BBC ponders the immorality of capitalism. Surprised?

I woke to the BBC's World Service the other night to hear about a new electrification program amidst African poverty. Unlike previous electrification efforts, this one was 1) for profit and 2) not showing signs of abandoning its effort. Previous efforts had been either based on charity or state direction. When priorities changed, the electrification was abandon. Apparently (alert: this is not news to those who have a cursory knowledge of Adam Smith), the profit motive focuses the attention of the electric providers to continue providing electricity. To be more accurate, companies making money by providing a service are less fickle than those who give gifts or the state. The kicker is this: after discussing how the locals were benifiting in no uncertain terms, and how the project dis not appear to be going the way of previous efforts, the corespondant asks the business man if he doesn't feel that it is immoral to make a profit among such poverty. Hmmm, moral would be free failure, but isn't it immoral to actually provide success if you're making a profit at it. This really says so much about the BBC. When failed socialism is better than successful capitalism, the world is upside down. For the record, I'd also say that successful socialism is better than failed capitalism. See, its the success and the failure to meet needs, provide goods and services, and otherwise perform the functions of an economy that are at issue here, not whether they conform your Platonic form of a good economy. I'll add that capitalism and socialism are systems that not only meet needs differently, they also meet different needs.

Athens


Note: Athenians form a league to maintain Greek liberty against the Persians. Eventually the league becomes an empire as smaller members of the league abdicate responsibility to Athens. It leads me to the conclusion that leagues are probabaly best at multi-polar enviroments. In such cases, the members of the leagues change, but the leaders are relatively stable. Its the shifting itself that keeps the league functioning as a league. When the league is stable, because of a bipolar or unipolar enviroment, the leader identifies as a leader, and the league members lose their sense that their contribution makes a difference and cease to be active citizens. As members of the league they become passive and begin to rely on the leadership of the powerful memeber(s).

Hannity and Mailer


Norman Mailer was on Sean Hannity's radio show (frankly, its this or FM radio), and Hannity again demonstrated his ignorance of ideas. Mailer was wrong, but was at least aware of ideas other than his own. Hannity only attacks straw men, probabaly because his view of everyone else is cartoonish. Mailer argued that Bush aimed to "take over the middle east". Hannity scoffed. Take a look at Max Boot's article over at the Weekly Standard's website.


There is only one solution to this problem, and it is called liberal democracy.
Spreading freedom in the Arab world is no easy task, of course, but if democracy could take root in eastern Europe, east Asia and Latin America, there is no theoretical reason why it shouldn't work in the Middle East.
This will ultimately be up to the local people, but America can give them a helping hand, as it has helped other democrats from Poland to the Philippines. [...] The West should heed the eloquent plea issued last week by the Egyptian dissident Saad Eddin Ibrahim to "assist the democratic transformation of the region". The fundamental problem in the Palestinian Authority is the same as in the rest of the Middle East: lack of liberalism. Developing democratic institutions isn't as sexy as pushing a "peace process", but it must be the West's primary emphasis in the region. Sometimes this will involve forcible regime change, as in Iraq. More often, subtler measures are called for.

Boot is not alone. Paul Wolfowitz has been heard to say the same things, as have a slate of Neo-con writers. Now, Mailer's characterization of the project is hostile, but in its essentials, I'd say its based on actual ideas put forward by some members of the administration and their supporters in the press. I will go on record and say that I agree that to defeat terrorism, we must impose liberalism on the middle east. I estimate it will take five decades. If Mailer wants to call that taking over the middle east, I'll shrug. Establishing democracy in Germany and Japan, struggling during the Cold War to free Eastern Europe as well as South Korea and Taiwan, and our fitful attentions in Latin America all took a long time and a huge investment, but have benefited America and the whole world tremendously. Leftists will point out the Vietnam couldn't make the list and that we sometimes supported authortarian regimes. I'd reply that to the extent that Vietnam was a war to bring democracy to Southeast Asia, it was a noble campaign. The fact that it was also a civil war and a war of anti-colonialism made the cost higher than Americans wanted to bear. As such, Johnson probabaly ranks as America's all-time worst president for failing to avoid a war there. On the second point, America allied with Stalin to defeat Hitler. Defeating the Axis couldn't have been done (in any way remotely like it was done) without that deal with the devil. I'm willing to accept that the victory against the Soviets in the Cold War couldn't have happened if America was unwilling to sometimes befriend anti-communist dictators. Obviously America prefered democracies, but getting democracy in the third world often was so comprimised by anti-colonial hostility to the West that what America reasonably feared was another Cuba. America helped topple Batista and got burned, seriously burned. How many more burns like that could America have endured in the Cold War?

In any event. Mailer has to walk away from his interview with Hannity thinking "idiot", and I have to agree. Hannity is obviously unaware (or is unwilling to acknowledge) that neo-cons do favor a long term campaign to topple paternalistic dictatorships and socialist tyrants who for various reasons are compelled to support terrorists and anti-American propaganda. The beauty of the thing today is that until we establish a democracy and it turns into a radical Islamicist state, we really don't have the fear of destablizing the region we had in the Cold War with the Soviets ready to jump on any opportunity.

Falling in the lap of good sources
It just so happens that I had started listening to Hugh Hewitt just before the Robert Scheer stuff about the Lynch rescue came out. So I happily happened upon a forum just before it became a most useful window into the current media bruha.

The Every So Often When I decide to Post Blog is back up and running.

That's the link over to the right, or just click here. My brother has had his rear window shot out. Pictures are on the site. He was also in a life or death struggle with a grandfather clock.

The Museum in Bagdad

As I mentioned below, I have parted ways with the talk radio broadcast locally. One of the areas of cleavage was the looting of the Bagdad museum. Unlike the anti-intellectuals on the airwaves, I took the loss of cultural treasures seriously. I was suspicous of the reports of the damage, and suspected that stolen artifacts would turn up quickly as the looters converted the artifacts into cash. I had been looking out for Victor Davis Hanson's take on the issue, because as a classicist he would not blow off the loss of antiquites. He writes, "the "178,000" destroyed priceless icons are slowly being downsized to a few hundred — and were mostly lost through the complicity of the Baathists themselves." As I had suspected, an inside job. Hanson has it all on this issue, as far as I am concerned. An educated man, an expert in a related field able to comment intelligently on the issue of preservation, and pro-war. Someone in his position is able to make a reasonable attempt to balance competing goods.

Two Months Silent?

Looking at the past two post timestamps, would you be surprised to find out I was student teaching from March 10 to May 9th?

Where to go for decent radio?

When the situation in Iraq started getting serious, I abandon NPR. I had some problems with their one-sided coverage prior, but not so much to drive me away. Indeed, I listened for about a dozen years. News, classical, jazz, Car Talk, What do you know, the whole nine yards. As the foriegn policy news began to become more important, my ability to over-look NPR's slant fell off the table. Part of this is because I am socially liberal, but in economics and foriegn policy, I am recognizably conservative. So, I turned to local AM talk radio. As long as Iraq remained the big story and most of the talk was about the war, I was happy with talk radio. As the talk returns to social issues and the war now only a small part of the talk, I can't stand the talk radio. Rusty Humphries is the most offensive, but Micheal Savage and Sean Hannity are driving me to search for alternatives as well. Humphries, aside from being blind to any reflection what so ever, hasn't the slightest idea what Hegel's dialectic is, and seems to think its all a trick. Ack. He has no idea that conservatives have be able to use Hegel without going through Marx to profitably say something useful. Humphries seems to think that liberals invented the term "neocon" as an attack term, probabaly because, as he says, it might suggest "neo-nazi" in the mind of the listener. Apparently Norman Podhoretz does not exist in Humphries world. Nor Irving Kristol, Gertrude Himmelfarb, or a host of other first generation neocons. Such an embrace of ignorance of Hegel, the history of an important strain on the right, and a host of other topics prevents me from even listening. My social liberalism is a problem on all of these shows, and my statism (moderate though it may be) prevents me from regarding the rabid anti-tax ravings of these fellows as anything but loopy.

I have tried to return to NPR, but found the very first story so slanted - the voting public's rejection of gun control candidates must be an NRA plot - that I quickly abandon that. Fortunatly fate smiled happily on me. James Lileks mentioned his own preference for Hugh Hewitt as an alternative to the "rant-a-thons". Always loved Lileks and happy to follow his lead re Hewitt. Fortunatly I live in a time when streaming LA radio is just as easy as listening to broadcast radio. Listened to a complete show today, and found it a very happy listen. Sensible, intelligent, and not demonstrating any propensity drive me to throw objects at the speakers. Ultimatly I will probabaly have to find another show or two to fill those days I am at home and desirous of talk and commentary (ie when I am awake and not at work).

Update: Humphries has the bizzare idea that posting his ideas on neo-cons is a good idea. See them at NewMax.com.