George Soros
George Soros or Schwartz on 12 August 1930 and is a Hungarian-born American businessman, philanthropist, and political activist.
He is the chairman of Soros Fund Management and the Open Society Foundations.
- Soros said his "position is that America is great precisely because it is an open society."
Open societies do not guarantee or promote a good society in itself.
He also said:
- "I think there's a lot of merit in an international economy and global markets, but they're not sufficient because markets don't look after social needs. Markets are designed to allow individuals to look after their private needs and to pursue profit. It's really a great invention and I wouldn't under-estimate the value of that, but they're not designed to take care of social needs."
Are Markets supposed to look after social needs except to promote the health of the society upon which the markets depend?
He appears to agree that "Markets are designed to allow individuals to look after their private needs and to pursue profit." We need to understand what are human "private needs". Would that not include family, friends neighbors, community and nations in which the private individual lives?
The term "profit" is more ambiguous. Profit can be production at your expense that has value but it dos not have to include an increase at the expense of others as we often see in financial markets or banking.
"I advocate an alliance of democratic states, with a dual purpose. One, to promote what I call open society. I talk about an alliance of open societies which would first foster the development of open societies within individual countries, because there's a lot that needs to be done in that effort. And secondly, to establish basic international law and international institutions that you need for a global, open society."
Laws and institutions along with the nature of alliances may be a way of closing the open society after the original democracy and open society brings down the original institutions.
- "The Republican Party has been captured by a bunch of extremists … People who maintain that markets will take care of everything, that you leave it to the markets and the markets know best. Therefore, you need no government, no interference with business. Let everybody pursue his own interests. And that will serve the common interest. Now, there is a good foundation for this. But it's a half-truth."
Few Republicans, if any, believe you need "no government". Most agree that there should be courts when one business impairs the free market of another, so that is not no government. A question again arises as to what kind of courts, bottom up or top down? This will also bring us back to what alliances laws and institutions are impressed upon his open society?
- "We need to maintain law and order. We need to maintain peace in the world. We need to protect the environment. We need to have some degree of social justice, equality of opportunity. The markets are not designed to take care of those needs. That's a political process."
Definition of political process is "the process of the formulation and administration of public policy usually by interaction between social groups and political institutions or between political leadership and public opinion.
Soros seems to advocate a social democracy with some institutions of power to care for social needs and speaks as if that can only be done through a political process.
America use to take care of all of its social needs not through a political process but through charity. In fact for the first hundred years it was considered anti American to use the power of government to provide for the poor through what was called Legal charity which was not charity but welfare through taxation.
America was considered great because America was considered good because it took care of almost every social need through charity from education to health care and even the aged and orphan or even prisons and public institutions.
Political process
There are several types of systems that may allow overlapping Political processes:
Authoritarianism vs a free or Pure Republic
Option 1.
Authoritarian:
- Monarchy(one has power), oligarchy (few have power), Democracy(the majority have power).
Usually a social democracy elects the oligarchy who is given or elects a chairman of the board, president, prime-minister etc with executive powers. Ultimately except on a very small scale the individual is far removed from the choices he may make for himself and his family and power is centralized in others.
Option 2.
Pure Republic
In a Pure republic the individual is free from things public so there is no political power binding the people to obey arbitrary Monarchs, Oligarchies, or the mob.
Basic fundamental laws could be listed on a small paper, don't steal, cheat, injure or kill other individuals. Don;t conspire to adulterate the rights of others or connive or contrive to take from others with some institution or practice.
The heads of individual families have equal power over their choices but not over the choices of their neighbors.
Disputes would be decided by a jury of your peers and you would have a right to appeal to the most honest and charitable, merciful and servant minded people of you community.
The way in which you elect those people is they are entrusted with the job of providing for the "social needs" of society. They are funded by small intimate groups of families who grant them freewill contributions for that purpose.
There would be no entitlements but those who make an effort to contribute would certainly have the hope of being cared for in their time of need. Those who fail to participate in the "social needs" of society would not expect any priority in the care they would receive. The people would need to govern themselves in faith, hope, and charity rather than force, fear, and fealty.
That is right social needs are provided as a religious process not a political process. In fact, two hundred years ago that was the definition of Religion and 2000 years ago Pure Religion was providing social needs without any force or political authority.