Prabhu Guptara wrote:  
>Equally, in our day, should blame not be laid on the shoulders of the  
>most-intelligent and best-educated "contemporary Philosophes" or  
>economists who can at least dimly sense the huge challenges of our  
>globalising world but who choose to hide behind the elegant formulae of  
>mathematics - perhaps because (as in the case of the French  
>Philosophes?) they do not want to risk their lifestyle....  
  
  
Excellent comment! The educated took refuge in   
theories, but it was a refuge from reality, that   
intractable foe of all idle abstractions. Is the   
same thing happening today? I recall, for   
example, the debate 12 years ago which heralded   
NAFTA as the solution to the immigration problem,   
since Mexico would be so prosperous that there   
would be no reason to immigrate. Events do not   
seem to have worked out that way, yet there have   
been few retractions. If we can engage in the   
fantasy of "future history" for a moment, can we   
not see a similar distabilizing influence, only   
this time world-wide instead of country-wide?  
  
Even the retreat to theory is often a partial   
retreat.  For example, "Comparative advantage,"   
the chief theoretical defense of the   
flat-earthers, depends in Ricardo's formulation,   
on three preconditions: one, that capital does   
not move from high-wage to low-wage states; two,   
that their is full employment in both trading   
countries, and; three, that there is balanced   
trade between the partners. None of these   
conditions apply to current trade arrangements,   
yet the theory is still touted as our salvation.   
The point here isn't to argue free-trade, but   
only to point out that those in charge are   
frequently true to neither reality nor theory.   
And when that happens, we'll get to live a little   
history ourselves, and not often a history we would prefer to live in.  
  
  
John C. Medaille