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SYSTEMS_OF_SURVIVAL

                                          October 5, 2012
                                          October 5, 2013

A book I've begun on many times,
and really *wanted* to like, is                  JANE_JACOBS
Jane Jacobs "Systems of Survival".
                                                  "Systems of Survival:
                                                  A Dialogue on the
  The form of Jacobs "Systems" has always         Moral Foundations of
  turned me off-- the philosophical dialog        Commerce and Politics"
  format is profoundly tricky, and her
  rendition of it seemed to lack conviction.

  There are some interesting ideas in there,
  but they cry out to be summarized, so let
  us crib from Alan Ryan's review, from the
  New York Review of Books, June 24, 1993
  "Cautionary Tales":


     "...  the morality appropriate to
     governments-- to Plato's 'Guardians'-- is
     distinctively different from the morality
     appropriate to the productive and trading
     classes, and must be kept so. Plato saw that
     human society is governed by two distinct
     moral codes-- 'moral syndromes,' Ms. Jacobs
     calls them-- and disaster can strike when
     they are mixed."

     "Borrowing from Plato, she labels these two codes
     the 'commercial' syndrome and the 'guardian'
     syndrome; the first is the moral code appropriate
     to trade, commerce, and industry, the second the
     moral code appropriate to hunters and gatherers,
     warriors, and governments. The first stresses the
     avoidance of force and fraud, recommends openness
     to novelty, praises inventiveness, thrift,
     investment-mindedness, accepts the value of
     comfort and convenience and the utility of
     competition. The second stresses prowess,
     obedience to authority, loyalty, the rightness of
     vengeance, the legitimacy of deceiving one's
     enemies, fortitude, resignation to fate, respect
     for tradition, and exclusiveness. It also
     emphasizes leisure and display rather than
     production or trading."


     "It offers an intuitively persuasive picture of
     why 'syndrome mixing' is likely to prove
     disastrous. What rational soldier would follow a    CORRUPTED_REASONING
     general known to be looking for ways of striking
     mutually advantageous deals with the general on
     the other side; what rational investor would
     invest in a company that refused to sell its
     products to foreigners?"

                                               And that in itself is a pretty
                                               interesting point: our instincts
Given this premise, you can see                lean toward compromise, toward
why Jane Jacobs figured that the               hybridization.
philosophical dialog was the
best form for it: two (at least)               Our politicians come up with
irreconcilable points of view,                 "public-private partnerships",
plus roots in Plato.  What else                and we're not supposed to blink.
but a dialog?









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