> most arguments from the socialist side of the debate concede that capitalism has greatly improved quantitatively measured standards of living All that shows,

> most arguments from the socialist side of the debate concede that capitalism has greatly improved quantitatively measured standards of living All that shows, IMO of course, is there is some common ground between capitalists and socialists when defining some objective quantitative measures. In a sense, we first agree on the rules of some game (i.e. the quantitative indicators of our qualitative desires) and then we turn the crank of the mathematical machine to see what scores the best. > qualitative thinking cannot simply brush aside the use of statistics, which is relevant in many (but not all) instances. I agree on this but in a subtle way. Analogies are the worst but I'm going to do it anyway. It's like a boat that has both a rudder and an engine. In this analogy the rudder is qualitative reasoning and the engine is quantitative reasoning. We use qualitative reasoning to "pick a direction" and quantitative reasoning to "move towards the goal". I sometimes think both sides are missing the fact we need both. A rudder without an engine doesn't get anywhere and an engine without a rudder moves aimlessly. My original argument was that the engine at this point is pretty well known: logic, science, math and computation. However, choosing good qualitative measures and then choosing good methods to convert them into quantitive measures is really difficult. You mentioned that quantifying "domination" or "exploitation" is tricky. I believe that choosing "domination" as your qualitative measure (before you even try to quantify it) is the really difficult thing. So often we go into quantitative mode with very little consideration why we chose the qualitative measures we are using. It makes me think of Habermas and his work on communicative rationality (another topic I'm very weak on). I'm not sure that is the right tool but I think we need a set of agreed upon tools other than quantitative reasoning to help us solve disagreements on qualitative measures.