RE: [OPE] The myth of market confidence

> The New Marxist Exploiting Class is always prophesying the capitalist collapse,
> they have been doing it since the time of the Second International. If they make
> a hundred prophecies, and the economy collapses just once, they see the one
> collapse as "proof" of their analytical acuity and intellectual rigor, and just ignore
> the 99 times they got it wrong. I don't want to have anything to do with that.

Hi Jurriaan:

I understand that criticism; I've used it myself in the past. But, I think one also has
to be on guard against the 'Young Person Who Cried Wolf Syndrome'. For those who
may not remember this fable attributed to Aesop, there was a young person
(a shepherd boy) who cried "wolf!" unnecessarily and repeatedly and then when
a real wolf came along and he again cried "wolf!" the villagers didn't believe him,
ignored his pleas, and the wolf ate the sheep. This fable can be interpreted in a
number of ways, but I think the relevant one for my purpose is - simply because
others were mistaken before when they warned of a crisis coming doesn't mean
necessarily that they're mistaken *now*. Of course, the past pattern of poor
predictions shouldn't be ignored but nor can one presume that the next prediction
will necessarily also be off-base.

In solidarity, Jerry
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Received on Sun Oct 12 12:34:43 2008