RE: Re: Exporting rubbish
In reply to Michael Perelman: 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. - I disagree that the acknowledgment of fundamental issues means that debate is almost impossible. That is only true if you (or I) are unwilling to acknowledge, examine and critique our own fundamental prejudices. Of course, that is probably true of most people, including academics. Second, of course you are utopian and I am practical -- why dispute it? You, and other utopians, want to remake man. You assume perfection is possible. For goodness sake, if memory serves, you didn't even vote for Nader, let alone Gore! :). I, on the other hand, am in agreement with Irving Kristol -- two cheers for capitalism, and two cheers is enough for me. Finally, you state that you would like to live in world in which I do not have to expect some direct compensation. What is stopping you from living in that world now? It sounds that you are living the life you would like to lead. That is why I love American society -- both Michael Perelman and rapacious investment bankers can find their place and lead their lives primarily as they see fit. David Shemano
Re: Re: Re: Edward Bellamy
You being ironic? ;-) M.P. unfortunately, i wasnt. im feeling like that joke about some village missing its idiot would be appropriate right now (itd be really amusing if someone made it), but the only contact ive had with weber is in a book by richard posner. and the way he described rationalization made it seem like an ultimately good thing. and my professor confirmed that view. to think i was just gonna do a quick search on the web to double-check...
Re: Re: A Marxist critique of the Tobin Tax
The danger in this argument is in historical projection. Although the author correctly draws on the shortcomings of the Tobin tax, he treats the manifesto as gospel, so if capitalism is supposed to encroach on less advanced modes of production, ergo, progress. In other words the author adheres to p.p. rey's dictum, capitalism develops the world at the same pace or to J. Robinson what is worst than being exploited by capitalism is not to be exploited by capitalism. openness of developing countries further accentuates lopsided development and the general rule is that inherited social relations from despotic modes are made to work for capitalism. So, no one in the developing world experiences the progress of early capitalism. Baran says something like tardy and skimpy the benefits of capitalism were to the developed world they were devastating to the underdeveloped world. Historical projection is methodologically wrong for obvious reasons. Certain measures of protection that safeguard a social agenda in the developing world are necessary in so far as that is compatible with an internationally worked out agenda for progress, ie, not purely nationalistic. Progress is an all encompassing social problem and not an economic problem per se. --- Chris Burford [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Although this only claims to be 'a' Marxist critique of the Tobin Tax, I would argue that marxism is a method - of dialectical analysis of material forces, which serves the best interests of the working class - rather than a badge of political purity, which of course I see as the thrust of the argument here. While the details of Tobin's own class position are interesting, what is central is whether this is a reform, whose implementation would on balance be favourable or unfavourable for the interests of the working people of the world, bearing in mind that otherwise the USA remains world hegemon economically as well as politically. A campaign anyway has to be a broad movement. Other progressive material on the Tobin Tax is on the War on Want website: http://www.tobintax.org.uk/ Chris Burford London __ Do You Yahoo!? Yahoo! Auctions - buy the things you want at great prices http://auctions.yahoo.com/
Being practical
David Shemano wrote: Second, of course you are utopian and I am practical -- why dispute it? You, and other utopians, want to remake man. You assume perfection is possible. For goodness sake, if memory serves, you didn't even vote for Nader, let alone Gore! :). I, on the other hand, am in agreement with Irving Kristol -- two cheers for capitalism, and two cheers is enough for me. Finally, you state that you would like to live in world in which I do not have to expect some direct compensation. What is stopping you from living in that world now? It sounds that you are living the life you would like to lead. That is why I love American society -- both Michael Perelman and rapacious investment bankers can find their place and lead their lives primarily as they see fit. = Firstly, all societies are constructed. You imply (none too subtly) that man is naturally capitalist, and that all else is somehow an artificial imposition or aberration. Most people around here would like to remake the _society_ that has been made, primarily because the humans that made it are singularly unrepresentative of the masses they purport to represent. Secondly, by saying that two cheers is enough you indicate at least as much utopianism as anyone else, given that your utopia is the status quo. Perhaps it would be less so if, instead of being a lawyer (and thus privileged in a system which places the law above most else) you were a teacher in a public school in any major city of the US. I suppose, though, that, having made your choice and found your place, that is just too bad. However... Thirdly, finding one's place is not an option for most people, including, I suspect, even Michael Perelman. Leading their lives primarily as they see fit is something that many in the US, never mind the rest of the world, have not been able to do on account of institutionalised racism, sexism, and fundamental economic exploitation that enables the rapacious investment bankers to find their place. If there is anyone here who is the dizzy utopian, it's most emphatically you. Michael K.
Parochialism and spam
Rob Schaap wrote: 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. = Cease thy muteness at once, comrade. Be resolute and unflinching. Do not kowtow to the imperialist running dogs. I was, am, and will be interested in what you have to say about Oz. The Gough Whitlam stuff you sent a while back is important, as is any material or thoughts on the present resurgence of One Nation, the apparent emergence of the Greens, and whatever remains of progressive politics within Labor. What's going on in East Timor? Is the Keating attempt to forge closer SE Asian ties (as opposed to Robert Conquest-type it'll be all white on the night international relations) still a goer? Any views on the recent Vietnamese CP Congress? What about the maverick new leader of the Liberal Democrats in Japan? What about it, Rob? Michael K.
Linguistic turn
Jim Devine wrote: 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. = Here in Finland they're re-running LA Law. One of the main characters is Benny Stulwicz, an office clerk with learning difficulties who is repeatedly described as retarded. Is this common usage? Michael K.
Hong Kong-New Zealand FTA negotiations - analysis
PEN-Lers may be interested in the following. Comments on the study mentioned would be welcome. Bill Rosenberg In April, New Zealand and Hong Kong announced the beginning of formal negotiations for a free trade and investment agreement after exploratory talks for some months. It is expected to use the Singapore-New Zealand Closer Economic Partnership agreement signed last year as a model. New Zealand and Hong Kong also have a bilateral investment agreement, signed in 1995, which contains contentious expropriation and investor-state disputes procedure provisions similar to those in NAFTA. ARENA (Action Research Education Network of Aotearoa) has published a study by Bill Rosenberg entitled Globalisation by Stealth - The proposed New Zealand-Hong Kong Free Trade Agreement and investment An outline follows. The paper and a summary are available on the web site http://canterbury.cyberplace.org.nz/community/CAFCA Alternatively, the paper is available from ARENA in book form for NZ$10: contact ARENA Action Research Education Network of Aotearoa P O Box 2450 Christchurch New Zealand/Aotearoa Phone: (643) 381 2951 Fax (643) 366 8035 Email: [EMAIL PROTECTED] With a preface by Jane Kelsey, the study looks at the investment relationships between Hong Kong and New Zealand. It uncovers multi-billion financial transfers to New Zealand for tax minimisation purposes. The intermediary relationship Hong Kong plays with China is analysed; again avoidance of taxes and tariffs are primary drivers. It finds that - Though the government has failed to release any details of what is proposed to the public, this paper finds that if such an agreement is based on the recently ratified Singapore-New Zealand Closer Economic Partnership (SNZCEP), an existing Investment Promotion and Protection Agreement (IPPA), and the WTO, it presents the following dangers to New Zealand, among others: · Destruction of the remaining textiles, clothing and footwear industry · Litigation by investors in closed international tribunals against the effects and existence of laws and regulations that protect our environment and economic development, resulting in multi-million dollar compensation payments and possible reversal of local and central government policies. · Further pressure to commercialise our social services such as education, health, public broadcasting, waste disposal and water. · Further constraints on the use of central and local government procurement to encourage economic development. · Growing constraints on local government in all these areas. · Encouragement of large short term international capital movements, and further loss of the control of capital movements and foreign investment which are essential to develop New Zealand's economy and protect ownership of land and fishing quota. -- ends -- --- The content of this message is provided in my private capacity and does not purport to represent the University of Canterbury.
Re: Re: Exporting rubbish
... Second, of course you are utopian and I am practical -- why dispute it? You, and other utopians, want to remake man. You assume perfection is possible. ... Part of a real dialog with others is accurately reflecting their beliefs: these statements above are false. We want to remake social relations. Human nature is the product of millions of years of evolution; behavior is a product of both innate capacities and the environment broadly construed. It is the latter we seek to change. Instead of wage slavery, we believe a different way of organizing society is possible. Perfection of man is neither possible nor is its pursuit desirable. Finally, most of us are eminently practical. We believe, for example, that externalities should be considered when evaluating how efficient something is. Most practical economists studiously ignore the topic. We also believe that efficiency is merely one of many elements that one should use to evaluate whether particular social relations are desirable, though efficiency in itself is a good thing when it is properly measured. Bill
Re: Coal
Coal played its own unique role and should not be analyzed together with other New World crops. Like sugar, cotton, and tabacco, coal provided Britain with substantial ecological relief, in the sense that, by having American lands grow these crops, and by using cheap supplies of coal, England freed up its own land and overcame the energy crisis it was facing due to the increasing scarcity of timber. But there are three fundamental differences, which P recognizes: 1) coal was an internal resource which England was lucky to have, 2) coal was the one resource which allowed Britain to escape the Malthusian constraints that afflict all organically based economies, and 3) the expansion of coal output required steam engines, as machines that could used coal as a new inorganic source of energy, and as power machines that could pump water out of the mines and allow the expansion of coal mining itself. And, as reviewers have noted, number 3 raises the problem as to whether Britain was ahead of China in this crucial technology. P obviously recognizes this and writes that it seems sensible, after all, to look at the mining and uses of coal as the most likely European advantage that was purely homegrown, crucial to its nineteenth-century breakthrough, and (unlike cotton) not dependent for its full flowering on European access to overseas resources (p61). He admits, reluctantly, that England was the beneficiary of a scientific culture which made possible the steam engines. But, as an excellent advocate for China, Pomeranz is not about to elaborate on this Newtonian culture, but instead goes on to underplay, even trivialize its significance, by arguing 1) that China remained technologically ahead in other areas, particularly in agricultural technologies which, after all, were associated with the largest sector of eighteenth-century economies; 2) that China *could* have developed a developed a steam engine similar to Watt's, as the Chinese long understood the basic scientific principle involved - the existence of atmospheric pressure - and had long since mastered (as part of their 'box bellows') a double-acting piston/cylinder system much like Watt's, as well as a system for transforming rotary motion to linear motion that was as good as any known anywhere before the twentieth century. All that remained was to use the piston to turn the wheel rather than vice versa (61-62). But, 3) because China did not enjoy England's geographic advantage in the location of its coal, it did not seem economical for China to develop further, or apply this technology to mining. Moreover, 4) Britain was also fortunate to have the mining problem it did - a need to pump out water, rather than prevent explosions [as was the case in China] - since it led to [water pump] engines with many other crucial applications (p67). Finally, 5) it was not really Newtonian knowledge, or any advantage in tools or machines, that made the steam engine work; it was the transfer of precision boring and calibrating skills from nearby artisans experienced in making instruments like clocks, watches, telescopes, and eyeglasses. All in all, science and technology alone do not seem an adequate explanation. Without England's geographic good luck, and the fortunate advantage of having nearby artisans with skills appropriate to making steam engines, the steam engine could have seemed not worth promoting (68).
Re: brad de long textbook
A book rep came to my office today telling me how good brad de long's text book would be. Will it be polluted with AS/AD? Minor pollution with AS/AD only--I want to focus on the Phillips curve instead of AS/AD, especially because you have to basically lie to your students to get the AD curve sloping the right way (a price level decline doesn't raise aggregate demand by raising the real money stock, it reduces aggregate demand because it raises real interest rates and causes chains of bankruptcies). It's a heavily American-Keynesian book (for these times, at least). It's a heavily neoclassical book. I think it's a very good book: perhaps one intermediate macro book (Mankiw) is clearer (although I think I'm more interesting), and one intermediate macro book (Blanchard) is clearly superior as an intellectual effort (although Blanchard is really, really hard for undergraduates. A *draft* of the preface is below. Current ms. versions of chapters 1 through 3 can be (or soon will be) found at: http://www.j-bradford-delong.net/MHText/Chapter_1.PDF http://www.j-bradford-delong.net/MHText/Chapter_2.PDF http://www.j-bradford-delong.net/MHText/Chapter_3.PDF Why Write This Book? I wrote this book out of a sense that it was time for intermediate macroeconomics to have many of the barnacles scraped off of its hull. It is more than three-quarters of a century since John Maynard Keynes wrote his _Tract on Monetary Reform_, which first linked inflation, production, employment, exchange rates, and government policy together in the pattern that we now call macroeconomics. It is two-thirds of a century since John Hicks and Alvin Hansen drew their IS and LM curves. It is more than one-third of a century since Milton Friedman and Ned Phelps demolished the static Phillips curve, and Robert Lucas, Thomas Sargent, and Robert Barro taught us what rational expectations could mean. And all the while intermediate macroeconomics has been becoming more complicated, as new material is added while old material remains. Thus we now have excellent macroeconomics textbooks--my three favorite are Andrew Abel and Ben Bernanke, Olivier Blanchard, and Gregory Mankiw. But they seem, to me at least, to have too much material that is in there primarily because of the way that macroeconomics has developed, and not primarily to aid students in understanding the material. It seemed to me that all three of these--excellent--textbooks went slower in the water than they might because of insufficient streamlining. It seemed to me that if I could successfully streamline the presentation then I would have a more understandable and comprehensible book. I believe that I have succeeded. I believe that this book does move more smoothly through the water than its competitors, and will prove to be a better textbook for third-millennium macroeconomics courses. I think that this is the case because I have made five changes in the standard presentation of modern macroeconomics. Note that these five changes are not radical: they are shifts of emphasis and changes of focus. They do not require recasting of courses. But they are very important in bringing the organization of the book in line with what students learning macroeconomics need to know. The first two changes have to do with economic growth. They continue the line of development begun by Gregory Mankiw, who first began to recapture the study of long-run economic growth as a major topic in intermediate macroeconomics. But the presentations of long-run growth--both the facts of growth and the theory of growth--in modern macroeconomics textbooks need to be beefed up, and I have done so. I believe that the subject of economic growth is worth much more than one or even two short chapters. One of this book's longest chapters is on the theory of economic growth. A second one of its longest chapters covers the facts of economic growth. Students need to see and understand the broad cross-country and cross-time patterns: the industrial revolution, the spread of industrialization, the East Asian miracle, and the American century. Students have no business leaving macroeconomics courses without understanding the nature and causes of the wealth of nations. The treatment of growth in this textbook will keep them from doing so. More important than the thicker and deeper treatment of the facts of economic growth, perhaps, is a better treatment of the theory of economic growth. Too often undergraduates find the standard presentation of growth theory--with concepts like output per effective worker--to be confusing. The more understandable and robust presentation of growth theory in this book focuses on the economy's steady-state capital-output ratio, which is itself a very simple function of the proximate determinants of accumulation: savings rates, depreciation rates, population growth, and labor-augmenting technical change.
RE: Re: FW: Why Feds Spend More on Suburban Schools than Poor Ones?
-Original Message- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] 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 . . . no reflection on you. I suppose it should be taught for purposes of filling out intellectual history. What I found positively annoying was his posture of seeming to uncover questions that nobody else had ever thought of or tried to analyze. For a scholar I think that's a pretty severe indictment, totally aside from the merits of his arguments. I was not commenting on the latter directly. max
Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: RE: It's a Jungle In Here
At 08:30 PM 4/25/01 -0700, you wrote: Einstein used to use royalty checks as bookmarks. He was not poor by any means. I understand that he was able to avoid poverty because others helped him deal with complications of everyday life that most of can deal with but he couldn't. This is a symptom that he had a dose of autism, though he was never diagnosed. BTW, Bill Gates is clearer: there was a story in TIME awhile back that described his social skills: he'd go to his office fridge to get a soda for himself, not even thinking of offering one to his guest. Jim Devine [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://bellarmine.lmu.edu/~jdevine
Utility on display
In a foyer of University College London, in a glass fronted cabinet, sits the preserved body of Jeremy Bentham; philosopher, economist, expounder of Utilitarianism, Bentham is chiefly remembered for inventing the Panopticon; a glass walled prison designed for total surveillance. A video camera pointed at Jeremy Bentham's body, updating images onto the Internet every five minutes. http://www.bartlett.ucl.ac.uk/web/Nina/JBentham.html Tom Walker Bowen Island, BC 604 947 2213
Strike Cripples Greece Despite Government Climbdown
Strike Cripples Greece Despite Government Climbdown By Jeremy Gaunt ATHENS, April 26 (Reuters) - Greece was crippled Thursday by a strike that hit schools, hospitals, public transport and state institutions despite a government climbdown on unpopular pension reform. Tens of thousands of Greek workers stayed at home in protest at the planned changes in pensions, leaving Athens's normally choked streets nearly devoid of traffic. ``It looks like Easter,'' said one Athenian, referring to the country's biggest getaway holiday. Greece's main public and private labor groupings called the 24-hour general strike in protest at government plans to raise the retirement age, change the way pensions are calculated and do away with a number of special pension categories. A mass rally and march was scheduled in central Athens which was expected to attract thousands of state and private workers fearful of the government's plans. The GSEE umbrella union said it was expecting one of the largest rallies in years. Buses and trolley buses failed to run in the capital. Children stayed home from school. State doctors were on strike and radio and television stations broadcast no news as journalists joined the national walk out. Air travel was also severely hit. Air traffic controllers went on a two-hour stoppage in the morning and said there were no flights at Athens's new international airport. State carrier Olympic Airways OLY.UL announced it was cutting its flights back to only one per country and one per local destination. Bending To Stiff Opposition The government bowed to opponents of its reform package late Wednesday, saying it was putting its pension plans on hold and asking all concerned to come up with new suggestions. It was widely portrayed in Greek media as an embarrassing step down by the government, although Labor Minister Tasos Yannitsis insisted that the plans were only frozen, not dropped. The government's plans are intended to make pension funds viable and reduce deficits. They would merge more than 200 pension funds currently operating in the country, which has been reforming its economy in line with new euro zone membership. Greece's complex system allows for widely different retirement ages, although there is a statutory age of 65 for men and 60 for women. Some women in public service, for example, can retire after only 15 years. The proposed rules would set a retirement age of 65 for most people. Opposition has been sharp, some of it coming from within the ruling socialist party. Only hours before the strike and following a socialist party meeting, Yannitsis said the government was freezing its proposals. He called on opponents to come up with alternative plans for discussion. Unions have previously rejected the reform proposals wholesale and said they would not discuss them. __ Do You Yahoo!? Yahoo! Auctions - buy the things you want at great prices http://auctions.yahoo.com/
RE: It's a Jungle In Here
This explains Microsoft documentation and 'help' files. I do hope though that Bill has the foresight to make provision in his will to follow in the footsteps of Jeremy Bentham. Alt-Ctrl-Del . . . Jim Devine wrote, BTW, Bill Gates is clearer: there was a story in TIME awhile back that described his social skills: he'd go to his office fridge to get a soda for himself, not even thinking of offering one to his guest. Tom Walker Bowen Island, BC 604 947 2213
Re: Re: Edward Bellamy
I wrote: 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. David Shemano 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. It should have been clear from my post -- or from all of my posts -- that I don't like Bellamy's ideals very much (though he's extremely creative). I see his vision as sort of mirror-image of the libertarian vision of the Universal Market running everything via a god-like Invisible Hand -- and just as utopian (in the sense of being impossible).[*] His vision expresses the ideals expressed by ideologists in the old Soviet Union, a kind of top-down bureaucratic socialism that works well in a paternalistic way. Something like this was expressed awhile back by a pen-ler who opined that, with the improvement of computing, we could plan the whole economy with a spread-sheet or some similar program. BTW, Bellamy was no revolutionary (in that the change seems to have come via unanimous decision, based on the concentration and centralization of capital) or even a socialist (he called himself a nationalist). He clearly didn't favor democracy except in a superficial way. [*] the word utopia combines notions of what's morally good and what's impossible. Jim Devine [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://bellarmine.lmu.edu/~jdevine
Re: Parochialism and spam
Rob Schaap wrote: 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. Michael Keaney writes: Cease thy muteness at once, comrade. Be resolute and unflinching. Do not kowtow to the imperialist running dogs. I totally agree. I love your stuff about Oz (even if I have a hard time reading it sometimes; I flunked Australian as a second language). Just because people don't reply very much doesn't mean you should shut up. I, for one, don't reply because I'm totally ignorant of the subject matter. I seem to get away with talking about a lot of stuff I don't know anything about, but that's because I dealing with students most of the time. ;-) Jim Devine [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://bellarmine.lmu.edu/~jdevine
Re: Sweatshops and featherbeds
Too bad. A fair trade group could have really used that $1000. Peter 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. 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
Nozick
Is it true that Nozick repudiated Anarchy, State and Utopia? Any references? Peter
Re: Coal
According to Pomeranz, then, the geography of England's coal deposits was a crucial factor in making of the first industrial revolution. DeLong may be too collegial when he says I am not sure that Pomeranz is arguing that the relaxation of resource constraints in western Europe was the key. For as he writes 'that does not, of course, mean that having this extra breathing room explains technological creativity - but the two factors worked hand in hand, each increasing the rewards of the other...'. Coal and new world resources are the key. This is where Pomeranz invests his energy, his talents and research efforts. Technological inventivenness is just a rhetorical concession which only becomes necessary in the accidental sense that skills cultivated for one purpose - instrument making - were found useful later on to serve an entirely different end: making water pumps. P's central argument is precisely that, whatever economic/technological/cultural differences may have existed between Europe and China, they were only in degree - each area enjoying their own specific advantages. If Europe had a slight advantage in a technological/scientific area that was useful to the creation of effective engines, that advantage mattered only in the context of easy access to internal coal supplies and overseas resources. The internal economic differences were too minimal, too even-handed to explain the great divergence The book abounds in statements like this: Without these 'external' factors, Europe's inventions alone might have been not much more revolutionary in their impact on economy and society than the marginal technological improvements that continued to occur in 18th China, India, and elsewhere (p32). DeLong otherwise knows this and, like P.H.Vries, criticizes P for ignoring the culture of scientific invention and entrepreneurialism that was so much a part of eighteenth century Britain, and poses the question whether cheaper coal - some of which was located not too far - would have led to an industrial revolution in China. (I can't tell if P is really serious about China's steam engine or if he is just musing.)
Re: Linguistic turn
At 02:30 PM 4/26/01 +0300, you wrote: Here in Finland they're re-running LA Law. One of the main characters is Benny Stulwicz, an office clerk with learning difficulties who is repeatedly described as retarded. Is this common usage? there has been a reaction against retarded, replacing it with developmentally disabled (or delayed) and the like. However, that's not very descriptive. My son, for example, is socially and emotionally developmentally disabled, but not intellectually so. Others use terms like differently abled and handicapable but those don't describe much either. I don't know what the official term is, but a lot of people use the term retarded to refer to intellectual/cognitive deficits. The main thrust these days seems to be (1) to emphasize that every kid or adult not only has disabilities but abilities, something to contribution; and (2) to acknowledge that each of us is weird in his or her own way (pen-l excepted of course). Jim Devine [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://bellarmine.lmu.edu/~jdevine
Re: Re: Re: Exporting rubbish
At 07:08 AM 4/26/01 -0500, you wrote: Perfection of man is neither possible nor is its pursuit desirable. Of course, what's meant by perfection depends on one's point of view. In the social Darwinist perspective, perfection seems to mean that each of us is an aggressive competitor, fighting our ways to the top on the backs of others. To my mind, the Marxian tradition doesn't want to change human nature as much as it wants to improve social conditions in a way that allows people to achieve the potential they _already have_ has human beings that is denied by current social institutions (including markets). And as Marx noted in various places, this kind of change in social institutions and conditions is most likely to come if it achieved collectively by the people most oppressed and exploited by the current system. Jim Devine [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://bellarmine.lmu.edu/~jdevine
Re: Re: brad de long textbook
when is this textbook coming out? BTW, Brad there's a typo below. The capital-output ratio is NOT a function of the savings rate but instead of the investment rate. Not only should the term savings (a stock) be replaced be replaced by saving (a flow), but an increased saving rate implies a recession _ceteris paribus_, not an increase in the capital-output ratio. Recessions hurt output but not the current stock of fixed capital, so an increase in the saving More important than the thicker and deeper treatment of the facts of economic growth, perhaps, is a better treatment of the theory of economic growth. Too often undergraduates find the standard presentation of growth theory--with concepts like output per effective worker--to be confusing. The more understandable and robust presentation of growth theory in this book focuses on the economy's steady-state capital-output ratio, which is itself a very simple function of the proximate determinants of accumulation: savings rates, depreciation rates, population growth, and labor-augmenting technical change. To make the links between the fundamental determinants of growth and the workings of the economy simpler and more transparent is more than half the battle. And I believe that the presentation of growth theory in this textbook will help us win intellectual victories with our students. I also look forward to reading your discussion of the Cambridge capital controversy. I hope that you've rejected the fallacious concept of an aggregate production function and have differentiated between the reward for owning capital goods (the profit rate) and the cost of reproducing physical capital goods. the following is good: The space saved by downplaying the LM curve can be used for a serious discussion of the term structure of interest rates. The Federal Reserve controls short-term, nominal, safe interest rates. The principal determinants of aggregate demand are long-term, real, risky interest rates. The slippage between these two is a limitation on the government's ability to stabilize the economy. Treating this topic seriously allows us to begin to teach the importance of expectations and the limits of policy relatively early in the book, rather than having to leave these topics for the policy chapters at the book's end. On the below, I hope that the institutional aspects, such as the wage/price spiral, are included in the inflation story, so that students learn that persistence of inflation isn't simply a subjective matter (as with the standard over-emphasis on expectations). This book has other excellent features not related to the primary task of streamlining. I am proud of Chapter 3, _Thinking Like an Economist_, which brings out into the light of day and examines many things about how economists argue and reason that are usually left unexamined. I am proud of Chapter 12, _The Phillips Curve and Expectations_, for its explanations that rational, adaptive, and static expectations are not incompatible alternatives among which one must choose but instead reflect different strategies by economic actors of dealing with the problems of inflation--strategies each of which can be useful in the right economic environment. This book has space for more thorough discussions of the term structure of interest rates and of the workings of international financial markets made possible because of the streamlining exercises undertaken. Jim Devine [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://bellarmine.lmu.edu/~jdevine
Re: rewards
Make that Bruno Frey and his colleagues at Zurich... Peter [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: 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: Czech issues.
At 07:45 AM 26-04-01, Rob Schaap wrote: 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 ... Actually I think we hushed up Churchill's role in suppressing the Left in Mediterranean countries. I have never heard of a buffer being mentioned in connexion with protecting us Poms from an imagined invasion by the SU. Michael Yaffey www.bigwig.net/new.hopes
Re: Re: Fed transparency
At 10:25 PM 25-04-01, Edwin (Tom) 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? Depends what primary covers. In the UK case the bank's remit is confined to the price target, regardless of the other considerations. That being so, a simple model will serve: if inflation is creeping up, raise the rate, and vice versa. To bring in the real economy needs a more complex and problematical model. There are contradictions. In the UK case the bank has a committee and there would be disagreements on the model. In the US case Mr Greenspan can make a Delphic pronouncement. I do not believe there exists an econometric model which copes with both real and monetary effects for the time horizon in which a legislature or parliament determines objectives. If there is, I would like it to be published. A side issue here is that the wording above pays no attention to foreign countries. It has always been the case that US interest rates are raised or lowered without thought for whether other countries (which are affected thereby) would like them to be lowered or raised. I think recently there may have been an exception for Japan: lowering rates, in a country where they are already near zero, can have a damaging effect, and this will react back on the US which owns a large chunk of Japanese capital. Even in this case, I don't know that foreign interests were considered. Michael Yaffey www.bigwig.net/new.hopes
Re: Re: Linguistic turn
Jim Devine wrote: to acknowledge that each of us is weird in his or her own way (pen-l excepted of course). Because we're all weird in identical ways? Because we're just generally weird all around? Doug
RE: Re: brad de long textbook
I can't wait for the video game version, with the cheetah, rabbit, and snail racing across the screen. mbs A book rep came to my office today telling me how good brad de long's text book would be. Will it be polluted with AS/AD?
Re: Re: Re: Linguistic turn
At 12:08 PM 4/26/01 -0400, you wrote: Jim Devine wrote: to acknowledge that each of us is weird in his or her own way (pen-l excepted of course). Because we're all weird in identical ways? Because we're just generally weird all around? because pen-lers are the sanest bunch of people I've encountered, each being very level and centered. ;-) (in other words, my parenthetical remark was a joke. In any event, weirdness is not a bad thing.) Jim Devine [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://bellarmine.lmu.edu/~jdevine
Re: Re: Re: Re: RE: It's a Jungle In Here
[EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: 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. When looking at employment and disability one also has to factor in the discrimination that disabled people face attempting to get into the workforce. I don't just mean prejudice, but economic discrimination on the part of employers who whether real or percieved calculate that a disabled employee is going to take away from their bottom line. Much of my writing deals with economic discrimination and the social organization of work. Disabled people have been shoved out of the production process in order for the small capitalist class to create the conditions necessary to accummulate vast wealth. That way employers don't have to provide interpreters, wheelchair access, readers, personal assistants on the job, maximum health care coverage, etc when they can segregate disabled people from regular work. So we have sheltered workshops and nonprofits who do employ disabled persons often at subminimum wages. Many of these workers know that they are paid less not because they are less productive but because of the nature of segregated employment. It is far too involved to get into all these issues in detail here but I'm sure that some of you will get my drift. Marta
Re: Nozick
From Google: Yes, but not entirely, in "Nozick's book "The Examined Life", in a chapter called "The Zig-Zag of Politics."" http://www.free-market.net/forums/main9909b/messages/963561003.html --Original Message Text--- From: Peter Dorman Date: Thu, 26 Apr 2001 08:51:04 -0700 Is it true that Nozick repudiated Anarchy, State and Utopia?Any references? Peter
Re: RE: Re: Exporting rubbish
--- David Shemano [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: That is why I love American society -- both Michael Perelman and rapacious investment bankers can find their place and lead their lives primarily as they see fit. David Shemano This is probably the most absurd claim I have heard on this list. I don't want to speak for Michael (although I doubt that he would claim that he leads his life as he sees fit) but for most of those hundreds of Americans with whom I have worked together over the past five years the statement that they lead their lives as they see fit is simply false. And I am talking about white collar and no-collar workers who belong to various strata of the middle class who presumably are doing better than the majority. As nearly all of my coworkers would say, they do what they for one simple reason: The pay check! Why do you think one important ingredient of the American dream in these days is to make a lot of money and retire as quickly as possible? Alienation at its peak! Sabri __ Do You Yahoo!? Yahoo! Auctions - buy the things you want at great prices http://auctions.yahoo.com/
the science wars revisited...
[subject changed] Michael Pugliese wrote: 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. 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. the man doth protest too much and a confession to facetiousness (or the justification of proclamations as facetiously motivated) should really make void prior and future arguments. how am i to tell which parts of his arguments and proclamations are facetious or will be retracted as facetious at a later date? 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. while being unable to personally analyze and describe these causes levitt seems quite capable of making arguments that assume their validity. is it possible that what he bemoans is not the rise of a harmful trait that he cannot analyze or describe, but the growing call for analysis and control of science as it is practiced? for decades scientists have held court in academia and ad hominem attacks (as most of this passage from levitt turns out to be) on newer fields by scientists could be nothing more than evidence of a power struggle. 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? all true i am sure, but equally of the sciences wing of academia. it would be tiring to repeat the evidence of lack of precise thinking or intellectual honesty in the sciences (i recommend the sci-fraud archives as a starting point for the latter and the elementary errors of logic of scientists from descartes to newton and the very debates in biology that i mentioned earlier in this thread) - the command of evidence in sciences has often been quite interesting as well, particularly in its manufacture and interpretation (see for instance eddington's solar eclipse proof of the theory of relativity). 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. the very same sokal who spent great effort establishing his left crdentials (solidarity with south american activists, for example) and empathy for the wretched, including glowing reviews of his book by the darlings of the left, chomsky and ehrenreich? an argument can also be made that sokal and bricmont's book (fashionable nonsense) relies mostly on glibness to sustain its thesis. btw, the gag paper is nothing new to sokal. if you do not know of it already search for richard lewontin's submissions to scientific journals under the spurios name isidore nabi (i think some mention of this may also be found in his book the dialectic biologist). [rest of ad hominem attack snipped] [list of great references to books and articles snipped] one of the people that sokal attacks (and sokal/levitt seem more interested in attacking people than theories - strange for a scientist?) is paul k. feyerabend, the [late] philosopher of science. it might be worthwhile to add to the list of citations above his philosophical papers (three volumes) and his more accessible books against method and farewell to reason. the anti-external-analysis argument of scientists like sokal and levitt rests on an ill-established hard line of separation of science from other human endeavours, and pkf's work attempts to illustrate this issue. phillip kitcher and ian hacking have written well-reasoned critiques of the relativist and STS positions (for example hacking's recent book on social construction theories: the social construction of
Coal
I aready said a few things about England's Newtonian culture in the H-World list and will not cover it here. No question this is a weak link in Pomeranz's coal argument, as other reviewers have noted. I have read only three reviews, but I suspect that P.H. Vries's forthcoming Were coal and colonies really crucial? Kenneth Pomeranz and the great divergence (JWH, 12) also looks at the relationship between technological creativity and resources (or at least this is something he considered in his paper at the WH conference). I believe there are deeper, self-refuting problems in P, which can be revealed by pressing his own geographic/ecological line of thought even further, deeper into Eurasia's past. But now, briefly, I just want to add that England was not facing its timber famine blindly, unaware of its Malthusian implications. It was understood that wood was running out as reflected in its rising price, and the bottlenecks that existed in other industries relying on wood. Britons were looking for solutions. They did not stumble into coal at the last minute but were using substantial amounts during the 17th and 18th centuries, and they knew that steam engines could be used to convert mineral heat into kinetic energy, and were determined to make as efficient an engine as they could, and they did. The rational is real.
Re: RE: Re: brad de long textbook
I can't wait for the video game version, with the cheetah, rabbit, and snail racing across the screen. mbs You have a better way to teach people the relative lags involved in automatic stabilizers, monetary policy, and discretionary fiscal policy? :-) Brad DeLong
Re: Re: Re: Utility on display
In a message dated 4/26/01 10:46:00 AM Pacific Daylight Time, [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Why, you may ask, has the University seen fit to display Bentham all these years? The answer, like the answer to so many other questions, is that we live in bourgeois society and it is the desires and even the whims of the rich that get carried out. As I put it on my web page, Bentham's will gave a whole bundle of cash to University College, London, on the condition that he be stuffed and put on permanent display there. Naturally, since money talks, he was taken up on this offer, and you can still go see old Jeremy if you wish. It makes you wonder if other philosophers should also be sent to the taxidermist, perhaps posthaste! is it also true that his will further stipulated that his body be present during all discussions of the philosophy group? --ravi Not quite that inconvenient, as far as I know! But another condition in his will is that Bentham's stuffed remains must be placed at the head of the table, with a full meal before him, each year at the annual university dinner. I wonder if his poor appetite these days affects those of the other diners --Scott Harrison
RE: Re: RE: Re: Exporting rubbish
Sabri Oncu writes: -- That is why I love American society -- both Michael Perelman and rapacious investment bankers can find their place and lead their lives primarily as they see fit. David Shemano This is probably the most absurd claim I have heard on this list. I don't want to speak for Michael (although I doubt that he would claim that he leads his life as he sees fit) but for most of those hundreds of Americans with whom I have worked together over the past five years the statement that they lead their lives as they see fit is simply false. And I am talking about white collar and no-collar workers who belong to various strata of the middle class who presumably are doing better than the majority. As nearly all of my coworkers would say, they do what they for one simple reason: The pay check! Why do you think one important ingredient of the American dream in these days is to make a lot of money and retire as quickly as possible? Alienation at its peak! -- This is so predictable, it's funny. Here is exactly what Michael said: 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. If we read Michael literally, which I did for fun, his sentence doesn't hold together as criticism. The first sentence says he would like to live in a world where I (Michael Perelman) don't have to expect direct compensation. The next two sentences say that, in fact, that is exactly how does live his life. Therefore, according to Michael's sentence, he is perfectly capable of living, as an ethical manner, as he chooses in the United States and, therefore, should view the United States as satisfying his requirements of the good society. Now, I know, or I should I say I assume, that that is not what Michael meant. To be argumentative, tendentious, and presumptuous, what Michael meant, and what you mean, and what all the other Lefties on the list mean, is that they want to live in a society where everybody shares their ethics -- there are no rapacious investment bankers out to squeeze every dime out of the deal. Their is simply no room in utopia for rapacious investment bankers. Finally, I never said, and very specifically did not say, that every person living in the United States leads lives as they see fit. As you point out, that would be an absurd claim. However, what makes the United States a good society in my eyes is that there is room for Michael Perelman and rapacious investment bankers to lead their lives generally as they see fit. Yes, there are people who are oppressed, incompetent, unlucky, stupid, suffer clinical depression, etc. and do not lead the lives they wish. But, in my view, that will be true of all societies, however constituted, which is why I believe you (generally speaking) are utopians and I am not. The question for me is empirical -- what type of social arrangements, in actual practice, permit the most people to lead lives as they see fit. David Shemano __ Do You Yahoo!? Yahoo! Auctions - buy the things you want at great prices http://auctions.yahoo.com/
Re: Nozick
Sort of, briefly and without elaboration, I mean a paragraph, in one of his later forgettable books--not Phil Explanations of The Nature of Rationality. I got rid of the book, it was very slight. --jks Is it true that Nozick repudiated Anarchy, State and Utopia? Any references? Peter _ Get your FREE download of MSN Explorer at http://explorer.msn.com
Re: Re: Utility on display
At 01:34 PM 4/26/01 -0400, you wrote: Most interesting! Not the part about Bentham being stuffed and on display; I make mention of that, along with a still picture, on my Philosophical Doggerel web site at: http://members.aol.com/Philosdog/Bentham.html It's the 5-minute updates that I find intriguing. Is the video camera there perhaps to catch Bentham in the act, should he suddenly decide to stand up and stretch?! I'm told that as part of Bentham's last will testament, he's wheeled out to attend LSE board meetings. (Can he break ties, like Dick Cheney?) Jim Devine [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://bellarmine.lmu.edu/~jdevine
Re: Re: Utility on display
[EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Why, you may ask, has the University seen fit to display Bentham all these years? The answer, like the answer to so many other questions, is that we live in bourgeois society and it is the desires and even the whims of the rich that get carried out. As I put it on my web page, Bentham's will gave a whole bundle of cash to University College, London, on the condition that he be stuffed and put on permanent display there. Naturally, since money talks, he was taken up on this offer, and you can still go see old Jeremy if you wish. It makes you wonder if other philosophers should also be sent to the taxidermist, perhaps posthaste! is it also true that his will further stipulated that his body be present during all discussions of the philosophy group? --ravi
Re: Exporting rubbish
Sabri Oncu wrote: [snip] various strata of the middle class [snip] As nearly all of my coworkers would say, they do what they for one simple reason: The pay check! If this is true, then identifying them as middle class is obscurantist. They are working class. The use of the term middle class is also one of the supports for calling parts of the working class underclass -- i.e., rubbish as in the subject line. Carrol
Re: Nozick
At the end of this postingon LBO January 2000 I note that Nozick's communitarianism is found in his Examined Life (1989). I don't remember him specifically rejecting or repudiating his earlier work but what he says positively seems inconsistent with the extreme individualism of his earlier libertarian work. Cheers, Ken Hanly Material is from Manitoba Co-operator Jan. 27: U.S. hog raisers want George Bush to stop dragging the word "pork" through the mud. In a candidates' debate in Iowa, the biggest pork producing state, Bush quipped that he would get rid of pork, quit feeding the hog. The pork producers are sick and tired of pork being associated with wasteful government spending. The National Pork Producers Council says: " We feel it is time to relegate pork's negative political connotation to the scrap heap of history once and for all. Call it waste, call it excess, call it unnecessary spending--just don't call it pork." Porks' rightful status the NPPC claims is as a wonderful, nutritious health food. Far from representing bloated spending, pork today is 31 per cent leaner than it was ten years ago. Cheers, Ken Hanly P.S. I assume it is still OK to bring home the bacon. Nozick's communitarianism is to be found in THE EXAMINED LIFE, Simon and Shuster, 1989 in one or two chapters. - Original Message - From: Peter Dorman To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Thursday, April 26, 2001 10:51 AM Subject: [PEN-L:10839] Nozick Is it true that Nozick repudiated Anarchy, State and Utopia? Any references? Peter
Re: Utility on display
In a message dated 4/26/01 7:19:52 AM Pacific Daylight Time, [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: In a foyer of University College London, in a glass fronted cabinet, sits the preserved body of Jeremy Bentham; philosopher, economist, expounder of Utilitarianism, Bentham is chiefly remembered for inventing the Panopticon; a glass walled prison designed for total surveillance. A video camera pointed at Jeremy Bentham's body, updating images onto the Internet every five minutes. http://www.bartlett.ucl.ac.uk/web/Nina/JBentham.html Tom Walker Bowen Island, BC 604 947 2213 Most interesting! Not the part about Bentham being stuffed and on display; I make mention of that, along with a still picture, on my Philosophical Doggerel web site at: http://members.aol.com/Philosdog/Bentham.html It's the 5-minute updates that I find intriguing. Is the video camera there perhaps to catch Bentham in the act, should he suddenly decide to stand up and stretch?! Why, you may ask, has the University seen fit to display Bentham all these years? The answer, like the answer to so many other questions, is that we live in bourgeois society and it is the desires and even the whims of the rich that get carried out. As I put it on my web page, Bentham's will gave a whole bundle of cash to University College, London, on the condition that he be stuffed and put on permanent display there. Naturally, since money talks, he was taken up on this offer, and you can still go see old Jeremy if you wish. It makes you wonder if other philosophers should also be sent to the taxidermist, perhaps posthaste! My bit of doggerel on Bentham, entitled The Great Moral Newton, goes as follows: The theory of utility Was one of philosophy's treasures, Which Bentham made servility To private self-interest and pleasures. This nonsense pleased his followers, Who hardly restrained their loud rootin': All later thinkers are borrowers; Our Bentham's the great moral Newton! But Marx saw in old Jeremy's Shopkeeper views, invalidity. And as for being a genius, He's A genius of bourgeois stupidity! Marx's comment, by the way, occurs in Capital, vol. 1, part VII, ch. XXIV, sect. 5. (This is a footnote on pp. 609-610 in the International Publisher's 1967 edition.) What I was trying to hint at in this poem is that the actual basis for all politics and morality is in fact collective human interests (modified, of course, into class interests in class society). The theory of utility originally meant something close to that, something like what is of use to the people, at least as the term was used by the early utilitarians. But Bentham ruined this profound insight by reinterpreting utility in two different ways: 1) in terms of INDIVIDUAL usefulness or self-interest, and 2) in terms of what provides pleasure. The first is obviously a bourgeois move. The second is a move towards looking at matters in terms of individual psychology rather than what objectively benefits or harms people. Most utilitarians since Bentham (and certainly John Stuart Mill) accepted these destructive reinterpretations without any murmur of dissent. Utilitarianism has never recovered from these blows. And neither has bourgeois political economy, because of course utility--in its Benthamized, individualistic form--became a basic element there too. --Scott Harrison
important news for parents of young kids
from SLATE: The NY [TIMES] business section reports that Hasbro reported a $25 million loss yesterday mostly because of its waning Pokemon revenue. The story doesn't mention a possible source of the diminution fronted by the LA [TIMES]: Pokemon has become a target for religious leaders throughout the Arab world who charge that the game promotes theories of evolution, encourages gambling and, at its core, is part of a Jewish conspiracy aimed at turning children away from Islam. The top religious authority in Saudi Arabia, the paper reports, has issued a ban against the toy. The story says that Japanese embassies throughout the Middle East have been asked if it's true that Pokemon is Japanese for I am a Jew. (Actually, it means pocket monster.) Jim Devine [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://bellarmine.lmu.edu/~jdevine
Re: RE: Re: RE: Re: Exporting rubbish
Finally, I never said, and very specifically did not say, that every person living in the United States leads lives as they see fit. As you point out, that would be an absurd claim. However, what makes the United States a good society in my eyes is that there is room for Michael Perelman and rapacious investment bankers to lead their lives generally as they see fit. Yes, there are people who are oppressed, incompetent, unlucky, stupid, suffer clinical depression, etc. and do not lead the lives they wish. But, in my view, that will be true of all societies, however constituted, which is why I believe you (generally speaking) are utopians and I am not. The question for me is empirical -- what type of social arrangements, in actual practice, permit the most people to lead lives as they see fit. David Shemano === Let's hear it for fatalism. Ian
Re: RE: Re: Exporting rubbish
David, debate is impossible once you reach fundamental questions about human nature. David Shemano wrote: I disagree that the acknowledgment of fundamental issues means that debate is almost impossible. Second, of course you are utopian and I am practical -- why dispute it? You, and other utopians, want to remake man. No. I don't want to remake man, just to stop the deformations reinforced by capitalism. You assume perfection is possible. Nope. But I want to keep working in that direction. I play basketball with people more than 40 years younger than me. I am old and slow and not very big, but I keep trying to improve. I don't expect to make the NBA or even reach mediocrity, but I still work toward perfection. For goodness sake, if memory serves, you didn't even vote for Nader, let alone Gore! :). Actually, I voted for Nader. I have reservations about his politics, but I respect him. -- Michael Perelman Economics Department California State University Chico, CA 95929 Tel. 530-898-5321 E-Mail [EMAIL PROTECTED]
RE: Re: RE: Re: brad de long textbook
For fiscal you should have shown a big truck labeled neoliberalism running the turtle over in the middle of the screen. mbs You have a better way to teach people the relative lags involved in automatic stabilizers, monetary policy, and discretionary fiscal policy? :-) Brad DeLong
Re: Exporting rubbish
At 02:28 AM 26-04-01, David Shemano wrote: In reply to Justin Schwartz and Michael Perelman: . . . 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). . . . 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. Like David I am interested in this but my experience is different. I find very few instances of person-to-person voluntary exchange in my own experience. Perhaps the nearest is car boot sales or garage sales, but even then, I see misery sometimes in the faces of the vendors. Particularly when selling stolen goods. On other occasions I find I have got an enormous bargain e.g. second-hand software, but I don't feel virtuous or ennobled to have got something for nothing. If I buy from these or even from a regular store, I am buying a bundle which is not fully disclosed and there is an element of deception which is icky, or worse still, I suspect there is but when I take the goods home I find my suspicion unfounded. Our law (in UK) is grounded on caveat emptor which requires me to be suspicious which is not ennobling. You see, I do not assume that human nature is perfect in any sense. Indeed, I think you do, David, if you liken human transactors to perfectly programmed maximising machines as some Righties do. When I sell, I am selling my labour to an employer, and this I am compelled to do, so it is involuntary exchange with incomplete disclosure and evident suspicion on both sides. This last type of exchange seems to be the most common of all. But most Lefties are Lefties because of their view of the relations between capital and labour during the productive process rather than their view of the marketing or distribution of the products by exchanges. Michael Yaffey Yorkshire, England www.bigwig.net/new.hopes
Re: Exporting rubbish
David, you are correct that I said that I can live the kind of life that this society [usually] prevents. I inhabit a small corner of the world -- academia -- which until recently retained much of its pre-capitalist, feudal traditions. Yes, the feudal traditions are not to be desired, but until recently, they offered some refuge from the market. I am in an a distinct minority and the universities are fast becoming an annex to the corporate world. David Shemano wrote: Here is exactly what Michael said: 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. If we read Michael literally, which I did for fun, his sentence doesn't hold together as criticism. The first sentence says he would like to live in a world where I (Michael Perelman) don't have to expect direct compensation. The next two sentences say that, in fact, that is exactly how does live his life. Therefore, according to Michael's sentence, he is perfectly capable of living, as an ethical manner, as he chooses in the United States and, therefore, should view the United States as satisfying his requirements of the good society. -- Michael Perelman Economics Department California State University Chico, CA 95929 Tel. 530-898-5321 E-Mail [EMAIL PROTECTED]
BLS Daily Report
BLS DAILY REPORT, THURSDAY, APRIL 26, 2001: RELEASED TODAY: The Employment Cost Index (not seasonally adjusted) for March 2001 was 152.5 (June 1989=100), an increase of 4.1 percent from March 2000, the U.S. Department of Labor's Bureau of Labor Statistics reports. The Employment Cost Index (ECI) measures changes in compensation costs, which include wages, salaries, and employer costs for employee benefits. Employee benefits made up more than one-third of company payrolls in 1999, with health insurance the most expensive single benefit cost, according to the results of a nationwide study by the U.S. Chamber of Commerce. Employee benefits cost employers an additional 36.8 percent over wages in 1999, or an average of $14,060 per employee, according to the chamber's 2000 Employee Benefits Study. In general, larger companies offer more employee benefits than smaller companies, the study says. Nearly every participating company offers employees benefits beyond the legally required payment of the Social Security payroll tax, unemployment insurance tax, and state worker's compensation insurance premiums (Daily Labor Report, page A-5). Orders to factories for costly manufactured goods rose for the first time this year, providing fresh hope the worst of the national slowdown may be over. Orders for durable goods -- items expected to last at least 3 years -- jumped 3 percent in March, thanks to strong demand for transportation equipment, the Commerce Department said. In January and February, all durable goods orders fell by 7.3 percent and 0.3 percent respectively (The Washington Post, page E2). Total housing starts for 2001 will be slightly lower as a result of a general economic slowdown, according to David Seiders, the chief economist with the National Association of Home Builders. Seiders and Joel Prakken of Macroeconomic Advisers LLC, speaking at an NAHB semi-annual construction forecast conference, said overall economic prospects in the second half of 2001 are likely to improve and continue into 2002. On the employment front, Seiders predicted some increase in the jobless rate before that figure tops out at about 5 percent, which he said is still a very low level by historical standards (Daily Labor Report, page A-10). Sales of new homes set a record in March and sales of previously owned homes rose to their second highest level ever, surprising analysts and offering further proof that housing remains remarkably healthy in an otherwise deteriorating economy, two reports released yesterday showed. Spurred by low mortgage interest rates and still-healthy employment levels, new-home sales shot up 4.2 percent in March to a record annual rate of 1.02 million, the Commerce Department reported, beating the previous record of 1 million set in December. Those same factors, economists said, pushed up home resales (The Washington Post, page E1). Home sales unexpectedly surged in March, data released today showed, indicating that real estate and construction are showing resilience as the rest of the economy slows. A jobless rate of 4.3 percent, close to a 30-year low, and mortgage rates that have fallen almost 2 percentage points since last May are bolstering home sales. The Commerce Department said durable goods orders, excluding transportation equipment, fell 1.8 percent in March to the lowest level in almost 2 years (The New York Times, page C4). Homes sold at record levels in March while capital-equipmentt orders sank, as resilient consumers and cost-cutting businesses pulled the economy in opposite directions (The Wall Street Journal, page A2). Just a day after a key measure of consumer confidence nose-dived, new numbers showed that consumers were still confident enough to buy houses at a record rate in March -- strong evidence that the economy could escape an outright recession this year. Orders for durable goods -- cars, refrigerators, computers and other items designed to last at least 3 years -- shot up unexpectedly in March. But the bad news was that virtually all the gain came in aircraft and defense orders, while other areas shrank. The key to what happens next is whether consumers keep spending. The hot home sales numbers suggest they will, because home buyers typically also buy appliances, furniture and other items to fill up their new homes (USA Today, page 1B). application/ms-tnef
Re: Parochialism and spam
G'day Pen-pals, I was, am, and will be interested in what you have to say about Oz. The Gough Whitlam stuff you sent a while back is important, as is any material or thoughts on the present resurgence of One Nation, the apparent emergence of the Greens, and whatever remains of progressive politics within Labor. One Nation is doing well just now, mainly because the major parties are undergoing a real and thoroughly deserved legitimation crisis, and Australians (who are legally obliged to vote) can but express their contempt by voting for anyone who offers antiglobalisation sentiments. And that's the problem One Nation has - it's a reactionary unit based on the rural petit-bourgoisie (and, after oil price rises and the introduction of a margin-narrowing, paper-work-multiplying goods'n'services tax last July, increasing chunks of the suburban petit-bourgoisie) and it's a nationalist-statist-small cappo denial of 'globalism' as a whole. It makes demands of the state that can no longer be met; pushes an abstract 'personal-responsibility' egalitarian liberalism that denies class/ethnic/cultural/gender inequities (eg 'blaming the victim' stuff such that charges of racism, for instance, are easy to level at 'em); pushes a 'those were the days' sentimentalism; and depends entirely on the persona of the inarticulate, often hysterical but strangely likeable Pauline Hanson. Anyway, One Nation is getting support from across the spectrum (the disillusioned are everywhere, after all) and has a real shot at a producing a couple of senators - which may be enough to carry the balance in the next senate. A worry, as the nationalism is xenophobic and effectively racist, the liberalism is one of judgement rather than emancipation; the social ideals are fifty years out of date, and Hanson just hasn't the mental ammo to resist opportunistic radical rightist agendas or go beyond feeding discontent. A national vote of around six per cent, with local spikes in Queensland, seems their electoral limit. But they are having an effect on the political culture, as the media find Hanson irresistable, and we have to have debates we thought we'd put away years ago. Capital is cross with 'em, because the media coverage gets picked up in the region, and our current and prospective SE Asian trading partners are having their suspicions regarding Australian whitism confirmed. The Greens are where the left goes these days, even though they still haven't anything like a class-conscious electoral politics or social policy. Again, we're just talking a 'somewhere to go' option for the disillusioned uni student or graduate. The Greens have benefitted from the traditional 'third force' (the Australian Democrats) being seen as too close to the conservative government. The latter have a glamorous new leader now, but I reckon the Greens could get a senator or two in at the elections, too. The Bush turnaround, local salinity crises, and Queensland land clearance orgies have combined to make an expressly green politics pretty trendy, so I think The Greens'll maintain their presence for the foreseeable future. What comes of it all really depends on who the successful candidates are, as Green candidates are a diverse lot. A five per cent electoral presence seems a realistic expectation, and that could be enough to get one or two across the line. What's going on in East Timor? Local discontent as to the tight reins the UN is keeping on local aspirations. The liberation looks more like a new domination every day, and the top-down development programme is predictably stalling. The media is saying nothing. East Timor is an ex-story. Is the Keating attempt to forge closer SE Asian ties (as opposed to Robert Conquest-type it'll be all white on the night internationalrelations) still a goer? Since John Howard pronounced that Oz saw itself as Uncle Sam's deputy in the region, the Indonesian population and Malaysia's leadership (for two) have correctly discerned that our foreign policy is still of the 'white man's burden' variety. We've recently upped the ante by announcing a major sustained military budget increase (the Defense people used to argue they needed money because there was nothing more dangerous than a united Indonesia; now they're getting money because there's nothing more dangerous than a fragmenting Indonesia), and a new regional arms race is likely to raise temperature and take food out of mouths. Australia is, in short, more on the nose in the region than it has been for a decade. Any views on the recent Vietnamese CP Congress? Well, nothing in the media here (of course), but it seems delegates are pretty free to speak. Lots of pronouncements about the Party having to review its structure (endemic corruption, arrogance of the security branches, non-representative and advanced age of cadres and executives, bureaucracy trumping compassion etc); some general comments about restructuring an education system
Growth
APRIL 26, 11:05 EST Sharp Slowdown in Global Growth By MARTIN CRUTSINGER AP Economics Writer WASHINGTON (AP) The global economy will slow significantly this year and could face even greater problems if the U.S. economy weakens further, the International Monetary Fund said Thursday in a sober assessment of world conditions. The forecast represented a sharp markdown in growth projections since September, and the international lending agency cautioned that even the lower figure may prove too optimistic. ``The prospects for global growth have weakened considerably, led by a marked slowdown in the United States, a stalling recovery in Japan and moderating growth in Europe and a number of emerging market countries,'' the IMF said in its new World Economic Outlook. The IMF projected that the global economy would expand this year by 3.2 percent, a full percentage point lower than it forecast in its last economic outlook in September. The new forecast was released as the 183-nation IMF and its sister lending organization, the World Bank, prepared for joint spring meetings. Officials were hoping the sessions would attract fewer protesters than a year ago, when police arrested more than 1,300 who clogged intersections around the IMF and World Bank headquarters near the White House. The IMF's new growth projection would mark a sharp slowdown from global growth of 4.8 percent in 2000, reflecting a dramatic slowing of the U.S. economy, the world's biggest. The IMF projected the U.S. economy would grow this year by just 1.5 percent, far below the 5 percent growth in 2000 and 1.7 percentage points lower than IMF's September forecast. IMF chief economist Michael Mussa told reporters at a briefing Thursday that so far the Federal Reserve has responded appropriately with its aggressive four interest rate cuts this year. He said lower rates combined with tax cuts being pushed by the Bush administration should be enough to keep the United States out of a recession and also provide support to the global economy. Mussa was less complimentary of the economic policies of the European Central Bank, which on Thursday refused once again to cut interest rates, something the IMF said is needed to battle global weakness. ``In a slowdown such as we are now experiencing ... it is desirable that the central bank of the second-largest economic area of the world needs to become part of the solution rather than part of the problem,'' Mussa said. The IMF projected that the United States would rebound in 2002 with growth of 2.5 percent, a strengthening that should help produce global growth of 3.9 percent next year. However, it cautioned that this forecast could be put in jeopardy if U.S. stock prices plunge further or if America's huge trade deficit leads to a sudden drop in the value of the dollar. ``The outlook remains subject to considerable uncertainty and a deeper and more prolonged downturn is clearly possible,'' the IMF cautioned. One cause for concern is what might happen in Japan, the world's second-largest economy, which has struggled with a decade-long bout of weakness. The IMF forecast the Japanese economy will grow by a lackluster 0.6 percent this year, 1.3 percentage points lower than its September estimate. It put growth in 2002 at 1.5 percent. For Europe, the IMF forecast 2.8 percent growth in the 12 nations that share the euro currency, a full percentage point lower than in September. The world's developing countries should experience growth of 5 percent this year, a drop of 0.7 percent from the IMF's September forecast. The reduction was attributed in part to weaker demand for foreign goods by U.S. consumers. The IMF also said it believed that reforms undertaken since the 1997-98 global financial crisis, which pushed 40 percent of the world into steep recessions, had made developing countries less vulnerable. The IMF said the most likely outcome for the global economy is that ``activity in the United States picks up during the second half of the year, while growth in Europe remains reasonably robust and the recovery in Japan resumes in 2002.'' On the Net: IMF: http://www.imf.org
philosophy of science stuff
[was: Re: [PEN-L:10806] Re: Re: Re: what is economics?] Ravi wrote: 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?... on this issue, I really don't care if I agree with David or not; that's an unimportant issue, since (like Milton Friedman) he may be right once and awhile. More importantly, I would say that the separation between the humans who set the direction of research in physics and the physicists should be broken down, as part of a general increase in democracy. 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) I can't agree with the extreme relativists, though the positivists are wrong too. BTW, I've been reading SCIENCE, FAITH, AND SOCIETY by Michael Polanyi. It's interesting: he argues against positivism (though he never really explains what that is), specifically against the idea that specific rules such as falsificationism can be used to develop science. He argues that science is instead based on ethical values, most importantly the commitment to finding the truth (even if it can't be found), because the truth is out there, independent of our perceptions of it. He also emphasizes objectivity, by which he means sort[ing] out facts, opinions, and emotions and present[ing] them separately and tolerance, meaning the willingness to listen to idiots and jerks, in hopes of learning _something_ from them. (p. 68) It's sort of a manifesto for science as a form of professionalism. It's notable that the difference between science and Protestant religion isn't very big in his view: scientists are different because of their naturalistic -- rather than magical -- world-view. But within the context of each, there's a commitment to truth, objectivity, tolerance. The kinds of truth differ. It's interesting, but he gets confused on the normative/positive issue: he assumes basically that science as it should be is the same as it's actually practiced in absence of some centralized (governmental) authority. I guess he never encountered the way that the Pentagon or the drug companies have distorted science. As such, his book could be seen as a critique of not only Lysenkoism but also of the practice of science in the advanced capitalist world. He also confuses Stalinism with Marxism, but that error is too common. If you've read Polanyi, I'd be interested in finding out if you agree with my interpretation. Jim Devine [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://bellarmine.lmu.edu/~JDevine Segui il tuo corso, e lascia dir le genti. (Go your own way and let people talk.) -- K. Marx, paraphrasing Dante A.
Re: A Marxist critique of the Tobin Tax
At 26/04/01 02:31 -0700, Ali Kadri quoted me (BTW if anyone knows why such text does not wrap around properly, please would they let me know?) but before this wrote: The danger in this argument is in historical projection. Although the author correctly draws on the shortcomings of the Tobin tax, he treats the manifesto as gospel, so if capitalism is supposed to encroach on less advanced modes of production, ergo, progress. In other words the author adheres to p.p. rey's dictum, capitalism develops the world at the same pace or to J. Robinson what is worst than being exploited by capitalism is not to be exploited by capitalism. openness of developing countries further accentuates lopsided development and the general rule is that inherited social relations from despotic modes are made to work for capitalism. So, no one in the developing world experiences the progress of early capitalism. Baran says something like tardy and skimpy the benefits of capitalism were to the developed world they were devastating to the underdeveloped world. Historical projection is methodologically wrong for obvious reasons. Certain measures of protection that safeguard a social agenda in the developing world are necessary in so far as that is compatible with an internationally worked out agenda for progress, ie, not purely nationalistic. Progress is an all encompassing social problem and not an economic problem per se. I cautiously think that Ali Kadri was referring in fact to Greg Oxley's article, because it was this that cited the Communist Manifesto and suggested that the really revolutionary approach is to realise that globalisation had been described as long ago as the Manifesto, and true Marxists should go straight for socialism. Oxley: The globalisation of the economy is nothing new. Marx and Engels described and explained it in the Communist Manifesto more than 150 years ago. They considered the development of the means of production and the unification of the world economy through trade as progressive historical processes, in that they were creating the material foundation of the socialist society of the future. Through the international division of labour and large-scale production, humanity has reached a very high level of productive technique. This achievement opens the possibility, for the first time in human history, to meet all the basic needs of the peoples of the entire world. If three-quarters of humanity are still living in poverty, if wealth is increasingly concentrated in the hands of a tiny minority, if perfectly curable illnesses and famines kill off millions of human beings every year, this is because these means of production remain the property of the capitalists, and cannot, as a result, be used in a rational and democratic manner in the interests of ordinary people. That is why the solution to the ills that blight humanity lies in the expropriation of the capitalist class and the organisation of the economy along socialist and democratic lines. I do not know if the Tobin tax is an answer. Subscribers to this column know I have sought to clarify other options, which are also debatable. But what I do insist on is that all democrats in the world, including all would be communists should consider supporting measures to prevent surplus being sucked out of different countries of the world into the capitalist heartlands. We must support a framework for them to develop economically and politically. Almost all such measures are absolutely impossible without being prepared to analyse contradictions between different wings of the capitalist class, and to make temporary alliances. The idea that we can build momentum and advance towards a socialist revolution world wide without compromises is a total denial of the marxist principle of analysing the material balance of forces. Oxley concludes with a stirring pair of aphorisms: Protectionism and grain of sand taxes will solve nothing. The achievement of socialism will change everything. This article was specially selected as an example of a Marxist critique of the Tobin Tax. Now there are many interpretations of Marxism. But one of the most zealous champions of a concept of Marxism against distortions to the left or right, was of course Lenin. His robust denunciations of left-wing communism as an infantile disorder, are well known to would-be marxists, or should be. Including the chapter, No Compromises? But a propos of the stirring conclusion to Oxley's simplistic revolutionary non-strategy, Lenin wrote about The Revolutionary Phrase By revolutionary phrase-making we mean the repetition of revolutionary slogans irrespective of objective circumstances at a given turn in events, in the given state of affairs obtaining at the time. The slogans are superb, alluring, intoxicating, but there are no grounds for them; such is the nature of the revolutionary phrase. (21 Feb 1918) It is perhaps a healthy sign that now the new
Positivism (What is it?) was Re: philosophy of science
Jim Devine wrote: he argues against positivism (though he never really explains what that is) I've encountered, it seems like, hundreds of attacks on positivism which also never explained what it was. When I think of positivism I think of a poster on another list a couple years ago who announced that if we knew all the facts we wouldn't need to study relations. If that understanding is correct, then positivism is utterly incompatible with any conceivable understanding of marxism (or, for that matter, reality). If anything, I would say that what we know are relations, from which we abstract facts depending on our purpose in a given context. Anyone have a better definition of positivism? Carrol
Re: Positivism (What is it?) was Re: philosophy of science
At 06:04 PM 4/26/01 -0500, you wrote: Anyone have a better definition of positivism? perhaps it's the belief that values and facts can be separated completely from each other? Jim Devine [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://bellarmine.lmu.edu/~jdevine
Re: Positivism (What is it?) was Re: philosophy of science
Carrol Cox wrote: Anyone have a better definition of positivism? http://www.utm.edu/research/iep/l/logpos.htm is a good start at logical positivism. there is an a.j. ayer book on the matter, that might be worth looking at. positivism in science is often held to originate with ernst mach, so some reading of his philosophy of science might be interesting (feyerabend goes to great measure to rescue mach from the later logical positivism, presenting evidence of mach's denial of a grasp of reality to science - described as anti-realism in the URL above). what might be of particular interest to this list might be the development of ethics in logical positivistic thinking by schlick, and the influence of wittgenstein on the vienna circle. i am certainly not an expert by any means, and my own description (not definition) of logical positivism would be to consider it the extreme extension of the attempts of the logicists and formalists (frege, russell, others) to formalize mathematics/science through axiomatization, partly in response to intuitonist and other philosophies (such as put forth by weyl, poincare,...). while godel (himself a member of sorts of the vienna circle) delivered a bit of a blow to logicism, logical positivism continues the attempt to axiomatize and formalize scientific knowledge and reject as meaningless all other metaphysical speculation (perhaps under the influence of wittgenstein: whereof one cannot speak, thereof one must remain silent). the chief outcome of this effort is the verifiability principle (only those statements, for which a verification method can be specified, are meaningful), and the various attempts (carnap, reichenbach, others) to define criteria for the validity of knowledge through empirical verification and axiomatic deduction. logical positivism has been criticized both by those proposing alternate theories of science (such as karl popper and his falsifiability principle) and by other philosophers of science, such as the logician w.v.o quine (who, unfortunately as of a few months ago, is no longer with us). feyerabend in particular criticizes all such formalizations as failing the test of actual scientific theory and practice. apart from the ayer book, reichenbach's the philosophy of space and time is i believe considered seminal. w.r.t the debates and controversies in mathematics at the turn of the 19th century, which were a precursor to the debates of positivism, the relevant sections of morris kline's mathematics: the loss of certainty might be of interest. --ravi
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please unsubscribe me! Neil left-communist
FTAA medic's account of protests
This was sent as a letter to a number of Canadian media. The author obviously wants it as widely circulated as possible cheers, Ken Hanly Testimonial on the Anti-FTAA Demonstrations, April 18-22, 2001 April 24, 2001 I want to write about what I saw this weekend in Quebec City. I volunteered as a Street Medic for the anti-FTAA protests, from Wednesday afternoon until Sunday afternoon. In the course of these days I saw so much that I hope to never see again. I treated hundreds of injured people, got tear gassed, felt the effects of pepper spray, and mostly felt the kind of turmoil that a peaceful society ought not to experience. Throughout the event medics were targeted by the police: wherever my partner and I would be treating people, tear gas canisters would land right beside us. Some medics got hit with rubber bullets. On Friday, my friend Sean was on his knees treating a patient in a tear gas cloud on the front lines, when a canister fell right under his face and exploded. He inhaled so much of it right there, then he tried to stumble to his feet only to narrowly miss a canister aimed at his head. Another canister hit the wall behind him, bounced and hit him in the back, knocking him flat. A final canister rolled by his face again and exploded. He was rescued by another medic team and spent the next two days recuperating in the medic clinic on Cote D'Abraham. On the front lines on Friday we began treating people as the gassing began. We kept having to retreat more and more to avoid the clouds of gas. At one point a canister exploded right next to me. I can't begin to explain the agony of being hit head on with tear gas first of all it suffocates you. I began to walk very quickly, barely restraining the panic, as I coughed and choked. I thought I would die, that any minute my asthma would kick in. Everywhere we turned there were more riot cops, more gas, and no safe space to calm down and decompress. My eyes were fine, being sealed under swim goggles, but my skin was burning like fire. Finally we managed to find a corner without gas and I got my breath back. I can't explain the fear that set in afterwards I was so scared to go anywhere near the cops. But I was in Quebec to do a service treat injured people who were in pain. Now that I knew what that pain was like, I also knew I had to go back into the fray. As we walked back into the chaos, we came upon a girl who had been hit by a canister of gas, which exploded all over her body. Medics were treating her by stripping off her clothing and pouring liquids all over her. The poor girl was crying and screaming, in so much pain. Around us were clouds and clouds of gas, and cops advancing on all sides. The cops began shooting canisters high into the air, into the back of the crowd, where we were. In that area were only peaceful protesters; we were not up by the perimeter fence, and we were not involved in Black Bloc activities up by the front lines. Our space was full of individuals being treated for various injuries, and just trying to recuperate. Yet we were getting hit with dozens of canisters! We had to watch the sky, hoping the canisters wouldn't land on us. We had to continually stand in the center of the action, yelling at people to walk, walk, walk to avoid a mob scene and tramplings. It's so hard to stand still or walk slowly when tear gas canisters at a temperature of hundreds of degrees Celsius are being shot straight at you or above your head. I broke down so many times in the fracas, because the emotion just ran so high. I thought I was either going to die or be incapacitated or arrested. At one point we were in the middle of a city block when a fire truck came through and the protesters attacked it. At the time I couldn't understand why, why would they attack firemen, but later on someone helped me realize that the truck was going to be used as a water cannon, so people wanted to trash it. Finally the truck went through, after having all its water emptied and the equipment taken. Later a row of riot cops formed at one intersection, and lobbed gas canisters to block off the end of the block. There was no escape route for my partner and I and the dozen or so protesters still there. Again I began to choke and almost panic, but we ducked into a driveway. When I saw the pain the others were in the adrenaline kicked in, and I began to treat them. I didn't even think about my state, because I didn't feel it once I saw the injured people that needed my help. We managed to escape through backyards onto another block. This weekend was a war zone. I felt like I was in the middle of civil war and urban warfare. I treated so many burned hands, from people who wore thick gloves to throw tear gas canisters back at the cops or away from the crowd, yet got their hands burned. I saw third degree burns. I flushed hundreds of eyes with water and sometimes with LAW liquid antacid mixed with water in a 1:1 ratio. When
Re: unsubscribe
just send a message to [EMAIL PROTECTED] unsub pen-l -- Michael Perelman Economics Department California State University Chico, CA 95929 Tel. 530-898-5321 E-Mail [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Berkeley Students Demand Divestment from Israel
From: MER [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: Berkeley students demand divestment from Israel Date: Wed, 25 Apr 2001 14:02:26 -00 MID-EAST REALITIES c - www.MiddleEast.Org - STUDENTS FOR JUSTICE IN PALESTINE, UC BERKELEY, OCCUPY UNIV BUILDING Group Demands Divestment from Israel By Will Youmans BERKELEY, CA - 24 April: Wheeler Hall is an ordinary University building. Full of classrooms and students adorned with stuffed backpacks, it can be especially busy during the end of the semester. Berkeley's semester is now coming to a close, but activism here is far from resting. Today, Wheeler Hall was transformed to Muhammad Al-Durra Hall. A banner announcing the new name flew from the second floor of the building. Around noon, the Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP), took action as two groups: the insiders and the outsiders. The outsiders began the heavily advertised rally near the center of campus, with an initial group of roughly 50 students. The insiders proceeded to enter the designated hall, and chained the doors shut, except for one that was used to evacuate students from inside. After receiving word, the rally proceeded to the front of the building. With a picket line outside, and numerous banners, signs, petitioners, and literature distributors, the crowd swelled. Chants, such as D-I-V-E-S-T, divestment spells equality, attracted on-lookers. Speakers, such as Richard Becker of the International Action Center, Alison Weir, a freelance journalist who recently returned from the West Bank and Gaza, Elias Rishmawi, of ADC-Sacramento, and Hatem Bazian, of the Al-Qalam Institute, gave stirring and supportive speeches. A marginal band of Israel supporters armed with banners and flags stood at the side, chanting as well. Clearing out all the students from inside proved difficult as was limiting their entrance at the turn of the hour. Swarms of them forced their way in, and some instructors called the event disruptive. Speakers responded that many Palestinian students are closed off from the schools and students have been shot on their way to school. The police made an early appearance, but did not take action against the occupiers until around 5 pm, when roughly 35 people were issued citations and photographed on the spot. By 6 pm, when the event was over, nearly 100 people remained. It is estimated that almost 300 people participated throughout the course of the day. SJP issued a proposal to the UC Regents on April 12th. It demanded divestment by April 22nd. The Regents did not respond at all despite the immediacy of the acceleration of Israel's war on the Palestinian people. Like most human rights situations, the need for action is immediate. SJP organized a follow-up forum for the next day, Wednesday. It is set for 7pm on the fourth floor of the MLK Student Union.
Solidarity Summer School 2001--Pittsburgh
Title: Solidarity Summer School 2001--Pittsburgh From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: Fwd: [cgp-osu] Solidarity Summer School 2001--Pittsburgh From: Solidarity [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: [SLDRTY-L]: Solidarity Summer School 2001 Solidarity Summer School 2001 IN THE STREETS, AT THE WORKPLACE, AROUND THE GLOBE: THE FIGHT FOR SOCIALISM A National Conference for Radical Activists June 14-17 at the Carnegie Mellon University Center in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania (Registration details below) Plenary Sessions: · Challenging the Two-Party System: Recession and the Bush Agenda · National Liberation in the Age of Neoliberalism · The Battle for a Living Wage · Racism Resistance in the U.S. · In the Streets, At the Workplace and Around the Globe: The Fight for Socialism Workshops: · From NAFTA to the FTAA: Free Trade, Cross Border Resistance, and Immigration · Remembering the Great Homestead Strike · The Face of Repression: Prisons, Policing, and Surveillance · History of the Death Penalty and the Fight Against It · Queer Politics and Liberation · A Better World is Possible: Socialism Anarchism · The Palestinian Uprising Against Israeli Occupation · Organizing for Justice and Equality in Public Education · Radicalism and Reform in the History of American Labor · Marxism and Ecology . The Marxist Theory of Capitalism · History of the Revolutionary Socialist Tradition: Marx Luxemburg · History of the Revolutionary Socialist Tradition: Lenin Trotsky · Cultures of Resistance · Socialist Feminism: Understanding Patriarchy · Whiteness Antiracism · Labor Activism from Below · Black Radicalism, 1960s-Present · US Intervention in Latin America Today · Plus a picnic in the park, music, videos, and fun SPEAKERS TO INCLUDE (organizations listed for identification purposes only): * MARY McGINN*, United Electrical, Radio and Machine Workers of America; author of Solidarity versus Competition: Unions and Free Trade * TEOFILO REYES, Labor Notes; Xicano Development Center, Detroit * STEPHIE DOMIKE, director of The River Ran Red and Women of Steel * CHRISTIAN PARENTI, author of Lockdown America: Police and Prisons in the Age of Crisis * ADOLPH REED, Labor Party; author of The Jesse Jackson Phenomena: the Crisis of Purpose in African American Politics and W.E.B. DuBois and American Political Thought * DONNA CARTWRIGHT, CWA Newspaper Guild Local 3; Working Group for Transgender Equality; Solidarity * DENNIS BRUTUS, Jubilee 2000 South Africa/ Jubilee South; author of Letters to Martha, A Simple Lust, and Stubborn Hope * DAVID McNALLY, New Socialist Group, Canada; author of Bodies of Meaning: Studies of Language, Labor and Liberation and Against the Market: Political Economy, Market Socialism and the Marxist Critique * PAM GALPERN, Jews Against the Occupation; Solidarity * DAN LA BOTZ*, Cincinnati Coalition for a Fair Economy (CHE); author of Made in Indonesia: Indonesian Workers Since Suharto, Rank and File Rebellion: the History of Teamsters for a Democratic Union, and Democracy in Mexico; Solidarity * BECCA SOLOMON, United Teachers Los Angeles; Coalition for Education Justice; Solidarity * PETE SHELL, Western PA Coalition to Close the School of the Americas; Thomas Merton Center * JOEL KOVEL, Green Party; author of Red Hunting in the Promised Land and History and Spirit; Solidarity * JOSE PALOFAX, contributor to Colorlines and Z magazine * JANE SLAUGHTER*, Labor Notes; author of Inside the Circle: Unions and Team Concept and Working Smart; Solidarity * KIM MOODY, Labor Notes, author of An Injury to All and Workers In A Lean World; Solidarity * PAUL LE BLANC, author of A Short History of the US Working Class and From Marx to Gramsci; Solidarity * STEVE BLOOM, author of Fighting for Justice: the Case of Mumia Abu-Jamal; Solidarity * CHARLIE POST, New Caucus of the PSC; author of Socialist Organization Today; Solidarity * DEAN ROBINSON, Labor Party, author of Black Nationalism in American Politics and Thought * STEPHANIE LUCE, editor of Against the Current; author of The Living Wage; Solidarity * MARCUS REDIKER*, Western PA Coalition to Free Mumia Abu-Jamal; author of The Many Headed Hydra: Sailors, Slaves, Commoners, and the Hidden History of the Revolutionary Atlantic * BETSY ESCH, editor of Against the Current; Solidarity * JOANNA MISNIK, SEIU Local 73; Solidarity * BRAD DUNCAN, Irish Republican Writers Support Group; Solidarity * CYNTHIA YOUNG*, member of Scholars and Writers for Social Justice * RUTHIE GILMORE*, Critical Resistance; UC Berkeley * DAVID ROEDIGER, author of Toward the Abolition of Whiteness and Our Own Time: History of American Labor and the Working Day * GABRIELE GOTTLIEB, Western PA Coalition to Free Mumia Abu-Jamal * BARNEY OURSLER, Alliance for Progressive Action, Pittsburgh; Mon Valley Unemployed Committee * HENRY PHILLIPS*, Teamsters for A Democratic Union * AND OTHERS TO BE ANNOUNCED! * (*) indicates unconfirmed
Re: Re: Positivism (What is it?) was Re: philosophy ofscience
ravi narayan wrote: Carrol Cox wrote: Anyone have a better definition of positivism? http://www.utm.edu/research/iep/l/logpos.htm is a good start at logical positivism. Logical positivism I know (or at least knew quite well 50 years ago). The problem is that positivism is a widely used curse word, and it is its meaning as a curse word that often needs defining. Anti-positivism is only intelligible interms of the particular conception of positivism the anti-positivist is operating from. Very few people _call themselves_ positivists today, but many people are (rightly or wrongly) _accused_ of being positivists. Carrol
Re: Positivism (What is it?) was Re: philosophy of science
Carrol, Positivism is a big umbrella term, encompassing the views of Comte and Saint Simon (still a force in Brazil), a comprehensive sort of 19th century Enlightenment progressivism based on science, British empiricism, Austrian empiriocriticism, and the logical positivism of the Vienna Circle and its American successor, logical empiricism. Leszek Kolokowski has a nice lirrle book on the history and meanings of positisvism. He is weakest on LP, despite having had an opportrunity to become acquainted with its Polish variant in the work of Tarksi. Logical positivism/empiricism, the set of these doctrines with which I am most familiar in detail, combined what might be called a metaphysics of experience (the LPs would have rejected this characteruzation vehemently) derived from Hume and the Brit empiricists, on which experience was concerived as a sort of atomic mosaic of sensations, with the modern logic of Frege as a way of constructing relations between them. Inspired by the scientific reasoning of Einstein and the relativity theorists (and some of the LPs were very deeply versed in relativity theory), they espoused a verification principle of meaningfulness, according to which cognitively meaningful sentences were those that could be shown to have empirical consequences, i.e., using the apparatus of modern logic, would imply some statements about pattern sof experience. Such statemnts were scientific. The LPs were concerned to analyze various problems in philosophy of science, e.g., what isa theory, what is an esxplanation, how does inductive inference workm etc. Other statements were either emotive or prescriptive (e.g., ethical statements), but not cognitively meaningful, or metaphysical nonsense, entirely empty. This included most of traditional philosophy, including Hehelian and Marxian dialectics. The LPs worked out an elaborate and beautiful system that came down under its own weight in the period from 1950-70. Although there are people who accept bits of the theory, no one today accepts the whole thing. The Vienna Circle was a group of fairly radical socialists. A leading member of the old LPs, Otto Neurath, was a self-identified Marxist who did a lot of important work on the socialist side of thecalculation debate. He defended historical materialism. His epistemology was much less atomistic than most of the other LPs. However, Carnap, Reichenbach, and Hempel, were on the radical left, and Carnap stayed there his whole life. In America, LP underwent a transition from being a modernist far left philosophy to being a technocratic and conservative one, much as its counterparts in modernist architecture, conceived in part to create futurist workers' cities, became subordinated to the imperatives of capital. The radical roots of the LP were totally lost to the New Left generation, and attacks on positivism as a right wing philosophy were common among then-left philosophers like Hilary Putnam (who used to be in PL). These radical roots are just now being rediscovered, see, e.g., Michael Freidman's The Parting of the Ways. The Frankfurt School hada different and broader conception of positivism, once that swept in scientistic philosophy and focused on technical raesoning. They Frankfurters tarred Popper, a libertian who was close to Hayek, with the positivist brush, driving him crazy because his falsificationism and metaphysical realism involved rejection of key tenets of LP/LE. THere is a mutual comedy of misunderstanding between Adorno and Popper memorialized in the Positivismusstreit, the Positivist Debates, some of which are collected in an English-language anthology of these exchanges that goes by a title like that. Hope this helps, jks . I've encountered, it seems like, hundreds of attacks on positivism which also never explained what it was. When I think of positivism I think of a poster on another list a couple years ago who announced that if we knew all the facts we wouldn't need to study relations. If that understanding is correct, then positivism is utterly incompatible with any conceivable understanding of marxism (or, for that matter, reality). If anything, I would say that what we know are relations, from which we abstract facts depending on our purpose in a given context. Anyone have a better definition of positivism? Carrol _ Get your FREE download of MSN Explorer at http://explorer.msn.com
