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<p>EricS -</p>
<p>I think this gives a good "hint" of part of what a fully
Socialized or Communal system looks like to some (e.g.
Libertarians), and why they resist what others of us might see as
"reasonable attempts at leveling the playing field". <br>
</p>
<p>I'm definitely ambivalent in the sense of being of "two minds".
I am a creature (ego?) shaped by the struggles and challenges I
have experienced... and "what didn't kill me made me stronger" or
maybe more to the point, I am a product of my experiences (nod to
Glen's "diachronic" vs "episodic" thoughts). <br>
</p>
<p>I have only the thinnest apprehension of Glen's "Anarcho
Syndicalism" (sure I've read a little, but have far from had time
to think through it all) but it has some of the positive features
I look for like "structure at all scales" and "self-similarity"
possibilities, explaining not only how "history doesn't repeat
itself, it rhymes" (Clemens) but perhaps how cultural sub-units,
"bubbles" if you will also rhyme across geography/culture as well
as time. A bit of a cultural/semantic version of the
"multi-verse foam" ideas in physics/cosmology.</p>
<p>Also the best reason I can accept for a continued-to-expand
humanity... with consciousness being not unlike the big-bang,
expanding (in quality) right up to our current era where the likes
of Musk and several nation-states are aspiring to begin to
colonize the inner system (at least moon/mars) in our (their?)
lifetimes.</p>
<p>- SteveS<br>
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<div dir="ltr">Nick, while I laud your motivation, I strongly
disagree with your proposed solution. The desire for a basic
fairness of some sort should be kept quite different the notion
of creating a flatland. We WANT a society full of people who
faced a variety of different struggles.
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<div>This is a Peirce/Dewey democracy problem. <i><u>IF</u></i>
the rationale for a democratic system is that we make better
decisions when we bringing a variety of perspectives to bear
on a problem, then the push for flat-land destroys the
rationale for having a democratic system. While we might
easily agree that those struggles should not include a risk of
literal starvation, that doesn't mean we want them all to
start out with access to identical fiscal resources and
identical educational opportunities. That some people have
more food than others, in a system that guarantees everyone a
baseline amount of food to support development, is perfectly
fine. <br clear="all">
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<div dir="ltr" class="gmail_attr">On Fri, Sep 18, 2020 at 11:32
AM <<a href="mailto:thompnickson2@gmail.com"
moz-do-not-send="true">thompnickson2@gmail.com</a>>
wrote:<br>
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<p class="MsoNormal">Thanks, Eric. He came off better on
the podcast. Glad to be corrected. This American Life
did one of it’s quixotic treatments of systems in which
leaders are chosen at random, and, of course, was quite
pleased by the result. By the way, isn’t that how the
Dali Lama is chosen? </p>
<p class="MsoNormal"> </p>
<p class="MsoNormal">I still think we should randomize all
the babies at birth, take huge amounts of money off the
top and pour it in at the bottom in the form of
education and flat-out income adjustment so that no
child is disadvantaged by the station of his/her birth.
</p>
<p class="MsoNormal"> </p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Nick </p>
<p class="MsoNormal"> </p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Nicholas Thompson</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Emeritus Professor of Ethology and
Psychology</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Clark University</p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><a
href="mailto:ThompNickSon2@gmail.com" target="_blank"
moz-do-not-send="true"><span
style="color:rgb(5,99,193)">ThompNickSon2@gmail.com</span></a></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><a
href="https://wordpress.clarku.edu/nthompson/"
target="_blank" moz-do-not-send="true"><span
style="color:rgb(5,99,193)">https://wordpress.clarku.edu/nthompson/</span></a></p>
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<div
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<p class="MsoNormal"><b>From:</b> Friam <<a
href="mailto:friam-bounces@redfish.com"
target="_blank" moz-do-not-send="true">friam-bounces@redfish.com</a>>
<b>On Behalf Of </b>Eric Charles<br>
<b>Sent:</b> Friday, September 18, 2020 6:20 AM<br>
<b>To:</b> The Friday Morning Applied Complexity
Coffee Group <<a href="mailto:friam@redfish.com"
target="_blank" moz-do-not-send="true">friam@redfish.com</a>><br>
<b>Subject:</b> Re: [FRIAM] Getting You Libertarians'
Goats</p>
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<p class="MsoNormal"> </p>
<div>
<p class="MsoNormal">So.... delayed response to the
original... based on the longer reviews I've seen,
this is partially a criticism of meritocracy itself,
but also a very strong criticism of the neo-liberal
bastardization of meritocracy. As it says in the
opening line of the review in the original post: The
thing being criticized are "pernicious assumptions"
about merit. From what I can tell, his TED talk
summarizes the book well: <a
href="https://www.ted.com/talks/michael_sandel_the_tyranny_of_merit"
target="_blank" moz-do-not-send="true">https://www.ted.com/talks/michael_sandel_the_tyranny_of_merit</a> </p>
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<p class="MsoNormal">He starts out with some
discussion of moral luck, but in my opinion not a
great discussion of it. Then he moves on to
criticize a world where pieces of paper are confused
for ability. In such a world, those without
the right pieces of paper are deemed to lack merit
and are told they can't have dignity. That part is
criticizing a world in which our leaders
continuously message that everyone should go to
college, encouraging a false belief that a getting a
degree somehow magically makes you successful, and
encouraging the implicit (or sometimes explicit)
judgement that not getting a degree somehow a
personal failure and that getting a degree and then
not succeeding is an incoherent position to be in.
The failure of that program of thought has been
huge. It is hard to explain how many of the students
I taught at Penn State Altoona had their lives made
worse by getting a degree. They are working the same
jobs they could have worked out of high school, but
with 4 years less experience, added shame and
frustration, crippling debt, and a worse
relationship with parents who can't understand why
having a degree hasn't made their kids successful.
And you can't try to defend this by hand-waving at
education being virtuous in its own right, but it
won't work, because by any reasonable measure they
aren't very educated either. </p>
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<p class="MsoNormal">Even with as right as some parts
of that critique are, it is all somehow
seething with the suspect rhetoric of the protestant
work ethic. There is nothing inherently virtuous in
being exploited for your labor (in the Marxist sense
of providing profit to a capitalist), and he is
somehow lumping all "work" together in a way that
obscures that. </p>
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<p class="MsoNormal">When all is said and done, it is
an interesting argument, but my Libertarian Goat is
doing fine, thank you :- )</p>
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<p class="MsoNormal">On Sun, Sep 13, 2020 at 1:28 PM
<<a href="mailto:thompnickson2@gmail.com"
target="_blank" moz-do-not-send="true">thompnickson2@gmail.com</a>>
wrote:</p>
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<p class="MsoNormal">This should do it!</p>
<p class="MsoNormal"> </p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><a
href="https://www.kirkusreviews.com/book-reviews/michael-j-sandel/the-tyranny-of-merit/"
target="_blank" moz-do-not-send="true">https://www.kirkusreviews.com/book-reviews/michael-j-sandel/the-tyranny-of-merit/</a></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"> </p>
<p class="MsoNormal">The thesis is that
“meritocracy” is the cause of the fact that the
us is now the least socially mobile country
among the western democracies. </p>
<p class="MsoNormal"> </p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Nick </p>
<p class="MsoNormal"> </p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Nicholas Thompson</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Emeritus Professor of
Ethology and Psychology</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Clark University</p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><a
href="mailto:ThompNickSon2@gmail.com"
target="_blank" moz-do-not-send="true">ThompNickSon2@gmail.com</a></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><a
href="https://wordpress.clarku.edu/nthompson/"
target="_blank" moz-do-not-send="true">https://wordpress.clarku.edu/nthompson/</a></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"> </p>
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