A world where profit has no value? A better world?

I have written more than several times about our congregation and how it is populated by some of the most wonderful people I have ever known.

They are also all WAY to the left. Many want the USA essentially to be a commune (unvoiced). Well if it could be done, that would be okay. I'd enjoy being in this kind of gung ho operation. Of course, not only can't it be done, it would result in hideous rule by fiat in the name of the good of the people by those who were 'fit' to understand what that was.

A good bye last night was punctuated by the question (serious) as to whether Bush was worse than Nixon.

But earlier a very serious (and friendly) discussion ensued engendered by the stimulus bill.I offered the opinion that all efforts should be about jobs since only the expansion of jobs would make people confident enough to spend money which IS what would end this. The STD moneys in the bill came up as a prime villain. The lady in the discussion is a MASTER, and I mean MASTER of social work, intervention and solving the acute problems of families in crisis. She offered the opinion that the STD moneys WOULD create many jobs just like hers.

Her husband is a teacher.

As an aside she told me about a study that showed when you or your family miss 9 meals, you are in the street ... amid mass social unrest. I think that if the THOUGHT the fam might miss 9 meals intruded into my mind, it would be tea in the harbor time. I don't think I'd wait.

I responded that in the end, if we did not make things here, for a profit, it was going to be very difficult to keep an expanding economy. More, the tangible result of an expanding jobs market could not be sustained by working to diminish STD's. She responded that she was sick of hearing that jobs like the ones she did were without value (jobs like hers would also include my wife and daughter, btw). Of course, jobs like hers are compulsory in a well functioning society, and keep the society PRODUCTIVE, COMPETITIVE and VIBRANT, but when the discourse veered into how sick they were of emphasis on profit, in terms of what was needed in society, and in how education was structured (for jobs), I began to listen carefully.

A different way of being !

Now I would like a society where education was all about the classics, and we sat around as Alexander did with Aristotle in open freewheeling discussion amid intellectually superior peers. It would then be nice to have all these well balanced baccalaureates choose among the vocations to get their MS's, MA's. PhD's and JD's and MD's post graduation.

That would be nice and maybe the demand for social interventions of a dramatic nature in family life would actually decrease in this kind of society.

As a guide, back after HAMAS was elected the husband and I had a very friendly difference of opinion as to how mallebale they would prove. You can all fill in the blanks well, I think.

But, of course, those pesky people in XXXXX (choose your nation where making money means direct and immediate improvement in your and your children's lives) would still be there willing to fill the same function for 10% of the value those MA's and MS's would accept. And work for even less on an assembly line making flat screens, cars, dryers or any of the other items we need and want.

LAW OF NATURE, not susceptible to opinion, only observation. Capital is a force of nature. Someplace, somebody is willing to do the job for less, becuase their own needs dictate that, and if they can do the job reasonably well, and market has this knowledge, you are SOL.

Yet they could not accept that profit made their jobs possible even though their jobs were MANDATORY in society. Could not accept that if education did not result in people READY to work in competent fashion, the ability to discuss Marlowe vs Shakepeare would have no REAL value. Could not accept that without profit, entreprenuers ready to take big chances for the money they could make, there would be a paucity of the means to employ THEM.

LAW OF NATURE, not susceptible to opinion, only observation.

There was no headway to be made.

These are great people and admirable people.

You can guess how they voted.

And why.