Wednesday, August 01, 2012

I look at the history of people trying to make a perfect world

full of perfect people, and this scares hell out of me:
But what kept me going day in and day out was the same thing that has sustained the Urban League all these years. The same thing that sustains all of you. And that is the belief that in America, change is always possible. That our union may not be perfect, but it is perfectible."
How many have tried to make perfection, make Heaven on Earth, and produced hell?

To borrow from Mal,
...Sure as I know anything, I know this - they will try again. Maybe on another world, maybe on this very ground swept clean. A year from now, ten? They'll swing back to the belief that they can make people... better....

1 comment:

Luton Ian said...

On a theoretical basis, Mises' "calculation problem" and Hayek's "knowledge problem" explain why the plans are doomed to failure before they start.

Empirically, the pattern which that murderous (understatement) failure takes is so remarkably similar, that anyone who has studied the history of such attempt to make new men and a socialist / centrally planned (same thing) utopia, must be totally deluded if they miss that pattern.

The violent Anabaptist takeover of the German city of Munster, during the 16th century "Reformation" was almost a dress rehearsal for Pol Pot's Cambodian killing fields in the 20th century

Rothbard's "History of Economic thought" has a chapter on the Anabaptists.
free .pdf here http://mises.org/document/5800/Austrian-Perspective-on-the-History-of-Economic-Thought

Also, Gray is brilliant:
second paragraph down, you'll like this:
http://books.google.co.uk/books?id=Y8hdqfOoIrEC&lpg=PA321&ots=-A6Frne8V0&dq=to%20witness%20bohm%20bawerk%20is%20but%20a%20pedestrian%20pleasure&pg=PA321#v=onepage&q=to%20witness%20bohm%20bawerk%20is%20but%20a%20pedestrian%20pleasure&f=false