Adrian Buck > Recent Status Updates

"but the Ekumen doesn't rule, it co-ordinates. Its power is precisely the power of its member states and worlds. In alliance with the Ekumen, Karhide will become infinitely less threatened and more important than it's ever been" - sounds like a defence of the EU

it is difficult to see how the future Soros of Central Europe can be made quickly from the stuff which is found among the ruins of state socialism.

There are many reasons why managers who have become owners might feel more comfortable navigating a Weberian world of political capitalism rather than a world governed by the conditions of laissez-faire capitalism.

By contrast, in the regions further east - in Romania, Bulgaria, Serbia and especially in Russia - it is conceivable that a substantial portion of the political nomenklatura became proprietors, and may constitute an important part of the propertied classes that will develop in these countries.

...there have been reports of journalists murdered, beaten and harassed in Russia and Slovakia. - only the last in Hungary

The nationalization of property has been a process with far-reaching implications, and is possibly irreversible. - cf UK nationalization and Privatization. Compensation?

We think that the capitalism which is being made in Central Europe is being made from above. - This has probably always been the case, why?

although the government formed by the Socialist Party did not display stunning competence, they were very efficient i rewarding the 'competent' - namely their cadre base - with state property.

between 1993 and 1995, it was not managers who benefited from the reduction in public sector ownersip, but foreign investors. - and Fidesz set about trying to take these assets back.

[Managers] subtracted the most lucrative activites of the state firms they managed to [their small privately owned] companies - Fidesz has further developed this.

After a brief encounter with critical thought, Central European intellectuals have returned to a reified consciousness; after Soviet Marxist reification, they are victims of bourheois reification.

Foundations have become a source of income for those intellectuals who now sit on their Boards of Directors, and most importantly serve as the major institutional base of intellectual power over culture, science and education. - plus ca change

Dissidents rejected the abstruse metaphorical language of the technocracy, and challenged the taboos of communist discourse by trying to call things by their real names. - real?

The smart manager, then, may not want to acquire ownership in the firm he manages. Instead, he may try to negotiate a good deal for his foreign acquaintences with the Privatization Agency.

What seems to be unique feature in Central Europe, however, is ... The web of institutional cross-ownership is so dense, and the back-and-forth between the public and private realms is so frequent, that it is often impossible to tell what distinquishes public from private ownership.

A great necessity is laid upon you, if you will be honest with yourself, a great necessity to be good, since you live in the sight of a judge who sees all things.

Why, then, do you insist that all that is scanned by the sight of God becomes necessary?

"Let us, them, if we can, raise ourselves up to the heights of that supreme intelligence. There reason will be able ... to see how that which has no certain occurrence may be seen by a certain and fixed foreknowledge, a knowledge that is not opinion, but the boundless immediacy of the highest form of knowing" - Boethius anticipates the epistemological problems of quantum mechanics?

"human reason refuses to believe that divine intelligence can see the future in any other way except that in which human reason has knowledge" - cf Kant's universal reason

"Everything that is known is comprehended not according to its own nature, but according to the ability to know of those who do the knowing" - so much for Kant's Copernican revolution.

"So that those creatures who have an innate power of reason also have the freedom to will or not to will"

"Whenever something is done for some purpose, and for certain reasons something or the other than what was intended, it is called chance" - hmm, this is very different to something happening without any intention being formed.

we should draw closer to everyday language to avoid the appearence of having moved too far from common usage? - appearence?

All fortune whether pleasant or adverse is meant either to reward or discipline the good or to punish or correct the bad. - isn't this when the argument falls down?

But if you could see the plan of Providence, you would not think there was evil anywhere. - how are the Historians doing on this?

And I shall ask you if men have such soundness of mind as to be infallible in their judgement of who is good and who is bad. - Donald Trump, for example.

Imagine a set of revolving concentric circles - good model!

Then let the clouds of ignorance give way/And these events will no more wondrous seem - Is Philosophy promoting religion or science?

"So each stage has its own degree of misery, if you see people with the desire to do something wicked, the to do it and the achievement, they must necessarily suffer a triple degree of misfortune" - had, having and in quest?

"But the greatest cause of my sadness is really this - the fact that in spite of a good helmsman to guide the world, evil can still exist and even pass unpunished. " - the central problem of The Republic.