Good afternoon, Lawry,
I want very much to be an optimist, but I have trouble being one right now.
Perhaps in a week or two? Very much depends on the weather and it's very hot
and humid here right now.
You see a brave new world, one of intellectual contribution, innovation,
experimentation, etc. ahead of us. I once saw that world flare up here and
there, but I'm now fully retired and out of the general swing of things.
Nobody asks me anymore. (Sob)
I'm not sure I agree with your take on the societal function of death. It's
almost telling elderly people like myself that we have to get out the way of
the energized young bulls that are charging toward us. No thank you, I still
feel that I have something to say even if there's nobody listening.
And I really don't think that if well meaning activists (pessimists?) scare
people enough things will change. I feel things will change only when we hit a
wall, only when there is no possibility of proceeding the way we are going.
And given the way we consume and produce, I do think that time is coming.
Being a natural born deep pessimist, I couldn't think otherwise.
Regards, Ed
----- Original Message -----
From: Lawrence de Bivort
To: RE-DESIGNING WORK, INCOME DISTRIBUTION,EDUCATION
Sent: Wednesday, July 14, 2010 11:46 AM
Subject: Re: [Futurework] Fw: [Ottawadissenters] Fw: More dismal stuff
Good morning, Ed,
I don't have a lot of time unfortunately for posting today, but I do want to
suggest that maybe you are being overly pessimistic. I see a quite bright
future, one in which intellectual contribution, aesthetic contribution,
innovation, enterprise, experimentation, structural flexibility and adhocracy
are the dominant characteristics.
Yes, as it now positioned, much of our population won't be able to make its
way to this. Too many people today are stodgy, unattracted to eduction,
stasis-oriented, entertainment-seeking, and physically unfit. They would have a
very hard time making it in a world of change, action, and initiative. But here
is the point that I think a lot of the postings here may not appreciate: that
these changes will happen over time and that people -- and populations -- will
adjust to the new problems and opportunities. They won't of course change in
perfect sync with the changing world: all of us tend to be lazy and somewhat
reactive, at best (and there are good reasons for this). So there is a lag, and
it is in that lag that people experience uncertainty and some experience fear
and failure. But by and large, populations adapt to new realities. And, in my
view, those realities will be very friendly to those who embrace change,
action, and initiative.
Of course, these new realities won't happen all at once; indeed, as the
eloquent comments on this list reflect, they started some time ago, and they
will take decades and centuries to become fully evident.
And this brings me to the societal function of death. In the end, a
significant part of the process of change depends on the death of older people.
They take with them old habits, old demands, and old attitudes to the grave.
They clear out space for younger people, younger ideas, and expectations. Death
creates space for innovators, experimentation, and change. It is also true
that death deprives us of a certain amount of often hard-won wisdom, and, I
suppose, we will be ever rediscovering wisdom that was lost as older people
die. To the extent that wisdom is contextual, this is not bad, but not all
wisdom is contextual....
So, for me, the future does not look at all bleak: it looks exciting,
inviting, freeing, and demanding. Those who don't 'get it' will not see it
this way, and I understand that.
What I hope we don't do is drown ourselves in a swamp of despair, and I see
some of the posts here doing that, or contributing to that. Not only does this
tend to leave people at their worst -- is despair and inaction -- but it also
saps the energy of youngsters when it comes to their addressing their own
futures. It is the opposite of pollyanish thinking, and both are equally
destructive.
Unfortunately, a lot of well-meaning activists have fallen into the trap of
thinking that if they scare people enough, people will change. These activists
thwart with this view the very goals they hold, and in the thwarting they
themselves sink into despair and anger, and so become themselves useless to the
processes of healthy change in society.
I hope these notes are of interest.
Cheers,
Lawry
On Jul 14, 2010, at 11:10 AM, Ed Weick wrote:
----- Original Message -----
From: Ed Weick
To: [email protected]
Sent: Wednesday, July 14, 2010 11:08 AM
Subject: Re: [Ottawadissenters] Fw: More dismal stuff
The main trends I see are continuing population growth, continued
urbanization (see Mike Davis's Planet of Slums for example), reduced employment
per unit of output (increasing efficiency in production), a continuing shift of
production to the low wage world, and the increasing importance of the
financial sector as opposed to the goods producing sector in the advanced
world. All of this means an exacerbation of the unemployment problem we have
now. I don't think that the world we're moving into will be a pretty place.
A little over a decade ago I spent a month in a vast slum of Sao Paulo,
then a city of 20 million people. Many, perhaps most, of the families of that
slum were migrants from the countryside who had lost jobs on plantations
because machinery had replaced them. They were stuck; there was no way that
they could go back to the land and grow their own food. The people I worked
with lived in a third stage favela (slum). Accommodation consisted of very
crowded but solid brick-block buildings. People in second stage favelas lived
in shacks cobbled together out of whatever wood and tin could be found. First
stage favelados slept in cardboard boxes under overpasses.
People did whatever they could to stay alive. Quite a few worked in hotels
downtown, others ran local shops, but many sold drugs and turned to petty or
even major crime. Standoffs and shootings between the police and drug dealers
or criminals were commonplace.
I'm not suggesting that our situation will be like that of Sao Paulo, but
given the kinds of changes now apparent, we will go some distance in that
direction. Our kids won't have the kinds of opportunities we had, and it will
likely be worse for our grandkids. We increasingly hear the word "deflation",
which suggests a prolonged slump and falling prices because people cannot or
will not spend as they did before. Paul Krugman argues that if people are not
spending, the government must, but governments already have high debts and
their powers to tax are diminishing.
Sorry that this posting is a downer, but I'm not an optimist so I might as
well say it how I see it.
Ed
----- Original Message -----
From: balfourarch
To: [email protected]
Sent: Monday, July 12, 2010 11:11 PM
Subject: Re: [Ottawadissenters] Fw: More dismal stuff
Ed
That kind of scenario cannot play out; post oil food if not raised
locally is not coming from afar.
The economy that allows the city state to exist collapses. The dregs
cannot exist if the flotsam above has sunk; the folks will be busy trying out
how to raise a little food inner city wise or moving to the hinterland to take
over the monoculture abandoned fields. Or die.
As in the latter day urbanization as saviour days are not sustainable.
The inner city has nothing to trade for the food from the hinterland. They have
to get their hands dirty.....
No room left for the drug culture.
rb
On 2010.07.12, at 3:14 PM, Ed Weick wrote:
----- Original Message -----
From: Ed Weick
To: Keith Hudson
Sent: Monday, July 12, 2010 5:40 PM
Subject: Re: More dismal stuff
Keith, I understand what you are saying, but I'd still maintain that
the world has changed greatly over the past half century. Production takes
place over a much larger part of the globe, container ships and aircraft move
what is produced around much more rapidly, communications are instant and
America and Europe have lost much of their economic clout. Because production
has become more efficient it needs fewer people per unit of output and yet the
global population continues to grow and its growth is expected to continue. I
see the question of how increasingly urbanized populations will make a living
as a major problem. Increasingly via drugs and crime probably.
Ed
----- Original Message -----
From: Keith Hudson
To: Ed Weick ; RE-DESIGNING WORK, INCOME DISTRIBUTION, , EDUCATION
Sent: Monday, July 12, 2010 1:45 PM
Subject: Re: More dismal stuff
Ed,
At 11:34 12/07/2010 -0400, you wrote:
There's been a lot of discussion, too much in fact, on Keynes and
Hayek on the list recently. I recall reading them, and others like Friedman, a
very very long time ago. They understood the world from the perspective of
their times, but now they're all dead. Well Krugman, essentially a Keynesian,
isn't dead, but the kinds of things he keeps saying in his columns, which I've
characterized as "spend, spend, spend", seems out of place too as belonging to
a past era rather than now.
What kind of a world do we live in now and how might we think about
it? One of the greatest differences between the worlds of Keynes and Hayek is
the extent of globalization.
There was as much, if not more, globalized trade (as between many
different importers and exporters in different countries)(as a percentage of
total world GDP) in the 1870s/80s as now. A very great deal of globalized
"trade" today is the shifting of components and sub-components within and
between large corporations.
Economic decisions and actions that are now made a very long
distance from us can have a huge effect on our well being. When Keynes and
Hayek lived, and thought, unemployment in a particular country was seen as
caused by a fall in effective demand in that country or by market imperfection
such as too much monopolization and too little competition. I don't think that
is the case now. Many Americans for example are unemployed because a large
chunk has been ripped out of their economy and shipped off to China.
But it's still the case that most high-value components (with higher
profit margins) are made elsewhere and only assembled in China. Even so,
Chinese wage rates are rising rapidly now -- just as they did in Japan and
Korea in the 1960s and the 1980s respectively -- and will be equivalent to ours
in the not too distant future. Chinese firms will then start to move to the UK
and the US just as the Japanese and the Koreans have done.
Another major difference between the world of Keynes and Hayek and
our world is that of the efficiency of the productive process. Even if
production has or has not been shifted to China and the BRICs, the productive
process employs far fewer people than in would have in Keynes' and Hayek's day.
But because of population growth there are far more people needing work. Even
the production of an increasing proportion of consumers goods in China has done
little to increase the proportion of the Chinese population that is employed.
And globally, while the efficiency of production has increased greatly, so has
the proportion of the global population needing employment. In 1950, global
population was approximately 2.5 billion; by 2000 it had increased to over 6
billion. And a much larger proportion of global population lived in cities
where they would be less able to fend for themselves if they did not find jobs.
Yet another major difference between our world and that of Keynes
and Hayek is the greatly expanded role of the financial sector, which can play
a very large role in global economic illness or health, as the US subprime
mortgage debacle has demonstrated. Yes indeed, as James Galbraith argues,
catch the bastards, incarcerate them, apply tough laws, etc., but will that
stop them? Hardly, given the vast number of hiding places that electronic
communications now provide them.
So, let us nod respectfully in the directions of Keynes and Hayek
and earlier economic thinkers like Adam Smith, Jean Baptiste Say, David
Ricardo, etc., but let’s not forget that we live in a very different world than
they did.
But the basic nature of economic transactions remains exactly the
same as then -- and probably the same as in 75,000BC when sea-shell necklaces
were traded over long distances.
My greatest fear is that our world of growing population, job
shrinkage, and the growth of nefarious practices could, in a couple of decades,
resemble the world portrayed in Soylent Green, a very classic movie about a
world gone totally out of kilter.
All the signs are that when people are in Soylent green scenarios --
as they surely will be in many regions of the world -- then fertility rates go
way down. There'll also be a huge amount of starvation but, within a generation
or so, the world population should start to sink. I think the basic
technologies will be extremely sophisticated by then so the big issue within
the advanced countries (not necessarily those of today) will be whether they
can educate their children up to a standard to be able to force job sharing on
the adults with interesting.
Keith
Ed
Keith Hudson, Saltford, England
balfourarch
[email protected]
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