Why is the world in such dire economic straits, and what can we do about it?
POSTED BY: SignyM
UPDATED: Sunday, August 23, 2026 20:19
VIEWED: 10119
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First of all, why are so many nations in such trouble? It seems like every nation's cause is a little bit different from every other nation's:
The USA has a significant wealth gap, and personal consumption fueled by credit.
The USA and Britain had massive real estate bubbles.
The Greek government overspent its budget.
Portugal, Ireland, Greece and Spain (PIGS) didn't have personal over-consumption and a high personal debt load, but were the recipients of over-investment from other EU nations.
Despite a lot of “socialist spending” and redistributive policies, the Icelandic government ran in the black. Iceland was brought down when it's three major banks engaged in out-and-out commercial bank fraud.
Italy, which is a large exporting economy, got caught by rising interest.
If we are to prevent this all from happening again, what are we to make of all of these disparate causes? Each nation seems to belie whatever cause we want to attribute to another nation. So we can rule out Fannie and Freddie because they don't apply to Europe. We can rule out socialist spending that doesn't apply to the USA. We can rule out government deficits and the wealth gap because those don't apply to Iceland, and we can rule out personal debt because that doesn't apply to the PIGS. There is a lot they DON'T have in common!
But, the one thing they DID have in common was “investment” in projects or sectors which were not about to generate a return, even in the medium-term. In the USA and Britain, the over-investment was in homes. In the PIGS, it was in large infrastructural projects; in Greece it was also in government bonds, in Iceland it was actually in fraudulent self-dealt bank loans for commercial projects.
The other thing to realize is that this has happened before: In the 1970's, due to a huge increase in oil prices, the Middle East nations (Saudi Arabia particularly) became the holders of a mountain of cash, specifically the USA dollar, and invested in huge infrastructural projects in Brazil, Chile, and Argentina- projects which could not be supported on a cash basis due to lack of either internal or external demand. This led to the Latam debt crisis of 1982. The same thing happened to the Asian "tiger" economies of 1997: over-investment by outside money created a "bubble" which led to an ephemeral rise in GDP, leading to the illusion of growth, which sucked in more money, until the illusion of growth could no longer be sustained. The same problem started the Great Depression.
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It seems there are epidemics of horrible investments, rash investments, possibly even desperate investments, not just now but throughout history. Rich people who have bought all of the yachts, mansions and jets that one can possibly buy and are now looking to make money with their money.
So why do the investments go sour?
Well, I think in a way it's the eternal mismatch of production and consumption under capitalism. Think of it this way: If the world produces a trillion dollars worth of goods and services, but the small fraction of ppl who own the companies only pays their workers $900 billion, the companies can only sell $900 billion dollars worth. That's $100 billion worth of goods and services that's not about to be sold, and $100 billion in the hands of a few who are NOT going to “spend” all of that money, they are going to “invest” a certain amount. Now, that investment can either go to loans (to increase consumption – which won't be ultimately affordable), or to increase production (which can't be sold to ppl who can't afford the goods), or to consolidate ownership, or to increase automation (which throws even more ppl out of work,who will not be able to buy much), or to speculation (diamonds, artwork, tulip bulbs) ... Each time money goes through the production-consumption cycle, more money goes up into the stratosphere... there is a bigger and bigger bundle of money looking for a home... but there is also less and less money available to buy stuff, and sooner or later the consumption-engine runs out of steam, mak
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I got it, but now my head hurts.
But yeah - I've had that idea about a cut of the money going off to the wealthy at each turn of sale-cycle. I just never put it together with investments.
We have to realize that the biosphere we live in is fragile and cannot be treated like a battered wife because the surface of the planet itself is not fragile. It will simply adjust probably eliminating us in the process. The core of the planet is beyond our ability to affect and can deal up some pretty horrific to us events. The space around the planet is hostile beyond our comprehension. And there are no exits.
EVERY SINGLE YEAR BETWEEN 1996 AND 2005 66% OF ALL FCDS CORPORATIONS PAID NO TAXES.
I think the current tax structure is about right for corporations. - Geezer
Without the benefit of the surrounding society, a corporation dies. If society looks at a corporation and says 'work, or die', what work should be demanded of the corporation for it to earn its survival?
While Wall St. is going through the roof, Main St. is paying all the bills.
Remember when teachers, public employees, Planned Parenthood, NPR and PBS crashed the stock market, wiped out half of our 401Ks, took trillions in taxpayer funded bailouts, spilled oil in the Gulf of Mexico, gave themselves billions in bonuses, and paid no taxes?
Yeah, me neither....
We're not rich because we work for our money. Rich people have their money work for them. Mrs. Huxtable
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Greed.
And economic policies based in fiction and wishful thinking instead of cold, hard facts.
As to what can be done, I doubt many if any of my reccommendations would be palatable to most people cause just about all of them involve some level of retribution against folk who laid down and carried out those policies KNOWING the result, so long as THEY benefitted.
-Frem
I do not serve the Blind God.
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(Reposted with explicit permission)
THE ELEVENTH MARBLE
by Michael Rivero
Any five-year old child knows that if you put ten marbles into a tin can, you can only take ten marbles back out. No amount of wishful thinking, dreaming, or praying, will yield that eleventh marble from inside that can. That eleventh marble does not exist. It never did, and it never will. All discussions about the eleventh marble are the product of imagination. The eleventh marble is a fantasy.
Private central bankers issuing the public currency as interest-bearing loans operate on the belief that they can put ten marbles (dollars) into a tin can (the world) and magically get 11 marbles back out. Thus, we may conclude that the bankers are dumber than five-year old children! But unlike five-year old children, the bankers will take your home, your business, and your nation when they don't get that eleventh marble! The spoiled child may cry and throw a tantrum, but that will be the end of their upset. The spoiled banker, however, in his or her arrogant rage that they cannot have the eleventh marble their imagination says must still be in that tin can, may start a war before they will admit that eleventh marble was never really there.
Economies are like tin cans. Before you can take a marble out, you must have put a marble in. Nobody can give you a marble that does not exist, yet this simple reality is lost to the priests of that fantastic religion called banking in that unholiest of temples called the IMF. Their religious doctrine seems to be that there must always be an eleventh marble inside the tin can, and that the tin can unfairly withholds that eleventh marble, indeed cheats them of their right to the eleventh marble, purely out of spite. That faith in the existence of the eleventh marble, unseen and improvable, is the article of faith the religion of banking rests on. It is far easier to burn the heretics than to question the dogma.
Today we see the bankers, having already retrieved their ten marbles from the tin can, flogging the world for that missing eleventh marble. Greece does not have that eleventh marble, so they turn to Germany and ask, "Do you have an eleventh marble", and Germany replies, "Sorry, but the bankers already took the ten marbles they put in our tin can, and we are searching for an eleventh marble ourselves. Try the Americans." The Americans, of course, have only just surrendered the last of their ten marbles back to the bankers and are looking under seat cushions for that missing eleventh marble nobody seems able to find.
But the eleventh marble will never be found. After all that mayhem brought down on the tin can there still will be no eleventh marble. It does not exist. It never did, and it never will.
The problem with all modern reserve banking systems is that the moment the first bank note goes into circulation as the proceed of a loan at interest, more money is owed to the banks than actually exists. Ten marbles have been put into the tin can, but the bankers see 11 marbles owed back to them. Sooner or later the non-existence of that eleventh marble will create a crisis of faith. People will stop believing in the religion called private central banking, and that crisis of faith will bring the system crashing down, as did the Temple of Baal in ancient times when the Syrians saw through the priests' trickery. This evil magic of creating money out of debt was a fraud all along, as fraudulent and silly as the idea that one can put ten marbles into a tin can, and take out eleven.
In ages to come economists will look back at this failed experiment in debt-based currency, and dump it into the same category of human folly as Tulip mania, The Nation of Poyais, Credit Mobilier, the Great South Seas Company, and Mortgage-Backed Securities.
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Frem,
Excellent article. Go Michael!
The problem as I see it, is not just the fantasy 11th marble. Because there are many tin cans (mini-economies) out there, all with 10 marbles each. When you take the 10 marbles out of your own tin can, you look to someone else's tin can for the 11th marble, leaving them with only 9. They go to another tin can to get their missing "2" marbles, and the next tin can is left with 8. Eventually, you get the tin can with 0 marbles, because its marbles went towards the 11th marble fund of 10 other tin cans.
The 11th marble model illustrates that wealth is a finite commodity. If some people have more, it came from people who have less.
Which brings us back to your first post: Greed.
The 11th marble must come from somewhere. It comes from making a huge proportion of our population less than poor. Some people have plusses because the rest of the people are in the minuses.
Why do investments fail? Because it is not only that they are looking for the 11th marble. They are SELLING the 11th marble. It is a gambling/lottery racket. There are not enough "11th marbles" to go around, so in greed, they start selling the HOPE of the 11th marble.
I tell my kids this story, which you all have heard before.
Little boy named Ken moves from the city to the country. He decides to buy a donkey. He pays the farmer $200 in advance to pick up the donkey on Friday. However, when he shows up, the farmer tells him the donkey died Thursday night, and the money is already spent. Ken says, "Fine. But at least give me the dead donkey." The farmer asks, "What are you going to do with a dead donkey?" Ken answers, "I'm going to sell him."
Months later, Ken bumps into the farmer, who asked what happened with dead donkey. Ken explains that he sold $2 raffle tickets for a chance to win a free donkey, without telling anyone that the donkey was dead. 150 people buy the tickets, making him $300.
The farmer asked, "My gosh! Didn't anyone complain that you were raffling a dead donkey?" Ken replied, "The guy who won the raffle did. But I just gave him his $2 back."
(The story goes on to say Ken grew up to run Enron....)
Anyway, substitute "11th marble" for "dead donkey," and you get the picture of what our investment system is like. We no longer operate the old-fashioned dividend-based capitalism, but some sort of complex gambling racket we call "investment." Brokers are simply bookies.
Asking why investments fail is like asking why gambling or lotteries fail. They don't, for the house. They are expected to fail for everyone else.
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Never be deceived that the rich will allow you to vote away their wealth. -- Lucy Parsons (1853-1942, labor activist and anarcho-communist)
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FREM that is a great analogy, and CTS, that is a great extension.
What you are referring to is the creation of debt, specifically interest-bearing debt.
I left that out of my post because there will be still booms and busts even without the banksters (who do indeed have their paws in everything we do nowadays!)
Imagine many tin cans with ten marbles, everyone in a circle having to pass a marble to their left. Now imagine that Freddy is allowed to take an extra marble every ten marbles, and keep it for himself. It becomes clear that eventually all of the marbles will be in Freddy's hands and the game (economy) stops
The Keynesian solution to this problem is to have someone feeding extra marbles into the game... if they are good at it, they will feed in those extra marbles at about the same rate as the marbles are being withdrawn... that is called "monetary policy", or "printing extra money". The game goes on, and the marbles in Freddy's hands become worth less over time because of inflation ("the invisible tax").
If marbles are merely added to the game, then the solution is relatively benign. But let's say that marbles are LOANED to any one of the players,,, it doesn't matter who, it could even be Freddie... with the idea that those extra marbles will be re-payed with even more marbles... then we in the imaginary eleventh-marble model, which ultimately accelerates the w/drawal of marbles from circulation.
The reason why I bring this up is because there were depressions even before there were central banks (IMF, ECB, World Bank, the Fed, etc). Getting rid of interest-bearing loans would help, but would not be sufficient to stop economies from falling into depressions.
And yes, CTS, TPTB know about booms and busts... they create them, and ride them to even greater wealth. There were never so many luxury cars sold per capita as during the Great Depression. But everyone else is left to struggle in very choppy economic waters.
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In any case, that still leaves us with the conundrum of "what to do about it".
Getting rid of those marble-loans would help, but there is still that concentration of marble's in Freddie's hands.
So, do we work on taking the marbles out of Freddie's hands? Changing the rules of the game so Freddie doesn't get to keep those extra marbles? But isn't there some sort of benefit to keeping some marbles in reserve (savings) for unanticipated expenses?
Anyway, in terms of money flow the marbles are a great analogy, but once we get into production we get into an area where the analogy breaks down.
Also, while I agree that greed is at the heart of the matter, I don't think raising people to be "not greedy" is the answer, because there will be that very very small percentage who will still be greedy nonetheless. And they can siphon off just a little from a lot of people, and no one would notice. Furthermore, there is no system of redress.
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I agree.
I think that the best way to mitigate concentrations of wealth and less wealth on the consumption side is to create a competing economic system. Perhaps one which does the virtual side of things better than the current system, or one that does the real world asset side of things better. Or both. If an economic system can do that, and it benefits the participants of that economic system, it will thrive and displace the old school systems.
The only thing you have to watch out for would be the people with a keen interest to squash any possible competition or rising lower class.
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Quote:Personally, I like the idea of saying "Fuck you, you can keep your fucking marbles" to Freddy, and inventing widgets to fill our empty tin cans.
Originally posted by SignyM:
So, do we work on taking the marbles out of Freddie's hands? Changing the rules of the game so Freddie doesn't get to keep those extra marbles?
THEN set up rules so that no one can sell or lend the 11th widget.
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Never be deceived that the rich will allow you to vote away their wealth. -- Lucy Parsons (1853-1942, labor activist and anarcho-communist)
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Also agreed!
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So essentially - Outlaw Usury ?
Yanno, one of the unstated bitches a lot of western society has with Muslim culture, other than the obvious shit even *I* hold them accountable for, much of which is in defiance of their own friggin holy book...
Is Islamic Banking - because Usury is considered morally repugnant even where it's not downright illegal - that shitheads like Chalabi and Karazi don't hold with this is one reason we tried to install them as puppets without realizing that even by itself cements public opinion of them as criminals even without all the other shit they pulled.
Libya, for another example, and just how fast THAT is gonna go downhill and start lookin like all the other nations the IMF "helped", well, is obvious.
Oh yeah, and instead of bombing wedding parties maybe we should spare a couple for the IMF right after declaring them to be the economic terrorists that they truly are - but then that'd require admitting that they're the primary bagman for western corporations...
Again and again, when the truth comes it, it's always our so-called protectors who are the real danger to us, ain't it ?
Heads.
On Spikes.
And while it ain't gonna happen by my hand, it *IS* going to happen - no longer a matter of if, but only a matter of when.
Come on people, you've read history.
-Frem
I do not serve the Blind God.
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I think there's a difference between blaming people and blaming systems.
There will always be a greedy Freddie somewhere.
But I think people can set up systems that result in consequences completely independent of intentional agency. Wolfram demonstrated how a few simple rules repeated many times can create patterns far more complex than would be intuitively obvious. With our laws and cultural norms we may have create complex results.
Since the results of what we think are simple rules may be complex, rather than focus on our rules, I think we need to look at results. If the results aren't to our liking, we need to alter what we are doing.
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On continuing thought ... for example, take the banks - please! Oh, wait, ... back on track ... and rules for 'capitalization rates'.
One way to keep banks from creating 'funny money' is to require 100% capitalization. ie they can't expand the money supply beyond that which already exists.
Banks would then make their profit, albeit a much, much, MUCH smaller one than now, on the difference between interest paid to savers v interest required from debtors.
But that leads to a second problem. The drive is to MAXIMIZE profit. Under that restriction (100% capitalization leading to far lower profit margins) what investor in their right mind would invest in a bank? And there's a second problem and that's cultural. That rule might possibly work with the ordinary saver/ borrower in the west, but it wouldn't work in Japan where people save at prodigious rates but don't borrow. (Up until Fukushima where Japan's economy melted with the corium) Japan's banks paid negative interest rates to savers due to the problem of too many savers, and not enough borrowers - or in balance sheet terms, too much outlay (interest to savers) and not enough income (interest from borrowers).
So simple rules I think can neither run an economy, nor can they, IMHO, account for the greedy Freddy or Fannie who does have intentional agency and will sidestep and sideswipe whatever rules he or she can.
So, let's get rid of private banks, eh? After all they're problematic for the economy and create chaos when they act in their own investors' interest at the expense of the society.
Does a public bank recreate the same issues, or a raft of different ones? I simply haven't thought that far.
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FREM, it's easy to say anti-usury laws... usury is definitely a problem... but that is far too limited.
There is one thing that I have learned from history, and that is the drive towards centralized power is relentless. Whatever series of “donts” are devised, someone will find a way around them, just like credit default swaps were created to evade the regulations on both insurances and deposits (paltry as those regulations were!) So, I think we really need to be thinking three or four steps ahead, not just reacting to the excesses of the day.
I conducted a series of thought-experiments to each possible economic proposal to see how it would fare (economically) in the long-run. But if my previous post made heads hurt, this one even makes MY head hurt!
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The first problem seems to be with money... the marble analogy. Once money comes into being, it develops a life of its own. It can be hoarded, it can be loaned, it can be used to gain control. And if you have a marble-making machine... Well! So- let's control the creation of money: That was the first thought that came into my head. Banks are in business to create debt. They are allowed to make money on money... actually it's even worse than that, they are allowed to make money on money they DON'T EVEN HAVE. The government requires that banks have only ONE dollar of actual invested money for each FIVE dollars they loan out... that is called the capitalization rate. So banks are allowed in fact to create money. I would require 100% capitalization rates... you CAN'T LOAN MONEY YOU DON'T HAVE. Or even better, separate out savings and loans altogether... make banks just big mattresses for people's savings. If people want to invest, let them do their own damn investing on their own dime. This would certainly eliminate bank fraud, fraudulent loans, spurious money-creation, and a lot of the crap that has brought down financial systems many times in the last century.
But what about corporate bonds? Private loans? Government bonds? ANY form of loans with interest creates that 11th marble, in the expectation that the lender will get that 11th marble back in the form of interest... an 11th marble than doesn't actually exist. So, limit interest rates to the inflation rate.
But, there is still the problem of the stock market. The stock market epitomizes the worst of the worst of financialism. The “owners” (shareholders) of a company often don't know what a company makes, whether or not it is a better product than its closest competitors, how it can be improved, all they care about is “more”... will this company make more profit this year? Will it make more profit than it's nearest competitor? Can I sell this stock next year for more than I paid for it this quarter? They are the absentee landlords of our production system, squeezing money out of production, often to the point of degrading both the product and the facility. So, I would get rid of the stock market.
Oh, but then there still is the idea of “profit”. Freddie is still allowed to take out every tenth marble. So we have private companies run for profit which will – over time- net their individual owners an increasing amount of circulating money... er, marbles... the supply of which we have severely restricted by eliminating profit-based loans. Sooner or later, a few Freddies will have ALL the marbles. What then? Company scrip?
All right. Eliminate corporations altogether. We'll all work either as individual business-owners or in “cooperatives” where we will ALL be part-owners, and we will ALL decide what to do with our revenues at the end of the year. We still have the market... after all, we have to sell our products into the marketplace at competitive prices.... we still have to hire at competitive wages... but there will be actual workplace democracy, where the owners know the process, know the product, have an interest in long-term viability, and are able to access loans at the inflation rate, and everybody gets to have a piece of the pie at the end of the year, if they so choose.
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I wanted to reiterate that these are simply thought-experiments. We do need a lot of real reform, now.
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Quote:I don't see how this is a problem. Because, if we're not talking any 11th marbles, the majority of people who have traded labor or land or whatever they've sold to the expansionist SHOULD have gotten something worth JUST AS MUCH back.
Originally posted by SignyM:
Then they take their accumulated money and buy more land. Or more machines. Or better automation. And they make more money, and still being of an expansionist frame of mind they eventually take over the vast majority of production, and if they have invested in automation- which seems like a reasonable business decision- they will have once again created a small coterie of owners and a vast majority of people on the outside looking in.
Quote:Again, I don't see why investment for profit is a problem.
... we are still left with the irreducible problem of “investment for profit”. Or maybe the problem is “profit for investment”. Or perhaps the REAL problem is simply “investment”.
I have $10. I trade 5 for water, 3 for lemons, and 2 for sugar. I make lemonade, and I trade my 10 cups of lemonade for $2 each. If I sell all my cups, I double my money. Or you can say, I earn $10 profit as compensation for my idea, labor, and risk. What is the difference between this and spending the day helping you move in exchange for $10?
The problem is the worth of intangible products and services like "labor" and "invention" and "hope." As long as those things are marketable at all, someone will invent the 11th marble.
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Never be deceived that the rich will allow you to vote away their wealth. -- Lucy Parsons (1853-1942, labor activist and anarcho-communist)
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Quote:Our enterprising cooperative has just invested in a machine that will allow them to do twice the work with the same number of people. They will be able to produce at lower cost than their neighboring cooperatives, and make more sales. Some cooperatives in that sector go out of business, creating unemployment. Our enterprising cooperative then expands into other products or other geographic areas, and with their emphasis on labor-saving devices put even MORE people out of work.
I don't see how this is a problem. Because, if we're not talking any 11th marbles, the majority of people who have traded labor or land or whatever they've sold to the expansionist SHOULD have gotten something worth JUST AS MUCH back.
At its theoretical endpoint, there will be a small number of the original cooperative owners who own ALL of the productive capacity, and their procedures are very productive indeed... much can be made with little labor. But the vast majority of ppl who can't compete at that level of productivity will be unemployed, and also unable to buy anything.
And BTW, I am all for labor-saving devices! But there is one caveat to automation: If you tie the distribution of money to work, and then you automate everything there will be a lot of people with no way to earn money!
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I still favor the idea of edible currency with an expiration date.
-F
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I think the issue is when people collect $ without producing anything of value.
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All very complex stuff.
I wanted to add something about the marbles. It's not about the actual marbles, its about what you would be willing to exchange for the marbles. The great unknown variable.
Kids don't seem to play with them now days, but they were popular when I was a kid. When the game was at its absolute height of popularity, you'd do and give a lot for the marbles you wanted. And not all marbles are valued equally, you might swap a couple of aggies for a tom bowler, or there was craze for oxbloods, which meant they were particularly valuable.
Then the school banned marbles. Can you believe it? We'd drawn chalk circles all over the carpet or some other heinous crime. Then they were worth virtually nothing. You couldn't give them away.
That is economics in a nutshell. It's not about gold, or anything tangible, its about desire, fear, greed, optomism, pessimism, suspicion, rumours, bravado..... Its actually incredibly emotive and nothing much more. That's why if it didn't impact on our day to day lives, it would be an incredibly funny folly. The thought that the world runs on such smoke and mirrors is hilarious and frightening.
So solutions.... look to the countries that are not in crisis, and Australia is one of them, and see what works.
I'd like to see a return to having at least one nationally owned bank. I belong to a bank that never used to have to have to worry about share holder dividends, and didn't charge enormous fees and interest. Now considered acceptable now of course, in these days where any idea of a national owned anything is considered free market sacrilidge. But it did work for a long time.
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Quote:*Everything* is relative. I cannot conceive of automation of *everything* in the foreseeable future.
Originally posted by SignyM:
And BTW, I am all for labor-saving devices! But there is one caveat to automation: If you tie the distribution of money to work, and then you automate everything there will be a lot of people with no way to earn money!
Yes, as automation displaced people throughout history, quite a number of folks have been disenfranchised. But if you look at the overall history, new industries emerged with new and different kinds of jobs. Technological progress is inevitable, but people are resilient and grow with the change. Yes, some people do get hurt, but the growing pains are not permanent.
I don't see it as a problem, at least, not enough that I would impose the Amish time-freeze on society or prevent investment for profit.
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Never be deceived that the rich will allow you to vote away their wealth. -- Lucy Parsons (1853-1942, labor activist and anarcho-communist)
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The world can't be in dire economic straits, that's nonsensical, like saying all the children are above average.
That said, you have a point. The problem is neocons, neolibs, globalism in general. What the world economy needs is trade barriers. You're spot on about Greece, etc.
Socialism is still a disaster, and the source of much of the economic pain. Europe has been an economic disaster for decades because of it, which is why Europe is not a place you think of a world economic power in spite of their dominance in so much of world industry, technology and information. The US is ceasing to be a world power, but our overspending and bank bailouts, handouts, and unlimited capital creation at the discount window has corrupted the currency system here, and in every currency tied to the dollar, or with an open exchange policy with the dollar.
I guess better than trade barriers would be to scrap the currency and start a new one. It might sound extreme, but it has been done many times before, even here.
BTW, you can't rule of Fannie and Freddie from the European disaster because dollars were freely exchangable for Euros, and in fact, the fiscal malfeasance tied to them was probably about 1/2 of the overall excess currency creation, but that also means that there was another half not connected to them.
The Saudi boom was natural, they produced a product, we bought it. This is not. This is nonsense. People are inventing numbers and juggling them on computers, there's no economy behind it.
Mansions and Yachts are good. That's people earning money and spending it on small business which employs people. That's a functional economy. That's not our problem. Our problem is nonsense. It's printing off 16 trillion for yourself at the discount window with fractional reserve lending. That's the problem.
I see Frem beat me to it on this one, so I'll shut up now.
That's what a ship is, you know - it's not just a keel and a hull and a deck and sails, that's what a ship needs.
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Quote:Money is the root of all evil. I believe it more and more.
Originally posted by Fremdfirma:
I still favor the idea of edible currency with an expiration date.
-F
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Never be deceived that the rich will allow you to vote away their wealth. -- Lucy Parsons (1853-1942, labor activist and anarcho-communist)
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Quote:Well said.
Originally posted by dreamtrove:
Mansions and Yachts are good. That's people earning money and spending it on small business which employs people. That's a functional economy. That's not our problem. Our problem is nonsense. It's printing off 16 trillion for yourself at the discount window with fractional reserve lending. That's the problem.
We rose to superpowerdom with the largest manufacturing economy in the world. We are crashing because we sold that manufacturing economy to China and moved to a gambling economy.
It's so stupid we DESERVE our impending doom.
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Never be deceived that the rich will allow you to vote away their wealth. -- Lucy Parsons (1853-1942, labor activist and anarcho-communist)
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Quote:HUH??? What do you base this on? Growth rate? National balance sheets? Standard of living? It sure would be nice if your brought some evidence to the table to back this up, because many of the most socialist countries are exporting powerhouses. And nearly all of the nations' government budgets (with the exception of Greece and Italy) were running in the black UNTIL the crisis... it was only AFTER the crisis hit that they had to empty their treasuries to shore up their (private) banks.
Europe has been an economic disaster for decades because of it, which is why Europe is not a place you think of a world economic power in spite of their dominance in so much of world industry, technology and information.
Where the EU DOES have a problem is their banking, and that is where the problem started for most of the affected EU nations. If you think OUR banking regulations are soft, we only got rid of Glass Steagall (in 1999... another nail in Clinton's coffin IMHO) to "keep up" with the EU.
THEY don't have a division between "savings" and "investment" banks. THEY operate under Basel II while OUR banks operate under FDIC. THEIR capitalization requirements were even lower than ours. Since the crisis began in every nation (except Greece) with a commercial/ investment bank crisis, it turns out that crazy capitalist-style banking was their Achilles heel. I know you have a hard-on against anything that smacks of "socialism", but at this point the only thing you're bringing to the discussion is prejudice (Prejudice... to pre-judge, not on the basis of fact).
Quote:Uh huh. Another baseless statement? Where do you get this "half" figure from?
BTW, you can't rule of Fannie and Freddie from the European disaster because dollars were freely exchangable for Euros, and in fact, the fiscal malfeasance tied to them was probably about 1/2 of the overall excess currency creation,
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CTS... you have not thought the automation problem through entirely. Automation by itself is not a problem. It is the fact that automation concentrates the flow of money into the hands of those who own the equipment.
ANY concentration of money is to be regarded as a possible problem, but under capitalism that is what money does... relentlessly and ceaselessly.
It's counter-intuitive to think of money just naturally concentrating. It's almost like thinking of water flowing uphill, or gas collecting in a corner of the room.
But there is ONE natural analogy to money concentration which may make the idea more intuitive, and that is gravity. Even if you start out with a uniform distribution of matter in space, by chance some particles will bump into each other and stick. Once that happens, they form a slightly larger gravity field, which collects more mass. And of course, the more mass an object has, the more it mass it gathers to itself. Eventually, an object will form which will collect up all loose matter.
The same thing happens with money. Now, money is no good unless it is FLOWING. Once it is all collected up in a single space, it stops being any good at all.
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Quote:Until someone else invents new automation equipment. Then it starts flowing to him/her.
Originally posted by SignyM:
It is the fact that automation concentrates the flow of money into the hands of those who own the equipment.
I know where you're going with the gravity analogy. I suspect you will suggest government policy as the only solution to the gravity problem. It is the only working model of anti-gravity, as it were.
My solution has always been new technology. If government doesn't get in the way of ANYONE coming up with new technology, then anyone can be the new center of gravity, if you will. Evolution is the anti-gravity. The old fade away, and the new take over.
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Never be deceived that the rich will allow you to vote away their wealth. -- Lucy Parsons (1853-1942, labor activist and anarcho-communist)
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Quote:The best function of government, as I see it, is to actively push power back downwards, to the people.
I suspect you will suggest government policy as the only solution to the gravity problem. It is the only working model of anti-gravity, as it were.
Quote:And yet here we are... many technological revolutions later... and 10% of the world wants the latest iPhone, while 50% just want more food. Not seeing how technological revolutions have really solved this problem.
My solution has always been new technology. If government doesn't get in the way of ANYONE coming up with new technology, then anyone can be the new center of gravity, if you will. Evolution is the anti-gravity. The old fade away, and the new take over.
Maybe new currencies are the solution. When someone has collected too many marbles, start using paper clips?
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My husband says the marble analogy is a bit flawed.
We are assuming that marbles means money, which means material resources.
He says, in reality, marbles means money, which means time. Hours and months and years in people's lives.
He says the 11th marble DOES exist. It is the future time of the debtor. When you pay interest, you are paying the time you already have PLUS the time you don't have yet. You are, in effect, selling portions of your future life into slavery.
The 11th marble, he says, is slavery.
I found that very interesting.
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Never be deceived that the rich will allow you to vote away their wealth. -- Lucy Parsons (1853-1942, labor activist and anarcho-communist)
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Quote:
Originally posted by SignyM:Quote:And yet here we are... many technological revolutions later... and 10% of the world wants the latest iPhone, while 50% just want more food. Not seeing how technological revolutions have really solved this problem.
CTS: My solution has always been new technology. If government doesn't get in the way of ANYONE coming up with new technology, then anyone can be the new center of gravity, if you will. Evolution is the anti-gravity. The old fade away, and the new take over.
Keyword: IF.
Keyword: ANYONE.
*IF* the government doesn't get in the way of *ANYONE* coming up with new technology....
Which is why you see govt as the solution, and I see govt as the part of the problem.
Right now, all the owners of old technology own new technology. The current centers of gravity want it that way, and they use govt to keep it that way.
If you look at 19th century America, there were a lot of NEW millionaires, money changing hands from the old money in Europe to the new money of inventors. That is as close as we've gotten to my evolution model.
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Never be deceived that the rich will allow you to vote away their wealth. -- Lucy Parsons (1853-1942, labor activist and anarcho-communist)
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In 19th century America, there were a lot of very poor people. Days of robber barons, remember? Not a great time to be a native American, or a farmer or factory worker. And a lot of very serious economic depressions. Again, not seeing much of a solution there.
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Quote:
Originally posted by canttakesky:
My husband says the marble analogy is a bit flawed.
We are assuming that marbles means money, which means material resources.
He says, in reality, marbles means money, which means time. Hours and months and years in people's lives.
He says the 11th marble DOES exist. It is the future time of the debtor. When you pay interest, you are paying the time you already have PLUS the time you don't have yet. You are, in effect, selling portions of your future life into slavery.
The 11th marble, he says, is slavery.
I found that very interesting.
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Never be deceived that the rich will allow you to vote away their wealth. -- Lucy Parsons (1853-1942, labor activist and anarcho-communist)
Hello,
That is an interesting interpretation, but I'm not sure the leap into slavery is justifiable.
If you let me have your car if I promise to drive you to the doctor on Tuescay, I would be making myself a slave under this interpretation. (Trading my future time for a valuable.)
Indeed, any time you promise to do anything for anybody in the future, you would be a slave under that interpretation.
While I like the Time is Money analogy, I don't think the Time is Slavery analogy works very well. In order to survive, we all must assign a portion of our tomorrows to the business of meeting our survival needs.
--Anthony
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"In every war, the state enacts a tax of freedom upon the citizenry. The unspoken promise is that the tax shall be revoked at war's end. Endless war holds no such promise. Hence, Eternal War is Eternal Slavery." --Admiral Robert J. Henner
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Quote:You're just a pessimist.
Originally posted by SignyM:
In 19th century America, there were a lot of very poor people. Days of robber barons, remember? Not a great time to be a native American, or a farmer or factory worker. And a lot of very serious economic depressions. Again, not seeing much of a solution there.
There were a lot LESS poor people than before.
America was the first time that kind of window opened up for anyone to invent new technology. It closed very quickly again after that. But in that window, a lot was accomplished. It allowed the emergence of a middle class. Pretty significant new development in economic history, I'd say. No it didn't do enough, but I believe it could have had it had more time.
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Never be deceived that the rich will allow you to vote away their wealth. -- Lucy Parsons (1853-1942, labor activist and anarcho-communist)
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Quote:That is because "slavery" is an extreme word that includes not only loss of ownership of our time, but loss of ownership of our will.
Originally posted by AnthonyT:
Indeed, any time you promise to do anything for anybody in the future, you would be a slave under that interpretation....While I like the Time is Money analogy, I don't think the Time is Slavery analogy works very well.
We need another word for losing ownership of small portions of our time/life, without losing all of our will. Like a mini- or quasi- or pseudo- slavery. Some people just call it employment, but that word is too culturally acceptable to drive home the point that there is little difference between a lifetime of debt and indentured servitude.
In other words, if you sell enough hours in your future life, you become a slave. I don't have an adequate word for selling small portions of your future life. Mini-slave? Hehe.
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Never be deceived that the rich will allow you to vote away their wealth. -- Lucy Parsons (1853-1942, labor activist and anarcho-communist)
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Quote:Got any data to back that up? Because the era that you refer to includes slavery, the Civil War, a lot of dead and displaced Indians, the railyway boom (which BTW was mostly a bubble, like the housing bubble today), robber barons, the Irish potato famine leading to a lot of destitute immigrants, and several really nasty depressions.
There were a lot LESS poor people than before.
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Quote:All right. Let me hunt something down. First, I need to specify the time period I'm talking about. Etc.
Originally posted by SignyM:
Got any data to back that up? Because the era that you refer to includes slavery, the Civil War, a lot of dead and displaced Indians, the railyway boom (which BTW was mostly a bubble, like the housing bubble today), robber barons, the Irish potato famine leading to a lot of destitute immigrants, and several really nasty depressions.
But it's not like you couldn't come up with a list like that for EVERY century.
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Never be deceived that the rich will allow you to vote away their wealth. -- Lucy Parsons (1853-1942, labor activist and anarcho-communist)
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Just found this interesting article. Felt like it belongs on this thread.
http://www.businessinsider.com/this-28-year-old-is-making-sure-credit-
cards-wont-exist-in-the-next-few-years-2011-11
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Never be deceived that the rich will allow you to vote away their wealth. -- Lucy Parsons (1853-1942, labor activist and anarcho-communist)
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Quote:OK, I'm back. First a caveat. I realize the "data" on poverty and standard of living vis a vis the first and second industrial revolutions are highly controversial amongst economists and historians. Datawise, we can argue forever, like global warming. So, what I would like to focus on instead are broader trends than specific "data."
Originally posted by SignyM:
Got any data to back that up?
I will quote some "data" or "observations" which you will accuse me of cherry-picking. Let me just say this up front. Yes, I will be quoting selectively to make my point. It does NOT mean what I omitted didn't happen or is being ignored. It only means that despite knowing there is a larger controversial picture, I want to underscore and spotlight certain trends I find significant.
Rough overview of Western economy.
Medieval times: Nobility owned everything. The rest were peasants in abject poverty, with a very small percentage comprising the "bourgeoisie" of merchants and educated professionals. Very little, if not impossible, vertical mobility.
First industrial revolution: After centuries and centuries of intractable monopoly of wealth by the nobility, wealth began to change hands into the bourgeoisie. Peasants/proletariat are still screwed--just how screwed they are is debatable. Poverty image changes from rural poor to urban poor. Growth spurts come with severe depressions. BUT, overall GDP shoots up and standard of living *begins* to improve for increasing numbers of people, but not percentages of people (because of a population explosion). Vertical mobility improves from impossible to improbable.
Quote:
https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/Industrial_Revolution
In the two centuries following 1800, the world's average per capita income increased over 10-fold, while the world's population increased over 6-fold.[2] In the words of Nobel Prize winner Robert E. Lucas, Jr., "For the first time in history, the living standards of the masses of ordinary people have begun to undergo sustained growth ... Nothing remotely like this economic behavior has happened before".
Sidestepping the debate mines, I want to focus on the overall result of improved living conditions for increasing numbers of people, contrasted with those throughout most of human history. No one will dispute those better standards can be credited in part to industrialization.
Quote:
http://www.econlib.org/library/Enc/IndustrialRevolutionandtheStandardo
fLiving.html
The ideological underpinnings of the debate eventually faded, probably because, as T. S. Ashton pointed out in 1948, the industrial revolution meant the difference between the grinding poverty that had characterized most of human history and the affluence of the modern industrialized nations. No economist today seriously disputes the fact that the industrial revolution began the transformation that has led to extraordinarily high (compared with the rest of human history) living standards for ordinary people throughout the market industrial economies.
The standard-of-living debate today is not about whether the industrial revolution made people better off, but about when. The pessimists claim no marked improvement in standards of living until the 1840s or 1850s. Most optimists, by contrast, believe that living standards were rising by the 1810s or 1820s, or even earlier.... (snip)
What does “standard of living” mean? Economic historians would like it to mean happiness. But the impossibility of measuring happiness forces them to equate the standard of living with monetary measures such as real wages or real income. “Real income” is usually defined as money income adjusted for the cost of living, but not for effects of things such as health, longevity, unemployment, pollution, the condition of women and children, urban crowding, and the amount of leisure time. Although some new indexes attempt to capture the various dimensions of well-being, for most praNOTIFY: Y | REPLY | REPLY WITH QUOTE | PERMALINK | TOP | HOME
I wish I could remember the name of the economics book I read a long time ago, but a lot of the supposed rise in the standard of living was correctly ascribed to technology. Basically what the author said was that if you were an extremely powerful African chieftain, for all your wealth and for all you power over the lives of multitudes, you wouldn't have an iron grate with a coal fire, iron not being refined and forged, and coal not being mined in that time and place and technology.
The other thing I would ascribe it to is that people were and are tapping into stored energies like coal and later oil. It multiplies productivity such that a worker can produce far more than human or animal labor alone could produce. Thus, they can produce enough for their survival while the large excess goes to benefit a very few. Or, as I also said elsewhere, capitalism survives by sucking resources into the bottom.
As far as I can see, that doesn't make capitalism good or necessary, it just makes it wasteful and unsustainable.
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Quote:
Originally posted by canttakesky:
It's so stupid we DESERVE our impending doom.
Lol. This cracked me up. But so true.
That's what a ship is, you know - it's not just a keel and a hull and a deck and sails, that's what a ship needs.
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Quote:Nah, I don't think it is good or necessary.
Originally posted by 1kiki:
As far as I can see, that doesn't make capitalism good or necessary, it just makes it wasteful and unsustainable.
I just don't think it is evil, or necessarily evil.
I think it is a neutral tool which CAN be used for good as well as for evil, and sometimes at the same time (as in the Gilded Age).
ETA: Just to clarify, I wasn't making a case for capitalism, anyway. I was making a case for new technology as an anti-gravity device.
ETA2: I should specify, unregulated development of new technology as an anti-gravity device.
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Never be deceived that the rich will allow you to vote away their wealth. -- Lucy Parsons (1853-1942, labor activist and anarcho-communist)
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Well DT, I noticed you brought no evidence to back up your story about how EU is a basket case because of "socialist spending" so I decided to look it up.
The nations with the most socialist spending (the Nordic nations and Germany) are doing quite well. Several of the nations which needed bailouts (Iceland, Spain, and Ireland) were running their governmental budgets in the black, and had in fact been using the surplus to pay DOWN their debt since about 1997, significantly decreasing their public debt burden from about 70% GDP to about 20-30% GDP in that time. They didn't run into trouble UNTIL the debt crisis, when they emptied their treasuries to shore up PRIVATE banks. The UK was running about even ,,, not either in debt or generating a surplus, and their public debt load was more or less stable from about 1997 to 2007.
So your argument is not at all supported by evidence. The primary cause for the financial crisis was the financial sector creating too much funny money. Again.
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CTS, I think what you are saying is that new technology creates new centers of gravity, and that while money is flowing from one center of gravity to another, at least it is flowing. Right?
First of all, the USA was not the "source" of new technology. All of that work on water-power and the steam engine, and its application to transportation and manufacturing? Mostly England and France. The invention of the programmable water-powered loom: France. (Even hear of saboteurs? They were throwing their sabots into the "new" technology) The self-propelled steam engine, and the steam-powered loom? England.
My sense is that doesn't solve the problem, and doesn't even delay the inevitable bust. When I look at the introduction of new technology (manufacturing) in England, it created a vast underclass of people who were substantially poorer than before: peasants displaced from their small holdings into cities, where they lived (and starved) under bridges and in poorhouses, without even the wherewithal to produce their own food. In other words, the introduction of new technology concentrated wealth more than ever. As an anti-gravity machine, it was a bust.
The saving grace of America was all of that "free" land which created a safety net of a sorts for people unable to find a place in the economic structure to strike out on their own and AT LEAST be able to produce food. In other words, the means of production were more evenly distributed here than elsewhere. I think that is why we never involved in the "year of revolutions" (1848). We were still busy extricating ourselves from an older form of production (slavery).
I think monetarism has been more effective. Governments have been riding monetarism for a long time to delay the inevitable, making money (and allowing private banks to make money) through the creation of debt and "quantitative easing" (ie the equivalent of printing more money!), and that more than anything has delayed the inevitable, as well as making it potentially worse.
Curiously, China is facing the same problem. The introduction of new technology (manufacturing) has created a new class of ultra-wealthy, while itinerant labor and the peasant farmer no longer enjoy the level of support (health care, education, unemployment insurance etc.) that they did in the past. (These are tied to where you are registered; so if you move out of your area of registration to work in a city, you receive no benefits whatsoever, very much like the parish system of charity in Victorian England)
China recognizes that it needs to increase its internal demand in order to keep growing, so they are investing in infrastructure at a crazy rate. However, because of the shadow banking system there are many outstanding loans which can no longer be paid, factory-owners are committing suicide rather than face the illicit lenders.
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Quote:Yes, because while it is flowing, it weakens the centers.
Originally posted by SignyM:
CTS, I think what you are saying is that new technology creates new centers of gravity, and that while money is flowing from one center of gravity to another, at least it is flowing. Right?
Quote:You're confusing the first and the second industrial revolutions. The first (18th-early 19th century), yes, mostly England and France. The second (1865 - 1913), mostly America. I am especially interested in the American industrial revolution because it was particularly unfettered by govt. My hypothesis is, the more unregulated new technology is, the bigger the flow of wealth from the old center of gravity to the new one.
First of all, the USA was not the "source" of new technology. ...Mostly England and France.
Quote:I would dispute the "more than ever." But I expected that we would have disagreements on this point.
In other words, the introduction of new technology concentrated wealth more than ever.
Also, the period of interest to me is the Second Industrial Revolution in America, rather than the first one in Europe. The first one was new technology mired in millenia of oppression. It didn't have much of a chance for anti-gravity to work. It would be like trying a new anti-gravity machine on Jupiter and saying, "Look it doesn't work." No shit. Let's focus on the anti-gravity trial we did on Mars, shall we?
Anyway, I didn't expect you to agree with me. I just wanted to explain my theory. Maybe it *is* wrong. But I would like to see unfettered development of new technology tried for say, 100 years before giving it up as a bust.
ETA: Oh, and about China? It doesn't fit my model. My model requires that ANYBODY must be free (unimpeded by govt) to come up with new technology. China doesn't meet that criterion. Like I said, there has only been one time in all of history that came close to my model, and that would be America 1865 - 1913. Not Europe. Not China. America in the Gilded Age.
New tech alone is not enough.
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Never be deceived that the rich will allow you to vote away their wealth. -- Lucy Parsons (1853-1942, labor activist and anarcho-communist)
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" My model requires that ANYBODY must be free (unimpeded by govt) to come up with new technology."
But, uhm, as was pointed out above, it wasn't Americans who came up with the new technologies. So the Gilded Age doesn't meet your criteria either.
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Posting separately on this point - you see freedom to invent new technologies as a necessary crutch for capitalism, a way out of the dead-end of concentration of wealth. But the freedom to invent new technologies has been around for a long, long, LONG time - since way before capitalism - with the invention of language, the bowl, the baby sling, fire, stone tools, agriculture and so on. Invention can and does exist without capitalism. But according to your ideas, capitalism can't survive without invention.
So, why have capitalism?
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Quote:
Originally posted by SignyM:
Well DT, I noticed you brought no evidence to back up your story about how EU is a basket case because of "socialist spending" so I decided to look it up.
The nations with the most socialist spending (the Nordic nations and Germany) are doing quite well. Several of the nations which needed bailouts (Iceland, Spain, and Ireland) were running their governmental budgets in the black, and had in fact been using the surplus to pay DOWN their debt since about 1997, significantly decreasing their public debt burden from about 70% GDP to about 20-30% GDP in that time. They didn't run into trouble UNTIL the debt crisis, when they emptied their treasuries to shore up PRIVATE banks. The UK was running about even ,,, not either in debt or generating a surplus, and their public debt load was more or less stable from about 1997 to 2007.
So your argument is not at all supported by evidence. The primary cause for the financial crisis was the financial sector creating too much funny money. Again.
I think you are on the money, if you will excuse the expression. There are countries in europe that have been incredibly irresponsible, like Italy, but that is nothing to do with socialism and everything to do with a culture that has scant regard for paying dues like taxes, and big into bribery and corruption. That is why Germany and France are so pooed off with bailing them out.
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Sig,
It's obvious to a 5th grader. Why would I waste my time debating it here? I have actual stuff to do.
Look again at europe's taxation rate, and their degree of govt. control, corporate-govt. ties and their stack of long term liabilities, not to mention their labor situation. I haven't met a european on either side of the political spectrum who hasn't thought it was a serious problem at any point in the last decade, maybe two.
That's what a ship is, you know - it's not just a keel and a hull and a deck and sails, that's what a ship needs.
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Quote:It was pointed out wrong. Most of the new technology in the Gilded Age WAS American.
Originally posted by 1kiki:
But, uhm, as was pointed out above, it wasn't Americans who came up with the new technologies. So the Gilded Age doesn't meet your criteria either.
Telephone: American
Telegraph: American
A/C current: American
D/C current: American
Airplane: American
Refrigerator: American
Cars: German
Assembly line for mass production of cars: American
Radio: American (though of course, the Italians want to claim this one)
Steel: British
Mass manufacturing of steel through vertical integration: American (not a technological but a logistical innovation)
Yes, there were a number of significant European inventions. And yes, inventions always piggyback on each other such that some claims for credit are controversial. But it is very clear that MOST of the innovation by which we obtained the final products occurred in America during the Gilded Age.
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Never be deceived that the rich will allow you to vote away their wealth. -- Lucy Parsons (1853-1942, labor activist and anarcho-communist)
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Quote:Why have a knife?
Originally posted by 1kiki:
So, why have capitalism?
Cause sometimes, just sometimes, it is useful without hurting anyone.
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Never be deceived that the rich will allow you to vote away their wealth. -- Lucy Parsons (1853-1942, labor activist and anarcho-communist)
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Telephone - Philipp Reis (German)
A/C current - Nikola Tesla (Austrian) while in Paris
D/C current - no one 'invented' the D/C current, but Alessandro Volta (Italian) invented the battery
Refrigerator - William Cullen (Scottish)
No, your claims aren't clear at all.
What many famous American 'inventors' did was file US Patents. It doesn't make them the inventor, merely the US patent holder.
"Cause sometimes, just sometimes, (capitalism) is useful without hurting anyone."
So despite your previous denial you really ARE arguing for capitalism. Just so we're clear on that.
Capitalism is a currently successful economic strategy. But what it is without exception is resource wasteful and environmentally destructive. Ultimately it's non-survivable. That makes it not at all useful, not even a little bit, IMO.
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Quote:
Originally posted by 1kiki:
Telephone - Philipp Reis (German)
A/C current - Nikola Tesla (Austrian) while in Paris
D/C current - no one 'invented' the D/C current, but Alessandro Volta (Italian) invented the battery
Refrigerator - William Cullen (Scottish)
No, your claims aren't clear at all.
What many famous American 'inventors' did was file US Patents. It doesn't make them the inventor, merely the US patent holder.
"Cause sometimes, just sometimes, (capitalism) is useful without hurting anyone."
So despite your previous denial you really ARE arguing for capitalism. Just so we're clear on that.
Capitalism is a currently successful economic strategy. But what it is without exception is resource wasteful and environmentally destructive. Ultimately it's non-survivable. That makes it not at all useful, not even a little bit, IMO.
I think there's a middle ground between you and Sky.
I would make the case that Americans improved upon European fundamental discoveries, improved them, found new ways to utilize them. Often many Americans contributed individual small modifications to a product or process, with the cumulative result that the product evolved very quickly-- the steam railroads are a good example.
Dozens of American railroads innovated individual changes during the 19th century, leading to hundreds of locomotive and car designs, each an improvement on the state of the art, each specialized for its own situation.
The simple, large number of people working to improve the product led to rapid improvement by trial and error, each little improvement being adopted by others, further modified to fit a particular circumstance, caused an overall improvement.
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Quote:Tesla's Serbian-American (eye rolling). You couldn't even get his original nationality right. And he invented A/C while he was in America. Yes, he proposed the idea first in Paris, but he made it work in America.
Originally posted by 1kiki:
A/C current - Nikola Tesla
I'm not even going to bother with the rest.
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Never be deceived that the rich will allow you to vote away their wealth. -- Lucy Parsons (1853-1942, labor activist and anarcho-communist)
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"It's obvious to a 5th grader."
Hello,
This is why no one can have a conversation with you.
--Anthony
_______________________________________________
"In every war, the state enacts a tax of freedom upon the citizenry. The unspoken promise is that the tax shall be revoked at war's end. Endless war holds no such promise. Hence, Eternal War is Eternal Slavery." --Admiral Robert J. Henner
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"Dozens of American railroads innovated individual changes during the 19th century, leading to hundreds of locomotive and car designs, each an improvement on the state of the art, each specialized for its own situation."
The railroads were the exact opposite of what you describe, according to this article.
"For this reason, Railroaded, Richard White’s trenchant history of the political economy of the first Gilded Age, told through a close examination of the transcontinental railroad corporations, could not be more timely. Parts of the book read like a Matt Taibbi exposé of fraudulent high finance and venal politics, but the bulk of it resembles a Vanity Fair article that gasps even as it sympathizes with insiders divulging the details of how things went terribly wrong. ... By 1890 six companies had completed seven separate lines in Kansas, overlaying the state with more miles of track than New York had and for a population less than one-third the size. Even the inveterate Kansas booster (and crooked US senator) J.J. Ingalls had to admit that “empty railroad trains ran across deserted prairies to vacant towns.” The overbuilding of track, like the overbuilding of housing today, was not spurred by demand. It was the handiwork of insiders looking to get rich through chicanery and government largesse. “The entrepreneurship so apparent in the 1880s involved innovations that combined financial manipulation, the waste of capital and labor, and the construction of railroad lines that fulfilled little or no discernible need except the enrichment of the promoter...” "
http://www.thenation.com/article/163050/trains-vain-richard-white
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"Tesla's Serbian-American (eye rolling)."
Whatever. Have some facts to go with your eye-rolling -
"Born an ETHNIC SERB in the village of Smiljan (now part of Gospić), in the Croatian Military Frontier[1] of the Austrian Empire (modern-day Croatia), TESLA WAS A SUBJECT OF THE AUSTRIAN EMPIRE BY BIRTH and later became an American citizen.[2]"
Ethnic Serbian, citizen of the Austrian Empire.
Oh, one more correction to your sloppy reading.
http://books.google.com/books?id=--giwZy0FpkC& pg=PA109&lpg=PA109& dq=%22For+the+first+time+in+history, +the+living+ standards+of+the+ masses+of+ordinary+people+have+begun+ to+undergo+sustained+growth&source=bl&ots=LPutGXA_PV&sig= TEdNtbaYEI6r2eZuQwbnVksAYvs &hl=en&ei=wFq_ To3iGZPViALyu4WNAw&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=8& ved=0CFUQ6AEwBw#v=onepage& q=%22For%20the%20first%20time%20in%20history %2C%20the%20living%20standards%20 of%20the%20masses%20of%20ordinary%20people%20 have%20begun%20to%20undergo%20sustained %20growth&f=false
"In the words of Nobel Prize winner Robert E. Lucas, Jr., "For the first time in history, the living standards of the masses of ordinary people have begun to undergo sustained growth ... Nothing remotely like this economic behavior has happened before"."
But reading an actual selection from his book (not that I expect you to, but one can always hope), Lucas doesn't attribute the improvement to capitalism. It's still best attributed to technology and the large-scale exploitation of non-biological energy.
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Quote:So go away and do it, then.
Sig,
It's obvious to a 5th grader. Why would I waste my time debating it here? I have actual stuff to do.
Oh, wait, you DO want to debate it!...
Quote:
Look again at europe's taxation rate, and their degree of govt. control, corporate-govt. ties and their stack of long term liabilities, not to mention their labor situation. I haven't met a european on either side of the political spectrum who hasn't thought it was a serious problem at any point in the last decade, maybe two.
Hmm... OK. Germany's total tax, about 45% of GDP. Public debt, about 80% of GDP. Real growth rate, abut 4%. Unemployment, about 6%.
USA, total tax revenues about 17% GDP. Public debt, 95%. Real growth rate... eh, maybe 2%. Unemployment, about 9%.
Yes, I see how terrible it is!
www.indexmundi.com
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Oh, and let's not forget that Paris had electric lighting long before the light bulb was ever "invented".
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I'm surprised at how interesting this thread was, normally I find talk about money andthe economy boring and hard to understand, but this was actually interesting.
I like the marbles and donkies stories. CTS, the idea of the 11th marble being slavery is really interesting and I'll have to consider it further.
Magon's, my little brother went through a marbles phase when he was six or seven, we made marks on the basement carpet with tape so he and my stepdad could play. He's nine now but I think he'd still like it, he probably forgot about it after the tape got pulled when we painted that room and got a new couch.
Sure there were things that got notably better for many people in the 19th century, as well as things that got worse for other people. That being said I'd not like to go back there thank you.
"A completely coherant River means writers don't deliver" KatTaya
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Quote:Neither do I.
Originally posted by 1kiki:
Lucas doesn't attribute the improvement to capitalism.
Quote:Which was precisely my point. Unfettered technology development.
It's still best attributed to technology...
Read my lips. Unfettered technology development. Do you see the word capitalism in there?
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Never be deceived that the rich will allow you to vote away their wealth. -- Lucy Parsons (1853-1942, labor activist and anarcho-communist)
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Just saw this chart.
http://www.getinthehotspot.com/10-richest-countries-in-world/
Haven't looked at how accurate it is, but it seems most of the countries listed as the richest are in Europe.
List is compiled by the Swiss, so maybe it is biased. But interesting.
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Never be deceived that the rich will allow you to vote away their wealth. -- Lucy Parsons (1853-1942, labor activist and anarcho-communist)
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Except you think capitalism is necessary to the "unfettered" part - and it isn't.
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Quote:Which was why I didn't not have electric lighting on my list as a mostly American invention.
Originally posted by SignyM:
Oh, and let's not forget that Paris had electric lighting long before the light bulb was ever "invented".
Look, you guys are really hung up on this. Lemme explain the whole invention thing again.
Invention is a continuous process that moves from person to person, country to country. Everything stands on the shoulders of the people who came before them. It's a chain, right? Some links in the chain influence the final product (the one WE know) more than others. But which ones? There is some subjectivity in deciding this link was the "father" link. Blah blah blah.
Take refrigeration. According to Wikipedia (and some other sources), this is what the chain looks like.
11th century: Avicenna, Iran, refrigerated coils
1748: William Cullen, Scotland, produced a small amount of ice artificially.
1805: Oliver Evans, America, vapor compression refrigeration cycle, key to refrigeration. No refrigerator unit though.
1834: Jacob Perkins, America, first patent to use vapor compression cycles in a refrigerator unit. Patent filed also in Scotland.
1841: John Gorrie, America, patent for mechanical refrigeration
1853: Alexander Twinning, America, vapor compression unit that produced large amounts of ice
1856: James Harrison, Australia, ammonia and ether compressor unit
1859: Ferdinand Carre, France, ammonia compressor unit
1867: JB Sutherland, America, refrigerated railroad cars
1876: Carl von Linden, Germany, gas liquification process critical to refrigeration
1913: Fred Wolf, America, refrigerators for domestic use
1916: Alfred Mellowes, America, self-contained refrigerators, bought out for first mass production of refrigerators at the Frigidaire Co.
1922: Baltzar von Platen, Carl Munters, Sweden, Electrolux refrigerators.
Etc. I am sure there are others I've missed, but you get the picture. I look at the links I consider to be critical, and I look at the number of links overall. I consider Oliver Evans to be the "father" link in the chain. Considering also that most of those links were American, I think it is safe to summarize that refrigerators were mostly invented in America.
The same type of chain can be constructed for all other inventions. Perhaps you will pick a different "father" link than I would, and we can nitpick and bicker about where things were invented ad infinitum.
Whatever. I stand by my position that most of the new technology during the Gilded Age was developed in America. You don't agree. Fine.
My central point is not whether Americans invented this or that. My central point is that unfettered development of new technology played a big role in allowing 1) money to move from Europe's nobility to the nouveau riche, 2) a creation of a middle class, and 3) improved living standards for industrialized nations. To me, these 3 results indicate that unfettered new tech development (even though it had a relatively short window) has promise as an anti-"gravity" mechanism.
Bickering doesn't address these points.
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Never be deceived that the rich will allow you to vote away their wealth. -- Lucy Parsons (1853-1942, labor activist and anarcho-communist)
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CTS, stripped of surrounding arguments you said:
Quote:
unfettered development of new technology played a big role in allowing 1) money to move from Europe's nobility to the nouveau riche, 2) a creation of a middle class, and 3) improved living standards for industrialized nations. To me, these 3 results indicate that unfettered new tech development (even though it had a relatively short window) has promise as an anti-"gravity" mechanism.
My first thought was that the development of steam power was certainly unfettered ... in fact, it was rampant. And it DID transfer wealth from the nobility to the nouveau riche. But it lead to impoverishment for whole swaths of populations, the previous agricultural peasant class who were forcibly displaced off their small holdings, and who filled the new factories, slums, poorhouses and streets with starving wage-slaves.
So what is the main difference between THAT implementation of technology, and one that you would consider to be "anti-gravity"? Because it seems to me, from many historical examples, that not every technological advance is anti-gravity.
Also, I would say that the first xfer of wealth from the nobility occurred during the formation of the merchant class, which began (I think) around 1500.
I agree that advanced technology CAN lead to better quality of life, for some. OTOH, in this highly advanced technological world, the entire continent of Africa is poorer than ever before. So the creation of prosperity for all is a complex process. IMHO the creation of a middle class (which BTW occurred in both Europe and the USA) had more to do with labor unions than any beneficent, automatic effect of technological advance. So I think this point deserves more discussion about how technology can be anti-gravity, and when it might not be, and how to ensure that future advances will fill the role.
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Unfettered technology has improved the overall standard of living ... for us. But not for everyone, not indefinitely, and currently as a crutch for capitalism.
Consider all the really important technologies a short list of which I gave above - language, stone tools, the baby sling, the bowl, fire, clothing, agriculture, even binding with sinew or rope, rafts, sails and rudders, and the alphabet, and all prehistoric discoveries great and small. Not only did they improve the standard of living, they made it possible for humans to expand from their very small, very particular and generous origin to which they were uniquely adapted to survive - their 'Eden' - to areas around the globe which otherwise would have been beyond their physical survival.
These technologies had important consequences for human society as well, consequences we are still trying to deal with to this day. They created excess, which, like Goodall's pile of fruit in front of the chimps, nearly always gave rise to hierarchies - more specifically male territorial (warlike) parasitic hierarchies - which lived off the excess generated by the people, and without apparently contributing anything in return except bs stories about the gods and their (the male hierarchies') divine right to be where they were, doing what they were doing, and getting what they were getting. A consequence which continues to this day, I might add.
So technology can improve the overall standard of living, but at a social cost.
Do we WANT unfettered technology? And do we WANT to enable capitalism?
Anyway, I have to get going. I hope to add more later.
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Well, I stopped following this a while ago, but it sounds to me that the frontier alleviating the poverty problems created by the industrial revolution and subsequent urbanization suggests that if each person/family unit doesn't has enough productive lands or resources that they can grow or trade for a living, bad things happen.
Similarly, bad things happen if an economic system relies primarily on projected assets and not real-world assets.
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Quote:
But, uhm, as was pointed out above, it wasn't Americans who came up with the new technologies. So the Gilded Age doesn't meet your criteria either.
They didn't come up with coal power or steam-engines, no, but there was plenty in the time period Americans did come up with or improve upon, for better or for worse.
There are periods of invention and growth and even optimism in human history. This appears to usually be caused by some kind of paradigm shift.
Quote:
These technologies had important consequences for human society as well, consequences we are still trying to deal with to this day. They created excess, which, like Goodall's pile of fruit in front of the chimps, nearly always gave rise to hierarchies - more specifically male territorial (warlike) parasitic hierarchies - which lived off the excess generated by the people, and without apparently contributing anything in return except bs stories about the gods and their (the male hierarchies') divine right to be where they were, doing what they were doing, and getting what they were getting. A consequence which continues to this day, I might add.
Nearly always. Not always. Obviously, the less centralized any society or community is, the more self-sufficient and stable it is, and the less parasitic.
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Why does it in any way matter exactly who came up with what, when - if the technology is of benefit ?
Caring more ABOUT that, than the effect, is what lead fools down the road to the DMCA and worse.
You do not forment technological improvement by strangling it in the crib.
-F
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A good point, Frem. I think none of us are against technology itself. Perhaps that's the salient argument here.
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Quote:See, I am not sure that the "nouveau pauvre" were that much poorer than the agricultural peasants. I think the poor and starving simply moved, from the country to the city, where they were more visible. I am also not sure that the technology itself was what caused the migration. If you'd like to make a case for that, I'd like to hear it.
Originally posted by SignyM:
But it lead to impoverishment for whole swaths of populations, the previous agricultural peasant class who were forcibly displaced off their small holdings, and who filled the new factories, slums, poorhouses and streets with starving wage-slaves.
Quote:Agreed.
not every technological advance is anti-gravity.
Quote:Yes, because people with advanced tech/weapons used the tech to oppress people in Africa. You might say that is how the Indians got robbed of an entire continent: advanced weaponry.
OTOH, in this highly advanced technological world, the entire continent of Africa is poorer than ever before.
Quote:Well, I am not that ambitious. Right now, I'd just like to see prosperity for more.
So the creation of prosperity for all is a complex process.
Quote:I think they both played a role.
IMHO the creation of a middle class (which BTW occurred in both Europe and the USA) had more to do with labor unions than any beneficent, automatic effect of technological advance.
Quote:Agreed.
So I think this point deserves more discussion about how technology can be anti-gravity, and when it might not be, and how to ensure that future advances will fill the role.
So maybe my premise is overly simplistic and naive. But here is how I see it.
The rich got rich by doing X. All their resources are invested in X. If someone else, anyone else, invents Y which makes X obsolete, all the future wealth becomes rerouted and goes now to the guy with Y. Instead of continuing to accumulate more and more, Mr. X's assets become devaluated; his gravity shrinks. Mr. Y, who may have been a peasant yesterday, suddenly has gravity of his own. The world now revolves around Planet Y instead of Planet X, which fades into a has-been.
Broadly speaking, when kerosene replaced whale oil, the whaling tycoons were replaced by coal tycoons. Then the petroleum tycoons displaced the coal tycoons a couple of notches down. I would imagine, should someone invent cold or warm fusion, fusion tycoons would displace the petroleum ones. I call it "evolution," as if each new technology were a mutation.
Now mutations are not always good, and do not always lead to a better life. In fact, most of the time, they cause many undesirable effects. But they are also the main, natural mechanism for long-term, large changes whereby the old die off, and the new begin. You want something that will break the unending and entrenched accumulation of power/wealth of the old? I think evolution, via mutation and natural selection, is the best answer.
No, not all mutations will lead to evolution. But evolution doesn't occur without mutations. So we just gotta put up with a lot of bad mutations until we get the ones that take. Maybe we can help it along in just the right way.
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Never be deceived that the rich will allow you to vote away their wealth. -- Lucy Parsons (1853-1942, labor activist and anarcho-communist)
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I wanted to get back to this. I haven't forgotten, but this is a complicated topic. Let me recap:
There is a difference between finance and the economy, although the two are tied in today's world. The economy has to do with production and consumption. Finance has to do with money.
"Goods" tend not to collect in a few hands, and "services"... well, there are as many providers of services as there are competent labor-ready hands. It is very difficult to hoard enough of anything to make a difference in the everyday comings and goings of an economy... if vital commodities like lithium [batteries] or tantalum [capacitors] or oil are severely restricted, in the short run this will shock production, but in the long run alternative sources or materials will be found. Because a hoard of goods tends not to lend itself (so to speak) into collecting more of itself, it is fairly easy to break a monopoly on goods and commodities.
Money OTOH is a different story. To the extent that money eases the exchange of goods and services, it is a good thing. The problem with money is that, once it is a "thing" it can be hoarded, lent, and used to gather even more. Money behaves gravitationally, while goods do not. And depressions seem to occur when money collects in the gravity well of the very wealthy. Because money only functions to promote production and consumption when it is flowing, once it is collected, it stops flowing, and once it stops flowing the economy collapses.
The two antipodes that are presented over and over (and over and over) are Keynes and Hayeck... increase the money supply, or austerity. But neither really works, as Keynesianism tends to merely delay the inevitable and the Austrian school merely crucifies the vast majority (on a cross of gold, even!).
We need to think of money as a resource, albeit a very special one: Who gets it? How does it move? What are the alternatives? Can we do away with it?
We could redistribute money, but keep the same pro-corporate mode of production. However, the wealthy will eventually use their wealth to undo the system of wealth redistribution.
We could control how money is used... particularly, how money is created... but we've been there and done that when we were on the gold standard and it didn't do a single thing to prevent depressions.
We could go to a cooperative mode of production ... and although I think this would be a good interim step... there is nothing to prevent a cooperative from becoming as monopolistic as any corporation.
Money being used to buy and sell things isn't a problem. The ultimate conundrum revolves around "savings", "investment", and "debt".
One can control the use of savings and debt creation... simply require that money be saved and loaned at zero interest. But even in the ideal world of cooperatives, with zero-interest financing, there is still the issue of concentration of power through successive reinvestment in a particular cooperative.
So, ultimately, NOBODY should be allowed to "own" the means of production... not even cooperatives. Theoretically, that is the only solution that puts an end to all of these problems of money concentration and debt creation and irrational over-investment.
I've thought about how that might work, but run out of time, so I'll have to get back to this later.
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Actually, it occurs to me that there is really one one thing in human society that behaves in "gravitational" manner (besides gravity, of course) and that is human cooperation.
That is why the media is gravitational, money is gravitational, soldiers are gravitational, and religion is gravitational... but "goods" are not.
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This is a lot to think about. I'm trying to think about is it gravitational or positive feedback.
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It's positive feedback. I just used gravity as an example of positive feedback that everyone in familiar with.
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Former US Comptroller General Dave Walker says the US debt is actually three times more than the $18 trillion we see in the media
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Quote:
Originally posted by 1kiki:
While Wall St. is going through the roof, Main St. is paying all the bills.
Check this one, thanks to Kwicko
FY End / Debt Outstanding / President
09/30/2015 18,150,604,277,750.63
09/30/2014 17,824,071,380,733.82
09/30/2013 16,738,183,526,697.32
09/30/2012 16,066,241,407,385.89
09/30/2011 14,790,340,328,557.15
09/30/2010 13,561,623,030,891.79 Obama
09/30/2009 11,909,829,003,511.75 W. Bush
09/30/2008 10,024,724,896,912.49
09/30/2007 9,007,653,372,262.48
09/30/2006 8,506,973,899,215.23
09/30/2005 7,932,709,661,723.50
09/30/2004 7,379,052,696,330.32
09/30/2003 6,783,231,062,743.62
09/30/2002 6,228,235,965,597.16
09/30/2001 5,807,463,412,200.06 Clinton
09/30/2000 5,674,178,209,886.86
09/30/1999 5,656,270,901,615.43
09/30/1998 5,526,193,008,897.62
09/30/1997 5,413,146,011,397.34
09/30/1996 5,224,810,939,135.73
09/29/1995 4,973,982,900,709.39
09/30/1994 4,692,749,910,013.32
09/30/1993 4,411,488,883,139.38 HW Bush
09/30/1992 4,064,620,655,521.66
09/30/1991 3,665,303,351,697.03
09/28/1990 3,233,313,451,777.25
09/29/1989 2,857,430,960,187.32 Reagan
09/30/1988 2,602,337,712,041.16
09/30/1987 2,350,276,890,953.00
09/30/1986 2,125,302,616,658.42
09/30/1985 1,823,103,000,000.00
09/30/1984 1,572,266,000,000.00
09/30/1983 1,377,210,000,000.00
09/30/1982 1,142,034,000,000.00
09/30/1981 997,855,000,000.00 Carter
09/30/1980 907,701,000,000.00
09/30/1979 826,519,000,000.00
09/30/1978 771,544,000,000.00
09/30/1977 698,840,000,000.00 Ford
06/30/1976 620,433,000,000.00
06/30/1975 533,189,000,000.00 Nixon
06/30/1974 475,059,815,731.55
06/30/1973 458,141,605,312.09
06/30/1972 427,260,460,940.50
06/30/1971 398,129,744,455.54
06/30/1970 370,918,706,949.93
06/30/1969 353,720,253,841.41 Johnson
06/30/1968 347,578,406,425.88
06/30/1967 326,220,937,794.54
06/30/1966 319,907,087,795.48
06/30/1965 317,273,898,983.64
06/30/1964 311,712,899,257.30 Kennedy
06/30/1963 305,859,632,996.41
06/30/1962 298,200,822,720.87
06/30/1961 288,970,938,610.05
06/30/1960 286,330,760,848.37 Eisenhower
06/30/1959 284,705,907,078.22
06/30/1958 276,343,217,745.81
06/30/1957 270,527,171,896.43
06/30/1956 272,750,813,649.32
06/30/1955 274,374,222,802.62
06/30/1954 271,259,599,108.46
06/30/1953 266,071,061,638.57
06/30/1952 259,105,178,785.43 Truman
06/29/1951 255,221,976,814.93
06/30/1950 257,357,352,351.04
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This was an interesting discussion, and still relevant.
I hope that KPO and THUGR and G read it, if nothing else to
1) Serve as an example of an actual discussion.
2) Demonstrate that there is life beyond their obsession with Russia
3) Show that I'm not ALWAYS talking about Russia or criticizing The West, I DO actually think about theoretical things, and have criticisms of socialism (should socialism ever come about) because I can see that it would create its own conundrums
--------------
You can't build a nation with bombs. You can't create a society with guns.
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another flaw for me in the US system is how open its scientific property is, I mean imagine you have an American company, it got support, tax cuts, grants whatever help and they invest in research....a better machine on how to freeze ice, or a better offroad motorbike or a new computer chip for a phone or something...whatever the item. For me this 'item' is a product of America, yet outsourcing and crony capital globalism should not mean that an American physics product or artistic chemical product or scientific product ends up in Japan or China or Italy or India or S.Korea two weeks later...so many times have I seen and heard of America simply giving away its best technology for a few bucks it just makes me shake my head. If America invents a new engine, a new computer or new aqua vehicle or a new chemical prodict I feel the United States should have intellectual access to its products for at least 4-5 years in a controlled enviornment inside America, if it is sold then it must be sold for a high price then after 4 or 5 years of course it should be sold or give out to the rest of the world. It's ridiculous how quick America gives away items it has taken years to have studied and researched.
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Why is it that positive feedback SYSTEMS persist? Not any one particular system, but the whole process? What might be negative feedback besides an alternative super-competing positive feedback system?
SAGAN: We are releasing vast quantities of carbon dioxide, increasing the greenhouse effect. It may not take much to destabilize the Earth's climate, to convert this heaven, our only home in the cosmos, into a kind of hell.
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I suppose we can look at black holes as the ultimate positive feedback system: A heavy star attracts matter, which creates a greater gravitational field which attracts more matter, which collapses to a black hole, which continues to behave in the same gravitational way .... I don't know if physicists or astronomers and mathematicians have ever imagined what "the end" of a black hole looks like. It seems that what happens in a black hole is beyond our observations and our math.
Fortunately, it's easier to observe other positive feedback systems, and they definitely have an "end" of one sort or another. In some cases .... like amplifiers ... they result in destructive oscillations which burn out the circuits. In nuclear fission, they result in an explosion which scatters the elements and slows down the reaction. In the case of lofting greenhouse gases into the atmo, they result in a new equilibrium - a la Venus. In the case of money concentration, they result in repeated depressions when too much money is concentrated in the hands of too few, and there aren't enough customers to drive production (another oscillation) which leads to revolt.
For those destructive positive feedback systems which we create ourselves ... like cyclic economic/ financial depressions ... you would think that we'd be 100% on top of that: Able and willing to predict the consequences of the systems that we ourselves had created, or at least allowed to develop.
Among them, scholars and researchers have sussed out what some of the underlying drivers are. The only reason why we don't make further progress on this, IMHO, is the fact that TPTB have a vested interest in things STAYING JUST AS THEY ARE: In this case, where they have all of the money and influence. So they will spend significant amounts of money on think tanks and endowments and commercials and campaign contributions to blunt and confuse our collective understanding of what is happening and what is happening next, and what might be done about it.
I personally think that since wealth seem to always behave gravitationally because it eventually sifts into the hands of a few sociopaths who are able and willing to take advantage of its ability to concentrate MORE wealth and power - we are fully capable of understanding the problem and devising solutions to this underlying driver, instead of being caught in an endless cycle of decay, collapse, and regrowth.
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You can't build a nation with bombs. You can't create a society with guns.
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Quote:
Originally posted by JAYNEZTOWN:
another flaw for me in the US system is how open its scientific property is, I mean imagine you have an American company, it got support, tax cuts, grants whatever help and they invest in research....a better machine on how to freeze ice, or a better offroad motorbike or a new computer chip for a phone or something...whatever the item. For me this 'item' is a product of America, yet outsourcing and crony capital globalism should not mean that an American physics product or artistic chemical product or scientific product ends up in Japan or China or Italy or India or S.Korea two weeks later...so many times have I seen and heard of America simply giving away its best technology for a few bucks it just makes me shake my head. If America invents a new engine, a new computer or new aqua vehicle or a new chemical prodict I feel the United States should have intellectual access to its products for at least 4-5 years in a controlled enviornment inside America, if it is sold then it must be sold for a high price then after 4 or 5 years of course it should be sold or give out to the rest of the world. It's ridiculous how quick America gives away items it has taken years to have studied and researched.
Ummm... Americans .... American corporations, specifically, don't "give away" valuable technology, and they sure don't sell it for cheap. Usually, they "license" the patent for a cut of the profits. Another reason to transfer technology is for overseas production ... if you're a chip-maker and you've just invented a process to create dies with incredibly tiny etches, but you want to make a lot of profit on it, you might invest in a chip-fab elsewhere ... say, South Korea. I think what you're really saying is that there are no more "American" companies ... no corporations with loyalty to the nation which nurtured them. Only internationals chasing the almighty dollar. (?)
Valuable technology which winds up overseas without making a profit for SOMEbody is stolen via corporate or foreign-government espionage. Our inventions are officially well-protected by a system of patents, copyrights, and trade secrets.
OTOH, what chaps my ass is how basic research- funded by the American taxpayer through research grants - is "monetized" by corporations - turned into a source of profit, with no recompense to the taxpayer for the use of the information.
Universities are getting wise to all that: they're now patenting everything, even the littlest paper, in case it turns into a money-maker some day. But IMHO, research is done best in a milieu of free-flow information. All of this patenting and copyrighting and registering simply slows down discovery. After all, can you imagine how slow progress would have been if someone had to pay the inventors of the alphabet every time they wrote something, or the inventors of the steam machine had to pay the discoverers of fire?
I think "monetizing" discovery is an internally contradicted concept. Most of the major discoveries (fire, agriculture, animal domestication, alphabet, the nature of gravity and the solar system, microscopic life) were NOT made in order to "make money" under capitalism. Trying to "make money" on knowledge just kills the process of development. The two processes don't play well together.
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You can't build a nation with bombs. You can't create a society with guns.
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"In the case of money concentration, they result in repeated depressions when too much money is concentrated in the hands of too few, and there aren't enough customers to drive production (another oscillation) which leads to revolt."
I was wondering if there's a negative feedback before it all blows up. But I don't see one.
Small differences in wealth/ power lead to larger differences in wealth/ power until you have a minuscule but powerful minority which not only runs the economy (whatever it is - feudal, mercantile, capitalist ...) but also the religion/ social ethic.
On the flip side you have the vast majority of people. The things that people fear I think are pain and death, and the pain and death of people they love. So long as the systems allows them (and/ or their family) to live, and they (and/ or their family) aren't in TOO much pain for TOO long, they'll hew to the trodden path - rather than risk disturbing a system that has preserved life and some comfort to date. In fact, the less they have to lose, the harder they'll cling to what little they have. *
It takes a lot to drive the populace to a revolution against the powerful. Either they have nothing left to lose, or they have enough of a cushion to risk going for more, or they see the powerful as relatively weak. (I see the last two as operative in the American revolution, which was fomented by a large number of wealthy men, who saw England as a distant force. OTOH I think the French in the French revolution, and the Russians in the Russian revolution were starving masses who had just about nothing to lose.)
So, unless your society specifically makes wealth be divested to avoid concentrations, I don't see a way out of the rise then crash-and-burn cycle.
* And, I believe this happens because even though we like to credit ourselves with being intelligent, we're not logic-driven, we're program-driven. We have both biological and social programs that run us, that we're not even aware of.
SAGAN: We are releasing vast quantities of carbon dioxide, increasing the greenhouse effect. It may not take much to destabilize the Earth's climate, to convert this heaven, our only home in the cosmos, into a kind of hell.
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Serbian Strong!?
Serbia says Australia Is Treating Our Star Tennis Player Like a Terrorist
https://hotair.com/ed-morrissey/2022/01/07/serbia-australias-treating-
our-star-tennis-player-like-a-terrorist-n439923
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'Who Gets to Build the Next Software Stack of Civilization?'
https://www.wired.com/story/who-gets-to-build-the-next-software-stack-
of-civilization/
Blake Masters Is the Most Dangerous Candidate in America
https://www.aol.com/news/blake-masters-most-dangerous-candidate-000107
726.html
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Wow, we used to have great conversations before everyone got tied up in RUSSIA!RUSSIA! and red-pilling!
Thanks for bringing this back from the past. These ideas are still worth pursuing, and I will pursue them, and try to fold in my "society as an organism" and "robustness v efficiency" thoughts.
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Pity would be no more,
If we did not MAKE someone poor - William Blake
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This was the original thought...
Quote:
Originally posted by SignyM:
First of all, why are so many nations in such trouble? It seems like every nation's cause is a little bit different from every other nation's:
The USA has a significant wealth gap, and personal consumption fueled by credit.
The USA and Britain had massive real estate bubbles.
The Greek government overspent its budget.
Portugal, Ireland, Greece and Spain (PIGS) didn't have personal over-consumption and a high personal debt load, but were the recipients of over-investment from other EU nations.
Despite a lot of “socialist spending” and redistributive policies, the Icelandic government ran in the black. Iceland was brought down when it's three major banks engaged in out-and-out commercial bank fraud.
Italy, which is a large exporting economy, got caught by rising interest.
If we are to prevent this all from happening again, what are we to make of all of these disparate causes? Each nation seems to belie whatever cause we want to attribute to another nation. So we can rule out Fannie and Freddie because they don't apply to Europe. We can rule out socialist spending that doesn't apply to the USA. We can rule out government deficits and the wealth gap because those don't apply to Iceland, and we can rule out personal debt because that doesn't apply to the PIGS. There is a lot they DON'T have in common!
But, the one thing they DID have in common was “investment” in projects or sectors which were not about to generate a return, even in the medium-term. In the USA and Britain, the over-investment was in homes. In the PIGS, it was in large infrastructural projects; in Greece it was also in government bonds, in Iceland it was actually in fraudulent self-dealt bank loans for commercial projects.
The other thing to realize is that this has happened before: In the 1970's, due to a huge increase in oil prices, the Middle East nations (Saudi Arabia particularly) became the holders of a mountain of cash, specifically the USA dollar, and invested in huge infrastructural projects in Brazil, Chile, and Argentina- projects which could not be supported on a cash basis due to lack of either internal or external demand. This led to the Latam debt crisis of 1982. The same thing happened to the Asian "tiger" economies of 1997: over-investment by outside money created a "bubble" which led to an ephemeral rise in GDP, leading to the illusion of growth, which sucked in more money, until the illusion of growth could no longer be sustained. The same problem started the Great Depression.
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It seems there are epidemics of horrible investments, rash investments, possibly even desperate investments, not just now but throughout history. Rich people who have bought all of the yachts, mansions and jets that one can possibly buy and are now looking to make money with their money.
So why do the investments go sour?
Well, I think in a way it's the eternal mismatch of production and consumption under capitalism. Think of it this way: If the world produces a trillion dollars worth of goods and services, but the small fraction of ppl who own the companies only pays their workers $900 billion, the companies can only sell $900 billion dollars worth. That's $100 billion worth of goods and services that's not about to be sold, and $100 billion in the hands of a few who are NOT going to “spend” all of that money, they are going to “invest” a certain amount. Now, that investment can either go to loans (to increase consumption – which won't be ultimately affordable), or to increase production (which can't be sold to ppl who can't afford the goods), or to consolidate ownership, or to increase automation (which throws even more ppl out of work,who will not be able to buy much), or to speculation (diamonds, artwork, tulip bulbs) ... Each time money goes through the production-consumption cycle, more money goes up into the stratosphere... there is a bigger and bigger bundlNOTIFY: Y | REPLY | REPLY WITH QUOTE | PERMALINK | TOP | HOME
Trump pledges 25% tariffs on Canada and Mexico, deeper tariffs on China
https://www.reuters.com/world/us/trump-promises-25-tariff-products-mex
ico-canada-2024-11-25/
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it was always a con, a vegas gamble move and tree card trick?
The Third World Is Not Poor (Michael Parenti)
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