Politicians are holding the middle class and working people hostage in their efforts to win more benefits for the rich.
No wonder some Washington politicians have been so loath to extend unemployment benefits. They don't know what it's like to be unable to find work for many months—and not just because they themselves have jobs. They work in the large metropolitan area with the nation's lowest unemployment rate.…
Article comments
126 - Baronius
No doubt, Jordan.
We're both taking extreme examples. Not every innovation is an airbag, and not every one is a Malibu Stacy accessory. But by getting rid of the means of innovation, you're depriving yourself of both. If we want to get rid of pointless innovations, we can do it the old-fashioned way, and not buy them. We don't have to overturn our political and economic systems.
127 - Jordan Richardson
Yeah, I don't know about the idea of "getting rid of pointless innovations by not purchasing them." Production is so much higher than demand in most spots because the economy is profit-based and not usage-based, so it's hard to really even say that we have a consumer-driven market anymore. It's more a system of hedging bets than it is a system of creating for consumer demand. A trip to your local supermarket confirms this.
128 - Cindy
even when that "new" version is just Malibu Stacy's new hat
OMG!!! I practically fell out of my chair I was laughing so hard!!!! (I still can't help laughing over and over...the people in the hospital will think I am insane soon.)
Baronius,
The system you're describing has no rules for the allocation of resources, so it's not going to be able to measure the value of innovation, and doesn't have any means to implement innovation.
How do we know this? How can you tell if the system has rules? You really make a lot of presumptions.
What disappoints me, is many people are ABSOLUTELY CERTAIN that something will not work, even though they do not seem to have a have a clue how that something works in its very most basic sense.
How is this possible? How can people judge and criticize a thing when they don't even know on a BASIC level, what it is they are criticizing.
Jordan is not an anarchist, but he's taken the time to understand what he's talking about. Try reading his replies to zing. They should help.
Anarchism, with regard to rules, is consistent with direct democracy or consensus. It essentially means that you, Baronius, have a direct say in what affects you directly. You are not represented by someone else. You have a choice in what rules there are and how they operate.
And if you still WANT to build 320 iphone clones, go right ahead. But, since the society will not be forced into being consumer drones, I am not sure why you'd want to.
Next:
Capitalism requires competition, holding back innovations, and trickery. (Like making cassette tapes and marketing them as being all different qualities when they are the same tape.) My point was that each company will not have to compete to make 42 of the same thing, for no better reason than it needs a profit. We can then focus on innovations from an playful mode. Allowing those who
As it is now, most cannot afford the innovation, but only the cheapest often crappiest version of a thing. Eventually a new innovation comes out and the whole thing shifts, leaving most, again, without the innovation. Thus, we are strung along and instead of everyone being able to use the innovation, only those with the most money can use it.
129 - Baronius
Jordan, I don't understand what you mean. There are no sellers without buyers, and no buyers without sellers. The economy exists at the intersection.
New Coke, Microsoft Vista, Madonna as a movie actress, Chevrolet...when multibillion-dollar industries back a bad idea, they get slapped down. As to whether Cindy's new system would have a better means of coordinating supply and demand, I don't know, because she doesn't seem to have a system at all. If anything, her idea is more "if you build it, they will come" than any marketer of Diet Pepsi Lime could dream of. She's got shiny happy people in a lab designing a product that will somehow make it into production, without any way of determining if the new product is a better use of resources.
130 - Cindy
zing,
i haven't gotten to everything you wrote yet, but so far:
some people might want no structure. i personally don't know any anarchists like that.
most would go with the first two ideas here:
Anarchy (from Greek: ??????? anarchÃ?, "without ruler") may refer to any of the following:
"No rulership or enforced authority."[1]
"A social state in which there is no governing person or group of people, but each individual has absolute liberty (without the implication of disorder)."[2]
131 - Baronius
Cindy - You'll notice that I'm not lumping Jordan in with the anarchists, if you look at what we've been saying.
The more you write about your ideal, the less realistic it sounds. It's like the inverse of a conspiracy theory, where people commit to it harder the *fewer* things it can explain. As for your understanding of innovation, I don't have anything to say. It's so contrary to reality that neither your assessment of today nor your hopes for tomorrow are grounded in it. Just trust me that you're not going to make things better by abandoning the mechanisms for improvement. You're not just fighting against human nature, you're fighting against the limitations of knowledge.
132 - Cindy
Structure is based directly on what is needed and what works as people discover these things through praxis.
It can be changed as soon as the people involved desire that change.
Example from Zapatistas: They choose representatives to go to conferences to represent the individual community interests among the larger communities. These representatives may only represent what the community has already decided. If something new comes up, they must return to their community for decision. If the community does not feel a representative is doing a good job, there is no waiting for terms to end. They sit her/him down and the community directly explains the problems and gives the representative a chance to defend/explain. The community can immediately remove the representative at any time.
This sort of structure is consistent with anarchism.
133 - Cindy
Baronius,
I am sorry to see you are so indoctrinated that you criticize things, based not in understanding them, but based on the way they superficially "sound" when they bump up against your biases.
The subject of anarchism is not something new, nor something I invented. It has been written about for centuries by people far more brilliant than us. Your off-hand dismissal with zero real comprehension says something about you.
I'm sorry for you. You haven't any idea what you are talking about and sound to me like a cult member defending his cult beliefs.
134 - doug m.
She's certainly fighting against the limitations of someone's knowledge
135 - Baronius
Well, *I* am sorry that *you* are so indoctrinated.
That was a persuasive argument, wasn't it? I sure won you over, didn't I?
136 - Mark
Baronius, I'm convinced that the only argument that will 'win you over' is the collapse of the existing system.
But it remains bizarre to use profitability as the measure of 'better use' of resources. See Jordan's timely review of Ecology and Socialism: Solutions to Capitalist Ecological Crisis by Chris Williams over in Books.
137 - Baronius
Why is that bizarre, Mark? It's basic economic theory that floating prices allow the consumers' preferences and the producers' resources to meet. But no, the collapse of our existing system wouldn't win me over until I saw whether the replacement system was any good. Otherwise it's just an intellectual game. And though this may be too conservative an idea for you and Cindy (heck, it's practically the definition of conservatism), saying that a political theory has been written about by smart people carries a lot less weight than saying people have made it work.
138 - roger nowosielski
Have made it work for for whom? And at what price?
139 - Doug Hunter
"Have made it work for for whom?"
Says the guy sitting in the air conditioned modern building using a computer made by a multinational corporation on a network created and developed in the evil capitalist US empire. Irony.
This is religion Baronius and you stepped between them and their heaven, the fantasy utopia that only exists in their version of the good books and the confines of their own minds. It'd be harmless if not for the hubris that refuses to allow them to even contemplate the idea that they themselves could be wrong, that other people might not want to play along with their fantasy. You're not a guy with a different opinion you're an indoctrinated tool of the other standing between a momma bear and her cub.
I wish going out and living altruistically and building the utopia they claim to want was as fun for them as talking about it and cheerleading the failures of others online. I know the excuses would come, but there's bound to be enough of them to create their own little community and do it grassroots style. This should be a free country and I'll fight for your right to create whatever type of goofy commune you want. Make it so great that in a few years I'm eating my words, knocking on the door, and begging to sign the social contract and get in... I'm not holding my breath though.
140 - roger nowosielski
Hey, buster, I don't make my judgment based on what "works" for me. That's your claim to fame.
141 - Cindy
...saying that a political theory has been written about by smart people carries a lot less weight than saying people have made it work.
It wasn't an argument I led with or would have ever made except in response to this: "The more you write about your ideal, the less realistic it sounds."
It is not merely my ideal, as if I has some il considered vision. It is a well considered topic that has been addressed.
I did not intend to convince you by saying that. What I did think was that, in light of your extra-light understanding of anarchism, you might do what an intelligent life form would do, at this point. Go read something about it. It is part of our world of information as human beings. Reading anything. Read an actual GOOD criticism of it.
It has been taken seriously and criticized. Just not considered by many, because your gov't and it's wealthy rulers do not want you to consider it at all. Have you never even considered the pov of the anarcho-capitalist (free-market anarchist)?
You sound like a banana critic whose never eaten a piece of fruit!
I am not responsible for presenting an argument to an ill-prepared critic. Go and learn about the subject if you'd like to debate it.
What excuse do you have for your ignorance? Wouldn't you expect that someone debating you as a right libertarian would at least try to find out that was?
SHEEEEEEEEEEEESH!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
142 - Jordan Richardson
There are no sellers without buyers, and no buyers without sellers. The economy exists at the intersection.
I'm hard pressed to see where I've suggested otherwise. Cindy's views, too, don't seem to point to a lack of economy or a lack of a market with buyers and sellers. What she appears to suggest, and what anarchist thought appears to suggest from my understanding, is a recalibration of who owns the economy. Instead of middle agents betting and wagering on the possibility of the sale of goods, goods and services would be provided for use and not speculation. Would this not be good for everyone involved?
What is the downside to purchasing goods and services from local sources? What is the downside to utilizing our finite resources in a more responsible way rather than to fuel engines of limitless production and assuming that people will buy what's out there?
In terms of personal stories, my dad is a trucker. He takes foodstuffs and other goods from Canadian warehouses to American warehouses and drives American goods and foodstuffs back into Canada. One trip, he took sugar from Canada to the United States (San Antonio, I believe). Long trip. While in San Antonio, his truck was loaded and he took the goods back to Canada. What he took back to Canada was sugar.
Prices are high to cover the spread, to cover the gap between goods that aren't sold and goods that are. This is standard economic practice.
I think it's a societal system of imposed ethics to suggest that this has anything to do with the preferences of the consumer. It begins with the very young and builds onwards; your value as a citizen of the world is to be a consumer, it's an implied role.
What's most compelling, and most troubling, is that people cling to this role as though it were a religious distinction.
143 - Jordan Richardson
The telecommunications sector is an ideal example of where innovation is heading when the motive is profit and not service of the people. Bear in mind, too, that profit need not be ultimately discarded as a part of the equation. My only suggestion would be that profit not be the prime motivation for the production of goods and services.
Cell phones and smart phones are made by the crateload. They contain an element in the circuitry known as coltan. Most people don't know what coltan is or that it's in their cell phones and smart phones. Coltan is currently financing the most violent war on the planet that nobody's talking about in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. Between August of 1998 and April of 2004 alone, 3.8 million people died.
There are coltan mines in Australia, too, and that mineral isn't a conflict resource there. But because of the situation in Congo around the mines, the coltan is available dirt cheap. The product can be moved with relative ease, too, as long as deals are struck with the forces surrounding the mines. Corporations have moved in on the Congolese coltan, obtaining what is essentially the digital age's "blood diamond" at rock-bottom prices and moving it to their manufacturing plants to get at the tantalum inside. The tantalum is shipped to other plants to be wired and seared into the circuit components. The Australia coltan, that which is produced without blood and dismemberment as its legacy, isn't as attractive a resource because it's not as cheap.
Now if this tragic story, a story that's been going on since our thirst for these digital treats began, doesn't rely intensely on the framework of modern capitalism and "innovation," I don't know what does. And if the "innovation" of a new iPhone product, for example, every 9-10 months doesn't have a direct line to to how much conflict coltan is dragged up on the backs of rape victims and child soldiers has nothing to do with the "insatiable" thirst for advances we apparently have, I don't know what does.
The fact is that these advanced products, with your 3G and 4G and so forth "innovations," are even exceeding the network capacities in Canada, the U.S. and beyond. Because we haven't caught the networks up to speed with the products we're pumping out, the products come to the consumers as not fully ready to utilize their full potential. Hell, the province of Saskatchewan in Canada has just received 3G+ networks. Virtually in the same month, the iPhone 4 arrived and the "new network" is already obsolete.
Tell me it's worth it all you like, but I have a hard time believing in the quality of a system that considers this sort of waste as "essential."
144 - Mark
Why is that bizarre, Mark? It's basic economic theory that floating prices allow the consumers' preferences and the producers' resources to meet.
Holy petitio principii, Baronius!
Competing economic theory analyzes prices, preferences and access to resources as moments in a class war.
Doug, there are 'experiments' going on internationally as we type. Hopefully, some of the ideas that come from these will make sense when capitalist acquisition/expropriation reaches its limit.
145 - roger nowosielski
It just about had reached its limit in the West. I'm afraid we're going have to wait until the booming economies of China and other "developing" nations have run their course. Of course, the economic decline of the West may prove to be the desired catalyst, unless there will develop a substantial consumer culture among the natives - an iffy scenario.
146 - Irene Athena
Jordan, could you recommend a tech journal with a philosophical to tech innovation that is only surpassed by its commitment to ETHICAL tech innovation?
If there isn't one....there's a good market for you. That was a great comment in #143.
147 - Irene Athena
philosophical ^commitment to ^ tech
148 - Jordan Richardson
I wish, Irene.
Actually, my comment is a paraphrase from my article here. While most of the time I'm paid to write about the "latest and greatest," every so often I can sneak in something much more important.
149 - Irene Athena
Mark, competing economic theories! I can't resist posting this rap video again.
If there's one made by the same outfit, with MARX and Hayek as contenders...maybe Cindy can show this to some of her anarchocapitalist friends and they'll be inspired to make one...
150 - Cindy
Irene,
That is hilarious!! Maybe we don't really need a video about Marx on the economy. Perhaps this says it all.
151 - Irene Athena
Show them the video anyway, Cindy. I'll bet they'd like it. Cute gift idea in your link, though here's one ANY OF US would be proud to wear.) Didn't I wish everyone a Merry Christmas already LAST time I said I'd better get going? LOL. Well, I better git going.
152 - Baronius
"Holy petitio principii, Baronius!"
How about this, then: any non-Marxian microeconomics (including socialist) would agree that floating prices allow the consumers' preferences and the producers' resources to meet. Marxian microeconomics (or microeconomics derived from Marxian thought) probably falls into the category of philosophy better than economics, which is to say that it's not predictive.
The one exception I can think of is Henry George.
153 - Ben
It is shocking how we got basic economics wrong: save during the good times and spend during the bad times. Now it's difficult to expand unemployment benefits when jobs are scarce due to budget constraints as a result of previous over-spending, ridiculous! They need to set up an emergency 'unemployment fund' for the future, paying in a very small percentage of GDP every year GDP growth is above a certain percentage.
154 - Bobby
Cindy and Jon Sobel, great posts.
Majority of the followers of Sara Palin and other far right wingers are below the middle class level. Yet these people insist on supporting these republicans who's agenda are for the to 10% of the population.
These people should know they or someone they know will need and benefit from the presidents health care reform bill and other bills. Why have we in American become so ignorantly blinded by the light in which would guide us into the next decade!?