On Fri, Apr 06, 2001 at 05:43:28PM -0700, Mark Plus wrote:
> Anders Sandberg wrote:
>
> >I don't think it is democracy itself, but rather open societies with free
> >markets that become immune. After all, if it was just a question of the
> >government doing something, then one would expect feudal societies to
> >become
> >immune too.
>
>
> In Amartya Sen's own words (from
> <http://www.sintercom.org/polinfo/polessays/sen.html>}:
Seems like the first paragraph you quoted essentially was a support for
my assertion that it was important with an open society in famine
prevention, rather than evidence that the way this prevention works is
that it is the government that saves the day.
The seoond paragraph essentially says that it is not just the market
that fixes things, but also other forms of social interactions. I would
agree with that, but if I get your drift right Sen also thinks that
government interventions are necessary to fix emergency situations. I
don't quite buy that. What is needed when (say) the harvest is destroyed
is some sort of collective support in addition to the market and
individual acts, but this can very well be provided by many other
institutions than the government, like for example churches or
charities. The important thing is that in an open society such
institutions can emerge and do their good work, with less likeliehood of
being corrupted since the press and public will be able to track them
more closely.
> I might add that Sen has one more Nobel Prize in Economics (1998) than we
> do.
So? Just because you get a Nobel Prize doesn't make you right in every
issue, not even the details of your own winning contribution.
-- ----------------------------------------------------------------------- Anders Sandberg Towards Ascension! asa@nada.kth.se http://www.nada.kth.se/~asa/ GCS/M/S/O d++ -p+ c++++ !l u+ e++ m++ s+/+ n--- h+/* f+ g+ w++ t+ r+ !y
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