Why greed is bad (and inequality, too!)
As income inequality has grown, one side’s heralds have worked very hard to pimp a load of supporting ideology. The other side’s heralds have largely slumbered, dozed, burbled and snored. We haven’t developed the language and the ideation with which we can approach those voters who are currently found outside our own tribe. Nor have we developed the forums in which we can approach such people with some hope of success. We prefer to spend our time insulting those who aren’t in our own tribe. This is lazy, self-indulgent behavior. Beyond that, it just isn’t smart.
What’s wrong with the societal pattern described in Whoriskey’s piece? If athletes and singers can haul in big swag, why can’t CEOs and “financial professionals?” The career liberal world has made little effort to fight back against that forty-year trend—a trend which has indeed driven along by “one half-baked study after another.”
I think there's definitely something to this. Liberals often assume that most of the public sees surging economic inequality as a profound and unqualified negative, but the reality is the public often has no idea just how unequal America has become. And what's more, the public has been fed the idea we should celebrate when the rich get richer because it means they'll just trickle more wealth down on the rest of us unworthy serfs.
So in response to Bob's challenge, I'd like to make the case for why greed is bad that could transcend the standard left-right divide and appeal to people who might disagree with me on a host of other issues. Let's give this a go, shall we?
Before delving too far into this, I'd like to give my general take on money. To me, money is a lot like sex and cupcakes. Meaning that while they're all things that everyone wants to have in one form or another, it's entirely possible to overindulge in all three. The key difference is, we don't stigmatize greedy people the same way we stigmatize people who are cads (i.e., Tiger Woods and Anthony Weiner) or people who are overweight (i.e., Michael Moore). In fact, when we read about somebody who makes an obscene amount of money we normally think, "Well good for them, I hope I can make it like that some day too!" The most classic example was the Wall Street Journal's interview with one of the homeowners whose foreclosure made hedge fund manager John Paulson into a gazaillinaire. Y'see, even though Paulson was literally profiting from the poor shlub's misery, he just couldn't find it in his heart to be upset:
In 2006, Mr. Booket got hit by a car while riding a motorcycle from a late-night party, was unable to find much work and couldn't pay the bank. In October 2008, he lost the house to foreclosure and plans to move out by next week. He says he bears no grudge against Mr. Paulson and Goldman.
"The man came up with a scheme to get rich, and he did it," says Mr. Booket, who had refinanced his mortgage just months before the accident. "So more power to him."
Mr. Booket is presumably a good guy. But he's also clearly bought into the idea that anything rich people do to make money is good for the rest of us too. Here, then, is my concise breakdown of the two biggest reasons why greed and inequality are bad:
- First: When people at the top are greedy, workers don't get their just rewards. For a long time in this country, there was a very close relationship between productivity growth and wage growth. Increased productivity is a good thing because it means we've come up with new ways to make more stuff with less effort. Now take a look at this chart:
As you can see, productivity started rising more rapidly than wages in the 1970s and has only accelerated since. This means, roughly speaking, that workers are now producing more but getting paid less. How in God's name is this possible? Well, technology and globalization are definitely part of the answer. But I think there's also something to be said for the fact that we've developed a real Randian "Cult of the Rock Star CEO" culture that values the output of the person at the top of the chain as key to creating wealth for everyone else (and if this sounds like economic fascism to you, well, you've got a point).
And look: Steve Jobs is a brilliant businessman, but he's not the one engineering the Mac Book Air, he's not the one refining the next-generation iPhone operating system and he's certainly not the one in the Chinese manufacturing plant putting all of these "magical" devices together. In other words, Steve Jobs is good at what he does but he has a whole lot of help that shouldn't be overlooked or underpaid. Note that I'm not saying Jobs doesn't deserve to be well-off for the work he puts into Apple. What I am saying is that as Jobs' wealth increases, so should the wealth of everyone else who works at the company. For the past 40 years in America, that just hasn't been happening.
- Second: Greed can turn you into a dumbass. There's this weird myth out there that the more money a Rock Star CEO has, the more money he'll invest into his business, thus creating more jobs for everyone. While this is certainly true in some cases, I don't think it's at all true across the board. And what's more, I think having too much money can give you a feeling of invincibility that can lead you to do stupid things.
I know I make fun of Charlie Sheen a lot but I think he's a really good example of the dumb crap people can get themselves into when they have too much damn money. Let's recall what Charlie said earlier this year when asked why he spent so much money on prostitutes:
Asked why he's "paid for sex" in the past, Sheen responded, "Because I had millions to blow. I ran out of things to buy."
"I had millions to blow. I ran out of things to buy."
That, in essence, was one of the problems we had in the lead-up to the housing bubble. Toward the end of that debauched period, lenders simply weren't producing enough mortgages to satisfy the Wall Street Securitization Machine that had spent the past decade piling more and more leverage onto banks' balance books. The solution, it turns out, was to create "synthetic" mortgage securities that were little more than bets on other mortgages that the banks didn't even own. Because a combination of low interest rates, tax loopholes and financial chicanery had given banks a whole ass-ton of money to play with, they had at that point literally run out of crappy mortgages to buy. So instead of, say, doing something more useful with it they decided to double down and create more crappy mortgages out of thin air. The brighter libertarians out there will concede that, yes, having too much money can make you stupid but eventually the market will make you pay for your mistakes and you'll never get hired again. Capitalism works!
Well, sure, if you ignore all the misery and poverty that financial collapses cause, I guess the system is great. And let's not mention that being thoroughly incompetent at your job is no obstacle to future employment if you've got good connections -- for Christ's sake, the World Bank has just appointed former Lehman Brothers chief risk officer Madelyn Antoncic as its damn treasurer! This is like baseball hiring Barry Bonds to be in charge of overseeing its drug-testing operation!
So that's my best crack at detailing in a (hopefully) amusing fashion why greed is really not a good thing that should be encouraged. Gordon Gekko wouldn't approve, but what does his fictional ass know that I don't?
I'm neck deep in jobs and money!
What, that's not jobs and money?
I should have known. Jobs aren't yellow, and money's not brown.
How does it feel to be trickled on? :-)
That's why they call us pee-ons, doncha' know!
When will government of the people, by the politicians, for the corporations perish from this Earth?
Not soon enough!
Nice article, thanks Brad!
An addition.
To some degree, greed begets an attitude that you want to make more simply to make more. It has nothing to do with how wealthy you are, etc.
Hence you get the President of ADM (largest privately held company in the US) getting involved in a price fixing scheme. Beyond the arrogance of his actions, as you mention, we get the stupidity.
So why does he do it?
He certainly doesn't need the extra money.
Then we get the Hunt brothers. Again. How much money did they "need"?
So they go off and decide they're going to corner the silver market and manipulate it.
Didn't turn out too well for them either.
I guess I equate it to politicians, sports figures, etc. who simply think that they're above the law.
didn't the fed, the govt, and major banks make a deal to cover their failed bets in the silver gamble?
The final outcome of all of this was that the Hunt brothers ended up losing about 4 billion dollars of their own money.
The gov't and banks (one of which the Hunt brothers had an interest in) did step in to initially cover the margin calls, but the Hunts still ended up paying.
thanks for the info
both bad. why? god said so, that's why.
yet, both loved like a chocolate bunny by the jesus-infused right wing.
funny how the religious fundy right can reject and eject their own christian teachings when it comes to money hoarding.
weird stuff. one might wonder how that damn camel will fit.
I agree with your views, Brad, but I'm not sure you've achieved this:
When money piles up it ceases to circulate.
The economy depends on the circulation of money.
People buy stuff, which creates demand for more stuff.
Every transaction is taxed, so The State gets its cut.
And the banks usually get a coupla percent too.
So everyone benefits when money circulates.
Conversely, when money piles up in hedge funds, for instance, it hurts the overall economy.
When trillions are tied up in gambling on incomprehensible derivatives, it hurts the economy, even when the derivatives market doesn't go bust, because the money is essentially out of circulation.
Even Wall Street is laying off staff now. Why? Because they've piled up all the money in greedy hedge fund derivative gambling escapades instead of letting the money circulate in the economy.
The only solution I see is to take all that piled up cash, divy it up among We The People, and let us spend it. That's the only way I see to get the economy going again (the real economy, not the stock market bubble).
And it would benefit the banks as well.
When will government of the people, by the politicians, for the corporations perish from this Earth?
Not soon enough!
on newly rich who are in our tribe.
http://www.dailyhowler.com/dh060311.shtml
“Why would anyone with a functioning brain believe this guy?”
Some guy with an eating disorder
From '1776' John Dickinson....
"Don't forget that most men with nothing would rather protect the possibility of becoming rich than face the reality of being poor."
...and it goes like this:
Money is only useful insofar as it solves real problems. Any more than that, and money IS the problem.
It kinda' goes along with your post. If you're earning money earmarked to solve problems (e.g., pay the mortgage, plan for retirement, pay your kids' college tuition), then more power to you! The day your money starts accumulating beyond those types of needs is the day you start creating subtle little problems for yourself.
Corporate CEOs are just a prime example of people who amass resources for the simple sake of conspicuous consumption. In some cases, it's a form of materialism that borders on the necrophilic (think Rush Limbaugh, Bill Gates, etc). I take solace in the fact that those choices DO have repercussions in this life (e.g., paranoia; spoiled, worthless children; materialistic wife; lawyered-up ex-wife; and the contempt of millions).
Beware of anyone promising a future full of yesterdays.
Wait, you are lumping together the founder of the Gates foundation with Limbagh?
http://www.lifeissues.net/writers/cho/cho_04c...
C) Capitalistic Man: The Wrecking Ball of Christendom
Since the "unlimited" as a psychological category, characterizes the capitalistic man, all institutions and cultural norms which place restrictions on, hence, render impossible, the limitless acquisition of wealth must be eliminated. The first restriction, because the simplest to overcome, which must be eliminated are all social institutions and customs which render impossible the capitalist life of unlimited individual acquisition.
"...The vocational guilds (UNIONS), although not formed by the clergy were, nonetheless, guided and inspired by them, also, regulated and, hence, restricted the economic freedom of the capitalist. In fact, they made capitalism impossible..."
"...The brotherhood within a particular profession, which was one of the essential marks of the guild (UNION), restricted competition between men of the same trade. This fraternal bond, which was the very conceptual opposite of the capitalistic ideal of maximum individual economic gain, demanded that there be an equitable and wide distribution of customers. Such a distribution ensured a minimum of work for each member of the vocational brotherhood. The dominant spirit of capitalism insists that we work in such a way that will put our competitor out of business. To achieve this is to be "successful" in the capitalistic system. The corporative system of the past was ordered to ensure that a man would pursue his occupation in such a way that he did not put his "competitor" out of business. Such bonds of charity, fraternity, and justice had to be weakened or made merely voluntary if the "capitalistic spirit" were to reign unfettered. In the corporative idea, we find the common good of working men and families was put ahead of the unrestricted "right" to purchase any product one fancies. Economic "freedom" breeds the insecurity which is a consequence of ruthless economic competition. Here, it is interesting to note that nascent capitalism and the beginning of "suburbanization" were contemporaneous, since the aspiring capitalist needed to flee the medieval cities in order to avoid the economic restrictions placed upon him by the guilds."
".....This goal of capitalism is not like the theoretical goal of Marxism, the "withering away of the State." Rather, what has been achieved by capitalism has been the hijacking of the majesty, power, and sovereignty of the State so that it serves as a necessary and useful instrument. The tasks which capitalism is willing to "allow" the domesticated State are several. First, is the maintenance of security in civil society. This "law and order" is tolerated by capitalism as long as it is a "law" and a consequent "order" completely unhinged from the Natural and Divine Law and from the created order of God or the derivative order of Christendom. "Security" as understood by the State hijacked by capitalism is simply the safe-guarding of the conditions in which the capitalists can achieve maximum material gain from minimal expenditure. Indeed, this is the ultimate guarantee of the stability and fixity of the capitalist system. One which threatens terror and ruin on those who would dare try to depart in anyway from the "given" system. In a fully capitalist society, you have the death of the State even when it seems to be at its most unforgiving and ferocious."
"....The next two "allowances" which capitalism makes to the newly-nondescript State, is that the State should guarantee "liberty" and that it should "educate" the population."
"...Such universal and secular education, also serves to dislocate a mind from his land, his home, and his own personal life, making him more attune to the impersonal character of the machine."
Donaldd
Without thousands of little worker bees Steve Jobs would still be working out of a garage.
"We haven’t developed the language and the ideation with which we can approach those voters who are currently found outside our own tribe"
say what!!!!!!!!!!!!!! the ideation? is that even a word? well, windows doesn't think it is, but websters disagrees
http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/ide...
come on man the ideology has been around since 1848
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Communist_Manifesto
"The history of all hitherto existing society is the history of class struggles.
Freeman and slave, patrician and plebeian, lord and serf, guild-master and journeyman, in a word, oppressor and oppressed, stood in constant opposition to one another, carried on an uninterrupted, now hidden, now open fight, a fight that each time ended, either in a revolutionary reconstitution of society at large, or in the common ruin of the contending classes.[12]"
considering what happens to anyone who openly proclaims themselves as socialist, maybe it is understandable why people do not want to embrace the obvious solution, which is socialism. i do notice the glaring absence of the word "socialism" in the piece, why is that? is it a tactical omission? or do "progressives" today run away from the word because they are not really socialists?
you are right about the name-calling, i see it a lot on this blog, it is past time to describe these social phenomena in pejorative terms, and start doing the analysis. i will tell you this, despite any protestations of the supposed left, we have yet to develop a coherent ideology that moves beyond marxism and addresses human rights in all it's various permutations, until this is done the left in america will be hobbled by internal inconsistencies.
the USA is highly narcissistic, which is understandable considering the trauma this country has collectively been through, but it is time to start accepting the limits and demands of government. to come to the proper conclusions one must leave aside value judgements and figure out what government does, essentially what we want government to do, and what we are willing to give up in order for government to do it's job. no more time right now.
Sorry, but there can be a happy medium between communism and oligarchy. Although you'd never know it in what is currently going on in this country.
I feel as if I'm watching a situation where you have a country with unlimited natural and human resources that is being turned over to a small group of people who's only purpose is to rape, pillage and move on.
Apparently there are a few million people who that that somehow advances this country.
Thankfully I'm 63.
On a small local scale, communism is workable. On the scale of a Nation-State it has seemed to be unworkable.
With peak oil and peak ecology we are running head long over a cliff.
I am 62. I am certainly glad that I will not see the full debacle.
statusquObama, change you can only pretend in
...but, basically, the way that humans survived for hundreds of thousands of years- and without dialectic discourse, because it was the only thing that worked.
Don't try to confuse the issue with half-truths and gorilla dust.
Tribalism and communism are hardly the same thing and very few tribes were not hierarchical in structure. What communism inevitably turns into is tribalism writ large.
Hasa Diga Eebowai
In that most of what you'd call a hierarchy in the sense that we- from the culture based on sedentary agriculture, a culture that keeps food under lock and key- know it. Tribal societies tend greatly towards selecting from the tribe the wisest amongst them to make decisions. Their words are not law- tradition and tribal experience rule. Agricultural societies gravitate towards leadership that seizes power by force, and that leadership rules by decree.
Agricultural societies build classes of people- warriors/enforcers, priests, scholars/inventors, skilled craftsman and unskilled laborers. In tribal societies, the leaders are still any or all of these, along with everyone else in the tribe (although there are some divisions of labor based on gender, but there are many examples of matriarchal tribal societies while there have been few matriarchal agricultural societies).
Don't try to confuse the issue with half-truths and gorilla dust.
Yes, argicutural societies produce food surplus which allows for non-food producing specialists to exist. The kinds of specialists that let you have a computer and an internet to talk about how much better it would be to live like cave men with. The kind that lets you have dedicated teachers that spread literacy across a society. Again with the rose colored glasses...
Tribalist doesn't necessarily mean Luddite or anti-intellectual. It just slows down the rate of technological progress...And putting space between tech discoveries allows us to figure out the upsides and downsides of the first discovery before the second discovery compounds the downside.
Don't try to confuse the issue with half-truths and gorilla dust.
But that's a fundementally pessemistic view of technology. Your assumption is that follow on technologies tend to exacerbate the negative effects of a previous technology. By that logic, we would have gotten the internal combustion engine, then waited, then built a car, then waited longer till we were sure what was up, THEN develop technologies to increase fuel efficiency and decrease pollution. I fundementally disagree with your premise that technology is inherrantly destructive (often disruptive yes, but not destructive).
Why the rush to global warming?
That's just one example of why we shouldn't assume a new technology isn't going to have some huge downside for the planet and all of those who dwell in it.
Dude...For hundreds of thousands (if not millions) of years, humans coexisted not only with each other, but with everything around them. Estimated that there were 1 million humans for much of that span, and that number stayed static. Then we get agricultural technology and it's only taken us 10,000-15,000 years to nearly ruin the planet, because it made life more comfortable- for us and us alone (okay, throw domesticated house pets in there, but that wasn't their choice).
We've kinda strayed from the topic of the OP here, but I'm going to bring it back around: Can you think of anything more greedy than humans who think that the Earth is here to serve humans?
Don't try to confuse the issue with half-truths and gorilla dust.
Every other species that doesn't think, but just consumes in a self-centered manner. In other words, every other species on the planet. Also, if you think that only modern humans cause extinction and environmental change on a massive scale, I suggest you look up the theories on prehistoric megafauna extinction in the Americas and Autstralia. Hint: pre-agricultural humans probably did it.
As to my internal combustion engine example, my point was that had we taken a "here's a new technology, let's sit on it for 20 years" approach, we'd still think 12 MPG was a good deal.
Not because it was the only thing that worked, because it was the path of least resistance.
is whether groups of people beyond a certain size are just unmanageable. do countries beyond a certain size become ungovernable? unable to take collective action? will the US eventually balkanize? and will it be a good thing?
China's a helluva lot bigger than the US, and I wouldn't call the situation there unmanageable. Not perfect- what is?- but not unmanageable.
It's a matter of law. For those hundreds of thousands of years when humans were living communally, they didn't have laws. They were small, tight-knit groups. They had traditions and customs based on experiences, examples of those experiences passed on through myths.Thos traditions were amenable due to circumstances, new myths told. But because those people usually wandered a fixed area, circumstances didn't change much.
Come the late-neolithic agricultural revolution, those small communes- tribes- banded together as chiefdoms, then as kingdoms. Many different tribes, many different traditions. So law was devised to manage the differences.
Don't try to confuse the issue with half-truths and gorilla dust.
the situation in china makes me sick, a "communist" or socialist nation where independent trade unions are illegal, big bill haywood would go nuts, absolutely nuts. the chinese have violated just about every principle of socialism, and discontent is growing, the authorities are just keeping it under wraps.
will never be taken until the marxist critique is accepted. notice that i veered immediately to socialism rather than communism in my post. for myself, i would prefer a mixed economy, but once again, this will not be achieved without applying marxist ideology. now we have global capitalism, which was foreseen by the wobblies, hence the motto "one big union"; today conglomerates play entire countries off against each other, automation is pervasive, we have "synthetic financial instruments", lot's of stuff marx did not foresee, we must adjust.
please notice that i also mentioned the extreme narcissism of the populace, this really hampers collective action.
You conflate automation and anti-labor practices. That's bunk. Automation raises productivity. The problem is that managers don't give workers a cut of the profits from productivity gains any more (hey, the point of the post!). A technician who works on a machine that does the work of 10 manual laborers is just as employed as any manual laborer, and as long as no one is skimming off the top of the economy (like the ultra-rich do now), those manual laborers should be able to find productive work in another sector.
no i'm not, i mention it because of what you describe. suppose we no longer needed human labor? then the question becomes what rights do people have to a living. yup, you make a good point. are you the one that nailed me about service sector workers? that was a good one too.
We will always have some sort of work society deems valuable that humans can and will do. What we need to make sure of is that the fruits of that labor are distributed equitably (not necessarily 100% equaly, but still fairly).
i disappeared because of a delivery, now i have to go be mr. mom. have a good one, may be back later.
...there are probably ways to sell communism without Marxist trappings. Jesus Christ, whether real or fictional, was a communist/tribalist, imo, promoting the advantages of stepping back to the old way of life, where there were no owners.
Don't try to confuse the issue with half-truths and gorilla dust.
It's no surprise that the rise of globalism is coinciding directly with the downfall of socialism. As the populations in each country around the world become larger and more diverse, people are less and less willing to accept socialism since they have nothing to unite them politically or culturally with their fellow citizens. Clearly the only way to get back to communitarian/socialistic societies is through tribalistic/nationalistic movements. The problem of course is that a lot of people on the left regard nationalism as tantamount to Nazism, and this is making it virtually impossible for nationalistic movements to gain any traction, especially in Europe and the U.S.
Yeah... tribalism is a really really bad idea. Tribalism = increased warfare and decreased trade. Instead of trying to promote local in-group indentites, how about we try to promote the idea that all humans are part of the in-group?
yes, indeed, but like a false zen, globalism has been used to dominate the workers of the world. i hate when someone says "it's all good". it's not, some thing are bad, they hurt people.
I agree. It's not all good. But the solution isn't to return to prehistoric societal organizations. I'm sure you are familiar with the "nasty, brutish, and short" description of ancient society. The past is best left there much of the time.
but resources used to the betterment of society as a whole, the right would turn this into "well who decides" because they have not come to terms with the nature of organized human societies, there will always be a trade off, any entity given power enough to suppress certain behaviors must be agreed upon by the members of that society. this is the art of governance, the basis of civilization.
our society is breaking down because too many people no longer see what is in it for them. we are breaking down along tribal lines because the organizing principle is deteriorating.
Well, that I can completely agree with. Though strictly speaking, sites like this could be argued to be helping with that. When you can view the world entirely through the prism of those you agree with, it aids the segmentation of society.
Global capitalism has created an in-group known as consumers, and it has been far more successful at uniting the world than Marxism ever was. The trouble is that a society based on consumerism naturally leads to class divisions, so while people are united as consumers, they are divided socially, and the people in the upper classes - since they have all the power and are fearful of losing it - are going to repress the lower classes more and more until the system fails. When this breakdown happens, there will likely be a global cataclysm larger than WW2, and then whatever people survive will be forced to return to tribalism/socialism out of necessity.
Wow, "pessimisstic" doesn't even do that view justice. I think there are many options short of global apocalyptic warfare and a return to the stone age.
so while people are united as consumers, they are divided socially, and the people in the upper classes - since they have all the power and are fearful of losing it - are going to repress the lower classes more and more until the system fails."
how are these two statements different?
"The history of all hitherto existing society is the history of class struggles.
Freeman and slave, patrician and plebeian, lord and serf, guild-master and journeyman, in a word, oppressor and oppressed, stood in constant opposition to one another, carried on an uninterrupted, now hidden, now open fight, a fight that each time ended, either in a revolutionary reconstitution of society at large, or in the common ruin of the contending classes.[12]"
what you describe is the class struggle, your ending the same as marx.
His ideas were a failure because the larger and more powerful the government, the greater the potential for corruption and repression. The lesson to learn from this I think is not that government is bad, as Ayn Rand and Republicans want us to believe, but simply that government functions better when divided into smaller sovereign divisions. When there are dozens of nations on a continent, people are forced to interact and negotiate with one another more often, which naturally leads to more socialism. When there is only one government on a continent, the people will have less power to negotiate or dissent, as larger.governments tend to be much less open to change. As paradoxical as it may sound, it's likely that the only way the workers of the world will ever be united is by disuniting the world politically.
Marx wasn't proved wrong. Lenin and Stalin were proved wrong. Mao was proved wrong.
Second, the problem isn't globalism. It isn't capitalism or socialism. It isn't industrialism. It's unchecked sedentary agriculture, what Daniel Quinn refers to as "Mother Culture", that from which all the rest of those problems spring. Mother Culture threw out of whack the balance between man and his environment, between man and man. An ancient tribe of nomadic shepherds from the Fertile Crescent told us way back when that man lacked the wisdom to practice sedentary agriculture. It's known to us as that part of Genesis referred to as The Fall- Adam and Eve. They told another story about how sedentary farmers come to dominate those around them. You know that as the story of Cain and Abel.
Don't try to confuse the issue with half-truths and gorilla dust.
Your moving dangerously close to some sort of wooy Gaian position. Then again, you are making Biblical references... If you want to go back and live like a hunter-gatherer from the stone age if you want, but me, I'll stick with society. I'd rather have to deal with the problems of figuring out social security than likely dying before I'd need social security.
...although it might seem that way.
Ever read Quinn's Ishmael series?
The Biblical references are there not because of some belief in revealed religion, but because it's an example of history. The Semites witnessed the Agricultural Revolution and noted that it was full of pitfalls. Sure, it allowed pastoralists and hunter-gatherers to settle down and have more children- to pass their genes along- but it also led to the larger agrarian society to wipe out its neighbors who didn't want to become farmers...Because it could and because it had to to perpetuate itself.
Wisdom would dictate that if you're going to grow a surplus, you save it for a rainy day, for the drought around the corner, but, instead, agricultural societies use those surpluses to grow their population so that the next drought has an even more devestating effect. So to minimize that drought, agricultural society expands its borders for more farmable land, wiping out more hunter-gatherers and pastoralists, wiping out more critters that used that land to hunt to sustain themselves...And as the agricultural society grows more, it needs to expand more, and wipes out more of its competitors...It's not a vicious circle, it's the vicious circle.
And ultimately it's unsustainable, for a number of reasons. First it fucks up the balance of the environment so that the life forms that formerly kept in check the population of harmful lifeforms is gone and can't perform its useful function, but more immediately it uses up all of the farmable land so that eventually the agricultural society not only can't supply enough food to keep growing, but it's burned out all of the minerals from the soil so that it can't feed itself at all. And if you don't think we can do it, take a look at the state of edible fish stock in the world at this point.
Don't try to confuse the issue with half-truths and gorilla dust.
No, we definitely can do it, and have. But other species have destroyed their environment and themselves before us. The difference is that we possess forsight, so if we can listen to our better tendencies, we can forestall, with any luck for millions or billions of years, our own destruction. Yes, argiculture lead to societies that take more and more land to grow more and more food to support more and more people, but that same society also ultimately led to the world we have today, with falling birth rates. The only force that we've found that causes a species (ours) to not continue to breed until it reaches the immediate carrying capacity of its environment is theeducation and wealth systems of modern society.
Every other species on the planet still lives like early humans in this respect; breed until the population's demands outstrip available resources, then start dying off at or above the birth rate, largely due to starvation, desease, and territorial conflict. That's what 'in balance with nature' actually means. However, you've already said your not a fan of starvation...
Naturally leads to more socialism? You are familiar with feudal Europe, correct?
The quality of life in most of the small countries of Europe is currently better than the quality of life in the U.S. This is due undoubtedly to the democratic socialism practiced in those countries, which in turn is possible only because of the small size and cultural homogenenity of those countries. If cosmopolitanism produced a better quality of life than parochialism, then the average person in the U.S. should be living better than the average European, and that simply isn't true.
...as far as population goes, and it's got far fewer natural resources.
And...Cultural homogeneity?!?! Sweden and Portugal share a culture?
Keep diggin', man. You're within a mile of Beijing....
Don't try to confuse the issue with half-truths and gorilla dust.
The current financial crises and cutbacks in social services happening in European countries is due entirely to the EU, which is an attempt to unite Europe into something like the U.S. As the move towards globalism increases, Europeans are suffering, just as Americans have been suffering. I mean, come on now, are you really saying there's no correlation between the rise of globalism and the current economic downturn in the world?
They're due to the people in some of those EU constituent nations- the PIGS- living beyond their means. Because membership in the EU made their situations better than they had been, the people in those nations thought that the sky was the limit. It, obviously, wasn't. Their problems are based upon faulty assumptions- the non-PIGS assuming that the PIGS wouldn't live beyond their means, the PIGS believing that the others would bail them out if they got in trouble.
Don't try to confuse the issue with half-truths and gorilla dust.
So history is only worth your time when your misinterpretation of it supports your argument. I see.
well yeah, but wasn't that what the IWW said a hundred years ago? and our government put the kibosh on that real quick.
national pride, racial pride, chess club, whatever, is all right as long as it doesn't get chauvinistic and all superior. i have always been too concentrated on the
Liberté, égalité, fraternité
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Libert%C3%A9,_%C...
to pay attention, my stars! that's french isn't it? does that mean i'm some kind of a commie? or something? can't be good.
Europe is divided into small, nationalistic countries, almost all of which are way more socialist than the U.S. Obviously none of them can engage in global military aggression ilke the U.S. can, as their size and resources make that impossibe. Of course all this may be changing now that the EU is making Europe somewhat more like the U.S.
Are you actually suggesting that a world covered in local skirmishes between nationalistic states is superior to one with one or more global powers exerting military influence globally? The goal is to reduce total conflict, not to make conflict more intractable and parochial.
Even if you go back in history and consider the wars the French and English waged on one another, it doesn't compare to the horrors of the conflicts involving global powers - WW1, WW2, the Cold War, Iraq, Afghanistan, etc.
But all of those wars from the Thirty Years War through the end of WWII were based on....Wait for it....Nationalism!
Don't try to confuse the issue with half-truths and gorilla dust.
He's only right by accident. The comparative horror of the various wars he mentions have nothing to do with "global powers" and everything to do with weapons and tactics.
True nationalism is centered on self-sufficiency and isolationism. Hitler, Napoleon, and the other leaders of *nationalist* movements were actually globalists, as their goal was to eliminate all sovereign nations except their own.
...imperialism. The EU- of which you're writing so glowingly- is actually an example of globalism, in a microcosm.
Don't try to confuse the issue with half-truths and gorilla dust.
As I wrote above, much of Europe is now going through an economic downturn precisely because of the attempt to *globalize* Europe into something similar to the U.S.
Like the nationalist USA isn't bearing it's own fruits?
You are all over the board, man. If you actually have some cohesive thoughts on this in your head- and I don't mean to come across as flaming here- you aren't communicating them very well.
Here's the problem with nationalism as it concerns Western and Central Europe: Not many resources, some landlocked countries and a history of nationalist wars dating back to the early 17th Century. Living together, responsibly, that can all do well. Living as separate nations, a few of them do very well, while the majority have it kinda crappy. Not Africa-crappy, but not first-world well, either. No EU, then Greece experiences a turndown and Greeks flood Germany, France and England, stressing their economies.
Don't try to confuse the issue with half-truths and gorilla dust.
It is probably the most cosmopolitan country on the planet, and has almost no national identity or character anymore. The U.S. also has no *nationalist* economic agenda anymore, as it has embraced globalism to the point that most major American companies are now owned or controlled by foreign interests. The wars the U.S. military is fighting also aren't *nationalist,* but are simply an attempt to force the globalist-capitalist movement onto poor (mostly socialist) countries with a lot of natural resources.
Since the 1980s, when American politicians started buying into the *anti-nationalist* globalist-capitalist movement, the quality of life for Americans has been in an almost-constant decline; in fact, virtually no American has benefited from this movement except for the wealthy elites who came up with the idea.
When advocates of gun rights say to me *more guns, less crime,* I ask them why the U.S. - given that it has more gun owners than virtually any country in the world - isn't the safest country in the world. Likewise, I ask advocates of globalism why the U.S. - which has embraced globalism more ardently than any other country in the world - isn't the most prosperous country in the world. I mean, are we just supposed to ignore the empirical evidence before us, which is screaming that globalism is bad for everyone except the ultra-rich?
Really?
First, the quality of life in this country has been in decline since 1974.
Second, and much more importantly, you are conflating global free market capitalism with globalism. Watch closely:
Globalism: The United Nations, the International Whaling Treaty, the World Health Organization, Doctors Without Borders, the World Court
Global Free Market Capitalism: World Trade Organization, NAFTA, CAFTA
See the difference?
Don't try to confuse the issue with half-truths and gorilla dust.
So you don't think that cheap Chinese goods improve the quality of life for the poor as well as rich? Or that export markets create jobs for farmers and manufactureres her? That's a ...unique interpretation.
Europeans have been doing less and less well as the EU and globalism have taken hold.
Almost all of the countries in Western Europe have a better quality of life than the U.S., especially the ones that are very small (Denmark, Sweden, Norway, the Netherlands, etc.). Again, I think people do better when they are divided into smaller, more closly-knit communities.
You know what those countries you named all have in common? Low birth rates and socialist welfare programs set up right after WWII.
Oh...And all of them but Norway are members of the EU.
Don't try to confuse the issue with half-truths and gorilla dust.
Germany set up a lot of what you'd call "socialist" programs when Bismarck was the Chancellor (basically, that's 1862-1890). The programs he set up concerning old age pensions, accident insurance, medical care and unemployment insurance are still kicking today. To undercut the strength of the Socialist Party in the Second Reich, the archconservative Prussian junker employed socialist programs.
Don't try to confuse the issue with half-truths and gorilla dust.
Also, low religiosity and high homogenaity among their poulations.
They also didn't have strategic bombers, machine guns, and modern logisitics for Europe's wars. Back then, more soldiers still died from disease than conflict. And warfare was a ritualized exchange between generals, fought on open fields, away from population centers. The old world meets new world war was WWI, and we all know how much of a wonderful exercize that was. You need to learn more about history. Had they had the same sort of technology we have now, their wars would have been just as bad if not worse. It has nothing to do with whether "gobal powers" (by the way, both France and England were global powers at the time) are involved. Your entire argument is fundementally flawed by your rose colored glasses.
Small correction here:
I'd take it back a few decades to the US Civil War/Austro-Prussian War/Franco Prussian War. This is where you see the emergence of trench warfare, breech-loading rifles and more accurate, longer range artillery. And the use of railroads to move and supply armies.
Don't try to confuse the issue with half-truths and gorilla dust.
Sorry, you are correct. You look at the US Civil War with old field battle tactics meeting rifles and artillery, railroads and telegraphs for logistics, and total war tactics like Sherman's March (though total war has been popular throughout history; Sherman didn't invent sacking cities), then you think about what the French-English wars (or the Crusades, or various Greek, Roman, Chinese, and barbarian campaigns) would have looked like had they had that technology.
i may not know exactly what i am talking about, but you guys are really interesting.
It's not the late neolithic any longer. The world has gotten smaller.The steam engine has been invented. Fossil fuels burned in the US have an effect on Europe. Radiation plumes from Japan effect the entire North Pacific and more.
Don't try to confuse the issue with half-truths and gorilla dust.
Even if WW3 or some environmental catastrophe never happens, the oil will run out, and globalism will come to an end. Without petroleum-based fuels, there will be no airline travel and large cargo ships won't be carrying goods across oceans. At that point, most people will no longer see a need for a global society, and they will go back to the way things were before the petroleum age.
Excellent Derek. I'm with you as far as you go. What I hear you saying is...21st century, time to evolve ideas.
Here's a further vision you can add to or delete from at your pleasure. I think we need to work toward a sustainable society. That would be one that included free or nearly free energy, houses that met their energy demands independently and cheaply. Cars that do the same.
Look carefully at vertical farming and ways we could all sustain our food supply. Look for ways to use household garbage and waste and recycling to build on the self sustainability.
I'm sure that even to some lefties this all sounds rather airy fairy. Don't forget it is called a vision. Something for us to talk about(instead of wingnut stuff) and build on.
The most beautiful thing about this to me is that the end result makes one quite independent. Not nearly so dependent on government or corporations. That is the rugged individualism that the righties dream of. This is a dream that could happen.
No, the infrastructure required for a sustainable society (recycling facilities, efficient waste water treatment, economies of scale that increase efficiency of renewable energy generation, etc) all pretty much require a more cooperative, less "ruggedly individualistic" society. The commune model does not scale.
Until we see a major depopulation of humans, neo-tribalism won't fly. Short of an apocalypse, that will take quite a few generations to happen. Hell, it will take quite a few generations to convince even seemingly rational people that they can't have more than one kid per couple.
Don't try to confuse the issue with half-truths and gorilla dust.
But economies of scale are always true. Tribal societies lost the competition to state societies because of this. Unless there are too few people on the planet to even realize economies of scale or allow for specialization at all, tribalism will never take hold.
Here- 'cause I ain't typing that thing out again! ; )
Don't try to confuse the issue with half-truths and gorilla dust.
If you graph the gini coefficient against per capita income for all the countries in the world you discover that the more unequal the income is the lower the per capita income. In simple term the fastest and surest way to make a nation poor is to make income very unequal. The major reason for this is once income and wealth is greater than a certain amount the income and the wealth become "dead" money. It is simple suck out of the "productive" economy and with it goes the "jobs" that that income and wealth would have created. And even worst that excess money goes into the 'speculative" economy were it drives up the price of commodites and fuels the boom and bust cycles that drives an economy into reccessions and depressions. The same cycle of boom and bust will continue in the USA driving our economy in a downward spiral until we are just as poor as Haiti.
Thoughtful and I think correct stewart.
There's a further problem with the fact that everything has been monetized and consumerized and we are all forced to live under the money whoo doo voo doo but that is a topic for another day.
Wait, what's your problem with using money? You think a barter economy would be superior? I wonder how many pounds of ground beef my ISP would ask for a month of internet access...
Americans were taught to do two things.
One, genuflect at the feet of the wealthy and powerful.
Two, fight amongst themselves for the scraps.
A hedge fund manager or a CEO that pulls down millions must be a genius (even if they cause suffering) but a working man that wants to be paid a fair wage and see a more progressive tax system and have a little something left over when he retires is nothing but a filthy commie.
And it worked perfect.
Greed is the god that we worship. The so-called leaders, movers and shakers that have risen to their positions of power have gotten where they are due more to their greed than by any capability to lead. We have a society run by selfish, self-obsessed jerks. A perfect formula for failure.
Greed is a natural force. We are a species that evolved to compete for resources in an envrionment where resources are limited and supplies are inconsistant. Those sorts of conditions reward those who horde goods and can take from others with limited cost to themselves. The thing is that greed can be driven towards different aims. Greed harnessed to make life easier and more plesant for everyone is good. Greed used to enrich the few at the expense of the many is bad.
turns into the drive to dominate.
But it is basic human nature. It drives everything we do. No effective solution can deny the basic nature of our evolved species.
but that's why the people must be made to see that cooperation has benefits.
Again, I think we agree. :)
And so is cooperation and social behaviors. Greed may be a virtue and a vice all in one, but to treat it as only virtuous is to create a very unnatural society. The capitalism we enshrine now treats greed as only a virtue, and criticisms of greed are castigated. That's why I say that capitalism is now religion. You can't criticize, don't you dare say the word socialism or cast aspersions on greed. We must all worship at the altar of capitalism. When the natural checks and counterweights to greed are removed from society the result is a society that ultimately self-destructs. What we have now is a very unnatural system, propped up in the same way that Mussolini's fascist state was propped up - with propaganda.
in his classic "Symbolic Exchange and Death" Jean Baudrillard posits this exact thing, that Capitalism is a death cult, worshiping dead labor in the form of Capital. i have attempted to flesh this out by noting that the only two things that i can think of that make a claim against life are death and capital.
capital makes a claim against resources, labor, energy, etc. things that promote life, or at least should.
Fix greed and prevent Corporations from abusing workers?
One way, world-wide minimum wage system. Not a "You will be paid $8 an hour" but tie the wages to a standard weight like gold. As say one hour of labor is worth 1/25th an ounce of gold/silver/other hard commodity. If you say $8 per hour, countries will just devalue their currency in comparison to others as to make their labor cheaper. Say "Ok, now a loaf of bread is $200 in China" where it might have been 50 cents before. If every country is holding gold stocks, they won't want their gold to be worth that much less as it simply gouges their buying power. This will never happen since the masters all want to keep us as slaves.
Gold has no more inherrant value than paper money. If you really want to impose a meaningful minimum wage law in this vein, I'd go more with a law that says the top compensation package at any company cannot have a cash value more than 20X that of the annualized income of the lowest paid worker (including contractors), and also that the minimum wage needs to be indexed to both inflation and local cost of living.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HnrfuTUlqVs&fe...
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