tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8954608646904080796.post4791469806988531369..comments2024-03-28T03:20:15.940-07:00Comments on Edward Feser: Aquinas contra globalismEdward Feserhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13643921537838616224noreply@blogger.comBlogger98125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8954608646904080796.post-65920271599712568832020-11-17T21:45:02.143-08:002020-11-17T21:45:02.143-08:00St. Thomas doesn't mention or mean nations, th...St. Thomas doesn't mention or mean nations, though his argument is applicable to them also.Miguel Cervantesnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8954608646904080796.post-91067607076202612752020-11-06T22:33:43.952-08:002020-11-06T22:33:43.952-08:00National unity is equivalent to the common good in...National unity is equivalent to the common good in the context of what Aquinas wrote in De Regno. I mean he says an influx of foreigners can cause disagreements not only between natives and the foreigners but also says the natives can be allured to foreign customs and thus the unity of the nation be disrupted by internal strife. I mean the chief harm is obviously to National unity, which is the specific common good that Thomas was obviously worried about. Now Thomas also makes plain he doesn't think either immigration or the presence of foreign traders is necessarily evil, only that the end goal is assimilation to at least some degree for immigrants and prudent caution o nor watchful eye on the influence and activity of foreign traders in the life of the city or nation.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8954608646904080796.post-74264813035627822882020-10-06T04:36:15.693-07:002020-10-06T04:36:15.693-07:00The people who founded the US were NOT conservativ...The people who founded the US were NOT conservatives. Genohttps://www.blogger.com/profile/04947011098774675886noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8954608646904080796.post-51997233057863889622020-09-29T18:03:04.791-07:002020-09-29T18:03:04.791-07:00I sent the following in an email to the person who...I sent the following in an email to the person who sent me this blog entry, so you might as well see it. I repeated some of it in my replies to "Miguel Cervantes". I noted in skimming through the comments some concern about "value". To oppose "nature" and "value" is the same mistake as to oppose "reason" and "will". When you know what something is, you know what it is worth. When you know something, you value it appropriately. Now for what I wrote to my correspondent:<br />As the New Yorker magazine used to say, "Here's Where We Stopped Reading Dept.": "...In Aristotelian-Thomistic political philosophy,..." There is no such thing, at least as far as Thomas is concerned. Whatever the writer here will boot-strap in on that unsupportable gambit is not worth reading. I'll take a peek. Thomas has more to say, and the writer's theory of the state might be supportable to Thomas, but here's something to remember about his political theory: "If the Prince breaks the law, he is no longer the Prince." Well, that lengthier quote, about foreigners, puts "Aristotelian-Thomistic" in plausible guise: when Thomas quotes "the philosopher", as he would, you can speak of Aristotelian Thomism, in some very vague way.<br />After Thomas's mention of Israel, the writer introduces his own hijacking plan: "What these passages from Aquinas imply is that too free a flow of populations across borders tends to dilute allegiance to the shared norms and culture of a nation, and thus threatens national unity." He/she has just verified that Thomas's criterion is "the common good", but now substitutes "national unity". I would regard this as an error that cannot be recovered from: the reader will not take that turn. <br />Notwithstanding, the writer's next point improves on Thomas's quoted argument. Thomas says, says the writer, that one's senses can be "immersed" in pleasure. The writer changes this metaphor to "overwhelm": so the senses might be waterproof but yet not indestructible in some sense. "So, Aquinas notes, first, that pleasure can overwhelm the mind to such an extent that, the more devoted one is to pleasure-seeking, the less 'critical distance' one has on the pleasures one enjoys. One is less able to think reasonably or prudently about them." We reach here the major flaw of what I will call Thomism, which Karl Rahner fixed: how does one know something? Though Karl uses Thomas's rule, "there is no knowledge without the phantasm", i.e., mental image, i.e., in the imagination, Thomas seems not to have worked this out, for instance in relation to the supposed distinction of reason and will. "... moreover, indulgence does not satisfy the appetite for the first sip only makes the thirst all the keener." Thomas, down to the present day (declared "Angelic Doctor" by some nineteenth century Pope), would have us believe, to the extent there is still a Catholic Church which still teaches philosophy, that we are binational beings: reason and will, with no common sense of the common good. How do you know what you want, what you would like, what you need, what you will do? You can make a plan, in your imagination, based on what you remember, in your imagination, and then wait and see if you carry it out to any extent at all.chrisrushlauhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/11432949074147807503noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8954608646904080796.post-50954190287040291602020-09-29T12:37:05.380-07:002020-09-29T12:37:05.380-07:00I misquoted Thomas. "When the Prince no long...I misquoted Thomas. "When the Prince no longer pursues the common good, he is no longer the Prince." The definition of law for Thomas is the mandate of reason promulgated by authority for the common good. As long as I'm cleaning up my workspace, I probably should add that globalism as a global information network is the definitive replacement of authority by mandates of reason that don't need a mother's milk (the root of "promulgate"): an authority's unreliable arguments. I might say, no more book of writs.chrisrushlauhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/11432949074147807503noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8954608646904080796.post-29713071666014308672020-09-29T12:16:57.685-07:002020-09-29T12:16:57.685-07:00"When the Prince breaks the law, he is no lon..."When the Prince breaks the law, he is no longer the Prince." The problem with Thomas, as with every scientist, is there is not enough time to work out all the implications. Have you read Karl Rahner? Thomas's big omission was in his saying that there is no knowledge without the phantasm, mental imagine, in the imagination, where knowledge occurs, but then failing to draw the necessary conclusions. Karl did half of this drawing in Spirit in the World, writing on that very definition of knowledge, but then Karl left it ambiguous if "this is one of those" as the act of knowledge occurs in words. It does not. Saying what the known thing is is a separate act. The true religion is that we encounter God via the senses. As Thomas Merton summarized virtue, "do what is indicated". The imagination also being the seat and sole territory of chimeras makes it problematic to see what is indicated. You must want to see what the senses report. You can explain it away. How is this willingness encouraged by others? I would say all creation encourages it: when you walk in a delusion, you stumble. Authority, "the weakest form of argument" per Thomas, can insist that the stumble was a success and oblige you to bow to it, like the Global War On Terror, for instance. That doesn't change the nature of the GWOT. chrisrushlauhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/11432949074147807503noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8954608646904080796.post-24434252346004240102020-09-29T11:56:41.791-07:002020-09-29T11:56:41.791-07:00We have to think of a state as a set of laws. A la...We have to think of a state as a set of laws. A law student knows that English law began, to the extent we'd recognize it in law today, as the book of writs. If you couldn't find your cause of action in the words of one of the writs the monarch's officers were empowered to adjudicate, you were bereft of legal remedy. So Cervantes's claim that most government, as the use of power to settle disputes, the -cracy, was settled by demo-cracy, that is, social arrangements at the base, is almost unavoidable.chrisrushlauhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/11432949074147807503noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8954608646904080796.post-60488484398716231482020-09-29T11:41:01.206-07:002020-09-29T11:41:01.206-07:00Tony,
I'm not saying (or implying) that educa...Tony,<br /><br />I'm not saying (or implying) that education is "primarily the task of the government", or that government can override parents' right and obligation to educate their children. My concern is about a system of (public and private) eduction that is driven by the market, more specifically, the object of material gain. It aligns with Aquinas' point that excessive trade is bad for the nation. <br /><br />One doesn't need religious convictions to see that such a system is seriously flawed, even in a pluralist society, I would think. The question is what, if anything, can be done about it. Because education impacts the public good, I think it is reasonable that government should be involved, though private schools provide more choices for parents and individuals.Nemohttps://www.blogger.com/profile/15049785243711109947noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8954608646904080796.post-92200282441842397622020-09-28T15:37:01.319-07:002020-09-28T15:37:01.319-07:00I can't put my fingers on it, but something is...<i>I can't put my fingers on it, but something is not quite right about letting the market decide education.</i> <br /><br />Nemo, I agree that education is a very important part of becoming a complete, flourishing person. However, that does not imply that it should be primarily the task of <i>the government</i>. Under subsidiarity, the government should generally keep its fingers out of pies that can be well met by lower / smaller entities. Experience has shown that education CAN be successfully carried out by private organizations. And no, I don't mean merely for-profit schools: there have been schools funded by charitable donations or combined private/charitable coordination for many centuries, LONG before governments got involved. There are also private schools that serve low-income populations: for example, I believe that the Catholic school system in the city of Washington, DC serves effectively the same <i>demographic cross section</i> as the public school system. (With, mind you, vastly better results). There are roughly 5M private college students and 15M public ones, (3 to 1 ratio) but 60 years ago the ratio was about 2 to 1. That is, private schools were handling a very large minority share of the task: there is no reason to think that private schools could not handle the entire task if funding were run differently. <br /><br /><i>The purpose of education, as i understand it, is to make man.</i> <br /><br />Well, I think the parents have something to do with making a man. And (so the Catholic Church teaches quite explicitly) it is a <b>primary</b> duty of parents to both HAVE children, and to EDUCATE them: for nature intends the end goal, not just the first stage, and the end goal is a <i>mature, healthy, independent man</i>, not a child. But just because it is a primary duty (and right) of parents, they also have a primary right to DIRECT the education of their kids, which includes (among other things) directing the <i>religious</i> education of their kids. One of the manifest results of a public education devoted to a sense of <i>pluralistic, non-religious</i> education is that such education teaches the kids to be pluralistic, non-religious: by taking education out of the hands of parental choice, public schools take away religious education and generate a man-made vacuum in its place, ready for implosion. <br /><br /><i>Isn't there more to the value of man than can be measured by the market?</i> <br /><br />Certainly. And that's why charitable schools have been around since the middle ages: men agree that education is worth non-market actions by men, and they put their money where their mouths are with direct donations. This is not market-driven <b>in toto</b>. But (when it is left in the hands of private enterprise (which includes private non-profit schools)) these also ANSWER TO market forces and quasi-market forces: they answer to market forces in that they must pay teachers a sustaining wage. They answer to quasi-market forces in that they must offer a product that donors / benefactors believe to be WORTHWHILE in the whole, or they will stop throwing money into the kitty. This (tends to, somewhat) prevent them from running off the rails into bent and unreasonable theories of "education" that foster such things as revolution or madness. Tonyhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/07159134209092031897noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8954608646904080796.post-49516317133031231472020-09-28T10:34:10.996-07:002020-09-28T10:34:10.996-07:00T N,
As I said, I'be happy to answer questio...T N, <br /><br />As I said, I'be happy to answer questions (or explain myself). However, when a person asks multiple questions in one comment, I suspect those are rhetorical, and s/he is not really interested in the answer, so responding would be an exercise in futility.Nemohttps://www.blogger.com/profile/15049785243711109947noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8954608646904080796.post-53088097164582749652020-09-28T09:58:59.377-07:002020-09-28T09:58:59.377-07:00Nemo, yeah prices are voting for the value of the ...Nemo, yeah prices are voting for the value of the product or service.<br /><br />You don't care to explain yourself. Ok, have a nice day.T Nhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/06287822708519943071noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8954608646904080796.post-18331492817768239312020-09-28T08:56:54.860-07:002020-09-28T08:56:54.860-07:00Tony,
I can't put my fingers on it, but somet...Tony,<br /><br />I can't put my fingers on it, but something is not quite right about letting the market decide education. The purpose of education, as i understand it, is to make man. Isn't there more to the value of man than can be measured by the market?Nemohttps://www.blogger.com/profile/15049785243711109947noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8954608646904080796.post-852819638330942252020-09-28T07:41:29.389-07:002020-09-28T07:41:29.389-07:00Paying a price is not "voting" or "...<i>Paying a price is not "voting" or "deciding" for it, any more than paying a ransom is "voting" for the ransom. </i> <br /><br />In this day, virtually anyone who actually wants to go to college and is intelligent enough to benefit from it (i.e. anyone with an IQ over, say, 80) can manage to go to community college and then a state u: the combination of government help and private aid and loans make it possible. Roughly 1/4 of young adults END UP with a 4 year degree, but others start out and then drop out or settle with a 2-year degree, or never intended to get a 4-year degree. <br /><br />And the economy actually explains that in part: there is a significant rate of failure of bachelors degreed graduates getting a bachelor-level job, many are settling for associate's degree level jobs because that's what's available. And while a number of old types of jobs that didn't used to require a degree now are enhanced if you have a degree, often the degree that enhances is an associates degree or a certificate program, not a traditional 4-year bachelor's degree. A significant number (about 1/3) say that their increased income opportunities by getting a 4-year degree is not worth the added student debt they take on - an indicator that <i>market forces</i> are not being well matched to regulate the choices being made: it is not clear that the ECONOMY as a whole can actually make use of the higher education if everyone got a 4-year degree, and there is some evidence that some of the gradually increasing #s of employer-requirements for SOME level of college education is a factor of employers winnowing out deadbeat prospects by seeing if they could get good grades in college (instead of push-em-through-and-out high schools), rather than by the extra knowledge actually being used on the job. And it is clear that people are not prepared for the academic rigors of that level of education. <br /><br />There is abundant evidence that high rates of government funding has been a leading contributor to the increased costs of a bachelor's degree (including, not least, the VERY sizable increase in the number of people who stretch their studies out to 5 or 6 years to get that 4-year degree, because (in part) the money is available), on a constant-dollar-value basis. Being a college professor is a high-paid AND high-status job, and it's level of ongoing effort required <i>once you have a Ph.D</i> is astonishingly modest for the level of pay. If universities and college were working with fully market-driven economic forces, there would be fewer dollars in the system and they would have to "work harder" to get them. Tonyhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/07159134209092031897noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8954608646904080796.post-54771398244277743652020-09-28T06:45:01.775-07:002020-09-28T06:45:01.775-07:00T N,
Paying a price is not "voting" or ...T N,<br /><br />Paying a price is not "voting" or "deciding" for it, any more than paying a ransom is "voting" for the ransom. Granted, in the classical supply and demand theory, prices do correspond to consumers' choices to come degree, but that mechanism does't apply to every product or service.<br /><br />If you care to ask questions one at a time, I'd be happy to try to answer them, and continue the discussion. At the moment, I suspect it would be futile to answer rhetorical questions.Nemohttps://www.blogger.com/profile/15049785243711109947noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8954608646904080796.post-82255670331687675952020-09-28T03:35:01.372-07:002020-09-28T03:35:01.372-07:00Nemo,
The "taxpayers" (i.e. the aggrega...Nemo,<br /><br />The "taxpayers" (i.e. the aggregate of consumers) do decide prices. If you buy something at a given price, you vote 'yes' to that price. If you don't buy at a given price, you vote 'no' on that price. Ergo, we collectively decide prices.<br /><br />You said the taxpayers should decide "what type of education should be provided". By what mechanism? Why would this mechanism be better than voting directly through prices?<br /><br />Charging taxpayers for everyone to get a degree will increase taxes (and decrease the value of a degree). Do you plan on increasing everyone's taxes, or just on some taxpayers? If we can pay for college through taxes, why can't we pay for it by traditional prices? Is it because you want to charge one group for the benefit of another group? I'm just asking what your plan is.<br /><br />There are already many government programs that help low income people pay for college. Why is what you're suggesting better?<br /><br />If college is benefit, why isn't it worth paying for? Why should person A have to pay for person B to receive a benefit? <br /><br />I agree that prices for college are out of control, but that is in large part because of government interference in not allowing prices to work. Since the government got in the business of higher education loans and grants, the sticker price has shot up accordingly. And why wouldn't it if Uncle Sam is paying? Why not let colleges (and the medical industry for that matter) compete on price and bring costs down? How will giving colleges and universities an endless taxpayer slush fund bring down prices?<br />T Nhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/06287822708519943071noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8954608646904080796.post-88739461748857000152020-09-27T19:34:04.137-07:002020-09-27T19:34:04.137-07:00T N,
The taxpayers don't decide the prices, s...T N,<br /><br />The taxpayers don't decide the prices, so I'm not sure what you mean by "make their decisions directly through prices".<br /><br />Low income families can pay taxes because taxes are proportional to their income, bur the same cannot be said about tuition.Nemohttps://www.blogger.com/profile/15049785243711109947noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8954608646904080796.post-75274824199981982982020-09-27T17:07:41.331-07:002020-09-27T17:07:41.331-07:00Nemo,
I'm imagining that this thread will loc...Nemo,<br /><br />I'm imagining that this thread will lock soon, but explain further: by what mechanism will "taxpayers decide"? Why can't those same taxpayers make their decision directly through prices instead of through some governmental mechanism? <br /><br />Are the "families who cannot afford it" taxpayers? Why can they afford it through taxes, but not through traditional means? If the "families who cannot afford it" aren't "taxpayers", why should someone else pay for them to recieve a value, and why should someone else dictate what they may and may not earn a degree in?T Nhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/06287822708519943071noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8954608646904080796.post-44784208040663997652020-09-27T14:57:20.991-07:002020-09-27T14:57:20.991-07:00T N wrote, "... if a given degree is valuable...T N wrote, <i>"... if a given degree is valuable enough to have tax payers pay for it through taxes, why isn't it valuable enough for market participants to pay for it through prices and the corresponding increased income to the holder of the degree?"</i><br /><br />If I understand your question correctly, education is certainly not "free", but having it paid for by taxes would allow individuals and families who cannot afford it to receive education for their own and the public good.<br /><br />As for the question "who decides" what type of education should be provided, it seems only fair to let the taxpayers decide, since they're the ones paying for it.Nemohttps://www.blogger.com/profile/15049785243711109947noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8954608646904080796.post-3250294269053957752020-09-24T19:11:00.338-07:002020-09-24T19:11:00.338-07:00Dignified,
"I would be careful with the lan...Dignified, <br /><br />"I would be careful with the language, first of all. DP only says that making the TV oneself would impart a certain dignity, or nobility, that buying a Korean TV lacks. And this I find to be plausible. Today we don't apply the term 'noble' or 'dignified' to such a person. People my own age would say, "that guy is a bad ass." I think this is probably similar to what Aquinas means by dignity (in this case at least)."<br /><br />I feel like the people who've built their own aircraft, guns, etc. prove DP. DarthT15https://www.blogger.com/profile/00031767948840667076noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8954608646904080796.post-65112368047762833572020-09-23T02:58:48.077-07:002020-09-23T02:58:48.077-07:00The whole point of my three examples above (heatin...The whole point of my three examples above (heating, cooking, childbirth) was to try to make sense of DP as it might apply to very trivial matters (like buying a Korean TV).<br /><br />Perhaps my examples aren't very good--as I conceded, I strongly suspect that many people would ridicule them. But if they do in fact indicate something important about human existence, they might serve to underwrite DP. (In other words, if they are right, it's not Aquinas who needs to modernize; it's the modern world that needs to medievalize.)<br /><br />"So, does watching a Korean made TV makes one deficient, as opposed to making the TV one's self?"<br /><br />I would be careful with the language, first of all. DP only says that making the TV oneself would impart a certain dignity, or nobility, that buying a Korean TV lacks. And this I find to be plausible. Today we don't apply the term 'noble' or 'dignified' to such a person. People my own age would say, "that guy is a bad ass." I think this is probably similar to what Aquinas means by dignity (in this case at least).<br /><br />In the end, perhaps it comes down to mutually incompatible intuitions. But: build your own TV, and then come back to me and tell me if you feel more 'bad ass' than you would after buying a Korean TV. :)Dignifiednoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8954608646904080796.post-38517347366112777752020-09-22T01:54:02.389-07:002020-09-22T01:54:02.389-07:00You won't find influential conservatives who b...You won't find influential conservatives who believe St. Robert Bellarmine to be a conservative thinker. In any case conservatism is essentially naturalistic, not religious, and St. Robert would have found it nauseating.<br /><br />It's not just that most important conservative thinkers simply aren't religious themselves; even those who do profess religion justify their worldview in a way that can't be reconciled with religion. Russell Kirk, for example, based his worldview on doctrines like this:<br /><br />"God's purpose among men is creation revealed through the unrolling of history. How are we to know God's <br />mind and will? Through the prejudices and traditions which millenniums of human experience with divine means and judgements has implanted in the mind of the species" (The Conservative Mind). It would have been better if he hadn't mentioned God, because this is not the Christian understanding of revelation.<br /><br />Compare the following orthodox view of history from Catholic sociologist Christopher Dawson: "For the Christian view of history is not merely a belief in the direction of history by divine providence, it is a <br />belief in the intervention by God in the life of mankind by direct action at certain definite points in time and <br />place", (Dynamics of World History) with Kirk's: "History is the gradual revelation of a supreme design... God makes history through the collective mind" and "Habit and custom may be the wisdom of unlettered men, but they come from the sound ancient heart of humanity".<br /><br />This is the worldview of most "religious" conservatism, yet it is even more eloquent in giving the game away as to its non-religious nature. How can the traditions and prejudices of millennia of human activity (a mixture of truth and falsehood) be called God's mind? Because, as Kirk tells us,. "they come from the sound ancient heart of humanity". But the Christian religion teaches that the heart of man is anything but sound, ancient or otherwise. <br /><br />Conservatism, as a post-Renaissance ideology, is based upon minimising original sin. Its naturalism leads it to believe that over time, "the species is always right", (Edmund Burke) but the Faith tells us that the "species" can not be counted on to do what is right, no matter how much time it allowed it, because of original sin. The dogmatism that Burke hated in the liberals of his day he also despised in religious people. Yet dogmas, the Church, the Faith, are all things which do not depend upon civil society. It is civil society which must be conditioned by these things which come from outside itself. Kirk's "collective mind" is helpless without them.<br /><br />The growing size of kingdoms had nothing to do with the arrival of the nation state. Most nation-states emerged through the breaking up of larger states. Existing kingdoms became nation-states when they became infused with the cult of civil society itself, which is the main focus of conservatism’s religiosity to this day. Countries suffering from messianic cults directed towards themselves (like France) were precocious in their adoption of nationalism and the national state, which went in step with the decline of genuine religiosity. To this day, many conservatives cannot understand that divinising the nation or the state automatically secularises society and corrodes religion. It was no accident that the Ancien Regime produced the revolution.Miguel Cervantesnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8954608646904080796.post-21889223384471441252020-09-21T17:16:41.916-07:002020-09-21T17:16:41.916-07:00St. Robert Bellarmine surely preceded the Enlighte...<i>St. Robert Bellarmine surely preceded the Enlightenment, nor was he a conservative.</i> <br /><br />Potayto, potahto. You're just choosing a meaning for "conservative" that excludes him. <br /><br /><i>Before the Enlightenment we cannot speak of monarchical nation-states </i> <br /><br />Before the Enlightenment (properly, the Endarkenment), there was the nascent advance of Europe from its former complex INTO larger states that swallowed up smaller entities. The French situation is emblematic, absorbing the duchy of Burgundy in the late 1400's. Castille and Aragon were joined and then absorbed Navarre in similar times, though the cultural unification continued forward for decades. These activities were not the result of Enlightenment ideas. You may not want to use the term "nation-states", but the reality of larger states being forged out of the material of a complex of smaller states was happening. (The unification of England and Scotland into Great Britain is another, but it didn't start until 1600, so I won't add it to the list). Whether or not it is useful to think of them as "nation-states" is a different matter and I am willing to accept another term, but we need something that denotes the conglomerated entities as distinct from the smaller entities that got swallowed. Tonyhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/07159134209092031897noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8954608646904080796.post-15011843907649082022020-09-21T16:36:58.361-07:002020-09-21T16:36:58.361-07:00No matter how large a community you can imagine, i...<i>No matter how large a community you can imagine, it will still be finite and its members will still have needs that could be better satisfied by cooperation with "outsiders".</i> <br /><br />Kristoffer, that "no matter how large" doesn't really work: if you take the whole world as the option, then we better not need help from outsiders. But speaking more practically: there are countries at various times whose internal resources were adequate for nearly all of the grave needs, and they could survive without external trade for a while; their trade goods consisted mostly of peripherals / luxury goods that the society can do without if necessary. <br /><br /><i>It is easier to gain access to pornography, clubs etc and at the same time it is less costly to break with one's more traditionally minded community.</i> <br /><br />I agree this has been happening, but it is an entirely <i>contingent</i> and changeable situation: there is no necessity that the culture be modified in that way. Part of our difficulty is the attitude about pluralism in western society, in which you are a meany if you don't agree with everyone else's lifestyle. Pluralism regarding moral norms is evil and culturally damaging, and this facet of western style democratic politics is a contingent feature. <br /><br />On the other hand, the more trade you have with others who have different cultures and different morals, the more <i>likely</i> it will be that moral pluralism will set in. It isn't <i>necessary</i>, but it is likely and the tendency is there. <br /><br />I think the real question is whether commercial prosperity itself (even if it does not come from trade and imports) tends to make the populace lax and bent toward the vices of the flesh. If so, then in a sense it is <i>prosperity</i> rather than trade that should have been Thomas's target. But that too seems difficult to argue: there has never been a society so situated that it didn't have any poor among them who rightly and justly aimed at being more prosperous. So then you are left with the problem of <i>those who are too well off</i> being overly indulgent, lax, and given to the vices of the flesh. And that, we do tend to see in western cultures. Tonyhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/07159134209092031897noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8954608646904080796.post-20547727917751429222020-09-21T14:59:23.761-07:002020-09-21T14:59:23.761-07:00Thank you for explaining "commodity money&quo...Thank you for explaining "commodity money", Tony.<br /><br />Value in a market is a fleeting thing: For example, if one buys a pair of shoes using his hard-earned money, only to find out that the shoes don't fit (and there is no return policy). The supposed value of the shoes vanishes instantly. I wonder if something similar happens often in the global market.<br /><br />I'll have to re-read Aristotle's Economics to better understand his view on governmental control of money.Nemohttps://www.blogger.com/profile/15049785243711109947noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8954608646904080796.post-52764087307803810312020-09-21T08:10:55.007-07:002020-09-21T08:10:55.007-07:00@Anonymous
Let me phrase it to you like this:
Wa...@Anonymous<br /><br />Let me phrase it to you like this:<br /><br />Wanting to have a free society without politics or strife is like asking for a bountiful field of crops without torrential rain and thunderstorms. The farmer who decides to create his farm on arid land with none of the loud thundering will get nothing for produce. What will happen when you successfully eliminate politics and strife will resemble what a farmer will get when he sows and plants in the Sahara (without irrigation).HolyKnowinghttps://www.blogger.com/profile/06109864288446595298noreply@blogger.com