Showing posts with label Market Capitalism. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Market Capitalism. Show all posts
Friday, December 25, 2009
Predictions For The United States of America During The Second Decade Of The XXI Century
.H/t to Dimitry Orlov @ ClubOrlov:
Da Buffalo wants to note: These ARE NOT 'apocalyptic' predictions... Just predictions of change in a rather uncomfortable and unwanted direction for the citizens of America, and also, perhaps at some point in the not-too-distant future, for the rest of the industrialized world.
As Sweatshop Union exclaims in this video, it's 'ALL ON US'...
Sweatshop Union @ MySpace. The lyrics. Their Wikipedia entry.
An evolutionary HipHop soundtrack is available @ archive.org
...for blithely going about living in a materialist fantasy land since... the beginning of the industrial revolution? But CERTAINLY commencing in it's greatest haste (for the benefit of "the greatest generation", who disregarded their narcissistic and short-sighted
Wikipedia has the basics on "Market Capitalism" and Consumer-based economies, but I recommend this article at the Boston Globe: "Why capitalism fails (The man who saw the meltdown coming [Hyman Minsky] had another troubling insight: it will happen again)".
Quote: "This wasn’t a Minsky moment. It was a Minsky half-century.”
...and this was the snake oil image we were being 'sold':
That said... Dimitry Orlov:
Around this time of year, some brave souls venture to put their reputations at risk by attempting to predict what the next year will bring. Some do so with uncanny accuracy, others — not so much. Being a serious author who hardly ever makes jokes, I generally sit out this annual bout of frivolity, but, noting that a new decade is about to burst upon us, I thought it reasonably safe to paint a picture of how I see the next decade. (In the unlikely case that my predictions turn out to be completely wrong, I would think that they will have been very thoroughly forgotten by the time 2020 rolls around.) And so, without further ado, here are my predictions for what it will be like in The United States of America during the second decade of the XXI century.The decade will be marked by many instances of autophagy, in business, government, and in the higher echelons of society, as players at all levels find that they are unable to control their appetites or alter their behavior in any meaningful way, even in the face of radically altered circumstances, and are thus compelled to consume themselves into oblivion, as so many disemboweled yet still ravenous sharks endlessly gorging themselves on their own billowing entrails.
Governments will find that they are unable to restrain themselves from printing ever more money in an endless wave of uncontrolled emission. At the same time, rising taxes, commodity prices, and costs of all kinds, coupled with a rising overall level of uncertainty and disruption, will curtail economic activity to a point where little of that money will still circulate. Inflationists and deflationists will endlessly debate whether this should be called inflation or deflation, unconsciously emulating the big-endians and little-endians of Jonathan Swifts Gulliver's Travels, who endlessly debated the proper end from which to eat a soft-boiled egg...
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Sunday, December 20, 2009
Two Words... "Vested Interests" - Economic Theory And The Disdain For Empirical Verification
."The validity of a theory proper does not depend on the correspondence or lack of it between the assumptions of the theory or its conclusions and observations in the real world. A theory as an internally consistent system is valid if the conclusions follow logically from its premises, and the fact that neither the premises nor the conclusions correspond to reality may show that the theory is not very useful, but does not invalidate it. In any pure theory, all propositions are essentially tautological, in the sense that the results are implicit in the assumptions made. {6}
Such disdain for empirical verification is not found in the physical sciences. Its popularity in the social sciences is sponsored by vested interests. There is always self-interest behind methodological madness. That is because success requires heavy subsidies from special interests who benefit from an erroneous, misleading or deceptive economic logic. Why promote unrealistic abstractions, after all, if not to distract attention from reforms aimed at creating rules that oblige people actually to earn their income rather than simply extracting it from the rest of the economy?" --Excerpted from Michael Hudson, "Krugman's attack on my review of Samuelson, Personal correspondence (December 20 2009)". In re: "Elegant Theories That Didn't Work: The Problem with Paul Samuelson" by Michael Hudson, Counterpunch (December 14 2009)
For more on the topic, see: "A Note Of Appreciation From The Rich"
Let's be honest: you'll never win the lottery.
On the other hand, the chances are pretty good that you'll slave away at some miserable job the rest of your life. That's because you were in all likelihood born into the wrong social class. Let's face it -- you're a member of the working caste. Sorry!
As a result, you don't have the education, upbringing, connections, manners, appearance, and good taste to ever become one of us. In fact, you'd probably need a book the size of the yellow pages to list all the unfair advantages we have over you. That's why we're so relieved to know that you still continue to believe all those silly fairy tales about "justice" and "equal opportunity" in America.
Of course, in a hierarchical social system like ours, there's never been much room at the top to begin with. Besides, it's already occupied by us -- and we like it up here so much that we intend to keep it that way.
But at least there's usually someone lower in the social hierarchy you can feel superior to and kick in the teeth once in a while. Even a lowly dishwasher can easily find some poor slob further down in the pecking order to sneer and spit at.
So be thankful for migrant workers, prostitutes, and homeless street people...
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Friday, September 25, 2009
Market Capitalism 101: Constantly Expanding Markets Are A Must, Despite The Cost To Your Society
BUSINESS AS USUAL
Economic crises are not natural disasters. They are brought about by the actions of bankers, officials, and developers, not to mention ordinary folks struggling to get by in a world we didn’t choose. They appear beyond our control, but they are not inescapable facts of life.
For all the talk of collapse, capitalism itself is as healthy as ever. The fundamental relationships remain unchanged: employers and employees, politicians and voters, police and policed. Our masters may loan us cars or houses to pacify us, but we still lack control over our own lives.
Crises like this are part of the protection racket that keeps them in business.
They profit on the industries that heat up the earth’s atmosphere, and when hurricanes destroy our neighborhoods they replace them with condominiums and sell us energy-saving light bulbs.
They profit on the invasions that secure more resources for the economy, and also on the occupations in which our friends and relatives die.
They profited from the subprime mortgages that contributed to the latest disaster, and now they’re profiting from the bailout.
Imagine another kind of crisis, one that could really pose a threat to their precious market: neighbors defending each other from eviction, workers seizing the goods they need, people building communities based on cooperation and self-determination.
Imagine a world in which we’d never be vulnerable to the whims of the market again.
As far as we’re concerned, it can’t come soon enough.
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