[Futurework] America is a dependency now
Those of us who believe that America (and the UK) invaded Iraq for the sake of placing a new government there that would give their oil corporations a chance of developing the rich northern oilfields of Iraq have always been on the defensive. Because, of course, the horror of the terrorist attack on the Trade Center on 11 September 2001, was so great that almost any other reason could be implanted in the minds of the credulous public. This was so, even though Bush and Blair have had to change their story several times. Firstly, the invasion was to get at the heart of terrorism (ignoring the fact that the terrorists were mainly Saudi Arabians), then that Saddam was creating weapons of mass destruction (and that we Brits were in danger of being attacked at 45 minutes' notice!), and then that Saddam was a nasty man and that it was about time that Iraq was democratised (ignoring the fact that there are several other dictators around the world who are just as mad or bad). The real reason was that 9/11 meant that Saudi Arabia was fermenting great problems domestically and producing fanatical extremists -- and who knows what they may do next. It was in the national interests of both America and the UK that further rich sources of oil supplies must be found fairly soon just in case Saudi Arabia become snarled up in an insurrection. We oilists have been on the defensive because Bush and Blair have been very clever in never mentioning oil. Almost never, anyway. I think I have heard each of them mention the word once. And when they do, it is as an aside -- a throwaway comment said with a dismissive smile. It is as though the oil resources of Iraq were on a par with the growing of olives or camel races or the Sumerian archeological remains -- just one of those minor characteristics of the country which is of no consequence compared with the grave matters of state with which statesmen occupy themselves. It is very likely that oil-as-a-reason will recede even further in the public's consciousness as attempts are made in Iraq to form a government in the coming months and years. Sooner or later, America's increasing dependence on Middle East oil will become obvious. Sooner or later, if western Europe doesn't wake up and throw itself into enthusiastic support of American policies in tghe Middle East, then it is likely that we will only be able to survive on the natural gas pipeline from Russia -- assuming, of course, that Russia will not want more of what remains in the decades to come. Keith Hudson SLEEPWALKING INTO GREATER OIL DEPENDENCE David Buchan and Carola Hoyos America has almost all the natural resources it needs to conduct its foreign policy. It can grow more than enough food to feed its people; and it has most of the minerals and metals it needs for manufacturing. The one big exception to the country's self-sufficiency is in oil and gas: the US appears to be sleepwalking into ever-greater reliance on some unstable suppliers around the world. In 30 years its own domestic oil output has fallen by 40 per cent, while consumption has increased by 40 per cent. And over that same period the share of imports in US consumption has risen from 36 to 56 per cent. In less than 20 years, the US could also be importing as much as a quarter of its natural gas, compared with 2 per cent today. But what is so special about US dependence? The general answer is that such foreign reliance on a commodity vital to America's economy limits any notion of US omnipotence. Specifically, it underlines the contradiction between the US's dependence on, and its policies towards, the Middle East. First, take the issue of dependence. The Organisation of Petroleum Exporting Countries (Opec) is likely to regain its market power. Despite intensive efforts by western oil companies in the past 30 years to develop non-Opec sources of supply -- from west Africa to the Caspian and even in the tar sands of Canada -- the Middle East remains the primary supplier. Indeed, Opec countries in the Middle East will account for two-thirds of the increase in global oil production from now until 2030, according to the International Energy Agency. This will increase the ability of predominantly Arab Opec to set prices -- a development of economic consequence to the US. Second, turn to US policies towards the Middle East. These have been largely determined by US support for Israel, which led the Arabs in 1973 to try to cut off oil to the US. Since then, Arab-US relations have improved, largely because Saudi Arabia, Opec's chief petro-power, has modulated output to try to smooth oil price fluctuations. In doing so, it earned US gratitude. The emergence of the fact that the terrorists behind the attacks of September 11 2001 were mostly Saudis, however, caused deep distrust in the US. Today President George W. Bush is campaigning to democratise Arab regimes. And if that policy proceeds smoothly
[Futurework] The gene for cooking
and also in further genetic changes in the brain which lay down our behavioural predispositions. Hitherto rather scorned as being of much importance, cooking appears to be one of the most formative of our cultural acquisitions. Indeed, as related below, it is certain that we couldn't physically survive today without cooking. His suggestion that cooking consolidated the genetic predispositions towards pair-bonding is quite persuasive to me. Keith Hudson A RECIPE FOR SUCCESS The role of cooking in our evolution was vital. It made food easier to digest; it created hearths around which people gathered. Now, we can't survive without it Sanjida O'Connell In the next few days, some of us will be struggling with a turkey, consulting Delia about whether to partboil potatoes before roasting, wishing we'd taken Nigel Slater's advice and made the pudding in October, and wondering what to give vegetarians who don't like nuts. Invariably we'll eat too much, drink unhealthy amounts of alcohol and some of us may consider going on a detox in 2004. But although cooking to our lives and our festivities -- whether it's Christmas, Hanukkah or Eid -- few of us realise how much it has altered not only our physiology, but our psychology. Changes that took place our bodies almost two million years ago could have reduced our ability to detoxify our foods, which may explain our unhealthy appearance in the New Year. The idea that cooking has changed the human species fundamentally was dreamt up by Professor Richard Wrangham of Harvard University, Boston, as he sat in front of a dying fire in his living room one winter's night. Wrangham studies chimpanzees and, as he stared into the embers, he felt a pang of pity for his subjects, sleeping out in the cold and eating only raw food. He found himself wondering when it was that human beings created fire and learnt to cook. He realised that not only did he not know the answer, but that most textbooks on human evolution did not cover the subject. Out of 17 textbooks surveyed by one of his students, it was found that, while 10 of the text books (or 58 per cent) mentioned cooking, the sum total of space devoted to the subject from all of them amounted to less than two paragraphs. Cooking comes across as the equivalent of a piece of furniture, Professor Wrangham says. If you've got it, you'll like it. But it isn't thought of as something that would have radically affected our ancestors' anatomy, or their social lives. Yet as long ago as 1773 James Boswell, Samuel Johnson's biographer, wrote: My definition of Man is, a 'Cooking Animal'. No one, perhaps unsurprisingly, took any notice. The great anthropologist Claude Levi-Strauss quoted Edmund Leach on the subject Men do not have to cook their food, they do so for symbolic reasons to show they are men not beasts. Instead, current theories of human evolution use hunting to explain how we became human. The division of the sexes arose because women collected plants and looked after the children while men brought home the bacon. Except that it wouldn't have been bacon, according to the proponents of the hunting hypothesis, says Wrangham. It would have been a raw hunk of pig, and it would have stayed raw while being eaten. One brave theorist, the anthropologist Loring Brace, argued in the 1970s that cookmg was important: actually, not so much cooking as de-frosting. During the ice ages it would have been necessary to thaw large hunks of frozen meat, which would have allowed humans to colonise glacial zones. But no one, according to Wrangham -- not even Brace -- has recognised how important cooking has been to our evolution. The perfect experiment to test Wrangham's hypothesis has been carried out. Today some Westerners believe that raw food is healthier since cooking destroys enzymes and vitamins. In a study of Germans who practised this philosophy, researchers discovered that most long-term raw foodists (those who stuck to the diet for more than three years) were suffering from chronic energy deficiency. Many had lost a lot of weight and about half the women had ceased to menstruate. A colleague of Wrangham's, Dr Nancy-loo Conklin-Brittain, calculated that an average woman on a raw-food diet would have to eat up to 10 kilograms (22 pounds) of food a day to gain enough calaries to sustain her; this is, almost a fifth of her body weight. Even Americans who, during Thanksgiving, can consume up to 7,000 calories, would not then eat more than 4.6 kg of food. Neither, Wrangham thinks, would eating raw meat help. With considerable difficulty, he has observed how long it takes chimpanzees to eat a piece of raw meat. It usually takes them about an hour to absorb 400 calories of flesh-- the equivalent of a sandwich. For a human being to get his or her calorie intake from raw meat, they'd have to chew for six hours a day. In contrast, cooked food is more edible; it's easier to digest because it's softer. Uneatable food is rendered eatable and toxins are removed
Re: [Futurework] Re: Find the cause
At 04:07 18/12/2003 +0100, you wrote: Keith Hudson wrote: Indeed -- let's look for causes. That is what I am attempting to do. What happens if we discover the cause to be inbuilt -- that is, a strong predisposition to buy consumer products (preferably the latest and preferably one with visibility) in order to show status? I agree that striving for status (or rather, for _recognition_) is inbuilt. However, I suggest that two fundamental parameters are determined by nurture rather than nature, i.e. can be changed: (1) _what_ represents status ? In your system, status is expressed by owning status goods -- the owner shows his wealth by owning expensive goods that others can't afford. This equates status with personal wealth in money. (Note that the status good itself doesn't tell if the wealth was simply inherited or earned through own achievements.) However, status could be defined quite differently, e.g. what a person can do for the community, or how little a person is polluting the environment. To re-define status in these ways, would lead to an anti-consumerist society. Yes, the respect from others (that is, status also) counts for a lot in smaller communities and maybe this is highly evident in Switzerland. But in larger cities there are no real communities. When I lived in Coventry I was on the main voluntary council for several years (the committe that oversaw about 30 voluntary agencies and helped to get funds for them), and I gradually got to know some of their leading people very well. My impression is that their motives were far from what they seemed to be. (2) the _urge_ for status varies Psychological research on consumerism found that the urge to buy is caused by a shortage of certain neurotransmitters in the buyer's brain. In fact, excessive consumerism has been identified as a mental illness. The levels of these neurotransmitters can be affected by dietary and environmental factors. So, even if we can't re-define status, we can reduce the sometimes pathological urge for status in affected individuals. This is strange information to me. Of course, neurotransmitters are involved in buying consumer goods -- they're always involved in the brain. Unfortunately, corporations and their political lackeys have a vested interest in (1) brainwashing people into equating status with buying status goods, and (2) maximizing the urge for status i.e. buying, both in order to perpetuate and maximize consumerism. I agree with this as a general statement, though I don't think many of the exploiters have worked this out consciously. One can see all this in all its nastiness during the Xmas season -- particularly the loathsome TV advertising aimed at children. Therefore, in any criticism of consumerism (and I agree that it's now a damaging symptom of modern society) unless you can find a universal cause then it is pointless to argue against it morally because it is unstoppable. If we find a cause, then we might be able to suggest alternatives. Therefore, it _is_ stoppable by (1) re-defining status and (2) by minimizing the urge for status as far as harmful notions of status are concerned. Yes. What I'm saying is: Don't preach about it in a holier-than-thou style which so many social reformers affect. (I am not including you.) This is not the way, because they too are after status in saying these things. Far better would be to sell community as a consumer good. I think that will come. Perversely, the modern gated communities of America (and this country) may be, I think, an early indication of this. Keith Chris SpamWall: Mail to this addy is deleted unread unless it contains the keyword igve. ___ Futurework mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://scribe.uwaterloo.ca/mailman/listinfo/futurework Keith Hudson, Bath, England, www.evolutionary-economics.org
[Futurework] What Keynes and Schumpeter thought about time
-minute CD) without having to traipse into town and browse in a shop, the consumer was saving time. Both of the blockbuster stratum goods of the last century -- the car and the TV -- made huge inroads into the spare time of the consumer. I am sure that there are going to be large numbers of new digital goods in the coming years and all sorts of specialised goods but they are all going to be superior versions of spending time which is already being spent. There is no more spare time for the sort of stratum goods which will boost economic growth for much longer. Keith Hudson DIGITAL DISCOMFORT: COMPANIES STRUGGLE TO DEAL WITH THE 'INEVITABLE SURPRISE' OF THE TRANSITION FROM ATOMS TO BITS To prosper from digitisation, businesses may have to be bold in identifying new opportunities and devise more inventive ways to catch customers Simon London Type digitisation into Amazon.com's new Search Inside The Book feature and you get back a list of 1,176 titles. Along with the usual roster of authors and publishers, you also get to browse pages relevant to the search. Before deciding whether to buy Stan Gibilisco's Teach Yourself Electricity and Electronics (McGraw-Hill, 3rd Edition, 2001) you can read page 510 which contains a passing reference to digitisation as a prelude to a treatise on digital signal processing. Too arcane? Then how about page 180 of Straight from the Gut, Jack Welch's managerial memoir? Or pages 40, 156, 211 and 221 of Best Practices in Planning and Management Reporting by David Axson? The new search feature is in itself a reminder that, more than a decade after digitisation became a buzzword, its impact is being felt in new and different ways. By scanning every page of 120,000 volumes -- 33m pages in total -- Amazon has for the first time brought a significant chunk of the English language book catalogue into the digital domain. While Amazon has taken precautions against piracy -- the electronic facsimiles are virtually impossible to print or download -- the long-term implications for authors, publishers and rival booksellers are profound. As with other media, once books are digitised they become not only easier to search but also easier to copy and share. The wider point is that while industries ranging from travel to securities trading have already been transformed by the transition from atoms to bits -- a phrase coined by Nicholas Negroponte, head of the Media Lab at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology -- other sectors are only now starting to feel the impact. Many of the business and social stories of 2004 will revolve around the impact of digitisation on, among others, broadcast television, conventional telephony, publishing, the motion picture industry, health and education. People tend to confuse the secular trend [digitisation] with the cyclical phenomenon of the dotcom bubble, says Gary Hamel, an author and consultant on corporate strategy. It is clear to me that the secular trend remains intact. For evidence, look at the business pages. Digital discomfort is widespread: in Kodak's cathartic decision to focus its resources on digital imaging; in the record industry's attempts to regain control through the courts of digital music distribution; in the challenge posed to telecommunications companies by internet-based telephony; in the collision of consumer electronics companies such as Sony and Matsushita with the big names of personal computing -- Dell, Hewlett-Packard, Gateway and Apple. Then there are companies that are finding ways to harness digital technology to add value to their products. Examples here might include OnStar, General Motor's in-car telematics service or the global positioning system (GPS) service that enables users of John Deere farm equipment to plough or spray to an accuracy of two inches. This is not just about the transition from atoms to bits, says John Hagel, a Silicon Valley-based consultant. It isdigitally e3nhanced atoms. The obvious uestion is why, given the progress of digital technology, over at least 30 years, digitisation continues to catch companies by surprise. After all, the force behind digitisation is Moore's Law, which predicts a doubling in the number of transistors on a chip every 18 months. This trajectory has more or less held since the 1960s, when it was first propounded by Gordon Moore, Intel co-founder. The mobile camera-phone, one of this year's consumer gadgets, is a prime illustration of Moore's Law at work: billions of transistors in an affordable, hand-held package, enabling digitisation and high-speed transmission of both voice and images. If the sales success of camera phones this year took some companies by surprise -- step forward Motorola, which was both late to the market and failed to secure sufficient component supplies to meet demand -- it was surely an inevitable surprise, the phrase used by Peter Schwartz, the author, to describe sudden but foreseeable events. In the same category fall other instruments of digitisation
[Futurework] Behaviour Therapy in Sparta
215. Behaviour Therapy in Sparta How did Sparta in 500BC treat homosexuality? After all, the Spartans had induced it in large measure as a byproduct, as it were, and they had to find a method of neutralising it afterwards. Otherwise, their population would have gone into a tailspin -- particularly the warrior class. (Strangely, Edward Rothstein doesnt discuss Spartan homosexuality in the following New York Times article, prompted by Louis Cromptons history, Homosexuality and Civilization. I havent read the latter, but I trust and hope that Crompton will have discussed the Spartans.) The Spartans practice was to take away most of the pre-puberty boys and put them in boot camps. There they lived during the rest of their boyhood, their teens and into early manhood as they learned the martial arts. In order to help the adjustment to normal life and fatherhood when they returned from their period as warriors, their wives would cut their own hair short to look like boys and, presumably, act like them to some extent. New husbands would frequently return to the all-male society during the first few months until theyd adjusted sufficiently to normal family life and the production of children. The same sort of behaviour therapy went on in England 30 or 40 years ago. One particular peer of the realm -- now a Duke -- had been a notorious homosexual and paedophile, practices no doubt inculcated by the boarding school he went to. After his prison sentence, he was photographed frequently in the tabloid newspapers lying on a beach with one or two luscious beauties of the opposite sex. Later he married, had children and as far as I know, is now a perfectly normal heterosexual. In those days there were some behavioural clinics which specialised in this conversion treatment. But this sort of therapy is extremely expensive in time and skill. Also, unlike in ancient Sparta, young homosexual men are not expected to un-print themselves, as it were and become heterosexual. The relevance of homosexuality today as far as evolutionary economics and the survival of society is concerned is that such a large proportion of homosexuals in modern America and England -- unknown before in history except in Sparta and maybe in similar warrior cultures -- is significantly denting the birth rate. This phenomenon, plus extremely small family sizes (or children of single-parents) that are well below replacement rate will cause modern populations to collapse spectacularly in the coming decades -- a far quicker drop than the rises in populations have ever been. Biologists, who study social mammals such as rats and snow-shoe hares in confined conditions are well acquainted with all of these behaviours as being symptoms of high stress. The evidence is, therefore, that this is precisely the condition of human society in advanced countries today. Keith Hudson SHELF LIFE Annals of Homosexuality From Greek to Grim to Gay Edward Rothstein In Tony Kushner's Angels in America, which concludes tomorrow night on HBO, homosexuality is associated with religious martyrdom; salvation is found in the embrace of sexual identity. In American courts, homosexuality is being associated with bourgeois family life; salvation is being sought in social routine. And in Louis Crompton's sober, searching and somber new history, Homosexuality and Civilization, homosexuality is associated with the inner workings of civilization itself. The book provides the background to the resentments and passions that erupt in Mr. Kushner's play and haunt debates about gay marriage, and it, too, offers a promise of salvation. It begins in the gladness of early Greece, where homosexuality had an honored place for more than a millennium and concludes with the madness of 19th-century Europe. In between is what Mr. Crompton calls a kaleidoscope of horrors lasting more than 1,500 years. In the 13th century, a French law stated Whoever is proved to be a sodomite shall lose his testicles. And if he does it a second time, he shall lose his member. And if he does it a third time, he shall be burned. Beginning in 1730 in the Netherlands, 250 trials of sodomites took place, followed by at least 75 executions. Between 1806 and 1835, 60 homosexuals were hanged in England. Mr. Crompton, an emeritus professor of English at the University of Nebraska and the author of Byron and Greek Love, a much-praised study of Byron's sexuality, was one of the first American professors some 30 years ago to teach the history of homosexuality, a project that was at the time both daring and inherently polemical. But this is a restrained, careful, clear book of scholarly exposition; it is no martyrology. It also hopes to be a post-mortem. Mr. Crompton ends the book at the moment when executions finally cease in Europe, promising both the fading of homosexuality's stigma and the slow healing of its stigmata. But what led to this kaleidoscope of horrors? In ancient Greece, homosexuality was philosophically
Re: [Futurework] My ongoing struggle to see the obvious :: Basic question for economists
Brad, At 07:50 18/12/2003 -0500, you wrote: Why doesn't all economics education and inquiry start with the principle: Friends hold all things in common. (--Desiderius Erasmus, and others) ? Since we have markets and such, the first lemma one seems forced to deduce from this principle is that the economy is a realm of social relations which are at best not friendly (and which in fact often are in varying degrees positively(sic) unfriendly). I am being entirely serious here. You've got the picture in one! Congratulations! When the leader of one group of early man saw the leader of the neighbouring group in war paint -- that is, with whom he was having a difference at the time -- of a particularly virulent shade of orange (iron ochre), he badly wanted some of the ochre for himself so that he, too, could look so splendid. But he couldn't lay his hands on any because there was none of this desirabvle rock in his own group's territory. So he had to he had to parlay with the neighbouring group's leader one fine sunny day when they were not at war (for, of course, warfare is only an occasional event) and decided to exchange one of his recently \post-puberty daughters whom he'd restrained (because she was about to leave anyway to find a partner elsewhere -- disposed to do so by what is called the 'patrilocal instinct' by the behavioural pscyhologists) for some leadership paint. The deal was done and during the trading transaction the two leaders were pretty friendly. The next day, or perhaps a month or two later, the two groups were at war again -- perhaps one the group had invaded the other's territory and stolen a pig -- and this time both leaders were wearing war paint. They made sure that they didn;t kill each other -- leaders seldon do that. They make sure that the honour falls to an underling. And, while they were wearing their war paint -- or perhaps retained it for days or weeks after wards -- both leaders would have been very attractive indeed if any post-puberty girls from yet a distant third or fourth group had come wandering by looking for a mate. Keith Hudson \brad mccormick -- Let your light so shine before men, that they may see your good works (Matt 5:16) Prove all things; hold fast that which is good. (1 Thes 5:21) ![%THINK;[SGML+APL]] Brad McCormick, Ed.D. / [EMAIL PROTECTED] - Visit my website == http://www.users.cloud9.net/~bradmcc/ ___ Futurework mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://scribe.uwaterloo.ca/mailman/listinfo/futurework Keith Hudson, Bath, England, www.evolutionary-economics.org
Re: [Futurework] Pollard Information Services
was in the American Embassy in Kuwait during the late 60's. The instruction we had during this period was that we should express no opinion on this issue and that the issue is not associated with America. James Baker has directed our official spokesmen to emphasize this instruction. We hope you can solve this problem using any suitable methods via Klibi or via President Mubarak. All that we hope is that these issues are solved quickly. [And] GLASPIE: Frankly, we can see only that you have deployed massive troops in the south. Normally that would not be any of our business. But when this happens in the context of what you said on your national day, then when we read the details in the two letters of the Foreign Minister, then when we see the Iraqi point of view that the measures taken by the U.A.E. and Kuwait is, in the final analysis, parallel to military aggression against Iraq, then it would be reasonable for me to be concerned. -- [HP: The suitable methods were talks with those Arab leaders. In fact during the conversation they discussed the upcoming talks. There was certainly no green light given for an invasion of Kuwait. Here's more on the suitable methods.] GLASPIE: Mr. President, it would be helpful if you could give us an assessment of the effort made by your Arab brothers and whether they have achieved anything. HUSSEIN: On this subject, we agreed with President Mubarak that the Prime Minister of Kuwait would meet with the deputy chairman of the Revolution Command Council in Saudi Arabia, because the Saudis initiated contact with us, aided by President Mubarak's efforts. He just telephoned me a short while ago to say the Kuwaitis have agreed to that suggestion. GLASPIE: Congratulations. HUSSEIN: A protocol meeting will be held in Saudi Arabia. Then the meeting will be transferred to Baghdad for deeper discussion directly between Kuwait and Iraq. We hope we will reach some result. We hope that the long-term view and the real interests will overcome Kuwaiti greed. GLASPIE: May I ask you when you expect Sheik Saad to come to Baghdad? HUSSEIN: I suppose it would be on Saturday or Monday at the latest. I told brother Mubarak that the agreement should be in Baghdad Saturday or Sunday. You know that brother Mubarak's visits have always been a good omen. -- --- [The Ambassador - I want to say Ambassadress, but that would probably be sexist or something - was concerned about troop movements toward Kuwait, but pleased about talks to defuse the situation. So, the 'green light' was given to the talks that were taking place. ] Henry George School of Social Science of Los Angeles Box 655 Tujunga CA 91042 Tel: 818 352-4141 -- Fax: 818 353-2242 http://haledward.home.comcast.nethttp://haledward.home.comcast.net --- Outgoing mail is certified Virus Free. Checked by AVG anti-virus system (http://www.grisoft.comhttp://www.grisoft.com). Version: 6.0.552 / Virus Database: 344 - Release Date: 12/15/2003 Keith Hudson, General Editor, Handlo Music, http://www.handlo.com 6 Upper Camden Place, Bath BA1 5HX, England Tel: +44 1225 311636; Fax: +44 1225 447727; mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] ___ Futurework mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://scribe.uwaterloo.ca/mailman/listinfo/futurework
RE: [Futurework] FW Basic Income sites
Harry, Did you ever read Robert Ardrey's books? (The Territorial Imperative, etc). He was popular in the 70s. He came under criticism by the then crop of sociologists and anthropologists (particularly Montague Ashley and his anti-aggressiveness beliefs you swear by -- but who is now considered very much out of date by modern anthropologists). But, of course, a lot of water has flowed under the bridge since Ardrey's popularity and the present crop of anthropologists, evolutionary psychologists and so on have much more developed ideas. (Also, many of them are too young to have read him.) As far as I know the subject there is no strong incoherence with Ardrey's basic ideas in the present field. He doesn't appear in the academic literature because he was an amatuer (playwright). However, it seems to me very much that Georgism, Ardreyism, modern anthropology, and my own economic interpretations of status/inclusion in the social group are all quite harmonious. Just a thought. I have become largely persuaded (by you) over the years on FW that Georgism is basically correct. But how to proceed with it. We are now into an era of great fiscal complexity in which the idea of simplification would be anathema to our civil services and politicians, adn so on. One can't turn the clock back in this way, except with partial introductions of land/property taxes. However, if my basic idea is correct (new consumer goods are bought for status, and that the professional classes which are the trend-setters are at the point of not adding any more -- no time -- then, despite the productivity growth we may be at the point of a consumer recession. The average American consumer can't get it going 'cos he strapped with debt. Keith At 03:00 17/12/03 -0800, you wrote: Chris and Art, Such agreement among us! The problem in every country is the hemorrhaging of production into the hands of the landholders. As I posted earlier, Marx saw this and pointed out that the Industrial Revolution was financed by the landholders. (He said more - that surplus value inevitably was swallowed into land rent - but who reads Volume Three of Das Kapital? I saw a recent estimate (knowledgeable guess) that the land of the US totaled $30 trillion. A nation paying for something that was initially provided by God - or was a gift of nature (choose one). My objection to the Basic Income is that it is an attempt - as are so many others - to take back some of that Economic Rent and distribute it to the people who pay the Rent. Why not take it all? It's a privilege for the tenant gets nothing back for the land Rent he pays. As everyone should know by now, I am against all privilege. Justice is infinitely more preferable. Harry Keith Hudson, General Editor, Handlo Music, http://www.handlo.com 6 Upper Camden Place, Bath BA1 5HX, England Tel: +44 1225 311636; Fax: +44 1225 447727; mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] ___ Futurework mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://scribe.uwaterloo.ca/mailman/listinfo/futurework
Find the cause (was RE: [Futurework] FW Basic Income sites
Christoph, At 01:29 17/12/03 +0100, you wrote: Maybe if we'd get over the obsession with productivity growth and the consumerism mania, and if we'd address _causes_ instead of tinkering with symptoms, then there would be less shit work to do in the first place? Indeed -- let's look for causes. That is what I am attempting to do. What happens if we discover the cause to be inbuilt -- that is, a strong predisposition to buy consumer products (preferably the latest and preferably one with visibility) in order to show status? Once we have food and sufficient clothing to keep us warm then everything else we possess is, fundamentally, an appendage. In any particular culture, we acquire (or are expected to acquire) a whole repertoire of goods very quickly or in one blow *as though* they are basic. (Ask any newly married couple in a developed country these days what they intend to start their married life with.) But they are only basic in a social sense. Historically, however, they have been acquired one by one. And what is the reason (apart from necessities of work perhaps) why someone with a standard repertoire of goods in a given culture should want to buy another? Critically examine your reason for acquiring a *new* consumer good, or that of someone you know very well. The odds are very high that it will be for keeping up with the Jones' reason -- acquiring status or consolidating status. (Forget about replacment goods, and forget about etchnical embellishments to existing goods.) Pause before you reply. Think carefully. It isn't greed -- that's much too indefinable a term in this context. In my opinion it is the acquisition or the consolidation of status -- not necessarily the highest status (as some want) but just a place in a particular social group. Therefore, in any criticism of consumerism (and I agree that it's now a damaging symptom of modern society) unless you can find a universal cause then it is pointless to argue against it morally because it is unstoppable. If we find a cause, then we might be able to suggest alternatives. Keith Keith Hudson, General Editor, Handlo Music, http://www.handlo.com 6 Upper Camden Place, Bath BA1 5HX, England Tel: +44 1225 311636; Fax: +44 1225 447727; mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] ___ Futurework mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://scribe.uwaterloo.ca/mailman/listinfo/futurework
II. Find the cause (was RE: [Futurework] FW Basic Income sites
Christoph, Appendix to previous: I think the big paradox is that although feelings against consumerism are higher now than ever before (and may be at their maximum now) the trend-setting middle-class people who initiate consumption trends have never been busier or more stressed in their working weeks. They have very little extra time in which to buy, use and display new consumer goods (that is, those that are new, highly desirable but also also require time in which to use them). I think it is very significant that in America (and England), with low interest rates, and surging productivity, there is no corresponding growth in consumer spending. In my opinion it is not just because the average customer has high credit card debts (though this is true) but because the middle-class professional trend-setting class are not buying any more than before. For the first time in history I think we are seeing a situation where no highly desirable new product is appearing. It is not in demand any more; it is not being supplied any more. There is very little evidence so far for what I am suggesting. But I think we are at a very significant hiatus just now. Keith Keith Hudson, General Editor, Handlo Music, http://www.handlo.com 6 Upper Camden Place, Bath BA1 5HX, England Tel: +44 1225 311636; Fax: +44 1225 447727; mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] ___ Futurework mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://scribe.uwaterloo.ca/mailman/listinfo/futurework
Re: FULL OF ADMIRATION (was RE: Slightly extended (was Re: [Futurework] David Ricardo, Cavema n Trade vs. Modern Trade
his life as he wandered the back streets, away from a public gaze, and tended the gardens of the rich, in my hometown. My mother was crippled by polio, from the time she was 4 years old. She had many side illnesses in pre-Medicare Canada. I was raised in poverty and knew about hunger and class marginalization as a child and bear that psychological imprint as an adult. The social capital of the Welfare State, after World War 11, and the ideology of equal opportunity, allowed me to get an education. It was the luck of context, however, not any special merit on my part. I suspect it is similar with the two of you, respectively. In a family of five, I am the only one who finished high school and went on to university education. There are many, many bright working class youth as capable as I am, and as you are. However, current educational reforms are limiting the kinds of opportunities we were able to partake of. I became a teacher and went many, many rounds, with a class stratified school system, on behalf of my working class students. As an educational researcher, my only interest has been in what happens to working class children in essentially middle class schools. My current project, Whose Standards?: Performance Standards, Globalization, and the Restructuring of School Knowledge is part of my attempt to understand what is happening to working class kids under the current school reforms in relation to the paradigm shift in the way kid's achievment and teacher accountability is benchmarked using high stakes testing. The project has been supported by SSHRC funding and several scholarships. I have had lots of contact with powerful and wealthy people. I have been a political activist and president of the riding association of a former Ontario Finance Minister. But who cares? I don't think it has anything to do with what I contribute to this list. Rightly, or wrongly, I see this list as a place for me to learn from some very smart people, exchange views, and get information, a lot of which I keep for use in my work. My view is that the working class has largely been written off in the current neoliberal reforms, despite the rhetoric of equity. Failure rates and drop out rates are increasing. The savage inequalities that have injured the working class and minorities still exist. I can assure you that to imply that there is a correlation between being working class and supporting private education is absolutely spurious. I worked for several years on large scale surveys of public attitudes towards education in Ontario and we found no evidence that working class respondents, in significant numbers, were supportive of this kind of change. In fact, most working class activists see private education as a threat to working class opportunity. Studies of working class resistance indicate that some working class youth internalize the meritocratic myths of middle class schooling and thrive within them. Paul Willis's classic study of working class resistance called such kids ear'oles. But many resist the class cultural agenda, that often includes the belittlement of working class work and working class identities and engage in cultural resistance. You and Harry may well be examples of the former, but I am an example of the latter. High school was a cultural dead space, for me. You support private education. I differ and support public education. Vouchers and charter schools do not help working class kids. The research is pretty clear that the best predictor of success, in schooling, is the neighborhood you live in. Taking only the matter of reading scores, the higher your parent's socio-economic status, the higher your reading level. High stakes testing is producing similar correlations. No personal disrespect is intended towards either you, Keith, or Harry, and I will state unequivocally my respect for you both. If I have written anything that has offended you, I offer my most deepfelt apologies for doing so. Respectfully submitted, Bob Keith wrote: It is strange, is it not, that you and I, both working class, and who know what it's all about at every level of society from top to bottom, should be the ones (the only ones on this list as far as I can make out) who are calling for private schools. IT IS BECAUSE THE STATE SYSTEM OF EDUCATION, DUMBING DOWN FOR THE PAST CENTURY AT EVERY OPPORTUNITY, IS THE GREATEST INJUSTICE THAT HAS BEING DONE TO MOST ORDINARY WORKING PEOPLE'S CHILDREN BECAUSE BASIC SKILLS ARE NO LONGER TAUGHT. They are now being left defenceless just at the time when we should be vastly upgrading our skills. Keith Hudson, Bath, England, www.evolutionary-economics.org
[Futurework] From status to stratum
time, it is quite obvious that politicians, central bankers (suchas Greenspan) and economists are very worried indeed. Although economic growth is supposed to be healthy (in America and the UK -- nowhere else), interest rates are being kept absurdly low because the aforementioned people are frightened what may happen if they are raised. Unconsciously I think they are recognising that the end is nigh. That is, the end to rampant consumerism. But if consumerism is really and essentially about status then we don't need to keep on making more and more consumer goods in order to find that magic bullet -- the next stratum good. If we could re-arrange the ways in which we live and work so that we can re-create community, then there'll be more than enough status -- and social inclusion -- for everybody. Keith Hudson ACQUIRING MINDS Inside America's All-Consuming Passion April Witt A blonde with a perfect blow-dry flips through the pages of Us magazine on the morning shuttle to New York. She's not interested in reading about celebrities; she just wants to check out what they're wearing. I have this dress, she says, pointing to a photograph of actress Jada Pinkett Smith wearing a $2,300 bronze-toned satin Gucci cocktail dress with a wide belt shaped like a corset. The fall shopping season is almost over, and Jamie Gavigan, a colorist at a Georgetown hair salon, is heading to New York City on one last fashion mission. She wants to find a killer cocktail dress and satisfy her special footwear urges at the Manolo Blahnik shoe salon. Jamie shops in Washington, too, at Neiman Marcus and Saks Fifth Avenue and some pricey boutiques. But two or three times a year, the 36-year-old single mother flies to New York to more fully indulge her fashion passions. It's her reward for standing on her feet nine hours a day, mixing chemicals and working straight through lunch to earn the six-figure income that makes these shopping expeditions possible. When the shuttle lands at La Guardia, Jamie hops into a cab and heads to her favorite department store, Barneys, at 61st and Madison, one of the culture's new cathedrals, where the affluent bring their soaring aspirations for better living through luxury shopping. It's all good here, she says. It's disturbing, isn't it? I like everything they have. On her feet, she's wearing $750 Manolo Blahnik black suede boots with four-inch-high stiletto heels. On her arm, she's carrying a blue Birkin tote bag by Hermes de Paris. If you could buy one, which now you can't, prices for the Birkin would start at $5,000 for plain leather and climb to more than $70,000 for crocodile renditions with diamond-encrusted hardware. Swamped in recent years by demand for the bag, Hermes had been asking would-be customers to put their names on a waiting list. Jamie waited two years for her Birkin to arrive. Last year, Hermes stopped adding names to the list. In Barneys's airy, light-filled fine jewelry section, Jamie bends over a display case and draws in her breath, the sound of sudden desire. Her long hair spills forward, and her Hermes handbag thuds softly against the jewelry case as she gazes upon a brilliant diamond brooch shaped like a starburst. At its glinting center lies a round glass compartment filled with dozens of tiny, loose diamonds. It looks like a profane rendition of a monstrance, the Roman Catholic vessel in which the consecrated Host is displayed on the altar for the adoration of the people. Jamie wonders what the loose diamonds would sound like if she could shake them like so many flakes in a snow globe. But at $30,000, this bauble is beyond her reach. I bet it sounds good, Jamie says, smiling wistfully and adjusting her pale blue pashmina shawl. I have a feeling it sounds really good. Deny it, outraged, if you will. Rail against unchecked materialism like some puritanical scold. Pray for the soul of a nation wandering lost in the malls, more likely to shop than to vote, volunteer, join a civic organization or place a weekly donation in the collection plate of a local house of worship. Consumerism was the triumphant winner of the ideological wars of the 20th century, beating out both religion and politics as the path millions of Americans follow to find purpose, meaning, order and transcendent exaltation in their lives. Liberty in this market democracy has, for many, come to mean freedom to buy as much as you can of whatever you wish, endlessly reinventing and telegraphing your sense of self with each new purchase. Over the course of the century the culture of consumption and American life became so closely intertwined that it is difficult for Americans to see consumerism as an ideology or to consider any serious alternatives or modifications to it, historian Gary Cross writes in An All-Consuming Century: Why Commercialism Won in Modern America. This society of goods is not merely the inevitable consequence of mass production or the manipulation of merchandisers. It is a choice, never
Don't shoot me. (wasRe: Fw: [Futurework] FW Basic Income sites
Ed, Don't shoot me. I'm only the messenger. At 12:51 16/12/2003 -0500, you wrote: (KH) Your special problem in Canada is that your government(s) has already committed itself to future welfare payments of over 400% of your present GDP. How on earth you are ever going to afford those, goodness knows. You cannot possibly afford to consider any extra welfare payments. You will certainly need a voluntary sector (and a very large one, too, one imagines!). (EW) Keith, absolute nonsense! I have no idea of where you got your numbers, but no government, even ours, is that stupid. I'm afraid that the IMF thinks so. This from a report, Who will Pay? by Peter Heller, Deputy Director of Fiscal Affairs, IMF. Canada already has an explicit debt of something like 40-50% of GDP, but has committed itself already to future commitements of about 400% of GDP. See the Economist of 22 November 2003 for a summary of the report. In respect of future commitments, Canada is already twice as bad as France and Germany and they're already right up to the hilt in what they can squeeze from the taxpayer. But I do appreciate your sense of humour. I don't know if you saw my piece on how a BI might be cobbled together from existing programs. And this morning I posted a suggestion that you could have a universal BI program with clawback provisions. But, surely, clawbacks invalidate it as a BI. You might just as well suggest further sets of welfare provisions. But even a Labour government over here is talking about the need to reduce all sorts of pensions and benefits in the future, and we've much less current debt and far fewer future commitments than Canada. Keith Ed - Original Message - From: Keith Hudson To: Ed Weick Sent: Tuesday, December 16, 2003 1:38 AM Subject: Re: [Futurework] FW Basic Income sites Ed, At 19:18 15/12/2003 -0500, you wrote: A special problem we have in Canada, and I know we're not unique, is the division of responsibilities under our constitution. The federal government is responsible for some things, the provinces for others. Too many people at the table to get an easy agreement. Thank God we have a large voluntary sector that actually does things while our two levels of government wrangle themselves into stalemates! Your special problem in Canada is that your government(s) has already committed itself to future welfare payments of over 400% of your present GDP. How on earth you are ever going to afford those, goodness knows. You cannot possibly afford to consider any extra welfare payments. You will certainly need a voluntary sector (and a very large one, too, one imagines!). Keith Ed - Original Message - From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]; [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Monday, December 15, 2003 3:19 PM Subject: RE: [Futurework] FW Basic Income sites I agree. I was too sharp in my response. I apologize. I think Ed's posting covers why it is affordable. But we may not be socially ready for BI. We are used to taking from the pot but not giving back. My fear is that BI will only accentuate taking and not giving. It may not be a good idea, in my view, since we have yet to educate/socialize people understand that they are part of society and that while society is responsible to them with BI, they are also connected to and involved with society such that they are expected to give back to society. Blame on too many years of smash and grab consumerism/capitalism or bowling alone or what have you. arthur -Original Message- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]] Sent: Monday, December 15, 2003 12:50 PM To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: RE: [Futurework] FW Basic Income sites Arthur Cordell wrote: I think similar criticisms were levelled against the minimum wage, child labour laws, old age security, medicare, etc. Same old, same old. Can't afford it today. Wait. Wait. Someday. Rubbish. Being in favor of the minimum wage(*), child labour laws, old age security, medicare, etc., but opposed to BI, I think there's a fundamental difference between the former and the latter: BI is of the perpetuum mobile kind. (not in the sense that BI works forever but that it won't work at all) It would be a pity if name-calling (rubbish) and misrepresentation of my arguments (can't afford it today -- no, can't afford it tomorrow either!) would be the only arguments of Arthur in reply to my posting and BI-example ($1.2 billion) of 13-Dec-03. Let's hear some good arguments (if possible with numbers) please... [if there are any] (*) Btw, I was informed that a Canadian province has reduced the minimum wage from $8 to $6 (Can.). For comparison, it's about $15 in Switzerland. I guess that's why a Swiss emigré mechanic recently had to return from Canada to work for 6 weeks here, and with the money he earned he can live for 5 months in Canada with his whole family. So Arthur, perhaps Industry Canada should introduce a _livable_ minimum wage
[Futurework] How was Saddam captured alive?
According to BBC Radio 4 this morning, some are wondering how it was that Saddam was captured alive. M'mm I've wondered about that, too. If the Americans allow him an even half-way fair trial (as, say, with Milosevich in The Hague War Crimes Tribunal) and Saddam decides to defend himself (he's articulate enough for that) it will cause some considerable embarrassment to America in view of former relationship. They would love to have killed him -- and were expecting to, I imagine. All I can think of is that the first soldiers who found him didn't realise he was Saddam and thought he was the house servant or similar. On reflection, just before I posted this, I think that Saddam will die before reaching trial. Keith Hudson Keith Hudson, Bath, England, www.evolutionary-economics.org
Re: Slightly extended (was Re: [Futurework] David Ricardo, Cavema n Trade vs. Modern Trade
At 17:17 14/12/2003 -0500, you wrote: I have had the experience of being involved in a law suit against an unethical doctor. It's a profession, governed by a regulatory self-governing body, also of questionable ethics, that has little credibility in my books. Bob, Well said! Keith Hudson When Pascal wrote the following, he was talking about doctors: When malice has rationality on its side, it puffs itself up and parades reason in all its lustre. The quote is from John Ralson Saul's On Equilibrium and he seems to share our scornful view of medical ethics. Caveat emptor! I will balance this by saying that there are some very fine physicians out there who practice the art of medicine with humanity - and they are well worth searching for - but they are in the minority in a profession for which I have little respect. Lest you think the law suit I was involved in was dismissed, I can offer that there was an out-of-court settlement, once it was moving in the direction of a jury trial, and a confidentiality agreement was imposed. That's how these questionable folks silence their critics. Coincidentally, the physician was represented by the same law firm that represented Conrad Black in his suit against Jean Chretien, a couple of years back. They are quite prepared to use every dirty trick in the book to squash upstarts who confront them. Forget Hippocrates. That gives you some sense of how seriously they respond to citizens who challenge them. Challenging them is a fight worth fighting, nevertheless. BB - Original Message - From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Cc: [EMAIL PROTECTED]; [EMAIL PROTECTED]; [EMAIL PROTECTED]; [EMAIL PROTECTED]; [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Sunday, December 14, 2003 3:54 PM Subject: RE: Slightly extended (was Re: [Futurework] David Ricardo, Cavema n Trade vs. Modern Trade accreditation is a thorny issue. It is nice to see the diplomas on the wall (of doctor, lawyer, engineer, architect) but are we sure they know what they are doing? and what if they don't? what recourse? that is why I guess that people say, when moving to a new town ask around. find a doc in a teaching hospital (more accreditation and more supervision, helping to catch the oafs). Friedman would say that the market will work. As long as information is provided (which it currently isn't. the medical world, for example is shrouded in cya and mystery) When a patient dies, in Friedman's model the next prospective patient would move to a different doctor. Today with cover ups, when a patient dies there is no information on why this happened or indeed if it happened at all. Unless of course there is a law suit. arthur -Original Message- From: Brad McCormick, Ed.D. [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]] Sent: Sunday, December 14, 2003 8:44 AM To: Cordell, Arthur: ECOM Cc: [EMAIL PROTECTED]; [EMAIL PROTECTED]; [EMAIL PROTECTED]; [EMAIL PROTECTED]; [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: Re: Slightly extended (was Re: [Futurework] David Ricardo, Cavema n Trade vs. Modern Trade [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Harry, Go back an re-read Milton Friedman's Capitalism and Freedom. He makes a strong case for getting rid of a lot of the accreditation in society saying that it just builds enclaves of monopoly power. ie., privilege. [snip] It seems to me that the justification for accreditation lies in the HUGE NUMBERS OF PEOPLE, which prevents persons from verifying the competencies of the persons they need services from by first-person experience of performative evidence. Our doctors, et al., apart from their cdredentials, are mostly pig in a pokes to us. I don't see how this can be changed in the anonymo-city. However, perhaps the credentialling process can be shifted from multiple choice tests to the making and predsentation of masterpieces. This happens to some extent (e.g., for watchmaker trainees). But I think the tendency is away from personal presentation of evidence of mastery toward enhancing Educational Testing Service's services. Anoher problem is that even where supposedly evidence of mastery is the criterion, as in the PhD dissertation process, much of the time the evidence prouced is something that means nothing to the learner but which is of some use as cheap labor to those who already have their credential. I think we need to acknowledge that many graduate students do not yet have any really meaningful interests in their young lives, and we need to find a way to let them do the jobs they are training for without jumping thru hoops. For the mindful god abhors untimely growth. (--Holderlin) Dissertations should be optional productions, which come when the spirit moves a person to have something to say in an honorific sense. Besides making the creenialling process more genuinely reasonable as part of meaningful personal and social life, I think we also ned to tr to minimize the situations which require credentialling. Automobile driving
Re: [Futurework] FW Basic Income sites
Christoph, Well said! Keith At 17:30 14/12/2003 +0100, you wrote: Thomas Lunde wrote: Well, Chris, you got me - sloppy analogy. Let me try a different one. We have a benefit for children called the Child Tax Benefit. Depending on the age of the child and the number of children in the family - every parent is eligible and I would say there is a 99% participation rate. Now note that their is no income eligibility. The millionaire's child is as eligible as the pauper's child. However, this has to be declared as income on the yearly income tax filing and for low income families they get to keep all the benefit of about $2000 per child while the affluent having to add this to their income find that the benefit is taxed back. The end result is the poor get the benefit and the rich - while they are rich and it is not always a permanent state, end up not getting the benefit. The BI Canada website (recommended by Sally) says: Income tax would be paid from the first pound, dollar, franc or mark of extra income, but the basic income itself would not be taxable. This sounds like everyone, rich or poor, can fully keep the BI (untaxed). I see a way for a Basic Income to work in which everyone gets a monthly cheque or weekly and for the poor, they get to keep the Basic Income, while the more affluent find that it is revenue neutral in the sense they get the benefit on a monthly/weekly basis to use but at the end of the year, they would repay the benefit while paying there taxes But even if you change the rules as described above, this system ends up penalizing work (taxing work but not the BI). How can you solve the production problem --and keep it solved-- with a society of non-workers ? Worse: who, if not workers, is supposed to pay the taxes to fund the BI ? I think a Basic Income does represent going to the root of the problem which is an adequate redistribution of wealth so that all citizens benefit from the wealth of the country - not just the successful capitalists or overpaid ^ executives. Now I understand why you said it's a Canadian solution... The wealth of the country probably refers to timber, oilgas, and in the sell-out of natural resources, you want to distribute it to all Canadians instead of just a few managers of the sell-out. However, plundering forests and fossil fuels is not a sustainable solution, and it offers no model for countries who lack natural resources to plunder. Going back to school or building a house with a GBI ?? How many thousand dollars per month are you thinking of ? If you follow the Basic Income web addresses that Sally posted a few days ago and went to the United States web site, you will see them talking $25,000 a year. A few years ago, I worked out a Basic Income based on the governments budget with a figure of $10,000 per person per year. For Canada, that would be over $300 billion (about 5 Bill Gateses worth -- how many Bill Gateses does Canada have, btw?), that is ~80 % of present tax revenues. (So I guess the schools, hospitals, roads, sewage system, army etc. will have to be maintained by unpaid volunteers then.) But since the BI would be an incentive not to work, the tax revenues would fall significantly. Bye bye Canadian forests and gas reserves... I know the average knee jerk reaction to the family of eight in that many women would opt for 8 children and $80,000 a year. So what? It is damn hard work to raise eight children and I have read statistics that each child costs the parent $250,000 to raise a child in a middle class environment and through University. Including through University, i.e. you're talking about the first 25 years of life, times the BI of $10,000/year gives exactly $250,000 ! But who said that they'll send all children to University, especially if the kids can live on the BI without working anyway ? So you'll end up with an incentive to breed like rabbits and produce school drop-outs with no incentive or desire to work or go to University. In a society of uneducated mostly non-working people, plundering the country's natural resources is indeed the only option that remains... Canada the Saudi-Arabia of the North ? Chris SpamWall: Mail to this addy is deleted unread unless it contains the keyword igve. ___ Futurework mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://scribe.uwaterloo.ca/mailman/listinfo/futurework Keith Hudson, Bath, England, www.evolutionary-economics.org
[Futurework] Virginia Postrels on aesthetics
210. Virginia Postrels on aesthetics I regard aesthetics and notions of beauty as having no fundamental basis, though many forms of art, such as J. S. Bach's Mass in B Minor, are artistic creations of exquisite enjoyment for some, including myself. Instead, I regard them as fashions of the moment. What are highly desirable in one generation may be despised by another, and sometimes return to favour a generation later -- the Victorian fireplace in my present house is one example. It only escaped the modernisers during the last 50 years because an old man lived here and refused to have any changes made to the house. The city of Bath in which I live was chock-full of wonderful Tudor buildings until about 1740. I have an early print of what it used to look like before the John Wood and the other builders tore it all down in the 18th century and replaced it with Georgian architecture everywhere. This, now, is considered a beautiful city. I had a shock some years ago when I visited Laycock Abbey not far from here. In the cloisters, some of the wonderful Gothic wall carvings in the Perpendicular style is shown to have covered over a previous cladding in Early English style -- quite as beautiful in its own, simpler way. The later Tudor builders didn't destroy the previous building (it would have been too expensive to have done so) but they certainly had no notions of the beauty of a century previously. Virginia Postrels is a prolific libertarian writer on economics and in her most recent book The Substance of Style she discusses the importance of fashions in the economic scheme of things. Although she is writing of superficial matters almost all her examples of desirable consumer products and branded goods are those of what I term infills or adjuncts to what were originally status goods. Although they are bought to denote status they are only the pale reflections of what were originally status goods -- powerful drivers of economic growth in previous times. The goods that Virginia Postrel writes about are useful maintainers of the economic system but that's all they are. However, her book is a useful commentary on modern times. M'mm ... I see that Virginia Postrels mentions Vance Packard's drive for status. I read a lot of him when I was young. Perhaps, subconsciously, I've been more influenced by him than I realise. I must re-read him! Keith Hudson BUYING SOFAS, STEALING BEAUTY Francis Morrone I like that. Im like that. This phrase recurs through Virginia Postrels provocative book, The Substance of Style.The phrase is, she suggests, the credo of our age, which is the Age of Aesthetics. At first, that notion seems counterintuitive.After all, many among us regard our time as something less than a Renaissance in the arts. I am not sure whether Ms. Postrel would agree or disagree with that assessment. For, though her subject is aesthetics, she concerns herself not at all with the fine arts. Rather, she writes of style as in lifestyle. We live, Ms. Postrel says, in a time when the aesthetic imperative pervades all aspects of our lives. As the Western economies grew, they first took care of outfitting our lives with material goods ample shelter, ample clothing, refrigerators, automobiles, and so on. These would have seemed ultra-luxurious in earlier times, but we quickly came to regard them as necessities. Having, as it were, conquered scarcity, now we seek to render our lives expressive through our adoption of styled products.Where once a refrigerator represented convenience, it is now, by its styling, a form of self-expression.A good-looking refrigerator allows us to make a statement about our lives, values, and aspirations. A noted libertarian editor and economics writer, Ms. Postrel seeks to enter a realm that would appear to be outside of her specialty. But, as she points out, aesthetics and economics are now so intertwined that any economics writer who fails to discuss aesthetics misses a major perhaps the major economic phenomenon of our time. Others, of course, have noted the convergence of the aesthetic and the economic typically in a condemnatory way as part of a social critique of the role of the fashion cycle in planned obsolescence. Ms. Postrel celebrates the aestheticization of our world and the seemingly infinite variety of expressive forms thus engendered. Ours is the most pluralistic and democratic time in the history of style. From dreadlocks to Starbucks, from PowerPoint to Pottery Barn, Americans today can't get enough of the delirious array of design that permeates their persons and environments. In today's aesthetic profusion, the choice of thirty-five thousand colors of plastic, fifteen hundred drawer pulls, thirty thousand fonts, motifs from nearly every culture that has ever existed serves a variety of tastes and circumstances.What's remarkable is that this profusion is so readily, immediately available, in stores
[Futurework] Status and Honours
211. Status and Honours The importance of status can hardly be exaggerated. In hunter-gatherer times, the patrilocal instinct of girls leaving their group or tribe at puberty and seeking sexual partners in a neighbouring group would mean that they would preferentially select the alpha male, or at least as high-ranking a male as possible that she found there. An extremely good example of the modern survival of this practice is to be found in Michael Palin's book, Sahara (and the BBC TV documentary) where the young women from several different groups of the Wodaabe tribe select their lifetime partners from the young men who dress up, wear lashings of kohl and stibnite make-up on their eyes and lips, and prance about (in what, to us, is an amusing way). Here, the girls are making their selection not on the basis of status per se but on the looks, the imagination of the men's dressage and bearing -- to them, as highly correlated with status and likely future life-success of the males as modern girls are able to assess by going to a night club and dancing and talking with possible future boy friends. Every group, every institution, and every country develops clear visible signs for status -- statues, memorials, rankings (civil service, army, university), decorations, letters after their names, honorary prefixes, medals, ribbons, lapel badges, hats and uniforms and so on. In England, such rankings, formally initiated by William the Conqueror in 1066 after the invasion, when he chose those who should be his barons (in exchange for military services), have evolved ever since. Lloyd George, when prime minister early last century, used to (privately) sell peerages. Prime ministers ever since have sold peerages to those who contribute to party funds (and perhaps to pirvate pockets). People, and particularly the males (for instinctive reasons) are desperately eager for signs of status. For most people, status is indicated in the goods they buy and, of course, the notion of status goods is a central theme in my evolutionary economics hypothesis. But for a minority in England, we have the honours system -- whereby titles and decorations are given by the Queen on her official birthday and at the New Year. As with so many state functions, the business of choosing who should receive honours has been taken over by the civil service and, in particular, by a small group of very senior civil servants, usually the heads of departments, or Permanent Secretaries. The minutes of the meetings in which they discuss those who should receive honours on these occasion are normally considered state secrets. Even political leaders -- even the prime minister -- are not allowed to attend these deliberations or read these minutes, though the civil servants concerned will take notice if a prime minister has particular preferences. The records are normally kept secret well beyond the usual 30-years limits for state documents. However, someone has ratted on this secrecy a few days ago. A recent set of minutes has been leaked to the press. There we have read the reason why this person or that was chosen for this or that rank of decoration. Many of these reasons are revealed to be quite trivial -- indeed, insincere. This has caused a tremendous furore and will dynamite the secret procedures that have applied hitherto. There are those who affect to believe that status is not very important, particularly Americans who tried to overthrow all this royalty-derived business when they set up their republic. Even now, an American who receives an honorary knighthood from the British Queen is not allowed to put Sir in front of his name -- but this doesn't reduce his enthusiasm to go to Buckingham Palace and be tapped on the shoulder with the Queen's sword while he kneels before her (on a comfortable cushion it must be said). Incidentally, over here, honours are affectionately called gongs by those senior civil servants who affect not to take the matter too seriously -- but who would kill if they were left out when their age and status qualified them for a honour of the appropriate grade. Keith Hudson SEVEN CENTURIES OF THE GONG SHOW Robert Winnett and David Leppard The roots of Britain's honours system can be traced back to the 14th century when Edward III created the Most Noble Order of the Garter, an order of chivalry that was available to only 25 knights. By the end of the century, King Richard II was handing out honours in the form of gifts or gold n6ck chains as a reward for loyal service. Chains of honour went to certain officers of the crown as a special mark of distinction. Until the beginning of the 19th century, honours in the form of appointments to the order of chivalry in England were restricted to members of the aristocracy and high-ranking military officers. From then on, those to be honoured were selected by the prime minister of the day and came from wider
[Futurework] The inevitability of legalised euthanasia
209. The inevitability of legalised euthanasia The certainty that our nursing homes are going to be chock-a-block with old and infirm people in the coming years, looked after by badly-paid, under-trained nursing assistants who will, in some instances, inflict even more cruelty than occurs now, means that euthanasia will come in with a swing before too long. Many religious people and some politicians, including my own MP, have been resisting it. But the problem is going to be so huge that when a minority of middle-class people who have signed living wills, as I have, say that they'd actually welcome dying in a dignified way before they inflict too much work on others or before they become too gaga will pass through the legislatures of developed countries with ease because it will at least relieve politicians of part of a serious and growing problem. Mary Warnock, who has been a brilliant observer of the human scene in this country for some decades and is highly respected on all sides, was once one of those who resisted the legalisation of euthanasia. I must confess that I was irritated that she, of all people, should have done so -- even more than I am presently irritated by my own MP who has just written me an extraordinarily long letter explaining why he is against it. However, Mary Warnock's resistance might have been for the best after all, because she has now changed her mind and the testimony of such a convert after her own real-life experience will be a powerful influence when legislation is next planned. And this, it is to be hoped, is not going to be too far ahead. I'd certainly like it to be in place before I become a burden. Her own article below is a well-argued piece of writing. I only disagree with her on the matter of mercy killing. I think this is desirable in principle -- as I carried out for my previous dog and will do so for my present one when in extremis (unless she survives me, which is quite possible). Mercy killing is also inevitable in my opinion. Keith Hudson I MADE A BAD LAW -- WE SHOULD HELP THE ILL TO DIE Lady Warnock, who once sat on a House of Lords committee that rejected legalising euthanasia, has since watched her husband die and now says the law should be changed Mary Warnock House of Lords select committee is about to be set up to consider the issue of assisted suicide. Ten years ago I sat on a committee that was concerned with the more general concept of euthanasia. At that time we concluded that the law should not be changed and that assisted death should remain a criminal offence unless a decision should be made in court making it permissible for the patient to die in very particular circumstances, such as when someone is in a persistent vegetative state and needs a life-support machine to be turned off. A great deal was made at that time of the distinction between killing and allowing to die, neither doctors nor nurses being prepared to contemplate killing when the whole ethos of their professions demanded that they attempt to keep people alive. This seemed to me a wholly bogus distinction. The committee also considered the case of terminally ill patients. It was alleged that a doctor could never be sure that a patient was in fact terminally ill nor that an extra dose of morphine, for example, would hasten death. This seemed an odd argument for doctors to use. I was a member of that committee and I went along with its conclusions, conscious nevertheless that the arguments leading to the conclusions were suspect and therefore that the conclusions were not to be regarded as written in stone. I believed that at some time or other the medical and nursing professions would have to face the fact that being alive was, in certain circumstances, contrary both to a person's wishes and his interests, and that palliative care, even if available, would not render his suffering endurable. The establishment of the new euthanasia committee is the outcome of a private member's bill, introduced into the House of Lords by Lord Joffe, a highly intelligent, sensitive and humane man. It is a bill of extremely limited scope. It proposes that those who are terminally ill and within sight of death and who are suffering severely, but who are of sound mind and who have expressed a wish to die before their condition becomes yet more unbearable, may be assisted to die, without the risk that whoever assisted them should be charged with murder. There has been one recent case, that of Diane Pretty, that caused widespread pity and partly motivated these proposals. She was an intelligent person who knew exactly how her paralysis from motor neurone disease would progress until in the end she would die of suffocation. She was physically incapable of committing suicide herself, but she knew that if her doctor or her husband helped her they would be liable to a charge of murder. Her appeal for assisted death was turned down by courts in Britain and by the European Court of Human Rights and in the end
FULL OF ADMIRATION (was RE: Slightly extended (was Re: [Futurework] David Ricardo, Cavema n Trade vs. Modern Trade
English, the North Americans would be a lawyer one week, a doctor the next, an accountant the next. Wasnt true, but that was what we thought. Now perhaps over here, we have adopted some of the stratification of the old world. But, whatever, money is translated into bacon and eggs and perhaps things with less cholesterol. Dont look down on it. Harry Keith Hudson, Bath, England, www.evolutionary-economics.org
[Futurework] No time to relax, no time to use more goods, no economic growth
212. No time to relax, no time to use more goods, no economic growth It is my case that there have been certain key economic goods which, throughout history, have been particularly significant in giving tremendous boosts to the economies in which they were available because they added to, or consolidated, the social status of the initial customers. It is not my main case that economic growth is coming to an end. This has been derived from my hypothesis, but it seems likely to me. The reason is that the class which initiates the consumption of key economic goods -- status goods -- seems to me to have too little time left in their working week to use and display those goods, even if some were to appear in the market place (which I can't see just at the moment -- the only ones I can see are embellishments/replacements of existing goods). The class that initiates the consumption of status-dominated goods has plenty of money -- or, sufficient money, anyway -- but is working too long a working week. However, if the initiatory class, such as the lawyers below, reduce their working week they will have less income and reduce the chance of a new status good taking off and boosting the economy. While the poor are into a poverty trap, the professional better-off are into a time-trap. I see no way out of it unless huge changes are made in our educational, social and working structures. How all this will happen, goodness knows, but one thing is certain: we will be forced into it by circumstances, not by choice or by voting for one enlightened political party or another. Keith Hudson LAWYERS ARGUE THE CASE FOR A LIFESTYLE REVOLUTION Patti Waldmeir These are tough times for lawyers. Not because of the economy - because of the holidays. According to the American Bar Association, most US lawyers in private practice work 60 hours, or often much more, nearly every week. A mere 40-hour week is considered part-time. Anything less is simply unpatriotic. But lawyers who work 12-hour days do not bake Christmas cookies. They scarcely have time to buy them. Santa will be lucky, in such households, if he gets a stale ginger biscuit beside his glass of milk. This cult of overwork -- the cult that raised me, and so many of my middle-aged contemporaries - now has a recruitment problem. Younger Americans are unaccountably demanding a right to life after work. Older lawyers may still be happy to service the jealous mistress. But younger ones, male and female, have begun to look for love elsewhere. The statistics are everywhere more than half of recent US college graduates say their highest professional goal is attaining a balance between personal life and career. That may be the impossible dream but it is the kind of fantasy that earlier generations would not have dared to utter. And even those who have once embraced the law are increasingly forsaking their mistress for lifestyle reasons, such as the right to glimpse their children awake on weekdays, or the right to refuse to bake Christmas cookies. Recently, a small cell of lifestyle revolutionaries met in the parish hall of a Washington, DC, church, to plot a new path to work/life harmony. Struggling to hear above the chorus of burbling babies and tetchy toddlers who had accompanied their mothers to the hall, the Lawyers at Home forum of the capital Women's Bar Association took instruction on alternative work schedules, or the art of working less without sacrificing your career. Their quest is as old as the feminist revolution. They want to have it all the job, the children, the home-baked cookies. But these young mothers - unlike my own generation of menopausal revolutionaries - are not just demanding the right to work like men. They are asking much more the right to work like mothers - less intensely, less pathologically and just generally less. Some make a moral case for their holistic vision that children have a right to see their mothers occasionally, even if the matriarch is a lawyer. But this case, of course, is easily rebuffed the child whose mother stays at home does not have his rights violated. Luckily there is also a business case for a lifestyle revolution in the law and it was made in the church hall that day by Cynthia Thomas Calvert, of American University's Program on WorkLife Law (sic). According to her, younger lawyers are leaving law firms in droves, often largely for lifestyle reasons - and many of them are men. This is not a women's issue, it's more of a generational issue, she says. It is the Baby Boom partners vs the Generation Xers. But the discontent of the Xers costs money Calvert says each second- or third-year associate costs between $200,000 (£114,000) and $500,000 to replace (including recruiting and training the departing lawyer and his or her replacement). And there are other costs too loss of institutional knowledge; loss of clients; and the loss of morale and productivity
RE: [Futurework] Status and Honours
Arthur, Thanks for reminding me of this article. Yes, as we've discussed in times past, I've always recommended transparency as a better strategy than regulation. Government regulations get captured by the big companies at the expense of the smaller ones, whereas governments will never become transparent voluntarily. But, as we've seen in the British Honours case that I posted, even the most secret things that go on in government leak out these days. Interestingly, it was this sort of leakage that was so significant at the Hutton Enquiry (and which, I think, will be so embarrassing to Blair when the report is published). Keith At 09:31 15/12/2003 -0500, you wrote: Keith, There is magic in secrecy but the drive to uncloak, to make transparent will bring great changes. Transparency will affect all institutions: business and government alike. A recent issue of The Economist asserted that the new book The Naked Corporation: How the Age of Transparency Will Revolutionize Business provides the first big idea since management books slumped a couple of years ago. Comparing Tapscott to management gurus Hamel, Peters and Christensen, the article notes that Tapscott argues that greater transparency is an unstoppable force: It is the product of growing demand from everybody with an interest in any corporation -- what he calls its 'stakeholder web' -- and of rapid technological change, above all the spread of the Internet, that makes it far easier for firms to supply information, and harder for them to keep secrets. (Economist 16 Oct 2003) http://www.economist.com/ arthur -Original Message- From: Keith Hudson [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]] Sent: Monday, December 15, 2003 3:32 AM To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: [Futurework] Status and Honours 211. Status and Honours The importance of status can hardly be exaggerated. In hunter-gatherer times, the patrilocal instinct of girls leaving their group or tribe at puberty and seeking sexual partners in a neighbouring group would mean that they would preferentially select the alpha male, or at least as high-ranking a male as possible that she found there. An extremely good example of the modern survival of this practice is to be found in Michael Palin's book, Sahara (and the BBC TV documentary) where the young women from several different groups of the Wodaabe tribe select their lifetime partners from the young men who dress up, wear lashings of kohl and stibnite make-up on their eyes and lips, and prance about (in what, to us, is an amusing way). Here, the girls are making their selection not on the basis of status per se but on the looks, the imagination of the men's dressage and bearing -- to them, as highly correlated with status and likely future life-success of the males as modern girls are able to assess by going to a night club and dancing and talking with possible future boy friends. Every group, every institution, and every country develops clear visible signs for status -- statues, memorials, rankings (civil service, army, university), decorations, letters after their names, honorary prefixes, medals, ribbons, lapel badges, hats and uniforms and so on. In England, such rankings, formally initiated by William the Conqueror in 1066 after the invasion, when he chose those who should be his barons (in exchange for military services), have evolved ever since. Lloyd George, when prime minister early last century, used to (privately) sell peerages. Prime ministers ever since have sold peerages to those who contribute to party funds (and perhaps to pirvate pockets). People, and particularly the males (for instinctive reasons) are desperately eager for signs of status. For most people, status is indicated in the goods they buy and, of course, the notion of status goods is a central theme in my evolutionary economics hypothesis. But for a minority in England, we have the honours system -- whereby titles and decorations are given by the Queen on her official birthday and at the New Year. As with so many state functions, the business of choosing who should receive honours has been taken over by the civil service and, in particular, by a small group of very senior civil servants, usually the heads of departments, or Permanent Secretaries. The minutes of the meetings in which they discuss those who should receive honours on these occasion are normally considered state secrets. Even political leaders -- even the prime minister -- are not allowed to attend these deliberations or read these minutes, though the civil servants concerned will take notice if a prime minister has particular preferences. The records are normally kept secret well beyond the usual 30-years limits for state documents. However, someone has ratted on this secrecy a few days ago. A recent set of minutes has been leaked to the press. There we have read the reason why this person or that was chosen for this or that rank of decoration. Many
[Futurework] Survivor
Harry, Keith, What is it you don't like about Survivor? For that matter, Ed, what is it you don't like? Harry I've little idea now what it is I don't like about Survivor because I can't remember it. All I can remember about it is that, during the few minutes I watched it, it filled me with the wish never to see it again. Keith Keith Hudson, Bath, England, www.evolutionary-economics.org
Re: [Futurework] But what is the cause? (was RE: [Futurework] http://www.glaesernemanufaktur.de/
of mass production and thereby make their way downwards through all the socio-economic strata, creating bow-waves of profits and investment along the way. I suggest that the vast majority of goods produced today even if they are new ones (like 3G mobile phones which are a sub-category of a previous status good -- the telephone ) are not status goods because they carry too little profit margin to stimulate the economy. They sell widely from the start. Innovative goods may initially carry high profit margins per unit of product because producers have to meet development and marketing costs, or so producers would typically argue. Yes, that's generally so. Drug companies argue this to maintain their patent protection, even though generic drug makers have demonstrated that the drugs can be produced profitably without protection. The original drug makers have a case in that the original discoveries involve huge investment of time in research. (But this doesn't justify protection by means of patents in my view, because that attempts to kibosh other parallel initiatives by other inventors and manufacturers. The original discoverers of new goods already have an immense advantage and should therefore get on with marketing it. I applaud those countries such as Brazil which have been copying western drugs or Chinese car makers which have been copying western designs. They have to do this in order to get to the leading edge. Otherwise, they will always be subservient to the original makers.) Costs per unit and profit margins per unit will typically fall as the market begins to be saturated, but the total profits of producers may not necessarily fall. Besides, there is always replacement once the market is saturated. Things wear out and often, driven by advertising (status maintenance?), consumers can be convinced that they wear out faster than they actually do. Yes, but once manufacturers are into really mass production and very wide sales their profits are wafer-thin and they've got to be on the ball constantly to keep on making their methods that little bit more efficient. It's a race that can easily be lost with the slightest lack of concentration. So far, for example, WalMart have done very well but will almost certainly falter at some stage. Sainsbury in England was in a commanding lead for quality, choice and price for several years and seemed unassailable but Tesco finally beat them into seond place by close attention to detail in everything they did to make themselves just that little bit more efficient. (In fact, Tesco is successfully holding off competition from WalMart so far.) I don't deny that your concept of 'status goods' has some validity, but frankly I don't see what it really adds to the theory of how markets and the economy incorporate new and innovative technologies that then become the impetus for a prolonged wave of growth. If there is a difference between us, it may be that I am thinking of relatively long waves, such as that produced by the internal combustion engine or the microchip, while you tend to think in terms of particular applications of these innovations. We may both be right, each in his own way. I see these long waves as being due to the particular innovative nature of the mechanical production method rather than itself automatically producing the demand for consumer goods. The essential point about status goods (as opposed to ordinary existing consumer goods) is that they (in addition to novelty and usefulness) have high profit margins *and* they are subsequently able to be mass produced. All consumer goods are either the end-results of what used to be status goods when they were truly innovative, or they are embellishments of existing consumer goods (e.g. CDs, electric toothbrushes, SUVs) or are (low-profit) infills or adjuncts of the existing product (e.g. as fishknives were to knives, forks and spoons, and spoons were to knives and forks, and forks were to knives). Keith Ed - Original Message - From: Keith Hudson To: Ed Weick Cc: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Saturday, December 13, 2003 10:13 AM Subject: Re: [Futurework] But what is the cause? (was RE: [Futurework] http://www.glaesernemanufaktur.de/ Ed, At 09:20 13/12/2003 -0500, you wrote: Keith, I do think that you push the status thing a little too hard. I am the consumer of all kinds of goods and services for all kinds of reasons. I consume bread and cereal, and have always done so, because it is part of a healthy diet. I rather doubt that the first person to have consumed such things had special status; everybody has consumed them for a very long time. Food is not involved. Food never had to be traded initially, nor for thousands of years. Think about it. If we'd had to trade for food, then man as a species couldn't have got started in the first place. I consume the services of my doctor and dentist not because I like to, or because I think the latest pills or gadgets they have give me special status
[Futurework] The dumb-bell shaped economy
Saudi Arabia. Amerfica's economy is rapidly integrating with China. As a sort of intermediate condition towards future transnational, functional governances, we are already seeing the formation of an American-Chinese dumb-bell-shaped economy. Chinese profits are sustaining the American federal exchequer; American industry is leading the way to the westernisation of the Chinese economy by means of its vast investments there. We certainly live in interesting times. Keith Hudson EUROPEAN UNION CAN'T REACH DEAL ON CONSTITUTION John Tagliabue BRUSSELS, Dec. 13 The leaders of 25 current and future members of the European Union failed to reach agreement on Saturday on a draft constitution, stumbling on a problem familiar to Americans: how to apportion power among large and small states. At issue was a proposal to discard a voting system agreed upon three years ago that gave Spain, a member of the union, and Poland, which joins next year, almost as much voting weight each as Germany, which has more than twice the population of either. Spain and Poland insisted on retaining the expanded rights. Germany's chancellor, Gerhard Schröder, called the summit meeting largely a failure, and said, We don't have a consensus on a constitution here because one or another country put the European ideal behind national interest. Officially, the leaders said they would meet to try again next year. But the failure touched off bitter recriminations that underscored differences between current and soon-to-be members of the union. The war in Iraq also played a part: the deep divisions in old and new Europe over whether to go along with the United States' military action contributed to the wedges driving the leaders apart. France's president, Jacques Chirac, said the failure galvanized his interest in creating a smaller union in the form of a pioneer group perhaps of the union's six founding countries, but open to others. He framed it as something that would accelerate integration. It would be a motor that would set an example, he said at a news conference after the talks. It would allow Europe to go faster, better. But others read it as a move toward scaling back Europe's unification. Mr. Schröder, acknowledging the temptation to do so, said, We will work that it not happen. Italy's prime minister, Silvio Berlusconi, chairman of the talks, agreed. I am not a partisan of the idea of six countries, he said. Prime Minister Tony Blair of Britain, who had sought unsuccessfully to soften the Spanish and Polish positions, said, It is in my view entirely sensible that we take the time to get it right. He added, To look at this in sort of apocalyptic terms is, I think, rather misguided. Poland's prime minister, Leszek Miller, left Brussels and was expected to call a cabinet meeting to discuss the outcome, Polish diplomats said. The meeting was not without its successes. On Friday, the leaders took a first important step toward striking a deal on the constitution's draft text, the subject of almost two years of discussion, when they agreed unanimously to a common defense policy that included planning abilities independent of NATO. The constitution is considered crucial in light of the coming enlargement, by which the union, which began as a customs union of Germany, France, Italy, Belgium, Luxembourg and the Netherlands, will become a 25-member club, bringing into its embrace many former East Bloc states, including Poland, Hungary, the Czech Republic and Slovenia. The striking thing is that 95 percent of the issues are largely resolved, said Kevin Featherstone of the European Institute at the London School of Economics. He said it was the very fact that agreements had been reached in most areas that had narrowed the room for the usual horse trading that lies at the heart of European compromises. With little else to decide, the voting rights issue became crystal clear. But he also said the stewardship of the talks might have contributed to the failure. Berlusconi has this putting-your-foot-in-it tendency, he said. As with the American leadership in Philadelphia in the 1780's, Europe's leaders are acting because they recognize that the challenges facing an enlarged union require more efficient government structures. Recent moves, including the introduction of the euro and the creation of a central bank, have fueled the drive beyond simple economic integration toward common policies in defense and foreign affairs. The analogy with the United States, which moved in the 1780's from a confederation to a stronger national government under the Constitution, has not escaped the Europeans. When Valéry Giscard d'Estaing, the former French president and chairman of the convention that framed the draft constitution, left for vacation last summer, he took along a copy of David McCullough's best-selling biography of John Adams, the author of the Massachusetts Constitution, the oldest
[Futurework] Saddam's capture and Blair's body language
208. Saddam's capture and Blair's body language The news has just come through here that Saddam has been captured. On TV we have seen Bremer's triumphalist announcement from Baghdad but also Blair's announcement from 10, Downing Street. This was far from triumphalist in tone. He spoke the measured words that everybody expected him to speak about Muslims pulling together in Iraq and so on, but what struck me very forcibly was his body language. I have never seen Blair quite so stressed before. His words were saying one thing, his facial _expression_ was saying something else. He'd been speaking with Bush a few minutes before, apparently, and I couldn't help thinking that whatever Bush had told him hadn't cheered him up much. Quite what his agonised face was saying we cannot know at this point. My guess is that now Saddam has been captured, we shall soon know whether Blix and his UN team of inspectors were correct in saying that there were probably no more weapons of mass destruction (WMDs) left in Iraq at the time of the invasion. If so, it could be that this will bring about Blair's resignation quicker than it would have been otherwise. I think he was preparing to go soon after Christmas on a separate issue (losing a vote of confidence on university students' loans) and was then hoping that Lord Hutton's report on Dr Kellys' death would have let him off relatively lightly on the matter of his agreeing to allowing Dr Kelly's name to be released. But now, it might be that events will move too fast for him. In addition, president Chirac of France is hurling vituperation at Blair for the breakdown in the European Union constitutional summit yesterday. So Blair may be thinking that, on several counts, now he'll be resigning under a cloud -- two or three of them, in fact. So far, Grand Atatollah Sistani has acted with wisdom and restraint since the invasion. Much rests now on what sort of elections he will insist upon and whether a majority Shia government will allow secular education to continue in the schools or whether they will be now be dominated by Shia clerics as they are in Iran or as the Wahabi clerics do in Saudi Arabia. The future is still fraught with immense problems for the Americans. If they accept Sistani's demands, and a legitimate government ensues, can Bush be sure that US and UK oil corporations will be able to negotiate development contracts in the northern oilfields? Aftyer all, this is what America badly needs as a form of insurance if an insurrection erupts in Saudi Arabia. Keith Hudson Keith Hudson, Bath, England, www.evolutionary-economics.org
[Futurework] But what is the cause? (was RE: [Futurework] http://www.glaesernemanufaktur.de/
Harry, Just as natural history in Victorian times was formative in the development of botany, zoology, biology and evolutionary theory, the traditional description of economics as dealing with the Nature, the Production, and the Distribution of Wealth shows that it still at an early stage of understanding. We can only move towards economics being regarded as a science when we start to examine the *causes* of economics and trade. Why did the whole business start in the first place? If we were able to trace back the history of every single item of consumer goods -- however trivial it may seem to us today -- we will discover that, in every case (apart from food), it first made its appearance as a item desired for its enhancement of status. Status, as in every social mammal sepcies, is the means by which selection is made for sexual activity, the strongest of our instincts apart from eating, and for its only slightly lesser byproduct -- though still valuable -- of social inclusion with the group or community. Today, the whole world of politics and business, is in a dither. Economists can give us no guidance of where we're heading. Unfortunately, the classical economists can give us no guidance. Major figures though they were, they had not yet started to ask the Why question. Until we do so -- and in my view appreciate that economic activity is mainly driven by new consumer goods bought for status only -- then we can make no sensible forecasts of just where modern society in developed countries is heading. Until we do, economics will remain as a purely descriptive activity -- as at the 'beetle collection stage' of the biological sciences 200 years ago or, to change the metaphor, the various economic nostrums that are prescribed today are no better than the weird variety of medicines that doctors gave to their patients 200 years ago before medical science started looking for causes of diseases. Keith At 23:00 12/12/2003 -0800, you wrote: Arthur, Wouldn't you know it? You almost repeated - word for word - what Henry George said in 1878. Great minds think alike! It's the reason why Classical Political Economy is described as The Science that deals with the Nature, the Production, and the Distribution of Wealth. That Distribution bit is the essence of Political Economy. Would that modern economists would start thinking about why the distribution is so unfair, instead of devising ways to patch the system by taking from the rich and giving to the poor. Harry Henry George School of Social Science of Los Angeles Box 655 Tujunga CA 91042 Tel: 818 352-4141 -- Fax: 818 353-2242 http://haledward.home.comcast.net -Original Message- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]] Sent: Wednesday, December 10, 2003 5:26 PM To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]; [EMAIL PROTECTED]; [EMAIL PROTECTED] Cc: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: RE: [Futurework] http://www.glaesernemanufaktur.de/ We have solved the production problem but can't seem to deal with the issue of distribution. Arthur -Original Message- From: Harry Pollard [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]] Sent: Wednesday, December 10, 2003 5:15 PM To: 'Brad McCormick, Ed.D.'; 'Ed Weick' Cc: 'futurework' Subject: RE: [Futurework] http://www.glaesernemanufaktur.de/ Brad, We are discussing these problems in a society where the power to produce has reached unbelievable proportions (After many have been thrown out of work, the industries they left behind are actually producing more. Productivity hasn't fallen even though there are far fewer workers employed.) Why these problems? Harry --- Outgoing mail is certified Virus Free. Checked by AVG anti-virus system (http://www.grisoft.com). Version: 6.0.548 / Virus Database: 341 - Release Date: 12/5/2003 ___ Futurework mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://scribe.uwaterloo.ca/mailman/listinfo/futurework Keith Hudson, Bath, England, www.evolutionary-economics.org
RE: [Futurework] David Ricardo, Caveman Trade vs. Modern Trade
Harry, Well said! Keith At 23:00 12/12/2003 -0800, you wrote: Chris, Of course the New Internationalist is not automatically wrong. But it has an anti-market editorial stance, so when it discusses anything to do with the market - its editorial policy will come to the fore. I don't blame it for that. In fact it is a well constructed magazine. And it looks good. I despair of your ability to hold a thought in your mind long enough to produce a sensible paragraph. Free trade is the absence of government interference. So you link it to the government printing money. Free trade has nothing to do with government idiocy. Government interference is your preference. You simply love this alternative to free trade. Yet, strangely enough you keep complaining about government activities. I suppose there is no way to please you. You do support the demands of a couple of hundred thousand steel workers over the desires of 280 million Americans. You are happy that all those Americans will pay higher prices so the steelworkers can live better. Of course steelworkers get high wages and excellent pensions, Like the capitalists, the socialists apparently pass out privileges to gain influence and achieve power. Those of us who are underprivileged see little difference between the two. Harry Henry George School of Social Science of Los Angeles Box 655 Tujunga CA 91042 Tel: 818 352-4141 -- Fax: 818 353-2242 http://haledward.home.comcast.net -Original Message- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]] On Behalf Of Christoph Reuss Sent: Monday, November 24, 2003 6:19 AM To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: RE: [Futurework] David Ricardo, Caveman Trade vs. Modern Trade Harry Pollard wrote: The New Internationalist is, of course, noted for its left wing anti-market stance. I used to subscribe but got tired of its bias. Does that automatically make it wrong what they said about Ricardo? Next thing you'll say is that Pierre Pettigrew also has a leftist bias... export-led trade has come to dominate the economic agenda. These are the economics of modern nation states - apparently the economics you support). They adopt the creed of Export or Die rather than the free trade position which is import and live. If you are in a position to print the world currency at will (U$), then of course it's easy to import and live -- import all you want, de facto FOR FREE (paid with self-made paper money). FREE trade, literally! ;-} However, other countries have to actually earn that money first (IF they want to import), and this usually happens by exporting stuff. For the record, I'm not particularly supporting export-led trade, which is neither necessary nor desirable from a localization/self- sufficiency position. A free trader wants to abolish trade restrictions in his country. If no other country wants to free its trade, that doesn't matter. The free trader will unilaterally free his country's trade and by doing so will remove the corporate privileges that go with Protectionism. If it's like this, then please act to introduce Free Trade in your country only, and get your gov't to STOP pushing FT down everyone else's throat (as in establishing FT areas all over N.+S.America and the Middle East, and bullying Europe, Asia and 3rd world into removing trade barriers). Good luck in doing so, Harry. Protectionism has one raison d'etre - to protect corporate privileges, a policy that I suppose you support (you have already admitted you agree with Big Steel shafting the American people). It seems you overlooked what I wrote about legitimate fees vs. obscene profits. If Big Steel is shafting the American people by giving obscene sums to shareholders and CEOs, then I don't agree. However, if American companies buy American steel, produced locally by paying fair wages, respecting environmental regulations and avoiding unnecessary long-distance transports, then I agree. It rather seems _you_ want to shaft the American people by using cheap imports, taking away their jobs. Chris ~ ~~~ SpamWall: Mail to this addy is deleted unread unless it contains the keyword igve. --- Outgoing mail is certified Virus Free. Checked by AVG anti-virus system (http://www.grisoft.com). Version: 6.0.548 / Virus Database: 341 - Release Date: 12/5/2003 ___ Futurework mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://scribe.uwaterloo.ca/mailman/listinfo/futurework Keith Hudson, Bath, England, www.evolutionary-economics.org
RE: [Futurework] Private health care (was E.European...) -- the free market again(?)
cripples take all from the honest athletes, etc.? Best wishes to all! \brad mccormick --- Outgoing mail is certified Virus Free. Checked by AVG anti-virus system (http://www.grisoft.com). Version: 6.0.548 / Virus Database: 341 - Release Date: 12/5/2003 ___ Futurework mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://scribe.uwaterloo.ca/mailman/listinfo/futurework Keith Hudson, Bath, England, www.evolutionary-economics.org
[Futurework] They've lost my IQ score!
geniuses are very bright, of course, often far above the entry level for Mensa. But some are not. Genius is about obsessiveness in choosing particular problems and persistence in tackling them. They shake a problem to pieces as a dog does with a rat. This is what I am attempting to do in the subject of economics because I think it is about time that it established itself as a science like several other humanistic disciplines have done recently. While I am certainly an ex-Mensan, I am not sure yet whether I am a genius. Keith Hudson IS MENSA DUMBING DOWN? Sathnam Sanghera The other week I learned something new and rather exciting about myself I am a genius. At the invitation of Mensa, I spent 45 minutes completing their Home Test, the first step you need to take to join the high IQ society, sent it off in the post to be marked, and waited for the result. A letter came back a few days later saying I had an IQ of 155. To put this in a bit of context the average IQ is 100; to qualify for Mensa, which takes only the top 2 per cent of the population, you need an IQ of 148 or above. A score of 155 puts me in the top 1 per cent. In short, I am very clever indeed. But while this happy letter from Mensa confirmed what I had always quietly suspected, it presented a problem. I had also got four colleagues to complete the Home Test and was now terrified that they had fared worse than me. I would have to tell them my brilliant score, they would have to face the fact that they were not as bright as me, and, frankly, it would be awkward. Nobody likes a show-off. My heart skipped a beat as they opened their respective envelopes. FT columnist Lucy Kellaway was first. It was a relief to see the slight smirk she had got 155 too. management editor Mike Skapinker was next. Again, that giveaway smug grin. 155 too. Then it was Paul Solman, the deputy features editor. A self-satisfied smile. 155. Ditto for employment correspondent David Turner. In one way it was the ideal result - none of us were exposed as being measurably dimmer than the rest. But I couldn't help feeling deflated. It's fun being a genius, but when everyone around you is a genius too, it's not so exciting. I began wondering about the accuracy of the Mensa test. Lucy Kellaway, the genius that she is, did a calculation on the back of an envelope showing that the likelihood of us all having an IQ of 155 was somewhere around one in 24m. I fired off an e-mail to John Stevenage, the chief executive of Mensa, asking why we had all attained the same fantastic score. His prompt reply listed several possible explanations we all work for the same clever newspaper so a high score is quite possible (our favourite explanation); some of us might not have kept very strictly to the allotted 45 minutes (our least favourite explanation); the Home Test is only a trial indicator - in order to formally join Mensa you need to pass a more reliable supervised IQ test, or submit a qualifying test score from an approved test. But my genius colleagues and I came up with an alternative theory Mensa is so desperate for members that it flatters people who complete the free Home Test in the hope that they will then sit a supervised IQ test and become paid-up members. It's a horrible, cynical thing to suggest about a great British institution such as Mensa - but could it be true? Surely Mensa isn't that desperate? Unfortunately, membership figures for the society, which was set up in 1946 by Lancelot Ware, a postgraduate Oxford student, and Roland Berrill, an Australian with a private fortune, suggest that it might be. Membership in the UK currently stands at a lowly 26,247 - the lowest figure in 15 years, more than 17,400 below the figure 10 years ago, when membership reached an all-time high of 43,652. While Mensa has a worldwide membership of 98,861, British Mensa, the heart and home of the society, is in a very sorry state indeed. So what has gone wrong? Well, pretty much everything. Mensa did very well for a period between 1980 and 1997, when Sir Clive Sinclair was chairman, growing from about 8,000 members to about 36,000 when he stepped down. The expansion was the result of Sinclair's high public profile in the 1980's and the work of chief executive Harold Gale, who aggressively increased membership by placing Mensa puzzles and adverts in newspapers. But things went very wobbly in the mid-1990's when Gale was unceremoniously sacked for running a small puzzle business out of Mensa offices. Though his appeal to an industrial tribunal was successful, he never got over the depression generated by the publicity. In 1997 the 55-year-old drove his car into a railway bridge support arch. The official verdict was accidental death, but those close to him believe he took his own life. Before setting out he had left a note on his kitchen table. It would have been better, he was reported to have written, if Sir Clive
Re: [Futurework] But what is the cause? (was RE: [Futurework] http://www.glaesernemanufaktur.de/
Ed, At 09:20 13/12/2003 -0500, you wrote: Keith, I do think that you push the status thing a little too hard. I am the consumer of all kinds of goods and services for all kinds of reasons. I consume bread and cereal, and have always done so, because it is part of a healthy diet. I rather doubt that the first person to have consumed such things had special status; everybody has consumed them for a very long time. Food is not involved. Food never had to be traded initially, nor for thousands of years. Think about it. If we'd had to trade for food, then man as a species couldn't have got started in the first place. I consume the services of my doctor and dentist not because I like to, or because I think the latest pills or gadgets they have give me special status, but because I need to. I'd like to think that employers or clients have consumed my services because of the status that imparts, but I don't think that's been the case. What about innovation? People buy something new simply because it works better than something old. Can openers are a good example. What about security? A lot of things that people did not purchase ordinarily were consumed post 9/11 because of the fear of terror. People did not look at one another and say 'Wow! he's got the latest germ protective suit! I gotta have one too!' They bought because they were scared. Well, doctors and can-openers are subsidiary to the main economy. I've never intended to say that all consumer goods have been status goods. But all new goods that are in a new category (as, surely, the car was in the last century) have been status goods (so long as they have some intrinsic interest or novelty) because they are in high demand by the well-off. I think you are too focused on one thing. I know that you are trying to make the argument that certain goods move the economy forward because of the status they impart, but the separation of status from utility, fear, fashion or fancy is never that clear. No, you've got me wrong. There are certain new types of goods which are status goods because they carry a high profit margin. Unlike positional goods (with which they have some similarities), status goods are then capable of mass production and thereby make their way downwards through all the socio-economic strata, creating bow-waves of profits and investment along the way. I suggest that the vast majority of goods produced today even if they are new ones (like 3G mobile phones which are a sub-category of a previous status good -- the telephone ) are not status goods because they carry too little profit margin to stimulate the economy. They sell widely from the start. Keith Ed - Original Message - From: Keith Hudson To: Harry Pollard Cc: [EMAIL PROTECTED] ; [EMAIL PROTECTED] ; [EMAIL PROTECTED] ; [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Saturday, December 13, 2003 2:56 AM Subject: [Futurework] But what is the cause? (was RE: [Futurework] http://www.glaesernemanufaktur.de/ Harry, Just as natural history in Victorian times was formative in the development of botany, zoology, biology and evolutionary theory, the traditional description of economics as dealing with the Nature, the Production, and the Distribution of Wealth shows that it still at an early stage of understanding. We can only move towards economics being regarded as a science when we start to examine the *causes* of economics and trade. Why did the whole business start in the first place? If we were able to trace back the history of every single item of consumer goods -- however trivial it may seem to us today -- we will discover that, in every case (apart from food), it first made its appearance as a item desired for its enhancement of status. Status, as in every social mammal sepcies, is the means by which selection is made for sexual activity, the strongest of our instincts apart from eating, and for its only slightly lesser byproduct -- though still valuable -- of social inclusion with the group or community. Today, the whole world of politics and business, is in a dither. Economists can give us no guidance of where we're heading. Unfortunately, the classical economists can give us no guidance. Major figures though they were, they had not yet started to ask the Why question. Until we do so -- and in my view appreciate that economic activity is mainly driven by new consumer goods bought for status only -- then we can make no sensible forecasts of just where modern society in developed countries is heading. Until we do, economics will remain as a purely descriptive activity -- as at the 'beetle collection stage' of the biological sciences 200 years ago or, to change the metaphor, the various economic nostrums that are prescribed today are no better than the weird variety of medicines that doctors gave to their patients 200 years ago before medical science started looking for causes of diseases. Keith At 23:00 12/12/2003 -0800, you wrote: Arthur, Wouldn't you know it? You almost repeated
RE: [Futurework] They've lost my IQ score!
Lawry, I much enjoyed your account of Joe, too. But, if I may, let me just select one thing from it -- when you asked Joe: Does Max [G. Spencer] Brown really make any sense? What did he say? In times past I have spent weeks and weeks puzzling over his system and what it really means. It's beautiful in all sorts of ways and, in fact, I used it in some papers I wrote about the cortex about 15 years ago. But, just like quantum theory which no one understands, though physicists use it, I used Spencer-Brown's system but didn't understand it! I felt intuitively it was right because it was so succinct and all-ecompassing. If Joe explained it then I would love to know what he said. Keith At 11:38 13/12/2003 -0500, you wrote: Loved your account, Keith. Good thing you are getting old enough to write it grin. I never applied to Mensa and wouldn't qualify. The smartest person I ever knew worked as a mail carrier. It gave him time to think about things while he making his rounds. I met him when he showed up one day to apply to a group home. My housemates rejected him as too weird, but Joe and I became friends. We talked about mathematical concepts, or rather I asked questions and he answered. I would ask things like Is a number a point or a distance? and Would a quaternary computer work better than a binary one? and Does Max [G. Spencer] Brown really make any sense? and Would a base-8 numerical system be inferior to the base-10 one? and he would ponder a bit and then launch into erudite, lilting, gesticulating explanations that were way above my head. He confused the naiveté' and gibberish of my questions with depth and so put up with me. He lived, aside from our occasional meetings, a solitary life with no other friends. But he seemed happy enough, if perplexed by the general behavior of his fellow human beings. He rented for a pittance a tiny room in the basement of a downtown hotel. The room had pipes of all sizes running though it, some hot and some cold, some hissing and some grunting, and Joe had placed boards on the pipes as shelves, and hung one hanger for his uniform. He had many jars of dried fruit and nuts and that was all he ate. I began to travel and we lost touch. I wonder what became of him, and how he is doing today. Lawry Keith Hudson Sent: Sat, December 13, 2003 9:25 AM Subject: [Futurework] They've lost my IQ score! The following FT article about Mensa, the high IQ-score society, reminds me that I have a beef with this organisation. As a young man, I took the Mensa test because, at the time, I didn't quite know where or what I was and was beginning to doubt my own sanity in a mild sort of way. As the most junior of all junior clerks in a local government department I was shy, largely lacking in confidence and found that my working colleagues and bosses would throw curious side-glances at me when they saw the sorts of books and magazines I was carrying about with me and reading at lunch-time. So I quickly learned to hide whatever I was reading inside run-of-the-mill newpapers and pretended to read the latter instead. I don't suppose that fooled them one little bit, and they must have thought my furtive behaviour was all the more strange. Also, whenever I was supposed to be carrying important pieces of paper from one place to another in my home town, I would slope off to the reference department of the town's central library and feast myself for an hour on the magazines and journals there which I couldn't have afforded or, indeed, didn't know existed otherwise. I had an intensely embarrassing experience on one occasion. I was sitting reading a magazine whose title I can't now remember with a stack of two or three more beside me which I was going to rifle through before going back to the office. On the top of the stack was The Hibbert Journal and, suddenly, it was lifted into the air by a man who appeared at my side. I saw that he was one of my bosses. He leafed through it, replaced the journal, gave me one of those looks which I had learned to receive so well and said: M'mm going into the church, are we, Hudson?. And then he walked away, leaving me to hastily replace the magazines on their shelves and scoot back to the office. Fortunately, he was a middle-ranking boss and didn't rat on me. In fact, he treated me rather kindly after that in the office, and more than once hinted that if I were to resume going to the library again he wouldn't let on. But I was greatly mixed up. All my friends from school had gone to university but my parents thought I had to get a job and, besides, I hadn't been an academic success, to say the least. In fact, I hated school, because it was putting on airs and graces then as it was trying to become a member of the Independent Conference (called a public school in England). So that's why, a few years later, I took the Mensa test in case it gave me some clues about myself. In fact, I found the home-test so
Re: [Futurework] Look in the mirror
Karen, At 09:09 13/12/2003 -0800, you wrote: Conservative columnist George Will warns about overreaching to establish democracy in Iraq by comparing notes as Keith has recently about Northern Ireland. But he spends most of his space here describing Putinisms dark side. Well, it's reassuring that someone else has noticed that there are quite close similarities between the Protestants' and Catholics' troubles in Northern Ireland today and the Sunnis and Shias in Iraq. When I wrote my original posting referring to thousands of deaths in Northern Ireland I wasn't quite sure how many and I didn't have time to do any research. So, thanks to George Self , I'm now reminded that it's 3,000. But . just consider! These 3,000 deaths in the last 30 years (occurring as they did in a so-called developed country) were confined to a relatively small portion of Belfast and one or two small border towns (between Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland). The total population that is (still) under stress in NI doesn't compare with that in Iraq -- maybe one twentieth or one fiftieth of the latter in the Sunni region of Iraq and Baghdad. If the American troops ever cause a massacre equivalent in its effect as the one in Derry in NI 30 years ago, then I can only guess with horror what the consequences may be. I fear that the terrorism that's going on now (the Shias being largely quiescent under the advice of Ayatollah Sistani), is but a pale reflection of what could happen if as stupid a command to American troops were given in the near futgure as General Ford gave to the British groops in Derry in 1977. Talk about steel walls 20ft high as in Belfast right now, they'll have to be 50ft high! As for Putin's Russia -- well, one can only be anguished as it descends relentlessly into Tsarism again. Keith Hudson If we are comparing, maybe he could also write a column about gerrymandering and voting integrity that challenge US democracy. This is dated for Sundays edition but online today. KWC Democracy Under Siege By George F. Will, Sunday, December 14, 2003; Page B07 On Europe's western edge, in Ulster, democracy is producing unlovely results. On Europe's eastern edge, in Russia, the results are even more unsavory. Those whose mission is to finish regime change in Iraq by constructing democracy can sense how long their task may take by noting the difficulties in Europe, which is more politically mature than the Middle East. When did the troubles in Northern Ireland begin? The Battle of the Boyne is a convenient marker. That victory of the armies of King William III, a Protestant, over those of King James II, a Catholic, is still celebrated by Ulster Protestants, largely to lacerate the feelings of Catholics, every July 12. It occurred in 1690. Thirty-five years ago Northern Ireland boiled into violence that in three decades claimed 3,000 lives. Five years ago the Good Friday agreement, brokered by the United States and endorsed by 71 percent of Ulster voters, supposedly brought peace by bringing paramilitary forces into politics. Concerning another country, the Los Angeles Times reports that U.S. and other diplomats have met commanders of an Afghan faction that is attacking the U.S.-led troops, urging the militants to dump their leader, disarm and form democratic parties. Sudden conversions to civility would solve most of the world's problems -- and would be especially helpful in Ulster. There the power sharing under the 1998 agreement, which was supposed to marginalize or moderate the extremists, has marginalized the moderates. The party of Ian Paisley, the 77-year-old Protestant fanatic who says the pope is the antichrist, has become the largest party in the province's assembly, which has been suspended for more than a year, since allegations of Irish Republican Army spying. Paisley refuses to deal with Sinn Fein, the political arm of the IRA, a paramilitary force that probably will now refuse to continue the decommissioning -- disarmament -- that it has committed to but has done only partially and grudgingly. For the first time, Sinn Fein has surpassed more moderate parties to become the dominant voice of those who reject British rule in Ulster. In Russia, a bastardized mockery of democracy has produced the marginalization -- actually, the annihilation -- of the moderates. After the elections to Russia's parliament, a senior adviser to the real winner, President Vladimir Putin, used a familiar Marxist trope in reading out of history the two pro-Western parties that failed to win any seats. They should, he said, be calm about it and realize that their historical mission has been completed. One reason they have been, in Trotsky's words, consigned to the dustbin of history is that Putin, who trained for democracy in the Soviet KGB, is using managed democracy to concoct a meretricious legitimacy for lawless authoritarianism. In a post-election statement, Putin blandly promised to correct shortcomings
[Futurework] Shakespeare's three great leaders -- Bush, Hu and Putin
and philosophy and then relating it all to modern technology in a bewildleringly fascinating way that caused Lake to throw away his formal discussion agenda and simply enjoy a fascinating conversation with a man of obviously great.scholarship. They postponed negoitations until the next days. The present president, Hu Jintao, is more than likely to be as gifted and versatile as Jiang Jemin. As a young man Mr Hu qualified as an engineer at Qinghua University in Beijing, the most prestigious university in China, for which millions of young Chinese sit examinations every year for one of 3,000 places. John Thornton, the ex-CEO of Goldman Sachs and who made it into the top investment bank in Europe, teaches there now. This is what he thinks of Qinghua (or Tsinghua) University: If you were to put Harvard, Stanford, Yale, Chicago, etc, all together you still wouldn't have the concentration of future leaders you do at Tsinghua. So Hu Jintao is no intellectual slouch! The BBC News item below gives a few more details about him. But since this item, president Hu has already released a raft of radical reforms in almost every aspect of Chinese life -- more freedom for the media, stricter banking regulations and control of corruption, and the further institution of democratic voting procedures in the countryside among many others. Finally, we come to Shakepseare's third category of greatness -- that which comes out of the blue. As the communist system in the Soviet Union was collapsing, Putin, one of hundreds of officers of his rank (major) in the KGB thought that he would have to become a taxi-driver in order to survive. Then he was selected by an old friend, the Mayor of St Petersburg to be his Mr Fix-it and then soon afterwards, even more astonishingly, chosen by Yeltsin as the next president of Russia! This was a man of modest rank in the secret service with absolutely no political or administrative experience becoming the president of a country with the greatest land mass in the world and many of its greatest resources! I think there's a slight clue in an article written from Der Spiegel by Christian Neef. Although everything we have seen and read about Putin so far -- his oppression of the independent TV channels, his arrest of Khordokovsky, etc -- suggests that he is heading towards being a dictator, ably assisgted by an revivified secret service, there is a clue in the following article as to why Yeltsin chose him. In bringing about the privatisation of Russia as fast as possible in order to prevent any possibility of communism returning, Yeltsin had cut many corners and, strictly speaking, was criminally guity of many acts which, after his retirement, he could have been arrested for. Yeltsin thus needed a successor who would give him absolution and who would not go back on his word. Putin was such a person. There seems to be considerable rigidity in his personality and while this will probably augur badly for Russia as a whole and over the longer term, there are a couple of unexpected instances mentioned which are praiseworthy. So, to summarise, what is the future of Shakespeare's dramatic personae? Indeed, what is our future in their hands? Both Hu and the newly re-elected Putin have years of power ahead of them, Bush, we don;t know about yet. He faces presidential re-election next November and, at the time of writing, the American political situation is exquisitely poised between the 'super-Patriot' Bush and his attempt to carry a sufficiently large jingoistic electorate with him in the coming months, and the newly rising star, Howard Dean, who has been the only Democratic candidate who has constantly opposed the invasion of Iraq. We will see. Whoever wins will join Hu Jintao and Vladimir Putin in possessing awesome power over the rest of us. Except for one fact of life. Powerful leaders are commensurately afraid of their own people. And they are particularly fearful of new ideas or cultural shifts within their own people which can be their undoing. Hu Jintao, like the rest of his politburo, deeply fears unrest by hundreds of millions of Chinese, particularly those in the countryside, unless he can keep on delivering consumer prosperity. Vladimir Putin, with his secret service backing him up, doesn't fear any sort of uprising, but he has a population which is literally dying on him, due to alcoholism, drug addiction, Aids, fast-declining fertility and sheer despair about the future. And George W.Bush, or Howard Dean, will have to cope with an American electorate, and particularly an intelligentsia, which is becoming more and more deeply cynical of politics and government as a whole -- and thus of the very basis of presidential validity. Keith Hudson HU JUNTAO Even close followers of Chinese politics can say little for sure about Hu Jintao, the man who has taken over as China's Communist Party leader and is its new president. It is 10 years since Deng Xiaoping promoted Mr Hu to the party's ruling Politburo
Re: Slightly extended (was Re: [Futurework] David Ricardo, Cavema n Trade vs. Modern Trade
At 23:11 10/12/2003 -0500, you wrote: Harry, don't even mention the show 'Survivor' to me. I see it as absolute American crap, like the Stench of America. There's nothing in it that even remotely bears any resemblance of the reality of hunters and gatherers. Ed My God, yes! You really do disappoint me sometimes, Harry. There are many things on TV that one looks at for 5 minutes and then never ever want to see it again. Crap is hardly the word. Many TV shows reflect a society that has become disembowelled with consumerism. (Now there's a word I use a lot. But consumerism doesn't have ad hominem overtones because we are all consumers and we are all taken in to a greater or lesser extent. We need a society in which consumer goods are on tap but not on top.) Keith - Original Message - From: Harry Pollard To: 'Ed Weick' ; 'Keith Hudson' Cc: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Wednesday, December 10, 2003 5:15 PM Subject: RE: Slightly extended (was Re: [Futurework] David Ricardo, Cavema n Trade vs. Modern Trade Ed, Another good discussion. I see little network television, but one I try to see is Survivor. In it, people are voted out of the tribe. Those that remain try to survive until the final episode when the winner gets $1 million. (Remember the $64,000 question?) One member was a good catcher of fish and they enjoyed the food he supplied. Yet, he was also so good generally that the others felt they would never win if he remained in the tribe. So he was voted off. Yet, the worries of the others centered on the lack of fish that would follow his dismissal. The crucial factor was that there was only a week or two remaining. If the tribe had looked to a longer life, I'm sure they would never have let him go. His hunter/gatherer abilities were too good. Interesting. Harry Henry George School of Social Science of Los Angeles Box 655 Tujunga CA 91042 Tel: 818 352-4141 -- Fax: 818 353-2242 http://haledward.home.comcast.net From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]] On Behalf Of Ed Weick Sent: Saturday, December 06, 2003 3:27 PM To: Keith Hudson Cc: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: Re: Slightly extended (was Re: [Futurework] David Ricardo, Cavema n Trade vs. Modern Trade Keith, I don't think we can go much further on this. You are the product of a stratified society full of Alpha males. I don't agree that this is necessarily the way societies and males have to be. I would however like to add a few more comments before I respectfully withdraw from the field. You say: Once again, your Indian tribes would certainly have had hierarchies, all sorts of heirarchies depending on the skills that was the current context. But they wouldn't have been obvious and, I suggest, they would have been invisible to you as an outsider unless you got to know them very well indeed. Listen to what ethologists, anthropologists, animal behavioural researchers say -- they all say that they have to live with the group (animal or human) they're studying all day long, month after month and sometimes for several years until they understand the dynamics of a group and the hierarchy. Actually, I spent some five years working for the Council for Yukon Indians (CYI) in the late 1980s and early 1990s and also spent four years with the Mackenzie Valley Pipeline Inquiry during the 1970s. While doing that I spent a great deal of time in the Yukon and the Mackenzie Valley and got to know Native people quite well. Yes indeed I was an outsider, but also a participant in what was going on. I have to repeat that in their dealings with each other the people I worked with were extremely egalitarian. In the case of the CYI, jobs were filled on the basis of what people could do, and not on the basis of who they were. Many important jobs were filled by women, including the leadership of the organization. My boss was an extremely competent woman. She has now passed on, but her daughter has become active in the Yukon Indian movement. You mention that ethnologists and anthropologists have to live with the people they are studying. I have a couple of friends that did just that. Hugh Brody, a British anthropologist and film maker, learned to speak fluent Inuktitut and lived with the Inuit of North Baffin for many months. One of his books, which I would highly recommend, The Peoples' Land, came out of that. He also spent time in Indian communities in northern British Columbia, and Maps and Dreams came out of that. Another friend, a geographer, lived with the people of Banks Island while he was doing his doctorate. I'm having lunch with him on Monday, and will ask him what he thinks about stratification and Alpha males among the Inuvialuit he lived with. In the course of my career, I have met and worked with many other social scientists that have spent time in Native communities. Quite frankly, I don't think many
[Futurework] What happens when Asia has caught up?
We have Karen to thank for bringing the following to our attention. In my view it is quite the most interesting and thoughtful economic discussion I have read in a long while -- a conversation ably transcribed into readable form by Erika Kinetz (a difficult job, as anybody who has done this will know!). The interlocutors had enough on their plates in talking about the jobs that are now leaving America and Europe for Asia to talk of other deeper factors. In a way, China, India and the other south east Asian countries have an easy job because they're playing catch-up. All they need to do essentially is to produce orthodox goods and services for the West more cheaply than we can make them and then supply their own consumer markets which, being much larger than ours, will produce a new super-large brand of multinational. Initially, as pointed out below, most of these will remain headquartered in American and European countries (hopefully swelling the funds of investors and pensions institutions over here) but increasingly they will become indigenous. Quite apart from the probability that all the developed and the neo-developed countries will be draining the existing energy resources of the world, there are two more big questions. The first is: Once the Asian countries have caught up, will they have the innovative ability to start supplying a new generation of consumer products? (We must remember that America's economic success in the last century -- to a very considerable extent -- has been due to being able to recruit the best brains of Europe and, in recent decades, Asia. The former brain drain will undoubtedly continue, but the latter will probably dry up in the coming years as their own countries supply sufficient opportunities for research and development.) The second question is: Can we be sure that developed societies have the structural capacity to absorb further goods? A corollary to this is: Will the initiatory class (the middle-class consumer market with sufficient disposable incomes not in hock to the credit card companies) have the time, energy or inclination to absorb more consumer goods in their daily lives and thus set off another wave of consumption? Keith Hudson WHO WINS AND WHO LOSES AS JOBS MOVE OVERSEAS? Erika Kinetz The outsourcing of jobs to China and India is not new, but lately it has earned a chilling new adjective -- professional. Advances in communications technology have enabled white-collar jobs to be shipped from the United States and Europe as never before, and the outcry from workers who once considered themselves invulnerable is creating a potent political force. After falling by 2.8 million jobs since early 2001, employment has risen by 240,000 jobs since August. That gain, less than some expected, has not resolved whether the nation is suffering cyclical losses or permanent job destruction. Last month, The International Herald Tribune convened a roundtable at the Algonquin Hotel in Manhattan to discuss how job migration is changing the landscape. The participants were Josh Bivens, an economist with the Economic Policy Institute, a nonprofit research group in Washington that receives a third of its financing from labor unions; Diana Farrell, the director of the McKinsey Global Institute, which is McKinsey Company's internal economics research group; Edmund Harriss, the portfolio manager of the Guinness Atkinson China and Hong Kong fund and the Guinness Atkinson Asia Focus fund; M. Eric Johnson, director of Tuck's Glassmeyer/McNamee Center for Digital Strategies at the Tuck School of Business, Dartmouth College; and, via conference call from Singapore, Stephen S. Roach, managing director and chief economist of Morgan Stanley . Following are excerpts from their conversation. Q. How big an issue is job migration? MR. ROACH: Offshore outsourcing is a huge deal. We do not have a data series called jobs lost to offshore outsourcing, but 23 months into the recovery, private sector jobs are running nearly seven million workers below the norm of the typical hiring cycle. Something new is going on. America is short of jobs as never before, and the major candidates for our offshore outsourcing are ramping up employment as never before. So yes, I think two and two is four. MS. FARRELL: This is a big deal in the sense that we see something structural happening. But I would react to the notion that it is a big deal that we should try to stop or recognize as anything other than the economic process of change. I think the bigger deal is the fact that we are going to have very serious curtailment of the working age population. MR. BIVENS: I'm curious about Steve's assertion that outsourcing can explain the sluggish employment situation. If you just look at slow growth plus fast productivity, you've got the sluggish labor market right there. MR. ROACH: A pick-up in productivity does not have to be accompanied by sluggish employment. There are countless examples, like the 1960s
[Futurework] Are they going mad?
What irony! If there could have been any justification for America invading Iraq, it was because Saddam was excluding US and UK oil corporations from development contracts in the rich oilfields of northern Iraq. What's up with the Bush team? Are they going mad? Those whom the Gods wish to destroy . I think the Bush team is falling to pieces. Consider. Two days ago, Powell wanted NATO to help with the occupation of Iraq. Now the Pentagon comes out with this (below). Of course, this could seen as an immediate riposte to NATO turning him down (or, rather, expressing reservations). No, I think the members of the Bush team are now staggering about from one decision to another with little coordination of strategy. They're in a schizophrenic state. They really don't know what to do in Iraq. (Besides, why are they thinking about reconstruction contracts when they should be applying themselves to the prime objective of bringing about an Iraqi government by July?) I repeat my guess of a couple of days ago. I think Powell (and perhaps Condee) will resign soon. Then the team will really be seen to be falling apart. Now that Howard Dean is overwhelmingly the Democratic front-runner, it's possible that there'll now be a tidal wave of opinion against Bush. I'm amazed that America has been so supine over the invasion so far -- considering Vietnam (and soon, being kicked out of Afghanistan). Keith Hudson PENTAGON BARS THREE NATIONS FROM IRAQ BIDS Douglas Jehl WASHINGTON, Dec. 9 The Pentagon has barred French, German and Russian companies from competing for $18.6 billion in contracts for the reconstruction of Iraq, saying it was acting to protect the essential security interests of the United States. The directive, issued Friday by Paul D. Wolfowitz, the deputy defense secretary, represents the most substantive retaliation to date by the Bush administration against American allies who opposed its decision to go to war in Iraq. from New York Times -- 10 December 2003 Keith Hudson, Bath, England, www.evolutionary-economics.org
[Futurework] The vice that is now gripping the rich world
200. The vice that is now gripping the rich world Developed countries are now in a vice-like grip which will squeeze economic growth to zero in the coming years. By economic growth I mean debt-free economic growth. The two purported fastest-growing economies in the west -- America and the UK -- are only growing now because because consumers have been cashing in on re-mortgaging inflationary rises in house rpices and in credit card debts which have already absorbed their disposable incomes for more than a year hence. What are the jaws of the vice? The first is the fast-declining birth rate in western countries because we no longer have the natural, local communities in which the raising of children can be shared. Nor do the middle-class trend-setters who always initiate bursts of economic growth -- as in the last century -- have any time to spend on children. Their working weeks are growing longer. Their commuting times are growing longer. They are reacting like an airplane pilot during a crisis whose senses are overwhelmed with too much information that he starts shutting down his perceptions. The initiatory middle-class -- and all those who follow -- are shutting down by not replacing themselves. The second jaw of the vice is that there are now no longer any more status goods of the stimulatory power of the motor car, TV and other similar goods of the last century. We only have dinky toys now -- mobile phones, DVDs, etc -- which don't have the profit margins to produce further waves of investments that the biggies of the last century did. Nor would the initiatory class have the time to spend on consumer goods as powerful as the car and TV -- even if they existed. As with lack of time to spare for children, the trend-setters have no more disposable time for significant consumer goods. We need to re-think everything that we have assumed about the good life during the last century. We need to re-establish the communities that we all yearn for -- and which can do so many things that the modern economy is so inefficient at doing. This includes as education, crime prevention, creative leisure time and real belongingness and genuine status -- not the status that we have all been spending money to acquire during the last century. At the present time, the developed world is committing suicide. If and when the developing world, such as China, reaches our standard of living and acquires our symptoms also, perhaps it will be more obvious. Perhaps it will be too late then. We need to give priority to scientific research into a future energy technology in order to replace the plundering of fast-declining oil and gas resources which we have accidentally stumbled upon in the last century. But we also need to recreate the groups and communities in which our deep genetic behaviours can be exercised a great deal less dangerously, and far more satisfyingly than now. Keith Hudson COUNTRIES PLAY THE DATING GAME TO HALT THE BABY BLUES David Turner When governments start running dating programmes, you know that policymakers are worried about low birth rates. Since the late 1990s, Japanese prefectures have been organising hiking trips and cruises for single people. Japan's birth rate, which has fallen to an average of 1.3 children per woman, is one of the lowest in the developed world . Critics say fertility is no business of politicians. There is still a taboo against letting the government into your bedroom, concedes one expert. So far, the results of the Wedding March dating programme suggest it has not provided the necessary romantic inspiration. One scheme in Shimane prefecture in western Japan cost $150,000 during three years, but only produced seven marriages and four babies. Many rich countries are beginning to wonder whether they can afford squeamishness about the subject. United Nations projections released yesterday suggest that the world's population will rise by 3bn during the next century, to slightly more than 9bn. But the population of Europe is forecast to fall from 728m now to 538m in 2100, and Japan's population is expected to drop from 127m to 90m during the same period. A recent report on low fertility from the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development explains in occasionally apocalyptic tones why countries are starting to worry. For rich countries, a low birth rate means lower economic growth, which transforms politics by provoking shifts in the political weights of countries in the international arena, the report notes. There are domestic implications, too. Increasing numbers of people may have no, or few, immediate family ties, creating a greater strain on public services. The OECD report hints the result could be the replacement of the class war of the 20th century with an age war, as larger and healthier groups of older people at the top of organisations resist the progression and career enhancement of younger people. The conventional explanation for the baby drought
RE: [Futurework] The poverty of nation-states
A had statistics fixed to it and this became public. (The worst university taught remedial reading to 62% of its freshmen.) Obviously, something had to be done - and it was. Subject A was abandoned, remedial reading became part of the English course, and the kids could now get university credit for learning to read. But, the statistics seem to have disappeared. Can the Terminator do anything to stop this relentless progress toward a third world banana republic? Perhaps, with his physique, he's well suited to a Herculean task. We'll see. Harry Henry George School of Social Science of Los Angeles Box 655 Tujunga CA 91042 Tel: 818 352-4141 -- Fax: 818 353-2242 http://haledward.home.comcast.net From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]] On Behalf Of Keith Hudson Sent: Thursday, December 04, 2003 11:16 PM To: Tor Førde Cc: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: Re: [Futurework] The poverty of nation-states Tor, At 00:59 05/12/2003 +0100, you wrote: The essay says: Similarly, Norway's supposedly separate rainy-day fund, financed from oil and gas revenues, was raided in 2001 to meet immediate budgetary pressures It is wrong. It si decided that not more money shall be taken from the fund than goes into it. But since a large part of the money is in shares and stocks, and their value fluctates quite a lot there have been years where the oilfund hardly has grown. The reason that the fund fluctates is changing values of stocks and shares, but every year more money is put into the fund than being taken from it. Well perhaps Heller got it slightly wrong. But Norway is to be praised for being the first country to start a rainy-day fund. Perhaps Norway will also start to add to that fund from normal taxation as well. Because this is what will be needed in the longer term future in order to pay for welfare. If Norway were to do this then it would be showing the way to all the developed countries in the world. But would the Norwegian taxpayer accpet this policy? I don't know because I'm not Norwegian. It certainly couldn't be done in England unless there was the most vigorous campaign by all the political parties cting in unison. But even then the electorate might vote an entirely new political party into power that would despise such a policy. This is the basic faultline of democracy as it has developed so far in the western world. Keith Keith Hudson, Bath, England, www.evolutionary-economics.org
[Futurework] No NATO in Iraq
I hear from this morning's news that Lord Robertson, Secretary-General of NATO, has ruled out the help of NATO forces in Iraq until we have done our job in Afghanistan. (There are only 55,000 NATO troops available at any one time anyway for use everywhere -- and Iraq needs at least 250,000 troops to make the place really secure.) So that's a snub for Powell. (He must be feeling very weary and lonely now.) But, of course, Afghanistan is falling back into its old ways -- Kharzei will be assassinated soon I guess -- it'll be either warlordism all over again now or the success of a resurgent Taliban. America (and NATO) will be kicked out in due course and as ignominiously as the Russians were. Bush is now in an impossible situation in Iraq. There is no way he can bring about a democratic (thus, Shia-dominated) government. The explosion hurting 30 American soldiers this morning is further pressure that he'll have to evacuate soon or else a civil war will start whether the American troops remain or go. What a catastrophe! What stupidity! And the Shia have remained relatively quiet and patient so far! When their (Sistani's) patience is exhausted there'll be a civil war against the Sunni. In this country, Blair is heading for a parliamentary defeat on a students'-loans-at-university matter. I think he's contrived this in order to be able to resign 'with honour' (!) before the Hutton Report is published in January/February and fingers him for lying (twice) over the Dr Kelly matter. (I think Hutton will only soften his report if Blair goes beforehand.) This won't help Bush's attempts at internationalising the occupation of Iraq (though not inviting the UN, of course, because it will insist on organising democratic elections). Surely, surely, there'll be moves to oust Bush in the next few months? I'll be very disappointed if Americans (intelligentsia-, CIA-, State Department-, Republican Congress-inspired) haven't the nous to do this well before the electoral campaign starts in earnest. The Chinese must be feeling increasing contempt for the American (democratic?) political system and the sort of people it throws up. (Come to think of it, it's interesting that Blair, despite his attempts in recent years to adopt an international statesman's role, has never been invited to China! I think they must regard him as a shallow person -- which he is -- and with great amusement, if not derision.) I wonder what impression Rumsfeld took back with him from Iraq? My opinion is that this visit was a clear sign of extreme desparation -- which must be close to its peak now. The impossibility of any sort of peaceful transition to government in Iraq must be dawning even on him. I think there'll be signs of great ructions in the Bush team quite soon -- voluntary resignation of Powell and Condee perhaps, followed by an ousting of Bush and Cheney by various plotters as suggested above? Keith Hudson Keith Hudson, Bath, England, www.evolutionary-economics.org ___ Futurework mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://scribe.uwaterloo.ca/mailman/listinfo/futurework
Consumer society in extremis (was Re: [Futurework] For Kieth
Ray, Thank you. This article explains in more detail why I rabbit on about the fontal lobes so much. Among many other things, the creativity of frontal lobes are able to enhance emotions into exquisite feelings, and body markings/jewelry (and much else besides) into symbolic signs of eons-old status rankings as exists in cruder forms in all social mammals (of which we are a species). That's the essence of my evolutionary-economics thesis. The consumer society is an advanced form of all this and America (with England not far behind) is now in extremis because the trend-setting intelligentsia are now harried to the very limits of the personal time that's available for more display of status. Our over-sized pyramidal hierarchies can no longer accommodate enough alpha-intellectuals in creative mode. The point is: Is America's consumer society about to collapse or will there be a transformation to a social/political structure that is quite different but accords more with our evolutionary past? It's one or the other. I suspect that it will be the latter but only at the expense of great social suffering. Billions of people all round the world are still suffering as a long-term consequence of the agricultural revolution of 10,000BC. Millions of people in the developed world are about to start suffering (if not already) as a consequence of the industrial revolution/consumer society of 1750AD and onwards. Keith Hudson At 01:13 09/12/2003 -0500, you wrote: Keith, here is a little gift from today's NYTimes science section. REH December 9, 2003 Humanity? Maybe It's in the Wiring By SANDRA BLAKESLEE euroscientists have given up looking for the seat of the soul, but they are still seeking what may be special about human brains, what it is that provides the basis for a level of self-awareness and complex emotions unlike those of other animals. Most recently they have been investigating circuitry rather than specific locations, looking at pathways and connections that are central in creating social emotions, a moral sense, even the feeling of free will. There are specialized neurons at work, as well large, cigar-shaped cells called spindle cells. The only other animals known to have such cells are the great apes. These neurons are exceptionally rich in filaments. And they appear to broadcast socially relevant signals all over the brain. The body, it turns out, is as important as the brain. Dr. Antonio Damasio, a neurologist at the University of Iowa Medical Center and the author of the book Looking for Spinoza: Joy, Sorrow and the Feeling Brain, has pioneered the argument that emotions and feelings are linked to brain structures that map the body. From human social emotions, he said, both morality and reason have grown. Similar ideas were advanced in simpler form more than a century ago. Now, researchers can point to specific aspects of brain structure that suggest how our forebears came to develop complex social emotions, culture and other quintessential human behaviors. The search for brain differences has not been easy. Mammalian brains are extraordinarily similar. All contain an outer rind, or cortex. The human cortex, where intelligence lies, is simply a lot bigger than that of other creatures given the human body's size. But the size of the brain is not everything. One important feature of more complex brains is that they are rich in circuits linked cells from various parts of the brain that become active at the same time. Imagine a Christmas tree with millions of lights, each representing a cell group. The thought of dogs would activate a small set of lights. The thought of a beloved dog that died last year would activate some of the same lights plus others. The thought of a cat would activate yet another set with some overlap because animals are involved. Thinking about a sunset would activate whole new sets of lights with no overlap. Once a thought is complete, all the lights or neurons fall silent, waiting to be called into play in different combinations when new thoughts arise. Some sets of lights are found in structures that serve as major hubs for thinking and feeling. For example, a brain region called the anterior cingulate a hub from which many circuits branch out is almost always active when human subjects are experiencing emotions or need to think about things that are difficult. Any conflict of any sort, any reward, and the anterior cingulate starts buzzing. At least that is the judgment of the researchers who track increased blood flow with brain scans called functional magnetic resonance imaging. One of the first circuits studied in the 1940's involved the sense of touch. Sensations from the skin, including pain and temperature, were found to be carried by nerve fibers to a part of the brain devoted to bodily sensation. Less distinct sensations from viscera and internal organs went to a small region called the insula. Or so the thinking of the time went. But Dr. Arthur
[Futurework] Biography
Hi Frank, Here's stuff for my biography page. I've probably left something out -- I always do -- then I've got to fiddle the dates again! - PHOTO (again!) with name underneath Born 1935; Educated at Bablake School and Lanchester College of Technology; 1957-1967: Experience in industrial chemistry, technical management, quality control management at Courtaulds and Massey-Ferguson; 1968-69: Experience as first professional writer of learning programmes in England with Inadcon, and wrote material for Vickers, Sloan-Duployan and Unesco; 1970: Founder of Warwickshire branch of Conservation Society; 1971:With Noël Newsome, joint-author of report on industrial toxic wates dumping into the countryside to Department of Environment (known in the press at the time as the Cyanide Dossier) which resulted in the passage of Deposit of Poisonous Waste Act 1972 as emergency legislation, the first environmental legislation in the last century apart from clean air legislation; 1972: Founder and editor of Towards Survival, one of the first environmental journals in the English-speaking world; 1974: Member of Midland Executive of Liberal Party, author of industrial policy proposals for the Midlands; 1975: Member of National Executive of the Liberal Party; 1979: Founder of Jobs for Coventry Foundation, the first privately-sponsored training organisation in England for young unemployed people under the Youth Opportunities Programme; 1982: Founder of Interskills, training organisation in computer and allied skills; 1982: Founder of Coventry Democratic Party, later subsumed into the national party (below) 1982: Member of original Organization Committee of the Social Democratic Party and author of starter- pack material for local convenors; author of various background papers on future development of party politics generally and governance; 1984: Author of Introduction to Computer-Assisted Learning ( Chapman and Hall Computing); 1985: First retirement; 1985: Was introduced to choral singing, one of the finest experiences of my life; 1986: Joint-founder of Property Portraits Limited; 1996: Corresponding member of Futurework List; 1996: Second retirement; 1997: Founder of Handlo Music Limited, publishers of early choral music, the first sheet music publisher on the Internet; 2003: Third retirement; 2003: Founder of Evolutionary Economics website. Deep and abiding interest in anthropology and neuroscience all through adult life and, more latterly, into evolutionary biology and its applications to economics and future political institutions and governance. Hoping to move soon from Bath to the village of Winsley for final retirement and the breeding of canaries (advice badly sought). then my signature and name again, please Best wishes, Keith Keith Hudson, Bath, England, www.evolutionary-economics.org
[Futurework] Apologies
My apologies to all. I'm refurbishing my website and sent my biography to Futurework instead of to my PC consultant. It could be thought to be a Freudian but assuredly not -- Frank and FW sitting next to each other in my mailbox.. This has wasted several hours and I'm furious with myself. This is the second time recently I've misdirected stuff to FW. My mind is definitely going. Keith Hudson P.S. There'll be a beautiful photo there, by the way, in a day or two -- then you can see how closely my beard is approximating to Darwin. He has a bigger nose than me, though. Keith Hudson, Bath, England, www.evolutionary-economics.org
[Futurework] Great similarities between NI and Iraq (was RE: [Futurework] No NATO in Iraq and Western myopia
, there are some other dirty little secrets that toxify US policies, but Americans could begin with this one. Cheers, Lawry -Original Message- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]]On Behalf Of Keith Hudson Sent: Tue, December 09, 2003 2:47 AM To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: [Futurework] No NATO in Iraq I hear from this morning's news that Lord Robertson, Secretary-General of NATO, has ruled out the help of NATO forces in Iraq until we have done our job in Afghanistan. (There are only 55,000 NATO troops available at any one time anyway for use everywhere -- and Iraq needs at least 250,000 troops to make the place really secure.) So that's a snub for Powell. (He must be feeling very weary and lonely now.) But, of course, Afghanistan is falling back into its old ways -- Kharzei will be assassinated soon I guess -- it'll be either warlordism all over again now or the success of a resurgent Taliban. America (and NATO) will be kicked out in due course and as ignominiously as the Russians were. Bush is now in an impossible situation in Iraq. There is no way he can bring about a democratic (thus, Shia-dominated) government. The explosion hurting 30 American soldiers this morning is further pressure that he'll have to evacuate soon or else a civil war will start whether the American troops remain or go. What a catastrophe! What stupidity! And the Shia have remained relatively quiet and patient so far! When their (Sistani's) patience is exhausted there'll be a civil war against the Sunni. In this country, Blair is heading for a parliamentary defeat on a students'-loans-at-university matter. I think he's contrived this in order to be able to resign 'with honour' (!) before the Hutton Report is published in January/February and fingers him for lying (twice) over the Dr Kelly matter. (I think Hutton will only soften his report if Blair goes beforehand.) This won't help Bush's attempts at internationalising the occupation of Iraq (though not inviting the UN, of course, because it will insist on organising democratic elections). Surely, surely, there'll be moves to oust Bush in the next few months? I'll be very disappointed if Americans (intelligentsia-, CIA-, State Department-, Republican Congress-inspired) haven't the nous to do this well before the electoral campaign starts in earnest. The Chinese must be feeling increasing contempt for the American (democratic?) political system and the sort of people it throws up. (Come to think of it, it's interesting that Blair, despite his attempts in recent years to adopt an international statesman's role, has never been invited to China! I think they must regard him as a shallow person -- which he is -- and with great amusement, if not derision.) I wonder what impression Rumsfeld took back with him from Iraq? My opinion is that this visit was a clear sign of extreme desparation -- which must be close to its peak now. The impossibility of any sort of peaceful transition to government in Iraq must be dawning even on him. I think there'll be signs of great ructions in the Bush team quite soon -- voluntary resignation of Powell and Condee perhaps, followed by an ousting of Bush and Cheney by various plotters as suggested above? Keith Hudson Keith Hudson, Bath, England, www.evolutionary-economics.org ___ Futurework mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://scribe.uwaterloo.ca/mailman/listinfo/futurework Keith Hudson, Bath, England, www.evolutionary-economics.org
RE: [Futurework] Biography
If the idea of biographies on FW's site is taken further, then I suggest that they are restricted to, say, 40 words each, so there's a democratic element involved for any subscribers who are young and hitherto inexperienced or who do not want to parade too many personal details. What I think is tremendously important is to remember that innovative ideas nearly always occur to the young mind before it fills up with too much junk. So young minds are to be encouraged on FW. Keith Hudson s At 14:28 09/12/03 -0500, you wrote: yes http://www.mail-archive.com/[EMAIL PROTECTED]/http://www.mail-archive.com/[EMAIL PROTECTED]/ -Original Message- From: Lawrence DeBivort [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Tuesday, December 9, 2003 2:21 PM To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: RE: [Futurework] Biography Are our postings here being posted to a publicly accessible web site? -Original Message- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Behalf Of [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Tue, December 09, 2003 1:36 PM To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]; [EMAIL PROTECTED]; [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: RE: [Futurework] Biography OK if people want to do it, but not mandatory. Privacy, anonymity and all that. arthur -Original Message- From: Ray Evans Harrell [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Tuesday, December 9, 2003 11:45 AM To: Keith Hudson; [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: Re: [Futurework] Biography This is great. I think it would be wonderful if we finally arrived at an introduction type of post where we all do what Keith has done. These could then be put into an Introductions section at the web site and serve as a context file for each of us as we explore these things together. It also would be helpful if we posted the things that we are interested in, in relation to the Future of work and how we could help each other. Just a thought. What do you think Arthur, Sally? Ray Evans Harrell - Original Message - From: mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]Keith Hudson To: mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED][EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Tuesday, December 09, 2003 9:57 AM Subject: [Futurework] Biography Hi Frank, Here's stuff for my biography page. I've probably left something out -- I always do -- then I've got to fiddle the dates again! - PHOTO (again!) with name underneath Born 1935; Educated at Bablake School and Lanchester College of Technology; 1957-1967: Experience in industrial chemistry, technical management, quality control management at Courtaulds and Massey-Ferguson; 1968-69: Experience as first professional writer of learning programmes in England with Inadcon, and wrote material for Vickers, Sloan-Duployan and Unesco; 1970: Founder of Warwickshire branch of Conservation Society; 1971:With Noël Newsome, joint-author of report on industrial toxic wates dumping into the countryside to Department of Environment (known in the press at the time as the Cyanide Dossier) which resulted in the passage of Deposit of Poisonous Waste Act 1972 as emergency legislation, the first environmental legislation in the last century apart from clean air legislation; 1972: Founder and editor of Towards Survival, one of the first environmental journals in the English-speaking world; 1974: Member of Midland Executive of Liberal Party, author of industrial policy proposals for the Midlands; 1975: Member of National Executive of the Liberal Party; 1979: Founder of Jobs for Coventry Foundation, the first privately-sponsored training organisation in England for young unemployed people under the Youth Opportunities Programme; 1982: Founder of Interskills, training organisation in computer and allied skills; 1982: Founder of Coventry Democratic Party, later subsumed into the national party (below) 1982: Member of original Organization Committee of the Social Democratic Party and author of starter- pack material for local convenors; author of various background papers on future development of party politics generally and governance; 1984: Author of Introduction to Computer-Assisted Learning ( Chapman and Hall Computing); 1985: First retirement; 1985: Was introduced to choral singing, one of the finest experiences of my life; 1986: Joint-founder of Property Portraits Limited; 1996: Corresponding member of Futurework List; 1996: Second retirement; 1997: Founder of Handlo Music Limited, publishers of early choral music, the first sheet music publisher on the Internet; 2003: Third retirement; 2003: Founder of Evolutionary Economics website. Deep and abiding interest in anthropology and neuroscience all through adult life and, more latterly, into evolutionary biology and its applications to economics and future political institutions and governance. Hoping to move soon from Bath to the village of Winsley for final retirement and the breeding of canaries (advice badly sought). then my signature and name again, please Best wishes, Keith Keith Hudson, Bath, England, www.evolutionary
RE: [Futurework] Biography
Just a reminder that my biography was written for my own website with which I am hoping to tempt a publisher in due course. (The renovated website which will appear in a few days will make this a bit clearer.) The purpose of the biography is mainly to show that I've knocked around a bit and what I may lack in formal credentials in economics is made up for by having been in the real world of work, politics, etc. I suppose that I could also have mentioned two personal insolvencies en route and having had to pick myself up again. This may be a badge of honour in America but not so in this country -- there is a sharp intake of breath whenever a fall from grace is mentioned. Keith Hudson Keith Hudson, General Editor, Handlo Music, http://www.handlo.com 6 Upper Camden Place, Bath BA1 5HX, England Tel: +44 1225 311636; Fax: +44 1225 447727; mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] ___ Futurework mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://scribe.uwaterloo.ca/mailman/listinfo/futurework
[Futurework] Reason for biography
Arthur, My somewhat lengthy biography which appeared here accidentally was originally written for my E-E website which is being refurbished and will appear in a few days. The reason for showing it there is that I am hoping to tempt a book publisher in due course. The purpose of the biography is mainly to show that I've knocked around a bit and what I may lack in formal credentials in economics is made up for by having been in the real world of work, politics, etc. I suppose that I could also have mentioned two personal insolvencies en route and having had to pick myself up again. This may be a badge of honour in America but not so in this country; there is a sharp intake of breath whenever a fall from grace is mentioned. Keith Hudson Keith Hudson, Bath, England, www.evolutionary-economics.org
Idiosyncracies (was RE: [Futurework] Biography ~ succinctness etc.
At 16:06 09/12/2003 -0500, Brad McCormick wrote: Quoting Keith Hudson [EMAIL PROTECTED]: If the idea of biographies on FW's site is taken further, then I suggest that they are restricted to, say, 40 words each, so there's a democratic element involved for any subscribers who are young and hitherto inexperienced or who do not want to parade too many personal details. What I think is tremendously important is to remember that innovative ideas nearly always occur to the young mind before it fills up with too much junk. So young minds are to be encouraged on FW. How many could provide a 3 word biography, like Julius Caesar: Veni, vidi, vinci. (I came, I saw, I conquered.) Youth is not always correlated with innovative thinking. Immanuel Kant did not write anything of lasting value until he was over 60 years old -- and then he revolutionized Western philosophy. I suppose that's so. Darwin was also quite ancient when he finally spewed out Origins. I'm now allowing my beard to grow as long as Darwin's and maybe my success will follow. Did Kant have any idiosynscracy that I can also adopt? -- so long as he wasn't a transvestite. Balzac could only write when wearing nightclothes but it's too cold in my office for that. Arnold Bennet and Georges Simenon both said independently that what's important is to write at least half-a-million words a year -- quality will inevitably follow quantity. At one posting a day on average I calculate that I'm falling lamentably short of that. On the other hand, Hardy used to do his writing before breakfast and before starting out on his horse establishing post offices. Well I do write my postings before breakfast and then take my dog for a walk before turning to the sordid business of making money, so that's a reasonable approximation. As for age being an advantage when writing in the humanities, then perhaps I can discover something new at my age. After all, I'm endeavouring to integrate the whole history (and pre-hisotry) of homo sapiens into my brilliantly innovative view of economics. Perhaps, at 68, I'm too young. Perhaps I ought to postpone the Great Book for another decade or so. Perhaps breeding canaries in my hoped-for olde worlde cottage for a few years will supply that serendipitous idea that will illuminate everything. I will tell the Nobel committee beforehand when the book is immient so they're prepared to move quickly while I'm still alive and before I die of some exotic canary-borne disease. Keith Hudson The real problem with new ideas when you are old (or with getting a Nobel prize when you're 80...) is that you don't have the body to go with it or the time to savor and build on it. In architecture, anybody under 40 is considered too young to do really serious work. (I believe in mathematics it's the reverse, which may just say that mathematics is not a humanistic discipline.) Yours in time \brad mccormick Keith Hudson s At 14:28 09/12/03 -0500, you wrote: yes http://www.mail-archive.com/[EMAIL PROTECTED]/http://www.mail-archive.com/[EMAIL PROTECTED]/ -Original Message- From: Lawrence DeBivort [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]] Sent: Tuesday, December 9, 2003 2:21 PM To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: RE: [Futurework] Biography Are our postings here being posted to a publicly accessible web site? -Original Message- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]]On Behalf Of [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Tue, December 09, 2003 1:36 PM To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]; [EMAIL PROTECTED]; [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: RE: [Futurework] Biography OK if people want to do it, but not mandatory. Privacy, anonymity and all that. arthur -Original Message- From: Ray Evans Harrell [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]] Sent: Tuesday, December 9, 2003 11:45 AM To: Keith Hudson; [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: Re: [Futurework] Biography This is great. I think it would be wonderful if we finally arrived at an introduction type of post where we all do what Keith has done. These could then be put into an Introductions section at the web site and serve as a context file for each of us as we explore these things together. It also would be helpful if we posted the things that we are interested in, in relation to the Future of work and how we could help each other. Just a thought. What do you think Arthur, Sally? Ray Evans Harrell - Original Message - From: mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]Keith Hudson To: mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED][EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Tuesday, December 09, 2003 9:57 AM Subject: [Futurework] Biography Hi Frank, Here's stuff for my biography page. I've probably left something out -- I always do -- then I've got to fiddle the dates again! - PHOTO (again!) with name underneath Born 1935; Educated at Bablake School and Lanchester College of Technology; 1957-1967: Experience in industrial chemistry, technical management, quality control management at Courtaulds
Re: [Futurework] Watch out, politicians! There are nano-missiles about!
At 16:18 07/12/2003 -0800, pete wrote: On Sat, 06 Dec 2003, Keith Hudson [EMAIL PROTECTED] In this week's New Scientist an interesting new piece of nanotechnology was illustrated. It is a miniature helicopter called the Quattrocopter (it has four rotor blades) which can be carried in a brief case. It is about two feet wide when assembled and can fly around for 25 minutes driven by an electric motor Ummm, I think you are seriously misunderstanding the term nanotechnology. At that size, it doesn't even qualify for micro - milli would be the right range, what in the sixties would have been called mini. Yes, of course. I appreciate this! But to the layman a two ft wide helicopter is quite a way towards it! and can take, and transmit, a video film of anything it flies over. It was made by a company in Munich. No doubt such spy helicopters will become smaller until they're hand-sized -- or even the size of a house-fly. Now that would be microtechnology, and in fact this fall a pair of engineers at UBC had an article in the university newsletter where they announced they were embarking on a project to build just such a device. The article was accompanied by an artist's conception which looked like a mechanical dragonfly. The engineers are working on the understanding of insect flight and the use of shape-changing polymers (featured in Sci Am a couple of months ago, they are much more compact and efficient for small devices than electric motors). Still a far cry from nanotech, though. A nanotech flyer would be undetectably inhaled when you breathed in. What we need is a prefix in between micro- and nano- ! Keith It was demonstrated recently to journalists in a Paris hotel who were startled to see the tops of their heads on a giant plama screen. As the following article from the Financial Times says, nanotech is being increasingly spoken of as the next new technology which might cause the next boom on the stock market. None of those engaged in nano-technology want that to happen. But it's most unlikely anyway because a category mistake is being made in talking about it. There is no distinct nano-technology with distinct uses or end-products. Nano-ology has been the norm in many different industries already. Ponderous machine tools weighing scores of tons have become pieces of equipment the size of the domestic washing machine and hardly any heavier. The mobile phone has shrunk from being equipment carried in a van, then becoming a portable item the size and weight of a couple of bricks and, in recent months, something hardly bigger than a wristwatch. The same applies to computers and so on for a great many other products. Again, none of this is nanotechnology. Nanotech is stuff that you need a microscope to see. If it's big enough to hold in your hand, it's not nanotech. If the word nanometre figures prominently in the description of components, it's nanotech. Otherwise, not. Nanotechnology is already proceeding apace in biotechnology and genetics simply because the items they deal with -- molecules -- are already on a nano-scale by definition. Indeed, those nano-technologists who, a few years ago, were trying to make exceedingly small gear wheels and propellors and the like are just realising that all these things already exist in the biological cell and thus have organic analogues. The ribosome, for example, which makes proteins, is a very small machine -- millions of them could fit on top of the point of a needle -- taking in molecules in two different slots and then spewing out a specific protein molecule out of another slot just like a vending machine delivering a choc bar. Yes, now you're in the right ballpark... -Pete ___ Futurework mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://scribe.uwaterloo.ca/mailman/listinfo/futurework Keith Hudson, Bath, England, www.evolutionary-economics.org
[Futurework] Foul-up in education (was The Politics of Foodbanks (or lack thereof) (was Re: Slightly extended)
Henry George School of Social Science of Los Angeles Box 655 Tujunga CA 91042 Tel: 818 352-4141 -- Fax: 818 353-2242 http://haledward.home.comcast.net -Original Message- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]] On Behalf Of [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Thursday, December 04, 2003 5:16 PM To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]; [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: RE: [Futurework] The Politics of Foodbanks (or lack thereof) (was Re: Slightly extended) Chris, I think you and Harry might just have something in common with this idea. Your plan assumes some degree of social cohesion (that there are relatives that there is a local community.) Assumptions aside, I like the idea. So count me in with you and, perhaps, Harry. arthur -Original Message- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]] Sent: Thursday, December 04, 2003 5:57 PM To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: [Futurework] The Politics of Foodbanks (or lack thereof) (was Re: Slightly extended) Arthur Cordell wrote: We can end poverty. There can be a basic income. Who is supposed to pay a general BI ? It would be just fighting symptoms anyway, worsening the causes. There's a better system: Have an education system that minimizes the number of people who can't make ends meet. For the few remaining ones, help them to get as good a job as they can handle, and/or have their relatives pay for their basic needs. For the _very_ few remaining ones then, have their local community pay their basic needs (rentfood) until they are restored to earn money again. Result: No foodbanks, and no starvation either (and low crime rate too). Yet, low taxes. Guess which country this is? Harry may rant about protectionism as much as he wants, but there _are_ upsides to it! Chris Keith Hudson, Bath, England, www.evolutionary-economics.org
Re: [Futurework] NYTimes.com Article: For Middle Class, Health Insurance Becomes a Luxury
Ray, At 10:02 08/12/03 -0500, you wrote: Once you get rid of the patent system which includes copyrights how would you pay people for their creativity? REH By instituting legal agreements between inventor and company that wants to develop it. Then the business had better get a move on. Patents only work against the individual inventor or the employee because they can't afford to sue a business when the latter steals it when it's patented. The patents office is a showcase for plunder. Most of the most important patents are broken by large companies by pretend-patents and reverse engineering and they rarely sue each other because it's loo time-consuming and by the time it's resolved someone else will have invented something better. Usually, in the rare cases that companies sue each other they come to a financial agreement long before the lawyers run up big bills. The best strategy for a business with a good idea is to retain the loyalty of its staff, keep it secret for as long as they can, and then market it as quickly as possible when it's ready and if the bsuiness has got anything about it, it ought to be able to keep its lead. Bach wrote plenty without copyright. Copyright is nothing whatever to do with true creativity. It's a spurious and artificial system designed for the already big-boys as opposed to the lone creator. Keith Hudson - Original Message - From: Harry Pollard [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]; [EMAIL PROTECTED]; [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Monday, December 08, 2003 3:01 AM Subject: RE: [Futurework] NYTimes.com Article: For Middle Class, Health Insurance Becomes a Luxury Arthur, We could start by getting rid of the patent system that articially raises drug prices along with the bottom lines of the huge drug companies. This money helps them pay off Congress. If you saw the Bill Moyer show on Friday you would appreciate why Eisenhower originally intended to call it the military-industrial-congressional complex. Of course the other privileges should also go - primarily the one that gives some people the ability to collect Economic Rent - or rather an amount much higher than economic Rent, because the price mechanism doesn't control Rent. Thus it becomes something known throughout history - rack-rent - the path to poverty for generations of peasants. So, we are back to the problems in the article. If the basics are not dealt with, such problems will always be with us. But as Thoreau said: There are a thousand hacking at the branches of evil to one who is striking at the root . . . . So, I'll keep striking, perhaps to little avail, leaving the rest of you to get sweaty hacking away at those branches. Of course there is great benefit to doing that, That's the psychological uplift that reformers get even if nothing of consequence is accomplished. I know - I've been one. So, work on a dozen or a hundred programs designed to ameliorate rather than end misery. It passes the time. Harry PS It costs $266 a month for a 59 year old to join Kaiser. That $275 for Ms Pard's nine year old seem a bit stiff. Henry George School of Social Science of Los Angeles Box 655 Tujunga CA 91042 Tel: 818 352-4141 -- Fax: 818 353-2242 http://haledward.home.comcast.net -Original Message- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Sunday, November 16, 2003 4:45 PM To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]; [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: RE: [Futurework] NYTimes.com Article: For Middle Class, Health Insurance Becomes a Luxury So, Harry P., how do you deal with this?? -Original Message- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Sunday, November 16, 2003 3:38 PM To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: [Futurework] NYTimes.com Article: For Middle Class, Health Insurance Becomes a Luxury This article from NYTimes.com has been sent to you by [EMAIL PROTECTED] For those who are not NYT subscribers. [EMAIL PROTECTED] / advertisement ---\ FOR YOUR CONSIDERATION: IN AMERICA - IN THEATRES NOVEMBER 26 Fox Searchlight Pictures proudly presents IN AMERICA directed by Academy Award(R) Nominee Jim Sheridan (My Left Foot and In The Name of the Father). IN AMERICA stars Samantha Morton, Paddy Considine and Djimon Hounsou. For more info: http://www.foxsearchlight.com/inamerica \--/ For Middle Class, Health Insurance Becomes a Luxury November 16, 2003 By STEPHANIE STROM DALLAS - The last time Kevin Thornton had health insurance was three years ago, which was not much of a problem until he began having trouble swallowing. I broke down earlier this year and went in and talked to a doctor about it, said Mr. Thornton, who lives in Sherman, about 60 miles north of Dallas. A barium X
Addendum (was Re: [Futurework] NYTimes.com Article: For Middle Class, Health Insurance Becomes a Luxury
Ray, I have become so angry today at the damage that the state education has done and writing my message in response to Harry that I have given up writing my usual essay today. Instead, I will confine myself to FW. So here's an addendum to my previous posting to you/FW. Here are three of my experiences wearing my (mild) inventor's hat. When I worked for Courtaulds 45 years ago I had to sign a secrecy agreement with them (that any of my ideas belonged to them). After a few years,I had an idea of applying a strong magnetic field to the spinning jet in rayon manufacturing. At the same time I was organising the scientific workers union (secretly at first). When they heard this, Courtaulds prevented me have paid leave to take a doctorate (even though they'd promised it to me). I had a family with children and couldn't afford to do it off my own bat. So I left some months later, without telling them of my idea. I didn't pursue it with any other firm -- too much bother, and besides I got caught ujp in the environmental movement then. It was only an idea after all (though with a rationale behind it). Many years later I discovered that this was being done somewhere (I've forgotten where). It produced a fibre with interesting properties. Not a great best-seller but profitable. (Soon afterwards, Courtaulds sent me an ex gratia payment. Quite what for they didn't say but I think it was because they were then fighting a battle against a take-over by an other firm. One of the other firm's trade unionists was going into print fequently on the matter and I think Courtaulds wanted to persuade me not to do so [I would have been in favour, of course]. But I wasn't interested by then. Soon afterwards, Courtaulds lost the fight. I chuckled.) About 15 years ago when I had ventured into architecture, I devised a system of building a steel-frame house (though conventional in appearance) starting with the roof (so that the following trades could work underneath immediately and whatever the weather) and raising it on hydraulic jacks. I reckned it would save 20% or so of final costs. I sent this in the usual way (sealed enveloped, etc) to a major UK house-building firm and they said they weren't interested and I then dropped the idea. Two years later, I came across an article of a Japanese firm doing precisely the same as I'd suggested -- the illustration was almost identical to the illustration in my own proposl and left no doubt in my mind that somehow they had acquired my method (not necessarily immorally from their point of view). I'm glad to say that the system didn't become economic (at least, I don't think it did, because it doesn't seem to have developed further). About five years ago I had an idea of writing Japanese/Korean/Chinese script by playing a keyboard rather like a piano -- 8-note chords signifying crucial junctures of the script on an 8 x 8 grid. Toshiba were very interested and in fact I had an interview with their Director of RD when he was over here on a visit to one of his factories. I felt confident that had the idea been taken further (which it wasn't after a few months on their part) I would have been treated honorably. I'm not an inventor. Like most people I have ideas from time to time and I'm sure that some of them could be useful. But most people don't pursue their ideas because the odds are that they will be stolen from them. The proportion of inventors who actually succeed in being treated honorably by a large firm is very low from what one hears constantly. This is not due to the patent system itself, of course, but it's a close cousin to the culture that business adopted since the patent system was brought in. Other quite satisfactory legal frameworks could have evolved IMHO if the patents (and copyright) system had not come into existence. The original patents were favours from the king in order to establish a monopoly and that's what they've fundamentally remained in spirit. Harry will be much more eloquent on this matter. Patents are anti-liberty. What about (as often happens) several individuals inventing something independently in different regions/countries? If one gets a patent, why should the others be penalised? Many, many investors (Arthur C. Clarke's satellite idea, the inventor of the Salk vaccine) have given ideas to the world without recompense -- commercially they've been worth billions. We must thank our lucky stars that some of our greatest inventors don't give a toss about money and are too fascinated in developing their next idea to waste any further time on their previous one. Keith Hudson At 10:02 08/12/03 -0500, you wrote: Once you get rid of the patent system which includes copyrights how would you pay people for their creativity? REH - Original Message - From: Harry Pollard [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]; [EMAIL PROTECTED]; [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Monday, December 08, 2003 3:01 AM Subject
Re: [Futurework] Foul-up in education (was The Politics of Foodbanks (or lack thereof) (was Re: Slightly extended)
Germany (that is, in Communist times) and bring out people in the boot of his car. Talk about dangerous! He could have been imprisoned for years -- or shot. He did this several times. One of them became his wife. Anyway the thing about Paul was that he was a natural linguist and took his degree in German at Oxford. In all his time there he didn't have to speak a word of German with his tutors! For his Finals he had one German-to-English translation to do and another vice versa. Unbelievable! That's all that he did for his MA. Things are different now, I guess. But Oxford and Cambridge are still snooty places and some Colleges will often turn down very bright working class students with a string of A levels 'cos they have an accent something like mine (Midland). But even though some of the Oxbridge colleges were richly endowed from medieval benefactors, they started to become dependent on the government 50 years ago, and now they are almost completely tied up in the state system and the government are starting to tell them what students they may or may not accept. That may be an appropriate punishment for their snobbery in the past (and now!), but it has also meant that they have little independence now, and they are both steadily losing their cachet as world-class universities which they once used to be. They (and ten other of the best univesities in England) deeply wish to be independent but they are trapped through lack of sufficient endowments. That's enough. Keith Ed - Original Message - From: Keith Hudson To: Harry Pollard Cc: [EMAIL PROTECTED] ; [EMAIL PROTECTED] ; [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Monday, December 08, 2003 9:24 AM Subject: [Futurework] Foul-up in education (was The Politics of Foodbanks (or lack thereof) (was Re: Slightly extended) Harry, At 01:28 08/12/2003 -0800, you wrote: Arthur, When I read it, I agreed with Chris' remarks. Except of course his aside on protectionism. There are probably areas almost the size of Switzerland in the US where there is little crime and living is good. There are other areas that aren't like that, However, unless thought is given to the basics such as education, we will get nowhere with our slapped on social poultices. Talking with a friend last night who teaches Junior College kids. When they find he wants written work, they flee to other classes. He's left with those who can't find another class. He says he should fail 75% of them but veteran teachers tell him to pass them through. The same here! I first came across the poor state of education 20-odd years ago when I was at Massey-Ferguson interviewing an engineer straight from university with, apparently, a good second class degree. He proudly showed me his final thesis. He had spelled Globa's salt (used in his project as a heat reservoir in a central heating system) all the way through! Repeatedly! He had obviously never seen Glauber's salt in print! Nor had his thesis supervisor noticed the repeated mistake. I couldn't believe. Needless to say, he didn't get the job. Today, 25% of 14 year-olds can't find plumber in the Yellow Pages, and can't do simple fractions or decimals. 40% of boys hate secondary school and badly want to leave. 40% of 21 year-olds admit to difficulties with writing and spelling (official survey -- Central Statistical Office 1995). 1,500,000 retired people in this country are not claiming government benefits because they have to wade through a 47-page booklet* and are too proud to confess that they can't understand it and too proud to go for help to Citizens' Advice Bureau. (*I've read it. It's complicated for me! I mean, do the civil servants do this on purpose? They were told it was too complicated before it was published, but it still had to go ahead because the system itself had become too complex to be simplified! All the different tax systems are, literally, becoming too complicated for the civil service itself to understand at a top level. In our agricultural department there are over 40 different government schemes for those who live and work in the countryside. A recent official enquiry revealed that few civil serants who were in charge of some of them in various departments were aware of the existence of most of the others -- sometimes [in the case of canny farmers and landowners] they were giving grants for the same things under different schemes! But much the same applies to the Department of Industry, the Home Office, etc. All this is madness and will have to be reformed or it will collapse of its own accord one day. It's the Byzantine Empire all over again.) Our only hope in the US in many places is to make education voluntary. Teachers should teach only those who want to learn - or whose parents want them to learn. Also, teachers should be allowed tax money to run their own schools. I suggested the economics of this a week or two ago. (The State could save money and the teachers would get a hefty raise. Yes, yes! We've all become
[Futurework] A new basis for taxation which could catch criminals, too
on fixed employment. However mobile we may become, we still want a place that we call home. He writes at the end of the article of the need for a bedrock of taxation which will remain which includes a reasonable level of sales taxes; fuel and power taxation; and some (maybe quite modest) level of income tax. However, all of these, except the last one, would be subsumed in my proposal of a five (or so)-banded sales tax. I simply see no reason at all for income tax. I think it has been a blind alley which has been in no-one's interests -- governments or the governed -- but very much in the interests of the cheat and the criminal. Keith Hudson THE NEW PROBLEM THAT IS THOUSANDS OF YEARS OLD Companies can be a brass plate in Liechtenstein and operate offshore, but the people who own them have to have a home, and they can be tracked Hamish McRae And it came to pass in those days that there went out a decree from Caesar Augustus that all the world should be taxed, and all went to be taxed, everyone into his own city. And Joseph also went up from Galilee out of the city of Nazareth into Judea unto the city of David which is called Bethlehem... Luke, Chapter 2. Had it not been for an effort by a supranational authority, concerned about the difficulties of collecting tax from economic migrants, Joseph and his pregnant wife would have been able to stay in Nazareth, and the story of the Nativity would have been rather differcnt. At the weekend. Mr Jurgen Stark, a finance ministry state secretary in Germany, said that Bonn was planning a campaign against tax havens in the EU, singling out the UK. It seems that British tax rates are one of the reasons why investment bankers, including many Germans, operate from London instead of Frankfurt. Germany is not proposing that Germans resident in London should have to return to their native cities to be taxed, though it would be a sight easier to hop on a plane back to Frankfurt than to trek down from Nazareth to Bethlehem, half a day's car ride even today. But Germany's concern is similar to that of Caesar Augustus. If you have a common currency zone with high levels of labour mobility it is hard to avoid inefficiencies in the tax system. Two millennia ago the problem was tracking people; now it is the multiplicity of different tax regimes. We can, to some extent, fix the old problem; but because the world is less unified, we have a problem that they did not have to tackle, the lack of a common tax authority. In the years ahead this is going to get worse. All high-tax countries are desperately concerned about economic migration. Germany is concerned about the loss of jobs to eastern Europe, partly a function of lower wages, but more one of less onerous social security and tax payments. I was in Sweden last week, and it was pointed out that all the high-profile Swedish sports stars lived outside the country. But at the moment we are only seeing a tiny change, for only a relatively small group of people are free to choose their location. As electronic communications develop, and as an increasing proportion of the world's labour force works on-screen, the proportion of workers who are free to locate anywhere will rise. We already have an element of tax competition within the EU, seeking to attract new business investment with grants and tax breaks. Are we moving to a world where tax competition extends to individuals and becomes a major way in which countries compete? Some people have gone even further than this, and started to ponder whether the Internet creates a world where companies and people can locate themselves beyond the bounds of any national authority. Of course humans have to be physically located somewhere; companies can be a brass plate in Liechtenstein and havc all their operations offshore, but the people who own them have to have a home. And they can be tracked. The advance of electronics, which brings us this freedom of location also makes it easier for Caesar Augustus to find us. But the combination of mobility and electronics is likely to cut away government revenues over the next generation -- it is the principal force which seems likely to cause the downsizing of government. To many this may appear welcome, but there is the disturbing possibility that governments simply will not have the revenue necessary to perform their basic functions. This raises two obvious questions. What can governments do to protect revenue? And is there a bedrock of taxation which will not disappear, come what may? On the first, the key element will be the degree of international cooperation that governments can develop. Within the EU there ought to be some room for holding tax rates within broad bands, but the scope will be more limited than people like Mr Stark would like. Quite aside from the obvious political difficulty of a country accepting a tax rate decided by voters in another, there is the practical difficulty that there are several places in western Europe which
[Futurework] Bush has suddenly become friendly to Europe!
I am constantly surprised why countries retaliate when other countries apply tariffs against their export goods. The Great Depression of the 1920s and 30s ought to have taught everybody that mutual protectionism soon gets out of hand and causes harm to everybody. I suppose it's due to the strong in-group out-group instinct in all of us, and it gives opportunities for macho male politicians to sound good to their own constitutents. When George Bush applied tariffs on imports of foreign steel two years ago in order to strengthen his electoral prospects in the steel-making states of Pennsylvania and West Virginia, then the European Commissioner, René Pascal, ought to have spread the word around quietly in Europe that America was only shooting itself in the foot. The higher steel prices that the US steel industry was able to charge because of the protection immediately started to hurt many of the US's other industries which use steel. And this, in turn, meant that prices to the US consumer started to rise. The immediate outcry was from the many small users of steel, but I have little doubt that much more powerful voices from the American car industry were talking quietly to the White House. Nobody has yet been able to refute David Ricardo's Law of Comparative Advantage, nor have all the studies made on the subject contradicted it in principle. As Bush's own former trade representative, Sharlene Barshefsky, once said: Costs of protectionism far outweigh the protective benefit. There is only one (short-term) exception to the fallacy of protectionism and this is when a country is incubating a new industry. This is something that David Ricardo didn't take into account. This is understandable because, at the time of writing, Ricardo was only considering the high tariffs that England was applying to cheap grain coming from abroad -- mainly America -- and the suffering that the high cost of food was imposing on the poor of England. At that time, Enlgand was sweeping all before it industrially and hardly any other country was involved to any significant extent. Had other countries been trying to industrialise quite as vigorously as Asian countries are now, then Ricardo would have had a far more difficult task in getting his (still correct) message over to the House of Commons. The only exception applies when another country is endeavouring to get a particular new industry off the ground and, in the interim, to prevent its products being swamped by lower prices from countries with mature efficient industries. The protectionism is not so much valid for economic reasons as to give time in which techniques can be developed and a new skilled workforce trained up. As soon as this is done -- and this can only be for a few years at the most -- then the protective country had better start reducing its tariffs, and quickly, in order to ensure that its own industry keeps its consumer prices low and becomes, and remains, as efficient as its foreign competitors. I am sure that Bush took far greater notice from his own car manufacturers rather than from the European Union commissioner for trade. After all, both he and Rumsfeld have been talking about 'old' Europe in the most disparaging, not to say rather nasty, terms in recent months. However, Bush's statements about Europe have suddenly become far more diplomatic in the last few days. This is significant, I think, for quite different reasons than the spat about steel. Bush is now realising that he hasn't a chance of bringing about some sort of acceptable Iraqi government without help and is now warming to the idea of NATO troops helping out. I don't think this will come off because, presumably, France and Germany will still be insisting on very early democratic elections in Iraq. This is something that America can't contemplate because it will bring about a Shia majority in that country and such a government might continue Saddam's policy of not inviting any US or UK oil corporations to help develop the massive oilfields of northern Iraq. But Bush is in an impossible situation right now and he might as well explore the possibility of a joint NATO-US solution. Even if it doesn't succeed in due course -- which I'm sure it won't -- such a proposed arrangement would at least sound good to the more gullible of the American electorate in the immediate future. Keith Hudson US TO DISMANTLE STEEL TARIFFS AND AVOID SANCTIONS Edward Alden in Washington, Guy de Jonquiircs in London Mariko Sanchanta in Tokyo The US yesterday backed down in the face of threats of international retaliation and rescinded its tariffs on steel imports. The decision removes a big source of friction with US trade partners, particularly the European Union, which was poised to impose sanctions on $2.2 billion of US exports by December 15 if the measures had not been scrapped. President George W. Bush said that the tariffs, which had been due to last for three years, had achieved their purpose by helping US
[Futurework] Watch out, politicians! There are nano-missiles about!
In this week's New Scientist an interesting new piece of nanotechnology was illustrated. It is a miniature helicopter called the Quattrocopter (it has four rotor blades) which can be carried in a brief case. It is about two feet wide when assembled and can fly around for 25 minutes driven by an electric motor and can take, and transmit, a video film of anything it flies over. It was made by a company in Munich. No doubt such spy helicopters will become smaller until they're hand-sized -- or even the size of a house-fly. It was demonstrated recently to journalists in a Paris hotel who were startled to see the tops of their heads on a giant plama screen. As the following article from the Financial Times says, nanotech is being increasingly spoken of as the next new technology which might cause the next boom on the stock market. None of those engaged in nano-technology want that to happen. But it's most unlikely anyway because a category mistake is being made in talking about it. There is no distinct nano-technology with distinct uses or end-products. Nano-ology has been the norm in many different industries already. Ponderous machine tools weighing scores of tons have become pieces of equipment the size of the domestic washing machine and hardly any heavier. The mobile phone has shrunk from being equipment carried in a van, then becoming a portable item the size and weight of a couple of bricks and, in recent months, something hardly bigger than a wristwatch. The same applies to computers and so on for a great many other products. Nanotechnology is already proceeding apace in biotechnology and genetics simply because the items they deal with -- molecules -- are already on a nano-scale by definition. Indeed, those nano-technologists who, a few years ago, were trying to make exceedingly small gear wheels and propellors and the like are just realising that all these things already exist in the biological cell and thus have organic analogues. The ribosome, for example, which makes proteins, is a very small machine -- millions of them could fit on top of the point of a needle -- taking in molecules in two different slots and then spewing out a specific protein molecule out of another slot just like a vending machine delivering a choc bar. So, from all sorts of different directions, impelled, usually, by reasons of efficiency of production and cost, nano-technology is proceeding apace but, apart from some research groups exploring specific techniques, there are unlikely to be nano-technology companies as such, even though many are already adopting the Nano- term in order to get funding. Even without Nano-businesses extreme miniaturisation techniques will emerge in profusion anyway. Just one final postscript. I have said, under a different heading, that the beginning of the end of the centralised nation-state occurred when the nuclear weapon was invented. It is now quite possible for a terrorist to blow up the White House, or the House of Commons, or the Kremlin by depositing a suitably equipped brief case on a nearby wall or pavement. The advent of nano-airplanes, helicopters or satellite-guided bullet-sized missiles will be shortly upon us, and I really can't see any form of defence against all this without imposing total quarantine on our politicians and leaders so that they never emerge into public view. Something very similar happened on Bush's so-called 'state visit' to England a week ago. Apart from one high-speed drive down Pall Mall which lasted all of three minutes in a bomb-proof limousine with a swarm of outriders all around, Bush hardly ventured into the public domain without having to scurry from one helicopter pad to another. Serenditous terrorism is now going to be normal part of life from now onwards. We will have a succession of Unabombers and Al Qaeda terror groups from now onwards. What this means is that centralised power is now on its way out. Governances throught history have ended when a new weapon came along from which there was no congtemporary defence. It takes time for a new form of governance to evolve. What our next one will be in the era of pocket-size nuclear weapons and ballistic missiles the size of hornets is anybody's guess. My guess is that we are going to have to revert to a highly decentgralised system -- rather like our hunter-gatherer past, in fact. As Ian Angel, Professor of Information Systems at the London School of Economics, said so very presciently ten years ago: There is a deep feeling that our present social, political, and economic institutions are coming to an end. But cultures don't change because, in a vague sort of way, humans decide that they should. We are far too conservative for that. Our insitutions only change when they are forced to by physical circumstances. Keith Hudson NANOTECH INDUSTRY WARY OF NEXT BIG THING SYNDROME There are fears that the science of the samll could repeat the boom-and-bust history of the dotcom frenzy Richard Waters
RE: Slightly extended (was Re: [Futurework] David Ricardo, Cavema n Trade vs. Modern Trade
in the developed world, should feel fortunate that they can afford foodbanks. Ever so many parts of the world can't, and people starve. Ed -Original Message- From: Ed Weick [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]] Sent: Thursday, December 4, 2003 9:08 AM To: Thomas Lunde; [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: Re: Slightly extended (was Re: [Futurework] David Ricardo, Caveman Trade vs. Modern Trade Thomas, very good posting. Ontario has just raised the minimum wage from peanuts to peanuts. Many of the poor are working full time and even double time, but are still unable to meet the rent or buy enough food, let alone get their kids the kinds of in toys (status goods) that are going around. They can try eating freedom and justice, but they don't taste very good when you can't make ends meet. Ed - Original Message - From: Thomas Lunde To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Thursday, December 04, 2003 3:36 AM Subject: Re: Slightly extended (was Re: [Futurework] David Ricardo, Caveman Trade vs. Modern Trade They don't need money, Thomas. They need justice and the freedom to enjoy it. Harry Thomas: In a way, you are right. Being poor and working with the poor as customers and neighbours let's me see the many ways the poor are lacking justice. A recent article in the paper made the outstanding statement that 37% of workers in Canada are not covered by the Labour Code and laws. When wages for the poor are kept artificially low, then the only way to compensate to maintain a survival standard is to work more. Of course, there are about 4 to 5% who are mentally incapable, or physically disabled or in the case of single mothers, family challenged. However, the work more solution has only produced the working poor, who still have to use food banks and subsidized housing, if thet can get it. Not only that, as you suggest, they do not even have the freedom to enjoy what little they have. I would agree, that justice and freedom would go a long way to compensating for money - or as you might suggest, make the earning and spending of money a by product of an effective system of justice and the freedom and thereby create a surplus to enjoy. Respectfully, Thomas Lunde Keith Hudson, Bath, England, www.evolutionary-economics.org
[Futurework] Mainly for Harry
Gerard Baker wrote an article last week in the FT mainly talking about Bush and American politics (if I remember rightly). A letter in today's FT refers: We all want a smarter man at the top From Mr. Derek Roper Sir, Gerard Baker ( 'This the season to loathe the president, December 4) writes: There is, let us be honest, the snobbery grievance. How could someone that dumb become president of the US? The Princeton professors and clever commentators can't quite conceal their anguish at the crassness of it all. It is not only professors and commentators who would feel safer if the most powerful man in the world were reasonably intelligent and well-informed. To present this as snobbery is not honest at all. Derek Roper Sheffield S10 5BW And so say all of us Keith Hudson, Bath, England, www.evolutionary-economics.org
Re: [Futurework] The poverty of nation-states
Tor, At 00:59 05/12/2003 +0100, you wrote: The essay says: Similarly, Norway's supposedly separate rainy-day fund, financed from oil and gas revenues, was raided in 2001 to meet immediate budgetary pressures It is wrong. It si decided that not more money shall be taken from the fund than goes into it. But since a large part of the money is in shares and stocks, and their value fluctates quite a lot there have been years where the oilfund hardly has grown. The reason that the fund fluctates is changing values of stocks and shares, but every year more money is put into the fund than being taken from it. Well perhaps Heller got it slightly wrong. But Norway is to be praised for being the first country to start a rainy-day fund. Perhaps Norway will also start to add to that fund from normal taxation as well. Because this is what will be needed in the longer term future in order to pay for welfare. If Norway were to do this then it would be showing the way to all the developed countries in the world. But would the Norwegian taxpayer accpet this policy? I don't know because I'm not Norwegian. It certainly couldn't be done in England unless there was the most vigorous campaign by all the political parties cting in unison. But even then the electorate might vote an entirely new political party into power that would despise such a policy. This is the basic faultline of democracy as it has developed so far in the western world. Keith Tor - Original Message - From: Keith Hudson To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Thursday, December 04, 2003 6:27 PM Subject: [Futurework] The poverty of nation-states If the accounts of the developed nations were judged in the same way that businesses were, then they would have declared bankrupt a long time ago and their directors taken to court for irresponsible behaviour, if not downright criminality in raiding their employees' pensions funds. For that, in a nutshell, is what developed countries have been doing. They have been 'trading', more or less, on an even keel, rather like an old-fashioned family firm that just about makes sufficient profits to pay for maintenance of its assets and perhaps a modicum of new investment from time to time. But the old-fashioned family firm -- of the sort that usually supplied a good canteen for its staff and a nice sports ground and facilities -- would also be regularly plonking money away into safe funds for its employees' pensions. But, it will be objected, the accounts of nation-states should not be compared with business companies. A nation's 'business' is not to make profits but to serve its constituents. All right, if that is accepted, then what about the moral obligation it has taken on (just like an old-fashioned business) to look after its elderly when they have reached the end of their working lives? In this regard, the duty of care is exactly the same. It should be judged accordingly. When William Beveridge wrote his great Report on national insurance in the last years of World War II, which he cleverly foisted on a reluctant Churchill (though the latter didn't have the chance of introducing it, as it happened) he made a bad mistake. And, because most developed countries adopted similar schemes shortly afterwards, they also inherited the same mistake. The basic mistake is not something we should pillory Beveridge for. It was made in good faith, and nobody queried it at the time. There were then about 10 active workers for every retired person and it made abundant sense that if every worker contributed a relatively small amount every week out of his wage packet then every old person could be given an adequate, albeit not over-generous, pension. Since then, however, the ratio has been declining. It is now about 4 workers for every retired person. In a few years' time it will be 2 workers per oldie. And it will even decline to less than this if most parents in developed countries don't quickly re-acquire the habit of having a replacement number of children -- namely 2.2 per family. Considering also that every retired person, in living longer, is also 'acquiring' many more chronic diseases than previously (a similar sort of oversight made by Aneurin Bevan when he introduced the National Health Service), the problem not only grows but becomes compounded. While we can excuse both Beveridge and Bevan, there can be no excuses for the politicians of all advanced countries in the last two or three decades as it became increasingly obvious that crunch-time would come sooner or later. Not only has it been obvious, but woe betide any politician or civil servant who attempted to start setting the matter stright. Some three or four years ago, Frank Field, for example, was kicked out of his ministerial position by Blair as soon as he tried to put forward an alternative pensions plan which was sustainable. And so it goes on. But the problem won't go away. Periodically, attention is drawn to certain catastrophe of the old
[Futurework] Whoops, Whampoa!
, but it might take many years yet and it will only be successful if the price and running costs are comparable to normal phone costs. It is going to be an interesting and delightful consumer good I'm sure but, in principle, of little economic importance to the overall market place as, say, the car and TV were in the last century. A little squeek of something like reality appears in the FT article below. This is uttered by an anonymous Hong Kong-based fund manager who is obviously worried at the amount of time and energy that Canning Fox and Frank Six, (senior executives of Whampoa) are spending on the 3G phone campaign. Not only does this fund manager reveal his anxieties about Whampoa but, considering that Whampoa is large enough to be able to finance almost anything that could be a good seller, he wails: Where is the next big thing going to come from? Do Canning and Frank spend any time thinking about expansion or do they just manage the daily business? Where is the next big thing going to come from? indeed! In my view, the 3G phone, however, versatile and wonderful it will ultimately become is no more than a nice little earner. A widely selling earner, but only with modest profiits. It won't have the same economic effect as the car, nor even perhaps the digital kitchen scale. I don't think there will be a next big thing -- as a consumer good in the usual way I seriously think we have reached the end of the yellow brick consumer road. There is nothing I can think of which will cost, say, between $1,000 and $10,000 -- an amount that middle-class consumers can afford, but few others could to start with, that is also mass producible so that the cost can come down steadily and steeply as other socio-economic classes yearn for it, that is either vastly more exciting to use in the home than the TV/DVD/PC or doesn't involve extra leisure time (which would then cannibalise on TV/DVD/PC sales and thus have no net effect on the economy). There is one exception which meets all the above criteria. This is non-rejectable replacement organs -- hearts, lungs, livers, kidneys, whatever. Life-savers, obviously, in millions of cases every year. Grown in accelerated fashion from the consumer's own stem cells so there is no possibility of rejection, organ transplants will be the big seller of the future. However, it will start as status goods existed a very long time ago in our history when, for example, only kings could afford bronze swords or, a little later, only regional iron age chieftains ruling over thousands could afford chariots with iron-rims. Organ transplants will be for the very, very rich. Li Ka-shing could probably afford one (and would no doubt need one, if he were to live long enough -- he is 75 now). There are a few hundred billionaires in the world, and a few million millionaires in the world, so let's put the starting price at about $500,000-$1 million. That would be realistic. Yes, the price could no doubt come down to, say $5,000 (virtually the cost of the necessary surgery) over the very long future and you could say that this would be affordable by everyone. (The average credit card holder has more debt than this now -- mainly for trivialities.) However, considering the qualifications of retail staff who would be involved in making this consumer item available, and the infrastructure required, we could hardly expect that this consumer good, once successfully developed, could be available for everyone for another generation at least. So I don't think organ replacements are going to save the existing consumer economy as it runs into the buffers. Organ replacements, as a status good, and subsequently as an ordinary consumer good, will have to be for the next type of economy, whatever that is going to be when the oil runs out. Keith Hudson THE WRONG CALL? HOW LI KA-SHING'S GAMBLE ON 3G TELEPHONY IS SQUEEZING CASH FROM HUTCHINSON WHAMPOA Problems with the third-generation mobile phone business in Euope are being felt across the group -- prompting talk that Hong Kong's richest tycoon has lost his touch Francesco Guerrera and Robert Budden Hong Kong's port teems witn me on a typically sweltering December morning. Sailors run round the ships cursing; truck drivers shout as they hurry to their vehicles; the giant red cranes at the water's edge lift container after container to the shore. Such incessant activity at the world's largest port is welcome news for Hutchison Whampoa, the conglomerate controlled by the tycoon Li Ka-shing that owns Hong Kong's international terminals. Every shipment passing through to feed China's insatiable appetite for raw materials, every container of Chinese goods sent from Hong Kong to the west, helps to pay for a risky business gamble thousands of miles away. Three, Hutchison Whampoa's fledgling third-generation mobile telephone business, has had only a trickle of customers in its shops -- whether in London, Rome or Stockholm -- in recent weeks. NEC and Motorola, suppliers
Re: Slightly extended (was Re: [Futurework] David Ricardo, Cavema n Trade vs. Modern Trade
Ed, At 14:31 05/12/2003 -0500, you wrote: Keith: A BI sounds wonderful but it is a theoretical solution that runs absolutely counter to human nature. Human society is about relative status. Not only human society, but primate society. And not only primate society but any social mammalian society. We really need to understand this first before we can suggest quite new social structures that will satisfy our basic instincts -- and, if possible, basic incomes also. But not before then. Extending welfarism beyond what we have now in most developed countries, desirable though it might sound (and I don't object to it on moral grounds), is already running itself into the ground. Keith, sorry, but you say the damndest things with utter certainty! Human society is about all kinds of things, depending very much on what people want it to be and agree that it should be. Status may be very important in American and European society, but I've dealt with small societies in northern Canada in which a person's importance depended on what he or she could do for the community. There were no contests around who could do the most for the community and therefore had the most status. You are misinterpreting me. I didn't say there always had to be contests! You've just admitted above that some people have importance. If that's not status I don't know what is. Native land claims negotiators were guys who had a better command of English than most others in the community. But it wasn't a status thing. It was because they had a better chance of understanding what the whiteman was saying with his forked tongue. Regrettably, once a land claim had been negotiated, those societies became stratified because people had to fill jobs at various levels and different rates of pay. That's when status began to move in and longstanding egalitarian principles began to come apart. Notions of fairness are as deeply in our genes as notions of status. (Perhaps not quite as deeply but certainly deeply enough to be very obvious and useful.) I mentioned the cooperative movement in an earlier posting. In that movement, people cooperated because it was in the interests of their communities and themselves to do so. There were no contest around who was the best cooperator. Of course, people cooperate. It's one of the chief characteristics of man. Have I ever written anywhere that they don't? There are many historic examples of people who gave away everything to deliberately unstatisfy themselves, people like Francis of Assisi and Peter Waldo in the 12th and 13th Centuries, who gave away everything, but for spiritual reasons, not because they were in any kind of race to the bottom. I don't want to discuss exceptional examples (sometimes of very idiosyncratic motives). Economics is about ordinary people. So give us a break and allow us our complexity of motives. The ordinary person also has complexity of motvies and I have never written otherwise. And besides, I feel that a Basic Income is entirely feasible economically and would probably pay off. Well, you may do so if you wish. I have have read very few economists who believe this. I have certainly not read any economists who can show how it can be achieved in a practical way without a revolt from the middle class. Any money received by the poor would likely be spent immediately, and not be put into long term investments. It's a question of political will. As long as we have neo-con governments, it's far less likely to happen than Bush's tax breaks for the rich. Ed I imagine that the closest any country has come to a Basic Income has been the Soviet Union. Even the poorest could live very cheaply indeed with very low expenditures on food, transport and houswing. Even the poorest in Stalinist times had savings (but nothing to spend them on). But the system collapsed nevertheless because there were no goods available -- except status goods for the nomenclatura (the chocolatura is what they called them when in shopping mode, I believe). Keith - Original Message - From: Keith Hudson To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Cc: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Friday, December 05, 2003 1:35 AM Subject: RE: Slightly extended (was Re: [Futurework] David Ricardo, Cavema n Trade vs. Modern Trade Arthur, At 16:16 04/12/2003 -0500, you wrote: As my colleague who was born in India says, the first picture of a Canadian child dying with a distended belly will be the spark that ignites governments to end this current (farcical) set of activities. There will be no starvation in Canada. There will be panhandlers on street corners and panhandlers using the food banks. Dignity is lost all around: Those who receive and those who give (although they feel mighty righteous at the moment.) We can end poverty. There can be a basic income. Somehow there is little incentive to change. Unfortunately (or not), a Basic Income would be impossible. All over the western world, taking all the developed countries into account
[Futurework] ... that dare not speak its name
useful only as a buffer just in case Russia resurges. But this is unlikely. America maintains friendly relations with Japan and Russia but it is a partonising relationship and no more than that. America already consumes 60% of the world's resources. China, with four times America's population -- and consequent consumer demand -- will equate fairly quickly. Within 20 years, America and China will together be able to absorb all the world's resources. The rest of the world will be heavily squeezed. There can be no other relatively peaceful scenario, even though millions of the world will suffer, just as the Iraqis are doing so today. But I am already going beyond the limit of my crystal ball. Whether the rest of the world will be anything more than wild life reservations and tourist attractions with interesting traditional crafts on display remains to be seen by younger readers of this posting. Keith Hudson Keith Hudson, Bath, England, www.evolutionary-economics.org
[Futurework] Re: Bush the confidence trickster (was RE: [Futurework] Blair's curious illnesses
) before going off to Andover as a legacy. Jim Hightower's great line about Bush, Born on third and thinks he hit a triple, is still painfully true. Bush has simply never acknowledged that not only was he born with a silver spoon in his mouth -- he's been eating off it ever since. The reason there is no noblesse oblige about Dubya is because he doesn't admit to himself or anyone else that he owes his entire life to being named George W. Bush. He didn't just get a head start by being his father's son -- it remained the single most salient fact about him for most of his life. He got into Andover as a legacy. He got into Yale as a legacy. He got into Harvard Business School as a courtesy (he was turned down by the University of Texas Law School). He got into the Texas Air National Guard -- and sat out Vietnam -- through Daddy's influence. (I would like to point out that that particular unit of FANGers, as regular Air Force referred to the Fucking Air National Guard, included not only the sons of Governor John Connally and Senator Lloyd Bentsen, but some actual black members as well -- they just happened to play football for the Dallas Cowboys.) Bush was set up in the oil business by friends of his father. He went broke and was bailed out by friends of his father. He went broke again and was bailed out again by friends of his father; he went broke yet again and was bailed out by some fellow Yalies. That Bush's administration is salted with the sons of somebody-or-other should come as no surprise. I doubt it has ever even occurred to Bush that there is anything wrong with a class-driven good-ol'-boy system. That would explain why he surrounds himself with people like Eugene Scalia (son of Justice Antonin Scalia), whom he named solicitor of the Department of Labor -- apparently as a cruel joke. Before taking that job, the younger Scalia was a handsomely paid lobbyist working against ergonomic regulations designed to prevent repetitive stress injuries. His favorite technique was sarcastic invective against workers who supposedly faked injuries when the biggest hazard they faced was dissatisfaction with co-workers and supervisors. More than 5 million Americans are injured on the job every year, and more die annually from work-related causes than were killed on September 11. Neither Scalia nor Bush has ever held a job requiring physical labor. What is the disconnect? One can see it from the other side -- people's lives are being horribly affected by the Bush administration's policies, but they make no connection between what happens to them and the decisions made in Washington. I think I understand why so many people who are getting screwed do not know who is screwing them. What I don't get is the disconnect at the top. Is it that Bush doesn't want to see? No one brought it to his attention? He doesn't care? Okay, we cut taxes for the rich and so we have to cut services for the poor. Presumably there is some right-wing justification along the lines that helping poor people just makes them more dependent or something. If there were a rationale Bush could express, it would be one thing, but to watch him not see, not make the connection, is another thing entirely. Welfare, Medicare, Social Security, food stamps -- horrors, they breed dependency. Whereas inheriting millions of dollars and having your whole life handed to you on a platter is good for the grit in your immortal soul? What we're dealing with here is a man in such serious denial it would be pathetic if it weren't damaging so many lives. Bush's lies now fill volumes. He lied us into two hideously unfair tax cuts; he lied us into an unnecessary war with disastrous consequences; he lied us into the Patriot Act, eviscerating our freedoms. But when it comes to dealing with those less privileged, Bush's real problem is not deception, but self-deception. Ever since their paths crossed in high school, Mother Jones contributing writer Molly Ivins has been an observer of our president. Her books about Bush include Bushwhacked: Life in George W. Bush's America and Shrub: The Short but Happy Political Life of George W. Bush http://www.motherjones.com/news/feature/2003/11/ma_559_01.html - Original Message - From: Keith Hudson To: Harry Pollard Cc: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Wednesday, December 03, 2003 9:25 AM Subject: Bush the confidence trickster (was RE: [Futurework] Blair's curious illnesses Harry, At 12:33 02/12/2003 -0800, you wrote: Keith, The part that bothers me about your post is: Yet I think Bush is intellectually stunted and is a confidence trickster through and through. And he's vengeful, so some of his former contacts say. What evidence to have that he is intellectually stunted? Harry, once again, I'm trusting the evidence of my own eyes and ears, having seen Bush on TV often enough and knowing the context from which he comes. I remember that when Bush came to office, he was unpracticed in the art of speaking. This evinced jeers and catcalls from
[Futurework] Self-employment in the ex-mass production world
, business and management consultancy, accountancy and auditing, banking, finance and insurance but there were also large increases in carpentry, bricklaying, childminding, taxi driving, and landscape gardening. The following is from today's Financial Times. Keith Hudson RISE IN SELF-EMPLOYMENT BOOSTS WORKFORCE David Turner An increase in the number of people working for themselves accounts for virtually the entire increase in the workforce over the past year, official figures reveal. The number of employees rose by only 9,000 in the year to September, research by the Office for National Statistics shows. But the number of self-employed people rose by 282,000 -- allowing the chancellor to continue to extol the buoyancy of UK plc. The growing army of the self-employed, however, owes its existence as much to the insecurity of Britain's labour market as to the country's entrepreneurial ardour, analysts warn. Simon Rubinsohn, economist at Gerrard, the fund manager, said While this does not necessarily fulfil Gordon Brown's dream of a rise in the entrepreneurial spirit, it certainly fits in with Tony Blair's comments about the erosion of the regular job. The prime minister warned on Tuesday that the old concept of nine-to- five jobs had already changed, when asked about Aviva's decision to transfer 2,500 jobs to India. The ONS research concludes that self-employment in a broad range of occupations has been increasing, from IT to accountants to taxi drivers. But it also finds the rise has been particularly large in banking, finance and insurance. It adds that the rise in self-employed financial and investment analysts and advisers broadly seems to support media stories about City job losses leading to people moving into self-employment. Stephen Alambritis, of the Federation of Small Businesses, said the rise in self-employment partly reflected the fired on Friday, come back on Monday culture, where highly skilled staff are pushed out of direct employment only to be rehired by the same company as consultants. If this is true, it suggests that government attempts to boost workers' rights could in part be counter-productive. The costs of employing workers directly have risen under Labour, said Mr Alambritis. He cited the right to four weeks' statutory holiday pay and enhanced conditions for fixed-term workers in line with EU law, as well as this year's rise in national insurance contributions which was bitterly attacked by business leaders. But he acknowledged that would-be entrepreneurs were helped by the low level of bureaucracy involved in setting up their own business in comparison with many other countries. David Yeandle, of the EEF manufacturers' organisation, said the rise was due to a mixture of push and pull. The pull was that people were now given greater encouragement to stand on their own two feet, but the push was that many services had been contracted out, often in order to follow head office decrees to reduce notional headcount. But although people may be forced by redundancy into considering self-employment, Mark Allsup of career advisers Fairplace Consulting suggested that this was not necessarily a negative development. Mr Allsup, whose business mainly advises redundant workers at the behest of their former employers, said that for clients in their 40s and 50s in particular, self-employment is an automatic question that they pose themselves. Firstly, because 'actually I would like to have more control of my life and my work'. And secondly because they recognise that there is no longer long-term security. By this reasoning, even self-employment triggered by redundancy may not be a bad thing. But if self-employment is set to become more common, government policy may need to change to accommodate self-employment. The government-appointed Pension Provision Group, of which Mr Yeandle was a member, recommended in 2001 that the self-employed should be included within the second state pension system in an attempt to give them more financial security in old age. The Federation of Small Businesses finds the level of state support given to self-employed people in the UK inadequate when compared with US levels. Financial Times -- 4 December 2003 Keith Hudson, Bath, England, www.evolutionary-economics.org
[Futurework] The poverty of nation-states
, as Hamish McRae says, politicans don't worry overmuch because they won't be in office when the bailiffs call on their former electors. I'm increasingly thinking that, to be realistic, governments should give sufficient notice that people should start to take on the responsibility of looking after themselves and how they are going to live when they retire from work because all the evidence suggest that politicians will never be able to. Also, perhaps parents would start to have more children so, if the government fails to help them in their old age -- as seems almost certain -- then they will have someone to rely on when they become infirm. Keith Hudson IN THE LONG RUN WE ARE ALL BROKE How to stop governments going bust Investors have good reason to worry about states defaulting on their loans: Argentina and Russia provide chastening recent reminders. But both were dysfunctional economies with troubled political pasts. Surely, there is no need to worry about the indebtedness of the governments of stable, advanced countries? Maybe not, but take a look all the same at the table below. Iceberg ahead Govenrment net debt as % of GDP in 2002 Country -- Explicit debt/Implicit debt (in order of size of implicit debt) Canada -- 45/420 Spain -- 42/355 Belgium -- 100/310 Holland -- 45/290 United States --45/265 France -- 40/230 Germany -- 45/200 Denmark -- 25/175 UK -- 30/110 Most countries' explicit net debt -- issued as bonds and traded every day in financial markets -- is at manageable levels, relative to GDP. However, embodied in current tax and expenditure policies are a lot of obligations for which governments have not yet had to make explicit provision. This implicit liability arises mainly from future increases in spending on pensions and health care. Include it, and total debt vaults to levels last seen (for explicit debt) in wartime. Governments often fall into bad habits when their debts are so high, usually by resorting to the printing press and using inflation to cut the real value of their liabilities. Credit-rating agencies are alerting their clients to the danger. Standard Poor's gave warning last year that many European governments will be relegated to the second division of borrowers if they do not tackle spending commitments that are set to soar as populations age. So far, however, investors do not appear to be charging higher risk premiums on explicit debt-the sanction that would most concentrate the minds of finance ministers. Yet the long-term budgetary risks are real and looming ever closer, says Peter Heller, deputy director of fiscal affairs at the International Monetary Fund, in a thought-provoking new book. (Who Will Pay? Coping with Aging Societies, Climate Change, and Other Long-Term Fiscal Challenges) These risks arise not only from the effects of an ageing population on pension and health-care bills, but also potentially from medical technology, global warming, security and globalisation. Irrespective of ageing, advances in medical technology are likely to push up public spending on health care: the more medical science and public health services can provide, the more people will want. Climate change may increase the incidence of floods, storms and droughts -- extreme weather events -- after which governments often step in as insurers of last resort. Some governments are already under pressure to spend more on defence: the peace dividend made possible by the end of the cold war is exhausted. And globalisation may limit governments' ability to exploit their national tax bases as both capital and labour become increasingly footloose. There may be some pleasant surprises to set against this catalogue of doom. Rising productivity ought to mean that future generations are richer and will be able to afford bigger tax bills, especially if the world economy enjoys the sort of productivity growth that America has experienced in recent years. Europeans could start to have more children, who would prop up their onerous pay-as-you-go pension systems. Mr Heller accepts that there are huge uncertainties; after all, fiscal forecasts a year ahead, let alone a decade or more, are often wildly wrong. But he thinks that the balance of risks lies on the downside. Worse, risks may hit the public finances at the same time; for example, governments in Europe could find their outlays ballooning from weather-related damage as well as population ageing. As for appealing to the generosity of future richer generations, he is properly dubious about governments' ability to squeeze more tax out of their citizens. Higher tax rates might merely mean a bigger shadow economy, or an abandonment of over-taxed work in favour of untaxed leisure. Plan, plan and plan again So what is to be done? First, governments must look much farther ahead than they do now. An increasing number of western countries are planning their public finances on a basis of three to five years, but this is nowhere near enough, argues Mr Heller
[Futurework] Blair's curious resignation
The way Blair is going about his resignation is curious beyond anything written in a novel. He's been having these strange (though trivial) illnesses in the last two months (and spoke about them at some length in his press conference yesterday -- the stress of leadership and all that). Moreoever, he's been trying to force through new legislation to load up students with more tuition debts before they start university (though they can pay them back afterwards [unless they declare themselves bankrupt which a few are already doing!] ) so that the so-called world-class universities (Oxford, Cambridge, Imperial College London) can survive financially (having been starved by the government in the last six years -- spending per student halving). Now, he says, it's going to be difficult to fight at least 170 of his own Labour Party MPs just now so the big fight will be left until January or so -- and he'll win then, so he says. But he might not, so he also says. Fact is, he'll lose and then he can resign having done his best, so he'll say. What's all this about? I reckon it's about Lord Hutton's Report (on the death of Dr David Kelly). It was due last month, but Hutton decided that it would be published next January. When I heard this I thought that this was because Blair and Hoon (Defence Secretary) would have been able to get at it and tweak it. But no, it would seem that the report will be just as condemnatory as it ought to be (considering that Blair lied twice over his responsibility in naming Kelly). Here's an extract from the FT of yesterday which I missed while I was house-hunting in the sticks : Lord Hutton has alarmed the government by refusing to send drafts of his report into the death of Dr Kelly to ministers, officials and others, including the BBC, who will be the subject of criticism. His decision, which breaks with normal practice of judicial enquiries, could give Tony Blair only hours to react before the potentially damaging report could be published. It's going to come as a bolt from the blue, one government official told the FT. We're being given no advance warning at all. So Blair is going to have to resign (for lying) in January/February anyway, but he'd rather resign just before the Report is published citing a tough and principled fight against those who are blocking his reforms to save the universities. So this is what is going to happen IMHO. SWhat will Bush do then without his (only) pal? Two years ago, Blair was trying to force us to adopt the Euro currency and a new European Constitution -- without a referendum. (We haven't even got a written Constitution!) I think he was angling for Presidency of the European Union then or at least an important Commissionership. Then his big rich media pal Richard Murdoch ditched him for his support of the EU. Then Bush got Blair to join in the Iraq invasion. On the basis that Iraqi oil is thicker than olive oil, Blair opted out of his European campaigning (and the prospect of a directorship in the Carlyle Group later). President Chirac of France now treats Blair with disdain and dry sarcasm even in public. (Blair dared to call him Jacques the other day at a press conference. Chirac responded icily to Prime Minister Blair.) So Blair's future career in the European Union is finished. So what's he after now? Possibly a Mastership of an Oxford College -- one of the most prestigious jobs that anybody could land in this pleasant land. That would be some sort of recompense for a Prime Minister who's served his country so well -- with collapsing national health service (NHS) and state education system despite spending going up about 50% to both in the last six years. (Facts: Average waiting time for operations in the NHS is 9 months, one quarter of all medical student leave the profession after qualifying and spending training time in our NHS hospitals; most doctors are withdrawing week-end and night-time home visits next year; one quarter of teenagers leaving school are illiterate and innumerate; one third of university students drop out during their degree courses.) There we are then -- I must move on to greater thoughts. When anybody talks of the death of the nation-state, remember that it's happening here first, and that you read about it here first. We led the way into the industrial revolution -- why shouldn't we lead the way out of it? We still have a bit of pride in our leadership qualities. Keith Hudson Keith Hudson, Bath, England, www.evolutionary-economics.org ___ Futurework mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://scribe.uwaterloo.ca/mailman/listinfo/futurework
Re: A cottage in the country (was Re: Thoughts on IQ scores (was Re: [Futurework] Talmud vs. Science (or Censorship thereof)
Ed, At 16:30 02/12/2003 -0500, you wrote: Never give up on that book Keith. I saw Studs Terkel, the American writer, interviewed on TV last night. I just caught part of it, but I think he's written another book and he's only 91! M'mm -- don't think I'll reach those years, but if the canaries don't peck me to death I might get a decent book out. I'm growing my beard to look like Darwin -- maybe that'll help. And please don't bother Harry and I while we are rabbiting about you. You give us plenty to chew on! I don't know whether you are serious, but you and Harry are a delight in my old age despite your (un)reasonableness in not falling over to be tickled on your tummies with my arguments. The house and location sound lovely. Last time I was in Somerset I slept in an old barn, 17th Century I believe, converted into part of a BB. Well, I'm crossing my fingers. The chief candidate for buying my present house is a Daily Telegraph sports journalist (with a wife who write detective novels), so I'm letting the tone of this neighbourhood down somewhat. But Winsley (for that is the name of the village) is still, thanks goodness, a goodly mixture of yuppie arty-tarties and genuine old farm workers (though on the far side of the village there is a clump of about 250 executive homes with long cars and SUVs in their drives -- but I'm already learning not to talk about these arrivistes -- though, to be fair, they are at least keeping the village shop in good economic health. Many villages round here have lost their village shops, and even their pubs!) Keith Ed - Original Message - From: Keith Hudson To: Ed Weick Cc: Harry Pollard ; [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Tuesday, December 02, 2003 3:24 PM Subject: A cottage in the country (was Re: Thoughts on IQ scores (was Re: [Futurework] Talmud vs. Science (or Censorship thereof) Ed and Harry, M'mm I see. While the cat's away .. I've been looking at a house for most of the day and when I come back I find that the two old men of FW have been talking about me. But I think I've found the place. Two old farm workers' terraced cottages of the 1700s bolted together more recently (well, about a hundred years ago). Attached to another pair similarly joined in stoney matrimony. Front room of my choice extends across front garden boundary into neighbour's building. Her kitchen extends across rear boundary into my intended garden. All very higgledy-piggedly -- probably the result of territorial disputes. Walls are two feet thick, circular staircase, oak beams everywhere. No room for a study on the ground floor -- where I'll need to be in coming years as my breathing worsens -- so I'll have to build a garden office where the GREAT BOOK will be written. Also, I have a sudden fancy out of nowhere to breed canaries or suchlike, so I might build an aviary next to my office with a little doorway between me and them, and then they can fly around as I toil -- no doubt crapping over the keyboard as they do so. That's something that George Bernard Shaw never had in his garden office. But, then, I'm aiming for higher things than GBS... Anyway, it's nice village -- has all the things that English country villages should have -- cricket club, bowls club (another incipient fancy of mine), Women's Institute meeting room where they teach young wives how to make sponge cakes and marmalade, nice Gothic church with a bent spire and, of course, the village pub. Also, so help me!, two manor houses (both, I'm glad to say, have public footpaths that run right across their graceful and spacious lawns along which the riff-raff can walk -- we're still protective of the common weal over here) and one of them, unbelievably, has a paddock with four llamas in it! What are they doing in the Somerset countryside, for God's sake! Delicate whispy things they are with dainty legs and all, nibbling away and eating fallen autumn leaves rather than choice green grass -- but I was told by a bent and ancient gent returning from the pub in painful gait on gnarled walking sticks and wearing a white beard even longer than mine, not to let my dog off the leash (she was anxious to give chase to these lovely creatures) because one of these dainty llamas would land a well-aimed kick on her skull and crack it open without a doubt. Them there lamy things can look after 'emselves a'right, we were told. M'mm not so dainty after all! I return home to find an invitation to speak at an economics conference in Milan next year. So even though you two go on at me, someone out there likes me. Might go, might not. I haven't got my ideas together yet. Still a few more hundred postings to write before my great thoughts start to gell. And then I discover, from a wall of e-mails in my mailbox taller than the rooms I've just been to, that you two have been rabbiting on again. Ah well, back to the keyboard. Haven't made an offer for the country pad yet. (Oh, I forgot, a well in the garden, of course. Probably
[Futurework] RE: A cottage in the country
lived a hundred yards away while he was dwelling on GREAT BOOK thoughts just like me. (Very sensibly he kept away from the gaming tables.) This place is stiff with history. Also, remembering a visitation (nay, delegation) last summer, I'm planning on putting a plaque on the wall outside: Harry Pollard (and family) slept here Or perhaps not. Keith Keith Hudson, Bath, England, www.evolutionary-economics.org
Blank incomprehension (wasRe: [Futurework] A glimpse of medieval Hangzhou and the Song civilisation
At 15:24 01/12/2003 -0500, you wrote: Keith Hudson wrote: [snip] I don't understand the rest of what you've written below I'm afraid. My apologies, but our vocabularies are so different, I can't get on your wavelength no matter how hard I try. Keith Hudson The question arises: How could European civilization, for over 2,000 years and continuing almost unabated today, have essentially have lost track of the universal fact that all ratiocination is human *activity* with motivations, aspirations, intentions, etc.? YOu do not understand the preceding paragraph I wrote???[snip] all laws of physics which take the form: If whatever-1 then whatever-2 Really have the form: If we do whatever-1a then we will encounter whatever-b Or the preceding paragraph? Sorry, no.[snip] Let's try this [yet] again in [yet another] a diferent way. I will grant that it doesn't make much practical difference whether we assert The planets move in elliptical orbits or When we take an interest in the night sky, we can best predict where we see what we call the planets, by treating them as very large objects very far away which move in elliptical orbits I think it makes a lot more practical difference whether the faculty members of a school assert Students will cheat less if the punishment for cheating is expulsion than if they can get away with it with impunity or We the faculty have decided to subject those persons over whom we have power -- the students -- to a system of examination how well they have done the things we instruct them to do, And we will get them to conform to the regimen we want to impose better if we expel the ones we catch cheating and get them to fear they are always being watched so that whenever one of them tries to cheat he or she will think they are likely to be detected and caught, than if we profer our examinations but do not punish students who do not behave as we want them to behave in response, since in the latter case, seeing that failing the exams would still cause them injury, the students will often choose to cheat rather than avoidably suffer us to punish them for failing the exam. In the first case, the volitional relations between faculty and students are obfuscated through the projection of an impersonal order of the world. In the second case it is clear that some persons are using their power over other persons in a unilateral way. In the first case even a student who is immensely wealthy may think he or she is subject to The Universal Law of Cheating. In teh latter case, the student just might think, and even say and act: Just who do you think you are to try to make my life miserable like that? Go find somebody else to do it to, or, better, how about I just buy up your damned school and then fire the lot of you? Now, the reason such issues are intersting is not so much for the cases of the persons who have a choice but have been tricked into thinking they don't, but to try to begin to do things to enable those who have less choice to have more of a voice in the shape of their life (yes, you guess it, I think I am more one of the latter than of the former, although rich liberals sometimes try to help those beneath them just because it makes them feel better to help them...). Michel Foucault (a lot of his writings make little sense to me, but some of what he wrote makes a lot of sense to me) aserted that Forms of power create domasins of objects Example: The power of pedagogues creates students, and it also creates honors students and dropouts. How about we say that students are not a natural species even if atoms are? That if persons did not experience, there would be no students, even if you want to say that even if persons did not experience there would still be atoms. Ultimately, I favor a metaphysical agnosticism, which is open to the possibility that even the Pythagorean Theorem may one day be disproved. But I think such agnosticism about the objects in experience does not affect the issue of: Who is a peer participant in the conversation, and who is an object whose fate the peers in the conversation decide unilaterally? Where the metaphysical agnosticism comes in is that the peer participants in the conversation keep themselves open to the possible invalidation of any assertion about any subject they talk about - with the one exception that they collgially agree not to reduce any among themselves from a peer member of the conversation to a mere object whose fate is discused by the remaining members of the conversation, and -- Gee, this is realy difficult!?$%^*( -- they also discuss this situation itself, i.e., the fact that they are peers in converation, etc. Finally, why isn't this stuff talked about more? My hypothesis is that the gods (bosses, faculty, etc.) generally don't have to talk about their situation because nobody is threatening it, etc. Why think that you are bossing people around if you don't have to -- only a few
Bush the confidence trickster (was RE: [Futurework] Blair's curious illnesses
Harry, At 12:33 02/12/2003 -0800, you wrote: Keith, The part that bothers me about your post is: Yet I think Bush is intellectually stunted and is a confidence trickster through and through. And he's vengeful, so some of his former contacts say. What evidence to have that he is intellectually stunted? Harry, once again, I'm trusting the evidence of my own eyes and ears, having seen Bush on TV often enough and knowing the context from which he comes. I remember that when Bush came to office, he was unpracticed in the art of speaking. This evinced jeers and catcalls from the not so loyal opposition. He is a quick learner and he has adapted to his new position. His London speech was excellent, delivered without a slip from his notes rather than from reading a Teleprompter. Why do you say he is a confidence trickster? Because he's told lies. And we've found out about several of them. His track record is now such that you would have to be very naive to believe anything that Bush says without thinking carefully of why he might be saying them. We can certainly argue that the WMD didn't materialize. Yet, both Bush and Blair were more than confident they existed. Indeed, most of the people concerned with Iraq, including the inspectors, were sure they existed. If they were moved, where did they go? There were some early reports that they were buried in Syria. No! With the present sort of satellite photography (down to 6 inches visual resolution) and many years of satellites going overhead, the CIA would know the whereabouts of every single piece of fixed military or industrial technology in the whole country. Not only visual methods, but infra red, X-ray and so forth mean that any sort of significant underground installations would also be a doddle to discover. When the presence of 100,000 troops at his borders persuaded Saddam that he had better provide greater (if unenthusiastic) cooperation with the UN inspectors, it could well be that any remaining WMD would be better off elsewhere. What evidence shows that he is vengeful, other than the words of former contacts -- whatever that means? One of the problems of thinking about these matters is that every movement, every gesture, every decision, is analyzed and overanalyzed by people who do not really know. They are guessing. Authoritative guesswork is now well-paid, so there is no shortage of guessers and guesses. I think that Bush has accepted a Herculean task. He may not be up to it, but one must wonder who is? If the situation in Iraq comes off the boil, if Syria mends its ways, if Saudi Arabia takes the necessary antiterrorist action, if Iran continues the policy (that may have already started) of rapprochement with the US, Bush will become the president of the 21st-century. Lots of ifs, but at least they are positive ifs -- a little different from the constant prognostications of doom and disaster. I really don't know how to express myself after reading the above paragraphs! So I won't. Keith Harry Henry George School of Social Science of Los Angeles Box 655 Tujunga CA 91042 Tel: 818 352-4141 -- Fax: 818 353-2242 http://haledward.home.comcast.net From: Keith Hudson [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]] Sent: Tuesday, December 02, 2003 1:16 AM To: Harry Pollard Subject: RE: [Futurework] Blair's curious illnesses Harry, At 16:47 01/12/2003 -0800, you wrote: Keith, Long before Iraq, Gwen and I used to be amused by Presidential hair color transitions. Hair that came in black, goes out gray. Gray heads become white. The job is not an easy one. I remember a science fiction yarn about the future Presidency. There were actually three Presidents - each with a specific area to cover - to handle the complexities. Maybe there should be several prime Ministers. That's precisely what I think is going to happen in the longer term future. We'll need (democratic) forums in each policy area. I only see Blair in action at Question Time and Press Conferences. He seems to handle things well in those arenas. He's a very good perfomer. And that's all he is. He's intelligent but he has no intellectual depth. Two opposition leaders ago, William Hague used to best him at Question Time three times out of five. Hague is an intellectual (he is writing a biography of William Pitt at present and learning to play the piano) though he doesn't seem it because he has a broad Yorkshire accent. (He was the chap who spoke at the Conservative Party Conference when he was 14! Remember?) This, plus the fact that he is still young, and bald, ditched him as leader of the Tories. He resigned very gracefully without hanging on too long. In 5 - 10 years' time with a good book behind him he'll go straight into the Tory leadership again. The main thing that bothers me about Hague is that his ideas (a year ago, anyway) don't seem to have changed since he was 14. But maybe they will as he writes about
[Futurework] The shared secret
with no legislative powers, corrupt Commission officials at all levels, etc. Keith Hudson Keith Hudson, Bath, England, www.evolutionary-economics.org ___ Futurework mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://scribe.uwaterloo.ca/mailman/listinfo/futurework
RE: [Futurework] Blair's curious illnesses
Harry, At 16:47 01/12/2003 -0800, you wrote: Keith, Long before Iraq, Gwen and I used to be amused by Presidential hair color transitions. Hair that came in black, goes out gray. Gray heads become white. The job is not an easy one. I remember a science fiction yarn about the future Presidency. There were actually three Presidents - each with a specific area to cover - to handle the complexities. Maybe there should be several prime Ministers. That's precisely what I think is going to happen in the longer term future. We'll need (democratic) forums in each policy area. I only see Blair in action at Question Time and Press Conferences. He seems to handle things well in those arenas. He's a very good perfomer. And that's all he is. He's intelligent but he has no intellectual depth. Two opposition leaders ago, William Hague used to best him at Question Time three times out of five. Hague is an intellectual (he is writing a biography of William Pitt at present and learning to play the piano) though he doesn't seem it because he has a broad Yorkshire accent. (He was the chap who spoke at the Conservative Party Conference when he was 14! Remember?) This, plus the fact that he is still young, and bald, ditched him as leader of the Tories. He resigned very gracefully without hanging on too long. In 5 - 10 years' time with a good book behind him he'll go straight into the Tory leadership again. The main thing that bothers me about Hague is that his ideas (a year ago, anyway) don't seem to have changed since he was 14. But maybe they will as he writes about English history in depth. He doesn't seem to be enmeshed at all with big business (thgough I'm sure he has a few directorships) and keeps away from the London scene, living an idyllic life (it would seem) in his constituency in Yorkshire with his lovely wife Fiona (an intellectual who was one of the brightest fast-track civil servants. She taught Welsh to Hague when he was Secretary of State for Wales and she was his senior civil servant). I must say, your usually excellent analyses seem to falter when you cover Bush (and perhaps Blair). Come on Harry! I'm now 68. I've knocked around with people from all classes -- in the army , shop floor workers (at two factories for some years), several Peers of the Realm and several politicians of all three parties of entirely different abilities and motivations. I've negotiated with civil servants at the highest level. If I can't judge the calibre of politicians from their speech, gestures and bearing after a sufficient number of viewings on TV (and, moreover that my estimation fits in with those of other observers I have time for) then I'm ready for the knacker's yard. I'm not prejudiced against Bush. My general ragbag of policies is slightly more stocked with Republican policies than with Democratic policies. Yet I think Bush is intellectually stunted and is a confidence trickster through and through. And he's vengeful, so some of his former contacts say. Note the Economist about Blair: . . . he became blind to any evidence or arguments that might have forced him to think twice. Harry Junior's reaction to the Presidential Thanksgiving trip was it showed class. Could that be a reasonable reaction to it? It was a disaster. But Bush got his photos with the Queen. That's what the trip was planned for 18 months ago long before the invasion was planned and that's what he got. The rest was humiliation, but Bush is so thankful that Blair -- his only friend in the non-American world -- is supporting him that he was prepared to be humiliated as no-one has ever been before. Are you saying the Economist doesn't have a party line. Isn't that good? It doesn't have a party line, which is good -- it has too many bright people on the staff. But its leaders chop and change about too much in recent years under the present editor. You really cannot be certain what it's general line is going to be on new issues. It's so often quixotic. As I wrote before, the Economist is extremely good at gleaning the informational world and grabbing the latest idea before most other publications, and that's why I buy it. Best wishes, Keith Keith Hudson, Bath, England, www.evolutionary-economics.org
A cottage in the country (was Re: Thoughts on IQ scores (was Re: [Futurework] Talmud vs. Science (or Censorship thereof)
Ed and Harry, M'mm I see. While the cat's away .. I've been looking at a house for most of the day and when I come back I find that the two old men of FW have been talking about me. But I think I've found the place. Two old farm workers' terraced cottages of the 1700s bolted together more recently (well, about a hundred years ago). Attached to another pair similarly joined in stoney matrimony. Front room of my choice extends across front garden boundary into neighbour's building. Her kitchen extends across rear boundary into my intended garden. All very higgledy-piggedly -- probably the result of territorial disputes. Walls are two feet thick, circular staircase, oak beams everywhere. No room for a study on the ground floor -- where I'll need to be in coming years as my breathing worsens -- so I'll have to build a garden office where the GREAT BOOK will be written. Also, I have a sudden fancy out of nowhere to breed canaries or suchlike, so I might build an aviary next to my office with a little doorway between me and them, and then they can fly around as I toil -- no doubt crapping over the keyboard as they do so. That's something that George Bernard Shaw never had in his garden office. But, then, I'm aiming for higher things than GBS... Anyway, it's nice village -- has all the things that English country villages should have -- cricket club, bowls club (another incipient fancy of mine), Women's Institute meeting room where they teach young wives how to make sponge cakes and marmalade, nice Gothic church with a bent spire and, of course, the village pub. Also, so help me!, two manor houses (both, I'm glad to say, have public footpaths that run right across their graceful and spacious lawns along which the riff-raff can walk -- we're still protective of the common weal over here) and one of them, unbelievably, has a paddock with four llamas in it! What are they doing in the Somerset countryside, for God's sake! Delicate whispy things they are with dainty legs and all, nibbling away and eating fallen autumn leaves rather than choice green grass -- but I was told by a bent and ancient gent returning from the pub in painful gait on gnarled walking sticks and wearing a white beard even longer than mine, not to let my dog off the leash (she was anxious to give chase to these lovely creatures) because one of these dainty llamas would land a well-aimed kick on her skull and crack it open without a doubt. Them there lamy things can look after 'emselves a'right, we were told. M'mm not so dainty after all! I return home to find an invitation to speak at an economics conference in Milan next year. So even though you two go on at me, someone out there likes me. Might go, might not. I haven't got my ideas together yet. Still a few more hundred postings to write before my great thoughts start to gell. And then I discover, from a wall of e-mails in my mailbox taller than the rooms I've just been to, that you two have been rabbiting on again. Ah well, back to the keyboard. Haven't made an offer for the country pad yet. (Oh, I forgot, a well in the garden, of course. Probably better quality than the stuff we get down pipes these days.) Might not get the house -- might not have enough of the ready. If so, it'll have to be another day of house-hunting. Meanwhile, does anybody want a Georgian town house in a most desirable city? And with a genuine ice room -- in which I now sit -- to which ice came from a freshwater lake near Boston in the early 1800s. Honest! Jane Austen visited next door, and David Ricardo lived a hundred yards away while he was dwelling on GREAT BOOK thoughts just like me. (Very sensibly he kept away from the gaming tables.) This place is stiff with history. Also, remembering a visitation (nay, delegation) last summer, I'm planning on putting a plaque on the wall outside: Harry Pollard (and family) slept here Or perhaps not. Keith At 07:46 02/12/2003 -0500, you wrote: Thanks, Harry. I enjoy my debates with Keith. Just to be fair, maybe one of these days I'll let him win one. As for potatoes, you know what happened to the Irish in the mid-19th Century. Like the sinister potato of Indiana or Idaho, they sat in the ground an lowered. But then their hour came! Ed - Original Message - From: Harry Pollard To: 'Ed Weick' ; 'Keith Hudson' Cc: 'Christoph Reuss' ; [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Monday, December 01, 2003 5:24 PM Subject: RE: Thoughts on IQ scores (was Re: [Futurework] Talmud vs. Science (or Censorship thereof) Ed and Keith, Whether your are miffed or unmiffed, your dialogues are delightful (even when you are both wrong). In your discussion of the lowly potato, you are both somewhat condescending and dismissive. Yet, Ed, the only way your next generation could be doctors, lawyer, and the rest, is because potato growing was doing well. Should Keith's forebodings about the oil crash come to fruition, who will be of greatest importance - potato growers or experts
[Futurework] Hutton not Hanson
Once again my memory is failing. The report that is expected on the enquiry into the death of Dr Kelly is by Lord Hutton, not Hanson, as I recently wrote. There's been a very strange lack of mention of the report in the papers during the last week or two. I think they can't quite believe that Lord Hutton will actually state that Blair told a lie about his decision to expose the name of Dr Kelly to the press, both before the enquiry and during it, particularly when the senior civil servant at the Ministry of Defence has contradicted him (something he wouldn't have dared to do unless he was telling the truth). Anyway, while the papers are awaiting Hutton's report in silence, the Bremner Show on Channel 4 last night devoted an hour to a savage attack on Blair (they even quoted from an existing [anonymous] British Ambassador who said that Blair was shallow-minded and paid no attention to the briefs or the expert opinion he was given.) This show is watched by all the intelligentsia and opinion moulders in England. Whether Blair had the courage to watch it (it was trailed extensively beforehand), I don;lt know but we can be sure that his immediate advisors would have done. More broadly, a recent poll in the Daily Telegraph showed that on the question of Do you trust the government? the Yesses have gone down from 25% to 10% in the last few years. Blair is finished, mainly due to supporting Bush over Iraq, and it is one of the miracles of modern times that he has not already resigned or fallen to a diplomatic illness. Eighteen months ago when Bush's state visit was agreed with Blair, it was intended that he would have the full treatment -- a public drive down Pall Mall from Buckingham Palace to Westminster (even Putin received this last year), and an address by Bush to both Houses of Parliament. Both had to be cancelled. The main reason was not the possibility of terrorism (though that could have happened of course) but the fact that, probably 250,000 people would have jeered Bush, not cheered him, as he rode by. Bush and Blair have been unimaginably humiliated. Bush won't affect to worry too much 'cos he'll have the photos with the Queen that he wanted for his election campaign. (Incidentally, most of the families of British soldiers killed in Iraq spurned the offer to meet Bush -- the meeting was held in private with an unknown number of grieving relatives. The only public adddress that Bush gave was to an audience that was hastily herded into the hall from another meeting that was being held nearby a few minutes before Bush appeared.) To adapt a Churchillan phrase: Never have so many British policemen (15,000) and so many American security guards (700) been used to so little purpose. The historians will relish the description of this non-state visit as a scurry from one helicopter pad to another. Anyway, we still await Lord Hutton's Report. I miscalculated the dates in my previous posting. It's 1 December today, and the report should have been delivered last month. Without being too sceptical at this stage, I am beginning to wonder whether a lot of pressure has been put on Lord Hutton to moderate his findings -- and that he's been resisting. Whereas Alastair Campbell, Blair's former press sercretary was able to bully the Intelligence Committee and sex-up their report that Blair took to be permission to invade, I don't think Blair will be able to bully Lord Hutton. I could be wrong, because law lords like him are largely unknown to the public, but his demeanour during the enquiry suggests that he'll be honest and blunt (albeit expressed in diplomatic language perhaps). So the papers -- and the rest of us -- are waiting. Keith Hudson P.S. John Le Carre -- one of our most respected spy story writers and himself a former MI5 agent -- has just been on the radio. He said: There can be no greater sin for a politician than to lead his country into war under false pretences. (I only caught the tail-end of the interview, but it would seem that his latest novel is based on the Iraq invasion. As he also said: I can be much more truthful in fiction than people can normally be in real life.) Keith Hudson, Bath, England, www.evolutionary-economics.org
Re: [Futurework] Death of a Consumer
Ed, Well, whoever Jon Helliwell is (I must confess as to not having heard of him), he's someone who ought to get a Nobel Prize instead of the stream of econometricians in recent years who put their faith in numbers alone. When I was on the Council of the Conservation Society 30 years ago one of our working parties was attempting to construe a happiness index and tried to interest various academics to help. But nothing came of it. There have, however, been some occasional happiness opinion polls and these strongly suggest that there has been a general decline in happiness since the 70s and 80s. ConSoc folded up a long time ago, but a modern equivalent would do better I think. Yes, we could do with an index. I think it would clearly show that we have reached the end of the road as regards consumerism. At least as regards a minority (albeit quite sizeable now) of middle-class intelligentsia in the western world. However, the majority of the population are still caught up in its trammels. And, of course, there are whole countries which are desperately trying to achieve the consumer plateau (without realising it's a plateau), such as the central European countries, but who will never achieve it (energy shortages in the next two or three decades will kibosh that) and just one or two more (e.g. China) who will achieve it (but only just, I think) and then, presumably, will start asking the same questions that Helliwell is. (I wonder how the Chinese will deal with this problem in, say, 20 or 30 years. They have a quite different 'culture set' to ours and perhaps their longtime Confucian philosophy will enable them to avoid it.) Yes, Helliwell is spot on. But I respectfully suggest that before we condemn consumerism outright we must first understand it. This is what I am attempting to do on my website. If I am right, then consumerism taps into some very powerful status predispositions. Consumer goods have been able very effectively to substitute for these (except for the exceptionally power-struck) -- so far. The only way that we can re-tap into original sources for well-being is, as Helliwell quite rightly says, the reconstruction of community -- in which everybody has a sense of status and belongingness. Keith At 14:57 29/11/2003 -0500, you wrote: I attended a talk by Canadian economist John Helliwell on the development of subjective well being indices last Thursday. If economists, sociologists, statisticians or whoever else might work on them were able to develop a reputable index of this kind (a happiness index), its main components, judging by what Helliwell said, would include things like belonging to a community and church (or other religious organization), the stability of the institutions one relies on, having family and friends, having a sufficient income, and being able to achieve approximately what one expects in life. It would not include SUVs or being snowed under by presents you may not really need or want at Christmas. Ed - Original Message - From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] ; [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Saturday, November 29, 2003 2:20 PM Subject: RE: [Futurework] Death of a Consumer It really is sad. The news casts are all about will this be a successful shopping season Is it cold enough (too cold) for consumers to shop Recently one upbeat bizz talk analyst was putting her money on self gifting ie., buying stuff for yourself. That this trend toward self indulgence should boost holiday sales. If I were a Christian I would be joining the Put Christ back in Christmas movement Re: X-mas, Keith. Be brave and take a stand. Give your grand-daughters a hug and a kiss and forget about buying into the declining and obscene consumer culture. arthur -Original Message- From: Keith Hudson [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]] Sent: Saturday, November 29, 2003 4:11 AM To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: [Futurework] Death of a Consumer In Arthur Miller's famous play, Death of a Salesman (1947) he described the end of the 'American Dream' -- that if any individual worked hard enough he could achieve success. In the tragedy that overcame his chief character, Willie Loman, Miller dramatised the demise of the old-fashioned virtues of hard work. On the other hand, millions of real-life equivalents of Willie Loman did, in fact, achieve all the trappings of success that Willie Loman believed in during the 1960s and 70s -- a house and car and all the rest of the usual consumer delights. This was achieved not so much by hard work by the ordinary worker but because they were fortunate enough to be employed in the growing number of large manufacturing and retailing industries that became more efficient from year to year and, very importantly, buoyed up by the increasing quantities of oil coming from abroad -- becoming cheaper from year to year. But now there are more than a few signs that the consumer revolution is coming to an end. There are, of course, millions of people in America
Re: [Futurework] A glimpse of medieval Hangzhou and the Song civilisation
Brad, At 11:58 29/11/2003 -0500, you wrote: Keith Hudson wrote: [snip] In almost every conceivable way, life in 12th century Hangzhou was incomparably better than life in Ehropean capitals for centuries to come. The only cities that I can think of that come close to it in both commercial prosperity and the arts (they are, of course, closely linked) are Venice and Florence during Renaissance times. /Human Accomplishment/ is a stupendous book, incidentally, and the first attempt to quantify individual genius in the arts and sciences in terms of cultural origina and geographical distribution.[snip] This sounds a bit like Ivan Morris's description of 10th century CE Heian (Kyoto), the Japanese capital at the time, which I have previously mentioned here http://www.users.cloud9.net/~bradmcc/essays.html#genji Thank you for reminding me of the existence of your website -- it is quite astonishing! Morris's book, however, is quite modest; on the other hand, the way he succinctly situates such cultures historically is imaginatively evocative. And the Heian Japanese were probably far less technologically acomplished than the Chinese. I have yet to see where scholars have really answered the question for either China or the classical Greco-Roman world (and late Medieval Islam? and some of the American pre-Columbian cultures?): Why did not these cultures take off scientifically and in engineering, as Europe did aproximately beginning with Galileo? What went wrong? We can blame the decline of Minoan civilization on a massive volcanic eruption, locally equivalent for the Minoans to that meteor that changed global environmental conditions to the detriment of the dinosaurs. If it does not sound prosaic, I think we can understand why the rich and liberal culture of late medieval Islam declined. At about that time, the technological and artistic fruits of China were bursting into Europe, and the Islamic clerics had to take a stance on this because they were mightily afraid of the consequences, particularly the military. A series of ijtihads (learned interpretations of the Koran) by their senior divines, however, caused Islam to turn against western ways. The rich trading culture of Islam all through the Mediterranean and beyond started declining vis-a-vis European merchants declined from then on. Whereas western Europe gained some of the virtues of liberal civilisation, Islam lost them. (At the same time, a parallel series of discussions was going on within the Jewish community but the 'liberal' rabbis -- e.g. Maimonides -- held sway. It is interesting that, even while Islam was declining, Muslims revered Maimonides. I was delighted to see a statue to Maimonides, much worn since its erection in the 17th century, when I visited Cordoba two years ago on holiday. Incidentally when I went round Alhambra I saw wooden doors there, about 15' high, 8' wide and 4 inches thick. I would guess that they must weight two or three tons each. Yet I found I could move them with one finger. Nothing exceptional in 17th century technology, but what perfection in craftmanship! Ah! But there must have been something exceptional about their technology -- I've just realised. The doors swung on steel pivots set into wooden bearings. The pivots hadn't corroded so they must have been made of some form of stainless steel -- something only rediscovered two centuries later in the industrial revolution of the West.) I think exactly the same applied to the burgeoning civilisations of ancient Greece and China. Their civlisations and all their philosophy and scientific innovation declined when their trading cultures and prosperity declined. In the case of ancient Greece the intensive network of Greek merchants all over the Mediterranean was snuffed out by the rising Roman Empire from about 300BC onwards. In the case of China, their huge network of merchants trading all round south-east Asia was suddenly stopped by an edict from its emperor in 1421. China's decline was not as precipitate as that of ancient Greece or medieval Islam, presumably because of its large size, and small pockets of industrialisation survived into the 19th century, but it didn't start to resume trading, and prosperity and its former scientific excellence until about 20 years ago, mainly due to Deng Xiaoping. This person, despite his great faults (including consent for the massacre at Tiananmen Square) will, in my opinion go down in history as the equivalent of Confucius, Laozi, Zhuxi and Mencius. He was more of a politician than philosopher but then, so was Confucius. Keith Hudson Keith Hudson, Bath, England, www.evolutionary-economics.org
Re: [Futurework] A glimpse of medieval Hangzhou and the Song civilisation
different, I can't get on your wavelength no matter how hard I try. Keith Hudson The question arises: How could European civilization, for over 2,000 years and continuing almost unabated today, have essentially have lost track of the universal fact that all ratiocination is human *activity* with motivations, aspirations, intentions, etc.? To answer this question and to turn the Juggernaut European humanity, including our universities and research labs, etc. -- to answer this question and turn the Juggernaut around, was Edmund Husserl's lifework, as well as the intention of others who took the other fork in the road to enlightenment at the end of the Middle Ages: Erasmus, Rabelais... and in our time, persons such as Stephen Toulmin. Why doe almost nobody take of the fact that all laws of physics which take the form: If whatever-1 then whatever-2 Really have the form: If we do whatever-1a then we will encounter whatever-b ? It is impossible in principle to show, e.g., that For every action [matter in motion..] there is an equal but opposite reaction [matter in motion...] But it may indeed be possible for us to discover that: Every time we look at matter in motion, we find that when we observe one thing strike another thing in a certain way, we observe that the first thing's speed and direction of motion changes in an equal measure but in the opposite direction of the change we observe in the speed and direction of the second object. AND, furthermore, each time we make such an observation, we do so because we have certain desires which we can describe for ourselves and for others either immediately or thru a process of self-reflection. HENCE, two sciences are elaborated in every experiment we do: (1) Physics, and (2) the interpretation of daily life (See! This science is so little practiced that it does not even have a name that would be generally understood. Certainly Transcendental phenomnology would not make sense to many educatd persons). Why is this almost never done? Or am I a member of some small fraction of the population who have not yet heard the good news? \brad mccormick -- Let your light so shine before men, that they may see your good works (Matt 5:16) Prove all things; hold fast that which is good. (1 Thes 5:21) ![%THINK;[SGML+APL]] Brad McCormick, Ed.D. / [EMAIL PROTECTED] - Visit my website == http://www.users.cloud9.net/~bradmcc/ ___ Futurework mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://scribe.uwaterloo.ca/mailman/listinfo/futurework Keith Hudson, Bath, England, www.evolutionary-economics.org
Re: [Futurework] A glimpse of medieval Hangzhou and the Song civilisation
At 16:11 30/11/2003 -0500, you wrote: Keith Hudson wrote: At 09:40 30/11/2003 -0500, you wrote:[snip] Well, Charles Murray proposes an answer anent the classical Greeks in today's NYT Week in Review: The invention of formal deductive logic turned the classical Greeks' heads away from empirical praxis [he probably would not use that word!] to abstracted speculative deduction. I can't see where Charles Murray has mentioned this, I am simply paraphrasing from today's NYT Wek in Review, pp.WK1,WK3, which I am sure in on their website. but if he's saying that the Greeks were not practical people then I'm afraid he's quite wrong. He's believing in the usual myth. The Greeks developed some enormously intricate machinery -- steam driven toys, archimedes screw, cantilevered cranes, a navigator's guide to the planets with many gear wheels and highly accurate, Greek fire (they probably weren't far off developing explosive missiles either), etc. They probably developed as much technnology as they needed to, given their circumstances. They were principally traders and, as above, had developed superb navigation equipment. They were also suberb craftsmen in bronze and developed many advanced building techniques. But the period of their intellectual/technological development was relatively very short -- a few centuries at the most. If they had not been overcome by the Roman Empire and had extended their holdings into new sorts of terrain with different potentials, then I've little doubt that they would have developed many other practical things, as the Chinese did. I certainly am not educate din this area, but my impression of the clasical Greeks includes the Hellen*istic* period. I have previously mentioned the Antikythera mechanism http://www.giant.net.au/users/rupert/kythera/kythera3.htm which suggests that the classical period may have accomplished more than we know due to the immense amount of material which has been destroyed (and merely lost) in the interim. Thanks. I was searching for that word. I have recently come upon a European analog to the Antikythera mechanism, from 18th century Europe: Jacquet Droz's automatons. These anticipated the computer (the Jacquard(sp?) loom did also). But anticipations are not accomplishments, at least insofar as they are *recognized* to be such *by us in retrospective projection instead of by the persons involved at the time*. Hans Blumenberg addresses this topic at various places in his _The Genesis of the Copernican Age_ (MIT). At one point he argues that at least as early as Gotthold Lessing, the way that theory shapes experience was argued -- and yet Thomas Kuhn's 1958 _The Structure of Scientific Revolutions_ was itself revolutionary. And then Newton turned modern Europe toward the reduction of the human world of daily life to physics. BUt all this happened as unintended consequences. It wasn't just Newton, of course. Again, I was paraphrasing Murray in the NYT. It is now being realised that Hooke was just as great as Newton and probably more versatile but didn't publicise himself as relentlessly as Newton. Some say he was a better physicist and that Newton plagiarised some of his ideas. Liebnitz developed a better calculus than Newton -- it is the direct ancestor of today's method. Newton was a towering figure but there were other towering figures also in England and Europe at the time. Let's assume that Murray is right. I'm therefore not at all sure that Murray is right if you've correctly summarised him above. Incidentally, I think some of Murray's main findings are wrong in /Human Accomplishment/. He's squeezed together two quite different effects to produce his scheme of greatness. But if you haven't read it then I won't specify now. It's still a magnificent book and is a goldmine of data for those who want to think about the sweep of hiuman achievement, but I'm not sure that it tells us anything very new. (I specifically abstained from talking about Murray's book, not just because I haven'tread it but because I had erased your previous email and was not sure they were the same person. Is the Charles Murray of _Human Accomplishment_ (reviewed in this week's NYT Book Review) the same person who wrote the book about China??? The NYT reviewer blasts that book as precisely not saying anything new or even important or even worse.) Yes. [snip] I don't understand the rest of what you've written below I'm afraid. My apologies, but our vocabularies are so different, I can't get on your wavelength no matter how hard I try. Keith Hudson The question arises: How could European civilization, for over 2,000 years and continuing almost unabated today, have essentially have lost track of the universal fact that all ratiocination is human *activity* with motivations, aspirations, intentions, etc.? YOu do not understand the preceding paragraph I wrote??? Sorry, no. To answer this question and to turn the Juggernaut European humanity, including our universities
Breathing in/out (wasRe: [Futurework] Bush's impossible problem of same-sex marriage
Ray, At 17:26 28/11/2003 -0500, you wrote: Sorry Keith but its the reverse. The diaphragm descends inflating the lungs while the gravity of the earth forces us to deflate. The process of exhalation is the normal result of presure on both visceral sac and lungs. It also does other things like digestion and messaging the organs. Good system. When you sing you just control the rate of exhalation but you can't prevent it. REH You're quite right. As soon as I woke up this morning I realised that I'd got it the wrong way round. I didn't know whether to 'fess all to the group or keep my head down and hope no-one had noticed. I should have realised that we had a master lungsmith on this list! Keith Hudson - Original Message - From: Keith Hudson [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Cc: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Friday, November 28, 2003 2:37 PM Subject: RE: [Futurework] Bush's impossible problem of same-sex marriage Lawry, At 11:33 28/11/03 -0500, you wrote: Good point, Arthur. What I have never understood, though, is this thing of breathing in AND out. I mean, wouldn't that just cancel everything out? Like, why bother? Well, OK, some argue that we do need oxygen. I can accept that, at least in theory. But then why not just breathe in? You know, do half the work, and therefore live twice as long. Seems to me that that would make lots of sense. But that's exactly what happens anyway! Our diaphragm muscles do the work of breathing out -- breathing in happens of its own accord. (Nature abhors a vacuum or some such.) My problem these days is that I'm a magnificent breather-out, but my lungs don't want to breath in too much. (My vacuity is lessening these days instead of increasing.) Keith Cheers, Lawry -Original Message- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]]On Behalf Of [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Fri, November 28, 2003 11:06 AM To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]; [EMAIL PROTECTED]; [EMAIL PROTECTED]; [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: RE: [Futurework] Bush's impossible problem of same-sex marriage And I understand that breathing in and out seems to correllate very strongly with eventual death. It seems there is a perfect fit between breathing in and out and eventual death. We have the best minds working on this very interesting research problem. arthur -Original Message- From: Lawrence DeBivort [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]] Sent: Thursday, November 27, 2003 8:59 PM To: Harry Pollard; [EMAIL PROTECTED]; [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: RE: [Futurework] Bush's impossible problem of same-sex marriage I did some research -- the numbers are available if you are willing to really look for them -- and the news is really a lot worse. The simple truth is that most lives end in death, I calculate about 98%, plus or minus 4%. This is based on careful sampling, and, though it may seem counter-intuitive, seems to be true of all cultures. Also, I found out that Eskimos have many words for death, if you include euphemisms. There is also some research that suggests that if enough people die, then more will die -- a sort of 100th Monkey effect. Cheers, Lawry -Original Message- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]]On Behalf Of Harry Pollard Sent: Thu, November 27, 2003 3:14 PM To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]; [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: RE: [Futurework] Bush's impossible problem of same-sex marriage Bill, Good! What I was reacting to - as you know - is the deliberate attack on marriage as a sometime thing. Marriages and divorces in a year are supposed to show that marriage is on the rocks. You seem to adopt my attitude. When in doubt, count. Since you came in to the discussion so well, I think I am going to broadcast the appalling statistic that half of all marriages end in death! That should stop people from getting married. Harry Henry George School of Social Science of Los Angeles Box 655 Tujunga CA 91042 Tel: 818 352-4141 -- Fax: 818 353-2242 http://haledward.home.comcast.net/http://haledward.home.comcast.net -- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]] On Behalf Of [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Monday, November 24, 2003 10:45 AM To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: Re: [Futurework] Bush's impossible problem of same-sex marriage Harry, you are correct if you consider ever divorced, viz: Young Adults Were Postponing Marriage _ The proportion of divorced persons increased markedly at the national level in recent decades, but the increases were not the same for all areas of the country. In fact, by 1990, sharp regional and State differences were noted in the prevalence of divorce (see map). _ One measure often used to highlight the differences in the level of divorce is the divorce ratio, defined as the number of divorced persons per 1,000 married persons living
[Futurework] Death of a Consumer
becoming a classic experiment involving Coke and Pepsi which I've already mentioned in a previous posting. As described below, this shows that in a non-blind trial, the reputation of a brand will overturn a consumer's real preference. All that this particular research has shown is that conventional advertising and astute 'positioning' of a brand image have been successful in the case of Coke versus Pepsi. Why neurological research will be of no danger to consumers and will not reveal any hitherto undiscovered urges is that advertising has already done this. Such is the diversity of approaches by advertisers that it becomes apparent before too long which is the best one. All that neurological research will be able to do -- perhaps -- is to bring forward the learning period a little sooner. There will no doubt be a profusion of novel consumer goods in the coming years, and a profusion of fashionable embellishments of existing goods but, in the daily and weekly schedules of the trend-setting middle class, although always on the lookout for new status markers, there will be no time for anything that is a major time-user equivalent to the powerful goods of most of the last century unless they can largely displace two of the biggest time-users, transport and TV. A very big spanner is now being thrown into the works. Once China has caught up with America, and once both of them start monopolising most of the oil and gas production of the world, then some immense changes are going to be forced on the world economy. The present socio-economic system of even the developed countries is going to have to change in radical ways that we cannot possibly foresee. Keith Hudson A PROBE INSIDE THE MIND OF THE SHOPPER Jerome Burne What does go through your mind as your eyes flick across the supermarket shelves before you reach out for one packet of soap powder rather than another? What is your brain doing as you leaf through a catalogue, pondering this jacket or those strappy boots? Marketing managers spend millions every year on focus groups in an attempt to probe consumers' decision-making processes. Now a technique known as neuromarketing promises to provide snapshot images of brain activity at crucial moments of retail choice. Scientists have been putting volunteers into MRI (magnetic resonance imaging) scanners to find out what goes on in their brains when they look at pictures of consumer goods. Their findings appear to offer new opportunities for manipulating consumers. But the idea that scientists can equip companies with sinister powers to influence the public has been a recurring fear and an unfulfilled promise since the 1950s. Until recently MRI has been used only in clinics -- for diagnosing strokes or discovering tumours -- or for pure research, such as identifying brain regions linked with movement or emotion. Now laboratory insights are being matched to the needs of marketing managers. Two neuromarketing centres, Brighthouse Institute and the Mind Marketing Laboratory, have recently opened in the US. MRI scanners were used this year for an investigation of amodern marketing conundrum: why Coca-Cola outsells Pepsi, even though blind tasting frequently shows more people prefer the taste of Pepsi. When Read Montague of Baylor College of Medicine in Houston, Texas, re-created the Pepsi Challenge blind tasting campaign of years ago, he found those who preferred Pepsi showed a five times stronger response in one of the brain's reward centres (the ventral putamen) than those who liked Coke. Then he ran the scans again but this time the volunteers knew which drink they were tasting. The result was remarkable, says Dr Montague. Not only did the subjects nearly all say they preferred Coke but another area at the front of the brain, the medial prefrontal cortex, which is linked with thinking and judging, lit up as well as the ventral putamen. This showed that subjects were allowing their memories and other impressions of the drink -- in other words its brand image -- to shape their preferences. A strong brand, it seems, can override our taste buds. The conclusion was that if you find what stimulates the medial prefrontal cortex you may have the basis of a successful advertising campaign. Dr Montague's work was picked up by the Brighthouse Institute of Thought Sciences, based in the neuroscience wing at Emory University Hospital in Atlanta, Georgia. This [the medial prefrontal cortex] is the area that is linked to our sense of self, says Clint Kilts, scientific director of Brighthouse. It is the area that used to be knocked out in a lobotomy: damage here can cause drastic personality change. If it fires when you see a particular product, he says, you are more likely to buy because that product clicks with your self-image. The Brighthouse team has found that when volunteers say they truly love something, the medial prefrontal cortex lights up on the scans. The scans can also give other indications of what is going on in your
[Futurework] The first transnational nation revisited
There is great talk at the present time that the American dollar is about to slide. It is said that George Soros has bet a lot of money on this and this will no doubt carry quite a bit of weight considering that he made at least a billion dollars betting against the pound ten years ago. Until recently I also thought that the dollar is in danger of sliding steeply. However, I'm not so sure now. No doubt it will have to weaken somewhat because America's immense deficit will have to slim down sooner or later. But somewhow I doubt that it will sink fast. China now has too much money invested in American bonds and, although foreign direct investment (FDI) in America by many Asian and European countries is slowing down considerably, I doubt very much whether China will reduce its holdings or indeed slow down its purchases of bonds in the coming months. China will have too much too lose if the dollar slides steeply because its own currency, the renminbi (yuan), is tied to the dollar. If the renminbi were to slide too suddenly it would cause chaos in the export markets everywhere. China would start cleaning up so much that it would provoke aggressive responses from the rest of Asia and Europe. Furthermore, China is rapidly releasing many of its larger industries from direct government control over their investment policies. It will shortly be the case, I am sure, that those Chinese firms which are amassing dollars from their exports will sending them back as direct investments in American firms. Considering that many American multinationals have already made massive investments in China then we are rapidly approaching the situation of what I have previously called a dumb-bell economy -- two massive lumps connected by the shipping-lanes of the Pacific. And then, considering the immense needs of both China and America for Middle East, Central Asian and Siberian oil and gas, then I cannot see much future for Europe, South America or Africa. Western Europe in the form of the European Union is getting itself entangled in so many regulatory and constitutional niceties that it scarcely has any energy left over to allow for vigorous economic growth or to afford any sort of military strength that is comparable to America's or China's. Lately, there have been a few disputes between America and China over trade matters. America has imposed quota limits on Chinese clothing, and China has responded by not signing soya bean contracts. But these are probably spurious quarrels just to satisfy powerful lobbies within their own countries. This sort of understanding between American and China started taking place between president Bush I and president Clinton and the Jiang Zemin 10-15 years ago. The leadership of both countries had to satisfy strong lobbies within their own countries and some of these artificial quarrels are well described in Beyond Tiananmen: The Politics of US-China Relations 1989-2000 (Brookings Institution 2003) by Robert L. Suettinger who was very close, and sometimes right inside, many of these deals. Anyway, once again, here are two good articles about the astonishing growth in China's economy. Keith Hudson WORKING FOR THE YANGTZE DOLLAR We pay scant attention to it, but China's current burst of economic growth is an event of shattering importance, comparable to our Industrial Revolution -- but far bigger Hamish McRae Imagine a new office and hotel development five times the size of London's Canary Wharf, built in half the time. Imagine a new Bluewater shopping mail being added each year. Imagine Heathrow getting both its new terminal and a new runway in the next 18 months. And now imagine this happening not just in London but on almost as big a scale in Glasgow, Manchester, Birmingham and another half dozen regional centres. This is what is happening in China. China is the biggest boom on earth. It is not just the fastest-growing economy in the world at this moment; its boom is the greatest that has ever occurred in the history of humankind. The world has never seen economic growth on this scale before. Some quarter of a billion people are racing from bare subsistence to middle-class comfort in less than two decades, the sort of transformation of living standards that took a century in Britain's Industrial Revolution. To visit Beijing and Shanghai, as I did last week, is to understand how visitors to Manchester must have felt in 1850, when they saw the new steam-powered factories for the first time. But it is happening at five times the speed. If it is exhilarating to catch a glimpse of this transformation as a visitor, it must be all the more exhilarating to experience it as a Chinese citizen. The people who now crowd the shopping malls grew up living with their parents in one room with no running water. We were lucky, a young Shanghai friend told me. Our family didn't have to share a room. She got a good degree, came to Europe for her Masters, and now is living a life that in most practical ways
[Futurework] Blair's curious illnesses
Harry, This is especially for you. Here's the Economist going back on itself (again!) concerning Iraq. The view below is the safer one, I think, because The World in 2004 has got to last, unlike ephemeral editorials. --- Waiting for Lord Hanson's Report on his Enquiry into the reasons for Dr David Kelly's suicide, promised for this month, is as interminable as waiting for Godot. Unless I've missed some news there are only two days left in which it can be published -- Monday or Tuesday next (today being Saturday). It is just a little odd that the Hanson Report is being left to the last moment. One wonders, ever so gently, whether someone has been trying to postpone its publication. One can only admire the rigour with which Lord Hanson has conducted his enquiry and, to the surprise of most people, the cornucopia of textual evidence, e-mails and all, that he's extracted from the Ministry of Defence, 10 Downing Street and other high-flown places -- information which would normally be regarded as sancrosanct for at least the next 50 years. And then, too, there was the curious incident when Lord Hanson suddenly decided to extend the enquiry by a further day in order to call the Permanent Secretary of the Ministry of Defence to give evidence. To my surprise, this mandarin unequivocally contradicted the statement given previously by the prime minister that he'd had no hand in deciding that Dr Kelly should be named. But, according to the civil servant, the decision was taken at a meeting at 10 Downing Street, and chaired by the prime minister. Curious. Curioser and curioser, there has been a succession of doctors visiting 10 Downing Street (going through the front door three times in the last month if I remember rightly), twice for stomach troubles, and once for heart palpitations -- the sort that every middle-aged man gets from time to time. Then his much publicised his visit to the hospital to have some checks. They've all been trivial complaints. What's curious is not that Blair might be suffering from a variety of stress-linked complaints, but why have we been told about them? This is quite unlike what normally happens when prime ministers or presidents are ill. They don't wish to be thought weak or vulnerable. But here we have a prime minister, while saying that he's raring to lead his party into the next general election, is allowing the whole world to know. Is he preparing us for news of a more serious complaint, and grounds for medical retirement when Lord Hanson's report is published? I don;t know and I don't intend to guess, but it's very curious all the same. A recent editorial in the Economist was quite in favour of Blair's support of Bush and adduced all sorts of reasons for the invasion of Iraq. Here, though, the political editor of the Economist takes a different line. I've extracted just two paragraphs from his recent article in The World in 2004 which is punished by the Economist. Keith Hudson WHEN TRUST IS GOING, THE GOING GETS TOUGH Matthew Symonds In 2003 Tony Blair gambled his reputation on leading his country into a war with Iraq. He did so in opposition to public opinion and despite the deep discomfort of most of his own MPs. Although the war itself went as well as even the most fervent optimist could have hoped, nearly everything associated with it has since gone pretty badly. The long failure to unearth weapons of mass destruction, the fragile security situation in Iraq and the bitterly slow progress in healing the war's diplomatic wounds have combined to make the successful military campaign look increasingly like a strategic blunder. The fallout will cast its shadow over 2004. The prime minister's collapsing ratings for trust are an indication that almost everyone, even supporters of the war, suspects him of having exaggerated the case for military action. Not in the sense, as his more extreme critics claim, of having cynically deceived both Parliament and people. The more substantive charge against Mr Blair is that, having made up his mind about what was the right thing to do, he became blind to any evidence or arguments that might have forced him to think twice. The World in 2004 (The Economist) Keith Hudson, Bath, England, www.evolutionary-economics.org ___ Futurework mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://scribe.uwaterloo.ca/mailman/listinfo/futurework
Re: Thoughts on IQ scores (was Re: [Futurework] Talmud vs. Science (or Censorship thereof)
Vanhanen examine IQ scores and economic indicators in 185 countries. They document that national differences in wealth are explained most importantly by the intelligence levels of the populations. They calculate that mean national IQ correlates powerfullymore than 0.7with per capita Gross Domestic Product (GDP). National IQs predict both long-term and short term economic growth rates. Second in importance is whether the countries have market or socialist economies. Only third is the widely-credited factor of natural resources, like oil. High praise indeed, except that putting anything in the same box as The Bell Curve immediately raises suspicions. Once again, there's a lot of labelling and prejudice going on here (not yours but mainly the temper of the last 50 years in sociological/philosophical circles. I wouldn't damn Lynn and Vanhanen on the basis of similarity to Murray's Bell Curve. Adding to these, the praise is extended by one Phillipe Rushton, a Canadian who achieved some noteriety a few years ago by publishing material similar to that of Lynn and Vanhalen. One of his findings, if I recall correctly, was an inverse relationship between IQ and the racially determined length of the penis. His main finding, however, is that IQ has a very high correlation with brain size when comparing, say, Africans, Chinese and Caucasians. Nobody has been able to refute this. It is palpable even though it's uncomfortable. The degree of antipathy towards people Rushton and Murray is reminiscent of the hunting of witches in the medieval days. Fortunately, they have broad backs (selected from other professionals who haven't had the courage to face the onslaught!) and also they are quietly supported by the professionals in evolutionary science. Other reviewers are not as kind to Lynn and Vanhalen. Thomas Volken published the following abstract in the European Sociological Review: Recently Richard Lynn and Tatu Vanhanen have presented evidence that differences in national IQ account for the substantial variation in national per capita income and growth. This article challenges these findings and claims that, on the one hand, they simply reflect inappropriate use and interpretations of statistical instruments. On the other hand, it is argued that the models presented by Lynn/Vanhanen are under-complex and inadequately specified. More precisely the authors confuse IQ with human capital. The paper concludes that once control variables are introduced and the models are adequately specified, neither an impact of IQ on income nor on growth can be substantiated. I simply don't accept the Lynn and Vanhalen thesis. Applying a single standardized test to a large, economically and culturally diverse, variety of peoples does not make much sense to me. I have reservations about the Lynn and Vanhalen thesis, too. Firstly, I think that most of the figures for most of the smaller countries are based on much too low numbers tested and there's too much interpolation (of those countries for which there are no tests). But for the larger groups in which there's been a great deal of testing (e.g. Caucasians, American-Jews, Chinese, etc) I think the IQ scores can be relied upon as meaning something (that is, a strong correlation with ability in life generally). Secondly (as in my long screed of the other day), I think there's a much greater cultural contribution to IQ development in the individual (in the post-puberty to 25 year age) and, correspondingly, a much large contribution of culture in the development of economies. I therefore agree with your first sentence below. Ever so many factors enter into human productivity and development, especially, as the foregoing points out, the development of human capital. At the most basic level, however, if people are treated like dogs and forced to live like dogs, they will behave like dogs. If they are treated like human beings, they will behave fully human. I agree in spirit with your latter two sentences, but let's not confuse these emotional sympathies with what I feel are very real differences in abilities (physically and mentally) between large population blocs which have lived in entirely different environments for thousands of years. Keith Keith Hudson, Bath, England, www.evolutionary-economics.org
Re: [Futurework] Talmud vs. Science (or Censorship thereof)
and peoples go as do nations. I think that nations have come and gone in the past almost exclusively for one reason -- the development of the next major innovative weapon of war. However, I think we're into a different world now. No single nation is going to be able to invent and develop a significant new weapon without another nation doing so too. No, I think that we're now settling into an almost pure Darwinian situation in which there will be selection of the fittest -- both between large population blocs and, within the developed countries, between different classes (as written below previously). (Fifty years ago most biologists would even state that the human species was so different from all others that evolution had stopped!) I think that the same effect of what can roughly be called scholastic inbreeding occurred also among the diaspora Chinese who typically have IQ scores of about 106 (many of them now returning to mainland China and already having a significant effects there in, it seems to me, just the same way that Ashkenazi Jews have had in many areas of American life during the last century). I agree. I am becoming increasingly convinced that the same sort of effect is occurring more generally in all the developed countries -- an increasing cultural separation between professional middle-classes and the rest, of which that part of ability which is measured by IQ scores is a significant feature. There is a substantial IQ-score divide between north and south England, for example. Interesting. The more egalitarian the education system becomes, the more selective it becomes and the more stratified society becomes. That is totally counter to the US. The less egalitarian the system becomes here, the more selctive it becomes and the more stratified economically with only the elite capitally succeeding because they have cornered the market. But in the long run they decline because ultimately they are at a dead end where their fear of poverty controls their entire imagination and ultimately ruins their discipline. I believe the same happens to the Aristocracy in England but you would have to confirm or deny that. I am not saying that education has become egalitarian in the US, anymore than it has become in England. But that is what educationalists are striving for. All the evidence is pointing to the fact that the more that left-wingers want to achieve a fairer society (and I don't quarrel with that) by means of education, then they will have to start thinking about intervention in the earliest weeks, months and years of a child's life. I agree but why just the left wingers? I wasn't making a political point. It is just that left-wingers are much more concerned about education for all and a fairer society for all than right-wingers who tend to be fatalistic about these matters. Keith Hudson Keith Hudson, Bath, England, www.evolutionary-economics.org
[Futurework] Crunch time over Iraq
There appears to be a mjaor divide between the CIA and Bush/Pentagon over the security of the American occupation in Iraq. The following is extracted from the latest PINR Report -- Parallels Between U.S. Occupation of Iraq and U.S. Involvement in Vietnam Drafted by Erich Marquardt on November 28, 2003 http://www.pinr.com Incidentally, right now I'm intrigued by the surreptitious visits of both Jack Straw and Bush to Iraq. In my view, they must have been talking to Sistani. Whether they came away with anything worthwhile would seem to be doubtful from the lack of news so far. I might be wrong, but it looks as though they might have been very close to some sort of agreement as to future elections. My guess is that Sisitani would have said that he could not control Sunni insurrection without substantial weaponry from America, and also that he would be agreeable to giving assurances that a future Iraqi government would definitely give oil contracts to US and UK oil corporations. The fact that Bush (in particular) flew to extremely dangerous terrirory (considering the recent rocket attack at Baghdad airport) shows that he is an extremely ... extremely ... extremely worried man now. Whether or not Washington is able to bring stability to Iraq before the U.S. public becomes disenchanted with U.S. objectives there largely depends on the size and capacity of the guerrilla movement. General Abizaid claimed on November 13 that the insurgency against the U.S. occupation does not exceed 5,000. Yet, at the same time, the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) released a report, titled appraisal of situation, written by the CIA station chief in Baghdad, which contradicted Abizaid's claims, warning that the insurgency could contain 50,000 guerrillas. Furthermore, the CIA report concluded that more and more ordinary Iraqis were siding with the insurgency due to their disillusionment with the U.S. occupation and because of the instability plaguing the country since the fall of Saddam Hussein's hold on power. These assessments indicate that the U.S. occupation in Iraq is becoming increasingly precarious, and it is not yet clear how the U.S. public will respond to deadlier and bolder attacks launched on U.S. forces. Keith Hudson Keith Hudson, Bath, England, www.evolutionary-economics.org
[Futurework] Correction (was Crunch time over Iraq)
A missing negative made nonsense of something I wrote hastily in my earlier posting today. Here is the corrected posting: --- There appears to be a major divide between the CIA and Bush/Pentagon over the security of the American occupation in Iraq. The following is extracted from the latest PINR Report -- Parallels Between U.S. Occupation of Iraq and U.S. Involvement in Vietnam Drafted by Erich Marquardt on November 28, 2003 http://www.pinr.com Incidentally, right now I'm intrigued by the surreptitious visits of both Jack Straw and Bush to Iraq. In my view, they must have been talking to Grand Ayatollah Sistani, the religious leader of the Shias. Whether they came away with anything worthwhile would seem to be doubtful from the lack of news so far. I might be wrong, but it looks as though they might have been very close to some sort of agreement as to future elections. My guess is that Sistani would have said that he could not control a Sunni insurrection without substantial weaponry from America, and also that he would *NOT* be agreeable to giving assurances that a future Iraqi government would definitely give oil contracts to US and UK oil corporations. The fact that Bush (in particular) flew to extremely dangerous territory (considering the recent rocket attack at Baghdad airport) shows that he is an extremely ... extremely ... extremely worried man now. Jack Straw didn't go to Iraq for Thanksgiving, and neither did Bush. Whether or not Washington is able to bring stability to Iraq before the U.S. public becomes disenchanted with U.S. objectives there largely depends on the size and capacity of the guerrilla movement. General Abizaid claimed on November 13 that the insurgency against the U.S. occupation does not exceed 5,000. Yet, at the same time, the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) released a report, titled appraisal of situation, written by the CIA station chief in Baghdad, which contradicted Abizaid's claims, warning that the insurgency could contain 50,000 guerrillas. Furthermore, the CIA report concluded that more and more ordinary Iraqis were siding with the insurgency due to their disillusionment with the U.S. occupation and because of the instability plaguing the country since the fall of Saddam Hussein's hold on power. These assessments indicate that the U.S. occupation in Iraq is becoming increasingly precarious, and it is not yet clear how the U.S. public will respond to deadlier and bolder attacks launched on U.S. forces. Keith Hudson Keith Hudson, General Editor, Handlo Music, http://www.handlo.com 6 Upper Camden Place, Bath BA1 5HX, England Tel: +44 1225 311636; Fax: +44 1225 447727; mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] ___ Futurework mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://scribe.uwaterloo.ca/mailman/listinfo/futurework
Re: Thoughts on IQ scores (was Re: [Futurework] Talmud vs. Science (or Censorship thereof)
Ed, Ah! I must have the last word (unless you think otherwise): At 06:28 28/11/2003 -0500, you wrote: Great stuff and a good debate, Keith, but I don't think we can come together on this. As good Talmudic scholars or whatever, we should now go our separate ways. As I'm sure you've gathered, my own view is that manifest intelligence depends very much on what people have to do, how many of them there are, and what they have to work with. I keep thinking of the poor Tasmanians Jared Diamond describes in Guns, Germs and Steel, cut off completely from any cultural diffusion, down to some 4,000 people at the time of European contact and having lost pretty well all of the skills they had when they were cut off from the Australian mainland some 10,000 years ago. I doubt very much that they would have done well on the Stanford Binet. They were easily wiped out by Europeans, mostly convicts from Britain. You're quite right. The aboriginal Tasmanians wouldn't have done well on a Stanford Binet IQ test. *But* they probably would have done quite well -- perhaps very well -- on a perception-reaction time test. This is known to be highly correlated with IQ scores on standard IQ tests -- that is, in those cultures where the people are able to read, understand basic numbers, etc. I venture to think that the Tasmanians might have done quite well on a culture-free test (using pictures only). In my book, this means that their rear cortices would be quite well stocked and networked as regards perception-based skills based on the environment around them. *But*, because of the primitive level of skills/culture handed down to them there would be little or no cultural 'set', nothing to carry forward, into their post-puberty world as their frontal lobes developed and in which they would establish outward signs of rank order (embellishing themselves in various ways as almost all societies do), make new discoveries, etc, etc. Keith Ed - Original Message - From: Keith Hudson To: Ed Weick Cc: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Friday, November 28, 2003 2:49 AM Subject: Re: Thoughts on IQ scores (was Re: [Futurework] Talmud vs. Science (or Censorship thereof) Ed, This is becoming as complicated as two Talmudic scholars arguing against each other -- except that, in older days, the exchanges would be months apart. With this new device, we have the chance of solving the world's problems in double-quick time. I'll extract pretty drastically, whatever the colours, in what follows: At 16:51 27/11/2003 -0500, you wrote: Keith, what I'm referring to is the migration of Jews eastward from Western Europe because of persecutions and expulsions (see: http://members.eisa.com/~ec086636/christiansjews.htm ). These migrations would have begun in, probably, the 12th Century and would have continued to about the 15th Century. Jews from Europe would have moved as far east as eastern Poland and the Ukraine. The Khazars ceased to exist as a distinct people in about the 11th or 12th Centuries, and one has to wonder what happened to them. They may have been aware of the movement of Jews into eastern Europe, and might have tried, perhaps succeeded, in making contact and merging with them. I have a friend of Jewish ancestry whose father came from Saratov in the Ukraine. While he doesn't think he has Khazar connections, he doesn't dismiss the possiblity. That's where I'll have to leave the matter for the moment. What I was saying (without expert knowledge of all this) is that large scale migration didn't occur until the 14th century when the King of Poland, impressed by their mercantile abilities, invited them to Poland in order to raise the economic tone of the place. Of course, the Khazar nation might also have been the result of a mass migration from the Middle East also. Or it could have been a collection point from pockets of Jews all over the Medierranean area. But let me just diverge for a point. There seems to be great similarities between Jews and Chinese. Firstly in their respect for scholarship (set within a highly definied Confucian culture) and secondly in their highly family-based society (itself set in a highly self-conscious culture). The result, I suggest, is that both cultures encouraged the migration of individual (or single-family) Chinese and Jews when their homeland fell on hard times. They had this enterprise because they were bright -- and they had the psychological strength of knowing that they were still connected to a highly defined culturfe even though they may be far distant. Small groups of Jews seem to have migrated all over Eurasia from about 500BC and onwards. Chinese migration seems to have occurred a lot later -- from about 1450 when China started descending into hard times due to the edicts against direct trade from China. In both cases in modern times, poc`kets of Chinese and Jews seem to be found in every city and sizeable town in the world -- wherever there's a possibility of a business. I think
[Futurework] Let us now praise Mansour Al-Nogaidan
As someone who wavers between cowardice and undue belligerence, I can only feel the greatest admiration for those who can keep their heads when all about are losing theirs (Kipling) and plod on with quiet courage. I have only recently posted an interview with Yelena Trebugova, the brave young Russian journalist who has just written a biography of Putin, warts and all. I can only think that something not very nice will happen to her in due course -- a spell in the renowned Russian prisons perhaps. I don't think Putin could be quite as nasty as Stalin used to be and kill her but he'll be nasty enough I guess. And now we have Mansour Al-Nogaidan, another brave journalist. He is trying to bring truth to Saudi Arabia, a country as steeped in oppression as any country can be. It is such a thoroughly nasty and dangerous a place as to be the only country in the world to have been able to throw out American troops from its territory -- as it did a year ago, just before the invasion of Iraq. It is so nasty and dangerous and liable to erupt in civil war that, for insurance purposes, Bush decided to invade Iraq with oilfields almost as large as Saudi Arabia's. Here is Mansour Al-Nogaidan's account of his home country, all the more authentiuc because he was himself a Wahhabi extremist when young. The psychologists tell us that intellectuals are more easily indoctrinated than than lesser minds. However, they are more likely to release themselves from indoctrination. Some don't, of course. But Mansour Al-Nogaidan did. I found this a moving statement. If Bush had had any courage or moral justification, Saudi Arabia was the country he should have invaded and then some of occupied would have been persuaded that he came, not to sow more discord than there was before, but to bring freedom to them. Keith Hudson P.S. In my last posting I wrote of the mysterious Jack Straw trip to Iraq. When he returned to England he immediately immersed himself in tricky theological issues concerning the constitution of the European Union which happens to be bubbling up somewhat. The result is that no-one in the media has questioned him about his visit to Iraq, not even Newsnight whose people usually have a nose for finding interesting truffles. However, as we have learned this morning, president Bush was also in Baghdad, purportedly to take Thanksgiving with his troops. Now he, even more so than Straw, would not have gone there to such a dangerous place unless there was something very important to discuss. I am quite sure that he (or his team, while he was eating turkey) was talking to Grand Ayatollah Sistani. From the lack of news, it looks as though there wasn't a breakthrough, but at least the US and UK are now talking to individuals who know more about the real Iraq, rather than many of those Iraqis on the Governing Council who, like Chalabi, have been out of the country for many years and are really American placemen. KH TELLING THE TRUTH, FACING THE WHIP Mansour Al-Nogaidan RIYADH, Saudi Arabia A week ago yesterday I was supposed to appear at the Sahafa police station to receive 75 lashes on my back. I had been sentenced by a religious court because of articles I had written calling for freedom of speech and criticizing Wahhabism, Saudi Arabia's official religious doctrine. At the last minute, I decided not to go to the police station and undergo this most humiliating punishment. With the nation at a virtual standstill for the holiday Id al-Fitr, the sentence remains pending. I will leave this matter to fate. Even before the attacks on foreign housing compounds in Riyadh in May, many writers and intellectuals in the kingdom, myself included, were being bombarded with letters and e-mail and telephone messages full of hate. We still receive death threats from Al Qaeda sympathizers. I have informed the Saudi authorities of the threats and provided them with the names and numbers of some of the people involved, against whom I have also filed a lawsuit. So far, no official action has been taken. The most recent government crackdown on terrorism suspects, in response to this month's car-bombing of a compound housing foreigners and Arabs in Riyadh, is missing the real target. The real problem is that Saudi Arabia is bogged down by deep-rooted Islamic extremism in most schools and mosques, which have become breeding grounds for terrorists. We cannot solve the terrorism problem as long as it is endemic to our educational and religious institutions. Yet the Ministry of Education and the Ministry of Islamic Affairs have now established a committee to hunt down teachers who are suspected of being liberal-minded. This committee, which has the right to expel and punish any teacher who does not espouse hard-core Wahhabism, last week interrogated a teacher, found him guilty of an interest in philosophy and put on probation. During the holy fasting month of Ramadan, imams around the country stepped up their hate speech against liberals, advocates
Re: Thoughts on IQ scores (was Re: [Futurework] Talmud vs. Science (or Censorship thereof)
Ed, At 11:03 28/11/03 -0500, you wrote: Keith, just one more last word, if that's OK. I found the following in a book I quoted previously, Bjorklund and Pellegrini, The Origins of Human Nature, published by the American Psychological Association in 2002: results of the transracial adoption study of Scarr and Weinberg (1976; Weinberg, Scarr, Waldman, 1992). Black children born primarily of parents from lower-income homes were adopted by White, primarily upper-middle-class parents. The average IQ of the adopted children who were placed in middle-income homes as infants was found to be 110, 20 points higher than the average IQ of comparable children being reared in the local Black community and similar to the estimated IQs of their adopted parents. This effect is consistent with the position that genes associated with IQ are expressed differently in different environments, yielding substantially different phenotypes. (p.81) This is quite compatible with what I've been writing, but I couldn't comment on this unless I new more details of sample sizes, ages, IQ scores before and after and suchlike. From the brief details above I would guess that this study was based on a very small one sample and I'd like to know how the original children were selected in the first place. The vast majority of such studies (usually of identical twins separated at birth and raised apart and compared with non-identical twins) suggest that environmental differences account for only about 10-15 points. The authors then go on to argue that both genetic and environmental factors are important in determining IQ. To me this suggests that taking the peasants out of the potato patch or the slaves out of the cotton field and sending them to school has a large effect for human betterment. The point is though that if that it you took large numbers out of the potato patch and gave them a superb environment and education you'll still end up with a fairly wide IQ distribution. You'd have revealed the original genetic contribution. This is the point I was making. By all means we should aim for the best educational opportunities for everyone, but the better it is the more stratified the final results will turn out to be. Ever so much depends on what people do with their IQs, or perhaps more accurately, how important IQ is to determining what an individual mind is capable of. I recall reading that an American woman with a phenomenal IQ, over 200, has a job answering mail for a fashion magazing, that an American man who recorded another very high IQ has become a middle-aged bouncer, and that yet another became a biker. On the other hand, a brilliant physicist, Richard Feyman I believe (?), did no better than a little over 120 when he was growing up. This suggests that there is far more to the mind than intelligence, whatever that is. Yes, indeed, and I've been saying this also in earlier postings on this thread. After puberty, the frontal lobes start dealing with some very strong adult emotions that start making themselves known for hormonal reasons, also the taking of one's place in the social scene in a serious way for the first time, also dealing with novel situations, also developing persistence, patience, planning strategies and so on -- all quite new objectives that lie beyond the restricted set of problems found in IQ tests and the restricted set of skills developed in the rear cortex. I would be surprised in Feynman was as low as IQ 120 because I'd imagine that every contributor on this FW list was at least that. But geniuses don't have to have sky-high IQs because a great many other qualities are also involved -- immense curiosity, persistence, and a high degree of obsessive concentration on a problem. All these are frontal lobe qualities which are 'built onto' the basic skills (basic IQ) of the rear cortex (and, as I've argued elsewhere, depend on the particular 'culture set' that is also passed on by the rear cortex, as it were at around puebrty). Keith Ed - Original Message - From: mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]Keith Hudson To: mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]Ed Weick Cc: mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED][EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Friday, November 28, 2003 6:43 AM Subject: Re: Thoughts on IQ scores (was Re: [Futurework] Talmud vs. Science (or Censorship thereof) Ed, Ah! I must have the last word (unless you think otherwise): At 06:28 28/11/2003 -0500, you wrote: Great stuff and a good debate, Keith, but I don't think we can come together on this. As good Talmudic scholars or whatever, we should now go our separate ways. As I'm sure you've gathered, my own view is that manifest intelligence depends very much on what people have to do, how many of them there are, and what they have to work with. I keep thinking of the poor Tasmanians Jared Diamond describes in Guns, Germs and Steel, cut off completely from any cultural diffusion, down to some 4,000 people at the time of European
RE: [Futurework] Bush's impossible problem of same-sex marriage
Lawry, At 11:33 28/11/03 -0500, you wrote: Good point, Arthur. What I have never understood, though, is this thing of breathing in AND out. I mean, wouldn't that just cancel everything out? Like, why bother? Well, OK, some argue that we do need oxygen. I can accept that, at least in theory. But then why not just breathe in? You know, do half the work, and therefore live twice as long. Seems to me that that would make lots of sense. But that's exactly what happens anyway! Our diaphragm muscles do the work of breathing out -- breathing in happens of its own accord. (Nature abhors a vacuum or some such.) My problem these days is that I'm a magnificent breather-out, but my lungs don't want to breath in too much. (My vacuity is lessening these days instead of increasing.) Keith Cheers, Lawry -Original Message- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Behalf Of [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Fri, November 28, 2003 11:06 AM To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]; [EMAIL PROTECTED]; [EMAIL PROTECTED]; [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: RE: [Futurework] Bush's impossible problem of same-sex marriage And I understand that breathing in and out seems to correllate very strongly with eventual death. It seems there is a perfect fit between breathing in and out and eventual death. We have the best minds working on this very interesting research problem. arthur -Original Message- From: Lawrence DeBivort [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Thursday, November 27, 2003 8:59 PM To: Harry Pollard; [EMAIL PROTECTED]; [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: RE: [Futurework] Bush's impossible problem of same-sex marriage I did some research -- the numbers are available if you are willing to really look for them -- and the news is really a lot worse. The simple truth is that most lives end in death, I calculate about 98%, plus or minus 4%. This is based on careful sampling, and, though it may seem counter-intuitive, seems to be true of all cultures. Also, I found out that Eskimos have many words for death, if you include euphemisms. There is also some research that suggests that if enough people die, then more will die -- a sort of 100th Monkey effect. Cheers, Lawry -Original Message- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Behalf Of Harry Pollard Sent: Thu, November 27, 2003 3:14 PM To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]; [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: RE: [Futurework] Bush's impossible problem of same-sex marriage Bill, Good! What I was reacting to - as you know - is the deliberate attack on marriage as a sometime thing. Marriages and divorces in a year are supposed to show that marriage is on the rocks. You seem to adopt my attitude. When in doubt, count. Since you came in to the discussion so well, I think I am going to broadcast the appalling statistic that half of all marriages end in death! That should stop people from getting married. Harry Henry George School of Social Science of Los Angeles Box 655 Tujunga CA 91042 Tel: 818 352-4141 -- Fax: 818 353-2242 http://haledward.home.comcast.net/http://haledward.home.comcast.net -- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Monday, November 24, 2003 10:45 AM To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: Re: [Futurework] Bush's impossible problem of same-sex marriage Harry, you are correct if you consider ever divorced, viz: Young Adults Were Postponing Marriage _ The proportion of divorced persons increased markedly at the national level in recent decades, but the increases were not the same for all areas of the country. In fact, by 1990, sharp regional and State differences were noted in the prevalence of divorce (see map). _ One measure often used to highlight the differences in the level of divorce is the divorce ratio, defined as the number of divorced persons per 1,000 married persons living with their spouse. _ The West had the highest divorce ratio of any region in 1990, with 182 divorced persons per 1,000 persons in intact marriages. In contrast, the Northeast had the lowest ratio (130 per 1,000). The ratios for the South and Midwest were 156 and 151, respectively. _ Not surprisingly, Nevada led the States in 1990 with the highest divorce ratio (268 per 1,000), more than double the ratio for North Dakota (101), with the lowest. If you divide all divorces by all marriages, you get a higher figure. I'm looking for that. Bill --- Outgoing mail is certified Virus Free. Checked by AVG anti-virus system (http://www.grisoft.com). Version: 6.0.541 / Virus Database: 335 - Release Date: 11/14/2003 Keith Hudson, General Editor, Handlo Music, http://www.handlo.com 6 Upper Camden Place, Bath BA1 5HX, England Tel: +44 1225 311636; Fax: +44 1225 447727; mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED
Re: [Futurework] Talmud vs. Science (or Censorship thereof)
Very interesting. It's been thought for some time that Middle East Jews, Palestinians and other ethnic groups in that region had very similar genes (from interbreeding over centuries/millenia), and these studies are further evidence. It's the Ashkenazi Jews who seemed to have changed significantly by inbreeding from about 1400 onwards in central Europe. This has not been excessive inbreeding by any tendentious use of the term, but it has certainly meant that their IQ scores are significantly higher (about 110-115) compared with Middle-Eastern born Jews (IQ scores about 90), and also that the former have acquired fairly high levels of a few harmful genes, such as Tay-Sachs. (I would infer from the original paper talked about in the Guardian article below, that Middle-East-born Jews don't have any pronounced tendency to Tay-Sachs.) I'm now inclined to think that Steven Pinker went too far in stressing the genetic contribution to ability in The Blank Slate. The several hundred genes that are involved in the formation and development of the human brain are indeed important and I wouldn't quarrel with the 70-80% contribution as being a rough-and-ready description when thinking of the abilities required in modern industrial society. But what is being increasingly realised from neurological research is the considerable shaping effect that takes place in the rear cortex during the very earliest years of childhood (that is, the death of millions of brain cells which are not used in the immediate environment and the subsequent networks that are left). This is something that schools can't really influence. Some recent studies in England suggest that young middle-class children of low-to-moderate ability at 4/5 years age are already starting to pull away in performance from 'working'-class children of moderate-to-high ability. By the age of 10/11 the difference is considerable. There appears to be a very strong two-away effect going on between the 'basic brain kit' that the genes contribute to the new born child and the 'basic kit' (of the fairly fully-developed rear cortex) that the child is left with at puberty -- as the individual starts his long march to fairly full brain maturation (by the subsequent full development of the frontal lobes in which brain cells continue to be formed) at 25 or so. The scholastic or informational shaping effect of Ashkenazi Jews in their very earliest years of life therefore seems to more fully potentiate the original genetic inheritance -- and was then shaped even further by the tradition of arranged marriages, preferentially directed by parents towards males of obvious intellectual ability. The effect of this between about 1400 and 1870 (when large-scale emigration of Ashkenazi Jews to western Europe and America started occurring -- thus exposing their relative high ability to a wider world) has obviously been considerable and is further supportive evidence of the realisation of evolutionary biologists from more general studies that mutational and selection effects can occur much more rapidly that was realised until fairly recently. (Fifty years ago most biologists would even state that the human species was so different from all others that evolution had stopped!) I think that the same effect of what can roughly be called scholastic inbreeding occurred also among the diaspora Chinese who typically have IQ scores of about 106 (many of them now returning to mainland China and already having a significant effects there in, it seems to me, just the same way that Ashkenazi Jews have had in many areas of American life during the last century). I am becoming increasingly convinced that the same sort of effect is occurring more generally in all the developed countries -- an increasing cultural separation between professional middle-classes and the rest, of which that part of ability which is measured by IQ scores is a significant feature. There is a substantial IQ-score divide between north and south England, for example. The more egalitarian the education system becomes, the more selective it becomes and the more stratified society becomes. All the evidence is pointing to the fact that the more that left-wingers want to achieve a fairer society (and I don't quarrel with that) by means of education, then they will have to start thinking about intervention in the earliest weeks, months and years of a child's life. My assessment is that this sort of 1984 scenario can't be achieved politically in any significant way at all, so I'm increasingly thinking that society in developed countries is already beginning to separate into two groups of different ability and that this can't be stopped. This is not a time for ideological shibboleths. If there is any possibility of this trend being reversed, we need to accelerate research into brain studies. Keith Hudson At 00:19 26/11/2003 +0100, Christoph Reuss wrote: http://www.guardian.co.uk/genes/article/0,2763,605806,00.html Journal axes gene
Thoughts on IQ scores (was Re: [Futurework] Talmud vs. Science (or Censorship thereof)
Ed, At 07:55 27/11/2003 -0500, you wrote: Keith, a couple of points. One is about the influence of the Khazars on the Ashkenazic population of eastern and central Europe. As you know, the Khazars were a Turkic people in the southern Ukraine who converted to Judaism in about the 7th Century. Apparently, they used Jewish personal names, spoke and wrote in Hebrew, were circumcised, had synagogues and rabbis, studied the Torah and Talmud, and observed Hanukkah, Pesach, and the Sabbath. They have been described as an advanced civilization with one of the most tolerant societies of the medieval period. By about the 11th or 12th Centuries, they seem to have disappeared, and nothing I've read suggests that scholars are quite sure of what happened to them. I've often wondered if they might have blended into migrant Jewish populations from the west. I'm puzzled about these people, too. I don't understand by what you mean in the last sentence. As I understand it, there were only isolated pockets of Jews to the west in those days -- though I might be mistaken. The other point concerns your use of IQ as something that tends to be relatively fixed for particular ethnic or racial groups. Thus diaspora Chinese typically have IQs of 106, Ashkenazic Jews typically 110 to 115 and Middle Eastern Jews 90. I've never seen anyone use as vague a concept as IQ with such certainty, and, in fact, anything I've read on intelligence in general suggests that it is a very illusive concept. The numbers are pretty reliable -- they're the results of many tests. (Summarised in IQ and the Wealth of Nations by Lynn and Vanhhanen. IQ scores don't have absolute value but there's a high correlation between the main varieties of tests and results are consistent when subjects are re-tested. All high IQ people don't necessarily become successful in material or creative terms, but all highly accomplished people in the arts or sciences (except perhaps a few idiots savants) score highly on IQ tests. How people think must surely depend greatly on what they have to think about. While some people do much of their thinking about numbers and other abstract concepts, others may have to think about getting out to the potato field or cotton patch as fast as they can if they want to live another year. The former would probably do very well on standardized IQ tests while the latter would likely fail. Yes, I sympathise with your point but will the future of manking depends upon our skills in growing potatoes or at other things? If it's other things, then IQ scores are probably the best method yet of selecting people who perform them well. Keith - Original Message - From: Keith Hudson To: Christoph Reuss Cc: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Thursday, November 27, 2003 2:54 AM Subject: Re: [Futurework] Talmud vs. Science (or Censorship thereof) Very interesting. It's been thought for some time that Middle East Jews, Palestinians and other ethnic groups in that region had very similar genes (from interbreeding over centuries/millenia), and these studies are further evidence. It's the Ashkenazi Jews who seemed to have changed significantly by inbreeding from about 1400 onwards in central Europe. This has not been excessive inbreeding by any tendentious use of the term, but it has certainly meant that their IQ scores are significantly higher (about 110-115) compared with Middle-Eastern born Jews (IQ scores about 90), and also that the former have acquired fairly high levels of a few harmful genes, such as Tay-Sachs. (I would infer from the original paper talked about in the Guardian article below, that Middle-East-born Jews don't have any pronounced tendency to Tay-Sachs.) I'm now inclined to think that Steven Pinker went too far in stressing the genetic contribution to ability in The Blank Slate. The several hundred genes that are involved in the formation and development of the human brain are indeed important and I wouldn't quarrel with the 70-80% contribution as being a rough-and-ready description when thinking of the abilities required in modern industrial society. But what is being increasingly realised from neurological research is the considerable shaping effect that takes place in the rear cortex during the very earliest years of childhood (that is, the death of millions of brain cells which are not used in the immediate environment and the subsequent networks that are left). This is something that schools can't really influence. Some recent studies in England suggest that young middle-class children of low-to-moderate ability at 4/5 years age are already starting to pull away in performance from 'working'-class children of moderate-to-high ability. By the age of 10/11 the difference is considerable. There appears to be a very strong two-away effect going on between the 'basic brain kit' that the genes contribute to the new born child and the 'basic kit' (of the fairly fully-developed rear cortex) that the child is left with at puberty
[Futurework] Straw's visit to Baghdad
On BBC radio this morning it has just been said that Jack Straw (our Foreign Secretary) is in Baghdad this morning. When going he said something to the effect that the plans of the CPA were going forward OK Wow! This is important. Firstly, his comment is ridiculous. American-UK plans for Iraq have changed dramatically in the last two weeks (when Bush finally realised that there was no more chance of encouraging the development of the northern oilfields until a 'legitimate' government is in place in Iraq). But let's leave his comment on one side. Secondly, Straw hasn't gone to Baghdad to see Bremer, the US ambassador to Iraq. Baghdad is far too dangerous a place to go to (as Wolfowitz discovered!) and see such a relatively junior man. Bremer could easily go to London. In my opinion (bearing in mind the UK experience with the IRA in Northern Ireland), Straw has gone there for secret negotiations with people who matter in Iraq who cannot leave the place without being noticed. (In the Northern Ireland situation, IRA people were sometimes flown to London secretly at night by helicopter for negotiations and then returned to NI before anybody -- particularly the press -- could twig what was happening. This is impossible in the case of Iraq.) It is unlikely, however, that Straw will be meeting with the various terrorist leaders (and certainly not with Saddam) because, probably, the occupying forces will not know who most of them are at the present time. I think Straw will be negotiating with, probably, the most important person in Iraq, Grand Ayatollah Sustani, who has refused to talk through to the Americans and will only convey anything he has to say through the United Nations. He is the only sufficiently eminent leader that the Shia Muslims have got now -- two others Ayatollahs having been assassinated (probably by Sunni terrorists). So far, GA Sustani has been a moderating influence, particularly in preventing outright warfare by some of his more militant clerics who have already armed many thousands of Shias (and, probably, could already defeat the American forces if they came out of their bunkers). The big dilemma that Bush has now is that he cannot bring any form of democracy about (or any representative intermediate bodies) unless the Shia have the predominant share of power. What Straw would dearly like to know is that if an election were held and the Shias came to power, would they be able to keep the peace (and also, of course, would they allow US and UK oil corporation to negotiate development contracts in orthern Iraq). Straw is a wiley bird and has had to be an extraordinary verbal gymnast so far in trying to justify Blair's decision to support Bush's invasion. However, he has a safe pair of hands as they say, and he and Sustani ought to get along well. (He has said just enough, in a couple of asides in recent months, to let the intelligentsia in England know that he thinks Blair's decision to support Bush was madness -- but without being obviously disloyalk to Blair.) The point is: If genuine democratic elections are planned, how can the Shias prevent an eruption from the Sunnis and perhaps Saddam-led tribal terrorists? That's the big issue. Have the Shias a sufficient number of competent people who can keep the lid on -- and then lead Iraq along a secular path (as regards school education and encouragement of professional skills in medicine and science, etc) which Saddam, for all his nasty habits and faulty judgements, was actually taking Iraq? Keith Hudson Keith Hudson, Bath, England, www.evolutionary-economics.org
[Futurework] The last shall be first?
As an entrepreneur myself -- worse, a serial entrepreneur -- I am fascinated by entrepreneurial activity, whether of the business variety or of other sorts (which I personally prefer). A recent report by the Global Entrepreneurship Monitor of the business start-ups in different countries has some immense surprises, some of which are baffling to me. For example, I'm amazed to discover that Argentina, often considered to be a basket case, is fourth on the list of 37 countries with 14% of the population rated as entrepreneurs. India and Thailand at the top of the list don't surprise me. I'm disappointed with my own country, halfway down the list. Interestingly, both China and the US -- the two economies which will overwhelmingly dominate the world completely within a decade or two -- are both near the top at 12%. I'm not at all surprised to see Russia at the bottom but incredibly surprised to see Japan and Hong Kong there, too. What can be said from this resarch study? Such are the anomalies and surprises in this list that the only comment I can think of is that, whatever governments may try to do, the deeper culture of a country is far more important. Japan, for example, managed to get a rapid rate of industrialisation going after the Meiji restoration at about 1880 and this was very much top-down driven. Now that it is trying to encourage enterprise from the bottom-up, then it is signally failing. Hong Kong and Singapore seem to be similar in this regard. In these three cases, theiur amazing rates of growth have been mainly based on a catching-up strategy, producing goods which the western countries were already making. A considerable part of China's industrial production in the last two decades has been mainly that of catching-up. The intriguing thing about China is whether, in restoring its mandarinate system of government in recent years, it is also going to recreate its innovative ability. Almost everything that the western European countries were producing up to about 1880 in the course of their industrial revolution was a repetition of what China had done a long time previously -- starting with high-grade steel production at about 500BC. It appears to have been innovative right up to about the 15th and 16th centuries when trade was suddenly stopped and economic decline set in. Will it become as innovative again? I tend to think so. They launched their astronaut into space a few weeks ago on a rocket that was originally based on a Russian design but a great many improvements were made. In the field of genetics research, China appears to have caught up with America and England already. Will it be as innovative as America? We will have to see. In my previous posting, Status goods and positional goods, I suggested that we may be coming to the end of the cascade of consumer goods production of the last 200 years and that, for reasons of status and social inclusion we may have to retreat into more cohesive, smaller social structures again. The paradox is that Japan, which may never succeed in regaining its former rate of economic growth due to lack of sufficient individual enterprise, may in fact lead the way into this new social order because the Japanese seem never to have completely adjusted to the industrial era even though they are brilliant in producing many of its products. Some twenty years ago, when I was discussing with someone from Nomura the special nature of the Japanese 'togetherness' which included both the bosses and the workers, she pointed out that one of the reasons why the Japanese were so group-orientated was that many rice-growing villages nestled in the crooks of mountains and their irrigation systems had to be extremely carefully controlled in order to avoid devastasting floods which could wipe out the crops of all of the villagers from the lord of the manor down to the lowest-ranking peasant widow. Co-ordination between then was all. When industrialisation came along from the 1880s and onwards, the whole village togetherness was bodily transferred into the factories without the century-long bitter class struggles which characterised the industrial revolution in England. To repeat myself, culture seems to be all. Maybe cultures can change but it's a centuries-long job in all nations. As we see Turkey, having had a secular government for 80 years, in some danger today of reverting to Islamic law, and Russia, communist for 70, falling back into Tsarism, the quick-fixes that politicians repeatedly proclaim never seem to come off. Keith Hudson JAPAN SPURNS SMALL BUSINESS DESPITE TOKYO'S BEST EFFORTS Although they can start a business for a symbolic single yen, few in Japan aqre keen David Ibson Nine months ago the Japanese government made it possible to set up a new company with just one yen -- less than the price of a stick of chewing gum. A lack of business innovation has long been recognised as one of the structural weaknesses behind the lacklustre economic performance of one
[Futurework] Two spanners in the three-state solution of Iraq
Good gracious! In the following New York Times op-ed, Leslie Gelb is proposing exactly the same solution that I have been advocating on this list at least twice in the last four months. This is that the good counsel that anthropology, evolutionary science and neuroscience could offer might prevail. The NYT could have had this advice for free if they'd invited me to write. However, Leslie Garb avoids discussing two major consequences of the three-state solution and they ought to have been considered in his article. The first is one that I've already mentioned. This is that if the Kurds were to be be given their own natural territory in northern Iraq, then they would have control over the northern oilfields, too -- very large and, hitherto, largely undeveloped. In the unlikely event that America would agree that a Kurdish government would have control over contracts placed with oil corporations (though the Kurds might repeat Saddam's decision to keep US and UK corporations out), then Turkey would be very upset. Turkey would not only be upset by the independence of Kurdistan in principle, but also that, thenceforth, it would have oil revenues so large that could make it powerful enough to declare war on Turkey and bite off a chunk of the Kurdish part of south- eastern Turkey and incorporate it. America would probably need far more troops than it has now in Iraq in order to keep the peace long enough for the new de facto regime to become acceptable to Turkey. This might take 10-20 years to accomplish, even though the situation would be likely to be stable, for ethnic reasons, from then onwards. The second is that a Shia-dominated southern state might also give out future oil contracts for the southern oilfields to oil corporations based in nations other than America. China, now needing oil even more than America because of its astonishing rate of economic growth, and negotiating for oil almost everywhere in the world, might be able to offer very attractive deals to a Shia government and, once again exclude American-based corporations. Besides, it is possible that 'Shiastan' might nuzzle up too closely to Iran -- one of Bush's 'evil states' -- for America's comfort. So, with great sadness, I don't think the three-state solution is possible. With some constructive American military presence here and there, it would work. But it's too neat and too sensible. America needs Middle East oil too much. Keith Hudson THE THREE-STATE SOLUTION Leslie H. Gelb President Bush's new strategy of transferring power quickly to Iraqis, and his critics' alternatives, share a fundamental flaw all commit the United States to a unified Iraq, artificially and fatefully made whole from three distinct ethnic and sectarian communities. That has been possible in the past only by the application of overwhelming and brutal force. President Bush wants to hold Iraq together by conducting democratic elections countrywide. But by his daily reassurances to the contrary, he only fans devastating rumors of an American pullout. Meanwhile, influential senators have called for more and better American troops to defeat the insurgency. Yet neither the White House nor Congress is likely to approve sending more troops. And then there is the plea, mostly from outside the United States government, to internationalize the occupation of Iraq. The moment for multilateralism, however, may already have passed. Even the United Nations shudders at such a nightmarish responsibility. The only viable strategy, then, may be to correct the historical defect and move in stages toward a three-state solution Kurds in the north, Sunnis in the center and Shiites in the south. Almost immediately, this would allow America to put most of its money and troops where they would do the most good quickly with the Kurds and Shiites. The United States could extricate most of its forces from the so-called Sunni Triangle, north and west of Baghdad, largely freeing American forces from fighting a costly war they might not win. American officials could then wait for the troublesome and domineering Sunnis, without oil or oil revenues, to moderate their ambitions or suffer the consequences. This three-state solution has been unthinkable in Washington for decades. After the Iranian revolution in 1979, a united Iraq was thought necessary to counter an anti-American Iran. Since the Gulf War in 1991, a whole Iraq was deemed essential to preventing neighbors like Turkey, Syria and Iran from picking at the pieces and igniting wider wars. But times have changed. The Kurds have largely been autonomous for years, and Ankara has lived with that. So long as the Kurds don't move precipitously toward statehood or incite insurgencies in Turkey or Iran, these neighbors will accept their autonomy. It is true that a Shiite self-governing region could become a theocratic state or fall into an Iranian embrace. But for now, neither possibility seems likely. There is a hopeful precedent for a three-state
[Futurework] From Russia with sadness
181. From Russia with sadness I learned textual (not spoken) Russian 40 years ago when the firm I worked for (Courtaulds), were building a textile factory in Russia and we had to do some technical translations of our procedures. I didn't get very far with the Russian language, but enough to read a little Pushkin and Turgenev and to appreciate the economical beauty of Russian writing, their feeling for the countryside but, above all, the proclivity to sadness that pervades that country. In those days, being young and naive, I had great hopes for Russia and used to read about their accomplishments with great excitement. However, a lot of water has passed under the bridge since then. Four years ago, I hosted the Moscow Academic Choir as it passed through Bath and gave a wonderful concert here, and I got to know a few Russians quite well. Indeed, three of them work for me via the internet and I know what a wretched life many people have over there, even those who have high professional qualifications. Following on from Mark Franchetti's interview with Yelena Trebugova that I posted a couple of days ago, we now have an account of the way that Putin is dealing with the oligarchs. I have no particular brief for them, except for those who have made it on the basis of enterprise alone without the swindle of Yeltsin's shares-for-loans scheme. This was done with, seemingly, the best of motives, in order to race quickly into a free enterprise economy so that the Communists would never be able to re-establish control. Well, perhaps they succeeded in this and perhaps Russia will never be a communist regime again. But it looks dreadfully likely that the ploy didn't succeed in neutralising the dreaded KGB secret police, now called the FSB, of which Putin was a former operative. I have the awful feeling that Russia is inexorably heading back to the police state. In the following, some of the business leaders are determined to be confident, even nonchalant, but there's a deep anxiety there. It seems to me that, even if Putin means every word he says about respecting the present (hitherto limited) property rights gained since the communist days -- and I doubt this -- the momentum within the FSB towards the degree of control that their predecessors used to have in Stalin's time is now unstoppable. Keith Hudson RUSSIA'S NERVOUS OLIGARCHS LEFT HANGING ON BY THE KREMLIN Phone lines linking Putin to the tycoons are to be cut -- and they will be restored only for those in favour Arkady Ostrovsky The Russian business elite is nervous. During the next few days the Kremlin will cut off 28 special telephone lines that connect Moscow's most influential private business tycoons to the Kremlin. This happens every couple of years, one source close to the Kremlin said. The question this time is who will get back the special vertushka telephone sets with the hammer and sickle stamped in the middle of the dialing ring? This will be a strong indicator of who is in and out of favour, one business leader explains. His comments indicate the anxiety that has beset the Russian business community since the arrest and detention last month of Mikhail Khodorkovsky, former head of Yukos and Russia's most politically ambitious oligarch. The only safe business at the moment is to be out of business, one tycoon jokes. Most of the oligarchs are putting on a brave face, saying that the arrest of Mr Khodorkovsky has not affected their investment plans. But privately everyone is talking about who is next. Some companies, such as Russian Aluminium, are pushing ahead with their ambitious multi-million dollar investments, but others are more cautious. One of Russia's leading financiers says his company has just pulled out of a $300m deal. There is no denying that the positive investment trend of the past few years has changed, he says. It is a big mistake to expect business to struggle against the regime. If you don't like the regime, you simply leave. My family and my children are already abroad. If I feel any threat to my own security I will get on the first flight out of here. There is more to life than business. To safeguard their interests, most Russian business leaders profess loyalty to Vladimir Putin, the president, and promise not to get involved in politics like their former colleague Mr Khodorkovsky. I was not a dissident then, I am not about to become a dissident now, one businessman says. The sense of obedience was on full display this month when Mr Putin attended the congress of Russian Union of Industrialists and Entrepreneurs. This congress of businessmen reminded me of a Soviet-style Communist party congress, an observer said. Mr Putin was greeted by eight standing ovations and none of the businessmen chose to mention Yukos or Mr Khodorkovsky by name. Even some foreign strategists have been told by their bosses not to rock the boat. I am convinced that the arrest of Mr Khodorkovsky has nothing to do with the questions of the oil sector
[Futurework] Downshifting to a better work-life balance
May I very briefly recap (three paragraphs) on what I think evolutionary economics is saying to us today? - 1. It says that new consumer goods throughout the whole course of our economic history have been bought mainly for reasons of status, not need. However, as the repertoire of bought goods rises, we become entrapped in the way of life that they have moulded; 2. The present sort of industrial economy which necessitates successive chain-reactions of consumer spending and investment will be brought to an end when those who initiate the consumption process (the trend-setting middle-class with sufficient disposable income) have no more time left in which to use new goods. The only goods they will buy in the coming years are those which are fashionable replacements/embellishments of existing goods, goods or services which cannibalise on the sales of other existing goods, and goods and services which do not require any additional and regular use of time; 3. The existing industrial economy, being totally dependent on very cheap fossil fuels, will gradually be brought to an end unless some miraculous new energy technology is invented (none of the present proposals being adequate either in volume or delivery characteristics). - Which of the two constraints, 2. or 3. will cut in first I cannot say, though I would put my money on 2. The constraints of energy supply is likely to become serious only very gradually -- over perhaps a century -- while 2. could have sudden effects at some critical point as sufficient numbers of intelligent people start withdrawing their inputs from the present system -- inputs on which the rest are increasingly dependant. Another way of expressing the last sentence is to say that many people will start to search for a better work-life balance or, using the present fashionable term, they will downshift. I downshifted about 25 years ago after my children had become independent, though for different reasons than most of those described in the article below. Also -- quite differently -- I moved from a gentle pace of working to a very hectic, though very interesting, one. Although I was earning a very good salary before downshifting I was, quite simply, bored with my working life as a manager in a multinational corporation (Massey-Ferguson) because it had no challenges. Instead, I turned to setting up an organisation (Jobs for Coventry Foundation) to train young unemployed people in my home town. Like most of those people below who downshifted, I took a large drop in earnings and it took a long time -- maybe a couple of years -- to finally make the adjustment. If I were a right-wing think-tank, or a politician of senior rank (left-wing or right-wing) in a developed country I would be exceedingly worried by the following article and I would want to commission some deeper investigation of what seems to be some serious alienation going on here. Keith Hudson DESIRE TO TRADE PRESSURE FOR PEACE GROWS Anna Fifield The quest for a better work-life balance might be more successful than estimated. A study published yesterday found a quarter of people had downshifted their jobs over the past decade. Exemplified by the high-profile resignations of Martha Lane Fox, chief executive of lastminute.com until last week, and Alan Milburn, the former health secretary, a downshifter is someone who has changed to a lower-paying job, reduced their work hours or quit work to study or stay at home. Clive Hamilton, executive director of the Australia Institute, a Canberra-based think-tank and a visiting scholar at Cambridge University, found 25 per cent of those surveyed had downshifted in the past decade, and a quarter of those had done so in the past year. Even more remarkably, they had taken an average pay cut of 40 per cent. I think it reflects the intensification of work and life pressures, and greater pressures to earn more and consume more and get into debt, Mr Hamilton said. This is a reaction to the over-consumption that has become so dominant in British life. More and more people are saying they want to buy back more time. In a survey of 1,071 people aged 30-59 selected at random, carried out by the British Market Research Bureau, 270 said they had made a long-term decision to change their life in a way that involved earning less. To provide a more representative picture the study excluded people who had also started their own business, refused a promotion or taken time off after having a baby. The proportion would rise to 30 per cent if they were included. Women were slightly more likely to downshift than men -- 27 per cent compared with 23 per cent. A third said a desire to spend more time with their families was their motivation, while nearly a fifth were searching for more control and personal fulfilment. Mr Hamilton said The survey results immediately dispel the widespread myth that downshifting means selling up in the city and shifting to the countryside to live a life closer to nature
Re: Slightly extended (was Re: [Futurework] David Ricardo, Caveman (fwd)
thinking! We may have had the capacity before then, but we may not really have used it very much, or we may have used it here and there but not consistently. According to sources cited by Bjorklund and Pellegrini, cognitively fluid thinking requires a long maturation process as the individual moves from the domain-specific to the domain general. Young children do not think that way and it is only when the brain is fully formed in late adolescence and early adulthood that individuals become cognitively fluid. Of course, a proportion of the population may never get there. It would seem, from material in Bjorkland and Pelligrini, that we are the only human species to have become full-time cognitively fluid thinkers. To become that requires a long maturation that takes the brain, step by step, through a process beginning at infancy and ending at adulthood. Not even Neanderthalers with their large brains appear to have made it, or did so to only a very limited extent, because they matured to adulthood much more rapidly than we do. This brings me to the giants upon whose shoulders Newton stood. Here, I would not include the guy that invented the fish hook, the spear or the atl-atl. Many groups of people would have done these things at different places and times. More probably, Newton was referring to people who used cognitive fluidity with exceptional grace and rationality, people like Aristotle, the genius in India who invented the concept of zero, the Arabs who brought that concept plus ancient Greek thought to Europe, and schoolmen like Aquinas and Abelard who argued religion with special elegance. Ed - Original Message - From: Keith Hudson To: pete Cc: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Tuesday, November 25, 2003 12:33 PM Subject: Re: Slightly extended (was Re: [Futurework] David Ricardo, Caveman (fwd) At 09:15 25/11/2003 -0800, Pete wrote: On Tue, 25 Nov 2003, Ed Weick [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Pete, I am an amatuer at all of this, and you have obviously read more than I have. However, what I don't understand is why, if we had essentially modern brains 160kya, did it take us 80,000 to 100,000 years to demonstrate that we had those brains. I'll have to do more reading. It's all about the rate of accumulation of culture. Newton famously said if he saw further than most men, it was because he stood on the shoulders of giants. The giants he refered to are easy to identify, but in fact there are a cadre of giants whose names are lost in prehistory, to whom we all owe a great debt for the life we live. It is hard to realize, but such things as fish hooks, needles and thread, baskets, nets, wooden huts, and many more, were revolutionary ideas, which had to wait for someone bright enough to not only conceive of them, and persist in working on them til they were effective enough to attract wider adoption, but I think most importantly to realize that innovation was a possible option, when most of the hardware which persists in the archaeological record appears to have been unchanged for _hundreds of thousands_ of years prior. The frequency of innovations at first must have been so low that each innovator would be essentially working without any living example that it was possible, particularly as the social unit was probably a small band of one to two hundred individuals at most. It is very much a critical mass issue, and was coupled to the total population size. What ever it was that brought our population down to 10,000 individuals or less, may have persisted, limiting population growth and thus the size of the brain trust. And as I also mentioned, language and lore had to develop. You can't have creative technological ideas if you don't have a cultural milieu which provides the excercise in manipulating concepts, something which requires a robust vocabulary. All these things take time, and it's hard to grasp how much time, when we now learn much more about many aspects of the world before the age of two than these people would have known at first as adults. -Pete Brilliantly described. Working backwards from now, if one could plot standard innovations (happening today at, say, one a month), they would probably fit on a pretty smooth exponential curve Keith - Original Message - From: pete [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Monday, November 24, 2003 11:56 AM Subject: Re: Slightly extended (was Re: [Futurework] David Ricardo, Caveman On Sun, 23 Nov 2003, Ed Weick [EMAIL PROTECTED] 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
[Futurework] Status goods and positional goods
that they are not considered to be a status good any longer. However, the last item, personal computers, is a very good example of a constraint that is increasingly going to apply to all future status goods. Those who use PCs do so instead of watching TV. The inverse relationship has been clearly established by consumer surveys. PC sales cannibalise on the sales of TVs. We are now coming to the stage where there is scarcely any time available to use use more consumer items. I have little doubt that there'll be many more consumer goods pouring out of the factories of the future but I'm not so sure that they will have the same stimulaI can only think of one or two items that will be status goods in quite the same way that has occurred up until now becaue they will have to compete for the time, as well as the money, of the consumer. Even if the consumer has sufficient disposable income he will not necessarily want to encumber himself with yet another consumer good unless it has extraordinary satisfactions that will displace the time spent in using his existing goods. The profit margins of all our present sorts of consumer goods is now becoming vanishingly small and the only way forward for those who produce them is to steadily increase robotic methods in their factories. The only consumer goods and services that I am sure will have a certain future are health services generally and replacement human organs in particular. These are items which don't necessitate devoting large and regular amounts of time to them -- time which people haven't got. I can't think that any other sorts of items will ever have the significance of status goods of the past and motivate the great juggernaut of profits and investments to keep the present sort of economy going forward. If, however, status is as genetically important in our lives as the evolutionary scientists tell us, then it will have to be supplied by other methods. Perhaps we will be forced back to social structures that were the norm in the earliest days of man. This needs further discussion and I will leave this to another posting. This one, I hope, has sufficed to clarify the difference between the positional goods of Fred Hirsch and the status goods that I propose and that there is much reason to think that the economic and social structures that are typical of the industrial era are now coming to an end. Keith Hudson Keith Hudson, Bath, England, www.evolutionary-economics.org
Re: [Futurework] The sociology and religion of addiction recovery
. Actually, it is possible to avoid talk of addiction in a meeting -- as long as the substitute is a laundry list of petty complaints. Some people have serious issues that they must uncork because their sobriety is threatened; seeing those people decompress, you can understand the magic of recovery, how it smooths the bumps of life. Yet others use meetings as therapy, and their narcissism can be oppressive. Many A.A. members can see absolutely no good in their old lives. In their zeal to repudiate those days, they tell a lie -- that absolutely no part of life when you're drinking has any value. I grew up among Irish Catholics who enjoy drinking -- folks who may find it difficult to walk past a bar but also have no trouble leaving one. A lot of them have more enthusiasm for life and the wonder of God's creation than many non-imbibing religious people I have known. They are also very funny. In the 1980s, before I stopped drinking, a trip to my favorite Washington pub (in a 200-year-old Georgetown townhouse with a giant rhinoceros head over the bar) meant camaraderie, laughs, conversation spanning every conceivable topic, great music and the possibility of love. In their own way, these are all expressions of the joy of existence. Of course, without temperance all of this can turn ugly, as I discovered. The lies, waste and destruction that are part of the alcoholic life are sins to be regretted. I escaped that hell, thanks largely to A.A. After a few years, however, I got tired of telling my story. It seemed -- it was -- years ago, something I had put behind me. I stopped craving alcohol. I could meet friends in bars and it didn't bother me. Part of the reason for my success was that I had taken to heart Wilson's lessons: I had found a higher power. It turned out to be the Catholic Church, which did not go over too well in A.A. Recovery culture is against organized religion -- and, in my experience, virulently anti-Catholic. Every meeting had what I call the Catholic moment. Someone would reveal that they were raised a Catholic but never knew God until they got into A.A. Not that they have anything against Catholics, mind you, it's just that, there are all those rules, or the nuns who hit them with rulers or, well, as one older gentleman bluntly put it in one meeting, Organized religion sucks. This is indicative of the narrow, often tyrannical nature of recovery culture -- you must submit to the idea that your addiction is the chi that centers and propels your life, and that forgetting that in a second of joy or even pain is a dangerous form of denial. God becomes not, as Pope John Paul II said of Christ, a shattering mystery that we approach with awe and great caution, but the portable ghost therapist you talk to to stay sober when earth people -- the term for the non-12-steppers -- muck up your sober mojo. Like so many other things, recovery has been defanged by the egocentrism and moral pliancy of modernism. In his comprehensive book Not-God: A History of Alcoholics Anonymous, Ernest Kurtz notes that two conflicting impulses have been internalized in Western cultures -- Enlightenment secularism and its reaction, Romanticism, which places a premium on feelings at the expense of reason and science. Thus, Kurtz writes, in yet another paradox, moderns readily accept 'feeling' even as they resolutely reject belief. Bill Wilson wrote that the point of recovery is to get back on the broad highway of life with our fellow men. Addiction is without a doubt a diabolical cul-de-sac. But recovery has become a benign one. Mark Judge, a freelance writer who lives in Potomac, is the author of Damn Senators and Wasted: Tales of a Gen-X Drunk. Url for this article is http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A5270-2003Nov21.html Keith Hudson, Bath, England, www.evolutionary-economics.org
