Re: [Marxism] What, or whom, will we eat? | Richard Seymour on Patreon
POSTING RULES & NOTES #1 YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. #2 This mail-list, like most, is publicly & permanently archived. #3 Subscribe and post under an alias if #2 is a concern. * > do we have to become > Malthusians? We can't evade the fact of natural limits to the planet's > systems. But how close we are to those limits, and the effects they > have, is obviously contingent on our social system. And, of course, the > way it uses technologies. Our denial that we humans are earth parasites has led us to our looming demise. Once, feeling guilty about the animals we stole from God's forest, we had animal sacrifice. Although some people still say, "Thank you God for the gift of this food," most of us still pretend that we earn, even create, what we have been given. What ever happened to humility? Parasite reality is not a popular message, and anyway even if it were accepted by everyone today it would be 2000 years too late to stop the damage done by the idea that God gave all the wealth of the earth to us. Thanks to that idea it seems there's no reason to feel guilty about consuming all "our" natural resources however we please and as fast a possible. Imagine that fleas have machines, owners, and workers. Worker fleas who run the blood pumps get respect and a ration of blood. They are not parasites. Fleas who own the dog get the rest of the blood, but how much blood can a few owner fleas and a few worker fleas drink? If only a few of the pumps can provide all the needed blood many fleas will be unemployed. Pumping some extra blood for the unemployed fleas who can't pay would be welfare. Welfare would deny unemployed fleas the dignity of a job, and it would make them too lazy to sit on a pump and push buttons. If all the fleas got a full time job running a blood pump the dog would die sooner, but worker fleas could all be proud of their hard work in running their "own" pumps. (Owned by some other flea) The key to creating jobs for unemployed fleas is to consume more blood, needed or not. Flea economics teaches that it would impose a heavy cost to miss the opportunity to consume all the dog's blood in one flea lifetime. Barry _ Full posting guidelines at: http://www.marxmail.org/sub.htm Set your options at: https://lists.csbs.utah.edu/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com
[Marxism] [UCE] No value, but necessary?
POSTING RULES & NOTES #1 YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. #2 This mail-list, like most, is publicly & permanently archived. #3 Subscribe and post under an alias if #2 is a concern. * Air has the ultimate value; it is necessary. Air's value goes beyond usefulness or desirability. However, if the value of air is measured by its price, or by the labor expended in its production, air has no value. Usefulness is somewhat disconnected from price. Some of the most useful things, like air, are free. We don't pay nature for what we take, so if a resource is not scarce and is easy to harvest it will have a low price even if it is much more than just useful and desirable. Some free things are necessary, even precious. Simple formulas can not replace good judgment, but they can avoid making hard choices. Reliance on expected money profit to make investment decisions avoids any need to make judgments about final usefulness or desirability. "Value" defined as price, labor, or rate of return will lead to the same results. Numbers can be assigned to those kinds of value. False-precision accounting is possible, although no consideration will be given to valueless items, like air, that are merely necessary. The most important things can not be measured. Doing the right thing is only possible without exclusive reliance on numerical accounting. Any system, like the capitalist market, that relies on vulgar non-normative values to make decisions must fail to plan for the future of life on Earth. Also: https://paulbernal.wordpress.com/2014/04/13/the-price-of-everything-and-the-value-of-nothing/ Being able to quantify things, to measure things, to compare and analyse can make it easy to miss the underlying issues. Focusing on the price makes it easy to miss the real value – and can turn what should be complex decisions based on combinations of ethics, morals, culture, empathy, philosophy and understanding of society into much simpler games based on numbers and calculations. That word game is the key – when all the values are removed, these things just become games. Mathematical games – where the key is to maximise your results. In the 1980s, when I began my working life, this attitude seemed to pervade almost everything – the growth of the use of spreadsheets mirrored what felt to me like a hardening of attitudes. The idea of ‘efficiency’ was king – and efficiency was intended in a very narrow sense. Cutting costs, maximising income, improving the bottom line… and this was seen as the key to almost everything in life. I remember friends who didn’t just record their mileage in their cars for business purposes, but who kept little books with exactly when they bought petrol, where from, at what price, and what mileage their cars had done, so that they could enter them onto spreadsheets and work out exactly how efficient their cars had been, so they could make better, more efficient decisions about purchases in the future. So what’s the problem with this? It seems sensible, doesn’t it? You can save money. You can make sure that you live an efficient, practical life – and maximize your results. In fact, you’d be stupid not to do it, wouldn’t you? Ultimately, it becomes a ... https://paulbernal.wordpress.com/2014/04/13/the-price-of-everything-and-the-value-of-nothing/ Barry http://home.earthlink.net/~durable/ _ Full posting guidelines at: http://www.marxmail.org/sub.htm Set your options at: https://lists.csbs.utah.edu/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com
Re: [Marxism] Why Growth Can’t Be Green – Foreign Policy
POSTING RULES & NOTES #1 YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. #2 This mail-list, like most, is publicly & permanently archived. #3 Subscribe and post under an alias if #2 is a concern. * As we know from many sources it's time to face extinction. Now, we are left with regrets about what we might have done to prevent it. The most important change would have been to see that the wealth in service doesn't depend only on GNP, but also on the life-span of the items we produce. Items that are consumed, used up, minutes after being produced add little to the wealth we have, but any kind of waste and bad planning add to the GNP, and helps to create jobs to compensate for the cutting of labor costs to increase profits. Capitalism allows unearned income, which could have replaced the wages lost to automation, but growth allowed wage-dependence to continue long after PAID full employment in was really needed. Growth allowed the "dignity" of work to persist long after we should have see we are earth parasites. Go sell that. Regret not even trying. Barry _ Full posting guidelines at: http://www.marxmail.org/sub.htm Set your options at: https://lists.csbs.utah.edu/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com
Re: [Marxism] Neoliberalism: not so bad? | Michael Roberts Blog
POSTING RULES & NOTES #1 YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. #2 This mail-list, like most, is publicly & permanently archived. #3 Subscribe and post under an alias if #2 is a concern. * http://www.leftbusinessobserver.com/Radio.html January 10, 2019 Quinn Slobodian, author of Globalists: The End of Empire and the Birth of Neoliberalism, on the history, theory, and practice of the doctrine Neoliberals hate the state. Or do they? In the first intellectual history of neoliberal globalism, Quinn Slobodian follows a group of thinkers from the ashes of the Habsburg Empire to the creation of the World Trade Organization to show that neoliberalism emerged less to shrink government and abolish regulations than to redeploy them at a global level. _ Full posting guidelines at: http://www.marxmail.org/sub.htm Set your options at: https://lists.csbs.utah.edu/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com
Re: [Marxism] Extinction Rebellion
POSTING RULES & NOTES #1 YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. #2 This mail-list, like most, is publicly & permanently archived. #3 Subscribe and post under an alias if #2 is a concern. * Did we forget to account for the wealth we have not consumed? > One of the main reasons the climate debate > has not gotten into a serious mode over the last 30 years is because > people who are in charge of informing the public are terrified of > telling the public that they can’t have the high consumer lifestyle > anymore. Yes, we can no longer have a high consumer lifesytle, but having abundant wealth doesn't require high consumption. The wealth we have is only the wealth we have NOT consumed. http://home.earthlink.net/~durable/ducked.html/ We should NOT match the work to the workforce. Without tax evasion we could match the workforce to the work. Surplus investor income is the income of investors that exceeds actual real investment. Without government borrowing, or taxation, speculation in existing assets would be the main outlet for that surplus income. The money used for speculation in existing assets is not really being spent back into the productive economy. Speculation transfers existing assets from one speculator to another without creating any real demand. Money stuck in speculator accounts is not part of the real economy and might as well be kept under a mattress. Taxing surplus investor income to get it back into circulation helped make 20th century capitalism prosperous, but the very rich led a successful tax revolt. The very rich hated the 90% tax rates, even though it was only an attempt to recirculate surplus income. They discovered that taxing surplus investor income is not necessary to make capitalism work, because government debt will do almost the same thing. Now, we just borrow the money we used to tax. Borrowing surplus investor income makes government debt grow by the same amount. U.S. government debt roughly equals the taxes that investors did not have to pay after their taxes were cut. Investors like government debt. Government debt is a safe investment outlet for surplus investor income. Barry _ Full posting guidelines at: http://www.marxmail.org/sub.htm Set your options at: https://lists.csbs.utah.edu/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com
Re: [Marxism] Capitalist ideology
POSTING RULES & NOTES #1 YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. #2 This mail-list, like most, is publicly & permanently archived. #3 Subscribe and post under an alias if #2 is a concern. * Philip, > full at: https://rdln.wordpress.com/2011/10/18/how-capitalism-works/ Capitalism and overpopulation are not exclusive causes of poverty. Even without capitalism no system can make long-term plans for overpopulation. Calculate it yourself. More and more must finally lead to too much. What would surplus value be in a robot economy? 100%? Without expended labor would there be no other kind of value of any kind? Barry http://home.earthlink.net/~durable/ _ Full posting guidelines at: http://www.marxmail.org/sub.htm Set your options at: https://lists.csbs.utah.edu/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com
[Marxism] Compensation for a shortage of humor
POSTING RULES & NOTES #1 YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. #2 This mail-list, like most, is publicly & permanently archived. #3 Subscribe and post under an alias if #2 is a concern. * Louis, You did not post one word I really said. Why not send me a private reply and say you are sorry. I am not holding my breath. Anyone who goes to a shrink should have his head examined. Barry _ Full posting guidelines at: http://www.marxmail.org/sub.htm Set your options at: http://lists.csbs.utah.edu/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com
[Marxism] Illegal in any case
POSTING RULES & NOTES #1 YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. #2 This mail-list, like most, is publicly & permanently archived. #3 Subscribe and post under an alias if #2 is a concern. * Robert Fisk's report from Douma, Syria: https://www.independent.co.uk/voices/syria-chemical-attack-gas-douma-robert-fisk-ghouta-damascus-a8307726.html . Also, this: https://www.jonathan-cook.net/blog/2018-04-17/fisk-report-syria-air-strikes/ Fisk rips away excuses for air strike on Syriaby Jonathan Cook 17 April 2018 It seems that many who supported the weekend’s air strikes on Syria are overlooking the significance of Robert Fisk’s report this morning from Douma, the site of a supposed chemical weapons attack last week. Fisk is the first western journalist to reach the area and speak to people there. One is a senior doctor at the clinic that treated victims of what a video purported to show were chemical weapons used by the Syrian government. That doctor says the video was real, but did not show the effects of a chemical weapons attack. It showed something else. This is what the doctor is reported saying: I was with my family in the basement of my home three hundred metres from here on the night but all the doctors know what happened. There was a lot of shelling [by government forces] and aircraft were always over Douma at night but on this night, there was wind and huge dust clouds began to come into the basements and cellars where people lived. People began to arrive here suffering from hypoxia, oxygen loss. Then someone at the door, a ‘White Helmet’, shouted ‘Gas!”, and a panic began. People started throwing water over each other. Yes, the video was filmed here, it is genuine, but what you see are people suffering from hypoxia – not gas poisoning. On my social media pages there are plenty of armchair warriors furiously denying the importance of this report, by claiming either that the doctor made up the story or that Fisk is a mouthpiece for the Assad regime, or maybe both. That will not wash for reasons that ought to be obvious – and it still won’t wash even if the testimony later turns out to be wrong. The air strikes on Syria at the weekend were patently illegal according to international law. That would have been the case even had there been a chemical weapons attack in Douma, in part because it would have been necessary for independent inspectors to determine first whether the Syrian government, and not the jihadists there, was responsible. The air strikes would have been illegal too, even if it could have been shown that a chemical weapons attack had taken place and that Assad personally ordered it. That is because air strikes would have first required authorisation from the UN Security Council. That is why international law exists: to regulate affairs between states, to prevent militarism of the “might is right” variety that nearly destroyed Europe 80 years ago, and to avoid unnecessary state confrontations that in a nuclear age could have dire repercussions. Had Assad been shown to be responsible, Russia would have come under enormous international pressure to authorise action of some kind against Syria – pressure it would have been extremely hard for it to resist. But had it resisted that pressure, we would have had to live with its veto at the Security Council. And again, for very good reason. Israel, the US and the UK have used depleted uranium munitions in the Middle East, and Israel and the US white phosphorous. But who among us would think it reasonable for Russia or China to unilaterally carry out punishment air strikes on Maryland (US), Porton Down (UK) or Nes Ziona (Israel), and justify the move on the grounds that the US and UK could veto any moves against themselves or their allies at the Security Council? Who would want to champion belligerent attacks on these sovereign states as “humanitarian intervention”? But all of this is irrelevant because whatever incontrovertible information the US, UK and France claimed to have that Syria carried out a chemical weapons attack last week is clearly no more reliable than their claims about an Iraqi WMD programme back in 2002. Fisk does not need to prove that his account is definitively true – just like a defendant in the dock does not need to prove their innocence. He has to show only that he reported accurately and honestly, and that the testimony he recounted was plausible and consistent with what he saw. Everything about Fisk’s record and about this particular report suggests there should be no doubt on that score. Fisk’s report shows that there is a highly credible alternative explanation for what happened in Douma – one that needs to be investigated. Which means that an attack on Syria should never have taken place before inspectors were able to investigate
[Marxism] cuba-aljazeera
POSTING RULES & NOTES #1 YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. #2 This mail-list, like most, is publicly & permanently archived. #3 Subscribe and post under an alias if #2 is a concern. * http://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/opinion/2017/07/cuba-future-promising-170716124102463.html _ Full posting guidelines at: http://www.marxmail.org/sub.htm Set your options at: http://lists.csbs.utah.edu/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com
[Marxism] Having learned enough some scholars turn to action. Other scholars can't take sides, having learned too much.
POSTING RULES & NOTES #1 YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. #2 This mail-list, like most, is publicly & permanently archived. #3 Subscribe and post under an alias if #2 is a concern. * _ Full posting guidelines at: http://www.marxmail.org/sub.htm Set your options at: http://lists.csbs.utah.edu/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com
Re: [Marxism] not so fast, Lars!
POSTING RULES & NOTES #1 YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. #2 This mail-list, like most, is publicly & permanently archived. #3 Subscribe and post under an alias if #2 is a concern. * Thanks for the tip Fred. I read George Caffentzis, "Why Machines Cannot Create Value... https://libcom.org/library/george-caffentzis-letters-blood-fire What would swell the ranks Marxist revolutionaries? I'll tell you after we get George out of the way. GC's "defense of the claim that machines do not create value" is a failure. His letters repeatedly prove that all human labor can not be eliminated. However, that fact does even imply that machines don't create any value. What is this strange "value" that machine output does not have? Self replication of automation is beside the point except to prove that human labor can never be eliminated totally. OK, but how does the fact that human labor was and will be always be necessary bear on why "value" is set by human labor? Self replicating automation is impossible and productivity has various limits, therefore machines can't create value? What a leap of logic! When automation becomes self-replicating will it be able to create value? "The ratio between workers caloric input and labor output could never reach 100%." What about oil drillers? This false and irrelevant conclusion makes it clear that GC is taking sides and resorting to lawyer-like facts to win for his side. Damn the truth; just find data. Remember "How to Lie With Statistics?" Yes, machines don't give a "Magical something for nothing." Having dismissed magic as a threat to the singular source of value, GC has again tried to divert our attention from the question, "can machines create value?" It all makes sense after one sees what Marx had in mind when he said machines can not create value. It seems that Marx-value is neither use-value nor exchange-value but just the wages generated. Since workers are not being paid when machines produce things, no value comes from machine production. That does not mean that no income is generated or that the output is just imaginary. # It's not a question of whether machines can do all work or whether AI will be smarter than people. The question is will smart machines be able to take over so much work from humans that we need to end wage dependence? If we believe as an article of faith that machines can't create "value" that does not mean that they can't replace workers. Marxists could insist giving "to each" a share of the non-value output produced by machines. That would swell the ranks Marxist revolutionaries. Our strange denial of the impact of machines have on the need for human work has rendered most Marxists harmless, and therefore tolerated in the academy as representatives of a monopoly radicalism. Capitalists also support wage dependence, maximum resource plunder, and the delusion that we are creators. All classes of parasites pretend they are THE creators. What we have been given and destroyed has no standing in the theories of of human pride. _ Full posting guidelines at: http://www.marxmail.org/sub.htm Set your options at: http://lists.csbs.utah.edu/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com
Re: [Marxism] not so fast, Lars!
POSTING RULES & NOTES #1 YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. #2 This mail-list, like most, is publicly & permanently archived. #3 Subscribe and post under an alias if #2 is a concern. * DW, Without labor all income would be profit. The limit of productivity is full unemployment, and the necessary transformation of the working class into owners. Marx would not be so slow to see the changes we face, but he was not a follower. Barry > Barry initiated an interesting digression...Barry believes our species to > be parasites. How interesting and indeed, anti-Marxist. That the root of > the labor theory of Value is that we, humanity, take nature, build tools, > and change our environment. Boo hoo. Back to the trees you scallywags > There is no hope!!! No, Marx allowed us to analyses capitalism. Everything > else is about how we use that analysis. There is no profit without labor, > regardless of what it is you automate. It just changes where that power of > the working class lies. I suggest as an intro probably the best peice of > Marxist analysis I've read in the last 5 years as a start before you start > raising he Green flag off that branch you are clearly sitting on. > > https://www.jacobinmag.com/2015/02/logistics-industry-organizing-labor/ _ Full posting guidelines at: http://www.marxmail.org/sub.htm Set your options at: http://lists.csbs.utah.edu/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com
Re: [Marxism] not so fast, Lars!
POSTING RULES & NOTES #1 YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. #2 This mail-list, like most, is publicly & permanently archived. #3 Subscribe and post under an alias if #2 is a concern. * Louis, While trying to understand why you owe Vivek a punch, I found the following... https://www.jacobinmag.com/2017/03/abcs-socialism-working-class-workers-capitalism-power-vivek-chibber/ Which has the following ... "The working class is unlike any other social grouping in the non-capitalist section of modern society. However penurious it is, however dominated it is, however atomized it is, it is the goose that lays the golden egg. It is the source of profits, because unless workers show up to do their work every day and create profits for their employers, that principle of profit maximization cannot be carried out. It remains a dead letter." Singular source? Labor is not exactly irreplacable, anyway we are all just parasites on the planet. This is an example of how those who merely follow Marx are like those who hold that Newton is all we need in physics. "We have to start thinking of the nucleus, the core, and the foundation of modern society, and building and establishing power within those foundations." The core we haven't started thinking about is that those few fleas who are running the blood pumps are not the singular source of value. I still don't know about the punch you own him, but those I have received were not from thinkers like you. I suppose you owe him a punch for some non-animal reason? Barry Observer vs participant Want to learn more? Taking sides doesn't help. _ Full posting guidelines at: http://www.marxmail.org/sub.htm Set your options at: http://lists.csbs.utah.edu/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com
Re: [Marxism] Fwd: Investment, investment, investment | Michael Roberts Blog
POSTING RULES & NOTES #1 YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. #2 This mail-list, like most, is publicly & permanently archived. #3 Subscribe and post under an alias if #2 is a concern. * Regarding the strange theory that demand doesn't matter, one much consider whether investors will expand output and thus create jobs without an expectation of demand ... >From "The Engineers and the Price System," by Thorsteen Veblen "Sabotage" is a derivative of sabot, which is French for a wooden shoe. It means going slow, with a dragging, clumsy movement, such as that manner of footgear may be expected to bring on. So it has come to describe any manoeuvre of slowing-down, inefficiency, bungling, obstruction. In American usage the word is very often taken to mean forcible obstruction, destructive tactics, industrial frightfulness, incendiarism and high explosives, although that is plainly not its first meaning nor its common meaning. Nor is that its ordinary meaning as the word is used among those who have advocated a recourse to sabotage as a means of enforcing an argument about wages or the conditions of work. The ordinary meaning of the word is better defined by an expression which has latterly come into use among the I. W. W., ? conscientious withdrawal of efficiency? ? although that phrase does not cover all that is rightly to be included under this technical term. The (...) the rate and volume of output have to be regulated with a view to what the traffic will bear, that is to say, what will yield the largest net return in terms of price to the business men who manage the country's industrial system. Otherwise there will be overproduction, business depression, and consequent hard times all around. Overproduction means production in excess of what the market will carry off at a sufficiently profitable price. So it appears that the continued prosperity of the country from day to day hangs on a conscientious withdrawal of efficiency by the business men who control the country's industrial output. They control it all for their own use, of course, and their own use means always a profitable price. In any community that is organized on the price system, with investment and business enterprise, habitual unemployment of the available industrial plant and workmen, in whole or in part, appears to be the indispensable condition without which tolerable conditions of life cannot be maintained. That is to say, in no such community can the industrial system be allowed to work at full capacity for any appreciable interval of time, on pain of business stagnation and consequent privation for all classes and conditions of men. The requirements of profitable business will not tolerate it. So the rate and volume of output must be adjusted to the needs of the market, not to the working capacity of the available resources, equipment and man power, nor to the community's need of consumable goods. Therefore there must always be a certain variable margin of unemployment of plant and man power. Rate and volume of output can, of course, not be adjusted by exceeding the productive capacity of the industrial system. So it has to be regulated by keeping short of maximum production by more or less as the condition of the market may require. It is always a question of more or less unemployment of plant and man power, and a shrewd moderation in the unemployment of these available resources, a ?conscientious withdrawal of efficiency,? therefore, is the beginning of wisdom in all sound workday business enterprise that has to do with industry. All this is matter of course, and notorious. But it is not a topic on which one prefers to dwell. Writers and speakers who dilate on the meritorious exploits of the nation's business men will not commonly allude to this voluminous running administration of sabotage, this conscientious withdrawal of efficiency, that goes into their ordinary day's work. One prefers to dwell on those exceptional, sporadic, and spectacular episodes in business where business men have now and again successfully gone out of the safe and sane highway of conservative business enterprise that is hedged about with a conscientious withdrawal of efficiency, and have endeavored to regulate the output by increasing the productive capacity of the industrial system at one point or another. But after all, such habitual recourse to peaceable or surreptitious measures of restraint, delay, and obstruction in the ordinary businesslike management of industry is too widely known and too well approved to call for much exposition or illustration. Yet, as one capital illustration of the scope and force of such businesslike withdrawal of efficiency, it may be in place to recall that all the civilized nations are just now undergoing an experiment in businesslike sabotage on an unexampled scale and carried out
Re: [Marxism] AI and robots threaten to unleash mass unemployment, scientists warn
POSTING RULES & NOTES #1 YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. #2 This mail-list, like most, is publicly & permanently archived. #3 Subscribe and post under an alias if #2 is a concern. * > FT, February 14, 2016 12:55 pm > AI and robots threaten to unleash mass unemployment, scientists warn > Clive Cookson in Washington Without the consumer economy plain-old machines would have "unleashed mass unemployment." Limits and robotics combine to make consuming enough to keep workers busy an act of suicidal folly. The innovation we need to to adjust to some old innovations like machines in a new way, and to forget other innovations that have been harmful. The consumer economy was an innovation from hell. Barry http://home.earthlink.net/~durable/ _ Full posting guidelines at: http://www.marxmail.org/sub.htm Set your options at: http://lists.csbs.utah.edu/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com
[Marxism] Elements of social ownership
POSTING RULES NOTES #1 YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. #2 This mail-list, like most, is publicly permanently archived. #3 Subscribe and post under an alias if #2 is a concern. * Michael, Social ownership of the means of production must go beyond worker control. Ownership also gives the right of use and the right of unearned income. So long as socialists associate unearned income with bad capitalism it will not occur to us to advocate it as part of good socialism. We are parasites on this planet. We take the wealth of nature, and with computer controlled machines the pretense that human labor creates wealth will finally become apparent. Imagine that at its limit an automated economy would need no human labor and all income would shift from wages to profits. Barry The life and death of the consumer economy Increasing consumption of all kinds has been a popular way to stop machines from causing too much unemployment, but that policy turned the main goal the economy. Before WW2, provision of goods and services was our goal. and frugality was understood to be the road to riches. Everyone knew that we only have the things we haven't consumed yet. The consumer economy was an innovation that used stimulation of demand to increase consumption. U.S. government wanted to create full employment, but the frugality and low worker income of the past were not compatible with keeping all workers busy. As automation allowed workers to produce more and more, we needed an economy that could consume all that full employment could produce. Although the consumer economy led to resource waste and pollution, it was able to stop the return of another depression after WW2. Increasing consumption caused little inflation so long as supply could be increased to match the growing demand; but war and shifting oil markets created a mismatch, and demand began to exceed supply. Price inflation became a problem in the 1970's. To stop inflation the U.S. government covertly dropped the goal of creating full employment. We have a new policy. We slow the economy to reduce demand and create enough unemployment to limit demands for higher wages. In the slowed consumer economy our stimulus policies are adjusted to create enough unemployment to stop inflation. end of the post-Second World War prosperity. Government began to create unemployment to keep wages down in various ways. In addition to spending cuts, government helped business to move production to other countries, and it allowed low-wage workers to enter the country. Business continued to create unemployment too by automating jobs, although their motive may only be to cut their internal wage costs. Attacks on labor unions in law and in media propaganda helped to limit demands for higher wages. Today, some economies are managed like a game of musical chairs. Some unemployment is planned. Training and motivating workers will only change who is left unemployed. Once resource scarcity becomes an important driver of inflation, the required level of unemployment needed prevent inflation will become high enough to bring back large groups of angry unemployed workers demanding real changes to the system. One common plan is to give people a pole instead of giving them a fish. Pole distribution could stop free-riders from begging and offer them the dignity we give to workers. Selling or giving out poles is taken to be an example of system level planning by many people. A real system level plan would not assume that giving people a pole will stop our growing population from finally wiping-out fish populations. Some people believe that more people and more hard work alone can always create more fish. That implies that there are no limits to the level of wealth creation that can be achieved by properly motivated, healthy, organized, confident, skilled, and most of all hard-working folks. If more work can always make more wealth why does overpopulation cause poverty? Since tribes migrated to flee hunted-out forests, people have had some clue that overpopulation causes poverty. Their hunting could create more wealth than the local forest could give them, but migration was still an answer. Now, our false pride as God-like creators of wealth would be shattered if people remembered why we had to migrate and remembered where our food really comes from. Farmers still know. We don't need to replace all the energy we consume today, because so much of it is wasted trying to stay busy. When we discover how we can end our need to waste resources, we will also discover solutions to many problems that seem impossible, like being able to make drastic cuts in our co2 emissions and having more wealth and economic security at the same time. We are lost if we confuse growth in the rate of consumption with growth in the stock of wealth. Our goal of
[Marxism] thecharnelhoue.org connected to twitter
POSTING RULES NOTES #1 YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. #2 This mail-list, like most, is publicly permanently archived. #3 Subscribe and post under an alias if #2 is a concern. * I wanted to see the collected works, then... Why must so many web sites connect to twitter, google and xyz, instead of just putting up the page requested? I just close my browser when I see that. It's not just the waiting. It's an invasion of privacy. As an example you could see my page. It is possible to put up a web site that doesn't link to the vast unknown for minutes... on dialup one can see those connections. Does Charnel even know what their site does? Barry http://home.earthlink.net/~durable/ (No twit bs linked.) _ Full posting guidelines at: http://www.marxmail.org/sub.htm Set your options at: http://lists.csbs.utah.edu/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com
