Discussions about the economic and financial ramifications of PEAK OIL
by americandream » Wed 01 Jan 2014, 02:45:33
$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('KaiserJeep', 'T')oday, the countries practicing Capitalism are those with a long line of people waiting to cross over and live there.
Thats not quite correct or we would see migration on the scale that occurred during Victoria's reign. The shift to the West can be counted in the 10's of thousands, certainly not in the millions as was the case, for example with Ireland.
Having said that, the current scenario is partly down to finances. Those driven enough to want to leave their homelands have to be in a position to cobble the funds for the crossing. But nevertheless, there isn't a queue of Victorian proportions at the gates of any Western country, recently conquered or in the European region. Consequently, we can only but speculate as to why the gilded streets of America for example aren't teeming with Asia relocated, as an example.
That point aside, AGW is one of those issues that will present itself in the rear view mirror and no amount of arguing alters that growing risk as we extend the use of the car for example into the billions range.
Finally, infinite growth will only go so far on a finite planet and eventually something gives. We will not be seeing BAU, which is the point Karl Marx sought to make all those generations ago, with little success it would seem despite being fairly obvious.
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by americandream » Wed 01 Jan 2014, 02:51:56
$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('ralfy', 'I') can't reply to KJ readily because his account is in my ignore list, but I'd like to add some more points:
Marx did not simply espouse a "philosophy" but, more important for this thread, explained the origins of modern capitalism and how it operates. Other posts by others explain Marx's views in detail.
Several "communist" countries mentioned are actually state capitalist.
The reference to Graeber is notable as well as some studies concerning hunter-gatherer groups in contrast to the idea of self-interest.
Given these points plus a combination of predicaments (global warming, peak oil, increasing debt), then localization is inevitable.
I have never agreed with the label "state capitalist" which is an absurdity. One is a bourgeoisie socialist economy with roots in private capital and elements of the socialised or an incomplete form of the revolutionary socialist operating within a framework of permanent revolution but with no ties to private capital. Capital is quite specific in its form. There has to be a market for capital to acquire the features of capital. Or else it is mere wealth in fixed form.
The term was bandied about by mischief makers during the Soviet era as another ploy in undermining the then revolution that was taking place worldwide and it clearly succeeded.
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by KaiserJeep » Wed 01 Jan 2014, 07:13:19
$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('americandream', '')$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('KaiserJeep', 'T')oday, the countries practicing Capitalism are those with a long line of people waiting to cross over and live there.
Thats not quite correct or we would see migration on the scale that occurred during Victoria's reign. The shift to the West can be counted in the 10's of thousands, certainly not in the millions as was the case, for example with Ireland.
The best estimate of the current numbers of undocumented immigrants in the USA are 11 Million people.
$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('americandream', '
')Having said that, the current scenario is partly down to finances. Those driven enough to want to leave their homelands have to be in a position to cobble the funds for the crossing. But nevertheless, there isn't a queue of Victorian proportions at the gates of any Western country, recently conquered or in the European region. Consequently, we can only but speculate as to why the gilded streets of America for example aren't teeming with Asia relocated, as an example.
Have you ever been to San Francisco? Ever been to a place called "Chinatown" in any city? Here in California, undocumented Asians are the second largest group after Latinos. They are imported by Asian gangsters who get them to sign contracts for years of labor to pay for their passage.
While there is no present emergency that equals the Irish Potato Famine, there certainly will come about such after cheap oil is gone. Widespread hunger is unavoidable, and unfortunately, the cost of an ocean passage will predictably be more than a poor person can afford.
$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('americandream', '
')That point aside, AGW is one of those issues that will present itself in the rear view mirror and no amount of arguing alters that growing risk as we extend the use of the car for example into the billions range.
Finally, infinite growth will only go so far on a finite planet and eventually something gives. We will not be seeing BAU, which is the point Karl Marx sought to make all those generations ago, with little success it would seem despite being fairly obvious.
Even Marx has to be right about some things. But Communism doesn't work at all. It has utterly failed in 41 out of 46 countries where it was tried, and gives every appearance of failing in the 5 countries still trying. If Marx was so wise, this would not be the case. Russia tried to make Communism work for more than three generations, and failed.
If you are going to propose a new economic system, pick one that works. But wait a minute, there is only one of those, the one that you consider to be a failure, and the one that Marx predicted would fail in the 19th Century. The same one that replaced Communism in 41 countries.
All the evidence says you are wrong. Let me tell you what I believe. This is the short version, although we can discuss it to any level of detail that you desire.
1. In a Capitalist society, one is rewarded in proportion to the effort one is willing to apply to his job. Homeless people, unwilling to work, get very little, although we don't allow them to starve. Here in Silicon Valley, we have a plentiful supply of the other extreme, company founders who turn a new product idea into a personal fortune, after years or even decades of intense and obsessed labor.
Most people, such as myself, fall somewhere in the Middle. I have worked for wages for 39 years, 36 at my present job. I'm about to pay off my home and I have a retirement plan. Fundamentally, I was not willing to sacrifice my marriage or family life or even my vacation time to become a "one-percenter". I know people who did so, either becoming company founders or simply climbing the corporate job ladder.
2. In our colleges and universities there are academics who want the same trappings of wealth we all want, but are unsuitable for ordinary employment, much less the years of intense labor required for a wage slave to elevate his income to the "one-percenter" levels. These folks profess an admiration for Marx and other obscure philosophers, in spite of the obvious problem that they are wrong.
3. The harm that these academics do is the way that they pass on their (entirely sincere and completely erroneous) beliefs to the young people they are being paid to teach. One of the things they omit to teach or minimize is the bone-chilling body count that exists in each country that attempted Communism.
Lest it be forgotten, Stalin slaughtered about 1 million people, either outright executions or by putting them in Gulags. This number is confirmed by the records of the USSR published in 1991. Mao Zedong's body count is 50+ million, five million in various purges and 45 million in the famine of 1958-1962 after the central planning for the economy failed. Pol Pot killed an astonishing 3 million out of a population of 8 million during four years as premier.
You have convinced me that someone somewhere filled your mind with drivel about Communism. Lest the victims of that murderous philosophy have died in vain, let me remind you that Communism is the greatest evil in the modern world.
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by radon1 » Wed 01 Jan 2014, 09:00:39
$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('KaiserJeep', '
')If you disagree, point to any country that is based upon Marx's theories, and explain why it's a success.
Soviet Union, no? A country deficient in any objective measure (population headcount and density, resource productivity, climate, logistics) produced impressive results and at one point nearly overtook the entire, much bigger, western world.
$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', 'C')ommunism has no successes whatsoever.
No, because it has never existed in reality. Except in primordial times.
$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', 'G')et a clue, Marx was wrong.
This is like saying that Herodotus was wrong, or that Newton was wrong because his theory did not explain relativistic effects. Marx produced an integral scientific system - unlike "economics", which is mostly a bunch of ideological scraps, partly borrowed from Marx and partly directed at criticising him. Marx's theory is a narrative, as any other scientific theory, and as such is as good as a narrative can be. It is not free from some serious, if not fundamental, internal contradictions, but most likely these were left unresolved due to Marx's lack of time rather than his inability.
The XXth century conflict was not ideological, as it is widely presented. It was inter-elitist, like any other conflict in the history. Indeed, why should it have been any different this time? Ideology was just a cover.
It just happened that the newly formed Soviet elite embraced Marxism as its main tool mostly due to the internal reasons - basically, they needed to take upon the country's upper/middle bureaucracy and also solve other problems. Do you think they would be any more successful if they instead entertained free markets and capitalism, or any other ideology? In this event all the likelihood was that they and the country would face collapse very soon.
A consequence - possibly unintended - of this "Marxist" approach was getting virtually entire country out of the poverty. This is why, by the way, the western elites completely hate the Soviet legacy - as a result of the competition with the Soviets they were compelled to share the spoils of prosperity with their own populace - a process that is not easily reversible. Interesting, to which extent the phenomena such as PO and economic crises are used as a PR tool to effect the reversal of the wealth redistribution to bring it back into their hands. It's no surprise that whenever that reversal becomes noticeable in the form of "rich getting richer and poor getting poor" or "1% against 99%", the masses revive the memories of socialism and Marx - something that the observers in the PO/survivalist circles already noted more than once. The reference to socialism - not imaginary, but really existing at some point - is one of the more powerful weapons in the hands of populace in their fight against the reverse redistribution of wealth.
Unintended consequences have played very powerful role throughout the history. One of capitalism's unintended consequences, for example, is a massive economic growth under the right circumstances.
But coming back to socialism, look at the results - within 12 years after completion of the severest and most devastating war in history the Soviet Union made a space launch and landed a vehicle on the Moon - something that the Chinese praise themselves with now, half a century afterwards, as their great technological achievement. And look at Russia twelve years after embracing "capitalism" and "free markets" - it became a sickman of the world, point of mockery and humiliation.
I agree though that blaming capitalist for the ills is a very one-sided approach. Capitalism works wonderfully in many circumstances, especially when put in a competitive position.
by radon1 » Thu 02 Jan 2014, 07:13:22
$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('KaiserJeep', 'I')t is extremely absurd to think that when times get tough and it's hard to feed yourself, that anybody at all would gravitate to the proven defective theories of Karl Marx. Theories which could not even be made to work in a time of relative plenty.
Free markets are wonderful - no sarcasm, the Soviet Union had no choice but go after free markets at a certain point. But when things turn tough everyone starts to seek the state's protection, rather than appeal to the free markets - don't have to go far, just look at the past 6-7 years.
From your posts, your approach looks like: "OK, I am doing well, the newspaper says that this is fair - of course, how can it be unfair with me, dear! - therefore whatever the newspaper says is good. The newspaper says that Marx is silly - so be it."
$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', 'I')t is also absurd to think that Communism existed in prehistoric times.
In a sense, you might be right, but that's a technical question - that type of communism was so-called "primordial communism" - but better not to delve into it, this is not that interesting anyway.
$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', 'I') repeat, Marx's theories of economy are thoroughly discredited, and he is reduced to the far lesser status of an interesting author.
Discredited by whom, by the newspaper?
Marxism is not some sort of absolute truth, but lots of what ascribed to it has little to do with it. Facts are often applied selectively and misleadingly. Take the record of repressions that you provided - they are somehow ascribed to Marx while in fact they were typical actions of the elites in the state of endangerment. Why one should think that the elites in the "developed democracies" have ever behaved or will behave any differently in similar circumstances is anyone's guess (although there might be one or two exceptions). Post-war Soviet Union had no mass repressions whatsoever and was one of the softest and crime-free places in the world - this is somehow overlooked. Even the political oppression was way much softer than the US "witch hunting". Chile, the poster child for success of liberal market reforms (and almost the only one) - came through repressions that were on par with those in the "socialist" regimes when taken in proportion, and eventually became a pretty ordinary raw materials provider with destroyed social safety nets, despite all the hype about the "success".
Again, Marx's studies were not some sort of bloodthirsty ideology, it was a science based on scientific methods. Based on logic, he happened to arrive at the conclusion that capitalism is finite. This, and the earlier mentioned practices of egalitarism seeded by the XXth century socialist countries, made Marx an object of hatred of the mainstream whatnots, because the mainstream whatnots are owned by the existing elites, and the existing elites are fully invested in capitalism. So yeah, they will thoroughly explain to you why Marx is thoroughly discredited. Take this with a grain of salt, though - as well as marxism itself, of course.
$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', 'I') am pretty sure that whatever form that post-PO society evolves into, it will still possess high technology, micro-electronics, and perfect digital records of history, including the facts that Marx was pretty much wrong about everything he wrote.
Quite a few of his predictions have already come true. In the event the society evolves in anything other than capitalism his main fundamental prediction will come true.
by Lore » Thu 02 Jan 2014, 12:00:18
$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('KaiserJeep', '
')YOU ALL KNOW that endorsing Communism is endorsing the acts of genocidal despots, why do you do so?
I believe you're not getting the message. None of that has anything to do with the ideology of Communism. You could say the same thing about our US Democratic Republic. Genocide of the American Indian, the continuation of slavery long after the rest of the world's Western civilization outlawed it. Your're a victim of parochial thinking on this.
The things that will destroy America are prosperity-at-any-price, peace-at-any-price, safety-first instead of duty-first, the love of soft living, and the get-rich-quick theory of life.
... Theodore Roosevelt
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by KaiserJeep » Thu 02 Jan 2014, 13:30:36
$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Lore', '')$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('KaiserJeep', '
')YOU ALL KNOW that endorsing Communism is endorsing the acts of genocidal despots, why do you do so?
I believe you're not getting the message. None of that has anything to do with the ideology of Communism. You could say the same thing about our US Democratic Republic. Genocide of the American Indian, the continuation of slavery long after the rest of the world's Western civilization outlawed it. Your're a victim of parochial thinking on this.
I don't think so. Communism failed to take root in forty-two countries, and is currently failing in the remaining five. Odds are that it is a totally unworkable system. Nor can you deny or diminish the record of genocide in former Communist regimes, or the utter lack of personal freedom.
Nor was I discussing the ideology of Marxism, which fails of interest because it is defective. The words I used were "necessary trappings", since the USSR proved without any doubt whatsoever, that education - even the total indoctrination of state-run schools for 3+ generations - is insufficient to get people to act in opposition to their own self-interests. As the former Communist citizens often said "they pretended to pay us and we pretended to work".
So all Communist regimes resort to genocide, forced labor camps, and other atrocities which sacrifice individuals for the good of the state. Communism is evil incarnate because it is only a truly evil individual who would impose such a system upon unwilling people.
KaiserJeep 2.0, Neural Subnode 0010 0000 0001 0110 - 1001 0011 0011, Tertiary Adjunct to Unimatrix 0000 0000 0001
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Warning: Messages timestamped before April 1, 2016, 06:00 PST were posted by the unmodified human KaiserJeep 1.0
by Lore » Thu 02 Jan 2014, 14:41:54
$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Strummer', '')$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('KaiserJeep', 'A')s the former Communist citizens often said "they pretended to pay us and we pretended to work".
That used to be said in the later 80s, when it was clear that the soviet block can not compete with the debt-fueled economy of the USA.
But before that, the citizens did work and it showed. Do you have even the slightest idea how the USSR looked in 1917? It was a country of illiterate peasants. The progress they made in the following decades is unprecedented in human history, especially considering the destruction during WWII.
I understand that during The Bolshevik Revolution government officials had to write then sign their own warrants since their captors were too ignorant to even write or read. Why would anyone wonder how a country living in such ignorance and ruin is so easily taken advantage of? Fine ideas are often abused by opportunists of power.
Rather then follow the teachings of the likes of Daddy Duck, maybe we should take a lesson in this country and get smart?
The things that will destroy America are prosperity-at-any-price, peace-at-any-price, safety-first instead of duty-first, the love of soft living, and the get-rich-quick theory of life.
... Theodore Roosevelt
