Relay-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP Posting-Version: version B 2.10.3 alpha 4/15/85; site ubvax.UUCP Path: utzoo!watmath!clyde!bonnie!akgua!whuxlm!harpo!decvax!tektronix!uw-beaver!cornell!vax135!timeinc!phri!pesnta!amd!amdcad!cae780!ubvax!tonyw From: tonyw@ubvax.UUCP (Tony Wuersch) Newsgroups: net.politics.theory Subject: Re: What is "capitalism"? Message-ID: <228@ubvax.UUCP> Date: Mon, 24-Jun-85 14:12:15 EDT Article-I.D.: ubvax.228 Posted: Mon Jun 24 14:12:15 1985 Date-Received: Sat, 29-Jun-85 04:09:21 EDT References: <470@qantel.UUCP> Organization: Ungermann-Bass, Inc., Santa Clara, CA Lines: 40 In article <470@qantel.UUCP>, gabor@qantel.UUCP (Gabor Fencsik@ex2642) writes: > Intellectuals gain with every move toward an administered society. The question > of democracy is orthogonal to whether businessmen or intellectuals make the > decisions. In fact, businessmen and intellectuals-turned-administrators are > not radically different animals. It is the incentives and penalties they > face that makes them different. > Sure, intellectuals gain with every move toward an administered society. I also think they gain with every move towards democracy. What is meant here by orthogonal? Usually it would imply that the amount of democracy is unrelated to the power of either businessmen or intellectuals. I don't agree. In democracy, persuasive people gain more power, and intellectuals are more persuasive than businessmen because verbal and written agility is needed to be intellectual. One point of democracy should be that important issues would get more public discussion -- hence my claims about intellectuals. And the less democracy, the more an existent distribution of power and property -- that is, the businessman -- makes decisions. As far as penalties go, an intellectual-turned-administrator can be made as responsible for the failure of the program he administers as any manager of a company. > Compare a businessman misjudging, say, the demand for laptop computers > to an intellectual predicting that MIRVs will improve U.S. national > security or that TVA will end poverty in Appalachia. Retribution is much > swifter and harsher in the first case than in the second. The above businessman is a very small one. Most major companies are large, and they judge their managers via organizational norms rather than direct market incentives (sometimes these match, sometimes not -- just as in politics). And woe to the stupid politician that decides to take the misjudgments of the intellectual as gospel. He could lose a lot. Tony Wuersch {amd,amdcad}!cae780!ubvax!tonyw