To the Editor

There is room for a variety of economic and political systems. We now have "monolithic" capitalism - as once we feared "monolithic" communism. At the present time capitalism has become a cancerous growth, eating up the nations of the world - some call it globalization. The only time we have to worry unduly about an economic/political system is when it threatens to "take over the garden", like a noxious weed, choking out anything else that might grow. That was the threat posed by Communism, and it is now the threat posed by capitalism.

We should not seek to force or impose our economic/political views on others, although we may try persuasion. Most people are content with a cup of tea and a biscuit in the afternoon. If you ask them, some people like free enterprise, some like socialism, some like a mixed economy. Let each select what he or she has a penchant for, and be tolerant of those whose preference is different. "Toleration" is the key word.

Mao Zedong said, "Let a thousand flowers bloom, and thousand schools of thought contend." He was, of course an impostor mouthing empty rhetoric as his subsequent actions of defoliating proved. But his poetic statement is prescient. Unfortunately we live in a time when there are few economic or political choices, and those are virtually all muddle-headed.

The world should be an economic and political laboratory, seeing what works best. That would be empirical. That would be scientific. Instead what we have today is a congeries of superstitions and biases - the opposite of behavioral science

Richard Kovac