Re: Sowell
David Shemano: The argument is about the effect of minimum wage laws, and if you can't figure out the difference between minimum wage laws and rising wages, Yes, indeed the argument is about the effect of minimum wage laws and it is based on a fallacy -- actually several fallacies -- including the shape of the theoretical labour supply curve, the relationship between low-wage labour and investment, the confusion of labour rates and labour costs, the competitiveness of labour markets and probably several others that other Pen-lers could name. No doubt there is SOME level of minimum wage that may cause a decline in employment but even then it's possible that the higher wage more than compensates for the loss of employment both collectively and individually. For example, someone would possibly be better off working 9 months of the year at $10 an hour than working 12 months at $7 an hour. They might even be better off with a lower total income earned during a shorter time period. The minimum wage/unemployment argument is a defiant throwback to archaic wages-fund doctrine. I would have every sympathy with Sowell's observation of the bureaucratic response to his suggestion about empirical validation provided he also noticed that the incentives for conservative economists are equally incompatible with the economic laws they purport to uphold and investigate. These folks are neither entrepreneurs nor scientists. They're an ecclesiatical order entrusted with an infallible, ineffable doctrine. Is it an accident that their conclusions invariably exalt the rationality of privilege? Or does that just happen to be true? It may have been painfully clear to Sowell that as they pushed up minimum wage levels... employment levels were falling, but such painful clarity doesn't constitute empirical validation. Nor, despite the shocked looks on the bureaucrats' faces, would his data on sugar cane have definitively answered the question. Considering the theoretical slimness of Sowell's moment of truth, his painful clarity takes on a fascinating rhetorical function. Does it ground his reasoning in a moment of *passion* arising out of some kind of vicarious suffering in identication with the poor? Or is it his annoyance at the obtuseness of the bureaucrats who are unable to see what he so clearly (he thinks) sees? Or is there perhaps some kind of fusion there where Sowell's suffering the bureaucratic fools in itself redeems the suffering of the poor, regardless of any policy consequences? I only pray that if I ever see the light, it not be the glow of such thread-bare doctrinal kaka. Tom Walker 604 255 4812
Re: Saddam on TV
BBC reported this as having been timed and arranged for US breakfast television. It appears that no British reporter was among the select band in the improvised courtroom, which I find an amazing lack of tact among coalition allies. Or just possibly it was British low key calculation of where their interests best lie. There were comments about who had selected the parts that were broadcast and whether it would be possible to see the whole transcription. A legal commentator with an English accent (?) on CNN, Jonathan Goldberg, described it as incredibly incompetent that the judge had insisted on Hussein answering incriminating questions without a lawyer present. UK media, television and newspapers all seem to assume an interventionist perspective, that it is normal and a good thing that justice should be imposed on a sovereign country like Iraq by outside intervention and pressure, few commenting on the legality of this. But in other respects by the standards of an emerging concept of international humanitarian justice, my impression is that the commentaries are looking for errors and blunders. One of the most fundamental divisions, courteously debated, is between those who think the trial should have been organised with international judges and advocates, and those who think it should somehow have the character of an Iraqi trial. What happened yesterday from the presentation on US breakfast television to the reports of the sounds of his chains falling to the ground in the ante-room where he had been escorted by US guards, suggests that this trial may fall between both stools. Their best bet is probably to concentrate on hearings of the other 12 and hope that will discredit and incriminate him, and now to keep him out of the lime-light. Salem Chalabi, the Iraqi minister for this area, indicated he did not think it desirable that Saddam Hussein's words should be broadcast live, and that was somehow a mistake. As was presumably the clumsy filming of the judge which was supposed to be from the rear to protect him from future assassination attempts but showed enough of his face for Iraqi's in the know probably to work out who he is. Chris Burford London - Original Message - From: Kenneth Campbell [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Friday, July 02, 2004 12:50 AM Subject: [PEN-L] Saddam on TV For what it's worth... I saw Hussein on TV this morn, and Peter Jennings did an excellent job of old Murrow-style radio reporting... describing scenes without the aid of a TV camera. Jennings described a beaten down man, thin, polite, alert, tangling with the judge once. I have since seen the usual American news stuff about that -- CNN subheaders included Look, the pimp is speaking and accredited the statement to an anonymous janitor. Great journalism. BBC was better -- including some factual reporting on what he said about Kuwait and the chemical weapons against Kurds. Jennings remains the objective reporter, as far as I have seen. He was in the court room. Rather than get outraged at the media's false editorializing, I would encourage people to actually ask people to look at the statements. Mention Jennings' objective reporting. Ken. -- I am the passenger And I ride and I ride I ride through the city's backside I see the stars come out of the sky Yeah, they're bright in a hollow sky You know it looks so good tonight -- The Passenger Iggy Pop, 1977 www.american-buddha.com/iggy.passenger.htm
Enron
by David B. Shemano Charles Brown writes: Hey , on an old thread, I haven't seen you since Enron. What to you think about bookcooking on Wall Street,now ? What do I think about it? I am against it. Look, fraud is illegal in a capitalist economy. There is a certain percentage of the population that is going to try and bend the rules to take advantage. I am sure that would never occur in a socialist economy. ^^^ CB: I might remember incorrectly , but I thought you were saying that it doesn't happen much in this capitalist economy.
Mr. Cranky reviews Fahrenheit 9/11
From my favorite film critic on the Internet, next to myself. http://www.mrcranky.com/movies/fahrenheit911.html Fahrenheit 9/11 I ask in all seriousness: where the fuck are their balls? Given the amount of controversy this film has generated, it seems wrong to attack it with the usual Mr. Cranky disdain, rather than addressing some of the issues it raises and leting the members of our little online community debate them. Ironically, I attended a lecture given by Paul Roberts recently. He wrote a book called The End of Oil. Though I haven't read the book, one of the points he made was that Saudi Arabia provides the United States with more oil than any other country. According to Yahoo, that's about 17.8%. Roberts explained that if the Saudi regime were replaced by a one hostile to the U.S., or if terrorists attacked Saudi Arabian oil facilities, either resulting in the elimination of Saudi Arabian oil from the U.S. economy, there would be an energy crisis in this country like we have never seen. So, whether we like it or not, it's in our country's best interest right now to be friendly to Saudi Arabia. One of the arguments of Michael Moore's film is that George Bush and most of his administration has compromised the security of the United States because they are so beholden to Saudi Arabian interests. The Bush family's own wealth is directly tied to the Saudis. Furthermore, the Bush family has also bedded down with the Bin Ladens, being that they too are Saudis and their wealth is generated from oil. When Osama Bin Laden attacked the United States on September 11th and George Bush responded by jacking up military spending, he increased the wealth of Osama Bin Laden because Bin Laden (and Saudi Arabia) are investors in the major United States defense contractors. While this is obviously a salient point, what exactly is the alternative to being friendly with Saudi Arabia? Based on the fact that 15 of the 19 terrorists were from Saudi Arabia, ignorant members of the Left suggest that the object of our hatred and military might should have been Saudi Arabia and not Iraq. To say this suggestion is foolish is a mild understatement. While I firmly believe that George Bush is a colossal dickhead, suggesting that his family could have possibly known that their relationship with the Saudis would have turned into the fiasco we face now is to ask them to predict the future. George W. Bush can barely form a coherent sentence. I don't think he'd be able to predict the future. If anybody were paying attention, the goal of the Bush administration in Iraq is completely clear: they are trying to create a country based on the Saudi model. They want a friendly leadership so that they get at Iraq's oil. Given our tenuous foothold in the Arab world, the Saudi regime's relationship with its own people, and our country's ability to suck oil from the world like a kid sticking a straw in a Slurpee, this isn't the worst idea. There's also another particularly interesting point made in Moore's film about the Democrats. Regardless of the outcome, the situation in Florida during our last presidential election was a mockery of our constitution. It's simply a fact that the state was won by Bush due to Republican efforts that prevented voters unlikely to cast votes in his direction from voting. Most of those voters were black. Moore shows us the scene, Al Gore presiding over a joint session of Congress, as black Congressperson after black Congressperson try to oppose the validation of the election. Each gives a speech, but failing to have their objection signed by only 1 Senator, they are forced to leave the podium. Sorry, but the thought that went through my mind was this: Where was John Kerry? Frankly, where was any Democrat during this whole thing? Our Democratic leadership in this country is a loose conglomeration of ball-less fucks. It's easy for the Left to be outraged by George W. Bush and the Republicans, but in many ways, the target of much of their hatred ought to be directed at the Democrats and their weak leadership. With these gutless weasels forming the agenda for the so-called Left in this country, it really is no surprise that so many people are voting Republican. Democrats simply don't believe in anything, don't stand up for anything, and there's really nothing Americans despise more than somebody who won't take a stand. That's why George W. Bush, despite his lack of intelligence, is so well liked. Despite all his failings (and there are many), at least he stands for something. At least he went after somebody (even if it was the wrong person). At least he tried. Meanwhile, there's John Kerry who voted for the Iraq invasion and then pulled his support and now can't seem to utter a complete sentence without changing his position on something. You know, take gay marriage for instance. Everybody knows that Kerry, if he truly is a liberal,
Kerry competes for official Jewish support
Kerry takes a stronger pro-Israel line By Bryan Bender, Boston Globe Staff | July 2, 2004 WASHINGTON -- Senator John F. Kerry strikes a decidedly stronger pro-Israel position in a new policy paper than he did a few months ago, as he attempts to enlist the support of Jewish voters who have been gravitating to President Bush and away from their tradition of voting Democratic in presidential elections. In the policy paper, which has not been released publicly, Kerry outlines clear, strongly worded positions on several issues important to the American Jewish community. He calls for more forceful action to prevent Iran from gaining nuclear weapons, fully backs Israel's construction of a 425-mile-long barrier between Israel and the Palestinian territories that the paper refers to as ''a security fence, and pledges to work to push for a new Palestinian political class to replace Yasser Arafat, who is called a ''failed leader. Earlier in the campaign, Kerry got off to a shaky start with some Jewish groups. Last October he called the barrier -- composed mostly of electronic fencing with razor wire and a ditch along a tracking road, but with some stretches made of concrete -- a ''barrier to peace. The new paper says building it is ''a legitimate right of self-defense and ''not a matter to be taken up by the International Court of Justice, which has criticized the move. On Wednesday, Israel's High Court of Justice, responding to Palestinian complaints, issued a landmark ruling saying a planned 20-mile section of the barrier in the West Bank must be rerouted, because the current path creates hardships for thousands of Palestinians. The Massachusetts senator earlier remarked that he might appoint James A. Baker III, secretary of state in the first Bush administration, a special peace negotiator. Jewish groups quickly attacked the proposal and accused Baker of making anti-Israel statements. The paper, drafted by policy and political advisers, does not say who Kerry would pick for that role. With the paper, titled ''Strengthening Israel's Security and Bolstering the US-Israel Special Relationship, Kerry is attempting to reintroduce himself to Jewish voters. ''John Kerry has been at the forefront of the fight for Israel's security during his 19 years in the US Senate, it says. ''His pro-Israel voting record is second to none. Republicans suggested some political desperation was behind the document. full: http://www.boston.com/news/nation/articles/2004/07/02/kerry_takes_a_stronger_pro_israel_line/ -- The Marxism list: www.marxmail.org
Sowell
Sowell paints a picture of himself as having a rather shallow grasp of Marxism, if the narrow experience he describes really changed his mind. I'm pretty sure that there is no principle in Marxism that says that capitalists won't lay people off in response to minimum wage hikes, if only as a way to retaliate against the minimum wage hike. On analogy to something Marx says in _Value,Price and Proift_, Marxists might say there is no _natural_ law that says things must be that way, that rather than laying people off , the capitalists' profits could be reduced. Assuming that Sowell is smarter than the way he portrays himself, the inference would be that he had another motive than reasoning based on the empirical study he mentions to change from left to right. In other words, it's a bit idiotic or slick to conclude that the ideas Marx sets out in his many works are false because in Puerto Rico at a certain time ,with capitalism in place, a minimum wage hike was followed by a rise in unemployment. I say it might be slick if Sowell is wanting to move to the right for opportunist reasons as discussed earlier on this thread. He seems to be casting the federal ,wage-and-hour, regulatory agents and unions as practitioners of Marxism. How ridiculous is that ? And then having set up these straw Marxists, knocks them down and moves on to the right. Pleeeassse. At this point , I guess I would have to question what kind and whether Sowell was a Marxist. He sounds more like a Marxist. He seems to equate liberals and Marxists. When Sowell and the interviewer have the following exchange: What's it like for you on the right? I certainly have met racist Republicans. I ask this question for the Salon readership, many of whom are probably convinced that the Republican party is made up entirely of racists. Sowell: That's not true, of course. It's amazing, for example, how many people on the right have for years been up in Harlem spending their money and their time trying to help the kids, including one whose name would be very familiar to you. But he hasn't chosen to say it publicly, so I won't either. CB: One wonders whether that Republican's generosity will cause a rise in the unemployment rate , since back at the company where the Rep got the ducets to give to poor in Harlem, they might have to layoff some people to pay for the gifts being distributed to those Black ( no doubt) recipients of loving, non-racist charity. Charles -- From:David B. Shemano The wonders of the internet. Here is Sowell explaining his shift away from Marxism: http://www.salon.com/books/int/1999/11/10/sowell/index1.html David Shemano Interviewer: So you were a lefty once. Sowell: Through the decade of my 20s, I was a Marxist. What made you turn around? Sowell: What began to change my mind was working in the summer of 1960 as an intern in the federal government, studying minimum-wage laws in Puerto Rico. It was painfully clear that as they pushed up minimum wage levels, which they did at that time industry by industry, the employment levels were falling. I was studying the sugar industry. There were two explanations of what was happening. One was the conventional economic explanation: that as you pushed up the minimum-wage level, you were pricing people out of their jobs. The other one was that there were a series of hurricanes that had come through Puerto Rico, destroying sugar cane in the field, and therefore employment was lower. The unions preferred that explanation, and some of the liberals did, too. Did you discover something that surprised you? I spent the summer trying to figure out how to tell empirically which explanation was true. And one day I figured it out. I came to the office and announced that what we needed was data on the amount of sugar cane standing in the field before the hurricane moved through. I expected to be congratulated. And I saw these looks of shock on people's faces. As if, This idiot has stumbled on something that's going to blow the whole game! To me the question was: Is this law making poor people better off or worse off? That was the not the question the labor department was looking at. About one-third of their budget at that time came from administering the wages and hours laws. They may have chosen to believe that the law was benign, but they certainly weren't going to engage in any scrutiny of the law. What that said to me was that the incentives of government agencies are different than what the laws they were set up to administer were intended to accomplish. That may not sound very original in the James Buchanan era, when we know about Public Choice theory. But it was a revelation for me. You start thinking in those terms, and you no longer ask, what is the goal of that law, and do I agree with that goal? You start to ask instead: What are the incentives, what are the consequences of those incentives, and do I agree with those?
Re: two kinds of neoclassical analysis
Monoposony theory is standard NC fare, so I wouldn't credit Becker. I'd credit him for not censoring it out of his course, though. Becker's one of the worst. He pontificates on all sorts of things (the economics of crime, discrimination, the family, etc.) but never confronts the real world. jd -Original Message- From: PEN-L list on behalf of Shane Mage Sent: Thu 7/1/2004 9:02 PM To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Cc: Subject: Re: [PEN-L] two kinds of neoclassical analysis James Devine wrote: Shane Mage writes:Under rigorous neoclassical analysis it is easily demonstrated of course, rigorous neoclassical analysis is not the same as the Chicago-school neoclassical analysis embraced by Sowell. For the latter, rigorous refers to free market. I don't know about Sowell, but I have to give credit where credit is due. I learned the analytic demonstration I referred to in Gary Becker's Economic Theory class at Columbia U Grad School in 1959. Incidentally, all Becker's teaching consisted of reading from Milton Friedman's lecture notes--when he came to this point he had to proclaim that it had no real-world applications! Shane
Sowell
From: David B. Shemano Some times you guys are just insufferable -- must you always resort to caricature? Read the entire exchange!! The relevant factor wasn't that minimum wage laws (not raising wages) reduce employment. It was the reaction of the government bureaucrats to his suggestion of an empirical test to determine why employment was falling, which led him to philosophically shift from the importance of goals to incentives. ^ CB: Well, sufferin' suckatash, is he saying the government bureaucrats were Marxists ?
Re: Sowell
CB: Well, sufferin' suckatash, is he saying the government bureaucrats were Marxists ? Many of them are. (present tense) If you get to know them, of course. But, Charles... don't tell him that. Next thing you know, David Shemano might be against unions. (It is rumored that organized labor might have Marx-ish thinker therein.) Ken. -- Religion is a belief in a Supreme Being; Science is a belief in a Supreme Generalization. -- Charles H. Fort Wild Talents
Re: Mr. Cranky reviews Fahrenheit 9/11
It's very common to scaremonger people with oh no! what if the government of country X, a key source of resource Y, were to be replaced by one less friendly to the United States? This needs to be challenged. For this to be a real threat, the hostile government would have to be so hostile that they would rather destroy the resource in question, or leave it in the ground, rather than sell it on the world market. There's one world market for oil. Either they sell the oil, or they don't. If they sell it, it makes no difference whether they like the United States or not. It could be argued that Saudi Arabia could be more of a price hawk than it is, given its reserves. It's not clear how much difference this would really make, because although they do care about what the U.S. government thinks, they don't always bend to the U.S. on the price question and they are also motivated by other considerations in not wanting the price to go too high (e.g. not creating too big a motivation for substitution.) The difference in price caused by a plausibly more hawkish Saudi policy would not result in an energy crisis in this country, unless you think a slightly higher price for oil constitutes a crisis. At 08:47 AM 7/2/2004 -0400, you wrote: Ironically, I attended a lecture given by Paul Roberts recently. He wrote a book called The End of Oil. Though I haven't read the book, one of the points he made was that Saudi Arabia provides the United States with more oil than any other country. According to Yahoo, that's about 17.8%. Roberts explained that if the Saudi regime were replaced by a one hostile to the U.S., or if terrorists attacked Saudi Arabian oil facilities, either resulting in the elimination of Saudi Arabian oil from the U.S. economy, there would be an energy crisis in this country like we have never seen. So, whether we like it or not, it's in our country's best interest right now to be friendly to Saudi Arabia. -- Robert Naiman Senior Policy Analyst Venezuela Information Office 733 15th Street, NW Suite 932 Washington, DC 20005 t. 202-347-8081 x. 605 f. 202-347-8091 (*Please note new suite number and telephone*) ::: ::: ::: ::: ::: ::: ::: The Venezuela Information Office is dedicated to informing the American public about contemporary Venezuela. More information is available from the FARA office of the Department of Justice in Washington, DC.
Re: the f word
I forgot to mention that this short piece is from today's L.A. TIMES. -Original Message- From: PEN-L list on behalf of Devine, James Sent: Fri 7/2/2004 7:45 AM To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Cc: Subject: [PEN-L] the f word COMMENTARY VP Is Just Following Bleeping Tradition Take that, you hogshead of feculence! By Henry Beard Vice President Dick Cheney recently took a lot of heat after he used an epithet in a spirited exchange with Sen. Pat Leahy on the Senate floor, but the reaction was excessive. The occupants of the second-highest office in the land have been known for their salty language since the earliest days of the republic. Not long after being sworn in as the nation's first vice president, John Adams set the tone by responding to a senator's critical remark on the Treaty With the Wyandot by telling his fellow Federalist to ftuff it, you miferable, ftinking, ftupid F.O.B. The irascible patriot's running mate in the 1796 election, the normally genteel and refined Thomas Jefferson, continued the tradition of colorful invective by responding to campaign criticism from Caesar Rodney by suggesting to the eminent statesman from Delaware that he put it in that intimate nether locality where the sun, for all its refulgent luminosity, is not wont to shine. But it was left to America's most controversial vice president, Aaron Burr, to move the discourse up or down a notch, to the level it now occupies. In a colloquy with Alexander Hamilton, which may have precipitated their fateful duel, Burr responded to an accusation of bias from Hamilton by calling the distinguished New Yorker a hogshead of feculence in a four-peck firkin. Hamilton's riposte is said to have infuriated Burr. Sir, said the eloquent congressman, addressing the vice president on the floor of the Senate, it is my duty to inform you that I am composed of an elastic and rubbery substance, whilst you are constituted of a most mucilaginous glue; and those very imprecations which you see fit to hurl so intemperately at my person, rebound from my resilient anatomy and adhere indissolubly to you. Indeed, sir? said the flustered Burr. Well, I give you leave to buss my luscious crupper. To which Hamilton said, Sir, I have it on impeccable authority that your mother is shod in boots more suited to the pedal extremities of an Hessian mercenary. Considering the fact that their next and final exchange involved flintlock pistols at 20 paces, it should come as a relief that the only thing our current vice president is shooting off is his mouth. Henry Beard is the author of The Dick Cheney Code, a political parody that will be published during the Republican convention
The Greens commit suicide
Counterpunch, July 2, 2004 Suicide Right on the Stage The Demise of the Green Party By JEFFREY ST. CLAIR Ignorance of remote causes disposeth men to attribute all events to the causes immediate and instrumental: for these are all the causes they perceive. Thomas Hobbes, Leviathan (1651) So this is what alternative politics in America has degenerated to: Pat LaMarche, the newly minted vice-presidential candidate of the Green Party, has announced that she might not even vote for herself in the fall elections. The Greens, always a skittish bunch, are so traumatized by the specter of Bush and Cheney that they've offered up their own party-born out of rage at decades of betrayal by Democrats from Carter to Clinton-as a kind of private contractor for the benefit of those very same Democratic Party power brokers. Take a close look at what LaMarche, a flighty radio personality, had to say to say to her hometown newspaper in Maine only days after winning the nomination in Milwaukee. If the race is tight, I'll vote for Kerry, LaMarche said. I love my country. But we should ask them that, because if Dick Cheney loved his country, he wouldn't be voting for himself. This is the sound a political party makes as it commits suicide. LaMarche's running mate, David Cobb, is no better. The obscure lawyer from California is a dull and spiritless candidate, handled by some truly unsavory advisors (more on them in future columns). In action, he functions as a kind of bland political zombie from a Roger Corman flick, lumbering across the progressive landscape from Oregon to Wisconsin and back again, to the tune of his liberal political masters. The tune? The familiar refrain of Anybody But Bush. Bland, yes, but it worked, thanks to the likes of Medea Benjamin and the pompous Ted Glick. At their recent convention in Milwaukee, the Green Party, heavily infiltrated by Democratic Party operatives, rejected the ticket of Ralph Nader and Peter Camejo in favor of the sour campaign of Cobb and LaMarche. This won't harm Nader much. Indeed, it may liberate him. Free of the Green Party's encyclopedic platform, Nader can now distill the themes of his campaign and, unburdened by the concern of party building, Nader can, if he chooses (and he should), focus his efforts only on the battleground states, where Kerry must either confront Nader's issues or lose the election. It's as simple as that. The fatal damage in Milwaukee was done to the Green Party itself, where Cobb and his cohort sabotaged the aspirations of thousands Greens who had labored for more than a decade to build their party into a national political force, capable of winning a few seats here and there and, even more importantly, defeating Democrats who behave like Republicans (cf: Al Gore). The fruits of all that intense grassroots organizing were destroyed in an instant. But look: the rebuffed Nader continues to poll nearly 6 percent without the Green Party behind him. Yet, you can't discern Cobb's numbers with an electron microscope. Of course, the pungent irony is that's precisely the way Cobb and his backers want it. So, the Greens have succeeded in doing what seemed impossible only months ago: they've made the quixotic campaign of Dennis Kucinich, which still chugs along claiming micro-victory after micro-victory long after the close of the primaries (indeed there have been more victories after the polls closed than before), seem like a credible political endeavor. Of course, Cobb and Kucinich share the same objective function: to lure progressives away from Nader and back into the plantation house of the Democratic Party. But at least Kucinich remained a Democrat. Cobb and LaMarche were supposedly leaders of a political party that formed not in opposition to Republicans, but from outrage at the rightward and irredeemable drift of the Democratic Party. Apparently, the Green Party has not only lost its mind, it's lost its entire central nervous system, including the spine--especially its spine. They've surrendered to the politics of fear. And once the white flag is raised there's little chance of recovering the ground you've given up. Always nearly immobilized by an asphyxiating devotion to political correctness, the Green Party has now taken this obsession to its logical extreme by nominating a pair of political cretins at the top of its ticket. Under the false banner of the Cobb/Lamarche campaign, the Green Party is instructing its members to vote for its candidates only in states where their vote doesn't matter. This is the so-called safe state strategy. Safe? Safe for whom? Not for Afghani or Iraqi citizens. Not for US troops. Not for the detainees at Gitmo, Bagram or Abu Ghraib. Not for the spotted owl or steelworker. Not for the welfare mother or the 2 million souls rotting in American prisons. Not for the streams of Appalachia or the rainforests of Alaska. Not for the residents of Cancer Alley
Skewering Fahrenheit 9/11
Counterpunch, July 2, 2004 Moore's Fahrenheit 911 Mocking the Moral Crisis of Capitalism By DOUGLAS VALENTINE The question is not what goal is envisaged for the time being by this or that member of the proletariat, or even by the proletariat as a whole. The question is what is the proletariat and what course of action will it be forced historically to take in conformity with its own nature. Karl Marx, The Holy Family They wept! They roared with laughter! At inappropriate times they applauded, the politically correct, white middle class audience at the Academy Theatre in avante guard Northampton, MA, home of Smith College, and many fine restaurants. But, then again, Michael Moore was preaching to the choir, wasn't he? And that's the first of two big problems with Fahrenheit 911. The other big problem is this frivolous film's utter futility. Let's be realistic. Moore says the purpose of his incoherent mockumentary is to get Bush out of office which, in and of itself, t'is a consummation devoutly to be wish'd. But the political passing of George W. Bush has no meaning, for even if the public shuffles him off, it's still left with Long John Kerry, and the strangling coil of oppressive laws, secret decrees, and eternal imperialistic war (with its attendant corruption) that Bush has wrapped so tightly around America's neck. Ay, there's the rub. Kerry is just another money-grubbing, ass-kissing, bromide-mouthing politician, as Gail Sheehy might say, and he is as acceptable to the Establishment as Bush. With Kerry in office, the war on terror and the occupation of Iraq will continue apace, with perhaps a little more of the stolen loot going to our anxious allies waiting avariciously in the wings. In the larger scheme of things, Fahrenheit 911 changes nothing: Halliburton keeps its blood-soaked contracts, the Republicans control both houses of Congress, and no neo-conmen go to the gallows for stealing $20 billion in oil revenues from the Iraqi people (I'm curious to know how Christopher Hitchens rationalizes that?), or for the massive war crimes they have committed. Kerry's performance during the Iran-Contra investigation assures the rich political elite of a continuing cover-up. While watching the movie, I couldn't stop thinking about how Moore had evidence of the torture at Abu Ghraib, and didn't tell anyone! I wanted to stand up and scream: What's it all about, Mickey? Is it just for the moment, or the money, we live? Or is it the thrill of being catapulted into the stratosphere of American celebrity? I thought to myself: I should have seen it coming, when the nouveau riche glitterati gave the movie a twenty-minute standing ovation at Cannes. Anything that so pleases the perfect people in Porsches cannot, by definition, have any redeeming value. A monumental letdown, Fahrenheit 911 is a sick exploitation film that tells us nothing new about ourselves, and changes nothing in the world. Yes, the farcical clips of Bush making a fool of himself add comic relief to the melodramatic footage of Bush and his venal clique visiting vengeful tragedy upon the world, and profiting from it. And, to his credit, Moore courageously goes where no man in the corporate media has dared to go before: he loosely chronicles how the tragedy unfolded, while being extra careful not to mention Israel. Here's how the story goes: Bush steals the election, lets the main Saudi suspects in the 911 mass murder case escape because his daddy is in business with them, and then goes on a worldwide killing spree with the blessings of Major Generals Rather, Brokaw, and Jennings. You've heard it all before; any tenth grader from Freyburg, Maine could have told us that. To sum it up, Moore's swipes at Bush are irrelevant during the current crisis-du-jour of capitalism. How much time must we waste laughing at Bush, tripping over his tongue, before we grab our pitchforks and storm, as family-values proponent Dick Cheney might put it, the fucking White House? The answer, to judge from the reaction of the progressive and academically oriented audience I was sitting with, is over and over again. Which, again, is the saddest part of watching his film. I'm sure Moore didn't intend it, but his mockumentary is as much an indictment of his adoring, bourgeois fan club as it of the criminal Bush regime. Even the film's unstated premise that the government, on behalf of the rich, creates employment and a disposed, easily indoctrinated lower class that will happily fight and die in imperialistic adventures was put forth about a hundred and fifty years ago. Alas, to the earnest audience in Northampton, this subliminal message seemed like a revelation. So there we sat. When the clapping was over, there was no place to go (save one of those fine restaurants). Like Bush in Iraq, Fahrenheit 911 has no exit strategy. Nor was one ever intended. F-911, like the psychological warfare campaign we
Re: The Greens commit suicide
Respectfully, The Greens are proto-fascists. Environment over working class reality. Greens have nothing to do with class in terms of production. I think the class component was important once to certain people. Ken.
Re: Mr. Cranky reviews Fahrenheit 9/11
Or... we could point out that Saudi Arabia is not the only supplier to the US. It is one of the top four suppliers, the other three being Canada, Mexico, andVenezuela-- and look how friend the US govt is to the that government. The dependency of the US on oil imported from Saudi Arabai that is not the determining factor. It is the co-incidence of class interests that makes them as snug as two bugs in a rug. It is the lack of that co-incidence that makes the US hostile to Chavez. Class trumps resources everytime, property makes bedfellows less strange.
Marlon Brando
NY Times, July 2, 2004 Marlon Brando, Oscar Winning Actor, Is Dead at 80 By RICK LYMAN Marlon Brando, the rebellious prodigy who electrified a generation and forever transformed the art of screen acting, yet whose erratic career, obstinate eccentricities and recurring tragedies prevented him from fully realizing the promise of his early genius, has died. He was 80. He died at an undisclosed Los Angeles hospital Thursday, his lawyer, David J. Seeley, said today. The cause of death was being withheld. Young audiences who knew Mr. Brando as a tabloid curiosity, an overweight target for late-night comics with his own private island off Tahiti, might be surprised to learn that at one time, he was a truly revolutionary presence who strode through American popular culture like lightning on legs. full: http://www.nytimes.com/2004/07/02/movies/02CND-BRANDO.html === (The words below were spoken by Marlon Brando, as quoted in an article by Paul D. Zimmerman in the March 13, 1972 issue of Newsweek magazine.) We all carry in us the seeds of any character that we might play. We all entertain the full spectrum of human emotions. Acting in general is something most people think they're incapable of, but they do it from morning to night. Acting is the guy who returns from some out-of-town wingding with some bimbo and tells his wife, `Oh, I had a terrible time.' He's acting. In fact, the subtlest acting I've ever seen in my life is by ordinary people trying to show that they feel something that they don't or trying to hide something. It's something everybody learns at an early age. I think anybody can act. I never really understood why anybody would want to use actors. I guess they're used because they've become like household pets. Acting is as old as mankind. We even see it among gorillas, who know how to induce rage and whose physical postures very often determine the reaction of other animals. No, acting wasn't invented with the theatre. We know all too well how politicians are actors of the first order. That's been demonstrated by their behaviour as shown in the Pentagon papers. We should really call all politicians actors. They good directors that I've worked with will say I'm a good guy. The other fellows will say I'm a bad guy. I've had good years and bad years and good parts and bad parts and most of it's just crap. Acting has absolutely nothing to do with being successful. Success is some funny American phenomenon that takes place if you can be sold like Humphrey Bogart or Marlon Brando wristwatches. When you don't sell, people don't want to hire you and your stock goes up and down like it does on the stock market. I don't think the film (`The Godfather') is about the Mafia at all. I think it is about the corporate mind. In a way, the Mafia is the best example of capitalists we have. Don Corleone is just an ordinary American business magnate who is trying to do the best he can for the group he represents and for his family. I think the tactics the Don used aren't much different from those General Motors used against Ralph Nader. Unlike some corporate heads, Corleone has an unwavering loyalty for the people that have given support to him and his causes and he takes care of his own. He is a man of deep principle and the natural question arises as to how such a man can countenance the killing of people. But the American Government does the same thing for reasons that are not that different from those of the Mafia. And big business kills us all the time with cars and cigarettes and pollution and they do it knowingly. Christ Almighty, look at what we did in the name of democracy to the American Indian. We just excised him from the human race. We had 400 treaties with the Indians and we broke every one of them. It just makes me roar with laughter when I hear Nixon or Westmoreland or any of the rest of them shouting about our commitments to people and how we keep our word when we break it to the Indians every single day, led by this Senator Jackson from Washington State, perhaps the blackest figure in Indian history, who votes against giving the Indians back the lakes and fishing rights that treaties clearly entitled them to. Success has made my life more convenient because I've been able to make some dough and pay my debts and alimony and things like that. But it hasn't given me a sense of joining that great American experiment called democracy. I somehow always feel violated. Everybody in America and most of the world is a hooker of one type or another. I guess it behooves an expensive hooker not to cast aspersions on the cut-rate hookers, but this notion of exploitation is in our culture itself. We learn too quickly the way of hookerism. Personality is merchandised. Charm is merchandised. And you wake up every day to face the mercantile society. -- The Marxism list: www.marxmail.org
Re: Sowell
Mr. Sartesian writes: I am very careful before calling someone a hack. Somebody who makes purely ethereal distinctions in order to obscure the ugly reality in order to justify the continuation of that reality is a hack. Obviously nothing. This is not about simple common sense, as if there exists such a thing, price theories, or the democracy of free markets. It's about class. What makes a hack is someone denying, obscuring his or her class service, by proclaiming rationality, utility, objectivity. Would it shock you if I said J. S. Mill was a hack, and a big one? Friedman is a hack, and never hackier than when he criticized the IMF for its role in the Asian and post-Asian financial collapse of 97-98. Now I understand. Anybody who disagrees with your view of the world is a hack. Mill, Friedman, Sowell and Shemano -- all hacks. I can live with that. David Shemano
Re: Simon and Garfunkel
Prof. Devine writes: individual prices can't be explained or predicted using Marx's labor theory of value (more accurately, the law of value). Regular micro will do (though not the Chicago variant). It's a monopoly situation, where the sellers try to get as much of the consumer surplus as possible. That is, if they find someone who's willing to pay $200 to see Simon Garfunkel, they'll try to figure out how to get him or her to pay that much (using price discrimination). The sellers who benefit the most these days are usually Ticketmaster and ClearChannel rather than the performers. (The scalpers sometimes make a lot, but they also can lose a lot. It's not like Ticketmaster or ClearChannel, who have relatively stable incomes and relatively risk-free lives.) We were just discussing that capitalism is theft, appropriation of value, etc. Now, how did this play out at the concert? There were about 18,000 tickets sold. Let's conservatively say at an average price of $150, so there was a gross of $2,700,000 for one night's work. The Hollywood Bowl got a leasing fee. The crew was paid. Simon and Garfunkel either received a very hefty fee or a piece of the gate shared with the promoter. Now, from a Marxist perspective, what were the class relations at play? Whose labor created what value? Who exploited who? How would it work in PEN-Ltopia? Now why anyone would want to listen to Simon Garfunkel is beyond me. C'mon, you live in LA. Listening to anything at the Hollywood Bowl is worth it. Pack the basket, drink wine and stare at the stars --pure bliss. David Shemano
Re: Simon and Garfunkel
Councilor Shemano writes: We were just discussing that capitalism is theft, appropriation of value, etc. I wasn't in on that. Now, how did this play out at the concert? There were about 18,000 tickets sold. Let's conservatively say at an average price of $150, so there was a gross of $2,700,000 for one night's work. The Hollywood Bowl got a leasing fee. The crew was paid. Simon and Garfunkel either received a very hefty fee or a piece of the gate shared with the promoter. Now, from a Marxist perspective, what were the class relations at play? Whose labor created what value? Who exploited who? How would it work in PEN-Ltopia? The hired folks (the crew, etc.) probably produced more value than they received in wages, so Marxian exploitation was going on: surplus-value was likely produced (though I don't know the details of the case). SG are super-star members of the working class, so they probably got a chunk of the surplus-value on top of their wages. TicketMaster and the concert impresarios got the rest, I'd guess. I don't know who owns the Hollywood Bowl. If it's the city, then some of the surplus-value went to the (local part of the) state. The class relations part of the concert (exploitation, production of surplus-value) reflects the class relations of US capitalism as a whole. There was also some distribution of that s-v to SG, TicketMaster, the impresarios, and perhaps the city. In the ideal socialism, the concert would have been organized democratically, by a pact between a democratically-run city and a workers' cooperative running the Bowl. SG's company would also be a workers' cooperative (though I imagine that the performers would have more say than most in decisions). They wouldn't e earning super-star salaries. I wrote: Now why anyone would want to listen to Simon Garfunkel is beyond me. David: C'mon, you live in LA. Listening to anything at the Hollywood Bowl is worth it. Pack the basket, drink wine and stare at the stars --pure bliss. it's true that with chemical help, anything sounds good. Even John Ashcroft's singing? (the last is a reference to Fahrenheit 911. I can't say much about that flick that hasn't been said, except (as far as I was concerned) that it was preaching to the converted. I'd read too many reviews, so a lot of it wasn't surprising at all. The best part was the aforementioned singing and seeing Paul Wolfowitz comb his hair.) jd
Re: Sowell
Charles Brown writes: Sowell paints a picture of himself as having a rather shallow grasp of Marxism, if the narrow experience he describes really changed his mind. I'm pretty sure that there is no principle in Marxism that says that capitalists won't lay people off in response to minimum wage hikes, if only as a way to retaliate against the minimum wage hike. On analogy to something Marx says in _Value,Price and Proift_, Marxists might say there is no _natural_ law that says things must be that way, that rather than laying people off , the capitalists' profits could be reduced. I am going to say this one more time. Sowell does not say that he started to change his mind because he discovered that minimum wage laws cause unemployment. The whole discussion of minimum wage laws is irrelevant to the point. The point is that when Sowell suggested an empirical test to answer the question, he discovered that the bureaucrats were entirely uninterested in why, as a matter of fact, unemployment was rising, because the bureacracy had an institutional interest in assuming the usefullness of wage and price controls. At that point, it clicked in his mind that incentives, as opposed to goals, are critical in understanding the way the world works. David Shemano
Re: Simon and Garfunkel
David B. Shemano wrote: How would it work in PEN-Ltopia? Simon Garfunkel would have been sent to the glue factory long ago. Doug
Re: Sowell
As long as we understand each other. Anybody who obscures the real source of poverty and immiseration and then argues that better is worse is a hack. Don't know if that describes you personally. -Original Message- From: David B. Shemano [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Jul 2, 2004 1:19 PM To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: Re: [PEN-L] Sowell Mr. Sartesian writes: I am very careful before calling someone a hack. Somebody who makes purely ethereal distinctions in order to obscure the ugly reality in order to justify the continuation of that reality is a hack. Obviously nothing. This is not about simple common sense, as if there exists such a thing, price theories, or the democracy of free markets. It's about class. What makes a hack is someone denying, obscuring his or her class service, by proclaiming rationality, utility, objectivity. Would it shock you if I said J. S. Mill was a hack, and a big one? Friedman is a hack, and never hackier than when he criticized the IMF for its role in the Asian and post-Asian financial collapse of 97-98. Now I understand. Anybody who disagrees with your view of the world is a hack. Mill, Friedman, Sowell and Shemano -- all hacks. I can live with that. David Shemano
Re: Simon and Garfunkel
In a message dated 7/2/2004 12:40:40 PM Central Standard Time, [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: We were just discussing that capitalism is theft, appropriation of value, etc. Now, how did this play out at the concert? There were about 18,000 tickets sold. Let's conservatively say at an average price of $150, so there was a gross of $2,700,000 for one night's work. The Hollywood Bowl got a leasing fee. The crew was paid. Simon and Garfunkel either received a very hefty fee or a piece of the gate shared with the promoter. Now, from a Marxist perspective, what were the class relations at play? Whose labor created what value? Who exploited who? How would it work in PEN-Ltopia? Comment Capitalism in its evolution from the prrevious economic and social order is birthed drench in blood, murder and theft. Capitalism means the private ownership of capital as means of production. Means of production are not never abstract and what is being referenced is the growth and expansion of the industrial system with the bourgeois property relations within. The industrial system with the bourgeois property relations within or in short speak, capitalism evolved on the basis of the slave trade and the expansion of heavy manufacture which made "modern" ship construction possible and the "mass production" of fire arms, steel and all the ingredients of sea travel and conquest. The development of navigation and science in general is given an impetus. The transition in the primary form of wealth from land to gold gave further impetus to the conquest of the Americas and theft of gold from the native populations. The industrial revolution basically began with the landing of Europeans in the Americas and its infrastructure basis took shape on the basis of the slave trade, as opposed to an abstract trafficking in black skin. War generally involves theft, plunder, rape and conquest. After the bourgeois property relations hasstood on its feet and transformed the old world to that of the new . . . industrial society . . . huge segments of the population have been converted into proletarians. The exploitation of the workers refers to the expropriation of the products of the workers and paying them as an aggregate a sum that is less than the prodeucts will fetch in the market. This surplus product or rather this surplus value is appropraited by the individual owners of productive forces and he may dispose of this surplus anyway he chooses. A portion of this surplus value will find its way back into production as each individual owners fights to expand his share ofwhat is in fact, an expandingsocietal value. This competition between individual owners of capital produces a series of economic and social consequences. The form of individual property ownership does not stand still. Today in the American union we have an economic and social system that allows individuals in possession of capital -- money, to be regarded as capitalist or treated as capitalist on the basis of wealth. One does not have to individually own a factory or the local pizza joint to be treated and regarded as a capitalists. Inherited wealth works just fine. However, the reality of private ownership is expressed as a bourgeois property relation on the basis by which products are created, bought and sold, the basis of their distribution and the circuit logic of reproduction as it is driven by competition between capital. Soviet industrial socialism most certainly did not pay the workers the full value of their labor, or rather an amount in wages that was the equivalent of the products produces or there would be nothing left over for expansion of productive forces. Capitalism or the bourgeois property relations does not pay the workers the equivalent of the products produces or there would be nothing left over for expansion of productive forces. The fundamental economic and social logic difference between Soviet industrial socialism and capitalist America is that in the former, no amount of money possession count allow one to convert their money into ownership of means of production with the power to privately expropriate the products of workers and reinvest the surplus into privately own enterprises. The element of competition between capitals in the market was absent and this produces a different curve and character of production and reproduction. There was most certainly theft, bribery, swindling and cheating under industrial socialism. Nevertheless, the state was the property holder and enacted laws that prevented the individual from converting money possession into ownership of means of production. The issue becomes a little complicated because all value producing systems - industrial systems, have certain features in common no matter what the property relations. This is true as development took place on earth. There were concerts under Soviet socialism and probably
Re: Sowell
Mr. Sartesian writes: As long as we understand each other. Anybody who obscures the real source of poverty and immiseration and then argues that better is worse is a hack. Don't know if that describes you personally. It probably does. Do you mind if I use it for my epitaph? Here lays Shemano the hack, who obscured the real source of poverty and immiseration and then argued that the better is worse. I would insist on being buried next to Herbert Spencer and make Marx stare at it all day. David Shemano
Re: Saddam on TV
[EMAIL PROTECTED] 07/01/04 7:50 PM I saw Hussein on TV this morn Ken. most significant feature of hussein's appearance in court was u.s. flag in corner of room, media made big deal of u.s. military personnel 'retreating' after bringing him in but i've not seen anyone allude even in passing to u.s. flag... hussein's trial at this time (on u.s. tv, no less) is for bush campaign (yeah, yeah, i know the interim gov't wanted to expedite things, blah, blah, blah)... michael hoover -- Please Note: Due to Florida's very broad public records law, most written communications to or from College employees regarding College business are public records, available to the public and media upon request. Therefore, this e-mail communication may be subject to public disclosure.
Re: Kerry: no drivers licenses for illegals
Kerry: No licenses for illegal immigrants - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - By Nedra Pickler, salon.com July 1, 2004 | Pittsburgh -- Democrat John Kerry said he opposes state laws that give driver's licenses to illegal immigrants, a position that puts him at odds with the Hispanic activists he is courting in the presidential race. above issue led some affluent, white dem party voters in california to vote to recall gov. gray davis *and* to vote for steroid man to replace him... apparently, these folks are 'tolerant' re. legal immigration but draw line when it comes to recognizing that undocumented have any rights... michael hoover -- Please Note: Due to Florida's very broad public records law, most written communications to or from College employees regarding College business are public records, available to the public and media upon request. Therefore, this e-mail communication may be subject to public disclosure.
Re: election concern
[EMAIL PROTECTED] 06/30/04 9:27 PM Voting official seeks process for canceling Election Day over terrorism Friday, June 25, 2004 BY ERICA WERNER ASSOCIATED PRESS WASHINGTON - The government needs to establish guidelines for canceling or rescheduling elections if terrorists strike the United States again, says the chairman of a new federal voting commission. didn't nixon's people have contingency plan to cancel 72 elections in event of 'domestic disturbances'... michael hoover -- Please Note: Due to Florida's very broad public records law, most written communications to or from College employees regarding College business are public records, available to the public and media upon request. Therefore, this e-mail communication may be subject to public disclosure.
Re: Sowell
Be my guest, if you like it, if it fits, and it's how you want to be remembered. Don't much care for epitaphs myself, although I wouldn't mind being remembered as a skirt-chasing bastard. -Original Message- From: David B. Shemano [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Jul 2, 2004 3:31 PM To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: Re: [PEN-L] Sowell Mr. Sartesian writes: As long as we understand each other. Anybody who obscures the real source of poverty and immiseration and then argues that better is worse is a hack. Don't know if that describes you personally. It probably does. Do you mind if I use it for my epitaph? Here lays Shemano the hack, who obscured the real source of poverty and immiseration and then argued that the better is worse. I would insist on being buried next to Herbert Spencer and make Marx stare at it all day. David Shemano
Re: bushites and nader
[EMAIL PROTECTED] 06/30/04 9:25 PM That's nothing in comparison to Gore inspiring more than 200,000 registered Democrats in Florida to crossover and vote for George W. Bush in the last election. The Democrats should not worry about the tiny number of Democrats who vote for Nader. They should try to figure out how to get Democrats to stop voting in massive numbers for Republicans. re. florida dems voting for bush in 2000, believe i was first to make the point (among some others), in post-election articles in local 'orlando weekly' rag... about 87% of dem voters nationwide voted for gore, about 94% of rep voters nationwide voted for bush, reps have history of stronger voter loyalty... in florida, some of those who voted for bush have been voting rep for several decades, particularly true in panhandle where more than a few conservative 'dixiecrats' have maintained dem voter registration even though they consistently vote rep... fwiw: vice-prez position has not been a very good one for prez office seekers, only a few have been able to win election... of course, gore did win popular vote both nationwide and in florida, and he ran to left of dlc who whined about that being reason he 'lost'... ironically, in florida, gore lost if vote had been recounted *only* in 4 majority dem counties that his people cynically pushed for but he won if the entire state had been recounted...michael hoover -- Please Note: Due to Florida's very broad public records law, most written communications to or from College employees regarding College business are public records, available to the public and media upon request. Therefore, this e-mail communication may be subject to public disclosure.
Re: Sowell
But what one earth has deciding that incentives rather than goals are more important in determining the way the world works got anything to do with rejecting Marxism or showing that there is something lacking in Marxism.? Also, why is what Sowell notices inconsistent with considering goals to be more significant than incentives in understanding the world? If the goal of the bureaucracy is to promote its own power and influence, this goal would explain why there is an incentive to promote price and wage controls as these will advance the power and influence of the bureaucracy. Not only do his observations have zilch to do with Marxism, they do not show anything to support his thesis that incentives rather than goals are important in determining how things work. Cheers Ken Hanly David B. Shemano [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Friday, July 02, 2004 1:23 PM Subject: Re: Sowell retaliate against the minimum wage hike. On analogy to I am going to say this one more time. Sowell does not say that he started to change his mind because he discovered that minimum wage laws cause unemployment. The whole discussion of minimum wage laws is irrelevant to the point. The point is that when Sowell suggested an empirical test to answer the question, he discovered that the bureaucrats were entirely uninterested in why, as a matter of fact, unemployment was rising, because the bureacracy had an institutional interest in assuming the usefullness of wage and price controls. At that point, it clicked in his mind that incentives, as opposed to goals, are critical in understanding the way the world works. David Shemano
Re: Sowell
What Marxist would deny that incentives affect behavior? Didn't Old Whiskers say somewhere that an 800% return would draw forth capital from the moon? Doug
Re: the Democratic Leadership Council wing of the Green party
[EMAIL PROTECTED] 06/30/04 10:44 PM Dan Scanlan writes As a longtime Green activist with both a long term view and a quick knee I have got to disagree. Nader's campaigns for President have been strategic for long term betterment. Dan Scanlan thanks for informative, well-reasoned comments... however, color me a cynic as i've a hunch that the sum of the parts that you describe add up to less than suggested... i probably should have acknowledged contribution of nader's campaigns to increased number of statewide green parties (which may or may not mean much re. resonance with larger public)... green party will experience 'growing pains' if it is to have substantive longevity rather than being another in long line of minor parties that exist for years years in what amounts to 'virtual space'... perhaps cobb will do for green party what buchanan did for reform party, leaving little in his wake, but that won't happen if, in contrast to what gertrude stein said (unfairly, me thinks) about oakland, there's a there there... in any event, cobb will receive any less media coverage, public attention, and votes than did nader, and if there's anyone left afterwards, they can get down to the difficult job of building a party...michael hoover -- Please Note: Due to Florida's very broad public records law, most written communications to or from College employees regarding College business are public records, available to the public and media upon request. Therefore, this e-mail communication may be subject to public disclosure.
why CA gas prices fluctuate so much?
here's Hal Varian from yesterday's (7/1/04's) NY TIMES: The economics of the California gasoline market are described in a recent study by Severin Borenstein, James Bushnell and Matthew Lewis of the University of California Energy Institute (www.ucei.org/PDF /csemwp132.pdf). The basic problem comes down to supply and demand. California uses a special low-polluting blend of gasoline known as CaRFG (California reformulated gasoline), which is produced by only 13 in-state refineries. In 2003 these refineries produced about 15 billion gallons, a figure almost identical to the 14.8 billion gallons consumed in the state. [inelastic supply] California's production capacity is so closely matched to its demand that even sharp increases in price result in little additional production of gasoline. [inelastic demand] On the other side of the market, the demand for gasoline is also quite insensitive to price: a 10 percent increase in price typically reduces short-term demand by only 2 to 3 percent. The result is that even small fluctuations in the demand or supply of CaRFG can lead to large price swings. The market forces of supply and demand offer a reasonably convincing explanation as to why the California gasoline market is so volatile. But this may not be the entire story. [possible role for monopoly power] The market is controlled by seven large suppliers, ranging from ChevronTexaco, with a 27 percent share, down to Exxon Mobil, which supplies 8 percent of the market. With only seven suppliers, price manipulation may also be at work. When demand is insensitive to price and capacity is more or less fixed, sellers have mixed incentives. When prices rise, a refiner can make an immediate profit by selling more gasoline; if all suppliers sell more, the price is pushed back down. But if a few large companies withhold gasoline supplies, they can keep the price propped up for an extended period. The authors of the report are quick to point out that they have no evidence that this has occurred. Indeed, they argue that the basic economics of the industry make it difficult to find such evidence in price and quantity movements alone. However, they also point out that the temptation to manipulate price is certainly present, and a prudent response from Sacramento would be to enact policies that will reduce that temptation as much as possible. Does this make sense to the experts? Jim Devine [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://bellarmine.lmu.edu/~jdevine
Imaginary Sowell Dialogue
Sowell..I came to reject Marxism when I was studying affirmative action programmes for black entrepreneurs. Commentator: HOw is that?? Sowell..Well this black business owner benefitted from special loan rates and other govt. incentives. However, he still had to pay a minimum wage. He complained that these minimum wages were causing his profit to decline to where he would soon be bankrupt and that he needed an increase in loan rebates and other incentives.. Competitors claimed that the decline in his business was the result of his products being inferior. Commentator: Well what has this to do with Marx? Sowell. Well when I suggested that we do an empirical study to find out that if it was the inferiority of his proudcts that actually was causing the decline in his business profts or the minimum wage requirements he rejected this outright. He insisted that it was the level of incentives and government subsidies combined with the minimum wage requirements. Commentator : So how does this relate to Marx? Sowell. Well isnt it obvious. This guy has an incentive to explain things as lack of govt subsidies since he is dependent upon these affirmative action programme and the complaint about minimum wages is an excuse for more subsidies.. He wasnt interested in empirical truth or in finding which explanation was correct. Now Marx thought that it was the goal that was important but I now understood that Marx was wrong it is the incentives that are most important in understanding this black businessman's answer not his goal. Commentator. But wouldnt Marx say that the goal is maximising profit and since this man's profits are dependent upon govt. subsidies then this goal provides him with the incentive to explain his lack of profits a priori by suggesting that they are not large enough in the light of his being required to pay minimum wages? Sowell..Sorry. Im out of time. I have some hack wrirting to do for some guy named Shemano.
Re: Sowell
Who is Old Whiskers? I thought it was Uncle Whiskers. I've always suspected that Doug was a revisionist. At 04:50 PM 7/2/2004 -0400, you wrote: What Marxist would deny that incentives affect behavior? Didn't Old Whiskers say somewhere that an 800% return would draw forth capital from the moon? Doug -- Robert Naiman Senior Policy Analyst Venezuela Information Office 733 15th Street, NW Suite 932 Washington, DC 20005 t. 202-347-8081 x. 605 f. 202-347-8091 (*Please note new suite number and telephone*) ::: ::: ::: ::: ::: ::: ::: The Venezuela Information Office is dedicated to informing the American public about contemporary Venezuela. More information is available from the FARA office of the Department of Justice in Washington, DC.
Re: Sowell
Regarding Sowell's transformation, the problem here is one of email communication confusion and I have contributed. In the Salon interview, the question to Sowell was So you were a Lefty once. Sowell responded Through the decade of my 20s, I was a Marxist. The interviewer then asked What made you turn around? Sowell then gave the Puerto Rico story. Therefore, in context, Sowell is responding why he is no longer a Leftist, not why he is no longer a Marxist. This makes much more sense, because Sowell has written two books, The Vision of the Annointed and The Quest for Cosmic Justice, on the differences between Left and Right world views, and by Left he is not talking about Marxism as an analytical tool. A flavor of this is in the Salon interview: You make a provocative distinction in your new book between cosmic justice and traditional justice. Would you explain that distinction? Traditional justice, at least in the American tradition, involves treating people the same, holding them to the same standards and having them play by the same rules. Cosmic justice tries to make their prospects equal. One example: this brouhaha about people in the third world making clothing and running shoes -- Kathie Lee and all that. What's being said is: Isn't it awful that these people have to work for such little rewards, while those back here who are selling the shoes are making such fabulous amounts of money? And that's certainly true. But the question becomes, are you going to have everyone play by the same rules, or are you going to try to rectify the shortcomings, errors and failures of the entire cosmos? Because those things are wholly incompatible. If you're going to have people play by the same rules, that can be enforced with a minimum amount of interference with people's freedom. But if you're going to try to make the entire cosmos right and just, somebody has got to have an awful lot of power to impose what they think is right on an awful lot of other people. What we've seen, particularly in the 20th century, is that putting that much power in anyone's hands is enormously dangerous. It doesn't inevitably lead to terrible things. But there certainly is that danger. Later in the interview, there is this exchange: I notice that in New York liberal circles, people generally prefer arguing over ideals to discussing what might work. Being on the side of the angels. Being for affordable housing, for instance. But I don't know of anybody who wants housing to be unaffordable. Liberals tend to describe what they want in terms of goals rather than processes, and not to be overly concerned with the observable consequences. The observable consequences in New York are just scary. Regarding when Sowell turned away from Marxism as an analytical tool, I don't know. I do have his Marxism book and the conclusion of the book contains a criticism, but there is no discussion of when or why he shifted. David Shemano
Re: Sowell
I really thank you for this piece, David. It was more articulate than that which had come in quotes before. But Mr Sowell does still seem quite... you know... stupid. You actually quote this: Liberals tend to describe what they want in terms of goals rather than processes, and not to be overly concerned with the observable consequences. The observable consequences in New York are just scary. The man seems a bit thick. scary ... jesus. Regarding when Sowell turned away from Marxism as an analytical tool, I don't know. I do have his Marxism book and the conclusion of the book contains a criticism, but there is no discussion of when or why he shifted. I doubt he shifted. Ken. -- Capitalism is the extraordinary belief that the nastiest of men, for the nastiest of reasons, will somehow work for the benefit of us all. -- John Maynard Keynes
Re: Sowell
David, I mentioned before that Card and Krueger found just the opposite: that journals would not consider articles that suggested that min. wage laws do not cause unemployment. On Fri, Jul 02, 2004 at 11:23:44AM -0700, David B. Shemano wrote: Charles Brown writes: Sowell paints a picture of himself as having a rather shallow grasp of Marxism, if the narrow experience he describes really changed his mind. I'm pretty sure that there is no principle in Marxism that says that capitalists won't lay people off in response to minimum wage hikes, if only as a way to retaliate against the minimum wage hike. On analogy to something Marx says in _Value,Price and Proift_, Marxists might say there is no _natural_ law that says things must be that way, that rather than laying people off , the capitalists' profits could be reduced. I am going to say this one more time. Sowell does not say that he started to change his mind because he discovered that minimum wage laws cause unemployment. The whole discussion of minimum wage laws is irrelevant to the point. The point is that when Sowell suggested an empirical test to answer the question, he discovered that the bureaucrats were entirely uninterested in why, as a matter of fact, unemployment was rising, because the bureacracy had an institutional interest in assuming the usefullness of wage and price controls. At that point, it clicked in his mind that incentives, as opposed to goals, are critical in understanding the way the world works. David Shemano -- Michael Perelman Economics Department California State University Chico, CA 95929 Tel. 530-898-5321 E-Mail michael at ecst.csuchico.edu
Re: Sowell and the big lie.
In a message dated 7/2/2004 5:22:00 PM Central Standard Time, [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: Traditional justice, at least in the American tradition, involves treating people the same, holding them to the same standards and having them play by the same rules. Cosmic justice tries to make their prospects equal. One example: this brouhaha about people in the third world making clothing and running shoes -- Kathie Lee and all that. What's being said is: Isn't it awful that these people have to work for such little rewards, while those back here who are selling the shoes are making such fabulous amounts of money? And that's certainly true. Comment This entire discussion concerning Mr. Sowell has an unreal quality that originates in his biases and dishonest assessment with the actual life of American society. Traditional justice in America have never involved treating everyone the same because America was more than less a Southern country in its genesis and this involved slavery and before that the genocidal extermination of the Indian. Slavery distorted everything that America - since 1776, professed it believed in. "Traditional Justice" dates from when and what is the empirical data concerning incarceration rates for the same crimes amongst different population groups? There is a point at which intellectual discourse becomes meaningless if one is not willing to confront the truth of our history and current reality. Enough of Mr. Sowell . . . and his obvious lies. Traditional American justice has never been treating everyone the same . . . and this includes in the ideological realm. Enough of this nonsense concerning Mr. Sowell. I would of course challenge him to debate amongst working class citizens and the lowest economic stratum of society and union members and give him the spanking he deserves . . . especially on issues like gun control and education. On affirmative action he would be run out of the podium and forced to understand the real meaning of traditional American justice. The poor would most certainly string him up and I would not object. Melvin P.
Re: Simon and Garfunkel
Prof. Devine writes: The hired folks (the crew, etc.) probably produced more value than they received in wages, so Marxian exploitation was going on: surplus-value was likely produced (though I don't know the details of the case). SG are super-star members of the working class, so they probably got a chunk of the surplus-value on top of their wages. TicketMaster and the concert impresarios got the rest, I'd guess. I don't know who owns the Hollywood Bowl. If it's the city, then some of the surplus-value went to the (local part of the) state. The class relations part of the concert (exploitation, production of surplus-value) reflects the class relations of US capitalism as a whole. There was also some distribution of that s-v to SG, TicketMaster, the impresarios, and perhaps the city. In the ideal socialism, the concert would have been organized democratically, by a pact between a democratically-run city and a workers' cooperative running the Bowl. SG's company would also be a workers' cooperative (though I imagine that the performers would have more say than most in decisions). They wouldn't e earning super-star salaries. Humor me on this. I need some Marx 101. Let's imagine the crew does all their work. They set up the special sound and light systems, etc. However, Simon and Garfunkel get into a fight and refuse to perform, so the show is cancelled and all ticket are refunded. The next night, Simon and Garfunkel reunite. The crew, pissed off, refuses to do any work. So Simon and Garfunkel go on stage, Simon plugs his guitar into the existent sound system, and notwithstanding the lack of special lighting, a backup band, etc., the two of them perform for 18,000 people who pay $2.7 million. I am not sure what my questions are. In what sense is the crew producing surplus value? What value did they produce on night one? What exactly is the value that is being created? Isn't all the value, for all practical purposes, being created by Simon and Garfunkel? Isn't the crews' value purely contextual and unrelated to their labor per se? David Shemano
Re: Sowell
THIS WE MUST PARSE... -Original Message- From: David B. Shemano [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Jul 2, 2004 6:19 PM To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: Re: [PEN-L] Sowell Traditional justice, at least in the American tradition, involves treating people the same, holding them to the same standards and having them play by the same rules. ___ Here Shemano proves that Sowell is indeed a hack. Taking an advertising slogan, i.e. American tradition, fair play, equal standards, which in the real history of the US has had exactly nothing to do with the development of its capitalist economy, and designating it as the real history, the real freedom, the real economy. That's what hacks do. I always find Hegel's definition of liberalism A philosopy of the abstract that capitulates before the world of the concrete so appropriate for dealing with hack theories, although I might change it to read ...that covers up for the world of the concrete. Can anyone looking at the real history of capitalist economic development find an American tradition that coincides with Sowell's hackery? Where is the fair play? In Slavery? In theeExtermination of the indigenous peoples? The NYC anti-draft riots? In the fraud and brutal exploitation accompanying the development of the railroads. How about Plessy v. Ferguson? How about in the assaults upon workers, organized privately and through the state against workers trying to organize for better wages? Where is the equal treatment? In the discrimination in employment. In strike-breaking? . Cosmic justice tries to make their prospects equal. One example: this brouhaha about people in the third world making clothing and running shoes -- Kathie Lee and all that. What's being said is: Isn't it awful that these people have to work for such little rewards, while those back here who are selling the shoes are making such fabulous amounts of money? And that's certainly true. But the question becomes, are you going to have everyone play by the same rules, or are you going to try to rectify the shortcomings, errors and failures of the entire cosmos? Because those things are wholly incompatible. If you're going to have people play by the same rules, that can be enforced with a minimum amount of interference with people's freedom. But if you're going to try to make the entire cosmos right and just, somebody has got to have an awful lot of power to impose what they think is right on an awful lot of other people. What we've seen, particularly in the 20th century, is that putting that much power in anyone's hands is enormously dangerous. It doesn't inevitably lead to terrible things. But there certainly is that danger. ___ Once again Shemano shows that Sowell is a hack, obscuring reality by pretending to apply simple rational analysis and then inflating the simplistic analysis as profound historical insight. Everybody play by the same rules vs. enormous power? Exactly what and how would you get any and everyone to play by the same rules when the rules themselves are a function of enormous power. Has Sowell ever seen a maquilladora? Or a clothing factory? Has he ever seen workers in food processing plants, slaughtering, preparing chickens? You cannot get the owners of these plants to abide by even a minimum set of rules regarding health or safety, or even fire codes, much less rules that might be fair. And putting that much power in anyone's hands is enormously dangerous? We are not talking about one person here, again Sowell distorts, and I would say deliberately, the social organization of classes, with individual corruption, arbitrariness, etc. as if those qualities were innate dangers of the human being and not historical expressions of the needs of property and class. __ Later in the interview, there is this exchange: I notice that in New York liberal circles, people generally prefer arguing over ideals to discussing what might work. Being on the side of the angels. Being for affordable housing, for instance. But I don't know of anybody who wants housing to be unaffordable. Liberals tend to describe what they want in terms of goals rather than processes, and not to be overly concerned with the observable consequences. The observable consequences in New York are just scary. _ More hackery. Creating the mythical New York liberal circle, (he left out Jewish) as the well-meaning but ultimately destructive engine of anti-freedom. What a load. What liberals? Doing what? How does this account for the social changes in housing stock, the real deterioration in living standards after 1973; the explosion in single parent working women families below the poverty line after 1979. This faux erudition pretending to be pithy insight is nothing but the William F. Buckley short course in pseudo analysis. And for those of you
Re: Simon and Garfunkel
David the troller writes: Humor me on this. I need some Marx 101. Let's imagine the crew does all their work. They set up the special sound and light systems, etc. However, Simon and Garfunkel get into a fight and refuse to perform, so the show is cancelled and all ticket are refunded. The next night, Simon and Garfunkel reunite. The crew, pissed off, refuses to do any work. So Simon and Garfunkel go on stage, Simon plugs his guitar into the existent sound system, and notwithstanding the lack of special lighting, a backup band, etc., the two of them perform for 18,000 people who pay $2.7 million. Don't be silly. You are supposedly a lawyer. The refusal to perform negated the contract. But not the contractual duties owed to those expected to aid in the performance. The pathetic spat between the actual performers (in your little hypothetical) does not negate what the crew was due. And it is hardly a narrowed surplus value concept. Unlike some on here, I like the law. And the law does not negate equitable results. That has nothing to do with politics. (Or doesn't have to.) I also prefer Doctor Whiskers (and I reject those revisionists who have spoken on that subject just recently). Ken. -- You're not your job. You're not how much money you have in the bank. You're not the car you drive. You're not the contents of your wallet. You're not your fucking khakis. You're the all-singing, all-dancing crap of the world. -- Tyler Durden
Re: Simon and Garfunkel
Please, no personal attacks. If David were a troller, he could have been very disruptive here. He has not been. I suspect that the thread has exhausted itself. On Fri, Jul 02, 2004 at 07:12:22PM -0400, Kenneth Campbell wrote: David the troller writes: -- Michael Perelman Economics Department California State University Chico, CA 95929 Tel. 530-898-5321 E-Mail michael at ecst.csuchico.edu
Re: Simon and Garfunkel
Michael writes: Please, no personal attacks. If David were a troller, he could have been very disruptive here. He has not been. I honestly did not write David the troller in a negative way. Honestly! I thought he was just here to be the straw that stirs the drink that we all prefer. I think he's refreshing. Sorry for any excess on that subject to both of you. Stir away! :) Ken. -- Never let the future disturb you. You will meet it, if you have to, with the same weapons of reason which today arm you against the present. -- Marcus Aurelius
Re: Sowell and the big lie.
Melvin P. writes: On affirmative action he would be run out of the podium and forced to understand the real meaning of traditional American justice. The poor would most certainly string him up and I would not object. As Godwin's Law approaches, I am done with the thread. David Shemano
Re: why CA gas prices fluctuate so much?
I am not an expert, but I would think that the decision of Shell to shut down the Bakersfield refinery sounds quite similar to what our friends at Enron did during the energy crisis here. Over to Gene Coyle now. Devine, James wrote: here's Hal Varian from yesterday's (7/1/04's) NY TIMES: The economics of the California gasoline market are described in a recent study by Severin Borenstein, James Bushnell and Matthew Lewis of the University of California Energy Institute (www.ucei.org/PDF /csemwp132.pdf). The basic problem comes down to supply and demand. California uses a special low-polluting blend of gasoline known as CaRFG (California reformulated gasoline), which is produced by only 13 in-state refineries. In 2003 these refineries produced about 15 billion gallons, a figure almost identical to the 14.8 billion gallons consumed in the state. [inelastic supply] California's production capacity is so closely matched to its demand that even sharp increases in price result in little additional production of gasoline. [inelastic demand] On the other side of the market, the demand for gasoline is also quite insensitive to price: a 10 percent increase in price typically reduces short-term demand by only 2 to 3 percent. The result is that even small fluctuations in the demand or supply of CaRFG can lead to large price swings. The market forces of supply and demand offer a reasonably convincing explanation as to why the California gasoline market is so volatile. But this may not be the entire story. [possible role for monopoly power] The market is controlled by seven large suppliers, ranging from ChevronTexaco, with a 27 percent share, down to Exxon Mobil, which supplies 8 percent of the market. With only seven suppliers, price manipulation may also be at work. When demand is insensitive to price and capacity is more or less fixed, sellers have mixed incentives. When prices rise, a refiner can make an immediate profit by selling more gasoline; if all suppliers sell more, the price is pushed back down. But if a few large companies withhold gasoline supplies, they can keep the price propped up for an extended period. The authors of the report are quick to point out that they have no evidence that this has occurred. Indeed, they argue that the basic economics of the industry make it difficult to find such evidence in price and quantity movements alone. However, they also point out that the temptation to manipulate price is certainly present, and a prudent response from Sacramento would be to enact policies that will reduce that temptation as much as possible. Does this make sense to the experts? Jim Devine [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://bellarmine.lmu.edu/~jdevine -- Michael Perelman Economics Department California State University michael at ecst.csuchico.edu Chico, CA 95929 530-898-5321 fax 530-898-5901
Re: the Democratic Leadership Council wing of the Green party
Title: Re: the Democratic Leadership Council wing of the Gre Michael Hoover writes... however, color me a cynic as i've a hunch that the sum of the parts that you describe add up to less than suggested... green party will experience 'growing pains' if it is to have substantive longevity ,,, perhaps cobb will do for green party what buchanan did for reform party, in any event, cobb will receive any less media coverage, public attention, and votes than did nader, and if there's anyone left afterwards, they can get down to the difficult job of building a party... Michael, thanks for the discussion. Some comments... I suspect the Green Party will be irrelevant in this election cycle and may not rebound from its failure to follow the more dangerous road, i.e., asserting what it believes (expressed fairly well by Nader, Camejo, Zinn and others) rather than emotive trembling in the fear of a second Bush administration. Numerous Greens jumped ship in the 2000 election and voted Democratic at the last minute. What a waste. Even though Gore won, neither he nor any Democratic Senator protested the count. They elected Bush and then fostered every one of his programs, regardless of how nasty. When the Green Party voted Cobb as its banner carrier, it basically endorsed Kerry. (Nader, by the way, wasn't seeking the nomination of the Green Party, but its endorsement. They gave it to Kerry.) Nader is a very intelligent person, a master mega-politician and, I believe, an exemplary citizen. Damn! He gave up sex for civic service. Here's a peephole through which I gather some of my current analysis: While many criticise Michael Moore's movie either for or against based on its content, Nader wrote a letter to Moore asking him why he abandoned his buddies when he premiered the film. Moore had surrounded himself with Democratic honchos. Nader chastised him for allowing the existence of his film to give credence to Democrats by association. What happened, Nader wrote (paraphrasing from memory), to your battle against the Democrats who sent the Flint MI jobs out of country, pushed through NAFTA and GATT, bombed Sudan, Afghanistan and Iraq, ended welfare as we know it, and protected the interests of the wealthy alongside the shenanigans of the Republicans? Why didn't you invite your friends, the people who stood with you when you were unfairly fired from Mother Jones? When you were attacked for speaking out at the Oscars? Dude, Nader wrote*, where's my buddy? I suspect Moore's joined the celebrityocracy. My point here is that Nader is more apt to instigate a course correction than take over the ship. That's exactly what he did with the Green Party. I predict that a new party will emerge from the remnants of the Green Party, it will be underground, it will be resistant and it will not be given to lengthy intellectual discussions or playing house with electoral politics. On Nader's site, a major push is for impeachment of the current Resident. in Chief. In my mind this is the only viable defensive action available to the American people at the moment. When Bush gets his second term, even that avenue will be gone -- in his mind (which hears God telling him to go to war), Bush will have been given permission to do whatever he wants. And his is the closest stuck-up finger to nuclear holocaust. As long as we're still talkingwhere I personally differ with Nader is that I don't think the American electoral process is redeemable, whereas he seems to think so. I believe we need a new constitution (if we survive the peril), one that is truly based on equal rights for all and that takes into account high speed mass communication, so that the rule is one media outlet and one vote per person. Let every voice, not just some, be heard loud and clear. Dan Scanlan * http://www.votenader.org/why_ralph/index.php?cid=54
Re: Simon and Garfunkel
Kenneth Campbell writes: Don't be silly. You are supposedly a lawyer. The refusal to perform negated the contract. But not the contractual duties owed to those expected to aid in the performance. The pathetic spat between the actual performers (in your little hypothetical) does not negate what the crew was due. And it is hardly a narrowed surplus value concept. Unlike some on here, I like the law. And the law does not negate equitable results. That has nothing to do with politics. (Or doesn't have to. You misunderstand my questions. I am not asking whether the crew should be paid. I am trying to understand the labor theory of value/surplus value/exploitation in context. David Shemano
Re: Simon and Garfunkel
David the non-trolled writes: You misunderstand my questions. I am not asking whether the crew should be paid. I am trying to understand the labor theory of value/surplus value/exploitation in context. I don't think I misunderstand your question. I was talking about the value of the crew. But please inform me of my errors, I am open to instruction, at any age. The labor/value thing is larger than micro economy, no? When you squish it into some smaller question, it is easier to make fun of the larger philosophical point? No? Like you are trying to do with Jim? At that point, that is where I was making comment about the law. Ken. -- What is the argument on the other side? Only this, that no case has been found in which it has been done before. That argument does not appeal to me in the least. If we never do anything which has not been done before, we shall never get anywhere. The law will stand whilst the rest of the world goes on; and that will be bad for both. -- Lord Denning Packer v. Packer [1953] 2 AER l27
Re: Simon and Garfunkel
In a message dated 7/2/2004 5:54:30 PM Central Standard Time, [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: Let's imagine the crew does all their work. They set up the special sound and light systems, etc. However, Simon and Garfunkel get into a fight and refuse to perform, so the show is cancelled and all ticket are refunded. The next night, Simon and Garfunkel reunite. The crew, pissed off, refuses to do any work. So Simon and Garfunkel go on stage, Simon plugs his guitar into the existent sound system, and notwithstanding the lack of special lighting, a backup band, etc., the two of them perform for 18,000 people who pay $2.7 million.I am not sure what my questions are. In what sense is the crew producing surplus value? What value did they produce on night one? What exactly is the value that is being created? Isn't all the value, for all practical purposes, being created by Simon and Garfunkel? Isn't the crews' value purely contextual and unrelated to their labor per se? Comment I assume your question is honest. "So Simon and Garfunkel go on stage, Simon plugs his guitar into the existent sound system, . . .the two of them perform . . ." The existing sound system is a given state of technology and labor that exist as the infrastructure of the arena or there would be nothing to plug into. We can say that this preexisting infrastructure is so much dead labor . . . but it once was the work and effort of real human beings and a real technology. This dead labor - the infrastructure that Simon and Garfunkel are plugging into has been factored into the rent of the stadium. Dead labor is excited to life by living labor in the process that makes money. Even without special lighting they are standing on a stage - platform, that is the result of human labor and technology and the arena has seats that is the result of human labor and technology and represents what might be called "constant capital" or represents the results of labor that can be called "dead labor." This dead labor is excited to life by human activity or the people paying their money, sitting in the seats, the artists plugging into the sound system and entertaining. What is so difficult about this? Someone is running the lighting so that the people can see and they are going to be paid. Someone is selling hot dogs and beer and the people performing the administration of these things are being paid wages. The people who clean the bathrooms are being paid wages that comes out of the yearly revenues of the arena. The same applies to the parking attendants, the guards and folks punching your ticket and the ushers escorting one to their seats. This is not Marxism but elementary common economic sense. There is an unreal element to this entire conversation and far to many individually conceived ideas are attributed to Marx. Simon and Garfunkel get paid and their pay may come from a sponsor - Chrysler, and a thousand tickets as a block may have been purchased by the Miller Brewing Company or a dozen different scenarios. When Committeeman I would always run into convert ticket from vendors, hats, ink pens, calendars and an assortment of things that represented profit or surplus value to the producer. The system or economy is a totality and not one group of guys that may or may not work on any given Sunday. There is a combination of dead and living labor in everything . . . and one can always loss in the market and go out of business. Should we not think things out a little more rather than point an accusing finger at Marx . . . especially if one has not gotten further than Marxism 101? The thing I enjoyed about negotiating with the company at the upper levels is that they tend to be honest about cost and wages. They are very clear about dead labor - machinery and buildings, or fixed cost or constant capital. The categories swing back and forth because individuals want to call advertisement a fixed cost because it is indispensable to selling products. There are conceptional difference between real life definitions and Marx approach. Hell, if you call advertisement a fixed cost I am not going to argue with you from across the table. The finance guys are always screaming about cost because that is their jobs to stop the spending before the bottom of the bell curve becomes reality. In the auto industry more than half of management hate the finance guys and their perpetual cost cutting. Simon and Garfunkel plugged their equipment into something that already existed as part of the infrastructure and its cost is already factored into rent. However, all this dead shit takes real people . . . living human beings and living labor to exist to life as production of surplus value. ] Then you can go out of business. Melvin P.
Re: Simon and Garfunkel
Kenneth Campbell writes: I don't think I misunderstand your question. I was talking about the value of the crew. But please inform me of my errors, I am open to instruction, at any age. The labor/value thing is larger than micro economy, no? When you squish it into some smaller question, it is easier to make fun of the larger philosophical point? No? Like you are trying to do with Jim? At that point, that is where I was making comment about the law. I am not trying to make fun. I am trying to understand. For better or worse, I am a reductionist, as some of you may remember from a previous exchange. Therefore, I insist on narrowing issues to their most basic. As I understand the Marxist view at its most reductionist, if Simon and Garfunkel hire a electricial and pay him X, the actual value created by the electrician is more than X. What I am trying to understand is what was the value created by the electrician? If he does the work, but the show is cancelled and there is no revenue, was value created? If the same revenue is generated regardless of whether the electrician does the work, what is his contribution to the value? Now, if you want to say that the labor theory of value is useless analytically at the micro level, go ahead, but my impression is that would not be Marxian orthodoxy. David Shemano
Re: Sowell and the big lie.
In a message dated 7/2/2004 6:42:37 PM Central Standard Time, [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: As Godwin's Law approaches, I am done with the thread. David Shemano Comment I understand . . . but there are times I speak as an insurgent partisan. I would debate Mr. Sowell in front of the people who actually have elected me to offices . . . offices . . . on things like the military budget. I am not a liberal or leftist. I am a communist worker who is not ashamed of the path I traveled from Christ communism to modern communism. And more than capable of presenting coherent arguments to masses. I do not advocate dividing one fish amongst 40 people. I do believe and can convince the diverse peoples of American that the billions of dollars cycling through the circuit of speculation could be better spend on real things like health care, hot dogsand child care for the majority of the workers who happen to be women. If you cannot spend a billion dollars then I am not advocating taking anything from you but an abstraction that is wealth that means nothing to the multitude. I am not interested in expropriating ones rather large mansion . . . because I refuse to be responsible for the administrative task of a mansion. You hire a cook and have to feed him to cook the food that feeds you. And then the cook have to feed his or her family and the cycle deepens. You slowly discover that the people you have hired are actually making you work to pay them. OK! There is some deeper logic and morality to society that does not always match our noble aspirations and ideological proclamations. I'll eat Mr. Sowell alive and my brother would bury him for sure. Peace Melvin P.
Re: Simon and Garfunkel
David wrote: I am a reductionist, as some of you may remember from a previous exchange. Therefore, I insist on narrowing issues to their most basic. You write: I insist on narrowing issues to their most basic. I do, too, sir. Survival. Ability to raise kids. Dignity. My dad was working class for his whole life. And that is as reductionist as I can imagine. (And the most basic is what Karl and Fred talked about. Read them. Reductionists both.) The issues that made Dad keep his job, as told to me on my mother's knee, was We can't leave the union. She said it many times. Is that reductionist? Or were they stupid? Like Karl and Fred? grin Ken. -- If Jesus had been killed twenty years ago, Catholic school children would be wearing little electric chairs around their necks instead of crosses. -- Lenny Bruce
Re: Sowell and the big lie.
I'll eat Mr. Sowell alive and my brother would bury him for sure. Peace Melvin __ Cue the brother: Brother Melvin puts somefire to the feet of theideological tapdancers of capital, and the dancershead towards the emergency exits, protesting the harsh language. Meanwhile, fire or no fire, their, the tap dancers', feet stink. But the facts ofmatters are that my brother Melvin isteaching a lesson-- that rhetoric obscures reality, and the reality is class struggle. The purveyors of the rhetoric of free markets, greed and god,have not themselves shied away fromapologizing, excusing, thephysical attacks upon the poorer members of society by the agents of the wealthier-- agents such as the police, the military, thesecret and not so secret night-riders. "It's unfortunate," is offered,which means, aswith everything else offered by the ideological soft shoe/hard bootmen, "It's really the fault of those uncouth, unwashed,demanding poor, who just won't accept that this is all for their own benefit. But we must preserve order." You tell me if you haven't heard that, or its equivalent, coming out of the mouths of Gilderites, Randists, Friedmaniacs, Von Miserabilists. What is the reality of capitalat its critical moments? -- Attacks on the workers. Thatcher dismantling British Steel; shuttering the coal mines.The dirty war in Argentina, withDaimler Benz auto plants used asghost prisons; with Fordpointing out "troublemakers." But no, some would ratherdiscuss hypothetical revenue sharing in Simon and Garfunkel concerts without realizing that the expropriation begins not in the work of the roadies, but the very production of the amps, the guitars, the costumes, the lights, that make the social, commerical, presentation of such aconcert possible. Give me Brother Melvin and his fire in the belly every time. And I'll bring the shovel. - Original Message - From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Friday, July 02, 2004 5:32 PM Subject: Re: [PEN-L] Sowell and the big lie. In a message dated 7/2/2004 6:42:37 PM Central Standard Time, [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: As Godwin's Law approaches, I am done with the thread. David Shemano Comment I understand . . . but there are times I speak as an insurgent partisan. I would debate Mr. Sowell in front of the people who actually have elected me to offices . . . offices . . . on things like the military budget. I am not a liberal or leftist. I am a communist worker who is not ashamed of the path I traveled from Christ communism to modern communism. And more than capable of presenting coherent arguments to masses. I do not advocate dividing one fish amongst 40 people. I do believe and can convince the diverse peoples of American that the billions of dollars cycling through the circuit of speculation could be better spend on real things like health care, hot dogsand child care for the majority of the workers who happen to be women. If you cannot spend a billion dollars then I am not advocating taking anything from you but an abstraction that is wealth that means nothing to the multitude. I am not interested in expropriating ones rather large mansion . . . because I refuse to be responsible for the administrative task of a mansion. You hire a cook and have to feed him to cook the food that feeds you. And then the cook have to feed his or her family and the cycle deepens. You slowly discover that the people you have hired are actually making you work to pay them. OK! There is some deeper logic and morality to society that does not always match our noble aspirations and ideological proclamations. I'll eat Mr. Sowell alive and my brother would bury him for sure. Peace Melvin P.
Re: why CA gas prices fluctuate so much?
Borenstein and Bushnell still insist that the market works for electric power! Everything, for them, comes down to supply and demand. Remarkably, in 2004 (below) they seem to have discovered that withholding capacity can prop up high gasoline prices. This is a real breakthrough for the UC Energy Institute! Wow, I have to phone a few friends to celebrate this dawning! Gene Coyle Devine, James wrote: here's Hal Varian from yesterday's (7/1/04's) NY TIMES: The economics of the California gasoline market are described in a recent study by Severin Borenstein, James Bushnell and Matthew Lewis of the University of California Energy Institute (www.ucei.org/PDF /csemwp132.pdf). The basic problem comes down to supply and demand. California uses a special low-polluting blend of gasoline known as CaRFG (California reformulated gasoline), which is produced by only 13 in-state refineries. In 2003 these refineries produced about 15 billion gallons, a figure almost identical to the 14.8 billion gallons consumed in the state. [inelastic supply] California's production capacity is so closely matched to its demand that even sharp increases in price result in little additional production of gasoline. [inelastic demand] On the other side of the market, the demand for gasoline is also quite insensitive to price: a 10 percent increase in price typically reduces short-term demand by only 2 to 3 percent. The result is that even small fluctuations in the demand or supply of CaRFG can lead to large price swings. The market forces of supply and demand offer a reasonably convincing explanation as to why the California gasoline market is so volatile. But this may not be the entire story. [possible role for monopoly power] The market is controlled by seven large suppliers, ranging from ChevronTexaco, with a 27 percent share, down to Exxon Mobil, which supplies 8 percent of the market. With only seven suppliers, price manipulation may also be at work. When demand is insensitive to price and capacity is more or less fixed, sellers have mixed incentives. When prices rise, a refiner can make an immediate profit by selling more gasoline; if all suppliers sell more, the price is pushed back down. But if a few large companies withhold gasoline supplies, they can keep the price propped up for an extended period. The authors of the report are quick to point out that they have no evidence that this has occurred. Indeed, they argue that the basic economics of the industry make it difficult to find such evidence in price and quantity movements alone. However, they also point out that the temptation to manipulate price is certainly present, and a prudent response from Sacramento would be to enact policies that will reduce that temptation as much as possible. Does this make sense to the experts? Jim Devine [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://bellarmine.lmu.edu/~jdevine
Kerry, Camejo, Immigrants: Licencias y Legalizacion para Todos
Licencias y Legalizacion para Todos (regarding Kerry, Camejo, Immigrants on the driver's license question): http://montages.blogspot.com/2004/07/licencias-y-legalizacion-para-todos.html -- Yoshie * Critical Montages: http://montages.blogspot.com/ * Bring Them Home Now! http://www.bringthemhomenow.org/ * Calendars of Events in Columbus: http://sif.org.ohio-state.edu/calendar.html, http://www.freepress.org/calendar.php, http://www.cpanews.org/ * Student International Forum: http://sif.org.ohio-state.edu/ * Committee for Justice in Palestine: http://www.osudivest.org/ * Al-Awda-Ohio: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Al-Awda-Ohio * Solidarity: http://www.solidarity-us.org/
