At 12:51 22/11/2003 -0500, you wrote:
It seems to me that you all are arguing the superiority of your own particular system as nature. Keith claims nature for trade
I certainly do. We now know that notions of fairness are instinctive -- and long before man came on the scene, too.
and demands a rock bottom (gold) while Ed talks relativity and processes (flow model) on the other hand Keith gives Ricardo a sort of environmentalist bent where everything will take care of itself if you just remove all the dams from the river. Except modern nation states that deal with civil authority as a balance to diversity and that accords strength to civil contracts based upon equality rather than authority pleads the case for dams to remove floods and make cities and housing possible. Chris claims that Ricardo was misunderstood. Then we get a fight over interpretations. It is all so biblical.
I suspect Ricardo, Smith, George and others who talked about invisible hands were speaking as Egyptians who had a natural ebb and flow in the Nile that served them well for the longest single state in the history of the world. But that does little for the complexity of the present. We live in a world where wealth is accruing in the hands of the elite
But wealth always has done done ever since the institution of agriculture. And the difference in wealth between the rich and the poor was far wider than today. The poor were not just poor but chattels and slaves. The same applies to the disparity of wealth in early industrialisation -- far bigger wealth gaps than today but this declined due to the need for many intermediaries. The recent IT binge also widened the differentials again but this, too, will decrease in time as yet more intermediaries are added.
and where they are also struggling to gather the finest of everything to themselves and giving to the church the egalitarian purpose of serving the cultural and welfare needs of the poor. "If you want music, go to church!" as was said by a policeman in a recent comedy. We might remember that it was Alfred North Whitehead that said that it was the "Ultimate Abstractions that taught us the meanings of things" and music as well as math are one of those "ultimate abstractions."
But I thought you were writing the other day that music is a "body thing" (with which I agree) Maths is far from that -- entirely imaginative and by far the largest part of it is never used once recorded on paper. (But, like advertising, we never know which can be the productive part of it.)
The Scandinavian states are more secular or perhaps just less diverse so their overall secular instrument serves the needs of the whole population better.
The beauty of the Scandinavian states is that their populations are quite small -- ideas can spread around so much more quickly and intensively discussed than can be done in the larger nation-states.
The same is true of their cultural institutions which were marveled at not long ago when their state sponsored orchestras visited New York. All of the complaints about the decay of the state as advanced by both Keith and Harry does not seem to be the case in a smaller population and a less diverse one. Remember where Harry is in California is a ferment of diversity, cultural and economic change. Hence "give us a hero."
I don't complain about the decay of the nation-state. I just suggest that the present type of political structures can't cope any longer. We've been through six or seven entirely different shapes/sizes/structures of governments since 8,000BC, each ended by a specific innovative weapon from which it had no defence. The nuclear bomb effectively ended the nation-state because the highly centralised nation-state can now be defeated by a man with a suitcase. This is why Bush and Blair are so hysterical about terrorism. The leaders are in the firing line now. Mortars fired from a builder's van almost got the John Major's cabinet in 10 Downing street not all that long ago. I think a highly dispersed Internet-type of governance will evolve over the next century or so that's largely invulnerable to physical attack.
I think the real point here is that Canada and the US are special cases nothing like England or elsewhere except maybe in the beginning throes of the European Union which is beginning to resemble pre-Bismarck Germany. We forget that Germany was a series of small states at war with each other and that they didn't want to join any more than Norway wants to join Europe today. The issue here is more complicated than Ricardo or any of the economists have thus far dealt with.
The main problem with the EU is that it is trying to turn the clock backwards. It is an attempt by the senior politicians and civil servants to make an even larger nation-state which will give them more scope and perks.
Canada and America is extremely irresponsible to its citizens preferring to replace them with immigrants who show them what "shits" they are for complaining about such things as healthcare and education. Immigrants who were trained in the schools of America's old enemies and who carry the cultural bug of that system in their training. Not logical at all but myths are hard to shake.
I don't understand you, but what's interesting about the fairly high levels of illegal immigration into England from central Europe and Asia is that, more often than not, they are highly enterprising young men with middle-class parents who could afford to pay high fees to the mafia to get them here.
I suspect that they are reacting to their cultural myths out of fear. It seems that most of them suffer from a Judeo Christian inability to think logically about big systems while making peace with the everyday life. Christianity has the same problem when they confess their sins, lay them off on God, get forgiveness and continue to be irresponsible. They then state the ideal as the goal while ignoring it in their lives and getting forgiveness for ignoring it. So nothing is ever seriously tested, especially the ideals. No one ever deals with the possibility of an ignorant, angry God who has lost control of his creation. Or how illogical that is in the contemplation of eternal realities and transcendent omniscience. Their description is not of an omniscient, benevolent being by any means. Petulant might be a better description.
Abortion is a perfect example. The ideal of life. So perfect that even masturbation is killing. Birth control is out of the question. Of course abstinence is the key for everyone but the poor male who was given the hormones (by God) not to be. Well then discipline. But the best disciplined is also the most likely to have his life shortened by a clogged prostate. Is it any wonder that we have among men a plague of prostate cancer today in civilized society? Why would it be any less logical that mastery of any part of the body would include cleansing any more than digestion? But we are not doing so well with food and digestion either. We give up Mastery and skill preferring ignorance and faith.
Sex is another. Christian attitudes towards sex are dysfunctional and mired in the middle class. The Roman church's answer was the hierarchy which made children of the masses and celibate (sexually ignorant) fathers who would progressively interpret the texts.
With massive literacy Catholics are now reading the bible and starting the history of the church all over again with the abuses of the early church. Might I say that it is the "abuse" of the child in the act of growing up. Protestants stressed reading, like the Jews and outran the Catholics until the present. Only wealth and power balanced their not being overrun by the world. Mike Hollinshead blamed this on nonconformist theology. I suspect it simply had to do with literacy in the masses. When Islam stressed literacy they too excelled in math and science but they had an elitist reaction from the wealthy and once more made the poor illiterate. How interesting the that Taliban, those demons, were again stressing literacy for the poor while the approved war lord today have once again put the people safely "in their place." If we were to look at the history of the first seventy years of America we too could find Taliban like abuses in the treatments of groups. The communists in China used to put the heads of drug addicts along the road to break the addiction to opium brought by the West in exchange for tea. There are no heroes here but plenty of demons.
Today we have a great turmoil in the world as protestants envy Catholic's certainty and create their own little world with mega churches, a semi hierarchy and their own schools. The answer, I believe is not a pendulum but a historical evolution more akin to Democratic decline into despotism. Meanwhile the elite wealthy have collaborated by absorbing the complex secular culture as their turf and making it economically unavailable. That has driven the masses to religion for culture, welfare and community. A Baptist is a Baptist no matter where in the world. All they need to do is move their letter from one church to another and they have full voting rights in the congregation. All they need to do to be a member is swear allegiance to the sovereign of the Baptist church. Its free and they make a big deal about that and the forgiveness before the big Kahuna because the payment was made for his anger. But does the system work? Well, it is certainly less murderous than the coliseum and is more sensitive than "let them eat cake." But is it a really intelligent system?
Keith, you are seeing some anti-intellectual elements appear in England. That is not surprising as the breakdown of Empire caused immigration into England and diversity appeared. The answer to diversity in the Western tradition is the liberal secular state that guarantees equal rights, availability of education, community development, healthcare and the right to work for the best potential of your talent. That is the balance to religion and what keeps religion from turning cancerous. It is also the balance to unfettered trade and greed. Everything is about balance and not about nature. Humanity decides balances and bases the answers on the current situation both in the human and natural worlds.
Today we are a planet alive with a coming change in the magnetic poles that severely effects the environment and yet we can't even decide how to take care of our poor in an environmental situation of our making. Nature is beyond our imagination. That is a problem with the current myths. We can't seem to consider all humans as potential rather then considering them as things to be economically exploited. Personally, I think modern "classical" economics is as cancerous in its needs as is runaway religion.
I don't think it's cancerous. It's confused. Can't see the wood for the trees -- because the needs of the nation-state are interfering with normal procedures and transactions. The nationpstate as we know it is bust. A remarkable papoer summarised in this week's Economist show that most of the most developed nation-states have implicit future commitments that are on average about 200% of their GDPs. If these were companies, they'd have to be declared bankrupt by law. (This list includes Canada [the worst of all-- 420%GDP future commitments], America [270% ], Germany [200%], etc) Economists can't adequately describe systems that carry this sort of loading -- invisible now but will have to come to light at some stage in the future -- or sels the poor and the old will have to be totally neglected.
I also believe that assigning nature to human activities is always a very dangerous proposition. That is not our gifts as animals compared to the rest of the animals. The silliest thing of all is the concept of property.
Why? Even animals defends their property.
The only property is Intellectual property that you arrive and leave with. Everything else belongs here. Everything else is about negotiation, wisdom and the courage to be who you are to the best of your potential and to find your peace with your fellow humans.
Fine words butter no parsnips, as we say over here. I hear what you say, but (I hope you don't take offence) I really don't understand this sort of language, I'm afraid.
Keith Hudson
REH
- ----- Original Message -----
- From: Keith Hudson
- To: Ed Weick
- Cc: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
- Sent: Saturday, November 22, 2003 8:46 AM
- Subject: Slightly extended (was Re: [Futurework] David Ricardo, Caveman Trade vs. Modern Trade
- Ed,
- I'm a bit non-plussed by your answer, I'm afraid. Let me try again -- see below. (This is slightly extended from the one I sent you and forgot to copy to FW.)
- At 07:13 22/11/2003 -0500, you wrote:
- Keith:
- > Today, currency has no value, except as much as the confidence that people have in
- > their respective governments to maintain printing to sensible quantities.
- > Exchange rates and trade balances are thus now complicated by all sorts of
- > political factors besides trade. Hence we have currency speculators (rather
- > than the more benign currency arbitragers.)
- I know we've been over this again and again and again, but I guess we need one more round. How can you say currency has no value when it very clearly has value against other currencies, which is why we have speculators, and against all goods and services, which is why my local grocer will give me something for it? Like everything else, its value changes, but value is there. Your real complaint may be that value has become much too fluid, that you can't count on something having the same value tomorrow as it has today, and that this buggers up all kinds of transactions. This can be worked on (and central banks do work on it) without reverting to something as archaic and inherently unworkable as the gold standard.
- If people have confidence in government (as they generally did at the turn of the last century) then they'll accept their government's word that the un-backed pound is the same pound as it was a fortnight previously when it was backed by gold. And once by far the greatest economic power in the world (as the UK was at that time) had done so, then foreign investors and traders would also have confidence and other governments followed suit. And that's what's happened ever since -- unless one individual government or another plays hanky-panky with its economy (e.g. Argentina, the fourth most prosperous country in the world 100 years ago), and its currency takes a nose dive in comparison with others.
- We've also had this out before. Yes, gold was patently insufficient as a practical money-in-your-pocket currency by around 1870 'cos there wasn't enough of it physically. In its place, a paper currency is perfectly practicable for day-to-day transactions -- so long as it was transferable into real value (e.g. gold) if necessary. When it's not transferable into value then it's at the mercy of governmental policies.
- Despite the ups and downs of finding new resources such as gold or platinum which had effects on the valoue of currency, money has never inflated as much as paper-only currencies have in the last half century. Even when the Spanish brought heaps of South American gold into Europe in the 17th century money only inflated about two-fold -- in the 1970s, when all our paper currencies inflated 24-fold! (This is ignoring bouts of hyper-inflation which individual countries can bring on themselves.)
- I think we're probably gradually proceeding towards a world-wide currency -- namely the US$. The quicker we get there the better because there'll be no currency fluctuations and if there's inflation or deflation then the currencies of all countries go up and down in step. In effect, we'll be in a similar siutation to when we had a gold-backed currency. (This is not to say that inflation or deflation won't still remain important -- they still will be -- but one major factor of international stress will be eliminated.)
- Keith
- Keith Hudson, Bath, England, <www.evolutionary-economics.org>
Keith Hudson, Bath, England, <www.evolutionary-economics.org>
