Re: Re: Re: question on trade _theory_
Hi Peter, I would be very interested to see a copy of your paper on trade theory. I teach a course on international economics and am always on the lookout for critical material. Thanks in advance! Best wishes Trevor Evans Paul Lincke Ufer 44 10999 Berlin Tel. +49 30 612 3951 Email [EMAIL PROTECTED] -Original Message- From: Peter Dorman [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [EMAIL PROTECTED] Date: 24 April 2001 21:42 Subject: [PEN-L:10691] Re: Re: question on trade _theory_ I'm the offending party. Look at any mainstream trade text (e.g. Salvatore); it will have at least one chapter, usually several, on capital mobility. Paul Krugman built his career on a wrinkle concerning factor mobility -- economies of agglomeration, etc. Herman Daly was just wrong on this. Fortunately, he seems to have changed his tune. I don't know of a good reading on trade theory from a heterodox perspective. If anyone out there can supply one, I'd be grateful. I've written a piece that develops the Keynesian critique of trade theory, via a review of Joan Robinson's writings on the subject. I'll send it to anyone who replies to me offlist. Peter Bill Burgess wrote: In _For the Common Good_ , Cobbs and __ state that factor mobility (especially of capital) cannot be incorporated in the theory of comparative advantage. Is this correct? I seem to recall someone on this list stating otherwise. Can you suggest a textbook or article that takes up this issue, and that quickly summarizes various other trade theories (e.g. 'new' trade theory)? I'm filling in for an absent colleague in a second year class discussion where these issues may come up. Bill Burgess ([EMAIL PROTECTED])
RE: Re: Re: Sweatshops and Krugman
well said. max Ive let the sweatshop discussion go by for lack of time, but, since this issue has been something of a preoccupation of mine for a long time, I feel I should say something. . . .
Re: Re: Sweatshops and Krugman
On Tuesday, April 24, 2001 at 21:48:05 (-0700) Peter Dorman writes: Ive let the sweatshop discussion go by for lack of time, but, since this issue has been something of a preoccupation of mine for a long time, I feel I should say something. The pro-sweatshop argument hasnt changed in almost 200 years, since the first debates over factory conditions in England. Yes, the wages and working conditions are appalling, we are told, but any intervention would only make matters worse. Wages are low because that is all employers can afford to pay, given the pressures of competition. As bad as the jobs are, they must be better than the alternatives, because workers willingly take them. Its too bad the children have to work, but their families need the money, and it keeps them out of greater mischief. Ultimately, the only solution is to let the free market grow as rapidly as possible: this will lead to more factory employment, a rise in the demand for labor relative to the supply, and further improvements in productivity, which are the only lasting basis for an improvement in wages. Do I have that right? It seems to me that the counterarguments were, and are, stronger. Here are four: Very well put. Here's a bit more on the topic from Noam Chomsky: ... So what about the tactic of pressuring corporations to provide decent wages and working conditions, in the face of the fact that they might pull up and go somewhere else -- a question, incidentally, which arises right where you and I live, not just for third-world investment? There are several criteria that should operate. First, we should follow the lead of the people who are the victims. If they tell us they'd prefer not to have efforts in the rich countries to ensure that they won't be locked into factories where they will be burned to death, or work for a pittance until they are exhausted and thrown out in favor of younger workers who will be treated the same way, then that's a good reason to refrain. Have you heard such pleas from third world workers? I haven't; rather the opposite. They are struggling hard to gain minimal benefits, and calling on us to help them. Another criterion is that we should not accord the private tyrannies the right to play off one group of suffering people against another -- in the case you mention, the right to find some place where they won't have to live up to minimally decent standards. That raises a whole host of questions that are exactly those that activists concerned with these issues work on: international solidarity, for one thing. It's also the reason why the US labor movement did not oppose NAFTA, but rather called for a different version which would overcome such problems (e.g., on the model of the compensatory funding and other projects employed by the EU before the poorer countries were brought in). And that's only the beginning. Why should the private tyrannies have the right to decide anything? To exist? In the short term, those are not the operative questions, but attitudes towards them may well influence the way short-term tactical choices are made -- among the more oppressed victims too. Bill
Re: Sweatshops and Krugman
To Peter's excellent post, I would add one other point. The standard development story (like John Henry's Puerto Rico tale) is all Adam Smith -- low wages mean high profits,captial accumulation, rising productivity, cheaper consumer goods and so -- if only the government will leave things alone -- an eventual rise in the standard of living. Historically though this tale doesn't quite hold up. Capitalist development generated extreme poverty and, in reaction to the poverty, social reformers, union organizers, utopian writers, political radicals. Through the efforts of these dissidents, all sorts of reforms were enacted - restrictions on work hours, workplace safety legislation, housing codes, public recreation, public education and child labor prohibitions, legalization of collective bargaining etc., etc. Thanks to these reforms, the standard of living of the working class rose... Ellen
Re: RE: Exporting rubbish
David, Will it help if I quote the first line of the paragraph: You must make everything which is yours _salable_. Marx's point is in part that political economy describes an economic system and a social reality where everything is for sale, including things that we thing would be horrible to sell. Prositution is a degradation of sexual love, but from a political economic point of view, it's just another sale; PE doesn't have the resources to account for why it's horroble that people should be forced by their circumstances to sell themselves for the sexual gratification of others, why that's exploitative and oppressive, even if it is, as we say today, Pareto optimal. Likewise with slavery (legal, you wil recall, in this country in 1844): the selling of humans is just another sale. Marx is attacking both the poverty of the theory--not its empirical adequacy, but its one-dimensionality--and the horrible nature of the society of which it is a theory, because in that society (ours), everything comes to be for sale. I was gratified that you and John Henry, our two procapitalists, were the ones who didn't get it. That suggests to me that Marx was on track this time. Justin Sabri Oncu writes -- Do I obey economic laws if I extract money by offering my body for sale, by surrendering it to another's lust? . . . . Am I not acting in keeping with political economy if I sell my friend to the Moroccans? . . . . The political economist replies to me, You do not transgress _my_ laws, but see what Cousin Ethics and Cousin Religion have to say about it. My _political economic_ ethics and religion have nothing to reproach you with . . . . . Some German thinker, writing in Paris in 1844. -- What exactly is the point? If conventional economics predict an uncomfortable result for a proposed act (e.g., if I offer to prostitute my self for a low enough price, somebody will pay me), conventional economics is wrong empirically? Is morally bad? David Shemano Himmm! Good questions! You are thinking along the right lines. Think harder!.. --- Don't presume I am thinking at all, let alone have the ability to think harder. Seriously, what's the point here? I don't want to guess. The sentence makes no sense to me, but Mr. Marx is a smart guy, so I assume I am missing something or simply being dense. David Shemano _ Get your FREE download of MSN Explorer at http://explorer.msn.com
Drop the Debt Call-in Day Today (4/25)
Call-In Day to Make the World Bank and IMF Drop the Debt Wednesday, April 25th 1.) Please take 5 minutes today to call the White House, Treasury and State Department. 2.) Double your voice! Call a friend and ask them to call-in too. People are much more likely to participate if you ask them personally! Calls are urgent this week. The World Bank and IMF are holding their annual spring meetings this weekend. Send the message on the eve of their meetings that DEBT IS NOT DONE! The Jubilee USA Network will be issuing press releases all week calling on the World Bank and IMF to cancel 100% of the debt using their own internal resources. We will also participate in press conferences to release groundbreaking legislation by Representatives Barbara Lee and Maxine Waters on HIV/AIDS and debt cancellation. Keep an eye on your local papers and let us know if the issue is being covered. The real story, though, is what you are doing in your local communities to flood the White House with calls demanding full debt cancellation on the eve of the Bank and Fund's spring meetings. Keep calling ALL WEEK long. Pick up the phone and help us make history. ** *** Drop the Debt: Jubilee USA Network National Call-In Day to Cancel Crushing Debt to the World Bank and IMF Help us get 10,000 calls to President Bush Call the White House Wednesday, April 25th - 9-5pm EDT 202-456- Here's what you do: Call the White House comment line and follow the prompts until you reach a live human being: 202-456-. If the line is busy and you can't get through please send a fax to: 202-456-2461. Here's what you say: 1) Africa is being devastated by HIV/AIDS and other health crises, yet many countries continue to pay more in debt service than on health care. 2) I am calling to ask President Bush to make the World Bank and IMF cancel 100% of the debt using their own internal resources (not more taxpayer money) so that impoverished countries can use the monies for primary health care and education. 3) I want the President to retain the legislation passed by Congress last year to eliminate user-fees imposed by the World Bank and IMF. Feel free to personalize your statement and always ask to leave your name and city. Please also call with the same message: Treasury Secretary Paul O'Neill at 202-622-1100 or fax: 202-622-6415 and Secretary of State Colin Powell at 202-647-6575 or fax: 202-261-8577 Congratulations! Thank you for helping to make history by joining the Jubilee USA Network to definitively cancel the illegitimate debts that continue to enslave millions of our brothers and sisters around the world! Background: The international Jubilee movement has had tremendous success in the last few years in bringing the world's attention to the unbearable burden of debt imposed on the world's poorest countries. Together we have made some gains in achieving actual debt relief that is making a difference in real people's lives. Yet much more is needed. The majority of the debt of the poorest nations has not been cancelled. Many countries still spend more on debt service than on health care and education. In light of the HIV/AIDS and other health crises in Africa, it is not tolerable for countries to continue to spend more on debt than on health care and basic education. It is time for the World Bank and the IMF to use their ample internal resources to cancel the debts owed them by the most impoverished countries. Harmful and failed economic policies, like user-fees for health and education, should not be imposed as conditions for debt cancellation. Rather, we should seek to insure that the priorities of the people in these countries are met--for investments in health care, schooling and clean water. The Jubilee USA Network is calling for President Bush to use U.S. leverage to make the World Bank and IMF cancel the debts of the poorest countries now using their own resources. For more information on the National Call-In Day please contact Mara Vanderslice at the Jubilee USA Network office at: 202-783-3566 or [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: More Progress in Deregulation
Warren Buffett asks, Congress jumps... THE DAILY TELEGRAPH(LONDON) April 24, 2001, Tuesday HEADLINE: Buffett plans $10bn for utilities BYLINE: By Andrew Cave in New York WARREN Buffett, the legendary US investor known as the Sage of Omaha, is planning to invest as much as $10 billion in America's troubled utility companies, it emerged yesterday. Billionaire Mr Buffett believes there are attractive opportunities in the US energy sector and wants the Senate to repeal a law limiting the ownership of such groups. He told the Wall Street Journal: We generate lots of capital and the electric utility industry requires it in massive doses. It is a natural business for us. His Berkshire Hathaway company made its first foray into energy last year, paying $1.6 billion for MidAmerican Energy, the US parent of Britain's Northern Electric. Berkshire disclosed earlier this month that it has taken a 4pc stake in Pennsylvania utility GPU. However, Mr Buffett is prevented from making any more major US utility acquisitions by the Public Utility Holding Company Act of 1935. The Act, which limits ownership of America's energy companies, was passed to counter depression-era problems of excessive debt issuance and unsold accounting practices. Critics say state regulation and accounting industry changes mean it is no longer necessary and the Senate Banking Committee is expected to vote today on whether to rescind the legislation. Abolition would still require a vote by the full Senate, agreement by Congress and a signature from President Bush but campaigners are hopeful that the legislation can be repealed soon. Chris Mele of the National Association of Regulatory Utility Commissioners, said: You can't remove the Act if you don't have full, open competition with greater choices for consumers. --- michael perelman [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: http://www.nytimes.com/2001/04/25/business/25POWE.html April 25, 2001 Senate Committee Votes to Repeal a Law Limiting Utilities JOSEPH KAHN WASHINGTON, April 24 A Senate committee voted today to repeal a Depression-era law that restricts the ownership and operations of utilities, a perennial mission of large electricity providers that has gathered momentum because of California's power crisis. The 19-to-1 vote by the Senate Banking Committee pushes forward what supporters hope will be the first national legislative response to a tumultuous energy market that has brought brownouts and price increases. President Bush, who has called it a national energy crisis, has supported repeal of the measure and overturning the law is expected to be a central element of a national energy strategy that Vice President Dick Cheney is drafting. But repeal of the 66-year-old legislation faces stiff opposition from consumer groups and community-owned power plants that fear a return of the electricity behemoths that dominated the industry in its early days. Before the law's enactment during the New Deal, multistate utilities sometimes used reliable profits from the regulated electricity business to help finance risky investments in other industries. The utility industry argues that the law is an antiquated barrier to investment in the $300 billion electricity and natural gas sectors. An aging infrastructure of transmission lines, gas pipelines and generating plants is the major factor behind skyrocketing electricity prices in California, industry officials say. Phil Gramm, a Texas Republican and the committee chairman, said repeal of the law was the best way to address California's woes and to assure that the problems did not afflict other states. This committee has an opportunity to pass an important bill directly related to the problems of California, Mr. Gramm said. This can solve the problem in California and prevent similar problems elsewhere. Congress enacted the Public Utility Holding Company Act in 1935 to shackle utility companies, seen at the time as dangerously powerful pyramid companies with excessive debt, inadequate financial disclosure and loose accounting practices. The law mandates that utility holding companies register with the Securities and Exchange Commission, which oversees their finances and restricts their geographical areas of operation. Utility executives say most of the law's provisions are outdated because other federal and state agencies now oversee utility companies. They compare it to the Glass-Steagall Act, another Depression-era law that separated banks from securities and insurance companies. Congress overturned that law in 1999. Analysts who follow the stocks of utility companies say that if the utility law was repealed, they would expect some electricity companies to become national brand names. Repeal may also attract money from outside the industry because large-scale investors would no longer have to register as utility holding companies subject to
Who benefited from New World Crops: Europe or China?
How much did Chinese crop production depend on the potatoe? In The Social and Economic Effects of the Potato, Salaman [no kidding] attributed the great jump in Chinese population to the introduction of the potato, which was very important in the inland regions -- which, admittedly did not contain the bulk of the population. -- Did the potato play an important role in easing the ecological pressures that both ends of Eurasia were experiencing in the modern era? Pomeranz thinks that both Europe and China were reaching a Malthusian wall by 1800, and argues that the potato was one of the New World resources that eased the pressures on the land *in Europe*, because it yielded what for Europe were unprecedented amounts of calories per acre (p57). What about in China? The potato, he adds, was also adopted in 18th century China and Japan, but almost exclusively as a crop for the highlands, since rice already produced enormous amounts of food per lowland acre. In Europe, where grain yields were much lower...the potato also conquered the lowlands in such densely populated areas as Ireland and Belgium (replacing 40% of cereal calories in Flanders by 1791) and, somewhat later, in much of central and eastern Europe (p58). The analysis above is one of the many ingenious ways in which P deals with difficulties in his central thesis. I am not convinced, and will argue below that it was China which enjoyed an ecological windfall as far as New World crops were concerned. First, the areas in Europe where he says the potato was adopted were not (with the exception of Belgium) the ones that industrialized first. Second, and more importantly, if we follow his own account of the Malthusian constraints that Europe was facing by 1800, only in the case of England does he appear to make a strong case, yet in England [the potato], as Braudel writes (the source P extracts the 40% figure re Flanders) made progress...but for a long time it was grown for export rather than for home consumption. Adam Smith deplored the English disdain for a crop which had apparently proved its value as a food in Ireland (Braudel, 170). France on the whole did not welcome the potato...The potato revolution took place there as elsewhere in Europe, only in the nineteenth century (170). The impression P wants to give about China is that the potato was not as important, for there it only conquered the highlands, the lowlands already producing enormous amounts of food per acre. But could we not argue that the adoption of potatoes and maize in the highlands was an indication of demographic/ecological constraints in the lowlands? We learn (indirectly) from P that population grew little in lower Yangzi between 1750-1850 (p139), suggesting that this otherwise historically rich wet rice area was experiencing, by 1750, a Malthusian crisis. On the other hand, we learn that China's post-1750 population growth was heavily concentrated in relatively poor areas (123). Were these poorer areas the highlands where the potato was adopted? I am not sure. Elsewhere P says that the population of Shandong and Zhili/Hebein increased over 40% between 1750 and 1870 (141). Well, these areas are in the north east but they are still below Machuria, which I thought was one of the key newly colonized areas where the new crops were adopted. In any case, in his 1107 page book, *Imperial China, 900-1800*, Mote tells us that The Chinese adapted readily to most of these foods [sweet potato, maize, tomatoes]; *poorer* people in particular came to rely heavily on them for daily fare...By the 17th and 18th centuries these *new crops had exerted a transforming effect, allowing the steady population growth to continue despite the greater crowding and pressure on the land* (p750). We have to wonder, then, who really enjoy the ecological windfall re these New World crops. I think it was China.
Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Czech issues.
I wrote: the two superpowers hated each other and engaged in an extremely expensive arms race at the same time they both wanted to maintain the status quo. It was sort of like a bad marriage, where two people stick together even though they despise each other because they can't imagine living without each other. Louis says: I don't know if the USSR hated the USA. It certainly didn't act that way immediately after WWII. Most revisionist historians starting with William Appleman Williams regard the cold-war as a one-sided affair with the USA initiating every escalation, starting with the H-Bomb. If Harry Truman had not decided to reverse the WWII policy of collaborating with the USSR, it is very likely that the Kremlin would have spent money on rebuilding the country rather than wastefully on armaments. Whatever else you want to say about the Soviet Communist Party, it was hardly bellicose. you're right -- but I was talking about the situation that prevailed once the Cold War had started. The USSR's animus was aimed at the US power elite, not the US people. And I wouldn't expect that the ruling party of a country that was largely on the defensive would automatically be bellicose (though it happens). (Though they were aggressive in protecting their power and privileges, thus suppressing independent unions and the like, bureaucratic socialism lacked the aggressive expansionism that is inherent in capital.) But they did meddle in the US sphere of influence in order to get advantages (just as the US meddled in the USSR's sphere of influence), helping to keep the Cold War going. My analogy survives, because it doesn't assume parity of the married couple: wives who are beaten by their husbands often stay with the creeps because of not only financial dependency but psychological dependency. BTW, Williams and others sometimes date the beginning of the Cold War to the Western invasions of Russia after 1917. Jim Devine [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://bellarmine.lmu.edu/~jdevine
Sweatshops and featherbeds
The sophistry in Krugman's argument is that he relies on a universal premise of rational utility maximization in order to demonstrate the irrationality of some particulars. All swans are white . . . therefore, those black swans over there are not swans. Obviously it takes a great deal of skill to perform such a feat but it also takes the indulgence of an audience that would rather watch and believe -- or watch and *disbelieve* -- such a performance than attend to the annoying question of what time it is. Sweatshops are a phenomenon of decay, pure and simple. They spring up like mushrooms in the crevices of a putrifying social formation. Sweatshop labour is a middleman operation heavily subsidized by state repression and uncompensated expropriation of population health. Wages are low not because of productivity but because of the legions of brokers, sub-contractors, petty officials and toad swallowers that have to be maintained to stoke the furnace with cheap labour. The middlemen are not cheap. Think of it this way: the difference between the price of an item produced by sweatshop labour and the cost of the labour that went into it is not all gravy for the capitalist. Some part of it went to feather the beds of so-called economists and columnists who churn out hoary tales about what a cracking good deal it all is. Tom Walker Bowen Island, BC 604 947 2213
Re: Re: Re: Re: Czech issues.
the two superpowers hated each other and engaged in an extremely expensive arms race at the same time they both wanted to maintain the status quo. It was sort of like a bad marriage, where two people stick together even though they despise each other because they can't imagine living without each other. Jim Devine [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://bellarmine.lmu.edu/~jdevine I don't know if the USSR hated the USA. It certainly didn't act that way immediately after WWII. Most revisionist historians starting with William Appleman Williams regard the cold-war as a one-sided affair with the USA initiating every escalation, starting with the H-Bomb. If Harry Truman had not decided to reverse the WWII policy of collaborating with the USSR, it is very likely that the Kremlin would have spent money on rebuilding the country rather than wastefully on armaments. Whatever else you want to say about the Soviet Communist Party, it was hardly bellicose. Louis Proyect Marxism mailing list: http://www.marxmail.org
Re: Re: Re: Re: question on trade _theory_
Trevor, Here it is in pdf. Let me know if you have any problems opening it. Also, I'd appreciate comments, suggestions, etc. Peter Trevor Evans wrote: Hi Peter, I would be very interested to see a copy of your paper on trade theory. I teach a course on international economics and am always on the lookout for critical material. Thanks in advance! Best wishes Trevor Evans Paul Lincke Ufer 44 10999 Berlin Tel. +49 30 612 3951 Email [EMAIL PROTECTED] -Original Message- From: Peter Dorman [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [EMAIL PROTECTED] Date: 24 April 2001 21:42 Subject: [PEN-L:10691] Re: Re: question on trade _theory_ I'm the offending party. Look at any mainstream trade text (e.g. Salvatore); it will have at least one chapter, usually several, on capital mobility. Paul Krugman built his career on a wrinkle concerning factor mobility -- economies of agglomeration, etc. Herman Daly was just wrong on this. Fortunately, he seems to have changed his tune. I don't know of a good reading on trade theory from a heterodox perspective. If anyone out there can supply one, I'd be grateful. I've written a piece that develops the Keynesian critique of trade theory, via a review of Joan Robinson's writings on the subject. I'll send it to anyone who replies to me offlist. Peter Bill Burgess wrote: In _For the Common Good_ , Cobbs and __ state that factor mobility (especially of capital) cannot be incorporated in the theory of comparative advantage. Is this correct? I seem to recall someone on this list stating otherwise. Can you suggest a textbook or article that takes up this issue, and that quickly summarizes various other trade theories (e.g. 'new' trade theory)? I'm filling in for an absent colleague in a second year class discussion where these issues may come up. Bill Burgess ([EMAIL PROTECTED]) Trade Paper.PDF
Re: Re: Re: Re: RE: Re: Why Is the Sky Blue Question
At 11:06 PM 4/24/01 -0700, you wrote: In a simple S/I economy with no other leakages or injections, S = I in two senses: (1) they are equal because it's an accounting identity. But this I includes unplanned inventory investment (general over-production), so this equality may not correspond to equilibrium. That is, the GDP may be falling or rising (or staying constant). (2) in equilibrium, leakages = desired or planned injections, so that in the simple S/I economy, S = planned I. There is no unplanned inventory accumulation, so that the GDP is neither falling nor rising. Why are these injections called leakages? Makes it sound -unplanned- rather than planned. Saving is a leakage because it doesn't involve purchases of current products (it's a leakage from the circular flow of income -- spending -- income). It's planned by individuals, but the macroeconomic effect is unplanned. Jim Devine [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://bellarmine.lmu.edu/~jdevine
Re: Re: Re: Czech issues.
Michael Pugliese writes that the US refusal to do anything about the USSR's invasion of Czechoslovakia was a Good illustration of the E.P. Thompson view that the Cold War was a mechanism used by each systems political ruling class to maintain domination over their respective populations. the two superpowers hated each other and engaged in an extremely expensive arms race at the same time they both wanted to maintain the status quo. It was sort of like a bad marriage, where two people stick together even though they despise each other because they can't imagine living without each other. Jim Devine [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://bellarmine.lmu.edu/~jdevine
Re: Re: Czech issues.
Yoshie writes: Yes -- in fact, the Prague Spring also addressed the question of autonomy for Slovaks. Basically its program was one of decentralization, political liberalization, liberal economic reforms. Like Perestroika, avant la lettre. that's because Perestroika didn't spring from the mind of Gorby but instead reflected class interests in a bureaucratic socialist system that was in decline. I wrote: I think that in 1968, the division in the Czechoslovak ruling party and between Czechoslovakia and the USSR implied a possibility that the working class could win a little more than mere bourgeois democracy, counteracting the thrust of the anti-levelers of Prague. Of course, in reaction, the latter might have finked out, allying with Moscow. Possibly. Czechoslovak workers had once appeared more in favor of socialism than some of their counterparts in the other Eastern European nations. the Czechoslovak version of actually-existed socialism was much better before 1968 than after. Afterwards, there was much too much emphasis on control, censorship, etc., even by Eastern European standards. As long as nations desire industrialization (be it under socialism, capitalism minus land reforms, or capitalism plus land reforms like Japan), maybe there is no way you can have an agricultural policy truly fair to farmers. Industrial development seems to depend upon cheap food. yeah, though the better versions of land reform (the kind the US opposes these days) gives the farmers a better deal. Maybe Dubcek could have played India's game, pitting the superpowers against each other to get help. Also like Yugoslavia, getting deeply in debt? maybe, but who knows. But of course the US really didn't care when the Prague Spring was smashed. The Gentlemen's Agreement? You wouldn't want the US to help anyone, though. No free lunch under capitalism, so aid doesn't come without strings. Besides, gifts from capitalists tend to enrich givers more than receivers. Soviet aid also came with strings. The USSR, for example, insisted that Castro endorse the 1968 invasion of Czechoslovakia. Some evidence suggests that they cut off oil shipments to make him obey. Jim Devine [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://bellarmine.lmu.edu/~jdevine
Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Czech issues.
G'day Lou, Whatever else you want to say about the Soviet Communist Party, it was hardly bellicose. That said, they were pretty hard-line in the manner of their take-over in Eastern Europe (they did pick up 764 000 square miles and 135 million people - enough to be going on with, I'd think - and then there was the rather provocative Berlin blockade). Perhaps no more hard-line than, say, the Brits were in Greece, but that's hardly a demanding standard. The war had been much more expensive for the SU than anyone else. They'd lost a generation and had a country to rebuild from the ground up. So they did alright, bellicosity-wise, considering. And anyway, the Soviets knew that Unca Sam had atomic ammo and that Nagasaki was more about them than about VJ, which would have inhibited 'em just a tad, I expect. I too think there might be something to the idea that a cold-war setting offered both elites something useful in the way of domestic hegemony - at a big price, mind, but then the costs were dispersed society-wide (world-wide, really) while the benefits were very specific indeed. Cheers, Rob.
Re: Re: Sweatshops and Krugman
Ellen wrote: To Peter's excellent post, I would add one other point. The standard development story (like John Henry's Puerto Rico tale) is all Adam Smith -- low wages mean high profits,captial accumulation, rising productivity, cheaper consumer goods and so -- if only the government will leave things alone -- an eventual rise in the standard of living. to make a Perelmanian (Perelmaniac?) point, one of the things that allowed the US to develop during the 19th century was its relatively high wages. As Habbakuk points out, high wages encouraged innovation. High wages can actually promote labor productivity, so that they pay for themselves. Historically though this tale doesn't quite hold up. Capitalist development generated extreme poverty and, in reaction to the poverty, social reformers, union organizers, utopian writers, political radicals. Through the efforts of these dissidents, all sorts of reforms were enacted - restrictions on work hours, workplace safety legislation, housing codes, public recreation, public education and child labor prohibitions, legalization of collective bargaining etc., etc. Thanks to these reforms, the standard of living of the working class rose... In some ways, this point can be illustrated by the history of the two big regions of the Eastern United States, i.e., the North and the South during the second half of the 20th century. Trade was totally free between these two regions, but as usual it was capital mobility that was more important (a point that always is elided by the neoliberals and by silly anti-globalists). This encouraged a movement toward what's now called harmonization of living standards, but there's an important asymmetry. Capital mobility from the N to the S slowly helped to undermine the N labor movement and the New Deal coalition -- so that Northern working-class living standards slowly fell relative to Southern ones. This was the kind of automatic result that believers in the market always talk about, but they like to avoid the down-side examples. (Instead they trash idiots like Ross Perot, who emphasize the impact on jobs and de-emphasize the impact on wages.) In the S, the inflow of capital did shake things up, undermining traditional ways of life. But the rise of S wages relative to N ones was not automatic: it was only the kind of struggle that Ellen refers to -- e.g., the civil rights movement -- that pushed S living standards up. As an example, I recently heard an interview on US National Public Radio of a woman (I don't think I ever heard her name) who wrote a book about Birmingham (Alabama) and the church bombing that's currently the subject of a trial there. (Interestingly, her father -- a fine upstanding member of the community -- was a member of some sort of secret white citizens' council and attended its secret meetings. Having been pretty young at the time, she agreed with his attitudes until the late 1960s.) She argued that the reason why the racist violence was so prevalent in Birmingham was _because_ of the fact that industrialism had progressed there more than in the rest of the South. The industrialists were paying the members of the white working class to terrorize the blacks, especially the civil rights people, in order to keep unions out and wages down. It was a classic divide and rule situation, one that she said was well illustrated by historical documents from the time. Jim Devine [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://bellarmine.lmu.edu/~jdevine
Re: Re: Re: Re: Czech issues.
Yup. I wouldn't want to extend that argument too far. Mike Davis, Fred Halliday and others had some effective critiques of Thompson in the Verso collection, Exterminism and Cold War. Michael Pugliese - Original Message - From: Jim Devine [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Wednesday, April 25, 2001 8:33 AM Subject: [PEN-L:10740] Re: Re: Re: Czech issues. Michael Pugliese writes that the US refusal to do anything about the USSR's invasion of Czechoslovakia was a Good illustration of the E.P. Thompson view that the Cold War was a mechanism used by each systems political ruling class to maintain domination over their respective populations. the two superpowers hated each other and engaged in an extremely expensive arms race at the same time they both wanted to maintain the status quo. It was sort of like a bad marriage, where two people stick together even though they despise each other because they can't imagine living without each other. Jim Devine [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://bellarmine.lmu.edu/~jdevine
Re: Re: Re: Sweatshops and Krugman
[EMAIL PROTECTED] As an example, I recently heard an interview on US National Public Radio of a woman (I don't think I ever heard her name) who wrote a book about Birmingham (Alabama) and the church bombing that's currently the subject of a trial there. (Interestingly, her father -- a fine upstanding member of the community -- was a member of some sort of secret white citizens' council and attended its secret meetings. Having been pretty young at the time, she agreed with his attitudes until the late 1960s.) She argued that the reason why the racist violence was so prevalent in Birmingham was _because_ of the fact that industrialism had progressed there more than in the rest of the South. The industrialists were paying the members of the white working class to terrorize the blacks, especially the civil rights people, in order to keep unions out and wages down. It was a classic divide and rule situation, one that she said was well illustrated by historical documents from the time. Bombingham Revisited Date: March 18, 2001, Late Edition - Final Byline: By David K. Shipler Lead: CARRY ME HOME Birmingham, Alabama: The Climactic Battle of the Civil Rights Revolution. By Diane McWhorter. Illustrated. 701 pp. New York: Simon Schuster. $35. Text: THERE are few white people in America more passionately perceptive about our vexing national problem of race than liberal-minded whites from the South, especially those who lived through the turbulent years of the civil rights movement. Lacking the detachment that allowed most Northerners to make judgments without making commitments, Southern whites who valued justice were forced to confront themselves, their families, their place of privilege. This happened either in real time or later, in a kind of retrospective anguish that has produced fine scholarship, fiction and journalism and even enlightened politics. Now comes Diane McWhorter. On Sept. 15, 1963, she was about the same age as the four black girls who were killed by the bomb at the 16th Street Baptist Church in Birmingham, Ala. ''But I was growing up on the wrong side of the revolution,'' she writes. In her childhood world of white Birmingham, the bombing's immediate consequence was trivial: a spasm of anxiety and the cancellation of a rehearsal for ''The Music Man,'' in which she had a part. In her adulthood outside her native city, however, she suffered a delayed reaction: a longer, gnawing anxiety about her family's possible connections with the violent resistance to integration. To unravel that personal story, she had to unravel the entire story. ''Carry Me Home'' is an exhaustive journey through both the segregationist and integrationist sides of Birmingham's struggle. There are few innocents in her depiction, especially on the white side, where the roots of bigotry and murder insinuate themselves into the foundation of the city's ''rule of law'' and the bedrock of its corporate power. Scouring law-enforcement reports, archives, memoirs, personal papers and adding her own interviews, McWhorter, in her first book, expertly follows the tangled threads of culpability until they reveal what she calls ''the long tradition of enmeshment between law enforcers and Klansmen,'' which included the Federal Bureau of Investigation as well as the state and city police. Her precision in filling in the particulars of that collaboration contributes significantly to the historical record. Birmingham has stood at the confluence of some of this country's momentous antagonisms -- between black and white, Jew and gentile, Roman Catholic and Protestant, labor and industry, Communist and anti-Communist. Surfacing and submerging and resurfacing, these currents of enmity shaped unsavory alliances, and they never quite dissipated before surging through the racial clashes of the 1960's. Back in the 1920's, the Ku Klux Klan's anti-Catholicism proved useful to coal and steel industrialists, who figured that if their work force of American-born Protestants and immigrant Catholics fought each other, ''there was no danger of union solidarity even among whites, let alone across color lines,'' McWhorter writes. (As a Klan lawyer in 1921, Hugo Black ''won an easy acquittal'' for a Methodist preacher who shot a Catholic priest to death.) When labor strife escalated in the 1930's, the Communist Party tried to shoulder aside the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People by melding the causes of Negro liberation and workers' rights. Unlike the Communists in Moscow, those in Birmingham were on the right side of history, but their involvement sowed the seeds of the Red-baiting that afflicted the civil rights movement until its end. Anti-union vigilantism committed by Klansmen on the payroll of U.S. Steel and other corporations set a pattern that lasted for decades. When the barons of business, known as the Big Mules, were no longer willing to dirty their own hands, they used ''the racism they had fomented
Re: It's a Jungle In Here
Too many people aren't working and I don't think the focus should be held to work. That is their line. Productionism/productivism is not my Utopia. Marta Charles Brown wrote: Even Bush forecasts economic downturn. Why not reknit the safety net ? War No. 2 on Poverty ? Lyndon Johnson [EMAIL PROTECTED] 04/19/01 10:18PM Right now it's hopeless. I prefer Make work pay! Work-conditioned benefits, and gigunda refundable tax credits. max Make what do you think of the slogan: Bring back welfare ! ( It's a jungle out there for some ) Charles [EMAIL PROTECTED] 04/19/01 11:23AM I have resubbed to this list, but with great tr -- Marta Russell author, Los Angeles, CA http://disweb.org/ Beyond Ramps: Disability at the End of the Social Contract http://www.commoncouragepress.com/russell_ramps.html
It's a Jungle In Here
Even Bush forecasts economic downturn. Why not reknit the safety net ? War No. 2 on Poverty ? Lyndon Johnson [EMAIL PROTECTED] 04/19/01 10:18PM Right now it's hopeless. I prefer Make work pay! Work-conditioned benefits, and gigunda refundable tax credits. max Make what do you think of the slogan: Bring back welfare ! ( It's a jungle out there for some ) Charles [EMAIL PROTECTED] 04/19/01 11:23AM I have resubbed to this list, but with great tr
The case for reparations
No, the content of Horowitz's discussion was extremely racist. He said that on balance , Black people in the U.S. benefitted by slavery. This is horrendously racist. He also claimed that the U.S. welfare system of the second half of the 2oth Century was somehow a reparation for slavery. Horowitz's ad's content was virulently racist. Charles Brown [EMAIL PROTECTED] 04/18/01 08:20PM What was racist about the Horowitz ad was not his position on reparations (about which reasonable people can disagree etc.), but his specific language. For instance, the line about welfare being reparations already paid to African Americans is reprehensible. Peter John Henry wrote: Thanks for posting this, Louis. I have frankly been puzzled by the people calling Horowitz and his ad racist. Factually, it seemed fairly solid to me and it certainly seems that there is room for legitimate debate on both sides of this issue without stooping to calling the other side (whichever side that might beG) racist. One question to ponder. It may have been answered but I've not ever seen it addressed in this respect. It is a question I address in my Human Resource Management classes and is: Who is black? (Or African-American if you prefer) Am I black? If you knew me (I am blonde haired and blue eyed fair skinned Scotch-Irish-German descent) you would answer definitely not. I have never claimed to be. However, under federal law and as clarified via some personal correspondence with the chief counsel of the EEOC in the early 90's, if I claim to be black, I *MUST* legally be accepted as black. So presumably, absent a change in the law, I could legitimately claim a share of the reparations. What about my kids? They are both fair skinned but on my wife's side we could prove some African heritage (she's Puerto Rican and descended from Spanish, Canary, Moorish, African (Sub-Saharan, Slave African, that is) Indian and other) Does this little bit of African blood qualify them for reparations payments? Especially since their enslaved ancestors were not even under the United States at the time of enslavement? In other words, leave aside the question of the rightness and wrongness of reparations for the moment. Just consider the logistics involved in deciding who is black and entitled to money and who is not. Do we really want to get back into the business of certifying people's race? Best, John R Henry CPP Visit the Quick Changeover website at http://www.changeover.com Subscribe to the Quick Changeover Newsletter at http://www.changeover.com/newsletter.htm
Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Czech issues.
Rob: That said, they were pretty hard-line in the manner of their take-over in Eastern Europe (they did pick up 764 000 square miles and 135 million people - enough to be going on with, I'd think - and then there was the rather provocative Berlin blockade). Perhaps no more hard-line than, say, the Brits were in Greece, but that's hardly a demanding standard. It was always bellicose toward its own people, including those who were being assimilated as a result of the Yalta conference. However, it was always deferential to the imperialists with whom these rotten pacts were being negotiated. As far as the Berlin blockade is concerned, the fault was entirely the west's according to liberal historian Caroline Eisenberg in Crossing the Line. Louis Proyect Marxism mailing list: http://www.marxmail.org
RE: Re: Re: Re: Re: RE: Re: Why Is the Sky Blue Question
(sorry for caps my cap lock was on and i'm too lazy to redo, i'm not screaming) CONSUMPTION AND INVESTMENT ARE BOTH TYPES OF SPENDING. SAVING IS A TYPE OF NOT-SPENDING. NOT-SPENDING WILL NOT NECESSARILY BE TURNED INTO SPENDING, UNLESS YOU FOLLOW A LOANABLE FUNDS TYPE APPROACH THAT GUARANTEES THAT NOT-SPENDING WILL BE AUTOMATICALLY TRANSFORMED INTO SPENDING BY VARIATIONS IN THE INTEREST RATE. THIS IS SAY'S LAW (NEOCLASSICAL VERSION). THE CONVENTIONAL VIEW OF BANKS FOLLOWS A KIND OF SAY'S LAW OF MONEY SUPPLY--MONEY SUPPLY WILL CREATE MONEY DEMAND. BUT THIS ASSUMES AWAY EXPECTATIONS AND OTHER FACTORS COMING INTO INVESTOR DECISIONS. IN THE REAL WORLD, JUST BECAUSE THERE ARE EXCESS RESERVES IN THE BANKING SYSTEM DOES NOT MEAN THAT A DEMAND FOR CREDIT WILL BE THERE. CONSUMPTION IS SPENDING. INVESTMENT CREATES INCOMES THAT WILL IN TURN SPUR MORE CONSUMPTION BY CREATING INCOME. IN THE CONVENTIONAL APPROACH, SOME PORTION OF INCOME WILL BE CONSUMED (THE MPC). IN THE ALTERNATIVE MULTIPLIER APPROACH, INVESTMENT IS SPLIT BETWEEN PROFITS AND WAGES, THE WAGE PART WILL BE RESPENT, THE PROFITS DEPOSITED IN THE BANKING SYSTEM. THE PART THAT IS RESPENT WILL THEN BE SPLIT BETWEEN PROFITS AND WAGES, AND SO ON. SO THERE IS SIMPLY NO WAY TO MAKE SAVING AND INVESTMENT INTO THE SAME THING UNLESS YOU ARE ADOPTING SAY'S LAW. THIS IS NOT THE SAME THING AS SAYING THAT S AND I ARE AN ACCOUNTING IDENTITY. THE ISSUE OF HOW S AND I CAN ALWAYS BE EQUAL AND ALSO S BEING BROUGHT INTO EQUALITY WITH I THROUGH CHANGES IN INCOME IS THE DISTINCTION BETWEEN PLANNED AND UNPLANNED I AND S. SEE PASSINETTI THE ECONOMICS OF EFFECTIVE DEMAND (1974 ESSAYS ON GROWTH AND DISTRIBUTION I THINK, CAMBRIDGE U., PRESS.) WHERE HE USES A LAGGED MULTIPLIER TO SHOW THIS. (Heilbroner actually wrote his undergrad thesis at Harvard on this last question, eventually published as a note in the American Economic Review in 1942.) -Original Message- From: Jim Devine [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]] Sent: Wednesday, April 25, 2001 10:35 AM To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: [PEN-L:10741] Re: Re: Re: Re: RE: Re: Why Is the Sky Blue Question At 11:06 PM 4/24/01 -0700, you wrote: In a simple S/I economy with no other leakages or injections, S = I in two senses: (1) they are equal because it's an accounting identity. But this I includes unplanned inventory investment (general over-production), so this equality may not correspond to equilibrium. That is, the GDP may be falling or rising (or staying constant). (2) in equilibrium, leakages = desired or planned injections, so that in the simple S/I economy, S = planned I. There is no unplanned inventory accumulation, so that the GDP is neither falling nor rising. Why are these injections called leakages? Makes it sound -unplanned- rather than planned. Saving is a leakage because it doesn't involve purchases of current products (it's a leakage from the circular flow of income -- spending -- income). It's planned by individuals, but the macroeconomic effect is unplanned. Jim Devine [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://bellarmine.lmu.edu/~jdevine
RE: It's a Jungle In Here
The public is willing, or at least more willing, to fight poverty with jobs that pay a living wage (or wages plus benefits), than it is with transfer payments according to income. A more immediate problem is that people think the war on poverty has been won due to welfare reform. max Even Bush forecasts economic downturn. Why not reknit the safety net ? War No. 2 on Poverty ? Lyndon Johnson [EMAIL PROTECTED] 04/19/01 10:18PM Right now it's hopeless. I prefer Make work pay! Work-conditioned benefits, and gigunda refundable tax credits. max Make what do you think of the slogan: Bring back welfare ! ( It's a jungle out there for some ) Charles [EMAIL PROTECTED] 04/19/01 11:23AM I have resubbed to this list, but with great tr
RE: Re: It's a Jungle In Here
Mine neither. But there is zero political support these days for aid to those deemed capable of work, outside of employment. max Too many people aren't working and I don't think the focus should be held to work. That is their line. Productionism/productivism is not my Utopia. Marta
RE: Re: RE: Exporting rubbish
Justin Schwartz writes: -- David, Will it help if I quote the first line of the paragraph: You must make everything which is yours _salable_. Marx's point is in part that political economy describes an economic system and a social reality where everything is for sale, including things that we thing would be horrible to sell. Prositution is a degradation of sexual love, but from a political economic point of view, it's just another sale; PE doesn't have the resources to account for why it's horroble that people should be forced by their circumstances to sell themselves for the sexual gratification of others, why that's exploitative and oppressive, even if it is, as we say today, Pareto optimal. Likewise with slavery (legal, you wil recall, in this country in 1844): the selling of humans is just another sale. Marx is attacking both the poverty of the theory--not its empirical adequacy, but its one-dimensionality--and the horrible nature of the society of which it is a theory, because in that society (ours), everything comes to be for sale. I was gratified that you and John Henry, our two procapitalists, were the ones who didn't get it. That suggests to me that Marx was on track this time. -- I understand Marx is making a political point -- conventional economics has no interest in the morality of the underlying actions. I agree 100% with Marx -- conventional economics has no interest in the morality of the underlying actions. I just don't understand why that is a criticism. I think Marx is putting the cart before the horse. He is saying that if you accept conventional economics (e.g. the study of society based upon the trade of commodities) you then have no defense against the trade of human beings. But that simply is not the case. I think it is more accurate to say that if you have a society that accepts the trade of human beings, conventional economics will tell you how to maximize your profits in that trade. But I don't see how that fact is deserving of criticism -- if you have a society that desires to create bombs to kill people, physics will tell you to how do that, but just because you have knowledge of physics, does not mean that you have to be in favor of creating bombs to kill people. (Maybe there are people who make that argument, Heidegger?, but I don't find it convincing.) As I said months ago in another context, I view economics as the means by which we satisfy our desires. Neither economics nor economists have any expertise in what I should desire. David Shemano
How Corporate Lobbyists Colonized the Net
How Corporate Lobbyists Colonized the Net Book review by Jon Katz http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=01/04/12/1533240mode=nocomment
The case for reparations: definition Black
[EMAIL PROTECTED] 04/19/01 07:39PM As the movement for reparations grows, I expect the definition of blackness to change. It will have to. But to what? Any ideas? Best, John R Henry CPP CB: No, the U.S. rule of any Black ancestory ( one drop of blood rule) would be the one to use. That is the one used to discriminate against people as Black down throught the years. So, the basic definition would stay the same.
BLS Daily Report
BLS DAILY REPORT, WEDNESDAY, APRIL 25, 2001: RELEASED TODAY: In March 2001, there were 1,527 mass layoff actions by employers as measured by new filings for unemployment insurance benefits during the month, according to data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics, U.S. Department of Labor. Each action involved at least 50 persons from a single establishment, and the number of workers involved totaled 171,466. In January 2001 through March 2001, the total number of events, at 4,550, and initial claims, at 544,717, were higher than January-March 2000 (3,965 and 433,968, respectively). A sharp decline in equity values and continuing weakness in labor markets throughout late March and early April caused consumer confidence to reverse its gains from March and fall 7.7 percentage points in April, the Conference Board reports. Consistent with the weak outlook for the job market and income growth, consumers' plans to make major purchases in the next 6 months also weakened(Daily Labor Report page A-2). Bombarded by news of thousands of layoffs, weak corporate profits and a volatile but depressed stock market, consumer confidence resumed its decline this month, a key survey showed yesterday (John M. Berry, in The Washington Post, page E1). After falling continuously from September through February, consumer confidence had unexpectedly increased in March, according to the monthly survey by he Conference Board, a business research group. This month, the group's confidence index fell back to the February level of 109.2, well below September's 142.5. But despite the extremely large losses of household wealth caused by the big drop in the stock market and the decline in confidence, consumers haven't cut spending, but are just not increasing it as much as they were before economic growth slowed sharply in the second half of last year. Consumer confidence in the economy fell in April, reflecting reduced optimism about jobs, a private survey showed today. While interest rate cuts and rising stocks may underpin confidence in coming months, job cuts may keep consumer spending sluggish. Spending accounts for two-thirds of economic growth. Jobs determine spending, not confidence, so we shouldn't expect to see strong spending in coming months, a senior economist at the Argus Research Corporation in New York said (Bloomberg News, in The New York Times, page C9). Consumer confidence is sliding again, after stabilizing in March, as job loss fears threaten to undermine what has been surprisingly resilient consumer spending. April's drop in confidence followed a big loss of nonfarm jobs in March, the largest such decline since 1991. Initial claims for unemployment insurance have risen, and layoff announcements have continued. In April, just 40 percent of respondents said jobs were plentiful, compared with 43.8 percent in March and 52.5 percent last September. At the same time, 14.2 percent said jobs were hard to get, up from 12.6 percent in March and 10.0 percent in September. The confidence report could spell trouble for the still strong housing market (The Wall Street Journal, page A2). The effects of the economic slowdown were evident in most states during the fourth quarter of last year, although personal income gains were not sharply lower than they were early last year, according to the Bureau of Economic Analysis of the Department of Commerce. Reflecting the robust experience in the first half of 2,000, the nation's personal income grew 7.3 percent for all of last year, the largest percentage gain since 1989. All 50 states and the District of Columbia shared in the income growth of last year. The strong growth in personal income boosted the nation's per capita income to $29,676 in 2000, with Connecticut having the highest per capita income at $40,640, the BEA said. Two New England states (Massachusetts and New Hampshire) and three in the West (Colorado, California, and Idaho) led the others in income gains last year. All 50 states and the District of Columbia registered increases that were larger than the advance in inflation, as measured by the BEA price index for personal consumption expenditures. The index rose 2.4 percent in 2000 (Daily Labor Report, page D-1). High-tech manufacturing and services helped fuel the largest growth in U.S. personal income in more than a decade last year. But now, with technology sectors limping and job growth slowing considerably, this year's outlook isn't nearly so bright. Government analysts noted 2000's income growth was particularly strong in the manufacturing and service industries, thanks in part to semiconductors, computer hardware, and software. The federal government defines personal income as the sum of several measures, including earnings from wages and salaries, stock dividends, interest and government payments through Social Security or welfare. Wages and salaries generally
Re: RE: Re: RE: Exporting rubbish
David, Although Marx is speaking in the formal mode, about political economy, his main target is in the material mode, the society where everything is for sale, that political economy describes. Marx doubts that political economy is neutral as opposed apologetic for that society, and actively obscurantist, in covering up realities of exploitation and oppression generated in part by putting everything up for sale. It might be that in a society where exploitation and oppression didn't exist, and there was not serious inequality, everything would _not_ be for sale, and economics of a more conventional bourgeois sort would be a useful tool for analysing the allocation of scarce resources. Oskar Lange used to say that Marxist economics is the economics of capitalism, but neoclassical economics is the economics of socialism. However, in a a society where things are otherwise, looking merely at whether the allocation of resources is efficient is a matter of complicity in evil, though Marx would not use the term evil--though maybe in 1844, he might have done. jks David, Will it help if I quote the first line of the paragraph: You must make everything which is yours _salable_. Marx's point is in part that political economy describes an economic system and a social reality where everything is for sale, including things that we thing would be horrible to sell. Prositution is a degradation of sexual love, but from a political economic point of view, it's just another sale; PE doesn't have the resources to account for why it's horroble that people should be forced by their circumstances to sell themselves for the sexual gratification of others, why that's exploitative and oppressive, even if it is, as we say today, Pareto optimal. Likewise with slavery (legal, you wil recall, in this country in 1844): the selling of humans is just another sale. Marx is attacking both the poverty of the theory--not its empirical adequacy, but its one-dimensionality--and the horrible nature of the society of which it is a theory, because in that society (ours), everything comes to be for sale. I was gratified that you and John Henry, our two procapitalists, were the ones who didn't get it. That suggests to me that Marx was on track this time. -- I understand Marx is making a political point -- conventional economics has no interest in the morality of the underlying actions. I agree 100% with Marx -- conventional economics has no interest in the morality of the underlying actions. I just don't understand why that is a criticism. I think Marx is putting the cart before the horse. He is saying that if you accept conventional economics (e.g. the study of society based upon the trade of commodities) you then have no defense against the trade of human beings. But that simply is not the case. I think it is more accurate to say that if you have a society that accepts the trade of human beings, conventional economics will tell you how to maximize your profits in that trade. But I don't see how that fact is deserving of criticism -- if you have a society that desires to create bombs to kill people, physics will tell you to how do that, but just because you have knowledge of physics, does not mean that you have to be in favor of creating bombs to kill people. (Maybe there are people who make that argument, Heidegger?, but I don't find it convincing.) As I said months ago in another context, I view economics as the means by which we satisfy our desires. Neither economics nor economists have any expertise in what I should desire. David Shemano _ Get your FREE download of MSN Explorer at http://explorer.msn.com
Re: RE: Re: RE: Exporting rubbish
The key word in what David says below is we. Yes, the complaint that I and others have is that it does not satisfy desires very effectively. You, David, might enjoy looking at Marx's brief discussion in the 1st vol. of Capital on the Fetishism of Commodities. I went to a bicycle shop yesterday. I had a nice chat with the owner. He repaired my fender, which I thought would need replacing. The whole exercize was highly inefficient. He told me that I owed him $2, but I gave him $5 since his employee did not bother to charge me anything when I came there. He lent a friend of Doug Henwood's a bicycle for a day, but refused to accept payment. That sort of personal capitalism -- when it is not associated with gross inequalities -- has some appeal, but ... On Wed, Apr 25, 2001 at 11:36:21AM -0700, David Shemano wrote: As I said months ago in another context, I view economics as the means by which we satisfy our desires. Neither economics nor economists have any expertise in what I should desire. -- Michael Perelman Economics Department California State University Chico, CA 95929 Tel. 530-898-5321 E-Mail [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Re: Czech issues.
Michael Perelman wrote: Rob, the Soviets believed that the take over was necessary, being surrounded by belligerent neighbors. E. Europe represented what they believed to be a necessary buffer. Which, I'm sure, is how the Poms explained away their excesses in Greece at the time ... Anyway, funny how we get a nice little thread warbling along on Eastern/Central Europe in the 1940s, but hardly a digit on modern-day Turkey or Indonesia - even the India thing is sorta taking place on the sidelines. Now, I'm not going to sink the slipper into the likes of PEN-L or LBO - they're the best lists going, for mine - but I do think we can see why foreigners don't pipe up much. Lefties everywhere sadly seem happiest talking about points elsewhere in the past tense, where lines are drawn and we are happiest to make our pronouncements. Anyway, the present tense is pretty well confined to things American. When I first came to the list, I unloaded plenty on developments in Oz, but even the 52nd state wasn't close enough to home to elicit manifest interest. So I've given up saying things about Oz, as it tends to make one feel like a spammer at worst and keeps one out of the conversation at best. There's probably nothing to be done about this, but there it is. Cheers, Rob.
Re: The Great Divergence
P's answer to this question is long and complicated, and requires a consideration of what may be the most original aspect of his thesis (an idea which as he recognizes was originally conceived by his colleague Bin Wong), namely, that both Europe and China were *organically* based economies with very little room left for additional increases in output without a major technological breakthrough. But England was lucky, because it had ample, cheap supplies of coal, close to abundant water and accessible ports which (to use Perdue's clear summation of this point) made the stean engine economically feasible. China, whose main coal deposits were in the northwest, far from its textile manufactures in Jiangnam, had no use for a steam engine, and no reason to overcome the huge cost of getting coal to the lower Yangtze. Such very local accidents of geology had a powerful effect on creating the preconditions for the first industrial breaktrhough. Ricardo, the last thing that I am interested in is a prolonged discussion of Pomerantz's book, but it is simply not accurate to state that the explanation is coal. He clearly says that the plunder of the New World has as much weight. Louis Proyect Marxism mailing list: http://www.marxmail.org
The Great Divergence
If as late as 1750, Europe/England and China/Yangzi Delta had comparable economies, what was it that set England apart and allowed it to industrialize first in the late 18th century? If "no part of the world was necessarily headed for an industrial breakthrough" (p206), how do we explain the turn to mechanized industry in 18th century England? P's answer to this question is long and complicated, and requires a consideration of what may be the most original aspect of his thesis (an idea which as he recognizes was originally conceived by his colleague Bin Wong), namely, that both Europe and China were *organically* based economies with very little room left for additional increases in output without a major technological breakthrough. But England was "lucky", because it had ample, cheap supplies of coal, "close to abundant water and accessible ports" which (to use Perdue's clear summation of this point) "made the stean engine economically feasible. China, whose main coal deposits were in the northwest, far from its textile manufactures in Jiangnam, had no use for a steam engine, and no reason to overcome the huge cost of getting coal to the lower Yangtze. Such very local accidents of geology had a powerful effect on creating the preconditions for the first industrial breaktrhough".
Re: Czech issues.
Rob, the Soviets believed that the take over was necessary, being surrounded by belligerent neighbors. E. Europe represented what they believed to be a necessary buffer. On Thu, Apr 26, 2001 at 02:12:27AM +, Rob Schaap wrote: That said, they were pretty hard-line in the manner of their take-over in Eastern Europe (they did pick up 764 000 square miles and 135 million people - enough to be going on with, I'd think - and then there was the rather provocative Berlin blockade). Perhaps no more hard-line than, say, the Brits were in Greece, but that's hardly a demanding standard. -- Michael Perelman Economics Department California State University Chico, CA 95929 Tel. 530-898-5321 E-Mail [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Re: Re: Czech issues.
We did have a few murmurs about Turkey and Indo., but not much. Also, a nice post about things in Argentina from Nestor. But none of these picked up any momentum. On Thu, Apr 26, 2001 at 06:45:48AM +, Rob Schaap wrote: Anyway, funny how we get a nice little thread warbling along on Eastern/Central Europe in the 1940s, but hardly a digit on modern-day Turkey or Indonesia - even the India thing is sorta taking place on the sidelines. -- Michael Perelman Economics Department California State University Chico, CA 95929 Tel. 530-898-5321 E-Mail [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: RE: It's a Jungle In Here
Max wrote: A more immediate problem is that people think the war on poverty has been won due to welfare reform. so what's going to happen with welfare reform if there's a recession? the whole program seems predicated on perpetual prosperity. Jim Devine [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://bellarmine.lmu.edu/~jdevine
RE: Re: RE: It's a Jungle In Here
Max wrote: A more immediate problem is that people think the war on poverty has been won due to welfare reform. so what's going to happen with welfare reform if there's a recession? the whole program seems predicated on perpetual prosperity. Jim Devine [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://bellarmine.lmu.edu/~jdevine Probably a godawful mess. My book goes into it, albeit from an ultra-sober academic posture. mbs
what is economics?
[was: Re: [PEN-L:10757] RE: Re: RE: Exporting rubbish] David Shemano wrote: I think it is more accurate to say that if you have a society that accepts the trade of human beings, conventional economics will tell you how to maximize your profits in that trade. Actually, though economists have produced models of slave plantations, my impression is that the slave-owners did very well at squeezing as much as possible from the slaves. Today, economics doesn't really tell businesses how they should be run. Economists, if they work for businesses, usually are engaged in advising management on technical details or in forecasting. In other words, I don't think economics is very practical in the way you suggest. But I don't see how that fact is deserving of criticism -- if you have a society that desires to create bombs to kill people, physics will tell you to how do that, but just because you have knowledge of physics, does not mean that you have to be in favor of creating bombs to kill people Robert Oppenheimer (the Father of the Bomb) and many of the nuclear scientists involved in the Manhattan Project became convinced that you are wrong. They argued _against_ building bombs, bringing normative issues in. They had seen Evil (especially in the hands of Truman) and decided that moral issues couldn't be shelved, that the ends don't always justify the means. Means and ends can't be separated, since the means applied shapes and limits the nature of the ends attained. (Of course, that is now a minority position, partly because the dissidents were purged.) As I said months ago in another context, I view economics as the means by which we satisfy our desires. Neither economics nor economists have any expertise in what I should desire. Many free-market economists push as hard as they can to limit the non-market provision of goods by government and other institutions (and they have powerful organizations such as the IMF on their side). This not only affects the amount of goods produced, but also the types of goods produced: they're pushing for the curtailment of collective goods (public parks, etc.) and the expansion of the realm of private goods (cars, etc.) Though neoclassical economists would like to deny it, this shift in the provision of goods feeds back to affect what people want (their desires): free-marketeers push to limit the benefits that the government provides to people, so people are encouraged to be cynical about what the government can provide. what is economics, anyway? orthodox economics seems to be a matter of preaching either free-market philosophy or technocratic superiority, along with a lot of purely academic stuff. Jim Devine [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://bellarmine.lmu.edu/~jdevine
Re: free rrpe volumes
Hi Michael, I'm very interested! Very Best Wishes, Tom Michael Perelman wrote: A retiring colleague is willing to donate all the back issues of RRPE to a deserving institution or person. -- Michael Perelman Economics Department California State University Chico, CA 95929 Tel. 530-898-5321 E-Mail [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Fed transparency
Doug Henwood wrote: It would, of course, be very clever of the Fed to announce their commitment to transparency just as they were retreating from it. But until they start acting that way, I'll take Ferguson at his word. Doug Ferguson also says that the primary task of central banks is to get monetary policy right--that is, to pursue policies that effectively promote the objectives established by their legislatures or parliaments, such as stable prices, full employment, and maximum sustainable growth. Should we take him at his word on this too? Edwin (Tom) Dickens
Re: Re: free rrpe volumes
sorry. too late. -- Michael Perelman Economics Department California State University Chico, CA 95929 Tel. 530-898-5321 E-Mail [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Re: Fed transparency
Edwin Dickens wrote: Ferguson also says that the primary task of central banks is to get monetary policy right--that is, to pursue policies that effectively promote the objectives established by their legislatures or parliaments, such as stable prices, full employment, and maximum sustainable growth. Should we take him at his word on this too? In the sense that he really believes this, yes. I think your average bourgeois really thinks s/he's doing the best for everyone, given the constraints of reality. They don't see themselves as exploiters and despoilers, even though they are. Doug
Re: RE: It's a Jungle In Here
The issue of disability poverty is rarely raised in these discussions on poverty and employment. Over 70% of disabled persons say they would like to have a job, yet our unemployment rate is astronomical - about two thirds of working age disabled persons age 16 to 64 are without employment. this would be about 8 million people. The ADA has not changed the unemployment rate. About 30% of disabled persons live in poverty compared to about 10% of the nondisabled population. For anyone who is interested, I would be more than happy to send a copy of my UCBerkeley Journal of Employment and Labor Law paper on the subject (send your address off list). I am about the only person writing from a political economy perspective -- most of the academics who write on disability won't touch capitalism with a ten foot pole, and hence we continue to get nowhere (except taken to postmodernism land). Marta Max Sawicky wrote: A more immediate problem is that people think the war on poverty has been won due to welfare reform.
The Great Divergence
Ricardo, the last thing that I am interested in is a prolonged discussion of Pomerantz's book, but it is simply not accurate to state that the explanation is coal. He clearly says that the plunder of the New World has as much weight. I was tempted to post this stuff on the H-World list, where Pomeranz sometimes acts as a moderator, but I did not want to look like I was trying to score points against him. I have said a few things there criticizing his book but nothing systematic, and have preferred to use other books/articles to do my eurocentric thing. Pomeranz has never commented on anything I have said - probably thinks I am just a nuisance. I met him at the WH meeting last summer (to which I was invited at the last minute to comment on his book, after AG Frank said he could not attend) but decided not to participate because I felt his book merited careful, tedious analysis. I told him he wrote an excellent book, and pressed him on a few points during the panel discussions, but that was that. Anyways, I know coal is only one ingredient, and would even say that Pomeranz has given Williams's thesis a new leg to stand on, by shifting the focus away from profits to resources, not as mere sources to profit from, but as sources which allowed Europe to escape the Malthusian wall...
The economy of Rumsfeld is demand constrained
[from LA Times] Rumsfeld Seeks More Time to Sell Off Some Investments From a Times Staff Writer WASHINGTON--Secretary of Defense Donald H. Rumsfeld has asked government ethics officials for another three months to divest personal holdings worth millions of dollars because he has been unable to find buyers, the Pentagon said Tuesday. Under federal ethics rules, senior administration appointees are required within 90 days of taking office to sell assets that could present a conflict of interest. While a number of top Bush administration personnel have been forced to take big losses in such divestitures, Rumsfeld has special problems because about half of his assets are tied up in complex and illiquid partnerships. According to his financial disclosure form, these investments are worth from $22 million to $99 million. Although Rumsfeld's attorneys and financial advisors have not been able to find buyers, it's not for lack of trying, said Rear Adm. Craig Quigley, the chief Pentagon spokesman. Nonetheless, Quigley said he remained confident that Rumsfeld would be able to find buyers without walking away from the assets. Often, investors in such partnerships are required to remain in them for many years--and to pay a sizable penalty for early withdrawal. Rumsfeld valued his entire portfolio at from $50 million to $210 million. On Jan. 18, just before he took office, Rumsfeld signed a complex agreement with the Office of Government Ethics in which he promised to sell investments that could create conflicts of interest. Because of the far-reaching activities of big government agencies, Cabinet secretaries often are required to sell off large shares of their holdings.
Sweatshops and featherbeds
http://www.latimes.com/news/comment/20010425/t34805.html A Sweatshop Is Better Than Nothing By DANIEL L. JACOBS Last month, after I wrote my final college tuition check of the year, I still had $1,000 left in the bank. After a good deal of research, I decided my money had the most potential for growth in an international fund that invests heavily in emerging economies. That night, I called my father, who is neither a practiced nor a successful investor, to inform him of my decision. An international fund puts money in developing global markets like the Philippines, China, Poland and Mexico. Knowing my father's position on many issues concerning global politics, I should have expected his response: How could I contribute to a fund that surely sustains companies that invest or invested in child labor, sweat shops and other practices that demean humanity? How could I live with myself, knowing that I was helping to maintain and condone practices that are not tolerated in the U.S.? They are good questions, they are inevitable questions, and they are questions that need to be addressed on a national and global stage, especially now that the market economy has transcended so many boundaries worldwide. I've answered his questions and, despite the recent protests by environmentalists and labor representatives at the Summit of the Americas in Quebec City over global commerce, I'm resolved to invest in corporations and countries that fundamentally reject the Western ideal of universal human rights. I am not concerned with exploitation of workers, because I know my investments will help make the people of those countries better off than they are. Living in the United States, many of us grow up with the skewed notion that our values and experiences are the right ones. So many of us believe the world would be a happier, nicer and better place if developing nations could or would just adopt the morals, virtues, values and experiences that America represents. Unfortunately, this ideal can't be applied in the rest of the world. Developing countries have their own particular problems, particular religions and particular values, morals and histories. Sometimes, we Americans have to realize that other people see their world through their own eyes and not ours. Sometimes working for a sweatshop, for example, is the best that they can expect. Sometimes 25 cents an hour is a whole lot better than nothing at all. How do you jump-start an economy whose people lack the facility and sophistication to take advantage of their nation's resources? Encouraging internal trade isn't the answer, because most of these countries have little to trade and not enough capital to circulate through their economies and use to generate more capital. In order for a developing country to begin exporting goods and get money circulating, it must encourage foreign investment, which sustains new economies by developing new industries that attract a domestic work force. I'm fully aware that foreign investors put money into developing countries to exploit cheap labor. But they are also generating money that wasn't there before, money that can be used for further development. Investors like myself are giving developing countries a better chance at growth, something they probably couldn't accomplish otherwise. And still so many of us choose to see injustice in this type of global investment. We investors can still make our choices--and from comfortable seats in which we can leisurely watch the injustices unfold on CNN. We choose to see the 7-year-old girls from India sitting at looms for hours everyday, weaving rugs so that they can bring home $10 a month to help their families. Many of us, though, choose not to see the little girl who is not working and is starving because her family doesn't have the money to feed her. We choose to see the Mauritanian who works 18-hour days in the fields, only to come home to a blanket, a little food and a small paycheck. We choose not to see the jobless Mauritanians, the ones lying on the streets, without food, who may end up lifeless. We choose to see the people who have taken the first step toward helping themselves. We choose not to see the ones lying dead because they did not have work. The questions for the investor seem harrowing. Do we invest in corporations that we know are exploiting labor in ways that would never be permitted in the U.S.? Or, do we decide not to invest in these companies, choosing instead to entrust our money to companies with more American ideals? I choose not to be swayed by the pictures on CNN or by the push for universal labor standards. I choose to put my paltry $1,000 into an international fund that invests in labor-exploiting corporations, because I am not afraid to see the world through the eyes of those my money will benefit and not the eyes of America. - - - Daniel L. Jacobs, a Native of Los Angeles
Re: Re: RE: It's a Jungle In Here
Marta's note about disability and poverty makes me think about David's question about the economy. Tim's Chico Examiner just published a wonderful article about a young man died. He was a physical disaster. Doctors recommended that his parents just let him die, time and time again. Yet he lived -- not long enough -- and he made quite contribution here in town. Economically, it did cost a lot to give him the care to keep alive, but he made a wonderful contribution to the town. I didn't know him well -- just enough to chat with him from time to time when he wheeled by, but he was always friendly and cheerful. Marx's point was that you cannot measure such things by cost benefit analysis. I also spoke today to a brother of someone on the list. He is homeless here in Chico. I wonder how many people we let slip through the cracks, without taking advantage of what they have to offer. At the same time, privileged jerks like W. and the gang rise to the top and exercise power. Marta Russell wrote: The issue of disability poverty is rarely raised in these discussions on poverty and employment. Over 70% of disabled persons say they would like to have a job, yet our unemployment rate is astronomical - about two thirds of working age disabled persons age 16 to 64 are without employment. this would be about 8 million people. The ADA has not changed the unemployment rate. About 30% of disabled persons live in poverty compared to about 10% of the nondisabled population. For anyone who is interested, I would be more than happy to send a copy of my UCBerkeley Journal of Employment and Labor Law paper on the subject (send your address off list). I am about the only person writing from a political economy perspective -- most of the academics who write on disability won't touch capitalism with a ten foot pole, and hence we continue to get nowhere (except taken to postmodernism land). Marta Max Sawicky wrote: A more immediate problem is that people think the war on poverty has been won due to welfare reform. -- Michael Perelman Economics Department California State University Chico, CA 95929 Tel. 530-898-5321 E-Mail [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Re: what is economics?
David S. wrote: But I don't see how that fact is deserving of criticism -- if you have a society that desires to create bombs to kill people, physics will tell you to how do that, but just because you have knowledge of physics, does not mean that you have to be in favor of creating bombs to kill people I commented: Robert Oppenheimer (the Father of the Bomb) and many of the nuclear scientists involved in the Manhattan Project became convinced that you are wrong. They argued _against_ building bombs, bringing normative issues in. They had seen Evil (especially in the hands of Truman) and decided that moral issues couldn't be shelved, that the ends don't always justify the means. Means and ends can't be separated, since the means applied shapes and limits the nature of the ends attained. Ravi writes: jim, arent you saying the same thing as david in the text above. i read david to be saying physics is a tool and it is morality/ethics independent, and it is society in the larger sense and physicists as moral/ethical members who can influence whether physics is used to build bombs or not. whereas consensus does seem to rule physics (unlike in economics, where political positions influence research in a big way), people's moral stance does affect which physical laws are discovered and how these laws are applied. The US (and the USSR) dedicate a lot of resources to developing bigger and better bombs, so that kind of physics was developed. That says that resistance to military physics -- by Oppenheimer, etc. -- affects the nature of the physics developed. ... this latter point takes on an interesting dimension in one aspect of the science wars - the biological and gene/iq academic wars, in particular the arguments of dawkins and others (we just say it as it is) and lewontin (a marxist by the way). dawkins, who wishes to be perceived as liberal/left accuses lewontin and others of trying to bend (or avoid) truth to meet moral needs, which he considers doomed, but rather suggests that knowing the truth does not prevent us from acting in an ethical way ... As I understand Dawkins (author of THE SELFISH GENE), he is making a clear political stand, which affects the biology he develops. Lewontin's point -- as I understand it from reading books like his DIALECTICAL BIOLOGIST -- is that Dawkins-type stuff is bad science, not just unethical. So the roles are reversed from what you say above. The idea that we can reduce complex organisms to merely the epiphenomena of their genes (as Dawkins wants to do, it appears) seems to be methodologically flawed. It's severe reductionism (akin to the economists effort to destroy macroeconomics by reducing it to microfoundations). That kind of methodology usually is associated with ideology, usually a kind of individualism. I think the point is that no science or social science is value free. My experience is that those who claim that they practice value free science are the _worst_ -- since they refuse to put their values on the table. Jim Devine [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://bellarmine.lmu.edu/~jdevine
Re: Re: RE: It's a Jungle In Here
After 2002, when the five year limit expires, it could easily--with a recession-- be 1932 again. There will be a surge in the homeless population, and some of the strictures on welfare will be loosened when the rest of the population trips ever more often over homeless people. For the moment, even though I disagree with its thrust, Max is probably right that all we can do is strive to improve the terms (wages, benefits, tax expenditures) under which poor people work. Joel Blau Jim Devine wrote: Max wrote: A more immediate problem is that people think the war on poverty has been won due to welfare reform. so what's going to happen with welfare reform if there's a recession? the whole program seems predicated on perpetual prosperity. Jim Devine [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://bellarmine.lmu.edu/~jdevine
Re: what is economics?
Jim Devine wrote: But I don't see how that fact is deserving of criticism -- if you have a society that desires to create bombs to kill people, physics will tell you to how do that, but just because you have knowledge of physics, does not mean that you have to be in favor of creating bombs to kill people Robert Oppenheimer (the Father of the Bomb) and many of the nuclear scientists involved in the Manhattan Project became convinced that you are wrong. They argued _against_ building bombs, bringing normative issues in. They had seen Evil (especially in the hands of Truman) and decided that moral issues couldn't be shelved, that the ends don't always justify the means. Means and ends can't be separated, since the means applied shapes and limits the nature of the ends attained. jim, arent you saying the same thing as david in the text above. i read david to be saying physics is a tool and it is morality/ethics independent, and it is society in the larger sense and physicists as moral/ethical members who can influence whether physics is used to build bombs or not. you seem to be saying the same thing. the contrary argument to david's point would be to suggest that physical truths/laws contain moral elements and a physical truth or law can correlate to its moral/ethical correctness (well actually this is not the contrary argument to david, since he is speaking of physics in a technological sense while i make a point regarding scientific theories). this latter point takes on an interesting dimension in one aspect of the science wars - the biological and gene/iq academic wars, in particular the arguments of dawkins and others (we just say it as it is) and lewontin (a marxist by the way). dawkins, who wishes to be perceived as liberal/left accuses lewontin and others of trying to bend (or avoid) truth to meet moral needs, which he considers doomed, but rather suggests that knowing the truth does not prevent us from acting in an ethical way - marx said its important not to know the world but to change it? to mean the same thing? (lewontin of course responds that it is dawkins claims to truth which are flawed and it is extreme reductionism that is the cause of the confusion). sorry for the segue! --ravi ps: there are of course more players in the biology/gene wars, including s.j. gould, ehrlich with his recent book human natures, j.m. smith, steven rose, e.o. wilson, r. hubbard. of similar interest is the infamous sokal prank on postmodernists and his subsequent defense of his left credentials. this debate has recently turned ugly with [norman?] levitt of rutgers, who is squarely in the anti-relativist pro-scientistic group, suggesting that perhaps democracy has outlived its utility since the common man can no longer be entrusted with decision making, given the complexity of scientific knowledge.
Re: Sweatshops and featherbeds
Ian Murray wrote: http://www.latimes.com/news/comment/20010425/t34805.html A Sweatshop Is Better Than Nothing By DANIEL L. JACOBS Last month, after I wrote my final college tuition check of the year, I still had $1,000 left in the bank. After a good deal of research, I decided my money had the most potential for growth in an international fund that invests heavily in emerging economies. This is from The Onion, right? Not the LAT? Doug
Re: Re: Re: RE: It's a Jungle In Here
Those people who provided services for him had a job because of his need and hopefully were well paid -- so though I dislike commodifying disability which home care corporations and other disability based business' do, there is a need that gets met by both a worker and the disabled person. We have been struggling to make personal assistance services jobs good pay with benefits but the counties (and state) has fought hard against raising the salaries to any where near a living wage. I just found out that a friend of mine died this week. She was a powerhouse during her lifetime. She had muscular dystrophy, used a ventilator for most of her adult life and though some might look at her and describe her as a physical disaster, she was proud to be disabled and she accomplished much more than many nondisabled persons in her lifetime. She managed to see hate crimes against disabled persons get worked through the legislature, wrote many articles on disability oppression, initiated the entire access for disabled women in Planned Parenthood Clinics, to name but a few things. So quality of life is not what it often appears to physically be. Marta michael perelman wrote: Marta's note about disability and poverty makes me think about David's question about the economy. Tim's Chico Examiner just published a wonderful article about a young man died. He was a physical disaster. Doctors recommended that his parents just let him die, time and time again. Yet he lived -- not long enough -- and he made quite contribution here in town. Economically, it did cost a lot to give him the care to keep alive, but he made a wonderful contribution to the town. I didn't know him well -- just enough to chat with him from time to time when he wheeled by, but he was always friendly and cheerful. Marx's point was that you cannot measure such things by cost benefit analysis. I also spoke today to a brother of someone on the list. He is homeless here in Chico. I wonder how many people we let slip through the cracks, without taking advantage of what they have to offer. At the same time, privileged jerks like W. and the gang rise to the top and exercise power. Marta Russell wrote: The issue of disability poverty is rarely raised in these discussions on poverty and employment. Over 70% of disabled persons say they would like to have a job, yet our unemployment rate is astronomical - about two thirds of working age disabled persons age 16 to 64 are without employment. this would be about 8 million people. The ADA has not changed the unemployment rate. About 30% of disabled persons live in poverty compared to about 10% of the nondisabled population. For anyone who is interested, I would be more than happy to send a copy of my UCBerkeley Journal of Employment and Labor Law paper on the subject (send your address off list). I am about the only person writing from a political economy perspective -- most of the academics who write on disability won't touch capitalism with a ten foot pole, and hence we continue to get nowhere (except taken to postmodernism land). Marta Max Sawicky wrote: A more immediate problem is that people think the war on poverty has been won due to welfare reform. -- Michael Perelman Economics Department California State University Chico, CA 95929 Tel. 530-898-5321 E-Mail [EMAIL PROTECTED] -- Marta Russell author, Los Angeles, CA http://disweb.org/ Beyond Ramps: Disability at the End of the Social Contract http://www.commoncouragepress.com/russell_ramps.html
Re: Re: The practicability of the Tobin tax
At 24/04/01 20:27 -0700, Colin wrote: I would appreciate some comments, for and against, on this article from the ATTAC website on its practicability. 1. Precisely by exploiting the useful features of this clearing system a tax could hurt them, encouraging private clearing schemes with associated counterparty risk, and perhaps encouraging people to postpone settlement of balances in hopes of clearing them in some other way. An advantage of an efficient clearing system is it encourages rapid settlement, a good thing. Could you expand on the implications of your comment? This is a highly technical area. My understanding is that Veem recognises that of course finance will try to find a way around such a tax. On the other hand he argues that there is already a highly integrated system for processing the main foreign exchange transactions, SWIFT. First, in nearly all cases the technology and payments processing services for all three payments institutions is provided, either individually or together, by a single, dominant, third party, the Society for World-wide Interbank Financial Telecommunications (SWIFT). SWIFT also provides the standardized and integrated communications system and services between individual trading banks, and between them and the payments institutions. Thus, SWIFT is already functionally a virtual global centralized foreign-exchange payments system. Presumably setting the tax at a low rate of say 1% would among other things be for the purpose of not encouraging tax avoidance (which is a problem with any tax is it not?) 2. While separating the practicability and goals questions has some analytical merit, much work still has to be done to show that taxing these particular settlement transactions in these particular institutions would produce other good results. I understand he says the main arguments for such a tax are to stabilise the international exchange system and to provide a source of revenue, but the commonest objection is about practicability. Even without understanding all the technical details it seems to me that a foreign exchange market, with all its volatility, is already a complex social feedback process. The socialisation is there but it is expressed entirely in mystified money terms. A tax on the exchanges would make the social dimension explicit and enable global political forces to start addressing how this global phenomenon should be more appropriately socially regulated. Of course revolutionary anarchists and right wing libertarians would disagree with this on principle, but the great span of political opinion between these which recognises the relevance of some state or social regulation of social processes, would not necessarily be opposed, although they would argue about what goals the tax should meet. The explicit socialisation of a mystified money relationship, would in marxist terms be a small progressive step forward. Note that it will be easiest for large institutions and active mkt participants to net obligations to achieve relatively small actual volumes of settlement. I think it is self-evident that larger instutions would be in the best position to maximise their advantages in dealing with a Tobin tax. International finance capital, anyway, is well used to analysing government policy and taking advantage of it. That is part of its tendency to move towards so much centralisation as to border on monopoly. That of course, in marxist terms, is a progressive aspect of finance capital. (I mean marxist in the sense of being progressive from the point of view of historical materialism, not in any moralistic sense of marxist) It is not explained how taxing this kind of settlement will affect fx position-taking. If the bid-ask spread is widened presumably it will reduce the benefits of betting against a rise or a fall in a particular currency. This would reduce the volume and the volatility of the markets and calm their animal instincts - their chain reactions. Chris Burford London best, Colin
Re: Re: Sweatshops and featherbeds
- Original Message - From: Doug Henwood [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Wednesday, April 25, 2001 4:00 PM Subject: [PEN-L:10783] Re: Sweatshops and featherbeds Ian Murray wrote: http://www.latimes.com/news/comment/20010425/t34805.html A Sweatshop Is Better Than Nothing By DANIEL L. JACOBS Last month, after I wrote my final college tuition check of the year, I still had $1,000 left in the bank. After a good deal of research, I decided my money had the most potential for growth in an international fund that invests heavily in emerging economies. This is from The Onion, right? Not the LAT? Doug == No, it's from the LAT; I freaked.. Ian
Re: Re: what is economics?
ravi narayan [EMAIL PROTECTED] this debate has recently turned ugly with [norman?] levitt of rutgers, who is squarely in the anti-relativist pro-scientistic group, suggesting that perhaps democracy has outlived its utility since the common man can no longer be entrusted with decision making, given the complexity of scientific knowledge. http://www.human-nature.com/articles/levitt.html Reflections on the Science Wars Norman Levitt I admit to facetiousness. I also allow that facetiousness is the rhetoric of despair-in this case, despair over the dreadful pickle into which the academic community in the US-and I suppose elsewhere-has gotten itself over the last two decades or so. STS-at least in the most flamboyant and-to use a dreadful phrase-pathbreaking versions-is to me both example and symbol of the university's growing inability to carry through one of its major intellectual functions, to wit, the filtering of new ideas and the winnowing out of those-most of them-that have small or ephemeral value. Why this function has atrophied to such a drastic degree is an interesting question-far more interesting than the interrogatives put to standard science by its would-be analysts in the STS community. Politics-political attitudinizing, that is, and the kind of magical thinking that accompanies it-is one obvious reason. There are doubtless deeper sociological reasons as well, possibly correlated with socio-economic factors that I personally can' t begin to analyze. Suffice it, however, that intellectual celebrity in much of the humanities/social sciences wing of academia, has in large measure ceased to be correlated with precise thinking, or command of evidence, or even fundamental intellectual honesty. What remains? A certain glibness, together with an effectual strategy for presenting onesself as in passionate solidarity with the wretched of the earth, in various guises. To find a flock of examples native to STS, merely consult the bibliography of Sokal's gag paper. Or, to take a fresher example uncontaminated by jocular intent, look at David Mermin's paper in the current Social Studies of Science. I call attention to this because Mermin (a very good physicist, by the way), for reasons that I infer to involve personal connections at least as much as philosophical stance, is determined to take a concilliatory tack, and to meet the STS community halfway, as it were. Nontheless, his analysis is as fully damning as anything I have seen written by an out-and-out science warrior on this side of the fence. One is left with the inescapable sense that some of the senior sages of STS are so philosophically naive, silly, and self-deluded that it's plainly as pointless to think in terms of dialog with them as with a UFO cultist. The only difference-and who knows how long that will last?--is that the vagaries of academic fashion in the last few decades have endowed the former with university positions and professorial titles. As the Wizard says, who needs a brain when you have a diploma? STS has very little of significance to say about how science and technology come to pass in society. You'd be much better off reading Scientific American, American Scientist, and Business Week if that's what you're interested in learning. STS has blown it completely, for the transient satisfactions of being transgressive, or whatever the favored phrase now may be. Gresham's Law has had its vengeful way with the field, pretty much. On the intellectual level, if not the institutional one, the science wars were over shortly after the first shots were fired, and it is curiousity, rather than passionate concern about the outcome, that leads me to keep an eye on all the rather pointless scurrying. Still, I brood about the larger fate of the university. The reason for my current disquiet may be found in the new book by Kors and Silverglate, The Shadow University, which is a sort of catalogue raisonne of recent PC horror stories. They are all well-documented, and all very, very true and, in sum, a depiction of ghastly moral cowardice and the appalling eagaerness of the shallow and mediocre to assume, or, worse, to abet, inquisitorial pretensions. The connection with STS? Somehow, I can't escape the conclusion that the same intellectual atmosphere that turned the administrators of many major and minor universities into shamefully gutless and puerile apparatchiks had something to do with the pattern of seemingly inexplicable indulgence and preferment granted to the fatuous dogmatics of orthodox STS-and its expositors. (Latour at IAS? You can make a better case for Jerry Springer.) Of course, a the contamination extends to a spectrum of other fields-but I won't go into that now. N. Levitt Books by Norman Levitt The Flight from Science and Reason Paul R. Gross (Editor), et al / Paperback / Published 1997 Higher Superstition : The Academic Left and Its
How Feds Spend More on Suburban Educ. than in Poor Schools
sorry to add to the "libertarian" contrarianism, but i am interested in what people have to say... HOW REDISTRIBUTION OPERATES Robert Nozick, Anarchy, State and Utopia It has been often noticed, both by proponents of laissez-faire capitalism and by radicals, that the poor in the United States are not net benficiaries of the total government programs and interventions in the economy. Much of government regulation of industry was originated and is geared to protect the position of established firms against competition, and many programs greatly benefit the middle class. The critics (from the right or the left) of these government programs have offered no explanation, to my knowledge, why the middle class is the greatest net beneficiary. There is another puzzle of redistributive: why dont the least well-off 51 percent fo the voters vote for redistributive policies that would greatly improve their position at the expense of the best-off 49 percent? That this would work against their long-run interests is true, but this does not ring true as the explanation of their refraining. Nor is an adequate explanation provided by referring to the lack of organization, political savvy, and so forth, in the bottom majority. So why hasnt such massive redistribution been voted? The fact will seem puzzling until one notices that the bottom 51 percent is not the only possible (continuous) voting majority; there is also, for example, the top 51 percent. Which of these two majorities will form depends on how the middle 2 percent votes. It will in the interests of the top 49 percent to support and devise programs to gain the middle 2 percent as allies. It is cheaper for the top 49 percent to buy the support of the middle 2 percent than to be (partially) expropriated by the bottom 51 percent. The bottom 49 percent cannot offer more than the top 49 percent can to the middle 2 percent in order to gain them as allies. For what the bottom 49 percent offers the middle 2 percent will come (after the policies are instituted) from the top 49 percent; and in addition the bottom 49 percent also will take something for themselves from the top 49 percent. The top 49 percent always can save by offering the middle 2 percent slightly more than the bottom group would, for that way they avoid also having to pay the remainder of the possible coalition of the bottom 51 percent, namely the bottom 49 percent. The top group will be able always to buy the support of the swing middle 2 percent to combat measures which would more seriously violate its rights. Of course, speaking of the middle 2 percent is much too precise; people do not know precisely in what percentile they fall, and policies are not easily geared to target upon 2 percent somewhere in the middle. One therefore would expect that a middle group considerably larger than 2 percent will be a benficiary of a voting coalition from the top.* A voting coalition from the bottom wont form because it will be less expensive to the top group to buy off the swing middle group than to let it form. In answering one puzzle, we find a possible explanation of the other often noticed fact: that redistributive programs mainly benefit the middle class. If correct, this explanation implies that a society whose policies result from democratic elections will not find it easy to avoid having its redistributive programs most benefit the middle class.+ * If others count on the bottom economic group to vote proportionally less, this will have to change where the middle swing group of voters is located. It therefore would be in the interests of those just below the currently benefiting group to support efforts to bring out the vote in the lowest group, in order to enter the crucial swing group themselves. + We can press the details of our argument further. Why wont a coalition form of the middle 51 percent (the top 75 1/2 percent minus the top 24 1/2 percent)? The resources to pay off this whole group will come from the top 24 1/2 percent, who will be worse off if they allow this middle coalition to form, than if they buy off the next 26 1/2 percent to form a coalition of the top 51 percent. The story differs for those in the top 2 percent but not in the top 1 percent. They will not try to enter a coalition with the next 50 percent, but will work with the top 1 percent to stop a coalition from forming that excludes both of them. When we combine a statement about the distribution of income and wealth with a theory of coalition formation, we should be able to derive a precise prediction about the resulting income redistribution under a system of majority rule. The prediction is broadened when we add the complication that people dont know their precise percentile and that the feasible redistributive instruments are crude. How closely will this modified prediction fot the actual facts?
FW: Why Feds Spend More on Suburban Schools than Poor Ones?
HOW REDISTRIBUTION OPERATES Robert Nozick, Anarchy, State and Utopia It has been often noticed, both by proponents of laissez-faire capitalism and by radicals, that the poor in the United States are not net benficiaries ofthe total government programs and interventions in the economy. Much of mbs: Noted by people who can't count, I imagine. government regulation of industry was originated and is geared to protect the position of established firms against competition, and many programs greatly benefit the middle class. The critics (from the right or the left) of these government programs have offered no explanation, to my knowledge, why the middle class is the greatest net beneficiary. mbs: reflects gross ignorance of the literature on regulation, from both right and left. There is another puzzle of redistributive: why dont the least well-off 51 percent fo the voters vote for redistributive policies that would greatly improve their position at the expense of the best-off 49 percent? That this would work against their long-run interests is true, but this does not ring mbs: actually there is a lot of evidence of the influence of the median voter on public sector outcomes. Again, the lack of reference to such work, aside from whether it is true or not, bespeaks ignorance. true as the explanation of their refraining. Nor is an adequate explanation provided by referring to the lack of organization, political savvy, and so forth, in the bottom majority. So why hasnt such massive redistribution been voted? The fact will seem puzzling until one notices that the bottom 51 percent is not the only possible (continuous) voting majority; there is also, for example, the top 51 percent. Which of these two majorities will form mbs: what an imbecile. this is discussed all the time in public choice lit. this is not even worth responding to.
Re: Re: How Feds Spend More on Suburban Educ. than inPoor Schools
http://world.std.com/~mhuben/nozick.html Criticisms of Robert Nozick and Anarchy, State, and Utopia. Part of the Critiques of Libertarianism site. http://world.std.com/~mhuben/libindex.html Last updated 04/25/01. Robert Nozick is perhaps the best known for libertarian philosophy. His work roiled political philosophy for years. What is less known is that his libertarian philosophy has been so thoroughly refuted that he no longer defends it. Links Robert Nozick, Libertarianism, And Utopia A distillation of a few of Jonathan Wolff's arguments showing a few invalid criticisms of Nozick, and concluding with how Nozick would reinvent the past. A Critique Of Libertarianism. James Hammerton's criticisms of Nozick and Hayek's ideas. Excellent philosophical rebuttals of some libertarian axioms. Contemporary Political Philosophy By Will Kymlicka. Specifically dissects many libertarian claims (mostly those of Nozick) for 65 pages. Why Libertarianism Is Mistaken by Hugh LaFollette. A published academic examination of the incoherence of founding libertarianism on negative rights and liberty. NEW 4/01: Robert Nozick And The Immaculate Conception Of The State Murray Rothbard criticizes Anarchy, State, And Utopia from a natural rights perspective. He swallowed the cow to catch the goat... he's dead, of course. Print References The links here are to Amazon.com, through their associates program, primarily because of the review information. Books without links are generally out of print, and can often be easily found at AddAll Used and Out Of Print Search. Good sites for bargain shopping for sometimes expensive new books are Online Bookstore Price Comparison and AddAll Book Search and Price Comparison. Both of those list applicable coupons. G. A. Cohen Self-Ownership, Freedom, and Equality (Studies in Marxism and Social Theory) Cambridge Univ Press, 1995. William A Edmundson Three Anarchical Fallacies : An Essay on Political Authority Cambridge University Press 1998. Exposes fallacies inspired by the ideas of obedience, coercion, and intrusion. Challenges many assumptions of libertarians and others. Alan Haworth Anti-Libertarianism: Markets, Philosophy, and Myth Routledge 1994. Will Kymlicka Contemporary Political Philosophy: An Introduction Oxford University Press, 1991. Now the standard text in the field; very highly regarded. Has a long chapter on libertarianism. Not at all kind to it. Steven Luper-Foy The Possibility of Knowledge: Nozick and His Critics Jeffrey Paul, editor Reading Nozick (anthology of essays about Anarchy, State, And Utopia) James P. Sterba Contemporary Social and Political Philosophy Wadsworth, 1994. His chapter on libertarianism makes the argument that, ... the right to a social minimum endorsed by welfare liberals is also required by the libertarian's own ideal of liberty. James P. Sterba Morality in Practice Fifth edition, Wadsworth, 1997. Another statement of the above argument. A longer version of this article will appear as Reconciling Liberty and Equality or Why Libertarians must be Socialists in Liberty and Equality, edited by Larry May and Jonothan Schonsheck (MIT, 1996). Jonathan Wolff Robert Nozick: Property, Justice and the Minimal State Blackwell 1991. Summarizes and invents numerous philosophical refutations of Nozick's Anarchy, State, and Utopia, a much parrotted work. Libertarians are generally unaware of the flaws and incompleteness of their best philosophy. Copyright 2001 by Mike Huben ( [EMAIL PROTECTED] ). This document may be freely distributed for non-commercial purposes if it is reproduced in its textual entirety, with this notice intact. Also see a book by Steven Newman refuting Libertarianism. Michael Pugliese - Original Message - From: Marta Russell [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Wednesday, April 25, 2001 6:57 PM Subject: [PEN-L:10789] Re: How Feds Spend More on Suburban Educ. than in Poor Schools What the heck is he talking about? When have we (people one on one) ever gotten a chance to vote on a redistributive measure? Congress and the rich patrons who finance congressional campaigns are the ones doing the voting and they are protecting the permanent interests. Marta [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: HOW REDISTRIBUTION OPERATES Robert Nozick, Anarchy, State and Utopia snip There is another puzzle of redistributive: why dont the least well-off 51 percent fo the voters vote for redistributive policies that would greatly improve their position at the expense of the best-off 49 percent? That this would work against their long-run interests is true, but this does not ring true as the
Re: How Feds Spend More on Suburban Educ. than in Poor Schools
What the heck is he talking about? When have we (people one on one) ever gotten a chance to vote on a redistributive measure? Congress and the rich patrons who finance congressional campaigns are the ones doing the voting and they are protecting the permanent interests. Marta [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: HOW REDISTRIBUTION OPERATES Robert Nozick, Anarchy, State and Utopia snip There is another puzzle of redistributive: why dont the least well-off 51 percent fo the voters vote for redistributive policies that would greatly improve their position at the expense of the best-off 49 percent? That this would work against their long-run interests is true, but this does not ring true as the explanation of their refraining.
RE: Re: RE: Re: RE: Exporting rubbish
In reply to Justin Schwartz and Michael Perelman: I think we are discussing something fundamental, and inherently interesting to me. What you are both saying, if I may paraphrase, is that human interaction based upon voluntary exchange is not ennobling. (Let us leave aside, for the moment, inequality, and just focus on the act of voluntary exchange itself). In other, in the best of all possible words, people would provide for each other needs without expecting anything in return, etc. Is this not what has motivated utopians for centuries? All we need is love? Now, I think you and the other list members assume the ickiness of voluntary exchange, but it is ultimately an assumption, an emotion, impervious to reason. It is why you are Lefties and why I am not. We could debate empirical information of capitalism v. socialism for eternity, but doesn't it come down to the fact that you are utopians and in your utopia people help each other without expecting anything in return? David Shemano
Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Czech issues.
DRAWING THE LINE: THE AMERICAN DECISION ... 1944-1949. Author: EISENBERG, CAROLYN http://hsozkult.geschichte.hu-berlin.de/zeitschr/radic/radic70.htm Radical History Review Issue 70 -- Women and Power Race, Class, Gender, and Diplomatic History Review of: Elizabeth McKillen, Chicago Labor and the Quest for a Democratic Diplomacy, 1914-1924; Brenda Gayle Plummer, Rising Wind: Black Americans and U.S. Foreign Affairs, 1935-1960; Rhodri Jeffreys-Jones, Changing Differences: Women and the Shaping of American Foreign Policy, 1917-1994; Harriet Hyman Alonso, Peace As a Women's Issue: A History of the U.S. Movement for World Peace and Women's Rights; and Carolyn Woods Eisenberg, Drawing the Line: The American Decision to Divide Germany, 1944- 1949. Robert Shaffer - Original Message - From: Louis Proyect [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Wednesday, April 25, 2001 10:35 AM Subject: [PEN-L:10753] Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Czech issues. Rob: That said, they were pretty hard-line in the manner of their take-over in Eastern Europe (they did pick up 764 000 square miles and 135 million people - enough to be going on with, I'd think - and then there was the rather provocative Berlin blockade). Perhaps no more hard-line than, say, the Brits were in Greece, but that's hardly a demanding standard. It was always bellicose toward its own people, including those who were being assimilated as a result of the Yalta conference. However, it was always deferential to the imperialists with whom these rotten pacts were being negotiated. As far as the Berlin blockade is concerned, the fault was entirely the west's according to liberal historian Caroline Eisenberg in Crossing the Line. Louis Proyect Marxism mailing list: http://www.marxmail.org
Re: The practicability of the Tobin tax
Hello Chris, 1. Re clearing systems, I simply noted that the logic of exploiting an existing clearing infrastructure is that you may harm it. Efficient clearing is a good thing. 2. I have no problem with the notion of working out the political economy of finance. I just came out of a class where we discussed Ch. 31 of vol. 1 of _Capital_, which touches entertainingly on this question. But I don't see how taxing something makes its social dimension explicit. I am not arguing against regulation or state intervention in principle, indeed the clearing institutions that your taxer wants to exploit are the result of state intervention intended to reduce risks of certain kinds of financial instability. 3. I think it is self-evident that larger instutions would be in the best position to maximise their advantages in dealing with a Tobin tax. International finance capital, anyway, is well used to analysing government policy and taking advantage of it. That is part of its tendency to move towards so much centralisation as to border on monopoly. That of course, in marxist terms, is a progressive aspect of finance capital. So now we're arguing for a Tobin tax on the grounds that it will accelerate the concentration of finance capital? This looks like a reform in search of a rationale. 4. It is not clear that transaction taxes reduce volatility. E.g. if you anticipate a large move in an asset price, that change will swamp the effects of a tax. For one discussion see http://csf.Colorado.EDU/pkt/authors/Davidson.Paul/Quack's%20Cure.html Best, Colin
Re: Exporting rubbish
Good, David. You can see exactly where we disagree on a fundamental issue where debate becomes all but impossible. I will make two modifications to your statement. First, to label us utopian and your position is implicitly practical or something like that, tends to contaminate your rational statement with an emotional suggestion. Second, it is not that I believe that people want nothing in return -- rather it is that I would like to live in world in which I do not have to expect some direct compensation. I don't have to take time to meet with my students. I could walk though my job with maybe 15 hours per week -- if I wanted to. Most teachers are dedicated to what they are doing and so put in more than is necessary. Finally, economists make a distinction between repeated interactions and infrequent ones. Economists see that in a world with repeated reactions you have more of a chance of building up an society based on a less self-serving sort of behavior. On Wed, Apr 25, 2001 at 06:28:43PM -0700, David Shemano wrote: In reply to Justin Schwartz and Michael Perelman: I think we are discussing something fundamental, and inherently interesting to me. What you are both saying, if I may paraphrase, is that human interaction based upon voluntary exchange is not ennobling. (Let us leave aside, for the moment, inequality, and just focus on the act of voluntary exchange itself). In other, in the best of all possible words, people would provide for each other needs without expecting anything in return, etc. Is this not what has motivated utopians for centuries? All we need is love? Now, I think you and the other list members assume the ickiness of voluntary exchange, but it is ultimately an assumption, an emotion, impervious to reason. It is why you are Lefties and why I am not. We could debate empirical information of capitalism v. socialism for eternity, but doesn't it come down to the fact that you are utopians and in your utopia people help each other without expecting anything in return? David Shemano -- Michael Perelman Economics Department California State University Chico, CA 95929 Tel. 530-898-5321 E-Mail [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Sweatshops and featherbeds
Does the L.A. times Normally capitalize words other than Proper nouns in the Middle of a sentence? A Sweatshop Is Better Than Nothing soph-o-mor-ic (sof uh môr'ik, -mor'-) adj. 1. of or pertaining to sophomores. 2. intellectually pretentious and conceited but immature and ill-informed. Daniel L. Jacobs, a Native of Los Angeles, Is a Sophomore at Williams College in Williamstown, Mass Tom Walker Bowen Island, BC 604 947 2213
Re: Re: Re: How Feds Spend More on Suburban Educ. than inPoor Schools
Nozick is now a communitarian of sorts. Murray Rothbard by the way, who you include as a critiic of Nozick, is himself a much more radical libertarian anarchist, and an even more devout believer in free markets than Nozick ever was. Rothbard criticiises Nozick because Nozick criticizes anarchism. Nozick believed in a minimal state. By the way I have read Anarchy, State, and Utopia several times and dont recall the passage quoted. Much as I disgaree with him, I think that Nozick is often a brilliant thinker certainly brainier and a better writer than Rawls. I find this passage a little odd since typically Nozick argues against redistribution on grounds that it violates principles of justice or entitlements not for the reasons given here. There are no page numbers given. Of course Nozick certainly would use any argument at all, whether part of his own positionor not, to buttrress his own conclusions. I am not sure that Nozick no longer defends libertarianism because he feels it has been refuted. I think it was because he began to realise the importance of groups and cultural ties in his own life, so he felt that the radical individualism of Anarchy, State , and Utopia was not an adequate ground for social philosophy. Nozick's response to critics was hardly that of a John Stuart MillNozick loved a sharp debate in which he defended his own position. Cheers, Ken Hanly - Original Message - From: Michael Pugliese [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Wednesday, April 25, 2001 8:06 PM Subject: [PEN-L:10790] Re: Re: How Feds Spend More on Suburban Educ. than inPoor Schools http://world.std.com/~mhuben/nozick.html Criticisms of Robert Nozick and Anarchy, State, and Utopia. Part of the Critiques of Libertarianism site. http://world.std.com/~mhuben/libindex.html Last updated 04/25/01. Robert Nozick is perhaps the best known for libertarian philosophy. His work roiled political philosophy for years. What is less known is that his libertarian philosophy has been so thoroughly refuted that he no longer defends it. -- -- Links -- -- Robert Nozick, Libertarianism, And Utopia A distillation of a few of Jonathan Wolff's arguments showing a few invalid criticisms of Nozick, and concluding with how Nozick would reinvent the past. A Critique Of Libertarianism. James Hammerton's criticisms of Nozick and Hayek's ideas. Excellent philosophical rebuttals of some libertarian axioms. Contemporary Political Philosophy By Will Kymlicka. Specifically dissects many libertarian claims (mostly those of Nozick) for 65 pages. Why Libertarianism Is Mistaken by Hugh LaFollette. A published academic examination of the incoherence of founding libertarianism on negative rights and liberty. NEW 4/01: Robert Nozick And The Immaculate Conception Of The State Murray Rothbard criticizes Anarchy, State, And Utopia from a natural rights perspective. He swallowed the cow to catch the goat... he's dead, of course. -- -- Print References -- -- The links here are to Amazon.com, through their associates program, primarily because of the review information. Books without links are generally out of print, and can often be easily found at AddAll Used and Out Of Print Search. Good sites for bargain shopping for sometimes expensive new books are Online Bookstore Price Comparison and AddAll Book Search and Price Comparison. Both of those list applicable coupons. G. A. Cohen Self-Ownership, Freedom, and Equality (Studies in Marxism and Social Theory) Cambridge Univ Press, 1995. William A Edmundson Three Anarchical Fallacies : An Essay on Political Authority Cambridge University Press 1998. Exposes fallacies inspired by the ideas of obedience, coercion, and intrusion. Challenges many assumptions of libertarians and others. Alan Haworth Anti-Libertarianism: Markets, Philosophy, and Myth Routledge 1994. Will Kymlicka Contemporary Political Philosophy: An Introduction Oxford University Press, 1991. Now the standard text in the field; very highly regarded. Has a long chapter on libertarianism. Not at all kind to it. Steven Luper-Foy The Possibility of Knowledge: Nozick and His Critics Jeffrey Paul, editor Reading Nozick (anthology of essays about Anarchy, State, And Utopia) James P. Sterba Contemporary Social and Political Philosophy Wadsworth, 1994. His chapter on libertarianism makes the argument that, ... the right to a social minimum endorsed by welfare liberals is also required by the libertarian's own ideal of liberty. James P. Sterba Morality in Practice Fifth edition, Wadsworth, 1997. Another statement of the above argument. A longer version of this article
Re: what is economics?
Jim Devine wrote, what is economics, anyway? orthodox economics seems to be a matter of preaching either free-market philosophy or technocratic superiority, along with a lot of purely academic stuff. Or as the Krugman/Jacobs consensus illustrates, purely sophomoric stuff. Tom Walker Bowen Island, BC 604 947 2213
Re: Re: Re: How Feds Spend More on Suburban Educ. than in Poor Schools
http://world.std.com/~mhuben/nozick.html Criticisms of Robert Nozick and Anarchy, State, and Utopia. Part of the Critiques of Libertarianism site. http://world.std.com/~mhuben/libindex.html Last updated 04/25/01. Robert Nozick is perhaps the best known for libertarian philosophy. His work roiled political philosophy for years. What is less known is that his libertarian philosophy has been so thoroughly refuted that he no longer defends it. * Need I mention Justin's excellent From Libertarianism to Egalitarianism essay It helps to remember Nozick was responding to Rawls more than anyone else. Ian
AG again......
[from the FT...only in economics doth equilibrium live...] Steady as she goes An uncertain global outlook suggests that Alan Greenspan will make further cuts in US interest rates, writes Gerard Baker Published: April 26 2001 01:37GMT | Last Updated: April 26 2001 01:43GMT To the optimists, last week's surprise half-point interest rate cut by the Federal Reserve was a perfectly timed move that lit the fire of recovery under the sputtering US economy. The reduction in the key short-term interest rate, the federal funds rate, to 4.5 per cent, was delivered at an inflection point in the economy's fortunes. It provided critical support for a stock market that had begun to edge back from its trough last month and restored Alan Greenspan, the Fed chairman, to his economic pedestal. To the pessimists, it was an act of desperation: an extremely rare second half-point rate cut between scheduled meetings of the Fed's policymaking open market committee, reflecting just how weak the US economy has become. It brought the central bank's emergency monetary easing to 2 percentage points in little more than 100 days - cause for alarm at the way in which the economy has spiralled out of the Fed's control. But to the Fed itself it was neither. The decision to lower rates last week was taken in fact at the previous FOMC gathering on March 20. At that meeting the Fed's policymakers appeared to ignore market pleas for a 75 or even 100 basis point cut and opted instead for 50. But, in a decision that was signalled in the committee's statement accompanying the rate cut, the FOMC agreed to cut again some time near the middle of the period between meetings. Since the next meeting was on May 15, the midway point was April 15-16 - when the Fed made its move. In the Fed's view, its actions this year reflect a judgment made when the economy began to deteriorate at the turn of the year. The central bank then faced growing evidence of a sharp fall in capital spending, declining profits and sliding business and consumer confidence. Policymakers decided that unless there was a sudden upturn in the economy's fortunes, they would need to cut rates substantially, over a period of many months, to a level consistent with recovery. On this view, the neatly spaced cuts represent a steady progression towards the Fed's ultimate destination. But what is that destination? How much lower is the Fed planning to cut rates in the absence of compelling evidence of economic recovery? One of the main tools used by Fed officials to gauge the appropriate policy stance is an assessment of a neutral - or equilibrium - real rate for federal funds. This is the inflation-adjusted level of interest rates that provides neither a monetary squeeze nor a stimulus. When the economy is expanding above its estimated long-term potential rate of growth, the real fed funds rate needs to be above the equilibrium and vice versa. Economists at the Fed believe the equilibrium rate has risen in the past few years as a result of the acceleration in the economy's growth rate of productivity and is probably between 2.25 and 2.75 per cent. With current inflation at about 2.5 per cent, that suggests the nominal equilibrium rate is about 4.75 to 5.25 per cent. The Fed's move last week brought the fed funds rate to 4.5 per cent - below the neutral rate for the first time in several years. But since the economy is clearly growing below potential, the indications are that the rate needs to go lower still. That points strongly to another cut by the Fed at its May 15 meeting and probably further to follow. The only thing that is likely to stop the Fed from moving further is confidence that the economic conditions in place since the end of last year have changed substantially for the better. And despite some optimism in financial markets that the turn may have come, Mr Greenspan and his colleagues do not appear to think they have seen it yet. In assessing the outlook, the Fed seems to be weighing one strong probability and two uncertainties. The strong probability - and the main threat to the economy - is a continuing fall in capital investment. The surge of the past 10 years was the catalyst for the rapid growth America has enjoyed in the past five. The reversal of this growth in the past six months is the main reason for the economy's woes. In the first three months of this year, investment in non-defence capital goods dropped by 3.3 per cent on the last quarter of 2000, as companies faced a glut of expensive new technology they could not put to productive use. Industrial capacity utilisation, according to the Fed, is below 80 per cent - its lowest level in eight years - a worrying indication that further retrenchment is likely. The anecdotal evidence from companies strongly suggests that they plan to continue cutting overcapacity - and so net investment - for some time. The problem for the Fed is that this classic investment-cycle bust seriously limits the effectiveness
Re: Re: Re: Re: How Feds Spend More on Suburban Educ.than inPoor Schools
Heh, that was a total cut and paste from that website so I can't take credit either way for the Rothbard reference. (BTW, a great anthology that Doug used when he was getting ready to write Wall St. was a book edited by Rothbard and Ron Radosh, Towards a New Leviathan. New Left (from Studies on the Left, the classic Martin J. Sklar, David Eakins, William A. Williams pieces) and Old Right (mostly Rothbard if memory serves) analysis/history of corporate/Cold War liberalism. I seem to remember a piece in Esquire once (maybe by Peter Steinfels, the NYT writer on religion for many yrs. until replaced by Gustav Niehbur) on Nozick. Said that when he was a Harvard undergrad in the late 50's, early 60's, he was a member of the Student League for Industrial Democracy. (As, I think, Gabriel Kolko and Bernard Cornfield [!!!] was). SLID morphed into SDS later, after Al Haber, Steve Max, Tom Hayden, Millie Jeffrey, etc. came into the org.) My sense of Nozick from that half remembered piece on him in Esquire, and reviews elsewhere, and glancing through his book Philosophical Reflections (?) and interviews is that personal tragedies (death of parents?) have modulated his hard Libertarianism. Not my cuppa tea, but neither was Rahls, theory of Justice. (Though the latters politics I could go along with.) M.P. P.S. Bad boy, Justin Raimondo of antiwar.com has a newish bio of Rothbard. - Original Message - From: Ken Hanly [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Wednesday, April 25, 2001 6:54 PM Subject: [PEN-L:10797] Re: Re: Re: How Feds Spend More on Suburban Educ. than inPoor Schools Nozick is now a communitarian of sorts. Murray Rothbard by the way, who you include as a critiic of Nozick, is himself a much more radical libertarian anarchist, and an even more devout believer in free markets than Nozick ever was. Rothbard criticiises Nozick because Nozick criticizes anarchism. Nozick believed in a minimal state. By the way I have read Anarchy, State, and Utopia several times and dont recall the passage quoted. Much as I disgaree with him, I think that Nozick is often a brilliant thinker certainly brainier and a better writer than Rawls. I find this passage a little odd since typically Nozick argues against redistribution on grounds that it violates principles of justice or entitlements not for the reasons given here. There are no page numbers given. Of course Nozick certainly would use any argument at all, whether part of his own positionor not, to buttrress his own conclusions. I am not sure that Nozick no longer defends libertarianism because he feels it has been refuted. I think it was because he began to realise the importance of groups and cultural ties in his own life, so he felt that the radical individualism of Anarchy, State , and Utopia was not an adequate ground for social philosophy. Nozick's response to critics was hardly that of a John Stuart MillNozick loved a sharp debate in which he defended his own position. Cheers, Ken Hanly - Original Message - From: Michael Pugliese [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Wednesday, April 25, 2001 8:06 PM Subject: [PEN-L:10790] Re: Re: How Feds Spend More on Suburban Educ. than inPoor Schools http://world.std.com/~mhuben/nozick.html Criticisms of Robert Nozick and Anarchy, State, and Utopia. Part of the Critiques of Libertarianism site. http://world.std.com/~mhuben/libindex.html Last updated 04/25/01. Robert Nozick is perhaps the best known for libertarian philosophy. His work roiled political philosophy for years. What is less known is that his libertarian philosophy has been so thoroughly refuted that he no longer defends it. -- -- Links -- -- Robert Nozick, Libertarianism, And Utopia A distillation of a few of Jonathan Wolff's arguments showing a few invalid criticisms of Nozick, and concluding with how Nozick would reinvent the past. A Critique Of Libertarianism. James Hammerton's criticisms of Nozick and Hayek's ideas. Excellent philosophical rebuttals of some libertarian axioms. Contemporary Political Philosophy By Will Kymlicka. Specifically dissects many libertarian claims (mostly those of Nozick) for 65 pages. Why Libertarianism Is Mistaken by Hugh LaFollette. A published academic examination of the incoherence of founding libertarianism on negative rights and liberty. NEW 4/01: Robert Nozick And The Immaculate Conception Of The State Murray Rothbard criticizes Anarchy, State, And Utopia from a natural rights perspective. He swallowed the cow to catch the goat... he's dead, of course. -- -- Print References
Re: Re: Sweatshops and featherbeds
Does the L.A. times Normally capitalize words other than Proper nouns in the Middle of a sentence? A Sweatshop Is Better Than Nothing in headlines, yes. I think it's conventional in the US. -- Jim Devine - This message was sent using Panda Mail. Check your regular email account away from home free! http://www.pandamail.net
Re: RE: Re: RE: Re: RE: Exporting rubbish
How can you just focus on voluntary exchange and set aside inequality? In fact if power relationships are too unequal the voluntary should even be in scare quotes. Consider the following: 1) A person voluntarily pays a ransom and in exchange is set free by kidnappers. (The person could have refused) 2) A poor rural Thai woman voluntarily contracts with a brothel in Bangkok in exchange for marginally more than the cost of her meagre room and board. (She could have stayed home with her family who may not be able to feed her) If I understand David's position in each case conventional economics would claim that following the science of conventional economics would efficiently satisfy each person desires. The person kidnapped desires to be free and paying the ransom may be the most efficient way of satisfying this desire. The Thai woman wants to eat, and have a roof over her head, the exchange provides that and is the most efficient choice given the plausible alternative starving at home. Is that not so? However, the desires involved are not the desires that the person would wish satisfied absent the power relationships. The person kidnapped desires to be free without paying the ransom but there is no practical alternative. The Thai woman would rather stay with her family in her community but there is nothing but possible starvation there. One of Marx's main points is that voluntary contracts between worker and capitalists are not voluntary but forced since the worker does not have access to the means of production and the capitalists appropriates the products and owns the means of production. Of course as David claims there are other ethical resources for criticising the types of situations he cites. But for Marx ethics is part of the superstructure. As long as the basic inequality of power resulting from the capitalist ownership of the means of production while most do not have access to production except through sale of their labor power voluntary exchanges will in fact continue to be exploitative and no amount of moral influence can change that substantially. Why? Because any ethical restraint that conflicts significantly with returns on capital will act as a barrier to efficiency. Of course the typical right wing response to the second example represents an ethics that does not even find an ethical restraint justified since the Thai woman is better off contracting with the brothel than in her other choice. CHeers, Ken Hanly - Original Message - From: David Shemano [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Wednesday, April 25, 2001 8:28 PM Subject: [PEN-L:10792] RE: Re: RE: Re: RE: Exporting rubbish In reply to Justin Schwartz and Michael Perelman: I think we are discussing something fundamental, and inherently interesting to me. What you are both saying, if I may paraphrase, is that human interaction based upon voluntary exchange is not ennobling. (Let us leave aside, for the moment, inequality, and just focus on the act of voluntary exchange itself). In other, in the best of all possible words, people would provide for each other needs without expecting anything in return, etc. Is this not what has motivated utopians for centuries? All we need is love? Now, I think you and the other list members assume the ickiness of voluntary exchange, but it is ultimately an assumption, an emotion, impervious to reason. It is why you are Lefties and why I am not. We could debate empirical information of capitalism v. socialism for eternity, but doesn't it come down to the fact that you are utopians and in your utopia people help each other without expecting anything in return? David Shemano
Re: Re: RE: Re: RE: Re: RE: Exporting rubbish
How can you just focus on voluntary exchange and set aside inequality? In fact if power relationships are too unequal the voluntary should even be in scare quotes. Consider the following: 1) A person voluntarily pays a ransom and in exchange is set free by kidnappers. (The person could have refused) 2) A poor rural Thai woman voluntarily contracts with a brothel in Bangkok in exchange for marginally more than the cost of her meagre room and board. (She could have stayed home with her family who may not be able to feed her) If I understand David's position in each case conventional economics would claim that following the science of conventional economics would efficiently satisfy each person desires. The person kidnapped desires to be free and paying the ransom may be the most efficient way of satisfying this desire. The Thai woman wants to eat, and have a roof over her head, the exchange provides that and is the most efficient choice given the plausible alternative starving at home. Is that not so? However, the desires involved are not the desires that the person would wish satisfied absent the power relationships. The person kidnapped desires to be free without paying the ransom but there is no practical alternative. The Thai woman would rather stay with her family in her community but there is nothing but possible starvation there. One of Marx's main points is that voluntary contracts between worker and capitalists are not voluntary but forced since the worker does not have access to the means of production and the capitalists appropriates the products and owns the means of production. Of course as David claims there are other ethical resources for criticising the types of situations he cites. But for Marx ethics is part of the superstructure. As long as the basic inequality of power resulting from the capitalist ownership of the means of production while most do not have access to production except through sale of their labor power voluntary exchanges will in fact continue to be exploitative and no amount of moral influence can change that substantially. Why? Because any ethical restraint that conflicts significantly with returns on capital will act as a barrier to efficiency. Of course the typical right wing response to the second example represents an ethics that does not even find an ethical restraint justified since the Thai woman is better off contracting with the brothel than in her other choice. CHeers, Ken Hanly *** So the condemnation of exploitation is that it is inefficient? Is power an amoral concept? If so what's the point of condemning exploitation? Ian
Re: FW: Why Feds Spend More on Suburban Schools than Poor Ones?
HOW REDISTRIBUTION OPERATES Robert Nozick, Anarchy, State and Utopia mbs: what an imbecile. this is discussed all the time in public choice lit. this is not even worth responding to. whoa, sorry. i really struck a nerve citing nozick. perhaps it will surprise you to learn that anarchy, state and utopia has been a staple of my political philosophy classes? i will agree that most of his positions are quite idiotic. (he actually argued that the marxian notion of exploitation meant that investment and subsidization for non-workers is a form of exploitation...and his essay on why intellectuals oppose capitalism, dear lord.) to ken hanley: i left out the first line of the section which stated, our normative task in these two chapters is now complete, but perhaps something should be said about the actual operation of redistributive programs. the page numbers are 274 and 275 in chapter 8 entitled equality, envy, exploitation, etc., in which he is mainly attempting to take on marx. fails miserably (in my estimation, at least). anyway, thanks for the info about his turn away from libertarianism. i was also under the impression that it was because he thought libertarianism had been throughly refuted. to ian or justin: where could i find the from libertarianism to egalitarianism essay? nozicks wilt chamberlain example and the example of nozick giving philosophy lectures to people in exchange for cranking the handle of a machine for him are supposed to show that no form of egalitarian society can be continuously realized without continuous interference in people's lives. g a cohen responded to this (robert nozick and wilt chamberlain: how patterns preserve liberty), but his argument is essentially a consequentialist one (and i think nozick actually does have a good argument against consequentialism in the section on side-constraints). does the essay touch on any of these issues? thanks.
Re: Re: Re: what is economics?
Jim Devine wrote: I commented: Robert Oppenheimer (the Father of the Bomb) and many of the nuclear scientists involved in the Manhattan Project became convinced that you are wrong. They argued _against_ building bombs, bringing normative issues in. They had seen Evil (especially in the hands of Truman) and decided that moral issues couldn't be shelved, that the ends don't always justify the means. Means and ends can't be separated, since the means applied shapes and limits the nature of the ends attained. Ravi writes: jim, arent you saying the same thing as david in the text above. i read david to be saying physics is a tool and it is morality/ethics independent, and it is society in the larger sense and physicists as moral/ethical members who can influence whether physics is used to build bombs or not. whereas consensus does seem to rule physics (unlike in economics, where political positions influence research in a big way), people's moral stance does affect which physical laws are discovered and how these laws are applied. The US (and the USSR) dedicate a lot of resources to developing bigger and better bombs, so that kind of physics was developed. That says that resistance to military physics -- by Oppenheimer, etc. -- affects the nature of the physics developed. yes, i would agree with that. but you have to forgive me if i point out that that still sounds the same as saying scientists and society have to set the right goals for research in physics. if the goal tends to be building bombs then physics can [try to] satisfy that need (which seemed to be what david was saying - i cut his text out for brevity). the fault lies not in physics but in the humans who set the direction of research in physics. perhaps i am only agreeing vigorously? i would also add that it is not just moral stance but also ease and efficacy among other things, that drive research direction and effort. those aspects of phenomena that are most susceptible to the methods of science are the most explored and utilised in further theorizing, and if the methods of science are [say] dehumanizing in nature, then so will be the direction of research (compounding the reductionism that seems inherent to science). the point here is that a technological approach to truth-finding contains inherently immoral and dehumanizing aspects (as heidegger/marcuse/others might theorize). of course that still falls short of negating truth claims of scientific theories. there is an increasing set of accusations that can be levelled against scientific practice and ultimately theory: - clearly you and i agree that what is published as scientific truth is the outcome of research directions. different directions would have unearthed different truths, but: - can the different truths contradict the discovered ones? the extreme relativist position holds that (in contradiction to what i read as david's original point) scientific truth itself (not just the direction of scientific research, as you and i seem to agree) is a social construct and therefore reflects the cultural and societal norms in whose context they are described (latour, prigogine and some of the STS folks seem to hold this view, and are attacked for it by sokal and philosophers like jerry fodor). - there seem to be intermediate positions in relativity: that scientific truths are contingent, but that is a philosophy of science issue and does not seem to relate significantly to this discussion. ... this latter point takes on an interesting dimension in one aspect of the science wars - the biological and gene/iq academic wars, in particular the arguments of dawkins and others (we just say it as it is) and lewontin (a marxist by the way). dawkins, who wishes to be perceived as liberal/left accuses lewontin and others of trying to bend (or avoid) truth to meet moral needs, which he considers doomed, but rather suggests that knowing the truth does not prevent us from acting in an ethical way ... As I understand Dawkins (author of THE SELFISH GENE), he is making a clear political stand, which affects the biology he develops. Lewontin's point -- as I understand it from reading books like his DIALECTICAL BIOLOGIST -- is that Dawkins-type stuff is bad science, not just unethical. So the roles are reversed from what you say above. i (being in agreement with lewontin's position) would not disagree with what you say above. my text above is just a report of the respective claims of each party. lewontin's work and your own text above do a good job of responding to dawkin's criticism by exposing his own subjective motivation. I think the point is that no science or social science is value free. My experience is that those who claim that they practice value free science are the _worst_ -- since they refuse to put their values on the table. indeed, or as howard zinn might say, you
Re: RE: Re: RE: Re: RE: Exporting rubbish
David Shemano writes: I think we are discussing something fundamental, and inherently interesting to me. What you are both saying, if I may paraphrase, is that human interaction based upon voluntary exchange is not ennobling. (Let us leave aside, for the moment, inequality, and just focus on the act of voluntary exchange itself). I'm not sure we can leave aside inequality. Not only does inequality of resource ownership imply that voluntary exchange (markets) benefits some much more than it benefits the vast majority, but the last 25+ years teach us that as the role of markets increases in society, inequality increases too, as those with wealth advantages use their wealth to accumulate further advantages. In other, in the best of all possible words, people would provide for each other needs without expecting anything in return, etc. Is this not what has motivated utopians for centuries? All we need is love? utopians point to other mechanisms for collective decision-making besides letting the rich rule via the use of dollar votes in the markets for goods, services, and politicians. Democracy springs to mind. In democracy, people work together as a _community_, while making decisions about what the community should do in a democratic way (rather than the one-dollar/one-vote approach of markets). Voluntary exchange encourages total individualization, destroying communities and democracy (and the values that are necessary to prevent voluntary exchange from becoming a mess of fraud and extortion and then a Hobbesian war of each against all). BTW, you might enjoy reading utopians: for the top-down socialist vision, look at Bellamy's LOOKING FORWARD; for the socialism-from-below ideal, see William Morris' NEWS FROM NOWHERE. Morris' story is not based on the kinds of motives that you suggest. It's not love but creativity and community that drive his utopia. Now, I think you and the other list members assume the ickiness of voluntary exchange, but it is ultimately an assumption, an emotion, impervious to reason [just as is the belief in the niceness of exchange?]. It is why you are Lefties and why I am not. We could debate empirical information of capitalism v. socialism for eternity, but doesn't it come down to the fact that you are utopians and in your utopia people help each other without expecting anything in return? Marx had a useful approach in his CAPITAL (volume I). He assumed that all exchange was equal (i.e., that commodities exchanged at value). In modern terms, all exchanges are voluntary and commodities exchange according to opportunity costs. He doesn't treat exchange as icky. Rather, he treats it as a moral standard (for argument's sake, at least) against which bourgeois society should be measured. That is, he judges it according to its own standards. He finds that capitalism doesn't live up to its own moral standard. Marx points to the fundamental social inequalities that we call class which imply that workers _voluntarily_ exchange their labor-power with the capitalists, who then are able exploit them. Because workers lack direct access to the means of production and subsistence, they have little choice (as long as they act as individuals) to do more labor than is necessary to pay for the hiring of their labor-power. In one of Marx's summaries, he says that surplus-value (profits, interest, and rent) is the price that workers pay for not being starved by the capitalists. BTW, on the question of Nozick: he seems to use the standard Lockean meaning for redistribution. Locke assumed that any property we own is _ours_ and ours alone, so that if the state takes some of it away as taxes and gives it to someone else, that's redistribution. This ignores the redistribution that takes place within a free-market capitalist system, i.e., the redistribution from workers to capitalists (capitalist exploitation). Of course, wherever there are external costs or benefits, redistribution occurs within the market system, whether the state is involved or not. -- Jim Devine David Shemano - This message was sent using Panda Mail. Check your regular email account away from home free! http://www.pandamail.net
Re: Re: FW: Why Feds Spend More on Suburban Schools than Poor Ones?
to ian or justin: where could i find the from libertarianism to egalitarianism essay? nozicks wilt chamberlain example and the example of nozick giving philosophy lectures to people in exchange for cranking the handle of a machine for him are supposed to show that no form of egalitarian society can be continuously realized without continuous interference in people's lives. g a cohen responded to this (robert nozick and wilt chamberlain: how patterns preserve liberty), but his argument is essentially a consequentialist one (and i think nozick actually does have a good argument against consequentialism in the section on side-constraints). does the essay touch on any of these issues? thanks. ** Justin's piece can be found in Social Theory and Practice vol. 18 # 3 Fall, 1992] See also, Justin's In Defence of Exploitation in Economics and Philosophy # 11[1995], and Paul Kamolnick's GA Cohen's Refutation of Inegalitarianism and the Quest for a Contemporary Socialist Ethic in, gaaak, Rethinking MARXISM vol. 9 # 1[Spring 1996/97]. Finally, Allen Buchanan's Marx and Justice: The Radical Critique of Liberalism is priceless.. Ian
Re: Re: Exporting rubbish
David, I must have missed your post, so I reply only to the bit quoted below. If it is incomplete, you can add on. I do not think that voluntary exchange is ennobling, but I also have nothing against it under conditions of rough equality. I don't think that it's realistic to expect people to generally act productively without the promise of material reward, although I do not think that the threat of material destitution is a necessary correlate. As I have argued at length here--not since you have been on, because Michael P have forbidden it--I think markets are fine and necessary institutions in their place. Marx didn't think so, or anyway, we disagree about their place; he thinks the are, or were, fine under the early stages of capitalism, but by the mid 19th century had outlived their utility, that a totally planned society with a nonmarket economyh was possible. I don't think that was true then and I don't think so now. I doubt whether it will be true in the foreseeable future--say the next 300 years. I don't know if it will ever be true. However, markets have to be kept in their place. Unlike many on this list I think that it is possible that they can; that their imperialistic tendencies, their tendencies to take over everything. can be constrained. Their place is in the allocation of production and consumption goods, and their just functioning requires that new investment be planned, wage labor banned, and rough equality maintained among producers who have control over their conditions of labor. I think this is conisistent with the quote I gave from the 1844 Manuscripts, although Marx, as I say, disagreed. The point of the quote is, as in the passage I omitted from the initial version, that not everything can be for sale, that some things must be taken off the market, and, no less importantly, the conditions that impel people to commodify what ought not be commodified must be changed. These include chiefly the exploitation involved in wage labor the great inequalities involved in vast numbers being rendered propertyless. Exchange under those conditions cannot be properly described as voluntary. Hope this clarifies at least where I stand. jks Good, David. You can see exactly where we disagree on a fundamental issue where debate becomes all but impossible. I will make two modifications to your statement. First, to label us utopian and your position is implicitly practical or something like that, tends to contaminate your rational statement with an emotional suggestion. Second, it is not that I believe that people want nothing in return -- rather it is that I would like to live in world in which I do not have to expect some direct compensation. I don't have to take time to meet with my students. I could walk though my job with maybe 15 hours per week -- if I wanted to. Most teachers are dedicated to what they are doing and so put in more than is necessary. Finally, economists make a distinction between repeated interactions and infrequent ones. Economists see that in a world with repeated reactions you have more of a chance of building up an society based on a less self-serving sort of behavior. On Wed, Apr 25, 2001 at 06:28:43PM -0700, David Shemano wrote: In reply to Justin Schwartz and Michael Perelman: I think we are discussing something fundamental, and inherently interesting to me. What you are both saying, if I may paraphrase, is that human interaction based upon voluntary exchange is not ennobling. (Let us leave aside, for the moment, inequality, and just focus on the act of voluntary exchange itself). In other, in the best of all possible words, people would provide for each other needs without expecting anything in return, etc. Is this not what has motivated utopians for centuries? All we need is love? Now, I think you and the other list members assume the ickiness of voluntary exchange, but it is ultimately an assumption, an emotion, impervious to reason. It is why you are Lefties and why I am not. We could debate empirical information of capitalism v. socialism for eternity, but doesn't it come down to the fact that you are utopians and in your utopia people help each other without expecting anything in return? David Shemano -- Michael Perelman Economics Department California State University Chico, CA 95929 Tel. 530-898-5321 E-Mail [EMAIL PROTECTED] _ Get your FREE download of MSN Explorer at http://explorer.msn.com
Re: Re: Re: RE: It's a Jungle In Here
Michael Perelman writes: Marta's note about disability and poverty makes me think about David's question about the economy. Tim's Chico Examiner just published a wonderful article about a young man [who] died. He was a physical disaster. Doctors recommended that his parents just let him die, time and time again. Yet he lived -- not long enough -- and he made quite contribution here in town. Economically, it did cost a lot to give him the care to keep alive, but he made a wonderful contribution to the town. I didn't know him well -- just enough to chat with him from time to time when he wheeled by, but he was always friendly and cheerful. Marx's point was that you cannot measure such things by cost benefit analysis. My son's mild autism (Asperger's syndrome) has convinced me of the validity of Gardner's multiple intelligences. Though he (my son) is disabled in terms of social skills and handling emotions, he is highly abled in terms of creativity and abstract intelligence. His more detailed psych tests are like a comb, really high in some dimensions, very low in others. In the somewhat sickly sweet cliche of those who deal with special children, he's not disabled but differently abled. Our society tends to rank everyone along a single scale, things like IQ, but ultimately how much money one makes as income. (The use of IQ is justified by pointing to how well it allegedly predicts income.) But that kind of thing would doom people like my son, since he sure doesn't look like an economic winner. If we're lucky and learn how to work around his disabilities and encourage his abilities, he might turn out like Einstein (in Star Wars terminology, going with the force) or Bill Gates (the dark side of the force). The former wasn't very good at generating income for himself and would thus be judged a failure by our society. -- Jim Devine - This message was sent using Panda Mail. Check your regular email account away from home free! http://www.pandamail.net
rewards
[was: Re: [PEN-L:10808] Re: Re: Exporting rubbish] Justin writes: I don't think that it's realistic to expect people to generally act productively without the promise of material reward... isn't there a whole literature (led by someone named Frei?) about how materially rewarding people for doing things tends to discourage people from doing them simply because it's inherently pleasant? -- Jim Devine - This message was sent using Panda Mail. Check your regular email account away from home free! http://www.pandamail.net
Re: Re: Re: Re: RE: It's a Jungle In Here
- Original Message - From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Wednesday, April 25, 2001 8:26 PM Subject: [PEN-L:10810] Re: Re: Re: RE: It's a Jungle In Here Michael Perelman writes: Marta's note about disability and poverty makes me think about David's question about the economy. Tim's Chico Examiner just published a wonderful article about a young man [who] died. He was a physical disaster. Doctors recommended that his parents just let him die, time and time again. Yet he lived -- not long enough -- and he made quite contribution here in town. Economically, it did cost a lot to give him the care to keep alive, but he made a wonderful contribution to the town. I didn't know him well -- just enough to chat with him from time to time when he wheeled by, but he was always friendly and cheerful. Marx's point was that you cannot measure such things by cost benefit analysis. My son's mild autism (Asperger's syndrome) has convinced me of the validity of Gardner's multiple intelligences. Though he (my son) is disabled in terms of social skills and handling emotions, he is highly abled in terms of creativity and abstract intelligence. His more detailed psych tests are like a comb, really high in some dimensions, very low in others. In the somewhat sickly sweet cliche of those who deal with special children, he's not disabled but differently abled. Our society tends to rank everyone along a single scale, things like IQ, but ultimately how much money one makes as income. (The use of IQ is justified by pointing to how well it allegedly predicts income.) But that kind of thing would doom people like my son, since he sure doesn't look like an economic winner. If we're lucky and learn how to work around his disabilities and encourage his abilities, he might turn out like Einstein (in Star Wars terminology, going with the force) or Bill Gates (the dark side of the force). The former wasn't very good at generating income for himself and would thus be judged a failure by our society. -- Jim Devine * Einstein used to use royalty checks as bookmarks. He was not poor by any means. Ian
Re: Re: Re: Re: RE: Re: RE: Re: RE: Exporting rubbish
I wish you would just make your points in concise form rather than questions whose bearing on what I wrote is unclear. But here goes: Question 1 So the condemnation of exploitation is that it is inefficient? Where in my text do I either say or imply that exploitation is inefficient? *** You never defined what constituted a condemnation of exploitation, so I was left to guess. Does a mere asymmetry of power, derived from a property right, justify the charge of exploitation? Is exploitation, as term characterizing a relationship, amoral, moral, or immoral? Or criticise exploitation for being inefficient? Indeed in both my examples my point is that the exchanges that exploit power inbalances are efficient. Free contract of labor with capital is also efficient though exploitative. What is the explanatory role of the concept exploitation as used in characterizing a relationship of two or more parties to a tansaction? Question 2. Is power an amoral concept? Power is not a concept at all but at least in part a relationship. A person who demands from another something at gunpoint has power over the other. And, what of all the other relationships involving asymmetries of power that don't? Question 3. If so what is the point in condemning exploitation?Well power is not an amoral concept but a relationship. Is there something conceptually odd about condemning relationsips where people take advantage of their power to exploit others? Of course the cure is not just moralising but changing relationships and in particular to the means of production if we are talking about the worker-capitalist exchanges. * What for if there are no moral objections between the parties to the exchange? You dont seem to have understood my post at all. A main theme is a critique of David's idea that you can focus on voluntary exchange wiithout considering inequality. This is the point of the two examples. In the next paragraph I bring in David's claim in an earlier post that conventional economics is a science that shows us how to efficiently satisfy our desires. What I wanted to show was: 1) Exchanges that are unequal are not strictly voluntary but take place under force of circumstances and with those who have superior power having the advantage. As the capitalists say, so what. 2) The desires that are efficiently satisifed in these exchanges are not what those with less power would have absent the power relationships. ** As long as the desire of the lesser power is also satisfied what's the moral problem? Now David and right wing apologists for the nobility of free exchange correctly point out that both parties in voluntary exchanges benefit. Indeed, many right commentators quite rightly point out that leftists who moralise about the practice of the Thai woman and say that it ought to be banned are in effect condemning her to starvation given the existing conditions. I am pointing to the unequal power relationships as a source of what we find to be morally unacceptable results. Changing those not moralising is the solution. Is that clear? CHeers, Ken Hanly While given the claim that the Thai woman would starve otherwise is sufficient to condemn the purchaser of her services for taking advantage , does there not exist a big difference between that and, say, the voluntary exchange that goes into the contractual relationship between a professor and a university or a borrower and lender etc.? What is the epistemic loci of exploitation in economic exchanges via money contracts? Ian
Re: Re: Re: RE: Re: RE: Re: RE: Exporting rubbish
I wish you would just make your points in concise form rather than questions whose bearing on what I wrote is unclear. But here goes: Question 1 So the condemnation of exploitation is that it is inefficient? Where in my text do I either say or imply that exploitation is inefficient? Or criticise exploitation for being inefficient? Indeed in both my examples my point is that the exchanges that exploit power inbalances are efficient. Free contract of labor with capital is also efficient though exploitative. Question 2. Is power an amoral concept? Power is not a concept at all but at least in part a relationship. A person who demands from another something at gunpoint has power over the other. Question 3. If so what is the point in condemning exploitation?Well power is not an amoral concept but a relationship. Is there something conceptually odd about condemning relationsips where people take advantage of their power to exploit others? Of course the cure is not just moralising but changing relationships and in particular to the means of production if we are talking about the worker-capitalist exchanges. You dont seem to have understood my post at all. A main theme is a critique of David's idea that you can focus on voluntary exchange wiithout considering inequality. This is the point of the two examples. In the next paragraph I bring in David's claim in an earlier post that conventional economics is a science that shows us how to efficiently satisfy our desires. What I wanted to show was: 1) Exchanges that are unequal are not strictly voluntary but take place under force of circumstances and with those who have superior power having the advantage. 2) The desires that are efficiently satisifed in these exchanges are not what those with less power would have absent the power relationships. Now David and right wing apologists for the nobility of free exchange correctly point out that both parties in voluntary exchanges benefit. Indeed, many right commentators quite rightly point out that leftists who moralise about the practice of the Thai woman and say that it ought to be banned are in effect condemning her to starvation given the existing conditions. I am pointing to the unequal power relationships as a source of what we find to be morally unacceptable results. Changing those not moralising is the solution. Is that clear? CHeers, Ken Hanly - Original Message - From: Ian Murray [EMAIL PROTECTED] How can you just focus on voluntary exchange and set aside inequality? In fact if power relationships are too unequal the voluntary should even be in scare quotes. Consider the following: 1) A person voluntarily pays a ransom and in exchange is set free by kidnappers. (The person could have refused) 2) A poor rural Thai woman voluntarily contracts with a brothel in Bangkok in exchange for marginally more than the cost of her meagre room and board. (She could have stayed home with her family who may not be able to feed her) If I understand David's position in each case conventional economics would claim that following the science of conventional economics would efficiently satisfy each person desires. The person kidnapped desires to be free and paying the ransom may be the most efficient way of satisfying this desire. The Thai woman wants to eat, and have a roof over her head, the exchange provides that and is the most efficient choice given the plausible alternative starving at home. Is that not so? However, the desires involved are not the desires that the person would wish satisfied absent the power relationships. The person kidnapped desires to be free without paying the ransom but there is no practical alternative. The Thai woman would rather stay with her family in her community but there is nothing but possible starvation there. One of Marx's main points is that voluntary contracts between worker and capitalists are not voluntary but forced since the worker does not have access to the means of production and the capitalists appropriates the products and owns the means of production. Of course as David claims there are other ethical resources for criticising the types of situations he cites. But for Marx ethics is part of the superstructure. As long as the basic inequality of power resulting from the capitalist ownership of the means of production while most do not have access to production except through sale of their labor power voluntary exchanges will in fact continue to be exploitative and no amount of moral influence can change that substantially. Why? Because any ethical restraint that conflicts significantly with returns on capital will act as a barrier to efficiency. Of course the typical right wing response to the second example represents an ethics that does not even find an ethical restraint justified since the Thai woman is better off contracting with the
Re: rewards
Yes, there is, and it's pretty robust. So the more pleasant we can make it for people to do things, the less we will need extrinsic rewards to induce them to do it. I'm all for pushing things as far as they will go that way. I just suspect there are pretty strong limits on it. Moreover, there are the Hayekian arguments about information, which are entirely seperate from questions about incentives to work, and address instead incentives to gather information. Those, as you know, are the main reasons that I think that markets are necessary. --jks [was: Re: [PEN-L:10808] Re: Re: Exporting rubbish] Justin writes: I don't think that it's realistic to expect people to generally act productively without the promise of material reward... isn't there a whole literature (led by someone named Frei?) about how materially rewarding people for doing things tends to discourage people from doing them simply because it's inherently pleasant? -- Jim Devine - This message was sent using Panda Mail. Check your regular email account away from home free! http://www.pandamail.net _ Get your FREE download of MSN Explorer at http://explorer.msn.com
Re: Edward Bellamy
In reply to Jim Devine: BTW, you might enjoy reading utopians: for the top-down socialist vision, look at Bellamy's LOOKING FORWARD; for the socialism-from-below ideal, see William Morris' NEWS FROM NOWHERE. Morris' story is not based on the kinds of motives that you suggest. It's not love but creativity and community that drive his utopia. Edward Bellamy? Do you mean when the revolution comes, everything is going to be rationalized and we are all going to be members of a great industrial army? I can hardly wait. David Shemano
Re: question on trade _theory_
My thanks to all who replied on and off list to my question about trade theory. Bill Burgess
Re: Re: Edward Bellamy
In a message dated 4/26/01 12:19:24 AM Eastern Daylight Time, [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: Edward Bellamy? Do you mean when the revolution comes, everything is going to be rationalized and we are all going to be members of a great industrial army? I can hardly wait. David Shemano wasnt weber the one always talking about the wonders of rationalization? keith
Re: The practicability of the Tobin tax
At 25/04/01 19:00 -0700, Colin wrote: Hello Chris, 1. Re clearing systems, I simply noted that the logic of exploiting an existing clearing infrastructure is that you may harm it. Efficient clearing is a good thing. Thanks for coming back on this highly complex question, which it is hard to study on one's own. Your comments are stimulating. Of course you and I would agree that exploiting here, is not in the Marxian sense of extracting surplus value, but simply making use of. The clearing system is a clearing system of what is presumably surplus value, in various derived forms. Efficient clearing is a good thing. It depends from what point of view. If it contributes to lowering the cost of commodities by lowering the cost of trade, and making commodities more widely available, that may be good for working people. But the growing global anti-capitalist movement is pointing out how violently the workings of the international system are destroying the local human and ecological environment in the developing world. Some of their platform is reactionary, but they have a political point in a world economic system that serves capital, not human beings. Compared to this, a reform which attempts to use the international clearing system for foreign exchange with an excessively modest tax of 1%, I do not think mainly has to be criticised for impairing the efficiency of the present largely laissez faire global capitalist system. 2. I have no problem with the notion of working out the political economy of finance. I just came out of a class where we discussed Ch. 31 of vol. 1 of _Capital_, which touches entertainingly on this question. And more than entertaining. Force is the midwife of every old society pregnant with a new one. It is itself an economic power. In London at the moment that old radical Ken Livingstone is warning people not to get associated with anti-capitalist protests on 1st May because he fears they will turn violent. War on Want, as one of the politically involved charities, obviously also would not advocate violence. But its website suggests one way that the global face of capitalism could appear more acceptable: the use of a Tobin tax to fund, say, a system for transferring the apparently blind workings of the global capitalist clearing system into products that stop people dying of AIDS in Africa and swell the profits of the western drug houses. No one on an internet list like this would advocate violence, but some degree of non-violent protests requiring the use of the forces of law and order does put pressure on the servants of Capital to consider what is the cheaper way of ensuring a tolerable level of social peace. Reforms are of course part of the agenda. This chapter 31 also has interesting comments about how userer's and merchant's capital emerged from the middles ages when the great discoveries of the end of the 15th century created the new world market. It also refers to the role of the state in accelerating the emergence of capitalism. And how With the national debt arose an international credit system, which often conceals one of the sources of primitive accumulation in this or that people. By analogy I do not think any one of an analytical marxist point of view (small 'A') would object to some state-sanctioned means of global taxation. It is interesting however if people who present themselves as Marxists appear to criticise an example of global taxation, if they provide no alternative.I would suggest that the article by Veem gives enough reason to see that a Tobin tax could indeed be imposed if there is the political will. I would therefore feel more comfortable if while debating its practicability, we compared it to other global taxes that those sympathetic to marxism, would prefer *more* - perhaps a tax on energy? We would also probably wish to see universal money made explicit but not in the form of the US dollar and not when the global decisions about the economy are shaped above all by the interests of Capital and not the interests of working people. But I don't see how taxing something makes its social dimension explicit. Essentially I am thinking of Marx's argument about the fetishism that lies at the root of capitalism. The way social relations are experienced through commodities and - even more abstractly - through money. I suggest that nearly two trillion dollars sloshing around the foreign exchange terminals daily, has that fetishistic power. This is magnified by the fact that in conformity with chaotic processes that can occur in feedback systems, the patterns can take on a life of their own. Hundreds and thousands of workers in Japan, Europe, or the USA may lose their jobs according to whether the feedback systems get stuck in a pattern in which the yen or the dollar is 10% overvalued or undervalued, in relation to universal money. I think it is obvious that instead of being mesmerised by a sense
