Hello Keith and Ed.
Now that's the Ed Weick I love and admire. The only thing he left out was that certain industries in America (beginning with the classical arts in the 1930s,) when "left to the market" while in a depression, entered what Keynes called an "equilibrium depression" that is the perfect balance of a black hole from which there is no recovery except war and revolution. It's very strange to hear "scholars" advocating the lack of conscious design when it comes to development of the future. The model that they draw on for the market is the model that destroyed the ecology of Europe in the Middle Ages in their use of their forests and has left nothing but the ghosts of the ancient animals and environments of Europe. That big "panther" like ghost that the Brits try to find in their destroyed ecology. That cat is only in their hearts. Can you imagine what Canada would be without the wilderness? But the best wilderness is the one that is managed logically for the good of all of the ecology from the microbes up through the humans. That's not the war model of the market. I contend that there are other models that combine conscious management design of the political governments and small corporate governments that are stable. As I see it, there were three elements to the recovery from the American Depression. . One that is usually ignored except by the late Donald Schoen in the "Reflective Practitioner" is the organization of the American University System into a system that stressed professional standards across the board. They were the "Bureau of Standards" for American development. All fourteen of my parent's siblings stood up to the line and got at least an undergraduate degree or certification of their minimum competency in the society. All fourteen came from families that were working class or farmers and had parents who had not gone to college. . The second was the Keynes economic stimulus by the New Deal and . the third was the psychological organization of the U.S. population as a team through the threat from Pearl Harbor of extinction in war. Both the lack of men in the work force which drove the women out of the homes and the lessons of life and death struggle in the men, reprogrammed the entire nation to succeed at prosperity. The stories that haunt us in the present were put aside as irrelevant when compared to death in battle. I heard this comment over and over from almost everyone. WWII is considered the "good" war for more than the reason of doing away with Hitler. It worked psychologically to restart the nation. Without any one of those three legs there would have been no serious recovery. None of the countries in depressions have done so recently and England is cutting off their "testicles" by doing away with the last vestige of the image of their manhood. The Blackguard. The challenge here as I see it, is to truly take responsibility for your future as a nation in a time of peace. Every individual must come to a knowledge of their own inadequacies and the inadequacy of their training and traditions in the present and consciously seek a holistic answer they way a war would cut the Gordian Knot of opinion in a different situation. The West has always relied upon war for that since Alexander cut the knot and "became great" through war in the eyes of Western History. That murdered 98 million people here with the advent of European invasion and returned to Europe and Asia in the 20th century to kill another 98 million through the historical idealization of war as an answer. In all cases, the reference to war is an inferential mechanism. When one doesn't have all of the pieces to the puzzle, they just start a war and cut up what they have and force them to fit. They infer, not from observation of the world but from their history, the answers to the problem. An understanding of reality as systems is more sophisticated and requires more from each participant but, I would argue that, it also grows a more stable prosperity. What is not said is that the market, as a system, is really a version of middle eastern and Mongolian "nomad" governmental systems with no serious special loyalty except to their own tent. What is also not ever seriously admitted is that the greatest form of that was the Khan Empire which proved totally unable to handle a health care crisis. Poor healthcare destroyed the largest Empire in the world. It wasn't the medical science, it was the hyper individuality of the Mongols and their belief in the superiority of Mongolian blood over everyone else on the planet. As such, they were great land sailors (although they couldn't get their armies across a simple sea to Japan) but they were lousy at the kinds of population loyalty that makes cities a serious historical possibility. But no one ever talks about this issue of Patterns, Models and Systems. Why not? And why such a one sided linear historical view of things? Hegel and Marx are perfect examples of the problem. They took the idea of systems design from the encounter with civilizations here but failed to understand the history of their evolution and how long that took and how delicate it was when facing invasion. Instead Pol Pot and Stalin were Western extensions of the war philosophy into a political philosophy that had tamed war and elevated design into a Art that was required the sustenance of all life forms for the good of the individual. I am arguing that that is a gross ignorance of the patterns of complexity and the necessity for the diminution of that complexity through an educated, sophisticated and competent average citizen. I am also arguing that it is a historical pattern based in a type of warfare and that it is now using up the resources of the planet both physically and as life, at an alarming rate that cannot be sustained. Today's average citizen is a brute. They are poor at pattern recognition in almost all of their senses. They are hopelessly provincial and ignorance is worn like a badge of accomplishment. Their sole recourse is a narrow literal logic and machines which are only as good as their eyes and they need glasses. Their ignorance of the abstract patterns that form the foundation for their judgments condemns them to having rocks in the head for brains. Alfred North Whitehead put it this way. "The paradox is now fully established that the utmost abstractions are the true weapons with which to control our thought of concrete fact." I like the pun on the word "concrete." REH From: [email protected] [mailto:[email protected]] On Behalf Of Ed Weick Sent: Saturday, October 23, 2010 7:29 AM To: [email protected]; Keith Hudson Subject: Re: [Futurework] Having a good night's sleep Good morning (over here), Keith, You raise the question of how desperate the US government may be. A friend recently asked me for comments on an interview with Thomas Sowell, an American academic now 80 and retired. The interview may be found at http://fora.tv/2010/08/06/Uncommon_Knowledge_Thomas_Sowell_on_Dismantling_Am erica#fullprogram The following are the comments I sent to my friend: Hi Friend: I said that I'd give you further thoughts on the Thomas Sowell interview, and here they are. The interview gives me a chance to put some of my own thoughts in order. First, one has to understand where Sowell is coming from. As a kid, he was a highschool dropout, but bright enough to get into Harvard after fighting in the Korean War. He did his doctorate in economics at the University of Chicago, which at the time was, and may still be, the very centre of right wing economics based on the "Austrian School" thinking of people like Ludwig Von Mises, Friedrich Hayek and Milton Friedman. The Austrian School's central argument is that the market must be left alone to operate with complete freedom. Government must not interfere with it. If there is a depression or recession, the market can be expected to readjust on its own without government intervention. The opposite argument, initially put forward by John Maynard Keynes in the depression of the 1930s, and generally accepted in some form by most economists today, is that the market may not make the necessary corrections on its own and government may therefore have to intervene to help it do so. What I felt was most disturbing about the interview is a lack of recognition of the fact that the American polity and economy are in a terrible state right now. The following kinds of things were simply glossed over: * The US is deeply in debt both in foreign and domestic terms partly, and perhaps largely, because of its huge international military undertakings. * The unemployment rate is very high. Officially it stands close to 10%, but if people who have simply stopped looking for work because their chances of finding it are zero are factored in, it may be as high as 16% to 20%. A major problem is that jobs which Americans did just a few years ago have been packaged up and sent en masse to Asia, where labour is much cheaper. Unions able to protect the rights of workers have almost become a thing of the past. * Since the 1970s and especially since Reagan's tax breaks for the rich, the incomes of the wealthiest Americans have surged enormously, while the incomes of poorer Americans has stayed about the same. Much of the middle class has eroded away. * Manufacturing which was the mainstay of the US economy is being displaced by FIRE (finance, insurance and real estate). The FIRE industries tend not to operate openly, but in shut away offices connected by the Internet. What harm they can do has been demonstrated by the sub-prime mortgage crisis of recent years. * Perhaps worst of all in terms of threats to democracy, many American politicians are increasingly being financed by business interests, which makes them lobbyists rather than representatives of the people. This has been aided and abetted by a recent Supreme Court ruling that puts no limits on the amounts that private companies can donate to election campaigns. * And, though you may not agree, religion has tended to move out of the little church on the corner and to morph into business, often big business. No wonder people are marching around, some with guns, trumpeting the need to adhere to the Constitution, a document that few of them really understand. It's a mess, and it's no wonder people are confused and angry, and confused and angry people need someone to blame. Who's to blame? Why government of course. What was really sad about the Robinson - Sowell interview was that the whole mess that Sowell had identified in his book was to be laid on Obama. When Robinson asked Sowell what Obama should do, Sowell said that Obama should resign. What wasn't recognized is that Obama and his team had been doing everything they could to pull the US out of its recession and bring some stability back into the economy. It may not happen, but they are trying. And the problems now affecting the US may be partly, even largely, the fault of past governments (Reagan's tax cuts, G.W. Bush's need to "git Saddam and Osama") but not the fault of the government that has inherited the mess. Also quite sad was Sowell's deprecation of things like community activism and universal health care. He took issue with Obama's health care act partly because he believes people should pay for their own health care even if they can't afford it, but also because it was some 2,000 pages long. He didn't seem to recognize that it's length had a lot to do with the huge number of amendments that were made to it in order to get it though both Congressional houses. As for community activists, surely he would have seen them do some good things when he was a kid in Harlem. He might also have recognized that, with the employment rate as high as it is in the US, activists may be badly needed as a counterforce to kids doing things like forming drug gangs, etc. I really wonder where the US is going with its Tea Party and heroes like Sarah Palin and Glenn Beck. Perhaps it'll shake it all off and rise again. I certainly hope so because I've known a lot of Americans who were wonderful people and don't deserve the kind of crap that's blowing around them. And thank you for this opportunity to get my thoughts together. You may not agree with them, but that's not my problem. Ed ----- Original Message ----- From: Keith Hudson <mailto:[email protected]> To: RE-DESIGNING WORK, INCOME DISTRIBUTION, <mailto:[email protected]> ,EDUCATION Sent: Saturday, October 23, 2010 2:33 AM Subject: [Futurework] Having a good night's sleep Just how desperate is the American government? Desperate? Very desperate? Very very desperate? We already knew that the US Treasury Department was desperate from the way that Tim Geithner, its Chief Secretary, has been sounding off at China in recent months. Never mind that a significant proportion of China's export surpluses with America are, in fact, the profits of American corporations in China. We could say that Tim Geithner is very desperate because the present week-end meeting of international finance ministers and central bank governors (in preparation for next month's G20 in Seoul) has already started in South Korea with an all-night session. Never mind that the judgement of half of the attenders must be badly affected by jet-lag, President Obama needs to know as soon as possible. He would love to be able to announce the deliverance of a "new world currency order" (though not a new world currency!) in time for the Congressional elections on 2 November as well as a "done and dusted" agreement to place before Prime Ministers at the actual G20 meeting in Seoul on 11-12 November. We could say that Tim Geithner is very very desperate because the US dollar now has every sign of starting a double-dip all of its own. And once that happens then the present "currency war" will become a currency chaos which would make the 1930s Great Depression seem like a stroll in the park. Needless to say, America's "solution" is also very very desperate. It wants to put a limit of the export earnings of any one country -- supervised by the IMF, its own special creation and friend. In fact, the solution is very very absurd because it doesn't have a chance of being agreed by countries such as China, India, Russia, Japan, Germany, Brazil and many other smaller countries that are trying to hoist their economies up to American/European standards. The American dollar was able to dominate the currencies of the rest of the world after the summit at Mount Washington Hotel, Bretton Woods in 1944 -- when the end of World War 2 was in sight -- because America was the only vibrant economy in the world at that time. The European Allies were bankrupt, Germany and Japan were destined for imminent physical, as well as financial, destruction, China was well-nigh destroying itself in its own internal war between the communists and the nationalists, Russia was sending the cream of its intellectuals to the gulags, and India was struggling to regain its independence from the British. This time, however, America is not the predominant power in the world. No country is. If America wants a "new world order" -- as prematurely announced by President Bush Senior in 1991 -- then it will have to be created by the new world in conjunction with America. Perhaps we'll know tomorrow when Tim Geithner has had a good night's sleep -- one hopes -- and can listen carefully to what China, Brazil and other countries have to say. I don't suppose they'd have any objection to the dollar remaining pre-eminent, so long as it's a stable World dollar and not a fast-depreciating American dollar. Keith Keith Hudson, Saltford, England _____ _______________________________________________ Futurework mailing list [email protected] https://lists.uwaterloo.ca/mailman/listinfo/futurework
_______________________________________________ Futurework mailing list [email protected] https://lists.uwaterloo.ca/mailman/listinfo/futurework
