>> What Gowan shows, as does Hudson, though in more arcane language, is >> that the metastatic outgrowth of the financial pole of capital is >> symptomatic. It is always an outcome of of a deeper accumulaiton >> crisis... a response to it that is a little like someone beginning to >> lose their grip on a bar of soap. Financial-pole ascendancy is like >> that dangerous juggling act being done when the slippery soap is in the >> air. What is happening now has very specific origins that can be >> studied and explained so long as one avoids or delimits the explanatory >> power of standard economic mystifications. What is happening right >> now as financial-pole capital is reaching from one center (Wall Street) >> into every cranny of the planet is historically unique, so it is not >> only extremely dangerous, it is extremely dangerous in highly >> unpredictable ways. >> >> Four years ago, some of us were writing that there was a housing bubble >> being inflated with fictional exchange value. Now, the sub-prime >> lending monster is at the doors of the middle class; and people are >> trying to explain it as if The Market were inhabited by fickle deities, >> as if society were being run by poltergeists. [...] >> Alex Zeigler makes the case that the original expansion impulse at the >> heart of these depredations is always scarcity, and often brought on by >> locally unsustainable practices. His example is that the steam engine >> was invented in Early Greece, but it didn't become generalized in >> application until the Brits cut all their trees down and had to dragnet >> the coal. Again, this hypothesis can be tested at least to some >> degree. There is no doubt that the expansion of US slavery was related >> in very large part to serial soil exhaustions.
this I think starts to answer the question: but what about large-field monocropping without corvee labour, authoritarian hierarchies, etc? I suspect this is kind of like asking "but what about freeways without cars?" -- i.e. this is a socio-econo-techno bundle, all are part and parcel of the same social dynamic. field ag where land ownership is not concentrated into a feudal/corporate pyramid [the other kind] scheme with ownership restricted to the tiny top tier, would tend to be small-field and diverse, not large-field and monocrop. Balinese rice paddies might be an illustration, or traditional Chinese market gardens, or the very long-running, relatively sustainable peasant and smallholder ag of the Indian plains... The difference between theory and practise in practise ...
Um? Coal became a major factor because the Brits were cutting down their trees for charcoal. Yup. To the extent that the steam engine had anything to do with it it was to create demand for charcoal, and when that source of energy was disappearing, a new one needed to be found. But that is not an indictment of modernity. Demand for energy is demand for energy - whether that energy happens to have negative externalities is what matters - if we produce it with wind and solar we're fine. And the expansion of slavery was related to the expansion of an agricultural economy based on slavery. That that had links to the growth of cotton for the textile industry, and in turn was linked to soil exhaustion by tobacco farming doesn't mean there's some sort of causal relationship between soil exhaustion and slavery. If the economy had been a non-slave based one, it would have expanded the non-slave economy. If they hadn't found a more profitable substitute, soil depletion would have led to a decline in slavery.
but what about large-field monocropping without corvee labour, authoritarian hierarchies, etc? I suspect this is kind of like asking "but what about freeways without cars?" -- i.e. this is a socio-econo-techno bundle, all are part and parcel of the same social dynamic. field ag where land ownership is not concentrated into a feudal/corporate pyramid [the other kind] scheme with ownership restricted to the tiny top tier, would tend to be small-field and diverse, not large-field and monocrop. Balinese rice paddies might be an illustration, or traditional Chinese market gardens, or the very long-running, relatively sustainable peasant and smallholder ag of the Indian plains...
Who cares whether we're working in large fields or small ones? The problem is the work. If the third world slums dwellers were working in smaller non-polluting, sustainable, cooperatively owned factories but still lived under the same material conditions, doing the same work, there would still be a problem with poverty.
Environmental sustainability says nothing about standard of living or quality of life, it just means that it is sustainable over the long term. The life of a sweatshop worker is undesirable not because they are part of an unsustainable system, but because their work and living conditions are poor. The same goes for peasant farmers. Poor housing, lack of running water, lack of electricity, lack of quality health care, lack of all sorts of pleasant material goods... all not good in and of itself.
It's why your view of civilization as bad, and a world where everybody works as a peasant farmer under pre-modern material conditions as good bothers me so much. I see it as no different from someone saying that what the left should aspire to is to turn everyone into third world urban slum dwellers, just minus a hierarchical socio-political system and inequality.
The suspected folly of capitalism is that it provides excellent living standards to us now, at the expense of environment and natural resourses for future generations. The later human "entrants" would be big loosers compared to us. How high is the risk of this sad scenario? Does capitalism needs expansion like us air? Wouldn't "leftish" impluses allow us to live prosperous times much longer?
We'd be in a bad situation. That's why I don't see a post-civilization society.
Does capitalism needs expansion like us air?
Yes, but not of resource consumption. It needs expanding profits, expanding economies but that's something else. More t-shirts, more cars, more downloads, higher end food, more services. Take a pound of coffee beans, make it all at home, drink it all at the 7-11, drink it all at the fancy coffee bar. Same pound of coffee, similar other resources, but to a capitalist economy very different values. What uses more resources - one thousand dollars worth of lawyer is the same one thousand dollars as a thousand dollars of cheap t-shirts at Walmart, not the same resource input. The resource question is independent of the capitalism one. The former is about what standard of living we can have on a sustainable basis, the latter is about how society is organized. If the government sets rules that force the private sector to use less natural resources, it will use less. Just like higher wages and greater equality in the post WWII period didn't cause a collapse of the capitalist system. The capitalists will have to be dragged kicking and screaming economic doom, just as they did then, and their predictions will be wrong, just as they were then.
Indeed, capitalism is supposed to be robust and function under many regimes, perhaps under any restrictions of natural environment and social agreement. After all, what is the difference between physical restrictions and social restrictions? A climate change may restict your buisiness freedoms muh more harshly than a cautios government policy.
Isn't this ironic that today's economy has to be massaged so subtly by the government?
Nevertheless, can capitalism expand much without the consumption growth? It must be able to reduce the stupendous waste of today's operations, if there exists a conceivable package of sufficient incentives. But how much growth may it have without material production?
Anyway. If the Greeks invented a steam machine but did not implemented it, can we see here a failure of... of... free run of civilization... or something? What did they miss for making the technological jump? Was it just a wrong social system? Or did they need isolation from dominant cultures?
"Dieu se rit des hommes qui se plaignent des conséquences alors qu'ils en chérissent les causes" Jacques-Bénigne Bossuet
Did Hero himself find it useless? What applications did he imagine? Nothing helpful for himself personally?
But I wonder, if Romans were not near around at that time, wouldn't Alexandrian inventors be able to build around a more mechanised polis?
It's possible that the thing was just a toy, a demonstration tool for the physics of steam, like the things you can buy in a science museum.
The æolipile that Melanchton illustrates is a (not particularly powerful) device for converting heat into rotational motion. In the technological context of the 1st century, I can imagine using that for a potter's turntable, but a steam machine would have been too expensive for a potter. And then there's the problem that the æolipile as depicted doesn't operate in a cycle as the steam escapes. So, you not only need a supply of fuel, but a constant stream of water. "It's the statue, man, The Statue."
Speaking of particians or other wealthy "investors": It is not necessarily optimal that technology development decisions depend on their needs, inclinations and understanding. In particular, they tend to be more greedy than the society norm - which is not a fortunate aspect regarding concerns of this diary.
Two questions. When you say "optimal", what are you optimising? And what would be an "optimal" mechanism for allocation of surplus wealth? "It's the statue, man, The Statue."
Immediate holders of surplus wealth would of course prefer to keep it to themselves. Whatever social agreements or deals are proposed, there will be some better off without the agreements (in the sense of game theory models). They may even use their power to prevent new agreements, or weaken exsisting ones. (As it happens now, with the global initiative from Washington DC.) They may use measure like propaganda to keep control. On the other hand, the rest of society players may decide that it is unfair to them to have no distribution. In extreme cases, they may have enough power to impose or persuade any distribution whatsoever. Of course, harmonious agreements are preferable. The "optimal" situation is perhaps when the power balance is in favour of the majority seeking a redistribution, and they persuade surplus wealth holders to apply multidimensional individual optimization, along the lines: is it the sum of your ambitions to grasp as much wealth as possible for this moment? Don't you want to be sure that this wonderful society will keep functioning happily in this marvelous environment for indefinitely long time?
Then you just need a slave to polish the mirror.
However, there was no indication to wheter he used this for any practical purpose. Think he was more of an inventor then an entrepreneur. A vote for PES is a vote for EPP! A vote for EPP is a vote for PES! Support the coalition, vote EPP-PES in 2009!
I think the friction between organized labor (seeking greater wages and other benefits) and the capitalists / management (seeking lower wages, higher productivity, and lower overall costs) was a big driver of 20th century technological innovation, as that friction helped drive the demand for the products of such innovation. Slaves, having no power, meant that friction did not exist in ancient Greece and Egypt, and thus there was no need for productivity enhancing technology (this is admittedly oversimplified because other stresses can create that kind of demand - growing population vs limited land for agriculture, for example, requiring greater agricultural productivity).
I assume this has been studied by scholars but I've never looked into it.
you are the media you consume.
Now if I recall correctly the history of steam-engines it went something like this:
The brittish steamengines were for the first hundred years or so solely used in the brittish mining industry. First to pump water to prevent mines from flooding and later on to haul stuff out of the mines. To haul stuff you need rails, so you need a certain knowledge of railmaking too.
These early steamengines were rather big, (with later standards) inefficient, stationary things. Since it was costly to have them running a lot of try and error was applied to make them better. One famous succesfull improver was named Watt.
After a lot of development steamengines could be used for other things like running trains. They were not that good though. In the famous competition were Stephensons Rocket defeated Ericssons Novelty, one competing design was disqualified after it turned out they had hid a horse in the train. (Bet it would have won.)
Eventually laws of thermodynamics were formulated which gave an idea of what the machines actually did and some ways to calculate improvements and not just doing the old try and error. This is btw, were games like civilization often gets it wrong, steamengines => thermodynamics, not the other way around. A vote for PES is a vote for EPP! A vote for EPP is a vote for PES! Support the coalition, vote EPP-PES in 2009!
A very important point. "It's the statue, man, The Statue."
Whereas England in the 18th century didn't have that much labour; most of the peasantry was tied to the land, and labour wasn't as cheap. Un roi sans divertissement est un homme plein de misères
