[PEN-L:5751] Re: Iqbal Masih
When I posed the question, "are we utopian or realist?" I meant that soultions to child labor (or slavery) are limited under capitalism. The problems of child labor and others are emanating from the contradictory nature of the system. Unless you eliminate those contradictions you cannot solve the problems. You could try to improve over what already exist through liberal reforms. That is exactly what some liberal governments try to do. By all means, they are not eradicating the root causes. Fikret Ceyhun On Tue, 27 Jun 1995, Anthony D'Costa wrote: In the precapitalist world children worked and did not get education. The question is were they exploited in the same way as today? Besides, urging human rights in an underdeveloped economy, without commitment, without administrative capacity, and with limited resources only becomes rhetoric with little practical substance. What might be a realistic solution? Assuming that the liberal west would most openly support human rights then by creating export dependency (which they already are in the case of carpets) of child-products boycotts by western consumers might drive home the message. Some effect of this has been felt by German pressure on India and government sponsored manufacture of carpets are "childlabor free" not so yet for private producers. The problem with this is that it is effective for the export but may do little for doemstic markets. As long as purchasing power is low with maldistribution of wealth, domestic market will continue to support chile labor. Past Chinese strategy might be useful but very difficult to adopt in hetergeneous, polyglot societies. Anthony D'Costa On Tue, 27 Jun 1995, Fikret Ceyhun wrote: 27 June 1995 My answer lies in the second sentence of my mesage. Namely, we are talking workers' rights in less developed countries, where adult workers are unable to gain their just right legally and if they gain legally, they are unable to implement them in practice. "De facto" situation is much different than "de jure." When it is difficult for adults, it is much more difficult for child workers, who cannot defend their rights as efficient and skilfully as adults. I am asked for a solution to a difficult question.There isn't one that can be implemented, because of the collusion between the employers and the governments. Frequently they are the same people.Child labor is inhuman whether it is legal or not. A chile in the field or in factory is a child whose education is denied. Educationally deprived child is a child lost. This vicious cycle of child exploitation must end so that they can't be exploited when they become adult. There must be a law (enforceable law) against child labor (anyone less than 14, 15, or 16 years old), and compulsory public education with government subsidy. If you can implement this, you will immensely improve children's future economic lot. In struggle, Fikret Ceyhun Economics Dept. Univ. of North Dakota On Mon, 26 Jun 1995 [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Fikret Ceyhun says: The argument to legalize child labor with all the rights that their adult counterparts have will not end the child exploitation, but will further it. ___ How? ___ In a world that adult laborers are unable to defend and protect their just rights against business, how can we expect that from the children? Are we utopian or realist? _ But they have been defending and protecting it much better than the children have been. What would be your realist solution? Cheers, ajit sinha
[PEN-L:5752] A Non-Linear FROP Cycle
All, The following equations generate business cycles purely from the falling profit rate. The end result is satisfyingly catastrophic. You can plug them into a spreadsheet (details below) or I could send mine, currently Excel 5, as a UUencoded file which most mail programmes will extract automatically. This is a 'toy' model designed to show that you can generate business cycle behaviour *purely* on the basis of the falling rate of profit, without recourse to any special behavioural assumptions. In particular, unlike Goodwin's (extremely interesting) models it does not rely on any assumptions about employment or the wage. The maths does not therefore hold workers responsible for the crisis. These endogenous cycles illustrate Marx's thesis that the contradictions of capital are generated by the self-movement of capital. Definition of terms: F=Fixed capital/capital stock S=profit or surplus value (the same) I=investment r=profit rate (S/F) Equations _ 1) F(0)=200 2) S(t)=50 3) I(0)=2 4) r(t)=S(t)/F(t)*100 5) deltaI(t)=S(t)*[r(t)-r(threshold)]*Accelerator 6) I(t)=I(t-1)+deltaI(t-1) 7) F(t)=F(t-1)+I(t) Parameters __ threshold=5 Accelerator=1/500 The spreadsheet: FS t Ir delta(I) A4=200; B3=50; C3=0; D3=2;E3=100*B3/A3; F3=B3*(E3-5)/500 A4=A3+D3;B4=50; C4=C3+1;D4=D3+F3;E4=100*B4/A4; F4=B4*(E4-5)/500 I may have messed up the description so if anyone tries and it does not work please contact me and I will attempt to post a bug fix. The parameters 'threshold' and 'accelerator' can be adjusted for varying results and graphs. A further refinement is to increase S in line with population growth, say by 0.01 per period. A particularly interesting graph is an XY-plot of I versus F. It turns out, roughly, that the bigger the accelerator the shorter the wavelength. Chaotic behaviour sets in for small Accelerators or thresholds. The cycles are divergent and unstable. If any 'theory' can be said to attach to this, it would be the following story: capitalists set a target profit rate (threshold). If the observed profit rate is higher than this, they dedicate an increased proportion of profits S to investment. Profits higher than the threshold lead to rising investment which raises the capital stock and eventually leads to a falling profit rate. Profits lower than the threshhold lead to falling investment and, eventually, disinvestment, raising the profit rate again. Just to stress that I do not claim or believe this is the actual mechanism of the business cycle. I just wanted to show that on the basis of very simple mechanisms and in particular the falling rate of profit, cyclic behaviour can be demonstrated without recourse to anything other than the endogenous effects of the accumulation process. A request: can anyone produce an equation (5) which results in stable cycles? I couldn't. Alan Freeman
[PEN-L:5753] A Non-Linear FROP cycle
I forgot; when you have entered rows 3 and 4 of the spreadsheet, copy row 4 down to the next 1000 columns, or so. Each column is then the time-trajectory of one variable. For graphs, select a column or two and call the wizard, whatever you have in your spreadsheet that makes graphs. Alan
[PEN-L:5754] Re: query: pre-war theories of liberal vs. monopoly K
What we have today is another variation of monopoly capital as discussed by Lenin, Hilferding, and others--oligopolistic competition. Entry barriers continue to remain high even if MNCs compete with each other. Anthony D'Costa On Thu, 29 Jun 1995, Doug Henwood wrote: At 5:26 PM 6/28/95, Mike Parkhurst wrote: 2) find some cogent critiques of this neat little narrative of heroic, liberal capitalism subverted by nasty, faceless monopoly K. As I say in my diss, no doubt liberal K was not quite so liberal, and twentieth C. capitalism is not simply US Steel and IG Farben. I've seen the argument made - I think by Alfred Chandler in The Visible Hand - that the old picture of 19C competitive capitalism is very wrong, that what you really had were small local monopolies in early manufacturing, and that you didn't really have competition on any scale until later in the century, as producers grew large enough and distribution networks sophisticated enough to have real regional and national markets. I still think that monopoly K is an inappropriate concept, torn from a specific German cartel structure of Hildferding's day, and recklessly applied across time and space. It's especially inappropriate to describing the present; you could argue that parallel to the sequence outlined in the previous paragraph, the national quasi-monopolies of the US 1950s and 1960s, the classic Baran-Sweezy MC, we now have global markets with huge MNC competitors. Doug -- Doug Henwood [[EMAIL PROTECTED]] Left Business Observer 250 W 85 St New York NY 10024-3217 USA +1-212-874-4020 voice +1-212-874-3137 fax
[PEN-L:5755] Re: Iqbal Masih
Fikret Ceyhun writes 6/29: The problems of child labor and others are emanating from the contradictory nature of the [capitalist] system. Accepting, for the purposes of discussion, that everything that you call "child labor" is evil, is it your (or the _official_ g pen-l) position that the political (including legal) process by which "child labor" is sustained is _only_ possible under "capitalism"? If that is so, is it that the preferred system simply provides no incentive and/or mechanism by which "child labor" can be sustained, or is it that the persons who live in that system simply _cannot_ make the political/legal choices which reach that result? If the latter, is it that the choices are structurally unavailable, or that the character or psychology of the decision-makers cannot take the necessary form? As you might infer, my opinions probably differ from yours, but I am not here trying to persuade you. I am trying to understand the intellectual/moral perspective from which you speak. Because I do not understand it, I may have framed my questions unhelpfully; please feel free to emend them. Michael Etchison [opinions mine, not the PUCT's]
[PEN-L:5756] japan
On the pol. econ. list, someone from the Industrial Bank of Japan just asked if U.S. banks have a way of evaluating risk. You might have fun playing with that post, although I erased it before I thought of telling you. -- Michael Perelman Economics Department California State University Chico, CA 95929 Tel. 916-898-5321 E-Mail [EMAIL PROTECTED]
[PEN-L:5757] Re: MM's cultures past and present?
Was the following message a joke? On Mon, 19 Jun 1995, Evan Jones - 448 - 3063 wrote: I am curious as to how Mike Meeropol can teach in an economics department within a program labelled 'cultures past and present'. My understanding is that economists have no concept of 'culture', or at best a wizened theoreticist one associated with ' economic man and the market'. But certainly no concept of cultures past, or the way in which they continue to influence the present. Would Mike M like to explain what wierd things go in in western Mass. Is it merely an excuse to some industrial archeology in the birthplace of American industry? Evan Jones Economics Sydney univ
