tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7907752.post1796728910247402976..comments2024-03-27T07:18:39.229-05:00Comments on In Medias Res: Managerial Expertise, Yes! Vision and Leadership, Not So MuchUnknownnoreply@blogger.comBlogger1125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7907752.post-74886015333266682412010-06-16T13:54:20.918-05:002010-06-16T13:54:20.918-05:00RAF: I actually agree with you about the limits of...RAF: I actually agree with you about the limits of compensation and civil liability as a means of promoting civil discourse. I do think, however, that a proper functioning system of civil liability may well go much farther than you are willing to credit toward creating the conditions under which more humane forms of economic organization spontaneously emerge. <br /><br />I think that one of the ways in which we fundamentally disagree with one another is over the limits of intentional human planning. This means that I am less likely than you are to see commercial behavior as resulting from a managerial culture in which executives do things to people. Rather, I tend to see commercial activity as a vast institutional mechanism for trial and error where -- if things are functioning well -- we get positive feedback for socially desireable results and negative feedback for socially undesiderable results.<br /><br />Ironically, I think that your thinking about commerce is very similar to your thinking about politics, which you see as at least potentially a kind of benign deliberation about intentionally created communities. Here again, I think that I am more inclined to see democracy as -- like the market -- a vast institutional mechanism of trial and error with feedback mechanisms that function with better or worse results. Indeed, it is because I see democracy primarily as a feedback mechanism rather than as a form of deliberation that I am relatively more enthusiastic about markets vis-a-vis democracy than you are. I think that even the best functioning political system will provide slow and crude feedback compared to the best functioning market.<br /><br />This means that I see real limits to intentional communal redefinition and redemption. I don't deny the importance and value of civic discourse and deliberation, but I see it as more limited and probably more hemeneutic rather than deliberative. I do think, however, that there is a sense in which our sensibilities may converge. I see my outlook as being humble and modest, one that is willing to acknowledge limits on our capacity to understand, plan, and control. I also see it as taking seriously the concept of "a way of life" seriously, as ways of life are always emergent rather than planned orders. Furthermore, they are always in the process of emergence and change. While I am sympathetic to trying to preserve them from the effects of violent change, I do not think that stasis should be an implicit ideal, as I think that much of preservationist thinking sub silentio assumes.<br /><br />This means that in the end, I am fine with a politics that doesn't call for radical, intentional remaking of society in the hopes of redemption. Indeed, such a politics frightens me. Rather, I am interested in a politics that aims at local ameliorations and the creation of institutions that allow for the creation and evolution of healthy, unplanned, organic social ordering. Hence, while I have my complaints with Obama, his failure to be more Carter-esque is not among them.N. Omannoreply@blogger.com