Keith:Ed:
Oh dear! I am disappointed. What you're saying above is that you are giving up in trying to understand the world. The fact is that our genes, instincts and predispositions are exactly the same as 100/200,000 years ago. (In my opinion we are probably a little less intelligent, but's by the way.) Also, most of the main events and features -- migration, warfare, savagery, trade, oppressive government, etc -- are also exactly the same. The original processes of living have just been placed in different contexts (1.the natural world, 2.the agricultural world, 3. the industrial world) each with its own basic energy technology, and each embellished with its own unique weapons of war and other innovations.
No, Keith, I'm not giving up trying to understand the world. All I'm saying is that I understand it as a series of dynamic interweaving and interacting processes, some of which are understood and many of which are not. Who could have predicted 9/11 and its fallout? Who can tell us where we will be a year from now? All we can do is, like a surfer, try to stay upright in it, but that doesn't always work, and the sharks may be waiting below.
But, being at least partly rational creatures, we are forever trying to get a fix on things. Bring back the gold standard (Hey, real value!), that'll fix it!
Come on! You haven't answered my main charge that when we had a value-backed currency, it didn't devalue to the same extent as our main currencies have done since they were made paper-only -- about 40-fold since 1900, and 25-fold since the the 1970. If we'd had a gold-backed currency, or even a Christmas pudding-backed currency, then there'd have been no currency speculating. Arbitraging, yes -- but this is only a marginal thing and doesn't cause international panics and immense economic repercussions. Gosh! They're alfready beginning to get worried now by the sliding dollar. Even though it's moved very little (so far?) it is already causing consternation in Europe because of the increase in the Euro which is hurting exports.
Git rid of Saddam, that'll fix it! Legislate corporate governance, that'll fix it! But nothing ever really seems to work more than momentarily. My gargantuan baker just keeps weaving the dough in and out, in and out, and never puts it in the oven. It never bakes.
And I would take issue with you that we are now the same as we were 100/200,000 years ago. Stephen Mithen of the University of Reading, as one example, argues that until about 70K to 80K years ago, our brains were relatively compartmentalized; that is, we were a lot like cats who think about mating and nothing else when mating, hunting and nothing else when hunting, socializing and nothing else when socializing, etc. At the time, our rather limited thoughts and actions were highly genetically determined. Then something happened. The wiring that controlled all that began to fall away and we became, as Mithen puts it, "cognitively fluid"; that is, we could think across all of those little compartments and use them all at the same time. The result was an explosion in creativity and also an explosion in our capacity for mischief. Not everybody agrees with Mithen.
Certainly no neuroscientist does! Mithen is an archeologist and his views are based on aesthetic considerations of the shapes of handaxes and he's built a very large conceptual edifice on this alone. He makes the case that handaxes were more in the nature of works of art (because at one site there were quite a number that happened to be unused and in perfect condition) and were really made as a sexual attractant by showing the girls how clever they were. (But this is based only on one site -- Schonongen in Germany. Besides, how does he know that it was only males who made them? Chipping flint is not an onerous job, and women are usually far more more dexterous than men. They might have made them if only to get the lazy buggers off their backsides and start hunting for a change!)
Some argue that a "creativity gene" arose some 50K to 100K years ago. Whatever happened, appears to have happened to all of us alive at that time in just a few generations, and it would seem that there weren't very many of us. As is suggested by the unique similarity of human DNA among primate species, there may only have been some 2,000 of us, the survivors of some natural disaster barely managing to stay alive somewhere in Africa.
I'm also inclined to disagree with your argument that "most of the main events and features -- migration, warfare, savagery, trade, oppressive government, etc -- are also exactly the same. The original processes of living have just been placed in different contexts (1.the natural world, 2.the agricultural world, 3. the industrial world) each with its own basic energy technology, and each embellished with its own unique weapons of war and other innovations." It places a fixity on things which IMHO was never really there. Since we walked out of Africa some 50K years ago and various groups of us went this way and that, our experiences as a species have been hugely varied. Some of us never left the bush, others became pastoralists, still others built cities along rivers and trade routes.
I would suggest that examples of all the activities I've mentioned -- migration, warfare, savagery, trade, oppressive government -- have been found in all sorts of societies. Yes, cultures are highly variable and some (a small minority) have even been known to live fairly peacefully for a lot of the time, but all of them, I suggest, show instances or pass through phases of all of these at one time or another.
In some cases, there was a progression from one type of activity to others; in other cases, people continued to do what they had done for millennia. I will never forget the shock I experienced when I first saw northern Athapaskan Indians wearing hard hats working in a mine. For some 20K to 30K years they had not known anything about hard hats or mining, and here they were, going underground as though it was perfectly natural to do that!
But getting back to my dynamic view of the world, I would suggest that the more we have left the natural world behind, the more we have put ourselves in the hands of my gargantuan baker weaving dough. There is a determinism and year to year predictability in the lives of hunters, gatherers and pastoralists that people who live in densely populated industrial economies simply do not have. We've tried to build in a predictability by creating institutions of governance and by pretending to be able to measure everything with aggregative statistics, but then a few chits in Florida can say it's Bush, not Gore, and a few hijacked aircraft can blow the roof off.
Well, there we are.... I don't think we have a big argument going on here. All I'm trying to suggest is that if we had a clearer grasp of what our natures really are -- and are likely to remain for hundreds or thousands of years to come -- then we could design our social institutions a great deal better than we happen to do at present -- which are really only magnified extensions of our original groups and tribes. In institutional engineering, not social engineering in teh sens of trying to change people. We have more than enough capacity to be as kind and peaceful and generous as we are to be nasty and murderous.
Keith
Ed
- ----- Original Message -----
- From: Keith Hudson
- To: Ed Weick
- Cc: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
- Sent: Sunday, November 23, 2003 2:17 AM
- Subject: Re: Slightly extended (was Re: [Futurework] David Ricardo, Caveman Trade vs. Modern Trade
- Ed,
- At 16:58 22/11/2003 -0500, you wrote:
- From: Keith Hudson
Ray, brilliant! Not sure of how to respond, so maybe I'll just back into the shadows and say nothing. You're right about how I see the world. It's a thing of interveaving flow processes, as though it were dough in the hands of some gargantuan baker who never puts it in the oven, but just keeps twisting it this way and that. There's nothing that ever stays the same for more than an instant or two. There's nothing that we can ever be sure of. There are no fixes that really work.
Ed ----- Original Message ----- From: Ray Evans Harrell To: Keith Hudson ; Ed Weick Cc: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Saturday, November 22, 2003 12:51 PM Subject: Re: Slightly extended (was Re: [Futurework] David Ricardo, Caveman Trade vs. Modern Trade
It seems to me that you all are arguing the superiority of your own particular system as nature. Keith claims nature for trade 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 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." 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 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 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. 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 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 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. 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. 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>
Keith Hudson, Bath, England, <www.evolutionary-economics.org>
