Tuesday, August 30, 2011

Views


     Is it correct to characterize the economic system as being competitive? Yes, but it is not correct to characterize it as being synonymous with the concept of competition or as being only competition. Is the economy mainly, is it only, competitive? This talk is wrong.
     I don’t think the economy is a matter of “competition.”  In fact, I think it’s bullshit, I think it’s a bunch of lies.
     It has competition in it, so does life. However our economic society is in no special or unique way competitive; it is not characteristically competitive. This is the wrong concept. It has brutality in it, I just don't think it is only about "competition." There is some kind of hooey going on. It is how business persons speak: "Hi, Al, I'm very competitive." --- "Hi, Ken I am super-competitive myself!" --- I believe capitalism has elements of competition. So does life. What is not true is  that the free market capitalist system is in any special or uniquely characteristic way competitive. There's a lot of brutal assholes in it, and they may bicker a lot, no doubt, but it still isn't a solely competitive system. Ha ha ha. You have been had.
     I have never heard anyone say the economy is a matter of cooperation, but that would make equal sense. So, I do not think that capitalism is characterized solely by competition.
    What the prevailing practice of characterizing free market economic as competition conveys is the fact you are not allowed to characterize the economy as being other than a competitive system. We are only going to talk about this economic system one way. Got it?
     This means that in the special case of the economics field only radical outsider groups possess freedom of speech ----- anyone who discusses economics in terms other than the allowable basically takes his life into his hands. It is as simple as that, not necessarily an overstatement. It is a statement about conformity perhaps, and what is allowable in the culture.

     Of course, I expect and hope to write this and live; I ain't no fool.

     One does not naturally want to overturn the apple cart on something like this but I have studied this extensively. I am pretty sure I am onto something.

Monday, August 29, 2011

The Sound of Gnashing Change

Liberals generally favor change. But capitalism also seeks out change, so it can be a pretty popular concept, opposed by almost no one.
    The charge of the change brigade, the carnage of change and the sound of change: it can deafen our ears to all else. It makes me seriously ask myself something. Is there anyone else there? -- is there anyone who does not call for change? Or are we in the Changewave? (Where we hear the tinkling sound of change)
     This is a time when mankind is effecting its own ruin and demise. In such a time anyone informed about the world situation would, I guess, want change, some sort of change. All of  the changes of the past two-three hundred years do not seem to have done much good.
    So how do you like change now?

I happened to yesterday come across some lines from Diderot. The lines are from an article in the Encyclopedie ----- on "Societé." I think it's kind of interesting. "There is no more inequality between the different stations in life than there is among the different characters in a comedy: the end of the play finds all the players once again in a same position, and the brief period for which the play lasted did not and could not convince anybody that one was really above or below the other." I am sort of segueing between change and equality. But the two seem related, at any rate, and I am seeing this great thing by Diderot in terms of the "normal" or "pre-change" (pre-capitalism, pre-revolution, pre-democracy, pre-"growth") state of affairs for man, that is ----- that is before the big change called the French Revolution. After that was the "change" era (insert ringing of bell sound]: beginning with the French Revolution. I think so. In our time, of course, we are totally accustomed to railing about inequality. (or else railing about how it's all the liberals' fault for railing wrongly or something) This is the style now. Obviously, everyone opposes "inequality." that's the big thing you cannot refuse (the problem being that it does not really make any sense). And from this concept of inequality quickly follows an instinctive call for change. (Hence the comment about liberals usually being in favor of Change --- everybody else is, too)
    And at this point in the history of the world, no one doubts it. I can accept that change is what we need, and add my voice to the chorus, too. It probably sounds ridiculous to most of my readers here that someone should claim that, in 18th c. France, there is no inequality, none whatsoever! But I think it's interesting. Anyway if no inequality, no need for "change." The idea doesn't exist. Because once we start railing about it, we automatically do wish for change. We need now to put everything back into the desired change box of equality -- and the equality now sounds like the natural and desired state. If your change campaign is about inequality then equality, of course, is inequality without the 'in' part added to it, and inequality is equality plus in.

Thus: Diderot, the "Enlightenment" figure, must be a kind of a conservative. What is wrong with being a conservative? Nothing. It's been a totally normal view point for the last three hundred years. It is a normal view today as well.

right Right/wrong Right

Many of the conservatives I've been encountering recently are far more interesting than the persons that carry the banner of the conservative or "right" aspect of society in the main cultural venues such as T.V., radio, best-selling books and so forth. All of these venues give us a notion of conservatism that is narrow, constricted, and unimaginative, as if that is the "official"/brand-name conservative-right product item that the culture allows us. It is an unimaginative, uncreative society. So, that's all you get to have. Boohoo.
     Paul Harvey, by contrast, seems to have had some pretty interesting views. His arguments for supporting women's equality were quite interesting. He also expressed his opposition to the Reagan administration's support of the "Contras."
     I have met some interesting conservatives but they are not those whom the T.V. anoints as "conservative" and the T.V. is not going to change. T.V. stands as a symptom of sickness, a big open sore, always available to us---it is a sort of an eye, and it is a peephole into the perversity of man.
     If we go back, we can read what conservatives of an earlier era had to say. There is, for example, opposition to capitalism. There are objections expressed concerning some of the forms of crass commercialization that we under the regime of capitalism are exposed to. Such conservative views are scarcely know or cared about today. We may begin to perceive that what "economic" or "corporate" interests want along with all of the collective of the profit-seeking folks, is the furtherance of a crass, superficial world. This would be a fake world oriented only around material gain, a world that believes in egotistical gratification, a narrow, doomed sort of world where the primary actors' short-sighted wishes are guaranteed to destroy us. And they will appoint  their automaton intellectuals, too, they will try to defend this fake world philosophically but actually those are not the kinds of person that Paul Harvey was.


(One book, with these conservative kinds of views in opposition to the crass commercialism of capitalism is, surprisingly, what seems to be a "humor" book in the "Mouse/Grand Fenwick" series by Leonard Wibberly published in 1969 as "The Mouse on Wall Street." This tome contains charming ideas on topics related to economy. --in paperback, by Bantam, N.Y. Apparently our culture can't cut it anymore. Apparently, our culture is no longer capable of producing a product of this quality, although it seems like this little comedy book -- yet "it is commentary," declares the Chicago Tribune in a review -- was produced more or less by second-nature, just fifty or sixty years back. I've been reading a lot of old books lately. But the Paul Harvey info comes from a recent book I found at the regular store: Good Day!: The Paul Harvey Story; author Paul J. Batura. "...follows the remarkable life of one of the founding fathers of the news media...")

Tuesday, August 23, 2011

HHDL (with slight editing)

         60th Anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (1948–2008). 


"This declaration affirms that all human beings have the right to freedom from want and freedom from fear. These human rights are inclusive, interdependent and universal.

Whether we are concerned with suffering born of poverty, with denial of freedom, with armed conflict, or with a reckless attitude to the natural environment everywhere, we should not view these events in isolation. Eventually their repercussions are felt by all...[a need for] effective international action to address these global issues from the perspective of the oneness of humanity...a profound understanding of the...interconnected nature of [the] world.

At birth, all human beings are naturally endowed with the qualities we need for our survival, such as caring, nurturing and loving kindness.  However, despite already possessing such positive qualities, we tend to neglect them.



Comment from JS: We have love; but we neglect it.... 



Friday, August 19, 2011

Two Thoughts About the Working Life, and then yet another---08-19, 2011

Here is the written effluvia - and visible result - of me, my bread crumb track in the sand, a result of thinking about poor and working class persons and this comes from some volunteer work I did recently and this experience, even before I met the activists in the flesh, set me off into thinking a lot. That is the back story of these scandalous and awful thoughts my evil mind somehow generates, but thoughts that I think everyone else is scared to think anymore in a so-called "free" country. Just some scribbling. Please don't shoot me.


Capitalism is a lot of rich people in a small space generating a lot of income. Each one tries to demand higher and higher payments from the others.
     You do not want to hear this, and you are not going to like it, but these persons have a double goal: to generate more money, and to keep it away from the poor persons.

     Except for the rich, life is extremely difficult. One must do everything one can to obtain employment. The price of employment is not criticizing the rich people. Once one learns to do it one can have a life of some sort. But, only as long as one has a job.

         +                    +                 +               +                +                 +            -         -


People holding "jobs" earn small amounts of money, working long hours.
     People that operate institutions, firms or other places of employment do not work for low wages. They employ those who do paying as little as possible. Sometimes, the market for labor causes those wages to increase, for workers having marketable skills.
     Labor is in a curious position, then. It is an integral part of capitalist development and therefore is neither completely impoverished or destitute, nor is labor rich. It's kind of in-between. Many employers are agreeable enough to allowing the worker the wages that the market commands. Thus a social system continues to exist with employers, labor, and destitute----with unemployed, rural persons, madmen and so forth.

Blogpost - August 19th, 2011

One day we are going to wake up and see that the economic system does not work anymore. We have been trained, in the U.S., to confute two words: "economy," and "competition." Because of this we have so little interest in the fates and fortunes of others.
     We see Europe is going down. So, we say, "who cares?" It's a competitive system, isn't it?
     That kind of language is related to the peculiar double nature that U.S./Americans have. The U.S. is successful, powerful, and influential---the prime instance of capitalist economic growth. Yet we do not equate that with cooperativeness. But, truly, cooperativeness is also a part of capitalism, as of life in general. Our attitude is twisted because we have been trained not to focus on the sorts of things that the word "cooperation" would bring up. Only the opposite word, competition, is allowable. That isn't free speech. That is a rancid pile of propaganda, to say the least about it. This is our US/American ethos, and what the ethos does is that lets us "see" only competition. That's what I mean by a double nature. We in fact live in a system that is cooperative but we think only this word "competitive." Now what I think is going to happen eventually, is that out of this blindness you get blind persons running the economy. Eventually, the economy is run by unthinking automatons (even in the case of gov't "intervention," so this covers both types).
     We can improve our understanding of the success of the U.S. in the world by making recourse to the concept of culture. This (capitalistic) success is tied up with culture. Culture is what people(s) do; the success or America, then, was not simply a matter of competition; and not simply a matter of cooperation. It is culture and tradition. What was there, in this great success of capitalism, was the matter of culture. It was all the complexities of human culture.
     This is how we understand capitalism through cultural, or "social," ideas. It also may shed some light on why I say that you can  think of "socialism" as being something found within capitalism rather than a separate system in itself. The correct understand of capitalism follows: by killing the "socialism" within capitalism you kill capitalism. Not a good idea, if there is no other place to find the socialism.
    

Tuesday, August 16, 2011

The Growth Illusion; Video Games

The prevalent emphasis on "growth" serves to promote the kind of thinking that says that more and more economic activity is always needed, where by "economic activity" we mean: more goods and services. This encapsulates the basic concept, and now I would like to make my commentary, on this concept.
     There is no inherent need for economic growth per se, no inherent human need for growth in the current sense in which the term is used in economics discussion. And here arises one natural question: if we don't need it, why do we (or: "they") want it? I dunno.
     There is no inherent need for it. What do I actually mean by saying that? That means that there exists no inherent need for persons to relate to one another only by attempting to find more and alternative ways of doing a very particular  thing: trading money with one another such that these trades will create more money. That is what is meant by "economic growth," in a nutshell, as far as I can see. But it is actually a rather narrow criterion. The essential message is that life is trade. And the implication is that it must always be that way. But that is a narrow message. There is no other kind of life? And, not only that, but this trade may only be trade that produces one narrowly defined form of profit, that of monetary valuation. A short way is to say that it must create what McKibben, in his "Deep Economy," calls "more," or, in his way of writing, "MORE."

     What if they do it -- what if they create growth -- by expanding the functioning of video games to include trade, which is to say money trade as one plays? This is apparently what is happening today. They can set up the games so that the players actually engage in "economic" trade in the course of playing, such that these video or computer games include using money. Although this is my understanding of it, let's admit that those who do it know best how it all works; and, I am not necessarily criticizing those persons. I am saying that this seems to be just the kind of "growth" that prevalent thinking wants --- let's just use money as much as possible --- it really sounds stupid, when put that way. Is that all there is to it? I wonder...
     I don't know, but at any rate this video game on-line trade situation is an example, or I think it is, of the same take on the concept of "growth" ----- just as it is used in the thinking of businessmen, and also, I am sad to say, the actual intellectual practice of mainstream economics. This is why there is a crying need to fundamentally question this kind of academic practice. While on the subject, let's consider that one can also play video games without "growing" in this sense, which is to say, without "more." You can just play the game. Just play the freakin' game and don't worry about it. You don't need to enter this novel or new stage of "growth," this money/exchange procedure being added on. But if we call computer gaming for money "growth" (of new brain cells, I suppose!) then some may say that playing the normal way would not be "economic"! But that cannot be economics! This brings up the question of what we actually mean by economics, which is a valid concern.
     The "economic growth" that takes place in the virtual realm is a sort of brave new step or brave new world, if you will. As I said, you can certainly play computer/video games without tying this into monetary exchange. The monetary exchange is an add-on----a growth.
     What happens in these type of on-line games is that, as noted, use of money is included in the ongoing experience of play. The participants not only play; they "trade." OK. Why? They can win money. This is my understanding. So that is the reason obviously. Still I would like to ask, why? ...Well I assume that they feel would some kind of drive to compete, an internal need of a sort, to show their game-power and take pride in their game-power. Hence, there may be some kind of competitive urge or itch to obtain money from the game as a source of status---or else just to make money, since there is that, of course. In China, according to reports in one book I read, some persons do make a small living this way. This book I am referring to is written by a former economist who gained some notoriety for studying the comp-game-world. Then he changed his academic title or academic field and went on studying this kind of stuff. Computer gaming.
     All of these things happen in the course of playing the computer games they "love" so much. Is it growth? Is it economics? Is it real? Above, I said that this is not a necessary activity. It is not a core "human" activity. No, it's an obsession. The computer game serves as example of something very important.
     Computer gaming is merely the example. It gives us the example. And, what we can say about monetary computer game competition also goes for the absurd idea of economic growth. That, too, is an obsession. It is like the "love of farming" of the businessman farmer that Socrates has a dialouge with in the dialogues ----- recorded not by Plato but by the less well-known Socrates biographer. (Xenophon, I believe it is.) (http://ebooks.adelaide.edu.au/x/xenophon/x5oe/) This is discussed in Tkacek's review. It is published in the magazine book forum, last month. Thus, the emphasis on "growth" is as absurd as the need to put emphasis on on-line games (which, in turn, reveals the one genuine use for the games: they serve as an example such that the example sheds light on any problems linked to this concept of growth, or "economic growth").
     Persons have the right to experiment with the economy, or to do whatever they like, as long as they do not break the laws. I am not a computer gamer what do I know? We may agree or disagree; our approval or disapproval is secondary. I sincerely wish them luck with it. Try a different example. Persons can also cook at home, share with friends.
     If they did so could they also eliminate an entire industry, the restaurant industry? If eating at home or gifting food to others is just as nourishing, entertaining, and sociable (or emotionally fulfilling) as eating at a restaurant is, there is no way to assert reasonably that the activity with the "economic growth" is better than the other. So, this supports what I am saying here. The whole idea is hollow. Why is the endeavor that has economic growth better? Why is one better than the other?
     What we are doing?  We are substituting one value for another. (In the later case with food sharing it made no contribution to "growth," ain't that a bitch. In the former case, we do seem to have growth --- I think --- we substituted one thing -- computer play -- for another, but somehow increased or sustained the world of money and growth, like any economic bubble would. So, isn't growth totally hollow? But, OMG! It is the economists' favorite topic! Oooops. They'll be mad, and "Kramer" [Jim], the guy on T.V., will kill me! Maybe he'll be mad...)
     That act of mere substitution may be economics. (Is it? What about "resources"? What about "allocation" or "resources," what are "resources"?)
     But what ultimately is of value? Are our illusions of value or is life about something?

     "Growth" is not a genuine value. It has no reality. What is being valued here? We can't find it.

     I am not sure I can further clarify this, or if anyone can, or if that is even my job; it is just something people need to "think on," as the old Southerner would put it.

Monday, August 15, 2011

Weird Country


Daniel Goleman (writer):


British and other European cultures place more importance on social connections... In Britain, for instance, every neighborhood has a pub, a place where neighbors go most nights to get together. By contrast, Americans disappear into their homes, doors locked.  (Daniel Goleman’s blog: http://danielgoleman.info/2008/01/25/...)

 .........................................

Why are Americans not supposed to talk to each other? ----WEIRD COUNTRY. Where did America come from and why is it so weird or should I just shut up?





                                                                                                                         

Thursday, August 11, 2011

Jeezes and Peeveses, pt. 2

_________
     Why are persons so crass and superficial?

     America, of course, is unique. It is a system that allows the crass and superficial to rise to the top. I've got my fingers crossed.
     A related thing is that we shroud ourselves in pseudo-sophistication. That's an option, but still not the "real" sophistication.
     Can't we all be great? There's an idea called "Only In America."

     It is not possible. In fact in this culture it seems like one phony after another and this disease is more than just American, it's pan-European. This is, may I suggest, the problem of Europe. The Greeks relegate gods to a parallel or separate god-world. They do not confuse the mere mortals with the gods but, even if there is a separation, their god behavior is not so different from the mortals.

     We have problems today. Which ones? Well, problems of climate change, for example. And we've got economic problems -- OK? -- and we've got all kinds of political tyranny. And all over the world there are these problems.

     Can we trust mankind's vanity anymore? In a world where leaders don't call us to be humble? ...do not ask for our virtue? Not when they vie for our vote they do not. How long will we last? How long will this world, with its tiny, vain actors, last? ---its haughty actors? Who believe they are gods.

     Words push their way into consciousness.

     Students stick gum underneath the desk.

     You go to MoonBeam or SunShine or StarKist, or whatever. There aren't any other places to go since Moonbeam locked up all the coffee markets or whatever, and now there isn't any more commons or whatever, and no town square or wherever it is that persons would congregate. So now no other places, which is to say aside from the commercial one. So you go to that one and you are disappointed: when you only find mere mortals.


                    (link): for context, see: Wednesday, July 13, 2011

Tuesday, August 9, 2011

Some More Observations On the System - this being installation no. 3

What is characteristic of our system? What is the characteristic way of life we have? What is characteristic of those living in the political unit of U.S. America?
    It is that the person is free to do whatever the person likes. This is the striking characteristic we are discussing here, and immigrants who come to America generally agree about this as perhaps the main quality or characteristic found here in the U.S. They may call it "the freedom system."
    Two questions, then, if that's what it is: What is this freedom system? Is it sustainable? Those are two questions that we might ask.

    In the foreign countries, it seems that one can test the limits. And then one hears "that's no good...", or, "you mustn't do that."
     But in America one cannot find them. Limits, that is---they do not even seem to exist. Yet everyone seems reasonably well-behaved, don't they? Well, OK, there are limits. There is a certain spectrum there, concerning both the freedom and the limits, that spectrum being between stifling and repressive "small town life," and the "open city." It's never perfect anywhere, is it? (Maybe in Tea-Party Land...)

    Two questions we were asking, though: where does all this American or U. S. freedom come from? And: is it sustainable? These are the important questions.

    The theme of the "What's My Line" T.V. show -- it was quite popular in bygone times like the 50s or 60s -- was that of persons doing different things. Whether you are a dog shampooer, or an airplane pilot, it's all good, just as long as you have some kind of a job. 

     The basis of do whatever you want-ism ...seems to be get-a-jobism.

Monday, August 8, 2011

Serial Thinki, Pt. 2

The business system needs to be a cultural system.

The business world has a necessary link to the culture or with the social world. If the business world is getting farther and farther away in terms of this link to culture----or to sociality, morality, and culture that is a problem right there.  That is a link that must not be broken; it is the link between capitalism and man. This social underpinning of capitalism, it would seem to me, is often missed entirely.
     Mostly, the right or conservative movement or tendency misses this problem completely or else gets it all wrong, as in the case of Klein's Shock Doctrine. If such a Shock Doctrine exists, as she alleges it does, waying that it is a real doctrine---an ideology---this doctrine does see some connection between the society and capitalism but beyond the mere fact of the two being connected there isn't anything good or helpful that this faction has to offer, particularly. Who knows? Maybe there is something there, but what we really need is an honest discussion so we can get into the matter, not sit around on the sidelines and wait for some freak to hit on the topic in a dysfunctional manner.

The question of whether such a link exists is rather nuanced. In my view, the link from the cultural world or cultural system, to the world called either business or economics does exist.

Belated "Tommorrow" Dow

(continuation of Friday's Post): Dow off 300 points.
     Why did I say what I said in the blog of a few days ago? That I kind of feel good about the country entering a depression?
     Hoo Boy. Well, it's because, then we fight. We go into the trenches. If all these smiley faces are going around being "optimistic," there's nothing for my type of personality to do. So it's true that I sort of feel more enlivened by a depression.

Sunday, August 7, 2011

Serial Thinking

Why are  things in the world today in such bad shape? It is because we do everything based on the principle of the "market system."
    Decisions are made based upon the calculus of the business system. This set of priorities results in money made, not sense made.
    If the decisions made turn out to be odd then the businessman, the only person today, just switches to any other thing. But the new answer is, always, another "business answer" once again based upon the principle of the "market system."
    But what is the "market system?" And why are we always putting quotes on it?

    Stay tuned to the business channel--to tomorrow's "great" post--where I tell you the answer!!!

Questioning Scientific Knowledge About --- Blood and Economics

___
It is not difficult, at all---to take into oneself some kind of scientific theory. Two examples: the general idea of blood circulation (which is not intuitive and which we need to have pointed out or explained to us), and the formation of prices by markets, or the idea that prices are formed by markets or some kind of market pressure.

Scientific ideas are ultra-absorptive. I mean absorbed into us. Our everyday lives are informed by scientific theories even though we may not be able to ourselves articulate these theories in words. This is to say that you do not have to be a skilled writer to absorb a scientific theory, but a reader. You only need to be a reader, so the point here is that we absorb or take in scientific ideas easily.

And in this way also those particular orthodox-mainstream ideas and theories that are known as economic ideas. This set of ideas known as "economics," then, informs our whole take on being alive and our whole general attitude. This is our attitude towards our society and being in it---it is very basic, cultural stuff. It is based on thinking there are these "market forces." I have been studying this for some time now; I am beginning to question it. But otherwise we believe the "explanation." One is tempted to say that the  explanation is causing the prices to be established. At any rate, I am not so sure the orthodox-mainstream view of society on economics and price is in fact the truth, and it may be wrong.  (I believe that it is an erroneous explanation of the way in which humans create product items or put them on the shelf and affix prices to them. This radical questioning of our assumed view of how these things word is based on the continuous questioning and study of a lifetime.)
     These economics topics constitute a theory that pervades the science world but goes far beyond that. It is not limited at all to scientists. The basic understanding which as said may be wrong, is repeated by businessmen; and, by all of us. It is repeated not just by scientists, but by everyone.
     It is not far-out to suggest that many of those holding this economic view have a vested interest in it---it maintaining it, which hardly constitutes a reason that it is correct! So, having a vested interest does not necessarily mean it is correct. Although in a sense we may admit that this interest, in promulgating and believing a particular view is, indeed, "economic"---in a some sense.

We do not need to know much about blood circulation in order to take in the basic scientific view either. Again, this is the general view held by most everyone in the society.  Perhaps we remember the pictures and diagrams---from our school days? Note, in this case, that this information goes just a bit deeper than we can cut (so to speak) with the naked eye. In school, new information is now coming in. It is coming in---into awareness---in the form of for example these diagrams of the capillaries and so on. This scientific information fits our prior experience well and is easily absorbed. And without even knowing it we are soon in possession of the scientific "circulation" view. There wasn't much struggle, was there? Now you know more? Do you?
     All of that circulation theory is well and good---in this case I am not trying to refute anything--- but yet we can also say it is one story amongst others. Do you not believe me? Maybe you don't. That there are other stories? But... ...a doctor would know a much deeper, more detailed version. Maybe he knows a different version, and it puts him on a different level, or maybe just a more detailed one and it is basically the same story or same science. I don't know which it is. But if I think of the person with only the basic version of the science I think of a person who received the general idea, probably in school, and saw some pictures of the capillaries and arteries/veins, painted red or blue. Those guys received the basic information on circulation; and that the oxygen (do you believe in oxygen?) goes in, and refreshes the blood, makes it red, etc. He/ she has one story. Does the doctor have a different view? I'll let you ask him or her. I'll admit that generally speaking we could say that these two stories, or levels of the story, added up, amount to one view---of blood.
     I want to go further. What if you went the other direction and had never, ever experienced this new story that replaces the earlier one? Are you the worse? What if you had never heard the new bloody story from teachers at school, in order to replace it in your consciousness, or not scanned the internet or read a book for it? What if you had never taken in the so easily-absorbed "nutrient" of the science theory?
     If you had to rely upon a simpler idea of how blood is relevant to your life, would you be actually be any worse for it? You, as a "primitive," would still know about blood. You would know that you bleed when you are cut. And you would have ideas or feelings about it. That would be clear with neither science nor schoolbook. You would probably have a few other bits of knowledge from the community you live in. Someone else might have confirmed for you what you had suspected anyways, but may not have fully articulated (even to yourself), that it is very, very dangerous to bleed too much---beyond a certain amount. What if you only had a normal, or primitive, or human, or cultural understanding---about what blood means? Would it have made any difference? You would be ahead in some ways, and behind in other ways. You would have a different understanding, not a better one. We regard one particular view, the science view, as superior. Is that justified? Or is it just our view? (It is our view---our ethnocentrism, or our bias.)
     The easily accepted and taken-in version or view entails rejecting a lot of "other" concepts or ideas---other ideas about BLOOD. And now, as I reject the "old" view I have always had (which is the "new" or science view we just discussed), I can "feel" my blood in my body. I never thought of it before today. Now I am doing it! So, after I have discarded something that I have unquestioningly clung to like a monkey with a coconut, for my whole post-secondary school life, I begin to feel out all the "other" views. These are of course the other "blood" views. Other "blood views." Other bloody "blood views." I can feel the "pressure." You can feel like your body is a sort of bag of blood----and it is full of feelings like the feeling of blood pressure. Something like that, anyway. You can pause and do this (you have to stop reading for at least a moment.) All you need to do is turn your mind to it. Be a bloody primitive (but remember: we also learned something about economics.)
     Some of you might not like to hear this. There are some of you who do not want this new information; you are the same ones that don't accept global warming. But by accepting the "received wisdom" of society you have lost access to alternative ideas. The idea of blood circulation replaces other ideas, the other ideas you would have without it.

     So don't be so arrogant. Don't be smug. Don't be so sure of your scientific knowledge. It is not difficult at all to take into oneself some kind of scientific theory. But when we are doing so we are losing access to other things.

Reading Heisenber, Werner

____
Scientists are talking about things that really happened but what really happened is their own research.

Friday, August 5, 2011

Boehner, And "Agreement"

The agreement on the debt ceiling, says Boehner, will ..."end this crisis in a manner that meets our principles of small government."
     What will the impact be, then, of smaller government? What good is smaller government going to do? It is the economy that is the problem. In a capitalist economic system, or capitalistic society, the economy is NOT in the hands of government. What good is smaller government going to do?---what's Boehner's point?
     The goverment shall now cut about 1 or 2 hundred billion dollars of spending annually. How will that help the economy, particularly?
     Will the economy suddenly become freed from all that total government control that we have at present? If Boehner's point is that of smaller goverment, and he is the custodian of that point, or if that is his principle, then Boehner is saying of any potential economic crisis, "private sector to the rescue."
     Do the Republicans have some kind of plan for re-organizing the private sector? No. THat is up to Boeing and GM, and Caterpillar tractor. All they have to do is govern themselves, which is what they've already been doing; in other words, the private sector will take care of it automatically. I'm excited. I've always loved the corporations, you see, and now they are going to be our new heroes. Yeah! Go, private sector! Come on! Cheer! Be patriotic!

Dow off one hundred points or more

Personally, I like depressions (I know this is an exciting topic. I shall indeed endeavor to try to update this blog tomorrow)

What does "Bias in Media" mean?


This just in via Reuters. They take no responsibility for it. This is supplied from another news service, through Reuters.
 (pasted in): * Reuters is not responsible for the content in this press release OK
---++WASHINGTON, April 7, 2008   ..  /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ OK 
 
Accuracy in Media (AIM),
 
the media watchdog group that campaigned to keep Al-Jazeera English off
American airwaves in 2006, 
said today that Dave Marash's decision to leave the channel confirms its warnings 
and fears.  Marash, the top U.S. journalist at Al-Jazeera English, says that anti-American bias 
at the network was a factor in his decision to leave.
 
(Jack comes to the rescue): What is bias? When I read the New York Times I read for three sentences and I see bias. I read the major U.S. newspapers as biased, heavily so. The debate about bias in media is heavily nonsensical. We should just ignore it. 

Wednesday, August 3, 2011

NEws FLash

SPECIAL FROM THE NYT:
After sitting almost silently on the sidelines for weeks, Mitt Romney on Monday declared that he was opposed to the debt ceiling compromise hammered out in Washington over the weekend.
Mr. Romney, the former Massachusetts governor and Republican presidential candidate, said in a brief statement that he would not support the bill.
“While I appreciate the extraordinarily difficult situation President Obama’s lack of leadership has placed Republican members of Congress in, I personally cannot support this deal,” he said.
In a statement just before a vote on the legislation, which Republican Congressional leaders are urging their members to support, Mr. Romney said that the bill “opens the door” to higher taxes and blamed the president for a failure of leadership.
“As president, my plan would have produced a budget that was cut, capped and balanced – not one that opens the door to higher taxes and puts defense cuts on the table,” Mr. Romney said. “President Obama’s leadership failure has pushed the economy to the brink at the 11th hour and 59th minute.”

Quick-draw artist. It's always the other guy. Always, in "our" guy Romney, just the dirty little desire to pick a fight. If it's anger and rancor you want, this is it.

Monday, August 1, 2011

News (FT - British financial newspaper)

Please respect FT.com's ts&cs and copyright policy which allow you to: share links; copy content for personal use; & redistribute limited extracts. Email ftsales.support@ft.com to buy additional rights or use this link to reference the article - http://www.ft.com/cms/s/3/d55bebfe-b957-11e0-b6bb-00144feabdc0.html#ixzz1Tmu5VFp1
Phew. Both the US and the eurozone seem, for now, to be between crises. Investors should use this breathing space to study the bigger picture. The problems in the two largest developed economies are only a part of a wider global rebalancing, tectonic shifts which are reshaping everything from British corporate profits to Chinese capital spending programmes.
The great transition is well under way. As a percentage of rich nations’ gross domestic product, emerging nations’ output (measured in spending power) has risen from parity to almost 145 per cent in the past six years, International Monetary Fund data show.

JACK'S COMMENT BELOW

The technological capacity itself is there for the less wealthy countries to develop skyscrapers, higher-yielding agricultural techniques, or anything else that the developed world knows how to do. Without considering the financial part of it at all we would still have to conclude that the continually increasing developed country technology and capacity makes it feasible for country "a" to develop, as long as that country gets the technology. Any country that receives the technology could do it, unless they are located in the middle of a swamp or a desert, but even then they could probably just draw on some techniques that some expert has already developed in some part of the capitalist world. The capacity is there but we are just arguing about the means to develop that capacity through finance --- the actual technology exists. To put it into practice, you just need to move that technology to another piece of land (country).
     You could take the same crew of one thousand persons with their cranes and materials and so forth and move it to a new country every year and in ten years you'd have ten countries with their own hooked-up starter system.
     The argument is about the financing. It is about financing such a project, and that seems to me a different argument from whether the material possibility exists. That is the thesis of this post. The capacity is there. The question is of whether it shall happen, or perhaps whether it should happen. Not that anyone has that kind of moral control.
     In a capitalistic world, businessmen always seem to be out there, willing to do stuff. Developing countries are therefore able to obtain that technology, at long last, and, as we said, if they can get the technology over to their piece of the world's geographical surface, they can develop.
     Now to a few philosophical considerations (as if there were anything else) and then I'll cease this. Whether all those countries will do it intelligently and sustainably is another subject.  It is not the world of the 19th century that we are applying this technology to but a different situation, both in terms of the multiplicity or sheer number of newly developing countries and in terms of the differences between the kind of global experience we are experiencing today and existed then.
     Certainly, the notion of "growth," as the concept is currently employed, ought to be questioned. I would say that the less-developed countries could grow a little bit, if it helps them. I'll give them that. But the "overblown" economies need to put a cap on it. They can grow a little less, they are not a run-on sentence and I really doubt that there is an unlimited capacity for growth, unless, that is to say, we look at which kind of "growth" we really mean here.  So, guess what I conclude?
     Well, I think that the entire notion of growth should be internationalized. It's global growth these hotshots  should be talking about not single-country growth. What exactly do we mean by "growth" anyways? I know it is their main word, but we aren't talking about growth of arboreal forests, for example. I'm happy for them that they found a nice word they can agree about. "Growth:" it sounds nice to them. But "growth" is a different word in English, than it is in the economist lingo.  Ultimately it does not I would think make any more sense than any other economics jargon. Nor does it save the economists' project, their "study" of economics.
     I know that businesses do need growth. It means, I believe, that they need to make a profit. (Hence the overarching concept of "economic growth," right? It just means profit, right?)  But I favor "growth" in intelligence. How about growth in sustainability so you don't just kill everybody? That would be a nice application for the word "growth," too.   
      Or: How about "dismal," that's a word. "Dismal science".