THE BLOG
of John Gelles
April 1, 2006Blogger captured by Ventura news photographer saluting a color guard in 2004.
INTELLIGENT DESIGN
OF AND WITHIN
POLITICAL ECONOMY
My theory of cultural evolution says our economic institutions (like human language, itself) change over time very much the same way as humans themselves change -- to survive.In other words, cultural evolution is a theory modeled on nature's evolution -- but the cultural variety is safer from controversy over its nature -- versus intelligent design.
It is obvious that intelligent design is behind the evolution of the wheel and wheel barrow. Not so obvious is the intelligence behind the evolution of the modern automobile -- and the death it brings daily to designers and innocents alike.
Yet it also far from obvious that there is a force of nature prohibiting the evolution of an extremely safe form of transportation -- that might function like a very soft car whose passengers could not be hurt.
Common human languages all include words with more than one meaning (ambiguities) -- and with meanings with more than one word (redundancies).
Human intelligent design must accept some percentage of each of these potential inefficiencies.
- But, as we know, computer languages cannot tolerate ambiguity.
- And the law, as we struggle to create it, is also unhappy when we are unsure what the meaning of "is" is.
But what of political economy?
Can political economy forever be determined by nature to fail to serve the economic needs of people bound to it?
Must human economy fail to deliver goods to the needy more than the law fails to deliver justice to ?
Can human intelligence ever serve to design a better political economy than the one we know and often hate?
We come now to the question of knowledge within the scope of an encyclopedia (especially the Wikipedia) about money, price, poverty, and purpose. For how long can knowledge of soft cars and softer money be withheld from the the people who need it?
