Technocracy versus "blossoming of many Flowers"

Virginia Postrel has an interesting book - above.
She argues that the old "left" and "right" politcal divisions are becoming divisions between "stasists" and "Dynamists". Ie the greens, anti-free traders etc versus people (like me) who see great benefits from unregulated spontaneous experimentation and creation, with the market (ie the aggregate decisions of the public) deciding which methods, companies and products stay and which are discarded.

Examples of technocracy: The minitel in France - govmt organized. Quickly overtaken by the superior unplanned Internet and WWW.
Also : France's "plan informatique" in the 90s to subsidies local computer manufacturers versus
Toshiba - launching dozens of laptops and keeping on manufacturing the ones that were successful.

French style technocratic planning sucks, big time. Nothing exciting or groundbreaking has ever come from it, that I know of.

Imagine having a technocrat deciding for you which slimming diet was "best", or which laptop design was "best". How pompous, elitist and unrealistic.

That we are stuck with bad public education is not surprising given the massive centralization of that effort.

True to its Progressive Era origins, the pure technocratic vision combines the frisson of futurism—a combination of excitement and fear—with the reassurance that some authority will make everything turn out right. In 1984, amid the personal computer revolution, Newt Gingrich marveled at its creativity, but he worried that such uncoordinated enterprise lacked the focus necessary for national greatness. "These developments are individually striking," he wrote. "Taken together, they form a kaleidoscope that is difficult to develop into a coherent picture. Yet it is by sweeping dreams that societies shape themselves."

For technocrats, a kaleidoscope of trial-and-error innovation is not enough; decentralized experiments lack coherence. "Today, we have an opportunity to shape technology," wrote Gingrich in classic technocratic style (emphasis added). His message was that computer technology is too important to be left to hackers, hobbyists, entrepreneurs, venture capitalists, and computer buyers. "We" must shape it into a "coherent picture." That is the technocratic notion of progress: Decide on the one best way, make a plan, and stick to it. Looking for a model, Gingrich had kind words for the French Minitel system of terminals run by the state phone company—a centrally administered system whose rigidity has stifled Internet development in France.

In recent years, Gingrich has become more skeptical—and so has the rest of the country. In 1984, he expressed his enthusiasm for space exploration in demands for new heroic technocratic programs like the moon landing. By 1995, he was musing about the great things that could happen "if we got the government out of the business of designing space shuttles and space stations....The challenge for us is to get government and bureaucracy out of the way and put scientists, engineers, entrepreneurs, and adventurers back into the business of exploration and discovery." Far from creating a promising future, technocracy had stifled its spontaneous evolution.

full article:

http://www.dynamist.com/tfaie/index-excerptB.html

"Irak the model" on Nuclear weapons

From "Irak the Model" - a blog by an Iraki dentist - an inside view into Irak from an educated Iraki:

Irakis comment on the idea of an arab country acquiring Nuclear weapons:

"Besides the fact that nuclear programs place a heavy burden on the weak economies of Arab countries, harming the poor day in and day out…I indeed do not feel safe when I know that an Arab regime possesses such weapons because these weapons would be commanded by the desires and impulses of rulers who have been proven incompetent in anything except for repressing and impoverishing their peoples.Mo'ammar Qaddafi has been sitting on the chest of his people for 40 years, so can you imagine figure what it's going to be like when he acquires nuclear bombs? Not to mention our horrible experience with Saddam Hussein who used WMDs against his own people."Lateef Baghdadi. Baghdad/Iraq

"I wish from all my heart that Arabs get to build nuclear weapons because they will use them against one another and against their peoples-what Saddam did is the best example. Consequently this would lead to the extinction of Arabs and by that Arabs would be giving a free service to the civilized western world by ridding the world of themselves and their terror. The world will become safer."Ammar Rahmatallah. Baghdad"

,
My name is Haider Mousawi from Arabic Basra. I absolutely refuse that Arabs acquire nuclear weapons, at least for the time being, for several reasons. First, it's dangerous for them before others, as Arab rulers are not wise and might use them against one another or against themselves (just like the former rulers of my country did to their people and the region's peoples). Second, nuclear weapons could not save super powers like the USSR from collapse. Third, they are very expensive, so it's better to [spend money] fighting poverty and unemployment. Fourth, those weapons are going to be a burden on their producers in the future and fifth, a peaceful program makes more sense."Haider Mousawi. Basra,

http://iraqthemodel.blogspot.com/

Czech president on Marxist Greenies

I love nature and National Parks, but it is becoming increasingly obvious that Environmentalism today is "Marxism by other means".

And Marxism sucks death - just ask any Pole, Czech, Cuban, Vietnamese etc who has actually lived under Marxist rule, rather than played with it's ideas in a Chicago coffee-shop.

In his book, the Czech president Vaclav Klaus argues that environmentalism seeks to restrict human activities no matter the cost:

The largest threat to freedom, democracy, the market economy and prosperity at the beginning of the 21st century is no longer socialism,'' Klaus writes. ``It is, instead, the ambitious, arrogant, unscrupulous ideology of environmentalism.

He has written a book on the subject (click to see Amazon website on the book):

Blue Planet in Green Shackles

The EU sucks

In my opinion, the EU is death ... death of variety of economic systems in Europe, and worse, death of pride and identity and free choice in being .. British, or Greek, or Spanish..
And also a smothering extremely undemocratic and unaccountable (and corrupt) Brussels aristocracy of statist gas-bags with much too much money to spend on wasteful projects.

The vapidity of Europe also leads to extremists (eg radical Islam, le Pen) being successful in European countries, as a reaction to the anemic non-entity that is "Europe".
What does Europe stand for ? kissing Saddam Hussein's and other dictators' asses... while being corrupted by his oil for food program. And selling him tech. to make chemical weapons, and even Nuclear weapons (France).
or "everyone on some sort of welfare", strikes, I have "rights" (but no duties), reflexive and infantile and irresponsible anti-Americanism (particularly in Germany). And a complete abandonment of : securing trade routes, and thwarting saber-rattling Dictators to the US.

Let's play, renovate our churches, have art museums, pretend socialism can make people happy and prosperous, while free-loading on the US as far as defence is concerned.


If there is one place where all the people are living for today, it is the European Union. The EU has deliberately set about trying to smother the identities of its 27 member states (including Lithuania) in a set of common laws, common regulations, common ethics, a common approach to problem solving, a common view of the rest of the world. It has sought to suppress the identities of its component parts in the name of a higher identity – Europe – which turns out to be no identity at all.

No surprise, then, that Europe today increasingly finds itself troubled by a Muslim minority within its midst – now perhaps 50 million strong – that draws confidence and growing power from the sureness of its identity. Does Europe, like America, offer a higher identity to which this minority might adapt itself – even die for? It does not.

Instead, it either pretends that no problem exists, or it attacks outward manifestations of identity, like Muslim headscarves, without making any real effort to integrate Muslims into a genuine European identity that means something more than the absence of identity. Meanwhile, frank discussions of the identity issue are pushed to the neo-fascistic fringe.

full article:

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB121305349075558959.html?mod=todays_columnists

Chinese Quake teaches Compassion ?

I was thinking when I watched the footage on TV... maybe this tragedy will make the Chinese less harsh to each other... I have heard from tourists that it was a very materialistic society, with low levels of kindness.. So this event could be transformational, like a Cancer for a high-flying businessman.

From the extract below, it seems it may even revive spirituality - extirpated violently by communism which hates religion with a vengeance (torturing Tibetan monks as an example of this). Communism aims to be the religion - the State is God, all your efforts are to please and glorify the state (or that asshole Mao).
European Socialism is not all that different in it's desires to be worshiped and to do away with religion and private initiative - just less violent.

The Sichuan earthquake not only energized him, but led to a step that, after our two decades of friendship, came as a surprise. Never before one to talk about religion, he told me he organized a private Christian service, over dinner, with eight relatives and staff members at a restaurant in Shenzhen. "We sang hymns, took turns reading from the Scriptures, and prayed for the lost people. No beer or wine on this occasion. We felt better afterwards."

"It's been 30 years of chasing after money in China," he said, striking another new note. "And people haven't paid enough attention to spiritual life. Now we Chinese have money; we must also have care and trust in each other. Because China has improved, there's a real private realm where action may be taken--we took it." This businessman in his 40s, briefly a civil servant in Beijing before coming to Harvard, links his self-reliance to a wariness of the Beijing government, frustration at its lack of transparency, and disgust at its corruption.

"If the Sichuan earthquake happened in Japan or USA, there would have been many more survivors," he said with agitation. "Our rescue rate of less than 1 in 10 was very low."In China some matters are strictly for the government. Politics is for the Communist party-state. Ordinary folk may pursue private goals. Beijing trusts the people with their money, but not with their minds. But the Sichuan earthquake, throwing everyone naked into the air, momentarily bridged the divide.

http://www.weeklystandard.com/Content/Public/Articles/000/000/015/194pzaio.asp


also from Guy Sorman:

Numerous on-site reports make it clear that the quake victims are for the most part migrant workers. That is, they are people from the countryside who had taken to the road to find jobs in workshops or small industrial plants, finding makeshift lodgings in uninhabitable and heretofore uninhabited regions. These deaths are not to be explained by supernatural causes, but by the political exploitation of impoverished peasants who have been despised and neglected by the Communist Party.Journalists on location, as well as survivors, likewise observe that the buildings first to crumble, and that killed the most victims, were public edifices – schools and hospitals. Everyone in China knows that a common form of corruption in the ranks of the Communist Party consists in economizing on materials and construction standards

.http://online.wsj.com/article/SB121097707834199753.html?mod=opinion_main_commentaries

Bush's Victories against Al-Quaeda

By aggressively denying them of safe havens (Afghanistan, Irak), by engaging them in full-on warfare when they tried to take over Irak, Bush's doctrine has worked.
Muslims are increasingly less enamoured with al-q :

Sheikh Salman al-Awdah, author of an open letter attacking bin Laden and violent jihad that has caused shockwaves across the Muslim world. The sheikhs of Anbar Province in Iraq lead a national, transsectarian movement preparing for provincial elections by the end of the year. Polling shows a widespread decline in support among Muslims for suicide bombing and for bin Laden. Fareed Zakaria observed that the number of Islamist attacks worldwide has declined precipitously since 2004.


Don't look now, but evidence of progress in the war on terror is just about everywhere. Last week CIA director Michael Hayden noted some U.S. accomplishments for the Washington Post: "Near strategic defeat of al-Qaeda in Iraq. Near strategic defeat for al-Qaeda in Saudi Arabia. Significant setbacks for al-Qaeda globally." USA Today: Attacks in Iraq are "down 70 percent since President Bush ordered a U.S. troop increase, or 'surge,' early last year."

The left's analysis of jihadism has been proved incorrect at every turn. It argued military power would be ineffective against the terrorists. Wrong. It argued that intervention in Iraq would energize bin Laden's movement. That movement is in shambles. The left argued Iraq was a lost cause. It isn't. The left argues that a "war on terrorism" is futile, that defeat is inevitable, because terrorism is a "tactic," not an enemy. Nonsense. President Bush has demonstrated through perseverance and (more often than not) sound policy that the war on terror can be won. And right now we're winning it.

full article here.