[PEN-L:875] RE: family/religion/economics
Max asked, What in tarnation is "the myth of the state"? MBS Another way of saying "the myth of the state" would be the "story of the origin of the state". It isn't necessarily a lie or a falsehood but it is necessarily a fiction. It is a fiction because it tells about something that occured before history. In the case of Genesis, the myth is that God kept making special arrangements with a particular line of descendents, the patriarchs, which became incrementally more state-like in their scope. Roughly one could schematicize the evolution presented in the myth as - revelation of a divine covenant with Noah's descendents (the rainbow) - insistence on total obedience to the law (Abraham's willingness to sacrifice Isaac) - granting of a territorial domain (Canaan to Isaac) - assumption of an administrative/economic function (Joseph's 'finance ministry' to Pharoah) So there you go: a constitution, law, territory and administration. Looks like a state, quacks like a state, must be a state. Now this myth is pretty primitive as regards to its explanatory coherence or its grounding in empirical evidence. But at the same time it is extremely powerful as a transmiter of "revealed truth". That's simply to say that the story has been told and retold for generations -- first as oral narrative, second as 'scripture' and third as literary and popular source. This myth of the state, by the way, is particularly salient for the U.S. where the biblical imagery has been associated with everything from the pilgrims landing at plymouth rock to the westward expansion (and genocide of the aboriginals [canaanites?]) to manifest destiny. You can take the boy out of the country, but you can't take the country out of the boy. And you can take prayers out of the schools, but you can't take the schools out of the prayers. Regards, Tom Walker ^^^ #408 1035 Pacific St. Vancouver, B.C. V6E 4G7 [EMAIL PROTECTED] (604) 669-3286 ^^^ The TimeWork Web: http://www.vcn.bc.ca/timework/
[PEN-L:882] Re: crisis is over?
Jim Devine wrote, Doug will point out (correctly) that there's a difference between the economy slowing (or going into a recession) and a crisis There's also a difference between normal stability and being unusually vulnerable to crisis. It doesn't snow every day in winter, either, but it's a good sight more likely to snow in winter than in summer. We don't say, "It's not snowing today so winter must be over." Either way, we should expect consumption to slow in the future, since the stock market is in the doldrums and as consumers adjust their plans to reality. The reason for the negative savings is less important than the fact that it suggests an unsustainable level of consumer spending. Either income has to go up (unlikely, considering falling corporate profits) spending has to go down (more likely) or savings will continue to be negative (which could have all kinds of interesting implications for money, prices and credit). Regards, Tom Walker ^^^ #408 1035 Pacific St. Vancouver, B.C. V6E 4G7 [EMAIL PROTECTED] (604) 669-3286 ^^^ The TimeWork Web: http://www.vcn.bc.ca/timework/
[PEN-L:1262] Re: labor note
Michael Perelman wrote, Does anybody know why Bensinger was fired? Every time I heard him, I was impressed. That could well be the reason. Regards, Tom Walker ^^^ #408 1035 Pacific St. Vancouver, B.C. V6E 4G7 [EMAIL PROTECTED] (604) 669-3286 ^^^ The TimeWork Web: http://www.vcn.bc.ca/timework/
[PEN-L:1257] Re: Lump of Labor?
Jim Devine wrote, However, I don't see anything earthshaking in the quotes. There isn't anything earthshaking in the quotes, just the usual propaganda, historical falsification and sophism. But _who pays_ (and cui bono) is quite an important issue. .. . . As noted, I wasn't concerned with the accounting issue, which frankly I feel is secondary. What's important is political-economic analysis. Sigh. I guess I'm going to have to write the whole book instead of a chapter in a book. What I've been saying for two years is that labour cost accounting is THE issue of political-economic analysis. The core of von Mises critique of socialism was that central planning couldn't develop an adequate method of cost accounting. Oskar Lange's response was that it could by adopting a scientific framework and experimentation. Unrealistic accounting practices had a lot to do with the economic problems in the soviet bloc during the 1970s and 1980s. There were (and still are) a lot of "value subtracting enterprises" that were able to show a surplus through the accounting magic of overvaluing inventories and discounting capital equipment depreciation. The neo-liberal equivalent has been to overvalue financial assets and discount social depreciation. The great "advantage" of the neo-liberal shell game is that it takes longer before the consequences of the cannibalism show up on the bottom line. People are remarkably resilient, even under adverse circumstances, but they aren't infinitely flexible. It's a shit eating contest. Whoever throws up first, loses. But the winner just keeps eating shit. I agree without reservation that who pays is THE important issue, ultimately. But without an accounting or with a distorted accounting, the issue of who pays and who benefits can't even come up. Regards, Tom Walker ^^^ #408 1035 Pacific St. Vancouver, B.C. V6E 4G7 [EMAIL PROTECTED] (604) 669-3286 ^^^ The TimeWork Web: http://www.vcn.bc.ca/timework/
[PEN-L:1252] Re: Lump of Labor Jim Devine?
Jim Devine wrote, I read through Tom's post again and found nothing specific about lumps of labor, though I guess it refers to abstracting from the number of hours hired and simply looking at number of workers hired. Whether or not this abstraction is justified depends on what questions one is trying to answer. It's quite correct that I only mentioned the lump of labour in passing. I'll have to leave what the lump ACTUALLY refers to a mystery for now because I am writing a piece about the lump and I don't want to give away the plot before I've told the story. Below is an assortment of quotes that should make it clear what opponents of work sharing think they are referring to when *they* use the term: "One of the best-known fallacies in economics is the notion that there is a fixed amount of work -- a "lump of labour" -- that can be shared out in different ways to lead to fewer or more jobs." -- Reginald Dale, International Herald Tribune "It is depressing that supposedly responsible governments continue to pretend to be unaware of the old "lump of labour" fallacy: the illusion that the output of an economy and hence the total amount of work available are fixed." -- One lump or two?, The Economist, October 25, 1997 "Work sharing rests on the belief that the economy can generate only a fixed amount of work. History provides little support for this gloomy view, which economists have labelled the lump-of-labour fallacy." -- Jock Finlayson, vice president of policy and analysis for the Business Council of B.C. "It is quite true that if there were a fixed amount of work to be done in the economy, there would be more jobs to go round if those who had them worked fewer hours. But--the lump of labour fallacy strikes again--the amount of work to be done is not fixed. Neither theory nor experience support job sharing as a way to reduce unemployment." -- One lump or two, The Economist, November 25, 1995 Jim further commented, I also wasn't addressing the issue of the issue of hours per worker. I did acknowledge Gil's point that fixed costs of hiring, training, etc. meant that in the short run, a higher minimum wage might mean increased hours of work for those who have jobs even if it hurt the number of people hired. My doubts about this issue concerned the long run. Gil's point is exactly the opposite -- that is, a higher minimum wage might lead to increased numbers of people hired although it might result in fewer hours per person. This is because a higher minimum wage makes the variable portion of the "quasi-fixed factor" proportionately larger. Without meaning to embarrass Jim, this is a good example of how easy it is to invert an analysis and take it as saying precisely the opposite of what it says. The social cost issue is simple: who pays for the external cost of unemploying labor, where "external" here means "external to individual employers"? The numerical example that Tom gives doesn't say who pays for the $200 that each hypothetical unemployed worker gets per week. That is, who pays for the unemployment insurance benefits? No, the social cost issue is much simpler than that. The cost is one matter, who pays is another. Although who pays is an extremely important issue, it has no bearing on the magnitude of the cost. That's why my example doesn't say who pays. Aside from Jim's extensive discussion, one obvious solution to the question of who pays could be that the unemployed worker pays. In that case, the unemployed worker doesn't receive $200 from anyone. Does that mean the cost has been avoided? No, it simply means that the cost has not been properly accounted for. Regards, Tom Walker ^^^ #408 1035 Pacific St. Vancouver, B.C. V6E 4G7 [EMAIL PROTECTED] (604) 669-3286 ^^^ The TimeWork Web: http://www.vcn.bc.ca/timework/
[PEN-L:1222] Patriotic economics: a provocation
What about telling the story that American economics is properly a high wage economics and that adherence to a low-wage economics is UNAMERICAN? That is to say, for example, that not only is NAIRU questionable as a theory and misleading as a guide for policy, it is first and foremost FOREIGN. The pitfall of such a rhetorical strategy is that it could skirt on xenophobia, anti-semitism and a justification of imperialism. Attacks on foreign doctrines can easily be displaced to become justifications for attacks against foreigners. It also obviously puts Marx in the shaky category of "foreign ideas". Here's a sample of how the story has been told in the past, by Francis A. Walker in "The Wages Question". Walker is a good example because his later writings did in fact become xenophobic: "Again, the fact that in England, at the time this doctrine sprang up, an increase of the number of laborers applying for employment involved, as it doubtless did, a reduction in the rate of wages, was due to the circumstance that English agriculture, in the then existing state of chemical and mechanical knowledge, had reached the condition of "diminishing returns." But at the same time in the United States, the accession of vast bodies of laborers was accompanied with a steadily-increasing remuneration of labor, and States and counties were to be seen bidding eagerly against each other for these industrial recruits. "That English writers should have been misled, by what they saw going on around them, into converting a generalization of insular experiences into a universal law of wages, is not greatly to be wondered at; but that American writers should have adopted this doctrine, in simple contempt of what they saw going on around them, is indeed surprising. "I would not impeach the scientific impartiality of those who first put forward in distinct form this theory of wages; but it may fairly be assumed that its progress towards general acceptance was not a little favored by the fact that it afforded a complete justification for the existing order of things respecting wages. . . If an individual workman complained for himself, he could be answered that it was wholly a matter between himself and his own class. If he received more, another must, on that account, receive less, or none at all. If a workman complained on account of his class, he could be told, in the language of Prof. Perry, that 'there is no use in arguing against any one of the four fundamental rules of arithmetic. The question of wages is a question of division. . .'" (The Wages Question, p.141-142) Regards, Tom Walker ^^^ #408 1035 Pacific St. Vancouver, B.C. V6E 4G7 [EMAIL PROTECTED] (604) 669-3286 ^^^ The TimeWork Web: http://www.vcn.bc.ca/timework/
[PEN-L:1225] Re: Peron said it
Valis wrote, Below is the epigraph in the mission statement of a small Leninist org rooted in France and Belgium: Europe will unify or succumb. The year 2000 will see Europe unified or dominated. The same goes for Latin America. (Juan PERON) That puts Peron right up there with Nostradamus. The jury's still out on the unified AND dominated thesis, though. I was just musing that the year 2000 (or even 1999) could well see the emergence of a sharp divergence between U.S. and European fortunes, with the U.S. finally reaping the bleak harvest of decades of foreign account deficit and anti-social policies and Europe capitalising on the extent to which labour has resisted the neo-liberal bromide. Great Britain may have to choose between sinking with the Yankee clipper or floating with the Euros. O.K. Pen-l'ers, here's the quiz: 1. Social injustice is: A. Good for business. B. Bad for business. C. May appear superficially good for business in the short term (because of accounting discrepencies) but is ultimately ruinous. D. There is no such thing as society, only individuals. Regards, Tom Walker ^^^ #408 1035 Pacific St. Vancouver, B.C. V6E 4G7 [EMAIL PROTECTED] (604) 669-3286 ^^^ The TimeWork Web: http://www.vcn.bc.ca/timework/
[PEN-L:1227] Re: Patriotic economics: a provocation
Brad DeLong wrote, "Skirt on"? Cover itself in like a dog rolling in a raccoon roadkill carcass, rather... No. I agree that is the danger and we could both cite many instances. But it is not an inevitability. The distinction between danger and inevitability is as crucial as the difference between life and death. But thanks for the image of a dog rolling in a roadkill carcass. One could envision Larry Summers rolling in the human roadkill carcasses of the Washington Consensus. Regards, Tom Walker ^^^ #408 1035 Pacific St. Vancouver, B.C. V6E 4G7 [EMAIL PROTECTED] (604) 669-3286 ^^^ The TimeWork Web: http://www.vcn.bc.ca/timework/
[PEN-L:1230] Re: Peron said it II
Valis wrote, C, of course. My favorite uncle always voted for the guy with the longest name, so I'm adopting that formula here. Does it work? Oh Reverend Tom, you make church into so much fun! -- And knowledge!! Why, I always thought NAIRU was a pile of sovereign bat guano in the South Pacific. Incredible! Only one question on the quiz and Valis got 3 out 3 right! Regards, Tom Walker ^^^ #408 1035 Pacific St. Vancouver, B.C. V6E 4G7 [EMAIL PROTECTED] (604) 669-3286 ^^^ The TimeWork Web: http://www.vcn.bc.ca/timework/
[PEN-L:1237] Re: pen-lquestions
Jim Devine wrote,
it's only fad among neoclassicals. As usual, the NCs claim Smith as their
founder at the same time they don't read his books.
Not reading the books is endemic to a textbook mentality and not peculiar to
neoclassical economics. Vulgar Marxism is as unedifying as Samuelson. The
point I raised about Oi's quasi-fixed factor is instructive. The 1962
article refers to Clark's Studies in the Economics of Overhead Costs as it's
inspiration. O.K. what does Clark say? You can't get rid of labour costs
through unemployment, you can only shift them from the firm to society. Yet
Oi's treatment ignores social costs. And the subsequent use of Oi's theory
ignores both the social costs and the explicit relationship between Oi's
theory and Clark's analysis.
Leaving aside complex mathematical language, it happens too often that
fundamental premises and conclusions are inverted by the epigonos and nobody
notices or seems to care. Wages, which were considered to be determined
exogenously by Smith and Ricardo, were claimed to be endogenous not only to
the economy but to the class by James Mill, MacCulloch and Nassau Senior.
("In the treatises, therefore of the stamp of MacCulloch, Ure, Senior, and
tutti quanti, we may read upon one page, that the labourer owes a debt of
gratitude to capital for developing his productiveness, because the
necessary labour-time is thereby shortened, and on the next page, that he
must prove his gratitude by working in future for 15 hours instead of 10."
-- Father Karl)
Alfred Marshall inverted the refutation of the wages-fund doctrine and
imagined thereby to have refuted a chimerical "work-fund doctrine".
Finally, Oi inverts Clark's long-run social cost accounting perspective to
look at short-term behavior of the firm.
These prolific inversions might even have some analytical value if it could
be kept in mind that they were (and remain) inversions. After all, what did
KM say about standing Hegel on his head? But the distinctions have to be
kept clear otherwise it's just as easy to argue that VISA and Mastercard owe
me money or that 100 divided by 10 equals 10 divided by 100.
Exogenous? Endogenous? What's the difference?
Short-run? Long-run? What's the difference?
Exceptional case? Generalization? Doesn't it amount to the same thing?
Regards,
Tom Walker
^^^
#408 1035 Pacific St.
Vancouver, B.C.
V6E 4G7
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
(604) 669-3286
^^^
The TimeWork Web: http://www.vcn.bc.ca/timework/
[PEN-L:1253] Re: Lump of Labor Jim Devine?
I said that the question of who pays has no bearing on the magnitude of the cost. However, it does drive a wedge between nominal wages and real wages and that's potentially confusing. The amount stated in my example for maintaining the unemployed could alternatively be assumed to be already included in either the nominal wage or the fixed per worker cost as an unemployment insurance premium. In that case, the totals are different but the fact remains that the redistribution of hours to eliminate unemployment either lowers costs increases wages with no increased cost to the employer. That is to say, it refutes the usual treatment of the quasi-fixed factor. I'm not making any broader claims than that for the abstract analysis. If UI included as part of fixed costs: With 10% unemployment: (90x125)+(90x40x10)=47,250 With 0% unemployment: (100x105)+(100x36x10)=46,500 (no unemployment, no premium) If UI is included as an income tax on the worker, then the elimination of unemployment would increase the real hourly wage without increasing total employer cost. Regards, Tom Walker ^^^ #408 1035 Pacific St. Vancouver, B.C. V6E 4G7 [EMAIL PROTECTED] (604) 669-3286 ^^^ The TimeWork Web: http://www.vcn.bc.ca/timework/
[PEN-L:1259] Suctional unemployment
Suctional unemployment is that portion of unemployment attributable to the hoarding of jobs or hours of work. When unemployment is high or the cost of job loss is perceived to be excessive, people will hang on to the job they have even though the work doesn't allow them to fully use or develop their skills and they will work more hours than they would like to as a cushion against the fearful prospect of future unemployment. Suctional unemployment thus contributes to total unemployment in two ways -- by artificially limiting the distribution of existing work and by imposing an efficiency loss on industry. As every good economist knows, there is no such thing as suctional unemployment, as for alchemists there was no such thing as oxygen, though they breathed the stuff shamelessly. Regards, Tom Walker ^^^ #408 1035 Pacific St. Vancouver, B.C. V6E 4G7 [EMAIL PROTECTED] (604) 669-3286 ^^^ The TimeWork Web: http://www.vcn.bc.ca/timework/
[PEN-L:1263] NASURU vs NAIRU
Since (as all right-thinking economists know) there is no such thing as suctional unemployment, there can be no such thing as accelerating suctional unemployment and hence the concept of a non-accelerating suctional unemployment rate of unemployment (NASURU) is an impossibility. Since NASURU is the mirror image of NAIRU, the very absurdity of NASURU proves that labour markets are dynamic in one direction only. The theological concept of uni-directional dynamism may be more colourfully described as stasis on a merry-go-round. Regards, Tom Walker ^^^ #408 1035 Pacific St. Vancouver, B.C. V6E 4G7 [EMAIL PROTECTED] (604) 669-3286 ^^^ The TimeWork Web: http://www.vcn.bc.ca/timework/
[PEN-L:1265] Re: Lump of Labor?
Jim Devine wrote, right. But as far as capitalism (and its policy elites) is concerned, GDP-type accounting is enough, since it reflects the buying and selling of commodities, which represent the core of capitalism. Of course, that's not good enough for humanity or non-human Nature, but it's the capitalists who have the power at this point... I should have specified that I'm talking about accounting discrepencies at the level of the firm/enterprise. If information about the relative costs of inputs and value of outputs is systematically distorted, the resulting resource allocation decisions will be sub-optimal (even 'pessimal' given a sufficiently vicious positive feedback loop) -- whether the system is capitalist, socialist or whatever and whether those costs are expressed as market prices or some other measure, such as units of energy consumption or hours of average labour power. Regards, Tom Walker ^^^ #408 1035 Pacific St. Vancouver, B.C. V6E 4G7 [EMAIL PROTECTED] (604) 669-3286 ^^^ The TimeWork Web: http://www.vcn.bc.ca/timework/
[PEN-L:1268] Re: Suctional unemployment
Jim Devine wrote, Most macroeconomists are aware of something akin to this phenomenon. Instead of workers clinging to jobs, it's a matter of employers holding onto overhead workers (staff, management) even though they aren't needed as much as when demand is high. Overhead employment is one key reason why profit rates take a dive when the economy goes into a recession. So in this case, according to Jim, labour hoarding is "akin to" its opposite job hoarding. It's only akin to in the sense that one is the inverse of the other, in the same way as 1/10 is "akin to" 10. With either theory, however, you get similar results. Please, Jim, do loan me a couple of thousand dollars. I'll let you pay me back at your convenience. Are you saying that "suctional unemployment" is _hidden unemployment_ (not measured by official stats) because existing employees are not working up to potential? Not at all. It's one of the components of measured unemployment like frictional, structural and technological. Suctional unemployment is, in a sense, an "overshoot". i don't understand this. It's hard to imagine accelerating suctional unemployment, because as a recession persists and/or deepens, employers start laying off the overhead employees in droves. In what sense is the NASURU the mirror image of the NAIRU? First, in order to try to imagine this chimera, you have to let go of the non-sequitur that job hoarding is "akin to" labour hoarding and that therefore what we're talking about is the later and not the former. I'm not not not not not talking about labour hoarding. Second, I would see the NASURU as the mirror image of the NAIRU in terms of its one-sidedness. I think both are fanciful precisely because they project some sort of totalizing power on one side or other of the class struggle. I offer NASURU as a thought experiment, not as a description of reality. On second thought, wasn't Friedman's "natural rate" hypothesis presented as a thought experiment? Regards, Tom Walker ^^^ #408 1035 Pacific St. Vancouver, B.C. V6E 4G7 [EMAIL PROTECTED] (604) 669-3286 ^^^ The TimeWork Web: http://www.vcn.bc.ca/timework/
[PEN-L:1922] Re: a question
I always thought it was Nixon, but a few weeks ago I came across the quote in a published collection and it was attributed to Milton Friedman! If anyone out there has is awake and has shaken off their hangover, I woner if you could answer the following question for me. Was it Nixon who said "We are all Keynsians now"? Thank you and best wishes for a healthy 1999. Frank Tom Walker http://www.vcn.bc.ca/timework/
[PEN-L:1931] Keynes on Nixon as Keynesian
"Practical men, who believe themselves to be quite exempt from any intellectual influences are usually the slaves of some defunct economist. Madmen in authority, who hear voices in the air, are distilling their frenzy from some academic scribbler of a few years back." Tom Walker http://www.vcn.bc.ca/timework/
[PEN-L:1933] lump stint
"Apart from the question of the number of hours that the Jew -- when under
the stern compulsion of hunger -- can work without killing himself, does the
Jew, when under no such compulsion, seek to grab more than his just share of
'the lump of labour'? Does he, in fact, voluntarily choose to do a great
deal more than a fair day's work? This is, obviously, a question partly of
pace, partly of hours. That the Jewish workman very strongly objects to
being hustled over his work is certain."
"The Jew as Workman." D. F. Schloss. _19th Century_, January, 1891, p. 101.
lump n. 1. compact shapeless or unshapely mass ('the lump', casual workers
in building and other trades)
". . .the selecting of a man who possesses superior physical strength and
quickness, as the principal of several workmen, and paying him an additional
rate, by the quarter or otherwise, with the understanding that he is to
exert himself to the utmost to induce the others, who are paid the ordinary
wages, to keep up to him . . . without any comment this will go far to
explain many of the complaints of stinting the action, superior skill, and
working-power made by the employers against the men."
_Trade Unions and Strikes_. T.J. Dunning, 1860, p. 22-3. cited by Marx in
_Capital_ vol. I
stint n. 2. limitation of supply or effort 3. a fixed or alloted amount of
work ('do one's daily stint').
Tom Walker
http://www.vcn.bc.ca/timework/
[PEN-L:1935] Euro-Bureau
Valis opined, there's a story here that Toynbee would have relished, And there's a hot dog here that Mustard would have relished. Tom Walker http://www.vcn.bc.ca/timework/
[PEN-L:1941] Re: Euro-Bureau
Valis sighed, Let's see: a hot dog is, more properly, a frankfurter, derived from Frankfurt, the euro's home base. He has put mustard in upper case, so it's really an apt substitute for someone's name. Alas, I think I'm just not pious or learned enough to follow through. Anyone to the rescue? If it IS a riddle (*IF*), it's taken me a century to solve it. So why should I blurt out the answer all at once? But here's another clue: "Schloss" may hold the key. Tom Walker http://www.vcn.bc.ca/timework/
[PEN-L:1971] A lump sum: frequency
Contributions toward a sociology of economics pseudo-knowledge -- The terms "lump of labor", "lump of labour" or "lump of work" occur in the text of 37 articles since 1891 indexed by JSTOR, an academic journal database. Included in the search database were the following economics journals (along with an extensive list of non-economics journals): American Economic Review, Econometrica, Economic Journal, Journal of Industrial Economics, Journal of Economic History, Journal of Money, Credit and Banking, Journal of Political Economy, Quarterly Journal of Economics, Review of Economics and Statistics, Journal of Applied Econometrics, Journal of Economic Perspectives Two of the occurences were found in non-economics journals: Contemporary Sociology and Annual Review of Anthropology. Two were found in the Quarterly Journal of Economics and one in the Journal of Economic History. The rest were found in the American Economic Review, Economic Journal and Journal of Political Economy. Below is a list of the publication years of articles in which one of the terms occurs: 1891 1896 1901 1901 1902 1904 1905 1906 1907 1910 1912 1912 1913 1916 1919 1922 1928 1930 1930 1933 1934 1935 1937 1937 1941 1944 1947 1948 1950 1952 1955 1958 1959 1980 1982 1984 1984 Tom Walker http://www.vcn.bc.ca/timework/
[PEN-L:1955] Re: lumpenlabor
the a priori notion. Contrary to the orthodox dogma, the sun (working time) does NOT revolve around the earth (marginal productivity). The hard truth is that the relationship between employment and the hours of work is simply "too hard" (too indeterminate, too "fuzzy") for a marginalist analysis to grasp. Given the choice between investigating a topic that exposes the limits of the marginalist analysis and imposing an intellectual taboo on that topic, marginalism has chosen the taboo. The so-called "lump-of-labor fallacy" amounts to a monumental intellectual fraud perpetrated by textbook authors and editorial writers who probably don't have the slightest suspicion that what they are saying is groundless, archaic and contradictory. Tom Walker http://www.vcn.bc.ca/timework/
[PEN-L:2733] Out of print?
The Coming Russian Boom: A Guide to New Markets and Politics © 1996 by Richard Layard and John Parker Price: $18.40 (33% off publisher's price: $27.50) Hard cover. 380 pages. If you wish to order Coming Russian Boom, or want to determine shipping charges, please add the book to the shopping cart at Manager's Bookwatch, and follow the instructions. Add to shopping cart Unlike numerous skeptics, Layard and Parker are optimistic about Russia's future. They analyze the economy and the underlying social and political forces to demonstrate the relative success of reforms and their implications for western businesses. They forecast a more rapid growth in Russia over the next two decades than in most emerging markets and provide specific recommendations for entrepreneurs, investors and analysts. They end their book with a useful (though long) 49-page executive summary. Author(s) Richard Layard is a Professor at the London School of Economics and Political Science. He has served as an advisor to Boris Yeltsin. John Parker is the European Editor of The Economist. He was previously a Moscow correspondent with that newspaper. Tom Walker http://www.vcn.bc.ca/timework/
[PEN-L:2732] Duty vs. Bargain
Testimony of Mr. Alfred Mault, Secretary of the General Builders Association, to the Royal Commission on Trades Unions, June 5, 1867 Earl of Lichfield: What is your idea with reference to the amount of work done now, compared with what it used to be some years ago? Mr. Mault: I am sure that as much work is not done now as used to be done, and that is attributable to the feeling generated by the union which I have just referred to, namely, that a man in his contract with his master must just make it simply a matter of bargain. But the old feeling of his having a duty to perform, and his pleasurably doing that duty to his master, is to be put upon one side, and that he is to think that if he does too much work, other people will be kept out of employment. It is to the feeling generated by that idea or principle upon which the union is founded, that I attribute a great deal more of the difficulties and evils that characterize the present condition of the intercourse between master and man than to anything else. Tom Walker http://www.vcn.bc.ca/timework/
[PEN-L:2723] Re: book on global economic institutions
Peter, As I started to read your message, I was thinking, "what he needs is an update of Fred Block's _Origins of International Economic Disorder_ . . ." Then I got to the punch line in the third sentence. This spring I will be co-teaching a course on international political economy. It would be helpful to be able to assign a book that lays out the history and institutional detail of the global economy: the rise and fall of the dollar standard, the IFI's, the emergence of offshore dollars, financial liberalization, GATT/WTO, etc. What I have in mind is an update of Fred Block's wonderful but now utterly dated "Origins of International Economic Disorder". It would be nice if the book had stirring political analysis, but that is not necessary. The main thing is for students with little or no background in global economics to find out what the facts on the ground are so that they can make sense of the theoretical arguments. Does anyone have suggestions? Peter Dorman Tom Walker http://www.vcn.bc.ca/timework/
[PEN-L:2697] What would happen if . . .
.. . . we had a four-day work week? The NEXT CITY asked Tom Walker, a social policy analyst with TimeWork Web, and Jock Finlayson, vice-president of policy and analysis for the Business Council of British Columbia, to comment. go to: http://www.nextcity.com/whatif/whatif14.htm Who makes more sense to you? Select your choice and then press below to register your vote. Tom Walker Jock Finlayson http://www.nextcity.com/WhatIf/whatif14.htm#vote Tom Walker http://www.vcn.bc.ca/timework/
[PEN-L:2682] Re: Duke University's literature department
It's funny, really, that such certifiably educated folks would confound self and subjectivity. That's the root form of *essentialism* that has been known to philosophy for ages as solipsism. Tom Walker http://www.vcn.bc.ca/timework/
[PEN-L:2675] Re: The lump-of-opera fallacy
ho made the entire Chinese Culture their customers in opium in exchange for "tea for home." In America the Delanos (of Franklin Delano Roosevelt) buried their shame and guilt in the palaces of the New England Barons hidden in Atlantic Coast enclaves of the super wealthy.The Art and beauty of their houses in no way mirrored the darkness of their souls. The Mirror for them was Tezcatlipoca. The Artist as the Trickster, the liar. And finally: Should I write about Germany, Russia or North America in the present? Simply examine seriously the 100% Artistic employment in Nazi Germany. The membership in the Nazi party of Artists that have been honored into the late 20th century and who contributed to the positive image of the accomplishments of Hitler and his government. We love to be told of the bad art of the Nazis but how about Herbert von Karajan, Elizabeth Swartzkopf, Irmgaard Seefried, Walter Gieseking, Karl Orff, Anton Webern and on and on.All artists nurtured by the Nazi Art Ministry. As I mentioned earlier Strauss himself even followed it for awhile. Webern suffered in spite of his patriotism but he would have suffered here as well for basically the same reasons. This greatest of the abstract dodecaphonists was unpopular with the "powers that be." But there was a belief in all of this that their art would endure and they believed in the vendication of history. But for the bulk, if they were competant or better, they worked. Consider instead the case of the American Indian composer Jack Kilpatrick here in America about the same time frame. He was highly praised by conductors including Stokowski's statement that he was one of America's greatest composers. He also was a scholar of Cherokee texts and poetry and wrote several books on it. America basically ignored his music and he made a living as the Dean of Music at Baylor University up until his death.As a traditional Cherokee, any property that is not sold or given away by the time of death is considered the property of the spirit and is burned. Now, we have these interesting quotes by prominent musicians and the scholarly texts and translations but the music is silent and will always be. Cherokees always believed in Intellectual property and still do. There was said to be 1,600 works of songs, symphonies and operas. That time in American and Cherokee history is gone.The Europeans almost lost J.S. Bach through their neglect, the Americans have yet to learn that lesson. I don't think they ever will, they still tear down their architectural masterpieces for money and put up the architectural equivelent of black velvet animal paintings in their place. But Ed, you must study this if you want to know the effect of art and the danger of the abuse of artists for the world. I would highly recommend the Kater book "The Twisted Muse" as a good place to start. Then the Jefferson book on Elizabeth Schwartzkopf.After that you might start on the Herbert Read books and just go from there. You could be the exception to the Neo Classic "clear cutters" at work in the present. And then we might have some discussions on the value of professions whose goals are the elevation of the human soul, the preservation of cultural treasures, the balance of the environment with human activity and the fulfillment, happiness, freedom and prosperity of the individual. Regards Ray Evans Harrell Edward Weick wrote: Ray: Being a musician is a full time job whether paid or not and angry artists are often quite destructive. Since they control the mirrors they often contain a destruction that is truly genocidal all in the name of their own view of the world "winning" a kind of artistic 'losing." I find this a little bothersome because it makes me wonder who might qualify as "destructive" or "genocidal" artist. Somewhere, in the dark recesses of their minds both Stalin and Hitler fancied themselves to be artists. Stalin wrote poetry and Hitler wanted to be an architect or painter. Both were failures, though perhaps not in their own minds. Were the prisoners of the gulag and the death camps victims of failed self-styled artists? Or perhaps you mean Hitler and Stalin were influenced by artists -- Hitler by Wagner, for instance. When I think of destructive true artists, Van Gogh comes to mind. But then he destroyed himself, not others. Ed weick Tom Walker http://www.vcn.bc.ca/timework/
[PEN-L:2657] Re: BLS Daily Report
__The AFL-CIO, pointing to new statistics from BLS that show membership in unions increased by more than 100,000 in 1998, says the organizing strategy laid out by the federation's leadership more than three years ago is working. In what is called putting a positive spin . . . The density of union membership in the workforce, however, decreased from 14.1 percent in 1997 to 13.9 percent in 1998. ... (Daily Labor Report, page A13). . . . on bad news. Tom Walker http://www.vcn.bc.ca/timework/
[PEN-L:2654] Re: intern needed
Doug, Would that be LBO as in LiBidO? Help! LBO badly needs an intern (can we still use that word?). Any volunteers or suggestions? Doug Tom Walker http://www.vcn.bc.ca/timework/
[PEN-L:2651] Re: to poet piet
Mathew Forstater wrote,
mine asked me why all the graves in the cemetery had "plus signs" on
them
More precisely, the plus signs are *over* the graves: a sur-plus.
sur- [1]
1. a prefix meaning " over, above, " " in
addition, " occurring mainly in
loanwords from French and partial
calques of French words: surcharge;
surname; surrender.
[ME OF L super- SUPER -]
plus (plus) prep.
1. increased by: Ten plus two is twelve.
2. in addition to: to have wealth plus fame.
adj.
3. involving or noting addition.
4. positive: on the plus side.
5. more or greater, as in relation to a
certain amount or level: A plus for
effort.
6. pertaining to or characterized by
positive electricity: the plus terminal.
7. of a remarkable degree: She has
personality plus.
n.
8. a plus quantity.
9. PLUS SIGN.
10. something additional.
11. a surplus or gain.
conj.
12. also; furthermore: It's safe plus it's
economical.
adv.
13. in addition; besides.
Tom Walker wrote:
piet,
Last night my five-year old son asked me:
"When you add two plus two,
is it that the first two is 'one, two'
and the second two is 'three, four'?"
Tom Walker
http://www.vcn.bc.ca/timework/
[PEN-L:2646] to poet piet
piet, Last night my five-year old son asked me: "When you add two plus two, is it that the first two is 'one, two' and the second two is 'three, four'?" Tom Walker http://www.vcn.bc.ca/timework/
[PEN-L:2119] re: Global Depression
The January effect fizzled within 2 weeks of the new year. My theory is the Brazilians were just waiting for Doug and Louis to get into a flame war so they could slip one past Pen-L. Tom Walker http://www.vcn.bc.ca/timework/
[PEN-L:2141] Re: Business News
And here's a virtual real-ity check mangled headline from CBC Marketwatch: YAHOO FALLS LOWER DUE RESIGNATION OF BRAZIL'S CENTRAL BANK CHIEF. Huh? Tom Walker http://www.vcn.bc.ca/timework/
[PEN-L:2148] Re: Business News
Max wrote, And here's a virtual real-ity check mangled headline from CBC Marketwatch: YAHOO FALLS LOWER DUE RESIGNATION OF BRAZIL'S CENTRAL BANK CHIEF. We took our honeymoon in Yahoo Falls. Wonderful place. mbs That's on the Amazon.com river, eh? Tom Walker http://www.vcn.bc.ca/timework/
[PEN-L:2163] re: Blood
n Connaught of the danger. Indeed, Connaught didn't learn until Aug. 18 of the problem from the Canadian Health department, which had been told by the U.S. FDA. The next day, Aug. 19, a Continental Pharma official told Connaught of the problem. According to a Connaught memo of the conversation about the four donors with hepatitis B: "They were from a prison population and had not been truthful when their history was taken." Until this conversation, Connaught had been unaware of the fact that it had been processing plasma collected from prison inmates. The shipping papers accompanying the plasma had not revealed the centre was located in a prison. They simply referred to the source as the "ADC Plasma Centre,Grady, Arkansas," without any indication that "ADC" stood for Arkansas Department of Corrections. Connaught had received, in February 1983, an FDA inspection report that revealed the centre was in a prison. But, as Judge Krever noted of the report: "It had not been reviewed (by Connaught)." By the time Connaught learned of the concerns about the four prisoners' plasma, it was virtually too late. It had mixed the plasma in with huge pools of other units, meaning just one contaminated unit would taint the whole batch. Connaught had already sent the Canadian Red Cross 2,409 vials of blood products made, in part, from the four prisoners' plasma. On Aug. 23, Connaught telephoned the Red Cross and declared that it wanted to withdraw those vials of Factor VIII, a blood product used by hemophiliacs to help make their blood clot properly. However, the Red Cross had already sent out the product to its blood centres in Toronto, London, Hamilton and Ottawa. Officials scrambled to pull the product from the shelves. But in the end, only 417 vials -- about one-sixth of the total -- was retrieved. Soon after, there was another warning from HMA about potentially infected plasma from the Grady prison. Again, it was too late. Connaught asked the Red Cross on Sept. 6 to retrieve 1,968 vials. Only 27 were recovered. On Sept. 7, Connaught's vice-president told the Red Cross that the plasma that had led to the two withdrawals had been collected from prison inmates. The Red Cross immediately cancelled its contract with Connaught, writing that although the company was "not directly responsible for the circumstances" and had "acted in good faith," the problem with the plasma "leaves us with no confidence in the quality and safety of the material." When Connaught conducted an internal review of the embarrassing mishap, it discovered it had also collected plasma in 1982-83 from inmates at four Louisiana prisons. A company there, Community Plasma Centre Inc., had sold the plasma to HMA in Arkansas. Again, just as it did with the plasma from the Grady prison, HMA sold the product to Continental Pharma, which sold it to Connaught. "There is no doubt that Canada's dependence on commercial concentrates made from U.S. plasma increased the risk that Canadians with hemophilia would be infected with HIV," wrote Judge Krever. The AIDS epidemic had hit the U.S. earlier, and that country's practice of paying donors increased the risk that high-risk donors (such as drug addicts) would donate because they needed the money. "The U.S. practice of collecting plasma in prisons also increased the risk." Unfortunately, by early 1983, however, Canada's was facing that risk itself. American hemophiliacs were getting their products from U.S. fractionators that had closed the door on prison blood. "Connaught, without knowing it, became the only fractionator in North American that was using plasma collected in prisons," observed Judge Krever. Almost all of that plasma, it seems, was coming from HMA in Arkansas, where Mr. Clinton had been re-elected after being once turfed from office. He was on his way to being known as the Comeback Kid. Tom Walker http://www.vcn.bc.ca/timework/
re:Hungary is number 1.0
Michael Pollak asked, Am I right in understanding that the list below purports to be apercentile chart? So production costs in Hungary are 1/100th of what theyare in Japan? I'm an expert on percentiles (expert witness at three seniority arbitrations). Percentilesare a measure of relative rank, not of absolute level of costs. All the percentile rankings tell is that production costs are lower in Hungary than in Japan. There's no way to tell from a percentile ranking what the ratio of production costs are. They could as easily be 99:100 as 1:100. Tom Walker
Re: Economics Insider Story
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/12/27/business/27RIVA.html?pagewanted=1 "From his perch at M.I.T., Mr. Samuelson revolutionized economics. Although firmly in the Keynesian camp, his foremost achievement was to unite a century of economic insights, many of them seemingly at odds, into a single, coherent theory the neoclassical synthesis, as it was called that would dominate economic discourse for some three decades." Didn't they leave out a purportedly or two? Tom Walker
Re:Query on Mutual insurance companies
Carrol Cox asked: How do the controllers of a mutual insurance company make their money. I would imagine they worked extemely long hours and saved every penny they earned. Isn't that how everybody does it? Tom Walker
myth of the self-made man
Deliberate or unconscious humour? http://www.ezwrite.com/Store/itemdetail.asp?IDNO=116 Tom Walker
re: myth of the self-made man
ance to the masters and men of the yard in more ways than can be definedin the duties he is expected daily to discharge because of his rareadaptability of tact and skill. He is a bright and patriotic American in theprime of young manhood, frank, courageous, generous. a man who convinces youis thinking well of what he says and is never careless as to the impressionhe would convey. The judgment of such a man is entitled to respect." Tom Walker
Enron, Arthur Andersen Co.
From Today's Headlines in the New York Times "A Tattered Andersen Fights for Its Future Besides Enron itself, no company has been more seriouslywounded by its collapse than Arthur Andersen Company,one of the world's largest accounting firms."http://www.nytimes.com/2002/01/13/business/yourmoney/13ANDE.html?todaysheadlines The New York Times article predictably dwells on the prospects of uncovering "wrong doing" andmisses the point. The point isn't that AA might have stepped over some fuzzy legal line but that the whole game of big time corporate accounting is predicated on clever evasions, some of which are unquestionably "legal" but only, of course, because the big five accounting firms lobbied vigourously to have them accepted as "standards." It will be interesting to see how this one plays out. One's inclination is to expect damage control. But it also seems to me that the stakes are too high for damage control to be blithely accepted by all the players. According to the background piece inan NYT story on Enron, Lay originally was thinkingof the name "Enteron" until someone told him it meant intestines. Tom Walker
Safire on Arthur Andersen
Andersengate http://www.nytimes.com/2002/01/14/opinion/14SAFI.html?todaysheadlines . . . "The dozen or so investigations may turn up something to embarrass the White House, especially if Bush pulls another "executive privilege" when Congress wants facts. But the scandal I see in this corporate debacle is non- political; it's professional. "This affair shows the accounting profession all too often to be in bed with the oldest profession. Accounting standards have been frequently prostituted by the new Uriah Heeps: these are executives in ever-merging firms afraid to challenge their clients' phony numbers and secret self-dealing because they might lose fees in the lucrative consulting business they run on the side. "These no-account accountants seem to forget that the "p" in C.P.A. means "public." The Big Five are silent about Andersengate because they are eager to become the Big Four by carving up their competitor's carcass. That's why it's harder to find a major bean-counter willing to condemn publicly the failures of Arthur Andersen Co. than to find a top Muslim cleric willing to criticize Osama bin Laden. "Although Andersen executives may try to cop a plea by ratting on the client they so supinely and profitably enabled, they must explain why, as the biggest bankruptcy in history loomed, their supervisors were so eager to remind those working on the Enron account to destroy records. "Self-dealing; asset-hiding; insider stock-dumping all these were supposedly beyond the ken of an audit committee and legal counsel blindly reliant on the ethics and standards of "professional" accountants." . . . Tom Walker
Evil genius?
QUOTE OF THE DAY (NYTIMES)="Companies come and go. It's part of the genius ofcapitalism."-PAUL O'NEILL, treasury secretary, on the collapse of Enron. The banality of O'Neill's comment obscures a deeper confusion. It is not simply the collapse ofEnron that is noteworthy but the timing, magnitude and agency of that collapse. Ah, so many geniuses, so little time. Here's a sampling from Google: The genius of capitalism, as Lenin might have pointed out, is that it develops its own rope, for hanging as much as for other purposes. The genius of capitalism consists precisely in its lack of morality. Few people will deny that the genius of capitalism lies in its ability to produce goodscommodities for people to buy and consume. The production of both specific intelligence and generalised stupidity are, to my mind, the most outstanding expression of the genius of capitalism. The genius of capitalism is its ability to capture the genius of everything else. Bernstein recognized from the outset that the evil genius of capitalism is its ability to take anything resembling dissent and quash it. The genius of capitalism is in coping with failure, writes the founder of Grant's Interest Rate Observer in this book. Once again, the genius of capitalism at work: Create a problem, then come up with a new product to deal with the consequences. It took the genius of capitalism to make a valuable commodity out of thoughts, opinions, teachings. It is the genius of capitalism that chaff like the Loman's are ruthlessly winnowed. A genius of capitalism has been to transform the ancient vice of avarice into a modern virtue of acquisitiveness, with the belief that when each one acts in economic self-interest, the greater good of all will result. The genius of capitalism is that thus far it has proven democratic when under threat. The genius of capitalism is its simplicity of motive. A major genius of capitalism is the emphasis on diffusion of economic -power This is the true genius of capitalism, the seduction of offering us yet another new toy as the answer to the quest for human happiness. The genius of capitalism, its magic, its alchemy, transform the lead of repression into the gold of stimulus. It is part of the genius of capitalism that it recognizes this selfish tendency and harnesses it to generate change in society. I would cheerfully argue that the genius of capitalism is that everything is tried and sometimes businesses get lucky and in effect roll 20 straight passes. Tom Walker
RE: The Enron Prize
Further to the story about Alan Greenspan's "Enron Prize" from the "James A. Baker III Institute for Public Policy" at Rice University. The following account of Enron business transactions is from the Jan. 7 Forbes. The kicker is in the penultimate sentence. In June 2000, for example, Enron sold $100 million worth of "dark fiber," or fiber-optic cables without the electronic gear necessary totransmit digitized information. The "buyer" was a partnership run byFastow called LJM2 (the acronym reportedly comes from the initials ofhis wife and children), set up in 1999 to trade assets with Enron. Onthat deal, Enron booked a $67 million profit, a significant piece of the$318 million gross profit the company reported for the broadbandbusiness in 2000. LJM2 later sold $40 million of the dark fiber to whatEnron refers to as "industry participants," and the remainder to anotherEnron-related partnership for $113 million in December. What's curiousis that the value of the fiber ostensibly increased 53% between June andDecember--during the same time that, in open markets at least, the valueof dark fiber plunged by 67%. LJM2 reaped a $2.4 million profit from thefiber trade, contributing to the $30 million of undisclosed gains theLJM partnerships delivered to Fastow, according to Enron.Shouldn't Enron's top management or its auditors have sought theidentity of the buyers who so overpaid for the fiber asset? One wonders.And where, by the way, was all this fiber? That $100 million, say afiber broker and an industry analyst, would have bought at least 33,000miles of single-strand dark fiber in June 2000--enough to string upthree nationwide networks--and considerably more by December. Enron'sentire network, presumably consisting of multiple strands, was 18,000miles at the time, with much of that fiber leased.The deal went undisclosed at a time when Skilling and Lay were talkingup the great prospects for Enron's broadband business. There's somethingelse they neglected to mention. Enron provided what its current 10-Qcalls "credit support" to the ultimate buyer, guaranteeing the debt. Butif the partnership defaulted, Enron was on the hook for $61 million ofthe $67 million it booked as profits. Former employees say Enron'sbroadband business consisted largely of such questionable deals. To wina $20 million broadband services contract from Rice University inHouston, for example, Enron donated $5 million to the school, and KenLay's personal foundation kicked in another $3 million. Unreported wasthe fact that Rice dropped the contract soon after. Tom Walker
Re: crisis causes the end of capitalism?
Galbraith's book dates to the mid-1950s. Peter Drucker also wrote a book on similar lines in the early 1940s. I would credit Berle and Means as the earliest articulate version of the theory (or story) in the U.S. There are also parallels with earlier Frankfurt School writings by Horkheimer and Pollard. Gene Coyle wrote: It is a little late for this thread but this also sounds likeGalbraith's THE NEW INDUSTRIAL STATE"Devine, James" wrote: I don't know if anyone is familiar with Darity's thesis about managerial society or the managerial mode of production, which he believes has developed out of capitalism. I am not sure if I agree that managerial society is a distinct mode of production that had superceded capitalism, but I think the thesis that managerial capitalism is another stage of capitalism has something to it. In the managerial society, "experts" run things and the system is based on credentialism. I can find the cites if anyone';s interested. mat This sounds a little like James Burnham, author of THE MANAGERIAL REVOLUTION (1941). Burnham believed that rule by the experts was the shared characteristic of fascism, Stalinism, and the New Deal. (In fact, he saw managers as a new ruling class. BTW, I think this is partly based on the Berle/Means thesis about the separation of ownership from corporate control (to the advantage of the controllers).) Around the time of the publication of that book, Burnham drastically changed his politics, going from being an associate of Trotsky to being an editor of William F. Buckley's Joe McCarthyite NATIONAL REVIEW. Tom Walker
Re: Evil genius?
Ian Murray asked, And what would Wittgenstein say about all those sentences? :-) Dunno. Will you settle for Edna Ullmann-Margalit referring to Wittgenstein in a discussion of the invisible hand and the cunning of reason? "Only when an invisible-hand mechanism can be pointed to, can the spell of an explanation that postulates a creator, a designer, or a conspiracy be effectively broken. "It is in this sense, and in this context, that we may allude to Wittgenstein's notion of being 'in the grip of a picture': the picture is the theological picture, within which one is held in the grip of the 'argument from design.'" Perhaps, we could say O'Neill was trying tocover his ass by pointing the finger atan invisible hand. Or is that perhaps taking the notion of being 'in the grip of a picture' too graphically? Tom Walker
Two, three many geniuses
As of 10:20 p.m pacific time, January 15, a google search on genius of capitalism and enron returned 453 hits. Following the below news item from AFP, I've added a few more pre-enron allusions to the genius. I do believe Secretary O'Neill has spoken thephrase that willsomeday appear inhis obituary. Top Bush official savaged over Enron comment Washington: US Treasury Secretary Paul O'Neill was savaged by leading members of Congress today for describing the biggest corporate collapse in US history as "part of the genius of capitalism". O'Neill, appearing on the Sunday talk show circuit along with Commerce Secretary Donald Evans, distanced the Bush administration from the collapse of the company, which left tens of thousands of employees holding worthless pensions while top executives reportedly cashed out for hefty profits. Speaking on the CBS show "Face the Nation", Senator Joseph Lieberman, a former Democratic vice-presidential candidate, described O'Neill's comments as "outrageous". "With all respect to Secretary O'Neill, those statements are outrageous. I hope that they're - they sound more cold-blooded than he means them to be," he said. "Those are statements that might have been made by the secretary of the treasury in the 18th century, but not in the 21st century." "The death that Enron experienced was not a natural death. We know enough to know that now," he added. "This was not capitalism as we want it to be." More cullings: The genius of capitalism is that markets, not regulations or politics, force the admission and correction of mistakes. The genius of capitalism is that suppliers have to both compete and also to collaborate to survive and that in the end they get their money from satisfied customers or not at all,so the marketplace may work for the public even though the standards committees fail. Pollution problems could be solved by the genius of capitalism. With capitalism in trouble, the fascist demagogues will need scapegoats, and the myths and legends of the Jews as the evil genius of capitalism are too tempting and too well established and elaborated to be dispensed with; anti-black racism has limited uses. The genius of capitalism - the wage-contract - means that capital never has to notice that there's a person and not just a worker on the other end of the contract - even if the worker has body piercings. The "genius" of capitalism was in its giving outlet to human creativity to deal with the prevailing circumstances without the burden of the past. A society that relies merely on legally coercive contracts and consumer carrots rather than a range of covenantal trust relationships in voluntary associations incurs increasing legal costs for enforcement and undermines the very freedom that is the genius of capitalism. Indeed, the primary genius of capitalism is not its miraculous powers to make things work; it is what Joseph Schumpeter called "creative destruction," i.e. the ability to drive out firms that cannot compete. The genius of capitalism is that it allows people to oppress themselves Although the genius of capitalism is indeed production, the genius of socialism is indeed distribution. Tom Walker
capitalism as we want it to be
Gene Coyle wrote, In my dreams I imagine that an alert CBS journalist immediately asked Lieberman "Just how DO you want capitalism to be?" And in my nightmares I can hear his answer. Wouldn't that just be where the Enronsgive 70% of their campaign contributions to the Demos? Or am I cynical?
Talking points for TV appearance on Four-day work week
l periods, their product development, retooling, marketing and launch cycles. One might compare these timelines to inalterable natural phenomena like the tides or the seasons. But the irony is that these artificial fiscal tides are in many instances less forgiving than nature, even when they dont have to be. -- Don't exhale, it'll all fall down! It does indeed sometimes seem that the four-day workweek (or less) will never happen because "it makes too much sense." Appearances can be deceptive. The four-day week is not happening now because our current work arrangements are too brittle to withstand any fundamental change. This is not a sign of strength or durability. In Houston for years people described the Enron corporation as a house of cards. As Mimi Schwartz reported in the Texas Observer, "It was usually said with a knowingand bemused shake of the head, as if the speaker was used to being ignored." The Enron Corporation used to rank #7 on the Fortune 500. It's stock, trading at $80 a share last January can now be had for 67 cents. But what intrigues me is that the company also ranked #24 in the Fortune 100 best employers to work for. It had a remarkably low employee turnover rate of 4%. It was -- or appeared to be -- "a good place to work." That was before their retirement savings accounts were wiped out. Today? The other night, KPRC-TV hosted an Enron special -- "Boom to Bust" it was called -- that featured several employees who had been fired that day. Dressed in the company's signature khakis and jeans, the assembled appeared shell-shocked and contrite. "I learned a good lesson in ethics," one beefy young man assured the viewers. A few well-meaning job counselors joined the show, and Becky Collums, a motherly type with a business called CC Staffing, brought up the cliche about doors closing and windows opening: "People can look at this as an opportunity to recreate themselves," she urged sweetly. Just a few months ago, she would have been laughed out of the Enron building. These refugees gave her their full attention. "Doors closing and windows opening"? Presumably Ms. Collums was thinking of fresh air and "windows of opportunity". The image that comes to my mind, though, is of people jumping out the windows of a burning high-rise. Tom Walker
The equality/efficiency trade-off: empirical evidence
The equality/efficiency trade-off: empirical evidence Arthur Okun. Equality and Efficiency: The Big Trade-off, 1975 The pursuit of efficiency necessarily creates inequalities. And hence society faces a trade-off between equality and efficiency. Paul Krugman in NYT Sept. 16, 2001 In retrospect, our national neglect of airport security boggles the mind. We've known for many years that America was a target of terrorists. And every expert warned that the most likely terrorist plots would involve commercial airlines. Yet airports throughout the United States rely on security personnel who are paid about $6 an hour, less than they could earn serving fast food. These guardians of our lives receive only a few hours of training, and more than 90 percent of the people screening bags have been on the job for less than six months. JOHN SCHWARTZ with REED ABELSON in NYT Jan. 17, 2002 With 1,400 professionals, the Houston office is among Andersen's largest. The leading accounting firm in the city, Andersen captured a commanding presence in the energy industry, auditing companies like Pennzoil. Enron was one of Andersen's biggest clients, generating about $52 million in accounting and consulting fees in 2000 alone. Partners at Andersen generally make more than $500,000 a year, but a partner with a major account like Enron would probably make $1 million or more, said Arthur Bowman, the editor of Bowman's Accounting Report. Arthur Levitt in NYT Jan. 17, 2002 As four government agencies and six committees of Congress begin to investigate the Enron failure, it's important to recognize that this is not just about Enron and its auditor, Arthur Andersen. We need to look at the entire system of gatekeepers -- auditors, corporate boards, analysts, ratings agencies, investment bankers, lawyers and accounting standard-setters -- who operate and regulate our financial markets. The confidence of individual investors depends on honest, independent gatekeepers. Sadly, the collapse of Enron shows this system urgently needs reform. Tom Walker
FYI: Enron prize winners
Colin Powell Mikhail Gorbachev Nelson Mandela Eduard Shevardnadze Alan Greenspan Tom Walker
Enron prize winners: clarification
Whoops! I hope no one confuses my signature line as being part of the list included in my previous message. I am not now, nor have I ever been a recipient of the Enron prize. Tom Walker
Re: Progress: a photomontage
It didn't work! I was trying to send a scan of John Heartfield's 1932 photomontage, "Spitzenprodukte des Kapitalismus" (TheFinest Products of Capitalism)tojuxtaposewith a photo of an ex-Enron employee from today's New York Times. The sign in the Heartfield composition reads, "Nehme jede Arbeit an!", which translates as any work accepted. Tom Walker
Re: From the Heartland
Gene Coyle wrote, We should take umbrage at anything over 3.0. I take umbrage where ever I can findit. Tom Walker
Re: From the Heartland
I agree with you, Max, that the best time to raise the Time issue is when the economy is in good shape. The problem then, however, is that no one is worried much about unemployment and so it is off the political agenda. I recall youspecifically makingthat comment to me in this forum, oh, about two or three years ago. That makes two times when it is not opportune to raise the Time issue -- when unemployment is not an issue and when it is. Having established that it is *never* opportune to raise the Time issue, I have to fall back on the position that it is therefore*always*important in principleto do the heap of work it takes to launch that discussion. Certainly Lonnie's work and Eileen's are part of that heap and that's a credit to EPI. I still can't quite square yourcharacterization ofthespending paradigmas the "one under discussion" when your op-ed piece was about the lack of attention being paid toit by Dems and Repubs alike. Perhaps the signal that it's time totry a differentparadigm iswhen Dems and Repubs aren't even paying the "one under discussion"much lip service. mbs: It's a different paradigm. I'm sympathetic, but for a variety ofreasons I'm stuck in the current one. It's going to take a heap of workto launch that discussion. The downside of the business cycle handsus a context that is ignored if we shift to a timeless focus on time. Itwould not pay to try and change the subject when the one underdiscussion redounds to our advantage. I would say the time toraise the Time issue is when the economy is in what is ordinarilythought of as good shape. Tom Walker
Re: kidnapping nurses
It happens all the time from up here in Canada. You see we have a 62 cent dollar. What we do is train nurses and then when the graduate offer them lousy working conditions and pitiful salaries. The Texans and Californians come up here with a fistful of Yankee greenbacks and fly back with a plane-load of fresh-faced nurses. I suspect it might all be part of the bigger plan to 'integrate' Canada into the U.S. health maintenance industry. See also the press release below. Tom Walker Michael Perelman wrote, The nurses do not exist in those numbers. He is grandstanding -- unless we can kidnap nurses from elsewhere. The Health Care Workplace in Crisis - What to Do ?Ottawa, January 23, 2002 - The deteriorating work experience of health care workers threatens the viability of the health care sector.That's the starting point for a new paper from CPRN.Recent surveys show health professionals are the least likely of all occupations to describe their work environment as healthy. Their job satisfaction is also below the national average.The reasons are manifold: poor labour relations, a low level of trust and commitment between employees and employers, high workload, lack of control over work, psychological distress and burn-out, and some of the highest rates of job absence due to personal illness or injury, to name a few.Doing something to change the situation is the focus of Creating High-Quality Health Care Workplaces, a CPRN discussion paper. The report is the work of a multi-disciplinary team: Graham Lowe and Grant Schellenberg of CPRN's Work Network, Mieke Koehoorn of the University of British Columbia and the Institute for Work and Health, Kent Rondeau of the University of Alberta and Terry Wagar of St. Mary's University. The paper also incorporates the input from a roundtable of experts from the health care sector held in October, 2001.The Canadian Health Services Research Foundation, the Change Foundation and Health Canada provided funding for this project.The authors argue that the negative work experience of health care workers today impedes recruitment and retention of essential staff and undermines the provision of effective patient care. A context of cutbacks, restructuring and demographic change makes the need for action all the more imperative.The Canadian Nurses Association predicts a shortage of 60,000 nurses in Canada by 2011. That's 25% of the current nursing labour force. The College of Family Physicians of Canada sees a shortfall of 6,000 family physicians by the same date. Technologists, therapists, audiologists and speech pathologists will also be in short supply."We cannot afford to ignore today's poor working conditions if we want to avoid that future," says Grant Schellenberg, Director of CPRN's Work Network, "The question guiding this paper is; What are the key ingredients of a high-quality work environment in Canada's health care sector, and how do we get there?"Drawing on the insights from a variety of research streams, the authors demonstrate that the conditions that contribute to motivated, committed, knowledgeable and well-resourced employees are also those that guarantee optimum oganizational performance."We call this a virtuous circle," says Schellenberg. "A workplace culture that pays attention to the psychosocial and physical hazards of the work environment, and a job design that fosters a high degree of participation and control over one's work, quality relationships with colleagues and supervisors and the opportunity to develop skills, are vitally linked to improved patient and organizational outcomes." Schellenberg says that recognizing their common interest in improving the work environment is crucial to cooperation in achieving that goal among the more than 30 health care occupations and professions, unions, managers and others involved in the complex health sector.The discussion paper presents a series of recommendations targeting ministers and public policy makers, unions and professional associations, and managers. It also identifies areas for further research."Our recommendations call for a new vision of health human resources built around recruitment, retention, staff development, and quality of work life. They treat employees as assets to be nurtured, rather than costs to be controlled," says Schellenberg. "Progress depends on all players being committed to this vision." - 30 -To download a free copy of the report visit our home http://www.cprn.org/cprn.htmlpage:
Progress: from Spitzenprodukte to Genius
Here's the Nehme jede ARBEIT an montage: http://www.vcn.bc.ca/timework/genius.htm Tom Walker
Re: From the Heartland
Max wrote, That still leaves the heap o' work. -- mbs Having conquered the lump o' labour, the heap o' work should be a piece o' cake. Here arefour non-exhaustive suggestions for things that need to be done: A comprehensive, cross-referenced, annotated bibliography on economics and history of work time limitation. A survey of the use of accounting in collective bargaining with specific attention to the costing of work time. Workshops that take union members through the steps needed to makeinformed decisions about work time issues. A 'how to' book and free-standing computer program for use by unions in collective bargaining. It would also help immensely if people would pay a bit more attention themodest heap o'work that has already been done on the issue, like Anders Hayden's Sharing the Work, Sparing the Planet andAndre Gorz's Critique of Economic Reason. Tom Walker
Produkte update
The genius of capitalism personified, Kenny-boy,joins the sandwich parade: http://www.vcn.bc.ca/timework/genius.htm Tom Walker
The eyes-glazing-over-factor strikes again
"Executives at the cable news networks acknowledged that Enron, while of enormous significance, is difficult to explain on television. "One senior network news executive said, 'It's the kind of story where you have to worry about the eyes-glazing-over factor.'" I say, "forget about Enron, forget about John Walker Lindh, let's hear more about this 'eyes-glazing-over-factor' thingy." Tom Walker
re: enron and the rate of profit
Empirical confirmation for this proposition comes from the revisions to productivity and labor income that came out last August. The accounting dodge that permitted companies to nottake a charge against revenues foremployee stock options effectively overstated their profitability and watered their equity shares. It might be useful to think of the defeat of labor, decreased regulation and fraud as a progression along a consistent trajectory. That trajectory has a lot to do with the class bias of accounting, which is first of all intensified in the cult of the bottom line. Chris Burford's comments about accounting are relevant here. I would also draw attention to an article some nine years ago in the Journal of Economic Issues by Donald Stabile on "Accountants and the Price System: the Problem of Social Costs". The founding myth of accounting is the boundary drawn between the firm and its social and environmental externalities. I would say that it is a productive myth so long as it is highly qualified by acknowledgements that it is only a convention.Collective bargaining, regulation and progressive taxation were waysof qualifying and containing theenterprise myth.The cult of the bottom line, however,convertswhat was a convention into an eternal Truth, which is where the fiction turns to fraud. Michael Perelman wrote I have been proposing the idea that the profit rate has been artificallyhigh for some time. I had mostly thought in terms of decreased regulationand the defeat of labor. Enron and the dot.com bubble makes me think morein terms of fraud. Any thoughts on this? Tom Walker
re: predicting irrationality
New thinking? I hope the academics at least cite Daniel Ellsberg's dissertation and 1961 Quarterly Journal of Economics article on Risk, Ambiguity and the Savage Axioms. Too bad Pearlstein also missed the Aglietta/Orleans stuff on mimetic desire (qua Rene Girard). The Compromise Effect. . . And the New Thinking About Money Is That Your IrrationalityIs PredictableBy Steven PearlsteinWashington Post Staff WriterSunday, January 27, 2002; Page H01 Tom Walker
Re: enron and the rate of profit
Would you agree that those limits are at least a contributing factor to the bursting of bubbles and the unravelling of Enrons? Jim Devine wrote, it seems to me that it's quite possible that the measured rate of profithas been high due to accounting tricks and the like. But there arelimits to how high the measured rate of profit can be relative to thevery-hard-to-measure actual rate of profit.
re: the decline and fall of the arrogant?
Don't you love opening lines that prove the opposite of what they contend? "It's hard to overstate the enormity of the impact of Enron's implosion" There! You just did it, Madeleine! Not that disagreeat allwith the sentiment or with the WISH that the impact will at least approach the enormity of the issues that the case discloses. But if wishes were horses, we'd all be up toour necks in manure. Dear God, please show those stiff-necked neo-liberal idolators you mean business smite 'em. Ian Murray wrote: [if we could only hope..] Regarding: Fall of the arrogantEnron's demise has discredited a vicious market ideology and givena boost to the anti-corporate causeMadeleine BuntingMonday January 28, 2002The GuardianIt's hard to overstate the enormity of the impact of Enron'simplosion. Tom Walker
Panic?
Yahoo market overview: "Fears of accounting irregularities ruled the day today." Tom Walker
Q4 Sunbeam
Surprise! Surprise! GDP rose in the fourth quarter by a breathtaking 0.2%. 0% financing on new car sales have raised the yankee economic chin just millimetresabove the bar. Huzzah! Huzzah! Buy! Buy! Happy days are here again! Prosperity is just around the corner. Wesee the recovery Sunbeam* at the end of the recession tunnel. *Hint: Chainsaw Al, rebates, Arthur Andersen Tom Walker
RE: Q4 Sunbeam
Uh. My jawis on thefloor. I guess my excuse is that THEY -- the breezy upbeaters --didn't tell me. But that's no excuse, really. You reallymean we're in a DEFLATIONARY recovery? Oh, that doesn't sound like fun at all. This puts a whole new spin on the comments of Diane Swonk, chief economist at Bank One: ``We are well positioned for a recovery here,'' said Diane Swonk, chief economist at Bank One in Chicago. ``We almost have to look back and call this a recession-ette, rather than a recession,'' Swonk said. Max Sawicky wrote, you left out the fun part. Nominal GDP actually fell,but the price level went down more (3/10's%). We'rein a deflationary recovery. Will wonders never cease. Tom Walker
The Pope of Arthur Andersen
NYTimes Quote of the day: The reason I got involved is that Andersen is in big trouble and they were looking for someone to sprinkle some holy water on them. -PAUL A. VOLCKER JR. The articulate, mocking genius of capitalism strikes again. Tom Walker Bowen Island, BC 604 947 2213
Goobers of all nations unite!
Rakesh Bhandari wrote: -not an absolute, purely economic impossibility of accumulation, but a constant alternation between the overcoming of crisis and its reproduction at a higher level until the destruction of the underlying social relations by the working class or the self-emancipation of peanuts. Tom Walker Bowen Island, BC 604 947 2213
O Joy -- another sign of recovery
. . . sales aside from cars posted their biggest surge since March 2000, aided by higher prices at the gas pump . . . I guess I'm just thick. I can't figure out how anyone figures a surge in retail sales if the uptick is entirely due to higher gas prices and excluding slumping car sales from the total. As Max pointed out, the recent surge in 4th quarter GDP was in real terms, after adjusting for price deflation. That number included car sales bloated by 0% interest rates. Lies, damned lies and audited financial statements. Tom Walker
Re: O Joy -- another sign of recovery
No, the weight of the evidence is inconclusive. Too many 'big things' have happened in the interim to make month-to-month fluctuations (especially massaged ones) a reliable indicator of underlying trends. One can say, reasonably, that the inconclusiveness is at least an improvement over evidence of deterioration. But not much more. There is, after all, a war going on. As for 0% financing auto sales, the interpretive slant seems to favour the story that the sales borrowed from future auto sales. I have no doubt that's part of the story. However, another part of the story would be, I presume, some substitution of autos for other purchases, so the rebound in non-auto sales may also reflect to some extent the end of such substitutions. How much of one or another kind of substitution is going on is clearly beyond the ken of the numbers. I don't advocate ignoring evidence, but I distinguish between what is actually evidence and what is interpretation. Doug Henwood wrote, The weight of the evidence is that the U.S. economy is troughing, or did bottom out around December. This could be a false bottom, a pause before another downleg; the recovery could be weak, and might feel little different from recession. But there's not much point in ignoring the evidence. Tom Walker
Re: O Joy -- another sign of recovery
Yeh, me too. I get paid to delve a lot deeper into numbers that in many ways are simpler and more self-explanatory than the retail sales data. The notion that analysts can almost instantaniously interpret these figures and unanimously agree on their import is amusing but not persuasive. Sabri Oncu wrote, By the way, I am saying these as a scientist, not as some leftist who wants revenge!... Tom Walker
Re: O Joy -- another sign of recovery
Doug Henwood wrote, Just this morning, CNBC had a Chicago stock futures trader on who said that Enron was big news a few weeks ago, but now we've moved beyond that. That's because Enron is an allegory traders think in symbols. Tom Walker
re:The next phase in the war against the axis of evil
THE JUDGES FROM Russia, China, Poland and Ukraine represent an axis of cheaters, Mr. Bush said to a standing ovation in a special joint session Shouldn't that be the *axles* of evil? Tom Walker
Re: Question for Drewk
In 25 words or less, Andrew, what's your substantive claim and how will knowledge of it contribute to doing away with capitalism? Andrew Kliman wrote, There were about 200 anti-global-capitalist youth in the audience, plus a smattering of older folks. I gave a value-theoretic analysis of the IMF, leading to the conclusion that we need to do away with capitalism. At this point the audience broke out into spontaneous applause. Tom Walker
RE: left friendly poll -- accompanied by an oud?
According to a USA TODAY/CNN/Gallup poll of 1,001 adults . . . As someone steeped in the critique of opinion polling methodology I am invariably more interested in the technical aspects than the results. In this case what strikes me is the Scheherazadian number of poll participants. One thousand and one adults pulls in some stirring narrative possibilities regarding sex, death and suspense. Tom Walker
Cremron
Investigators believe the crematory had stacked the corpses for up to 15 years. They just piled them on top and then piled more on top. And then they just left them, Sperry said. I wish we had a good explanation for this, but we don't. Whosoever would grace this frail cottage, in which poverty adorns every corner, with a rational summing up, would be making no inapt statement nor overstepping the mark of well-founded truth if he called the world a general store, a customs-house of death, in which man is the merchandise, death the wondrous merchant, God the most conscientious book-keeper, but the grave the bonded drapers' hall and ware house. - Johann Christoph Männling, Theatre of Death, or funeral orations, 1692. Used by Walter Benjamin as a motto to his section on allegory and trauerspiel in Origin of German Tragic Drama (Ursprung des deutschen Trauerspiels) . Tom Walker
Axis of Evil: Poindexter
in the computer security realm in the 1980's, said Marc Rotenberg, a former counsel with Senate Judiciary Committee, referring to Mr. Poindexter's policies that shifted control of computer security to the military. It took three administrations and both political parties over a decade to correct those mistakes. As national security adviser, Mr. Poindexter was involved with a Reagan administration initiative in 1984 known as National Security Decision Directive, N.S.D.D.-145, which gave intelligence agencies broad authority to examine computer databases for sensitive but unclassified information. In a later memorandum, Mr. Poindexter expanded this authority to give the military responsibility for all computer and communications security for the federal government and private industry. Mr. Poindexter, who received a doctorate in physics from the California Institute of Technology, has a deep interest and an advanced understanding of computers and other information technologies, said Victoria Stavridou, a Darpa contractor and director of the Systems Laboratory at SRI International in Menlo Park, Calif. John is very well respected technically, she said. He understands these issues, and that makes him extremely valuable. Tom Walker
Re: Axis of Evil: Poindexter
Michael Perelman wrote, Bush is bringing back everybody except Fawn Hall. Maybe she is next. Not likely. Fawn ratted, however reluctantly. I've been poindering the Pondexter appointment all day and I think I've solved the riddle. The Bush II admin needn't have appointed Abrams, Reich, Poindexter to avail itself of their wisdom or talents. The appointments were clearly meant to be symbolic. But what do they symbolize? They symbolize exactly the reverse of Poindexter's resignation in 1986. They celebrate the well-known but officially denied fact that Reagan ordered the specific violation of laws and that Bush the senior (along with the entire R. cabinet, the congress, the media the public) knew damn well that was the case. The appointment of Poindexter officially retracts the denials now that it is too late to do anything about the impeachable offenses. As Lawrence Walsh wrote: Regan, Meese, and Casey then embarked on a desperate gambit, which Regan laid out that day [November 24, 1986] in a memorandum entitled 'Plan of Action.' 'Tough as it seem,' he wrote, 'blame must be put at NSC's door -- rogue operation, going on without president's knowledge or sanction.' The goal would be to 'try to make the best of a sensational story.' The authors of the plan concluded that it would not be enough to fire North. They needed more than a scapegoat; they needed a firewall. Poindexter had to go. The next day he resigned at a meeting in which Reagan and Bush expressed their regrets. Tom Walker
A new kind of combat
What Poindexter is up to. http://www.fcw.com/fcw/articles/2001/0917/news-genoa-09-17-01.asp Tom Walker
preempting nefarious acts
here's the latest on the John Firewall Poindexter caper: http://www.fcw.com/fcw/articles/2002/0218/web-darpa-02-18-02.asp Feb 18, 2002, DARPA spokeswoman confirms appointment. Tom Walker
preempting nefarious acts II
From the CPSR Newsletter, Winter 1993: Computer Security Authority During the 1980s a debate arose in Washington about whether authority for computer security shouId be entrusted to a civilian agency or an intelligence agency. A presidential directive signed by President Reagan, NSDD-145 transferred computer security authority from the National Bureau of Standards (later renamed the National Institute of Standards and Technology) to the National Security Agency and gave the intelligence community authority for sensitive but unclassified information. A subsequent memorandum from John Poindexter expanded this authority still further to all computer and communications security for the federal government and private industry. As the government's authority to control access to computerized information expanded, the free flow of information diminished. Stories of agents visiting private information vendors and public libraries soon followed. At the same time, a wide range of other activities by the federal government further threatened to restrict access to information. Tom Walker
what is total information awareness?
The Information Awareness Office (IAO) develops and demonstrates information technologies and systems to counter asymmetric threats by achieving total information awareness useful for preemption, national security warning and national security decision-making. http://www.darpa.mil/iao/ Tom Walker
more total information awareness
February 19, 2002 Pentagon Readies Efforts to Sway Sentiment Abroad By JAMES DAO and ERIC SCHMITT WASHINGTON, Feb. 18 The Pentagon is developing plans to provide news items, possibly even false ones, to foreign media organizations as part of a new effort to influence public sentiment and policy makers in both friendly and unfriendly countries, military officials said. http://www.nytimes.com/2002/02/19/international/19PENT.html?todaysheadlines Tom Walker
Connect the dots . . .
Clairtone, BCCI, Bre-X, Barrick, Enron, GenesisIntermedia . . . On second thought, don't connect the dots. You don't want to know. And don't ask me. I never heard of any of them. Tom Walker
Re: On the necessity of socialism and grammar
Sabri Oncu wrote, Um, as soon as we can figure out whether God does or does not exist... Ian My dear Ian, This problem is not that difficult. I solved it when I was 14. I realized that there was no difference between believing in the existence or non-existence of God. Sabri has framed the issue correctly. Both are beliefs. For the same reason as Sabri, I believe in God but not in a God or gods. The distinction is crucial. There IS a difference between believing in God and believing in a God or the God. God is a unique part of speech that cannot be a noun. The article makes God into a noun, which is grammatically absurd. It is like saying, in English, I the go to store or She a eat apple. It is clearly, obviously ungrammatical. God is also not a verb, an adjective, an adverb, a preposition or any other common part of speech. In fact, one might say that the linguistic function of God is precisely to stand as other to all the common parts of speech and thus to remind us of the incompleteness, the inadequacy of any conceivable utterance. God is the unique grammatical term for the ultimate unutterableness of being. Tom Walker
Re: n the necessity of socialism and grammar
Rob wrote, To avoid confusion, though, I'd not call it God -snip- The famous last sentence of the Tractatus - What we cannot speak about we must pass over in silence This suggests to me that as much as I sympathize with the aim of avoiding confusion, confusion cannot be avoided. That too is inherent in the limitation of language. Tower of Babel and all that. Tom Walker
Re: on the necessity of god, goddess, gods, goddesses, or a combination of the above
Jim Devine wrote, As far as I can tell, there's no logical argument either for or against the existence of god. I agree absolutely there's no logical argument for or against. My own position is based entirely and radically on grammar. Tom Walker
Wiseacres Anonymous
Doyle Saylor wrote, PS Tom is a wiseacre in starting this thread, and I recognize the difference in seriousness of his message and my own. Still the point he made is worthy of my attention in a serious manner anyway. [1585-95; MD wijssager prophet, trans. of MHG wissage, late OHG wissago, earlier wizzago wise person, c. OE witega; akin to WIT 2] Verily my tongue hath worn a hole in my cheek. But I am also dead serious. I would just add that the emptiness of the God term is potentially a productive emptiness, although it is also potentially deadening. How can there be different kinds of emptiness? Think of aporia and hollowed out. Aporia carries thought forward with an expectation, hollowness arrests action with disappointment. Fortunately, hollowness can be transformed to aporia, which is the method of Negative Dialectic. A 17th century German dramatist wrote: Whosoever would grace this frail cottage, in which poverty adorns every corner, with a rational summing up, would be making no inapt statement nor overstepping the mark of well-founded truth if he called the world a general store, a customs-house of death, in which man is the merchandise, death the wondrous merchant, God the most conscientious book-keeper, but the grave the bonded drapers' hall and ware house. Walter Benjamin used the passage as a motto for his chapter on Allegory and Trauerspiel in _The Origin of German Tragic Drama_. I cited it last week in connection with the Georgia crematorium. God as a book-keeper seems at first a peculiarly inapt metaphor, inasmuch as book-keeping is a matter of reducing all activity to monetary value. But God is *the most conscientious* book-keeper, which is to say there are no off-balance sheet transactions. Mere money cannot be God's unit of account. Compare this book-keeper God to the neo-classical tatonnement auctioneer for whom vain money is the sole unit of account. One might say the only difference is their unit of account. But that difference makes all the difference in the world. The auctioneer is thus revealed as an imposter, a huckster, a fraud, a false prophet (false profit). What if the most important questions about the attacks on the Pentagon and the World Trade Center as historical Events transcend the terms of the current debate and the underlying framework it serves? http://csf.colorado.edu/pen-l/2002I/msg01951.html Tom Walker
Re: Dallas Smythe student
Sut Jhally sounds like my kind of fellow alumnus. Unfortunately his lecture is on a Friday afternoon, one of my most congested. I'll see what I can do. I disagree with one claim in the article. Dallas Smythe wasn't the first to look at media as economic institutions. I wouldn't claim Walter Benjamin as first because absolute priority is difficult to establish. But he was certainly looking at the media as economic institutions long before Smythe. While were on the theme of advertising and the apocalypse, I've dusted off my sandwich boards and have begun flaneuring around again in earnest. The rationale and highlights will unfold serially on sandwichman.blogspot.com. Tom Walker
Re: Dallas Smythe student
This kind of hijacking selected words out of context and insinuating that they mean something else is pointless. I would say juvenile, but would be insulting to children. The context was the role of advertising in the media and culture. The point is about advertisers promising people things they can't deliver. Perhaps advertisements have improved Doug's sex life. If so, perhaps he could tell us how. Doug Henwood wrote, Gadzooks! Sex!! Triviality!!! Band together and protect the youth from these threats Remind me what's progressive about this? It sounds like Donald Wildmon.
Re: Dallas Smythe student
Not being a mind reader, I haven't the slightest idea what Doug's a lot of this critique refers to. Sut Jhally? The Media Education Foundation? Dallas Smythe? The critique of consumerism in general? (and here we could branch off into other specifics, Marcuse's repressive sublimation? the voluntary simplicity movement? Juliet Schor? etc. etc. etc.). Your juvenile point, Doug, is too vague to be a point and so sweeping as to be every bit as reactionary as the Puritan hair-shirt crap you conjure up. Fascinating passage from Mandel and a paradoxical pledge of allegiance to, presumably, Mandel's first sentence -- but not his second. Mandel's SECOND sentence begins with a catalogue of and homage to precisely those conquests that have been arrested in North America during the quarter century since the source text, _Late Capitalism_, was translated into English: the shorter work week, the weekend, paid holidays, politically sacrosanct pension universality, affordable post secondary education. That same sentence concludes with the qualification, to the extent to which they are not trivialized or deprived of their human content by capitalist commercialization. Pardon my slow, deliberate reading but *trivialization* is precisely what Jhally's comment referred to and what you, Doug, lampooned as puritanical crap. The anxiety isn't over pleasure and sensuality per se, but over the commodification of pleasure and sensuality -- a process that is no doubt so far advanced that it becomes hard to conceive of pleasure and sensuality in any other terms. Hard? Conceive? Ha ha. Perhaps I should have said something about penetration, too. It's an anxiety that you obviously share, Doug. Otherwise, how to account for the compulsive eroto-detective work, the discovery of revealing expressions (what one might decades ago have referred to as Freudian slips). Fear not, Doug, your anxiety is my own. I have no wish to renounce pleasure in the name of an abstract critical purity. But as for having little political appeal, consider that the unabashedly anti-pleasure fundamentalist right gets an incredible amount of political mileage out of the anxiety that, presumably, no one but affluent PC lefties and the voluntary poor share (not to mention you and I, Doug). Doug Henwood wrote, And my juvenile point was that a lot of this critique is a rather undigested rehash of a lot of Puritan hair-shirt crap. You may think the quote is out of context - I think it's a revealing expression of anxiety over pleasure and sensuality. It is also likely to have little political appeal beyond a rather affluent gang of PC lefties (or the voluntarily poor). I'm with Mandel on this one. Doug Ernest Mandel, Late Capitalism, pp. 394-396: 6. The genuine extension of the needs (living standards) of the wage-earner, which represents a raising of his level of culture and civilization. In the end this can be traced back virtually completely to the conquest of longer time for recreation, both quantitatively (a shorter working week, free weekends, paid holidays, earlier pensionable age, and longer education) and qualitatively (the actual extension of cultural needs, to the extent to which they are not trivialized or deprived of their human content by capitalist commercialization). Tom Walker
Re: Dallas Smythe student (separated at birth?)
What I see that I object to is not so much asceticism as good old fashioned oppositional smugness. I object to it, though, with some humility. There's a long tradition of smugness alternating between politically correct asceticism and bohemian hedonism. For chrissake think of the sixties maoists and hippies, often the same people at different points in their hormone-crazed personal trajectories. Oppositional hedonism and asceticism are mirror images of each other and together the pair is a mirror image of the mainstream A H twins. Keep in mind that the hedonistic and ascetic positions are going to stand out more than some wishy-washy dialectical appreciation of nuance. To paraphrase another famous Canadian communications guru, sometime indeed the medium is the massage. Doug Henwood wrote, What I see in the anti-commercial gang is just the kind of asceticism that Mandel criticized in orthodox Marxists, though without the class angle.
Re: Dallas Smythe student
Hey! What is this Yoshie? Theory of inevitable progress? Let me assure Yoshie and Daniel that I am not a woozy pre-capitalist romantic. But I will continue to wonder why such assurances are necessary at all. Look at my primitive tools, youse guys: notebook computers, scanners, printers, spreadsheet programs, web sites, etc. I hope no one is offended when I confess that I actually derive sensual pleasure from using these running-dog bourgeois instruments of oppression and exploitation. HORRORS! But my pleasure doesn't prevent me from bearing witness to the violence that takes place every day in the name of my sovereign right to possess a separate notebook computer for each colour in the rainbow. Let's simplify this discussion: undialectical critique of capitalism: bad undialectical apology for capitalism: bad dialectical critique of capitalism: good dialectical apology for capitalism: intellectually dishonest The latter proceeds by mistaking a dialectical critique for an undialectical critique and correcting it where it needs no correcting. Yoshie Furuhashi wrote: Just as wage labor is a necessary stage through which production must pass to become socialized enough for socialism, commodification of pleasure and sensuality is a necessary stage through which (broadly defined) reproduction gets socialized enough for socialism. to which Daniel Davies added: But more broadly, why all the fuss about commodification of pleasure and sexuality? Isn't it enough zat zey be pleazant and zexy, without also demanding that they be politically correct? And what if commodified products are actually *nicer* than their non-commodified equivalents? This is certainly true of the brewing industry, and quite possibly of many others. Tom Walker
Re: Dallas Smythe student
about the unique delicacy of women with respect to certain kinds and conditions of labour. This is not to say that the strategy and tactics *justified* discrimination against women any more than racism against chinese immigrants at the turn of the century was *justified* by employers use of immigrant labour to undercut wage rates. It is to point out that one dismisses such pragmatic consideration at the risk of discounting the integrity of the collective subject. And that places us right back in the puzzle of the relationship between individual and collective action. To conclude, IMHO wage labour long ago served its historical purpose and has only one thing positive left to offer to humanity: the struggle to overthrow it. It makes little sense to disparage the effectiveness of individual consumer choice while extolling the emancipatory virtues of the individual sale of wage labour. Tom Walker
Re: The Incomplet Recession
I see the hair-shirt left-wing gloomster crowd is at it again wringing their hands in ghoulish glee at the misery that will befall the working class and lead lickety-split to the final conflict. When will you guys ever learn that rotten and corrupt as it is, capitalism provides the best damn goo-gahs on earth. I'm kidding, of course. Just wanted to save Doug the trouble of his usual rant. Tom Walker 604 255 4812
Economists beware!
Italian guerilla group blamed for economist's murder I condemn this brutal and senseless act of violence. Where are the investment bankers? Tom Walker
Re: Poultry Ban in Russia
Charles Jannuzi wrote, Because US chicken is so full of anti-biotics one drumstick cures the clap! Is that administered topically, orally or intravenous? Tom Walker 604 255 4812
Re: Set up for some people to be out of work
What strikes me about dmacon3's response (besides the sheer, BSing) is the idiosycratic capitalization of Economist and Market Economy. Charles Brown forwarded the following exchange: Set up for some people to be out of work Exchange: westont In a class I'm taking, we discussed the issue of employement verses unemployement. Well, my professor stated that the government has it set up for some people to be out of work. Everyone can't have a job. So my concern is, who picks who works and who doesn't. Is it by luck that I have my job,or was I selected by some unknown power in Washington. It is the balance of power. The economy has to balance out, even though we are in a recession. However, what do we tell the homeless man, who has been searching for a job for several months, or the mother who has to receive TANF, because her company closed down? It makes you wonder about this so called Land of the Free. Weston dmacon3 Weston, is your professor an Economist? From your statement regarding his/her statement it wouldn't seem likely. Although there are some structural and de facto safeguards in place that seem to favor the dominant society, I am aware of any full blown conspiracy to keep some people employed and others unemployed. I do know that in a Market Economy, full employment is considered to be 94%. The remaining 6% is termed cyclical, i.e. people between jobs, disabled or choosing not to work. I don't know if this answers your question, but this is one mans opinion. And I don't believe it is inferior to that of your professor. Tom Walker 604 255 4812
