Wow... I can see this starting to play out. Put on top of it the fact that the world is running out of oil (debators say we could run out in as little as 75 years or as long as 1000 years) and this could end up being the hardest fall civilization has ever seen.
You're very confused by my post. I did not mention any Marxist that i know of. In fact I've never read that much of Marx, but 99.9% of the population hasn't read any. Including I would guess all the people who use the term Marxist for anything that doesn't describe pure Laissez-Fair. Which is insane since no country has Evey grown to economic power under a pure Laissez-Fair. Not one can you think of one? Even Adam Smith said that protective measures like the Navigation acts were a good idea for England. All Nations with a middle class has had some degree of social policy. I spoke mainly of The American System of Political Economy (ASPE). The ASPE was an invention well practiced in America from 1812 all the way to WWII. Even after WWII , though more covertly. I would hardly call America during this period Marxist. But it is interesting you admit little knowledge of Marx and yet use the term so liberally in your posts. The ASPE was counter to Marx and Classic economists ( Smith, Ricardo, John Steward Mill) grim future for humanity. Both Europeans schools thought that wealth was finite and ultimately a zero-some game. That scales of economies would displace workers and bring wages to a natural state of subsistence. The only question was who was going to exploit who. Marx wanted a communist revolution thinking that it was going to happen anyway after capitalism reach it's natural conclusion of monopolies and oligarchs. The ASPE did not except this dark future of man. Rather theorizing that wealth is finite based on the earth's resources. ASPE observed through out history that gains in wealth were made by man exploiting nature not each other. Wealth is something that increases your standard of living. Cars , electricity, indoor plumbing, structural engineering etc. Think about heating and air conditioning it has increased the standard of living (makes your life easier or more enjoyable). The natural recourses that go into making these have been around since man has, but just in the last century have we enjoyed them. It was man's cognitive ability to manipulate earth's resources into something useful that creates wealth. Not paper games played on wall street which merely transfer existing assets and does not make any. You're confusing high wages for wealth creation( production, innovation,and ingenuity) with income derived from speculation and wealth transfer. The financial sector cannot create wealth. It only creates financial claims on wealth. Money, Stock, Bonds. The difference is financial claims on wealth are traded for something that raises your standard of living (Production). Financial claims on wealth (paper wealth) are worthless unless something tangible is produced to exchange for. If one isolated island had all the paper wealth (or even gold) and another isolated island had all the modern things in life we enjoy. Which country has wealth? Which country enjoy's a high standard of living? The high wage doctrine was based on high wages, well fed, well educated labor would out perform pauper (slave) labor. In fact it took four slaves in the south to equal the same production as a well paid worker in the north. The South advocated the British free trade system as it was the only way to compete with Caribbean and other providers of raw material to the British. The ASPE wanted to build up textile industrialization in the North with high wage employees to increase internal demand for the souths production. The free south population was suffering from 80% unemployment because of slavery. They called the free trade system "free to starve" because that's what most of them did. But politics are decided by money so the plantations one the day. The North won the civil war and built a textile industry under tariffs and other protective measures. The same way The British took the textiles away from Holland, Dutch, and Flemish makers. Long before Adam Smith England under Henry VII (Tudor) and Elizabeth I developed policies including banning exportation of wool. criminalizing the ownership of foreign made wares. If the south was victorious America would still be a economically dependent colony of the British empire. An economic vassal. Friedrich List took the American school to Germany. Starting over a dozen MIT type institutions. Focusing on chemical and metallurgy. Advances were made and German steel surpassed england in production and quality. Another British industry lost to the ASPE. The high wage doctrine led to advances in agricultural production. The establishment of universities for Ag led to crop rotation, reversal if soil depletion. High wages also force the mechanization of industries. I think the examples in the OP are sufficient. "Also high wages force companies to mechanize creating huge leaps in technology and lower production costs. Modern Agriculture machinery would never had happened if the slaves of the south were never freed. Robotics would be an infant industry if auto unions weren't getting high wages. Remember the fruit pickers in California debate. Jobs Americans don't want to do (or wages Americans can't afford to work). If there were no immigrant workers The high wages of the American worker would force them to mechanize the harvest process. In the short run this would lead to extreme high prices.= but in the long run would decrease the cost of production way under the migrant workers labor cost.The amount of technology that has been lost to low wages in china and others well be unfortunately felt for years.Low wages make technology stagnant. "
Technology encompasses a lot more than electronic gadgets your mind seems to exclusively associated the word with. Technology describes and type of progress or advance in standard of living. Going from a hunter/gatherer to managed land technique is a form of technology. Increasing crop production through fertilizer and hybrid seed are under the tech umbrella. Did you take a look at terra power and Marshall hydrothermal vents?technology of this nature are need to replace the end of the oil paradigm. Why not start them now and avoid a Malthusian depopulation? In fact I wouldn't describe you're examples of RIM APPL as tech advances at all. Being on the fringe of technology has enabled developed nations to create high wage jobs. just like the textile fight mentioned earlier. Countries like south Korea, japan, Taiwan have developed national policies to take away or develop on there own fringe technologies. This is a pretty easy concept. High wages allow more education.education leads to advances (wealth creation) It also forces companies to innovate to mechanize production as it is cheaper to innovate then to pay wages. Once mechanization occurs the costs of production is below cost of even the lowest available paid wage. I have no idea why you insist that everything needs to have a Marx or capitalist label. Perhaps you watch too much TV, economic hacks who do the same for political association reasons. If anything it is the American school of political economy. "Since these are massive investment with not an immediate payout the corporate capitalist structure well put there money int default swaps and other non productive, non wealth creating things instead of the long term investment and planning needed for an expanding population." Who would a marxist say should do the long term planning and investment? How would they do it and how would they measure it if not by money? Thanks for your replies. I am trying to understand your arguments better. [/B][/QUOTE] , sooner or later you're going to have to think if it's a good idea or not. not what label we can ascribe it to.I don't mean to come off as smug, but trying to ascertain weather something is Marx or capitalist shows a very narrow understanding of the variety and multitude of economic thought before and after. Massive investments clearly pays off. One of the icons of free trade and globalization that Thomas Friedman loves to shove in your face is Toyota. Too bad for him that it was subsidized for 17 years as it lost money trying to make cars nobody wanted. Now it sits on top of the auto industry. Was the outcome better than producing nothing are other things of decreasing margins.
Super commentary, Anti-trust. Our future is really shaped by humanities collective expectation of it. Mental maps of the mind, as it were. This is where academics, industrial leaders and bureaucrats exert a sinister control over our fates: by gating our awareness to more 'favorable' outcomes and not others. The undercurrent to mainstream political, social and economic thought is undeniably Malthusian. Over-population, "peak" resources, and environmental destruction are buzz words that even lay-people immediately recognize as sensible and prudent. That notion, that economies are zero-sum, is complete horseshit, as Anti-Trust so aptly demonstrated. Wealth is work. To be more specific, wealth is productivity. Therefore, living standards are only constrained by our productiveness, and the natural resources available to us. Innovation and ingenuity produce technological fruit which makes people more productive. A horse and buggy carries only a 5 ton load 10 miles in a workday, but an 18 wheeler carries a 100 ton load 600 miles in a day! The benefits from less people doing more work is living standards rise. Goods become cheaper and more plentiful. And life, more enjoyable. The essence of wealth creation is not land, labor and capital. Although that too is essential. The key to unlocking the indomitable force latent in the masses is guaranteed Return On Investment (ROI). People must reap what they sow. This is where Government plays a critical role in setting the necessary conditions that spur thriving markets: 1) Private property rights 2) Low taxes/regulation 3) Stable currency 4) Free and fair court system to impartially adjudicate contracts That's it. Once those conditions are set in stone by Government, the collective desire for people to excel and make a better life for themselves sets in, and jobs, investment, entrepreneurship, ingenuity and technological advancement blast off. Fundamentally, this is why America became a top industrial power. This is also why most third-world nations are impoverished. Examine that 4-item list carefully. Note that nearly every third world hellhole doesn't conform to most of those items: threat of expropriation is very real, taxes for business are often onerous, currencies are weak and constantly devalued, and the judicial system is incredibly corrupt. So few people bother to save, invest and create. Why should they? By hook or crook, the Dictator - or his cronies - will take most of it. So few people work. And since wealth is work, poverty sets in and takes over. It's at this point, the Malthusians chime in, point to all this crushing third world poverty and conclude capitalism has failed and the world obviously can't support 7 Billion people. In fact, that's not the case at all. The third world never experienced Capitalism. What they have is something worse than a feudal system where the poor are continually robbed for the benefit of the ruling class. And the consequences to that are predictable and repetitive. Back to the original question: where do we go from here? The kill-shoots are decidedly slanted towards a deterministic end: a neo-feudal system where innovation is stifled and Government redistributes wealth to favored industries under the ruse of "saving" the underclass from poverty or a shadowy enemy. The irony is these types of kleptocracies create the very poverty they claim to guard against, specifically through destroying incentives to succeed. If America reverted back to a free market system, with low taxes (10%), hard currency, low regulation, the economy would take off like a rocket. We'd be colonizing the stars in 40 years. However, this is not an option. When humanity beholds what it's capable of, in such a short period of time, the gig will be up. The Ruling Elite would be thrown to the dogs and humanity would enter a new Golden Age unrivaled in all history. Today, we have no faith in free markets to harness our divine spark and creative genius. We have let our Rulers cannibalize the free market out of ignorance and selfish greed for an "entitlement" handout. And now, we are reaping what we have sowed. Pathetic, really. Fucking pathetic.
Antitrust: My answser to your first excellent post. You are correct, I was very confused by the post. I am also very interested in what you say. The answers I am honestly looking for may come from any direction, but most likely from something I don't understand properly today. Sorry. So fire away! I don't know Marxism at all and you are not a Marxist so let's drop that. I simply use socialist and captialist as the two dominant fundamental economic worldviews that I am aware of today. Democracy is orthoganal to the economic organizing worldviews. I thought that the US started growing into the top economy in the world under pure laissez-fair rules set down by some very good people. In fact, didn't they essentially tell Britain to leave them alone (laissez-faire). (I may be wrong so please correct me.) Somewhere along the path of growth, The US began to diverge from their principles and those original people, after getting over their initial horror of where the US is today, would use the same message against a similar foe (interal this time). As pogo said - I have seen the enemy and it is us! Let's dispose of the middleclass here. The middleclass in my view is simply a group of people striving to achieve an almost impossible end (rags to riches). It grew due to a temporary population boom when labour had the clout to drive wages beyond what they could be sustained long term. Smart labour leaders realized that polical clout was needed and so used it to drive further into the entitlement state. They used wonderful dreams. They used the bad part of democracy (mentioned before) to create unsustainable ideas which still exist today. Wages are simply the organizing of the slave society that we have today. Without savings (that is capital) ability to move to the wealthy class is almost not possible. Most don't believe it though. Most still like a dream since it is better than their reality for some. I look at most work as simply self-managed slavery under the guise of the american dream. All of these thoughts in this post are just my opinion of course. To use your words, ASPE worked initially but it changed course for some reason. I think the major change was when the busts became politically unpalatable and the political elite created an entity to prevent economic busts around 1913 on Jeckyl Island. The rulers also did an end-run around the laws of the US regarding money creation. WWII simply showed them that external forces could impact the US as well. I presume you disagree with what I have said, if so, where is my reasoning flawed? It is ironic to me, that the clear exploitation of "losers" (not in a negative way I mean) in the capitalist system is not exploiting them. Giving them a picture - see here, you can improve your lot. Work for me and grow rich. Think and grow rich. There is some truth, but an awful lot of heart ache there as well. In a capitalistic system, we all look and envy at the winners, but there has to be losers too. You can't define winners with out having losers to distinguish them. Later on, when the improvements became less and less and the slaves became more restless, credit was introduced along with advertising to increase the desire that drives the economy. Desire for a dream that will not happen for most. Increasing debt beyond real economic growth has a limit though and we are close to that today. Perhaps it will go on for decades. Perhaps it will not. We will know soon I think. Has any standard of living increased? With the printing of money and inflation, why could families exist on one breadwinner in the past, but now kids, both parents and even the dog has work to try to make ends meet? If you plot the standard of living minus debt and inflation, I wonder if there has been as much progress as we think there has been. Or is this also part of the advertised dream? I think it was the cognitive ability of our leaders (not all) that manipulated dreams to look like useful things are created. The whole thing is a paper game once the money is not honest. Money is the scorecard and if you fiddle it, the score is not honest in my view. Wall street is providing what people need most when the are exhausted and paying taxes and debts - a dream that there is a better life for you out there some day! Someone has one. High wages are just how you keep self managed slaves searching for the dream. No matter that the wages are inflated away. APSE has worked a lot, but it needs retooling now that the debt needs to be repaid. Debt is now growing too fast to inflate it away. What I say about the APSE is true mostly worldwide where dreams abound and reality is a little tougher! LOL - Apparently I feel strongly about these points.
Rising sea levels, due to melting arctic snow, coupled with some earthquakes and tsunami will halve the world population by 2050. After that the political and social structure will be rebooted for the better.
With the population rising at exponential levels that wouldn't surprise me. Although I favor sudden political instability and broken supply lines leading to widespread famine as the more likely means of population halving.
Antitrust: My answer to your second excellent reply post. "Technology describes and type of progress or advance in standard of living." I accept your definition. I enjoyed your link examples (which were very interesting). You use the word in a better way than I since you speak of advances that are good for all members of society. More food (which is in my view the real limiting force behind society) with less labour is great. This sounds a lot like the Zeitgeist ideas which involve technology solving human problems. Sadly we have had little technical change in the rulers yet. Hopefully someone will solve that, since with decling morals and increasing corruption, government technology (socialist, capitalist, facist, marxist?) has not evolved. If we get that one right, much of the others will fall into place. We will have a society that fails right and not fails wrong (IMO). Let me suggest that we both might agree that technological changes in the form of government and dreams are needed today. Perhaps a solution to the tragedy of the commons. Perhaps a relegation of the scientific technology behind socialogical technology. Hence the point of this thread. How do we help each other gain non-monetary wealth? What should be used to keep score that is not corruptible and more valuable than money? "High wages allow more education.education leads to advances (wealth creation)" The ability of education to feed the dream is failing as the scarcity of educated labour increases. Education creates little, if there is no thinking. If you read a majority of papers, they are pretty insignificant. I am not sure I agree with this statement but I am open to your comments. what happened to the old adage - those who can do and those who can't teach? High wages feed into a dream and desire that motivate behaviour changes. If they are simply inflated away, they are not very meaningful. Once one reaches a certain level of wealth, the satifaction diminishes I suspect. Largely because the dreaming is done. We can not be successful in the future, or in the past, only in the present. Suvccess is an inside job. "Massive investments clearly pays off. One of the icons of free trade and globalization that Thomas Friedman loves to shove in your face is Toyota. Too bad for him that it was subsidized for 17 years as it lost money trying to make cars nobody wanted. Now it sits on top of the auto industry. Was the outcome better than producing nothing are other things of decreasing margins." I plead ignorance on where massive investments clearly pays off, Most of the things I think of, haven't paid off - TARP, budget deficits, war on drugs, war on poverty, war on war etc. I accept your premise, what postive examples of lasting (more than 25 years) changes can you suggest? My opinions on dreams and reality were stated. I have a great hope for society and all life and would love to solve an issue that has bothered me for decades. Thanks for your thoughts.
your assumption are pretty standard. In fact economic history is not required to get a degree. everything is based on theories that have their own set of false assumptions. there hasn't been one nation that developed under laissez faire.Concerning your question about Britten the answer is no.laissez faire is an economic policy that says no government intervention by it's own government. The British merchants and government could try to influence the U.S. economy activity all they wanted as long as it wasn't through the US government. In fact it is correct to say that laissez faire hands over economic policy to the next highest power structure. In those times it was the British empire. now it seems to be different factions of the power elite you mention below. Just like the british empire the U.S. decided to push laissez faire after it had become the uncontested economic power. It real is a tool of empire. Both countries rise to power on the exact opposite policy they try to impose on other nations.. Genreal patten once said "Now I want you to remember that no bastard ever won a war by dying for his country. He won it by making the other poor dumb bastard die for his country. " the same could be said for free trade the trick is to get other countries to do it while not doing it yourself. a couple of books for this topic: http://www.amazon.com/Bad-Samaritan...5986/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1310701957&sr=8-1 http://www.amazon.com/How-Rich-Coun...8420/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1310702046&sr=8-1 http://www.amazon.com/Americas-Prot...6687/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1310702083&sr=8-1 http://www.amazon.com/Super-Imperia...9890/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1310702108&sr=8-1 only production, innovation (technology) creates wealth. so yes you are correct most of the economic surplus ( the amount of wealth created above a substance living) is sucked off to the top. Even adam smith in his day thought the Aristocracy was a parasite on the economy dragging it in to the abyss and wanted to get rid of them.They didn't produce (create wealth) only collected rents off of land and labor. To him this was the modern day welfare queen. Of course today's Adam Smithers would scream Marxist at smith's ideas. yes it went out after WWII. yes 1913 did pave the way for an American aristocracy or oligarchy. our money system is debt based meaning all money is debt, and since debt grows at compound interest and economies grow at a linear rate. it is mathematically unstable. Inflation and increase debt is a necessity to keep the system alive. This was understood from ancient Sumeria to roman times. when a new ruler would come to power all the debts would be canceled. they understood math better that the economists today.The roman's never gave this repudiation and the world dried up into a barter economy.Even Adam Smith said that no country has ever paid it's debts they only pretended to pay. yes the situation is quite unfortunate