So, bullets=100pts, futures=-100TNpts. ;-)
On 6/28/2011 12:07 AM, archytas wrote:
The truth on bullets is you get to eat if you have them and the food
holders don't!
On Jun 28, 3:52 am, rigsy03<[email protected]> wrote:
I wonder the number of vacant, distressed properties in the West?
Well, China was humiliated by the tactics of the West in our forcing
her to open to trade via opium and dynasty overthrow plus the theft of
her national arts and treasures- keeping them "safe" in western
museums, like the rest of our lootings.
Americans accumulated their own debt with abuse of credit when it was
easy street. The banks/financial institutions were irresponsible and
so were our governments. You can't eat bullets.
On Jun 27, 4:49 pm, archytas<[email protected]> wrote:
I don't believe the modern arguments (post 1950) concern communism
other than as a futile ideal. We seem to have forgotten about habros
- the polluting quality of luxury. The term arises in a Greek play
celebrating the victory of the Athenian Democracy over the Persians.
The warning to the Greeks was that they must never become sissies
wallowing in emotions and luxury like the defeated Persians. Most of
us are barely aware of history and have no real clue what the Soviets
and Chinese were up to. Even in relation to what's going on in China
now, I find few who know they have built ghost cities and are fueling
GDP growth with a property bubble.
The broad brush of western economics is that the ignorant rabble have
no place in real decision-making and that they must both know this (in
order not to forget their place) and to deny it in fantasies to
encourage virtual self-aggrandizement. Thus we are to live in virtual
meritocracy whilst actually just part of a pack that will not
challenge the alphas. In a very real way, we do not argue with facts,
but the stories of literature which bounds our expectations. Video
games are a warning of what we are, even if we don't play them.
The debts that are everywhere like a nightmare are not to do with
money as a means of simple exchange, taken on to be worked off in some
equation of labour value. They have been manipulated as surely as any
in past empires. Just as Chinese GDP is floating on 64 million empty
buildings no one can afford to live in (terms are often half up front,
the balance over 3 years), our currencies float on deals between
governments and favoured banks. We have suppressed wages and banks
hardly even provide working capital for business, instead engaging in
speculation in giant Ponzi schemes hedged in ever increasing prices
for assets that no one would eventually be able to buy from a wage,
and securitised to the tax payer. Wages were collapsed over 30 years
by exporting manufacturing - but GDP kept rising as we borrowed
against the asset pile to buy more and more crap and pay welfare to
those deprived of jobs.
The rich grew vastly richer in this period. If there are 64 million
Chinese apartments empty, how many across the world are now holiday
homes and the rest. None of this is communist or capitalist economics
- it's more fundamental, possibly the economics of the city in which
absentee landlords gamble the labour of poor tenants and then replace
them with more economic sheep. The money that was always making money
in high finance was never making anything other than the debt. You
need to understand mark to model and mark to market. The money was
never being made - banks were allowed to value their own assets to
models kept secret for reasons of commercial security. Now, if they
have to really sell any 'assets' they are worth what the market will
pay. And given the way banks count loans as assets, they are all
probably bankrupt because most of the loans will be real liabilities.
None of us borrowed this 'money'. It was pumped in by the Fed, BoE,
EU Central and so on and stole your hard-earned from underneath you.
This was done to bring inflation, and as yet it hasn't worked (though
notice how much more food costs) because we can already see our wages
and jobs are under threat and won't sell our homes at knockdown.
What we should get away from is homily about needing to tighten belts
after 'our excesses'. GDP all over has been massively inflated pretty
much as Enron inflated its books. The problem is we can't direct
capital to the work that needs doing. The hot money is already in
Swiss vaults or buying up land and evicting the tenant farmers (as in
the Enclosures). It also wants to buy up our public sectors - with
the very money we have given to support the bent system.
The question has long been how we might direct capital into the work
that needs doing and fairly distribute in a way that doesn't kill of
innovation or focus power into an elite that operates like a Politburo
we can't vote out. The news is that we already have this situation,
and may even have another massive debtor nation about to hit hyper-
inflation whilst more armed to the teeth than Nazi Germany. Imagine
Palin in charge of that!
We have all had trouble breaking the ancien regimes. Even the USA is
a Republik, rather than participative democracy - and democracy itself
has vile origins. Greece is run by a few rich-bastard families, the
US by banking interest, the UK is still basically a privateer island
(though privateers were strictly French) and the EU is still an
aggrandizement of ideas of stopping war with Germans and maintaining
coal and steel industries.
There is another way if we give up and homilies that barely work for
individual households let alone economic groups. Much of the debt
within the EU could be cancelled between countries in a Jubilee.
Beyond this we could ensure individuals get more control in economics
through wages and make investment an ethical business.
On Jun 27, 8:30 pm, paradox<[email protected]> wrote:
But communism (in theory) is about every man contributing to the
communal pot, to be distributed by dint of a principle of "equity".
Free markets (or Capitalism, or whatever resonates) is about man
pursuing his own ends, for which an emergent, enabling by-product is
the economy (as we know it); of course, great disparities of wealth
(and power) are an unavoidable (some might argue desirable) feature,
as man has an unequal capacity to create value (and we can get into
the ethics of the "why's" and the "wherefore's"). (Re)distribution is
a political initiative to manage these disparities through taxation.
And yes, you're right, wealth will perpetuate "at the top", but really
as a consequence of an enhanced capacity to create even greater value;
i think that this is what tends to appear as the great "visible hand".
Thing about "growth", rigsy / contemplative, is it's one of the very
few mega non-zero sums around; thats what makes it so beguiling and
difficult to manage; so we swing from boom to bust to boom to...:)
On Jun 27, 2:49 pm, rigsy03<[email protected]> wrote:
I don't agree- unless you are talking about Communism- which flopped.
Man serves the economy and whichever power happens to be in charge who
may then decide to redistribute wealth/products but this is not a
voluntary agreement. But generally, wealth remains at the top for the
prime reason of maintaining power.
On Jun 25, 3:26 am, paradox<[email protected]> wrote:
Hmm...fine points all!
Lets not forget though, that the economy serves man, not the other way
round? Just an observation regarding your suspicion of the "growth"
imperative in contemporary economics.
On Jun 24, 9:54 pm, Contemplative<[email protected]> wrote:
The key phrase for me is "relative homeostasis". I agree that the
encouragement you refer to
is desirable. I am unsure of it's possibility. Our belief that growth is
mandatory for our economy
encourages activities and behaviors that, I think, out-pace the ability of
the natural system to
balance itself at its natural rate. I am not convinced that we have a solid
enough understanding
of our own system to allow us to recognize true key indicators of systemic
health, rationally process
that input, and subsequently make good decisions about the which conditions
we should encourage.
To state it bluntly, I think our desire for growth is malignant...
I don't mean to be doom and gloom about this, and actually I think there is
reason to be optimistic.
But economics seems to me to have that stereotypical characteristic of
having 20/20 vision through
the rear view mirror. Economic policy decisions that are both long term and
aggressive(such as increased
home ownership) which use 'tweaks' to the system to achieve the aims are
likely destructive and very
unpredictable. In a relatively isolated or buffered system, they may be
more predictable, but we are not
in an economy which is either buffered or isolated. We are comparatively
wide open(global), and playing
in a much bigger sandbox than we have been, say 25 years ago. ...and from
my perspective, we don't
know the playing field well enough to be aggressive, though we should be
looking long term. ...and by
long term, I mean more than two quarters out!
Thanks for the opportunity to think this through a bit...! :-)- Hide quoted
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