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The flaws of the EU's asymmetric approach to imbalances | 132 comments (132 topical, editorial, 0 hidden)
Re: Self-censorship (4.00 / 2)
Completely off-topic. One of these days somebody will have to explain me, very slowly, how Keynes is still appropriate in a post-industrial society that is going to suffer (is suffering) a rather strong shrinkage of its resource base (oil, food, water, general ecosystem, ...).

I fail to understand how it is possible to maintain the current western pattern of consumption. If think that we will get poorer. Currently because of re-distribution (from the middle to the top), but in the future due to sheer natural scarcity.

Not a subject of this thread, I know. But I could not help it ;)

by cagatacos on Wed Jul 20th, 2011 at 11:42:04 AM EST
[ Parent ]
Re: Self-censorship (4.00 / 5)
Keynes cares about employment, and nominal GDP, not about real GDP or consumption.

So you could in theory continue to have employment and growing GDP with a shrinking resource base. You just have to employ a larger fraction of the population in activities with a low resource use.

The growth of the "service" or "tertiary" sector and the "information economy" are steps in that direction. It doesn't follow that people in the service or information economies should be high earners, but that pretty much arbitrary numbers of people can be employed in them and they will need to be if 5% of the population can produce food for everyone and industrial production of material goods gets less and less labour-intensive.

Economics is politics by other means

by Carrie (migeru at eurotrib dot com) on Wed Jul 20th, 2011 at 11:46:20 AM EST
[ Parent ]
Re: Self-censorship (none / 1)
I think I see your point.

The problem is that sometimes it passes (from some Keynesians that I read) that proper economic policy would be enough to maintain the status quo lifestyle. That state anti-cyclical intervention (and redistributive policies) would be enough to counter nature's limits. Indeed many of those keynesians ignore nature's limits (hence my comment on post-industrialism) and clearly talk about growth (in very real terms).

Any realistic politics for the future will have to consider a shrinkage of the resource base. That, by the way is more encouraging of redistributive policies: "trickle down" would only make sense in a infinite growth (real) scenario: If there are limits then if some get more and more that can only mean that others get less and less.

by cagatacos on Wed Jul 20th, 2011 at 12:08:15 PM EST
[ Parent ]
Re: Self-censorship (4.00 / 4)
The way I see it, the current policies ban a fairly large proportion of society from accessing the means of production they need to be productive. All in the name of fighting the satanic forces of inflation.

Keynes on the other hand saw that unemployment is an evil as it destroys the unemployed, and therefore it is better to run unproductive public projects like pyramid building then to have unemployment. Even better is to produce things actually needed.

Keynes lived at a time when resource constraints was results of boycotts, not nature. But that does not invalidate his observations on unemployment, and in a resource constrained world more manual labor will be needed as we can no longer throw more resources at every problem.

Sweden's finest (and perhaps only) collaborative, leftist e-newspaper Synapze.se

by A swedish kind of death on Wed Jul 20th, 2011 at 02:03:19 PM EST
[ Parent ]
Re: Self-censorship (none / 0)
Migeru:
if 5% of the population can produce food for everyone

but what if we go back to 90% of people involved in farming like before? what's going to power those behemoth threshers and balers? galley slaves?

to imagine 5% are going to continue to produce the world's food for long... can you really believe that?

'The history of public debt is full of irony. It rarely follows our ideas of order and justice.' Thomas Piketty

by melo (melometa4(at)gmail.com) on Wed Jul 20th, 2011 at 05:03:03 PM EST
[ Parent ]
Re: Self-censorship (none / 1)
That would be a nice discussion to have. "Nice" is more like "must have" due to peaks and resource competition.
by cagatacos on Thu Jul 21st, 2011 at 07:12:12 AM EST
[ Parent ]
Re: Self-censorship (none / 1)
Impossible. Too many people starting from ideological positions and too much inconsistent data.
by Colman (colman at eurotrib.com) on Thu Jul 21st, 2011 at 07:14:36 AM EST
[ Parent ]
Re: Self-censorship (none / 0)
 Nature's inherent limits will "fix" those (supposed) problems and the "discussion" will take place--one way or another.  Would you rather it be primarily verbal or via other, non-verbal means?

   And, besides, "positions" are necessarily "ideological" --otherwise they contain no "ideas".  To pretend that there are any non-ideological "positions" is neither necessary nor helpful though it is, of course, possible to pretend this.

 --------------

  RE (ref. http://www.eurotrib.com/story/2011/7/19/15816/2580#66 ) :

  "You just have to employ a larger fraction of the population in activities with a low resource use."

   "Capitalisms" don't do this well or, so far, at all.  Instead, success is practically defined as "More, more, more, more, more."  Higher consumption, higher profits, higher "productivity", higher output, etc.  Capitalisms, in short, "succeed" by literally using everything up--completely.  

   In this vein, Jean-Jacques Salomon's points in his essay, Le destin technologique ( http://www.folio-lesite.fr/Folio/livre.action?codeProd=A32811 )

   where he describes a very arresting thought experiment.  It goes very roughly something like this:

   Imagine for a moment that the earth and its human populations one day reach their absolute limits--I know, you'll object that this can't and won't occur because one or more catastrophes will intervene before that limit arrives, but this only makes Salomon's point the more arresting since his scenario is the "good news", so to speak, since it takes for purposes of analysis the view that somehow humanity so controls and attenuates those intervening and population-limiting catastrophes that, in effect, populations go on growing until the earth's resources, and or technological capacities to "stretch" them also reach their limits--that, when you think in his terms (i.e., many thousands and thousands of years) has to occur eventually or, otherwise, of course, we become extinct as a species.

   In extrapolating, we arrive inescapably at the point where the only feasible operative possibility is literally "zero" growth, none, at all, because even the smallest measureable increase is beyond the capacity of physical resources to accomodate.

  It seems clear to me that before any future human society arrives at this extreme, we (or that future people, more able than are we to reason and act sensibly for their own survival) have essentially two courses open:

   one is to continue as we are until we eventually destroy ourselves in some combination of itentional and accidental folly;

  the other is to veer off our present course in ways which are so fundamental a departure from our present assumptions that they are as yet not welcome to imagine or discuss in most discussion fora.  The present insanity must be protected and preserved.

  And that's driving the current misery around us.

"In such an environment it is not surprising that the ills of technology should seem curable only through the application of more technology..." John W Aldridge

by proximity1 on Thu Jul 21st, 2011 at 10:08:44 AM EST
[ Parent ]
Re: Self-censorship (none / 1)
When a discussion ostensibly about the physical world is based in grossly incomplete data and mostly about validating participants political views, there's not much point, is there?

Take the proposition that the question "what's going to power those behemoth threshers and balers?" has no answer. We can spend hundreds of comments dealing with that and at the end of the day the gaia-is-going-to-punish-us-and-we-deserve-it crowd and the technology-will-save-us-all crowd will be just calling each other names. The discussion isn't really about what's possible, it's about other stuff.

by Colman (colman at eurotrib.com) on Thu Jul 21st, 2011 at 10:27:51 AM EST
[ Parent ]
Re: Self-censorship (none / 1)
Hmm. Pretty good set of reasons for not discussing anything, like climate change, energy, and certainly nothing to do with politics or economics.

Plus a fairly damaging assumption about the "crowds" in presence.

I suppose we could talk about sport, but I'm pretty sure you'd rather steer away from that, too?

by afew (afew(a in a circle)eurotrib_dot_com) on Thu Jul 21st, 2011 at 11:06:15 AM EST
[ Parent ]
Re: Self-censorship (none / 0)
 FIFY:

   "Pretty good set of reasons for not discussing anything one would rather not see addressed, like climate change, energy, and certainly nothing to do with politics or economics."

 Exactly---and that may be the point, after all.

"In such an environment it is not surprising that the ills of technology should seem curable only through the application of more technology..." John W Aldridge

by proximity1 on Fri Jul 22nd, 2011 at 08:54:21 AM EST
[ Parent ]
Re: Self-censorship (none / 0)
Well, I don't think it was Colman's point.
by afew (afew(a in a circle)eurotrib_dot_com) on Fri Jul 22nd, 2011 at 08:56:42 AM EST
[ Parent ]
Re: Self-censorship (none / 0)

  Hmm.  Then I've missed yours, in your comment, too.

"In such an environment it is not surprising that the ills of technology should seem curable only through the application of more technology..." John W Aldridge
by proximity1 on Fri Jul 22nd, 2011 at 08:59:55 AM EST
[ Parent ]
Re: Self-censorship (none / 0)
I responded to the ideas expressed, and though I did not indicate snark or humour, the remark was at once serious and light-hearted.

Also see my comment below.

by afew (afew(a in a circle)eurotrib_dot_com) on Fri Jul 22nd, 2011 at 09:04:01 AM EST
[ Parent ]
Re: Self-censorship (none / 0)
 
     I don't see why (and you haven't bothered to explain it) attempts to validate one's own political views and at the same time, defend them from others' critiques (or, failing that, to change them) are  pointless exercises.  I just have your unsupported word for this, which is about all you seem interested in offering.  You aren't interested in giving straight answers when it's apparently so much easier to dismiss the objections with a universally-applicable "It's no use, it'll never work.  People are too stuck in their ways."  (Something of which you seem determined to offer marveloous evidence, yourself.)  And we have once again your always-implied fatalistic underlying view that people are in so many of the most fundamental ways a hopelessly incorrigible lot.  Can't persuade 'em, can't kill 'em all, so the best that can be hoped for is to quibble over the trivial details at the far edges of issues, where it's supposed that tiny compromises can occasionally be found.

  And, then, strangely, at the same time, something hard--like actual political and economic events in the living world--seems to have brought you around to seeing the validity of what seems to me to be at least some the of left-ish political and economic criticisms which once upon a time in these threads I'd could read you opposing and denoucing--or maybe I'm just mistaken about that.

    Now we can read, for example, your valid objections to what you colorfully describe as the absurdly other-worldly habits of econ policy-makers imploring what amounts to throwing more virgins into the sacrificial volcano.  Just who demands and requires these virgins' routine sacrifice?  Surely it isn't the people whose economic beliefs you have in the past or currently still do disparage, is it?  That is, unless I'm mistaken about it, hard facts have wrought some changes in your formerly expressed economic & political beliefs.  This is also and perhaps even moreso true of Migeru who now can admit that the opponents of last several E.U. referenda votes (including what I'd call the Lisbon disgrace)  were after all at least partly right to oppose them--though he still can't quite credit them as being right for reasons which they themeselves understood.  Still, again, there's progress.

  So, you see?  There is such a thing as progress.

"In such an environment it is not surprising that the ills of technology should seem curable only through the application of more technology..." John W Aldridge

by proximity1 on Fri Jul 22nd, 2011 at 08:52:28 AM EST
[ Parent ]
Re: Self-censorship (none / 0)
If you want to settle scores in this debate, and in particular make them personal, I suggest you're wasting your time.

We have better things to do.

by afew (afew(a in a circle)eurotrib_dot_com) on Fri Jul 22nd, 2011 at 09:01:14 AM EST
[ Parent ]
Re: Self-censorship (4.00 / 2)
At least having the discussion might force the people with definite starting points and data to lay them out.

Economics is politics by other means
by Carrie (migeru at eurotrib dot com) on Fri Jul 22nd, 2011 at 07:49:04 AM EST
[ Parent ]
Re: Self-censorship (none / 1)
... ARRGH. I see this point made in every single discussion of peak resources. And it completely ignores that industrial agriculture has a resource consumption of near zero. Have you ever been on a farm? Industrial farming needs, in order:

  1. Land.
  2. Steel.
  3. Ammonia. (for fertilizers, and for fuel. Yes, you can run tractors and combines on ammonia. People do so already.)

.. and thats it. And none of it is going to run out before the sun enters its red gigant phase and swallows the earth. Enough ammonia to keep the agricultural sector fueled and fertilized can be made with the output of extremely modest hydro electric facilities, never mind types of renewables less than a century old.

grumble Doomers. Stop fantasizing about the apocalypse, pay a tiny bit of attention to what the actual constraints and possible/probable substitutes of our industrial ecology are, because all you are currently doing is destroying your own credibility. Which, to be honest.. go ahead, the less influence you have, the better for the planet.

by Thomas on Sat Jul 23rd, 2011 at 11:13:12 AM EST
[ Parent ]
Re: Self-censorship (none / 0)
So what has been your experience of farming, Thomas?
by afew (afew(a in a circle)eurotrib_dot_com) on Sat Jul 23rd, 2011 at 11:22:32 AM EST
[ Parent ]
Re: Self-censorship (none / 0)
Industrial farming needs, in order:

  1. Fresh water
  2. Land.
  3. Steel.
  4. Phosphates
  5. Ammonia. (for fertilizers, and for fuel. Yes, you can run tractors and combines on ammonia. People do so already.)

Fixed it for you.

#1 is already an issue, and #4 is going to be inside the present century.

- Jake

Friends come and go. Enemies accumulate.

by JakeS (JangoSierra 'at' gmail 'dot' com) on Sat Jul 23rd, 2011 at 11:25:05 AM EST
[ Parent ]
Re: Self-censorship (none / 0)
Well, if climate change makes the rain move away from prime farmland, yhea, a lot of people will starve to death. Modern farming has failure modes. None of which are adressed by reverting to having 90% of humanity take up being peasants again. Which is the assumption that makes me froth at the stupidity.
by Thomas on Sat Jul 23rd, 2011 at 11:45:13 AM EST
[ Parent ]
Re: Self-censorship (none / 0)
You are far too cornucopian. As usual. Factory farming as presently practised creates immense problems with run-off that poisons freshwater resources.

- Jake

Friends come and go. Enemies accumulate.

by JakeS (JangoSierra 'at' gmail 'dot' com) on Sun Jul 24th, 2011 at 12:08:39 PM EST
[ Parent ]
Re: Self-censorship (none / 0)
Its not cornucopicism, its merely the certainty that the future is not going to be a copy of the past in any way, shape or form. Peasant farming is far less productive, (and also far more ecologically destructive) than industrial farming is, and farmland under the plow is the limiting factor on our food production. I am not certain that the future will have enough food, I am merely certain that regardless of what happens its not going to involve regressing to primitive farming techniques. If climate change wrecks the grain belts- well war will provide for all, either in victory or in death.
by Thomas on Mon Jul 25th, 2011 at 10:34:14 AM EST
[ Parent ]
Re: Self-censorship (none / 0)
farmland under the plow is the limiting factor on our food production.

Well, no.

Under the present system, access to synthetic fertiliser is the first constraint that will really bite.

- Jake

Friends come and go. Enemies accumulate.

by JakeS (JangoSierra 'at' gmail 'dot' com) on Mon Jul 25th, 2011 at 10:39:53 AM EST
[ Parent ]
Re: Self-censorship (none / 1)
.. Fertilizer are primarily needed for nitrogen fixation. That means ammonia. Ammonia is synthezied from hydrogen and nitrogen with modest pressure and heat -this means that the actually nessesary inputs are electricity, air and water. With no requirements whatsoever as to the quality of water, nor any pressing need for most of the electricity supplied to be reliable - for electrolysis intermittant power will do just fine as long as you have a tank to store hydrogen in.
The very first artificial fertilizer factory ever built ran off a single norwegian dam and supplied most of europe for decades. This is not a resource that is ever going to run short. The land squids farming the canadian shield in 1.5 billion years from now will not be short.
by Thomas on Mon Jul 25th, 2011 at 11:03:14 AM EST
[ Parent ]
Re: Self-censorship (none / 0)
Fertilizer are primarily needed for nitrogen fixation.

Phosphates would like a word.

- Jake

Friends come and go. Enemies accumulate.

by JakeS (JangoSierra 'at' gmail 'dot' com) on Mon Jul 25th, 2011 at 11:27:31 AM EST
[ Parent ]
Re: Self-censorship (none / 0)
Thomas:
Peasant farming is far less productive, (and also far more ecologically destructive) than industrial farming is

Would you care to enlighten us on the ecological destruction caused by peasant farming?

by afew (afew(a in a circle)eurotrib_dot_com) on Mon Jul 25th, 2011 at 10:47:34 AM EST
[ Parent ]
Re: Self-censorship (none / 0)
The fertile crecent isnt so much anymore for a reason. Also, africa, south america.. Really, just look at anyplace that still practices it?
by Thomas on Mon Jul 25th, 2011 at 11:05:11 AM EST
[ Parent ]
Re: Self-censorship (none / 0)
What ecological destruction has actually been caused by peasant farming?

And how can you sidestep the ecological damage - toxic run-off to rivers and coastal areas, water-table pollution, excessive irrigation demands, soil erosion and decline of soil fertility, creation of specific pests and diseases through monoculture, destruction of biodiversity through same and through use of pesticides, flash-flooding and freak winds as a consequence of destruction of hedges and ditches, concentration on products of doubtful necessity like over-production of meat/dairy and their attendant maize, GHG emissions through excessive livestock production, rainforest destruction not carried out by small peasants - caused by industrial farming?

Or is your version of industrial farming some techno-wet-dream that will be happening in 1.5 billion years?

by afew (afew(a in a circle)eurotrib_dot_com) on Mon Jul 25th, 2011 at 12:31:42 PM EST
[ Parent ]
Re: Self-censorship (none / 1)
Really? Deforestation, hunting, overgrazing, soil erosion, and so on and so far. Peasant farmers are extremely bad news for the ecosystems they encroach upon - for a given output of food, much, much worse than industrial agriculture with even minimal enviormental regulations in place.

This is really simple: Primitive farming techniques are much less productive per square meter than advanced ones. This means that trying to feed any given number of people with lesser techniques means cultivating far more land. Which destroys the ecosystem that used to be there. We already have 7 billion people on the planet - if modern farming caves in, not a single one of them will go quitely into the night, but all of them will try to find things to eat. This would cause a mass extinction near total in scope of just about everything edible, and nearly everything is edible to humans hungry enough. Societial collapses nearly always take the nearby ecosystems down with them. This has happened many, many times. It still happens - Haiti doesnt really have a vibrant ecology anymore, for example. It will happen again if we should fail at maintaining our technosphere.  

Maybe I come across as very fond of technological fixes and somewhat panglossian, but the thing is, if we do not find technological fixes for the ecological issues facing us, it is not mankind that is screwed, it is the planet earth. This is for example why the reaction to fukushima pisses me the fuck off - Noone died, and people are still fleeing from one of the very few energy sources we have that has low ecological impacts. No nuclear accident is ever going to do anything of any significance whatsoever to the non-human bits of the ecology it happens in. The deathrates from cancers are so far down into the noise for wildlife that it is not even funny.

by Thomas on Tue Jul 26th, 2011 at 07:50:03 AM EST
[ Parent ]
Re: Self-censorship (none / 0)
And, fortunately, most of the US corn belt has excellent wind resources nearby, i.e. within a few hundred miles of either the front range of the Rocky Mountains or the Great Lakes, and generating ammonia is an excellent use for "stranded wind". Yet, while ammonia is used to a limited extent for mid-west US agriculture, almost all of it comes from petrochemical plants in Louisiana via barge up the Mississippi and Missouri rivers. But, strangely, there is no real effort to develop the wind and wind driven ammonia aspect of this asset.  

"It is not necessary to have hope in order to persevere."
by ARGeezer (ARGeezer a in a circle eurotrib daught com) on Sat Jul 23rd, 2011 at 12:27:39 PM EST
[ Parent ]
Re: Self-censorship (none / 1)
Completely off-topic. One of these days somebody will have to explain me, very slowly, how Keynes is still appropriate in a post-industrial society that is going to suffer (is suffering) a rather strong shrinkage of its resource base (oil, food, water, general ecosystem, ...).

Because all the Very Serious People are Hooverians. Talking about genuine post-Keynesian economics would make heads explode.

And while we certainly have a more pressing need than in Keynes' times to not strangle our industrial plant by making it overly reliant on non-replenishing resources, it is not easy to see how such improvements can be brought about if we are busy strangling our industrial plant with golden fetters.

(Incidentally, I greatly dislike the term "post-industrial society" - it is usually little more than apologia for a vision of society where we make nothing but hamburgers, create nothing but lawyers and sell nothing but tax shelters.)

- Jake

Friends come and go. Enemies accumulate.

by JakeS (JangoSierra 'at' gmail 'dot' com) on Wed Jul 20th, 2011 at 12:26:42 PM EST
[ Parent ]
Re: Self-censorship (4.00 / 2)
We are not in a "post-industrial" society. Most of the industry has gone to Asia, that's all.
by afew (afew(a in a circle)eurotrib_dot_com) on Wed Jul 20th, 2011 at 01:39:02 PM EST
[ Parent ]
Re: Self-censorship (none / 0)
But we are going in that direction due to resource scarcity: production efficiency (the 5% of pop for agriculture) is decreasing, not increasing. That is a tectonic shift.
by cagatacos on Thu Jul 21st, 2011 at 07:13:44 AM EST
[ Parent ]
Re: Self-censorship (none / 1)
No, that's not true. Productivity has increased over the past quarter century, and has only flatlined in the last decade. And this is largely due to deliberate policy choices, not because there is any technical reason that it had to.

Past performance is no guarantee of future performance, but so far the productivity loss has been purely self-inflicted, unless you consider the absence of competent policymakers a natural resource shortage.

- Jake

Friends come and go. Enemies accumulate.

by JakeS (JangoSierra 'at' gmail 'dot' com) on Thu Jul 21st, 2011 at 10:54:12 PM EST
[ Parent ]
So you're a cornucopian, Jake? (none / 0)
How disappointing.

[just a drive-by ad hominem... ;)]

It is rightly acknowledged that people of faith have no monopoly of virtue - Queen Elizabeth II

by eurogreen on Fri Jul 22nd, 2011 at 05:56:02 AM EST
[ Parent ]
Re: So you're a cornucopian, Jake? (4.00 / 2)
No. Past performance does not guarantee future performance. I am simply pointing out that the resource crunch has not happened yet, and therefore can not serve as an excuse for impoverishing people. This impoverishment is, in fact, a deliberate political decision rather than an unavoidable fact of life.

It is possible that this is the last decade for which such a comment can be made. But this is now, and the future isn't quite here yet. And arguing that the neoliberal thirdworldisation policies were unavoidable when they were not plays directly into the hands of the very people who have been sitting with their thumbs up their asses for the last thirty years when we should have been doing something about the scarcities that are forecast to hit within the next decade or two.

- Jake

Friends come and go. Enemies accumulate.

by JakeS (JangoSierra 'at' gmail 'dot' com) on Fri Jul 22nd, 2011 at 12:01:45 PM EST
[ Parent ]
Re: Self-censorship (none / 0)
  ..."unless you consider the absence of competent policymakers a natural resource shortage."

     whether a natural resource or not, and, whether there's a "shortage" or not, somewhere, there's a problem:

     if better responses exist, the current crop of policy-makers is a bloody-minded lot who adamantly reject and refuse those better responses.  There are good reasons to believe that they're doing this for rationally sound reasons though for reasons which are morally corrupt. (With the most amazing nonchalance, they've dismissed the whole notion of moral hazard, once taught with such stern authoritarianism when the subjects and lessons had to do with third-world macro-economic thriftiness, as no longer being very important.)

    There are competent policy-analysts, and they're producing valid critiques and useful policy formulations which, ultimately, have been utterly ignored by the PiP.  In such circumstances, while it can be disputed as neither a natural resource nor a shortage, so far, one is hard-pressed to explain why it might not as well be desribed that way.

    Economic theories which have been thoroughly discredited remain in sway among lots of PiP.  Though good critiques are available, these make little impact on practical affairs.  So, our real troubles--as numerous analysts have repeated--are political failings more than failings of economic theory at this point.  Right?

 

"In such an environment it is not surprising that the ills of technology should seem curable only through the application of more technology..." John W Aldridge

by proximity1 on Fri Jul 22nd, 2011 at 08:23:12 AM EST
[ Parent ]
Re: Self-censorship (4.00 / 2)
(With the most amazing nonchalance, they've dismissed the whole notion of moral hazard, once taught with such stern authoritarianism when the subjects and lessons had to do with third-world macro-economic thriftiness, as no longer being very important.)

No, no, you still see moral hazard trotted out to explain why Greece needs to be punished, cannot default, and cannot have its debt rolled over at a discount.

Moral hazard, like other economic concepts, is used selectively in support of political goals.

Economics is politics by other means

by Carrie (migeru at eurotrib dot com) on Fri Jul 22nd, 2011 at 08:59:51 AM EST
[ Parent ]
Re: Self-censorship (none / 0)

  At some point, the double-standards will collapse under their own weight, won't they?

 Q:  Who said (apparently not "famously"-enough)

    "Deficits don't matter!"

   A: Republican U.S. Vice-President Richard "Dick" Cheney.

"In such an environment it is not surprising that the ills of technology should seem curable only through the application of more technology..." John W Aldridge

by proximity1 on Fri Jul 22nd, 2011 at 09:05:09 AM EST
[ Parent ]
Re: Self-censorship (none / 0)
No, because the conservative mind can hold two contradictory thoughts, as long as it doesn't think them at the same time.

Economics is politics by other means
by Carrie (migeru at eurotrib dot com) on Fri Jul 22nd, 2011 at 09:37:19 AM EST
[ Parent ]
Re: Self-censorship (none / 0)
the conservative mind can hold two contradictory thoughts, as long as it doesn't think them at the same time.

And especially if it is in their interest to confound the two thoughts because neither is in their immediate interest.

"It is not necessary to have hope in order to persevere."
by ARGeezer (ARGeezer a in a circle eurotrib daught com) on Fri Jul 22nd, 2011 at 07:29:12 PM EST
[ Parent ]
Re: Self-censorship (none / 0)
At some point, the double-standards will collapse under their own weight, won't they?

What part of human history gives you cause for such unbridled optimism?

- Jake

Friends come and go. Enemies accumulate.

by JakeS (JangoSierra 'at' gmail 'dot' com) on Fri Jul 22nd, 2011 at 12:04:03 PM EST
[ Parent ]
Re: Self-censorship (4.00 / 2)
cagatacos:
how Keynes is still appropriate in a post-industrial society that is going to suffer (is suffering) a rather strong shrinkage of its resource base (oil, food, water, general ecosystem, ...).

afaik, keynes had little or no clue that hubbard's curve lay ahead, but imagining he were here today, i think he may guess that we would go to war again, because it makes more money for the rentier class and kills off the youth unemployed surplus who may make trouble in the domestic arena if not safely engaged with another propangandised 'enemy' somewhere preferably far away on some steppe or similarly godforsaken place.

like libya or the falklands...

anyways some could argue that the industrial expansion to gin up for war was a (perverted) keynesian solution to a problem...who's gonna whine about deficits when the future of democracy is at stake?

basically the iraq war was about digging holes and filling them up again, but with the added bonus of the gamble on commanding some of the richest petrochem real estate. either way they win... get paid for reconstruction afterwards too.

war is the age old solution to overpopulation, and dwindling bank profits.

of course if enough people realised there is another way, even the bankers could win, once they let go of the banana in the bottle.

true visionary keynes would be something like the new deal under fdr, but global in scope. something like the blueprints of the advanced western democracies, but even better greed-proofed, and geared to fix unemployment by facing the energy issue head-on, all hands on deck, 24/7, seven days a week, 365 days a year.
return energy generation to the Commons, and half the problems are solved. thanks to certain pioneers amongst us, this idea is gestating nicely, out on the edge, while the titans clash at the centre.

victory gardens are another old idea ready to be recycled anew... so many brilliant ideas, all held back because the lead boots of the status quo are afraid more than anything of what they would lose, and utterly blind to what we all could win.

waiting till we are backs to the wall is just immature.

'The history of public debt is full of irony. It rarely follows our ideas of order and justice.' Thomas Piketty

by melo (melometa4(at)gmail.com) on Wed Jul 20th, 2011 at 04:58:24 PM EST
[ Parent ]
Re: Self-censorship (4.00 / 6)
One of these days somebody will have to explain me, very slowly, how Keynes is still appropriate in a post-industrial society that is going to suffer (is suffering) a rather strong shrinkage of its resource base (oil, food, water, general ecosystem, ...).

Keynes explored and explained the overall functioning of the economy of his time via an extended non-mathematical discourse and the understandings he crystallized remain valid for systems such as he described, i.e. national economies. His prescriptions for promoting employment and mitigating the effects of the business cycle have been shown to work. The problem is that those goals are at odds with the desires of elites to accumulate more and more for themselves. Those elites, through the application of their own money via think tanks and the media, discredited and de-legitimated the Keynesian consensus, (Richard Nixon - "We are all Keynesians now."), through propaganda repeated until it stuck, not through academic rigor. But they also supported the work of people like Milton Freedman and Fredrich Hayek.

The result was that, starting in the '70s with bogus claims that Keynesian prescriptions no longer worked, while ignoring the effect of US peak oil, banking regulation was repealed and national economic policy was turned on its head to successfully halt a one hundred and forty year economic history of rising real wages in the US. The goal was to increase the "take" for holders of capital. This naturally produced economic problems which they falsely blamed on the continuing effects of Keynesian policies and self servingly prescribed tax cuts for the rich and deregulation of business as the "solution". Then, through the elimination of controls on capital flows and efforts to de-legitimate such controls by other countries, they internationalized capital and business while leaving regulation on a national level. This made the application of Keynesian prescriptions on a national level highly problematic and, simultaneously, made international corporations largely ungovernable by nation states. In fact, multinational corporations have increasingly come to regulate what states can do. We are nearing the end point of that process.

Also, bear in mind that what passes for Keynes in the USA, (Hicks-Hansen synthesis plus Samuelson), is a bastardization of Keynes that attempted to recast some of his insights on money, interest and employment into mathematical formalisms, something Keynes had deliberately avoided, and, thereby, promote a perception of precision and control that was unwarranted. Keynes always emphasized the unknowability of the future and our inability to accurately assess risk.

At Bretton Woods in 1946 Keynes proposed an international financial flow clearing system that had taxes on both trade surpluses and deficits that would have prevented most of the fiascoes we have seen in international finance, but the USA rejected it. So naturally, after bastardizing his system, rejecting outright some of his best suggestions and rendering inpossible most of his techniques for controlling national economies, when things blow up they want to blame it on Keynes. Still.

"It is not necessary to have hope in order to persevere."

by ARGeezer (ARGeezer a in a circle eurotrib daught com) on Wed Jul 20th, 2011 at 05:00:38 PM EST
[ Parent ]
Re: Self-censorship (none / 1)
Oh, and add Lyndon Baines Johnson's insistence on having both "guns and butter" - the Vietnam War and more social programs such as Medicare - to the list of things that were ignored or blamed on "Keynesianism".

"It is not necessary to have hope in order to persevere."
by ARGeezer (ARGeezer a in a circle eurotrib daught com) on Wed Jul 20th, 2011 at 05:03:41 PM EST
[ Parent ]

The flaws of the EU's asymmetric approach to imbalances | 132 comments (132 topical, 0 editorial, 0 hidden)
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