Julien answering to Tom who is asking for miracle solutions as if I would be
losing my time here if I had them:
>BTW, how much
>longer do you think that system will hold?
No idea.
>When we can discuss influencing
>factors beyond macroeconomics, we can return to this.
You can influence things beyond macroeconomics by macroeconomic
actions. You can influence macroeconomics by actions that have nothing to
do with it. But what was your idea?
>The
>point STILL is that figures are available to you, when you seemed to imply
>they weren�t.
They may be available. But I have no idea where to find them. If you know,
please tell me.
>Start with Bentham and Ricardo on the necessity of expansion of the British
>Empire in order to avoid resource depletion in the Midlands.
But that is not saying that wages are a function of consumption of ressources,
is it? That's merely saying that we need to consume ressources to live
(common sense). Tell me is I missed something.
>... EYE like the idea of adjusting prices
>to reflect true environmental costs. When we step away from our fantasy
>game, however, I am still asking the same question: Can you please
>describe the mechanism that installs these solutions in our societies?
Actually, in many countries small mechanisms of that kind at already working,
for example about the price of gas.
I see two mechanisms:
In countries sufficently democratic, people can push for those solutions if
there's a significant part of the population beind the idea. In others, blood
couls be needed to achieve the same result.
In any countries, governments and businesses at some point will want to do
more crisis prevention. It's likely to be much too late.
These two solutions need a more widespread realization that unregulated
markets don't deliver satisfactory results. It seems that this realization is
underway.
>�There are real-world examples of countries with different
>consumptions for the same living standards. Do you deny that?�
>
>No, I think we agree. What is your point? I missed it.
Then there are actually existing ways to have diminshed resource
consumption that have to be pushed further.
>�I've no global solution and I'm not even sure that a global
>solution would be
>desirable.�
>
>Yet it is a global crisis �. hmmmmm.
So what? If there is freezing before harvest of sensitive crops in a region, sould
all peasants unite to find a regional solution or should they take care of their
crops as they can? Sorry for the bizarre metaphor, but you'll have to come up
with arguments rather than rhetoric ("global something" must go with "global
another thing" is indeed rhetoric).
>Yet your last response to me featured alternatives installed in a year and
>removal of the �flavour of capitalism� before �the big crisis.� You might
>possibly perceive my difficulty in following your multi-pathed approaches.
>Forgive me.
It was just thought experiments. Remember?
What was not thought experiments is that there are ways for a willing society to
do better. The problem is to get the willing society.
>�actual economic value� as you use it is
>a limiting factor, not an encompassing one. Until economic value includes
>the true cost to the planet of resource consumption, you guys cannot have
>access to the word �actual�.
I'm not sure about what you mean with limiting vs. encompassing.
Also, I don't think that we have any idea of the "true cost to the planet" of
anything.
Anyway, I think that one way to go if we want to have useful value concepts is
to have actual use-values which have to be compared against a different type
of value that we may call ecological-value. In other words, I'd like to have the
use-value of items compared to their "ecological footprint" in one way or
another.
What you want to do seems to be: real value = UV (use value) minus lost EV
(ecological value) in production. The trouble is that I don't see a good way to
translate units of "UV" into units of "EV". I'd escape this problem by saying that
EV is invaluable and that their is no way to compare the two but that we must
live so we'll allow ourselves some destruction of EV for the moment at this
"rate" against UV. You might think it's a nuance, but I think that having positive
and negative "real values" runs the risk of having people read them as
good/bad and also runs the risk of heading towards "more of the same thing"
solutions like overproduction of things with strongly positive "real values" for
the sake of that "real value" created.
>�Driving prices closer to actual values is not extremely hard for
>most states, as long as it's recognized that thoses values must be
>arbitrarily decided. I don't deny any possibility of applying "real" values,
>but that would be a lot harder.�
>
>Yes, that indeed speaks to the point I raised above. If you have just been
>arguing inapplicable old dead Marxist theory in a vacuum of fantasy, well
>then I am prepared to totally agree with your propositions. If you intend on
>using those theories to act in the �real� world, ... well �. I am still
>looking for the mechanism that makes them relevant before the Crash
>readjusts our priorities.
I have not been arguing marxist theory here. Many states are currently driving
some prices closer to actual values (and on the other hand are often doing the
reverse with other prices). My opinion is that we shouldn't be ashamed to
arbitrarily set prices without a sound theory, but I also said that I'm open to
"scientific" solutions for deciding which price is the "best".
>I am
>sorry Julien, but the Marxist position cannot have it both ways.
I am not trying to have "the" marxist position and I frankly think that you read
marxism a bit too often in what peole say. Here I was making an observation,
not a theory. If marxism says A and I "see" B, I'll believe my "eyes" like
everyone else (I guess).
>If it is to
>be claimed � as it has by some here recently � that socialist economics was
>a deliberate construction tool of global capitalism, and that there is some
>vast capitalist worldwide conspiracy to do evil to the workers (and there
>is), then you cannot insert the disclaimer that there is not a de facto
>�unified market�.
If socialist economics were a tool of global capitalism and if there was a
consipiracy (not that I agree), how would that create a de facto unified market?
In what data or facts do you "see" this unified market? Facto�ds like "I can buy
stuff made in China" won't do. That's not new.
>A baby born in the the
>US or Europe consumes the earth�s resources at 13 times the rate of a baby
>born in the �average� third world.
And I have no solution to solve that. I think that it would already be nice to stop
what we do to contribute to that situation, which means cancelling debts,
recalling armies, burning down the IMF, etc. I also think that if those poor
babies rise up against their "elites" and then have some proposals, we should
listen.
>Yes. And that [decolonization? coups against their dictators?] is the
>current prescription for sliding into the abyss. Their plan(s) will be too little
>too late. Think harder.
I don't think that I have to think for them. They have brains. If we have
proposals for each other, then we can maybe cooperate and work together,
but I don't think that I should look down to the people of Africa whose situation I
have very little knowledge of to offer them solutions to their problems.
>Care to suggest a system that avoids them [warlords]?
There IS such a system. ;-)
Seriously, I think that in the current situation we'd better look for efficient and
trustworthy leadership than for a system which avoids the risk of bad
leadership emerging again. In other words, any better alternative to current
dictators would be, well... better. The ones ready to wages metaphorical wars
inside their countries as opposed to the ones willing to wage real wars would
be appreciated, I guess.
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