A Networked World: Why Are Socialist Economies More Competitive?

Earl Mardle on the button again. This made me laugh out loud, then wonder whether I shouldn't be crying:

Maybe it has to do with scale, our organs collaborate among themselves, if the liver was in constant competition with the feet for resources and both spent half their time trying to sell their services to the stomach, we'd feel sick most of the time and never be able to compete with other species for resources. So while individuals can compete within a society, for whole societies to "be competitive", maybe they need to release their constituent parts' energies through higher order collaboration. [Earle Mardle, A Networked World: Why Are Socialist Economies More Competitive?]

Earl continues with these observations which fit in, to an extent, with my earlier post on innovation.

Maybe because the Scandinai\bvians u derstand that if the community, via the state, takes over the supply and maintenance of education, health services, transport, social and civil support, people have much more time available for creative thinking and doing. Tim Flannery in The Future Eaters makes the case that a great deal of human creativity comes not, as the adage puts it of necessity, but of luxury and that in those societies where even a single failure can be disastrous, we become cautious, fearful and very conservative. [Earle Mardle, A Networked World: Why Are Socialist Economies More Competitive?]

Innovation needs space, not beaurocracy. Sounds as if I could do to read The Future Eaters, which I would never have guess from the description, as generically interesting as it might appear.

Of course, this could easily sound like me, as an academic, saying, "Give me plenty of money, and make no demands of me, and you will thank yourselves for it one day." I'm sure it's true, but it's not going to get me very far :)

Comments

[Earl Mardle]

Hi Hamish,

ack, did I really leave that awful typo there? Fixed now.

And yes, read Flannery, his relentless gaze on places like Tasmania before the Europeans and Easter Island are sobering thoughts on what happens when either populations destroy their resources or crucial knowledge is lost.

As well as the other side of the coin, creativity.