Keith, In an era of massive Mega systems, group pathologies arise as a result of constraints stemming from issues of scale and time. During the Imperial ages, the mega-systems were governmental and either Aristocratic, Democratic and later Socialist (empirical). Today they are International Private mega-systems with no loyalty to anyone other than their shareholders. In this way they resemble the Aristocratic Governmental Systems or the marauders traveling through star systems on the Syfy Channel. (Did you see the movie "Independence Day?")
You and I have been here before Keith but you were preaching Comparative Advantage at the time. I remember writing this to you in the 1990s. The issues flow from monetary to human capital and human capital is what creates a future. Creativity and Design skills tend not to flow from the upper classes into the mainstream. The struggle necessary to achieve a superior discipline usually comes from poverty or a war. World War II crashed a lot of cultural stories and as a result people changed and prospered. The monetarists would like to blame that on the vertical systems of authority and prosperity in exotics but I think that is shallow thinking. We have lived through continuous cycles of war since the great plagues and the world wide weather disruptions of that time. The discovery of America and the efficiency of European germ warfare, emptied a continent and fed the treasuries of an inferior culture who promptly squandered most of it. Those same monetarists belief humans are interchangeable. That regressive attitude eats its children. Think of poor Elizabeth's boys and their creativity and wasted potential for the development of any kind of serious design. Now we have the grandchildren and it isn't any better. Where are those epigenes? The human capital problem today is still the same as the English Manor House system, except worse. Even here the Epigene's arise and the American Government is dysfunctional because they don't do the system. Perhaps those Epigenes are incapable of positive results? People try to avoid voting, avoid petitioning their representatives (unless paid), and plan to fight, or protect, their neighbors who are either "brothers" or "scum." Consider money not to be capital for creativity but a status symbol of a shallow life. This is not the system put in place by the Founders. It is instead, the latest virtual world brought here by immigrants after the World Wars. People who had been affluent but came here poor. Our system allowed them to rise back into their old positions, but the virtual world, between their ears, had nothing to do with the system my ancestors fought, in every war on the American side, to sustain. This is not my world. What is strange here, Keith, is to realize that all of these folks talk in English but because their Virtual Worlds are old feelings and impulses from a place and time that they are no longer a part of, each virtual world is unique as is the treatment of almost every word in English they speak. It's like gibberish that their family and clan understands minimally but when put into action just doesn't work. Think the US Congress today. Today's American world came from the losers in Europe who are now preaching Laissez Faire in the same way they grew forests in Germany and England. It is a world of group pathologies. The terms are "Groupthink" and "Clanthink." But the pathologies are playing out and they are beginning to devour themselves in the same way they did in Germany in 1933. In Germany they ate their ethnicities, in England it was the wild animals. What happened to the animals of Britain's forests? The one's titled "game." Now the poor have become "game" except there are too many to disappear. Like the artists of America who train rigorously for years spending hundreds of thousands of dollars for their education and then having 2 out of every 100 graduates able to work. The 1% of the wealthy hire them leaving that extra 1% left over for the up and coming winners in their game theory. 98% are just labor glut failures and it has little to do with human capital and everything to do with luck. It is a dangerous time in America with none of the class patrician rules of England or China to keep them in check. That 98% is arming themselves to the teeth and like the Black Panther Party of the 1960s, carrying their loaded weapons everywhere including schools and religious institutions. Anger is their energy and revenge is not far away from the surface of things. The eight symptoms of Groupthink: 1. shared illusion of invulnerability. 2. collective efforts to rationalize away warnings. 3. unquestioned belief in the group's inherent morality. 4. stereotyped views of rivals and enemies. 5. direct pressure on members who disagree with any of the groups stereotypes, illusions or commitments. 6. self censorship of deviations. 7. a shared illusion of unanimity... augmented by false assumption that "silence means affirmation." 8. the emergence of self appointed mind guards. I. L. Janis, Stress, Attitudes, and Decisions; NY, Praeger, 1982 REH From: Keith Hudson [mailto:[email protected]] Sent: Wednesday, January 02, 2013 4:17 AM To: RE-DESIGNING WORK, INCOME DISTRIBUTION, EDUCATION; Ray Harrell Subject: Re: [Futurework] Nobel Prize -- was Re: [Ottawadissenters] Hey, you gotta watch dem machines... At 19:51 01/01/2013, REH wrote: How is that different from a man who uses his gifts and expertise to steal from the poor through market cycles? No, the gifted man, or the rich man or the corporation steals from the middle-classes or the soi-disants. The latter are the ones who have the money. They pay over half of all income tax also. The poor are hardly worth stealing from but, if anybody, it's the middle-class who do so. And among the poor it's the lowest-but-one rung of the poor (the hard drug pushers, pay-day loan sharks, burglars, "carers" in state nursing homes, "nurses" in geriatric hospital wards, etc) who exploit the poorest. Keith REH From: [email protected] [ mailto:[email protected] <mailto:[email protected]> ] On Behalf Of Arthur Cordell Sent: Tuesday, January 01, 2013 1:16 PM To: 'RE-DESIGNING WORK, INCOME DISTRIBUTION, EDUCATION' Subject: Re: [Futurework] Nobel Prize -- was Re: [Ottawadissenters] Hey, you gotta watch dem machines... No I mean like having power in one area and exploiting it in another. E.g. the policeman who takes an apple from the corner grocer or the president who exploits an intern or the senator who accepts gifts etc. From: [email protected] [ mailto:[email protected] <mailto:[email protected]> ] On Behalf Of Ray Harrell Sent: Tuesday, January 01, 2013 1:05 AM To: 'RE-DESIGNING WORK, INCOME DISTRIBUTION, EDUCATION' Subject: Re: [Futurework] Nobel Prize -- was Re: [Ottawadissenters] Hey, you gotta watch dem machines... You mean like virtue = wealth production or You can't be a good businessman and pay taxes or You owe your loyalty to your shareholders not to the poor of America or.......... REH From: [email protected] [ mailto:[email protected] <mailto:[email protected]> ] On Behalf Of Arthur Cordell Sent: Monday, December 31, 2012 1:25 PM To: 'RE-DESIGNING WORK, INCOME DISTRIBUTION, EDUCATION' Subject: Re: [Futurework] Nobel Prize -- was Re: [Ottawadissenters] Hey, you gotta watch dem machines... Of course we all have biases. But those who trumpet the truth while pretending that they are not biased are those that I avoid. arthur From: [email protected] [ mailto:[email protected] <mailto:[email protected]> ] On Behalf Of michael gurstein Sent: Monday, December 31, 2012 10:47 AM To: 'RE-DESIGNING WORK, INCOME DISTRIBUTION, EDUCATION' Subject: Re: [Futurework] Nobel Prize -- was Re: [Ottawadissenters] Hey, you gotta watch dem machines... So who isn't "biased". M From: [email protected] [ mailto:[email protected] <mailto:[email protected]> ] On Behalf Of Arthur Cordell Sent: Monday, December 31, 2012 6:39 AM To: 'RE-DESIGNING WORK, INCOME DISTRIBUTION, EDUCATION'; 'Keith Hudson' Subject: Re: [Futurework] Nobel Prize -- was Re: [Ottawadissenters] Hey, you gotta watch dem machines... I used to read Buckley for the same reason. A very interesting conservative thinker. Krugman's biases sometimes get in the way, as did Buckley's. Both interesting. Both biased. arthur From: [email protected] [ mailto:[email protected] <mailto:[email protected]> ] On Behalf Of Ed Weick Sent: Monday, December 31, 2012 6:53 AM To: RE-DESIGNING WORK, INCOME DISTRIBUTION, EDUCATION; Keith Hudson Subject: Re: [Futurework] Nobel Prize -- was Re: [Ottawadissenters] Hey, you gotta watch dem machines... Not sure of why people on this list are going after Krugman. Personally, I think he writes a very good, very readable column on a diverse range of topics. In today's column, he deals with a very relevant topic, the hidden influence of big money on politics, a very important but largely ignored topic. OK, so he got the Nobel prize because he pointed something in an academic field that Henry Ford already knew as a practical person and the Japanese already knew as well. However, what he said wasn't recognized in the field of economics until he said it. I did my undergrad work back in the 1950s, and the Ricardian idea of comparative and absolute advantage is what we had to learn and how we had to view the economic world. I did a graduate degree in the late 1960s and things were still very much the same. What Krugman did to get his Nobel was open economics up and make us see that while Ricardian theory may still apply to growing grapes and oranges, it may only very partially apply to the modern industrial and increasingly cybernetic economy, if it applies there at all. I for one will continue to read Krugman's columns not because he is an economist but because I find him an interesting liberal thinker. Ed ----- Original Message ----- From: Keith Hudson <mailto:[email protected]> To: RE-DESIGNING WORK, INCOME DISTRIBUTION, EDUCATION <mailto:[email protected]> ; Ed Weick <mailto:[email protected]> Sent: Monday, December 31, 2012 3:38 AM Subject: Re: [Futurework] Nobel Prize -- was Re: [Ottawadissenters] Hey, you gotta watch dem machines... At 16:26 30/12/2012, you wrote: (EW) Not sure of where all of this is going. Prior to Krugman, the theory of international trade was based on the Ricardian notion of comparative advantage. Countries would produce those products in which in which they had an advantage, given their resources, and then trade with each other. >From what little I know, Krugman brought in the idea that, given a certain level of technological development, resource advantage didn't really matter very much. (KH) But that idea didn't need Krugman! Or anyone else for that matter. The Japanese had been importing resources ('cos they had none of their own) for decades before Krugman was even born. I believe those who say that Krugman got a Nobel for the same reason as Paul Samuelson (who only copied Marshall's ideas of Sale and Demand curves) -- that he was an economist very much in the public's eye. (EW) Any advanced country could, and would, produce cars and, given consumer willingness to buy, these cars would be shipped to markets all over the world. As others have pointed out, economies of scale were very important in this. The more cars that could be produced, the lower the unit costs; the more cars that could be shipped, the lower the costs of shipment. (KH) And Henry Ford had known that decades before Krugman was born! _____ _______________________________________________ Futurework mailing list [email protected] https://lists.uwaterloo.ca/mailman/listinfo/futurework _______________________________________________ Futurework mailing list [email protected] https://lists.uwaterloo.ca/mailman/listinfo/futurework _______________________________________________ Futurework mailing list [email protected] https://lists.uwaterloo.ca/mailman/listinfo/futurework
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