Ray,
A few comments on your latest:
At 21:56 19/08/2010 -0400, you wrote:
William Baumol told us in 2004 that productivity has vastly increased the
money that is available. The problem was where it was going. We have
plenty of real capital. We are not a small island nation off of the
coast of Europe. We have vast resources and a population that is a
tremendous natural resource as well.
Neither of these is important in itself. Small countries with almost no
resources and small populations can do very well -- e.g. Sweden,
Switzerland, Singapore. What's important is innovative ability and a
culture that will support unusual initiatives.
What we suffer from is a lack of genuine ideals that stress life,
equality, unity and the effects of actions down to the seventh
generation. Most of all you need a cultural program that
· builds individual competence and insight,
True
· develops a program that is a part of the real world and not
fantasy based in religious theories.
True
· Seriously caring about every single citizen in the country and
their growth and evolution
Not necessarily. Besides, is it possible?
There is nothing long range about the private sector and working with it
is tremendously expensive when compared to the public sector.
Energy and resource companies think much further ahead than any current
government in the world -- except China perhaps.
America has made the business of the private sector into a simple
profit machine for share holders. That is new.
No, it's out of date already in the case of many of the largest firms,
particularly in the financial sector. Shareholders (and pension funds with
high shareholdings) take second place to the top managers of firms who are
only concerned with their current earnings and perks, not with longer-term
profitability.
Companies that were seriously involved in community building and long
term planning have been replaced by companies that ravage communities and
steal the resources of the weak.
Most firms don't want to ravage communities. They want a large consumer
base which willingly buys their products.
They call it the creditindustry and it has permeated the entire stock
market structure of the country. It is also recent.
True. But the immense growth of credit has been due to the running-out of a
chain of uniquely new consumer goods such as we had between 1780 and 1980
and for which customers saved for. Motivation for "new" products since
about 1980 has been so weak that an entirely new financial sector had to
arise that would thrust credit onto customers and firms.
How long before this fact is realized? I dont know but in my
experience the private sector can only do very simple economie of scale
processes that force it to follow the public sector in the really
creative public projects.
What creative public projects are these? I know of none. Creative projects
only arise in individual minds and can only be taken forward by relatively
small groups. In many cases if they're successful and it's in
bureaucracies' best interests such projects are taken over by the state.
· You dont have serious private space programs.
· Nor do you have a chip-fab lab anywhere in the world financed by
the private sector.
The biggest ones are in Taiwan and they're private.
· The private sector cannot even develop a profit making complex
artistic ensemble.
What about Glyndebourne Opera and thousands more projects around the world?
The best they can do is widgets and trinkets and trash. Shiny things.
Many are, but many more make "widgets" that the modern artistic world,
among others, depend on.
Great works of the human spirit do not come from the private
sector. Nor does equality of opportunity and an efficient use of resources.
Once again, great works arise in individual minds and are usually taken a
long way forward by quite small private groups. There is a maximum of
opportunity when a new idea first starts to shape up. Efficiency can only
arise from competition, never from a unitary owner like a monopoly or the
state.
Perhaps your comments about a war are true of England but I can
guarantee that they are not true of here. America is arming itself.
I wouldn;t guarantee anything about England or America except that the
Western world is going to experience an even worse financial condition than
we have now -- caused by the nation-states' takeover of money a century ago
which is now crashing about their ears. The politicians and treasuries of
the Western world have absolutely no idea what to do next.
KSH
REH
From: Keith Hudson [mailto:[email protected]]
Sent: Thursday, August 19, 2010 2:31 PM
To: RE-DESIGNING WORK, INCOME DISTRIBUTION, , EDUCATION
Cc: Ray Harrell
Subject: RE: [Futurework] Close to the end of the present phase
Ray,
I'm not so sure that there'll be any wars in Europe -- not of the
nation-state variety anyway. Politicians use warfare as diversions for
other problems they can't solve. But not this time. We're all broke. And
Uncle Sam, who helped out one side in the last affair . . . well, he's
broke too. It's the internal ones that bother me. All European countries
host civil wars and revolutions pretty regularly. Even in the island of
cricket and warm beer we've had one civil war (1640) two close shaves
(around 1800 and 1920) and a more or less continuous religious war
(Northern Ireland) since about 1920.
At 09:22 19/08/2010 -0400, you wrote:
So now the whole world will understand what it means to be an artist in
America. Welcome to my world Keith. It all depends upon what you
agree you will have your psycho-pursuit of valuesin. You love shiny
things. (What the Nahuas called the shit of the sun.) What the
Jamestown colonists started wars and murdered children for in a five
hundred year journey that murdered 33 million people (not counting the
unborn) and continues down to the present. On the other hand I love
aural abstractions. Values are everything. As I hear the moaning
around me as people experience the world I know, live in and actually
prosper, if you consider happiness capital, then it becomes clear that
the only answer to this will be an ultimate tragedy invented from the mind
of a tyrant. Something on the order of the American Presidents to my
people, Hitler to the Jews who provided jobs for the Germans by dying or
the kulaks who provided jobs and property for the Soviets by dying as
well.
The knee jerk response to complexity is never to solve it through
competence but always the Alexander solution to the Gordian knot. Just
cut the bugger and get on with life. Until the asteroid or some other
REAL problem in life just wipes our provincial asses off the earth and
restarts the whole experiment. Meanwhile, old men in the act of dying
can act outthe psychological mechanism of projectionand believe that the
world isnt a problem of solving complexity through competence, human
compassion and design. Believing that the complexity is out there
somewherewhen it is really between the ears. Nothing is complex if you
have the competence to solve it without resorting to violence. Peace is
as much a matter of competency as is war. Instead we treat peace as
the absence of violence rather than the creative design of a society that
helps every citizen achieve their dreams and purpose in life.
What I find ludicrous is the acceptance of the usurer as the method and
final judge of the society within your head. I would just as soon shoot
him, (my version of Alexanders knotty problem). Maybe that will be
the next war that happens every 25 years in European and European
influenced cultures. We say that to answer a person is to honor
them. I honored you with my time this morning.
REH
From: [email protected]
[<mailto:[email protected]>mailto:[email protected]]
On Behalf Of Keith Hudson
Sent: Thursday, August 19, 2010 3:52 AM
To: RE-DESIGNING WORK, INCOME DISTRIBUTION, , EDUCATION
Subject: [Futurework] Close to the end of the present phase
In 1945 at the end of World War 2, after the manufacture of scores of
thousands of tanks, tens of thousands of airplanes, and thousands of
warships -- and at least as much spent on ammunition -- American national
debt had risen to 120% of annual national production (GDP). From the end
of the war onwards the mighty industrial machine and huge inflation turned
as one to making and selling a whole range of consumer goods that half of
the population had been unable to buy ever since the Wall Street Crash of
1929 and the subsequent Great Depression.
Due to this consumer take-up and continuing inflation (with higher tax
bands thus being reached) the American National Debt declined to less than
40% of GDP by 1990. By then most households possessed most consumer goods,
there were no new ones on the horizon, and replacement goods or marginal
improvements to them were then increasingly supplied by Japan, Korea and
China. The latter countries were able to institute the very latest
automated methods of the West right from the start of their production
runs -- as also, in their early rejuvenated years, using high-value
components still being made in the West.
But by then things were beginning to be sticky in America and Europe.
Unemployment was rising, particularly among the young, and the real wages
of the new service occupations that replaced the old industrial ones were
declining from year to year. From then onwards (President Reagan's time)
America's national debt rose to over 60% (with corresponding rises in
those of West European countries). It sank a little during President
Clinton's time but then started rising again during the two terms of
George W. Bush to over 80%. Today it's rising at an even faster rate and
is already past 100%. President Obama shows no sign of being aware of the
dangers of further money-printing.
America's national debt could easily go above 120-140% of GDP in the next
12 months -- as indeed several European countries' already have (with
several others close behind). When that level of debt is reached then it
becomes impossible to pay back those debts out of normal taxation.
The public have been aware in a vague way of the rise of inflation and the
rise of national debts since 1945. What they haven't been aware of has
been a concerted campaign by governments and central banks to suppress the
price -- and thus the validity -- of gold. Above all governments didn't
want gold to resume its role as currency because that would prevent
governments from steadily (and often not so steadily!) devaluing the price
of their own currencies in order to reduce the real value of their debts.
Central banks suppressed the price of gold by selling large quantities of
it from time to time. To a considerable extent this policy has succeeded
since 1945. But at various times, whenever national currencies showed
signs of fragility or inflation, the price of gold would go up for a while
until central banks managed to quietly suppress it again. But since about
2000, governments have been failing to hold the price of gold in check and
it has risen, on the whole, steadily, all the way up to $1200 an ounce
today. This is a fourfold increase over the course of a decade.
And it is still rising. Previously, the price of gold had an inverse
relationship with the price of national currencies, mainly the dollar and
the euro. As they devalued, the price of gold increased. But also, during
the strong deflationary period of the past two years, gold has continued
to rise. In fact, gold now has the confidence of so many investors
(including the governments of China, India, Russia and the oil-rich Middle
East countries) who are now doubting the future validity of Western
national currencies that it will continue to rise and become the de facto
new world currency. This is as it was before and during the greatest
growth phase of the industrial revolution (19th century) before
governments started printing paper money to pay for armies and major wars.
Unless something miraculous happens to somehow restore public faith in
national currencies and some miraculous formula is found to somehow
neutralise national debts then a day of reckoning is now not far off. To
English readers of this posting I would suggest that they take little
notice of the pseudo-cheerful bits of news that one reads in the press
most days of the week (after all, the media have an interest which they
ought to declare!) but to pay careful attention to the meaning behind the
words of those who really do know the real situation -- the Governor of
the Bank of England perhaps or the bosses of Tesco, Asda, Sainsbury, etc.
They know that the toughest times ever in the history of the
industrial-consumer revolution are now upon us. We are now very close to
the end of the great governmental experiment in printing paper money.
Keith
Keith Hudson, Saltford, England
Keith Hudson, Saltford, England
Keith Hudson, Saltford, England
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