The Clay Tricks Reloaded

The generations passed but nothing of very much interest happened.  Everyone gossiped about nothing much in particular.  One group of plates carried out lots of rituals invented by their imaginative high priest, which the other group copied, about a generation later.  The contemplative plate continued meditating on what it meant to be clay.

The Clay Tricks

Deep in the Negev desert you can find a large deposit if clay.  For most of the year it is dry and cracked, but when the annual rains come it becomes moist, expands and joins together again to become a basin where the rains collect for a few weeks before evaporating away.

George Soros: The Crisis of Global Capitalism – Open Society Endangered

Soros champions the concept of open society as middle path between closed societies of communism and dictatorships and inherently unstable, laissez fair, free-market capitalism. He defines an open society as one based on the assumption of fallibility with the aim of constant awareness of its weaknesses for the purpose of continuous improvement. He regards closed societies as ones in which an imposed vision of an “ideal” society prevents critical analysis leading to a situation of stable disequilibrium between how society is perceived in peoples’ minds to how it operates in a more objective reality. Another example of closed society is the fundamentalist Islamic state.

John Kenneth Galbraith: The Good Society – The Humane Agenda

Galbraith seeks to improve the lot of the poor, both within and outside the US by promoting socialist policies to regulate a quasi free-market economy. Starting with the assumption that the economy must grow, he compares a situation with high unemployment but stable prices and one with nearly full employment and high inflation. Inevitably he favours the latter. While recognising and permitting the motivating power of pecuniary reward, he insists on a progressive taxation regime to support a comprehensive welfare state.