Re: [Mind's Eye] Re: Economy

So, bullets=100pts, futures=-100TNpts. ;-)

On 6/28/2011 12:07 AM, archytas wrote:
> The truth on bullets is you get to eat if you have them and the food
> holders don't!
>
> On Jun 28, 3:52 am, rigsy03<rigs...@gmail.com> wrote:
>> I wonder the number of vacant, distressed properties in the West?
>>
>> Well, China was humiliated by the tactics of the West in our forcing
>> her to open to trade via opium and dynasty overthrow plus the theft of
>> her national arts and treasures- keeping them "safe" in western
>> museums, like the rest of our lootings.
>>
>> Americans accumulated their own debt with abuse of credit when it was
>> easy street. The banks/financial institutions were irresponsible and
>> so were our governments. You can't eat bullets.
>>
>> On Jun 27, 4:49 pm, archytas<nwte...@gmail.com> wrote:
>>
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>>> I don't believe the modern arguments (post 1950) concern communism
>>> other than as a futile ideal. We seem to have forgotten about habros
>>> - the polluting quality of luxury. The term arises in a Greek play
>>> celebrating the victory of the Athenian Democracy over the Persians.
>>> The warning to the Greeks was that they must never become sissies
>>> wallowing in emotions and luxury like the defeated Persians. Most of
>>> us are barely aware of history and have no real clue what the Soviets
>>> and Chinese were up to. Even in relation to what's going on in China
>>> now, I find few who know they have built ghost cities and are fueling
>>> GDP growth with a property bubble.
>>> The broad brush of western economics is that the ignorant rabble have
>>> no place in real decision-making and that they must both know this (in
>>> order not to forget their place) and to deny it in fantasies to
>>> encourage virtual self-aggrandizement. Thus we are to live in virtual
>>> meritocracy whilst actually just part of a pack that will not
>>> challenge the alphas. In a very real way, we do not argue with facts,
>>> but the stories of literature which bounds our expectations. Video
>>> games are a warning of what we are, even if we don't play them.
>>> The debts that are everywhere like a nightmare are not to do with
>>> money as a means of simple exchange, taken on to be worked off in some
>>> equation of labour value. They have been manipulated as surely as any
>>> in past empires. Just as Chinese GDP is floating on 64 million empty
>>> buildings no one can afford to live in (terms are often half up front,
>>> the balance over 3 years), our currencies float on deals between
>>> governments and favoured banks. We have suppressed wages and banks
>>> hardly even provide working capital for business, instead engaging in
>>> speculation in giant Ponzi schemes hedged in ever increasing prices
>>> for assets that no one would eventually be able to buy from a wage,
>>> and securitised to the tax payer. Wages were collapsed over 30 years
>>> by exporting manufacturing - but GDP kept rising as we borrowed
>>> against the asset pile to buy more and more crap and pay welfare to
>>> those deprived of jobs.
>>> The rich grew vastly richer in this period. If there are 64 million
>>> Chinese apartments empty, how many across the world are now holiday
>>> homes and the rest. None of this is communist or capitalist economics
>>> - it's more fundamental, possibly the economics of the city in which
>>> absentee landlords gamble the labour of poor tenants and then replace
>>> them with more economic sheep. The money that was always making money
>>> in high finance was never making anything other than the debt. You
>>> need to understand mark to model and mark to market. The money was
>>> never being made - banks were allowed to value their own assets to
>>> models kept secret for reasons of commercial security. Now, if they
>>> have to really sell any 'assets' they are worth what the market will
>>> pay. And given the way banks count loans as assets, they are all
>>> probably bankrupt because most of the loans will be real liabilities.
>>> None of us borrowed this 'money'. It was pumped in by the Fed, BoE,
>>> EU Central and so on and stole your hard-earned from underneath you.
>>> This was done to bring inflation, and as yet it hasn't worked (though
>>> notice how much more food costs) because we can already see our wages
>>> and jobs are under threat and won't sell our homes at knockdown.
>>> What we should get away from is homily about needing to tighten belts
>>> after 'our excesses'. GDP all over has been massively inflated pretty
>>> much as Enron inflated its books. The problem is we can't direct
>>> capital to the work that needs doing. The hot money is already in
>>> Swiss vaults or buying up land and evicting the tenant farmers (as in
>>> the Enclosures). It also wants to buy up our public sectors - with
>>> the very money we have given to support the bent system.
>>> The question has long been how we might direct capital into the work
>>> that needs doing and fairly distribute in a way that doesn't kill of
>>> innovation or focus power into an elite that operates like a Politburo
>>> we can't vote out. The news is that we already have this situation,
>>> and may even have another massive debtor nation about to hit hyper-
>>> inflation whilst more armed to the teeth than Nazi Germany. Imagine
>>> Palin in charge of that!
>>> We have all had trouble breaking the ancien regimes. Even the USA is
>>> a Republik, rather than participative democracy - and democracy itself
>>> has vile origins. Greece is run by a few rich-bastard families, the
>>> US by banking interest, the UK is still basically a privateer island
>>> (though privateers were strictly French) and the EU is still an
>>> aggrandizement of ideas of stopping war with Germans and maintaining
>>> coal and steel industries.
>>> There is another way if we give up and homilies that barely work for
>>> individual households let alone economic groups. Much of the debt
>>> within the EU could be cancelled between countries in a Jubilee.
>>> Beyond this we could ensure individuals get more control in economics
>>> through wages and make investment an ethical business.
>>> On Jun 27, 8:30 pm, paradox<eadohe...@hotmail.com> wrote:
>>>> But communism (in theory) is about every man contributing to the
>>>> communal pot, to be distributed by dint of a principle of "equity".
>>>> Free markets (or Capitalism, or whatever resonates) is about man
>>>> pursuing his own ends, for which an emergent, enabling by-product is
>>>> the economy (as we know it); of course, great disparities of wealth
>>>> (and power) are an unavoidable (some might argue desirable) feature,
>>>> as man has an unequal capacity to create value (and we can get into
>>>> the ethics of the "why's" and the "wherefore's"). (Re)distribution is
>>>> a political initiative to manage these disparities through taxation.
>>>> And yes, you're right, wealth will perpetuate "at the top", but really
>>>> as a consequence of an enhanced capacity to create even greater value;
>>>> i think that this is what tends to appear as the great "visible hand".
>>>> Thing about "growth", rigsy / contemplative, is it's one of the very
>>>> few mega non-zero sums around; thats what makes it so beguiling and
>>>> difficult to manage; so we swing from boom to bust to boom to...:)
>>>> On Jun 27, 2:49 pm, rigsy03<rigs...@gmail.com> wrote:
>>>>> I don't agree- unless you are talking about Communism- which flopped.
>>>>> Man serves the economy and whichever power happens to be in charge who
>>>>> may then decide to redistribute wealth/products but this is not a
>>>>> voluntary agreement. But generally, wealth remains at the top for the
>>>>> prime reason of maintaining power.
>>>>> On Jun 25, 3:26 am, paradox<eadohe...@hotmail.com> wrote:
>>>>>> Hmm...fine points all!
>>>>>> Lets not forget though, that the economy serves man, not the other way
>>>>>> round? Just an observation regarding your suspicion of the "growth"
>>>>>> imperative in contemporary economics.
>>>>>> On Jun 24, 9:54 pm, Contemplative<wjwiel...@gmail.com> wrote:
>>>>>>> The key phrase for me is "relative homeostasis". I agree that the
>>>>>>> encouragement you refer to
>>>>>>> is desirable. I am unsure of it's possibility. Our belief that growth is
>>>>>>> mandatory for our economy
>>>>>>> encourages activities and behaviors that, I think, out-pace the ability of
>>>>>>> the natural system to
>>>>>>> balance itself at its natural rate. I am not convinced that we have a solid
>>>>>>> enough understanding
>>>>>>> of our own system to allow us to recognize true key indicators of systemic
>>>>>>> health, rationally process
>>>>>>> that input, and subsequently make good decisions about the which conditions
>>>>>>> we should encourage.
>>>>>>> To state it bluntly, I think our desire for growth is malignant...
>>>>>>> I don't mean to be doom and gloom about this, and actually I think there is
>>>>>>> reason to be optimistic.
>>>>>>> But economics seems to me to have that stereotypical characteristic of
>>>>>>> having 20/20 vision through
>>>>>>> the rear view mirror. Economic policy decisions that are both long term and
>>>>>>> aggressive(such as increased
>>>>>>> home ownership) which use 'tweaks' to the system to achieve the aims are
>>>>>>> likely destructive and very
>>>>>>> unpredictable. In a relatively isolated or buffered system, they may be
>>>>>>> more predictable, but we are not
>>>>>>> in an economy which is either buffered or isolated. We are comparatively
>>>>>>> wide open(global), and playing
>>>>>>> in a much bigger sandbox than we have been, say 25 years ago. ...and from
>>>>>>> my perspective, we don't
>>>>>>> know the playing field well enough to be aggressive, though we should be
>>>>>>> looking long term. ...and by
>>>>>>> long term, I mean more than two quarters out!
>>>>>>> Thanks for the opportunity to think this through a bit...! :-)- Hide quoted text -
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