tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2827071479314474893.post6593449892333850816..comments2024-01-31T22:47:47.791-08:00Comments on Anglocat on the Prowl: Confessions of a Continuator: "Everybody Knows it's Me or You..."Anglocathttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03218740053628978255noreply@blogger.comBlogger2125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2827071479314474893.post-6645696917845995312015-08-21T19:57:29.108-07:002015-08-21T19:57:29.108-07:00A great quotation, Claude, and an even better comm...A great quotation, Claude, and an even better comment. I agree with you, and am delighted to host a comment that puts it so pithily and so well. <br /><br />(Outdoing the main post, mind you, but so be it.)Anglocathttps://www.blogger.com/profile/03218740053628978255noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2827071479314474893.post-27462536950109356952015-08-21T14:39:04.907-07:002015-08-21T14:39:04.907-07:00This is from The Great U-Turn: Corporate Restructu...This is from The Great U-Turn: Corporate Restructuring and the Polarizing of America, by Bennett Harrison and Barry Bluestone, published in 1988:<br /><br />"The type of competition that conservatives postulate amounts to a Hobbsian world in which there is a war of all against all. Firms must be constantly on guard against losing their entire market to a new domestic or foreign entrepreneur with essentially the same product but a slightly lower price. And workers must continually keep an eye cocked to see which young upstarts are perched to takeaway their jobs simply by offering equivalent work for ten cents less an hour. In such a world, there is a bullish market in Maalox and valium."<br /><br />This is a bit of a reductio, as it postulates a perfectly frictionless economy; something that, by the grace of heaven, we're unlikely ever to see. Still, the removal of barriers to the flow of information, enabling vastly expanded opportunities for arbitrage (in and of itself not a bad thing), along with the removal of regulatory restraints, has brought us closer to Harrison and Bluestone's "Hobbsian world."<br /><br />What I find ironic is the characterization of the advocacy of laissez faire as "conservative." In the nineteenth century, it was considered "liberal"; its advocates wanted to liberate commerce from the restraints put on it by the Crown. "Conservatives" were those who cautioned against hasty or radical change, valuing social stability. Today, unrestrained markets are, I believe, the greatest threat to social stability. Claude Scaleshttps://www.blogger.com/profile/13183579833702456213noreply@blogger.com