That's one likely outcome, but I was commenting on purpose, not efficacy.
Shopping list of left motherhood statements, no suggestion given about where they want to go or how they propose to get there. Meaningless, and unlikely to produce anything resembling real change. Note the proliferation of extraneous issues referenced, i.e.:Originally Posted by motorfirebox
presumably to achieve "consensus".They have profited off of the torture, confinement, and cruel treatment of countless nonhuman animals, and actively hide these practices.
I very much doubt that they will be able to achieve anything resembling consensus on any course of action concrete and practical enough to be meaningful, which renders them politically impotent in the long run. They will be pandered to, but they are unlikely to produce actual policy changes.
“The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed (and hence clamorous to be led to safety) by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary”
H.L. Mencken
That's one likely outcome, but I was commenting on purpose, not efficacy.
As far as I can tell the primary purpose is to have a good time. Demonstrations are fun. Confrontation is fun too, especially in developed nations where the cops are polite and the probability of lasting damage is minimal. Getting arrested (invariably out in 24 hrs) or coming away with a few bruises earns huge status points in the clique and is an excellent way to get laid.
Been there, done that, deep in my young and stupid past.
If there's any political purpose that's concrete enough to mean anything, it has yet to be revealed.
“The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed (and hence clamorous to be led to safety) by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary”
H.L. Mencken
Um... I'm not denying the attraction, of course. But really, if risking tear gas and rubber bullets to get laid were really this many people's ideal pastime, we wouldn't have needed an ongoing financial crisis to trigger it. Even if all of them, right now, are just there to have as much fun as possible, it takes a pretty big societal upheaval to convince that many people that this is the most attractive option. I mean, for chrissake, if you see a bunch of kids kicking a severed head around as a soccer ball, you don't throw up your hands and say "Well, that's just what they like to do for fun," you say "Wow, how did their society get to the point where they find this acceptable?"
Nothing that results in human progress is achieved with unanimous consent. (Christopher Columbus)
All great truth passes through three stages: first it is ridiculed, second it is violently opposed. Third, it is accepted as being self-evident.
(Arthur Schopenhauer)
ONWARD
The "income sources" chart suggests that today's rich draw a higher percentage of their income from productive activity as opposed to rentier activity than those of 1928.
Given the rather prodigious number of other variables in the picture, correlation to causation in this case would be a pretty dramatic leap.
“The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed (and hence clamorous to be led to safety) by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary”
H.L. Mencken
Population Bomb Author Warns Of Global Collapse
Link to article by Paul Ehrlich (author of the 1968 book The Population Bomb) about the very,very high risk of a Global Collapse of Society. Scary stuff.
http://populationmatters.org/2011/bl...doom-gloomier/
Well...
He got the population bit wrong; he got the famines wrong; he lost his bet with Julian Simon. Lessee how he does on this prediction...
That "productive activity" would be mostly CEO salaries and bonuses, right?
Those salaries multiplied -in most of the Western world- by more than an order of magnitude over the last few decades - measured in multiples of average worker income.
It's not reasonable to assume that such a relative increase of income is really warranted by productivity gains. It looks a lot more like -in most of the Western world- the powerful ones are rather rigging the system and ripping labour off.*
A somewhat lighthearted summary of one example of rip-off.
* Sadly, the so-called social democrats were among their greatest allies in Germany, and the "Labour party" played quite the same role in the UK.
Public Banking TV
This pretty neat it's called Public Banking TV....has a series of videos on how the banking system really works and how to fix it. The link below is to one "Taking Control Of Our Money".
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IvTDT...ature=youtu.be
The distinction would be that a larger percentage of today's rich (as opposed to those of 1928) are actually working, rather than sitting around collecting rents. Whether or not the compensation they receive for their work is "fair" is another story. Ultimately a "fair" price for any good or service is what someone's willing to pay for it. An executive's performance or productivity is not measured in multiples of average employee income, it's measured in the ability to show the shareholders the results they want to see. Executives who fail to do this are discarded very quickly, those who succeed are rewarded.
The cult of the celebrity CEO, like so many other offshoots of the mid/late 90s "democratization" of investment, has probably done more harm than good, but like so many other vestiges of that deranged time, it will take time to work through. It would be interesting to see data on average CEO tenure... my guess is that it's a lot shorter than it once was. Two bad quarters and you're fired, two good quarters and you're looking to trade your "success" and temporary stardom into a richer deal elsewhere. Companies will pay exorbitant sums to retain a "successful" CEO or to bring in one with a reputation; this is less a function of the CEO's value to the company than of impact on shareholder perceptions. Losing your star, or failing to bring in a star, is seen as a potentially damaging blow to share price, especially in a fragile market.
I think Companies and executives pay way too much attention to daily share prices and short term results and too little to longer term planning... but that's another of those 90s things that needs to shake out a bit.
Reducing executive salaries, like raising taxes on the rich, would be aesthetically pleasing but wouldn't really do much for labor or for "the poor".
“The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed (and hence clamorous to be led to safety) by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary”
H.L. Mencken
NO.
Every single market failure means that this is not true. On top of that it's thoroughly illogical, for preferences vary and thus the "fair" price would be different for many customers if you were right.
No, fair prices are prices close to the market clearance level in a setting of approximately compensated market failures.
The economic policy of the U.S. is incredibly incompetent (and has been so for two generations at least). Part of the country even denies the existence of market failures and thus becomes useful idiots for those who rig the system in their favour through many market failures.
On top of that much of the legislation and executive are adding to the rigging of the system.
The U.S. is basically a longhorn cow that's being bound to a milking machine and losing substance and health.
Meanwhile, it gets horny about its oh-so great and powerful horns and many of its thoughts are about some oh-so threatening ants and about how half of its hide has a totally wrong colour.
The clearing price is what buyers are willing to pay for a given good or service. If buyers aren't willing to pay the price - if they don't think the price is fair - the product doesn't sell and either the price drops or the seller goes out of business.
In any given transaction a "fair" price is one that is acceptable to both buyer and seller. What other possible definition is there?
In actual fact prices are often "different for many customers". A plain t-shirt may cost half as much as the exact same t-shirt with a brand name printed on it. For some buyers the price of the printed shirt is unfair, so they buy the cheaper one. Other buyers may be willing to pay the price to wear the brand name. In either case the actual transaction price is "fair", because it's acceptable to buyer and seller.
An executive hire is a one-off transaction; each one is different. How can someone who is not a party to the transaction determine a "fair" price for the services in question, still less impose that "fair" price on the transacting parties?
True, though I'd have said dumb rather than incompetent. Minor distinction. Long term economic goals are often subordinated to short-term political goals, and even those are often pursued ineffectively.
“The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed (and hence clamorous to be led to safety) by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary”
H.L. Mencken
You almost have to admire a guy who can make a well-paid career out of being wrong. An interesting testament to the marketability of fear...He got the population bit wrong; he got the famines wrong; he lost his bet with Julian Simon. Lessee how he does on this prediction...
“The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed (and hence clamorous to be led to safety) by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary”
H.L. Mencken
Offhand, I would add to that definition that if either party lacks significant or critical information regarding the transaction, and especially if that information has been deliberately withheld, the transaction is not fair. I would also add that if the balance of control of the transaction price is shifted too far towards one party or the other, the transaction is not fair. If, for instance, the time-sensitive nature of the transaction is used by one party to force the other to agree to a renegotiation, that can be unfair. Or, of greatest relevance to the specific concept being discussed, if one party controls so much of the market that the other simply can't negotiate, the transaction can be unfair.
Any one of these conditions, or all of them, can exist to a degree small enough that the overall transaction can be considered fair--fair enough, at any rate. The greater degree to which they exist, though, the more unfair the transaction is.
That's simply wrong. There would be no buyer's rent if you were right.
The clearing price is the price that convinces the enough buyers.
An example:
Potential customer a:
appreciation of product: 5$
Potential customer b:
appreciation of product: 10$
Potential customer b:
appreciation of product: 15$
Quantity of product: 2
Clearing price = 10$, not the same as what c is willing to pay for it.
C's buyer's rent = 5$
In practice, the price may be just about anywhere, and the market gets cleared at all prices from 0.01$ to 10$.
There are many possibilities. Market failures can turn a trade unfair, bad, even though buyer and seller agree on a price.In any given transaction a "fair" price is one that is acceptable to both buyer and seller. What other possible definition is there?
Examples:
* monopoly / cartel
* power asymmetry
* information asymmetry
* principal-agent problem
* externalities
The trade is unfair to a third party in the latter two, while in the first two cases it's about ripping off one party's rent.
Not to pick on Dayuhan, but that statement really does strike me as exemplifying the problems our economic system is facing. A lot of people say things like this, and when you bring up fraud, coercion, and other issues, the response is "Well of course I didn't mean situations where one party has an unfair advantage over the other outside of the actual transaction." But the whole problem is that a particular economic sector has gotten an ongoing, massive, unfair advantage over the rest, which advantage lies outside of the actual transactions taking place. So the idea that if one party doesn't do well in a transaction, they should have tried harder/been smarter/whatever, is completely undermined to the point of being, in this context, utterly invalidated.
Not to pick on
motorfirebox...I'm just an unedumacated hillbilly but I think that statement is perhaps academically sound but realistically possibly a bit excessively idealistic (that's a euphemism for incredibly naive).
The history of mankind is one of sellers trying to take advantage of buyers in any way they can. The 'progressive ' solution to that problem is to pass laws that preclude such advantages. The sellers solution to that problem is to buy lawmakers to the extent they control the content of such laws. Guess to whose advantage they try to shape such laws...
The solution is to realize that a way around such laws will always -- repeat, always -- be found by the sellers. Thus it would seem to me that a combination of minimal but effective laws passed by lawmakers who cannot be bought and educated buyers who are cautious in their transactions is a far better solution.
Good luck with any of that...I do not agree. I very much agree the field has been tilted. That's true everywhere to some extent but the sort of neat thing is that here in the US, we are into swing cycles -- the pendulum swings too far toward raw capitalism and then it is perceived as excessive so a swing back toward tight restrictions; Cycle repeats. I believe we are about to swing toward more restriction but the concern one should have is that the 'restrictions' contain hidden loopholes to be exploited while giving the appearance of improvement. Lulling buyers is as old as Babylon.....But the whole problem is that a particular economic sector has gotten an ongoing, massive, unfair advantage over the rest, which advantage lies outside of the actual transactions taking place. So the idea that if one party doesn't do well in a transaction, they should have tried harder/been smarter/whatever, is completely undermined to the point of being, in this context, utterly invalidated.
However, I also believe that most thinking humans can see and understand this. They should be thus able to act accordingly.
The problem is that it is not to the advantage of the political and / or governing class to mention that fact. That would limit their ability to pass more inane laws and get larger campaign contributions.
Once again I suggest the culprit is not unfettered capitalistic greed -- it is in the design and construction of fetters and 'blame' therefor accrues to those designers, the true culprits...
All of which goes to explain why "Caveat Emptor" is older than you, me, the US and even the long defunct Roman Empire...
Pricing Information...
...for the hillbilly in all of us; digital nascar style jackets for our political class courtesy of:
www.opensecrets.org
Hat tip to Thomas L. Friedman's column in today's NYT, Did you hear the one about the bankers?
Sapere Aude
Posted by Fuchs
Agreed, and the fact that corporations can away with paying these lump sum bonuses to ineffective CEOs demonstrates the flaw in the system. Larger corporations (or consortium's of like minded Corporations) will always retain over 50% of the shares (call it the old boy's club) and will always vote in ways that result in the accumulation of more and more capital, not in ways that result in overall economic growth. The current system is rigged, so it can't be reformed legally unless Congress acts, and since the Corporations are generally global it is difficult for one country to effectively act.That "productive activity" would be mostly CEO salaries and bonuses, right?
Those salaries multiplied -in most of the Western world- by more than an order of magnitude over the last few decades - measured in multiples of average worker income.
It's not reasonable to assume that such a relative increase of income is really warranted by productivity gains. It looks a lot more like -in most of the Western world- the powerful ones are rather rigging the system and ripping labour off.*
Can anyone explain how large investments triggered by algorthyms that is nothing more momentum investing where millions/billions of dollars are moved from one company to the next hour after hour can truly be called investing? Again it is capital accumulation in ways that doesn't result in economic growth.
There are always apologists for the banks, even in this forum, but I suspect that is driven by propaganda. Alex Carey wrote, "the 20 century was characterized by three developments of great political importance: the growth of democracy, the growth of corporate power, and the growth of propaganda as a means to protect corporate power against democracy."
GDP does equate to development and real growth anymore. It is a meaningless number for most individuals, because the capitalist system Adam Smith wrote about where the markets ruled no longer exists. The markets are controlled by a consortium of corporate power brokers. It is extremely difficult in our current system for a young person to get a loan from a bank to start a business, which is just one indicator that the trickle down theory is deeply flawed. You can also study the IMF's philosophical approach to facilitating growth in developing countries with their structural adjustment programs, which has accurately been called the globalization of poverty. Large loans that allows the IMF to control the country's economic programs and of course charge interest (sometimes indirectly). This has resulted in a new form of mercantilism that benefits a select few and marginalizes the masses.
The greatest culprits are the banks, and the only U.S. President that had the moral courage to stand up to the banks was Andrew Jackson. The banks intentionally drove the U.S. into a recession in hopes of getting Andrew Jackson to back off, but he and Congress held the bank's feet to the fire despite the economic turmoil they intentionally created (self serving, had nothing to do with the market). This isn't a problem unique to the U.S., the Rothchilds in England were famously corrupt and would fund both sides of a conflict to hedge their bets. They(like most banks) would produce money artificially and then charge interest on it. Wow, if we could all do that we could all be millionaires without the requirement to produce meaningful services and products for society. This isn't Adam Smith's capitialism, he wrote about a market that was agnostic, but today's market is anything but agnostic, it favors the large corporations who do set unfair prices for business loans, insurance, etc. once they are able to marginalize the competition.
The silver lining perhaps is that information technology may enable democracy to actually work and effectively challenge corporate power plays in a way that will allow capitalism to work the way it was intended to work.
Posting Permissions
Bookmarks