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getting use to the new economic normal?

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Re: getting use to the new economic normal?

Unread postby KaiserJeep » Sat 14 Sep 2013, 07:01:27

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('SeaGypsy', '')$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('KaiserJeep', 'Y')ou've got too many mistaken pre-conceptions about America to count.


I think exactly the same about you. So :P


The difference would be, that I have lived and worked in America for over six decades, and visited Europe, Africa, various Pacific islands, and the ME. Not Australia as yet, though. Nothing like working and living in a place to understand the Economy.

I remember a Louisiana under Governor Earl P. Long, younger brother of the Kingfish. Earl ran the state from inside a mental hospital, then shacked up with a stripper named Blaze Star when he got out. I remember living and attending high school in Virginia when Martin Luther King gave the "I have a dream" speech. I remember Sputnik and Echo 1 and seeing Neil Armstrong step onto the moon on TV. I remember living on Guam under the approach path for the B-52's bombing Vietnam. I remember the Cold War, the Cuban Missile Crisis, and 9/11/2001. I remember when the federal politicians bailed out the Wall Street fat cats and simultaneously stole much of the value of my home and my retirement account. I remember gasoline at $0.18 per US gallon, now costing $4.00.

I remember an America before the standard of living began a 40+ year slip. I lived these things, I did not simply read about them. I voted Democrat, Republican, Libertarian, Independent, Green, and Natural Law on occasion. Voting is how one renews the license to complain about politics, after all.

I remember what it was like when oil production peaked in the USA, and I am presently observing the increasingly evident results of world oil production peaking in the second quarter of 2008. I am not sure if the global population peaks at 9 Billion or 12 Billion, but I am fairly certain it will be within those bounds. I do not expect to enjoy seeing most of the global ecology destroyed by starving humans seeking to survive, but I do expect it to begin to happen within two decades. But I have a plan for personal survival and comfort.
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Re: getting use to the new economic normal?

Unread postby americandream » Sat 14 Sep 2013, 07:06:24

Nothing new. Written by Marx almost 200 years ago:

The bourgeoisie cannot exist without constantly revolutionising the instruments of production, and thereby the relations of production, and with them the whole relations of society. Conservation of the old modes of production in unaltered form, was, on the contrary, the first condition of existence for all earlier industrial classes. Constant revolutionising of production, uninterrupted disturbance of all social conditions, everlasting uncertainty and agitation distinguish the bourgeois epoch from all earlier ones. All fixed, fast-frozen relations, with their train of ancient and venerable prejudices and opinions, are swept away, all new-formed ones become antiquated before they can ossify. All that is solid melts into air, all that is holy is profaned, and man is at last compelled to face with sober senses his real conditions of life, and his relations with his kind.
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Re: getting use to the new economic normal?

Unread postby SeaGypsy » Sat 14 Sep 2013, 07:10:25

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('KaiserJeep', 'I') have a plan for personal survival and comfort.

Well that's what this thread is about isn't it? How does your personal plan stack up with general systems failure- given the mounting problems associated with peak oil, the failure of FF driven middle America, the huge amount of waste involved in running the system as it stands, the meaningless futility of so much of what constitutes economic activity right now and it's dependence on abundant dirt cheap energy? That's what I would like to hear from you about, rather than a politically slanted history lesson.
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Re: getting use to the new economic normal?

Unread postby KaiserJeep » Sat 14 Sep 2013, 07:15:39

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('americandream', 'N')othing new. Written by Marx almost 200 years ago:

The bourgeoisie cannot exist without constantly revolutionising the instruments of production, and thereby the relations of production, and with them the whole relations of society. Conservation of the old modes of production in unaltered form, was, on the contrary, the first condition of existence for all earlier industrial classes. Constant revolutionising of production, uninterrupted disturbance of all social conditions, everlasting uncertainty and agitation distinguish the bourgeois epoch from all earlier ones. All fixed, fast-frozen relations, with their train of ancient and venerable prejudices and opinions, are swept away, all new-formed ones become antiquated before they can ossify. All that is solid melts into air, all that is holy is profaned, and man is at last compelled to face with sober senses his real conditions of life, and his relations with his kind.


Nothing accurate, either. The whole of the second half of the 20th Century could be summed up as "that period when Marx's theories were decisively disproved".
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Re: getting use to the new economic normal?

Unread postby SeaGypsy » Sat 14 Sep 2013, 07:21:25

AD, you were on track last time you posted IMO, talking about how while there is a huge percentile of the world living on $1-10 a day, desperate to achieve some semblance of your moniker (the American Dream)- the bourgeoisie have their 'cannon fodder' under global capitalism. This class no longer need to care for the niceties of maintaining a middle class where they come from. Nor do they particularly need to keep re-inventing the wheel to achieve and maintain their own class. Resource depletion will bite global economic growth in the bud in due course, as likely will climate change; but when?
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Re: getting use to the new economic normal?

Unread postby KaiserJeep » Sat 14 Sep 2013, 07:36:35

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('SeaGypsy', '')$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('KaiserJeep', 'I') have a plan for personal survival and comfort.

Well that's what this thread is about isn't it? How does your personal plan stack up with general systems failure- given the mounting problems associated with peak oil, the failure of FF driven middle America, the huge amount of waste involved in running the system as it stands, the meaningless futility of so much of what constitutes economic activity right now and it's dependence on abundant dirt cheap energy? That's what I would like to hear from you about, rather than a politically slanted history lesson.


My personal plan for survival includes retiring in that part of the American MidWest in which I spent much of my childhood, and where I will be among extended family and friends. The MidWest is after all the breadbasket of America, and the source of many fine distilled alcohols. I expect to own a comfortable older farm home (no mortgage or other debt) that is equipped with some photo-voltaic panels, perhaps a windmill, and a battery room. I will live within a few miles of anything I need to live. I expect to own one or more electric vehicles and will maintain and charge them myself. I will have more than one well on the property, a woodlot for supplemental heat and fuel, I expect to have a large garden, a few chickens, and lots of glass jars for preserving food. I will have an electrified fence and me and my neighbors will cooperate for security.

I'm not naive about this lifestyle, either. My parents on both sides came from farms, and I spent some Summers in my youth working on my Maternal grandparents' dairy farm. This lifestyle is a time-honored scheme for a comfortable retirement and one that enabled many Americans to live in economic security during the Great Depression. I expect to make this move within a decade, as my wife is a few years younger and wants to work a bit longer.
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Re: getting use to the new economic normal?

Unread postby SeaGypsy » Sat 14 Sep 2013, 08:07:04

Cool :) Us men are as young as the women we feel, so they say :lol:
There are a few posters here you would have a lot to chat through regarding the back to the land lifestyle. In case you are yet to find it, this thread has many ideas and will give you a quick idea of who is up to where along the path to self reliance and sustainability: today-i-made-bought-learnt-for-a-post-oil-world-5-t64507.html
I love it at this site that we have posters who are so into fundamentals like this whilst often being, in my view at least, high intellectuals.
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Re: getting use to the new economic normal?

Unread postby americandream » Sat 14 Sep 2013, 08:17:46

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('SeaGypsy', 'A')D, you were on track last time you posted IMO, talking about how while there is a huge percentile of the world living on $1-10 a day, desperate to achieve some semblance of your moniker (the American Dream)- the bourgeoisie have their 'cannon fodder' under global capitalism. This class no longer need to care for the niceties of maintaining a middle class where they come from. Nor do they particularly need to keep re-inventing the wheel to achieve and maintain their own class. Resource depletion will bite global economic growth in the bud in due course, as likely will climate change; but when?


Globalism has to reach that tipping point..where the interaction of the quest for accumulation with its resource base (raw materials and the labour surplus) reaches a point of maximum optimisation and begins a descent. With each day that draws us closer to full globalisation (of consumerism and capital...be very aware that the Syrian conflict's "resolution" will speed up globalisation), the spectre of this peak draws even closer and I would suspect that we shall see some early signs by the end of this decade (with the onset of unremitting deflation and the collapse of profit).

Of course, so does the spectre of a full tilt into barbarism as capitalism decouples. There are no guarantees that the requisite consciousness will arise to enable us to harness the fruits of modernity WITHOUT capital. The massive deficit of ignorance surrounding the science social economy is not very encouraging.
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Re: getting use to the new economic normal?

Unread postby SeaGypsy » Sat 14 Sep 2013, 08:38:07

I agree with all of that AD. Just that I can't see Syria in isolation really, to me what is going on in the ME is some kind of quantum event around ELM and dictatorship, proxy government and failure to strike a balance between the executive and the populace becoming evident as internal tipping points are being reached- ELM again, drought, unfulfilled fantasy notions of the future based on imaginary social states as visualized in Hollywood portrayals of reality in the first world. Religion has a lot to answer for too- the prophecies of Salvation and Prosperity doctrine- contrasting end times doom and gloom; like a collective schizophrenic delusion.
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Re: getting use to the new economic normal?

Unread postby radon1 » Sat 14 Sep 2013, 08:39:11

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('MD', '')$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('pstarr', '.')..
Automation long ago was the means to paradise on earth...


Who's to say it isn't still? I'm not making value judgments, just questioning odds. I've watched it evolve for thirty years, in a real world interactive way.

...and there is no sign of stopping it yet.


Increasing automation or robotization, like any technological advance, requires ever-increasing division of labor, and the latter requires ever-growing number of consumers. As the resource base mastered by humans is constrained, it can only support so many consumers, therefore the robotization at some point will run into the wall of the natural limits. Hence techno-utopia/dystopia is an illusion unless the talk is about some fantasy-world scenario like singularity or matrix.

Equally, the notion that robotization at a national level inevitably results in a super-successful super-advanced society is an illusion too. Guess what is the most robotized country on Earth after Japan? It is Italy.
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Re: getting use to the new economic normal?

Unread postby SeaGypsy » Sat 14 Sep 2013, 08:49:02

All of which assumes the impossibility of restructuring the entire economic model- something I disagree with. The welfare state is already a break away from the 'mandatory division of labor'. I'm not suggesting for 1 second that anything like current first world lifestyles can be maintained or handed out on a platter; but that a steady state economy should be possible. There is no hard science saying otherwise, just a few hundred years of economic pseudo science (and every politician in the world chanting the growth mantra).
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Re: getting use to the new economic normal?

Unread postby americandream » Sat 14 Sep 2013, 08:50:29

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('SeaGypsy', 'I') agree with all of that AD. Just that I can't see Syria in isolation really, to me what is going on in the ME is some kind of quantum event around ELM and dictatorship, proxy government and failure to strike a balance between the executive and the populace becoming evident as internal tipping points are being reached- ELM again, drought, unfulfilled fantasy notions of the future based on imaginary social states as visualized in Hollywood portrayals of reality in the first world. Religion has a lot to answer for too- the prophecies of Salvation and Prosperity doctrine- contrasting end times doom and gloom; like a collective schizophrenic delusion.


The process that accompanies the rise of modernity in a theocracy often appears a mish mash of contradictions but the underlying impulses ALWAYS lead to the same outcomes. The Arab Empire (Islam), being rooted as it is in Abrahamic economy and its medieval and feudal rules on credit, is in the midst of its own Reformation, led as that bizarrely is, by the Saudi ruling elite (who fundamentally are deepening their ties with pragmatic Western capitalism. (This position is precisely what the Iranians are assailing in their competition with the Saudis)).

Assad represents the last remnants of Cold War regionalism and is essentially an obstruction to the swift opening up of the region to free flowing global liquidity (much as Saddam and Ghadaffi were.)

Any "Islamist" successor of Assad will very quickly implement free market reforms thus paving the way for more deeper access to the regions labour, resources, capital and of course, its as yet undeveloped consumer market of a billion muslims. Thus edging us closer to the peak in accumulation I mentioned in my above post.
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Re: getting use to the new economic normal?

Unread postby radon1 » Sat 14 Sep 2013, 08:58:49

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('SeaGypsy', 'A')ll of which assumes the impossibility of restructuring the entire economic model- something I disagree with.


Well, - it actually assumes its inevitability rather than impossibility. Or otherwise the humans have to expand their resource base somehow.
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Re: getting use to the new economic normal?

Unread postby SeaGypsy » Sat 14 Sep 2013, 09:01:07

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('americandream', '
')
Any "Islamist" successor of Assad will very quickly implement free market reforms thus paving the way for more deeper access to the regions labour, resources, capital and of course, its as yet undeveloped consumer market of a billion muslims. Thus edging us closer to the peak in accumulation I mentioned in my above post.


Maybe that is what is someone's ideal outcome yes, but likely? Not from where I sit. I think we are observing the beginning of a new 100 years war. There is an infinite amount of hatred being generated every day in this region, most particularly right now in Syria, but in many other parts also. If the radicals or the statists they are fighting were observant of international protocols on the rules of war- this would give kudos to the view that this is simply a stepping stone to global capital liquidity flow. They aren't, they don't, there is no sign they will.
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Re: getting use to the new economic normal?

Unread postby SeaGypsy » Sat 14 Sep 2013, 09:05:29

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('radon1', '')$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('SeaGypsy', 'A')ll of which assumes the impossibility of restructuring the entire economic model- something I disagree with.


Well, - it actually assumes its inevitability rather than impossibility. Or otherwise the humans have to expand their resource base somehow.


Sadly, very likely true. But while I'm breathing and able to string words together in a somewhat coherent fashion, I'm not done promoting other possibilities. (BTW I'm not a 'Singularist' to me the whole thing is a crock- when our organic being is over here, we are over here.)
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Re: getting use to the new economic normal?

Unread postby americandream » Sat 14 Sep 2013, 09:05:49

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('radon1', '')$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('SeaGypsy', 'A')ll of which assumes the impossibility of restructuring the entire economic model- something I disagree with.


Well, - it actually assumes its inevitability rather than impossibility. Or otherwise the humans have to expand their resource base somehow.


A star fleet of inter-planetary freighters, a systemic closed loop (completely eliminating the detritus of accumulation (or pollution)) as well as an infinitely expanding but planetary sustainable consumer base would be the sort of things necessary for a forever capitalism.
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Re: getting use to the new economic normal?

Unread postby SeaGypsy » Sat 14 Sep 2013, 09:10:57

Sure AD and I can't see that happening any more than you can. I'm not going to be around long enough to see the end of the big C though I think and I'm not quite 50 yet. My kids- maybe. Just my view :)
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Re: getting use to the new economic normal?

Unread postby americandream » Sat 14 Sep 2013, 09:16:10

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('SeaGypsy', '')$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('americandream', '
')
Any "Islamist" successor of Assad will very quickly implement free market reforms thus paving the way for more deeper access to the regions labour, resources, capital and of course, its as yet undeveloped consumer market of a billion muslims. Thus edging us closer to the peak in accumulation I mentioned in my above post.


Maybe that is what is someone's ideal outcome yes, but likely? Not from where I sit. I think we are observing the beginning of a new 100 years war. There is an infinite amount of hatred being generated every day in this region, most particularly right now in Syria, but in many other parts also. If the radicals or the statists they are fighting were observant of international protocols on the rules of war- this would give kudos to the view that this is simply a stepping stone to global capital liquidity flow. They aren't, they don't, there is no sign they will.


The problem with religious radicalism (which is NEVER founded on a clear understanding of social economy), is that it is always HIGHLY susceptible to the compulsions of utilitarian reform, especially as entrenched native elites establish ties with the global liquidity conduits, the banks.

It was precisely this ideological base that drove the USSR to its violent demise, militarily, in Afghanistan. In contrast, Mao's wishy washy socialism in one state was essentially why China hastily and voluntarily dismantled its "socialism".

Capitalism is an objective dynamic. Like a river flowing to the ocean. It simply erodes a societys underpinnings from within, slowly and relentlessly, seemingly random, but always flowing in the one direction.
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Re: getting use to the new economic normal?

Unread postby rollin » Sat 14 Sep 2013, 11:07:37

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('MD', 'B')ack on point: carried to the extreme, "robotics" will create (and is creating) an economic model that requires almost no human labor. Our entire workforce model is changing as a result.

We could shut them all off and go back to humans performing the "dull, dirty, and dangerous" tasks, but should we? A strong argument can be made for both sides of that question, but in the mean time our global manufacturing base is racing to make the robot world a reality. Are you ready to join the borg yet?


Without a major change in technology, the dream of producing a near human or highly capable robot will not occur. The first difficulty is heat dissipation, producing anything near the 300 million MIPS required and putting it in a small package would require lots of power and melt the brain anyway. Standard circuitry could require 10 megawatts. We might be able to get them up to the level of bugs, not bad since bugs work fairly well.

The second difficulty is that we do not understand how brains really work. We may eventually be able to simulate animal and human brain activity through molecular level computing and a totally different computing paradigm, but the robot will not view the world as we do. We will have created something new, something completely unlinked to nature and therefor potentially extremely dangerous. The way it views the world will be completely alien. Just use us as an example, we are natural but our brains are less hardwired and more dissociated from following natural patterns compared to other animals. See what that has done?

A more major difficulty is, how does this solve the energy, population and resource problems? Without solutions to those, our bug intelligent robots will be merely a few toys destined to fall with us.

Personally, I think humans are trying to solve problems that don't really exist. They have created machines and now are running around trying to find ways to continue the machine existence. Who is running the show here, why are we so concerned about maintaining a bunch of constructs? Are they holding our children for ransom or will their continued energy sucking existence kill off our children and the children of other species? Time to answer a few good questions?

Just because we have an idea, does not mean it is a good idea.
Last edited by Tanada on Sat 14 Sep 2013, 12:07:21, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: getting use to the new economic normal?

Unread postby radon1 » Sat 14 Sep 2013, 14:33:12

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('rollin', ' ')a near human or highly capable robot


Even that might not be of much help. Such robots will likely be humanoid-type consumers themselves, as they will need power and materials to function, as much as humans need food and heat. And their societal behavior will likely mimic the human behavior. Therefore their introduction will not change the economic mode of the society, and all the problems with the natural limits will stay in place.

To overcome these problems, a robotic entity would need to be driven by a totally different logic, i.e. base its decision making on the balancing of the existing resources vs their consumption vs achievement of the objectives. This would make them totally alien to humans and would lead the world to an existence akin to the singularity/matrix mode.
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