Re: Getting Something for Nothing
Thomas, It looks like you grasped Hubbert's basic idea. My sense is that what Hubbert is saying is much easier to grasp than to keep together. His prescription follows logically from his diagnosis even though his diagnosis implies that the whole system (of production/distribution) is based on a fallacy. That is sort of like printing up written instruction leaflets on "how to read" -- those who can follow the instructions don't need them and those who need them can't follow the instructions. I think Hubbert's critique of the "you can't get something for nothing" ideology is dead on. What the propagandists *really* mean is "YOU can't get something, but WE can!" And, of course, they do. It seems that just getting something for nothing under the rules of the game isn't enough for some of them, they have to steal even more -- witness the conveniently forgotten BCCI scandal. A court judgement last month for $1.16 billion against former Saudi intelligence boss, Sheik Abdul Raouf Khalil, for his part in the embezzlement of $10 billion didn't even show up on the media radar screen. IT'S NOT NEWS THAT THE SUPER RICH STEAL. How do they get away with it? Because people making $30,000, $40,000 or $50,000 a year don't want to admit that they couldn't have even as much as they do have if left ENTIRELY to their own devices. The proud fantasy that "I worked hard to earn everything I've got" keeps away the uncomfortable fact of our radical social dependency. (And it insults lots of people who worked even harder and don't have f-all to show for it). The traditional Marxist argument about exploitation of the workers feeds into the illusion. According to the traditional argument, the workers produce even MORE value than they receive in wages. That WAS part of Marx's argument, but it was for capitalism, an economic system that has been supplanted by the direct application of science and technology to industry, which is also part of Marx's argument. What I'm trying to say -- albeit impressionistically -- is that getting from Hubbert's diagnostic "A" to his prescriptive "B" is a lot harder than the logical bee line he pursues. One can imagine a psycho-analyst shaking his patient by the shoulders, shouting, "Can't you see? It's all a neurotic obsession brought on by repressed erotic impulses toward your unresponsive father! Get over it, man! Get a life! Remember!" Thomas Lunde wrote: I have read this quote several times. Not easy to grasp the essentials but as I read it, the author is saying that the whole concept of wages for labour is based on a fallacy - that it cannot be so! The reason, as I grok it, is that the energy it takes to maintain a human life exceeds the amount of productivity that a persons labour will produce. The conclusion is that until we add in the externalities of the "free" energy which is more or less equally distributed on the Earth's surface as a fact, whether the life in question is a billionare or a panhandler, the concept of wages for labour is a shell game. Can I take this to mean that in a "true" economic system, a Basic Income of the equivalent free energy is given to every human being? And following from that any additional productivity can then be added to this monetized Basic Income so that those who produce something recieve additional too their Basic Income. Rather than the current situation as basically advocated by the neo-con mindset that if you don't work, you starve. In other words he is saying no one starves because everyone gets their share and some reduced amount who chose to devote time to producing goods and services then get more. In essence, then, this monetary payment for free energy would be added into every product or service and that sum would be set aside to pay the Basic Income? As I said, this is not easy to grasp in reality, though I like his debunking of the current explanations. Help me out Tom, regards, Tom Walker http://www.vcn.bc.ca/timework/worksite.htm
Re: Jim Stanford (was Re: Charles Leadbetter)
Steve, You were wondering why no one had replied to your earlier criticism of Jim Stanford's op-ed piece. So I replied. My point is simply that you have taken a light-weight rhetorical piece to task over some heavy-duty substantive issues and have ignored the fact that we are daily inundated from the right with a steady diet of light-weight arguments cutting the other way. As I said, you've missed the point of Jim's article. Jim's point is that the arguments we hear incessantly from the right can be readily turned around and used against the purveyors of those arguments. You said, Journalism has an obligation to present clarity and truth as much as humanly possible. Well, isn't that a fine sentiment! And public officials have a duty to look after the general welfare. And we all should be kind to one another. Here's one more story that the mainstream journalism falls all over itself to present: Thursday July 15, 12:16 pm Eastern Time Company Press Release SOURCE: First American Corporation First American Trustee Seeks Assistance From Saudi Ambassador NEW YORK, July 15 /PRNewswire/ -- Harry W. Albright, Jr., Trustee for First American Corporation, appointed by the federal court in Washington, D.C., has made a personal request to His Excellency Prince Bandar Bin Sultan Al-Saud, Saudi Arabian Ambassador to the United States, for assistance in collecting additional funds for the worldwide creditors of the failed Bank of Credit and Commerce International (BCCI). On July 7, 1999, Mr. Albright sent a letter to Prince Bandar requesting that, in the interest of comity and justice, the Prince intervene to ensure that Saudi businessman and ex-government official [a discrete way of saying "former head of Saudi intelligence"] Sheikh Abdul Raouf Khalil honors and pays the $1.16 billion judgment obtained by BCCI's liquidators in Washington on June 23, 1999. BCCI collapsed as a result of massive fraud in July 1991, leaving a deficit of more than $10 billion. Court-appointed liquidators have to date recovered and repaid approximately half of BCCI customer deposits. Khalil, who has stated his net worth is in excess of a half billion dollars, is retired and lives in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, where he owns one of the world's largest private museums. For more information, contact Harry W. Albright, Jr., Trustee for First American Corporation. Phone: 914-948-6474 SOURCE: First American Corporation Related News Categories: banking Steve Kurtz wrote: Tom Walker wrote: Context, Steve, context. Your response to Jim Stanford's piece seemed to miss the point that poor-bashing and welfare-bashing have been mainstays of the self-styled individualist, "free market" line since time immemorial. Maybe that's the opinion of some about the actions of a few. But sorry Tom, no literate reader of English could miss the "point" of Stanford's essay. Jim was presenting a "let's put that shoe on the other foot and see how it fits" commentary. That happens to be his style. It's a folksy way of making a point, You mean he uses a "baffle them with BS" style. :-) Are you saying that the end (ire against free market capitalists) justifies any means? Are you saying "Don't confuse me with the facts? it's not intended to be most sophisticated economic analysis. Journalism has an obligation to present clarity and truth as much as humanly possible. His essay is nonsense, I can't fathom you saying otherwise. You ain't no dope. The Fraser Institute issues a "report card" on "economic freedom" and Jim counters with a report card on economic freedom "for the rest of us" -- How do you define "economic freedom", Tom? Recall the words from my post: SK: Is "be made to" "would have to" the preferred sort of societal mechanisms you wish used on a minority of your fellow citizens? Look out, they may be used on you! TW: meaning those things that matter to people who don't receive most of their income from dividends and interest payments. What's wrong with that? regards, Everything is wrong if emotional misconceptions are reinforced. Retired folks breathe the same air, drink the same water, walk the same streets... Since when did this list become a place for pure polemic? Steve regards, Tom Walker http://www.vcn.bc.ca/timework/worksite.htm
Re: Charles Leadbetter
Steve Kurtz wrote: Are there no reactions to my post about the Workfare for Capital piece? Perhaps all listmembers grasped its ideological hyperbole immediately! Context, Steve, context. Your response to Jim Stanford's piece seemed to miss the point that poor-bashing and welfare-bashing have been mainstays of the self-styled individualist, "free market" line since time immemorial. Jim was presenting a "let's put that shoe on the other foot and see how it fits" commentary. That happens to be his style. It's a folksy way of making a point, it's not intended to be most sophisticated economic analysis. The Fraser Institute issues a "report card" on "economic freedom" and Jim counters with a report card on economic freedom "for the rest of us" -- meaning those things that matter to people who don't receive most of their income from dividends and interest payments. What's wrong with that? regards, Tom Walker http://www.vcn.bc.ca/timework/worksite.htm
Re: The End of Work/The End of Jobs
tom abeles wrote: Tom Walker wrote, in part: What has been occuring instead is an INCREASED reliance on increasingly meaningless (to productivity) criteria of hours of work, job tenure and individual performance. What this means in practice is not "reward commensurate with contribution" but a winner take all lottery. --- i am not sure that I understand what is happening in your model. Can you give me a scenario and take that the next step forward That's a good question. With the application of science and technology to industrial processes, productivity becomes increasingly SOCIAL and not individually attributable. Karl Marx noticed phenomenon this nearly 150 years ago in the Grundrisse: "to the degree that large industry develops, the creation of real wealth comes to depend less on labour time and on the amount of labour employed than on the power of the agencies set in motion during labour time, whose 'powerful effectiveness' is itself in turn out of all proportion to the direct labour time spent on their production, but depends rather on the general state of science and on the progress of technology, or the application of this science to production." Some sense of the scale of change can be had by looking at labour productivity statistics over the longer period. Labour productivity per hour in the U.S. in 1992 was approximately 13 times what it was in 1870. During the same period, the average annual hours worked per person employed was nearly cut in half, from 2,964 in 1870 to 1,589 in 1992. On average, then, a worker in 1992 produced seven times as much per year in slightly more than half as many hours. Much of that productivity gain, by the way, occurred between 1929 and 1973. I suppose one could say that the average individual U.S. worker in 1992 worked 13 times harder than the average worker in 1870 or was 13 times more skilled or some intermediate combination of increased skill and effort. I suppose. Another way of looking at the change, though, is that "inorganic nature", rather than the worker, has been made to do more of the work: "No longer does the worker insert a modified natural thing [Naturgegenstand] as middle link between the object [Objekt] and himself; rather, he inserts the process of nature, transformed into an industrial process, as a means between himself and inorganic nature, mastering it. He steps to the side of the production process instead of being its chief actor. In this transformation, it is neither the direct human labour he himself performs, nor the time during which he works, but rather the appropriation of his own general productive power, his understanding of nature and his mastery over it by virtue of his presence as a social body -- it is, in a word, the development of the social individual which appears as the great foundation-stone of production and of wealth." All this may sound very grand indeed if one forgets that the "inorganic nature" in question largely has consisted of the consumption of non-renewable fossil fuels. Over the past 20 years or so there has been a marked polarization of income which has been intensified by a polarization of annual hours worked -- that is to say that (on average) those earning at a higher hourly rate have also been working progressively more hours per year. Often this dispersion has been described as a "skills gap" or an "education premium", thereby attributing the change to differences in individual ability, knowledge or effort. Considering the major source of productivity gains over the past century or so, however, it would be better to look at the dispersion in income as a bounty paid to the most prodigious consumers of energy. That is to say, relatively small differentials in skill or educational credentials become the warrants for relatively large differentials in entitlements to consume energy at work. Individuals are then compensated roughly in accordance with those later entitlements and not the original more modest differences in ability, knowledge or effort. Leaving aside the element of randomness relating individual success in obtaining employment to credentials, we might find, for example that A, with 20 years of schooling obtains a warrant to consume 40 units of energy per hour at work while B, with only 16 years of schooling obtains a warrant to consume a mere 20 units per hour. As a result, A may well "produce" twice as much per hour as B, thus "justifying" much higher compensation. regards, Tom Walker http://www.vcn.bc.ca/timework/worksite.htm
Re: Jeremy Rifkin - 1-6-99
Ed Weick wrote, I know that I'm being enormously unfair to Rifkin because I've only been able to read the first few pages of anything he's written without feeling that I'm being fleeced by a con man. I can sympathize with Ed's reaction because Rifkin DOES use some pretty goofy hyperbole. He's a showman and an evangelist, two characteristics that can be off-putting to sober thinkers (and I take Ed to be a sober thinker). My defence of Rifkin is that, without looking at my notes, I can name four or five books that came out in the 5 or 6 years before Rifkin's The End of Work, which contained excellent scholarship and close argumentation and presented their conclusions with all due moderation and qualification. These books documented some of the same main trends that Rifkin emphasized and had almost no impact on public discussion. Rifkin is a popularizer of ideas and undoubtedly this makes him a vulgarizer of those ideas. It's unfortunate that the discussion of Rifkin often gets stuck at the level of criticizing or defending Rifkin's vulgarizations rather than seeing the appeal of Rifkin's book as a barometer of a broader public unease and groping about the evolving status of paid work. Saying that "unemployment in the US has been very low during the past decade" doesn't really answer the unease. For one thing, "the past decade" drastically overstates the duration of the fabled "golden era" of U.S. job creation, which has only really settled in over the past _half_ decade. Before that, people in the U.S. were still talking about the "jobless recovery". Second, the U.S. job creation record over the last five years has to be contrasted with the record in much of the rest of the world. The shallow response to that disparity is to hold up U.S. economic policies as a model for job creation elsewhere, as if Dollar hegemony and the ability to run enormous trade deficits indefinitely had nothing to do with it. This is not to say that the U.S. jobs have been somehow "wrung out" from other countries' losses, only that the conditions that have allowed phenomenal U.S. job growth in the past five years are exceptional. Exceptional is too mild a word, a better word would be *bizarre*. In response to Ed's "So what?" about the virtual elimination of manufacturing jobs, the consequences are both different and WORSE than the title of Rifkin's book implies. If Ed supposes that the continuing need for "doctors, lawyers" etc. will absorb all those sloughed off by manufacturing, he hasn't engaged the argument at the level of seriousness alreadly clear twenty years ago in Bureau of Labor Statistics projections -- large percentage increases applied to small numbers are quantitively insignificant compared to small percentage increases applied to large numbers. The "new opportunities" of the future will be for janitors, security and prison guards and non-medical health and personal care attendants. The potential is there, however, for ever more "new opportunities" which contribute ever less to anything resembling individual and social wealth. Rifkin underestimates the job creation potential of a parasitic and pathological economy -- iatrogenic growth, to use Jonathan Rowe's expression. The issue isn't just "where will the jobs come from" as Ed implies, but what -- and who's -- purposes will be served. To dismiss Rifkin's image of a bipolar world as "not how things are now, nor are likely to be . . . in the future" is to simply wave aside mountains of evidence. Only if one defines "the world" as the top 20% of the population in the rich nations could one even contemplate ignoring the disparities. To say that "new technology is not locked up in some fortress" is to beg the question of the relationship between knowledge and income. A lack of knowledge or of access to technology may well be a barrier to income. This does not mean, however, that the acquisition of knowledge or access to technology provides a path to income. There is the old Aristotilean distinction between necessary and sufficient conditions. The "opportunity to input and access output" is simply not the same thing as having access to income. Old style barriers like having a small child to care for or not being in favour with the dispensers of contract largesse are as formidable as ever, even for those with credentials, experience and technological savvy. To conclude, as Ed does, that our leaders and ourselves are addressing the question of how to share productivity gains broadly is a hyperbole of a very different kind from those that Rifkin indulges in. Rifkin extrapolates flamboyantly from trends to arrive at his hyperbolic assertions. Ed abjectly states the opposite of the trend as it's inevitable outcome. Both may be fantasies, but Rifkin's fantasy at least opens up the questions, rather than closing them off. regards, Tom Walker http://www.vcn.bc.ca/timework/worksite.htm
So what II: The U.S. job creation machine
Anecdotal evidence that there may be just a smidgen of hype to the confident notion that unemployment is not a problem in the U.S. THOUSANDS OF APPLICANTS CROWD R.I. EVENT FOR SHOT AT MALL JOBS By Associated Press, 07/15/99 PROVIDENCE - Demand for jobs at the Providence Place Mall is unexpectedly high, with 6,000 applicants turning out for 1,500 job openings at a job fair. The fair, held Tuesday at the Rhode Island Convention Center, attracted people who jockeyed for a slew of retail positions as well as jobs as janitors, pizza makers and bank managers. The mall is expected to open in August. The event drew a crowd, despite the fact that the state's unemployment is below 4 percent. ''Oh, my God. Overwhelming! It's unbelievable,'' Nordstrom human resources manager Lucy Rose told The Providence Journal. The department store had one of the fair's most popular booths, giving out about 2,000 applications for its 350 openings by midday Tuesday. Other employers ran out of applications. The mall's general manager, Joseph J. Koechel, said the turnout suggested that people want to make job changes and that they are excited about the new mall. The mall will have 150 stores and restaurants and a 16-screen cinema. The biggest stores are Lord Taylor, Filene's and Nordstrom. Those who attended the fair included an unemployed man whose wife is dying of cancer and a classical guitarist running out of money. This story ran on page A33 of the Boston Globe on 07/15/99. regards, Tom Walker http://www.vcn.bc.ca/timework/worksite.htm
FW: Globalization creating grotesque gap - Chicago Tribune
ed to protect intellectual property, are blocking the ability of developing countries to develop their own products. Even within the Third World, inequality is sharp. Thailand has more cellular phones and Bulgaria more Internet users than all of Africa except South Africa, the report said. The report was not all gloom and doom. Even as gaps between nations grow and some countries slide backward, the quality of life for many of the world's poor is improving, it said. Between 1975 and 1997, life expectancy in Third World countries rose to 62 years from 53, adult literacy rates climbed to 76 percent from 48 percent, child mortality rates to 85 per 1,000 live births from 149, and some countries --Costa Rica, Fiji, Jordan, Uruguay and others--"have overcome severe levels of human poverty." The UNDP report said uneven and unequal development around the world is not sustainable and risks sinking the global economy in a backlash of public resentment. Without global governance that incorporates a "common core of values, standards and attitudes, a widely felt sense of responsibility and obligations," the major nations and corporations face trade wars and uncontrolled financial volatility, it said, with the Asian financial crisis of the past two years only the first of many upheavals. At the moment, new rules and regulations are being written in talks at the World Trade Organization, the International Monetary Fund and other powerful global bodies. But these talks are "too narrow," the report said, because they focus on financial stability while "neglecting broader human concerns such as persistent global poverty, growing inequality between and within countries, exclusion of poor people and countries, and persisting human-rights abuses." They also are "too geographically unbalanced," with an unhealthy domination by the U.S. and its allies." The UNDP report called instead for a "global architecture" that would include: - A global central bank to act as a lender of last resort to strapped countries and to help regulate finance markets. - A global investment trust to moderate flows of foreign capital in and out of Third World countries and to raise development funds by taxing global pollution or short-term investments. - New rules for the World Trade Organization, including anti-monopoly powers to enable it to keep global corporations from dominating industries. - New rules on global patents that would keep the patent system from blocking the access of Third World countries to development, knowledge or health care. - New talks on a global investment treaty that, unlike talks that failed last year, would include developing countries and respect local laws. - More flexible monetary rules that would enable developing countries to impose capital controls to protect their economies. - A global code of conduct for multinational corporations, to encourage them to follow the kind of labor and environmental laws that exist in their home countries. The report praised voluntary codes adopted in Asia by Disney World and Mattel, the toy company. The leading industrial nations already are considering new global rules on investment, banking and trade. The UNDP report, in effect, endorsed these efforts but urged that they be broadened to include the needs of poorer nations. regards, Tom Walker http://www.vcn.bc.ca/timework/worksite.htm
Re: The End of Work/The End of Jobs
Michael Gurstein is right to distinguish between the end of work and the end of jobs as we know them. As a parent, I can say for certain that the work never ends. Not only may the number of those employed increase, as Mike suggests. Many of those employed will be employed at more "jobs", whether concurrently or consecutively. This condition COULD be a progressive step, in terms of increased autonomy at work if it weren't for the old-style coupling of income and employment benefits to a standard of full-time labour force attachment that is no longer operative. The old-style coupling was itself simply a convention, there shouldn't be such a profound obstacle to changing it. But here's the catch, as I see it. EITHER there has to be a new "standard package" of labour force attachment OR income and benefits have to be uncoupled from whatever randomly determined attachment that individuals happen to acquire. What has been occuring instead is an INCREASED reliance on increasingly meaningless (to productivity) criteria of hours of work, job tenure and individual performance. What this means in practice is not "reward commensurate with contribution" but a winner take all lottery. regards, Tom Walker http://www.vcn.bc.ca/timework/worksite.htm
Re: FW: DOWN AMONG THE ECONOMISTS
lsively* as the symptom of their professional neurotic disorder. Sure, it would be nice if we could "cure" the economists, but what does this say about the rest of us -- submitting passively to a disease-inducing "treatment" administered by certified crackpots? To be fair to the economists, they are after all only the mouthpieces (and eventually the scapegoats?) for an enormous collective repression. And not just simple repression -- but SURPLUS repression. As Herbert Marcuse wrote, "Civilization has to defend itself against the spector of a world which could be free." "[T]he closer the real possibility of liberating the individual from the constraints once justified by scarcity and immaturity, the greater the need for maintaining and streamlining these constraints lest the established order of domination dissolve." regards, Tom Walker http://www.vcn.bc.ca/timework/worksite.htm
Re: FAQ:Economics
Thanks to Paul Dumais for the question and to Wes for the answer. I also couldn't quite follow the contoller logic but wasn't able to figure what I didn't understand about it, I could figure out the fixed overhead cost part but not the "bi-stability" part. I think this is a very useful illustration that reminds me in some respects of M. King Hubbert's analysis of petroleum extraction. At 09:48 AM 7/3/99 EDT, [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: 2, To: WesBurt, From: Paul Dumais Q: You wrote in your post of 99-06-29: I corrected my mistake the way our bankers create money, with the stroke of a pen, by drawing a straight line on the chart from the unit cost ($/KWH) at design output, back to a slightly lower unit cost ($/KWH) at the no load or minimum output on the chart. QUESTION # 2 You said above that the cost ($/KWH) declined as the output of the boiler reached designed output. How then can you draw a line from the unit cost at design output to a slightly -lower- unit cost at the no load end of the chart? How does the straight line help you to compute the optimum dispatch? Does this line (the straight one) somehow account for variable costs that were not included in your cost data? A: Every capital asset will have certain fixed cost associated with it such as mortgage payments and no-load (no output) operating costs. Those capital assets which produce a product will have, in addition to its fixed costs, variable costs roughly proportional to output. The decision to build the asset in the first place, or get it up to temperature and on-line in the second place, are decisions that cannot be decided by the current markrt price for the product. On the other hand, once the asset is on line, only the variable costs can be logically involved in deciding how much output the asset can produce at unit costs ($/KWh) less than the current unit cost of power from all other assets presently on-line. Most productive assets will have a lower variable unit cost at their design output, than at lower outputs, and higher variable unit costs above the design output. But, a logical controller (the chart I was discussing) automated to move the asset from its minimum output, to its design output, and then into its overload range up to some set limit, as the market price rises, and back again as the market price declines, must have a control characteristic with an upward slope over the whole range of output. If the control characteristic sloped downward with increasing output, as I had first drawn the chart, the asset would be bi-stable under automatic control. At a certain rising price (A), it would move rapidly to near full output, without regard for the actual output needed to hold frequency and the scheduled net-exchange of power over the tie-lines constant. When the demand for power was falling and bringing the price down to near the design cost (below A) the asset's output under automatic control would move rapidly to the minimum, again without regard for the actual output needed to hold frequency and the scheduled net-exchange of power. This type of malfunction on power systems gives rise to trade disputes between interconnected power companies, just as failure to stabilize national economies gives rise to trade disputes among nations in a global economy. Power companies hold such malfunctions to a minimum, nations refuse to do so. Like the stroke of a banker's pen, that straight line on the chart would ignore no-load losses, which cannot be eliminated and do indeed make the asset less efficient at low outputs, in order to have a stable control characteristic over the whole range of output for each productive asset in the system. Most of the time, the optimum dispatch involves loading the plants in order of their unit cost at design output. When two or more plants have their straight lines at the same cost level they will share increments of additional demand between them until they reach the upper limits. If additional plants at higher cost were not put on-line in time to carry the next higher increment of demand, the local automatic dispatching system will experience run away inflation of the price index, low system frequency, and excessive incomming power over the tie-lines. Only rising variable unit costs can be used to compute an optimum dispatch of multiple productive assets. That is to say, that all productive assets serving a particular market must exhibit constant or decreasing returns to scale before the market mechanism can converge to an optimum allocation of resources, just as Henry Carter Adams said in his 1887 monograph, RELATION OF THE STATE TO INDUSTRIAL ACTION, Vol. I, American Evonomic Review. ~ regards, Tom Walker http://www.vcn.bc.ca/timework/worksite.htm
TimeWork Web: four years online
http://www.vcn.bc.ca/timework/worksite.htm June 29, 1995 - June 29, 1999 Here's what they say about the TimeWork Web: "Il s'agit d'un site particulièrement riche et bien fait autour du thème du temps de travail en général, et de sa réduction en particulier." - Gilles L. Bourque, Association d'économie politique, Université du Québec à Montréal. "Onderzoek naar levensvatbare beleidsopties voor arbeidstijdverkorting en herverdeling van arbeid gericht op terugbrengen van werkloosheid. Houdt zich ook bezig met het opbouwen van een achterban voor dergelijke politieke opties." - Albert Benschop, Sociology Department, University of Amsterdam. "LAVORARE MENO, LAVORARE TUTTI: Da qualche tempo si sta diffondendo una nuova filosofia che cerca di studiare nuove forme per l'economia e per la società in generale. Si fa, in particolare, riferimento alla riduzione dell'orario di lavoro per svolgere attività socialmente utili. Molto materiale su questi aspetti si trova su Time Work Web." - TQS Soluzioni, Italy. "TimeWork Web: Informationen zum Thema Arbeitszeit" - Robert Neunteufel, Bildungsabteilung der Arbeiterkammer, Graz, Austria. "This is the official home page of the Shorter Work Time Network of Canada, and is a mine of information and internet links related to work and working time. The TimeWork Web was launched in June 1995, and is both a research facility and an activist organizing site." - The Jobs Research Trust, New Zealand. regards, Tom Walker http://www.vcn.bc.ca/timework/worksite.htm
Re: Easing Transition to Cybereconomy
osit surplus labour, but rather the general reduction of the necessary labour of society to a minimum, which then corresponds to the artistic, scientific etc. development of the individuals in the time set free, and with the means created, for all of them."? regards, Tom Walker http://www.vcn.bc.ca/timework/worksite.htm
Re: Easing Transition to Cybereconomy
Thomas Lunde wrote: 1. Reduce the length of the work-week (4 day) The problem with this idea and believe me, I spent a year arguing for as is and did, Tom Walker. Most eloquently. Business is not going to buy it, government is not going to legislate it and those who are working and enjoying their paycheques are not going to support it. It's easy to be discouraged by the surface appearance of no movement on this issue. But this is a seismic issue and the tectonic plates are moving along quite nicely, thank you very much. Al Gore's presidential campaign obviously did some polling and conducted focus groups on the issue and guess what? The "time deficit" came out on top of their spinner scope as a hot-button item. Here's the punch line of Gore's announcement speech: "We have closed our budget deficit. But today, we find a deficit of even greater danger, one that only seems to deepen the harder we work, and the better we do. "These are our deficits now: the time deficit in family life; the decency deficit in our common culture; the care deficit for our little ones and our elderly parents. Our families are loving but over-stretched." In my debate with Jock Finlayson of the B.C. Business Council 82% of respondents (latest count) agreed that we would be better off with a four-day week. What impressed me about that margin was: 1. it continued to widen long after the initial announcement of the poll -- the earlier published result was 79% in favour. 2. the magazine is funded by a right-wing foundation and leans mildly to the libertarian right. Like I said: this is the seismic issue. When those plates let go, the earth is going to shake. "After all their idle sophistry, there is, thank God! no means of adding to the wealth of a nation but by adding to the facilities of living: so that wealth is liberty -- liberty to seek recreation -- liberty to enjoy life -- liberty to improve the mind: it is disposable time, and nothing more." -- anonymous, The Source and Remedy of the National Difficulties, 1821. regards, Tom Walker http://www.vcn.bc.ca/timework/worksite.htm
FW: Class warfare in the information age [annotation]
PERELMAN, MICHAEL. Class warfare in the information age. New York: St. Martin's Press, 1998, Pp. 154. $35.00. ISBN 0-312-17758-5. Examines the reciprocal relationship between class structure and information technology. Considers the extravagant claims about the revolutionary nature of the coming information age. Contends that, for the most part, the information technologies are not being applied to improve the quality of life; rather, they are being used to perfect command and control processes, often at the expense of the wellbeing of workers. Examines information and the control of the labor process, arguing that information processes should be used to develop and engage the technological potential of all employees. Describes the contradiction of exploited informational labor: that command and control management is self-defeating under conditions where a single error in a massive computer program can cause a disaster. Explains why the use of information as a commodity necessitates a more intrusive government to protect intellectual property rights. Indicates how the new information technologies are also used to exert control of the general population outside of the workplace. Analyzes how the growth of intellectual property rights undermines the growth of science and technology, thereby restricting the potential of the information economy. Demonstrates that markets are poorly equipped to manage the production and exchange of information. Suggests ways that the technologies of the supposed information revolution could be turned to good purpose. Perelman is Professor of Economics at California State University, Chico. regards, Tom Walker www.vcn.bc.ca/timework/worksite.htm
TimeWork face lift
To celebrate the fourth anniversary online of the TimeWork Web, I've updated its internal navigation and uploaded several research papers that haven't previously been available on the web. The new papers include one on trade union contract costing and a qualitative survey of attitudes toward work time. My personal favourite is "Stop the Clock", based on a pop-up graphic montage that was voted Audience Favourite at the 1998 Art of the Book Exhibition in Vancouver www.vcn.bc.ca/timework/wallet.htm. The internal contents page www.vcn.bc.ca/timework/compol.htm now includes the following entries: - How "Growth" Economics Killed the Standard of Living - S.J. Chapman's Theory of the Hours of Labour - The Prosperity Covenant: how reducing work time really works to create jobs - What would happen if . . . we had a four-day work week? - Rewarding Years of Service with More Free Time - Contract Costing and the Campaign for Reduced Working Time - Hours of Work: Moving Beyond Gridlock - Close the Overtime Loophole! - A Day in the Life of a Policy Scavenger - What Governments Can Do - Bruce O'Hara - A Work Spreading Tax - David Chapman - A Re-Election Strategy - Bruce O'Hara - Sabbath of the Land or Utopia of Work? - Lost Time: Time, Work and Family - The Case for Shorter Work Time - Bruce O'Hara - Canadians' Views on Working Time? - Business and Labour: Missing the Point? - TimeWork Research Prospectus - Stop the Clock (a pop-up graphic montage) - FUTUREWORK/METAMORPHOSIS The home page now includes quick links to (click on the asterisk*): BetterTimes Newsletter 32 Hours - Toronto 32 Hours - Guelph Shorter Work Time Pages Phil Hyde's "Timesizing" 30-Hour Work Week If you find the TimeWork Web links and articles useful, informative and thought provoking please spread the word. regards, Tom Walker www.vcn.bc.ca/timework/worksite.htm
Re: FW: Chaotic Systems vs. Created Unequal
le of its rulers contracts,
as a more exclusive interest is maintained against a wider one. Every
demand of the simplest bourgeois financial reform, of the most ordinary
liberalism, of the most formal republicanism, of the most shallow
democracy, is simultaneously castigated as an 'attempt on society' and
stigmatized as 'socialism.' And finally the high priests of 'religion
and order' themselves are driven with kicks from their Pythian tripods,
hauled out of their beds in the darkness of night, put in prison vans,
thrown into dungeons or sent into exile; their temple is razed to the
ground, their mouths are sealed, their pens broken, their law torn to
pieces in the name of religion, of property, of the family, of order.
Bourgeois fanatics for order are shot down on their balconies by mobs
of drunken soldiers, their domestic sanctuaries profaned, their houses
bombarded for amusement -- in the name of property, of the family, of
religion, and of order. Finally, the scum of bourgeois society forms
the holy phalanx of order and the hero Crapulinski installs himself in
the Tuileries as the 'savior of society.'"
So much for spontaneous order.
slime' mold n.
1. any of various funguslike organisms
belonging to the phylum Myxomycota of
the kingdom Protista, characterized by a
somatic ameboid phase and a streaming
phase in which the separate organisms
merge and produce spore-bearing fruiting
bodies. Also called myxomycete.
scum (skum) n.
1. a. a film or layer of foul matter that
forms on the surface of a liquid.
b. a film of algae on still or stagnant
water: pond scum.
regards,
Tom Walker
www.vcn.bc.ca/timework/worksite.htm
Re: FW: Chaotic Systems vs. Created Unequal
There may be something to Bob McDaniel's analogy between free markets and amoebas after all. A lot of the "good old days" building code regulations were weakened in Vancouver and many entrepreneurs saw through and exploited the opportunities. The result? Leaky condos and lots of SLIME MOLD. Now if Bob would explain to the purchasers of those moldy condos that they are dwelling in SPONTANEOUS ORDER and don't really have a damp, smelly, unhealthy and expensive PROBLEM on their hands I'm sure they would be a lot happier. Granted that economic order is not linear. But it takes more than "vision" to see the "awesome diversity, beauty and balance" in slime mold. It also takes a heap of distance, indifference and abstraction that comes with believing one is exempt from the real consequences of the idealizations and utopias one extolls. Free markets were a utopia before Karl Marx was born. They will always be a utopia, no more realizable than "perfect communism". People will always try to impose linear solutions on non-linear "order" when that order threatens to disrupt the accustomed order of their lives. The word "order" doesn't mean precisely what the Humpty-Dumpty Hayekians want it to mean. The spontaneous order argument, following from Hayek, assumes that price performs the function of coordinating diverse wants and scarce resources -- sort of like the amoeba's AMP molecules. The problem for Hayek's argument is that people are conscious of the coordinating role of prices and as a consequence IF THEY CAN they expend more effort distorting prices than they do adjusting supply or demand to "spontaneous" prices. Such activity may be "irrational" from the perspective of system efficiency and even of long run personal interest, but as Keynes said, in the long run we're all dead. Preaching the superior efficiency and rationality of free markets is no different than preaching the superior efficiency and rationality of centralized planning -- they're both preaching. The really objectionable thing about free market preaching is that it is done and financed to an enormous extent by the military-industrial and financial recipients of state privilege and monopoly. The big pigs are not opposed to their own feeding at the trough of state subsidies, they are only opposed "in principle" to little pigs getting any. Follow the money. Next time Mobil or McDonnell-Douglas or Banc America croons to you about the "magic of the marketplace" ask 'em how much they spent last year on lobbyists and political campaign contributions. And it's true, the amoebic bodies of the politicians, defense contractors, banks and oil companies do seem to stream toward each other until they merge into one big slime mold. PART VI: FEEDBACK LOOPS AND FREE MARKETS Chapter 23: Spontaneous Order 1.A slime mold is just one phase in the lifecycle of an amoeba species. Since an amoeba moves so slowly, as soon as it has engulfed all the bacteria within immediate reach, it begins to starve. But instead of curling up to die, it pumps out pulses of a chemical distress call, cyclical AMP. 2.Nearby amoebas sense the AMP molecules. They respond by moving toward the source of the chemical wave and emit their own pulses of cyclical AMP. As many as 100,000 amoebas stream toward each other until their bodies merge together into a slime mold. 3.The slime mold fascinates us because it challenges our deepest intuitions about consciousness and control. The slime mold's self organization makes us face the ultimate question: is it really possible that an unconscious, spontaneous phenomenon brought forth a natural world of such awesome diversity, beauty and balance? 4.The notion that no one is in control - that economic order spontaneously emerges from the chaotic interactions of millions of individuals and firms -is quite hard to swallow. 5.Feedback-loop equations are "nonlinear." Instead of steady curves, nonlinear formulas generate wildly erratic, zigzagging lines. Few bothered to crunch these numbers because of the unpredictability of nonlinear equations makes the effort pointless. The great tragedy in this is the most natural phenomena are nonlinear. Much of physics, most of chemistry, and all of biology falls outside linear science. 6.Chaos is not disorder, it is a higher form of order. Chaos covers everything that seems to be disorderly but in fact adheres to underlying patterns. The weather is a perfect example. 7.A diseased heart beats with extreme regularity. It is the healthy heart that beats chaotically. Brain waves of the mentally healthy are chaotic, while those of an epileptic during a seizure are regular. 8.Instead of viewing the body as a remarkably complex machine controlled by the brain, new scientists see a collection of 10,000 billion cells incessantly conversing via chemical messages. 9.A market is something more than a sequence of independent trades. A market represents the collective
Re: FW: Chaotic Systems vs. Created Unequal
Eva Durant wrote: Free markets were a utopia before Karl Marx was born. They will always be a utopia, no more realizable than "perfect communism". Lucky then, that Marx was never teaching or researching any such concept... Quite the contrary, Marx was an outspoken critic of bourgeois utopian socialism. In fact, that was one of his major contributions to political theory. It's called historical materialism. How about planning with democracy and thus free flow of information? With the mixture of local and global integrated and sustainable use of resourses? Sorry, there is no third way, the mechanism of capitalism is not able to cope with the demands on it, it cannot turn the human face, even if we anthropomorphise it and imagine than it wants to... Planning with democracy SOUNDS LIKE a good ideal, but then so does the free market. It is the distinction between this ideal and the actual conditions of life that make such turns of phrase "ideological". If there is no "third way", it is only because there was no First way nor Second way. There are rather as many different ways as human vulnerability, ingenuity and endurance can invent. Utopian socialism and the fetishism of the commodity (which Marx saw as the core of classical bourgeois economics) erected barriers to understanding and changing society.
Re:FW:Chaotic Systems vs. Created Unequal
Bob McDaniel wrote, The above comments reflect what is amiss with the present economic system but say nothing about the system which may be emerging, beyond perhaps implying it'll be more of the same. We should value those thinkers who attempt to get a handle on the new system by exploring new metaphors and their implications. -- snip -- But now to massive numbers and the speed of light must be added rapid, if not convulsive (intra-generational) change, leading us to seek the insights of catastrophe theory, chaos theory, fuzzy logic and multimedia (sound, video, graphics, geographical information systems (GIS)) based methods of pattern recognition. It is probably true that the transnational corporations which are building the infrastructure of the emerging system will fade away as they become increasingly irrelevant. The present system of nation-states appears destined for a similar fate. There's a large difference between catastrophe theory, chaos theory and fuzzy logic on the one hand and the vague use of these terms as metaphors on the other hand. Although the theories may be new the resulting metaphors are strikingly anachronistic. The metaphors suggesting awesome, rapid, convulsive change were tediously popular among hack writers in the 1960s. I happen to know this because I've done narrative analysis of some of that 1960s sludge. Here's a short quote from 1967: "As man casts off from the bonds of earthbound knowledge and soars to new intellectual heights, he must unlearn as well as learn. Only yesterday the atom was thought to be immutable unit of matter; now it has been split, with consequences both fearful and wonderful. And learned scholars, considering strange rays of light, again dispute a question once believed settled -- the very origin of the universe." Actually, Bob, you should have a good look at the Ed Wood movie, Plan Nine from Outer Space, there's a lot of this kind of woo-woo verbiage in it, too -- along with zombies and Ed Wood's wife's chiropractor pretending to be Bela Lugosi. regards, Tom Walker www.vcn.bc.ca/timework/worksite.htm
SPECIAL INTERESTS PUSH OUT PUBLIC INTEREST TELECOMMUNICATIONS (fwd)
The Los Angeles Times Tuesday, June 1, 1999 SPECIAL INTERESTS PUSH OUT PUBLIC INTEREST TELECOMMUNICATIONS The industry practically wrote the 1996 law, so why be surprised that it works in industry's favor. By Robert Scheer Who's watching the store? In 1996, when Congress passed the Telecommunications Act and President Clinton signed it into law, my curiosity was aroused. There were such long lines of lobbyists and their ilk outside the meeting rooms where markups of the bill were taking place that something important had to be going on. Yet every time I tried to read the bill, I was confused and bored. The language of the legislation was tortured in a way that only lobbyists could love. They had crafted the bill, wrangling over each sentence, while congressional staffers, who often privately admitted they lacked expertise, only pretended to preserve the public interest. "During the debate on the communications bill, everyone was protected but the consumer," said Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.). "I saw senators leave the room to ask special interests how to vote." Those special interests got heard because they are major sponsors of the game called representative democracy. Cable and local telephone companies alone gave $22.8 million in political contributions during the five years leading up to the passage of the Telecommunications Act, which rewrote the ground rules for their industries. That money "helped buy them a seat at the table when the groundbreaking Telecommunications Act of 1996 was being negotiated," reports the lobbyist monitoring group Common Cause. "So it isn't surprising that the bill, which was supposed to make telecommunications industries more competitive and more responsive to consumer needs, hasn't worked out that way." In the wake of the act, ownership of the broadcast industry has been more concentrated and cable TV and pay phone rates have soared. The biggest news is something called "convergence," in which telecommunications giants are fighting over the communications superhighway of the future. For example, the recent ATT bid for MediaOne, with the assistance of Microsoft, has enormous implications for the future of democracy because it will determine the parameters of a family's access to news and entertainment. But the mass media we count on to cover these mergers have an inherent conflict of interest in being an integral part of the very industry they are reporting on. The public interest is represented, barely, by the FCC, which is swamped by these changes and is hobbled by an outmoded structure built in the days when most of what is now called telecommunications didn't even exist. A clear example of the FCC's failure to act in the public interest concerns the mismanagement of phone number allocations, which has resulted in endless splitting and overlaying of area codes throughout the country at considerable expense and inconvenience to consumers. Following an outmoded model, which made sense when there was only one phone company, the FCC continued to allocate phone numbers in inefficient blocks of 10,000 whenever asked. The old Ma Bell had no need to hoard numbers it didn't use because it had no competition. But now there are hundreds of phone companies competing for this public resource, phone numbers, and the FCC continued to distribute them in the old way without any requirement that unused numbers be returned. Consequently a false shortage was created, causing the near doubling of area codes. Last week, in a formal notice of rulings, the FCC conceded that less than 50% of the allocated numbers were in actual use. The FCC chairman predicted that the current system if not changed would produce "a catastrophe in the future." If it is not fixed, the problem would cost between $50 billion and $150 billion to rectify, according to the FCC. Fortunately, in response to a public outcry and the appeal by five states' regulatory agencies, the FCC initiated the process of mandating that the phone companies report on the number of phone numbers in use and to return the unused ones for redistribution. But the lesson in this good news is that the FCC was very slow to act and is struggling to stay on top of a vast and infinitely complex telecommunications industry. That industry is using public resources, be it broadcast spectrum or phone numbers, and the FCC needs to renew its commitment to do its public monitoring job. We also need elected representatives and media willing to critically follow these complex issues so the public can learn in a timely fashion if the common good is being betrayed for the benefit of those who can buy influence through advertising and campaign contributions. Robert Scheer Is a Times Contributing Editor.
Re: From a A Cathedral to a Bazaar
Mike, The question really isn't whether the proposed model is more appealing than the existing model. The questions are: whether the proposed model can work as well or better in any number of diverse circumstances; and whether the model can be implemented in those circumstances with anything approaching fidelity. The easiest thing in the world is to give things new labels -- jack up the hierarchy and call it interactive. Impose self-monitoring (confession) and call it self-management. If labeling can make it so, why bother with the bazaar, why not go straight to paradise? Anecdotal evidence isn't good enough. Comparing Eaton's and Amazon.com or Drudge and the NYT begs so many questions it's hard to know where to begin. Without a controlled experiment and an explicit hypothesis we can't draw conclusions about the role that different structures of governance played in the success of one enterprise and the failure of the other. Some people get rich by buying lottery tickets. Does that mean that everybody could get rich if they bought lottery tickets? The Cathedral/Bazaar contrast leaves me without an image of the good life. What it offers instead is a technical solution of the good process. Presumably, once we've established the appropriate procedures for selecting the ends (and the means to those ends), those procedures will lead to good ends. Not so. Structural reforms can as easily vomit up political cyphers like Clinton and Blair, who since they stand for nothing drift aimlessly until they have to retroactively justify the place that aimless drift has taken them. Then, with a stroke, the iron fist is substituted for the bazaar (for "reasons of state"). What's left of the bazaar with the likes of Wesley Clark, Robin Cook and Jamie Shea manning the booths, calling the shots and doctoring the spin? regards, Tom Walker http://www.vcn.bc.ca/timework/covenant.htm
Re: From a A Cathedral to a Bazaar
Michael Gurstein wrote: Also centralized planning works best when you happen to be at the centre (cf. Mr. Gates and Mr. Broz), for the rest of us, at the ends of pipelines of diminishing dimensions, co-ordinated networks are much preferred (and in the end probably deliver the code (and the black bread) better than C3 systems). I think this is where the discussion needs to begin: 1. can networks be co-ordinated without being SUB-ordinated? 2. could such co-ordinated networks serve as a good model for the state? The historical evidence suggests "sometimes" and "no". The reason networks don't serve as a good model for the state is that participation in a network presupposes and rewards conformism to a higher degree than does hierarchy. Your boss may order you to wear a suit, but your colleagues will ostracize you for wearing the wrong brand of running shoes. More to the point, they will ostracize you for being either too articulate or inarticulate. As Groucho Marx said, "I wouldn't want to be a member of a club that would have me as a member." The dictates of conformism are inconsistent, unpredictable and often retroactive. Ultimately, the unrelieved psychic pressure of spontaneous conformity fosters the desire for "order" -- that is to say, hierarchy. "I'll do what I'm told, if only someone would just tell me what to do!" When George Orwell reviewed Hayek's The Road to Serfdom in 1944 he paired it with a book about imperialism, unemployment and war, The Mirror of the Past, by a left-wing Labour M.P., Konni Zilliacus. "Taken together, these two books give grounds for dismay. The first of them is an eloquent defence of laissez-faire capitalism, the other is an even more vehement denunciation of it. They cover to some extent the same ground, they frequently quote the same authorities, and they even start out with the same premise, since each of them assumes that Western civilization depends on the sanctity of the individual. Yet each writer is convinced that the other's policy leads directly to slavery, and the alarming thing is that they may both be right..." regards, Tom Walker http://www.vcn.bc.ca/timework/covenant.htm
Suggestions
At 06:24 PM 5/27/99 +0100, Suggestions wrote: Thanks for your message. We don't have any immediate plans for a Forum, but we shall probably have one on the site next year some time. In the meanwhile, I have forwarded your message to our Economics Editor. Yours, Anthony Gottlieb Anthony Gottlieb Executive Editor THE ECONOMIST Tom Walker [EMAIL PROTECTED] 5/26/99 8:27:14 pm In your recent mailing announcing new features at the economist site, I didn't notice any mention of a public discussion forum, such as some magazine sites have. I have a specific issue with the Economist's analysis that I would like to raise in a public forum. Frequently in the past, the Economist has readily referred to the "lump-of-labour fallacy" as a kind of one size fits all rebuttal to calls for reduced worktime (at last count, the Economist has made the LoL reference 8 times since 1993). The fallacy of the "Theory of the Lump of Labour" actually has "nothing to do with the length of the working day" according to its original critic, David F. Schloss in his 1891 article on "Why Working Men Dislike Piece-Rates". The transference of the Lump-of-Labour fallacy to the turn of the century issue of the Eight-Hours Day occured some ten years later in connection with a vile piece of anti-trade union propaganda run in the London Times under the heading of "The Crisis in British Industry" and purportedly based on information supplied by the publicist for a scab labour contractor. In other words, the current usage of the "lump-of-labour fallacy" has all the scholarly respectibility of Piltdown Man or Cyril Burt's I.Q. studies of twins. At least you are in good company. For 50 years in his introductory textbook, Paul Samuelson has ritually referred to the lump-of-labour fallacy in rebuttal to demands for a shorter work week. He can't give exact sources, either. regards, Tom Walker http://www.vcn.bc.ca/timework/covenant.htm regards, Tom Walker http://www.vcn.bc.ca/timework/covenant.htm
Re: From a A Cathedral to a Bazaar
Are you saying what we need is more "school spirit"? It seems to me that the cathedral/bazaar dichotomy simply gives a kitsch veneer to the well-entrenched neo-liberal critique of centralized planning. I happen to appreciate parts of that critique, but only the negative parts. I gaze at your list of positive features . . . transparency flexibility interactivity immediacy multi-nodality and network interoperability . . . and frankly wonder where is a Diogenes in this scheme? Where is a Goethe or a Dante or a Nicolai Bukharin, for that matter. In other words, I don't see any passion for ideas, only an incessant reconfiguration of positions. Somehow this kind of rearranging of deck chairs might be more palatable if it was accompanied by an expanding public expenditure. But I've had my fill of post-it note brain storming on how to cope in a world of diminishing expectations. Sorry to be so sour. I have a toothache. regards, Tom Walker http://www.vcn.bc.ca/timework/covenant.htm
Rehabilitation of S.J. Chapman's Hours
I've transcribed the technical footnote to S.J. Chapman's "Hours of Labour" (Economic Journal, Sept. 1909) and posted it on the web at http://www.vcn.bc.ca/timework/chapman.htm I've also broken down the cluttered explanatory figure Chapman presented in the footnote into four colourful, step-by-step graphs. Until sometime in the 1930's, Chapman's analysis was considered the "classical statement on the theory of 'hours' in a free market" (J.R. Hicks, 1932). Then it virtually 'disappeared' from the economics discourse. Please forward this announcement to other lists, scholars and individuals concerned about employment, equity, working conditions, economic growth, productivity, social justice and intellectual freedom. regards, Tom Walker http://www.vcn.bc.ca/timework/covenant.htm
Re: Black holes
Thinking about cold war, social rot and the dilemma of productivity will lead us around and around in circles until we understand that "most of what we thought we knew is wrong." I'm not talking about some kind of conspiracy theory or secret history of the world concealed from the masses but known to controlling elites. What I'm referring to is the unavoidable human activity of constructing and projecting narrative historical frames out of snapshots of partial information. We need those meta-narratives to make sense of the world, but we soon forget that they are/were provisional. The stories -- composed of one part fact and nine parts conjecture -- take on a life of their own and eventually make nonsense of our experience. When we think of the cold war, we associate it with the names of Khruschev and Kennedy; not Lange, Samuelson, Robbins and von Mises. We think of the ICBM, not the GDP. That is, when we think of the cold war, we remember the headlines and celebrities, not the deep structures and the legacies. Most of what we thought we knew is wrong. What we always need to do is revise "history" from the perspective of the present. We seldom do that. Instead we cling to uprooted conceptual "guideposts" that not only mislead us about the past and the present but persuade us to repudiate whatever brief flashes of insight we stumble across. We tell ourselves, "That can't be true; I've never heard it before." "The ideas of economists and political philosophers, both when they are right and when they are wrong, are more powerful than is commonly understood. Indeed the world is ruled by little else. Practical men, who believe themselves to be quite exempt from any intellectual influences, are usually the slaves of some defunct economist. Madmen in authority, who hear voices in the air, are distilling their frenzy from some academic scribbler of a few years back . . . soon or late, it is ideas, not vested interests, which are dangerous for good or evil." The quotation is from John Maynard Keynes' _General Theory of Employment, Interest and Money_. But most people who have read or heard the quote before have never held Keynes' book in their hand. The quotation was presented as an epigraph at the beginning of the first chapter of Paul A. Samuelson's introductory textbook _Economics_. For all the celebrity lustre of Keynes' name, it was Samuelson's interpretation of Keynes that became the core of what we retrospectively regard as "Keynesianism". Similarly, for all the evocative authority of Marx's name, it was Lenin's, Bukharin's and eventually Lange's interpretations of centralized state planning that came to stand for "Marxism". All of the terms in our current thinking about economics have, since the 1930s, been refracted through a narrow lens of calculability. Markets, social welfare, economic growth, planning, full employment, competition, productivity, equity and efficiency mean precisely what the Humpty-Dumpty econometricians of the 1930s wanted them to mean. For the first twenty years of its publication, the journal Econometrica featured Lord Kelvin's dictum that science is measurement on its title page. Had they been dadaists, the editors of the journal would have juxtaposed this assertion about science with Kelvin's other claim that heavier-than-air flying machines were impossible. In their zeal to portray themselves as objective scientists -- and as 19th century scientists, at that -- economists adopted a yo-yo as their measuring rod. In the 1968 Canadian edition of Samuelson and Scott, chapter 37, the Theory of Growth, begins with the epigraph from Lord Kelvin: ". . . when you can measure what you are speaking about, and express it in numbers, you know something about it; but when you cannot measure it, when you cannot express it in numbers, your knowledge is of a meager and unsatisfactory kind. It may be the beginning of knowledge, but you have scarcely, in your thoughts, advanced to the stage of science. . ." The reification of economic growth -- its deification, really -- relies on a sleight of hand. The yo-yo value of labour time is "conveniently supposed", as a "simple book-keeping artifice" to be a unit of definite and measurable dimensions. I call labour time a "yo-yo value" because the value of labour time becomes larger and smaller and changes direction from negative to positive and back again to negative according to the variation of the length of the usual working day. At this moment, when "impossible" heavier-than-air flying machines rain death on random bus passengers in Kosovo, it might be worth reconsidering the powerful ideas of the defunct economists whose hubris told them they could take the measure of things they couldn't comprehend. Truly, "Madmen in authority, who hear voices in the air, are distilling their frenzy from some academic scribbler o
How Iatrogenic Economics Killed the Standard of Living
I've posted a draft of part one of this essay at: http://www.vcn.bc.ca/timework/satanic.htm How Iatrogenic Economics Killed the Standard of Living "Any prescribed set of ends is grist for the economist's unpretentious deductive mill, and often he can be expected to reveal that the prescribed ends are incomplete and inconsistent. The social welfare function is a concept as broad and empty as language itself -- and as necessary." -- Paul Samuelson 'And was Jerusalem builded here Among these dark Satanic Mills?' -- William Blake Introduction When Alfred Marshall coined the phrase, "standard of living" in 1891, he did so to distinguish between "a mere increase of artificial wants, among which perhaps the grosser wants may predominate" and "an increase of intelligence, and energy and self-respect; leading to more care and judgment in expenditure". Marshall saw a "great diminution" in the hours of labour as a necessary condition of an increase in the standard of living, concluding that, "a general reduction of the hours of labour is likely to cause a little net material loss and much moral good . . . " Eighteen years later, S. J. Chapman added "The ideal working day of the future cannot be eight hours, for it must essentially be a progressive ideal." Remarkably, these observations from turn of the century "bourgeois economists" converged with Karl Marx's claim that "the limitation of the working day is a preliminary condition without which all further attempts at improvement and emancipation must prove abortive." Neo-classical economic set aside such visions of social progress by insisting that a reduction in the hours of labour could only come about as a result of an increase of artificial wants and of the output to fill those wants. That is a lie -- a baseless, circular lie. The prescription of economic growth that follows inevitably from that lie is iatrogenic . That is, the treatment induces injury. More of the same medicine is prescribed for the injury and the patient gets sicker and sicker. continued at http://www.vcn.bc.ca/timework/satanic.htm regards, Tom Walker http://www.vcn.bc.ca/timework/covenant.htm
Re: The GENERAL THEORY for LOSING GROUND
I can agree with most of what Wes says, but I can't agree with the "evil minority" thesis. I think that's a viciously circular argument that ends up deputizing an "evil minority" to rid us of the "evil minority". William Blake spoke instead of "dark Satanic Mills", which refers to the utilitarian calculus that is the precise mathematical negation of the biblical-economic principles Wes is promoting. Paul Samuelson is undoubtedly the greatest modern-day proselytizer for the Satanic Mill. But reading his books I can't help but get the impression of a sincere, compassionate human being wanting to do good. I get the impression as much as anything from the prominent clues he leaves at the scene of the crime shouting, in effect, "I can't help myself. Somebody, please, stop me before I kill again." I can prescribe a reading list of five published articles that supply all the technical information needed to "deconstruct" the general theory for losing ground. How many readers would consider salvation worth the risk of wasting a few days of their precious time tracking down and reading such a curriculum as preparation for a debate on architecture of "these dark Satanic Mills"? How many more would dismiss the very word "salvation" as archaically unscientific compared to, say, "revealed consumer preference"? D.F. Schloss, Why Working-Men Dislike Piece-Work E. Barone, The Ministry of Production in the Collectivist State S.J. Chapman, Hours of Labour A. Bergson, A Reformation of Certain Aspects of Welfare Economics T. Scitovsky, The State of Welfare Economics regards, Tom Walker http://www.vcn.bc.ca/timework/covenant.htm
Re: 30-hour week in the 1930s
Robert, For information about the legislation and its defeat, see Benjamin Hunnicutt's Work without End. For a longer term history of the struggle for shorter work time see Roediger and Foner's Our Own Time. For an account of the disappearance of serious worktime theory from economics see Nyland's Reduced Worktime and the Management of Production. For an upcoming expose of how these events leave a trail of clues that lead to an indictment of the logical and mathematical integrity of mainstream post-war economics, stay tuned to Futurework. I'm working on it. A sketchy preview for those who have followed my earlier lump-of-labour postings: Paul Samuelson's _Foundations of Economic Analyis_, more specifically the social welfare function described in that book, turns out to stand on a "lump-of-labour fallacy" committed in 1908 by Enrico Barone in the construction of a social welfare calculus and then uncritically appropriated in 1938 by Abram Bergson in his social welfare function. Talk about having "feet of clay". Mainstream economics stands on the foundation of a lump. The section in edition after edition of the Samuelson textbook on the lump-of-labour fallacy may perhaps be seen as a kind of "stop me before I kill again" plea for someone to excavate his own untenable foundational myth. Hunnicutt, Benjamin Kline. Work without end : abandoning shorter hours for the right to work / Benjamin Kline Hunnicutt. Philadelphia : Temple University Press, 1988. Roediger, David R. Our own time : a history of American labor and the working day / David R. Roediger and Philip S. Foner. New York : Greenwood Press, c1989. Nyland, Chris. Reduced worktime and the management of production / Chris Nyland. Cambridge [England] ; New York : Cambridge University Press, 1989. At 08:11 PM 4/20/99 +0200, Neunteufel Robert wrote: I found the following short informations about a thirty-hours legislation in the USA in the 1930s in Juliet B. Shors book "The Overworked Amerikan" (page 74 /75). Can anyone on the FW-list give me more information about that legislation and the story of its failure? Are there any informations on the internet about this? Thank you for any comment, Robert Neunteufel, Styria, Austria, Europe personal homepage: http://members.EUnet.at/ro.neunteufel regards, Tom Walker http://www.vcn.bc.ca/timework/covenant.htm
Fwd: Cyber Song
| THE MODERN CYBER-CITIZEN'S SONG. By Marcus Bales. | |I am the very model of a modern cyber-netizen |All logic I dispense with, and all taste and manners jettison; |I'm found on TV, radio, and many other "medias" |But cyberspace is where I'm most particularly tedious. |I come in every stripe from the conservative to radical |And know it all except for how to spell or be grammatical. |I haven't got a clue about the use of logicality |And drivel on with made-up-factoid bargain-bin banality. |I flame opponents hairless from a dozen different pseudonyms, |Each one a ruder, lewder pun on Anglo-Saxon crudonyms, |And where I find civility and hot debate have been at ease |I break it up with spamming, flaming, scrolling and obscenities. |I'm ignorant in every field, poetic to statistical, |Which only makes my points of view more thoroughly sophistical; |My attitude's aggressive and my tone is sanctimonious, |My facts are bad, conclusions wrong, and arguments erroneous; |My posts are pure unparagraphed expressions of my vanity, |Impossible to parse except perhaps for the profanity. |I'm known for disputatiousness and other sorts of knavery |From purposeful mendacity to things yet more unsavory. |The places civil reason is accounted most iniquitous |Are places where you'll find me inescapably ubiquitous. |In short, all logic I reject, all taste and manners jettison |Because I am the model of a modern cyber-netizen! regards, Tom Walker http://www.vcn.bc.ca/timework/covenant.htm
Re: It's the (war) economy, stupid II
Subtitle: Why are we in Kosovo? The term "military Keynesianism" is a misnomer and authorizes a misleading reduction of the question of war economy to the relative size of appropriations for the military in the federal budget. Instead of speculating about the dimensions of a vague metaphor -- mK -- I suggest those interested in the question look at historically-specific texts. A war economy is predicated not on the proportion of miltary spending to the domestic product, but on the way in which productive capabilities and priorities are oriented to maximizing potential wartime output -- both military and *non-military* -- rather than to maximizing domestic welfare of the citizens. For starters, I can recommend the influential survey, published by the Twentieth Century Fund in 1947, _America's Needs and Resources_, by J. Frederic Dewhurst and Associates. The first chapter reviews the impact of the second world war on economic growth in the U.S. The rest of the book may be said to be an effort to "interpret wartime output in terms of peacetime productive probabilities." For those who want to go into depth, see Herman Somers (1950), _Presidential agency : OWMR, the Office of War Mobilization and Reconversion_. Here's a trivia question: what famous textbook author was in charge of war-time planning for continuing full employment at the National Resources Planning Board from 1941-1943 and was responsible for the economic and general planning program at the OWMR in 1945? An idea of how the issues of war mobilization and war reconversion seque into those of "peacetime industrial competitiveness" may be had by reading Edward F. Denison's (1962) _The Sources of Economic Growth in the United States and the Alternatives Before Us_, published by the Committee for Economic Development. There is a simple conceptual hinge to the war economy thinking -- the reduction of economic welfare to economic output. One can still detect in Dewhurst and in Denison a shadow of acknowledgement that welfare and output are not synonymous. But the acknowledgement is largely *en passant*. The lessons of war showed economic planners how to increase output, they didn't show them how to increase public welfare. They finessed the dilemma by simply assuming that any increase in output at least "implied" an increase in welfare. The assumption brazenly disregards marginalist economic theory. Today, the conventional wisdom scoffs at any suggestion that increased output doesn't necessarily lead to increased welfare. Say hello to the new war, same as the old war. It's the economy, stupid. regards, Tom Walker http://www.vcn.bc.ca/timework/covenant.htm
Re: It's the (war) economy, stupid I
Subtitle: Going down to Washington in civilian garb to find a wartime job or how I became chairman of the Economics Department "In 1941 came also a somewhat more important event, America's entry into war. I knew that the armed forces would not want me; I had a thyroid deficiency, and the device used a number of times later of applying for a commission and assignment to Washington or other post at which medications were dependably available did not occur to me. In any event I think that I would have seen no superior virtue in performing service in a military rather than civilian uniform. I went down to Washington, in civilian garb, to find a wartime job. "My first wartime employer was the National Resources Planning Board, where I was interviewed and my employment recommended by Paul Samuelson, who was a consultant to NRPB. "GNI and GNP data had come into full use in government by the end of the 1930s, but they had not come fully into the mental awareness of all economists. A small and unofficial part of my work in Washington in 1941 and 1942 consisted of explaining GNP concepts and analysis to some older economists who found some of the concepts baffling. "I aided Paul in the writing of a pamphlet that analyzed the effect of military and economic demobilization after World War I (during 1918-1920) on employment and income, and drew deductions concerning difficulties that might arise during demobilization after World War II. The pamphlet, After the War: 1918-1920, was published in 1943. Also, with Nora Kirkpatrick I wrote an article, published in the American Economic Review in the same year, on "The National Output at Full Employment in 1950." The forecast proved remarkably accurate, but for a reason that few economists would wish to duplicate. We appreciably underestimated the size of the labor force in 1950 and equally overestimated what the level of productivity would be in that year. "The long range work of NRPB, dear to the heart of Franklin Roosevelt, was not closely related to the war effort. NRPB was soon to be terminated, and I moved to one and then another agency that were doing work that in principle was important. In practice, however, both were marginal to the prosecution of the war, and I was delighted to be drafted (figuratively) to the small staff of Jimmy Byrnes at the Office of War Mobilization, the "domestic presidency." Byrnes had been asked by President Roosevelt to resign his seat on the Supreme Court to head the agency. "My functions were varied, some important, some unimportant. The Office of War Mobilization presently became the Office of War Mobilization and Reconversion. Among various pieces of work concerning reconversion to peace let me mention one general one. I asked economists of five other agencies to estimate the likely level and duration of unemployment as the war ended, Though my own unemployment estimate, for OWMR, was the lowest of the six, it too was considerably too high; OWMR found it possible to abandon programs tentatively considered. We had greatly underestimated the speed with which the country's industrial corporations would be able to turn from war production to production for the peacetime market. In a few cases, it seemed certain, the conversion was so speedy because the companies involved had violated the governmental injunction to devote no resources to preparation for peacetime production while their production was still wanted for war, but in the main we had simply underestimated the agility of the American industrial system. "During the war, state governments, to curb consumer expenditures somewhat, had maintained their tax rates at prewar levels even though expenditures required for social welfare and a number of other state functions had greatly shrunk. By the end of the war almost every state government had accumulated a large treasury balance. Many a state had plans to use the balance to place various state programs and agencies at the nation's forefront. To make the state university one of the nation's greatest was a frequent aim. Illinois had such an aim, and had asked Howard R. Bowen, an economist of some note in wartime Washington, to become dean of the School of Business and Economics to accomplish the purpose. Bowen offered me a professorship, and I moved to Urbana in 1948. In the 1949-50 school year he asked me to become chairman of the Economics Department." regards, Tom Walker http://www.vcn.bc.ca/timework/covenant.htm
Re: begging in Europe/plague in Thebes (fwd)
Dear Svetlana, The irony of my reply comes not from an elite enjoyment of exemption but from too intimate an identification with the work you do and how it relates to what you study. For years I wrote proposals, received funding and worked on research projects on social problems. Just as you do now. Then, five years ago, I had the misfortune of having two of my most important [provincially funded] institutional contacts de-funded at the same time as the Canadian federal government initiated large cutbacks in funding for research. For five years now, I have received exact instruction in how beggars must feel when they expose their need to unsympathetic citizens. Not only do my proposals get turned down, I have been verbally attacked by the prospective funders who view a polite and carefully explained funding proposal as an uninvited attempt to climb aboard their "life boat" (the exact words of one prospect!). I do still get lots of calls from radio stations, magazines and newspapers who are very interested in my area of research and eager to have my comments on topical issues (for free, of course), so it's not as if my research skills are out of date. They have just been made redundant by a funding establishment that doesn't want to know about the things my research will show. If, instead of interogating beggars as the "subjects" of your research, you essayed to examine how the elites manufacture and manipulate the "problem" of begging, your funding would be nil. Instead, in your proposal, you have cunningly (like a successful beggar) honed in on how your funders want to think of themselves -- "we're concerned, we're compassionate . . . we're not responsible" -- and flatter those illusions. Another suggestion for your literature review: Oedipus Rex by Sophocles. Pay special attention to the part where Teiresias tells Oedipus that it was he, Oedipus, who murdered Laius and brought the plague on Thebes: Teiresias: . . . You, Oedipus, are the desecrator, the polluter of the land! Oedipus: You traitor! Do you think that you can get away with this? And there you have the first rule of social research. regards, Tom Walker http://www.vcn.bc.ca/timework/covenant.htm
Re: begging in Europe (fwd)
mbers of the public, the interrelationship between begging and other forms of informal and street-level economic activity, and the interrelationship between begging and homelessness. 5) To address the issue of begging and citizenship, including the beggars' perceptions of their citizenship rights and obligations in a particular culture. We would look at the issue of whether and to what extent the beggars remain a part of the social and cultural mainstream and are subject to the same ideological influences; including the issue of alternative lifestyles. 7) To implement a cross-cultural study of perceptions of begging. We would look at such issues as perceptions of undeserving and deserving poor in various cultures, perceived causes of begging and relationship between political beliefs and the attitudes to beggars. 8) To study the policy initiatives in relation to begging at the national and local levels, both those directed to the regulation and control of begging and those directed to the protection and assistance of street people. Research Methods We would probably aim to conduct research in five major European cities. Research methods would include in every country: - a comprehensive literature review; - a public opinion survey of perceptions of begging (as appropriate, in order to complement existing data sources); - observation and in-depth interviews with beggars; - semi-structured interviews with policy makers and practitioners. We are looking for active partners in Western European countries other than the UK and in Eastern Europe, but also, possibly, potential collaborators from other UK institutions with direct experience of research in this field. If you are interested in participating in this project, we would very much like to hear from you. Please get in touch with me, indicating: - the basis of your interest; - the specific expertise or facilities which you are able to offer; - the particular components of the proposed project with which you might be able to assist; - any ideas or suggestions you may wish to contribute or share with us in relation to the development of the project. Yours sincerely Dr. Svetlana Sidorenko-Stephenson Department of Applied Social Studies University of Luton Park Square Luton LU1 3JU UK Tel: +44 (0)1582 732886 Fax: +44 (0)1582 734265 E-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [EMAIL PROTECTED] Facing the Future Inc 15003 56 Avenue Edmonton AB T6H 5B2 CANADA (780) 438 7342 ph or fax. regards, Tom Walker http://www.vcn.bc.ca/timework/covenant.htm
Henry Carter Adams
I've followed Wes Burt's suggestion and read an essay by his favourite economist, Henry Carter Adams, "Relation of the State to Industrial Action". I'm undecided at this point as to whether Adams will replace John Maurice Clark as _my_ favourite but there is no question that Adams presents a dazzling defense of individualism and critique of laissez faire all rolled up into one. My advice to futurework subscribers: read the essay. Thanks, Wes. regards, Tom Walker http://www.vcn.bc.ca/timework/covenant.htm
Re: The Teflon Topic, its weakness, at least for the moment.
Wes Burt wrote, To illustrate this mode of progress toward the future, the necessary sigmoid would have a horizontal axis of zero to 100% and beyond to show the various technical requirements that must be satisfied at 100% to reach the optimum rate of development at 100% on the vertical axis. Wes continues to talk in pictures while his audience is mostly confined to thinking in platitudes. It has been my impression, from five years experience with the chattering classes on the internet, that nearly everyone with an IQ. above 100 believes that his interests will drop like a stone if public policy is allowed to satisfy more than the 50 to 70% of the requirements for optimum development. And most more zealous to fight the "superfluous" (to them) 30% than to constructively defend their own 70%. Since Wes introduced the topic of Greek names for shapes, I'll introduce my own, chiasma, a cross or in this case a set of coordinates that cross in the centre of a graph. The normal sense that people have of political polarization is literal and one dimensional -- at the opposite ends of a pole: X * --- -*-X But a very interesting thing occurs when we plot (and rotate) survey responses on a two dimensional graph, political positions that we normally think of as polarized may appear on the graph as orthogonal: Y | |* **|** O |* | * * X SO---D---*--- -X |* * | | | | -Y The individual clustered close to Y will, nevertheless, perceive those clustered around -X as -Ys, while the individuals clustered around -X perceive those around Y as Xs. The optimal compromise between Y and -X would be found at point O, but since both side perceive their opponent's position as diametrically opposed to their own, they are more likely to reach a suboptimal stalemate at point SO, or if -X wield disproportionate power, a suboptimal point of domination at D. In the illustration, I have shown D as a less good outcome for -X than would have been a co-operative solution at O because I think that's how it usually shakes down. I would suggest that my chiasma and Wes's sigmoid are two ways of picturing the same dilemma. Having more than one way to picture the problem doesn't solve the problem, but it might be a way of recruiting a few more souls to recognize what kind of a problem it is. It is a problem that is conceptually "too simple" to believe because it contradicts our naive, antagonistic perspective. regards, Tom Walker http://www.vcn.bc.ca/timework/covenant.htm
Wes Burt's Model
A few comments on Wes Burt's model: I'm not sure I understand every element of the model, but what I do understand of it makes good sense. As to why a rational social investment in dependent children remains the "Teflon Topic", I would venture that Wes Burt's model offers both the greatest net benefit and the most equitable distribution of that benefit, and therein lies its "weakness", at least for the moment. As long as the need exists for _some_ kind of policy for investing in dependent children, sub-optimal policies can be promoted as "better than nothing". Sub-optimal policies, by failing to provide the greatest net benefit will continue to generate mandates for even more sub-optimal policies and, by failing to provide equitable distribution of benefit, will create pockets of surplus funding that can be used as campaign funds to press for more, similarly sub-optimal policies. Another way of saying this would be that it may be the carrying cost of a public policy that generates the most dedicated constituency -- a vested interest. Wes Burt wrote, Clearly, the flow of today's goods and services as shown by the upward arrow in Figure 7, represents an "interest free investment" by members of the workforce in the developing dependent members of the population. That "interest free investment" is a blessing to the developing members and a burden to the working members, and our only options are to keep the rate of investment adequate and to distribute the burden equitably over the productive taxpayers. - - snip - - . . . Why does the more modest proposal, to subsidize only the support of children, not have a corresponding international organization promoting the less expensive, but more certain approach? Lets hear from the frequent posters, lurkers, and innocents on several mail lists. regards, Tom Walker http://www.vcn.bc.ca/timework/covenant.htm
Re: Replies to the Macro and Micro aspects of the Global Model
he Constitution of the United States. #6 also defines the structure of the real property tax of local governments, as it operated prior to the 1890's to provide education, infrastructure, and justice, while the U.S. was still a nation of property owning farmers and small businessmen. Today's total tax rates range from 23% in Turkey to 55% in Sweden, with the U.S., Switzerland, and Japan clustered around the Biblical tax rate of three tithes, or 30% of Gross Domestic Product. To the contrary, the late great U.S.S.R. collected 92% of its public revenue from indirect taxes, which increase the market price of subsistence, and only 8% from taxes on personal incomes, according to the taxpayer's ability to pay. There is no surer way to arrest the economic and moral progress of a corporation or commonwealth than to impair its reproductive process by raising the price of necessities for those "parenting" families and firms which are producing the productive assets for the future. Once again, Mr. weeks, nothing I might say at this point can more clearly convey the spirit with which I submit these two articles of Economic Rights and Responsibilities, which are indeed the keystone of an economic philosophy, than the words of Rene Descartes in his 1641 letter to The Faculty Of Theology at Paris. Like Descartes, I know my superiors when I meet them. He wrote, concerning his "Meditationes de Prima Philosophia," in part: "It is different in philosophy, where it is believed that there is nothing about which it is not possible to argue on either side. Thus few people engage in the search for truth, and many, who wish to acquire a reputation as clever thinkers, bend all their efforts to arrogant opposition to the most obvious truths. - That is why, Gentlemen, since my arguments belong to philosophy, however strong they may be, I do not suppose that they will have any effect unless you take them under your protection." regards, Tom Walker
The MAI meisters: Up to their old tricks (PLEASE CIRCULATE FAR AND WIDE)
ces. Under the transparency agreement, each local government would be expected to provide "notices of proposed procurement; notify(deposit copies) with the WTO of procurement policies; publish notices of contract awards; include evaluation criteria in bid documents; publish information on reasons for sole source procurements; dispute resolution provisions for member countries..." All of these are significant intrusions into the authority of local governments and would be onerous financially, especially for smaller communities. And the only reason for pursuing a agreement on transparency alone is to make it easier for foreign corporations to target governments they believe are violating liberalization principles. The background document states: "Canada's market access interests may be best achieved through achieving a broad scope to open as much foreign government procurement as possible to transparency obligations. A broad scope would suggest that Canada pursue a broad cross-section of federal and sub-central government procurements with limited exceptions." In spite of the fact that the anti-MAI campaign highlighted the draconian dispute settlement process - one of the features which caused France to withdraw completely - Canada is still pursuing such a process with resect to procurement. This could see small municipalities facing huge legal costs to defend their purchasing practices. Says the background paper: "An issue will be the extent to which we would wish to promote utilization of the independent tribunal model and the Canadian International Trade Tribunal as a single bid challenge mechanism (per NAFTA)..." The Trade Tribunal was designed with national governments in mind and to impose such an elaborate and expensive regime on thousands of small towns and villages indicates just how deeply free trade ideology has penetrated the thinking of federal government officials. Despite the fact that a representative of municipalities attended the consultative meeting, there was not a single mention in the background materials of the impact on governments of pursuing a broader agreement on market access. The assumption that trade is good regardless of its social and political consequences was soundly rejected by the opposition to the MAI in a dozen or more countries. Yet this modern day version of "What's good for General Motors is good for America" is still the operating principle of the federal government. Far from being chastened by the MAI experience, the government is absolutely committed to those same assumptions. Indeed, it goes beyond just looking at the benefits for exporters. The federal government is planning to hire a consultant to complete a procurement access study. The consultant's instructions include consultations with a wide variety of firms in each province but no consultation with municipalities. The consultant is explicitly instructed to "identify the benefits of market access." There is no provision for identifying the drawbacks. The threat to Canadian sovereignty and government authority comes not just from the politicians who try to sell these deals. The threat is in giving trade officials, who seem incapable of understanding societal values, the exclusive power to negotiate trade agreements. The response of the federal officials at the consultation to reminders of the MAI's failure, and to criticisms from provincial and municipal officials, was all too predictable. They had no response. The political and ideological language barrier was insurmountable. They simply were unable to grasp what was being said. The meshing of corporate and federal government interests, language and perspective seemed virtually seamless. regards, Tom Walker http://www.vcn.bc.ca/timework/covenant.htm
Re: shorter hours essay
Eva Durant wrote, So, you are saying that pensionfunds and some sort of mass-shareholder scheems would take us sort of smoothly out of capitalism? But they, too rely on profits and growing profits, and to stock market gambling, thus tendecy to crash... Sorry to have lead you away from shorter hours. Eva, You seem to think I was presenting the examples of hedge funds and pension funds as positive features. They are not. They are essentially parasitic and dysfunctional. What I am saying is that financial schemes perform only one economic function -- the redistribution of income from producers of wealth to non-producers -- and they don't perform that function particularly well. In fact, they now perform it dysfunctionally -- they intensify, rather than moderate, income and wealth inequalities. At some point in the past, the redistributive role of pension funds may well have been positive, but that positive role has been overwhelmed by the sheer speculative inertia of so much brain-dead institutional money. Profits for these activities are not economically vital for the maintenance of capitalism. They do perform an ideological function for capitalism in convincing a large number of people that they are getting "something for nothing" every time they win a buck-fifty on a two dollar lottery ticket. But at this point, even that ideological function is beginning to cost the system more than the benefits it offers. It is the habit of systems to continue to dysfunction long after their dysfunctionality becomes obvious to any honest observer. So, what I am saying is the opposite of what you think I am saying. Far from "taking us smoothly out of capitalism" mass shareholder schemes are the engines of idle speculative activity. Choking-off the profitibility of such schemes would be a blessing, not only to ordinary working people but to capitalism itself. regards, Tom Walker
Re: shorter hours essay
Eva Durant supposes that my essay misses the importance of profits. She then enumerates several points having to do with the non-correspondence between productivity and profitability. If I may so characterize Eva's point, it refers to Marx's analysis of the internal contradictions of capitalism (i.e., forces of production versus relations of production). Far from missing this point, my analysis is consistent with Marx's analysis of the internal contradictions of capitalism. For Marx, the fact of this internal contradiction was the starting point -- not the conclusion -- of his analysis. Marx was concerned to show not just the inevitability of crisis but also how it was that, in spite of this contradiction, extended periods of economic stability could exist and how the framework of capitalism could periodically renew and reform itself. Perhaps for Eva such a demonstration seems a "well meant but a cosmetic, a superficial idea that disregards the realities of capitalism." But I'd rather stick with the unexpurgated text of Capital rather than the "more realistic" socialist readers' digest version. All that I have addressed in my essay is the possibility of an economic revival of capitalism. What I haven't addressed is the political prospect of such a revival. The second question is, of course, the decisive one but also much more complex. I happen to agree with Eva that the political prospect is not bright. But that's precisely why I think it is important to show that an economic revival is possible within the logic of capital. It seems to me that at this stage in historical development, capitalists as a class are antagonistic to the renewal of capitalism as a system. Yes, this would be the final contradiction. What capitalists want today is not "efficiency, competition and free markets" but a guaranteed income for capital -- a perpetual motion machine of compound interest. I think it is important not just to assert that, but to show it. regards, Tom Walker
Re: The Prosperity Covenant
Thanks, Ed, for taking the time to read my paper. I'll adress your points in reverse order because it seems to me that you presented them in escalating order of importance. First, regarding my "implicit assumption" of the homogeneity of labour. What I assume is a reconfigurable division of labour. I also explicitly state that the current use of labour cannot be assumed to be optimal -- that unemployment is a reliable indicator of such sub-optimality. Without those two elements, we would no longer be talking about an "economy". We would be talking about, say, a "status culture of production" in which the division of labour is, for the most part, traditional and "unemployment" would be a caste designation rather than a result of transactions on a labour market. The "indispensible" employee is an example of an inefficient (uneconomic) use of labour, not an rationale for long hours. To say that in "a knowledge based economy, expertise resides with the individual" is to give a distinctively feudal or caste-system definition to the "knowledge-based economy". In other words, the claim lies somewhere between empty slogan and oxymoron. By definition, if the *economy* is knowledge-based, then expertise _cannot_ reside with the individual. Hours versus methods: It's not simply the reduction of hours that brings about the greater intensity of labour. This occurs through the "introduction of new technology and improved methods of undertaking work" in response to the shorter hours. I said as much in my paper. The reduction of hours is a catalyst for the introduction of improved methods and it makes the greater intensity of labour humanly bearable (at both an individual and social scale). Downsizing versus reduction of work time: My comparison between 7 and 8 hours referred to the length of the work day. That's what the paper is about. To say that an efficient firm would have already gotten rid of their eighth employee is to miss the point that the intensity of [a person's] work is limited by the longer hours. Downsizing may seem to offer the same benefit ON PAPER but it's only on paper. Eliminating inefficient firms: Driving less efficient (in use of labour resources) firms out of business is not a problem for my analysis. If those firms are less efficient, they are wasting labour that could be more efficiently put to use by other firms and they are usurping market share that they haven't "won" competitively. Good riddance to parasitic capital. regards, Tom Walker
Re: shorter hours essay
Eva Durant wrote, Tom, you say I asked the political questions, when in fact I asked economical ones - how can be profits maintained if your suggestions are accepted. You provide evidence for the maintanace of productivity, but not profits the essential motor of the present economic mechanism. Eva, A simple model would show profits increased for efficient firms and decreased for inefficient firms. In the aggregate, the _rate_ of profit would decrease but the total amount of profit would decrease to a lesser extent or could even increase. The decreasing rate of profit is only a problem from the perspective of finance capital because more and more of the functions of capital have already been or are capable of being socialized (viz., on the one hand, Long Term Capital Limited, on the other hand, pension funds). At any rate, current profit levels are unsustainable because they are largely on paper. All Ponzi schemes come to an end. We _will_ see a fall in profit levels, whether because of a financial collapse and depression or because of a "prosperity covenant". A prosperity covenant in effect offers a soft landing for capitalism. Those who assume that a crash offers a better prospect of a socialist future must accept the burden of proof of showing why such a crash wouldn't be at least as likely to lead to barbarism. regards, Tom Walker
Re: FW - Debating goverance
Thanks, Thomas, for a well considered response. I don't think our differences of opinion on this matter can ever be resolved by reason, they can only be tempered by experience. My opinion is that debating governance remains just that -- debating. I would recommend that you get ahold of a 1977 book titled _Sabotage_ by Geoff Brown for one account of the vagaries of micro-governance and counter-strategy. My own views on the potential for change at the top are very much influenced by Charles Lindblom's discussion of policy incrementalism and the science of "muddling through". And I might add that Lindblom's influence on my thinking has itself been incremental. Subject: Re: FW - Debating goverance Thomas Lunde wrote, Now as I have noted on FW before, when you start to examine the concept of Future-work, it soon passes beyond, shorter work weeks and other technical changes into a study of the ideas of economics and from there we find that it is the laws and directions of governments that actually will determine what the future of work will be. Tom Walker said: I agree with Thomas' observation that this is what happens. But I disagree with his conclusion that the "top of the heap" is the proper starting place for the debate. What Thomas casually refers to as "technical changes" are the substantive conditions under which different structures of governance might be possible. In our society, paid work is the microstructure of governance. Perhaps people find top of the heap questions easier to talk about because they are harder to do anything about. Tom Walker Thomas: Governance is a structure, if I can presume to build a picture in your mind, in which the apex consititutes a very small number of individuals whose actions create a framework in which the majority - literally all of us - play out the drama of our lives. It is like a pyramid. Within the lower 99.999% of the pyramid, we, the majority are constrained, directed and guided by legalistic forms, much like parking our automobile at a Mall is controlled by the designers of the mall. One example that comes to mind is the lineup at the local bank. It used to be a series of linear lines, you chose which line you thought would get you to the teller quickest. Then it was changed to one long line in which the first person took the first available teller. Then if became a line that was controlled by little chrome posts that had us stand in a snake like lineup which conserved floor space for the bank. Now, if you walk into a bank, even if there is no one ahead of you, you are forced by the arrangement of the chrome posts to follow the snake like path to get to a teller. Whenever I am forced to do this, I get angry, as I feel I am responsible enough to just walk in a straight line to the nearest teller. The same control has been imposed on us through Voice Mail. You dial up Bell Telephone and you are forced to wait through a pre-recorded message that lists your options according to the doors they want you to go through. Should you have a request that can only be answered by a human, you finally learn you can select that option which throws you into a waiting pattern and forces you to listen to their advertising while waiting for the operator. The operator then comes on and starts interrogating you, your name, your phone number, your address, finally after 5 to 7 minutes of wasting your time, you are finally allowed by the structure to ask the question you originally wanted to ask. Slowly but surely, we are being strangled in our choices as they impose their options on us, not for our convience or needs but for their convience or needs. This is governance in operation. Now, I can spend a year of my life arguing with Bell or the Bank or the designer of a Mall and perhaps I might get a small change in their procedure - a technical change - or I can ask that a law be passed by the small number at the apex of the structure that would outlaw the controlling of consumers by corporate controls. However, under the current governance, the chances of me, an individual impacting them to make a change is really remote because they have designed a governance structure in which the needs of people are not important, rather the need to retain power through re-election is the primary consideration. Tom Walker wrote: Conversely, bottom of the heap questions are harder to talk about because they indicate courses of direct action that have personal consequences. It is the "sanctions" involved in those personal consequences that keep most of us micro-governing ourselves on behalf of the status quo. Thomas: You intuit this by the last sentence and of course that gentle word "sanctions", while I might use the word penalties. If I do not follow the Mall designers instructions, I may get a ticket, or the bank would refuse to serve me, or the Voice Mail will refuse to process my questions. And yes, you are righ
Re: Krugman and the Austrians
arthur cordell wrote, Krugman needs a dose of humility. Here's one thought. Imagine his reaction if the budget for MIT were halved and traditional economic theory was suddenly found to be imperfect and so flawed that it was no longer acceptable for teaching. Hmmm. What options might be open to him and others that promote perfect this and seamless that!! What do you mean "suddenly found to be imperfect and so flawed . . .?" That is precisely what makes it acceptable for teaching. Here's a teaser of the expose I'm working on. Just the tip of the iceberg . . . Michael Perelman wrote, Jim, Good question. Only to be able to make sense of what the bogus economists are saying. Jim Devine wrote: -- snip -- Michael, why do you care about total factor productivity? it's a concept based on bogus assumptions. Whoa! Hold on a minute there. Are these references to "bogus economists" just a casual release of steam or is there a programmatic critique of the bogusity being breached? I'm not particularly concerned about ideologically driven nincompoops who make preposterous assumptions and mine the data that suits there fancy. I'm talking about blatant propaganda forgeries that are then passed off as theoretical legal tender by slimy academic fences with connections in high places. As a case in point, I'd like to refer to the handywork of one William Collinson, propagandist for the National Free Labour Association, an organization established in Britain in 1893 "primarily for one purpose: to supply employers with workmen in place of locked-out or striking trade unionists." By his account -- as told to Paul Mantoux and Maurice Alfassa, authors of La Crise du Trade-Unionisme -- "It was me who wrote these articles, or more exactly, I provided the information for them to a regular writer in The Times, Edwin A. Pratt. It was necessary to act in such a way in order to give the campaign an impartial character. All the facts published by The Times are scrupulously correct, but there could have been charges of exaggeration if I had signed those articles." "And just what articles are those?" you may ask. "The Crisis in British Industry", which ran in a series of 12 installments from November 18, 1901 to January 16, 1902. Articles, on the theme of an insidious socialistic conspiracy to undermine British industry, which caused "a great deal of controversy" and on which there was a "very full correspondence". It was in this series of articles that that ancient complaint of "restriction of output" was fused with opposition to the reduction of the working day. Here's how Pratt/Collinson summed up labour's struggle for the eight-hours day: "The general adoption of the eight hours system was to bring in a certain proportion of the unemployed; if there were still too many left the eight hours sytem was to be followed by a six hours sytem; while if, within the six, or eight, or any other term of hours, every one took things easy and did as little work as he conveniently could, still more openings would be found for the remaining unemployed, and still better would be the chances for the Socialist propaganda." But what does this ancient history have to do with bogus economics in 1999? I present in evidence, a line by Lawrence F. Katz, in a January 1998 Brookings Institute commentary "In what has been labeled the lump of output fallacy, most advocates of worksharing implicitly assume that output is held constant in response to a policy effort to reduce hours per worker, so that total hours of work to be done each week are unchanged." Where did Katz get his lump of output fallacy? From Layard, Nickell and Jackman, _Unemployment: macro economic performance and the Labour Market_, Chapter 10, section 7 (pp. 502-508). Layard, reported to be a leading economic advisor to the Tony Blair's New Labour government and to Boris Yeltsin, was co-author along with the former Moscow correspondent from the Economist of _The Coming Boom in Russia_. To give Layard the benefit of the doubt, he probably doesn't know scratch about the seemy history of the "fallacy" he circulates with such condescension. In other words, his only alibi is that he doesn't know what he's talking about. regards, Tom Walker
Re: FW - Debating goverance
Thomas Lunde wrote, Now as I have noted on FW before, when you start to examine the concept of Future-work, it soon passes beyond, shorter work weeks and other technical changes into a study of the ideas of economics and from there we find that it is the laws and directions of governments that actually will determine what the future of work will be. I agree with Thomas' observation that this is what happens. But I disagree with his conclusion that the "top of the heap" is the proper starting place for the debate. What Thomas casually refers to as "technical changes" are the substantive conditions under which different structures of governance might be possible. In our society, paid work is the microstructure of governance. Perhaps people find top of the heap questions easier to talk about because they are harder to do anything about. Conversely, bottom of the heap questions are harder to talk about because they indicate courses of direct action that have personal consequences. It is the "sanctions" involved in those personal consequences that keep most of us micro-governing ourselves on behalf of the status quo. Tom Walker http://www.vcn.bc.ca/timework/
Re: democracy
Steve Kurtz wrote, Again the cornucopian fallacy raises its ugly head. My grubbing in the late-Victorian archive makes me suspicious of undefined uses of the word "fallacy". The late-Victorian legacy can be roughly translated as "My class prejudice is Truth, yours (the one that _I_ attribute to you) is fallacy." What kind of a *fallacy*, then, is this "cornucopian fallacy"? Is it a straw man? An ad hominem? A reductio ad absurdum? Is it a forceful way of saying, "I won't listen to you because (people like) you are not worth listening to"? Tom Walker http://www.vcn.bc.ca/timework/
What would happen if . . .
. . . we had a four-day work week? The NEXT CITY asked Tom Walker, a social policy analyst with TimeWork Web, and Jock Finlayson, vice-president of policy and analysis for the Business Council of British Columbia, to comment. go to: http://www.nextcity.com/whatif/whatif14.htm Who makes more sense to you? Select your choice and then press below to register your vote. Tom Walker Jock Finlayson http://www.nextcity.com/WhatIf/whatif14.htm#vote Tom Walker http://www.vcn.bc.ca/timework/
Re: lump of labour stuff
Eva Durant wrote, It is obvious, that people's life should not depend on the ambiguous ways work is defined and measured. Work is a social collaborative activity, so the products should be socially shared. Simple really... Yes, but. So simple really that it is no longer obvious to those who are compelled (by shame? by greed?) to find justification for the unjustifiable and a rationale for the pathological. Tom Walker http://www.vcn.bc.ca/timework/
Re: Samuelson's lump-of-labor, 1998
Ray Harrell wrote, The argument I have made on these lists for a number of years is that this is all related to value. What one decides to value and pay money for. Today in the U.S. they have decided to pay the money they used to pay for the commodity milk, for stocks and bonds instead. (see my post about Rukeyser) snip. . . Here we value the idea of the market, the official state religion in the U.S., over the idea of bread and so we even enslave the growers of wheat by keeping the price of bread far below the cost of growing it for the advantage of the stock "market". Ray, I agree. The "idea of the market" is valued so highly that the market, as it is, has to be contorted to conform to that idea. No matter if all the signals are falsified, if the entire state apparatus has to be transformed into one big stock market transfusion (witness social security) the result is the illusion that the idea of the market is more real than any actual market could ever be. The kind of "economics" that applauds this travesty calls itself "value free". Tom Walker http://www.vcn.bc.ca/timework/
Re: Samuelson lump-of-labor fallacy, 1998
ted to a level to work in a steel plant and with the skills of a steel plant worker and with the work to rule attitudes of organized labour in a mature industry are unwanted by the new industries anyway. Their children and grandchildren may have the education and attitudes needed and move, but not the mature worker. Even if he could finance it - remember most of his savings are in his house which the collapse of local industry has caused to fall (indeed it may be unsaleable at any price, like the steel mill in which he once worked - another real wealth effect Mr. Krugman). The people who grow the new industries and are employed by them enjoy economic rents due to their innovation and enterprise. There is a redistribution of income. Take a look at the way income distribution has skewed over the past ten years Dr. Krugman. Unfortunately,the people whose incomes are depressed far out number those whose incomes are growing - you can flatten an industry which has matured overnight, but you can't grow a new one at the same pace. People with high incomes cannot consume them all, much as they try (just go to Seattle and look at the monster houses Bill's Microsoft millionaires are building), so much of their income goes into financial assets (stocks and bonds = near money) - look at the money piling into the financial markets. Why do the new economies arise some place else ? A variety of reasons historically. Usually it has to do with revolutions in transportation technology which transform location economics - Edmonton and Calgary and Irkutsk could not have grown without the transcontinental railway, to take extreme examples. It has also been influenced by the availability of a suitable primary energy - that is why the English cotton industry which drove the first industrial revolution was first located on remote streams and rivers and then on the coal fields. In the case of silicon plants the reason was social/human, according to Spanish sociologist Cassils in his recently published study of new high tech or science cities. The man who founded the Stanford Research Institute around which the industry subsequently bloomed (his students included pioneers like Hewlett and Packard) had initially tried to interest Boston area universities and prominent citizens in his ideas (Boston was where the electronics industries developed in the Second World War were located, firms like Raytheon). He was given the cold shoulder. He didn't fit their paradigm - vacuum tubes, anymore than Krugman's theorizing fits the facts :-) So he broadened his field of search and Stanford, then a very minor college, said yes. The fact that his widowed mother had earlier settled nearby may also have had something to do with his decision :-). So the frictional problems which the Austrian school pointed to and which Krugman dismisses are very real. And so is the real wealth effect of stranded assets. And so are the spiritual and social psychological crises which cause people to become pietistic (consume less) and demand more money for security's sake. Mike H Tom Walker http://www.vcn.bc.ca/timework/
Re: Defining Sustainable
deborah middleton wrote, The demand for knowledge workers far out runs the supply, this I believe has resulted in a shift in business focus on recruitment and retention of employees. Unless things have changed drastically since the last time I talked to the front line people at HRDC or to my neighbour who just completed the technological skills curriculum review for the province, the excess of demand over supply is only true to the extent that the demand is for very narrow, specific and immediate qualifications. The demand for people who can "land running" with exactly the skills the employer needs at that moment is always going to out run the supply because that kind of talent skimming is a way of disqualifying most of the potential supply. When there's a shift in business focus on recruitment and retention, I'll know about because I'll have to get an extra phone line. I'll tell you what's not sustainable "lifelong learning", in its current usage as a perpetual process of disqualification and compulsory requalification. Hey, you don't have to take my word for it. That's what my neighbour, the tech. ed. guy, says. What is sustainable is WORKING LESS -- significantly less. "The desirable medium is one which mankind have not often known how to hit: when they labour, to do it with all their might, and especially with all their mind; but to devote to labour, for mere pecuniary gain, fewer hours in the day, fewer days in the year, and fewer years of life." -- John Stuart Mill Tom Walker http://www.vcn.bc.ca/timework/
Re: Reporter Inquiry: FOUR-DAY WORK WEEK (Frome CHICAGO TRIBUNE)
Peter and Barbara, See my article on "Rewarding years of service with more free time" at http://www.globalideasbank.org/wbi/WBI-43.HTML It was judged one of the "world's best ideas for 1998" by the Institute for Social Invention. I've also got a debate with Jock Finlayson of the B.C. Business Council on "What If . . . there was a four day week" in a magazine called Next City. The magazine has a web page but the last time I checked, the debate feature hadn't been posted to the site yet. http://www.nextcity.com/contents/index.html I can send you a copy of my side of the debate now that the magazine's out, for Jock's you'd have to look at the site: Labor costs would decrease. Stanford Business School Professor Jeffrey Pfeffer recently noted in the Harvard Business Review that most managers don't know the difference between labor rates, which only concerns inputs, and labor costs, which consider inputs as a ratio of outputs. Because of fixed, per-employee costs -- such as fringe benefits and payroll taxes -- a shorter work week does indeed raise labor rates, a fact corporate bean counters use to explain why employers "can't afford" the change. But a four-day work week would actually lower labor costs -- due to higher productivity and new employees commanding fewer seniority-related benefits. The number of disability claims would decrease. Recently, the American Management Association and the CIGNA Corporation studied the effects of downsizing on long-term disability claims. Firms who had laid off workers experienced more claims from the employees who remained. Stress from long work hours and job insecurity topped the list of factors leading to disability. The lesson is clear: shorter hours = less stress = fewer disability claims. Employers and employees would benefit from on-the-job training. Employers spend billions of dollars annually on training courses, neglecting more effective on-the-job training because they can't spare experienced employees from tight production schedules. A lean work force doesn't have enough slack to replenish itself. Businesses would create yang (or positive) Kaizen. Shortening the work week is not simply a question of juggling the number of workers and the hours per worker; it could create opportunities for improving the production process. A four-day work week will provide an antidote to the Japanese practice of Kaizen, which sought continuous improvement mainly by subtracting from the workforce. That negative, yin, Kaizen has run its course. And let's not forget the side effects. A four-day work week would create thousands of new jobs and more time for family and community. -- Colleagues: I offered to post the following to FUTUREWORK and the reporter said sure. In addition to the story inquiry which follows, she also requested: "[FUTUREWORK] might be helpful as a source to gauge general interest in the 4-day week, if it's been talked about beforeAnyone who has opinions on the subject is welcome to write to tell me about their reasons and how previous discussions have gone." 2. FOUR-DAY WORK WEEK - CHICAGO TRIBUNE (IL). Barbara Brotman is working on a story about the possibility of a four-day work week. Will this ever become the standard? She would like to hear from a labor historian who can discuss the possibilities and implications of this, as well as when the five-day work week became the standard, what was done before the five day week, etc. What would the impact on the economy be? Employment rates? Etc. Needs leads by January 25. Email: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [T::1/20:3592] = Peter Seidman, Dissemination Program Director National Center for Research in Vocational Education University of California at Berkeley 2030 Addison St., Suite 500 Berkeley, CA 94720-1674 [EMAIL PROTECTED] 800.762-4093 fax: 510.642.2124 http://ncrve.berkeley.edu/ Traveler, there is no path, Paths are made by walking. Antonio Machado ========= r Tom Walker http://www.vcn.bc.ca/timework/
Re: Canada 'haven for terrorists'
Canada was becoming the world's premier haven for international terrorists, he said. I don't suppose he was referring to Chretien welcoming Suharto at the APEC conference in Vancouver? Tom Walker http://www.vcn.bc.ca/timework/
Re: lumpenlabor
fallacy is the a priori notion. Contrary to the orthodox dogma, the sun (working time) does NOT revolve around the earth (marginal productivity). The hard truth is that the relationship between employment and the hours of work is simply "too hard" (too indeterminate, too "fuzzy") for a marginalist analysis to grasp. Given the choice between investigating a topic that exposes the limits of the marginalist analysis and imposing an intellectual taboo on that topic, marginalism has chosen the taboo. The so-called "lump-of-labor fallacy" amounts to a monumental intellectual fraud perpetrated by textbook authors and editorial writers who probably don't have the slightest suspicion that what they are saying is groundless, archaic and contradictory. Tom Walker http://www.vcn.bc.ca/timework/
Re: The end of work?
A ritual response to Jeremy Rifkin's argument about the end of work was to accuse him of committing a supposed "lump-of-labor" fallacy that there is only a given amount of work to be done and that if machines do the work there will be less for people to do. The Economist magazine is especially fond of invoking this fallacy and has done so seven times since 1995 in its ongoing effort to discredit the "naive popular belief" that unemployment can be reduced by redistributing work time. I've wondered about this fallacy and my wondering has taken me on a search for the origins of the story. I believe I've found the source and, perhaps not surprisingly there is much less "economic science" there than has commonly been supposed. To make a long story short (I'm also writing the long story), there appears to be not one but two modern versions of the lump-of-labor fallacy and they are mutually exclusive. Furthermore, it is a misnomer to refer to either of these versions as "the lump-of-labor fallacy" as the historical version was more eclectic in its reference, not confined to the question of reducing and redistributing the hours of work. The two modern versions of the so-called fallacy appear to have descended, respectively, from Frederick Winslow Taylor's 1911 _Scientific Management_ and from an 1890 Atlantic Monthly essay by Francis Amasa Walker on "The Agitation for the Eight Hours Day" (the marginalist version). The core of Walker's argument was echoed by John Rae in an 1892 essay in the Contemporary Review and incorporated into Alfred Marshall's Principles of Economics. Far from establishing an incontrovertible fact of economic science, the two modern versions that have survived were vigorously disputed in their own day. The Taylorist version of the fallacy was disputed by Frank T. Carlton in his 1911 _History and Problems of Organized Labor_ and the marginalist version was disputed by Charles Beardsley in a 1895 article, "The effect of an eight hours' day on wages and the unemployed" in the Quarterly Journal of Economics. Carlton and Beardsley disputed the internal consistency of each of the respective versions. To my knowledge, no one has previously called attention to the existence of two distinct and incompatible versions of the fallacy. Although the definitions used by Taylor and by Walker/Rae/Marshall correspond with modern definitions of the lump-of-labor fallacy, none of them use the term lump-of-labor (although Carlton uses it in opposition to Taylor). Usage of the term in the period of the late 19th century and early 20th century is not specific to the question of the hours of work. The earliest reference I have found is in a 1891 essay by David Schloss on "Why Working Men dislike Piece-work," published in The Economic Review. I haven't had a chance to look at the Economic Review article yet, but here is the citation of it I found in the Economic Journal for September, 1891: "Mr. Schloss points out the difficulties that arise from the standard adopted by employers, which is apt to be that of the best, and not of the ordinary workmen, and from the greater mental strain which is experienced by those employed on piece-work. He then deals with the 'Lump of Labour Theory,' which he considers to lie at the root of all the difficulty." So what? The what is much larger than the coherence, integrity or validity of the lump-of-labor fallacy, itself. The strange career of this purported fallacy calls into question the coherence, integrity and validity of a mode of economic argument -- neo-classical or marginalist -- whose practitioners routinely and ritually resort to a non-existent fallacy to deflect questions about the relationship between aggregate employment and the hours of work. The truth is that the relationship between employment and the hours of work is simply "too hard" for a marginalist analysis to grasp. Given the choice between investigating a topic that exposes the limits of the marginalist analysis and imposing an intellectual taboo on that topic, marginalism has chosen the taboo. The so-called "lump-of-labor fallacy" amounts to a monumental intellectual fraud perpetrated by textbook authors and editorial writers who probably don't have the slightest suspicion that what they are saying is groundless. Tom Walker http://www.vcn.bc.ca/timework/
Re: Citizens on the Web: Growing Gap
This is very similar to Thomas Paine's proposal in his Agrarian Justice and reflects the principal political commandment of the Old Testament -- the "Sabbath of the Land". The author asks, "What is the relationship between equity and economic growth?" This is the central question asked by Henry George 120 years ago in Progress and Poverty. His answer was that all livelihood ultimately depended upon access to land (in which he included all natural resources, and ALSO such things as government-created monopolies (i.e. things like salt in Gandhi's India, taxi cab licences, radio and TV licences, and all patents). Where those resources, which were provided by nature as commons for the good of all, are held in a few hands, the holders of them can and do claim all the value of both labour AND capital, leaving the labourer or ordinary businessperson no more than they need for elementary subsistence. George's answer was for society to charge those who benefitted from the exclusive use of land or any other part of the commons the full economic rent therefore, and to distribute the rent equally to all so that all might benefit. Tom Walker http://www.vcn.bc.ca/timework/
A simulation question
Suppose Doug Wilson builds his simulation, tests it and finds it is 99.9% accurate. Now, suppose Doug runs the simulation and finds that Canadian employers could save $36 billion a year in direct labour costs by creating 1,800,000 new full-time jobs. Suppose Doug discovers that half of each employer's portion of the savings could be achieved without regard to whether or not the other employers acted. The other half would occur as a result of the collective action of all employers. Assume that Doug's error checking and data confidence is so thorough that he knows the answer his simulation has produced is accurate to within a few billion dollars and 100,000 jobs. What does Doug do with this information? Tom Walker http://www.vcn.bc.ca/timework/
Y2K in SF?
I see on the news bulletins that San Francisco is experiencing a massive and mysterious power blackout. Could this be an early symptom? Maybe a systems test that didn't work? Tom Walker http://www.vcn.bc.ca/timework/
Re: (FW) Data and projects (simulation)
-Pete Vincent wrote, then you can say "OK, let's just see if that's really true", and introduce the reform in the simulation. Then you can respond to the economist's criticism with "our reknowned reliable simulation engine clearly demonstrates that this reform will have only these consequences... Pete, you're kidding, of course? Read the following story. Replace the word banana with "sound analysis". There's a model of the policy process for you. BUREAUCRACY [ AND TYRANNY] IN ACTION! 1. Start with a cage containing five apes. In the cage, hang a banana on a string and put stairs under it. Before long, an ape will go to the stairs and start to climb toward the Banana. 2. As soon as he touches the stairs, spray all of the apes with cold water. After a while, another ape makes an attempt with the same result--all the apes are sprayed with cold water. 3. Turn off the cold water. If later another ape tries to climb the stairs, the other apes will try to prevent it even though no water sprays them. 4. Now, remove one ape from the cage and replace it with a new one. The new ape sees the banana and wants to climb the stairs. To his horror, all of the other apes attack him. After another attempt and attack, he knows that if he tries to climb the stairs, he will be assaulted. 5. Next, remove another of the original five apes and replace it with a new one. The newcomer goes to the stairs and is attacked. The previous newcomer takes part in the punishment with enthusiasm. 6. Again, replace a third original ape with a new one. The new one makes it to the stairs and is attacked as well. Two of the four apes that beat him have no idea why they were not permitted to climb the stairs, or why they are participating in the beating of the newest ape. 7. After replacing the fourth and fifth original apes, all the apes which have been sprayed with cold water have been replaced. Nevertheless, no ape ever again approaches the stairs. Why not? "BECAUSE that's the way it's always been done around here." Tom Walker http://www.vcn.bc.ca/timework/
Suctional unemployment
Suctional unemployment is that portion of unemployment attributable to the hoarding of jobs or hours of work. When unemployment is high or the cost of job loss is perceived to be excessive, people will hang on to the job they have even though the work doesn't allow them to fully use or develop their skills and they will work more hours than they would like to as a cushion against the fearful prospect of future unemployment. Suctional unemployment thus contributes to total unemployment in two ways -- by artificially limiting the distribution of existing work and by imposing an efficiency loss on industry. As every good economist knows, there is no such thing as suctional unemployment, as for alchemists there was no such thing as oxygen, though they breathed the stuff shamelessly. Regards, Tom Walker ^^^ #408 1035 Pacific St. Vancouver, B.C. V6E 4G7 [EMAIL PROTECTED] (604) 669-3286 ^^^ The TimeWork Web: http://www.vcn.bc.ca/timework/
Re: Simulation
Pete Vincent wrote, Most importantly, the simulation will be of no value if it is algorithm-driven. To reflect the true picture, it must be an FSA (Finite State Automata) model. Algorithms may be deduced from its results, but not ordained in its construction. The simulation should model the actions of individual players, and be iterated over cohorts over time. A well constructed simulation should be able to model any form of economy one can imagine, and not be limited by the constrictive assumptions built into an algorithm-driven simulation. This is so important. It can't be emphasized too strongly. I don't suppose that everybody will understand what Pete is talking about right off the bat. Everyone, please, print out the above paragraph and paste it over your monitor screen. DO NOT REMOVE until you think you have an idea of what Pete is talking about. Conventional simulations unknowingly assume the greater part of the outcome they are supposed to be simulating. The way that they do this is by incorporating "simplifying" assumptions into their algorithms. Variables end up no longer being variable. Dynamic interactions are dumbed down into ratios. It's not unusual to find simple accounting errors (double-counting is common) wired into the models at such a basic level that no one ever sees them again. Pete is right that a proper simulation is not a trivial project, but I think there can be, and need to be, "simulation essays" that take a small corner of the economic universe and show how FSA and algorithm-driven models differ. One of the problems now is that "Model A" simulation has been around long enough to etch its own distortions into the economic landscape. The unintended consequences of a solution to one problem become a bigger problem than the original problem. Regards, Tom Walker ^^^ #408 1035 Pacific St. Vancouver, B.C. V6E 4G7 [EMAIL PROTECTED] (604) 669-3286 ^^^ The TimeWork Web: http://www.vcn.bc.ca/timework/
Research help: 'lump-of-labour'
I'm looking for the 'locus classicus' of the "lump-of-labour fallacy" and would welcome any suggestions for sources. I'm trying to track down the first use of the term "lump-of-labour" and any sources that actually analyze the logical construction of a so-called "fallacy". The four volume Palgrove Dictionary of Economics doesn't mention the lump, nor do several other economics terminology references including the Economist's dictionary of economic terms (ironic since the Economist magazine regularly uses the term to sneer at work sharing proposals). The definitions I have found aren't consistent. Some contrast the "mistaken belief that there is only a fixed amount of work" to the historical record of economic growth (basically the Samuelson usage). The Oxford Dictionary of economic terms seems to come closer to what I believe is the classical argument: that restricting the hours of work will force employers to employ people under sub-optimal (for the employers) cost conditions and this will lead to a drop in demand for labour. I suspect that the classical discussion may be Alfred Marshall in his Principles of Economics, but he doesn't use the term lump-of-labour or refer to a logical fallacy. To the contrary, Marshall cautions that "The relations between industrial efficiency and the hours of labour are complex." If anyone knows of any pre-Samuelson citations of the lump, please let me know. Regards, Tom Walker ^^^ #408 1035 Pacific St. Vancouver, B.C. V6E 4G7 [EMAIL PROTECTED] (604) 669-3286 ^^^ The TimeWork Web: http://www.vcn.bc.ca/timework/
Canada-U.S. labour market comparison
From the statscan Daily, November 24, 1998: for details: http://www.statcan.ca/Daily/English/981124/d981124.htm Labour force update: Canada-U.S. labour market comparison 1989 to 1997 Since 1989, employment growth in the United States has outpaced gains in Canada, while the type of employment created by each country has been vastly different. While most of the growth occurred among full-time employees in the United States, self-employment has been the engine of growth in Canada. Since the recession of the early 1990s, the pace of employment growth has been stronger south of the border. Between 1989 and 1997, employment increased 10.4% in the United States, compared with only 6.5% in Canada. The type of employment created during this nine-year period has been quite different in the two countries. In Canada, self-employment has been the engine of growth, accounting for 80% of the overall employment increase. In the United States, self-employment accounted for only 10% of job creation between 1989 and 1997. The reasons for this stark difference are not well understood, but may reflect differences in tax policy, and higher payroll taxes and unemployment rates in Canada. Regards, Tom Walker ^^^ #408 1035 Pacific St. Vancouver, B.C. V6E 4G7 [EMAIL PROTECTED] (604) 669-3286 ^^^ The TimeWork Web: http://www.vcn.bc.ca/timework/
Re: FW: Re: Views on Rifkin's theory
Brian, Agreed. I'm currently reading Thomas Mann's _Joseph and his Brothers_. Tom, we could have some fun here finding the oldest comments on these matters. I was working with a student yesterday; we were finding contemporary situations similar to those describe by some of the prophets in the Hebrew(old) Testament. Amos and Isaiah had some interesting concerns. Regards, Brian McAndrews Regards, Tom Walker ^^^ #408 1035 Pacific St. Vancouver, B.C. V6E 4G7 [EMAIL PROTECTED] (604) 669-3286 ^^^ The TimeWork Web: http://www.vcn.bc.ca/timework/
Re: Views on Rifkin's theory?
Victor Milne wrote, I find Rifkin's central argument quite compelling: that the net effect of technology is to reduce the number of available jobs in the long run Considering that the *purpose* of technology is to save labor, it would be rather strange if it didn't reduce the number of available jobs (given a fixed definition of 'job'). The "other side" of the argument is that new needs will always arise to absorb the labor released by labor saving technology. Those needs may even already be present but latent -- such as building housing for the homeless, etc. I view the "other side" as a kind of perpetual motion machine theory of economics. Sure, if you assume a "frictionless plane", you could build a perpetual motion machine. And if you assume limitless and freely accessible natural resources, you could build an economy based on the infinite expansion of needs. After all the cheap fossil fuels ran out, you'd need the perpetual motion machines to supply the motive force. Possibly this is such an obvious topic that it was hashed out before I joined the list, but I would be interested in reading other people's views on Rifkin's theories. Your comment raises a fascinating point. No, the topic hasn't been hashed out but in a real sense it is *so* obvious that people can't see it. It's as if most of us have a little voice inside that says, "No, that would be too easy." or "If the matter were that simple, somebody would have already done something about it." I guess one of the great conundrums of complexity is that the simple explanation becomes unacceptable. But there really, truly and absolutely is no way around the two propositions: 1. technology is labour-saving. 2. available resources are finite. What this means for us is another question. Just because the sun will burn itself out in a few billion years is no reason to throw away our bathing suits. On the other hand, if we're ten feet away from the edge of the cliff in a bus travelling at two hundred miles an hour it's not going to do us a lot of good to slam on the brakes. I believe we're somewhere in between those two scenarios (it's just a belief). We're close enough to the limits that the consequences are being felt by billions of people and by the natural environment. But the potential scope of action remains vast. If we could just stop doing some of the stupidest things -- weapons buildup, government subsidies to encourage environmental destruction, tax policies to promote wage inequality -- we'd have plenty of time left to figure out how to stop the bus before it goes over the cliff. Regards, Tom Walker ^^^ #408 1035 Pacific St. Vancouver, B.C. V6E 4G7 [EMAIL PROTECTED] (604) 669-3286 ^^^ The TimeWork Web: http://www.vcn.bc.ca/timework/
Re: Views on Rifkin's theory?
Arthur Cordell wrote, Technology is also labour empowering or enhancing. McCluhan said it expands our reach. Viz., right now I am posting this message to a computer in Waterloo, Ontario that is forwarding to about 500 or so other computers around the world. This is what helps to make it a 'transformative technology.' This is one aspect of the "expanding needs" argument. Technology saves labour but also creates the possibility of creating and satisfying new needs. Because hypertext enables me to embed links to animations in my text, I can now spend hundreds of more hours writing articles and illustrating them with cartoons. Of course there has to be effective demand for those animations or else I'm just playing around. How many of those 500 computers stay subscribed to futurework if it comes with an explicit price tag? And who pays whom? Do the lurkers pay the posters for the service or vice versa? The phrase 'transformative technology' suggests that the 'goods services' produced by the technology don't fit the traditional definitions of economic value. How we can generate traditional jobs and incomes from transformative goods and services is a moot question. It's like asking how we can build a log cabin out of glass and steel. Regards, Tom Walker ^^^ #408 1035 Pacific St. Vancouver, B.C. V6E 4G7 [EMAIL PROTECTED] (604) 669-3286 ^^^ The TimeWork Web: http://www.vcn.bc.ca/timework/
Re: FW: Re: Views on Rifkin's theory
Pete Vincent I think it could hardly be called _Rifkin's_ theory, as it has been around an awfully long time, being discussed explicitly, for example, in Robert Theobald's 1964(?) book. I'd give it a much older pedigree than that. Stephen Leacock started out as a political economist and wrote a very interesting piece on the same theme in 1921. M. King Hubbert's "Man hours and production" dates from the mid 1930s. Regards, Tom Walker ^^^ #408 1035 Pacific St. Vancouver, B.C. V6E 4G7 [EMAIL PROTECTED] (604) 669-3286 ^^^ The TimeWork Web: http://www.vcn.bc.ca/timework/
Re: Jay Hanson's remarks on economists
I don't agree with everything Jay has to say about economists, but I can see his point. Just about every evil that has been perpetrated in the world during our lives has been justified by "economics" (on both sides of the former iron curtain). What this use of economics as a political blank check for the high and mighty has to do with the economists' profession is a rather complex question. Where I would disagree with Jay is in his premise that economics and economists are the source of the problem. By and large the great institutions that confer credentials, honours and career paths on economists have succumbed to the obsequious waltz by which a particular current of economic thought and a corresponding current of political tyranny mutually flatter each other. But no economic school of thought could have orchestrated the obsequity. It's more a matter of funding and career opportunities, specializations and an institutional hierarchy that always feels compelled to put a "moral" face on its crass pursuits. In simple terms, it is not the best economists who rise to the top, but the most ambitious. This is hardly a feature unique to economists or economics. The Greek tragedians had a word for it -- hubris. For a more modern term, we might turn sociologist C. Wright Mills' phrase, "professional ideology of the social pathologists" on its head: a social pathology of the professional ideologists. Modern economics (including the advocacy of free markets) emerged as a critique of political absolutism. The profession of economics has evolved into an apologist for an even more total form of political absolutism. Therein lies a contradiction. Some of the wisest things said about the world -- including the most trenchant criticisms of the economic conventional wisdom -- have been said by economists. How unprofessional! Regards, Tom Walker ^^^ #408 1035 Pacific St. Vancouver, B.C. V6E 4G7 [EMAIL PROTECTED] (604) 669-3286 ^^^ The TimeWork Web: http://www.vcn.bc.ca/timework/
Re: Fw: EUROPE: Marx Makes a Comeback, Riding on a Magazine
But, hey there's an upside too. This'll do wonders for the collector's value of my December 1991- January 1992 issue of MT, "Final Issue: The End (Collector's Item)". Yes, comrades that final issue actually announced itself as a "Collector's Item". (Unless, of course, the blighters have warehouses full of the old final issue and they've been planning all along to flood the resurgent Marx-market with them?) Eva Durant wrote, Don't get over-exited or worried. These people (at best) want to sell keynes again, the contradiction of capitalism with a human face. I read the article in the Guardian, I've written a letter with this theme and - surprise - it wasn't published. Good old Pilger. Title: POLITICS-EUROPE: Marx Makes a Comeback, Riding on a Magazine By Dipankar De Sarkar LONDON, Oct 28 (IPS) - The man is back in town. One hundred and ten years after his death, the German economist Karl Marx -- the father of communism -- has been 'relaunched'. Thanks are due in part to the British magazine 'Marxism Today', which this week made a spectacular comeback with a one-off issue published to assess Prime Minister Tony Blair's 18-month-old government. The magazine -- an issue devoted to left-of-centre criticism of what it calls the 'Blair Project' for Britain -- has been a *** sell out. *** my emphasis, and the only reality content that got in by accident. (rest of the article cut) Perhaps they are trying to pre-empt a real revolution? The news is that marxism never went away. Until capitalism stinks, (and it cannot be otherwise) marxism is with us whether we like it or not. Regards, Tom Walker ^^^ #408 1035 Pacific St. Vancouver, B.C. V6E 4G7 [EMAIL PROTECTED] (604) 669-3286 ^^^ The TimeWork Web: http://www.vcn.bc.ca/timework/
Re: DANGEROUS CURRENTS
Arthur Cordell wrote, A great posting from Ed. I guess citizens all over the world are wondering the same thing. It is one thing for governments to embrace the corporate agenda it is quite another to say to its citizens, 'you are on your own.' What's a citizen to do? 'Partnering' doesn't seem to do it. Civil disobedience is one possibility. Regards, Tom Walker ^^^ #408 1035 Pacific St. Vancouver, B.C. V6E 4G7 [EMAIL PROTECTED] (604) 669-3286 ^^^ The TimeWork Web: http://www.vcn.bc.ca/timework/
Re: VPAC-INFO: Job seekers website for students and alumni
I guess it's kind of amusing to see the architect of the most reactionary elements of the Liberal government's Employment Insurance reforms (Nakamura) involved in setting up an electronic "hiring hall" for the post secondary "labour market". James Galbraith points out the utter fallacy and mischief of this notion of a "labour market" in his book, _Created Unequal_. Date: Mon, 19 Oct 1998 19:41:29 -0400 (EDT) Reply-To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Originator: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sender: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Precedence: bulk From: Peggy Sun [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: Multiple recipients of list VPAC [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: VPAC-INFO: Job seekers website for students and alumni MIME-Version: 1.0 Please circulate, this job seekers web site should be of interest to recent graduates and students: http://www.careerowl.ca Background: "A small group of faculty members at the universities of Alberta, British Columbia and Western Ontario, including myself, designed and paid the initial development costs for a web-based electronic hiring hall system for the post secondary labour market in Canada. Our students are struggling harder to find job openings now than earlier in my career. When the economy goes down in one part of the country but there are still jobs in other parts, it is hard for our students and alumni to find out about and set up interviews in other parts of the country. For the most part, our university and college career placement offices will only help students and alumni for the institution each is affiliated with. Increasingly, when our students and alumni form families, both partners work. One partner will get a good job offer somewhere else in the country, and the other will call a former professor asking how they might go about searching for a job in the new location. Again, our campus placement offices are not ideally set up to be of help for that sort of search. They have been strapped for resources, and are burdened just helping the current students. The CareerOwl web system we have built (www.careerowl.ca) allows students and alumni to stay connected and be easily reached by employers anywhere they are, even in periods when they are changing their phone numbers and e-mail providers because of moving. It is free for the job seekers.Employers can also list for free right now. In the longer run, employers will pay very modest posting fees. If we can achieve high usage, fees can be low because the system is run on a nonprofit basis and the initial system is being donated by faculty members who feel this is important. If the system is free for the job candidates and truly low cost for employers,all of our campus career placement offices can use CareerOwl as an add-on to their current services, at no extra cost to them. They can do this without any contract or negotiations. This is a nonexclusive service. Faculty and Department offices and student and alumni clubs can do the same.We have done what we can to make this possible. It is up to you and others now. We must get students and alumni registered on the system -- anyone with some post secondary education working or who wants to work in Canada.Please encourage your students to register. Please register yourselves and eligible family members. A person should register as a candidate if potentially interested in using the system to seek employment, including part-time, summer, co-op or intern, and consulting opportunities as well as career positions. A person should register as an employer if potentially interested in using the system to find a person for any sort of work including things faculty members often hire students for such as grading,research assistance, contract computer programming, and home services such as house sitting, yard work and child care -- all the sorts of jobs that help students pay their way through school. Once we have suitable numbers of job candidates enrolled, we will be going to major employers to urge them to put their jobs on this system. We need your active help to get through this start-up phase and achieve those suitable numbers. I am attaching some information that may be useful to you in this effort. Please help us. Sincerely, Alice Nakamura Winspear Professor of Business University of Alberta" Regards, Tom Walker ^^^ #408 1035 Pacific St. Vancouver, B.C. V6E 4G7 [EMAIL PROTECTED] (604) 669-3286 ^^^ The TimeWork Web: http://www.vcn.bc.ca/timework/
My world's best idea (1998)
Please come read and rate (on a scale from 0-10) my scheme to reward years of service with more free time, judged one of the "world's best ideas" for 1998 by the Institute for Social Inventions. http://www.globalideasbank.org/wbi/WBI-43.HTML Regards, Tom Walker ^^^ #408 1035 Pacific St. Vancouver, B.C. V6E 4G7 [EMAIL PROTECTED] (604) 669-3286 ^^^ The TimeWork Web: http://www.vcn.bc.ca/timework/
Re: SOCIETIES AND ECONOMIC SYSTEMS
Eva Durant wrote, mass unemployment cuts the unions bargaining power due to cut in membership and that competitive pool of unemployed who are ready to work for less in worse conditions. Also the mass media for the last 30 years was constantly hammering the idea of unionism. Unemployment may well cut union bargaining power, but short-sighted strategy cuts union political power much more. Over the past 30 years, unions (in general) have chosen to focus on income over organizing and on seniority over solidarity. This could be explained as a defensive strategy brought on by necessity. Or it could be explained as a conservative strategy brought on by institutional inertia. I'm sure it's been a bit of both. The problem with a one-sided "unions as victim" analysis is that it really gives the unions no direction to change -- other than whine about how tough things are. Union bureaucrats are all too happy to have something to complain about. That way they can keep playing the conservative game and rationalize the predictable all too predictable losses as due to anti-union hostility. And militant rhetoric is no guarantee of strong union political strategy. My observation is that union officials who "talk tough" often seem to believe that's enough. Regards, Tom Walker ^^^ #408 1035 Pacific St. Vancouver, B.C. V6E 4G7 [EMAIL PROTECTED] (604) 669-3286 ^^^ The TimeWork Web: http://www.vcn.bc.ca/timework/
Re: Predicting the Asian Crisis
Ed Weick wrote, It is probable that the crisis is far from over. The situation we have now is one in which economies are not functioning well, investors are confused, and everyone is waiting for the other shoe to drop. And there is an anxiety abroad that it may be a very big shoe. Everyone can stop waiting for the other shoe to drop. The other shoe dropped first. Nobody heard it because there was so much noise from the party upstairs. The ready (and unquestioning) availability of foreign credit to emerging Asian economies was in large part due to the lack of opportunities for comparatively high return on investment in the west. It sounds paradoxical, but fast growth in the emerging economies of Asia was fueled by slow growth in the mature economies of North America, Europe and Japan. The fast growing emerging economies then acted as global engines of growth, even shoring up sluggish growth in the mature economies. In North America, the other shoe was the partial dismantling of the Keynesian welfare state and the decline in earnings of the lower two fifths of households. Although these have had devastating impacts on the individuals affected, the macro-economic consequences have been masked by an increasing reliance on export-led growth. We heard the mantra over and over: "compete in the global economy, compete in the global economy, compete in the global economy." Now note the subtle shift to emphasizing the inherent strength of the domestic U.S. economy as a bulwark against global turmoil. It won't wash. The bankers and finance ministers killed the goose that laid the golden egg. They murmured 'fiscal rectitude' and coddled speculative excess. There they sit with goose-grease dripping from their chins wondering how they can squeeze a few more from the ravaged carcass on the table. Soup, anyone? Regards, Tom Walker ^^^ #408 1035 Pacific St. Vancouver, B.C. V6E 4G7 [EMAIL PROTECTED] (604) 669-3286 ^^^ The TimeWork Web: http://www.vcn.bc.ca/timework/
Table manners
For Immediate Release September 14, 1998 REMARKS BY PRESIDENT CLINTON TO THE COUNCIL ON FOREIGN RELATIONS (with added commentary from "Through the Looking Glass" by Lewis Carroll) "O Oysters, come and walk with us!" The Walrus did beseech. "A pleasant walk, a pleasant talk, Along the briny beach: We cannot do with more than four, To give a hand to each." I just want to emphasize again that even as we respond to the urgent alarms of the moment, we must speed the pace of this systemic work as well. That is why I have asked Secretary Rubin and Chairman Greenspan to convene the finance ministers and central bankers of the G-7 and key emerging economies in Washington within 30 days to develop a preliminary report to the heads of state by the beginning of next year on strengthening the world financial system. "The time has come," the Walrus said, "To talk of many things: Of shoes -- and ships -- and sealing-wax -- Of cabbages -- and kings -- And why the sea is boiling hot -- And whether pigs have wings." As we take these immediate steps, we also must intensify our efforts to reform our trade and financial institutions so that they can respond better to the challenges we now face and those we are likely to face in the future. We must build a stronger and more accountable global trading system, pressing forward with market-opening initiatives, but also advancing the protection of labor and environmental interests, and doing more to ensure that trade helps the lives of ordinary citizens across the globe. "I weep for you," the Walrus said. "I deeply sympathize." With sobs and tears he sorted out Those of the largest size. Holding his pocket handkerchief Before his streaming eyes. On the other hand, we need to be honest with Russia and everyone else. No nation, rich or poor, democratic or authoritarian, can escape the fundamental economic imperatives of the global market. No nation can escape its discipline. No nation can avoid its responsibility to do its part. "O Oysters," said the Carpenter. "You've had a pleasant run! Shall we be trotting home again?" But answer came there none -- And that was scarcely odd, because They'd eaten every one.' Regards, Tom Walker ^^^ #408 1035 Pacific St. Vancouver, B.C. V6E 4G7 [EMAIL PROTECTED] (604) 669-3286 ^^^ The TimeWork Web: http://www.vcn.bc.ca/timework/
Life expectancy falls in Europe
Just out from the British Medical Journal BMJ 1998;317:767 ( 19 September ) News Life expectancy falls in Europe Adrea Mach, Geneva Laying the blame squarely on "poverty, unemployment, homelessness, excessive drinking, and smoking" and on health reforms that are too reliant on "market forces," the World Health Organisation's latest report reveals that Europe's overall health is deteriorating for the first time in 50 years. The report, which contains data on key indicators of health, was released at this week's meeting of the 50 active member states of the WHO's regional committee for Europe in Copenhagen. It shows that average life expectancy across Europe (although still higher than in the other WHO regions) has fallen for the first time since the second world war--from 73.1 years in 1991 to 72.3 in 1995. The reason for the fall is the social and economic upheaval in the newly independent states of the former Soviet Union and the countries of central and eastern Europe. On average, a child born in the newly independent states can expect to live 11 years less than a child in the European Union. Re-emerging infectious diseases (such as malaria, diphtheria, tuberculosis), sexually transmitted diseases (such as syphilis and HIV/AIDS), and lifestyle mediated diseases (such as cancer, cardiovascular disease, and illnesses related to alcohol and tobacco) take a heavy toll. And, as the social safety net of the welfare state dissolves, extreme poverty (affecting 120 million of Europe's 870 million people), homelessness, and other social and environmental factors also undermine health. However, the report states that even among the 15 countries of the European Union there is little room for complacency as rising unemployment and the expanding divide between rich and poor have resulted in health problems. Also although infectious diseases such as tuberculosis and diptheria have so far been confined mainly to countries in the east of the region there is a risk that they will spread to western Europe. To tackle these problems, the WHO's regional committee for Europe is adopting a new strategy, Health21, which sets 21 targets for the 21st century. Arun Nanda, WHO's regional adviser for Europe, denied that this means that the organisation has abandoned its Health For All goals (see figure). He said that the Health21 document is the result of an unprecedented two year consultation process to update and consolidate the 38 regional health targets set in 1984. "It adapts the universal Health For All principles to our rapidly changing times and region," he said. "The European region has changed dramatically over the last decade," emphasised the WHO's director general, Gro Harlem Brundtland, in her address to the regional meeting. With 20 new members since the early 1990s, many new needs, and a disturbing trend in which "the vast majority of rich countries decrease their development cooperation," the World Health Assembly in May had responded with "an historic decision . . . to increase allocations to two regions--Africa and Europe." These resources are sorely needed in Europe, where "cardiovascular disease, cancer, and diabetes are the top three health problems . . . and share common risk factors--smoking, unhealthy nutrition, lack of physical exercise, and heavy drinking," said Dr Brundtland. In reversing these trends, universal access to high quality healthcare services must remain "a bedrock principle," Dr Brundtland emphasised. Market forces may have increased productivity; business may have enhanced cost effective resource allocation, but "the private sector will never become the key provider of primary health care or the guarantor of securing health services to the poor . . . that is a key responsibility for governments." Health in Europe 1997 can be found on the World Health Organisation's website (www.who.int/). Regards, Tom Walker ^^^ #408 1035 Pacific St. Vancouver, B.C. V6E 4G7 [EMAIL PROTECTED] (604) 669-3286 ^^^ The TimeWork Web: http://www.vcn.bc.ca/timework/
Basic income vs. moral hazard
The topic of basic income has come up on the "Third Way" Economic Policy debate list at http://www.netnexus.org/debates/3wayecon/ I personally find the tone of that third way debate stuffy and unrewarding. But there is an argument there calculated to raise the hackles of Thomas Lunde, among others. The objection to a basic income scheme centres on the issue of "moral hazard", which is to say that basic income offers an incentive to people to be idle. My initial, gut reaction to that argument is "so what?" Under contemporary conditions idleness is a better social contribution than is frenzied marketing, which ultimately subtracts from net social welfare. But for the sake of argument, I'd like to worry the moral hazard problem a bit further. My gut reaction assumes a one-time-for-all-time basic income scheme and it further assumes that what people do with their time will have no bearing on the workings of the basic income scheme. What happens though, if we admit that some basic income recipients will use their freed time to lobby for a higher basic income and for preferences and privileges in the scheme that will favour "people like me"? One could imagine the basic income lobby becoming a voracious and insatiable one issue beast fueled by the slogan "more for me (and less for them)". In other words, the real moral hazard is not that people will become indolent but that they _won't_. But there's another twist. What I've outlined above could as easily be called "conflict of interest" as "moral hazard". The general attitude toward conflict of interest in high places these days is "nudge, nudge, wink, wink, y' know what I mean." Conflict of interest guidelines and legislation are fig leaves that, at best, merely caution politicians and public servants to try to be a little discrete in their self-serving activities. From the philosophical perspective of free-market ideology, there is no such thing as _conflict_ of interest. Everyone pursues their private interest (through the market, of course, nudge, nudge, wink, wink) and that adds up to the public good. Abstractly, that position favours "downsizing" government -- curiously affecting only those operations of government that don't directly benefit the powerful interests in the marketplace. And, of course, as the Economist recently noted, government budgets have grown as a proportion of GDP under the avowedly "free market" regimes of the past 20 years. The point that I'm trying to make is that "moral hazard" is only a problem when it extends to the currently disenfranchised a 'right' that has come to be regarded by the elites as beneficent when it is theirs exclusively. Regards, Tom Walker ^^^ #408 1035 Pacific St. Vancouver, B.C. V6E 4G7 [EMAIL PROTECTED] (604) 669-3286 ^^^ The TimeWork Web: http://www.vcn.bc.ca/timework/
Re: Marx required angelic robots
Jay Hanson wrote, . . . Marx required angelic robots for his utopia . . . - snip - . . . Marx's grand hallucination wound up in the trash can . . . - snip - Jay, Both of the above statements have about the same degree of scientific validity as would a claim that Tammy Faye Bakker wrote the New Testament. It's one thing to claim that the natural sciences are superior to the human sciences in their methodology. It's another thing entirely to launch uninformed, unsubstantiated and emotional attacks against the latter. It's ironic that you have apparently swallowed a huge dose of the vitriol manufactured to smear Marx over the past half century by the defenders of the corporate mass consumption way of life that you profess to detest. You also apparently take at face value the self-serving appropriations and distortions of Marx by bureaucratic totalitarian regimes. One thing is clear: you haven't bothered to check out those misrepresentations for yourself by studying Marx's work. You would no doubt be surprised to learn that Marx's writing has influenced your own arguments more than you could ever dream. A crude map of the intellectual trajectory from Marx to Hanson passes through Thorstein Veblen and M. King Hubbard. Be careful when you condemn something you don't understand -- it may turn out to be part of yourself. Regards, Tom Walker ^^^ #408 1035 Pacific St. Vancouver, B.C. V6E 4G7 [EMAIL PROTECTED] (604) 669-3286 ^^^ The TimeWork Web: http://www.vcn.bc.ca/timework/
Re: Canada's claim to be best country may be shot down
In Yukon, no one is eligible for full social assistance benefits unless they are deemed a permanent exclusion from the workforce. Single parents are deemed excluded until their children reach the age of two but they are required to wait for a six-month period before they receive full benefits. The cost of living in Yukon is higher than in most areas of Canada. Explain how this situation is compatible with the right to an adequate standard of living. 78. Please explain what measures are planned or taken to reduce the very considerable lower lone-parent family incomes in Yukon. 79. Please provide more data as regards literacy programmes in Yukon. Northwest Territories 80. The new welfare programme of the NWT provides for a shelter provision limited to $450 per month for single persons. This is less than what was provided in 1997. Explain how this situation is compatible with the right of NWT residents to housing and to adequate standard of living. 81. Has the positive trend in the reduction of school drop-outs in the Northwest Territories been upheld since 1991? Regards, Tom Walker ^^^ #408 1035 Pacific St. Vancouver, B.C. V6E 4G7 [EMAIL PROTECTED] (604) 669-3286 ^^^ The TimeWork Web: http://www.vcn.bc.ca/timework/
The German Question
of the SPD were sharply criticised by party officials, but their time may yet come. A possible way forward for social democracy is offered by Walter Riester, currently vice-chairman of the powerful metal workers' union, IG Metall, and in line for the post of minister of labour in a Schröder government. He would like to "modernise working conditions" and bring in new labour legislation that would take due account of the pressures on industry as a result of globalisation and would also respect the workers' need for security. He proposes to introduce a minimum income and pension to apply across the board. And he has won support among party intellectuals for his plans to renew urban development, modernise the industrial infrastructure, encourage social work and sponsor state schemes for ecological innovation. These plans will depend for their execution on a consensus among the representatives of capital and on the post Oskar Lafontaine is offered in the new government, since he is known to be more sympathetic than Mr Schröder to state intervention and European control of capital. They will also depend on the relative strength of the Greens in the event of a coalition with the SPD. But the future of Mr Riester's programme depends above all on the trade unions' ability to carry their point that, quite apart from any claims they may have in respect of wages and jobs, they want to share in the industrial society of the future. So they could campaign for a redistribution of work that would maintain the number of skilled workers. Klaus Zwickel, the chairman of IG Metall, has already put demands of this kind to the future government. But he and two other union leaders, Herbert Mai of the Public Services and Transport Workers' Union and Detlev Hensche representing the media, are alone in calling for a radical reduction in working hours. Trade unions members and officials are all too ready to repeat the ancient prayer: Lord, may we keep all that we have won and may the coming boom bring back the good old days. Only a timid few welcome the cultural revolution that will follow the inexorable decline in work. But we shall have to revise all our ideas about work and leisure, invent ways of living that have nothing to do with consumption, organise social security schemes that do not depend on paid work. Women, the unemployed and the young have not yet the political power to do more than claim a bare subsistence. They cannot force a debate on the future form of society. No one - especially not at election time - dares to challenge the middle class majority, which is defending its standard of living and would rather see a growing number of people excluded than agree to share work, wages and opportunities. Germany is still prosperous enough for its system to survive. But nobody can deny that fewer and fewer people who are in work are now paying for more and more people who are out of work. Lucidly and cynically, a whole era is being consigned to oblivion. The German model has not found the secret of perpetual motion. The rest is politics. * Journalist, Berlin Translated by Barbara Wilson (1) See "Le modèle allemand bat de l'aile", Le Monde diplomatique, December 1996. (2) Die Woche, Hamburg, 24 April 1998. (3) Tagespiegel, Berlin, 23 March 1998. (4) DM1.78 = $1 Regards, Tom Walker ^^^ #408 1035 Pacific St. Vancouver, B.C. V6E 4G7 [EMAIL PROTECTED] (604) 669-3286 ^^^ The TimeWork Web: http://www.vcn.bc.ca/timework/
Greenspan speech
rmal or negative profits, and in most instances will exhibit an inability over the life of the asset to recover the cash plus cost of capital invested in it. Thus, while adequate national saving is a necessary condition for capital investment and rising productivity and standards of living, it is by no means a sufficient condition. The former Soviet Union, for example, had too much investment, and without the discipline of market prices, they grossly misplaced it. The preferences of central planners wasted valuable resources by mandating investment in sectors of the economy where the output wasn't wanted by consumers--particularly in heavy manufacturing industries. It is thus no surprise that the Soviet Union's capital/output ratios were higher than those of contemporaneous free market economies of the West. This phenomenon of overinvestment is observable even among more sophisticated free market economies. In Japan, the saving rate and gross investment have been far higher than ours, but their per capita growth potential appears to be falling relative to ours. It is arguable that their hobbled financial system is, at least in part, a contributor to their economy's subnormal performance. We should not become complacent, however. To be sure, the sharp increases in the stock market have boosted household net worth. But while capital gains increase the value of existing assets, they do not directly create the resources needed for investment in new physical facilities. Only saving out of income can do that. In summary, whether over the past five to seven years, what has been, without question, one of the best economic performances in our history is a harbinger of a new economy or just a hyped-up version of the old, will be answered only with the inexorable passage of time. And I suspect our grandchildren, and theirs, will be periodically debating whether they are in a new economy. Regards, Tom Walker ^^^ #408 1035 Pacific St. Vancouver, B.C. V6E 4G7 [EMAIL PROTECTED] (604) 669-3286 ^^^ The TimeWork Web: http://www.vcn.bc.ca/timework/
the fundamentals are sound
What does it mean when politicians say "the fundamentals are sound"? The phrase is meaningless in itself, it only makes sense as a denial of an implicit charge that the fundamentals (whatever they are) _aren't_ sound. The phrase is the economic equivalent of "we are beginning to see a light at the end of the tunnel", "I am not a crook" or "I have never had sexual relations with that woman". The denial is strictly pro forma. No one believes or is expected to believe it. One of the "fundamentals" is not having to deny the unsoundness of the fundamentals. To say that the "fundamentals are sound" is therefore to mean that they are not. "Markets rise and fall. But our economy is the strongest it's been in a generation, and its fundamentals are sound," Clinton said in his weekly radio address. . . . Clinton recorded his address Friday while in Ireland. His comments came after Alan Greenspan, chairman of the Federal Reserve Board, warned Friday that the global financial turmoil and Wall Street's volatility may hurt the U.S. economy and suggested he was as inclined to cut interest rates as to raise them. Regards, Tom Walker ^^^ #408 1035 Pacific St. Vancouver, B.C. V6E 4G7 [EMAIL PROTECTED] (604) 669-3286 ^^^ The TimeWork Web: http://www.vcn.bc.ca/timework/
The Second Shoe
Between February and April of this year David Croteau of Virginia Commonwealth University conducted a survey of Washington, D.C. based journalists. His report on that survey is on the Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting (FAIR) website: http://www.fair.org/reports/journalist-survey.html The results of two questions (below) neatly sum up the findings: in a nutshell, economic conditions looked pretty good to reporters making a lot of money. Questions About Journalists' Assessment of Economic Policy Issues 9. First, how would you rate economic conditions in this country today? 34% Excellent 58% Good 4% Fair 1% Poor 2% Don't know/not sure 24. For classification purposes, into which of the following ranges does your annual household income fall? 5% under $50,000 27% $50,000 - $74,999 16% $75,000 - $99,999 21% $100,000 - $149,999 17% $150,000 - $199,999 14% $200,000 or more I wonder if there was any correlation between the 31% of journalists with household incomes over $150,000 and the 34% who rated economic conditions as excellent? Similarly, 58% thought economic conditions were good and 64% had household incomes between $50,000 and $149,999 a year. It would be fun to ask those folks a couple of follow up questions: 1. How do you rate economic conditions _now_? 2. Have you lost any money in the market this year? Back in the 1970s, Habermas wrote of the displacement of crisis tendencies in advanced capitalism -- from economic crisis to rationality crisis, legitimation crisis and motivation crisis. Here's a great quote from the book, _Legitimation Crisis_: "If governmental crisis management fails, it lags behind programmatic demands *that it has placed on itself* [emphasis in original]. The penalty for this failure is withdrawal of legitimation. Thus, the scope for action contracts precisely at those moments in which it needs to be drastically expanded." On the back cover of my Beacon Paperback edition is the following blurb from Jeremy J. Shapiro: "Shall we sit back and watch our social system crumble on the TV screen? Or can we step out of our private views and interests, figure out what is objectively good for the human species, and act on it?" The responses of reporters in the above survey exemplify the view that private interests *equal* public good. The term 'conflict of interest' seems quaint in juxtaposition with the motivations celebrated by free market ideology. It seem to me that what we have been seeing over the past year and a half is not "economic crisis" but the rapid and _irreversible_ displacement of economic problems into legitimation crises. Underlying this almost instantaneous decay of the system has been the slow erosion of morally defensible (traditionalist) structures of individual motivations. As Habermas argued, "Bourgeois culture as a whole was never able to reproduce itself from itself. It was always dependent on motivationally effective supplementation by traditional world views." There is no economic fix to the current crisis simply because it is NOT an economic crisis. THIS is the second shoe. Regards, Tom Walker ^^^ #408 1035 Pacific St. Vancouver, B.C. V6E 4G7 [EMAIL PROTECTED] (604) 669-3286 ^^^ The TimeWork Web: http://www.vcn.bc.ca/timework/
Re: the lonely net
Agree? I certainly don't agree with the claim that this was an "extremely careful scientific study" based on the information provided in the short excerpt. Did the researchers consider the possibility that the cause and effect chain goes the other way -- that is that people who are becoming socially disconnected are driven to the internet to seek consolation (and not really finding it)? We know that the 169 participants in the study were not randomly selected, but we don't know if there were any other precautions taken to make this study simulate double-blind, controlled trials. Regards, Tom Walker ^^^ #408 1035 Pacific St. Vancouver, B.C. V6E 4G7 [EMAIL PROTECTED] (604) 669-3286 ^^^ The TimeWork Web: http://www.vcn.bc.ca/timework/
Long Workdays Draw Backlash (fwd)
moan and groan about working more hours, but given falling wages and job insecurity, they do it.'' Working harder has also come at the behest of America's bosses. In the 1980s, companies like Ford and Chrysler discovered it's cheaper to have a stable of productive workers. When business booms, these employees can work overtime - and the company can hire temporary workers to pitch in. By not hiring more full-time workers, the firm avoids paying severance packages, health benefits, and the like. ``If you put a person on your payroll and they stay with you until they retire, it costs a bundle,'' says Michigan State's Dr. Brickner. One benefit of the current system, he points out, is that there won't be as many layoffs during economic slumps. Yet the new paradigm has caused tension. The GM strike was mostly about America's biggest automaker playing catch-up on this concept. Furthermore, unions are realizing that companies' reliance on overtime - rather than new workers - is hurting their membership numbers. So now unions are joining with the overworked employees. ``At first workers said, 'Yeah, yeah, yeah,' `` to more overtime, says Rose. ``But after doing it week in and week out, they're now saying, 'No, no, no.' `` Regards, Tom Walker ^^^ #408 1035 Pacific St. Vancouver, B.C. V6E 4G7 [EMAIL PROTECTED] (604) 669-3286 ^^^ The TimeWork Web: http://www.vcn.bc.ca/timework/
Re: Russian life expectancy
Ed Weick wrote, It should be noted that the footnote appears to confirm the life-expectancy figure used by Prof. Cohen. However, Tom's point about the accuracy and meaningfulness of the figure remains valid. I've seen several other sources confirming the life expectancy figure of 57 years for males. It's also feasible for the numbers to be accurate -- in the sense that they are correctly computed using appropriate data, etc. -- yet still exagerate the impact of the changes simply because of the way an indicator such as "life expectancy" is constructed. Regards, Tom Walker ^^^ #408 1035 Pacific St. Vancouver, B.C. V6E 4G7 [EMAIL PROTECTED] (604) 669-3286 ^^^ The TimeWork Web: http://www.vcn.bc.ca/timework/
Re: Demodernizing of Russia (fwd)
when male life expectancy has plunged to 57 years . . . I wonder how reliable this fact is, though. From what I've seen, the Russian mortality crisis reflected a statistical trend from 1987 to 1994, mostly among males in the 30-60 age group. Infant mortality and death rates among older males didn't change that much (although birth rates also plunged). There was also an improvement in male life expectancy in the decade prior to 1990. It seems to me that a complicating factor would be the extraordinary bulge in the Russian birth cohort from the 5-year period preceding World War II. I don't have the stats to do the checking, but it may be that a much less drastic decline in male life expectancy has been amplified out of proportion by a half-century old demographic blip. As of 1990, the Russian male cohort born in the five years between 1936 and 1940 was about 50% larger than that born in the previous five years and over 2/3 larger than that born in the subsequent five year period. A second complicating factor could be the huge military casualities suffered by the Soviet Union in World War II. For example, in 1990 there were only about half as many males as females in the 65-69 age group. Ceterus paribus, there would be less deaths among males in the 70-75 age group during the first half of the 1990s simply because there would be less males. To repeat: all this suggests to me not that there hasn't been a deterioration in male life expectancy in Russia, but that the steepness of the decline MAY have been exagerated due to demographic factors totally unconnected with the demise of the Soviet Union. This is a _question_, not a conclusion. Regards, Tom Walker ^^^ #408 1035 Pacific St. Vancouver, B.C. V6E 4G7 [EMAIL PROTECTED] (604) 669-3286 ^^^ The TimeWork Web: http://www.vcn.bc.ca/timework/
Death of a trend (was Demodernizing of Russia)
Further ruminations about Russian male life expectancy . . . There's also the question of misplaced concreteness of "life expectancy". Most of the Russian males whose life expectancy hypothetically declined so much are (miraculously?) still alive. Does the change in life expectancy reflect a measured decline in the health of these individuals? No. Although their health may well have declined, their "life expectancy" is based not on their own health but on other people's deaths. Some of that decline in life expectancy may also have come from the loss of previously projected improvements, rather than from actual increase of mortality. "Not only are things getting worse," the trends seem to say, "they are not getting better." This is a kind of double counting in which the chickens are counted before they've hatched and then counted again after they haven't hatched -- we only had one egg but we lost two chickens. Regards, Tom Walker ^^^ #408 1035 Pacific St. Vancouver, B.C. V6E 4G7 [EMAIL PROTECTED] (604) 669-3286 ^^^ The TimeWork Web: http://www.vcn.bc.ca/timework/
Russia: Latest from Fred Weir via Gregory Schwartz (fwd)
[PEN-L:1141] Russia: Latest from Fred Weir Gregory Schwartz ([EMAIL PROTECTED]) Folks, Here is the latest from (comrade in keypad) Weir in Moscow. I shall abstain from any synthesis and allow the lines of his article reveal the shaky situation in Russia. Only one thought has occupied my mind in the past few day: this so called 'financial crisis' in Russia was anticipated by Yeltsin long ago - around February. Anyone with half a brain (i.e. Yeltsin or somebody like him) could see this crisis in the making, and it is surprising its culmination took as long to materialise as it in fact did. It would seem, therefore, that as opposed to the reports of Yeltsin's dismissing of the cabinet, the impending crisis led him to concede to the demands of some important people in the cabinet for their resignation, in order that they could escape the brunt of responsibility in the coming months. This would allow them, primarily people like the GazProm tycoon, former Prime Minister Chernomyrdin, to stand innocent while furnishing (him) with the opportunity to re-evaluate more carefully the situation in order to draw-up a strategy for a sucessful presidential bid. Kirienko, for his part, is the real loser in the whole situation. But, since he did not precipitate the crisis and knowing how appointments are dealt in the Russian government, he will probably be demoted to something like the Energy Minister (not bad considering this might be Russia's future economic base), a post he held until his current appointment as a Prime Minister. This might be speculative and, in any event, not very substantial at this point, but - if true - it could shed some additional light on the impotence of the Russian state, as well as on some political forces that might emerge in the (near) future. In solidarity, Greg. * From: Fred Weir in Moscow Date: Sat, 22 Aug 1998 14:43:24 (MSK) For the Hindustan Times MOSCOW (HT Aug 23) -- Russian politics are spiralling into confrontation as the opposition-led parliament continues an emergency session, requested by the Kremlin to pass urgent anti- crisis legislation, that has instead moved to censure the government and urge President Boris Yeltsin to resign. "Russia has entered a period of very serious financial crisis," Prime Minister Sergei Kiriyenko told the special assembly of the State Duma, Russia's lower house of parliament, on Friday. "It's very unpleasant to take responsibility for the unpopular actions, but there is no pleasant and popular way out of the crisis." But the Duma appears in no mood to pass the 17 draft laws the government says are needed to raise taxes, slash spending and halt the collapse of Russia's public finances. Instead, deputies seized the opportunity Friday to pass a resolution, by 245 votes to 32, calling on Mr. Yeltsin to quit. The usually pro-government Our Home is Russia party and the liberal Yabloko party joined Communists in voting for the measure. "The country is in a deep crisis and the president is not taking measures to protect the constitutional rights of citizens. This has created a realistic threat to Russia's territorial integrity, independence and security," the resolution said. "The State Duma recommends that President B. N. Yeltsin stop fulfilling his presidential powers before the end of his term." The resolution, which is not legally binding under Russia's president-centred Constitution, was greeted with derision in the Kremlin. "People seem to forget that Russia already has a president," the official ITAR-Tass quoted Mr. Yeltsin as saying. But analysts say the situation is dire. Russia's worst economic crisis since the collapse of the Soviet Union grows harsher by the day while parliament appears to have abandoned any semblance of cooperation with the government. The Duma is slated to continue its emergency session on Tuesday. Communist leader Gennady Zyuganov, whose party controls half the seats in parliament, said he has collected the necessary 90 signatures of deputies to place a motion of no-confidence in the government before the session. And he said the Duma must accelerate a process launched two months ago to impeach Mr. Yeltsin. "We are now in a new situation that has brought Russia to the edge of an abyss," Mr. Zyuganov said. "Russia has devalued itself to the point where a single multibillionaire can buy it. This is the full collapse of the course carried out in the past seven years," he said. Despite a $4.8-billion cash injection from the International Monetary Fund barely a month ago, the Russian government was forced to stop defending the battered rouble last week and declare a moratorium on repaying domestic and some foreign debt. Experts say the plunging rouble threatens a wave of bank failures and a new round of heavy price inflation for long suffering consumers. Russia's main stock market index has crashed from almost 600 points a year
Life expectancy and resurrection in Russia
Yeltsin Fires Kiriyenko By Sharon Lafraniere Washington Post Foreign Service Monday, August 24, 1998; Page A1 MOSCOW, Aug. 23 President Boris Yeltsin today fired Prime Minister Sergei Kiriyenko and replaced him with his predecessor, Viktor Chernomyrdin, delivering another jolting surprise to Russia and its crisis-battered financial markets. Yeltsin essentially reversed what he did in March, when he replaced Chernomyrdin with Kiriyenko, saying the government needed new ideas and new energy to achieve market reforms . . . © Copyright 1998 The Washington Post Company [- - snip - -] Regards, Tom Walker ^^^ #408 1035 Pacific St. Vancouver, B.C. V6E 4G7 [EMAIL PROTECTED] (604) 669-3286 ^^^ The TimeWork Web: http://www.vcn.bc.ca/timework/
Re: FW: a very important equation
Eva Durant wrote,
yes, i stopped reading it when lot of the variables were
arbitrarily called constants, when most of them never are.
Too many people are already causalties of the
present economics, I think acting earlier is better,
whereever is the alleged point of inflection,
I have the feeling you wont find two econoomists
who agree where to put it anyway... exactly because of
the arbitrary nature of similar "equations".
I am not convinced that such mathematical
modelling of social "data" can be as useful as modelling
in physics. There are very few unconvoluted
independent/dependent variable relations.
This makes it even more paradoxical when the measurable quantities that do
exist are so readily -- one should say willfully -- ignored, even denied.
For example, we can document from birth statistics the appoximate size of
various age cohorts in developed countries. It's not at all hard to go from
there to estimates of changes in the working age population and changes in
the retirement age population.
Although such an demographic estimate doesn't directly provide an estimate
of potential funds available for retirement savings, it does tell us
something about the demographic parameters within which the flow of funds
into or out of retirement accounts operate. We know, for example that
working age people (roughly 20-64) are more likely to contribute to
retirement savings and people over the age of 65 are more likely to withdraw
from those funds. Although this is not a certainty, it is a measurable
probability.
Seventeen years ago, I worked at a school board where the officials were
convinced that "declining enrollment" was an inexhaustible trend. A quick
call to the department of vital statistics could have confirmed that in a
few years school enrollments would again start to increase. But there was no
place in the official methodology for factoring in "outside" data.
Everybody operates according to some sort of model, whether mathematically
sophisticated or not. I would contend that each of these models is
"mathematical" -- even if the math is no more than a crude dichotomy
("there are two kinds of people . . .").
You're correct that John Burr Williams called a lot of things "constants"
that aren't constant. But what he was doing wasn't arbitrary. He was naming
a set of "simplifying assumptions". That is, he was trying to make it clear
to the reader exactly where the estimates (based on the hypothetical
constants) would most likely deviate from reality.
Regards,
Tom Walker
^^^
#408 1035 Pacific St.
Vancouver, B.C.
V6E 4G7
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
(604) 669-3286
^^^
The TimeWork Web: http://www.vcn.bc.ca/timework/
FW: a very important equation
From a lecture on populations by Dr. Stephen T. Abedon http://www.mansfield.ohio-state.edu/mans/microbio/biol1540.htm "a very important equation: A differential equation approximating the sigmoidal growth curve of an ideal population is: dN/dt = rN(K - N) / K where r is the intrinsic rate of population growth, K is the carrying capacity of the environment, N is the number of individuals present in a population, and t is time. For those of you haven't had calculus, dN/dt stands for instantaneous change in N as a function of t, a slope. Thus, using this equation one can determine the instantaneous rate of increase of a reasonably well behaved population (change in N as a function of time) so long as one has knowledge of the population's biotic potential, actual size, and the carrying capacity of the environment in which the population lives. r strategist --- adapted to exponential increases: An organism which is particularly well adapted to an exponential increase in population size is know as an r strategist (the r coming from the differential equation described above). r strategists are characterized by great rapidity in their developmental programs combined with an ability to produce large numbers of offspring. No organism is a pure r strategist. Most show at least some capacity to survive at equilibrium, i.e., in carrying capacity situations. pioneer species: r strategists tend to be particularly good at finding disturbed environments and then rapidly producing large numbers of progeny in such environments. Often those offspring are ill-equipped for survival except under optimal conditions because of the small amount of parental resource put into their survival. However, the large numbers produced tend to both make up for low survivorship as well as allow for great dispersal. Wide dispersal allows at least some fraction of progeny to find and therefore exploit newly disturbed habitats. weeds: A plant which is an r strategists more likely than not we would call a weed. k strategist --- adapted to limitation: In contrast to r strategists, many organisms show extreme potential to survive and prosper at or near carrying capacity, though often at the expense of their ability to display rapid population increases under most circumstance (i.e., their intrinsic rate of population growth is small). Such organisms are called K strategists. The variable K refers to carrying capacity (i.e., they display a bias in their adaptations toward maximizing carrying capacity). adaptation to climaxed ecosystems: K strategists tend to be very good at surviving in mature (climaxed) ecosystems. low fecundity: K strategists also tend to put a great deal of resource into raising only a few young. example: gorilla: A gorilla is a K strategist." Regards, Tom Walker ^^^ #408 1035 Pacific St. Vancouver, B.C. V6E 4G7 [EMAIL PROTECTED] (604) 669-3286 ^^^ The TimeWork Web: http://www.vcn.bc.ca/timework/
RE: Boomer angst?
Arthur Cordell wrote, See the attached WSJ piece below which supports this point, at least the boomer withdrawals from mutual funds---those that are looking at 'early retirement.' The author of the WSJ article did a good job of making a human interest story out of a statistical glacier. Ordinarily, watching a glacier move is about as exciting as watching paint dry. Every once in a while, though, a chunk drops off the end and . . . WOW!! Speaking of glaciers, I would propose that as better metaphor for the financial markets than the bubble metaphor. Regards, Tom Walker ^^^ #408 1035 Pacific St. Vancouver, B.C. V6E 4G7 [EMAIL PROTECTED] (604) 669-3286 ^^^ The TimeWork Web: http://www.vcn.bc.ca/timework/
Re: FW: Cashing in
Tor Forde wrote, But does it have to be a bad thing? Absolutely not. The only "problem" is that the financial securities have ridiculously inflated face values. As they get cashed in they'll gravitate toward more realistic levels. It only becomes a bad thing if (when?) the politicians, economists and paper owners get it into their head that the "real" value of financial assets must be preserved at all costs. This exactly what has been happening in North America for the last 18 years or so. The owners of those inflated securities haven't "earned" the increases in value of their holdings, they've been granted them by the state. Easy come, easy go. Regards, Tom Walker ^^^ #408 1035 Pacific St. Vancouver, B.C. V6E 4G7 [EMAIL PROTECTED] (604) 669-3286 ^^^ The TimeWork Web: http://www.vcn.bc.ca/timework/
FW: Boomer angst?
In an earlier message (dieoff vs. y2k) I raise the spectre of a triple shock assault on growth economics: 1. the asian financial crisis 2. the y2k bug 3. the global oil production peak. Silly me. I left out the demographic crunch. Those familiar with Japan's economic problems point to Japan's aging population as a major burden. Now consider the North American case where the major impetus behind the stock market boom is the anxious (shall we say obsessive compulsive?) "retirement" saving of members of the so called baby boom generation. To paraphrase Newton, "what goes in must come out". It would be very simple (but laborious) to graph the the dying and retirement of the boomers year by year. The graph would emerge as, first, a series of superimposed normal distribution curves with (spiky) peaks at 2009 through 2029 and, second, a curve composed of the sums of all the individual curves. The composite curve would estimate withdrawals from the retirement account. Without having actually done the math, it seems to me that the composite curve will not only increase exponentially over time but will accelerate its rate of annual increase. It should be relatively easy to estimate from that curve when the rate of withdrawals will begin to exceed the rate of contributions. Of course, it makes no substantive difference whether the retirement account is "public" or "market" -- a withdrawal is a withdrawal is a withdrawal. O.K. now imagine we've got four normal distribution curves: asian crisis, y2k, global oil peak, N.A. demographic decay. The overlap and succession of the curves, peaks and points of acceleration describe an exceedingly long and profound period of crisis. But as Bruce Cockburn sang, "the trouble with normal is it only gets worse." Statistics aside, the question has to be whether there's a learning curve in any of this -- which could make things better -- or simply a succession of negative feedback loops, which would make things a helluva lot worse. Regards, Tom Walker ^^^ #408 1035 Pacific St. Vancouver, B.C. V6E 4G7 [EMAIL PROTECTED] (604) 669-3286 ^^^ The TimeWork Web: http://www.vcn.bc.ca/timework/
FW: dieoff vs. y2k
All else being equal, I must say that predictions of a global oil peak sometime in the next 10-12 years look fairly credible. I'd even be sanguine enough to say that given the oilternative of global warming, the end of cheap oil may not be such a bad thing. But a funny thing happens on the road to the peak. In seventeen more months the odometer clicks over on the millennium clock and a cartload full of cobol programs aren't supposed to hack the transition. One of the milder scenarios of the y2k sees a moderate to severe recession resulting from the confusion. I won't mention the doomsday scenarios. Considering that a major region of the world is already in a 'recession' and that the fallout from that is already causing a 'slowdown' in the rest of the world economy, predictions of a y2k induced recession may even be a little stale. A more likely -- but still moderate -- scenario is that y2k will prolong and deepen the recession that will already be in progress as y2k consequences begin to surface. Instead of demand for oil continuing to increase exponentially, the double-whammy recession could have the salutary effect of dampening and even decreasing demand for oil, thus extending the horizon for cheap oil by as much as several years (again, all else being equal -- which it ain't). Of course, as the world continues to approach the peaking of oil extraction (even if more slowly) oil prices would begin to rise in anticipation of the inevitable shortages and the world economy would face an even steeper climb out of an already profoundly deep and long 'recession'. Strike three for growth economics. The punch line of this is: see what happens if you enter "y2k" and "hubbert" in an Alta Vista search (as a boolean 'and' search). What do you get? Six or seven hits in which the two terms occur together *coincidentally*. My point is that -- aside from wide disagreement about the magnitude of effects -- both of these future events are predictable (in the proper sense) and have reasonable credibility within their respective fields. The Asian financial crisis is a fait accompli. Someone, somewhere has perhaps thought about the combined effects of these three phenomena but not enough people have been thinking and writing enough about it to make finding it an easy hit on a search engine. Regards, Tom Walker ^^^ #408 1035 Pacific St. Vancouver, B.C. V6E 4G7 [EMAIL PROTECTED] (604) 669-3286 ^^^ The TimeWork Web: http://www.vcn.bc.ca/timework/
FW: Yardeni 6884, Hubbert 5139
No matches were found. Regards, Tom Walker ^^^ #408 1035 Pacific St. Vancouver, B.C. V6E 4G7 [EMAIL PROTECTED] (604) 669-3286 ^^^ The TimeWork Web: http://www.vcn.bc.ca/timework/
Re: Sustainablity Plan B
Jay Hanson wrote, Robert L. Hickerson wrote an interesting piece about M. King Hubbert. Thanks to Jay for bringing up Robert Hickerson's essay on King Hubbert. In connection with my own cause celebre, the reduction of work time, I would be remiss if I failed to point out Hickerson's penultimate paragraph, before his personal conclusions and recommendations: "Hubbert goes on to state that following a transition, the work required of each individual, need be no longer than about 4 hours per day, 164 days per year, from the ages of 25 to 45. Income will continue until death. 'Insecurity of old age is abolished and both saving and insurance become unnecessary and impossible.'" It's also worth noting that Hubbert's analysis comes from his 1936 article "Man Hours -- A Declining Quantity". For those who are familiar with Hubbert's prescient estimates of oil extraction peaks -- obviously a major influence on Jay -- it's interesting to find a very similar analysis applied in the 1936 article on hours as work. In 1948, Hubbert made his first public prediction that U.S. domestic oil production would peak in the late 1960s/early 1970s. But, as quoted by Robert Clark in 1983 interview, "I first worked this out in the middle 1930s but the first time I really wrote it down was for the AAAS convention in 1948." That "middle 1930s" sounds remarkably close to the 1936 publication date of the Man Hours article. I suspect that what Hubbert did was apply the same concept to two facets of the economy -- hours of work and energy supply. I don't want to take anything away from Hubbert's scientific achievements, but it is my contention that Hubbert essentially confirmed ancient traditional wisdom about the perniciousness of compound interest. Hubbert's arc of petroleum depletion is, after all, constructed to illustrate the interaction of two principles: the boundless exponential growth of compound interest and the finite quantity of extractable resources. But, as Hickerson notes in one of his personal conclusions: "Increasingly desperate means will be used by those who think we can continue to have business as usual." An odd thought occurred to me about the 1970 peak of U.S. domestic production. The oil crisis didn't register on the political map and prices of oil didn't go up relatively until the OPEC embargo in October 1973, a full three years after the peak. Meanwhile what emerged as a major political scandal was a "third rate burglary" at the Watergate. Once again, as we approach an even more auspicious global peak, the energy crisis is not on the political map. This time, the headline issue is a blow job. Talk about Nero fiddling while Rome burned. I hear they just named the CIA headquarters after George Bush. Regards, Tom Walker ^^^ #408 1035 Pacific St. Vancouver, B.C. V6E 4G7 [EMAIL PROTECTED] (604) 669-3286 ^^^ The TimeWork Web: http://www.vcn.bc.ca/timework/
Re: BUT WHAT DOES IT MEAN?
Eva asked, Shouldn't we try whatever we can? Eva, Have you ever laid down on the tracks to stop a moving train? If you had, you wouldn't be telling people it's so easy. Sure, if everyone laid on the tracks together, the train would have to stop. But those who lie down first are alone -- totally alone and totally vulnerable. The pronoun "we" is a plagiarism of courage. Regards, Tom Walker ^^^ #408 1035 Pacific St. Vancouver, B.C. V6E 4G7 [EMAIL PROTECTED] (604) 669-3286 ^^^ The TimeWork Web: http://www.vcn.bc.ca/timework/
