[Plantagenet]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('ROCKMAN', ' ')So here’s a bit of the sampling of our electorate that must chose the proper leaders to pull us out of our tailspin:

"Does the Earth go around the Sun, or does the Sun go around the Earth?" If you answered the latter, you're among a quarter of Americans who also got it wrong, according to a new report by the National Science Foundation.

Only 39 percent answered correctly with "true" when asked if "The universe began with a huge explosion," while only 48 percent knew that "Human beings, as we know them today, developed from earlier species of animals," according to the statement. Asked whether there needed to be more government funding for science, 30 percent said there should be.

Good to remember that the vote on any person who thought the sun revolved around the earth counts the same as yours.

[Plantagenet]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('pstarr', 'A')ctually the earth and sun revolve around each other.

[dolanbaker]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('SteveO', '
')
Massive inequity turns out pretty badly too. The French, the Bolshevik and the Chinese Communist revolutions all come to mind.

[Quinny]

Pops

I think the basic premise of the concept of Economic rights is that if access to credit were seen as a 'right' rather than a privilege then money and the financial system would be more a facilitator than a means of control as it clearly is now.

I agree with your point that FF labour has 'displaced' human labour as the 'creator' of wealth in some ways, but having worked on a production line for the first time in my life, question the level of automation practical in many industries particularly give PO's effect on machines.

As we move past peak and a shift back towards manual labour happens (either post collapse or on the slide down) the concepts maybe economic rights might give us some answers or at least shift the balance of power.

It's new to me as well, but imagine if everyone had a right to credit. It would put more pressure on the 'system'/government to make damn sure everyone was educated/trained to be actively engaged in the system. It's clear that basic human needs can be produced using a fraction of the labour available, so maybe it would also free up more leisure time for all (that bit sounds good to me)

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Pops', 'I') have no idea what the OP is about unless it is rejecting corporate personhood, is that it?

But more broadly I think we can say the economic tank really is full to the peak.

If you think about it, the massive accumulation of wealth today has been manufactured directly by fossil fuels. There were rich people a couple of hundred years ago (relative to the poor of the day who were really poor) but they were rich as a result of the labor of (poor) people and since the supply of people and the work they could do was limited, so was the wealth. After coal and especially oil, the amount of work that could be done became virtually unlimited, now we regularly move mountains, change the course of rivers, leave the planet.

To the extent that nowadays money doesn't relate to human work but to fossil work.

The buzzwords are "Knowledge Economy" - what does that mean anyway? It means we take for granted that actual, physical work will simply happen, that there is an unlimited supply of work available and all we need is an idea for an app or to invent a real estate trance or make a high speed trade faster than the next guy and boom, it's off to the races and the money starts flying from our butts without the least human work expended.

So now there are uncountable trillions of units of currency out there, both real and virtual. Those trillions are now largely the product of fossil work, to the extent that humans are becoming redundant and are rapidly being replaced by fossil fueled machines. The belief that keeps that balloon inflated is the holder believes, someone else will likewise believe, that his currency represents value. But even more basic than confidence and probably very rarely contemplated is the idea that the money held will be able to purchase something of value in the future. And how will that thing be produced?

Fossil fuels.

The thing that guarantees the conceptual value of all that money is the idea that sometime in the future someone will be able to offer the holder something of real physical value in exchange for his abstract money, something that is the result of real physical work. As pointed out above, work now done by fossil fuels way beyond the ability of human labor to ever replicate.




So the question is, what happens when it becomes clear that there can never be enough work performed - product produced - to spend all that imaginary money on?
.

[AndyA]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', 'T')hat, after all, is the nature of investing, to accept risk in return for having your money work instead of you.

[AndyA]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', 'I') think the basic premise of the concept of Economic rights is that if access to credit were seen as a 'right' rather than a privilege then money and the financial system would be more a facilitator than a means of control as it clearly is now.

[Graeme]

Mind the Gap: Why most of us are poor

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', 'T')here was a time when TV One seemed the natural home for measured, thoughtful documentaries such as this, the latest offering from Bryan Bruce, the man behind 2011's eye-opening Inside Child Poverty doco. But market forces have ravaged what was once our flagship state broadcaster, leaving it almost braindead, a fact that might raise a smile from Bruce, who examines the effects of an unrestrained free market in this fine doco and two others that will follow on TV3 in due course.

Standing in front of The Beehive in the opening minutes, Bruce poses two simple questions: why is the gap between rich and poor growing faster in New Zealand than most developed countries? And why is that bad for all of us?

The next hour is spent searching for answers, with input from a wide range of interested parties: a young unemployed mother reduced to sleeping with her three children in a tent in a relative's back yard; a couple who work full-time yet can barely cover their rent; a Nobel Prize-winning economist; an Indian entrepreneur who has set up a bank funding sustainable self-employment initiatives for the poor.

Bruce supplies historical context for New Zealand's steady slide from the broadly egalitarian society of the 60s and 70s to a highly competitive nation generating obscene wealth for a small elite; a place where a substantial proportion of the taxes gleaned from the now-struggling middle classes flows down to pay welfare subsidies that disguise the grim conditions endured by the nation's poor, while most of the profit generated from rents and the sale of consumer goods is kicked upstairs to the wealthiest 10 percent of our society, most of whom pay less tax than ever.

Blame is laid squarely at the feet of the neo-liberal economic reforms spearheaded by Roger Douglas back in 1984, and Bruce argues that even superficially compassionate modern-day social initiatives such as the Accomodation Supplements merely transfer state wealth to landlords, while the Working For Families top-up subsidises employers who pay appallingly low wages.

He finds no shortage of heavyweight financial experts who share his views. In one interview, an Australian economist dismisses asset sales, privatisation, radical market deregulation and the mythical ‘trickle down effect' as "zombie economics"; just a marauding mob of rotten, extremely whiffy old ideas that refuse to die, spawned within unenlightened parliaments and boardrooms then set free to roam the land, spreading misery wherever they go.

Mention is made of influential 2009 book The Spirit Level, which showed that drug abuse, poor mental and physical health, crime, obesity, violence and teenage pregnancies all increased in direct proportion to the inequity of any given society, suggesting the rich have as much to gain from a more equitable society as the poor.

Just before the closing credits roll, Bruce is back in front of The Beehive, casting dark glances towards the debating chamber. "If we want good food and warm shelter for everyone, a better life for our children and a longer, happier life for ourselves, we're going to have to do something about narrowing the gap between rich and poor. We need to legislate for fairness and equality, so that we can put some morality back into the marketplace."

[Subjectivist]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('pstarr', 'Y')our confusion regarding the barycenter reflects your misunderstanding of the topic. The economy cannot flourish without universal access to credit, at all levels of society. And the previous and current administrations handouts to the bankster and wealthy is the antithesis of that truism.

[Strummer]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Subjectivist', 'F')unny but the economy seems to have functioned well enough for the average person before the credit economy was created in 1913.

[Ibon]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Pops', ' ')If you think about it, the massive accumulation of wealth today has been manufactured directly by fossil fuels. There were rich people a couple of hundred years ago (relative to the poor of the day who were really poor) but they were rich as a result of the labor of (poor) people and since the supply of people and the work they could do was limited, so was the wealth.

[Pops]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Ibon', 'W')e are no longer anchored by any metric to the physical essentials of survival. It is a bizarre abstract world, one that can even support the ignorance of the masses who don't know the basic physics of our planet and our sun.

Constraints of fossil fuels will not trigger any changes here since the vast amount of work performed has to erode down through all the indulgences before it starts to hurt on the basic survival level of food, shelter, sanitation, transport.

That is why we must look toward environmental feedbacks as the trigger, not fossil fuel depletion. Massive crop failures or epidemics as the two most likely scenarios. Otherwise the "inequities" and fantasy credit will continue.

[Ibon]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Pops', '
')However I think your scenario is perhaps too literal. For example crop size (and so crop failure) has little to do with starvation in a world where a majority of grains feed livestock and cars rather than humans, supply is for the moment unlimited if calories alone are considered, the limit is economic.

[Plantagenet]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Ibon', '
')
This will be good for the planet. The faster we erode the economic power of the vast middle class the better off we will be.

[Ibon]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Plantagenet', '
')
I really enjoy your posts, Ibon. I read every one---you've definitely got a dystopian vision that rivals James Kunstler.

[Plantagenet]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Ibon', 'A')t what point in the upcoming constraints of resources will the middle class be purposively disenfranchised and the growing inequities maintained in order to preserve privilege for the few?

[Ibon]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Plantagenet', '
')
It makes my head spin to think like that. The prospect of "a few billion" folks being removed from "the game" is a step too far for me.

[Oneaboveall]

I'm going to sound like Pretorian again for a second, but I see a lot of (mostly justified) criticism of J6P, while it's people in other countries who are having a mertic-***-ton of children, not those evil middle-class Americans.