Re: Scientific progress and Scarcity

["Henry C.K. Liu" <hliu@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Capitalistic economy would appear to be materialistically efficient due largely to its
shedding of the costly burden of social responsibilities.  It would operate with clear
purpose, because material gains are stimulated by material incentives, relatively
unencumbered by metaphysical morals.
Capitalism is paradoxically tied to the perpetuation of poverty, because it needs the
fear of poverty as an negative incentive for the invidual to work.  Even if capitalism
should succeed in eliminating material
poverty, it would do so only at the price of a poverty of the spirit. It is when
questions of responsibility to one's fellow men and thehigher purposes of life are asked
that the purpose of economic efficiency in a capitalistic democracy faces it's most
serious challenge.
While an ample supply of bread may prevent political revolutions, it is necessary to
remember, as Christ pointed out: "Man lives not by bread alone."

Attitude toward money being often more indicative of a person's true worth than the mere
possession of it, the same might be even more true for societies.
This explains why modern societies, whose members would be obsessed with a single-minded
quest for material wealth, would be constantly faced with recurring crises of value.
The pursuit of maximization of wealth leads inevitably to the betrayal of human values
that would otherwise forbid unconscionable exploitation of and impersonal disregard for
others.
Maximization breeds abuse.  The Confucian doctrine of the Path of the Golden Mean
(Zhongyong zhi Dao), a concept of avoiding extremes, is instructive on this point.
More is not necessarily better; most is seldom best, and best is the mortal enemy of
good, as Voltaire has insightfully pointed out.  A rich man amid masses of poverty will
not find himself a paradise on earth.  A
society that celebrates only the best will waste the good.  The relentless pursuit of
absolute beauty will result in ugliness, which explains why the art world is often
infested with revolting characters.
The fact that the historical record of socialist politics is littered with betrayals of
the humane ideals of theoretical socialism should not diminish the valor of those who
have placed their hopes on the noble
vision, just as the materialistic efficiency of unregulated capitalism is no testimony
on the moral validity of greed.

It is telling in the manner modern economics treats the trade-off between return on
capital and compensation for labor: an increase in return on capital is viewed as
economic efficiency while a rise in pay for workers is viewed as non-productive
inflation.  What moral rules enable the pampered corporate executive to receive a
generous bonus for firing thousands of workers in a recession?  Maximization of
shareholder value through cost reduction is an euphemism for robbing the workers to
enrich the owners.
It is a very sick society that views as progress the depreciation of human workers in
favor of the appreciation of material assets.

In a money economy, it is a basic truism that those who have money are the only ones who
can pay the bills at the end.  If the poor are to pay their share, ways must be found
for them to earn sufficient money to constructively participate on a healthy financial
level, without permanent subsidy from the economic order to which they have become
burdensome wards.

In a bountiful world, poverty is seldom caused by someone else's having more money than
others.  This is particularly true in a society in which both greed and envy are
constrained by moral precepts.  One does not have to be the world's richest man in order
to avoid feeling poor.
Poverty is the result of underdevelopment in relation to the production and consumption
norms in a particular socio-economic order.  It is only when some singular segment of
society fails extensively to receive sufficient economic opportunity, or sufficient
value for its labor to maintain its fair share of consumption, as normatively prescribed
in the socio-economic order, that poverty is born.

Social cohesion will be threatened when poverty is perceived as the result of
institutionalized mal-distribution of wealth, reflecting unfairness in the sharing of
the fruits of co-operative endeavor among different socio-economic groups.
Poverty, however, cannot be defined by absolute income levels alone, because poverty is
actually a social problem with an economic dimension.  Only because it is most
conveniently recognizable in a money-based economy by its financial aspect that poverty
is often mistaken as a simple matter of income deficiency.

Poverty is in reality a phenomenon of social despair.  The unemployed, the unemployable,
the underemployed and the working poor in developed countries have higher absolute
incomes than the middle class in other less developed countries, whose members
nevertheless do not consider themselves poor because they have not lost hope in
themselves or self-respect for their lot. Poverty is a symptom of economic inefficiency
and social dislocation in society.  Its existence in an economy hurts the rich as well
as the poor, and its pervasiveness in society alienates its members from one another.
Aside from being dehumanizing to those suffering from it, it is destructive to the
society tolerating it.

Poverty becomes a political issue when the poor is structurally excluded from
contributing to the economic process at a level that enables its constituents to support
a dignified life in a healthy environment consistent with the cultural tradition of
their society.  While there would always be those who enjoy higher income than others,
there is no socio-economic necessity for the poor to exist.
Life without growth will become a zero sum game in which winners will gain only from the
losers.  In such a game, eventually all would lose because the game is
self-terminating.  Wealth redistribution without
growth always leads to social conflicts, the final phase of which is generally settled
with violence, the organized form of which is war and the unorganized form is
revolution.  But growth cannot be defined simply in quantitative terms.  Quality of life
and the range of available options are often more revealing measures. Along with
material growth, cultural development and social mobility also accelerate.
Poverty in the form of pathological social despair is not prevalent in many periods of
history.

The flowering of culture has its roots in the high quality of life enjoyed by all
citizens, regardless of their social positions and income levels, and the high standard
of the efforts of their labor, manual or intellectual, regardless of their commercial
values.
Since money is only one of the determinants of a good life rather than the all consuming
ingredient, the pleasures of life are not denied to those who do not aspire to financial
wealth, or those who are unable to
achieve it because they do not care to surrender to society's financial rules.
The inner peace preached by Daoist and Buddhist precepts were verifiable by the
individual's direct personal experience in the socio-economic realm of the Chinese Tang
era.  The rejection of materialistic concerns did not necessarily reduce one to abject
poverty, nor earn society's scorn.
On the contrary, hermits were respected by society and donations toward their upkeep are
considered as enlightened expressions of the donors' own sagacious insight rather than
ostentatious acts of charity.
Generally, an imbalance existed between donors and recipients, the number wishing to
give frequently exceeding the number prepared to receive.
Whenever a seng (Buddhist monk) or a dao'shi (Daoist priest) or a wandering free spirit
should show up in a village, his presence would be celebrated by an spontaneous
outpouring of generous giving by the
villagers that would resemble an instant festival.
Even in modern time, sengs in Southeast Asian societies would still receive daily meals
by simply walking through villages, without begging, while the pious lay population
would await their habitual schedule with
the finest food in the house ready to give with eagerness, the way bird-lovers would
feed their ornithic idols.

The job as an economic notion would be an artificial phenomenon born of the industrial
society, a necessary evil of modern life, through which money rather than personal
satisfaction would be the primary reward for impersonal, piecemeal work, made tolerable
by the promise of desirable non-job-related consumption to be purchased with money
earned.  Boredom with job-related work would be an accepted given, particularly for
factory and office workers, the majority of the modern work force.
Boredom at work would create the modern need for management, an euphemism for
antagonistic supervision of bored workers and uncaring labor and for preemption of
individual decision-making at the job site. The difference in value between the payment
for work and the market value of work's productivity, less payment to management,
operation and materials, would is return on capital.  The high pay for management would
be justified by its ability to keep wages low and production high, an aim that would
create work conditions that would requires more supervision, thus creating a
self-perpetuating vicious circle of more management and its seeming indispensability.
It would be similar to the
circular phenomenon of poverty resulting in increased crime rate which would create the
need for more police which would increase public expenses paid by higher taxes which
would exacerbate further poverty.
In modern life, activities that are pleasurable would be considered hobbies, and only
disagreeable activities would be considered work.  The pain of a job, as much as its
productivity, would be compensated with
money.  Money would be made indispensable for even basic consumption in a modern money
economy.  To keep workers working, prices for food and housing are artificially kept at
a level to absorb most of the workers' income.  In sectors of surplus productive
capacity, production would be cut and workers laid-off to keep supply scarce to maintain
prices. Frequently, surplus basic commodities such as grain and milk are bought up at
artificially high prices, kept in storage or allowed to be destroyed or rot, so that the
horrible prospect of free food destroying the incentive to work would not materialize.
So all who do not have
unearned income from capital would have to work for a living, thus sustaining the value
of money and insuring a steady supply of workers. Leisure would be defined as the hours
after the workday and as the
much-awaited annual vacation, during which the pleasures of life would be pursued.
Excess of leisure beyond paid vacations would be called dropping-out, or if involuntary,
would be classified as unemployment, an unpleasant and disgraceful predicament, except
for those lucky enough to own capital.

Instead of impersonal jobs, people before the Industrial Revolution had livelihoods
which are functional categories of work in the socio-economic order based on each
individual's own calling.  The purpose of work and the purpose of life are congruent,
and pride in the product of one's labor is identical with pride in one's existence.
There is no need for management, which would be a sanitized euphemism in modern time for
supervision of depersonalized and forced labor.  This happy condition experienced by all
in the past would still occur in modern society, but unfortunately, it would be enjoyed
increasingly only by the economic and cultural elite.
Leisure as an escape from the drudgery of work was an unknown concept in pre-industrial
society.  Neither was the concept of vacation.

Skills were developed by pre-industrial workers not as a mere bargaining chip in the
impersonal labor market, but as an expression of their own existential essence.
The concept of junk, in the form of shoddy products, does not exist in the economic
culture of the Tang dynasty, as no one is prepared to renounce his pride of personality
by making artifacts below his ability.

The people of Buddhist Bali have a saying: "we have no art; we do everything well."  It
is a Daoist concept and it applies also to pre-industrial culture.

Western imperialism in the 19th century would do more than just reducing China to
material poverty by its illicit drug trade, war indemnities, and unequal treaties that
imposed territorial concessions,
extraterritoriality, foreign control of customs, unilaterally imposed
most-favored-nation trading status for the invading countries, and a wide range of other
dishonorable impositions on China's economic and
political sovereignty.  As damaging as these material impositions would be, they would
remain less corrosive than the role played by the imposed precepts of Western
imperialism in impoverishing Chinese culture, by destroying the indigenous
socio-economic ideals that had once aspired toward personal and collective perfection as
a purpose in life, and replacing them with a blind marathon toward maximizing productive
efficiency to satisfy the thirst of alien economies across the seas.
The claim made by apologists of Western imperialism of the 19th century that it would
contribute, despite its other evils, to the spread of the benefits of modern
civilization to an underdeveloped area of the world
would not be justified by fact in China, if anywhere else.  Fear of alien cultural
pollution, often exploited by xenophobic fanatics in revolutionary politics, would have
a substantive historical base in Modern China.

The segment of the Chinese population that would achieve success in this new
19th-Century semi-colonial socio-economic environment would find it necessary to
suppress its own traditional cultural ideals and to embrace the crass mercantile values
that had been shunned previously by self-respecting citizens of the traditional culture,
as exemplified in Tang time.
The modern bourgeois class in China, not much different than its predecessor of past
centuries in its basic values and outlook, would be largely uncultured.  The difference
is that they would be the elite of
society in modern time, whereas in Tang time, they have been at the bottom of the social
structure, ranking below prostitutes. The two centers of recent bourgeois prosperity in
China: pre-war Shanghai and post-war Hong Kong, despite decades of financial success,
would fail to produce any significant cultural achievements.  Unlike historical
Florence, Venice, Amsterdam, London, or Chang'an during Tang time, where the success of
trade achieved by the bourgeoisie would nurture the flowering of culture enjoyed by the
ruling class, the modern bourgeoisie in 19th-Century China would contribute only to the
transfer
of wealth from its own incompetent ruling class to the western imperial powers.  Such
transferred wealth would greatly enhance the cultural flowering of the ruling classes of
London and Paris, and to a lesser
degree Boston.

Traditional Chinese culture considers merchants who buy and sell for profit, bankers who
lend other people's money as a livelihood and speculators who profit from the needs of
others in adversity, little
better than social parasites.  With its elite class in continuous decline for much of
the past two centuries, Chinese culture naturally would suffer eclipse in modern time
from which it would yet recover.
In modern time, rare traces of traditional ideals would be found only in remote Chinese
villages, untouched by the destructive influence of Western imperialism, where pride of
workmanship would still show in peasant handicraft, and the quest for social harmony had
not been compromised by disjointed individual initiatives.

In these village societies, it would remain inconceivable that the betterment of the
individual could be achieved independent of the betterment of the whole village, let
alone at the expense of it.  What
would be bad for the village as a whole could not possibly be good for the individual
villager.
The revival of this focused pursuit of symbiotic union of personal fulfillment and
collective ideal would be considered by many serious thinkers as a fundamental
prerequisite for the renaissance of Chinese
culture in modern time, as it is prevalent in Tang time.

Many historians would credit this social cohesion of Tang culture, in a society of
spiritual piety, ordered hierarchy, ethnic diversity, cultural assimilation, political
cohesion, if not continuous stability, and social mobility, to the effectiveness of
Confucian emphasis on self-restraint and the calming effect of Buddhist acceptance of
fate. They would cherish the Confucian notion of natural hierarchy, balanced with the
Buddhist view of all things being fundamentally equal in essence, that have permitted
the pursuit of perfection to flourish at all social levels rather than being
concentrated at the top.

Henry C.K. Liu

Harry Veeder wrote:

> >
> >Sven R Larson wrote:
> >
> >> This is a very a-historical statement. The scientific revolutions were
> >> thwarted for a long time by political interests who instead directed
> >> research such taht it would corroborate certain political ideas. Whether
> >> those politicians were kings or men of the church is ephemeral.
> >>
>
> Two recent books have come out which challenge this popular belief
> with respect to the church. See _The Sun in the Church_
> and _Galieo's Mistake_.
>
> > >Henry C.K. Liu wrote:
> >They don't give you one not because Corvettes are scarce, but that you value other
> >goods more.  The trade off is your decision.  There are many free commodities which
> >you also do not consume.  What is scarce is an instrument of exchange: money - a
> >totally artifical construct imposed on society.  Any system is totally capable of
> >producing all the Corvette consumers may want, provided ways are found to deliver
> >money, through income, to all.  The rationing of Corvettes is not a natural
> >phenomenom.  BTW, while you are demanding, why not a Ferrari ?
>
> I don't think material things are scarce, but I do think Time is scarce.
> The question is how does money come to embody the scarcity
> of time. It is a difficult conceptual problem.
>
> Harry Veeder