She’s not claiming an argument from authority so don’t burn that strawman.

Fair share of community resources ? Privatised into the hands of the ants ? What tyranny of the ants are you referring to ?

The original story was honest, simple and clear. This one is distorted and ambiguous and confusing. Are you trying to imply that entrepeneurship, innovation and creativity are punished under a free capitalist society ?

Actually, it would be the converse. Because the ant is able to keep the fruits of his labour, otherwise known as savings, he can then use those savings to pursue innovation and productivity.

As the ant saves and builds up a more complex capital structure, he adds several increasingly complex stages of production, creates employment and raises living standards.

Does Hayek offer a way of understanding how and why rdinary people come to wise ‘collective’ decision or just individual ones. I found Pierre Bourdieu’s concept of Habitus (bodily knowledge) useful.

The parable gets me because it cuts so close to the bone of situations in places such as Sao Paulo, or Johannesburg or even Delhi, where the Uber-Affluent live almost within sight of incredibly huge slums filled with all kinds of suffering. And I’m sure you are not blaming those folk. Even the ones who don’t complain and seem to enjoy carefree lives. And even the ones who Arundhati Roy and Kofi Annan might defend.

I do think one needs to be careful of placing people – of whatever sort – up on a pedestal. Many of Rafe’s Popper posts discuss the dangers of elevating a class of people based on what appears to be their visionary capabilities. It was Hayek who pointed out that ordinary, inarticulate people may do things the ‘best’ way without knowing why. Elevation of what appears to be ‘the best’ can mean the accumulated wisdom of the ages finishes up getting trashed.

Then there is the story about the grasshopper who sings and dances all summer long because he has been deprived of his fair share of community resources when it was privatised into the hands of the ants, so that is all the ant can do, either that or revolt against the tyranny of the ants.

The thing about ants is that they do nothing new, while they may work hard, they kick everyone else out so no one is able to work on an even playing field to prove one way or another that the way the ants dictate the use of resources may not be the best way, and when it’s all said and done, they live on the rotting corpses of beings who try to achieve greater things.

Various forms of central planning – no matter how clever and capable the intellect behind it – show that planners aren’t capable of knowing enough to plan an entire system. In that sense, the fable illustrates a problem of epistemology as much as anything else.

Thanks to your two comments, I think i see whats being implied here. I also now see that it assumes certain ideas of progress, growth, technology, production and poverty. You know, people often remark about the left’s inability to reach out without alienating people, but sometimes I wonder about you Libertarians.

Personal responsibility is great. I’m all for it. But leaving straw-grasshoppers to die for no reason? And trying to make out that if you take action then all the ants and all the grasshoppers will die? Forgive me if im taking all this too seriously, but is there supposed to be an equivalent to POTAGA in the real world? One that is going to kill us all?

Given P-Costello’s recent proclamations on procreation, it might be useful to ask whether there are already, or whether there will be soon, too many insects And whether it is moral to discourage or encourage the birth of new larvae.