To: engineeringdept@city.windsor.on.ca
jessica
hi....
i'm hoping this is a good email address, but maybe you could forward this somewhere more appropriate if it isn't?
i'm renting a basement apartment at cataraqui and marion and am getting a few problems and am just trying to determine the cause. my landlord claims there are separate storm and sanitary lines, and i have no reason to doubt him. his logic is that rainfall should not cause the toilet to drain slowly, and he's consequently not taking me seriously. i understand his argument and why it shouldn't happen.
however, i'm a scientifically minded person and i've been able to demonstrate the following:
1) the slow down is correlated with the rain. that is, the toilet drains slowly after a rain and drains normally once the rain has dried up. so, while a block might exist, it's not the primary cause of the slow down.
2) the amount of slow down is proportional to the amount of rain. that is, when it rains a little, it slows down a little. when it rains a lot, it slows down a lot.
despite understanding that these systems ought to be separated, my brief and aborted training as a physicist tells me that when you have things that are correlated in a proportional manner, it is very likely that there is a causal relationship between them. that is, i have a high degree of certainty that the rain is causing the toilet to drain slowly in a manner that is proportional to how much rain is falling.
while it's august right now, the proportionality has me concerned about spring runoff, which is of course substantial in canada. i have every reason to think that that a lot of snow melting could back up the toilet and cause a horrible mess.
now, i've talked to the neighbour next door and he's confirmed that he's actual dealing with back ups through the pipes, which is a worse problem than i have. he's convinced that the problem is related to sewer replacement on wyandotte down the road. this only makes sense to me if they might have put the storm through the sanitary as a temporary measure. is that something the construction team has done in the short run?
i'm leaning towards a different cause. at roughly the same time that the problem started, the house across the street experienced a significant fire. the property has been completely shut down. i suspect the sump pump is not running, the basement is flooding and it's draining into the floor, which is connected to the sanitary and this is causing the backup. the issue i'm running into in having this make sense is related to the volume of water running through the floor drain. it's a pretty big property - it was an apartment before the fire, but it would have been a five or six bedroom house some time in the middle of the last century, and it has a very big backyard. so, there's a potential for a large volume of water to be coming into the floor drain. how likely do you think it is that this could be the root of the problem? how big a problem do you think this is going to cause in the spring, if it's not addressed now? and what is the better solution for this - running a sump pump on an abandoned property, or closing the drains off? how does the city deal with something like this, if it's determined to be the cause?
city of windsor, engineering department
I would like to clear up a few points in your email.
While your landlord may be correct in that the house may be serviced by separate storm and sanitary connections (I can't confirm that), both these connections would outlet to the same combined sewer in the road. There is only one sewer Cataraqui and one on Marion, and they are both combined sewers meaning that they accept both rain water and sewage.
With respect to the Wyandotte project, there is no sewer work being undertaken as part of that project. Windsor Utilities is replacing the watermain and services and the City will reconstruct the pavement following that work. This project would have no impact on the sewers servicing your property.
You are most likely correct in that there is a correlation between rainfall and the slow running plumbing in your house. This is due to the combined nature of the sewer that services your property. During rain events, combined sewers fill with rainwater and therefore have limited capacity to accept flows from buildings.
With respect to the apartment building across the street from you, all rainfall runoff from this property would have entered the sewer system via foundation drains prior to the fire, so the fact that the basement may have flooded and the water is now entering the floor drain would change the drainage pattern very little. In fact, rainwater entering the sewers from this property would be very small in proportion to that coming from the catchbasins draining the roads in the area.
With respect to abandonment of the connections servicing the apartment building, that would be addressed when the building is demolished by the Building Department. If you have concerns regarding the state of
the building, please contact the Building Department via 311.
Hopefully, this answers some of your questions. Please contact me if you want to discuss this matter further.
Sincerely;
----------------, P.Eng.
A/Contracts Co-ordinator
Thursday, August 21, 2014
further update...
jessica
we got very little rain today, and the effect was consequently much less, but still noticeable. what that demonstrates is two-fold:
1) that the slow down is proportional to the amount of rain. we now have correlation and proportionality, demonstrating causality.
2) if a very small amount has a noticeable effect, a very large amount would have a very large effect.
i don't think it's likely we're ever going to get enough rain for a big problem, and i can deal with a slow toilet, but i'm worried about run-off in the spring. the proportionality that is now demonstrated indicates that the run-off could be a gigantic problem.
none of this was happening before, so something has changed in the last month, something that needs to be determined is if other people in the neighbourhood are having the same problem or not. a back-up like this should only affect the lowest lying fixtures, so i need to find somebody else with fixtures in the basement to ask. i've identified the basement tenant next door, i'm now waiting for him to come outside for a smoke to ask him. if he's dealing with the same thing, well know it's a city problem. if he's not, i'm not sure what to say other than that something is probably busted...
(pause)
alright...
so, i talked to the tenant next door and he IS getting back-ups from the rain, meaning it's a city thing. he thinks the pipes in the area are bad and it's the construction.
at this point, i've reached what i can do: i've identified there's a problem with the city piping and reported it to the property owner.
it's now in your hands as to what to do...
(pause)
i've thought about this a bit and i think it's worth being careful about. apparently, the neighbour next door is actually getting backups, not just slow drains. i may have a block of some sort, but i'd hazard a guess that most plumbing is at least mildly blocked. what if the reason i'm NOT backing up is because there IS a block?
i think there's enough evidence at this point to conclude that rainwater is somehow getting into the city's sanitary. i think it's better to focus on that.
the landlord
THE City WILL BE HERE MONDAY DURING THE DAY TO RUN THE EEL THROUGH THE LINE:
jessica
ok.
i still don't feel that i'm getting across what the problem is.
the problem is not that the line is blocked all the time. it is not. the problem is that the line is ONLY blocked when it RAINS.
in general, i'm an advocate of ruling out possibilities. the only way to find out is to try. but i've developed what is a pretty strong causal relationship between the drain and the rain. it seems to be that it will continue to drain slowly until the sump pump turns off, then get back to normal. the sump pump continues to run 12 hours after a mild rain storm, and i need to reiterate that this seems unusual. but considering the separation, i think what the connection between your sump pump and the toilet down here is is that the water drainage in the basement across the street is going to level at about the same time the sump pump stops. that is, i think that the reason they seem connected is because the floor drain across the street should stop draining at roughly the same time that the sump pump down here stops.
i'd just request that the three of us spend a few minutes over the weekend brainstorming other ways that the rainwater might be overwhelming the sanitary on the street.
that abandoned house is the only thing i can think of that really makes sense...and it would probably be better if one of you can get a hold of him to turn the pump back on and/or plug the drain somehow, if you know him, because if i do it it's going to be through city bylaw.
we got very little rain today, and the effect was consequently much less, but still noticeable. what that demonstrates is two-fold:
1) that the slow down is proportional to the amount of rain. we now have correlation and proportionality, demonstrating causality.
2) if a very small amount has a noticeable effect, a very large amount would have a very large effect.
i don't think it's likely we're ever going to get enough rain for a big problem, and i can deal with a slow toilet, but i'm worried about run-off in the spring. the proportionality that is now demonstrated indicates that the run-off could be a gigantic problem.
none of this was happening before, so something has changed in the last month, something that needs to be determined is if other people in the neighbourhood are having the same problem or not. a back-up like this should only affect the lowest lying fixtures, so i need to find somebody else with fixtures in the basement to ask. i've identified the basement tenant next door, i'm now waiting for him to come outside for a smoke to ask him. if he's dealing with the same thing, well know it's a city problem. if he's not, i'm not sure what to say other than that something is probably busted...
(pause)
alright...
so, i talked to the tenant next door and he IS getting back-ups from the rain, meaning it's a city thing. he thinks the pipes in the area are bad and it's the construction.
at this point, i've reached what i can do: i've identified there's a problem with the city piping and reported it to the property owner.
it's now in your hands as to what to do...
(pause)
i've thought about this a bit and i think it's worth being careful about. apparently, the neighbour next door is actually getting backups, not just slow drains. i may have a block of some sort, but i'd hazard a guess that most plumbing is at least mildly blocked. what if the reason i'm NOT backing up is because there IS a block?
i think there's enough evidence at this point to conclude that rainwater is somehow getting into the city's sanitary. i think it's better to focus on that.
the landlord
THE City WILL BE HERE MONDAY DURING THE DAY TO RUN THE EEL THROUGH THE LINE:
jessica
ok.
i still don't feel that i'm getting across what the problem is.
the problem is not that the line is blocked all the time. it is not. the problem is that the line is ONLY blocked when it RAINS.
in general, i'm an advocate of ruling out possibilities. the only way to find out is to try. but i've developed what is a pretty strong causal relationship between the drain and the rain. it seems to be that it will continue to drain slowly until the sump pump turns off, then get back to normal. the sump pump continues to run 12 hours after a mild rain storm, and i need to reiterate that this seems unusual. but considering the separation, i think what the connection between your sump pump and the toilet down here is is that the water drainage in the basement across the street is going to level at about the same time the sump pump stops. that is, i think that the reason they seem connected is because the floor drain across the street should stop draining at roughly the same time that the sump pump down here stops.
i'd just request that the three of us spend a few minutes over the weekend brainstorming other ways that the rainwater might be overwhelming the sanitary on the street.
that abandoned house is the only thing i can think of that really makes sense...and it would probably be better if one of you can get a hold of him to turn the pump back on and/or plug the drain somehow, if you know him, because if i do it it's going to be through city bylaw.
Wednesday, August 20, 2014
this weird fear of swallowing is back.
it has to be psychological as opposed to something like, say, ms, which i've seen various symptoms of come and go since i was a little kid. if i get a jug of juice, it goes right down. if i try and take a swig of coffee, i start blowing into the cup. so, i have to take a small sip, swallow, wait and repeat.
i'm pretty sure i'm afraid of choking myself. it goes away after a while....
it has to be psychological as opposed to something like, say, ms, which i've seen various symptoms of come and go since i was a little kid. if i get a jug of juice, it goes right down. if i try and take a swig of coffee, i start blowing into the cup. so, i have to take a small sip, swallow, wait and repeat.
i'm pretty sure i'm afraid of choking myself. it goes away after a while....
Tuesday, August 19, 2014
update...
jessica
hi again.
the toilet did the same thing after the storm today, so it's really obvious, now.
further, i checked the back room and it seems to be flooding out of the storage area beside the laundry room, which my ears tell me is where the sump pump is.
i noticed when i went out for a smoke that it was dumping water on the front lawn at a startling rate. like, it looks like somebody left a faucet running, sort of thing.
again: i have no idea what this means, only that something is flooding and it seems to be connected to the sump pump.
(pause)
actually, the water in the basement seemed to be coming from a little hole in the foundation. but if i were to guess, i'd think the cause of it seeping through would be the massive amount of water coming out of the sump pump directly above it. i might be concerned that it's producing some water damage, but it's sort of secondary to the plumbing issue itself.
it's hard to believe it 's coming from the rain because the puddles on the rest of the street have already dried up. why is this unit getting a thousand times more water than the one next door? so, it has to be feeding back from somewhere.
i just want to be clear about the flow rate. you know the "outdoor taps" that units used to have? i haven't seen once since i was a kid, but you'd attach a hose or a sprinkler to it out of your backyard. it looks like that faucet is on FULL BLAST. and it's been running like that for an hour. there's absolutely no way it's just the rain, it didn't even rain that much, that water has a different source...
with that much water, i thought maybe it was coming from a pipe that could be turned off, but it was suggested to me that that doesn't make sense. see, maybe it doesn't. but the toilet thing doesn't seem to make sense either.
i don't know what the options on the sanitary line are, or how they could get mixed up with the storm drain, but something seems to be crossed.
so i need to ask: did the furnace guys connect any pipes together? might it have crossed something up, through back pressure?
(pause)
sorry for the long email, but, just to finish the thought, it seems like the water was coming out of the sump pump and back into the basement. so it was recycling itself, creating the impression that it was coming out at a steady flow. he put a device in that acts as an inclined plane, to get the water out from the house and each pump is consequently decreasing in volume. so, it seems like it's not backed up, after all, it's just that the ground is really saturated. it might be a good idea to try and make that permanent to prevent further water damage...
it doesn't explain the toilets, but i do think the logic extrapolates. if the water is too saturated in the front of the house, it stands to reason that the city system is possibly backed up.
i'm still a little skeptical about possible flow issues somewhere, but that's an easy line of thinking to stick with for now.
(or it could have been a coincidence that the pump started slowing when the device was installed)
the landlord
Again the pump, pumps storm water, it does not pump sewage. If the sewer, sewage line is backing up we will call the city and report this. Speak to Paul and explain what you are experiencing so that he can look for himself when it rains again. This will give him first hand knowledge of the problem when he speaks to the City. I will speak to Paul and have him call this to the Public works. This is not are doing this will be a city correction. If you notice around our building that they have had us divert the water from the eves draughs out of the storm pipes at the side of the building. This is so the storms are not overloading, delaying the run off into the storm sewers from the road surfaces. Paul you are seeing this e-mail, call me when you get this.
jessica
i guess that explains where the extra water is coming from. ok. i just couldn't understand why there was so much on this property, and so little elsewhere without the water backing up from somewhere. i was thinking that if a stormwater pipe had broken, it could be flooding both the sump pit and the sanitary at the same time. but if you're doing it on purpose, that explains that.
i did a bunch of googling and i'm still working with a weak understanding of toilet plumbing but i think it has to be the case that water is pooling somewhere. it might be a blockage, but if it's a blockage it would have to be somewhere that water can pool where it rains - through a manhole or something. this is then killing the air pressure on the flush. otherwise, it would be slow to drain all the time.
the other thing i was thinking was about the air vent coming up from the toilet. if something had been rerouted with the furnace, could it not possibly have a different reaction to rainwater, and conceivably produce a lack of flush pressure? but, i did an experiment early in the morning and i think i've ruled it out. what i did was let the water in the sink run and then flush. the water was flowing right out through the sink before i flushed, but as it was flushing it started to fill up a little. if i understand correctly, this rules out a vent issue by demonstrating a restriction of the flow rate.
i have to admit that i'm not entirely convinced it isn't construction. if they're temporarily down to one pipe somewhere instead of two, that could be where the water is pooling. i know everybody else in the neighbourhood would have to experience this, but how many have toilets that are low enough for it to be an issue?
i'll bring paul down here next time we get a lot of rain...
(pause)
the only other thing i can think of is that maybe one of the neighbours recently installed a sump pump to the sanitary and it's exaggerating an existing block...you're not supposed to that, but people do that...
whether it's via leak, construction, bad install or whatever else i think the flow restriction happening only when it rains, and stopping when it's dried out, demonstrates that there just has to be rainwater blocking the sanitary at some point, somewhere, somehow - even though that's not supposed to happen.
but, like i say, i'll get paul down here to see it next time it happens.
(pause)
actually, there's one more hypothesis i have. i know this is a little bit of a long shot, but the culmination of what you're telling me and what i'm reading and what i'm seeing indicates that something very strange is happening.
the house across the street had a fire last month. it seems like it's been completely shut down since. if they shut the sump pump off, the basement could be flooding in the rain, and the flooding could be finding it's way into the sanitary, slowing the drain down.
it's just a guess, but something weird like that MUST be happening. i don't known if you know those guys or could call them and ask, but i think the sump pump in that basement ought to be working, regardless, for the benefit of the rest of the neighbourhood....
hi again.
the toilet did the same thing after the storm today, so it's really obvious, now.
further, i checked the back room and it seems to be flooding out of the storage area beside the laundry room, which my ears tell me is where the sump pump is.
i noticed when i went out for a smoke that it was dumping water on the front lawn at a startling rate. like, it looks like somebody left a faucet running, sort of thing.
again: i have no idea what this means, only that something is flooding and it seems to be connected to the sump pump.
(pause)
actually, the water in the basement seemed to be coming from a little hole in the foundation. but if i were to guess, i'd think the cause of it seeping through would be the massive amount of water coming out of the sump pump directly above it. i might be concerned that it's producing some water damage, but it's sort of secondary to the plumbing issue itself.
it's hard to believe it 's coming from the rain because the puddles on the rest of the street have already dried up. why is this unit getting a thousand times more water than the one next door? so, it has to be feeding back from somewhere.
i just want to be clear about the flow rate. you know the "outdoor taps" that units used to have? i haven't seen once since i was a kid, but you'd attach a hose or a sprinkler to it out of your backyard. it looks like that faucet is on FULL BLAST. and it's been running like that for an hour. there's absolutely no way it's just the rain, it didn't even rain that much, that water has a different source...
with that much water, i thought maybe it was coming from a pipe that could be turned off, but it was suggested to me that that doesn't make sense. see, maybe it doesn't. but the toilet thing doesn't seem to make sense either.
i don't know what the options on the sanitary line are, or how they could get mixed up with the storm drain, but something seems to be crossed.
so i need to ask: did the furnace guys connect any pipes together? might it have crossed something up, through back pressure?
(pause)
sorry for the long email, but, just to finish the thought, it seems like the water was coming out of the sump pump and back into the basement. so it was recycling itself, creating the impression that it was coming out at a steady flow. he put a device in that acts as an inclined plane, to get the water out from the house and each pump is consequently decreasing in volume. so, it seems like it's not backed up, after all, it's just that the ground is really saturated. it might be a good idea to try and make that permanent to prevent further water damage...
it doesn't explain the toilets, but i do think the logic extrapolates. if the water is too saturated in the front of the house, it stands to reason that the city system is possibly backed up.
i'm still a little skeptical about possible flow issues somewhere, but that's an easy line of thinking to stick with for now.
(or it could have been a coincidence that the pump started slowing when the device was installed)
the landlord
Again the pump, pumps storm water, it does not pump sewage. If the sewer, sewage line is backing up we will call the city and report this. Speak to Paul and explain what you are experiencing so that he can look for himself when it rains again. This will give him first hand knowledge of the problem when he speaks to the City. I will speak to Paul and have him call this to the Public works. This is not are doing this will be a city correction. If you notice around our building that they have had us divert the water from the eves draughs out of the storm pipes at the side of the building. This is so the storms are not overloading, delaying the run off into the storm sewers from the road surfaces. Paul you are seeing this e-mail, call me when you get this.
jessica
i guess that explains where the extra water is coming from. ok. i just couldn't understand why there was so much on this property, and so little elsewhere without the water backing up from somewhere. i was thinking that if a stormwater pipe had broken, it could be flooding both the sump pit and the sanitary at the same time. but if you're doing it on purpose, that explains that.
i did a bunch of googling and i'm still working with a weak understanding of toilet plumbing but i think it has to be the case that water is pooling somewhere. it might be a blockage, but if it's a blockage it would have to be somewhere that water can pool where it rains - through a manhole or something. this is then killing the air pressure on the flush. otherwise, it would be slow to drain all the time.
the other thing i was thinking was about the air vent coming up from the toilet. if something had been rerouted with the furnace, could it not possibly have a different reaction to rainwater, and conceivably produce a lack of flush pressure? but, i did an experiment early in the morning and i think i've ruled it out. what i did was let the water in the sink run and then flush. the water was flowing right out through the sink before i flushed, but as it was flushing it started to fill up a little. if i understand correctly, this rules out a vent issue by demonstrating a restriction of the flow rate.
i have to admit that i'm not entirely convinced it isn't construction. if they're temporarily down to one pipe somewhere instead of two, that could be where the water is pooling. i know everybody else in the neighbourhood would have to experience this, but how many have toilets that are low enough for it to be an issue?
i'll bring paul down here next time we get a lot of rain...
(pause)
the only other thing i can think of is that maybe one of the neighbours recently installed a sump pump to the sanitary and it's exaggerating an existing block...you're not supposed to that, but people do that...
whether it's via leak, construction, bad install or whatever else i think the flow restriction happening only when it rains, and stopping when it's dried out, demonstrates that there just has to be rainwater blocking the sanitary at some point, somewhere, somehow - even though that's not supposed to happen.
but, like i say, i'll get paul down here to see it next time it happens.
(pause)
actually, there's one more hypothesis i have. i know this is a little bit of a long shot, but the culmination of what you're telling me and what i'm reading and what i'm seeing indicates that something very strange is happening.
the house across the street had a fire last month. it seems like it's been completely shut down since. if they shut the sump pump off, the basement could be flooding in the rain, and the flooding could be finding it's way into the sanitary, slowing the drain down.
it's just a guess, but something weird like that MUST be happening. i don't known if you know those guys or could call them and ask, but i think the sump pump in that basement ought to be working, regardless, for the benefit of the rest of the neighbourhood....
so, maybe not.
i left my broom to dry in the back room a few weeks ago and forgot about it. i was going to clean today, but not without a broom...
if it doesn't show up by tomorrow, i'll go buy a new broom, i guess. i mean, it's the landlord's broom. but that gives me a few hours to listen to mixes.
i left my broom to dry in the back room a few weeks ago and forgot about it. i was going to clean today, but not without a broom...
if it doesn't show up by tomorrow, i'll go buy a new broom, i guess. i mean, it's the landlord's broom. but that gives me a few hours to listen to mixes.
i'm really sick of the idea of "education failing our children". it was clever for about two seconds. now it's one of the worst cliches out there.
it's particularly annoying because it masks the root of the problem, which is a culture that places initiative in the wrong places and creates individuals with stupid priorities. the system can break you, but it can't make you. you have to do that shit yourself. every copy of that awful michelle pfeiffer movie should be tracked down and burned. it's not the answer...
it doesn't matter how bad the system is. in the end, if your kids can't count or read then they fail. you can talk about the kids not working hard enough, or not having the aptitude (in rare cases). you can talk about the youth culture downplaying it's importance and producing warped, cynical psychopaths. you can talk about the parents not raising their kids with good mindsets or at all (which is the real root of the problem in almost all circumstances). but you can't reasonably blame it on the education system, which merely presents information to interpret. i can't even get my head around how anybody could even make sense of shifting the responsibility for personal achievement in such a bizarre manner.
so, let's get it right. it's not as touchy feely. it requires a level of responsibility. but, the system doesn't fail your kids. your kids fail the system. and, if that happens, it's *your* fault.
it's particularly annoying because it masks the root of the problem, which is a culture that places initiative in the wrong places and creates individuals with stupid priorities. the system can break you, but it can't make you. you have to do that shit yourself. every copy of that awful michelle pfeiffer movie should be tracked down and burned. it's not the answer...
it doesn't matter how bad the system is. in the end, if your kids can't count or read then they fail. you can talk about the kids not working hard enough, or not having the aptitude (in rare cases). you can talk about the youth culture downplaying it's importance and producing warped, cynical psychopaths. you can talk about the parents not raising their kids with good mindsets or at all (which is the real root of the problem in almost all circumstances). but you can't reasonably blame it on the education system, which merely presents information to interpret. i can't even get my head around how anybody could even make sense of shifting the responsibility for personal achievement in such a bizarre manner.
so, let's get it right. it's not as touchy feely. it requires a level of responsibility. but, the system doesn't fail your kids. your kids fail the system. and, if that happens, it's *your* fault.
ffs...
i'm basically never going to buy fresh meat ever. i don't want it in the house. and i've been phasing out the bit of salami i temporarily had in my diet, reducing my primary protein source to eggs - which is what it's been for most of the last 15 years.
but, if i were going to buy meat, and you put halal meat beside otherwise unmarked meat at the same price, i'd actually probably get the halal meat. it's not because it underwent some kind of lunar ritual, or because i'm interested in the rules in leviticus (or wherever the rules are). it's because i would understand that this is meat that was butchered with an intent to cause the animal the least amount of pain possible.
when you consider the other option of factory farmed meat, where animals are literally put through meat grinders while they're still breathing, i couldn't imagine any human worthy of the term (i'm allowing some cross-species discussion, here) choosing the factory farm meat. to freak out and go on all kinds of racist tirades about it isn't even really maddening - it's just depressing.
how about we start marketing non-halal and non-kosher meat as MAXIMUM PAIN INFLICTED. fuck it, it would probably develop a market amongst you bloody savages...
i'm basically never going to buy fresh meat ever. i don't want it in the house. and i've been phasing out the bit of salami i temporarily had in my diet, reducing my primary protein source to eggs - which is what it's been for most of the last 15 years.
but, if i were going to buy meat, and you put halal meat beside otherwise unmarked meat at the same price, i'd actually probably get the halal meat. it's not because it underwent some kind of lunar ritual, or because i'm interested in the rules in leviticus (or wherever the rules are). it's because i would understand that this is meat that was butchered with an intent to cause the animal the least amount of pain possible.
when you consider the other option of factory farmed meat, where animals are literally put through meat grinders while they're still breathing, i couldn't imagine any human worthy of the term (i'm allowing some cross-species discussion, here) choosing the factory farm meat. to freak out and go on all kinds of racist tirades about it isn't even really maddening - it's just depressing.
how about we start marketing non-halal and non-kosher meat as MAXIMUM PAIN INFLICTED. fuck it, it would probably develop a market amongst you bloody savages...
Monday, August 18, 2014
predictable. one wing of the establishment used the protests as a means to seize power from the other. the people that took over never represented anybody on the street. now, they're just as much of an annoyance to the sitting government as they were to the previous one. it's the same pattern you see in essentially all stage-managed seizures of power.
ok, i'm glad to see them doubt the idea that it's just the old and sick lions doing this. that's always been blatant lion apologism. but, i really don't think there's anything new about this, either, or that it has to do with habitat infringement or the weather or some other extraneous factor. that's really just further lion apologism.
i don't know why it's so hard for people to get their head around the idea that lions and tigers are apex predators in their environments and we're not. i think it's ultimately a religious thing. even humans that aren't religious have held on to this idea of humans as being outside of the food chain, but the evidence in front of our faces just simply does not uphold this. i mean, in the video they talk about animals and humans as though they're two entirely different things that don't naturally mix in nature. a moment's reflection should indicate how absurd this really is.
there's actually mounting evidence that humans evolved as prey species, and primarily for lions (or the ancestors of modern lions) in the african savannah. the predator-prey relationship that developed may even be the dominant factor in how we evolved intelligence, both culling the human population of those who were unable to escape and providing a selective factor for those that were able to figure out how to not get eaten, whether we're talking about individual or group behaviour alike.
it follows that what you're seeing here is ancient behaviour that goes back millions of years and defines what we are as a species, not something that's developed recently. there really couldn't be anything more natural than humans being eaten by lions. it just might require adjusting your understanding of humanity's place on our planet to get your head properly around it.
i don't know why it's so hard for people to get their head around the idea that lions and tigers are apex predators in their environments and we're not. i think it's ultimately a religious thing. even humans that aren't religious have held on to this idea of humans as being outside of the food chain, but the evidence in front of our faces just simply does not uphold this. i mean, in the video they talk about animals and humans as though they're two entirely different things that don't naturally mix in nature. a moment's reflection should indicate how absurd this really is.
there's actually mounting evidence that humans evolved as prey species, and primarily for lions (or the ancestors of modern lions) in the african savannah. the predator-prey relationship that developed may even be the dominant factor in how we evolved intelligence, both culling the human population of those who were unable to escape and providing a selective factor for those that were able to figure out how to not get eaten, whether we're talking about individual or group behaviour alike.
it follows that what you're seeing here is ancient behaviour that goes back millions of years and defines what we are as a species, not something that's developed recently. there really couldn't be anything more natural than humans being eaten by lions. it just might require adjusting your understanding of humanity's place on our planet to get your head properly around it.
Sunday, August 17, 2014
see, the thing is you'd *expect* an irrational creature to build a
social system centered around that creature's inherent rationality - as a
consequence of that inherent irrationality, which would blind it to
it's own nature. if such a creature were to have the capacity to come to
terms with it's inherent irrationality, it wouldn't truly be
irrational. that is to say, it would be an impossibility, rather than
that it would state anything about the creature's nature. a rational
creature may understand it's rationality, but an irrational creature
could only confuse it's irrationality for rationality. and, i may have
just proven what i have suspected all these years - that i am not a
member of the species i ought to be a member of.
as i've stated previously, i'm content with sharing a genus with homo sapiens (sapiens) but i need a new species categorization for myself. sorry.
actually, they say that the person that discovers the species gets to name it, so i guess that's my responsibility.
this should surprise nobody that knows me: i am hereby homo j.
i'm half-considering putting the application in to the academy, just to see what happens.
as i've stated previously, i'm content with sharing a genus with homo sapiens (sapiens) but i need a new species categorization for myself. sorry.
actually, they say that the person that discovers the species gets to name it, so i guess that's my responsibility.
this should surprise nobody that knows me: i am hereby homo j.
i'm half-considering putting the application in to the academy, just to see what happens.
if a god actually did exist, could it even begin to understand our inherent irrationality?
or might we just perplex it to such an extreme point of confusion that it would just give up on us?
i'm kind of leaning towards the latter, really. i couldn't imagine any supremely rational being being able to get it's head around us. it would just be too much for it.
"they're pointing nuclear weapons at...don't they know what...da fuck...?"
then, we wonder why the bastard seems like such a vengeful asshole. well, shit, what other response is there?
you can only frustrate a supremely rational being so long before it gets to a breaking point and is just like "fuck it.".
or might we just perplex it to such an extreme point of confusion that it would just give up on us?
i'm kind of leaning towards the latter, really. i couldn't imagine any supremely rational being being able to get it's head around us. it would just be too much for it.
"they're pointing nuclear weapons at...don't they know what...da fuck...?"
then, we wonder why the bastard seems like such a vengeful asshole. well, shit, what other response is there?
you can only frustrate a supremely rational being so long before it gets to a breaking point and is just like "fuck it.".
deathtokoalas
this is not a new (relative to 2005) line of thinking for biafra. he was calling people out on this shit all through the 80s - anarchy for sale is a good example, but it's not the only one. and, it wasn't just jello pointing it out, either. early crass is incredibly critical of the british punk movement. and, try reading the kind of popular historical accounts of punk rock they teach to kids in music history classes nowadays. they're really surreal. it seems like history is going to record punk rock as something that vivienne westwood created to sell bracelets to teenagers.
i can't comment on the case in much depth, but i know that even east bay acknowledged that the royalty thing was an "accounting error". i don't know what "accounting error" actually means. but it seems clear that the crux of the case wasn't about royalties but about control over the discography. honestly? jello may have run the label, but these kinds of decisions should have been democratic - up to veto power by any single member, including whatever drummer was on whatever recording. i'm not sure jello held up to that ideal the way you'd expect him to. that doesn't excuse the decisions that were made by the other band members, but it does present a lesson about the value of democratic decision making, namely that when shit devolves into clashes of egos it rarely works out well for anybody involved.
there's a kind of pseudo-marxist theory driving the idea of youth culture music as propaganda, but i think there's more than enough evidence to draw on since the beatniks to deduce that marx was completely wrong. if you go back a few thousand year to plato (socrates), he said something rather interesting. i'm paraphrasing because i don't want to look it up, but it was roughly this:
when you see musicians begin to gather, you know that some change is occurring.
what i remember about the statement (i don't even remember what text it's in) is it's ambiguity in terms of cause and effect. even back in ancient greece, it was clear that social change and music are correlated together. but, which one is the cause of the other? or are they interrelated?
what i think the empirical evidence since the beatniks demonstrates is that music cannot produce change because it gets co-opted as soon as it tries. it seems like there's a pattern. a message is paired to an art form, and it begins by attracting people that get the message. but, as the message grows, it becomes converted into a product. what that means is that by the time it reaches the status quo it's just a package for sale. the masses consequently interact with it the same way they'd interact with any other product for sale. the next step is that it becomes emulated through the filters of the status quo, and that's when it becomes co-opted. there's not even a place for "selling out" or for corporations to come in and buy everything out. it's the market that co-opts it on it's own. that's the reason music is always so much more powerful at the core of it's development, regardless of whether you're speaking of raw punk power or elaborate progressive rock. blink 182 is to the dead kennedys as journey is to king crimson.
but, i think the market could only be capable of co-option in the first place if the art represents something that the status quo can connect to. that is, the change must have already occurred. i think socrates' observation is consequently better read as that when you see musicians gather, you know they are reacting to a social change that has already happened.
i'd suggest re-evaluating 20th century musical movements in this socratic context, rather than the usual marxist one. could the hippies have been a result of the kind of social change brought out by the beatniks and also by the civil rights movements? and could punk have been more than a reaction to the hippies, but a consequence of the kind of change they brought out? i think we already mostly understand alternative rock as a result of punk rock, and most movements that have existed since then (excluding the reactionary movements) as results of alternative culture and/or punk.
but, taking that perspective changes the rules of the game. it takes the wind out of the sails, but the approach has clearly failed, so we need to try and understand why. all of a sudden, political music becomes about preaching to the choir - which is not something that nobody else has put together, but is maybe something that hasn't been separated out into it's own kind of thought quite yet.
so, what do we do then? well, maybe we stop pretending that music can create social change and start understanding that music reflects social change that has already occurred. that doesn't mean we should abandon music. it has recreational and enjoyment value, of course. but, if we can realize this we can start focusing our political energy in other places...
but, to get back to the point, i imagine that once jello developed into a role of some power over his label he adopted some of the characteristics he spent so much time satirizing. i don't want to psychoanalyze the guy on youtube, but all that shit didn't come from nowhere. alternative tentacles, uber alles, indeed.
(deleted post)
deathtokoalas
that's very competitive, hierarchical thinking...
Alex Murray
it is true, though. DK without Jello is a joke.
deathtokoalas
i think there are plenty of people that could have filled in for jello, should the band have decided to move on without him. i don't like how things turned out. but it doesn't mean jello has some kind of heightened importance, or was irreplaceable.
this is not a new (relative to 2005) line of thinking for biafra. he was calling people out on this shit all through the 80s - anarchy for sale is a good example, but it's not the only one. and, it wasn't just jello pointing it out, either. early crass is incredibly critical of the british punk movement. and, try reading the kind of popular historical accounts of punk rock they teach to kids in music history classes nowadays. they're really surreal. it seems like history is going to record punk rock as something that vivienne westwood created to sell bracelets to teenagers.
i can't comment on the case in much depth, but i know that even east bay acknowledged that the royalty thing was an "accounting error". i don't know what "accounting error" actually means. but it seems clear that the crux of the case wasn't about royalties but about control over the discography. honestly? jello may have run the label, but these kinds of decisions should have been democratic - up to veto power by any single member, including whatever drummer was on whatever recording. i'm not sure jello held up to that ideal the way you'd expect him to. that doesn't excuse the decisions that were made by the other band members, but it does present a lesson about the value of democratic decision making, namely that when shit devolves into clashes of egos it rarely works out well for anybody involved.
there's a kind of pseudo-marxist theory driving the idea of youth culture music as propaganda, but i think there's more than enough evidence to draw on since the beatniks to deduce that marx was completely wrong. if you go back a few thousand year to plato (socrates), he said something rather interesting. i'm paraphrasing because i don't want to look it up, but it was roughly this:
when you see musicians begin to gather, you know that some change is occurring.
what i remember about the statement (i don't even remember what text it's in) is it's ambiguity in terms of cause and effect. even back in ancient greece, it was clear that social change and music are correlated together. but, which one is the cause of the other? or are they interrelated?
what i think the empirical evidence since the beatniks demonstrates is that music cannot produce change because it gets co-opted as soon as it tries. it seems like there's a pattern. a message is paired to an art form, and it begins by attracting people that get the message. but, as the message grows, it becomes converted into a product. what that means is that by the time it reaches the status quo it's just a package for sale. the masses consequently interact with it the same way they'd interact with any other product for sale. the next step is that it becomes emulated through the filters of the status quo, and that's when it becomes co-opted. there's not even a place for "selling out" or for corporations to come in and buy everything out. it's the market that co-opts it on it's own. that's the reason music is always so much more powerful at the core of it's development, regardless of whether you're speaking of raw punk power or elaborate progressive rock. blink 182 is to the dead kennedys as journey is to king crimson.
but, i think the market could only be capable of co-option in the first place if the art represents something that the status quo can connect to. that is, the change must have already occurred. i think socrates' observation is consequently better read as that when you see musicians gather, you know they are reacting to a social change that has already happened.
i'd suggest re-evaluating 20th century musical movements in this socratic context, rather than the usual marxist one. could the hippies have been a result of the kind of social change brought out by the beatniks and also by the civil rights movements? and could punk have been more than a reaction to the hippies, but a consequence of the kind of change they brought out? i think we already mostly understand alternative rock as a result of punk rock, and most movements that have existed since then (excluding the reactionary movements) as results of alternative culture and/or punk.
but, taking that perspective changes the rules of the game. it takes the wind out of the sails, but the approach has clearly failed, so we need to try and understand why. all of a sudden, political music becomes about preaching to the choir - which is not something that nobody else has put together, but is maybe something that hasn't been separated out into it's own kind of thought quite yet.
so, what do we do then? well, maybe we stop pretending that music can create social change and start understanding that music reflects social change that has already occurred. that doesn't mean we should abandon music. it has recreational and enjoyment value, of course. but, if we can realize this we can start focusing our political energy in other places...
but, to get back to the point, i imagine that once jello developed into a role of some power over his label he adopted some of the characteristics he spent so much time satirizing. i don't want to psychoanalyze the guy on youtube, but all that shit didn't come from nowhere. alternative tentacles, uber alles, indeed.
(deleted post)
deathtokoalas
that's very competitive, hierarchical thinking...
Alex Murray
it is true, though. DK without Jello is a joke.
deathtokoalas
i think there are plenty of people that could have filled in for jello, should the band have decided to move on without him. i don't like how things turned out. but it doesn't mean jello has some kind of heightened importance, or was irreplaceable.
yeah. you know, here's the thing: lions eat people, too. quite a few of them. not when their "natural diet" is low; humans are a component of a lion's "natural diet". some theories even suggest it's part of the reason why we humans got so s-m-r-t. they'll come right into the village, grab a human and start munching, alright? estimates are around a thousand human deaths a year due to lion predation. they're above us on the food chain in the regions they inhabit.
now, if you saw a lion munching on a human, would you say "ah, whatever, it's nature. lion's gotta eat."? well, you might if you're some twisted hobbesian psychopath. but, you're probably not. you'll probably react with a healthy amount of empathy and say "noooo! not the human!".
so, why is it different with an elephant?
i'm not denying the premise. it's true: a lion's gotta eat, and it's gonna eat what it can, including you, if you're around. but, there's no rule that says we need to have lions.
now, stop and mentally define the word monster. would you not agree that a lion perfectly fits the definition of a monster? they're horrific creatures, really.
elephants are very smart creatures that demonstrate a range of emotions and cognitive abilities that in some ways exceeds our own. as far as we know, an elephant can't find the root of a polynomial equation (or prove it can't be found using any brilliant methods developed or not developed by french revolutionaries dabbling in group theory), but most humans can't do that, either. we do know that elephants have far superior memory skills to our own. the reality is that the depth of their cognitive abilities is still being studied, and may yield some rather shocking (to some people) surprises.
in short, an elephant deserves your empathy just as much as a human does. at various phases in our existence, we've banded together to chase off predators that pose a threat to us. we've driven some of them to extinction - and that's natural. if it's them or us, and it generally is when we're talking about predators that eat us, i'd rather it be them.
so, i think it's worth asking whether or not it's worthwhile to stand in solidarity with the elephants to drive the lions to extinction. i'm not saying we should, exactly, i'm wondering if we should. do we have a moral case for it, considering elephant intelligence? and do we really need a world with monsters in it?
now, if you saw a lion munching on a human, would you say "ah, whatever, it's nature. lion's gotta eat."? well, you might if you're some twisted hobbesian psychopath. but, you're probably not. you'll probably react with a healthy amount of empathy and say "noooo! not the human!".
so, why is it different with an elephant?
i'm not denying the premise. it's true: a lion's gotta eat, and it's gonna eat what it can, including you, if you're around. but, there's no rule that says we need to have lions.
now, stop and mentally define the word monster. would you not agree that a lion perfectly fits the definition of a monster? they're horrific creatures, really.
elephants are very smart creatures that demonstrate a range of emotions and cognitive abilities that in some ways exceeds our own. as far as we know, an elephant can't find the root of a polynomial equation (or prove it can't be found using any brilliant methods developed or not developed by french revolutionaries dabbling in group theory), but most humans can't do that, either. we do know that elephants have far superior memory skills to our own. the reality is that the depth of their cognitive abilities is still being studied, and may yield some rather shocking (to some people) surprises.
in short, an elephant deserves your empathy just as much as a human does. at various phases in our existence, we've banded together to chase off predators that pose a threat to us. we've driven some of them to extinction - and that's natural. if it's them or us, and it generally is when we're talking about predators that eat us, i'd rather it be them.
so, i think it's worth asking whether or not it's worthwhile to stand in solidarity with the elephants to drive the lions to extinction. i'm not saying we should, exactly, i'm wondering if we should. do we have a moral case for it, considering elephant intelligence? and do we really need a world with monsters in it?
Saturday, August 16, 2014
deathtokoalas
so, the thing is that you're wrong. if you were right, i'd probably uninstall adblock. for the record, what i'm trying to do right now is figure out why youtube is only counting about 30% of my hits (and i suspect it's the reason why). to me, that's a better argument.
the average adblock user simply isn't going to respond to the ads. they're not going to go buy the iggy azalea cd that's advertised on the radiohead video. they're not going to go watch the awful movie that is being mass marketed with no concept of demographics.
what people like this guy (and is that really his bedroom?) need to realize is that advertisers are going to eventually clue into this and abandon the format. making me watch a 30 second spot for something i'm never going to buy isn't going to resolve the underlying problem, which is that the advertising doesn't work.
if we want this internet thing to work outside of a model of corporate dominance, we need to come up with better ideas than advertising because, adblock or not, it's days are numbered.
see, it's actually pretty ironic.
so much of the internet is built on an advertising model - including google. but, google's search function is precisely what has made advertising obsolete. it doesn't really matter what you're advertising for anymore, you're not going to reach anybody under 40. rather, younger people will use google's search engine to actively research anything and everything they're going to buy, from a $5 pack of guitar picks to a $500,000 house. the advertising is just reduced to noise to work through in the research process. it's entirely worthless.
historically, advertising's primary purpose has been to convince us to act irrationally, but all advertising claims are now subject to immediate verification through internet search. it's basis of coercion through emotional manipulation can no longer be effective because it is too easy to rebut.
it might be more than ten years before this becomes understood, but it's happening, so we'd might as well start adjusting for it now, not when it happens.
the way i see it is that advertisers are going to have to shift from actively pursuing customers to being able to provide information. it's going to no longer be about attracting as much attention through volume and whatnot, and going to shift to being about trying to get sites listed at the top of search engines and then creating content on the company's own website that engages possible buyers. this is a really fundamental shift, as it shifts attention away from coercion and towards the actual product.
that reduces traditional advertising to bandying about search terms as buzzwords to try and get the rankings skewed in their favour. and it completely cuts out this clockwork orange style forced viewing that's been pushed so heavily, and is failing so badly.
simply put, the era of the passive consumer that responds to aggressive advertising is coming to a close with the coming irrelevancy of generation x, whom everybody always knew was going to get squeezed between two much larger demographic bulges and have a relatively shorter period of relevancy than the generations that preceded and followed them. what will follow is an era of the active consumer that independently seeks out information and must be advertised to interactively, in a way that responds to their requests for information.
companies that get on top of this will be successful, while companies that cling to obsolete models will fall apart.
stockingandblossom1
i agree
SuperkenGaming
You clearly have never been to a school if you think advertisement doesn't work lol.
deathtokoalas
yeah. i think it may have worked some time in the early part of the last century, up til a bit past the middle of it. but, we're so saturated with ads now that we mostly ignore them. i think it might have something to do with an extrapolation of the idea of transmarginal inhibition. i think most of us have hit a sort of an ultra-paradoxical phase, where advertising merely produces a negative response.
it's not just youtube. i know where the billboards around my house are, and i walk by them multiple times in a week, but i don't know what they say because i completely block them out as soon as i realize they're ads.
i would consider the literature on it to be very out-of-date, and i'm not aware of anybody that's doing current research on it. that applies both to pro-advertising and anti-advertising literature.
SuperkenGaming
kids buy brand names to fit in... the brand name isnt on the shirt because its a cool name.. its wearable advertisement lol
deathtokoalas
i'm not convinced that's actually true. i never knew anybody growing up that thought like that.
the only brand names i ever had on my shirts were stuff my parents bought me because it was on sale, and i mostly avoided wearing them because i felt awkwardly conformist in them.
there was a phase in high school where i wore a lot of band shirts, but i was trying to advertise myself to people that may have had like interests because i didn't have a lot of friends. it's a bad comparison.
SuperkenGaming
you mustve not known many people :P
look at the iphone.. IOS is clearly the lesser OS, but the iphone is an accessory made popular by public and celebrity advertisement
deathtokoalas
the iphone's market share was the result of it producing the product first. as android/google and others have caught up, it's market share has actually decreased dramatically.
further, macs are still a novelty item and will almost certainly remain that way, no matter how much they spend on advertising.
now that the market has leveled, the primary factor for people buying a new phone actually seems to be price.
stockingandblossom1
i cam watch an old ad from the 90's like the pentium 3 ads over and over and never get tired of it. but i can't stand todays commercials it's too generic.
deathtokoalas
that's probably more your age talking. i'm not saying "you're old", so much as i'm saying "the advertising isn't directed at you anymore".
i think a bigger factor is the saturation. we're just bombarded, and if it doesn't produce that violently negative reaction almost out of reflex (that's what i tend to get) it just gets lost in the low signal to noise ratio.
stockingandblossom1
that could be true, also if i have to watch ads and risk getting a virus i would like to be paid to do it. google should pay both sides of the coin if they want people to disable adblock.
deathtokoalas
i just want to clarify that he probably means companies tracking him, and it's not a trivial concern.
you can see the price determinant everywhere if you drop the idea of brand recognition, which is probably not accidentally pushed through various literature. there's two commodities i consume a large amount of: mayonnaise and soy milk (not blended together).
with the mayonnaise, the brand name is always stacked to it's highest point on the shelf, until they have to put it on sale. then it starts moving. it follows that the brand name mayonnaise is not marketable unless it's price is reduced to that of the no name mayonnaise. and, it often ends up hitting the store doubly, because they have to reduce the brand name to below the no name to get it to move (because consumers just automatically pick the no name, because they know it's cheaper), which causes the no name to back up, and then have to be reduced even further. they only seem to be able to resolve this by reducing orders.
the soy milk is even worse. the grocery store i go to has simply stopped stocking the no name chocolate soy, which is generally about a dollar cheaper than the brand name stuff. i actually went and tracked down the manager of the store, because i didn't want to pay the extra dollar. he explained to me that the brand name has actually put pressure on the chain (food basics) to stop stocking the no name, because the sales for the brand name were so low.
those are just two examples i can see and understand through direct experience. there's no doubt many others.
Eave
I'm not going to argue, you're selfish and inconsiderate. What if you got less money at your job? It would MASSIVELY cause your life to go on the decline. (provided you don't switch jobs in said situation) This would force the fun things which you pay a subscription to to be no longer available. You'd have no internet, TV, and barely any food. Having nothing but the necessities is a terrible life.
stockingandblossom1
i don't see as a job, and don'y try that guilt trip bs because it won't work.
deathtokoalas
that's a market society, buddy. i don't like markets, either, but the solution isn't to sit around and complain that it isn't fair that nobody's propping up a failing business model.
one solution to try and get around the inequalities and anti-art biases that are inherent in market capitalism is to argue for a guaranteed minimum income.
stockingandblossom1
i agree.
jeff darnell
So true, I honestly don't think I have ever bought something I saw advertised on the internet that I already wasn't going to buy. In fact I don't think I have ever bought something advertised on the internet at all. Internet ads make me have ill will towards the company as if they know their product is shitty so let's advertise the shit out of it. Advertising is convincing, a good product shouldn't need convincing.
---
Eyyaz Chishty
Three weeks since i've turned it off and im not even considering to turn it back on (for youtube). Seriously guys it's only 5-30 seconds of your time, hell you can just go on another tab and read a short news artical whilst it runs.
regret
For some people it's too much time. I don't see how
Darth Grumpy
No, simply because I have been on the internet longer than 99% of you and I know what the internet was like before it go so fucking greedy and commercialized. The internet did JUST FINE WITHOUT ADS FOR YEARS, then all of a sudden it became ad heaven because everyone is greedy. I am fighting back the only way I can and that is blocking the ads. If they get adblock removed, someone will just write another one, and another and another. It's time for the greed to stop. Simple as that. It's called GET A JOB. Sitting on your ass all day making videos doesn't count as work, sorry but it doesn't. Time to wake up and live in the real world, life sucks, deal with it.
Lolatmyaccounts .Lol
Because it benefits me, and that's all that matters. Selfish? Sure, but this guy wants all his viewers to spend small portions of their time just so he can gather more cheeseburger funds.
deathtokoalas
"you should run the ads, and ignore them."
that's likely to keep advertisers keen about paying out, right?
and herein lies the problem. it's the model itself that's obsolete. if half the internet is blocking the ads, and the half that doesn't is mostly older people and/or people that are ignoring the ads to pay the content providers, what it suggests is that this form of advertising is not successful in marketing products and that the model consequently needs to be adjusted.
you're delusional if you think it can carry on like this. it's time to come to terms with the reality that we built this all up on an unsustainable premise, and that it's eventually going to come crashing down. if you adjust to it, you can get out in front of it. if you stick to it, you're going to be washed away along with it.
so, the thing is that you're wrong. if you were right, i'd probably uninstall adblock. for the record, what i'm trying to do right now is figure out why youtube is only counting about 30% of my hits (and i suspect it's the reason why). to me, that's a better argument.
the average adblock user simply isn't going to respond to the ads. they're not going to go buy the iggy azalea cd that's advertised on the radiohead video. they're not going to go watch the awful movie that is being mass marketed with no concept of demographics.
what people like this guy (and is that really his bedroom?) need to realize is that advertisers are going to eventually clue into this and abandon the format. making me watch a 30 second spot for something i'm never going to buy isn't going to resolve the underlying problem, which is that the advertising doesn't work.
if we want this internet thing to work outside of a model of corporate dominance, we need to come up with better ideas than advertising because, adblock or not, it's days are numbered.
see, it's actually pretty ironic.
so much of the internet is built on an advertising model - including google. but, google's search function is precisely what has made advertising obsolete. it doesn't really matter what you're advertising for anymore, you're not going to reach anybody under 40. rather, younger people will use google's search engine to actively research anything and everything they're going to buy, from a $5 pack of guitar picks to a $500,000 house. the advertising is just reduced to noise to work through in the research process. it's entirely worthless.
historically, advertising's primary purpose has been to convince us to act irrationally, but all advertising claims are now subject to immediate verification through internet search. it's basis of coercion through emotional manipulation can no longer be effective because it is too easy to rebut.
it might be more than ten years before this becomes understood, but it's happening, so we'd might as well start adjusting for it now, not when it happens.
the way i see it is that advertisers are going to have to shift from actively pursuing customers to being able to provide information. it's going to no longer be about attracting as much attention through volume and whatnot, and going to shift to being about trying to get sites listed at the top of search engines and then creating content on the company's own website that engages possible buyers. this is a really fundamental shift, as it shifts attention away from coercion and towards the actual product.
that reduces traditional advertising to bandying about search terms as buzzwords to try and get the rankings skewed in their favour. and it completely cuts out this clockwork orange style forced viewing that's been pushed so heavily, and is failing so badly.
simply put, the era of the passive consumer that responds to aggressive advertising is coming to a close with the coming irrelevancy of generation x, whom everybody always knew was going to get squeezed between two much larger demographic bulges and have a relatively shorter period of relevancy than the generations that preceded and followed them. what will follow is an era of the active consumer that independently seeks out information and must be advertised to interactively, in a way that responds to their requests for information.
companies that get on top of this will be successful, while companies that cling to obsolete models will fall apart.
stockingandblossom1
i agree
SuperkenGaming
You clearly have never been to a school if you think advertisement doesn't work lol.
deathtokoalas
yeah. i think it may have worked some time in the early part of the last century, up til a bit past the middle of it. but, we're so saturated with ads now that we mostly ignore them. i think it might have something to do with an extrapolation of the idea of transmarginal inhibition. i think most of us have hit a sort of an ultra-paradoxical phase, where advertising merely produces a negative response.
it's not just youtube. i know where the billboards around my house are, and i walk by them multiple times in a week, but i don't know what they say because i completely block them out as soon as i realize they're ads.
i would consider the literature on it to be very out-of-date, and i'm not aware of anybody that's doing current research on it. that applies both to pro-advertising and anti-advertising literature.
SuperkenGaming
kids buy brand names to fit in... the brand name isnt on the shirt because its a cool name.. its wearable advertisement lol
deathtokoalas
i'm not convinced that's actually true. i never knew anybody growing up that thought like that.
the only brand names i ever had on my shirts were stuff my parents bought me because it was on sale, and i mostly avoided wearing them because i felt awkwardly conformist in them.
there was a phase in high school where i wore a lot of band shirts, but i was trying to advertise myself to people that may have had like interests because i didn't have a lot of friends. it's a bad comparison.
SuperkenGaming
you mustve not known many people :P
look at the iphone.. IOS is clearly the lesser OS, but the iphone is an accessory made popular by public and celebrity advertisement
deathtokoalas
the iphone's market share was the result of it producing the product first. as android/google and others have caught up, it's market share has actually decreased dramatically.
further, macs are still a novelty item and will almost certainly remain that way, no matter how much they spend on advertising.
now that the market has leveled, the primary factor for people buying a new phone actually seems to be price.
stockingandblossom1
i cam watch an old ad from the 90's like the pentium 3 ads over and over and never get tired of it. but i can't stand todays commercials it's too generic.
deathtokoalas
that's probably more your age talking. i'm not saying "you're old", so much as i'm saying "the advertising isn't directed at you anymore".
i think a bigger factor is the saturation. we're just bombarded, and if it doesn't produce that violently negative reaction almost out of reflex (that's what i tend to get) it just gets lost in the low signal to noise ratio.
stockingandblossom1
that could be true, also if i have to watch ads and risk getting a virus i would like to be paid to do it. google should pay both sides of the coin if they want people to disable adblock.
deathtokoalas
i just want to clarify that he probably means companies tracking him, and it's not a trivial concern.
you can see the price determinant everywhere if you drop the idea of brand recognition, which is probably not accidentally pushed through various literature. there's two commodities i consume a large amount of: mayonnaise and soy milk (not blended together).
with the mayonnaise, the brand name is always stacked to it's highest point on the shelf, until they have to put it on sale. then it starts moving. it follows that the brand name mayonnaise is not marketable unless it's price is reduced to that of the no name mayonnaise. and, it often ends up hitting the store doubly, because they have to reduce the brand name to below the no name to get it to move (because consumers just automatically pick the no name, because they know it's cheaper), which causes the no name to back up, and then have to be reduced even further. they only seem to be able to resolve this by reducing orders.
the soy milk is even worse. the grocery store i go to has simply stopped stocking the no name chocolate soy, which is generally about a dollar cheaper than the brand name stuff. i actually went and tracked down the manager of the store, because i didn't want to pay the extra dollar. he explained to me that the brand name has actually put pressure on the chain (food basics) to stop stocking the no name, because the sales for the brand name were so low.
those are just two examples i can see and understand through direct experience. there's no doubt many others.
Eave
I'm not going to argue, you're selfish and inconsiderate. What if you got less money at your job? It would MASSIVELY cause your life to go on the decline. (provided you don't switch jobs in said situation) This would force the fun things which you pay a subscription to to be no longer available. You'd have no internet, TV, and barely any food. Having nothing but the necessities is a terrible life.
stockingandblossom1
i don't see as a job, and don'y try that guilt trip bs because it won't work.
deathtokoalas
that's a market society, buddy. i don't like markets, either, but the solution isn't to sit around and complain that it isn't fair that nobody's propping up a failing business model.
one solution to try and get around the inequalities and anti-art biases that are inherent in market capitalism is to argue for a guaranteed minimum income.
stockingandblossom1
i agree.
jeff darnell
So true, I honestly don't think I have ever bought something I saw advertised on the internet that I already wasn't going to buy. In fact I don't think I have ever bought something advertised on the internet at all. Internet ads make me have ill will towards the company as if they know their product is shitty so let's advertise the shit out of it. Advertising is convincing, a good product shouldn't need convincing.
---
Eyyaz Chishty
Three weeks since i've turned it off and im not even considering to turn it back on (for youtube). Seriously guys it's only 5-30 seconds of your time, hell you can just go on another tab and read a short news artical whilst it runs.
regret
For some people it's too much time. I don't see how
Darth Grumpy
No, simply because I have been on the internet longer than 99% of you and I know what the internet was like before it go so fucking greedy and commercialized. The internet did JUST FINE WITHOUT ADS FOR YEARS, then all of a sudden it became ad heaven because everyone is greedy. I am fighting back the only way I can and that is blocking the ads. If they get adblock removed, someone will just write another one, and another and another. It's time for the greed to stop. Simple as that. It's called GET A JOB. Sitting on your ass all day making videos doesn't count as work, sorry but it doesn't. Time to wake up and live in the real world, life sucks, deal with it.
Lolatmyaccounts .Lol
Because it benefits me, and that's all that matters. Selfish? Sure, but this guy wants all his viewers to spend small portions of their time just so he can gather more cheeseburger funds.
deathtokoalas
"you should run the ads, and ignore them."
that's likely to keep advertisers keen about paying out, right?
and herein lies the problem. it's the model itself that's obsolete. if half the internet is blocking the ads, and the half that doesn't is mostly older people and/or people that are ignoring the ads to pay the content providers, what it suggests is that this form of advertising is not successful in marketing products and that the model consequently needs to be adjusted.
you're delusional if you think it can carry on like this. it's time to come to terms with the reality that we built this all up on an unsustainable premise, and that it's eventually going to come crashing down. if you adjust to it, you can get out in front of it. if you stick to it, you're going to be washed away along with it.
deathtokoalas
corgan is often attacked for his oversized ego, but he actually strikes me as fairly humble - if startling and slightly painfully pretentious. iha, on the other hand, doesn't seem to be able to get over himself, and that's what strikes me as the root of the problem.
jeb tweebance
again
deathtokoalas
i told you....
but, wait.... ...are you paul mccartney?
Susie G
Billy Corgan can be quite the musical genius but he's also a control freak and I think that eventually drove the band insane. The fact that Corgan has had rocky relationships with MANY people besides James Iha is more a testament to his lack of character than anybody else's. Ive always been fond of James and Darcy and it stopped being the Pumpkins without them.
Gordon Mccracken
drug issues are well known, could see her functioning, touring, recording with any professional band?
deathtokoalas
afaik, her horrible drug problem is that she likes pot and the reason she's not making music is that she's grown out of it and was never really that into it in the first place. heroin is a tour problem. marijuana is not a tour problem.
not to be rude, but the reality is that nobody really cares about d'arcy, anyways. i think iha at the least provided a sort of creative foil. outside of the odd vocal part, i really don't think d'arcy contributed anything.
when i saw 'em in ottawa back in '96, i wasn't even convinced she was playing.
people move on and blah blah blah. it's probably too late now to reconstruct what's been lost. but, i think billy needed james on a certain level. d'arcy? they honestly probably would have been better off with a better bassist....
Gordon Mccracken
I am pretty sure she was arrested for crack possession
evenflowjimbo
Eh. I can see why he doesn't want to talk to him anymore. Billy is super Republican and just seems like a total asshole.
deathtokoalas
i get more of a libertarian vibe from him, but you have to put it in the context of the american political spectrum. you get the same kind of thing from krist novoselic and a lot of other people that came out of the period. they're out there working with these kind of right-wing groups and stuff, but if you listen to what they have to say they're obviously not really aligned with their politics.
where billy and krist (and jello and chomsky and countless others) are absolutely right is in looking at the democratic party and understanding that it's a hopeless vehicle - there's not a significant difference between it and the republican party. supporting the democrats is worse than a waste of time, it's making things worse. so, when you understand that the united states is a one-party state - and there's a lot of rhetoric, but i mean really come to terms with it and grasp it - then the obvious next step is to look at third parties.
in the united states, there is not a third party on the left. what you have are people like jesse ventura or ron paul that have some good policies and some horrific policies. if you're serious about breaking the two-party system, the reality is that that kind of right-libertarianism is the only option at the moment. you can hope for wealthy artists to support more egalitarian movements, but you can't expect them to go out and build them - that's something that has to be done from the ground up.
i'm about as left-wing as you can get, but if you were to take me back to 2008 and make me vote for obama or paul, i would have picked paul. that would not have been an endorsement of paul's social darwinism, it would have been a rejection of obama's imperialist rhetoric. they're both evil in their own ways, but the libertarian right is considerably less evil than the interventionist left.
i agree that it would often be best if billy just shut up when it comes to certain things, but it's hard to blame him for being realistic about what our options are in terms of actual political shifts.
Gordon Mccracken
I concur, I was raised in a Democratic leaning house hold but have seen the hypocrisy within it and lean Libertarian myself.
metal134
According to Billy Corgan and Jimmy Chamberlin, she wasn't playing, some of the time.
Leo B
D'Arcy could definitely play the bass. If you are a seasoned guitar and/or bass player you can clearly see and hear that on the live clips. With the high standards Billy has he would surely have fired her if she couldn't play.
You could say she lacked a bit of energy and inspiration in her playing though, but I think Billy also wanted the bass to be a bit more discrete in their music. It does seem to me however, that D'Arcy didn't share the same passion for music as the other three in the band, she always seemed a bit distant
deathtokoalas
i'm not really arguing that she couldn't play. i'm suggesting that she probably didn't.
there were relationships involved, it must have been messy and confusing...
the argument corgan generally used was "i can do it faster" - and it might have even been true at the time.
but that sounds like an excuse to me. what that really means is "it's my song, and i want the bass to sound the way i want the bass to sound so i'm playing the bass and if you don't like it then go home."
Leo B
oh you meant in the studio. I thought you meant live lol
deathtokoalas
i'd be surprised if she played on anything in the studio at all after gish.
and i did say that it didn't seem like she was playing when i saw them in '96 (with a big budget) on the mellon collie tour.
there were actually a few points (notably the rocket stage show) where i wasn't entirely sure that billy was playing either, while there were points where it was pretty obvious that he was.
it's hard to speculate further.
metal134
I didn't say she couldn't play. But Billy was quoted as saying (and I wish I could remember the exact quote) that he ended up recording most of James' and D'arcy's parts himself on the albums, which was later corroborated by Butch Vig.
ZeroGravitySubstance
You are correct about Billy recording all the bass and guitar parts on the first two albums but that was not the case on Mellon Collie. James said for all the lead parts it was divided up about fifty/fifty and who knows how the rhythm parts were divided up. And yes, D'arcy is not the greatest bassist haha.
rlos duarte
well said
VTK XTO
Lack of character? Maybe he's got a tough personality, but Corgan can never be accused of lacking character.
OD138
You know for a fact she's only into pot? I bet you're wrong about that.
deathtokoalas
i do appear to have been wrong; she has a problem with crack cocaine, as others pointed out.
Mattydigs
Which is fair. A true artist sacrifices everything for the good of the song.
Creat Swartz
Are you serious? Billy humble. That is a good one!
deathtokoalas
in twenty-whatever years, the truth is that i don't think i've ever read or seen him say anything positive about himself. he only deprecates himself.
it's an imaginary media construct.
corgan is often attacked for his oversized ego, but he actually strikes me as fairly humble - if startling and slightly painfully pretentious. iha, on the other hand, doesn't seem to be able to get over himself, and that's what strikes me as the root of the problem.
jeb tweebance
again
deathtokoalas
i told you....
but, wait.... ...are you paul mccartney?
Susie G
Billy Corgan can be quite the musical genius but he's also a control freak and I think that eventually drove the band insane. The fact that Corgan has had rocky relationships with MANY people besides James Iha is more a testament to his lack of character than anybody else's. Ive always been fond of James and Darcy and it stopped being the Pumpkins without them.
Gordon Mccracken
drug issues are well known, could see her functioning, touring, recording with any professional band?
deathtokoalas
afaik, her horrible drug problem is that she likes pot and the reason she's not making music is that she's grown out of it and was never really that into it in the first place. heroin is a tour problem. marijuana is not a tour problem.
not to be rude, but the reality is that nobody really cares about d'arcy, anyways. i think iha at the least provided a sort of creative foil. outside of the odd vocal part, i really don't think d'arcy contributed anything.
when i saw 'em in ottawa back in '96, i wasn't even convinced she was playing.
people move on and blah blah blah. it's probably too late now to reconstruct what's been lost. but, i think billy needed james on a certain level. d'arcy? they honestly probably would have been better off with a better bassist....
Gordon Mccracken
I am pretty sure she was arrested for crack possession
evenflowjimbo
Eh. I can see why he doesn't want to talk to him anymore. Billy is super Republican and just seems like a total asshole.
deathtokoalas
i get more of a libertarian vibe from him, but you have to put it in the context of the american political spectrum. you get the same kind of thing from krist novoselic and a lot of other people that came out of the period. they're out there working with these kind of right-wing groups and stuff, but if you listen to what they have to say they're obviously not really aligned with their politics.
where billy and krist (and jello and chomsky and countless others) are absolutely right is in looking at the democratic party and understanding that it's a hopeless vehicle - there's not a significant difference between it and the republican party. supporting the democrats is worse than a waste of time, it's making things worse. so, when you understand that the united states is a one-party state - and there's a lot of rhetoric, but i mean really come to terms with it and grasp it - then the obvious next step is to look at third parties.
in the united states, there is not a third party on the left. what you have are people like jesse ventura or ron paul that have some good policies and some horrific policies. if you're serious about breaking the two-party system, the reality is that that kind of right-libertarianism is the only option at the moment. you can hope for wealthy artists to support more egalitarian movements, but you can't expect them to go out and build them - that's something that has to be done from the ground up.
i'm about as left-wing as you can get, but if you were to take me back to 2008 and make me vote for obama or paul, i would have picked paul. that would not have been an endorsement of paul's social darwinism, it would have been a rejection of obama's imperialist rhetoric. they're both evil in their own ways, but the libertarian right is considerably less evil than the interventionist left.
i agree that it would often be best if billy just shut up when it comes to certain things, but it's hard to blame him for being realistic about what our options are in terms of actual political shifts.
Gordon Mccracken
I concur, I was raised in a Democratic leaning house hold but have seen the hypocrisy within it and lean Libertarian myself.
metal134
According to Billy Corgan and Jimmy Chamberlin, she wasn't playing, some of the time.
Leo B
D'Arcy could definitely play the bass. If you are a seasoned guitar and/or bass player you can clearly see and hear that on the live clips. With the high standards Billy has he would surely have fired her if she couldn't play.
You could say she lacked a bit of energy and inspiration in her playing though, but I think Billy also wanted the bass to be a bit more discrete in their music. It does seem to me however, that D'Arcy didn't share the same passion for music as the other three in the band, she always seemed a bit distant
deathtokoalas
i'm not really arguing that she couldn't play. i'm suggesting that she probably didn't.
there were relationships involved, it must have been messy and confusing...
the argument corgan generally used was "i can do it faster" - and it might have even been true at the time.
but that sounds like an excuse to me. what that really means is "it's my song, and i want the bass to sound the way i want the bass to sound so i'm playing the bass and if you don't like it then go home."
Leo B
oh you meant in the studio. I thought you meant live lol
deathtokoalas
i'd be surprised if she played on anything in the studio at all after gish.
and i did say that it didn't seem like she was playing when i saw them in '96 (with a big budget) on the mellon collie tour.
there were actually a few points (notably the rocket stage show) where i wasn't entirely sure that billy was playing either, while there were points where it was pretty obvious that he was.
it's hard to speculate further.
metal134
I didn't say she couldn't play. But Billy was quoted as saying (and I wish I could remember the exact quote) that he ended up recording most of James' and D'arcy's parts himself on the albums, which was later corroborated by Butch Vig.
ZeroGravitySubstance
You are correct about Billy recording all the bass and guitar parts on the first two albums but that was not the case on Mellon Collie. James said for all the lead parts it was divided up about fifty/fifty and who knows how the rhythm parts were divided up. And yes, D'arcy is not the greatest bassist haha.
rlos duarte
well said
VTK XTO
Lack of character? Maybe he's got a tough personality, but Corgan can never be accused of lacking character.
OD138
You know for a fact she's only into pot? I bet you're wrong about that.
deathtokoalas
i do appear to have been wrong; she has a problem with crack cocaine, as others pointed out.
Mattydigs
Which is fair. A true artist sacrifices everything for the good of the song.
Creat Swartz
Are you serious? Billy humble. That is a good one!
deathtokoalas
in twenty-whatever years, the truth is that i don't think i've ever read or seen him say anything positive about himself. he only deprecates himself.
it's an imaginary media construct.
Friday, August 15, 2014
townies. ugh.
i expected those, though. it's a miracle it took this long, really. best to avoid them....
"you know, you should open up the advertising a little bit so people know the shows are going on."
"but it's a tight knit scene."
"that's why you should open up the advertising, so people outside the scene know what's going on."
"if you want to join the scene, you should come down. it's very tight knit."
"but, that's why you should open it up and make it less exclusive."
"but, it's a very tight-knit scene."
ugh...
fuck tight knit scenes, i want radical inclusion.
somebody shows up and offers suggestions on ways to open it, and all they get is a lot of attitude and an almost violent desire to maintain a small, incestual clique-y group. that's not something i want anything to do with. it's radical inclusion, or fuck off.
i mean, the bottom line is i haven't seen much of anything that's interesting in terms of local music over the year i've been here. it's all very generic and boring takes on different styles of punk, or equally boring folk music. my conclusion is that there's really not very much interesting music happening in the area at all.
but there's a specific bar that doesn't have a show calendar online. now, i really have little reason to think the bar is booking anything that's worth going to. i think the reverse logic is pretty applicable - if anybody worth watching was playing the bar, the bar would be updating it's listings. but, i'm the type of person that wants to know what's going on at all the bars i can get to, anyways, just in case there's that one rare act that seems interesting....
having idiosyncratic tastes requires this kind of meticulousness.
you wouldn't think a suggestion for a bar owner to update a web page would set off such a defensive reaction, but that it did says a lot about the area and the people that inhabit it. it demonstrates a very clique-y mentality that is suspicious of outsiders and wants to "vet" people before they're allowed to integrate.
going to a bar to watch a show doesn't imply a desire to join a club. and i definitely have zero desire to join a club....
this is why i prefer big cities to small towns. when i go out somewhere, i don't want to meet up with a group of people that i know, i want to fade into the crowd. i don't want everybody to know my name; i don't want *anybody* to know my name! i cherish that level of anonymity.
so, detroit's a good fit for me. windsor, less so...
in the end, if the local bands in the area just want to play to the same group of friends every show then that's their choice. i'll go hang out in detroit and watch some more interesting acts in the process...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FoCfiZnOplY
i expected those, though. it's a miracle it took this long, really. best to avoid them....
"you know, you should open up the advertising a little bit so people know the shows are going on."
"but it's a tight knit scene."
"that's why you should open up the advertising, so people outside the scene know what's going on."
"if you want to join the scene, you should come down. it's very tight knit."
"but, that's why you should open it up and make it less exclusive."
"but, it's a very tight-knit scene."
ugh...
fuck tight knit scenes, i want radical inclusion.
somebody shows up and offers suggestions on ways to open it, and all they get is a lot of attitude and an almost violent desire to maintain a small, incestual clique-y group. that's not something i want anything to do with. it's radical inclusion, or fuck off.
i mean, the bottom line is i haven't seen much of anything that's interesting in terms of local music over the year i've been here. it's all very generic and boring takes on different styles of punk, or equally boring folk music. my conclusion is that there's really not very much interesting music happening in the area at all.
but there's a specific bar that doesn't have a show calendar online. now, i really have little reason to think the bar is booking anything that's worth going to. i think the reverse logic is pretty applicable - if anybody worth watching was playing the bar, the bar would be updating it's listings. but, i'm the type of person that wants to know what's going on at all the bars i can get to, anyways, just in case there's that one rare act that seems interesting....
having idiosyncratic tastes requires this kind of meticulousness.
you wouldn't think a suggestion for a bar owner to update a web page would set off such a defensive reaction, but that it did says a lot about the area and the people that inhabit it. it demonstrates a very clique-y mentality that is suspicious of outsiders and wants to "vet" people before they're allowed to integrate.
going to a bar to watch a show doesn't imply a desire to join a club. and i definitely have zero desire to join a club....
this is why i prefer big cities to small towns. when i go out somewhere, i don't want to meet up with a group of people that i know, i want to fade into the crowd. i don't want everybody to know my name; i don't want *anybody* to know my name! i cherish that level of anonymity.
so, detroit's a good fit for me. windsor, less so...
in the end, if the local bands in the area just want to play to the same group of friends every show then that's their choice. i'll go hang out in detroit and watch some more interesting acts in the process...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FoCfiZnOplY
naomi klein gave a very important speech at unifor about a year ago, and i was ecstatic when i heard it because she articulated exactly what i've been saying about this for years. it's nice to see that jill realized it's importance, as well. trying to be "bipartisan" about climate change is a waste of time - there is a bipartisan consensus, and it's that dealing with it sounds expensive. if you want to change something, forget about building consensus in washington. that doesn't work. you have to bring in the whole machinery of worker's politics, and you have to be willing to fight those that will reject those politics. what defines our social relations within capitalism is conflict, not consensus. we have to start telling the hippies to fuck off.
the status quo provides us with two ways to change things. first, we can pass regulatory laws. now, we're consistently bombarded with messaging that regulation is tyrannical, but worse is that the regulatory bodies inevitably end up controlled by industry. so, that leads us down the garden path to the elite's preferred method of change: markets. the elite prefers this method because the only change that markets are capable of producing is increased class stratification.
jill is being careful with her language, but what she's calling for is worker ownership of production. and, she's right. naomi was right. i'm right. there is no way the government will ever work against the corporate lobbies to impose substantial sanctions or provide serious incentives. rather, government will continue to work in the interests of capital - and dirty energy - so long as government exists. so, that rules out using both regulation and markets.
this is the option the status quo declines to inform us of, and it's the only way forward. we're not going to elect a saviour that will fix the issue with centralized government policy. we're not going to solve the issue with green toilet paper, or subsidies for clean energy. we have to take over the factories and convert them. we have to take over the oil fields and shut them down.
...and we have to get over our programming that teaches us to work within a system that was constructed to be useless and stop pretending there's another answer.
the status quo provides us with two ways to change things. first, we can pass regulatory laws. now, we're consistently bombarded with messaging that regulation is tyrannical, but worse is that the regulatory bodies inevitably end up controlled by industry. so, that leads us down the garden path to the elite's preferred method of change: markets. the elite prefers this method because the only change that markets are capable of producing is increased class stratification.
jill is being careful with her language, but what she's calling for is worker ownership of production. and, she's right. naomi was right. i'm right. there is no way the government will ever work against the corporate lobbies to impose substantial sanctions or provide serious incentives. rather, government will continue to work in the interests of capital - and dirty energy - so long as government exists. so, that rules out using both regulation and markets.
this is the option the status quo declines to inform us of, and it's the only way forward. we're not going to elect a saviour that will fix the issue with centralized government policy. we're not going to solve the issue with green toilet paper, or subsidies for clean energy. we have to take over the factories and convert them. we have to take over the oil fields and shut them down.
...and we have to get over our programming that teaches us to work within a system that was constructed to be useless and stop pretending there's another answer.
Thursday, August 14, 2014
see, this is rather pointless. yeah, she bashed the thing for a few seconds to get a peanut. but, what did you expect? the moonlight sonata? this is again a circular concern. i'm not aware of a culture that doesn't have music, but, if one did exist, i'm not convinced you'd get a different reaction from a human out of that culture.
and, probably roughly half the adult human population of the united states would react no differently....
"a keyboard. it makes sound. whatever. when do i get paid?"
the implied error is consequently within the universality of music. it seems to be universal across culture. but most humans couldn't care less.
and, probably roughly half the adult human population of the united states would react no differently....
"a keyboard. it makes sound. whatever. when do i get paid?"
the implied error is consequently within the universality of music. it seems to be universal across culture. but most humans couldn't care less.
yeah, i've seen enough to realize that the flowers are fake and the gorilla's articulation of sign language isn't. separating between the idea of "falsity" and "representation" may be a little abstract for her (although it might be something that could be taught), but she clearly understood that the picture of a flower was not actually a flower and felt the need to specify it. that is, she wasn't content with saying "that's a flower", she needed to find a way to express "that's a picture of a flower". that might not imply that she meets any technical definitions regarding the use of human language, but it does demonstrate that she understands what she's doing when she flops her fingers around. she is very clearly consciously doing so with the intent of expressing ideas that are her own.
i'm not sure it even makes sense to try and ask questions about grammar as they relate to sign language outside of the context of a spoken and written language, and i think it opens up a lot of questions regarding the circularity of it. i know there's different ideas about it, but i have a hard time separating grammar from written language. it seems to me that it's the writing that enforces the grammar, rather than the other way around. when you look at tribes that don't have written languages, the grammar may exist but is often rather basic - and they have thousands of years of linguistic evolution to get to the point, whereas koko only has her lifetime and a set of limited tools to express herself. i don't really have to hypothesize about taking europeans and putting them on a different planet without writing - you can look at how the language has broken down in areas of australia and north america, where the written component is not great. that is, you take the writing out and the grammar demonstrably starts to fracture. so, i just don't see how this experiment is able to produce any kind of meaningful conclusions on the question. to answer that question, you'd have to carry the experiment out over generations, teach them how to use written language and then construct something that gives the gorilla more ability to use grammar than signing.
but, i'm not falling for this idea that the gorilla is being conditioned. i've seen very little, of course - youtube videos. but the bit i've seen is just overwhelmingly in favour of an independent agent producing independent thought.
if the gorilla can understand over a thousand signs, it could conceivably understand just as many key combinations on a keyboard. that would eliminate a lot of ambiguity. perhaps using chinese style writing (or even something roughly comparable to hieroglyphs) may be a better way to start.
after all, humans didn't start with a complicated alphabet, either. we built it up over time. we started with pictorial representations that expressed ideas.
so, it's not really fair to grab a gorilla and expect it to grasp a modern roman alphabet with the complexity of a modern language right off the bat. i wouldn't even expect that a pre-neolithic member of our own species would be able to do that.
everything we know about plasticity and evolution nowadays suggests that whatever is inherent must have developed over the time we've been using language and grammar. so, if you want to do this and draw any meaningful results, you need to control for that by emulating the same kind of systems that early humans used, not the fully developed ones we use now.
i mean, we have no idea what ancient egyptians sounded like when they talked to each other. we can take some guesses. but there's not really any serious way to really understand how complex their grammar was, at the time.
chinese would be better for that reason, but it might be too complicated.
if tolkien can construct a new language, it can't be that hard to make one for some apes using a simple but "correct" grammar and then transliterate it with pictures constructed with combinations on an oversized keyboard.
and i'm suggesting this because i think the results will be shocking to certain people and put some questions to rest rather permanently.
i'm not sure it even makes sense to try and ask questions about grammar as they relate to sign language outside of the context of a spoken and written language, and i think it opens up a lot of questions regarding the circularity of it. i know there's different ideas about it, but i have a hard time separating grammar from written language. it seems to me that it's the writing that enforces the grammar, rather than the other way around. when you look at tribes that don't have written languages, the grammar may exist but is often rather basic - and they have thousands of years of linguistic evolution to get to the point, whereas koko only has her lifetime and a set of limited tools to express herself. i don't really have to hypothesize about taking europeans and putting them on a different planet without writing - you can look at how the language has broken down in areas of australia and north america, where the written component is not great. that is, you take the writing out and the grammar demonstrably starts to fracture. so, i just don't see how this experiment is able to produce any kind of meaningful conclusions on the question. to answer that question, you'd have to carry the experiment out over generations, teach them how to use written language and then construct something that gives the gorilla more ability to use grammar than signing.
but, i'm not falling for this idea that the gorilla is being conditioned. i've seen very little, of course - youtube videos. but the bit i've seen is just overwhelmingly in favour of an independent agent producing independent thought.
if the gorilla can understand over a thousand signs, it could conceivably understand just as many key combinations on a keyboard. that would eliminate a lot of ambiguity. perhaps using chinese style writing (or even something roughly comparable to hieroglyphs) may be a better way to start.
after all, humans didn't start with a complicated alphabet, either. we built it up over time. we started with pictorial representations that expressed ideas.
so, it's not really fair to grab a gorilla and expect it to grasp a modern roman alphabet with the complexity of a modern language right off the bat. i wouldn't even expect that a pre-neolithic member of our own species would be able to do that.
everything we know about plasticity and evolution nowadays suggests that whatever is inherent must have developed over the time we've been using language and grammar. so, if you want to do this and draw any meaningful results, you need to control for that by emulating the same kind of systems that early humans used, not the fully developed ones we use now.
i mean, we have no idea what ancient egyptians sounded like when they talked to each other. we can take some guesses. but there's not really any serious way to really understand how complex their grammar was, at the time.
chinese would be better for that reason, but it might be too complicated.
if tolkien can construct a new language, it can't be that hard to make one for some apes using a simple but "correct" grammar and then transliterate it with pictures constructed with combinations on an oversized keyboard.
and i'm suggesting this because i think the results will be shocking to certain people and put some questions to rest rather permanently.
deathtokoalas
again: when an elephant rubs your nose, it's expecting you to rub back. that's why it's standing there, within a foot of her nose, expecting reciprocation, and eventually walks off, confused and dejected.
why are humans so rude?
(deleted response)
deathtokoalas
it's not a dog...
basically, she "left the creature hanging". that trunk rub is a high five, or a hug. you gotta reciprocate or it's going to feel rejected...
nuspacestate
I agree, the girl should reciprocate but she is not familiar with elephant behavior.
(deleted response)
deathtokoalas
the apes that don't wear clothes have no trunks, either. i don't think it would find that confusing.
elephants learn almost everything from their parents and almost nothing from instinct - quite a bit like us. they wouldn't know an ape from a banana if they've never seen one before. that's not how the baby elephant is interpreting the human.
you've seen kids anthropomorphize animals. it's no doubt proboscidomorphizing her.
"humans are elephants, too!"
Ludwig van Beethoven (Truth Lives)
I must have misinterpreted this video incorrectly - but thanks for giving me the heads up on elephant behaviour. What I thought was the Baby Elephant was trying to work out why the woman didn't have a trunk.
paramornal
Where did you learn that "when an elephant rubs your nose, its expecting you to rub back"? I am a veterinarian and my fiance is an animal caregiver and we never learned anything like that.
deathtokoalas
well, it's an extrapolation. for example, you might see people hug their dogs. that's human behaviour, but sometimes we treat other species as though they're a member of ours, for the simple reason that it's how we think. now, humans are unusually smart animals - we can figure out how to communicate with some animals by mimicking their behaviour. elephants are also very smart, but this is a very young one.
when elephants rub their trunks against each other, it's a bonding thing. you'd expect family members or friends to do this. so, you'd expect an elephant to behave that way towards a human it wishes to bond with, because that's what an elephant would do - just as you might hug your dog. certainly, that's what the behaviour she's expressing is - a bonding rub.
it's kind of like when a chimp starts grooming you. that's not random behaviour, it's a bonding thing.\
humans hug, chimps groom, elephants rub - and dogs lick. same idea. the fact that we're different species doesn't change the behaviour.
(deleted response)
deathtokoalas
this isn't new behaviour, and i don't need a lecture. i may have coined the term, but there are many other observed instances of elephants treating humans as elephants. with elephants, especially - due to their extreme intelligence - it takes on a deeper dimension. i'm using examples with dogs and chimps to demonstrate behaviour they share with humans. in more generality, you can't interpret elephant behaviour the way you'd interpret dog behaviour - they're far too intelligent. they're not as smart as we are either, but you need to learn more in the direction of us than in the direction of our pets. with the trunk rubbing, this is a universal in elephant populations. humans may show a lot of variation in customs, but we also have some universals - and touching is one of them.
as another example of elephants treating humans as elephants, elephants have been known to bury sleeping humans under the misunderstanding that they're dead or dying. as astonishing as it sounds - and it is remarkable - elephants actually hold funerals for their dead friends and family members.
in fact, almost any mammal (excluding certain predators that interpret us as a natural prey source, which are mostly cats: lions and tigers) and a lot of more advanced non-mammals (this has been demonstrated in owls) will interpret us through their own filters and allow us to integrate into their social networks when they are existing. even when they're not existing, animals that co-habitate with us will work us into their own social understandings. i grew up with two or three dogs in the house at any given time, and i was entirely aware that i was as much a part of their pack as they were a part of the family - that we lived in a den as much as we lived in a house. the dog that protects their owner is demonstrating pack behaviour with the underlying understanding of the human as their dog kin. and, you've surely been licked by a dog that's trying to show affection and not really aware that we humans think it's a little gross. we do the same thing when we stand up for animals we interact with socially.
we have the ability to separate between species we consider "friends", but a moment's reflection will realize that this is an advanced cognitive ability. that the elephant sees an elephant in the human is not a sign of extreme intelligence, but a demonstration of their lack of full awareness. as great as elephant cognition may be in relative terms, it is a substantial abstraction to understand that different animals have different cultures and adjust behaviour to cater to each one. elephants understand elephant culture; due to our ability to understand that, we have the responsibility to adjust and respond accordingly.
daveyboi28
totally cool thanks for teaching me something new :D
Jessica Cejnar
How should she have responded?
daveyboi28
well all i know is i wouldnt have been ignoring as she did! the cutest thing on this earth happens and she just ignores it? i woulda been stroking his/ her trunk :D
again: when an elephant rubs your nose, it's expecting you to rub back. that's why it's standing there, within a foot of her nose, expecting reciprocation, and eventually walks off, confused and dejected.
why are humans so rude?
deathtokoalas
it's not a dog...
basically, she "left the creature hanging". that trunk rub is a high five, or a hug. you gotta reciprocate or it's going to feel rejected...
nuspacestate
I agree, the girl should reciprocate but she is not familiar with elephant behavior.
(deleted response)
deathtokoalas
the apes that don't wear clothes have no trunks, either. i don't think it would find that confusing.
elephants learn almost everything from their parents and almost nothing from instinct - quite a bit like us. they wouldn't know an ape from a banana if they've never seen one before. that's not how the baby elephant is interpreting the human.
you've seen kids anthropomorphize animals. it's no doubt proboscidomorphizing her.
"humans are elephants, too!"
Ludwig van Beethoven (Truth Lives)
I must have misinterpreted this video incorrectly - but thanks for giving me the heads up on elephant behaviour. What I thought was the Baby Elephant was trying to work out why the woman didn't have a trunk.
paramornal
Where did you learn that "when an elephant rubs your nose, its expecting you to rub back"? I am a veterinarian and my fiance is an animal caregiver and we never learned anything like that.
deathtokoalas
well, it's an extrapolation. for example, you might see people hug their dogs. that's human behaviour, but sometimes we treat other species as though they're a member of ours, for the simple reason that it's how we think. now, humans are unusually smart animals - we can figure out how to communicate with some animals by mimicking their behaviour. elephants are also very smart, but this is a very young one.
when elephants rub their trunks against each other, it's a bonding thing. you'd expect family members or friends to do this. so, you'd expect an elephant to behave that way towards a human it wishes to bond with, because that's what an elephant would do - just as you might hug your dog. certainly, that's what the behaviour she's expressing is - a bonding rub.
it's kind of like when a chimp starts grooming you. that's not random behaviour, it's a bonding thing.\
humans hug, chimps groom, elephants rub - and dogs lick. same idea. the fact that we're different species doesn't change the behaviour.
(deleted response)
deathtokoalas
this isn't new behaviour, and i don't need a lecture. i may have coined the term, but there are many other observed instances of elephants treating humans as elephants. with elephants, especially - due to their extreme intelligence - it takes on a deeper dimension. i'm using examples with dogs and chimps to demonstrate behaviour they share with humans. in more generality, you can't interpret elephant behaviour the way you'd interpret dog behaviour - they're far too intelligent. they're not as smart as we are either, but you need to learn more in the direction of us than in the direction of our pets. with the trunk rubbing, this is a universal in elephant populations. humans may show a lot of variation in customs, but we also have some universals - and touching is one of them.
as another example of elephants treating humans as elephants, elephants have been known to bury sleeping humans under the misunderstanding that they're dead or dying. as astonishing as it sounds - and it is remarkable - elephants actually hold funerals for their dead friends and family members.
in fact, almost any mammal (excluding certain predators that interpret us as a natural prey source, which are mostly cats: lions and tigers) and a lot of more advanced non-mammals (this has been demonstrated in owls) will interpret us through their own filters and allow us to integrate into their social networks when they are existing. even when they're not existing, animals that co-habitate with us will work us into their own social understandings. i grew up with two or three dogs in the house at any given time, and i was entirely aware that i was as much a part of their pack as they were a part of the family - that we lived in a den as much as we lived in a house. the dog that protects their owner is demonstrating pack behaviour with the underlying understanding of the human as their dog kin. and, you've surely been licked by a dog that's trying to show affection and not really aware that we humans think it's a little gross. we do the same thing when we stand up for animals we interact with socially.
we have the ability to separate between species we consider "friends", but a moment's reflection will realize that this is an advanced cognitive ability. that the elephant sees an elephant in the human is not a sign of extreme intelligence, but a demonstration of their lack of full awareness. as great as elephant cognition may be in relative terms, it is a substantial abstraction to understand that different animals have different cultures and adjust behaviour to cater to each one. elephants understand elephant culture; due to our ability to understand that, we have the responsibility to adjust and respond accordingly.
daveyboi28
totally cool thanks for teaching me something new :D
Jessica Cejnar
How should she have responded?
daveyboi28
well all i know is i wouldnt have been ignoring as she did! the cutest thing on this earth happens and she just ignores it? i woulda been stroking his/ her trunk :D
i believe that the grooming is a gesture of friendship and the head honcho gorilla stormed off when it wasn't reciprocated. so, if you're ever in uganda, and some gorillas start grooming you, you really ought to groom back. it's rude not to, and might hurt their feelings. it's kind of like not accepting a local meal with the local customs..
the thing about gorillas is that they're smart enough to understand they're being caged. you've seen at least one action movie, right? what happens when the aliens put an action hero in a cage, and the action hero gets the chance to escape? doesn't even need to be aliens, either, does it? could just be bad guys. and, it's carnage.
you consequently need to interpret the violent behaviour, when it happens, as a function of their captivity. you'd act no differently, yourself. it doesn't matter if the aliens or the bad guys "treat you well". you're still going to eat their faces if you get a way out.
but, it's different if you're integrated into the family. maybe there's a level of stockholm syndrome, but it's a different scenario than being locked in an enclosure.
what's going to define the nature of the beast is going to primarily be whether or not they interpret you as food. you're nuts to try and befriend a tiger. but gorillas are never going to interpret you that way.
of the other intelligent species? elephants aren't going to eat you, either.
cetaceans are sketchier.
you consequently need to interpret the violent behaviour, when it happens, as a function of their captivity. you'd act no differently, yourself. it doesn't matter if the aliens or the bad guys "treat you well". you're still going to eat their faces if you get a way out.
but, it's different if you're integrated into the family. maybe there's a level of stockholm syndrome, but it's a different scenario than being locked in an enclosure.
what's going to define the nature of the beast is going to primarily be whether or not they interpret you as food. you're nuts to try and befriend a tiger. but gorillas are never going to interpret you that way.
of the other intelligent species? elephants aren't going to eat you, either.
cetaceans are sketchier.
it's probably too late for koko, but can't this kind of research be done in groups in the future? i mean, imagine being abducted by an advanced alien species, locked in a room and forced to communicate in code with them. no matter how well the aliens treat you, you're going to get lonely. you're going to feel various pressures to do the kinds of things that your dna demands that you do. and, you're a human, not a gorilla. chances are you're going to cope with it better because you have more advanced reasoning skills.
further, wouldn't the research even be superior if it was carried out in groups? if you tried to study a human under those circumstances, you'd no doubt be studying some kind of manic depressive psychopath, as the result of the conditions.
nearly every segment i've seen from this ape is trying to communicate immense grief. she's fucking miserable....
further, wouldn't the research even be superior if it was carried out in groups? if you tried to study a human under those circumstances, you'd no doubt be studying some kind of manic depressive psychopath, as the result of the conditions.
nearly every segment i've seen from this ape is trying to communicate immense grief. she's fucking miserable....
Wednesday, August 13, 2014
Monday, August 11, 2014
the unfortunate reality around the situation, though, is that it's an open question whether this is a few bad apples or something that is actually permitted by the hierarchy. i'm not going to write an essay, but what we today call "paedophilia" was an integrated aspect of roman social behaviour. pederasty has an intriguing history over the centuries, modulating rather regularly between social norm and outright criminal behaviour. it may seem outlandish to most people alive today, but it's actually rather likely to find it's way back to social norm some time in the future.
in the classical roman period, pederasty had a partial religious function and was very normal amongst the (pagan) roman priesthood. when christianity was either created by the state or adopted by it, that institution of roman priesthood was converted into what eventually became the roman catholic church (there's a thousand years before the orthodox church split off, then another 500 until the reformation). christianity might publicly oppose pederasty on moral grounds, but the priesthood carried over the tradition from the pagan period (as northern europe carried over santa claus and chistmas trees from the indigenous german religions). it's been with us for the entire history of christianity, coming in and out of the public spotlight as social attitudes about the practice have changed in favour of or violently against it.
so, this whole thing is embedded deeply within the church hierarchy. pederasty seems to be carried down from mentor to student within the framework of the church hierarchy itself. it's really questionable whether the church is going to be able to reform itself of the practice, or if the whole structure needs to be abolished.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0M1XVE9W67g
when i was in my early 20s, i took part in an experiment that tested what kind of sexual reaction adults have to sexualized portrayals of children. i want to be clear that this was a voluntary (and paid) study, rather than something mandated by the state as part of an evaluation of some sort. i wasn't told that the study had to do with children, i was just told it was a study an sexual arousal. i'm not sure i would have taken part if i knew it was about children. i was mostly attracted to it because i was a big thomas pynchon fan at the time; i had this idea that i'd be conditioned to imipolex g, or something.
but, what they did was hook my penis up to some electrical equipment, ask me to wear some glasses that flashed erotic images of children at me and measured the physical response. i didn't demonstrate a response, and passed the control (which flashed me adult porn and then asked me to think about making out with my girlfriend), so i can officially declare myself not a paedophile. i guess there's some relief in that.
afterwards, i spent some time talking to the students that carried out the experiment and i was apparently rather unusual in my complete lack of response. apparently, the vast majority of adult men will demonstrate a sexual response to sexualized images of children - and of either gender. i didn't tell them, but i happen to have identified as transgendered even at that stage and was between periods of treatment for it. so, maybe i wasn't the best subject. i may have even skewed the data, mildly.
....but i was an outlier, either way, and what i learned from listening to the students really changed my understanding of the factors that lead men to physical arousal. up until that point, i had a standard pseudo-scientific quasi-leftist position that sexuality is a complex mix of environment and genetics, but that it's mostly genetic. the "born this way" perspective. the results of this experiment forced me to modify my views to male sexuality as being fundamentally opportunistic in nature. that is, men will become aroused when they have an opportunity to be aroused and considerations such as age and gender are mostly secondary to that opportunism.
extrapolating that to a biological context actually makes a lot of sense. logically, the optimum behaviour for men from an evolutionary perspective ought to be simply to maximize the amount of offspring. that should mean that men should be physically aroused by just about anything, as it's a game of probabilities for them - the more sex they have, the more offspring they produce and the greater the probability that their genes will carry on. as is the case with most species, the quality control in choosing mates is largely a responsibility of the females of the species, who are consequently much more difficult to arouse.
what i'm getting to is that pederasty may end up being a more natural aspect of human sexuality than our culture currently acknowledges. i think this is very complicated, as i agree that consent is a blurry concept when applied to children. but, if the studies state that most men are aroused by sexual portrayals of children then dealing with the ramifications of that needs to be more subtle than stamping a social taboo on it.
in the classical roman period, pederasty had a partial religious function and was very normal amongst the (pagan) roman priesthood. when christianity was either created by the state or adopted by it, that institution of roman priesthood was converted into what eventually became the roman catholic church (there's a thousand years before the orthodox church split off, then another 500 until the reformation). christianity might publicly oppose pederasty on moral grounds, but the priesthood carried over the tradition from the pagan period (as northern europe carried over santa claus and chistmas trees from the indigenous german religions). it's been with us for the entire history of christianity, coming in and out of the public spotlight as social attitudes about the practice have changed in favour of or violently against it.
so, this whole thing is embedded deeply within the church hierarchy. pederasty seems to be carried down from mentor to student within the framework of the church hierarchy itself. it's really questionable whether the church is going to be able to reform itself of the practice, or if the whole structure needs to be abolished.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0M1XVE9W67g
when i was in my early 20s, i took part in an experiment that tested what kind of sexual reaction adults have to sexualized portrayals of children. i want to be clear that this was a voluntary (and paid) study, rather than something mandated by the state as part of an evaluation of some sort. i wasn't told that the study had to do with children, i was just told it was a study an sexual arousal. i'm not sure i would have taken part if i knew it was about children. i was mostly attracted to it because i was a big thomas pynchon fan at the time; i had this idea that i'd be conditioned to imipolex g, or something.
but, what they did was hook my penis up to some electrical equipment, ask me to wear some glasses that flashed erotic images of children at me and measured the physical response. i didn't demonstrate a response, and passed the control (which flashed me adult porn and then asked me to think about making out with my girlfriend), so i can officially declare myself not a paedophile. i guess there's some relief in that.
afterwards, i spent some time talking to the students that carried out the experiment and i was apparently rather unusual in my complete lack of response. apparently, the vast majority of adult men will demonstrate a sexual response to sexualized images of children - and of either gender. i didn't tell them, but i happen to have identified as transgendered even at that stage and was between periods of treatment for it. so, maybe i wasn't the best subject. i may have even skewed the data, mildly.
....but i was an outlier, either way, and what i learned from listening to the students really changed my understanding of the factors that lead men to physical arousal. up until that point, i had a standard pseudo-scientific quasi-leftist position that sexuality is a complex mix of environment and genetics, but that it's mostly genetic. the "born this way" perspective. the results of this experiment forced me to modify my views to male sexuality as being fundamentally opportunistic in nature. that is, men will become aroused when they have an opportunity to be aroused and considerations such as age and gender are mostly secondary to that opportunism.
extrapolating that to a biological context actually makes a lot of sense. logically, the optimum behaviour for men from an evolutionary perspective ought to be simply to maximize the amount of offspring. that should mean that men should be physically aroused by just about anything, as it's a game of probabilities for them - the more sex they have, the more offspring they produce and the greater the probability that their genes will carry on. as is the case with most species, the quality control in choosing mates is largely a responsibility of the females of the species, who are consequently much more difficult to arouse.
what i'm getting to is that pederasty may end up being a more natural aspect of human sexuality than our culture currently acknowledges. i think this is very complicated, as i agree that consent is a blurry concept when applied to children. but, if the studies state that most men are aroused by sexual portrayals of children then dealing with the ramifications of that needs to be more subtle than stamping a social taboo on it.
rip robin williams
part of robin's talent was picking great scripts and then breathing life into them. this wasn't his most popular film, but it was his best.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OdgGxgg91Tc
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OdgGxgg91Tc
the winter of 2002 was particularly cold in the area of canada i lived in, and i rather quickly derived the hypothesis that the humongous bombs they were using in afghanistan might have had something to do with it. in hindsight, we can see there's been a decrease in warming since then. i've looked a few times for some serious studies on the topic, but have never found any.
robock points out that it's necessary to have some kind of fuel, but i think that blowing up mountains is certainly going to throw more dust into the air than blowing up a beach. further, i've seen reports that some of the bombs they were using in afghanistan and iraq were (while conventional) considerably more powerful than the smaller sized nuclear weapons.
somebody ought to see if they can draw a connection between the bombing that happened after 9/11 and the decrease in warming that followed.
robock points out that it's necessary to have some kind of fuel, but i think that blowing up mountains is certainly going to throw more dust into the air than blowing up a beach. further, i've seen reports that some of the bombs they were using in afghanistan and iraq were (while conventional) considerably more powerful than the smaller sized nuclear weapons.
somebody ought to see if they can draw a connection between the bombing that happened after 9/11 and the decrease in warming that followed.
Saturday, August 9, 2014
i must have seen something somewhere recently about the centennial of wwI that bothered me in terms of the way it was framed, because the dream i had this morning was just off the wall, starting some time in about 1917 and ending in the mid 70s. i'm not going to go over it because it's a little blurry but it was some kind of episode of quantum leap. or sliders for the younger folk. or dr. who for the elderly, i suppose.
what i remember, though, is how insistent i was on a proper narration of events and how frustrated i was about people continuing to fall for propaganda that is now a hundred years old. it's made me wonder if this isn't a good time to review some basic historical misunderstandings of the last century.
i think historians will eventually think of one war rather than two.
1) the soviet experiment was not one in worker self-management, but something constructed by the vulgar marxism of the banking elite (new york, london) to determine if marx' ideas could really be used to reduce workers to compliant slaves and increase production and profit, as he claimed. if you're a member of the banking elite, you don't want to write off marxism without trying it out. it's pretty seductive, really. what you want to do is put them in competition with each other and see which is better at being oppressive. it turns out capitalism was the more oppressive system, and faking democracy is better at producing compliant people than faking socialism, so the bankers chose it and dismantled the soviet state. socialists, communists and anarchists of all types were mass executed in the process.
2) as is the tendency in russia, a nationalist appeared from nowhere and took over the state. it didn't null the experiment, but it did provide a problem for a few decades.
3) therefore, hitler, who was created to remove stalin - and nearly did.
4) hitler also backfired, but not as badly as stalin.
5) wwII was primarily a war between russia and germany. the american tactic through the war (sometimes misinterpreted as"isolationism") was non-interference, in the hope that the germans (who they supported) would remove stalin from power. however, once it was clear that stalin had the upper hand, it was determined that they must become involved to prevent soviet global dominance.
6) that is to say that the goal of the invasion of normandy was not to liberate france from germany (who had already lost the war on the eastern front and was merely waiting to be occupied by the soviets) but to occupy germany in order to prevent a soviet invasion of france, italy, the uk and spain.
7) likewise, the purpose of bombing japan with atomic weapons was not to end the war faster but to ensure that it would be occupied by american soldiers rather than russian ones. the russians were fast approaching. truman wanted leverage to get a direct peace treaty, and got it.
you have to meet the conspiracy theorists halfway. they're good at constructing evidence that demonstrates that whatever thing was a plot, and are often in the end proven right. what the theorists don't realize most of the time, though, is that they're uncovering a plan that ultimately *failed* and that the conclusion to draw from the evidence they put together is almost always one of mass incompetence, rather than diabolical genius.
everything up there is pretty standard history at this point, but the propaganda continues to define the narrative.
what i remember, though, is how insistent i was on a proper narration of events and how frustrated i was about people continuing to fall for propaganda that is now a hundred years old. it's made me wonder if this isn't a good time to review some basic historical misunderstandings of the last century.
i think historians will eventually think of one war rather than two.
1) the soviet experiment was not one in worker self-management, but something constructed by the vulgar marxism of the banking elite (new york, london) to determine if marx' ideas could really be used to reduce workers to compliant slaves and increase production and profit, as he claimed. if you're a member of the banking elite, you don't want to write off marxism without trying it out. it's pretty seductive, really. what you want to do is put them in competition with each other and see which is better at being oppressive. it turns out capitalism was the more oppressive system, and faking democracy is better at producing compliant people than faking socialism, so the bankers chose it and dismantled the soviet state. socialists, communists and anarchists of all types were mass executed in the process.
2) as is the tendency in russia, a nationalist appeared from nowhere and took over the state. it didn't null the experiment, but it did provide a problem for a few decades.
3) therefore, hitler, who was created to remove stalin - and nearly did.
4) hitler also backfired, but not as badly as stalin.
5) wwII was primarily a war between russia and germany. the american tactic through the war (sometimes misinterpreted as"isolationism") was non-interference, in the hope that the germans (who they supported) would remove stalin from power. however, once it was clear that stalin had the upper hand, it was determined that they must become involved to prevent soviet global dominance.
6) that is to say that the goal of the invasion of normandy was not to liberate france from germany (who had already lost the war on the eastern front and was merely waiting to be occupied by the soviets) but to occupy germany in order to prevent a soviet invasion of france, italy, the uk and spain.
7) likewise, the purpose of bombing japan with atomic weapons was not to end the war faster but to ensure that it would be occupied by american soldiers rather than russian ones. the russians were fast approaching. truman wanted leverage to get a direct peace treaty, and got it.
you have to meet the conspiracy theorists halfway. they're good at constructing evidence that demonstrates that whatever thing was a plot, and are often in the end proven right. what the theorists don't realize most of the time, though, is that they're uncovering a plan that ultimately *failed* and that the conclusion to draw from the evidence they put together is almost always one of mass incompetence, rather than diabolical genius.
everything up there is pretty standard history at this point, but the propaganda continues to define the narrative.
hey, i knew i was walking into the collapse of western civilization. no surprises. no drama. this is what i knew was here.
this one i really like, actually.
i'm putting this one aside for future album art.
http://s.imwx.com/dru/2014/05/771b8d59-bb90-4091-8cf6-cf6b2a9b8ead_650x366.jpg
this one i really like, actually.
i'm putting this one aside for future album art.
http://s.imwx.com/dru/2014/05/771b8d59-bb90-4091-8cf6-cf6b2a9b8ead_650x366.jpg
this is a recent picture of the pontiac silverdome, which was once the continent's biggest, state-of-the-art multi-purpose entertainment complex. pontiac is considered a suburb of detroit, but it's almost the distance from ottawa to montreal. i'll have to find my way out there eventually....
the main tenant was the detroit lions (an american football team), but they also set several records for largest indoor rock concerts in the 70s (first the who, then led zeppelin, both in the 70,000s).
the stadium was sold off to private management a little over ten years ago and has been abandoned, now, for several years.
but a shot like that makes you wonder if there's a way in there to reclaim the space.
http://s.imwx.com/dru/2014/05/f264f804-530a-4a59-8a77-5672fe28844a_650x366.jpg
the main tenant was the detroit lions (an american football team), but they also set several records for largest indoor rock concerts in the 70s (first the who, then led zeppelin, both in the 70,000s).
the stadium was sold off to private management a little over ten years ago and has been abandoned, now, for several years.
but a shot like that makes you wonder if there's a way in there to reclaim the space.
http://s.imwx.com/dru/2014/05/f264f804-530a-4a59-8a77-5672fe28844a_650x366.jpg
Thursday, August 7, 2014
angular momentum
this is a short section from the song i'm working on. the idea is to put it on repeat and listen to it for hours. i throw these sorts of loops up periodically, but i haven't included any in any releases. i'm going to start doing it...
there's a pizzicato bass line for the piece that i may or may not add to the loop. i'm expecting not to.
but, i just love the way the syncopated cowboy ramones drums interact with the slightly metallic psychedelic grunge riff and the soaring gazey guitar tremolo. the thing that makes the loop, though, is that carefully placed minor seventh chord.
i can listen to this for hours. maybe you might, too.
http://jasonparent.bandcamp.com/track/angular-momentum
i compose/record by ear and work out the details after the fact (mostly for soloing), but i think the reason the minor seventh works so well is the microtonal tuning. all of the guitars are purposefully slightly "out of tune", with the b and g strings down an eighth tone and the low e string down a quarter tone. that removes the song from the boundaries of western theory. while there's a prominent accidental on the b-flat (tuned down a quartertone), it's otherwise basically in g (but centered around it's relative minor, e, tuned down a quartertone).
the minor seventh strums through all the microtones and ends on the high e, which is correctly in tune and sort of rings out of the piece. so, it brings your ear to it - it's tonal clarity in a sea of harmonic confusion.
loop isolated on aug 7, 2014.
there's a pizzicato bass line for the piece that i may or may not add to the loop. i'm expecting not to.
but, i just love the way the syncopated cowboy ramones drums interact with the slightly metallic psychedelic grunge riff and the soaring gazey guitar tremolo. the thing that makes the loop, though, is that carefully placed minor seventh chord.
i can listen to this for hours. maybe you might, too.
http://jasonparent.bandcamp.com/track/angular-momentum
i compose/record by ear and work out the details after the fact (mostly for soloing), but i think the reason the minor seventh works so well is the microtonal tuning. all of the guitars are purposefully slightly "out of tune", with the b and g strings down an eighth tone and the low e string down a quarter tone. that removes the song from the boundaries of western theory. while there's a prominent accidental on the b-flat (tuned down a quartertone), it's otherwise basically in g (but centered around it's relative minor, e, tuned down a quartertone).
the minor seventh strums through all the microtones and ends on the high e, which is correctly in tune and sort of rings out of the piece. so, it brings your ear to it - it's tonal clarity in a sea of harmonic confusion.
loop isolated on aug 7, 2014.
Wednesday, August 6, 2014
you know, they say that understanding hand signals are a sign of extreme intelligence in the animal kingdom. pretty much only elephants can pull it off, apparently. and, the evidence is mounting that elephants are even smarter than chimps are.
anybody that's had a dog realizes they can understand pointing, but apparently only with training. i'm a little skeptical. some dog psychologist will appear on the thread and argue the dog understands the pointing due to prior conditioning, but i don't feel the argument would hold up if really challenged.
regardless of the status of dogs, i just met a skunk that understood my hand signals. it noticed me sitting there and put it's tail up. but, a little wave of the hand was enough to realize i did not desire to harm it and sent it off in the direction i wanted to send it in.
speciesism aside, i really think we've got animals all wrong. i'm not suggesting some kind of disney alter-reality or something. there's certainly a bar to cross-species communication in terms of cognitive ability to comprehend attempts to communicate, but my experience suggests to me that that bar is really set fairly low, especially amongst mammals.
anybody that's had a dog realizes they can understand pointing, but apparently only with training. i'm a little skeptical. some dog psychologist will appear on the thread and argue the dog understands the pointing due to prior conditioning, but i don't feel the argument would hold up if really challenged.
regardless of the status of dogs, i just met a skunk that understood my hand signals. it noticed me sitting there and put it's tail up. but, a little wave of the hand was enough to realize i did not desire to harm it and sent it off in the direction i wanted to send it in.
speciesism aside, i really think we've got animals all wrong. i'm not suggesting some kind of disney alter-reality or something. there's certainly a bar to cross-species communication in terms of cognitive ability to comprehend attempts to communicate, but my experience suggests to me that that bar is really set fairly low, especially amongst mammals.
Tuesday, August 5, 2014
somebody talked me into updating my cd list, so i spent most of the
night last night doing that. it was something i was going to do soon
anyways; that's one of the reasons i'm going to get some wood to build
some shelves. but it means i didn't get any recording done.
it's up here, if you're curious.
now, i should add the caveat that it's pretty thin regarding releases after about 2002 and especially after 2005. this is partly because i haven't had a lot of cash to blow on cds and partly because the wide variety of options for downloading music have meant that the cash i did have was often perceived as better spent elsewhere. not having to take chances on discs anymore has also drastically reduced the amount of time i've spent listening to things. back in the 90s, you'd take a chance on something and then force yourself to listen to it at least ten times to be sure you don't like it. nowadays, i think we all tend to write things off without giving them the time they might need, while gravitating towards things that appeal to us as instant gratification and/or make it instantly clear that the complexity level is off the wall. there's a good and bad side to that - it increases the amount of music you're exposed to and in the process gets you closer to what you really want, but it also abolishes a certain aspect of subtlety. i try not to be a hypocrite, but i can't defy arithmetic. what i will say is that the list of planned purchases for discs released after 2005 is both very long and very weeded out by much listening. as a collector, i still have a prerogative to buy discs, but that is something that is usually going to happen when the disc is five-ten years old and i'm convinced i like it enough to add it to the collection.
i'm going to be weeding the collection out slightly, but the truth is it's already been weeded out. the three aims in the collection right now are related to rarity, quality and the label the thing was released on. so, i've got a lot of constellation stuff, for example, that i very rarely listen to but have no interest in discarding due to the collector quality of the label. that issue accounted for, this is a relatively elite list of music produced before 2005. the guilty pleasures are mostly connected to 90s grunge discs that i know are bad but can't bring myself to discard because i like rocking out to them from time to time.
there are reviews attached to the first dozen or so entries in the list. i'm not at all prioritizing this at the moment, but i will eventually come back to it, and when i do i'll be trying to address the holes in the list created by mp3s replacing physical discs.
i'll be recording tonight.
http://dghjdfsghkrdghdgja.appspot.com/categories/music/index/index.html
if there's anything (new or old) that you think is a glaring omission, let me know. i'd say chances are that i'm familiar with it, and i can let you know if it's in the list or not and how i'd rank it.
it's up here, if you're curious.
now, i should add the caveat that it's pretty thin regarding releases after about 2002 and especially after 2005. this is partly because i haven't had a lot of cash to blow on cds and partly because the wide variety of options for downloading music have meant that the cash i did have was often perceived as better spent elsewhere. not having to take chances on discs anymore has also drastically reduced the amount of time i've spent listening to things. back in the 90s, you'd take a chance on something and then force yourself to listen to it at least ten times to be sure you don't like it. nowadays, i think we all tend to write things off without giving them the time they might need, while gravitating towards things that appeal to us as instant gratification and/or make it instantly clear that the complexity level is off the wall. there's a good and bad side to that - it increases the amount of music you're exposed to and in the process gets you closer to what you really want, but it also abolishes a certain aspect of subtlety. i try not to be a hypocrite, but i can't defy arithmetic. what i will say is that the list of planned purchases for discs released after 2005 is both very long and very weeded out by much listening. as a collector, i still have a prerogative to buy discs, but that is something that is usually going to happen when the disc is five-ten years old and i'm convinced i like it enough to add it to the collection.
i'm going to be weeding the collection out slightly, but the truth is it's already been weeded out. the three aims in the collection right now are related to rarity, quality and the label the thing was released on. so, i've got a lot of constellation stuff, for example, that i very rarely listen to but have no interest in discarding due to the collector quality of the label. that issue accounted for, this is a relatively elite list of music produced before 2005. the guilty pleasures are mostly connected to 90s grunge discs that i know are bad but can't bring myself to discard because i like rocking out to them from time to time.
there are reviews attached to the first dozen or so entries in the list. i'm not at all prioritizing this at the moment, but i will eventually come back to it, and when i do i'll be trying to address the holes in the list created by mp3s replacing physical discs.
i'll be recording tonight.
http://dghjdfsghkrdghdgja.appspot.com/categories/music/index/index.html
if there's anything (new or old) that you think is a glaring omission, let me know. i'd say chances are that i'm familiar with it, and i can let you know if it's in the list or not and how i'd rank it.
while it's always prudent to absorb state media with a large dose of skepticism, and i'm not able to translate from russian myself, i don't see anything contentious in the video. vice is reporting similar images and perspectives from a pro-western perspective. while this is no doubt spliced to present a message, i think that message should be taken rather seriously.
what struck me about the perspectives in the video is how flabbergasted people are at what's happening - just this absolute level of disbelief that what they're experiencing could really be possible.
and, when you step back from the propaganda, it's hard not to share that view. all of this nonsense and violence over some abstract geopolitics that most of these people don't seem to have the slightest clue about....
what struck me about the perspectives in the video is how flabbergasted people are at what's happening - just this absolute level of disbelief that what they're experiencing could really be possible.
and, when you step back from the propaganda, it's hard not to share that view. all of this nonsense and violence over some abstract geopolitics that most of these people don't seem to have the slightest clue about....
Monday, August 4, 2014
i'm going to weigh in here as an anarcho-socialist, rather than a marxist. i haven't watched this yet, but i've read a handful of his books...
it's actually very easy to agree with sutton from the left. it's a little harder to say "therefore, hayekian liberalism", but he's not actually contradicting anything at all in the leftist tradition, and it's for two reasons:
1) marx was aware that he was an authoritarian. if you read marx carefully, his dictatorship of the proletariat is more or less an update on the existing prussian status quo of "enlightened despotism". he often agreed more with conservatives like burke or hobbes than with liberals like paine or rousseau or even proudhon. there's a large amount of marxist literature that reduces happiness and freedom to some kind of illusion and argues that the slave will be happy if she is taught to be happy, and never under any other circumstance. a great deal of it is actually about ways to brainwash slaves into happiness so they can be more productive. there's your cultural marxism, and it's exactly what the capitalists ordered! if you read the capitalist engels carefully, there's a few points where he more or less admits it. read his history of christianity, it's very eye-opening as to the reasons he was promoting this guy. if marx was alive today, most people would consider him a fascist rather than a socialist.
2) there were plenty of socialists that realized this well before the shit hit the fan. we refer to them today as anarchists, but the separation at the time was not very strong. there was actually even a break in the international as a result of marx' open, clear authoritarian tendencies. anarchist socialists like bakunin were entirely aware that the marxist approach of centralizing power into these committees would not somehow lead to communism but would be co-opted by capitalists and produce untold human misery. so, he wanted to smash the state yesterday rather than through some weird process of proletariat dictatorship. there were plenty of socialists alive in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries that predicted the results of marxism and fought violently against it. unfortunately, as the bolsheviks had capital on their side, they were able to destroy all the real socialists. and, something similar happened in spain.
so, the way to read sutton from the left is as verification of the early anarchist polemics against marx. and, this is certainly also the empirical way to read it
further, there's plenty of literature on the left that is very similar to sutton's in terms of analysis, if not in terms of proposals. i've heard chomsky say all the same things. it's consistent with zinn's writings. &etc.
Svelt Man
good post. i am of the left too and am finding all this illuminating and basically irrefutable.
maersklandro
Dude is a fucking moron. Lying moron propagandist for the right.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vftNpSXUOU8
Barry Smyth
Said the left wing looney.
maersklandro
Looney? Maybe. At least I'm not full of shit like this guy right here.
This clown didn't have a clue about industry and technology.
He's just talking out his ass and his asshat cult following are simply lapping it up.
Libertarian Views Scotty M
+maersklandro http://static.comicvine.com/uploads/original/1/12397/3653741-baby-crying-1884717.jpg
deathtokoalas
as a leftist, i sometimes cringe at sutton's proposals. but, his research is rigorous and his analysis is spot on. you should try and listen a little more closely rather than write it off. i mean, you need to put "socialist" in quotes the way he uses it or replace it with "vulgar marxists" or something (he often does this himself) but there's otherwise not really a very strong political component in his work. if the lecture was spoken by chomsky, you wouldn't react like that. those are the kind of blinders that keep us at each other's backs.
maersklandro
His research is not rigorous nor his analysis spot on. And you clearly aren't a leftist if you believe that.
Anyone who knows anything about some of the technical matters he touches upon cringes at his ragingly arrogant ignorance and stupidity on the matter of Soviet technological and scientific development.
Dude knows (knew) fucking nothing about Soviet technology and parallel and original development.
Go watch 'The Engines That Came In From The Cold! (The Soviet Moon Program)' for just one example of what I'm talking about.
That bloody moron would have had us believe the soviets couldn't manufacture a ball bearing.
Nothing further from the truth. Just another right wing moron historical revisionist.
Libertarian Views Scotty M
+maersklandro Oh he isn't lying, one only needs to read the history of the likes of Alexander Hamilton to see what he advocated. This is the same Alexander Hamilton who founded the First National Bank of the United States of America, a Banker. Alexander Hamilton was strongly opposed to the Articles of Confederation because he wanted more power to the National Government. If that's not Socialist, what is? He was a strong supporter and advocate of central planning of the economy, again, if that's not Socialist, what is? Someone who greatly increased taxation and was a supporter of protectionist tariffs. If that's not Socialist, what is? The fact is, all of those things are Socialist, you just don't like those facts, you can't stand facts.
You are the typical lefty that despises the practice of Socialism because you can't bare to see that what Socialism really is, (not what you dream of) is a disaster. If anyone is thick enough to sit and deny central planning of the economy isn't Socialist, then they don't understand Marxism, this is how stupid Socialists are.
I wonder who Alexander Hamilton's arch-rival was, hmmm? I wonder who? Maybe it was Thomas Jefferson, the Classical Liberal Capitalist, perhaps? And what did Alexander Hamilton support more power to National Government for? Well because he wanted to subsidize businesses from the public, make the public poorer to fund the rich. He was the founder of Crony Capitalism in America. That's right, the Socialist founded Crony Capitalism. Now go stick your two fingers down the back of your throat, because that fact makes you sick.
Oh and he maybe a revisionist in your eyes, but when it comes down to it, where do you think the Soviet Union was getting the capital to fund all those things? That's right, Capitalist countries, why? Because 100% of your capital (money) is produced by Capitalism. Without Capitalism, you wouldn't have money.
Barry Smyth
+maersklandro Ha! The Soviet moon program was one of the several reasons why the USSR collapsed when ever the government is way too involved in economic life collapsed is bound to happen. Wars, economic central planning. The Space industry was a big drain on the economy, no wonder it caused the technological lag behind the rest of the world.
Barry Smyth
+maersklandro Cult following you have some nerve one name> Noam Chomsky
Libertarian Views Scotty M
+Barry Smith Agreed, central planning was detrimental, just look at Nikita Krushchev who boasted that their Soviet scientific socialism would be better than anything Capitalism could ever provide. Yep, which is why by 1991 it collapsed lol
deathtokoalas
+Scotty M as mentioned, russian science was heavily dependent on technology that was taken from the germans after wwII. it was also heavily driven by espionage. they weren't a little behind, they were dramatically behind.
but this doesn't have anything to do with socialism or capitalism. it has to do with a ridiculous czarist state that kept russia in the dark ages into the twentieth century v the large amount of state expenditure in the anglosphere that invested heavily in science for the benefit of the mercentalist and capitalist classes. that heavy state subsidization of industry is the reason our technological sector is so developed.
the soviets made some advances in terms of quality of living. those advances would have also been made under fascist or capitalist states. the key wasn't any single type of collectivist statism, but ditching the czarist hierarchy, which simply didn't care about the population.
there's simply not any way they could have competed immediately, even if bolshevism actually was comparable to socialism in any meaningful sense. they would have had to spend a very long time catching up first, which would have required the massive state expenditure that is only possible under capitalism. this is according to marx, remember. and, as they couldn't do something that defied all economic sense (marxist or otherwise), they collapsed before they caught up.
Libertarian Views Scotty M
+deathtokoalas You fail to understand socialism, because socialism has nothing to do with liberty or democracy, it's a contradiction of both, and what it does is suppresses innovation, destroys incentives to be creative and to work. Because of socialism's fixated nature, it lacks innovation.
deathtokoalas
+Scotty M can you define socialism for me, scotty?
thanks.
Libertarian Views Scotty M
+deathtokoalas Well Socialism is not about workers control over production, that's for sure, it's not what you have in theory, even the theory alone of Socialism is deeply flawed. You can never put theory above practice and yes the true face of Socialism was plastered all over the Soviet Union, even in Nazi Germany. Socialism's defining ethic is government coercion, which is dangerous. It's all about THE PLAN and when it comes down to it, Socialism is all about central planning of the economy. In order to carry out THE PLAN, you need THE PLANNERS, who are the government, they are the ones who carry out the distribution.
By definition and theory, it is social ownership of production, about sharing more or less, however the reality of Socialism is, it always leads into the hands of the few, basically the small elite. We have tonnes of historical evidence to prove of this evidence.
deathtokoalas
+Scotty M well, i agree with part of what you're saying. i posted a long comment on the video about the difference between marxist/authoritarian "socialism" (which is indeed quite similar to fascism both in theory and in practice) and anti-authoritarian, decentralized anarchist socialism.
as you know, socialism is the idea that production should be socially rather than privately owned. you can imagine that i've had many debates with people that don't know this. that's why i asked you to define it for me.
this really doesn't have any implications about central planning. for example, one could take the syndicalist position that the workers that work in the factory ought to own the factory. those factories may then compete on a market, and all the liberal market theory would continue to apply. this would merely remove a level of bureaucratic waste in the management of the factory. nor does it imply anything about big or small government. a real advocate of small government ought to see something of value in removing the management class. it's the same argument.
personally, i am not in favour of centralized planning. i think production ought to be primarily local, and run for the benefit of the citizens in the region rather than carry out the multi-year plans produced by the centralized bodies of large corporations. there's not any contradiction arising between my rejection of centralized planning and my view that production should work for social purposes, rather than to generate profit for an elite class of people.
as i pointed out in my post, the historical fact is that both the bolsheviks and nazis killed millions of socialists that were fighting against their goal to centralize everything in the hands of a totalitarian state. you can have these arguments with marxists, and they'll mostly play into your mischaracterizations, because a lot of your perceptions about them are, indeed, largely accurate. but you need to be careful in generalizing those views to socialism in a larger context, because they are simply not applicable in full generalization.
as an anarcho-socialist, i can agree with a lot of hayek's analysis. it's his conclusions that i find fault with.
i just want to add something about coercion, because the argument reduces to property rights. i can talk abstractly about how localizing production into social bodies doesn't need to produce coercion, but i do realize that some coercion is inevitable. but, i'm going to use an extreme example to demonstrate a point. laws against rape are technically coercive, but we universally acknowledge their validity due to some abstraction of the non-aggression principle. i like the non-aggression principle for negative rights, but i feel it's lacking for positive rights and should be extrapolated to something more social. what i'm getting at is that this kind of arrangement is only coercive on people that want to demonstrate anti-social behaviour.
now, you can compare that to a more traditional market society. it always makes me laugh when people argue that markets are voluntary. the only way that markets can be truly voluntary is if market relations only exist on top of a system of full distributive justice. that is, you can only talk about free and voluntary association in a market system if it's regarding the exchange of luxury items. basic necessities need to be taken for granted. there's plenty of classical liberals that have realized this and derived the idea of a minimum income to adjust for it. theory aside, i have to say i'd be largely satisfied with liberalism if the minimum income were to be worked into it, as it would provide me with the ability for real and voluntary association.
but, if you don't take that into account, markets place the vast majority of people (that is, people in the proletariat) with the choice of working or starving. there's nothing free or voluntary about that. it's the whole basis of the left anarchist desire to abolish markets as fundamentally oppressive, coercive institutions.
so, you're left with a choice between the kind of coercion that is inherent in markets (work or starve) and the kind of coercion that is inherent in communism (work towards the common good or be ostracized). they're both coercive, but one is a far more altruistic and acceptable type of coercion than the other. nobody is going to argue laws against rape should be abolished because they are coercive, even though they are clearly coercive. likewise, i have a difficulty taking people seriously when they argue that a social order that promotes sharing over hoarding is bad because it is coercive.
maersklandro
+Barry Smith You don't know shit. The USSR collapsed because the people running it and the people running 'the free world' wanted it to collapse.
And because of the petrodollar and bretton woods monetary system that basically crowned the US the hegemon of world.
BTW, capitalism collapses in an instant if it ceases to exponentially inflate its money supply. Because without that there is nowhere for profits and the firm's expenses towards other firms to come from.
They can't come out of nothing. For someone to be able to pay their suppliers, let alone register a profit, someone else HAS to not even be able to pay their suppliers.
Unless, of course, the money supply grows continually to provide the missing monies for most of the firms in the economy to at least cover their expenses with their suppliers.
What, you thought you can get something out of nothing (profit, expenses towards other businesses)?
That's just insanity, religion. Not science.
Modern economics is not even pseudo-science. It's glorified religion.
There absolutely nothing scientific about it.
No, the money for your suppliers has to come out of a printing press.
The money the stockholders, the employees and other people take out of what the firm takes in is less than 100%. So they can't recycle the difference between what they take out of the firm and what the firm takes in.
Because the difference is what goes out to the firm's suppliers. That is to say, mostly other firms.
So people can't pay that back directly to the firm because they never get the money directly from the firm to give it back to it. And all firms are like this because all firms directly take in from either people or other businesses more than what they directly pay out to people, either as dividends, wages, rents, whatever.
The shortfall has to be continually made up by the printing press, which has to print ever faster because of the law of diminishing returns (inflation).
Of course, I doubt you could understand any of that.
Käptn Kook
+maersklandro "BTW, capitalism collapses in an instant if it ceases to exponentially inflate its money supply."
inflation is not capitalism.... its an outcome of central bank state capitalism..exactly what sutton fights against.
deathtokoalas
+Käptn Kook but, you need inflation to fight against the concentration of resources. he's right - and sutton is wrong - on this point. capitalism is impossible without inflation.
this isn't a theoretical consideration, either. it's historical fact. we tried this, under a system called the "gold standard". it was an absolute catastrophe - it caused the depression. europe tried a similar system recently with the euro, and it's also been a disaster. and, any other attempts to abolish inflation will likewise be disastrous...
Libertarian Views Scotty M
You need inflation to fight the concentration of resources? One of the beautiful things about a free market is the fact that there is no possible way for you to become successful and prosper without providing for your consumers and if you cannot provide for your consumers your competition will wipe the floor with you. A Capitalist system is not about special privileges and this religious need to try and connect Capitalism to that is desperation because there is no other argument left.
It is within fact that under a Capitalist system you have no bailouts. Saying that you require inflation referring to the higher costs is ludicrous really and what contradicts that is the fact that private businesses main goal is to make profits and how do you maximise your profits? You maximise profits by minimising your costs, that essentially means using the fewest resources as possible, not abusing it. Furthermore private land owners have the incentive to look after their land and resources because land can appreciate in value or depreciate, why would any private land owner wish to depreciate the value of his land? That would run him at a loss, he wouldn't have the incentive to.
Turn your attention now to the government who didn't have to work for your money, is there any risk at hand over how government spends YOUR money that YOU earned? No, it didn't have to work for it. Isn't it funny how government council housed areas look like World War 2 had just finished, yet private land and housing looks immaculate? I wonder why that must be?
What you have stated is not historical fact especially when you talk about the disaster of the Gold Standard, Tom Woods already flattened your argument on the Gold Standard explaining the reason for the boom and bust cycle of the 19th Century was due to the trying and testing of the paper currency, nothing to do with the Gold Standard. In fact between 1700 to 1930 the Gold Standard was stable in Great Britain. In the 1920s with the Federal Reserve stepping in with Open Market Operations in 1922 stripping the Gold Standard away and printing fiat currency out of thin air, that is part of what led to the Great Depression. So where do you get the idea from that the Gold Standard was a disaster?
The € currency is a disaster because IT IS a fiat currency with nothing backing it and many nation states using the one currency with different tax and spend policies, so how you think that pans out when the ECB (European Central Bank) tries to set ONE interest rate across different nations with different tax and spend policies? A disaster.
Did your school put you up to this? Your school needs educated on economics.
Käptn Kook
+deathtokoalas this is what mainstream economists try to tell you. listen to what "austrian school of economics" say, and you'll see what the real issue was. certainly not the so called "gold standard".
its both neoclassical and neoliberal myth, that you need inflation. thats exactly on of the biggest issues we have in our economy today. the skewing of prices and interest rates trough inflation. its societies problem since a century now.
so, inflation is neither capitalistic, nor is it necessary. its one of the biggest causes of economic crisis.
deathtokoalas
+Libertarian Views Scotty M
it's new years eve. i'm not reading this right now. i'd rather smoke a joint than argue about market theory. give me a few days to come back to this. i'll leave it open in a tab.
but, the basic point is that the theory underlying capitalism is essentially garbage. there is absolutely no empirical evidence that suggests that any of these "equilibrium" points can ever actually happen. what empirical evidence - and, in fact, they teach this in first year economics nowadays - suggests is that a market is an imaginary ideal that immediately collapses into an oligarchy. if you take the state away, and leave markets in place, you don't get this utopian fantasy that you call capitalism. what you get is feudalism: power concentrated in the hands of a small elite, and a mass of starving peasants.
further, it's not a question of whether this is desirable or not. i mean, it is - for me. you probably don't care. which separates you from the core liberal thinkers, who actually did. they weren't evil, they were just naive.
from your perspective, it's a question of whether it's sustainable - and it isn't. even if you get to be the feudal baron, which you no doubt think you will, you can't withstand an onslaught of billions of people. all you end up with, in the end, is massive guerrilla warfare and literal, textbook anarchy.
i'll state this again: i didn't read your post. i'll come back to this in a few days.
Libertarian Views Scotty M
I'll leave it at that.
maersklandro
+Käptn Kook
Yet another right wing ignorant moron. You can't have capitalism without a geometrically growing money supply.
There's nowhere for businesses' profits and operating expenses towards other businesses to come from without money supply growth.
It's bloody hilarious how such a simple realization escapes you right wing zombies.
Ignorance and stupidity, thy name is right wing electorate.
Käptn Kook
do yu even read little asshole? dumb fuck.. i wont talk to you anymore.
Libertarian Views Scotty M
Wouldn't bother arguing with that ignorance, there was no requirement of the contraction of the Gold Standard, this I already stated but ignorance turns a blind eye to this fact. Last but not least the very reason our economy ended up in the mess it did was the result of inflation, the fact these people think inflation is a positive thing speaks for itself, I mean how stupid can you possibly get? Increasing the costs of your living does not equate to positivity, it means you're poorer. But that's okay, let's live in a backwards world they live in and pretend that's what leads to prosperity.
The laughable part is, the contraction of the paper currency which leads to the devaluation of the currency and costs of living going up means your purchasing power is driving down and you're becoming poorer, but that's okay, we'll choose to ignore that fact because we're all ignorant.
deathtokoalas
+Libertarian Views Scotty M
do you realize that what actually happened was that they ran out of gold?
a monetary supply needs to increase as the population increases. more people. therefore, more money. makes sense, right?
inflation is a necessary side effect of this. and capitalism cannot function without a sufficient level of capital to circulate.
what's insane and should be abolished is not inflation, it's interest. you leave your money in the bank, and it magically gains value? that's absurd.
if you're going to refuse to spend your money, it should lose value - as an incentive to spend it.
let me respond to some of your points.
"One of the beautiful things about a free market is the fact that there is no possible way for you to become successful and prosper without providing for your consumers and if you cannot provide for your consumers your competition will wipe the floor with you."
in theory, perhaps - albeit not in practice. in practice, firms collude with each other to harm consumers. competition is irrational, so firms will seek to avoid it at essentially all costs. your theory rests on the assumption that firms will behave irrationally for the benefit of consumers. a proper model needs to understand that firms are in collusion with each other, and in conflict with consumers - not in conflict with each other for the benefit of consumers. that is, it needs a class analysis.
but this actually has nothing to do with the money supply, or why it needs to continue to expand in order for capitalism to function.
"It is within fact that under a Capitalist system you have no bailouts."
bailouts don't have anything to do with inflation, either.
what we call a "bailout" is actually an interest-bearing loan - and the state always comes out ahead, because it collects the interest. so, in the end, there's no inflation from bailouts. the money that was created ends up destroyed when it's returned, and the state generates a profit out of it. rather, it functions as a kind of fine put in place for irresponsible behaviour.
but i don't dispute your claim so much as i question whether it's a good idea. this abstraction of stateless capitalism would indeed cause large banking institutions to collapse when they fail. and, then what? well, all the depositors would lose all their wealth. if you had a nest egg in that institution, it would merely cease to exist. that is something that also happened in the depression, and in fact the reason we erected the state to act as a lender of last resort - essentially an insurance company. you had people wandering the streets because the banks destroyed all their savings. this was rightly understood as unfair, so a system was created to counteract it.
you might argue in favour of private bank insurance. but, then you're just arguing for the status quo, because that's all the system that exists really is - except that a private system of bank insurance would (like private healthcare) ensure far less people at a far greater cost.
"Saying that you require inflation referring to the higher costs is ludicrous really and what contradicts that is the fact that private businesses main goal is to make profits and how do you maximise your profits?"
you seem to be confusing inflation in the money supply with inflation in prices. these are not the same thing and should not be confused, as you seem to be doing.
there is no formula for price inflation. that's the basic idea of a market system - that prices should be allowed to go up and down based on the costs of production. in the modern economy, this is determined by things like weather (the weather in california has increased the price of strawberries in canada), oil, currency exchange, etc. of course, we essentially never see prices come down when the costs of production decrease and we often see exaggerated price increases (price-gauging).
the cpi has almost nothing to do with inflation in the money supply.
"You maximise profits by minimising your costs, that essentially means using the fewest resources as possible, not abusing it."
that's exactly the point. firms will spend the least amount that they can, and will consequently end up sitting on profits. over time, all the money trickles up to the top, leaving nothing left for the unwashed masses to trade with. so, you either need to create more money for the masses to trade with or you need to find a way to redistribute that wealth.
now, i'm a socialist. i'd prefer the latter, actually - the abolition of currency altogether. but, if we're stuck with capitalism, we need the money generation to prevent mass poverty in the lower classes - and i'll take that choice over the alternative.
i've never heard of tom woods, and google doesn't suggest he's somebody i should take particularly seriously. britain was a horribly unequal and terrible place to live in the nineteenth century, and not something that should be held up as a model - if that's what you mean by "stable", there's a cross of gold out back for you to crucify yourself on. i'm expressing the dominant academic understanding of the situation. if you want to make more specific arguments, i'll be glad to entertain them.
the problem that greece, especially, is dealing with is an inability to print money. it's stuck with an over-valued currency that it cannot deflate, which has completely ravaged it's economy. there's various answers to this conundrum, but my point is that this is the same basic problem that the gold standard predictably produces and will be produced here if that kind of inflexibility presents itself in the money supply.
Käptn Kook
your understanding is grotesk, deathtokoalas. what you think is just ill. did you ast least gather information from "the austrian school of economy" like people asked you to?
or did you just dismiss them, because you learned these ideas you are perpetuating somewhere more thrustworthy?
getting rid of interest is such a no go. makes the whole inflation desaster even worse.
if there is no fiat money, saving your money in banks would release more capacities for investments. and lending your money would not even make sense, if you would not get any interest out of it. you have now less than before... very bad motivation for savings.
but what am i trying here... if you are not able to at least consider watching a speech of tom woods, why should i bother explaining you this?!
deathtokoalas
+Käptn Kook well, i didn't say i wouldn't consider watching something if you had a link; i did suggest that i probably wasn't going to read his book unless you sold me on it a bit, though - libertarian monetary theory isn't really my idea of a good read. sorry.
you're going to have to explain to me how you come up with the idea that reducing the money supply is going to increase lending. but, if you've got some kind of argument, feel free to present it.
when i was in university, i studied mathematics, which is a sort of an unusually interdisciplinary thing to study. nobody really has a serious separate undergraduate math department, so you end up taking a series of specialized courses for other disciplines, and, there's your math degree - although they ban you from taking the too easy stuff, like math for psychiatry.
so, i took math courses for physicists, math courses for chemists, math courses for biologists, math courses for computer scientists (and perhaps linguists), and even a few math courses for math courses, although mostly at the graduate level - and, also, math courses for economists.
i was always a little withdrawn, but you get to talking to people in classes, or overhearing conversations. i remember hearing an economics exchange student once explain it something like this:
you study economics because you think that's where the money is, in the economy. but, in the first year they teach you about market theory. then, in the second year they teach you that market theory is wrong. then, in the third year they just start making things up, and then it's all just making stuff up from there.
that kind of stuck with me as an interesting synopsis.
but, here's the thing: now they teach you that market theory is wrong in first year, so you don't walk out of first year thinking it's useful.
Libertarian Views Scotty M
Yeah, because Socialism is such a wonderful read, so wonderful it destroyed my country Scotland.
maersklandro
+deathtokoalas That's not the only reason the money supply has to increase. It primarily has to increase because businesses' expenses towards other businesses and their own profits have nowhere to come from except either money supply growth or other people or businesses' losses.
Libertarian Views Scotty M
Your monetary supply growth is what devalues the base of the currency and drives up inflation making the poor poorer.
maersklandro
+Libertarian Views Scotty M Not necessarily. If the newly issued money is distributed perfectly equally, it will actually make the poorest 50% richer (through their nominal wealth growing faster than the money supply) and the richest 50% poorer (through their nominal wealth growing slower than the money supply).
If you and I have $100 and $25 to our names, respectively, for a total money supply of $125 and we each get $10 of newly printed money, the money supply will grow to $145 for a percentual money supply growth of 16%.
Per $ purchasing power, at least in the short term, will be 86.20% what it used to be before the new money was printed.
Meaning that each dollar would only buy what 86 cents used to before the new money supply grew.
However, my nominal wealth will have grown by 40%. Taking that into account as well as the loss of purchasing power, we see that my actual purchasing power is :
1.4 x 125 / 145 = 1.2068... or a 20.7% increase in actual wealth.
Your nominal wealth will have increased from $100 to $110, for a nominal growth of 10%.
1.1 x 125 / 145 = 0.9482... or a 5.17% contraction of actual wealth.
There you go, mathematically proven that printing money and distributing it equally to everyone in society helps the poor and hurts the rich.
Of course, I don't expect an obtuse, ignorant, lying right winger to admit the simple mathematical fact I just outlined.
deathtokoalas
+maersklandro
it's kind of the same statement. the fact that the upward flow of capital is zero-sum is only a systemic problem under capitalism in the context of exhaustion, but what you're saying is basically a restatement of what i'm saying. capitalism is all about gaining at another's expense, after all. that's no travesty, it's the point. but the game needs sufficient circulation in order to be played, or everything dries up.
deathtokoalas
+Libertarian Views Scotty M
this always blows my mind, although i've seen it before: the market fundamentalist that opposes price changes.
currency exchange is only a minor factor in price-setting, and currency inflation is only a minor factor in currency exchange. you're supposed to be the Market Man. you're supposed to know these things.
i mean, it can make a difference, sure. the canadian dollar is down. bananas are up 20%. but, the canadian dollar is down because the petro-dollar is up and oil prices are down. our central bank has nothing to do with this.
i just don't get this. market advocates are supposed to be all hunky dory about price fluctuations - it's stability, it's fairness, it allows producers to pass on costs and savings to consumers. what happened to all that stuff?
it's all been replaced by this absurd reading of friedman.
i mean, ok: if a central bank increases it's money supply by 50%, that's going to make a difference.
but, you can't even measure the tweaks they make, most of the time. it's such a minor factor in real-life inflation that it's not even worth noting.
deathtokoalas
+maersklandro
i think you've effectively demonstrated how specious economic logic can be, when scratched a little bit.
kind of an off the wall assumption about purchasing power, don't you think?
Käptn Kook
just anyone.. please shut up.. with this nonsense.
deathtokoalas
+Käptn Kook i think i broke this one.
maersklandro
+deathtokoalas No, it's not the same statement.
You're saying that the money supply needs to grow with the population.
I'm saying it even needs to grow if the population is contracting.
It needs to grow continually, as long as there is capitalist / monetarist, private, for profit, dispersed / decentralized economic activity.
Otherwise there's nowhere for the money required for profits and expenses towards other businesses (subcontractors, suppliers) to come from, except other people and businesses' losses.
Basically, there's a net purchasing power deficit inherent to capitalism.
And there's also net directional money flows in capitalism. From retail businesses to capital goods manufacturing and servicing businesses. And from people to businesses, because all businesses take in more money directly from either people or other businesses than they pay back out directly to people.
All of this need to be continually financed through the continual issuance of money ex nihilo. Which, because of the law of diminishing returns, needs to be geometrical.
And which, in capitalism, is done through interest bearing consumer loans such as home mortgage loans and car loans.
Until the credit market collapsed in 2008. Because capitalism is basically a pyramid scheme made up of several different pyramid schemes and simply can't run on forever.
When private borrowing and spending stops growing, let alone stops or even contracts, the government has to step in and create the needed monetary growth through deficit spending.
This is one of the reason capitalism requires population growth to function. It always needs more borrowers.
It's also why the banks lent to subprime borrowers (unemployed, unemployable, bereft of assets to pledge as collateral etc.).
And why illegal and legal immigration is tolerated. That and driving down the cost of labour.
When there isn't enough private borrowing or spending (because you've simply run out of borrowers you can lend to, no matter what you do), the government simply has to step in and borrow and spend through deficit spending to create the required money supply growth.
Which the fucktarded, drooling idiot right wing and their right wing electorate vehemently oppose.
As if :
1. money were scarce when there's tens, hundreds or even thousands of trillions of monetary units worldwide and growing.
2. money had intrinsic value when it doesn't and it's created out of nothing. This is closely tied in to 1.
3. money poofed and disappeared out of existence when spent by the government as part of deficit spending. Which is false, the money doesn't disappear. It goes to the private contractors hired by the government to the work it's funding through deficit spending.
That money will continue to percolate through the economy, paying for the production and rendering and consumption of goods and services.
And an even bigger, overarching problem is that the capitalism of the present and near future doesn't need employees all that much and needs fewer of them all the time even though it still needs consumers and borrowers, probably more than ever.
But you can't really have the latter without the formers.
What do you mean by 'off the wall assumption' of purchasing power?
In my argument, I used the (ideological enemy's) (assumption / presup)position of the right wingtard, that purchasing power of money is in an exact and immediate relationship of inverse proportionality to the money supply.
Libertarian Views Scotty M
Yes necessarily, you cannot make the poor richer off the back of printing fiat currency out of thin air which devalues the base of the currency and shoots the cost of living up at the same time. In fact it was primarily the reason for the wider gap between the rich and poor for what Labour Party caused between 1945 to 1979, the laughable thing is the rich are not affected by this because they hold all the assets.
For anyone to claim that printing fiat currency out of thin air can benefit the poor simply be redistribution of perfect equality is simply nonsense. The valuation of the purchasing power driving down does not equate to poor people becoming richer, it results in them becoming poorer as that is all they hold in hand for the work they do in exchange.
For every £1 and $1 you print there is a 1+ debt added to the currency, the more you print in circulation the lower the valuation of the currency, the higher your costs of living grows from that inflation of the paper currency, the poorer people become. That is why 50 odd years ago you could buy far more with £10 or $10 than you ever could today, to say otherwise is simply nonsense, or do you want to argue with historical recorded facts proving your Keynesian nonsense caused £5 trillion UK debt? This picture comes to mind:
http://static.guim.co.uk/sys-images/Guardian/Pix/pictures/2011/1/14/1295007178679/Margaret-Thatcher-MP-with-007.jpg
That was Lady Thatcher proving that initial point despite being a monetarist herself.
Yes, I don't expect ignorance like you to know any better, your wonderful money printing showed itself in Great Britain between 1945 to the 1970s where we became known as the sick man of Europe, but it seems to me you don't like recorded history now, do you? Doesn't seem like it, because that is precisely what led to the decline of the British economy. It is a simple fact that when you devalue the base of the currency it makes the poor poorer.
Secondly, this idea that you are creating egalitarianism when the rich are not affected by the devaluation of the paper currency itself is laughable, but that's not the major reason of what is flawed with your argument, the biggest flaw and hole in your argument is the question, what exactly is moral about the theft and violence by a government to steal tax money to redistribute? As for your mathematical nonsense? Please, you're speaking theoretically about egalitarianism when the history of Britain is contradicting you.
Nor do I expect an ignoramus like you to understand the only places in history that ever saw the wealth gap close were free markets like Hong Kong where the wealth gap closed between 1961 to 1997 meanwhile it was a widening of the wealth gap between 1945 to 1979. But I wouldn't expect you to understand the costs of living rising and purchasing power driving down making poor people poorer and rich people not affected by this to cause a wealth gap, because you're not intelligent enough to understand that.
Gaining at another's expense?
Yes, because Standard Oil reducing a barrel of oil from ¢30 a barrel to ¢5.9 cents a barrel by 1897 was gaining at others expense, wasn't it? It gained at others expense so much that John Davison Rockefeller enriched the whole of society and opened opportunity, the gate to Henry Ford's automobile industry, but I suppose no one benefited from that now, did they? Oh wait a minute, everyone's driving about in cars.
Yes it does blow your mind, because you're an economic illiterate, there is no such thing as a literate Socialist, it doesn't exist. Who in the right mind regardless of whether you're a Socialist that supports the mixed economy or just a Socialist in general thinks you can enact price controls and then expect efficiency at the other end of it? The only people who think government price controls are efficient, are those who do not understand the fundamental basics of economics and have never studied pricing.
I mean who in the right mind is daft enough to carry out a government price ceiling or price floor which inevitably causes the distortion of market value destroying the information of profits and losses and causes what we call the Economic Calculation Problem where government cannot calculate value rationally meaning that it cannot allocate scarce resources efficiently? I'll tell you who thinks that is rational, an economic illiterate.
If you understood the market son, you would know you do NOT set prices, that is exactly what causes waste and shortages and the misallocation of scarce resources, real value is what the market sets value and that is determined by consumers, so this idea about price setting is just ignorance. Does Venezuela and food shortages ring a bell after what government caused with its price ceiling? Does the housing bubble on the lead up to 2008 ring a bell with your wonderful Labour Party RENT CONTROLS ring a bell? Yeah well it should, because if you understood economics that is primarily the reason for the housing bubble, it caused a shortage.
"our central bank has nothing to do with this."
You're living in 2016 now and you don't understand the problem with central banking? I'm guessing you are a millenial, born after the year 2000, how can I tell? You're a brainwashed Marxist subject to the Marxist educational system under Obama, what a bloody joke. Are you trying to tell me your central banking system isn't a problem for why you're facing these problems today? Are you having a laugh?
"i just don't get this. market advocates are supposed to be all hunky dory about price fluctuations - it's stability, it's fairness, it allows producers to pass on costs and savings to consumers. what happened to all that stuff?"
Of course you don't, you haven't the intelligence to understand it, that's the reason why you don't get it. Prices fluctuate because value does not remain the same, what this proves is you do not understand prices, nor do you understand supply and demand, are you telling me the price should remain the same if you end up with a shortage of something? So how then do you know if you have a shortage? You don't, because that's what PRICES tell you, PRICES are signals, without the information of prices you don't hold the information, you don't know. This is why you are illiterate.
Absurd reading from Friedman?
More like understanding basic economics which you clearly do not.
From what the Federal Reserve caused on the lead up to the Great Depression which ignorance such as yourself attempted to try and blame the free market for? Please, you are the same type of stupid person who tried to blame Calvin Coolidge and tried making that fool FDR, that TYRANT out as if he was heroic, the same FDR who prolonged the Great Depression with all his Socialist government interventionist nonsense, argue with that historical fact and you will prove to me you don't know history.
deathtokoalas
+maersklandro i apologize for the late response. i got busy focusing on something more important to me. i'm de-nicing over the next few days, so i have some time.
"I'm saying it even needs to grow if the population is contracting."
that would not be accurate. you're assuming a sense of moral order that the capitalist class does not have. for historical examples of the consequences of such policies, see the disastrous levels of inequality in nineteenth century england. it would create a brutal, class-based society that may inevitably collapse - but capitalism is too short-sighted to see it's own inevitable decline, and too greedy to care about the consequences of inequality.
but, what does need to happen for capitalism to work, however crudely own defines 'work', is circulation. and, on that point we are making the same argument. whether we need to increase the money supply to ensure circulation in the face of decreasing dollars due to population growth or we need to increase the money supply to ensure circulation to offset the effects of accumulation, or we need to increase the money supply to ensure circulation for some other reason, we need to increase the money supply to ensure circulation. and, it's maybe a better idea to understand it at that higher level of abstraction, so you can recognize other equivalent concerns when you see them.
"Otherwise there's nowhere for the money required for profits and expenses towards other businesses (subcontractors, suppliers) to come from, except other people and businesses' losses."
but, capitalism can function just fine by circulating money only amongst those who own capital - so long as the existence of a feudal labour system is taken for granted. but, the money does at least have to come from other people's losses.
there's nothing preventing the system from running with a fixed money supply, so long as the money is circulating. it's just an awful system to contemplate - it basically necessitates slavery. the united states has operated under this system, and it did not collapse - people were just miserable within it.
"When there isn't enough private borrowing or spending (because you've simply run out of borrowers you can lend to, no matter what you do), the government simply has to step in and borrow and spend through deficit spending to create the required money supply growth."
that's not true, either - and your concept of money creation seems to, itself, be monetarist. government doesn't create money out of thin air. that's right-wing nonsense - propaganda, really. what it can do is liquidate assets and float them on a market in the form of bonds. banks can create money, but it's not the same thing.
if you can cut through the confusion in what you're saying, you're again assuming a concept of moral impetus that capitalism does not have built into it. we can allow the banks to fail. we can allow people to lose their homes. we can watch people starve on the streets and not help them. it's not pretty, but allowing these things to happen will not, in themselves, collapse the system - and, hence, your prescription is not necessary to uphold capitalism itself, but only necessary to minimize it's harmful effects - which capitalism does not, itself, see as necessary at all.
Libertarian Views Scotty M
Disastrous inequality in 19th Century England?
What an ignoramus, really?
What was the wealth like in Britain between 1650 to 1700 and then compare that to 1850 what was the wealth like then? You don't know, you're clueless, you just made something up in your own head in hope that someone didn't have an answer to flatten you with, I will later on.
Here is the reason you are a moron
Between 1650 to 1700 here is what the 3 class groups in wealth looked like:
EXTREMELY WEALTH
> consisted of 2% of the population
> held 80% of the wealth
MIDDLE CLASS
> consisted of 8% of the population
> held 10% of the wealth
WORKING CLASS
> consisted of 90% of the population
> held 10% of the wealth
NOTE: wealth in this period was measured largely by land and building ownership, take into consideration there is a slightly different measurement in the mid 19th Century as more had been introduced. Now that we can see the statistics from that period prior to the Industrial Revolution and note that the extremely wealthy who were the monarchy owned practically everything, there was barely anything left for the middle class and working class people, notice how the working class and middle class both held 10% wealth? Let's compare that to 1850:
EXTREMELY WEALTH
> consisted of 2% of the population
> held 30% of the wealth
MIDDLE CLASS
> consisted of 58% of the population
> held 50% of the wealth
WORKING CLASS
> consisted of 40% of the population
> held 20% of the wealth
Take note of this, as you can see the working class population dropped from 90% to 40% as they moved up into the middle class which is why the middle class moved from 8% of the population to 58% of the population. As you can see the middle class went from 10% wealth to 50% wealth and the working class went from 10% wealth to 20% wealth, the extremely wealthy went from 80% down to 30%, although the extremely wealthy became richer, you can see wealth disparity spread, there was more equality.
That's why you never trust a lefty with history.
The above proves lefties do nothing but talk shit.
maersklandro
+deathtokoalas I didn't say the state creates money. It doesn't. Most states have not issued any money for centuries. You're responding to points and assertions I never made.
The banks create money. And mostly the private banking system at large, very little of the money supply is actually created by the central bank. And that's a private bank too, even when the state is majority or even sole stakeholder.
Because the state doesn't issue money even when it's majority or sole stakeholder of the central bank.
If it had the power to issue money it would not need to borrow it, at interest, from the central bank or other banks.
It could simply issue the money it needs to finance the budget deficit itself, to itself, without needing to borrow it from anyone. So with no debt to pay it back, let alone with interest.
Only right wingers could claim that borrowing money from one's self, at interest, that one's self issued out of nothing to lend to one's self makes sense. So only right wingers claim the central bank is a state/government organ/institution.
And the state can't even borrow directly from the central bank. Through law in most countries, it has to do it through the intermediation of private banks which simply add more interest to the issued debt and perform no other role at all in the process. In the US these are called prime lenders.
Also, you're asserting I attributed morality to capitalism when saying that the money supply has to grow geometrically perpetually for capitalism to function, even when the population is stagnant or even contracting.
I did no such thing.
I explained that the reason for my assertion is that, without a continually geometrically expanding money supply, there is nowhere for businesses expenses towards other businesses, let alone profits, to come from except other people or businesses' loses.
Presumably, you extrapolated from this and assumed the reason I said capitalism would not work if business expenses and profits could only come from other parties' losses was because of some modicum of morality inherent in capitalism or something of the sort.
That's not what I believe at all.
I believe that without a perpetually geometrically expanding money supply (or if that money is not introduced into the real economy but instead withheld by the banking system and the sick fucks that work in or for them and own them), the real economy enters a contractionary spiral.
Like we saw in the Great Depression and we are seeing today, since 2007~8.
This could result in a reversion to feudalism, which would technically constitute a failure or collapse of capitalism.
Or, theoretically possibly, a revolution or uprising where capitalism is replaced with state capitalism or socialism. Or maybe even something completely different, like a Technocracy or RBE.
Capitalism can't operate fine with a static money supply.
Businesses can't operate and won't be operated when, because of the static money supply, there is less than a 50% chance of just breaking even, let alone registering a profit. And no new businesses would be started either, to replace those that went out of business.
Ownership of wealth and the money supply would concentrate even faster than in a 'functional' capitalist economy and more and more of the population would simply drop out of the economy altogether, with no means of income whatsoever and no or trivial savings.
Most people would quickly lose all of the little property they have by either it being confiscated by the banks they supposedly owe money to or them having to sell it themselves, at pennies on the dollar, to purchase food.
After they have nothing at all, if not long before that, they'd be forced to turn to crime, if they hadn't done so already, begging and panhandling or simply starve or die of exposure.
Capitalism goes into a spiral of economic contraction and wealth concentration which is untenable because of the social effects it has and either leads to feudalism or a revolution.
Or at the very least, significant political changes, normally to the left. At least that's what one would expect.
Unless, of course, the population is as stupid, ignorant and brainwashed as they are today.
Where the already heavily right wing thick as pig shit and ignorant electorate goes even further to the right with every failure of capitalism.
Also, the owner class of today's capitalist society will soon simply be able to mass exterminate everyone else using robots or technology. Which they would not have been able to do at the time of the great depression.
And they'll do it to, if they can. Especially as they don't need most people alive for slave or wage slave labour even today. As the vast majority of jobs today are either redundant or useless in the greater scheme of things or they can already be automated.
So either capitalism is overthrown and replaced with something other than neofeudalism soon, such as a Technocracy or RBE or communism with robots, or we're quickly headed towards the greatest genocide in human history.
There's no confusion in what I'm saying. You're reading and responding to things I never said. Or reading things into what I said that I never meant.
deathtokoalas
+Libertarian Views Scotty M i'm blocking scotty again. he's unable to put together a coherent argument, and not worth my time. but, i want to correct a few of the baseless accusations he put down in order to tear down the strawman he then tore down.
1) i would identify as gen x.
2) i've pointed out a few times that i'm from canada.
3) i reject marx. i think he was an authoritarian tyrant.
4) i do not actually advocate monetarism. i'm a leftist. monetarism is not a leftist type of thinking. i actually advocate the abolition of currency, and it's replacement by a needs-based system. this is a view that is more historically associated with anarchists like kropotkin. it is a very different proposed social order than scotty is suggesting i would support.
in all his huffing and puffing and finger pointing and baseless accusations and tearing down of strawmen, scotty never addressed the contradiction in viewing the market as a dynamic source of pricing and being deeply opposed to inflation. he doesn't seem to realize that the inflation is a consequence of the market, rather than of monetary policy - and that his solution would consequently actually exacerbate the problem.
i'm having a hard time making precise sense of the numbers he recently posted, and he provided no source for them. marx himself wrote widely on the rise of the bourgeoisie, and i think that's what he's trying to get across - although his dates seem wrong, to me (the bourgeoisie in england would have risen earlier than 1850). but, the language of "middle class" suggests that the bourgeoisie was less separated from the proletariat than the aristocracy - and this is really just propaganda. the trick is that he changes the meaning of the middle class halfway through, to make it look like the rich went from 80% of the wealth to 30% of the wealth. and, i think he knows what he's doing, too - that it's just open dishonesty.
but, even so, this says little about inequality in the period, as it was defined by the terrible conditions of the british working class.
deathtokoalas
+maersklandro
i'm going to pull out of this discussion as well. i don't actually disagree with much of what you're saying (although, in some countries - like canada - the separation between the central bank and the government is weak enough that the state can actually print interest-free money directly if it really wants, although it tends not to), so much as i disagree over the question of whether the effects are enough that capitalism requires inflation for this reason.
i mean, look at europe. they have a zero-inflation monetary policy. it has essentially destroyed their society - they're being pulled back into the dark ages by their adoption of a gold standard. services are crumbling. unemployment is structural. mass poverty has become normal. we've seen demonstrations all over the place. but, you know what? the elite are actually doing quite well. they don't seem to be hurt by this zero-inflation; they're thriving. and, the police are functioning properly in making the masses invisible to them.
so, i do think there's a moral bias underlying your perspective - even if you're not entirely aware of it. maybe, instead of rejecting that claim, you might think about it for a bit, first.
Käptn Kook
finally...
maersklandro
+deathtokoalas Scotty is a well known right wing troll who seems as ubiquitous as he is immune to logic and reason and dishonest.
Might be a professional propaganda operation software bot or team of paid trolls.
I define working or functioning capitalism as capitalism where capitalism functions with the consent or even support of a large majority of the population. Where a majority of people would vote or even fight to preserve it.
Also, you make the mistake of confusing 0 inflation with 0 money supply growth. This is pretty monetarist and right wing of you.
You yourself said that money supply growth need not mean proportional inflation.
There can be money supply growth without proportional inflation.
Have a look at this chart for Euro Area Money Supply M3 :
http://cdn.tradingeconomics.com/embed/?s=emuevolvmonsupm3&v=201601111707n&d1=19160101&d2=20161231&h=300&w=600
deathtokoalas
+maersklandro the zero-inflation target refers to the money supply concept rather than the cpi concept, although it's expressed in a kind of intermediate point of interest rate policy. the eu central bank isn't pretending that it can affect the cpi through monetary policy.
maersklandro
+deathtokoalas I'm not sure what you mean by that, that central banks or at least the ECB target money supply growth rather than goods basket price growth.
It's the first time I've heard that central banks give a damn about what the money supply is rather than giving a damn (or pretending to) about goods basket price indicator.
That's irrelevant as well, if not compared with the median wage.
Rising prices are not a problem if wages or incomes rise as fast or faster. They're only a problem for savers, if prices rise faster than interest accrues.
I'm not expressing an opinion on what the ECB wants or does not want or can or can't do to control the cpi.
I'm trying to show that for capitalism to function, the money supply needs to grow geometrically continuously.
And for that to occur, the banks need to lend continuously, ever more, to ever more people and businesses. And ever more people and businesses need to want to borrow and to meet the requirements or conditions for the loans they seek.
Which is why (what the right wingers would call irresponsible but they're just morons) borrowing and spending has been encouraged and conditions and requirements for bank loans have been relaxed more and more over time.
Also, you might even say that money supply growth, which is required by capitalism to continue to function, requires population growth, rather than the other way around.
And also why most if not all (not very well informed on the matter) nations run budget deficits and why these have been growing over time. Because private sector borrowing simply is not enough. And has not been for a while.
Only time a local, state or national/federal budget can be balanced is when private borrowing is booming so there isn't so much of a need for governments to borrow to ensure the necessary money supply growth.
Of course, moronic, ignorant right wingers want to cut deficit spending.
Because they're just that fucking stupid.
They actually think :
1. money has intrinsic value or at least should (when the very notion and definition of money is that it has no intrinsic value or negligible intrinsic value, otherwise it's just another good and using it is no different from barter).
2. money is scarce, has to be earned through honest, hard work.
3. people make exactly as much money as they deserve and their work is worth.
4. running a budget deficit is like burning money (as if that were a problem, you can simply print more) and unsustainable (lulz).
5. issuing any new money is unsustainable and causes hyperinflation.
6. we should have a static money supply, preferably "backed by" gold (as if fractional reserve banking cares whether the underlying asset is gold or paper and we didn't already have that system in place a century ago and it did nothing to constrain money supply growth - because that's what capitalism needs to work).
7. inflation is always awful and bad for everyone. My mathematical thought experiment earlier in this discussion disproves this.
Now please compare these two graphs and tell me capitalism doesn't need a perpetually geometrically expanding money supply to work :
http://www.tradingeconomics.com/greece/money-supply-m3
http://www.tradingeconomics.com/germany/money-supply-m3
How is Greece doing economically and how is Germany?
Which of the two has the fastest declining living standards?
Which of the two has the highest unemployment and youth unemployment and homelessness?
Now you tell me again why you disagree with my assertion that capitalism needs a geometrically expanding money supply to function or work.
Because I did not perfectly exactly define what functioning or working means when referring to capitalism?
Ok then, can we at least agree that German capitalism is working better than Greek capitalism because German capitalism is able to grow its money supply while strangling Greek capitalism through contracting its money supply?
Isn't the capitalism which is able to print its own money in whichever quantities it wishes doing arguably better by every possible metric and statistic you choose to use (not just economic indicators but also social indicators) than the capitalism which depends on a foreign capitalism to issue its money supply, a foreign capitalism which has decided it would be just fine and dandy to starve peripheral european capitalist countries of money, not by limiting or constraining them out of any money supply growth but actually contracting their money supply?
Germany has control over the ECB and, by virtue of having control over the ECB, the banking system rules and regulations as well as policy throughout the eurozone.
Which means it has control over which countries' banking system get paper and coins to cover withdrawals from its banking system of money of account it issues internally, in and through its national banking system.
Which means it can collapse the monetary / banking system of any country in the eurozone which is issuing more money than itself out of nothing.
Which means it can collapse the money supply of any country in the eurozone.
This was the intention for the euro from the outset.
Joining the eurozone is the biggest, downright suicidal socio-economic policy mistake a country can make.
It's basically electing to be a colony of Germany.
Germany conquered Europe. And did so not by the muzzle of a gun but by getting moronic, ignorant people and the treasonous politicians they voted into office relinquish their national, sovereign right to issue their own money inside their own country, without requiring the consent or approval of a foreign social, economic or political entity, institution or organism.
Kindly tell me what of the above you disagree with, if anything.
deathtokoalas
+maersklandro that was worded awkwardly. i pointed out that i'm quitting smoking this week. i was trying to disarm a misperception, and it came out badly.
the purpose of the central bank is to "minimize inflation" and allow for "price stability". but, what the central banks do - set interest rates - doesn't have a large effect on the fluctuations we see on a day-to-day basis. they will talk about the cpi in various types of propaganda. and, in the most abstract sense it is true that they could possibly affect the exchange rate by fractions of a cent, and it could have some barely measurable effect on the basket of goods. they will interpret this as a part of their mandate, because it's what the public wants to hear, kind of thing. what i was trying to say is that they don't really buy into this, it's just political nonsense.
what the central banks really do is prevent currency competition on a national basis. that's what you had before central banks. then, you'd have buddy farmer in missouri dealing with his nest egg (and the price of eggs) floating around all over the place because the morgans and rockefellers were having a currency war. that's what the mandate of "controlling inflation" and "maintaining stability" is all about. and, all the bank has to do to ensure this is exist. it's not a question of what the rate is. these quarter of a percent hikes and cuts don't change anybody's behaviour. it's a question of there being a single rate that everybody abides to.
the m3 isn't liquid currency, so the argument you're constructing is based on flawed data. the problem in greece is that they can't devalue. they would of course devalue by printing money. but, they've abandoned their sovereignty and replaced it with actual, real debt.
the number of euros is constant through the eurozone, and determined by the central bankers. there's no basis for comparing the money supply in greece to the money supply in germany. it's the same money supply. and, that's the actual problem.
greece and germany need to set up a fiscal relationship that is similar to the one that exists between ontario and nova scotia. what we have here is an "equalization payment", where we collect taxes from the wealthy provinces and redistribute them to the poorer ones. we don't call this "bailouts". we call it "confederation".
maersklandro
+deathtokoalas If you don't like M3 you can look up M1 and M2. You'll see the same geometric growth pattern except a smaller absolute size and absolute growth.
I don't know why you don't like M3 as a measure though. Because for every long term deposit, there's free money wandering around in the economy as banks don't sit on deposits. Especially long term deposits. Or at least they didn't use to when the money from the central bank wasn't actually free.
And you can look at whichever country you like, you'll see all of their money supplies (M1, M2, M3 etc.) are growing. Except for countries conquered and occupied monetarily by Germany at the periphery of the euro monetary zone.
For instance, between January 2007 and November 2015, Romania's M1 money supply (cash in circulation and overnight deposits) grew 2.64 times, from 51,638,854,200 RON to 136,061,806,900 RON.
I reject your contention that the money supply is static.
Greeks and Greek businesses and businesses operating in Greece have less money than they used to have even a year ago, speaking nominally.
While it's the other way around with Germans, German businesses and businesses operating in Germany.
The money supply is not constant in the eurozone.
There is basis for comparison. They're not the same thing. Euros in a Greek's bank account and wallet are not the same thing as Euros in a German's bank account or wallet.
The Greek can't spend the euros in the German's bank account or wallet on himself or something he wants. Only those euros in his own bank account or wallet..
Also, his banking system can't issue more euros out of nothing as it pleases, regardless how the German banking system feels or policy makers feel about it.
And that's the actual problem.
I agree with your last paragraph but that is politically untenable because of the stupidity, ignorance, selfishness, callousness and prejudice of the electorate in Germany.
deathtokoalas
+maersklandro it's the m0/mB that is relevant to the discussion and the comparison to the gold standard, and it's been flat forever. that's what they need to actually increase to get the economy going. and, it is static across the eurozone - that's the point of having a eurozone. but, the policy is to keep it flat, or even reign it in. the other measures of wealth are largely only meaningful to investors. most people never engage with wealth beyond the sense of actual dollars coming in and out of their accounts; most people have precisely no real wealth at all.
the germans would actually probably benefit from decreasing the m0, whereas the greeks need it drastically increased. and, it's really actually that conflict that is the problem.
maersklandro
+deathtokoalas What? How does M0/MB matter at all?
The money in circulation matters. Which means M1, M2 and M3 matter, because of the reasons I gave (long term deposits aren't sat on by the banking system, even if you adhere to the incorrect view that bank loans come out of deposits).
By your claim you're basically saying only cash transactions matter or even exist in the economy. Not even debit or credit card transactions matter by this metric.
No, you're not even saying that. I have no idea what you're trying to say by claiming that M0/MB matters at all, for anything.
How do reserves at the central bank matter at all, for anyone?
And how does anything you've said disprove my thesis that the money supply needs to grow geometrically continually for capitalism to work?
deathtokoalas
+maersklandro what i'm saying is exactly that only cash transactions matter to the proletariat - that the rest is just make believe, for the benefit of the ruling class. the central bank consequently doesn't matter to anyone except investors, except in the sense that it minimizes currency speculation - and not through monetary policy, but by merely existing.
maersklandro
+deathtokoalas It's not make believe. Don't you purchase stuff with make believe money created by the banks out of nothing?
Didn't you ever get paid with that kind of money? Didn't you have to live on it?
I have and did. While I was unemployed I lived on fictional cash in the bank which I (my mom, really, as she owned it) obtained through the sale of an apartment and which I gradually used to redeem actual, real, physical cash to buy the necessities of life.
Even now, I get paid through bank transfers of fictional cash I then use to redeem actual cash to buy my groceries.
And I buy games and software applications on steam or online, paying using PayPal.
So I find your assertions that only cash matters to the proletariat (I most certainly am a proletarian) and that the fictional cash doesn't exist (it is money, it's just not cash) ludicrous.
My definition of money is quite a deal simpler.
If you can use it to buy stuff in the real world, it's money. Doesn't matter what its form is or how you can spend or receive it.
You see, I'd long been homeless and possibly dead or seriously ill if that were nto so.
Because I lived for quite while on the money off the sale of that apartment and no other source of income at all apart from paltry unemployment benefits of something like $47 a month, at today's exchange rate.
And the unemployment benefits were only for a few months. I think they don't last longer than 6 months unless you jump through a lot of hoops to prove you're actually looking. I had to claim the benefits because my mom wanted to shame me into finding a job.
Because she somehow thought I didn't want to or wasn't looking or something. Luckily I managed to find my current place of employment, a company from abroad which pays me via bank transfers as I work remotely, from home. As a support tech.
So I feel you are fudging how we feel about how things work and how we feel about how they should be working with how things actually work.
Believe me, I am no right winger. Nor proponent or advocate of capitalism. Furthest from it, in fact.
I myself would much prefer to see a moneyless society, with no private property (only right of exclusive and non-exclusive usufruct or personal property and a right to privacy) or guarantee of inheritance.
At the very least, I think we should have a citizen income, guaranteed nutrition, housing and healthcare.
However, I would much prefer a society completely free of money, profit, with no guarantee of inheritance or right of ownership.
Especially with regard to superfluous, unnecessary and luxury possessions such as a summer home, a yacht or your own means of production.
And apart from being an authoritarian, statist and culturally and socially conservative, I am as left wing economically as you can be. Possibly more than you are yourself.
I do not want to live in the society I was born in. I'd have much preferred to be born many decades from now.
All of the above don't change the fact that, in capitalism, the money supply needs to grow geometrically continually, with the new money being distributed to ordinary people, or it brings out the very worst in capitalism.
deathtokoalas
the m0/mb refers to cash in circulation, which includes actual transactions and debit card withdrawals. it doesn't include money created by bank practices, or by governments floating bonds for property.
you have never been paid in anything that is not included in the m0. even if you made money by selling real property. that is still a real transaction.
maersklandro
+deathtokoalas All money is created through bank loans. The people who bought the apartment paid for it mostly with money from a bank loan.
Which was basically new money created out of nothing through the issuance of their loan.
That money was not included in M0.
M0 is notes and coins in circulation, outside of bank vaults and the reserves at the central bank. Most of the money in any bank loan is electronic only. It doesn't exist as cash but only as make believe cash.
deathtokoalas
+maersklandro m0 includes all money in circulation - that is, all money that is transacted. it doesn't matter that the money was sourced by a loan (or that the way you're presenting this idea is wrong); the fact that it was used in a transaction and moved into your account brings it into m0.
this is not a difficult problem to work through. if all money is created by loans, and money created by loans is not included in m0, then m0 is precisely zero at all times. that is clearly false, so you should be able to immediately see that your reasoning is flawed.
the money created by fractional reserve banking is used in "money markets", not used for circulation. it goes into the stock markets.
you're very confused about how the banking system works, and i again need to point out that you're essentially repeating a lot of propaganda.
listen, i'm sorry - i'm not interested. and, i don't think you know what you're talking about, so i don't think this is a useful way to spend my time.
but, i think we should take a step back and realize that these definitions are not static. you might be looking at a different concept of liquid assets than i was. different countries define their statistics differently. in north america, m0 is understood to include money in circulation plus money than can be immediately withdrawn as cash - that is, money that is not tied into any kind of assets and is entirely liquid. not property, not bonds, not debt; actual money.
the point i was trying to make is that it doesn't matter how much make believe money the bank makes to trade on markets. what matters is how much actual money exists in circulation.
this is the measure of the money supply that you need if you're going to discuss comparisons to the gold standard, ways to balance out the business cycle or really anything else of any meaning or value.
and, in europe, this measure of money has stayed flat because the size of deposit accounts is steadily decreasing as a consequence of austerity. this is far more important in terms of measuring the money supply than anything that banks do.
i've explained to you already that those charts are not the charts you want to look at to understand why the euro zone is functionally a gold standard system, and why the central bank is less important in monetary policy than spending policies by national governments. the amount of money that is accessible to spenders has been flat in the eurozone for decades (conversely, it has steadily grown in canada). functionally speaking, the important point here is that government austerity programs reduce the real money supply - not that interest rates modify the make-believe money supply.
it's consequently not necessary to grow the money supply for capitalism to function, although not doing so will lead to mass unemployment and widespread poverty (as we are seeing today in europe).
it doesn't matter how money was created, whether or not it is "backed" by something, who created it or any of these other things. this is all a lot of nonsense. what matters is it's level of liquidity. that is what those subscripts refer to. and, if it's liquid it's m0/mb. it could be poofed into existence by aliens, or printed as counterfeit. the how is not important. it's the form the cash exists in that is important.
what i'm reacting against is the idea that creating make believe money for rich people to play games with will somehow increase the amount of money in circulation. that's reaganomics. and, it's absolute nonsense.
the only way to create liquid, accessible money is through government spending in the real economy.
--
David Longfellow
What is "Cultural Marxism"?
deathtokoalas
you probably know it better as "neo-conservatism".
it's actually very easy to agree with sutton from the left. it's a little harder to say "therefore, hayekian liberalism", but he's not actually contradicting anything at all in the leftist tradition, and it's for two reasons:
1) marx was aware that he was an authoritarian. if you read marx carefully, his dictatorship of the proletariat is more or less an update on the existing prussian status quo of "enlightened despotism". he often agreed more with conservatives like burke or hobbes than with liberals like paine or rousseau or even proudhon. there's a large amount of marxist literature that reduces happiness and freedom to some kind of illusion and argues that the slave will be happy if she is taught to be happy, and never under any other circumstance. a great deal of it is actually about ways to brainwash slaves into happiness so they can be more productive. there's your cultural marxism, and it's exactly what the capitalists ordered! if you read the capitalist engels carefully, there's a few points where he more or less admits it. read his history of christianity, it's very eye-opening as to the reasons he was promoting this guy. if marx was alive today, most people would consider him a fascist rather than a socialist.
2) there were plenty of socialists that realized this well before the shit hit the fan. we refer to them today as anarchists, but the separation at the time was not very strong. there was actually even a break in the international as a result of marx' open, clear authoritarian tendencies. anarchist socialists like bakunin were entirely aware that the marxist approach of centralizing power into these committees would not somehow lead to communism but would be co-opted by capitalists and produce untold human misery. so, he wanted to smash the state yesterday rather than through some weird process of proletariat dictatorship. there were plenty of socialists alive in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries that predicted the results of marxism and fought violently against it. unfortunately, as the bolsheviks had capital on their side, they were able to destroy all the real socialists. and, something similar happened in spain.
so, the way to read sutton from the left is as verification of the early anarchist polemics against marx. and, this is certainly also the empirical way to read it
further, there's plenty of literature on the left that is very similar to sutton's in terms of analysis, if not in terms of proposals. i've heard chomsky say all the same things. it's consistent with zinn's writings. &etc.
Svelt Man
good post. i am of the left too and am finding all this illuminating and basically irrefutable.
maersklandro
Dude is a fucking moron. Lying moron propagandist for the right.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vftNpSXUOU8
Barry Smyth
Said the left wing looney.
maersklandro
Looney? Maybe. At least I'm not full of shit like this guy right here.
This clown didn't have a clue about industry and technology.
He's just talking out his ass and his asshat cult following are simply lapping it up.
Libertarian Views Scotty M
+maersklandro http://static.comicvine.com/uploads/original/1/12397/3653741-baby-crying-1884717.jpg
deathtokoalas
as a leftist, i sometimes cringe at sutton's proposals. but, his research is rigorous and his analysis is spot on. you should try and listen a little more closely rather than write it off. i mean, you need to put "socialist" in quotes the way he uses it or replace it with "vulgar marxists" or something (he often does this himself) but there's otherwise not really a very strong political component in his work. if the lecture was spoken by chomsky, you wouldn't react like that. those are the kind of blinders that keep us at each other's backs.
maersklandro
His research is not rigorous nor his analysis spot on. And you clearly aren't a leftist if you believe that.
Anyone who knows anything about some of the technical matters he touches upon cringes at his ragingly arrogant ignorance and stupidity on the matter of Soviet technological and scientific development.
Dude knows (knew) fucking nothing about Soviet technology and parallel and original development.
Go watch 'The Engines That Came In From The Cold! (The Soviet Moon Program)' for just one example of what I'm talking about.
That bloody moron would have had us believe the soviets couldn't manufacture a ball bearing.
Nothing further from the truth. Just another right wing moron historical revisionist.
Libertarian Views Scotty M
+maersklandro Oh he isn't lying, one only needs to read the history of the likes of Alexander Hamilton to see what he advocated. This is the same Alexander Hamilton who founded the First National Bank of the United States of America, a Banker. Alexander Hamilton was strongly opposed to the Articles of Confederation because he wanted more power to the National Government. If that's not Socialist, what is? He was a strong supporter and advocate of central planning of the economy, again, if that's not Socialist, what is? Someone who greatly increased taxation and was a supporter of protectionist tariffs. If that's not Socialist, what is? The fact is, all of those things are Socialist, you just don't like those facts, you can't stand facts.
You are the typical lefty that despises the practice of Socialism because you can't bare to see that what Socialism really is, (not what you dream of) is a disaster. If anyone is thick enough to sit and deny central planning of the economy isn't Socialist, then they don't understand Marxism, this is how stupid Socialists are.
I wonder who Alexander Hamilton's arch-rival was, hmmm? I wonder who? Maybe it was Thomas Jefferson, the Classical Liberal Capitalist, perhaps? And what did Alexander Hamilton support more power to National Government for? Well because he wanted to subsidize businesses from the public, make the public poorer to fund the rich. He was the founder of Crony Capitalism in America. That's right, the Socialist founded Crony Capitalism. Now go stick your two fingers down the back of your throat, because that fact makes you sick.
Oh and he maybe a revisionist in your eyes, but when it comes down to it, where do you think the Soviet Union was getting the capital to fund all those things? That's right, Capitalist countries, why? Because 100% of your capital (money) is produced by Capitalism. Without Capitalism, you wouldn't have money.
Barry Smyth
+maersklandro Ha! The Soviet moon program was one of the several reasons why the USSR collapsed when ever the government is way too involved in economic life collapsed is bound to happen. Wars, economic central planning. The Space industry was a big drain on the economy, no wonder it caused the technological lag behind the rest of the world.
Barry Smyth
+maersklandro Cult following you have some nerve one name> Noam Chomsky
Libertarian Views Scotty M
+Barry Smith Agreed, central planning was detrimental, just look at Nikita Krushchev who boasted that their Soviet scientific socialism would be better than anything Capitalism could ever provide. Yep, which is why by 1991 it collapsed lol
deathtokoalas
+Scotty M as mentioned, russian science was heavily dependent on technology that was taken from the germans after wwII. it was also heavily driven by espionage. they weren't a little behind, they were dramatically behind.
but this doesn't have anything to do with socialism or capitalism. it has to do with a ridiculous czarist state that kept russia in the dark ages into the twentieth century v the large amount of state expenditure in the anglosphere that invested heavily in science for the benefit of the mercentalist and capitalist classes. that heavy state subsidization of industry is the reason our technological sector is so developed.
the soviets made some advances in terms of quality of living. those advances would have also been made under fascist or capitalist states. the key wasn't any single type of collectivist statism, but ditching the czarist hierarchy, which simply didn't care about the population.
there's simply not any way they could have competed immediately, even if bolshevism actually was comparable to socialism in any meaningful sense. they would have had to spend a very long time catching up first, which would have required the massive state expenditure that is only possible under capitalism. this is according to marx, remember. and, as they couldn't do something that defied all economic sense (marxist or otherwise), they collapsed before they caught up.
Libertarian Views Scotty M
+deathtokoalas You fail to understand socialism, because socialism has nothing to do with liberty or democracy, it's a contradiction of both, and what it does is suppresses innovation, destroys incentives to be creative and to work. Because of socialism's fixated nature, it lacks innovation.
deathtokoalas
+Scotty M can you define socialism for me, scotty?
thanks.
Libertarian Views Scotty M
+deathtokoalas Well Socialism is not about workers control over production, that's for sure, it's not what you have in theory, even the theory alone of Socialism is deeply flawed. You can never put theory above practice and yes the true face of Socialism was plastered all over the Soviet Union, even in Nazi Germany. Socialism's defining ethic is government coercion, which is dangerous. It's all about THE PLAN and when it comes down to it, Socialism is all about central planning of the economy. In order to carry out THE PLAN, you need THE PLANNERS, who are the government, they are the ones who carry out the distribution.
By definition and theory, it is social ownership of production, about sharing more or less, however the reality of Socialism is, it always leads into the hands of the few, basically the small elite. We have tonnes of historical evidence to prove of this evidence.
deathtokoalas
+Scotty M well, i agree with part of what you're saying. i posted a long comment on the video about the difference between marxist/authoritarian "socialism" (which is indeed quite similar to fascism both in theory and in practice) and anti-authoritarian, decentralized anarchist socialism.
as you know, socialism is the idea that production should be socially rather than privately owned. you can imagine that i've had many debates with people that don't know this. that's why i asked you to define it for me.
this really doesn't have any implications about central planning. for example, one could take the syndicalist position that the workers that work in the factory ought to own the factory. those factories may then compete on a market, and all the liberal market theory would continue to apply. this would merely remove a level of bureaucratic waste in the management of the factory. nor does it imply anything about big or small government. a real advocate of small government ought to see something of value in removing the management class. it's the same argument.
personally, i am not in favour of centralized planning. i think production ought to be primarily local, and run for the benefit of the citizens in the region rather than carry out the multi-year plans produced by the centralized bodies of large corporations. there's not any contradiction arising between my rejection of centralized planning and my view that production should work for social purposes, rather than to generate profit for an elite class of people.
as i pointed out in my post, the historical fact is that both the bolsheviks and nazis killed millions of socialists that were fighting against their goal to centralize everything in the hands of a totalitarian state. you can have these arguments with marxists, and they'll mostly play into your mischaracterizations, because a lot of your perceptions about them are, indeed, largely accurate. but you need to be careful in generalizing those views to socialism in a larger context, because they are simply not applicable in full generalization.
as an anarcho-socialist, i can agree with a lot of hayek's analysis. it's his conclusions that i find fault with.
i just want to add something about coercion, because the argument reduces to property rights. i can talk abstractly about how localizing production into social bodies doesn't need to produce coercion, but i do realize that some coercion is inevitable. but, i'm going to use an extreme example to demonstrate a point. laws against rape are technically coercive, but we universally acknowledge their validity due to some abstraction of the non-aggression principle. i like the non-aggression principle for negative rights, but i feel it's lacking for positive rights and should be extrapolated to something more social. what i'm getting at is that this kind of arrangement is only coercive on people that want to demonstrate anti-social behaviour.
now, you can compare that to a more traditional market society. it always makes me laugh when people argue that markets are voluntary. the only way that markets can be truly voluntary is if market relations only exist on top of a system of full distributive justice. that is, you can only talk about free and voluntary association in a market system if it's regarding the exchange of luxury items. basic necessities need to be taken for granted. there's plenty of classical liberals that have realized this and derived the idea of a minimum income to adjust for it. theory aside, i have to say i'd be largely satisfied with liberalism if the minimum income were to be worked into it, as it would provide me with the ability for real and voluntary association.
but, if you don't take that into account, markets place the vast majority of people (that is, people in the proletariat) with the choice of working or starving. there's nothing free or voluntary about that. it's the whole basis of the left anarchist desire to abolish markets as fundamentally oppressive, coercive institutions.
so, you're left with a choice between the kind of coercion that is inherent in markets (work or starve) and the kind of coercion that is inherent in communism (work towards the common good or be ostracized). they're both coercive, but one is a far more altruistic and acceptable type of coercion than the other. nobody is going to argue laws against rape should be abolished because they are coercive, even though they are clearly coercive. likewise, i have a difficulty taking people seriously when they argue that a social order that promotes sharing over hoarding is bad because it is coercive.
maersklandro
+Barry Smith You don't know shit. The USSR collapsed because the people running it and the people running 'the free world' wanted it to collapse.
And because of the petrodollar and bretton woods monetary system that basically crowned the US the hegemon of world.
BTW, capitalism collapses in an instant if it ceases to exponentially inflate its money supply. Because without that there is nowhere for profits and the firm's expenses towards other firms to come from.
They can't come out of nothing. For someone to be able to pay their suppliers, let alone register a profit, someone else HAS to not even be able to pay their suppliers.
Unless, of course, the money supply grows continually to provide the missing monies for most of the firms in the economy to at least cover their expenses with their suppliers.
What, you thought you can get something out of nothing (profit, expenses towards other businesses)?
That's just insanity, religion. Not science.
Modern economics is not even pseudo-science. It's glorified religion.
There absolutely nothing scientific about it.
No, the money for your suppliers has to come out of a printing press.
The money the stockholders, the employees and other people take out of what the firm takes in is less than 100%. So they can't recycle the difference between what they take out of the firm and what the firm takes in.
Because the difference is what goes out to the firm's suppliers. That is to say, mostly other firms.
So people can't pay that back directly to the firm because they never get the money directly from the firm to give it back to it. And all firms are like this because all firms directly take in from either people or other businesses more than what they directly pay out to people, either as dividends, wages, rents, whatever.
The shortfall has to be continually made up by the printing press, which has to print ever faster because of the law of diminishing returns (inflation).
Of course, I doubt you could understand any of that.
Käptn Kook
+maersklandro "BTW, capitalism collapses in an instant if it ceases to exponentially inflate its money supply."
inflation is not capitalism.... its an outcome of central bank state capitalism..exactly what sutton fights against.
deathtokoalas
+Käptn Kook but, you need inflation to fight against the concentration of resources. he's right - and sutton is wrong - on this point. capitalism is impossible without inflation.
this isn't a theoretical consideration, either. it's historical fact. we tried this, under a system called the "gold standard". it was an absolute catastrophe - it caused the depression. europe tried a similar system recently with the euro, and it's also been a disaster. and, any other attempts to abolish inflation will likewise be disastrous...
Libertarian Views Scotty M
You need inflation to fight the concentration of resources? One of the beautiful things about a free market is the fact that there is no possible way for you to become successful and prosper without providing for your consumers and if you cannot provide for your consumers your competition will wipe the floor with you. A Capitalist system is not about special privileges and this religious need to try and connect Capitalism to that is desperation because there is no other argument left.
It is within fact that under a Capitalist system you have no bailouts. Saying that you require inflation referring to the higher costs is ludicrous really and what contradicts that is the fact that private businesses main goal is to make profits and how do you maximise your profits? You maximise profits by minimising your costs, that essentially means using the fewest resources as possible, not abusing it. Furthermore private land owners have the incentive to look after their land and resources because land can appreciate in value or depreciate, why would any private land owner wish to depreciate the value of his land? That would run him at a loss, he wouldn't have the incentive to.
Turn your attention now to the government who didn't have to work for your money, is there any risk at hand over how government spends YOUR money that YOU earned? No, it didn't have to work for it. Isn't it funny how government council housed areas look like World War 2 had just finished, yet private land and housing looks immaculate? I wonder why that must be?
What you have stated is not historical fact especially when you talk about the disaster of the Gold Standard, Tom Woods already flattened your argument on the Gold Standard explaining the reason for the boom and bust cycle of the 19th Century was due to the trying and testing of the paper currency, nothing to do with the Gold Standard. In fact between 1700 to 1930 the Gold Standard was stable in Great Britain. In the 1920s with the Federal Reserve stepping in with Open Market Operations in 1922 stripping the Gold Standard away and printing fiat currency out of thin air, that is part of what led to the Great Depression. So where do you get the idea from that the Gold Standard was a disaster?
The € currency is a disaster because IT IS a fiat currency with nothing backing it and many nation states using the one currency with different tax and spend policies, so how you think that pans out when the ECB (European Central Bank) tries to set ONE interest rate across different nations with different tax and spend policies? A disaster.
Did your school put you up to this? Your school needs educated on economics.
Käptn Kook
+deathtokoalas this is what mainstream economists try to tell you. listen to what "austrian school of economics" say, and you'll see what the real issue was. certainly not the so called "gold standard".
its both neoclassical and neoliberal myth, that you need inflation. thats exactly on of the biggest issues we have in our economy today. the skewing of prices and interest rates trough inflation. its societies problem since a century now.
so, inflation is neither capitalistic, nor is it necessary. its one of the biggest causes of economic crisis.
deathtokoalas
+Libertarian Views Scotty M
it's new years eve. i'm not reading this right now. i'd rather smoke a joint than argue about market theory. give me a few days to come back to this. i'll leave it open in a tab.
but, the basic point is that the theory underlying capitalism is essentially garbage. there is absolutely no empirical evidence that suggests that any of these "equilibrium" points can ever actually happen. what empirical evidence - and, in fact, they teach this in first year economics nowadays - suggests is that a market is an imaginary ideal that immediately collapses into an oligarchy. if you take the state away, and leave markets in place, you don't get this utopian fantasy that you call capitalism. what you get is feudalism: power concentrated in the hands of a small elite, and a mass of starving peasants.
further, it's not a question of whether this is desirable or not. i mean, it is - for me. you probably don't care. which separates you from the core liberal thinkers, who actually did. they weren't evil, they were just naive.
from your perspective, it's a question of whether it's sustainable - and it isn't. even if you get to be the feudal baron, which you no doubt think you will, you can't withstand an onslaught of billions of people. all you end up with, in the end, is massive guerrilla warfare and literal, textbook anarchy.
i'll state this again: i didn't read your post. i'll come back to this in a few days.
Libertarian Views Scotty M
I'll leave it at that.
maersklandro
+Käptn Kook
Yet another right wing ignorant moron. You can't have capitalism without a geometrically growing money supply.
There's nowhere for businesses' profits and operating expenses towards other businesses to come from without money supply growth.
It's bloody hilarious how such a simple realization escapes you right wing zombies.
Ignorance and stupidity, thy name is right wing electorate.
Käptn Kook
do yu even read little asshole? dumb fuck.. i wont talk to you anymore.
Libertarian Views Scotty M
Wouldn't bother arguing with that ignorance, there was no requirement of the contraction of the Gold Standard, this I already stated but ignorance turns a blind eye to this fact. Last but not least the very reason our economy ended up in the mess it did was the result of inflation, the fact these people think inflation is a positive thing speaks for itself, I mean how stupid can you possibly get? Increasing the costs of your living does not equate to positivity, it means you're poorer. But that's okay, let's live in a backwards world they live in and pretend that's what leads to prosperity.
The laughable part is, the contraction of the paper currency which leads to the devaluation of the currency and costs of living going up means your purchasing power is driving down and you're becoming poorer, but that's okay, we'll choose to ignore that fact because we're all ignorant.
deathtokoalas
+Libertarian Views Scotty M
do you realize that what actually happened was that they ran out of gold?
a monetary supply needs to increase as the population increases. more people. therefore, more money. makes sense, right?
inflation is a necessary side effect of this. and capitalism cannot function without a sufficient level of capital to circulate.
what's insane and should be abolished is not inflation, it's interest. you leave your money in the bank, and it magically gains value? that's absurd.
if you're going to refuse to spend your money, it should lose value - as an incentive to spend it.
let me respond to some of your points.
"One of the beautiful things about a free market is the fact that there is no possible way for you to become successful and prosper without providing for your consumers and if you cannot provide for your consumers your competition will wipe the floor with you."
in theory, perhaps - albeit not in practice. in practice, firms collude with each other to harm consumers. competition is irrational, so firms will seek to avoid it at essentially all costs. your theory rests on the assumption that firms will behave irrationally for the benefit of consumers. a proper model needs to understand that firms are in collusion with each other, and in conflict with consumers - not in conflict with each other for the benefit of consumers. that is, it needs a class analysis.
but this actually has nothing to do with the money supply, or why it needs to continue to expand in order for capitalism to function.
"It is within fact that under a Capitalist system you have no bailouts."
bailouts don't have anything to do with inflation, either.
what we call a "bailout" is actually an interest-bearing loan - and the state always comes out ahead, because it collects the interest. so, in the end, there's no inflation from bailouts. the money that was created ends up destroyed when it's returned, and the state generates a profit out of it. rather, it functions as a kind of fine put in place for irresponsible behaviour.
but i don't dispute your claim so much as i question whether it's a good idea. this abstraction of stateless capitalism would indeed cause large banking institutions to collapse when they fail. and, then what? well, all the depositors would lose all their wealth. if you had a nest egg in that institution, it would merely cease to exist. that is something that also happened in the depression, and in fact the reason we erected the state to act as a lender of last resort - essentially an insurance company. you had people wandering the streets because the banks destroyed all their savings. this was rightly understood as unfair, so a system was created to counteract it.
you might argue in favour of private bank insurance. but, then you're just arguing for the status quo, because that's all the system that exists really is - except that a private system of bank insurance would (like private healthcare) ensure far less people at a far greater cost.
"Saying that you require inflation referring to the higher costs is ludicrous really and what contradicts that is the fact that private businesses main goal is to make profits and how do you maximise your profits?"
you seem to be confusing inflation in the money supply with inflation in prices. these are not the same thing and should not be confused, as you seem to be doing.
there is no formula for price inflation. that's the basic idea of a market system - that prices should be allowed to go up and down based on the costs of production. in the modern economy, this is determined by things like weather (the weather in california has increased the price of strawberries in canada), oil, currency exchange, etc. of course, we essentially never see prices come down when the costs of production decrease and we often see exaggerated price increases (price-gauging).
the cpi has almost nothing to do with inflation in the money supply.
"You maximise profits by minimising your costs, that essentially means using the fewest resources as possible, not abusing it."
that's exactly the point. firms will spend the least amount that they can, and will consequently end up sitting on profits. over time, all the money trickles up to the top, leaving nothing left for the unwashed masses to trade with. so, you either need to create more money for the masses to trade with or you need to find a way to redistribute that wealth.
now, i'm a socialist. i'd prefer the latter, actually - the abolition of currency altogether. but, if we're stuck with capitalism, we need the money generation to prevent mass poverty in the lower classes - and i'll take that choice over the alternative.
i've never heard of tom woods, and google doesn't suggest he's somebody i should take particularly seriously. britain was a horribly unequal and terrible place to live in the nineteenth century, and not something that should be held up as a model - if that's what you mean by "stable", there's a cross of gold out back for you to crucify yourself on. i'm expressing the dominant academic understanding of the situation. if you want to make more specific arguments, i'll be glad to entertain them.
the problem that greece, especially, is dealing with is an inability to print money. it's stuck with an over-valued currency that it cannot deflate, which has completely ravaged it's economy. there's various answers to this conundrum, but my point is that this is the same basic problem that the gold standard predictably produces and will be produced here if that kind of inflexibility presents itself in the money supply.
Käptn Kook
your understanding is grotesk, deathtokoalas. what you think is just ill. did you ast least gather information from "the austrian school of economy" like people asked you to?
or did you just dismiss them, because you learned these ideas you are perpetuating somewhere more thrustworthy?
getting rid of interest is such a no go. makes the whole inflation desaster even worse.
if there is no fiat money, saving your money in banks would release more capacities for investments. and lending your money would not even make sense, if you would not get any interest out of it. you have now less than before... very bad motivation for savings.
but what am i trying here... if you are not able to at least consider watching a speech of tom woods, why should i bother explaining you this?!
deathtokoalas
+Käptn Kook well, i didn't say i wouldn't consider watching something if you had a link; i did suggest that i probably wasn't going to read his book unless you sold me on it a bit, though - libertarian monetary theory isn't really my idea of a good read. sorry.
you're going to have to explain to me how you come up with the idea that reducing the money supply is going to increase lending. but, if you've got some kind of argument, feel free to present it.
when i was in university, i studied mathematics, which is a sort of an unusually interdisciplinary thing to study. nobody really has a serious separate undergraduate math department, so you end up taking a series of specialized courses for other disciplines, and, there's your math degree - although they ban you from taking the too easy stuff, like math for psychiatry.
so, i took math courses for physicists, math courses for chemists, math courses for biologists, math courses for computer scientists (and perhaps linguists), and even a few math courses for math courses, although mostly at the graduate level - and, also, math courses for economists.
i was always a little withdrawn, but you get to talking to people in classes, or overhearing conversations. i remember hearing an economics exchange student once explain it something like this:
you study economics because you think that's where the money is, in the economy. but, in the first year they teach you about market theory. then, in the second year they teach you that market theory is wrong. then, in the third year they just start making things up, and then it's all just making stuff up from there.
that kind of stuck with me as an interesting synopsis.
but, here's the thing: now they teach you that market theory is wrong in first year, so you don't walk out of first year thinking it's useful.
Libertarian Views Scotty M
Yeah, because Socialism is such a wonderful read, so wonderful it destroyed my country Scotland.
maersklandro
+deathtokoalas That's not the only reason the money supply has to increase. It primarily has to increase because businesses' expenses towards other businesses and their own profits have nowhere to come from except either money supply growth or other people or businesses' losses.
Libertarian Views Scotty M
Your monetary supply growth is what devalues the base of the currency and drives up inflation making the poor poorer.
maersklandro
+Libertarian Views Scotty M Not necessarily. If the newly issued money is distributed perfectly equally, it will actually make the poorest 50% richer (through their nominal wealth growing faster than the money supply) and the richest 50% poorer (through their nominal wealth growing slower than the money supply).
If you and I have $100 and $25 to our names, respectively, for a total money supply of $125 and we each get $10 of newly printed money, the money supply will grow to $145 for a percentual money supply growth of 16%.
Per $ purchasing power, at least in the short term, will be 86.20% what it used to be before the new money was printed.
Meaning that each dollar would only buy what 86 cents used to before the new money supply grew.
However, my nominal wealth will have grown by 40%. Taking that into account as well as the loss of purchasing power, we see that my actual purchasing power is :
1.4 x 125 / 145 = 1.2068... or a 20.7% increase in actual wealth.
Your nominal wealth will have increased from $100 to $110, for a nominal growth of 10%.
1.1 x 125 / 145 = 0.9482... or a 5.17% contraction of actual wealth.
There you go, mathematically proven that printing money and distributing it equally to everyone in society helps the poor and hurts the rich.
Of course, I don't expect an obtuse, ignorant, lying right winger to admit the simple mathematical fact I just outlined.
deathtokoalas
+maersklandro
it's kind of the same statement. the fact that the upward flow of capital is zero-sum is only a systemic problem under capitalism in the context of exhaustion, but what you're saying is basically a restatement of what i'm saying. capitalism is all about gaining at another's expense, after all. that's no travesty, it's the point. but the game needs sufficient circulation in order to be played, or everything dries up.
deathtokoalas
+Libertarian Views Scotty M
this always blows my mind, although i've seen it before: the market fundamentalist that opposes price changes.
currency exchange is only a minor factor in price-setting, and currency inflation is only a minor factor in currency exchange. you're supposed to be the Market Man. you're supposed to know these things.
i mean, it can make a difference, sure. the canadian dollar is down. bananas are up 20%. but, the canadian dollar is down because the petro-dollar is up and oil prices are down. our central bank has nothing to do with this.
i just don't get this. market advocates are supposed to be all hunky dory about price fluctuations - it's stability, it's fairness, it allows producers to pass on costs and savings to consumers. what happened to all that stuff?
it's all been replaced by this absurd reading of friedman.
i mean, ok: if a central bank increases it's money supply by 50%, that's going to make a difference.
but, you can't even measure the tweaks they make, most of the time. it's such a minor factor in real-life inflation that it's not even worth noting.
deathtokoalas
+maersklandro
i think you've effectively demonstrated how specious economic logic can be, when scratched a little bit.
kind of an off the wall assumption about purchasing power, don't you think?
Käptn Kook
just anyone.. please shut up.. with this nonsense.
deathtokoalas
+Käptn Kook i think i broke this one.
maersklandro
+deathtokoalas No, it's not the same statement.
You're saying that the money supply needs to grow with the population.
I'm saying it even needs to grow if the population is contracting.
It needs to grow continually, as long as there is capitalist / monetarist, private, for profit, dispersed / decentralized economic activity.
Otherwise there's nowhere for the money required for profits and expenses towards other businesses (subcontractors, suppliers) to come from, except other people and businesses' losses.
Basically, there's a net purchasing power deficit inherent to capitalism.
And there's also net directional money flows in capitalism. From retail businesses to capital goods manufacturing and servicing businesses. And from people to businesses, because all businesses take in more money directly from either people or other businesses than they pay back out directly to people.
All of this need to be continually financed through the continual issuance of money ex nihilo. Which, because of the law of diminishing returns, needs to be geometrical.
And which, in capitalism, is done through interest bearing consumer loans such as home mortgage loans and car loans.
Until the credit market collapsed in 2008. Because capitalism is basically a pyramid scheme made up of several different pyramid schemes and simply can't run on forever.
When private borrowing and spending stops growing, let alone stops or even contracts, the government has to step in and create the needed monetary growth through deficit spending.
This is one of the reason capitalism requires population growth to function. It always needs more borrowers.
It's also why the banks lent to subprime borrowers (unemployed, unemployable, bereft of assets to pledge as collateral etc.).
And why illegal and legal immigration is tolerated. That and driving down the cost of labour.
When there isn't enough private borrowing or spending (because you've simply run out of borrowers you can lend to, no matter what you do), the government simply has to step in and borrow and spend through deficit spending to create the required money supply growth.
Which the fucktarded, drooling idiot right wing and their right wing electorate vehemently oppose.
As if :
1. money were scarce when there's tens, hundreds or even thousands of trillions of monetary units worldwide and growing.
2. money had intrinsic value when it doesn't and it's created out of nothing. This is closely tied in to 1.
3. money poofed and disappeared out of existence when spent by the government as part of deficit spending. Which is false, the money doesn't disappear. It goes to the private contractors hired by the government to the work it's funding through deficit spending.
That money will continue to percolate through the economy, paying for the production and rendering and consumption of goods and services.
And an even bigger, overarching problem is that the capitalism of the present and near future doesn't need employees all that much and needs fewer of them all the time even though it still needs consumers and borrowers, probably more than ever.
But you can't really have the latter without the formers.
What do you mean by 'off the wall assumption' of purchasing power?
In my argument, I used the (ideological enemy's) (assumption / presup)position of the right wingtard, that purchasing power of money is in an exact and immediate relationship of inverse proportionality to the money supply.
Libertarian Views Scotty M
Yes necessarily, you cannot make the poor richer off the back of printing fiat currency out of thin air which devalues the base of the currency and shoots the cost of living up at the same time. In fact it was primarily the reason for the wider gap between the rich and poor for what Labour Party caused between 1945 to 1979, the laughable thing is the rich are not affected by this because they hold all the assets.
For anyone to claim that printing fiat currency out of thin air can benefit the poor simply be redistribution of perfect equality is simply nonsense. The valuation of the purchasing power driving down does not equate to poor people becoming richer, it results in them becoming poorer as that is all they hold in hand for the work they do in exchange.
For every £1 and $1 you print there is a 1+ debt added to the currency, the more you print in circulation the lower the valuation of the currency, the higher your costs of living grows from that inflation of the paper currency, the poorer people become. That is why 50 odd years ago you could buy far more with £10 or $10 than you ever could today, to say otherwise is simply nonsense, or do you want to argue with historical recorded facts proving your Keynesian nonsense caused £5 trillion UK debt? This picture comes to mind:
http://static.guim.co.uk/sys-images/Guardian/Pix/pictures/2011/1/14/1295007178679/Margaret-Thatcher-MP-with-007.jpg
That was Lady Thatcher proving that initial point despite being a monetarist herself.
Yes, I don't expect ignorance like you to know any better, your wonderful money printing showed itself in Great Britain between 1945 to the 1970s where we became known as the sick man of Europe, but it seems to me you don't like recorded history now, do you? Doesn't seem like it, because that is precisely what led to the decline of the British economy. It is a simple fact that when you devalue the base of the currency it makes the poor poorer.
Secondly, this idea that you are creating egalitarianism when the rich are not affected by the devaluation of the paper currency itself is laughable, but that's not the major reason of what is flawed with your argument, the biggest flaw and hole in your argument is the question, what exactly is moral about the theft and violence by a government to steal tax money to redistribute? As for your mathematical nonsense? Please, you're speaking theoretically about egalitarianism when the history of Britain is contradicting you.
Nor do I expect an ignoramus like you to understand the only places in history that ever saw the wealth gap close were free markets like Hong Kong where the wealth gap closed between 1961 to 1997 meanwhile it was a widening of the wealth gap between 1945 to 1979. But I wouldn't expect you to understand the costs of living rising and purchasing power driving down making poor people poorer and rich people not affected by this to cause a wealth gap, because you're not intelligent enough to understand that.
Gaining at another's expense?
Yes, because Standard Oil reducing a barrel of oil from ¢30 a barrel to ¢5.9 cents a barrel by 1897 was gaining at others expense, wasn't it? It gained at others expense so much that John Davison Rockefeller enriched the whole of society and opened opportunity, the gate to Henry Ford's automobile industry, but I suppose no one benefited from that now, did they? Oh wait a minute, everyone's driving about in cars.
Yes it does blow your mind, because you're an economic illiterate, there is no such thing as a literate Socialist, it doesn't exist. Who in the right mind regardless of whether you're a Socialist that supports the mixed economy or just a Socialist in general thinks you can enact price controls and then expect efficiency at the other end of it? The only people who think government price controls are efficient, are those who do not understand the fundamental basics of economics and have never studied pricing.
I mean who in the right mind is daft enough to carry out a government price ceiling or price floor which inevitably causes the distortion of market value destroying the information of profits and losses and causes what we call the Economic Calculation Problem where government cannot calculate value rationally meaning that it cannot allocate scarce resources efficiently? I'll tell you who thinks that is rational, an economic illiterate.
If you understood the market son, you would know you do NOT set prices, that is exactly what causes waste and shortages and the misallocation of scarce resources, real value is what the market sets value and that is determined by consumers, so this idea about price setting is just ignorance. Does Venezuela and food shortages ring a bell after what government caused with its price ceiling? Does the housing bubble on the lead up to 2008 ring a bell with your wonderful Labour Party RENT CONTROLS ring a bell? Yeah well it should, because if you understood economics that is primarily the reason for the housing bubble, it caused a shortage.
"our central bank has nothing to do with this."
You're living in 2016 now and you don't understand the problem with central banking? I'm guessing you are a millenial, born after the year 2000, how can I tell? You're a brainwashed Marxist subject to the Marxist educational system under Obama, what a bloody joke. Are you trying to tell me your central banking system isn't a problem for why you're facing these problems today? Are you having a laugh?
"i just don't get this. market advocates are supposed to be all hunky dory about price fluctuations - it's stability, it's fairness, it allows producers to pass on costs and savings to consumers. what happened to all that stuff?"
Of course you don't, you haven't the intelligence to understand it, that's the reason why you don't get it. Prices fluctuate because value does not remain the same, what this proves is you do not understand prices, nor do you understand supply and demand, are you telling me the price should remain the same if you end up with a shortage of something? So how then do you know if you have a shortage? You don't, because that's what PRICES tell you, PRICES are signals, without the information of prices you don't hold the information, you don't know. This is why you are illiterate.
Absurd reading from Friedman?
More like understanding basic economics which you clearly do not.
From what the Federal Reserve caused on the lead up to the Great Depression which ignorance such as yourself attempted to try and blame the free market for? Please, you are the same type of stupid person who tried to blame Calvin Coolidge and tried making that fool FDR, that TYRANT out as if he was heroic, the same FDR who prolonged the Great Depression with all his Socialist government interventionist nonsense, argue with that historical fact and you will prove to me you don't know history.
deathtokoalas
+maersklandro i apologize for the late response. i got busy focusing on something more important to me. i'm de-nicing over the next few days, so i have some time.
"I'm saying it even needs to grow if the population is contracting."
that would not be accurate. you're assuming a sense of moral order that the capitalist class does not have. for historical examples of the consequences of such policies, see the disastrous levels of inequality in nineteenth century england. it would create a brutal, class-based society that may inevitably collapse - but capitalism is too short-sighted to see it's own inevitable decline, and too greedy to care about the consequences of inequality.
but, what does need to happen for capitalism to work, however crudely own defines 'work', is circulation. and, on that point we are making the same argument. whether we need to increase the money supply to ensure circulation in the face of decreasing dollars due to population growth or we need to increase the money supply to ensure circulation to offset the effects of accumulation, or we need to increase the money supply to ensure circulation for some other reason, we need to increase the money supply to ensure circulation. and, it's maybe a better idea to understand it at that higher level of abstraction, so you can recognize other equivalent concerns when you see them.
"Otherwise there's nowhere for the money required for profits and expenses towards other businesses (subcontractors, suppliers) to come from, except other people and businesses' losses."
but, capitalism can function just fine by circulating money only amongst those who own capital - so long as the existence of a feudal labour system is taken for granted. but, the money does at least have to come from other people's losses.
there's nothing preventing the system from running with a fixed money supply, so long as the money is circulating. it's just an awful system to contemplate - it basically necessitates slavery. the united states has operated under this system, and it did not collapse - people were just miserable within it.
"When there isn't enough private borrowing or spending (because you've simply run out of borrowers you can lend to, no matter what you do), the government simply has to step in and borrow and spend through deficit spending to create the required money supply growth."
that's not true, either - and your concept of money creation seems to, itself, be monetarist. government doesn't create money out of thin air. that's right-wing nonsense - propaganda, really. what it can do is liquidate assets and float them on a market in the form of bonds. banks can create money, but it's not the same thing.
if you can cut through the confusion in what you're saying, you're again assuming a concept of moral impetus that capitalism does not have built into it. we can allow the banks to fail. we can allow people to lose their homes. we can watch people starve on the streets and not help them. it's not pretty, but allowing these things to happen will not, in themselves, collapse the system - and, hence, your prescription is not necessary to uphold capitalism itself, but only necessary to minimize it's harmful effects - which capitalism does not, itself, see as necessary at all.
Libertarian Views Scotty M
Disastrous inequality in 19th Century England?
What an ignoramus, really?
What was the wealth like in Britain between 1650 to 1700 and then compare that to 1850 what was the wealth like then? You don't know, you're clueless, you just made something up in your own head in hope that someone didn't have an answer to flatten you with, I will later on.
Here is the reason you are a moron
Between 1650 to 1700 here is what the 3 class groups in wealth looked like:
EXTREMELY WEALTH
> consisted of 2% of the population
> held 80% of the wealth
MIDDLE CLASS
> consisted of 8% of the population
> held 10% of the wealth
WORKING CLASS
> consisted of 90% of the population
> held 10% of the wealth
NOTE: wealth in this period was measured largely by land and building ownership, take into consideration there is a slightly different measurement in the mid 19th Century as more had been introduced. Now that we can see the statistics from that period prior to the Industrial Revolution and note that the extremely wealthy who were the monarchy owned practically everything, there was barely anything left for the middle class and working class people, notice how the working class and middle class both held 10% wealth? Let's compare that to 1850:
EXTREMELY WEALTH
> consisted of 2% of the population
> held 30% of the wealth
MIDDLE CLASS
> consisted of 58% of the population
> held 50% of the wealth
WORKING CLASS
> consisted of 40% of the population
> held 20% of the wealth
Take note of this, as you can see the working class population dropped from 90% to 40% as they moved up into the middle class which is why the middle class moved from 8% of the population to 58% of the population. As you can see the middle class went from 10% wealth to 50% wealth and the working class went from 10% wealth to 20% wealth, the extremely wealthy went from 80% down to 30%, although the extremely wealthy became richer, you can see wealth disparity spread, there was more equality.
That's why you never trust a lefty with history.
The above proves lefties do nothing but talk shit.
maersklandro
+deathtokoalas I didn't say the state creates money. It doesn't. Most states have not issued any money for centuries. You're responding to points and assertions I never made.
The banks create money. And mostly the private banking system at large, very little of the money supply is actually created by the central bank. And that's a private bank too, even when the state is majority or even sole stakeholder.
Because the state doesn't issue money even when it's majority or sole stakeholder of the central bank.
If it had the power to issue money it would not need to borrow it, at interest, from the central bank or other banks.
It could simply issue the money it needs to finance the budget deficit itself, to itself, without needing to borrow it from anyone. So with no debt to pay it back, let alone with interest.
Only right wingers could claim that borrowing money from one's self, at interest, that one's self issued out of nothing to lend to one's self makes sense. So only right wingers claim the central bank is a state/government organ/institution.
And the state can't even borrow directly from the central bank. Through law in most countries, it has to do it through the intermediation of private banks which simply add more interest to the issued debt and perform no other role at all in the process. In the US these are called prime lenders.
Also, you're asserting I attributed morality to capitalism when saying that the money supply has to grow geometrically perpetually for capitalism to function, even when the population is stagnant or even contracting.
I did no such thing.
I explained that the reason for my assertion is that, without a continually geometrically expanding money supply, there is nowhere for businesses expenses towards other businesses, let alone profits, to come from except other people or businesses' loses.
Presumably, you extrapolated from this and assumed the reason I said capitalism would not work if business expenses and profits could only come from other parties' losses was because of some modicum of morality inherent in capitalism or something of the sort.
That's not what I believe at all.
I believe that without a perpetually geometrically expanding money supply (or if that money is not introduced into the real economy but instead withheld by the banking system and the sick fucks that work in or for them and own them), the real economy enters a contractionary spiral.
Like we saw in the Great Depression and we are seeing today, since 2007~8.
This could result in a reversion to feudalism, which would technically constitute a failure or collapse of capitalism.
Or, theoretically possibly, a revolution or uprising where capitalism is replaced with state capitalism or socialism. Or maybe even something completely different, like a Technocracy or RBE.
Capitalism can't operate fine with a static money supply.
Businesses can't operate and won't be operated when, because of the static money supply, there is less than a 50% chance of just breaking even, let alone registering a profit. And no new businesses would be started either, to replace those that went out of business.
Ownership of wealth and the money supply would concentrate even faster than in a 'functional' capitalist economy and more and more of the population would simply drop out of the economy altogether, with no means of income whatsoever and no or trivial savings.
Most people would quickly lose all of the little property they have by either it being confiscated by the banks they supposedly owe money to or them having to sell it themselves, at pennies on the dollar, to purchase food.
After they have nothing at all, if not long before that, they'd be forced to turn to crime, if they hadn't done so already, begging and panhandling or simply starve or die of exposure.
Capitalism goes into a spiral of economic contraction and wealth concentration which is untenable because of the social effects it has and either leads to feudalism or a revolution.
Or at the very least, significant political changes, normally to the left. At least that's what one would expect.
Unless, of course, the population is as stupid, ignorant and brainwashed as they are today.
Where the already heavily right wing thick as pig shit and ignorant electorate goes even further to the right with every failure of capitalism.
Also, the owner class of today's capitalist society will soon simply be able to mass exterminate everyone else using robots or technology. Which they would not have been able to do at the time of the great depression.
And they'll do it to, if they can. Especially as they don't need most people alive for slave or wage slave labour even today. As the vast majority of jobs today are either redundant or useless in the greater scheme of things or they can already be automated.
So either capitalism is overthrown and replaced with something other than neofeudalism soon, such as a Technocracy or RBE or communism with robots, or we're quickly headed towards the greatest genocide in human history.
There's no confusion in what I'm saying. You're reading and responding to things I never said. Or reading things into what I said that I never meant.
deathtokoalas
+Libertarian Views Scotty M i'm blocking scotty again. he's unable to put together a coherent argument, and not worth my time. but, i want to correct a few of the baseless accusations he put down in order to tear down the strawman he then tore down.
1) i would identify as gen x.
2) i've pointed out a few times that i'm from canada.
3) i reject marx. i think he was an authoritarian tyrant.
4) i do not actually advocate monetarism. i'm a leftist. monetarism is not a leftist type of thinking. i actually advocate the abolition of currency, and it's replacement by a needs-based system. this is a view that is more historically associated with anarchists like kropotkin. it is a very different proposed social order than scotty is suggesting i would support.
in all his huffing and puffing and finger pointing and baseless accusations and tearing down of strawmen, scotty never addressed the contradiction in viewing the market as a dynamic source of pricing and being deeply opposed to inflation. he doesn't seem to realize that the inflation is a consequence of the market, rather than of monetary policy - and that his solution would consequently actually exacerbate the problem.
i'm having a hard time making precise sense of the numbers he recently posted, and he provided no source for them. marx himself wrote widely on the rise of the bourgeoisie, and i think that's what he's trying to get across - although his dates seem wrong, to me (the bourgeoisie in england would have risen earlier than 1850). but, the language of "middle class" suggests that the bourgeoisie was less separated from the proletariat than the aristocracy - and this is really just propaganda. the trick is that he changes the meaning of the middle class halfway through, to make it look like the rich went from 80% of the wealth to 30% of the wealth. and, i think he knows what he's doing, too - that it's just open dishonesty.
but, even so, this says little about inequality in the period, as it was defined by the terrible conditions of the british working class.
deathtokoalas
+maersklandro
i'm going to pull out of this discussion as well. i don't actually disagree with much of what you're saying (although, in some countries - like canada - the separation between the central bank and the government is weak enough that the state can actually print interest-free money directly if it really wants, although it tends not to), so much as i disagree over the question of whether the effects are enough that capitalism requires inflation for this reason.
i mean, look at europe. they have a zero-inflation monetary policy. it has essentially destroyed their society - they're being pulled back into the dark ages by their adoption of a gold standard. services are crumbling. unemployment is structural. mass poverty has become normal. we've seen demonstrations all over the place. but, you know what? the elite are actually doing quite well. they don't seem to be hurt by this zero-inflation; they're thriving. and, the police are functioning properly in making the masses invisible to them.
so, i do think there's a moral bias underlying your perspective - even if you're not entirely aware of it. maybe, instead of rejecting that claim, you might think about it for a bit, first.
Käptn Kook
finally...
maersklandro
+deathtokoalas Scotty is a well known right wing troll who seems as ubiquitous as he is immune to logic and reason and dishonest.
Might be a professional propaganda operation software bot or team of paid trolls.
I define working or functioning capitalism as capitalism where capitalism functions with the consent or even support of a large majority of the population. Where a majority of people would vote or even fight to preserve it.
Also, you make the mistake of confusing 0 inflation with 0 money supply growth. This is pretty monetarist and right wing of you.
You yourself said that money supply growth need not mean proportional inflation.
There can be money supply growth without proportional inflation.
Have a look at this chart for Euro Area Money Supply M3 :
http://cdn.tradingeconomics.com/embed/?s=emuevolvmonsupm3&v=201601111707n&d1=19160101&d2=20161231&h=300&w=600
deathtokoalas
+maersklandro the zero-inflation target refers to the money supply concept rather than the cpi concept, although it's expressed in a kind of intermediate point of interest rate policy. the eu central bank isn't pretending that it can affect the cpi through monetary policy.
maersklandro
+deathtokoalas I'm not sure what you mean by that, that central banks or at least the ECB target money supply growth rather than goods basket price growth.
It's the first time I've heard that central banks give a damn about what the money supply is rather than giving a damn (or pretending to) about goods basket price indicator.
That's irrelevant as well, if not compared with the median wage.
Rising prices are not a problem if wages or incomes rise as fast or faster. They're only a problem for savers, if prices rise faster than interest accrues.
I'm not expressing an opinion on what the ECB wants or does not want or can or can't do to control the cpi.
I'm trying to show that for capitalism to function, the money supply needs to grow geometrically continuously.
And for that to occur, the banks need to lend continuously, ever more, to ever more people and businesses. And ever more people and businesses need to want to borrow and to meet the requirements or conditions for the loans they seek.
Which is why (what the right wingers would call irresponsible but they're just morons) borrowing and spending has been encouraged and conditions and requirements for bank loans have been relaxed more and more over time.
Also, you might even say that money supply growth, which is required by capitalism to continue to function, requires population growth, rather than the other way around.
And also why most if not all (not very well informed on the matter) nations run budget deficits and why these have been growing over time. Because private sector borrowing simply is not enough. And has not been for a while.
Only time a local, state or national/federal budget can be balanced is when private borrowing is booming so there isn't so much of a need for governments to borrow to ensure the necessary money supply growth.
Of course, moronic, ignorant right wingers want to cut deficit spending.
Because they're just that fucking stupid.
They actually think :
1. money has intrinsic value or at least should (when the very notion and definition of money is that it has no intrinsic value or negligible intrinsic value, otherwise it's just another good and using it is no different from barter).
2. money is scarce, has to be earned through honest, hard work.
3. people make exactly as much money as they deserve and their work is worth.
4. running a budget deficit is like burning money (as if that were a problem, you can simply print more) and unsustainable (lulz).
5. issuing any new money is unsustainable and causes hyperinflation.
6. we should have a static money supply, preferably "backed by" gold (as if fractional reserve banking cares whether the underlying asset is gold or paper and we didn't already have that system in place a century ago and it did nothing to constrain money supply growth - because that's what capitalism needs to work).
7. inflation is always awful and bad for everyone. My mathematical thought experiment earlier in this discussion disproves this.
Now please compare these two graphs and tell me capitalism doesn't need a perpetually geometrically expanding money supply to work :
http://www.tradingeconomics.com/greece/money-supply-m3
http://www.tradingeconomics.com/germany/money-supply-m3
How is Greece doing economically and how is Germany?
Which of the two has the fastest declining living standards?
Which of the two has the highest unemployment and youth unemployment and homelessness?
Now you tell me again why you disagree with my assertion that capitalism needs a geometrically expanding money supply to function or work.
Because I did not perfectly exactly define what functioning or working means when referring to capitalism?
Ok then, can we at least agree that German capitalism is working better than Greek capitalism because German capitalism is able to grow its money supply while strangling Greek capitalism through contracting its money supply?
Isn't the capitalism which is able to print its own money in whichever quantities it wishes doing arguably better by every possible metric and statistic you choose to use (not just economic indicators but also social indicators) than the capitalism which depends on a foreign capitalism to issue its money supply, a foreign capitalism which has decided it would be just fine and dandy to starve peripheral european capitalist countries of money, not by limiting or constraining them out of any money supply growth but actually contracting their money supply?
Germany has control over the ECB and, by virtue of having control over the ECB, the banking system rules and regulations as well as policy throughout the eurozone.
Which means it has control over which countries' banking system get paper and coins to cover withdrawals from its banking system of money of account it issues internally, in and through its national banking system.
Which means it can collapse the monetary / banking system of any country in the eurozone which is issuing more money than itself out of nothing.
Which means it can collapse the money supply of any country in the eurozone.
This was the intention for the euro from the outset.
Joining the eurozone is the biggest, downright suicidal socio-economic policy mistake a country can make.
It's basically electing to be a colony of Germany.
Germany conquered Europe. And did so not by the muzzle of a gun but by getting moronic, ignorant people and the treasonous politicians they voted into office relinquish their national, sovereign right to issue their own money inside their own country, without requiring the consent or approval of a foreign social, economic or political entity, institution or organism.
Kindly tell me what of the above you disagree with, if anything.
deathtokoalas
+maersklandro that was worded awkwardly. i pointed out that i'm quitting smoking this week. i was trying to disarm a misperception, and it came out badly.
the purpose of the central bank is to "minimize inflation" and allow for "price stability". but, what the central banks do - set interest rates - doesn't have a large effect on the fluctuations we see on a day-to-day basis. they will talk about the cpi in various types of propaganda. and, in the most abstract sense it is true that they could possibly affect the exchange rate by fractions of a cent, and it could have some barely measurable effect on the basket of goods. they will interpret this as a part of their mandate, because it's what the public wants to hear, kind of thing. what i was trying to say is that they don't really buy into this, it's just political nonsense.
what the central banks really do is prevent currency competition on a national basis. that's what you had before central banks. then, you'd have buddy farmer in missouri dealing with his nest egg (and the price of eggs) floating around all over the place because the morgans and rockefellers were having a currency war. that's what the mandate of "controlling inflation" and "maintaining stability" is all about. and, all the bank has to do to ensure this is exist. it's not a question of what the rate is. these quarter of a percent hikes and cuts don't change anybody's behaviour. it's a question of there being a single rate that everybody abides to.
the m3 isn't liquid currency, so the argument you're constructing is based on flawed data. the problem in greece is that they can't devalue. they would of course devalue by printing money. but, they've abandoned their sovereignty and replaced it with actual, real debt.
the number of euros is constant through the eurozone, and determined by the central bankers. there's no basis for comparing the money supply in greece to the money supply in germany. it's the same money supply. and, that's the actual problem.
greece and germany need to set up a fiscal relationship that is similar to the one that exists between ontario and nova scotia. what we have here is an "equalization payment", where we collect taxes from the wealthy provinces and redistribute them to the poorer ones. we don't call this "bailouts". we call it "confederation".
maersklandro
+deathtokoalas If you don't like M3 you can look up M1 and M2. You'll see the same geometric growth pattern except a smaller absolute size and absolute growth.
I don't know why you don't like M3 as a measure though. Because for every long term deposit, there's free money wandering around in the economy as banks don't sit on deposits. Especially long term deposits. Or at least they didn't use to when the money from the central bank wasn't actually free.
And you can look at whichever country you like, you'll see all of their money supplies (M1, M2, M3 etc.) are growing. Except for countries conquered and occupied monetarily by Germany at the periphery of the euro monetary zone.
For instance, between January 2007 and November 2015, Romania's M1 money supply (cash in circulation and overnight deposits) grew 2.64 times, from 51,638,854,200 RON to 136,061,806,900 RON.
I reject your contention that the money supply is static.
Greeks and Greek businesses and businesses operating in Greece have less money than they used to have even a year ago, speaking nominally.
While it's the other way around with Germans, German businesses and businesses operating in Germany.
The money supply is not constant in the eurozone.
There is basis for comparison. They're not the same thing. Euros in a Greek's bank account and wallet are not the same thing as Euros in a German's bank account or wallet.
The Greek can't spend the euros in the German's bank account or wallet on himself or something he wants. Only those euros in his own bank account or wallet..
Also, his banking system can't issue more euros out of nothing as it pleases, regardless how the German banking system feels or policy makers feel about it.
And that's the actual problem.
I agree with your last paragraph but that is politically untenable because of the stupidity, ignorance, selfishness, callousness and prejudice of the electorate in Germany.
deathtokoalas
+maersklandro it's the m0/mB that is relevant to the discussion and the comparison to the gold standard, and it's been flat forever. that's what they need to actually increase to get the economy going. and, it is static across the eurozone - that's the point of having a eurozone. but, the policy is to keep it flat, or even reign it in. the other measures of wealth are largely only meaningful to investors. most people never engage with wealth beyond the sense of actual dollars coming in and out of their accounts; most people have precisely no real wealth at all.
the germans would actually probably benefit from decreasing the m0, whereas the greeks need it drastically increased. and, it's really actually that conflict that is the problem.
maersklandro
+deathtokoalas What? How does M0/MB matter at all?
The money in circulation matters. Which means M1, M2 and M3 matter, because of the reasons I gave (long term deposits aren't sat on by the banking system, even if you adhere to the incorrect view that bank loans come out of deposits).
By your claim you're basically saying only cash transactions matter or even exist in the economy. Not even debit or credit card transactions matter by this metric.
No, you're not even saying that. I have no idea what you're trying to say by claiming that M0/MB matters at all, for anything.
How do reserves at the central bank matter at all, for anyone?
And how does anything you've said disprove my thesis that the money supply needs to grow geometrically continually for capitalism to work?
deathtokoalas
+maersklandro what i'm saying is exactly that only cash transactions matter to the proletariat - that the rest is just make believe, for the benefit of the ruling class. the central bank consequently doesn't matter to anyone except investors, except in the sense that it minimizes currency speculation - and not through monetary policy, but by merely existing.
maersklandro
+deathtokoalas It's not make believe. Don't you purchase stuff with make believe money created by the banks out of nothing?
Didn't you ever get paid with that kind of money? Didn't you have to live on it?
I have and did. While I was unemployed I lived on fictional cash in the bank which I (my mom, really, as she owned it) obtained through the sale of an apartment and which I gradually used to redeem actual, real, physical cash to buy the necessities of life.
Even now, I get paid through bank transfers of fictional cash I then use to redeem actual cash to buy my groceries.
And I buy games and software applications on steam or online, paying using PayPal.
So I find your assertions that only cash matters to the proletariat (I most certainly am a proletarian) and that the fictional cash doesn't exist (it is money, it's just not cash) ludicrous.
My definition of money is quite a deal simpler.
If you can use it to buy stuff in the real world, it's money. Doesn't matter what its form is or how you can spend or receive it.
You see, I'd long been homeless and possibly dead or seriously ill if that were nto so.
Because I lived for quite while on the money off the sale of that apartment and no other source of income at all apart from paltry unemployment benefits of something like $47 a month, at today's exchange rate.
And the unemployment benefits were only for a few months. I think they don't last longer than 6 months unless you jump through a lot of hoops to prove you're actually looking. I had to claim the benefits because my mom wanted to shame me into finding a job.
Because she somehow thought I didn't want to or wasn't looking or something. Luckily I managed to find my current place of employment, a company from abroad which pays me via bank transfers as I work remotely, from home. As a support tech.
So I feel you are fudging how we feel about how things work and how we feel about how they should be working with how things actually work.
Believe me, I am no right winger. Nor proponent or advocate of capitalism. Furthest from it, in fact.
I myself would much prefer to see a moneyless society, with no private property (only right of exclusive and non-exclusive usufruct or personal property and a right to privacy) or guarantee of inheritance.
At the very least, I think we should have a citizen income, guaranteed nutrition, housing and healthcare.
However, I would much prefer a society completely free of money, profit, with no guarantee of inheritance or right of ownership.
Especially with regard to superfluous, unnecessary and luxury possessions such as a summer home, a yacht or your own means of production.
And apart from being an authoritarian, statist and culturally and socially conservative, I am as left wing economically as you can be. Possibly more than you are yourself.
I do not want to live in the society I was born in. I'd have much preferred to be born many decades from now.
All of the above don't change the fact that, in capitalism, the money supply needs to grow geometrically continually, with the new money being distributed to ordinary people, or it brings out the very worst in capitalism.
deathtokoalas
the m0/mb refers to cash in circulation, which includes actual transactions and debit card withdrawals. it doesn't include money created by bank practices, or by governments floating bonds for property.
you have never been paid in anything that is not included in the m0. even if you made money by selling real property. that is still a real transaction.
maersklandro
+deathtokoalas All money is created through bank loans. The people who bought the apartment paid for it mostly with money from a bank loan.
Which was basically new money created out of nothing through the issuance of their loan.
That money was not included in M0.
M0 is notes and coins in circulation, outside of bank vaults and the reserves at the central bank. Most of the money in any bank loan is electronic only. It doesn't exist as cash but only as make believe cash.
deathtokoalas
+maersklandro m0 includes all money in circulation - that is, all money that is transacted. it doesn't matter that the money was sourced by a loan (or that the way you're presenting this idea is wrong); the fact that it was used in a transaction and moved into your account brings it into m0.
this is not a difficult problem to work through. if all money is created by loans, and money created by loans is not included in m0, then m0 is precisely zero at all times. that is clearly false, so you should be able to immediately see that your reasoning is flawed.
the money created by fractional reserve banking is used in "money markets", not used for circulation. it goes into the stock markets.
you're very confused about how the banking system works, and i again need to point out that you're essentially repeating a lot of propaganda.
listen, i'm sorry - i'm not interested. and, i don't think you know what you're talking about, so i don't think this is a useful way to spend my time.
but, i think we should take a step back and realize that these definitions are not static. you might be looking at a different concept of liquid assets than i was. different countries define their statistics differently. in north america, m0 is understood to include money in circulation plus money than can be immediately withdrawn as cash - that is, money that is not tied into any kind of assets and is entirely liquid. not property, not bonds, not debt; actual money.
the point i was trying to make is that it doesn't matter how much make believe money the bank makes to trade on markets. what matters is how much actual money exists in circulation.
this is the measure of the money supply that you need if you're going to discuss comparisons to the gold standard, ways to balance out the business cycle or really anything else of any meaning or value.
and, in europe, this measure of money has stayed flat because the size of deposit accounts is steadily decreasing as a consequence of austerity. this is far more important in terms of measuring the money supply than anything that banks do.
i've explained to you already that those charts are not the charts you want to look at to understand why the euro zone is functionally a gold standard system, and why the central bank is less important in monetary policy than spending policies by national governments. the amount of money that is accessible to spenders has been flat in the eurozone for decades (conversely, it has steadily grown in canada). functionally speaking, the important point here is that government austerity programs reduce the real money supply - not that interest rates modify the make-believe money supply.
it's consequently not necessary to grow the money supply for capitalism to function, although not doing so will lead to mass unemployment and widespread poverty (as we are seeing today in europe).
it doesn't matter how money was created, whether or not it is "backed" by something, who created it or any of these other things. this is all a lot of nonsense. what matters is it's level of liquidity. that is what those subscripts refer to. and, if it's liquid it's m0/mb. it could be poofed into existence by aliens, or printed as counterfeit. the how is not important. it's the form the cash exists in that is important.
what i'm reacting against is the idea that creating make believe money for rich people to play games with will somehow increase the amount of money in circulation. that's reaganomics. and, it's absolute nonsense.
the only way to create liquid, accessible money is through government spending in the real economy.
--
David Longfellow
What is "Cultural Marxism"?
deathtokoalas
you probably know it better as "neo-conservatism".
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