[PEN-L:151] Re: IMPORTANT: Interesting News on Section 201
nd our letter writing campaign, by visiting our webpage at: http://www.prairienet.org/csncu Solidarity, Dennis Grammenos Colombia Support Network Champaign-Urbana chapter in central Illinois *** * COLOMBIA SUPPORT NETWORK: To subscribe to CSN-L send request to * * [EMAIL PROTECTED] SUB CSN-L Firstname Lastname * * (Direct questions or comments about CSN-L to [EMAIL PROTECTED]) * * Visit the website of CSN's Champaign-Urbana (Illinois) chapter at * * http://www.prairienet.org/csncu Subscribe to the COLOMBIA BULLETIN * * For free copy and info contact CSN, P.O. Box 1505, Madison WI 53701 * * or call (608) 257-8753 fax: (608) 255-6621 Email: [EMAIL PROTECTED] * * Visit the COLOMBIA SUPPORT NETWORK at http://www.igc.org/csn* * Visit the COLOMBIAN LABOR MONITOR at http://www.prairienet.org/clm * *********** -- Gar W. Lipow 815 Dundee RD NW Olympia, WA 98502 http://www.freetrain.org/
[PEN-L:76] Hahnel article URL
I sent a small excerpt from a much longer Robin Hahnel argument to three lists. Thanks to midnight posting syndrome, I forgot to add the URL to the entire article when I sent the excerpt. For those who are interested, the entire article can be found at http://www.zmag.org/hahdefpe.htm . Note that the bulk of the article is responding to criticism of Parecon. The excerpt which I forwarded on strategy is the very last section. -- Gar W. Lipow 815 Dundee RD NW Olympia, WA 98502 http://www.freetrain.org/
[PEN-L:103] Re: Chile
Tom Walker wrote: Tommorrow, September 11, 1998 is the 25th anniversary of the coup in Chile. When Neruda died during the coup, my late father wrote the following: Neruda I will not mourn for Neruda, no crooked cross Can foul his dreams with the stench Of graveyard breath, the albatross Will grin on the tyrant's bloody trench But Neruda will still sing Together with a holy man called Cesar Neruda will sing, and together With crimson fury of a lead guitar hurling rebel rock forever at the vultures head. And when the raging barrios In California stretch brown arms to join Black one in New York alleys, Santiago's Snarling bullet and rattling coin Will not buy his silence. In the harvest fields of California, And the coal mines of Appalachia, And the agony of Cambodia On the smoldering streets of Uganda And the river banks of India And with Jose Marti in Cuba And in El Salvador named for the Savior Neruda will still sing. By the late Shay A. Lipow Gar W. Lipow 815 Dundee RD NW Olympia, WA 98502 http://www.freetrain.org/
[PEN-L:87] Re: Re: Winning Socialism
rxist movement walks around in a total state of self-flagellation. That is part of its problem. Meanwhile, when you read Hahnel and Albert (or their second cousin Michael Lerner), you would get the impression that their shit doesn't stink. Jim Devine is much too nice a guy to really drive the point home. I am not a nice guy, so I will make the point for him. Albert-Hahnel are a couple of sectarians. Their "Workers Vanguard" is Z Magazine. It is a vehicle for reminding the left, especially the Marxist left, how fucked up it is and how fucked up it will remain unless it starts to take them as seriously as they take themselves. I can't take them seriously for the same reason I can't take any utopian socialist seriously. Blueprints for socialism, and that is exactly what "LOOKING FORWARD: PARTICIPATORY ECONOMICS FOR THE TWENTY FIRST CENTURY" is, are a total waste of time for socialists. Revolutionary socialists--and that is the only way socialism will come about, through revolution--are not like draftsmen or architects or systems analysts working at a desk with slide-rules and computers. We are more like midwives. We will be operating in conditions much more like an operating room where there will be utter chaos, with screaming, and with blood and other fluids pouring out, and a baby stuck half-way out of the mother's womb. Louis Proyect (http://www.panix.com/~lnp3/marxism.html) -- Gar W. Lipow 815 Dundee RD NW Olympia, WA 98502 http://www.freetrain.org/
[PEN-L:78] Re: Re: Re: Winning Socialism
In this case your hatred of HA (which at one point led to you confuse the two with one another) has led you to overlook that excerpt I forwarded has a hell of a lot of relevance to things other than Parecon. I forwarded specifically because it has good strategic points in general; I think it is the best summary I've seen of what may be a growing consensus as to the path the left must take -- in terms of supporting unions, co-ops, community development, supporting indigenous peoples,non-reformist reforms (I am over-simplifying. The fact that what is good in this excerpt cannot be summarized in a paragraph is one reason I forwarded it.) I'm a parecon supporter myself, but I would say about 95% of this excerpt is useful to people who do not care about parecon. If you want to critique the article further, let me emphasize that it is completely the work of Robin Hahnel, and that you should not confuse him with Michael Albert again, or accuse him of being an editor of Z magazine; also, I suspect that the actual strategy he suggests, and the class analysis he uses in the excerpt is worth spending more time on than another critique of parecon. Louis Proyect wrote: Since I have such a personal and political dislike for Hahnel and Albert, and since I am trying to turn over a new leaf and be the most popular guy on the Internet, I have waited until the last minute to say a few words about "Parecon." But how can one not see how irrelevant it is at this point to the real world? For example, take Russia (spoken with a Henny Youngman inflection). The topic that the entire left is grappling with is how the Yeltsinite regime can be toppled and a more humane system put in its place. Zyuganov is calling for the renationalization of major industry, but stepping back from a full-blown planning approach. The people on the left, such as Kargalitsky, hope that a revivified socialism can re-emerge but are probably too weak to influence events. So where does something like Parecon fit in? Obviously, nowhere. In times of great stress, the tasks that have to be addressed are primarily political ones that overlap into conjunctural economic ones such as: --how to avoid rekindling of the cold war? --how to foster economic development while relinquishing the monopoly on foreign trade? --how to deal with the ultrarightists? --how to rebuild foreign economic relations after the collapse of the Soviet COMECON? With due respect for the differences between Russia and a country like the US, one of the reasons it is important to study Russia is that it also can illustrate the problems we will be facing when our own hard times begin. The Russian working-class, like the American working-class, was thoroughly depoliticized and atomized. It was cynical about the "system" and lived for its own material rewards. There was very little concern with social justice and as long as the system could "deliver" after a fashion, people remained apathetic. Now that they are being shaken to the core, the radicalization is beginning but it is uneven. One of the things that is occuring is that left-wing politics is taking on a vaguely anti-semitic cast, due in some part to the fact that most of Yeltsin's advisers are of Jewish descent. Zyuganov blames "cosmopolitans" for ruining the good character of the Russian homeland. The best you can say about the Z Magazine project is that it is the homebase of Edward Herman, Ward Churchill and Noam Chomsky, who the pedantic Marxists who give papers at the academic conferences can learn from. Now if Z Magazine could find a way to drop its sectarian hatred of Marxism, the left would be in a stronger position to move forward. I am not holding my breath. Louis Proyect (http://www.panix.com/~lnp3/marxism.html) -- Gar W. Lipow 815 Dundee RD NW Olympia, WA 98502 http://www.freetrain.org/
[PEN-L:47] Fwd:Winning Socialism
one's work mates? In other words, do we want an economy that obeys the maxim "to each according to the value of his or her personal contribution," or the maxim "to each according to his or her effort?" Do we want a few to conceive and coordinate the work of the many? Or do we want everyone to have the opportunity to participate in economic decision making to the degree they are affected by the outcome? In other words, do we want to continue to organize work hierarchically, or do we want job complexes balanced for empowerment? Do we want a structure for expressing preferences that is biased in favor of individual consumption over social consumption? Or do we want to it to be as easy to register preferences for social as individual consumption? In other words, do we want markets or nested federations of consumer councils? Do we want economic decisions to be determined by competition between groups pitted against one another for their well being and survival? Or do we want to plan our joint endeavors democratically, equitably, and efficiently? In other words, do we want to abdicate economic decision making to the market place or do we want to embrace the possibility of participatory planning? As long as the problem is viewed as how to get an economic elite to make decisions in the public interest rather than their own, we won't get very far in thinking about a truly desirable economy. Whether they be capitalists, central planners, or managers of public enterprises, economic elites will imperfectly serve the public interest at best, and more often than not end by subverting it to their own interest. A desirable economy must be a classless economy. Moreover, the social process of consciously, democratically, and equitably coordinating our interconnected economic activities is fundamentally different from the social process of competing against one another in the exchange of goods and services. And while both "solutions" to the economic problem are feasible, only responsible cooperation is compatible with self-management (decision making input in proportion to the degree one is affected by the outcome), equity (to each according to personal sacrifice or effort), efficiency (maximizing the benefits from using scarce productive resources), solidarity (concern for the well being of others), and ecological restoration. Standing Fast: The next century will prove no easy road for progressive organizers. Capitalism does not dig its own grave, it loans and charges us dearly for the shovels we use to dig our graves. Only as enough of us come to our senses and put our shovels to better use will the increasing human misery and environmental destruction that marks the end of the century that should have been capitalism's last, give way to a sustainable economy of equitable cooperation. Unfortunately, "coming to our senses" is easier said than done. It will come to pass only after more sweat and tears have flowed in more campaigns on more fronts than we can yet imagine. Fortunately, sweat and tears in the cause of justice and freedom are at the center of the human spirit, and the best of all ways of life. References Albert, Michael and Hahnel, Robin. 1991a. The Political Economy of Participatory Economics. Princeton: Princeton University Press. Albert, Michael and Hahnel, Robin. 1991b. Looking Forward: Participatory Economics for the Twenty First Century. Boston: South End Press. Albert, Michael and Hahnel, Robin. 1992a. Socialism As It Was Always Meant To Be. Review of Radical Political Economics 24 (34). Albert, Michael and Hahnel, Robin. 1992b. Participatory Economics. Science Society 56 (1). Devine, Pat. 1988. Democracy and Economic Planning: The Political Economy of a Self Governing Society. Boulder: Westview Press. Folbre, Nancy. 1991. A Roundtable on Participatory Economics. Z Magazine July/August 1991: 67-70. Hagar, Mark. 1991. A Roundtable on Participatory Economics. Z Magazine July/August 1991: 70-71. Hahnel, Robin. 1998. The ABCs of Political Economy. Forthcoming. Levy, David. 1991. Book Review: Seeking a Third Way. Dollars and Sense 171 November 1991: 18-20. Pramas, Jason. 1991. A Roundtable on Participatory Economics. Z Magazine July/August 1991: 73-74. Weisskopf, Thomas. 1992. Toward a Socialism for the Future in the Wake of the Demise of the Socialism of the Past. Review of Radical Political Economics 24 (34). -- Gar W. Lipow 815 Dundee RD NW Olympia, WA 98502 http://www.freetrain.org/
[PEN-L:1307] FreedomTrain Web Site
I would like to thank all the people who have written to me about the new FreedomTrain web site. http://www.freetrain.org/. One thing I gather I did not make clear in my original anouncement. If you are running an electronic petition campaign, and want a petition added to the site let me know; the odds are I'll add it. If you are running a general campaign, and would like us to add an electronic petition in support of it, let me know. The odds are I'll do it. Please forward this to any activists, or lists which you think may find a site which gathers electronic petitions on a single page, ready for one-click endorsement, of interest. P.S. -- Some people have asked how I do certain types of error checking. Rather than answer individually, I'll just point out that your browser has a "view page source". The JavaScript code I used is actually pretty simple. If you want to use it on your site, just grab it, and modify it. -- Gar W. Lipow 815 Dundee RD NW Olympia, WA 98502 http://www.freetrain.org/
[PEN-L:1219] New web site, practical, useful for progressives
I have developed a new free web site (FreedomTrain: http://www.freetrain.org/ Which I think most on-line U.S. progressives will find modestly useful, in a limited and practical sort of way. The idea is to take emergency fax networks, and e-mail alerts to Nth degree. This site contains supporting petitions for progressive e-mail alerts gathered from all over the web. The advantage over other such sites it that you enter your name and address only once (when you register). You then go to the site which contains the petitions, and just mark a check box for each petition you support. The page with the check boxes contains one line teaser. You click the teaser to pop-up the petition and read it before checking it off or not. After you have checked all the petitions you wish to endorse, you press SUBMIT just once add your endorsement to all of them. The site, naturally, will look up your member of Congress or Senator for petitions addressed to them. I think this will be useful for progressive individuals on line, in letting you get electronic alerts at a single site, and send them off conveniently. I hope it will also be useful to progressive organization, who may find it helpful to send petitions to the site, asking that they be placed upon it. I will add, that in general this site contains it's own petitions in support of existing campaigns rather than simply forwarding existing wording. Most alerts specifically ask that you contact targets using your own words. It also avoids problems with copyright laws. In anything that calls for people to sign on (such as the Han Young petition) the original wording is (of course) respected. The site has both a frames and noframes version. The noframes version tries to be disablity friendly. It does use tables but in a way that I think will not harm the ability to read on text only browser. I tested this in Lynx -- but it may be different on versions other than the one I used or for people using lynx with text to speech converters. Please let me know about any problem my site poses for the disabled so I can correct it. For unavoidable reasons, the noframes version is slower -- so if you can use a frames enabled browser I urge you to do so. I will appreciate comments about this site -- either by private e-mail or online. Thanks Gar
[PEN-L:780] Re: Re: adieu boddhi?l03130300b1f6d321a29f@[137.92.42.130] 13777.10954.63802.632924@localhost
Me three. I usually disagree with Boddhi, but I've seen worse -- much of it on this list. Maybe I'm missing something, but it looks to me like Boddhi is being thrown off for intellectual disagreement rather than behavior. At least I don't remember him having to apologize for personal attacts on anyone, or being warned to change x, y, or z behavior or risk being expelled. Les Schaffer wrote: "" == Rob Schaap [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: Just a couple of words on Boddhi's proposed 'resignation'. I don't think he is disrupting the list, The bloke is clever, articulate, quite brave, and often funny. i dont know if the input of a lurker counts on this list, but i mostly agree with these 2 points of Rob here (not so much on the content of what Boddhi says) and yeah, the heat has ratcheted up a couple notches recently, but then the d(elete) button works wonders if i grow weary, and the responses to him, even though also heated, have good content to them. in any case, if you survey the overall trend of pen-l posts during this latest boddhi-war, you find enough variety that clearly the list behavior has not been entrained by the individual ratcheting up... anyway, and this is apropos of nothing, really, but to those that recoil at the smugness of bevans nickname: 'boddhisattva' DOES NOT MEAN 'enlightened one'. in the buddhist world-view a boddhisattva delays his/her (final) enlightenment and works in such a way that all other 'beings' are enlightened first. and don't ask me what THAT means les schaffer
[PEN-L:755] American Arrogance: a small example
The Monday, Aug 19 issue of My local rag (it hardly deserves the word "newspaper") reprinted an article from the LA Times article "Bombing leave Kenyans asking; Why here?" Like most LA Times articles, the last two paragraphs contained the story which should have led. These paragraphs in full say: From the moment the gigantic bomb exploded in a parking lane behind the U.S. Embassy, there have been two disasters playing out in Nairobi: one behind the iron fences of the embassy building and the other in the chaotic streets of the capital [All caps added by me] RESCUE EFFORTS, CONDUCTED SEVERAL YARDS APART, HAVE BEEN SEPARATED BY ARMED U.S. SOLDIERS. KENYAN POLICE HAVE NOT BEEN ALLOWED TO SET FOOT ON EMBASSY PROPERTY. MANY OF THE EMBASSY'S INJURED WERE FLOWN TO HOSPITALS IN SOUTH AFRICA, THE BEST ON THE CONTINENT, WHILE ORDINARY KENYANS COMPETED FOR BEEDS IN CROWDED NAIROBI HOSPITALS.
[PEN-L:534] Re: Re: Re: re Puerto Rico 1.0
Um, just one thing -- when I referred to "microstate" I was not suggesting it as a name for Puerto Rico. I was suggesting it as a new name for Washington State, which I said in my post had dibs on selling itself to Microsoft. (Since we have already given fair chunks of money away to Microsoft.) My jocularity was at the expense of my new home state - - Washington State -- and not at the expense of the people of Puerto Rico. Ricardo Duchesne wrote: Date: Tue, 04 Aug 1998 12:01:56 -0400 To:[EMAIL PROTECTED] From: Thomas Kruse [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: [PEN-L:470] Re: re Puerto Rico 1.0 Reply-to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Regarding PR, Ricardo notes: So, as it stands now, Puerto Ricans are just second-class American citizens. Statehood would turn them into a "micro state" but that's better than a micro-nation: I have yet to see a convincing argument showing that independence would improve the lives of common people. It would only give a sense of pride to some intellectuals, who don't want to admit that they are already a hybrid people, just like many other peoples around the globe. ricardo First, thanks for injecting some substance into this discussion. For my taste, up until your post it was a bit to slap-happy; a bit of jocular banter from the motherland about the fate of "our" colonial subjects. That's how many in the left operate: a bit of anger plus power politics. I mean Puerto Rico "1.0". But Ricardo: not so fast on the "intellectuals, who don't want to admit that they are already a hybrid people..." I don't think this is a fair thumbnail of those who might be for independence, or against simple incorporation but equally unhappy with the other options. First, I don't think it's about simply "accepting" that we're all cultural mutts, half-breeds and mestizos. So we're hybrids; doesn't mean we have to tolerate being shit on, silenced, etc. In cultural terms it's also about the margins left over (defended, fought over) for expression, exploration, after McDonaldization; all that touchy-feely stuff like hegemonic cultures, framing operations, imposed silences, and whether anyone will assign Julia de Burgos in PR high school lit classes. I an willing to talk about cultural hybridization because it works both ways: just as there is "americanization" so there is a reshaping of metropolitan culture by third world ones. The fear of statehood by the American right wing (and perhaps some of the left there) is that Puerto Rico as a state will mean a de facto spanish-speaking state. What an example to Miami and other states! Jim is going to have to learn spanish and I don't thinks he wants to. ricardo Rather, it's about pushing beyond the evil of two lessers. I agree: I have not heard good arguments for how indepencence might better people's lives. But that should not mark the end of the search for alternatives. Is a micro-state (of the US) better than a micro-nation? Perhaps we could tease out some of the implications of this. I can certainly imagine some downsides to micro-state hood; and at least as a micro nation you can have your own foreign policy, and control -- to a degree -- the marauding of the FBI and DEA agents on your territory. And hey folks: look at this converstion! Doesn't it shock the hell out of you at the end of the 20th century we're disucssing the fate of "our" colonies? It does me anyway Tom Tom Kruse / Casilla 5812 / Cochabamba, Bolivia Tel/Fax: (591-4) 248242 Email: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
[PEN-L:574] Re: On the 'utility' of copyright (was: copyright)
I think there are actually three points in this discussion: 1) What is possible in a decent society. Of course in a decent society copyright would be unneccesary. How would innovation be encouraged? Well many people on this list have already pointed out the non-material incentives. But if material incentives were neccesary (and I suspect there is a lot of intellectual work no one would do for free) Intellectual and creative workers would be compensated like any other worker. There are an infinite number of ways compensation could be arrange. Here are two examples -- sticking to the producers of written words only ,to keep things simple. 1) a worker could be paid by the hour by a workplace (a publishing house or a magazine). 2) If this seems to rely too much on institutions which might filter out unpopular ideas you could set up a kind of freelance socialist setup in which anyone who did creative work would keep track of hours and expenses. There would be some sort of free distribution system in which anyones work would be distributed at no charge to author. The author would set the charge for accessing it. If enough people accessed to exceed the cost of distributing by a certain amount then the author would be have his or her materials refunded and the time she spent writing compensated. Regardless of how much people paid the author would only be paid for hours spent plus compensation for materials (paper, printer ribbons what have you.) In such a system Doug Henwood and Stephen King would earn pretty much the same amount of money. No doubt an actual socialism would handle things completely differently, and elabarate arrangements such as I have described would be more neccesary in early stages than later stages. The point is it is quite possible to materially reward work without giving intellectual workers private ownership of your work. Once you have been compensated for your time, your work belongs to everybody. 2) Is copyright as a whole a good thing in modern society? I think copyright is the main form in which the fencing of the commmo takes into todays world. Plants developed by indiginous peoples over the course of a thousand years are patented by big corporations. So are individual genes in patients treated by doctors. Common words even pass from the commons to become private property. The Village Voice recently sued a local Seattle Paper for using the word Voice. (The paper not having the capital to fight the village voice changed it's name. If I had the time and money I would start a paper called the Village Idiot and sue the village voice for violation of my copyright on the word "idiot".) The draconian measure Michael E. points out has been in the works for years. The publishing industry has been trying since at least 1976 to arrange for public libraries to pay copyright fees every time a reader checks out a book. 3) Lastly, I would say writers in the existing real world, the one we live in have to defend their copyrights. Doug Henwood is just one example of some one who's only source of living is his writing. If he gave away his words for free, he would either starve or do something else to earn a living. In eiher case he would no longer write. 4) You can make real arguments as to why it is moral to steal words from the New York Times just as you can make real arguments as to why it is moral to steal money from the New York times. Neither argument should be conducted in pure moral terms without considering th practical barriers. And it is immoral to break the capitalist law and leave someone else to pay the the penalty. So you should not break copyright laws and leave Michael P. to be sued for it -- regardless of moral arguments. Gregory Schwartz wrote: I think a number of comments made by other comrades with respect to Ellen's prognosis of the utility of copyright are wonderful. Above all they illustrate the authors' commitment to seeing that true human creativity (not pseudo creativity a la its exchange-value) be realised. But despite various attacks on the institution of private property and the state, which were brilliantly (if implicitly) textualised, the messages - for the most part - fail to invalidate the basis on which Ellen's entire argument rests, namely that: "The purpose of the copyright and patent laws is to encourage invention and creativity...[as] no one would bother inventing or writing if they didn't get a return and [could not] control the use made of the products of their imagination [i.e. by others; for the purpose of profit - G.S.]" (Dannin, 5 Aug 1998 09:29:12) While I accede to Doug's argument that so long as we live under capital we cannot do otherwise, it would seem the problem is more grave; even more grave than Ellen's inability to part with private property and the state that's committed to its protection. It is an inability to conceive of an alternative socio-economic system, one that is not based on exchange-value and
[PEN-L:532] Re: Re: Re: Re: copyright
Doug Henwood wrote: there are an awful lot of American lefties, for one, who have no idea how good the Wall Street Journal can be at its best. Doug An old time left wing Journalist (Charles Morgan -- wonder where he is now) used to say The Wall Street Journal was the best underground newspaper in America.
[PEN-L:464] Re: Re: Puerto Rican Strike
James Devine wrote: BTW, I think that Puerto Rico would do better if it became a fully-owned subsidiary of Microsoft and changed its name to Gatesland. ;-0 Nah .. Washington State has dibs on becoming a Microsoft subsidiary. Our proposed name change is to MicroState.
[PEN-L:201] Re: Re: Re: Left and Inequality
Carrol Cox wrote: This seems off the radar screen to me for three reasons: 1. It seems to jump the entire intervening time between now and that time in the future in which a socialist regime would be in position to think about "redistribution," and since such an interval would necessarily have torn the society apart, one cannot now even begin to guess vaguely at what kind of conditions would condition the policies a working class would develop under those conditions. This kind of argument seems an all purpose attack about any kind of long term thinking whatsoever. Why mention social ownership in the point below? This also "jumps the intervening time between now and that time in the future". The answer is that thinking about social ownership gives insights into reforms we can fight for now -- as does thinking about redistribution. 2. "Redistribution," as it was used in some earlier posts on this thread , seemed to serve something like the purpose of factory exposures: a way of making vivid to people what they already know, a speculative redistribution for metaphorically dramatizing the structure of capitalism. But as such it hardly seems worth pursuing or elevating to the level of "socialist strategy." It is something to use once and throw away. See above. Thinking about income and wealth inequality is also a rich conntinuing source of insight about the flaws of capitalism, and what we immediate opportunities we have to act against them. 3. Finally, serious use of this metaphor utterly obscures the fundamental fact that control of the means of production, not the modes of distribution already predetermined by production relations, is the the core of the socialist project. As every post which (in effect) regarded the question of redistribution as an agitational metaphor clearly showed, a redistribution under present circumstances would be farce; but change present circumstances (replace them with either a mass struggle to replace them or an actual socialist triumph), and all speculation on distribution becomes moot. The question would reappear, but in forms on which it is silly to speculate now. Oh come on, I could make the same argument about social ownership. Social ownership under present circumstances (with Bill and Hillary, the Pentagon and the Post Office as "managers") would be utterly silly too. Non-governmental social ownership is also quite a leap under current cirucmstances. We are not going to get any of the components of socialism in next fifteen minutes -- not an end to ableism nor an end to supremacy based on skin privelege, gender, sexual preference transgender, not social ownership, not greater equality of wealth and income, nor an end to environmental degredation. But any battles against any of these evils are worth fighting. Or do you think battles such as the fight for a living wage (clearly redistributionist more than social ownership) are "throwaway" tactics?
[PEN-L:191] Re: Re: The Left and Inequality
There are two sets of points here. One is the point that there are a lot of indirect effects of inequality -- crime, higher death rates, social mismanagement, environmental desctruction, tremendous waste. But the other is that point is wrong to begin with. Just because you can come up with arguments accepting your opponents premise is no reason to accept that premise when it is wrong. The key of course is that redistribution would NOT involve just the "Super Rich" but the "somewhat rich" and "extremely comfortable" as well. Such a redistributions would: A) eliminate poverty B) make 80% or more of the population A LOT better off even in terms of narrow personal consumption. That may not be the most important reason to fight for redistributionist policies -- but it is not trivial either. And it strikes me as a damn good selling point. Nove's point is widely believed -- even on the left. I suspect one reason for this is that a lot the people who encounter it first hand do make enough that redistribution would not particularly be beneficial to them (at least not in the narrow sense of personal consumption). Trond Andresen wrote: At 11:22 6/07/98 -0500, Robert Naiman wrote: I have been reading Alec Nove's "Economics of Feasible Socialism Revisited" and came across his argument that the Left is misguided when it puts too much emphasis on the wealth of the super-rich, on the grounds that redistributing the wealth or income of the super-rich will not go very far. I have run across this argument before. What do PEN-Lers think of it? What do folks think about Nove's book? I haven't read the book, but the argument is quite common, also in Norway. June Zaccone says: Two problems with this argument--even if one accepts Nove's sassessment of the effect of redistribution on incomes: If income and asset distribution were less uneven, the rich would have less political power, which they use to change government policy in their favor. Their consumption shapes not only what is produced but the aspirations and sense of well-being of many of those who have less, so that they consume more than they would in a more egalitarian economy, and yet feel/are deprived. Poorer people lose out on good public transportation where many people have cars. I am convinced that public telephones will soon be gone or left unfixed as more people have cell phones, so that one will have not much choice about buying one. I agree with June's points, but if we ignore them for the moment, there is an additional important point: A society polarized between the few very rich and the many poor, is a society where debt/asset relationships play a dominant role. The rich receive financial income from their financial claims on others. Part of this income, or debt service flows, is financially re-invested - to the degree the rich have a propensity to save out of financial income - which they obviously have. For certain parameter combinations - interest rate, propensity to save for the rich, repayment time on loans* - aggregate financial asses for the rich will grow persistently, mirrored by corresponding debts for the rest of society. From the latter go correspondingly increasing debt service flows to the rich - the other way go increasing flows from the rich for either their consumption or further finacial investment. If these circular flows in the aggregate increase in relation to the flows neccessary to for the function of the rest of the economy (wages, consumption, real investment), we are heading towards a situation where the economy wil be overwhelmed by debt-asset relationships. Observing today's world, this seems to me to fit in with reality. Again: Note that this criticism can be made independent of the points that June Zaccone made. Trond Andresen -- * Here is a presentation on conditions for debt/asset polarization: The _share_ of a capitalist's financial income flows re-invested (as opposed to consumed or spent in other ways) is crucial to whether accumulation takes place. If a certain share of expenditure is on the condition that it shall yield a future stream of dividends (i.e. re-investment), and these in the next round are financially reinvested inthe same proportion, etc., then for certain parameter values the aggregate of all financial assets (mirrored by corresponding debts) will grow exponentially: Call - aggregate net non-money financal assets (debt) = A(t) [$] initial aggregate assets at t = 0 is A(0) = A0 average interest (dividend) rate = i [% / year] the propensity to save out of financial income = s [ ] average loan repayment rate (incl. perpetuities) = d [% / year] Then accumulation will occur following: dA/dt = ( -d + s (i +d) ) A(t)(1) or, with the asset growth factor defined as g = -d + s (i +d) , (2) dA/dt
[PEN-L:193] Re: Re: Re: Re: The Left and Inequality
michael perelman wrote: see us. Winning a lottery does not change all that; nor would redistribution. Marx discussed this problem in his brief mention about the difficulty of building socialism with a people who had been formed under capitalism. A one time redistribution will not change society any more than a one time election. Fundamental change is a long term process. -- Michael Perelman Economics Department California State University Chico, CA 95929 No a one time redistribution will not permanently change society. But redistribution (and a permanent rather than one time redistribution) is part of the socialist project; it is not sufficient, but it is not trivial either. I don't know if it is really possible to seperate the ill effects capitalism creates through inequality, and those in creates through alientation and extreme atomization. But the point is that without trying to do some sort of absurd numerical weighting, inequality is an important source of evil in the world; I doubt a successful and humane socialism will allow a great of such inequality. And fights for redistributionist reforms within capitalism (such as single payer health, a minimum wage in the 10-20 dollar an hour range, a decent welfare system for those who cannot work, child care, decent funding for education -- the whole social democratic laundry list) are important to winning any long term socialism. 1) There is the immediate relief of suffering victories in such matters would produce. This is very real; there seems to be a great deal of evidence that even within capitalism reducing inequality lengthens life spans, reduces crime has a great many positive effects (not to mention the postive effectsa for those at the bottom of the scale who get decent homes, enough to eat, and for those toward the middle who have reduced insecurity. Your own recent essay pointed out how lowering inequality makes capitalism more economically stable, less vulnerable to depressions, massive deflation and bankruptcy. 2) There is the increase in labors bargaining power and reduction in capitals -- leading to an arena of conflict with much more space for the left 3) There is the education that comes in fighting for such reform, 4) there is the possibility of building a movement in fighting for such reforms. In short -- the redistributionist project is not the whole of socialism, any more than social ownership, the fight against skin privilege, gender privelege, hertrosexism, ableism, environmental sanity, the rights of indigious people are the whole of the socialist project. But it is not trivial, and not to be dismissed a la Nove. I'm not suggesting that if a left mass movement ever comes into existence that it drop other demands in favor of redistribution or be narrowly redistributionist. But redistributions reforms are certainly one type of non-reformist reform to include in the fight against capitalism. BTW the fact that capitalism can accomodate a particular reform without collapsing does not make it a bad thing. If the accomadation means transfering a little bargaining power from capitalist to working people, it is worthwhile -- especially if said working people have become a little more concious of their own ability to win change through struggle, and especially if it sparks the formation of mass organizations.
[PEN-L:128] Re: Re: The Left and Inequality
I appreciate the correction. It reinforces my point -- if income was divided up more or less equally a more than 80% would be better off in immmediate material terms (not mention the benefits of reduced insecurity, lower crime rates ) Two questons 1). To get a feel for how more or less equal incomes would compare to the way people live now now, don't you have to substract capital spending, ? Thus the revelevent figure would not be either real GDP or direct wages, but real GDP less capital investment. When I say revelevent, I mean to this particular aspect -- the material advantages of equality. 2) I'd be curious to get a similar feel for what would happen if income was redistributed among the worlds population. The world GDP figures I've heard are about $5,000-$6,000 per person -- which might not be advantagous in the industrialized world but would be a heck of an improvement for 80% or 90% of humanity. the Fellows, Jeffrey wrote: By my estimates, which will be published soon: Real GDP/labor year [40hours a week x 52 weeks] in 1995 was $54,985 for workers 16 and over. Real GDP/person with work experience was $48,093, and per capita was $32,955. Of course, these figures do not include accumulated wealth, which is what others have mentioned. According to industry breakdowns in Gross Product Originating, actual employee compensation accounted for about 57.9% of the total. Jeff -- From: Gar W. Lipow To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: [PEN-L:125] Re: Re: Re: The Left and Inequality Date: Monday, July 06, 1998 2:57PM Actually I think that even in terms of income that this is plain wrong. I recently saw the figure cited on the LBO list that if the U.S.GDP were distributed equally per hour worked (after substacting capital investment) then pre-tax earnings would be $22 an hour. This means a single earner family would earn $44,000 a year for a forty hour work week. A dual earner family would earn $88,000 a year.
[PEN-L:125] Re: Re: Re: The Left and Inequality
Actually I think that even in terms of income that this is plain wrong. I recently saw the figure cited on the LBO list that if the U.S.GDP were distributed equally per hour worked (after substacting capital investment) then pre-tax earnings would be $22 an hour. This means a single earner family would earn $44,000 a year for a forty hour work week. A dual earner family would earn $88,000 a year. This means that within the U.S. 80% plus of the work force would be a hell of a lot better off after such income restribution than before (The upper limit of the 80th percentile in 199t was $68,000 -- $20,000 a year less than that.) Of course such redistribution would only be part of socialism . As Louis P. pointed out, socialism involves a lot more than just income redistribution. But the point is that the advantages of income redistribution are not trivial -- and should not be dropped either programatically or as a long term goal. Complete (or damn near complete) equality of income distribution would make for a beter society in the long run. And decreases in inequality whether through highers minimum wages, more social spending , and (as Doug puts it) "soaking the fat boys" are worthwhile goals in the shorter run. Eugene P. Coyle wrote: argument that is pointed out by Nove -- "that the Left is misguided when it puts too much emphasis on the wealth of the super-rich, on the grounds that redistributing the wealth or income of the super-rich will not go very far."
[PEN-L:2] Re: Thaler's The Winner's Curse
I have. It is first rate, and suprisingly well written for someone who is pretty firmly in the neoclassical camp. Be warned though; Thaler is heavily into denial. He rationalizes away (so to speak) most of the more subversive implications of the collection. To get the most out of it, you have to do a kind of "King's Messenger" reading. Bill Rosenberg wrote: Has anyone read/have views on "The Winner's Curse: Paradoxes and Anomalies of Economic Life" by Richard Thaler? According to Brian Easton in the NZ "Listener" (6 June) it "describes 13 general anomalies where the standard economic theory of indivdual behaviour is contradicted by the evidence. Together, they present a serious challenge to the 'economic rationalism' that is used to justify so much recent economic policy." Easton gives savings behaviour as an example. Bill Bill Rosenberg, [EMAIL PROTECTED]
[PEN-L:351] Re: BLS Daily Report
Several comments on this 1) Someone once said that if engineers designed buildings the way programmers design programs, one woodpecker could destroy civilization. Ignoring the false assumption that what we've go is a civilization, that is not so very far off. Chips contain engineer written micro-code -- which has bugs. Software engineers design assemblers to run on these chips -- which have bugs. Programmers code operating systems using these assemblers -- and add new levels of bugs. Higher level programmers write languages and databases -- which have bugs. The applicatons you use -- statistics packages, word proccesors, spreadsheets, browsers, e-mail packages are written on top of all of these levels of bugs -- and of course have their own bugs. 2) Another point is that actual coding is not the most difficult, nor the most time consuming part of the programming. To program something right, you damn well better know how to do it WITHOUT using a computer (even , as in some cases it would take you a few thousand years to actually to the process you know in the real world.) This means that before you design an application, you better know what kind of results the user wants, what form the input is going to take, and any intermediate information and steps required to get those results from that input. This is why the best programs are written either by lone cowboys, or by tightly knit small teams that work as equals -- without a whole lot of hiearchy. Try organizing a software development team in a classic industrial hiearchy. Person A does the "analysis". Person B does the coding. (A more recent equivalent is -- person A writes the objects. Person B specifices and assembles the objects.) Well -- since person A is the only one with the big picture he has to tell person B in pretty specific detail how to write the modules or objects. Given that modern programming languages are both terse and visual, it will probably take as long for A to tell B what is wanted as it would for A to write it herself (assuming A is competent at both code and analysis.) In practice, software teams work best when EVERBODY understands the "big picture". The work is then divided into modules, with everyone understanding where intersects others. So Sarah know that if she is going to anything that rights to file x , she had better ask Sue, and Jim know that if he touches attributes x in entity y, he'd better talk to Jane. 3) Time constraints. Generally users needs change drastically every few months or so. This means what you are trying to accomplish will change thoughout your work on the process. This has encouraged what is know as iterative software development -- where you deliberately go off half-baked to provide something immediately rather than exactly what they want in two year. You then get user feed back -- modify everything including the data structures, and actually do a try-and-fit approach to software design. Some very successful large products are done this way, using so-called Rapid Application Development tools. You can see why super-hierachal, industrial type organization does not work within a software team. This does not prevented a "lone cowboy" or roughly egalitarian team from being exploited by a hiearchal organization, or from being very exploitive towards lower level workers. Even the latter is not completely true. Somebody designing a program, who relies on management for specifications will produce a useless product. If you want good results, you need to get the knowledge which resides mostly in the skulls of ordinairy workers -- which means you damn well better have good relations with them. (BTW if the results of these good relations is that you design something which eliminates their job, this means you have been acting as a spy -- performing espionage against them. This gives computer programming something in common with social science in general. All those polls, studies learning how poor, and working people behave and what influences them -- what does that make the social scientists but spies for the ruling elites (members of this listed excepted, I assume) .) Anyway, I think you can see why computer programmers think of themselves as not being working class -- and why they are wrong. I think that while management has not given up all hope of organizing the software industry in a standard hiearchal form, they are perfectly willing to turn to all the other methods of exploitation. If you can't send the work out to cheap workers, bring the cheap workers in to do the work. Programmers aren't as priveleged as they believe. The long hours take their toll after a while. The career of the average system analyst lasts about seven years before burnout.But even the relative privilege they have is pretty well doomed. There are a lot people getting computer degrees worldwide. Some are already experiences; others will be experienced within a few years. If programmers need to
Re: on David Harvey
I hold no brief for the Sierra Club, the largest of the corporate environmentalist groups. But the 40% vote for the anti-immigrant rule is not completely reflective of their membership. From what I understand there was a massive last minute purchase of memberships by right wing groups to push for this initiative. (Anyone can join the Sierra Club.) As David Browder proved, your fundamental point is correct -- there is massive racism within mainstream environmentalism. Nathan Newman wrote: -Original Message- From: Louis Proyect [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [EMAIL PROTECTED] The business about identifying with the African-Americans in the jazz club who implicitly view Earth Day as a "white thing" is really key to the book, since he regards any environmental struggle _outside_ of the framework of racial minorities and the like as a diversion and a trap. I will have to read Harvey's book, but this commentary is hardly from some abstract free-floating theoretical position, but is the bread-and-butter view of the growing environmental justice movement. Early in the 1990s, the national network of toxic waste advocates broke apart largely over the fact that environmentalism was being discussed outside the framework of race dynamics. The result of those race-free approaches was that environmental regulations give white elite communities plenty of power to kick toxics out of their community - NIMBYism - without regard to the fact that the toxics then inevitably get concentrated in poor, usually non-white communities. The new environmental justice networks, like the Southwest Network for Environmental Justice, created new approaches that tied the concerns of working class non-white communities to environmental advocacy. The Sierra Club with its recent vote around immigration illustrated the intertwining of environmental and race issues quite dramatically. The anti-immigrant proposition was classic NIMBYism: keep the US population down so our trees and our rivers can avoid straining their "carrying capacity" without regard to how poverty and misery in the third world will be effected by such anti-immigrant environmentalism. I was happy that 60% of Sierra Club members voted against the proposition, but the fact that 40% voted for it shows an incredible level of racism and NIMBYism in the mainstream environmental movement. It's funny; a professor I know here at Berkeley who studied under Harvey made fun of him for that fact that Harvey was too political, that Harvey spent many weekends with a staple gun in hand putting up posters for rallies. This professor, who loved radical Marxist geographic theory, was somewhat embarassed that his mentor actually got his hands dirty doing plebian political work, rather than just being a sophisticated talking head commentator. Just on that "recommendation", I've always harbored a certain admiration for Harvey without having met him. Anyone with tenure who still handles a staple gun is alright in my book :) --Nathan Newman
MAI News Flash (FWD)
Fowarded From Alliance For Democracy (Ruth Caplan) [Note: some editing of URLs have been done by Gar W. Lipow, so that they point at the right place along with removals of some extra hard carriiage returns.] RE: OECD Ministerial in Paris Remember all those rumors a month or so ago that we had defeated the MAI? Well, like we warned back then, it ain't so. The 29 OECD ministers have just concluded their two days of meetings in Paris without a final agreement on the MAI, but the MAI is still alive and kicking. As predicted last week by Alan Larson of the State Department, the ministers decided to extend negotiations at the OECD with the goal of concluding an agreement of the same breadth and depth as the previous drafts. The ministers are talking about continuing negotiations until their October meeting. Further, it looks like they support parallel negotiations moving forward at WTO. So roll up your sleeves. We have lots of local organizing to do. Public Citizen reports that the OECD actually released a "new" version of the MAI text which purports to deal with concerns about the environment, sovereignty and corporate power; however it fails to incorporate any of the concerns 600 citizen groups from around the world, including the Alliance for Democracy, expressed in their joint statement released last February. In fact, Lori Wallach reports from Paris that many parts of the "new" text are actually worse than the "old" text, incorporating old, rejected language based on GATT/WTO exceptions and non-binding NAFTA recommendations. The one significant change is that the new language on expropriations actually goes even further than the previous text. The new text is available at http://www.citizen.org/pctrade/tradehome.html [Interpolation -- this is GTW main page. Actual text is at http://www.oecd.org/daf/cmis/mai/negtext.htm which is a gateway to PDF versions of the text] According to Lori, the OECD conceded that there are disagreements over text and other issues (especially country-specific reservations) that must be resolved. The ministers stated a need to further address environmental and labor issues, including more consultations. At this time it is not clear as to whether this implies that the areas of the text where there are no disagreement are "locked in" or not. Not surprising, there appears to have been no mention of investor to state dispute resolution as an area of concern. Public Citizen concludes a press release by saying "Global investment rules are needed -- but not these rules written by the largest multinational corporations. We need global investment rules that help root capital in communities with some democratic accountability and the right for our governments to ensure that investment benefits the public interest, not just the special interests." To this I say Amen. To get us revved up on getting anti-MAI local council resolutions passed, I am posting separately an action packet which includies the Toronto and San Francisco resolutions and some guidelines for working with local councils. Dave Lewit and I will try to get additional materials to you shortly.
Re: Richard Rorty *- demise of left
The interesting thing is that your analysis -- that defeat of the left cannot be blamed on the left itself is an extremely pessimistic one. Of course , if it is true it is true -- but look at the implication. If the left is not screwing up big time and we losing this badly then things pretty hopeless. On the other time someone who says "Look -- you are really messed up in your way of handling X, Y and Z" is giving you good news if they are right. A valid criticism of the left says everything is not in the hands of our enemies. It says there is something we can do to improve things. My late father, who was a grassroots activist and an optimist all his life, and a working man for most of it always held the view that most left leaders could fuck up a wet dream. In terms of the U.S. specifics you cite: must U.S. leftists be vulnerable to such tactics? . Could one problem here be that most left movements are dominated by the managerial/bureaucratic/academic/technocratic coordinator class rather than controlled by ordinary people? Richard K. Moore wrote: Dear Louis list, I understand where the analysis (at bottom of this message) is coming from, and what information it is based on, but I suggest it is in error, based on important facts not taken into consideration. To begin with, the New Left was not overly marxist at all. It was quite in tune with a broad range of progressive concerns, and only seemed leftist by comparison with the fascist Johnson Nixon regimes. It was in fact only getting into gear when it got squashed, and promised much good on the American political scene. Furthermore, the marxist dimension of New-Left thought was over-sensationalized in the press, as a demonization policy, and this clouds our collective memory of what it was really about. Why it failed is simple: it was thoroughly infiltrated by the FBI, destabilized in different ways from within and without, and thus neutralized as a political force. The same thing happened earlier, on an even larger scale, with the labor/union movement, primarily via FBI-sponsored subversion of leading unions by the mafia. In the case of the Socialist Party, it was demolished by the (unconstitutional) Palmer raids. In the case of the Populists, it was co-option by the Democrats and over-emphasis on short-term electoral victories. It has been the systematic policy of the US elite, from earliest days of the republic, to neutralize any movement which threatened to unleash democracy onto the national scene (or onto anyone else's national scene for that matter, eg, Nicaragua, Grenada, Cuba, Chile, etc etc etc). Howard Zinn or Michael Parenti are good sources for this kind of stuff. Techniques of neutralization include: - media demonization - agent-provocateur infiltration - police-caused riots followed by arrest of leaders - adoption of third-party platform planks by Democrats (but seldom followed-through on) - harrassment via IRS or other govt. agencies - framing of leaders on serious charges (ie, Joe Hill) The list goes on, and you can be dubious about `conspiracy theories' if you want to be, but this is straight history, and it must be taken fully into account by any current movements which aim to actually achieve political influence. Any movement which becomes _effective, in the US, the UK, or Candada, and who knows where else, _will be monitored, and _can _expect to be the subject of subversive intrusions, beginning with monitoring of all email traffic. I keep wondering when large-scale mail spoofing will begin... imagine the chaos if fake postings from familiar names started showing up on lists, aimed at discrediting them and disrupting list activity. [ignore that, you guys with earphones on] One of the best defenses is to deepen the community bonds within any movement -- get to know each other on a personal level, etc. If a community sense is developed, then agent-provocateur newcomers, for example, tend to stand out as being a-social to the community ethic, and are less likely to do damage. --- As to the more general question of the demise of leftist or activist (or even centrist) content in USA public debate, that too cannot be laid entirely (or even mostly) at the feet of leftists themselves. They swim upstream against a very strong and well-funded tide, a full-court-press intentional assault aimed at the very goal of neutralizing their effectiveness. Let me just enumerate a few of the currents in this tide, and leave it as exercise to the reader to recall others from past news events... 1) the continual use of the the phrase `tax and spend liberal', and in general the officaldom, pundit-dom and media-dom demonization of the whole concept of liberalism, including the suggestion that liberals are `elitist' 2) the scapegoating of the entire SL debacle
Re: {Fwd: Building a mass organization - one more try - forwarded from Z mag] (fwd)
Sid Socolar wrote: The principles and the supporting rhetoric are very attractive. One thing worries me, though. If I were an agent for a government or other right wing intelligence organization and wanted to amass a data base of radical-thinking North Americans, I might think of launching such a scheme. Given the government propensity for keeping lists of petition signers, magazine subscribers, meeting and demo attenders I suspect anyone who will sign on to such an organization is already on a list. Government agents usually either start violent groups, or major time wasters, This thing is not likely to consume a lot of anybodies time, nor lead to short term easily containable violence. Aren't movements built in the first instance on the basis of people's working together and developing trust in each other's commitment? Don't/shouldn't potential leaders get/be identified as their commitment, skills and trustworthiness emerge in such WORKING relationships? Why should some anonymous person become the custodian of a database like the one proposed just because that person is able to enunciate an attractive set of principles? When membership reaches 100, the custodian won't be anonymous. Everyone who signs on (including the web master) will have their e-mail address and full name on the web. Basically by signing on you are publicly standing up and being counted. The names , as I understand are available to anyone with a browser right left and center. Yes that makes your e-mail address available to every progressive organization, every intelligence agency, and every right wing lunatic for that matter -- but no more than participating on Pen-L or DSA-net both of which are archived on public sites on the web and include full e-mail addresses of participants in their archives. -- Sid Socolar 606 West 116th Street New York NY 10027-7027 Voice: 212-666-5925 Fax: 212-316-1405
Building a mass organization -- one more try -- forwarded from Z mag
I'm forwarding the following article by Michael Albert. It strikes me that in these times any new idea about building a mass left organization is worth considering. Any comments? Organization to Liberate Society? (May issue of Z magazine) By Michael Albert How big is the choir? How many more people have left values and hopes though they are not able to act on them? How many people with just a little explanation and prodding would be in this camp and on the road to activism? These are fair questions, it seems to me, to which no one has compelling answers. I recently heard about a web site that wants to find out. It is called Organization to Liberate Society or OLS for short (and you can find it at: http://www.olsols.org). They want to tally the choir, and help grow and mobilize it. You enter the site and read: "Are you tired of the rich getting richer and everyone else paying for it? Of the government being an appendage of the Fortune 500? Of not being able to have an effect on health care, education, your job, the economy, laws, and our culture? Of so much hypocrisy, injustice and just plain commercial rot? So are we. And as many as we are, as angry at injustice as we are, and as good-hearted as we are, if we can just get together we can make a big difference..." The next thing you read is: "Imagine an organization with a million members that grows at an accelerating rate. It has a program that stems from the needs and insights of its membership and it pursues its goals with vigor, creativity, and determination. It has an inclusive, participatory, democratic structure evolving in accord with its agenda and principles. And, finally, it's values and aims are congenial to anyone concerned about creating a truly humane society. Would you rejoice that such an institution existed? Would you lend it some of your energies? If you would join when it was large and effective, would you join just a little earlier, to help create this type organization?" OLS is for people who are "tired of national political organizations that are forced by their conditions to spend nearly all their time trying to determine or refine a program and structure, but which are too small for these to actually matter much, and (b) tired of having no way to know the size of the total community of people with broadly progressive values in the U.S., much less to reach it in a timely and effective manner." The OLS idea is to recruit, recruit, recruit until there are a million members, and only then to settle on national program. "The defining features of political organizations are generally their principles, structure, and program," reports the OLS web site. "OLS has five defining principles which the organization pledges to act on.Â… OLS begins with virtually no internal structure -- only a membership list and this web site. What it becomes will be up to the people who make it real. Existing members promote and otherwise argue on behalf of OLS's principles and enlist new OLS members, creating local organizations and local program as they choose, until we are one million members strong. Then OLS will be large enough to decide on a more complex and ambitious national program and to develop needed supporting organizational structure." The site includes ideas about how to recruit, how to form local chapters, etc. and it has forms with which to sign up online. OLSÂ’s principles as stated on the site: A society is more liberated to the extent that fewer people are denied human rights or opportunities or in any way oppressed due to race, religion, ethnicity, gender, age, sexual preference, property ownership, wealth, income, or statist authoritarianism and exclusion. Reducing and ultimately removing such hierarchies of reward, circumstance, status, or power would improve society. A society is more liberated to the degree that it fosters solidarity such that its citizens, by the actions they must take to survive and fulfill themselves, come to care about, promote, and benefit from one another's well being, rather than getting ahead only at one another's expense. A society is more liberated to the degree that its citizens enjoy comparably rewarding and demanding life experiences and equal incomes, assuming comparable effort and sacrifice on their parts to contribute to the social good. A society is more liberated to the extent that its citizens are able to democratically influence decisions proportionately as they are affected by those decisions and have the circumstances, knowledge, and information required for this level of participation. A society is more liberated to the
Re: Settlement: $500 to Every Kid Born between 1985 and 1997 HOAX
The following is a known Internet hoax. Generally, when you hear about stuff like this, where there is no major motive to suppress, on the Internet before it comes to the mainstream media you can be pretty sure you are being fooled. Michael Eisenscher wrote: [Apologies for duplicates as a consequence of cross-posting. Pass this on to friends.] From: "Ms. Aikya Param" [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: Money for US Children Born '85-'97 Date: Tue, 7 Apr 1998 10:52:30 -0700 Please forward to anyone who has children or grandchildren born between 1985 and 1997. Qikya $500.00 U.S. SAVINGS BONDS FOR EVERY CHILD BORN BETWEEN 1985-1997. In a lawsuit settled this fall, Gerber Food Corporation has been ordered to give every child born between 1985-1997(under the age of 12) a $500 US Savings Bond for falsely advertising "All Natural" baby food products which were found to contain preservatives. Reuters News Service reported that Gerber Baby Food must provide the savings bonds, but is not required to advertise the settlement or attempt to contact product users. Bonds may be obtained by sending a copy of the child's birth certificate and social security card to: GERBER FOOD SETTLEMENT ADMINISTRATION, INFANT LITIGATION PO BOX 1602 MINNEAPOLIS, MN 53480 All the Very Best, Caspar Davis Victoria, B.C., Canada Only when the last tree has died And the last river been poisoned And the last fish been caught Will we realize that we cannot eat money. - The Cree Aikya Param, Publisher, Women and Money Economic Justice and Empowerment Report
Re: Green Permits and Taxes
Robin Hahnel wrote: So you want to auction off the permits. Great. That's better than giving them away for free since it makes the polluters pay and gains the victims some form of compensation in the form of more tax reveunes. And I like the idea of a minimum price equal to the marginal social cost of the pollutant. But why don't you want to let the original buyers resell permits if they wish to? And why don't you want to let polluters who didn't buy as many as they now want at the original auction buy them from polluters who bought more than they now decide they want/need? Admittedly, if all polluters had their acts figured out perfectly at the time of the original auction none would want to participate in a re-sell market, but perfect knowledge is hard to come by, and where's the harm in allowing resales -- otherwise known as making the permits "tradable?" Because there would be a temptation for a corp. to buy unnecessary permits, corner the market and make a profit. Maybe they should be allowed refunds-- provided someone is willing to buy the ration or permit for the same or more than the original purchaser paid. . I'm really trying to make it a green tax -- but a green tax that includes a ceiling on what pollution is allowed. I am trying to structure the thing to avoid the type of corporate giveaways you criticize. All I'm really trying to figure out is how to build a ceiling into green taxes. straw man snipped No -- singing, dancing, talking, scarecrow snipped If you mean: SINCE IN THIS WORLD NO MATTER HOW MUCH WE TRIED TO REDUCEPOLLUTION WE COULD NOT EVEN COME CLOSE TO REDUCING IT BY AN AMOUNT THAT WOULD BE OPTIMAL, OUR GOAL SHOULD BE SIMPLY TO STRIVE FOR THE GREATEST EDUCTIONS WE CAN POSSIBLY ACHIEVE, I completely agree with you. Yup, that's what I mean. But Iagree because our power is so small and the polluters power is so great right now that we can't go wrong using this rule of action. No matter how much reduction we won, it wouldn't be as much as would be optimal. exactly. But if you mean that it is always better to reduce pollution, no matter how much we have already reduced -- if you mean zero is the best level of pollution, I disagree and suggest you don't mean this. You are right. I don't mean this No, it seems to me that you have to know how much pollution you want to allow BEFORE you begin to figure out the social cost of unit of pollution. And just how do you figure out how much pollution you want to allow? This is the question too few greens ever ask themselves. The reason is because as long as we are pretty powerless we don't need to know the answer. We just need to scratch and claw for as much reduction as we can get. But likewise, we just need to scratch and claw for the highest pollution taxes we can get. If we ever get powerful enough to get close to the optimal level of pollution reduction, we're going to need an answer to the question how much pollution do we want. I submit that you can't answer that question without estimating the marginal social benefits of pollution reduction FIRST. Since only then will you know how much pollution you want to tolerate. However, given that certain levels of certain pollutants have catastrophic effects, we will know what we do not want before we know what we do want. That is, we do not know what the right level of fossil fuel carbon is. (I can make a very good argument for it being greater than zero.) But most greens can give you a level it has to be reduced below to avoid greenhouse catastrophe. . If greens should happen to achieve a strong position of influence without being dominant, I suspect that is the degree of reduction they will be able to win. If greens gain so much influence they can reduce pollution to or near optimal then you are right -- marginal social costs and benefits of pollution become essential to deermine. What about that long term ? Even in a better society, I suspect that -- at least in the transition stages -- some equivalent of ceilings will have to supplement true social pricing. I think that what it comes down to is distrust. All right, in economic theory, you need the same information to determine true social cost of pollution and optimum level of pollution. In economic theory, if you price a pollutant at this true social cost, pollution will be reduced to the optimum level. In economic theory the previous sentence was redundant, saying the same thing twice; the definition of optimum level pollution is the amount of pollution produced when priced at true social cost. Given the basic human ability to screw up, I'd suspect that in real life major problems in this regard are possible regardless of economic theory. I cannot believe that it is impossible that a price determined to be optimum could not in some exceptional case reduce pollution so little that it approached catastrophic level I certainly cannot believe it impossible that in some cases such a
Re: Green Permits and Taxes
Robin Hahnel wrote: I doubt you mean "non-tradable" in the above, since non tradable permits are the equivalent of regulations (that most now call "command and control." No, I mean non-tradeable. Non-tradeable permits are not the same as regulation if they are sold to the highest bidder. If in a given area you allow a thousand units of a certain type of pollutant this month, then anyone in the area can bid for each of those thousand units at the beginning of the one month period. The thousand highest bids gain the right to pollute. No trades, no transfers, no refunds. (Actually the highest thousand bids above a floor set to equal the best estimate of what the proper pollution tax should be. Any permit not salable at at least that rate will not be sold.) The efficiency issue that is usually never mentioned, is how many pollution permits are "efficient" to issue? The analagous question for pollution taxes is, how high a pollution tax is "efficient"? The truth is there is only one way to answer either of these questions. One must come up with an estimate of the social costs of pollution. There are a host of procedures used to do this -- none of them very good. One thing that should be remembered is that none of the so-called "market based" methods such as hedonic regression and travel cost studies can possibly capture what are called the "existence value" or "option value" people place on the environment. So "market based" methodologies for estimating the social costs of pollution (and therefore the social benefits of pollution reduction) will inherently underestimate those costs and benefits. Once we have the best estimate of the social cost of the pollution we can come up with, we simply set the pollution tax equal to the marginal social cost of pollution. That will yield the efficient overall level of pollution reduction, and achieve that reduction at the lowest social cost. With permits, one has to use trial and error. You issue some number of permits and wait to see what price they sell at. If the price is lower than your best estimate of the marginal social cost of pollution, then you issued too many permits and need to issue fewer. If the market price for permits is higher than your estimate of the social cost of pollution, you have issued too few permits and need to issue more. Once you have got the right number of permits out there so the market price of permits is equal to your estimate of the marginal social cost of pollution, your permit program will yield the efficient overall level of pollution reduction, and achieve that reduction at the lowest social cost ASSUMING NO MALFUNCTIONING IN THE PERMIT MARKET. I think you are relying too much on theoretical models here. In real capitalism, greens can estimate much more easily what level of pollution reduction they wish to achieve (in the case where the goal is not zero) than they can determine what price will result in reductions to that level. The object, at least under capitalism , is not to achieve some optimum level of pollution. (As you say, the level of pollution is almost certain to be too high, and the price paid by polluters is almost certain to be too small.) The goal is to reduce pollution as much as possible, and make polluters pay as dearly per unit of pollution as possible. This yields an answer to both the question of the proper level of a pollution tax under capitalism (as high as possible) and the proper number of Nontradeable permits (as low as possible). In a good society, no doubt your green taxes would be the ideal -- though even there I would like to see some sort of built in bias to ensure lower levels of pollution than might be considered economically optimum. Regarding equity: Pollution taxes make polluters pay for the damage they inflict on the rest of us. How that payment is distributed between producers and consumers will depend on the elasticities of supply and demand for the products whose production and/or consumption cause the pollution. How the cost is distributed between employers and employees on the producers' side will depend on how much of the cost to producers comes out of wages and how much comes out of profits -- which I prefer to think of in terms of bargaining power and mainstreamers reduce to relative elasticities of the supply of and demand for labor. No doubt the distributive effects of pollution taxes are not optimal from the perspective of equity. Hence the need to combine pollution taxes with changes in other parts of the tax system that will make the overall outcome more equitable -- i.e. progressive. For an "equivalent" permit program, IF THE PERMITS ARE AUCTIONED OFF BY THE GOVERNMENT THE EQUITY RESULTS ARE EXACTLY THE SAME AS FOR THE POLLUTION TAX. But if the permits are given away for free, in addition to all the above equity implications, there is a one-time windfall benefit awarded to polluters. If effect, the polluters are
Re: Green Permits and Taxes
Robin Hahnel wrote: I have been campaigning on this theme recently because the mainstream of the profession has generated an intellectual stampede in favor of permits and has ignored taxes completely. I think the entire reason is permits can be part of a massive corporate boondoggle -- and pollution taxes cannot. As evidence of a stampede without real intellectual content, witness the effects on Wally Oates and Max Sawicky! So, I have been giving talks challening anyone to come up with a situation in which permits are superior to taxes -- in an attempt to even the debating playing field as much as one radical can. So far my I'm not getting very bloodied in my version of a John L. Sullivan, challenge-all-comers in boxing tour. Granted that parecon would generate full social and ecological price signals, I still don't understand why in capitalism non-tradable, auctioned, permits with a floor are not superior. Suppose greens won enough influence in the U.S. to force a ten percent reduction in fossil fuel consumption. Undoubtedly there is a carbon tax that would create such a reduction. But under the distorted price structure of capitalism I don't know how to find out -- in advance -- what it is. Perhaps for professional economists this is a simple problem. If the tax was too high , no problem from my point of view. I want more than a ten percent reduction anyway. But given the wiggle room the question leaves, it seems likely to me that the tax is far more likely to be set too low. Now look at non-tradeable permits auctioned, with a floor. The floor is of course a guess as to what the carbon tax should be. ( I'm leaving aside the possibility that markets will work well in the auctioning process, since corporations would probably manage to rig them, and assuming that essentially permits are sold at the floor). BTW the auctioning is not on a multi-year basis. New permits must be bought every year or every month, and prior purchase give you no special rights for current one. In short, what I am trying to propose is not really a permit process as normally described, but green taxes with rationing as a precaution against excessively low rates If fewer permits sold than were offered, then your price was right or perhaps too high . If all permits sold then the price would automatically rise until some permits went unsold. The advantage over green taxes without rationing in this context is if a green tax is set too low, pollution goes above the target, while with a permit process, pollution stays at target even before the price is raised sufficiently. On the other hand if both prices are right or are too high, then the results are identical -- even given market rigging in the auction process. In short leaving the assumption of perfect markets, and assuming highly imperfect information, and a highly politicized process it does seem that green taxes with rationing would work better. Given the political effort required to achieve green taxes, it seems that it might be worth while to include such a rationing process in the demands.
Re: Green Permits and Taxes
MScoleman wrote: In a message dated 98-02-25 21:27:27 EST, Barkley Rosser asks: Maggie, What about when there are both taxes and subsidies as we see in France and Germany? Actually when the major US environmental laws were put in place in the early 70s most of the profession advocated taxes, an idea dating back at least to Pigou. This was rejected in favor of what are essentially command and control systems. The politics was that pollution is "sin" and taxes would let people pay for sin, rather than outlawing it. Of course the c and c system didn't outlaw it either, just dealt with it in a very arbitrary way. This predated the push for tradeable permits. Barkley Rosser In short, I have no real idea -- however, off the top of my head (the grey haired part which is smarter than the other) I would say that a combination of taxes and subsidies would cancel each other out because they have an opposite effect. The government would be collecting a tax, then turning around and paying it back as a subsidy. I think that this debate over taxes, subsidies, restrictions and pollution credits which can be sold is interesting but also missing out on the main point of what needs to be done. The responsibility of business TOWARDS the community needs to become part of the public debate, not the responsibility of the community to coddle businesses into being less polluting. Pollution as a cost of doing business needs to be raised in such a way that the public demands that private businesses spend their own money cleaning up waste. The only reason we debate the best way to institute green taxes and permits is because business does not accept the responsibility to clean up after itself. Most places have laws against littering -- and yet businesses are allowed to litter the world with impunity. maggie coleman [EMAIL PROTECTED] For things like plutonium where any reasonable person wants to allow zero pollution, no green taxes or permits are neccesary. But you can't avoid usage of natural sinks and sources (though you can confine their use to well below what is sustainable). Not even traditional societies used zero natural resources -- and I doubt whatever wisdom we learn (if we learn any before it is too late) will involve perpetual motion. Note that very low levels of pollutions and resource consumption (10% or 1% but some percent of what we use now) are sustainable. So how do you allocate allowable pollution? 1) Command and control. Allow x to pollute y, and r to pollute q. At first glance this may seem tough on polluters. But,. note that this regulatory approach is still a give away of natural reasources -- in our current society to corporation, in some future society to whatever form of entereprise may occur (including worker owned firms, parecon worker councils, state owned firms or whatever). 2) You can have tradeable free permits -- still a giveaway. 3) You can auction off tradeable or non-tradeable permits -- with or without a floor. 4) You can charge pollution taxes. I'm not even mentioning subsidies. Paying people not to pollute is absurd. Note to Robin: I wonder if non-tradable permits auctioned with a floor aren't really pollution taxes.
[Fwd: New Progressive On Line University]
Long term Pen-l member and occasional generator of controversy Robin Hahnel, as well as a number of other people are offering on-line classes through Left On Line University. In case any of these classes are of interest to anyone, or in case anyone has friends who would benefit, I am forwarding this announcement. Hello, My name is Alfredo Lopez. I'm a Partner at People-Link, the progressive Internet access provider and administrator of People Link's New World Village (http://www.people-link.com). I hope you won't consider it an intrusion for us -- my partner in this undertaking is Michael Albert of Z Magazine and ZNet, http://www.lbbs.org -- to be sending you news about a new, progressive, On Line School, the Learning On Line University, in hopes you will want to participate in the undertaking. Starting April 1, 1998, this new project, LOLU for short, will bring high quality courses sponsored by diverse progressive organizations all working together and sharing resources and revenues and taught by prominent academics and activists to people throughout the world. To provide some incentive to read on, let me just note at the outset that the courses to be offered this semester are: ORGANIZING: THE LOST ART Organizational Sponsor: -- Faculty: Leslie Cagan PARENTING FOR PROGRESSIVES IN THE LATE 20th CENTURY Organizational Sponsor: South End Press -- Faculty: Cynthia Peters MEDIA ANALYSIS: CHALLENGING ROUTINE PROPAGANDA Organizational Sponsor: FAIR -- Faculty: Norman Solomon CONCEPTUALIZING A BETTER ECONOMY Organizational Sponsor: Z Magazine -- Faculty: Michael Albert RADICAL THEORY, VISION, AND STRATEGY Organizational Sponsor: Z Magazine -- Faculty: Michael Albert LINE. COLOR, AND SHAPE: A REINTRODUCTION TO THE VISUAL ARTS Organizational Sponsor -- Faculty: Anita Karsau U.S. CAPITALISM IN THE TWENTIETH CENTURY Organizational Sponsor: -- Faculty: Peter Bohmer INTRODUCTION TO POLITICAL ECONOMY Organizational Sponsor: -- Faculty: Robin Hahnel CHALLENGE AND CHANGE: ORGANIZED LABOR IN THE NEXT MILLENNIUM Organizational Sponsor: Communication Workers of America -- Faculty: William Henning To find out more about these courses and the outstanding faculty teaching them please point your web browser at the LOLU web site (www.lolu.org) where you will find course descriptions, staff biographies, and registration information and forms. But I'd like to offer a short description of this unprecedented project. LOLU courses run for ten weeks in a very congenial and easy to use on-line venue that incorporates discussion groups, lecture presentations, live chat, inter-student email, self grading evaluations and exams, glossaries and many other educational features as well. There is one lecture per week, with class discussion between faculty and students during each week, plus on-line handling of optional assignments, etc. You take the course in your home, at your leisure, on any schedule you like, doing as much or little of any assignment as you choose. To keep up you need to read a lecture per week. But you can do it anytime, and you can partake of the on-going dialogues that make up class discussions, adding your own questions and comments as you choose, again, entirely on your own schedule. You do everything with your browser, no extra software is required. The school venue is truly friendly and functional so you get the course content frustration free. In fact, the software is fun to use. We have in the past run courses (including some of those being given this semester) on a small scale and with far less robust and friendly software to rave reviews. Now we are growing and refining the operation (which explains this promotional email), and we would like you to join us. Imagine taking classes with other serious and engaged "students" from all over the world, with stellar faculty, for relatively minuscule fees. That's what LOLU is all about: the courses and the community of on-going friendships, working ties, and involvements they will spur. Normally courses are going to be $50, quite inexpensive compared to the usual $1200-$1500 for on-line university courses taught with the same software (but by inferior faculty, of course). For this introductory semester, however, we are going to offer courses at only $20 each. LOLU is worthy of support in its own right, as well. If it succeeds and grows as an institution it will promote solidarity in the progressive community as different organization, projects, and periodicals each sponsor courses and promote the work of all. Three fourths of the revenues will be dispersed to these diverse sponsoring projects and faculty, thereby helping fund all manner of diverse efforts at social change. The last quarter will finance LOLU itself, its software, promotional efforts, and labor. So please, help us build this fantastic unifying institution. Take a course or two. You will meet new people and learn new subject matter, even as you join with us in this incredible
MAI Not Dead -- Stop the false rumour (was U.S. will not sign MAI (fwd))
Sid -- your own forward says this whole "not signing" thing was a trick. They had given up getting a final deal in April months ago. The announcement is just to accomplish three things: 1) trick all the groups opposing MAI into thinking they have won, to drop the anti-MAI pressure, 2) win an in-house turf struggle with the State Department, 3) get a better deal for the U.S. at the expense of other signatories. Given that, why continue to argue methodology? Again, your own forward from Lori Wallach warns that it is just a way of using a minor truth (that the treaty won't be signed in April) to spread a major lie (that MAI is in big trouble). Your forward also pointed out that similar lies were used to cool opposition to NAFTA , and other trade deals. Thanks Gar Sid Shniad wrote: Bill, I have a methodological question: why is there a single "real reason" involved? This implies that the real actors are capitalists and that the actions of the little folk in striking, demonstrating,etc. are merely incidental. Or am I missing something? Sid On Fri, 13 Feb 1998, Sid Shniad wrote, on why the US has said they will not sign the MAI: Maybe they were looking for a way to save face by backing out this way Marty, rather than acknowledging the enormous ground swell of opposition to the damned thing. Isn't it more likely due to differences between imperialists? This may include each's margin of manuever in dealing with pressure from below, but the real reason is their rivalry. Bill Burgess
[Fwd: dsanet: FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE]
This message is from: [EMAIL PROTECTED] --- 02-10-98 ACLU Action Update Sender: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Precedence: bulk Reply-To: ACLU Action Owner [EMAIL PROTECTED] MEMORANDUM TO: ACLU Action Network FR: Bob Kearney, Field Coordinator RE: House to Vote THIS WEEK on Voter Suppression Bill DT: February 10, 1998 SUMMARY: Congress is trying to push through -- with no warning -- a bill that would allow intimidation of ethnic and minority voters, create a "Big Brother" national voter data base and repeal some protections on the Privacy Act of 1974. The House leadership is pushing this directly to the House floor, with no committee consideration, for a vote TOMORROW or THURSDAY. We need to take action TODAY! Please go to the "In Washington" section of the ACLU Website at www.alcu.org/congress/congress.html and link directly into a letter to Congress. Or, call the Congressional switchboard at 202-225-3121 and ask for your House member's office. Urge them to vote NO on HR 1428, the so-called "Voter Eligibility Verification Act." BACKGROUND: The Voter Eligibility Verification Act, HR 1428, would undermine the Motor Voter law, erect new barriers to voting, and suppress voting by members of ethnic and racial minority groups and people with disabilities. It would infringe on the privacy rights of all voters by establishing a Big Brother national voter database and partially repeal protections of the Privacy Act of 1974. (More information on the bill is available at http://www.aclu.org/congress/lg021098a.html.) WHEN: Although the bill was not considered or voted on by any committee, it has tentatively been scheduled for consideration on the House floor on Thursday, February 12. TALKING POINTS H.R. 1428 is Unnecessary: People who apply to register to vote must already swear under penalty of perjury that they meet voting eligibility requirements, including citizenship. Under current law, voting by non-citizens is an action punishable by deportation. H.R. 1428 Would Suppress the Votes of Minorities: This bill would give election officials discretion to determine which voters' eligibility they will seek to verify, leaving open the possibility for local registrars to discriminatorily subject members of minority groups to voter verification disproportionately. If there is even a 1 percent error in the verification process, this translates to the suppression of hundreds of thousands of votes! HR 1428 Threatens Voter Privacy: There is no national database of U.S. citizens, but the requirements of this bill would lead to the creation of a new database to serve the verification system. This database would not only include all registered voters, but also their Social Security Numbers -- the key that unlocks the door to our personal information! H.R. 1428 amends the Privacy Act to allow all states to require voters to submit their SSN when they register without requiring that the states ensure the privacy of these numbers. This means that the voter database would link voter name, address and Social Security number in state registration files which are often publicly available. ONLINE RESOURCES FROM THE ACLU NATIONAL OFFICE ACLU Freedom Network Web Page: http://www.aclu.org. America Online users should check out our live chats, auditorium events, *very* active message boards, and complete news on civil liberties, at keyword ACLU. ACLU Action Update ACLU National Washington Office 122 Maryland Avenue NE Washington, DC 20002 To subscribe to the ACLU Action List, send a message to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with "subscribe action" in the body of the message. To end your subscription, send a message to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with "unsubscribe action" in the body of the message. For general information about the ACLU, write to [EMAIL PROTECTED] -
Re: Said on US-Iraq
valis wrote: It's hardly surprising that no one on the list feels up to addressing the comments of Edward Said, nearly four hours after they arrived here. The immediate subject and the larger world-historical constellation to which it belongs can by now inspire only a weariness unto death. Said has been saying such things for many years, while admitting that his efforts are futile. Admirably, he has no compelling need to say them, for he is a major cultural star of American academia, unlike hundreds of Arab professors who seem to be possessed by the Arab-Israeli conflict as if their single motivating concept. Coming from a privileged Christian family and a polished Ivy League preparation, Said decades ago waded into sweaty, dangerous fights that he could easily have avoided; in fact he could have left ethnicity behind altogether, in the manner this country so seductively offers. He assailed the Oslo agreement even before it was signed, sensing what a shameful swindle was in the works. Since then he has been saying things about Arafat, the PA, the PLO, Hamas and the weakness and abiding mediocrity of Arab society in general that could win him a berth on the boat Salman Rushdie has occupied alone for the past eight years. As far as making a difference is concerned, a difference in blood, in treasure, but above all in freedom and mutual comprehension, Edward Said is too late; it was too late before he was born, too late a century ago and more. Islam and the West make a binary of hardwired antagonism like few others; they are like the parallel universes facing some sci-fi figure who can't experience - or even remember - more than one at a time, and the story is exhausted in his efforts to do so. Hasn't one major point of Edward Said's work been that Islam and the West do not make a "binary of hardwired antagonism", that there is not an unbridgeable gap between Islam and the West, that we could easily comprehend one another if we took the trouble to do so? I believe that while accepting the tragedy, he denies historical inevitability and irreversibility. I believe he is right in this, that we can give the dead and living alike a better gift than mourning and learned observations.
Re: Santa Fe-Krugman-Arthur
Doug Henwood wrote:
Rosser Jr, John Barkley wrote:
Another wiggle, close but not the same, is that a
system can be behaving very regularly and then quite
suddenly start behaving very erratically ("chaotically"),
with different and smaller changes than the first case.
I don't like this use of the word "system," which is a conceptual and
philosophical horror when applied to human society. It concedes the most
repellent aspects of bourgeois culture, the quantification and monetization
of everything. It assumes that the conventional statustics used to
represent economic activity - employment, GDP, and the rest - are an
adequate or desirable representation of social life. In some sense they
are, but not fully.
Doug
Any time we think about something as complex as human society, as mere individual
human beings we are going to leave something important out. So I don't think we can
reject treating society as a "system" simply because it is cold and abstract. I do
agree that with any abstraction, the burden of proof is on those "telling the story"
to show that it is good for something. And if a systems approach does prove useful in
certain cases, I hope it is never becomes the primary means of analysis.
I don't know if this is important to anybody -- but a lot the people who use
complexity theory to model society are doing it wrong -- from the standpoint of
complexity theory.
Most complexity social theorists do acknowledge the existence of politics in defining
an economic system. But many, having done this, apply complexity only to economics,
while assuming that politics represents the the "simple rules" in the "simple rules,
complex systems" cliché they favor. From the point of view of complexity theory, this
is simply wrong. Once politics is acknowledged to be a rule generating mechanism for
economics, it has been defined as a complex system in itself -- which means that if
you see a need for the economy to grow, or evolve or change, you also must see a need
for the polity to grow, evolve and change. If you are going to use complexity theory
at all (and you see politics in having any role at all in defining the "rules of the
game") you no longer have any case for a minimal state. (You also have a heck of case
for a new system eventually replacing both our existing state and existing economic
system --- the new system , of course, to be made up!
of some other set of interacting systems.)
Of course your question of whether complexity theory should be applied to society at
all is the more fundamental point. But I don't think the fact that it is being
applied incorrectly is trivial.
Gar W. Lipow
Systems Analyst
815 Dundee Road NW
Olympia, WA 98502
Ph: 360-943-1529
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Santa Fe
Most of the "Simple rules, complex systems" school actually ignore the fundamentals of complexity theory. Cyberlibertarians may think of Godel's incompleteness theorem as old hat now that it's no longer a favorite plaything of the nuagers, but it remains rather essential to the particular types of analysis they try to do. Once systems grow beyond a certain level of complexity, there is no static set of rules which can completely define them. Your system will have problems or questions which exist within it, and which have solutions or answers, but which the system is not capable of solving or answering. (I suppose I could be kind to the dialeticians on this list and refer to these as contradictions, but since I'm fundamentally mean-spirited -- I won't.) Further, when you discover the correct answer to one of these problems or question outside your complex system, and forcibly incorporate it into the system as a new axiom or fundamental premise or radical reform, immedi! ately new problems or questions of the same type emerge. In other words if you are analyzing -- say economics or politics or society -- as a dynamic evolving complex system generated by rules, then the rules themselves will always be dynamic, evolving and ever changing. Again this is separate from any acceptance or rejection of the usefulness applying cybernetics and complexity theory to politial economy. If it is a useful thing to do, the cyberlibertarians are doing it wrong . And they are wrong in a fundamental way , which ignores the basic well established tenets of the mathematical methods they claim to use. At 03:44 PM 1/31/98 -0500, Doug wrote: I don't have time to get into the details, but this sort of thinking is designed to cut off any notion of social action in an economy. It's all individuals and the beautiful patterns they create, so just stand back and be amazed at the wonders of the market Not to mention cutting off any notion of conflict or alienation. Is it that they're willing to give up on equilibrium without bearing the full consequences (like politics and history)? I don't think it's a matter of "cutting off" conflict so much as not having the guts to move up to it. The kind of model-building they do actually fits with social action very nicely. One of the basic ideas of complexity theory (at least as I understand it from the non-econ lit, which I know better) is that small sets of simple rules can produce very complex behavior, such as the actions of a flock of birds in flight. Social action and politics is what happens when one of the rules governing actors behavior is that actors can attempt to change the rules of the game. Far from being a limitation of complexity theory, I think it's clear from the writings of, say, Brian Arthur, that complexity economists spend a decent amount of time willfully closing their eyes to the logical implications of their theory (this is esp. noticable when Arthur writes about the computer industry, where the role of govt. other rule-changing agents is rather hard to ignore). Anders Schneiderman Progressive Communications
dsanet: Clinton, Iraq and Nuclear Weapons
This message is from: "Gar W. Lipow" [EMAIL PROTECTED] The following are the top few paragraphs of an article which appeared in the Tacoma News Tribune of Yesterday, Jan 28th -- apparently bought form Newsday. Does the refusal to rule out nukes make anyone besides me nervous? Apparently the Pentagon does normally rule out nuclear weapons during conventional attacks. With zippergate, the "he can't be that stupid" loses any reassurance it may have ever held. Nothing, including nukes, ruled out if Saddam won't allow more inspections Patrick J. Sloyan; Newsday WASHINGTON - President Clinton has ordered preparations for a "devastating" strike on Iraq's suspected biological weapons sites to be launched next month if a last-ditch diplomatic effort fails to persuade Saddam Hussein to open his door to U.N. weapons inspectors, U.S. officials said Tuesday. For the first time since the 1991 Persian Gulf War, the Pentagon also refused to rule out the possibility of using nuclear warheads to attack underground bunkers where the Iraqi leader may have buried Scud missiles and stockpiles of chemical and biological weapons. If it does, this is not a bad time to call your Congress member, your Senator, and to send e-mail to the President and Madeline Albright. I'm sure everyone on this list has long since sent letter opposing the U.S. bombing the hell out of Iraq's people with any weapons, but you might mention that again as well. President Clinton is at [EMAIL PROTECTED] VP Al Gore is at [EMAIL PROTECTED] Madeline Albright is at [EMAIL PROTECTED] If you want to try e-mailing your Congress member or Senator try http://www.visi.com/juan/congress/ While the site is geared to use addresses to figure out who people's Representatives and Senators are, it also give you e-mail address for those pols who have one. I know we've had forwards on peace groups and demonstrations and such lately -- all extremely important. But I bet no activist out there objects to this addition.
Re: dsanet: Clinton, Iraq and Nuclear Weapons
valis wrote: Gar Lipow ended his post thus: President Clinton is at [EMAIL PROTECTED] VP Al Gore is at [EMAIL PROTECTED] Madeline Albright is at [EMAIL PROTECTED] [etc.] I know we've had forwards on peace groups and demonstrations and such lately -- all extremely important. But I bet no activist out there objects to this addition. Leaving aside whether or not my calloused fingertips qualify me as an activist, You know better than I how to classify yourself. I must say that, yes, I do object to all such last-minute appeals to the very scum at the heart of this game. All right Presumably your next sentences will tell me why We've had months and years to probe for the existence of kindred spirits among the vets and adherents of the putative right/far right I know that the Fellowship Of Reconciliation at least has been doing this, with more success among vets than among the right/far right. Did you try this? What kind of response did you get? . I think some of us are, however, too attached instead to fantasies of instructing Congressional committees in their Marxist ABCs and other convivial acts of common cause. When you say "us", you must have a mouse in your pocket, because none of my fantasies involve government officials of any type. We never learn that _every_ gesture toward the center of power gives it additional strength. No matter which finger you use? valis As the bastards in charge move from murdering the people of Iraq though starvation and deprivation of medical supplies to murdering them through bombs. are you saying we should not escalate our opposition by all means possible -- including letters? -- To those who, shocked to death, now arrive at 6:30 for Manpower's morning shape-up, I can only ask: Where was your political interest when a tube and a six-pack were the bookends of your life? -- So -- better never than late?
Useful URL's for the Re Utopias Thread
Yes I know you have a lot more meaty stuff to think about right now. But you all know damn well that the "Re Utopias" thread may return eventually. These are just some useful on-line resources to keep on file for when that happens. The first item on the list is by me -- because I don't DO humility. The rest are genuine Robin Hahnel and Michael Albert compositions. I've created a summary of the PE model, short on arguments, long on correct pricing and incentives. Being the sort who is unable to see a beautifully balanced machine without getting the urge to tinker, and being unable to see something good without criticizing it for not being perfect, naturally I've added some comments of my own. Also, naturally, the parts not explicitly labeled comment are still my personal view of what AH meant and are not endorsed by them in any way. This URL for this is:: http://www.lol.shareworld.com/leftonl/lipow.htm AH also have posted their own summary on this which is a little more sketchy about how the model works. It gives a great sketch of arguments about why something like Parecon is needed. http://www.lol.shareworld.com/HahnelURPE.htm Robin Hahnel also gave a talk on disputes and common ground between democratic planners and market socialists: http://www.lol.shareworld.com/ZMag/Articles/hahnelumasstalk.htm The ZNet bulletin board is now working fine. (Let it not crash after my saying so publicly). The forums work via browser, (not by news reader) but are still a little slow. If you want to get into the Parecon forums start at http://www.lol.shareworld.com/leftonl/ZNETTOPnoanimation.html and follow the prompts to forums and parecon forum. Michael Albert also has ten lectures posted on the subject which are extremely long and far more elementary than "Looking Forward". These can be found at: http://www.lol.shareworld.com/Parecon/10lecs.htm Lastly there is an article of interest on Marxism by Michael Albert. It does not directly deal with Parecon, but gives you a better idea of the overall perspective than led Michael at least to spend the time it cost to come up with Parecon. Most of the sources this article cites are join works by MA and Robin Hahnel, so I assume to represents (at least in part) Robin Hahnel's thinking as well. http://www.lol.shareworld.com/marxismarticle.htm If anyone is interested in the article I mentioned, but has to pay per minute to browse, (or uses a super slow shared browser), I will be happy to forward any of the above articles upon request via e-mail. (The only exception is the ten lectures, which are too long and in too many pieces for me to e-mail conveniently.) You can reach me to request this at [EMAIL PROTECTED] Thanks Gar Lipow Olympia, Washington.
Re: The Situation In Cuba
Louis --Hope you don't mind this addition to a discussion you have officially retired from. But, you are a long time activist (probably including on this issue). I'm sure it was purely accidental that your brilliant theoretical analysis of Cuba's suffering under global capitalism omitted any references to immediate practical actions your readers could take.. Anyone who wants to actually help relieve some of the suffering of the Cuban people can do the following: Write President Clinton, Secretary of State Albright and your Congressmember urging them to support H.R. 1951 which would eliminate food and medicine from the embargo against Cuba. The supporters of this bill are also asking that people on-line e-mail all the rest of the Congress as well. A sample letter is at the end of this post. To get more details on this try the page on the Cuban Humanitarian Relief act at http://www.igc.apc.org/cubasoli/relifact.html The above is a page on the Cuban Solidarity web site. http://www.igc.apc.org/cubasoli/ This contains links to a number of other sites -- at which those with time and money to donate can find out about additional actions they can take. All this stuff I'm passing on comes from there. There is also a web site with an online petition you can sign: http://www.salam.org/activism/cuba.html BTW http://www.salam.org/ though officially devoted to the Palestinian cause is a great site on Middle Eastern politics in general -- and as the above example shows often devotes time to humanitarian causes of all kinds. For list members outside the U.S. -- writing to Clinton and Albright still would not hurt. Thanks Gar Lipow [EMAIL PROTECTED] Olympia, Washington Sample Letter Supporting H.R. 1951: Dear Pres. Clinton, Secretary of State Albright and Congressmember __ I am writing to wish to express my concern, and displeasure, with the course of our policy on Cuba. Despite the claim that this policy of isolation and embargo is intended to bring about democracy in Cuba through a change in leadership, the net result has been to greatly increase the suffering of the Cuban people. Nowhere is this result more evident than in the field of health care. (See the report published by the American Association for World Health entitled "Denial of Food and Medicine. The Impact of the U.S. Embargo on Health and Nutrition in Cuba. March 1997.") This embargo, unprecedented in its aim of withholding food and medicine from a whole population, is clearly rejected by all of the civilized world, leaving the United States government as "odd man out." The recent frenzy on the part of the Congress to intensify even the harshest aspects of the Helms-Burton Act, rather than softening those provisions as promised to the European Union, only thrusts the United States further into the role of a global bully. We urge you to begin to draw back from a path of irreversible conflict, not only with our neighbor nation, but with our chief allies, by rescinding all restrictions on supplying/selling food and medicine to Cuba. The passage of bill, H.R. 1951 to exempt food and medicine from the embargo will be a good first step to ending a long, futile and cruel policy -- the embargo itself. Very truly yours, After you have contacted YOUR representative send an e-mail message to 250 other representatives with known e-mail addresses. Click here to access a current e-mail list for the 105th Congress . Create your own mailing list and with one key stroke you send your letter to these 250 representatives expressing your support for HR 1951.
Strong Encryption and Transaction Taxes
I've always favored Doug Henwood's position on strong transaction taxes on bets placed in the global and national casinos. But as a tech type, I've also kind of reflexively opposed the restrictions on strong encryption. You know, when secret codes are outlawed only outlaws... (In case one or two lurkers are unfamiliar with strong encryption, you can think of it as a secret code you can use which the government cannot break. Since everybody already knows how to do this, restrictions on such encryption are pretty futile. And the assumptions that your right to privacy stops existing when it becomes practical to enforce has always appalled me. [Sub note: strong encryption may not be as unbreakable as was thought until recently. But I still have not heard of anyone breaking a 1 meg key with parallel computing.]) I've always assumed there was no contradiction here. If you have a transaction tax, and you think someone is using encryption to evade it, get a court order and make them cough up the key. If they "lose" the key or openly refuse to turn it over, treat them as you would a suspected violator who shreds or burns files. However, I'm a lot more familiar with computer technology than I am with the process of investigating tax evasion -- especially by large corporations and very rich individuals. Is it as simple as I make it sound, or does strong encryption pose a problem here? Gar W. Lipow [EMAIL PROTECTED] 815 Dundee Rd NW Olympia, WA 98502 Phone 360-943-1529
Re: Lean and mean
Tom Walker wrote: Max Sawicky wrote, immediate relevance is that business firms could be handed 'user fees' or Pigouvian taxes (e.g., taxes that 'correct' externalities, like pollution) and these would show up as costs in any accounting framework. So would general taxes on capital which financed goods whose cost could not be mechanically traced to individual firms (e.g., public education). Motivating such taxes and expenditures would depend in part on the social accounting to which I alluded in my previous post. Does that wrap it up nicely? That wraps it up extremely nicely. For the sake of argument, let's call the relevant tax here an overtime tax. Define "overtime" as weekly hours worked in excess of a standard attained by dividing total labour force hours worked by total number of labour force participants (both employed and seeking employment). This could be an index the BLS could produce quarterly. The proceeds from the tax then form a fund to provide unemployment benefits. The fine details of the tax would hinge on social policy objectives, but the crude outline would be to insure that the social overhead costs show up as costs in the accounting framework. Does that follow? Regards, Tom Walker ^^^ Know Ware Communications Vancouver, B.C., CANADA [EMAIL PROTECTED] (604) 688-8296 ^^^ The TimeWork Web: http://www.vcn.bc.ca/timework/ Presumably layoffs, work which produced more than average injury, death, mental illness, and addiction would also be taxed as well. Gar W. Lipow [EMAIL PROTECTED] 815 Dundee Road, NW Olympia, WA 98502 PH: 360-943-1529
Re: Ride free or die!
William S. Lear wrote: On Sat, January 3, 1998 at 20:55:43 (-0900) Gar W. Lipow writes: Robin Hahnel wrote: ... A welfare safety net for the losers? What would you say? With gambling or without, I think a Parecon will provide a welfare safety net. I am not talking about the retired, the involuntarily unemployed, or those unable to work. In these cases I assume you would provide average consumption plus any special needs as a matter of decency. I am talking about truly the annoying cases. Imagine for the moment a Bob Black style anarchist who refuses to work because you have not made work "one long ecstatic dance". Are you going to refuse him health care? You endanger your own health by doing so. Once you maintain someone's health, food is a lot cheaper than treating malnutrition or starvation . Shelter, and clothing are cheaper than treating exposure. Indoor plumbing is cheaper than treating infectious diseases. Thus even in an "undeserving case" you gain more than you lose by providing some minimum. This does not have to mean luxury or anything approaching average consumption. If Bob Black is a "truly annoying case" that means he is rather rare, no? If we make the assumption that most people do not tend to be so sociopathic, then we could easily support the outliers, right? Bill Exactly. (BTW. -- I imagined someone acting on Bob Black's stated beliefs. I haven't met the man, and can't judge whether he is personally annoying or not . ) Gar
Re: Ride free or die!
Robin Hahnel wrote: Or, perhaps, my oblique point would be clearer if I came at it from another angle: the greatest indignity inflicted on the poor is not their poverty; it is the retroactive justification of that poverty (and the corresponding wealth of the wealthy) as being "as of right". It's worth entertaining the thought that *most* inequality results not from misfortune or personal qualities but from the ideology erected *ex post facto* to explain, justify and, ultimately, naturalize inequality. I am very sympathetic to this view. Rationalization of exploitation as being in the interest of the exploited is the ultimate insult. [While I have a lot of respect for John Rawls, I believe that his difference principle has been used to do a lot of just this kind of thing. Growing inequality is rationalized under the PRESUMPTION that the greater gains of the better off are necessary to win the more meager gains of the worse off. It's usually just plain BULL.] As a thought experiment, I'll pose an alternative to parecon: "socialotto". Socialotto doesn't seek to eliminate inequality or free-ridership, only to systematically randomize them. As an aside, I'd reckon that, given a choice in the structure of rewards (but not in their actual distribution), people would opt for much less inequality than now exists but for substantially more than a ratio of 2:1. I agree that randomized inequity is better than systematic inequity. Slavery where blacks and whites had equal probabilities of becoming slaves or slave masters would have been better than blacks having a 0% probability of becoming slaves masters while whites had a 0% probability of becoming slaves. But I wouldn't spend a lot of time fighting for randomized slavery. I know from my students' reactions to parecon that most of them THINK they'd like more of an income lottery than 2:1 But they -- mistakenly in the case of the students at the university where I teach -- usually assume they are more likely to come out on the high than the low end too. In any case, American culture is strongly into the "vision" of how exciting casino's can be. I know. I think it's one of the myopias we suffer under -- and I think it is "pushed" on us as part of establishing capitalist ideological hegemony. But, if people really want casinos, we can certainly arrange for them in parecon. If people want to take their effort earned consumption rights and exchange them in a Casino for a possibility of much more consumption right -- and a possibility of much less, I see no reason to discriminate against gambling. So if someone doesn't like the 2:1 distributive odds of the parecon economy, they can make it as risky as they want! A welfare safety net for the losers? What would you say? With gambling or without, I think a Parecon will provide a welfare safety net. I am not talking about the retired, the involuntarily unemployed, or those unable to work. In these cases I assume you would provide average consumption plus any special needs as a matter of decency. I am talking about truly the annoying cases. Imagine for the moment a Bob Black style anarchist who refuses to work because you have not made work "one long ecstatic dance". Are you going to refuse him health care ? You endanger your own health by doing so. Once you maintain someone's health, food is a lot cheaper than treating malnutrition or starvation . Shelter, and clothing are cheaper than treating exposure. Indoor plumbing is cheaper than treating infectious diseases. Thus even in an "undeserving case" you gain more than you lose by providing some minimum. This does not have to mean luxury or anything approaching average consumption.
Re: Analyzing Technologies
Ellen Dannin wrote: On Mon, 29 Dec 1997, Louis Proyect wrote: * * * I have to confess that the discussion about "technology" sort of baffles me since it seems detached from the broader question of how society is organized. There is no question that automation of blue-collar and white-collar work has led to increased misery under capitalism. Ellen J. Dannin Wrote And not just amongst the workers who are hired to do the work. Now technology is making us all do the work -- unpaid at that. Last night while calling to check on some flight details, the automated phone system first put me through trying to figure out whether I fell into the "press or say 1" or "press or say 2" category as we went through the menu (and I knew I did need to speak to a real person), I was put on hold because there weren't nearly enough people working to handle the customers (thanks probably to "right sizing"). I couldn't even mark exams while on hold - something I am avoiding at this second - because I had to be a captive audience for their ads. And this is not the only place in which we all are doing unpaid work for corporations as they use technology to turn us all into their virtual staffs. Ellen J. Dannin California Western School of Law 225 Cedar Street San Diego, CA 92101 This is not limited to advanced technology. Having to assemble virtually all furniture, and common household products yourself is a not exactly new, or high tech.
Holiday Blues
I've stiched a number of excepts from recent posts together to show how what struck one lurker (me). Are the holiday blues just causing me to take them out of context, or are they meant as depressingly as they sound when arranged in this way? Doug Henwood wrote (in the context of a much large discussion about land rights of native peoples) Maybe there are real positive attractions for most/many people that it would be impossible, and maybe even wrong, to resist. Is it possible to separate the "lures" - the positive aspects of capitalist modernization - from exploitation, polarization, and the destruction of nature? Michael Perelman responded I don't know exactly. I confess confusion on this point. For that reason, I appreciate this thread so that I can get a better handle on this matter. Doug Henwood responded I don't know either, really, which is why I asked a lot of questions, instead of my usual mode of vigorous assertion. Terry Eagleton says in his little book on postmodernism that to a Marxist, capitalism is both the best and worst thing that ever happened to humanity. He's got a point. Sid Shniad interjected Doug, please address this question yourself. If such a separation is not possible, your position becomes one of defending capitalism itself, no? Doug Replied Following in this morning's PEN-L tradition of quoting poets from memory, I'll quote Wallace Stevens' "It must be possible. It must!" I keep hoping that a more humane social system could appropriate the technical and organizational knowledge produced by capitalism and re-deploy it for purposes other than making money and steepening hierarchies. Maybe this is too optimistic. Are you all really in the position where your only basis for believing that we can do better than capitalism, while preserving the benefits of modernism, is faith? Do the majority on this list seriously no longer see an intellectual basis for believing we can do better than capitalism without giving up antibiotics and indoor plumbing?
Re: Analyzing technologies
It seems to me that all this discussion actually ties very well into the Hahnel and Albert Participatory Economics. Doug Henwood was asking whether a more humane system could appropriate all the benefits of modernization and separate them from exploitation, polarization, and the destruction of nature. They appear to offer a very plausible description of how to do just that. Michael is dealing with the centralization of power in job definitions, the centralization of information. Again PE very specifically suggests ways to reorganize work so that empowerment, desirability and access to information are divided roughly evenly. And I think your suggestion that such a redefinition would be more efficient even in the narrow sense is correct. They even touch lightly on the technology issue, with a hint of how computer technology should evolve to better serve PE. I know Pen-L has discussed PE to death already. But if you really are stuck for a feasible and humane alternative to capitalism, maybe it is worth another look. Cheers, and Happy Holidays Gar Lipow [EMAIL PROTECTED] [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: I was taken by Michael P.'s discussion of the information economy of picking melons. In the real world, it's the melon-picker who uses his or her judgement to read the information about when or whether to pick melons. In Michael's imaginary scenario, there would be a division of labor between one worker who inspects the produce and writes a report on each individual melon and another who reads the report and decides which melons to pick. I guess then the first worker (or perhaps a third one) picks them. What this says to me is that the growth of the so-called "information economy" coincides with the process of deskilling that Braverman highlighted. The second worker -- the symbolic analyst -- has taken some of the first worker's decision-making power away, separating conception (by the analyst) from execution (by the reporter and/or picker). Exactly my point. One of the reasons our society _needs_ all sorts of computers is that the separation of conception from execution has centralized as much as possible of the decision-making in a small number of hands, so that as much information as possible must be put into those hands. yes. Clear lines of communication must be established between the conception center and the execution peripheries. Of course, it also goes the other way: Yes, in my example, the workers "communicated" by stretching their back. Elsewhere keystrokes are measured. In my school we communicate with the administration by fte [full time equivalent -- or student body counts. Workers' thoughts are merely an intrusion in the work process. -- Michael Perelman Economics Department California State University Chico, CA 95929 Tel. 530-898-5321 E-Mail [EMAIL PROTECTED]
