Re: DANGEROUS CURRENTS
Jay, What is really interesting is not only that Thurow is right, but the fact that maverick economists have been pointing out that the neo-classical economic emperor has no clothes for quite some time - looking at my bookshelves I see Capitalism, Socialisma ndDemocracy by Joseph Schumpeter (1950), The Entropy Law and the Economic Process by Nicolas Georgescu Roegen (1956), Economic Heresies by Joan Robinson (1971), Essays Towards a Steady State Economy by Herman Daly (1971), What's Wrong with Economics by Benjamin Ward (1972), Staelmate in Technology by Gerhard Mensch (1975), The Making of Economics by Ray Canterbury (1976), and The Idea of Economic Complexity by David Warsh (1984). Joan Robinson, like Lester Thurow today, was one of the heavyweights of the profession, a student of Keynes at Cambridge. Mensch had the temerity to throw data at them. None of it has made the slightest impression on the profession - they simply repeat the mantra. I can remember discussing in a graduate seminar the ideas of an obscure economist named Clark who I had read as an undergraduate, in which he tried to tie what psychologists know about human behaviour into consumer demand theory. The reaction was of bemusement. It didn't matter a darn that consumers could be driven by non-economic factors and be economically illogical, because in the long run the market would assert itself. (Clark was on the right track, but didn't get far because he was using behavourist theory, which is about as obscurantist and edifying as neo-classical economics). I remember reading a graduate text on general equilibrium theory which stated at the beginning that if in fact the assumption of equilibrium in markets was wrong, everything which followed was void. There then followed a hundred or so pages of densely reasoned mathematical economics and the caveat was never mentioned again. Markets are, of course, seldom in equilibrium and then only by accident. Everyone but neo-classical economists knows that. When I was at the Department of Economics at the University of Alberta in the late 1960s and early 1970s I taught micro-economic theory to engineers, agronomists and business students. That is long gone. Those faculties teach their own economics courses now. The department has shrunk and I am told by one of the faculty that few students complete a degree in the discipline at either the undergraduate or graduate levels. It would seem that while professional economists don't get it, students and members of other faculties do. What is even more interesting is to look at the work on economics being done at the Santa Fe institute by people like Brian Arthur and Kenneth Arrow of Stanford. In the Theory of Complexity they have a powerful new investigatory tool but from what I can determine in Waldrop's book about Santa Fe, they can't break free from the strait jacket of conventional thinking and terminology and the "traditional" economic problems. What they should be doing is leaping the conventional bounds and following wherever complexity theory leads to see where they wind up, to create an entirely new paradigm and a new language to accompany it. The person at Santa Fe who did the most interesting work in economics was the biologist Stuart Kauffman who built network models in which life (including economic life) bootstrapped itself into existence. When Kauffman explained his model to Arthur, all the latter could do was to talk about the fact that it led to increasing returns, which is interesting and important but no news to biologists, and immediately smothered the results in conventional economic terminology and thinking. Mike H [EMAIL PROTECTED] Facing the Future Inc. 15003 56 Avenue, Edmonton AB T6H 5B2 (403) 438-7342
Re: working alternatives
A few comments on the recent dialogue on definitions. All paradigm shifts involve changes to the language new meanings for old words entirely new words Old words carry the baggage of the old paradigm in their etymology. They therefore make it very difficult to escpape the old paradigm and fully understand the implications of the new. Example of new meanings for old words: Ecology - originally meant the study of the interactions between elements in living systems; in common parlance it has come to mean "the balance of nature". This reflects the cultures having discarded first the Romantic view of Nature; then a scientific one based on competition; and is now adopting a scientific one based on comlementarity. This is reflected in the fact that the people who used to shape popular culture on this subject were poets (Wordsworth) and art critics (Ruskin) in the first era; then, in the second, social critics (Spencer) and "competitive" bilogists (Darwin); now it is "complementary" biologists (Suzuki, Sheldrake). Example of new words Automobile, radio Note that there were intermediate words for these things in the transition from the old to the new paradigm - "horseless carriage" "wire-less". Thinking of an automobile as a horseless carriage makes it legitimate to think in terms of keeping it within the old (biological) bounds - requiring a man to walk in front of it with a red flag, for example. Thinking of it as an automobile - something self mobile/powered - opens the possibility of something unbound by biological limits. "Horseless carriage" bounds the imagination to the organically contrained city (constrained by the speed and carrying capacity of horses and people). "Automobile" releases the imagination to consider a mechanically constrained city designed around freeways. The horseless carriage gives us the city as it has been for thousands of years from Ur to early modern cities. The automobile gives us Los Angeles. I am therefore sympathetic to what Richard Mochelle has proposed. We need new words for new concepts or we will not break free of the old ideas. It seems to me that what Michael Spencer has in mind is a (mental) hyphenation of the word work, similar to the notions of "horseless-carriage and "wire-less", and thus can be interpreted as a step in the direction of Richard's proposal. Richard's and Michael's proposals are thus complementary, not competitive. I suggest we begin with the hyphenation exercise, to gain a clearer idea of the direction in which we ought to be heading, and conclude with coining some new words. Regards, Mike H [EMAIL PROTECTED] Facing the Future Inc. 15003 56 Avenue, Edmonton AB T6H 5B2 (403) 438-7342
Directory of Canadian Futurists
From: Ruben F.W. Nelson Sent: July 24, 1998 12:36 PM To: '[EMAIL PROTECTED]' Subject:RE: The Great Canadian Search for Futurists I need your help. Square One Management Ltd. has been asked by the Policy Research Secretariat, Ottawa, to compile a Directory of Canadian Futurists. We are looking for any person in any sector who is paid, full time or even only occasionally, to undertake one or more forms of future-oriented activity. Some of the persons we are seeking will likely be employees who work entirely inside their own organization. Others will work as consultants--under contract with clients outside their own organization. Some may undertake futures research in a specific area, e.g. health care, technology or the environment. Others might use a particular futures methodology, e.g. scenarios or search conferences. Some might do both. I need your help in order to locate and contact such persons. First, please send me the names, phone and fax numbers and e-mail addresses of any persons known to you who should be included in the upcoming directory. Be sure to include yourself, if you qualify. Alternatively, have such persons contact me directly. We will send them a simple one page form. Second, please copy this message to any persons (list serves) who would be willing to assist us in the Great Canadian Search for Futurists. The Directory will be a useful resource to all who are deeping their interst in the future. It will be available in October 1998. Your assistance is greatly appreciated. Cheers Ruben Ruben Nelson President Square One Management Ltd. 29 des Arcs Road LAC DES ARCS, AB, CANADA, T1W 2W3 403-673-3537 = office 403-673-2114 = fax [EMAIL PROTECTED] = e-mail [EMAIL PROTECTED] Facing the Future Inc. 15003 56 Avenue, Edmonton AB T6H 5B2 (403) 438-7342
Re: Satanic mills
Re: Ed and Eva's exchange: Capitalist ambition seems to be a transmuted form of ascent, where spiritual ascent is replaced by symbolic ascent or ascent in other forms e.g. progress. Capitalism seems to flourish during periods when there is an emphasis within the culture on people as individuals, deriving from religious doctrine, as in the 11th through 13th centuries as well as the 16th through 17th. See Jean Gimpel The Medieval Machine and Morris Berman Coming to Our Senses. Exceptional periods of inventiveness and innovation derive from this concern with self and the interiority (introspection) which goes with it and the psychological need to heal the gap between self and other with everything from alcohol to self absorbing practices like art and invention and social achievement. In particular there is an efflorescence of ascent practices (body practices such as rhythmic breathing which lead to trance states , designed to heal the gap between the heightened sense of self and other - nature or God - see Berman on this) In the first period, which had all the same characteristics of the second in terms of intense investment in machines (water powered in mining, textiles tanning and milling), factories (Cistercian abbeys of the period were highly integrated and sphisticated factories) supported by a more advanced agriculture (horse collar, metal shod deep plough and triple rotation and new crops like beans which fixed nitrogen in the soil) things were brought to a halt by a combination of Church fiat (the Pope shut up Aquinas and slaughtered the Cathar heretics of Languedoc, the principle source of interiority practice), exhaustion of the ecological niche expoitable with current technology (all the streams were dammed, the accessible forests cut down for charcoal and building construction) and an adverse shift in climate which caused crop disasters and triggered the plague. In the second industrial revolution in the West (there had been another similar episode in China, see Joseph Needham's history of technology in China) the interiority was provided by the Reformation (Luther and Calvin). The Pope couldn't put a stop to this episode of heresy, unlike the previous one, because the printing press spread it so wide and so fast (see Keith Thomas, An Incomplete History of the World). So far we seem to be repeating the medieval model - pressing against the limits of our ecological niche, climate change in the offing (cooling rather than warming, if Milankovich is anything to go by, and since his theory matches all previous cooling episodes I find it rather convincing) though no Pope to put a stop to the orgy of interiority and belief in ascent (sublimated as progress). Not all the mills were satanic. Here is a short section from a book I am writing on all this stuff to be published later this year by McFarlane, Walter and Ross. "A question for modern day supporters of industrial capitalism with its monotheistic focus on individual selfishness is how it is that the group of people who did more than any other to bring it about, the Quakers, addressed one another as "fellow creature", believed in the brotherhood of man and put community and concern for their fellow man before their own needs and ambitions ? They might ponder the stories of Samuel Gregg, a Quaker and Richard Arkwright an Anglican. Beside the River Wye, near Bakewell in Derbyshire, is a piece of flat ground covered with grass. Humps and low fragments of walls hint at its original use. It is the site of the first mill built by Richard Arkwright to house the new-fangled cotton spinning machine he invented, the Water Frame. In the middle years of this century, excavations at the site turned up the skeletons of children, buried in unmarked graves. They were unlucky members of Arkwright's labour force, who worked fifteen hour days around totally unprotected belt driven machinery. This may seem astonishing to present day readers, but it is a fact that the labour forces in the cotton mills of the First Industrial Revolution were children, the youngest only five or six and the oldest of them teenagers. They were cheap, they were compliant and the nimbleness of their small fingers was an asset in working with the thread which was prone to break and frequently needed piecing together. If they fell asleep, the overseers beat them. The teenage girls were sexually harrassed. When they became pregnant they were dismissed and thrown upon the Parish as paupers. In 17-- adult hand spinners, whose livelihood was threatened by Arkwright and his child labour force, attacked the mill. They smashed the machines and burned the mill to the ground. Arkwright left for pastures new. He adopted a machine named the Spinning Jenny, refused to pay its inventor, Samuel Crompton any royalties, and consigned him to a paupers grave from the ruinous litigation his unprincipled action caused. (He also stole another inventors patent for the Water Frame which
Re: More satanic mills
Ed, Thanks for the reply. I'm not sure that I agree you interpretation of what brought the era to a close. Certainly, the actions taken by the official church were important, and undoubtedly many an ecological niche was used up by the water and charcoal based technology of the time. However, I would argue that some important natural and psychological factors were also at work. It would seem that the weather turned nasty in the 13th Century, resulting in devastation by famine between 1315 and 1317. ?? I thought I did mention the change in climate and the starvation and plague which it led to. The Medieval Industrial and Agricultural Revolutions occurred during a benign climatic period called by climatologits the Little Optimum. The subsequent cooler period did not pass until the 18th century and I believe had a direct impact on industrialization by the beneficial effect it had on disease and agricultural productivity. The cooler period was particularly severe in the mid 17th century and the poor harvests it caused helped to create the social and political unrest which led to the English Revolution of 1640 from which flowed in turn the radical protestantism and nonconformism which contributed substantially to the rise of modern capitalism. It was French Calvinists who brought the silk industry to England after the Revocation of the Edict of Nantes. Arkright, who the text books say developed the modern factory and mass production, was actually copying silk spinning mills, the first one of which was set up in England in 1719, half a century before he built his first cotton spinning mill, the one near Bakewell. Watt was a Presbyterian and his partner Boulton was a Quaker. Barclays Bank, now one of the worlds largest, was started by a group of Quakers. Birmingham, which in the 19th century became the workshop of the world, was a notable centre of nonconformism. Coke of Derby who invented the puddling process that permitted ductile iron to be made with coal and thus provided the basic raw material of the industrial age on a scale unthinkable with charcol smelting, was a Quaker. The only one of the really biggies who was not a nonconformist was Arkright. Nonconformist schools led in technical and business education - they were in fact the only places where you could receive it, apart from on the job. There are many other examples which I give in the book. All of this suggests that for a century or more the world became a terrible place, battered, it would seem, by satanic forces people could not understand. This was not the kind of climate which would have promoted the speculation, experimentation and learning that had been the hallmark of the 12th Century. On the contrary, it promoted withdrawal, piety, orthodoxy and bizarre religious behaviors such as self-flagellation. Agreed. I would agree that the 12th and 13th Centuries had many of the characteristics of the industrial revolution, but I would venture that the difference between the factories of the 12th Century and those of the 18th is a quantum leap rather than a progression. I don't think I called it a progression, merely that there was a medieval episode which shared some characteristics of the one in the 18th century, like factories. If Europe had not shut down in the 14th Century, it is possible that the industrial revolution of the kind experienced in the 18th to 20th Centuries might have come earlier, but this is a matter of pure speculation. What you could do with the horse and the waterwheel is minuscule compared to what could be done with steam power, electricity and the methods of mass production. While cities grew and trade flourished during late medieval times, the essential character of the landscape was nevertheless rural. The second industrial revolution (as you call it) totally transformed the landscape to an urban one. Agreed. But the first one did too. It devastated the forests. In the second industrial revolution in the West (there had been another similar episode in China, see Joseph Needham's history of technology in China) the interiority was provided by the Reformation (Luther and Calvin). The Pope couldn't put a stop to this episode of heresy, unlike the previous one, because the printing press spread it so wide and so fast (see Keith Thomas, An Incomplete History of the World). So far we seem to be repeating the medieval model - pressing against the limits of our ecological niche, climate change in the offing (cooling rather than warming, if Milankovich is anything to go by, and since his theory matches all previous cooling episodes I find it rather convincing) though no Pope to put a stop to the orgy of interiority and belief in ascent (sublimated as progress). Nothing that ever happens is "typical" and I don't believe that history repeats itself as some great cyclical process. Depends how you define the cycle, does it not ? Civilizations do tend to rise, flourish and then decline, for example.
Re: Krugman and the Austrians
Arthur, No apologies needed. Go back and look a the original post. It is all there in Krugman's own words. Mike H Apologies to Krugman. You are right. He is clearly one of the most open of the economists and seems most willing to suggest that there may be 'imperfections' in the theory. arthur cordell -- From: Edward Weick To: Cordell, Arthur: DPP; Michael Gurstein; Mike Hollinshead Cc: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: Re: Krugman and the Austrians Date: Monday, February 01, 1999 1:15PM I must be missing something. I haven't read much of Krugman, just "Peddling Prosperity", a book of essays called "Pop Internationalism" and a few of his columns in "Slate". It's never occurred to me that he is assuming a frictionless or seamless world. I would characterize his most consistent message, as much as I've read of him, as: "Cut through the bullshit and find the facts. They may not support your argument." He has a way of demonstrating that, quite often, the facts have not been supportive. Ed Weick Krugman needs a dose of humility. Here's one thought. Imagine his reaction if the budget for MIT were halved and traditional economic theory was suddenly found to be imperfect and so flawed that it was no longer acceptable for teaching. Hmmm. What options might be open to him and others that promote perfect this and seamless that!! arthur cordell ------ From: Michael Gurstein To: Mike Hollinshead Cc: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: Re: Krugman and the Austrians Date: Sunday, January 31, 1999 2:39PM Hey, Maybe in the long run they can all be tenured professors of Economics at MIT. Ah, retraining M On Sun, 31 Jan 1999, Mike Hollinshead wrote: Mike Gurstein just posted a piece on the closure of Devco in Cape Breton Canfutures, in which are to be found these two paragraphs, describing frictions in the labour market and wealth effects which Krugman claims not to exist. Mike H The emotion that greeted Premier Russell MacLellan Friday in his belated trip Sydney Mines was raw. Miners have good reason to be frightened. Most will not qualify for pensions, despite work records stretching back a quarter century. They have little education and few marketable skills should they decide to move away, and many incumbrances that make moving impractical. Most own homes that would not fetch enough for a down payment in the robust real estate markets where jobs are said to be plentiful. They have family and community ties that make it possible to live in Sydney Mines on incomes that would not sustain them elsewhere. Michael Gurstein, Ph.D. ECBC/NSERC/SSHRC Associate Chair in the Management of Technological Change Director: Centre for Community and Enterprise Networking (C\CEN) University College of Cape Breton, POBox 5300, Sydney, NS, CANADA B1P 6L2 Tel. 902-563-1369 (o) 902-562-1055 (h) 902-562-0119 (fax) [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://ccen.uccb.ns.ca ICQ: 7388855
Re: what about gas
Hydrogen already is produced on a large scale using heat, pressure and a catalyst, from natural gas. It is an intermediate product in the manufacture of certain petrochemicals. We make huge quanitities here in Alberta already - for petrochemicals and to hydrogenate heavy oil. As to transportation fuels, they don't need to be liquid. Hydrogen can be used directly in fuels cells, which Ballard Engineering in Vancouver, allied with Ford and Mercedes, is successfully developing for transportation uses. If you insist on liquid fuels, natural gas is easily converted to methanol for which there is an exising large scale industry with established technology. Methanol can be burned in internal combustion engines without modification, though they use it more efficiently if the compression ratio is about double what is usual now. There are driveability problems in cold climates which are probably solveable with additives. I would put my money on fuel cells. There are large energy inefficiencies in converting natural gas to hydrogen compared to producing it from water using sunlight and solar cells, so it will probably be an intermediate step (next fifty years) to a solar hydrogen economy. Odell by the way, was one of the few people to forecast the spiking of oil prices in the 1970s and their crash in the 1980s (as also was I). I suspect he is right on gas. This is also the conclusion which the energy group at the International Institute for Advanced Systems Analysis came to circa 1980 (Wolf Haeferle and Cesar Marchetti et al). Marchetti was another of the very few who predicted the oil price crash in 1983 (using logistic substitution analysis between basic energy forms). Their reports are all available (http://www.iiasa.ac.at). Regarding ethanol from biomass, I recall from studies done in the early 1980s that the energy balances for producing it from grains and sugar cane (which is what the Brazilians were doing) were highly negative. Studies were also done on cropping desert plants, like jojoba which produces an oil which can be used directly in diesel engines. The problem would be that of ecological damage from taking over desert areas for growing these things and the inefficiencies of gathering systems where production per acre is so low. A problem with both wastes and dedicated crops is that production occurs in relatively small quantities over large areas (compared for example with oil and natural gas), making the economics of a gathering system preparatory to large scale long distance transportation poor. Think of rural natural gas systems in reverse. They have all required subsidization, plus you will lose a proportion of the methane to power the compressors which would drive the gas through the gathering system from each of the production points. They are unlikely to be of much help to the megalopolises to which Third World populations are migrating and where most of the human population of the future will apparently live. For them you need a readily available high btu fuel which occurs in concentrated areas in huge volumes and can be efficiently transported over long distances (so that transportation costs per btu are modest). Natural gas is the only fuel which meets these criteria. In other words, your study will be flawed if it only looks at total energy demand and supply and ignores their structure and how energy alternatives match those structures. What is very interesting about the progression of primary fuels historically is that each succeeding fuel has been more hydrogen rich and has been more economical to transport to users in urban areas, per btu. In other words, it would appear that urbanization has driven the progression from wood/hay to coal, to petroleum to natural gas. Mike H
Re: What about (blush) gas
Odell is a geographer. It was because he was unencumbered by the assumptions of economists that he was able to forecast both the spiking and the collapsing of oil prices. According to Marchetti (see IIASA references) global consumption of natural gas as a proportion of total consumption will peak in 2017, when a new source will take over. Mike H
Re: Samuelson lump-of-labor fallacy, 1998
For an answer to what I now name "The Lump of Samuelson Fallacy" (I thought of something entirely more biting to begin with but decided to be polite), please see my previous post about Krugman and the Austrians (below). Samuelson has been one of the greatest disasters to befall economics. It is devoutly to be wished that he had stuck to electrical engineering and left economics alone. He has said he made the transition because he thought economics looked easier. Just apply engineering math (differential and integral calculus) to economics and hey presto ! a successful career in economics without ever having to really learn any - see his Foundations of Economic Analysis and The Collected Papers of Paul A. Samuleson. He is still doing it. A side note on his hide bound habit of clinging to what he learned at engineering school in the 1920s. He has dismissed the evidence for long waves on the grounds that (at the time he made the comments) that there had only been three of them and that this number of cycles was insufficient for statistical testing fo the null hypothesis. This is obtuse because there are other mathematical techniques for testing the theory than conventional statistics based on the Normal, Chi-squared or F distributions, as Marchetti has shown (using Fisher-Prey Equations) and because there are other forms of statistics/time series analysis that can be used. Ironically,in view of Samuleson's educational background, one of them (Spectral Analysis using transformations of Fourier Series) was developed in electrical engineering and has been applied to energy and invention data with results that confirm Marchetti - see Bodger, Moutter and Gough, Tehnological Forecasting and Social Change 19, 367 - 386 (1986). Moreover, Jay Forrester and his team at MIT were also able to replicate these results using a systems dynamic model for the US economy (there are many papers but see An Alternative Approach to Economic Policy: Macrobehaviour from Microstructure in Economic Issues of the Eighties, Kamrany and Day eds, John Hopkins U Press) with the effect coming out of adjustments of the economy to investments in long lived capital and their interactions with consumption and lending. Finally, price series exist for grain prices in Cologne for over 300 years, which clearly show the cycle even with simple smoothing - more than enough cycles to satisfy even Dr. Samuelson, I would hope. If one can independently arrive at the same result using four totally different forms of analysis of the data covering altogether a period of 500 years, it is time to wake up and smell the coffee. Finally, from his comments re: labour market adjustments via migration and downward adjustment of real wage rates (a simple restatement of Classical Theory which must have Ricardo, Mill and Marshall chortling in their graves), one would have thought that Keynes had never written the General Theory. It is inadequate aggregate demand Dr. Samuleson, which explains what you make disappear with a wave of your Neo-classical theoretic wand. And it is caused by the factors I have explained - the long term nature of long-lived capital and output adjustments between industries due to waves of technological innovation, the real wealth effect this causes, rigidities in labour markets which prevent quick, complete adjustment to the structural change in output and investment, and the sea change in social psychology which accompanies all this (causing a shift in the liquidity preference function). Mike H Krugman dismisses the Austrians too soon. His error is to rely on Von Hayek's and Schumpeter's versions instead of that of the neo Schumpeterians. What he has done is equivalent to criticizing monetary economics on the basis of what Say said, ignoring Keynes and Friedman. There is solid statistical work on inventions, innovations and energy by Mensch and Marchetti to show that these long cycles exist and are associated with regular (55 year approximately) cycles in innovations (new products that create new industries) and substitutions between primary energy forms in the new world economies which accompany them. See Gerhard Mensch Stalemate in Technology, Ballinger 1979 and Cesar Marchetti Society as a Learning System: Discovery, Invention, and Innovation Cycles Revisited, Technological Forecasting and Social Change, volume 18, (1980). Moreover the dips between cycles are associated with other phenomena which go a long way to explaining why large numbers of people start preferring cash (saving) at that point. The economist Harold Innis and the sociologist Samuel Clark (both of U of T) before the War pointed to an association with the emergence of radical Protestant sects at these times and the University of Chicago historian William McLouglin, more recently, to the coincidence of alternate ones (the ones which in history have come to be called Commercial or Industrial Revolutions) with what religious historians refer to as
How science is really done
Regarding the subject of what is science and definitions which emphasized observation and rejection of theories when counter factual data is presented, I thought the two following documents would be of interest. Scientists do not as a rule observe and then theorize. They typically do it the other way round. When they find the data does not confirm the hypothesis, the usual reaction is not to reject the hypothesis, but to assume it was a bad set of data and proceed to draw another set. These observations are well born out in the following article about scientific heretics and particularly Thomas Gold, because he generated new data on the origins of oil and gas and geophysicists are not rejecting the conventional theory but Gold's data. Gold is an astrophysicist with impressive credentials who asserts, on what I personally judge to be very convincing evidence, that oil and gas are produced deep within the mantle and are not of biological origin. As an astrophysicist he is well aware that hydrocarbons are found in meteorites and on planets like Pluto where there is absolutely no chance of their having originated from plants - the conventional theory of petroleum geologists. There are many things about the composition of petroleum and where conventional fields have been found that contradict biological origin, which Gold points to and the conventional wisdom ignores. More importantly he conducted and experiment which debunks conventional theory - he drilled for oil and gas where the conventional theory would predict none would be found and found both. If he is right, there is much more oil and gas to be found than conventional models would indicate because they exist in places far removed from places the conventional theories predict and therefore far from where oil and gas companies typically drill. To demonstrate this, Gold persuaded the Swedish government to drive two boreholes deep into granite, a non-sedimentary rock i.e. that never has contained plants or marine animals. In North America this would be equivalent to drilling in the middle of the Canadian Shield, say north of Lake Superior, or in the middle of Great Bear Lake. At considerable depth they found both oil and methane. The methane flowed at rates equal to those found in conventional gas wells in places like Oklahoma. If ever there was a counter factual demonstration, this is it. Yet all Gold gets from petroleum geologists is vituperation. Gold's original article contains maps and charts which did not reproduce. To see them you may want to refer to the original document at http://www.people.cornell.edu/pages/tg21/usgs.html Both Pauling and his wife, by the bye, died of cancer despite taking daily mega doses of vitamin C for many years. Mike H HERESY! THREE MODERN GALILEOS By Anthony Liversidge Omni, June 1993 Pauling believes that large dosages of vitamin C prevents many ailments, including cancer. Duesberg disputes the idea that certain oncogenes cause cancer in humans. Gold believes that petroleum is a product of geological processes. Last autumn, at last, the Catholic Church confessed. The New York Times' frontpage headline read: "After 350 Years, Vatican Says Galileo Was Right: It Moves." Following a 13-year investigation by an expert panel of scientiests, theologians, and historians, Pope John Paul II was prepared to correct the record. In 1632, Galileo wrote that he had evidence that the earth moves around the sun rather than vice versa. He should not, today's Pope now acknowledges, have been hauled before a tribunal, threatened with torture, forced to recant, banned from publication, and banished for the rest of his life to his country estate. As the Church panel now confirms, Galileo was right on the money all the time. Stale news for most of us. Moreover, the story of a great scientist battling established religion seems irrelevant to the modern world-or is it? Some leading scientists claim that the repression of Galileo's ideas only foreshadowed the politics they have to contend with today. They insist that another church has established itself, a more insidious enemy to truth seeking than the Catholic Church of old. This time the church shutting out new ideas as heresy and blocking the march of truth is the scientific establishment. The modern iconoclasts aren't New Age freaks, homeopaths, or astrologers-outsiders typically hostile to scientists who scorn them. They rank among the most distinguished and productive men and women in American science and include Nobel laureates. They are, you might say, the "modern Galiloes." If they're right, the Popes and Cardinals of modern science are turning a deaf ear to
Re: lump of labour stuff
Very interesting, Ray. In fact, my reading of the history of religious revivals and awakenings in North America has taught me that it is precisely children abandoning the parents fallen gods that is one of the essences of these events. Adolescents are the primary leaders and followers of the new sects. Henry Alline, the leader of the New Lights in Nova Scotia in the late 18th century was only 17 years old when he began to preach and most of his acolytes were teenage girls. The same was true of the Ranters and so on during the English Awakening of the mid 17th century - they were teenage apprentices and their molls, and the Beat generation of the 1960s etc etc. Mike The Aztecs with the largest market in the world at the time, solved the problem by making the Cacoa Bean (a food) the unit of value. Can you imagine Rukeyser abandoning commodoties if they are the unit of money?Then there is the issue of work as a part of the ethos of the culture. America's current work "ethic" is Calvinist Christian. But do you ban it? Or do you grow them out of it? And if you choose the latter then how do you deal with the issue of respect towards one's parents and their choices. As we know, those children who have chosen to abandon their parents traditions have alway made the world better, right? (just kidding) Damn complexity! REH Eva Durant wrote: It is obvious, that people's life should not depend on the ambiguous ways work is defined and measured. Work is a social collaborative activity, so the products should be socially shared. Simple really... Eva
Re: Samuelson's lump-of-labor, 1998
Ray, This is really important. It is something I have wrestled with in the book. The whole basis for political legitimacy in the industrial age is property - at first land and latterly machines and buildings. Economists and lawyers have tried to deal with the issue you raise by creating the concept of intellectual property and trying to throw around it the same fences as they did around physical property to protect exclusive use by defined owners. With the Internet, this cannot work. Once an idea or intellectual work is on the Net there is no legal or physical fence that you can throw around it. The only thing you can own in the old fashioned Lockeian sense is the means of distribution of the information - the hardware of the Net. In my view, the entire Lockeian political theory that underlies modern politics and the modern conception of the state falls down because of this. In one sense, it is therefore possible to say that everything on the Net is art - like this listserve and our conversations :-) Looked at another way, the Net is the (intellectual) Commons of our time, but unlike the Commons of 17th century England, you can't eject the villeins, freemen and cottagers from it and put fences around it to keep them out. Mike But this raises another issue for me on this list. Why is it that whenever you guys and gals talk about work you "basically" are still talking 19th century manufacturing "hired hands" or "commodities" labor instead of the 18th and now late 20th century "intellectual project oriented skills"? Is this an issue still of the bias towards "real estate" as the only true capital base?I would dispute this considering that until recently America's largest and most profitable export was arts and entertainment (movies) that is purely intellectual capital or maybe more accurately "virtual capital."Of course the movies have the highest labor costs, along with professional sports of any profession in the country.I think the theoretical base for this amongst economists thus far is pretty shoddy and old fashioned. Talk to me. REH
Re: lump of labour stuff
Very interesting, Ray. In fact, my reading of the history of religious revivals and awakenings in North America has taught me that it is precisely children abandoning the parents fallen gods that is one of the essences of these events. Adolescents are the primary leaders and followers of the new sects. Henry Alline, the leader of the New Lights in Nova Scotia in the late 18th century was only 17 years old when he began to preach and most of his acolytes were teenage girls. The same was true of the Ranters and so on during the English Awakening of the mid 17th century - they were teenage apprentices and their molls, and the Beat generation of the 1960s etc etc. Mike The Aztecs with the largest market in the world at the time, solved the problem by making the Cacoa Bean (a food) the unit of value. Can you imagine Rukeyser abandoning commodoties if they are the unit of money?Then there is the issue of work as a part of the ethos of the culture. America's current work "ethic" is Calvinist Christian. But do you ban it? Or do you grow them out of it? And if you choose the latter then how do you deal with the issue of respect towards one's parents and their choices. As we know, those children who have chosen to abandon their parents traditions have alway made the world better, right? (just kidding) Damn complexity! REH Eva Durant wrote: It is obvious, that people's life should not depend on the ambiguous ways work is defined and measured. Work is a social collaborative activity, so the products should be socially shared. Simple really... Eva
Re: (Fwd) HANDBOOK OF EVOLUTIONARY PSYCHOLOGY (fwd)
Jay, It is no more scientifically true than that the sun and planets revolve around the earth. What is really funny is that Darwin purloined his principle of selection through competition from classical economics, from Malthus in fact. So you take the dog eat dog mythology of early capitalism and apply it to biology and then "prove" that hierarchical social systems are evolutionarily determined because evolutionary biology proves it to be so. Tosh. It is a tautology from beginning to end. (As is the Darwinian "Theory" of Evolution, but that is another story). for those who would like the fine print of the argument see Richard Lewontin (a biologist who can actually think rather than merely regurgitate) Biology as Ideology. It was one of the Massey Lectures and can be sourced at the the CBC's website under the program Ideas. Mike H - Original Message - From: Eva Durant [EMAIL PROTECTED] Why do they believe this? First, explicit evolutionary thinking can sometimes eliminate certain kinds of errors in thinking about behavior (Symons, 1987). Evolutionary theory is only intended to explain how living organisms evolve. Applying it to any other field of inquiry puts you on VERY shaky ground. It's presently being used to predict primate (human) behavior. Although it's politically incorrect, it's scientifically true. Jay
Krugman and the Austrians
Mike Gurstein just posted a piece on the closure of Devco in Cape Breton Canfutures, in which are to be found these two paragraphs, describing frictions in the labour market and wealth effects which Krugman claims not to exist. Mike H The emotion that greeted Premier Russell MacLellan Friday in his belated trip Sydney Mines was raw. Miners have good reason to be frightened. Most will not qualify for pensions, despite work records stretching back a quarter century. They have little education and few marketable skills should they decide to move away, and many incumbrances that make moving impractical. Most own homes that would not fetch enough for a down payment in the robust real estate markets where jobs are said to be plentiful. They have family and community ties that make it possible to live in Sydney Mines on incomes that would not sustain them elsewhere.
Re: more simulation ideas
Douglas, One major problem you are going to run into is the inability of non-chaotic systems models to generate surprise (like innovations) as such models are completely defined. Innovation is one of the major factors from the human side and Mother Nature has tricks up her sleeve too. Any model which cannot explain it endogenously is fatally flawed. Economists have never been able to do it which is why they ignore it (they treat it as a residual in the power function of the production function). So the conventional algorithmic approach ultimately won't help, ditto non-chaotic simulation. You need something like biologist Stuart Kauffmans bootstrap model which is a chaotic simulation model, but it is only a baby step towards what you will need. Even then you have no way of specifying new future technologies which have the habit of completely transforming the global economic structure. You would only have some metaphorical clues as to how the transformations might occur. These makeovers occur every fifty to sixty years, so you can't assume them away in any long term model. In this I am agreeing with Ed and Eva, i.e. You have to have some theory of how things work, and you have to be able to conceive of and simulate alternative systems to the one we have now (entirely different social and technical systems). Otherwise you are simply projecting the status quo, which might be interesting in the short run, but is of no earthly use in the long run when we want to be able to imagine things being different than they are. You might want to look at the work which has been done at the International Institute for Advanced Systems Analysis in Laxenburg Austria. Cesar Marchetti, who works there has done the only worthwhile work on anticipating innovation and energy systems that I have seen. Mike H This is a response to several people who have commented on my idea of running a simulation of the world economy, and I should mention especially Pete [EMAIL PROTECTED] who has some very useful ideas, (as Tom Walker has also pointed out). First a few general comments: I want to do this myself, but I am willing to accept help, and I am most interested in help collecting data. If I get enough help I am quite willing to surrender all claims to this project to the futurework mailing list as a whole and will gladly let someone else take over and run the project if the list as a whole has no serious objections at the time. I would like someone more reliable than me to keep an archive of whatever is produced, in case I get run over by a bus, and I'd prefer it to be made available by FTP to anyone who wants it. I'd like to use only public domain or freely redistributable math libraries so the whole project can be freely redistributed under the GNU public license. I think the target language should be plain-vanilla ANSI C with as few preprocessor directives as possible, and it should compile with the GNU gcc compiler (djgpp on DOS or Windows systems) using -Wall to enable all warnings -- but without any warnings produced. Having just said that, I will probably do some rapid-prototyping using Pascal which is easier and supports array bounds checking, then translate it into C using the p2c translator at some point. I'd like to use a real programming language, a good one, but unforunately none has ever been written! (Though I could say a few nice things about ML or Python, which most people have never heard of.) In an earlier message (which I regret not responding to), Pete wrote: On the other issue, I have no fear of mathematics, nor engineering, in analysis of social issues. However, I will state categorically that algorithm-based analysis is inadequate to the task, and most likely actively deceptive. Nothing less than fullblown simulation is able to yield a valid analysis, but this is something easily within reach of current computing power. Systems engineering applied to the whole problem of economic srtucture is fully mature and powerful enough to handle the problem, and is long overdue to supplant the voodoo algorithms of orthodox economic theory. I might have been more likely to respond to this comment if I disagreed with it, such being human nature, but since it is so obviously correct I just let it pass by unnoted -- sorry Pete. In particular I agree with his endorsement of systems engineering, and since I do, I think the first step must be requirements analysis, followed by design, and only then can code be written -- except for a small amount of rapid-prototyping as proof of concept. Commenting on my plans to do a simulation Pete wrote: This is an approach I have advocated for a long time, so of course I'm all in favour. However there are some important points to make: a proper simulation is not a trivial project; I had envisioned it being the product of a team effort in the order of several man-years. I'm still working on requirements analysis, but I have a few preliminary design ideas
Re: Moving on.
Tim, I too have been observing Ed's posts - for several years. He is honest, fair minded and no racist. You completely misunderstood his post. Your reaction is completely over the top and gratuitiously offensive. We do not get personal on this board or tell people to shut up. Please clean up your act or move on. Mike H Now, I admit I might have missed part of the beginning of this jew=capitalist thing during the turmoil of switching ISP's, but Ed's attempt to apologise about the shmazzozzle is even more offensive than the stuff I have read. He tried to turn jew=capitalist into protester=brownshirt and he thinks that should fix it. That is so whacked that I would not know where to begin in debunking it if I were to bother trying. I have been noticing Ed Weick for awhile. He is the poster boy example of somebody with a complete lack of good sense trying to be a philosopher. It isn't that he 'offends sensibilities;' personally I love offending 'sensibilities.' It is that he shoots off his mouth about whatever pops into his head because he is either incapable of, or can't be bothered with, first working out the implications of what he is saying. Thus he keeps laying eggs faster than a leghorn hen on estrogen and wondering why he is being 'misunderstood.' No, people understand what you are saying, Ed. It is that you yourself don't understand what you are saying, which should suggest to you that perhaps you should shut up. That is the end of my contribution to this, although it doesn't seem to be moving on very fast. Tim R. Agree. -- From: Tim Rourke It is time this whole putrid 'string' about whether jews are capitalists dissapeared. It should never have gottern started. If it does not I am going to contact the Jewish anti-defamation league. Blech. Tim R. But please allow me one last word. I feel as though I've been misunderstood, or at least understood by only a few people. I personally was not calling Jews anything. What I was talking about was the groundless persecution of the Jews or indeed of any people, a process that usually begins and becomes justified by repeatedly labeling them "capitalist", "infidels", "unbelievers", "terrorists" or whatever the anthithesis of the dominant set of beliefs happens to be and scares people enough to make them react. In doing so I was reacting to some of the news coming out of Seattle, where being "capitalist" was a very bad thing, and where some small franchisees had windows smashed. I know that what happened in Seattle was nothing like Krystalnacht, but I couldn't help thinking of that fateful event and the awful things that followed it. I apologize if anyone has been offended. I will move on and refrain from using an ironic style of writing again. However, I do hope it was the style and not the substance of what I wrote that bothered people. Ed Weick
Re: Krystallnacht in Seattle
I don't think I am a conspiracy theorist, but I know enough about the role
of agents provocateurs in history to wonder if the vandals in Seattle were
all that people assume them to be.
Mike
Ed,
In a parallel posting directed at Tim Rourke I've indicated that I agree
with your main point about the dangers of ideological labeling of groups of
people, but I don't quite agree with your comparison of the vandalism in
Seattle to Krystallnacht on a smaller scale.
The important difference is this: Krystallnacht was the work of a single
powerful group, the Nazi Party, acting on orders from the top. The
demonstrators in Seattle were a whole bunch of different groups of
relatively powerless people protesting against the actions of the powerful.
The vast majority of them were non-violent, and there was no top command to
order the vandalism. Indeed we do not even know for sure if the vandals were
protestors of any stripe. It may be they were just vandals, drawn by a large
noisy crowd and the opportunities it presented for mischief. Quite possibly
the window-breakers wouldn't be able to tell you what the letters WTO stand
for.
In another posting you expressed a wish that the WTO could be fixed rather
than abolished. Like you my initial response is to press for reform rather
than destruction. In this case I think not. The WTO is so singlemindedly
dedicated to the anti-human interests of the trans-national corporations
that polite requests for reforms will produce nothing at all, at most purely
symbolic gestures. ("Oh, we really want to raise the living standards of the
toiling masses. That's why we're employing child labour at 20 cents an
hour.") If we press for the destruction of the WTO, it may, just may,
transform itself into something acceptable in order to avoid the death
penalty.
I do think your point about the dangers of demonizing capitalists is very
well taken. I can't think of any definition of capitalism that will send
Bill Gates to the guillotine while sparing the independent plumber with a
battered old van.
I do not believe that it will ever be possible, or even desirable, to
eliminate capitalism in the broad sense. There will always be those
independent plumbers in their battered old vans.
To me the answer lies in a re-assertion of governmental sovereignty, i.e.,
the rule of the whole community in the interests of the whole community. If
that were done, we simply would not allow pollution. Manufacturers would
have to bear the cost of producing their products through pollution-free
processes and then pass the costs on to their consumers instead of relying
on the community to subsidize them by either absorbing extra pollution or
paying the costs of the cleanup. Corporations should be stripped of their
fictional legal status as persons--and not be allowed to make any political
contributions. A hefty Equities Sales Tax (EST) should be slapped on stock
market transactions to stop this insane casino in which "investments" are
bought and resold within a matter of minutes, and disemployment of workers
is a favoured tactic of management to ratchet up the price of their stock by
a few points. And on and on. There's an endless list of things that could
and should be reformed by a government of the people, by the people, for the
people.
Regards.
Victor Milne
Re: Krystallnacht in Seattle
Ed, The notion that the meshing of economies through trade and business would ensure peace was prevalent in the 1920s. It was an argument used by people opposed to the League of Nations. It didn't work very well then and I doubt that it will work very well now. Competition for resources is a frequent cause of wars - the colonial wars between the English, Spanish, Dutch and French, for example, and the German doctrine of lebensraum which was used in the Second World War. Trade wars frequently lead to hot wars. The MNCs work both sides of the street. ATT collaborated with the Germans in the Second World War as a way to protect its European assets, for example. German big business collaborated with the Nazis for the same reasons. I doubt we will ever eliminate war, humans are such aggressive, territorial animals which for millions of years have developed around the concepts of in groups and out groups. The problem with trade is that under the current Western, modern paradigm, it leads to extensive use of resource on a scale which is unsustainable. I can buy in my local Safeway coral reef fish which are caught by dynamiting, a process which is wrecking reefs all over the Pacific. I can buy cheap shrimp which are raised in South East Asia by clearing mangroves for shrimp lagoons, in the process destroying the nurseries and feeding grounds of numerous important food fishes. I can buy farmed salmon, which in Norway, Scotland and New Brunswick have passed a deadly disease to wild salmon which in Scotland and Norway has caused a catastrophic decline in wild salmonid populations (the industry is still small in Canada, but give us time). The economic history of Canada is a history of similar rapes in the pursuit of trade. We wiped out the white pine forests which once covered the entire St. Lawrence lowlands from New Brunswick to Ontario in about four generations. The last mature, untouched stand is in Temagami Park, which the Harrris Government would like to license loggers to fell. Commerce and sustainable values are poor bed fellows. Mankind needs to back up and take stock, not continue to heedlessly charge forward chanting the free trade mantra of laissez faire ideology. I say this as a trade and development economist who used to teach the history of economic development. The whole comparative advantage argument for free trade is bogus, even from the point of view of national economic development (a subject for a future post). I see hope for the future much more in the emergence of the concept of "civil society" and a United Nations Peoples Assembly. Sustainable values which will throw a restraining loop of laws around the MNCs will come from these directions. That is what the protest in Seattle was all about, in my view, and the resistance to the MAI. Mike I don't want to see the WTO destroyed because, as I believe I've stated in other postings, the removal of trade barriers and extension of trade represents one of the surest ways of so completely enmeshing the world in common interests that any part of it would be foolish to be in serious conflict with any other. Rather the WTO promoting peaceful trade and competition among all countries than the development of large economic blocks which could become political blocks and ultimately military blocks. When it comes to labour standards and the environment, I rather like Sylvia Ostrey's idea of a meaningful ILO (International Labour Office) and a WEO (World Environment Organization). I would even accept that the latter two should have primacy of place over the WTO, as someone on the list has suggested. If you simply kill the WTO, nothing much will happen that is not already happening -- i.e., the continued formation of blocks of interest and an increasingly polarized world.
The Myth of Comparative Advantage, or Free trade will maximizeyour future wealth, poppycock!
I said in a previous post to Ed Weick "The whole comparative advantage argument for free trade is bogus, even from the point of view of national economic development (a subject for a future post)." Here is that future post, in the form of an exerpt from my new book, The Myth of Canada. "Not every myth writer has been so disinterested, though. Henry Tudor certainly wasn't and neither are today's mythmakers in the corporate world. There is no difference between the way in which today's giant business corporations use the mythology of the market to buttress their political power and to create a new international charter for capitalism, in the form of the MAI, putting them on a level with nation states, and the way in which Henry Tudor and the Parliamentarians of 1640 used the myths of previous golden ages. Margaret Thatcher continually harked back to the First Industrial Revolution as a golden age of free markets for Britain to emulate. Yet it reflected social reality then no more than it does now. The English cotton industry, the driver of that Revolution, was protected in its home market by an embargo of Indian cottons and supported in its export markets by a subsidy on printed goods. Goods imported to Britain could only be brought in English ships, a rule enforced by the British Navy. The great Carron ironworks in Scotland, where Watt began his experiments with improving Newcomen's steam engine, was heavily subsidized and supported by generous contracts for artillery from the British Army and the British Navy (the heavy naval gun, the carronade, was named after the works, where it was made). Henry Maudslay's specialized cutting and boring machines, which were the first machine tools on which manufacturing industry came to be based, and made identical parts which could be assembled without fitting - another innovation of modern manufacturing (often attributed, incorrectly to Samuel Colt), was all done under contract to the British Navy which needed to rectify a shortage of blocks (devices used in great quantities in the running rigging of sailing ships). That is to say, the state played a heavy handed role in the first Industrial Revolution. Moreover, it was achieved by ruining the Indian cotton industry through trade restrictions, and heavily subsidized by cheap cotton fibre produced by black slaves on plantations in the Carribean and the Southern United States. Nothing much free market about any of that. The financial capital which made all this possible was obtained from the production of sugar in the West Indies again using slaves and from the exploitation and plundering of the Indian subcontinent by the East India Company. As the historian William McNeill documented in The Pursuit of Power, the European Powers expanded economically by using superior military technology to wrest control of existing production and trading systems in the Indian Ocean, the China Sea and the Americas from native rulers and traders. The gold and silver earned from the sale of sugar ultimately came from Spanish mines in South and Central America which were manned, again, by slaves who died in their millions. Again, not much of the free market about all that. Modern capitalism grew by exploitation of military technology by the state for the benefit of traders and industrialists and by rigging markets through state power. Britain in her time and the United States now have only adopted free trade policies when they dominated the world economy and had made it play by their rules on a precipitously slanted playing field. Trade in free markets, poppycock. The classical economic theory of comparative advantage, which is the central myth used by the free traders, suffers, like all myths, from having been abstracted from its original context and thus presents a distorted, abstract and unrealistic view of the world. It was first proposed by the English economist, David Ricardo in his Principles of Economics in 1817. He based his discussion on an example of trade in wine and cloth betweeen Portugal and England, an example which has been faithfully followed in every economics textbook in the English language ever since. It has been used to argue that free trade will always benefit everyone, even a country which is a low cost producer of all goods. Ricardo's example of trade between Portugal and England had a basis in a historical controversy over the Anglo-Portuguese trade treaty of 1703. But let us begin at the beginning, as we must if the issue is to be understood properly. The real beginning of the story is a 1654 treaty between England and Portugal which England gained use of Lisbon as a naval base and access to the Portuguese market for cloth. By the treaty, Portugal gained England as an ally in its war of independence from Spain. Portugal was a satrapy of Spain at the time, though it had its own king, and had been in revolt since 1640. Spain eventually recognised Portugal's independence in 1668. England
Re: FW: Re Krystallnacht in Seattle
You are not paranoid, those people really are out to get you :-) But seriously, who can forget that during the FLQ crisis, the RCMP were planting bombs and burning down barns in order to establish their bona fides with the revolutionaries and to influence public opinion against them ? They have been at it again in their work against enivironmentalists who have been blowing up oil company property to protest their complete disregard for human and environmental health. The RCMP blew things up too, to establish their bona fides and stir up public opinion. It worked in Quebec, why not in Alberta ? Mike Mike Hollinshead [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: I don't think I am a conspiracy theorist, but I know enough about the role of agents provocateurs in history to wonder if the vandals in Seattle were all that people assume them to be. So does that make me paranoid when that was my first thought about it? I guess it's a result of hearing in passing somewhere that almost all `revolutionary' political groups in north america in the sixties were penetrated by agents provocateur in the pay of one or another US govt agency, even the goofball Vancouver Maoist faction. -Pete Vincent
meeting between men
Now here is something positive. I am with the new Vikings and can really relate to the dissonance between the Swedish and English attitudes. My first child was born in Scotland and I wasn't even allowed in the hospital never mind the birthing room. In Canada I coached my wife through the next two births and cared for the children as much as she - she has a career and I am a house husband (with a consulting practice). The Swedes officially recognize that raising children is valuable work done by both sexes. It will be interesting to see how the generation of kids raised in this way turns out. It will probably surprise us. The response from the Italian lady is interesting too. Evidently Italian women find these new Vikings very attractive (compared, presumably, to macho Italian men). One thing I notice here in Edmonton is that there are quite a few asian-european couples, and in almost all cases the woman is asian. Are the asian women doing the same as the Italians - voting their preference for non macho males (asian males tend to be pretty macho too) ? In such quiet, little observed ways is social change effected and the definition of work remodeled :-) Mike Status: U X-Sender: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Date: Tue, 14 Dec 1999 13:02:18 +0100 Mime-Version: 1.0 X-MIME-Autoconverted: from quoted-printable to 8bit by naga.mailbase.ac.uk id MAA03034 Subject: meeting between men From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] (Eva Palsgard) To: [EMAIL PROTECTED], [EMAIL PROTECTED], [EMAIL PROTECTED], [EMAIL PROTECTED], [EMAIL PROTECTED], [EMAIL PROTECTED], [EMAIL PROTECTED], [EMAIL PROTECTED], [EMAIL PROTECTED], [EMAIL PROTECTED], [EMAIL PROTECTED] X-Unsub: To leave, send text 'leave satsunet' to [EMAIL PROTECTED] Reply-To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] (Eva Palsgard) Sender: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Precedence: list X-MIME-Autoconverted: from 8bit to quoted-printable by crash.ab.videon.ca id FAA14834 Dear AWISE, Renaissance Vikings, an observation I had an interesting experience recently; an English male colleague of mine visited me here in Sweden. We had been postdocs in the same lab in the UK for a few years. Back here in Uppsala I thought it would be fun for him to meet some of the guys I did physics with here, many years ago. I never thought there were very big differences between England and Sweden, howeverÂ… My friends here in Uppsala are now starting up families, they are on paternity leave etc and live fairly normal Swedish lives. The first evening the UK man was here we went to the pub and a Swedish friend of mine joined us. My Swedish friend was so relieved to get away from nappies and to be able to have an adult conversation for an evening. My UK friend was very amused to start with. An interesting conversation developed, the UK man implied that paternity leave was sort of a holiday. The Viking said "O no, a lot of work, should not even be called paternity leave, should be called paternity work". His son had been in a bad mood that day and very hard work. The conversation got more and more into what paternity meant. O yes, hard work but there was no way the Swedish man wanted to miss this lovely part of the development of his son. He wanted a close relationship with his son; no way he wanted to give all that up to the mother alone. This was very important and he said, a sign of civilisation. The next day we met another man and his expecting wife, very soon the discussion came into how to fit in the paternity leave with his teaching, his experimental work and the families general plans. UK man again amused, amused but also I believe, a bit alarmed. I started realising how, excuse me Ladies, far ahead we are in Sweden where there is no threat to manhood to stay away from career and look after kids. I never considered this during my years in the UK. The last evening we went for dinner and next to us there was a family with babies, grandparents and the lot. The fathers were looking after the babies as much as the mothers and the grandparents. When we were about to leave the restaurant the women were still sitting at the table talking and laughing. We left and in the hall we met a giggling naked girl, being changed by her father as they were playing. Other fathers were there too with their kids. My UK friend said that this just about summed up his experience of the modern Vikings and that now he had really seen the effects of feminism. I wonder how he feels now, when the experience is sinking in. The guys we met here think it is perfectly normal to take their paternity leave and that this is something important for them and their families' quality of life. Needless to say that in Sweden you have facilities for changing nappies in the gent's too. Just an observationÂ…. Facts: http://www.si.se/eng/esverige/esverigex.html Happy Midwinter Celibrations, Eva - Dr Eva Palsgard Centre for Surface Biotechnology BMC, University of Uppsala P O Box 577 SE-751 23 Uppsala
Scientology
One story of the origins of Scientology goes as follows. Ron Hubbard, the founder, was having a drink with the boys and shooting the breeze about religion and Ron said "Anybody can start a religion. I could start a religion." "Bet you can't." "Bet I can." Ron won the bet.
Re: Sweatshops
Hm. I don't know, Ed Sound exactly like the conditions in England in which the Grand National Consolidated Union of the 1820s was created. Remember nine were transported to Australia for their temerity - the Tolpuddle Martyrs. Don't forget the Peterloo Massacre of 1819 either. This was a time when you could be transported for life for stealing anything worth more than five shillings, and hung for ten bob. It was a time when wealthy landowners protected their game from poachers with trip guns (loaded and cocked guns with the trigger connected to a trip wire) and gamekeepers regularly shot suspected poachers, no questions asked. Stealing from the Crown was a recognised perquisite of office down to the end of the 18th century. Look at the great country houses - from Cecil's Hatfield to Walpole's Houghton Hall. Cecil was such a successful peculator he built three palaces - Burghley House, Theobalds and Hatfield. Poor Walpole only managed two and Wimpole Hall he only really improved though it does, according to the brochure contain "state rooms that would do credit to a palace". It was originally built by Lord Chancellor Hardwicke. Except Pitt the Younger, every First Minister left office richer than he came until Wellington set a new standard of probity (though his older brother Richard, the Earl of Mornington, preferred the older style, and returned from a term of office in India outrageously wealthy). Down to the late 19th century, when the great agricultural depression forced their break up, most of England was divided up into great estates owned by a handful of powerful families who ran England from Westminster and the magistrate's bench. Don't forget that the English monarchs from William and Mary on were essentially window dressing for rule by the Whig Oligarchy from 1680 to 1900. Mike Arthur: Maybe I missed it, but have we adequately explored the creation of strong trade unions in these countries, trade unions that are part of a movement aimed at upward harmonization of living standards?? No, I don't think we have. But I do wonder if they would fit. It's now a decade and a half since I was in India, but what I recall is a highly entrenched class system and a lot of vested interest in keeping it that way. People with power, privilege and wealth do not want to share it. There is very little flexibility in the system and very little chance of anyone borne into the lower classes rising above them. Any movement by the poor to shift power and wealth downward would likely encounter strong resistence. India prides itself on being a democracy and so, perhaps, it should. But Indian democracy is still little more than a veneer which covers a rigid hierarchical system, which, if it bends at all, bends only a little. We mustn't forget that unions are a distinctly western phenomenon, the product of a long history of social change and experimentation. They are possible where there is a fundamental belief in the equality of man and a willingness to bargain and negotiate. They are far less likely to be possible where the fundamental assumption is inequality and force or corrupt backroom deals can be used as means of suppression. Simply assuming that third world countries can adopt our systems and standards or even that they would want to adopt them will not get us very far. When I was in India, I saw ever so many poor children begging on the street. Some of them had been maimed, deliberately I was told, to give them an upper hand as beggars. Third world poor families knowingly sell their daughters into prostitution. If there are no options other than begging and prostitution, wouldn't working in a Nike sweatshop be preferable? Well perhaps not for everyone, but if one asked the little kids who are begging on the street or the little girls who are bound for prostitution (or their parents), I believe I know what the answer would be. My apologies to the Washington protesters. I'm sure many of them are there out of deep conviction and high ideals. However, what upsets me a little is that going after agencies such as the WTO, the World Bank and the IMF has become something of a blood sport. Not everything these agencies do is bad, and I for one do not believe they are totally in bed with the MNCs. Perhaps partly, but not totally. They are responsible to governments, and many governments continue to be responsive to the whole of their constituents. But in saying that, perhaps I'm simply revealing that I'm Canadian, and therefore naive. Ed Weick
Re: Sweatshops
Ed, The more you describe what you believe to have been the situation historically in Europe, the more I see parallels in contemporay East Asia, India and Latin America. Tremendous technological change forcing tremendous economic and social change, and, instead of the philosophes the Modern people in their own countries and what they see of the West on the TV screens. And political elites going with the flow - see the coup in Asia, the political changes in South Korea and Taiwan and, of course, the Deng Zaoping reforms in China. Mike Mike, you are obviously a far better historian than I. Nevertheless, I would still argue that there were possibilities implicit in western Europe that are now not possible in much of the developing world. From what little I've read of it, the industrial revolution led to tremendous upheavals, making new social arrangements such as unionization possible. Indeed, Europe was a very cruel place in the 18th and 19th, and even the 20th, centuries, but the possibilities were there. Powerful guilds of craftsmen and artisans had existed in medieval cities, and from what little history I recall, writers of the Enlightenment invoked concepts of a rational and well-ordered society and the common worthiness of all men. As industrialization gathered momentum, invention piled on invention, application on application, and cities grew, large fissures opened in society -- fissures that the old agrarian based power structure and the emerging capitalist class could no longer fully control or close. Arthur points out that the birth of the unions was a bloody affair. It was indeed, but ultimately the unionists triumphed and themselves became a powerful and often repressive force in society. However, my general point is that what was possible in Europe and North America during the past two centuries is not now likely possible in much, perhaps most, of the poor world. When unionization occurred in the west, Europe and the Americas were places of rapidly rising productivity. Wealth per capita grew rapidly and the power structures eventually recognized that there was no great need for massive repression, even if they were strong enough to apply it. The wealth of the rich did not diminish simply because of gains made by the poor. I don't see the same situation in much of the poor world today. Except perhaps for China, productivity is rising only very slowly if it is not falling, and the elites have a powerful incentive to hang on to what they have. Some societies remain rigid; others attempt to do so but ultimately explode. You either have stasis or chaos. This may change, but I doubt very much that I will see in my lifetime. Arthur has also commented that the kinds of criticisms which I leveled at the Washington protesters were also leveled at the kids who were protesting the Vietnam War. I think there's a difference. The Vietnam protesters were opposing something specific which could be stopped - a particular war in a particular place being waged by their government. The current round of protesters are opposing "globalization" and God only knows what that is. Ed Weick Hm. I don't know, Ed Sound exactly like the conditions in England in which the Grand National Consolidated Union of the 1820s was created. Remember nine were transported to Australia for their temerity - the Tolpuddle Martyrs. Don't forget the Peterloo Massacre of 1819 either. This was a time when you could be transported for life for stealing anything worth more than five shillings, and hung for ten bob. It was a time when wealthy landowners protected their game from poachers with trip guns (loaded and cocked guns with the trigger connected to a trip wire) and gamekeepers regularly shot suspected poachers, no questions asked. Stealing from the Crown was a recognised perquisite of office down to the end of the 18th century. Look at the great country houses - from Cecil's Hatfield to Walpole's Houghton Hall. Cecil was such a successful peculator he built three palaces - Burghley House, Theobalds and Hatfield. Poor Walpole only managed two and Wimpole Hall he only really improved though it does, according to the brochure contain "state rooms that would do credit to a palace". It was originally built by Lord Chancellor Hardwicke. Except Pitt the Younger, every First Minister left office richer than he came until Wellington set a new standard of probity (though his older brother Richard, the Earl of Mornington, preferred the older style, and returned from a term of office in India outrageously wealthy). Down to the late 19th century, when the great agricultural depression forced their break up, most of England was divided up into great estates owned by a handful of powerful families who ran England from Westminster and the magistrate's bench. Don't forget that the English monarchs from William and Mary on were essentially window dressing for rule by the Whig Oligarchy
Re: Sweatshops
Hi Ed, I agree with the role of plunder and greed in the English Industrial Revolution. They played a role. But it has not been true of all industrial revolutions. There was no plundering and greed in the medieval European industrial revolution. The driving actors were a religious order (the Cistercians) and a group of religous fanatics who thought that only the afterlife was real (the Cathars or Albigensians). I am not aware of greed and plunder in the medieval Chinese industrial revolution either. The Neoconfucianists had lot in common with the Cathars - a pretty austere lot, like the nonconformist protestants who drove the English Industrial Revolution of the 18th century. So, I return to my point - industrial revolutions have occurred in widely differing cultures and societies which did not share all of the characteristics of England in the 18th century, except the ones I mentioned - warmer climate, agricultural revolution, ideology of perfection. Mike Hi Mike, Let me try to restate my argument. Economic growth requires certain basic conditions. I would not pretend to know what all of these are, but stability and the possibility of upward mobility would, I suspect, be among them. I would also include the existence of capital; not only capital itself, but the financial infrastructure through which capital can be mobilized. You mention three other possibles in your comparison between England and Korea, namely improvements in agricultural technology, a warming climate and a perfectionist ideology. The presence of "outgroups" such as the Jews or Chinese may or may not be a factor. These factors were not lacking in China, Korea and Taiwan. These were well organized and, in some important respects, progressive, societies before Europeans came with their gunboats. What I believe was historically unique about western Europe was both an insatiable curiosity and an overwhelming greed. It is highly probable that the Chinese navigated the west coast of the Americas well before Europeans found the east coast. But that is all the Chinese did, navigate. They did not set up colonies and plunder the lands they found. They didn't feel they had to. China was complete in itself. Colonizing and plundering the "New World" was left to the Europeans, and the Chinese, the Koreans and many other "complete in themselves" peoples ultimately paid dearly for it. In finding the New World, Europeans found treasure, which is how the Mercantilist thinkers of the time saw it. The prosperity of Europe prior to the industrial revolution and in the early phases of industrialization was largely based on plunder. Plunder abroad plus plunder at home, such as the enclosures, generated the resources for industrialization. Once the industrial revolution took off, it generated its own capital, and the colonies, their products and their markets were then less needed. The colonial powers of Europe relaxed their grip. What you have now is a non-European world which consists of countries which have lost much of what they had, in which people are fighting for the few scraps which are left (Africa), and countries which were able to retain much of what they had, and to adopt some of Europe's capability for plunder and accumulation (China, Korea, Southeast Asia). Is it possible to have another era of explosive growth such as took place in Europe and North America during the past five hundred years? Perhaps in the rich world, but not likely in the poor. In the poor world there are far too many people and far too few resources. There is far too little wealth, and those who have it want to hold onto it, investing it in safe havens outside of the country. I spent a month in Jamaica recently, a country which gained independence with the highest of hopes in 1962 and which, by global standards, is still relatively well off. But now you can almost feel it grinding down. Roads, hospitals, schools and public institutions in general are deteriorating, and there is not much that can be done to repair them. Anyone with an education wants to leave, and even the uneducated want to do so. Why? With nearly three million people living on a mountainous island the size of Prince Edward Island there is simply not enough for people to do. Many people have found a role in the drug trade. Jamaica has become a major transshipment point for drugs for drugs moving from South America to the US. Others make a living as hold-up men and petty criminals. There simply are no alternatives. By now you must be wondering if I see any possibilities at all. I am thinking about it. I tend to reject grand scale solutions such as mass education. For much of the world it is not affordable even if it were acceptable. Pouring concrete across rivers, as the World Bank has done or trying to bail out corrupt and leaky regimes such as the IMF has, does not seem to have worked very well either. However, what I have seen in a few rather grim and grimy places is
