----- Original Message -----
Sent: Saturday, November 22, 2003 12:51
PM
Subject: Re: Slightly extended (was Re:
[Futurework] David Ricardo, Caveman Trade vs. Modern Trade
It seems to me that you all are arguing the
superiority of your own particular system as nature. Keith
claims nature for trade and demands a rock bottom (gold) while Ed talks
relativity and processes (flow model) on the other hand Keith gives Ricardo a
sort of environmentalist bent where everything will take care of itself if you
just remove all the dams from the river. Except modern nation
states that deal with civil authority as a balance to diversity and that
accords strength to civil contracts based upon equality rather than authority
pleads the case for dams to remove floods and make cities and housing
possible. Chris claims that Ricardo was misunderstood.
Then we get a fight over interpretations. It is all so biblical.
I suspect Ricardo, Smith, George and others
who talked about invisible hands were speaking as Egyptians who had a natural
ebb and flow in the Nile that served them well for the longest single state in
the history of the world. But that does little for the
complexity of the present. We live in a world where wealth is
accruing in the hands of the elite and where they are also struggling to
gather the finest of everything to themselves and giving to the church the
egalitarian purpose of serving the cultural and welfare needs of the
poor. "If you want music, go to church!" as was said by
a policeman in a recent comedy. We might remember that it
was Alfred North Whitehead that said that it was the "Ultimate Abstractions
that taught us the meanings of things" and music as well as math are one of
those "ultimate abstractions."
The Scandinavian states are more secular or
perhaps just less diverse so their overall secular instrument serves the needs
of the whole population better. The same is true of their cultural
institutions which were marveled at not long ago when their state sponsored
orchestras visited New York. All of the complaints about the decay
of the state as advanced by both Keith and Harry does not seem to be the case
in a smaller population and a less diverse one. Remember
where Harry is in California is a ferment of diversity, cultural and economic
change. Hence "give us a hero."
I think the real point here is that Canada and
the US are special cases nothing like England or elsewhere except maybe in the
beginning throes of the European Union which is beginning to resemble
pre-Bismarck Germany. We forget that Germany was a series of small
states at war with each other and that they didn't want to join any more than
Norway wants to join Europe today. The issue here is more
complicated than Ricardo or any of the economists have thus far dealt
with. Canada and America is extremely irresponsible to its
citizens preferring to replace them with immigrants who show them what "shits"
they are for complaining about such things as healthcare and
education. Immigrants who were trained in the schools of America's
old enemies and who carry the cultural bug of that system in their
training. Not logical at all but myths are hard to
shake.
I suspect that they are reacting to their
cultural myths out of fear. It seems that most of them suffer
from a Judeo Christian inability to think logically about big systems while
making peace with the everyday life. Christianity has the same
problem when they confess their sins, lay them off on God, get forgiveness and
continue to be irresponsible. They then state the ideal as the
goal while ignoring it in their lives and getting forgiveness for ignoring
it. So nothing is ever seriously tested, especially the
ideals. No one ever deals with the possibility of an ignorant,
angry God who has lost control of his creation. Or how illogical
that is in the contemplation of eternal realities and transcendent
omniscience. Their description is not of an omniscient,
benevolent being by any means. Petulant might be a better
description.
Abortion is a perfect example. The
ideal of life. So perfect that even masturbation is killing.
Birth control is out of the question. Of course abstinence is the key
for everyone but the poor male who was given the hormones (by God)
not to be. Well then discipline. But the best
disciplined is also the most likely to have his life shortened by a clogged
prostate. Is it any wonder that we have among men a plague of
prostate cancer today in civilized society? Why would it be any
less logical that mastery of any part of the body would include cleansing any
more than digestion? But we are not doing so well with food
and digestion either. We give up Mastery and
skill preferring ignorance and faith.
Sex is another. Christian attitudes
towards sex are dysfunctional and mired in the middle class. The Roman
church's answer was the hierarchy which made children of the masses and
celibate (sexually ignorant) fathers who would progressively interpret the
texts.
With massive literacy Catholics are now reading
the bible and starting the history of the church all over again with the
abuses of the early church. Might I say that it is
the "abuse" of the child in the act of growing
up. Protestants stressed reading, like the Jews and outran the
Catholics until the present. Only wealth and power balanced their
not being overrun by the world. Mike Hollinshead blamed this on
nonconformist theology. I suspect it simply had to do with
literacy in the masses. When Islam stressed literacy they too
excelled in math and science but they had an elitist reaction from the wealthy
and once more made the poor illiterate. How interesting the that
Taliban, those demons, were again stressing literacy for the poor while the
approved war lord today have once again put the people safely "in their
place." If we were to look at the history of the first
seventy years of America we too could find Taliban like abuses in the
treatments of groups. The communists in China used to put the
heads of drug addicts along the road to break the addiction to opium brought
by the West in exchange for tea. There are no heroes here but
plenty of demons.
Today we have a great turmoil in the world as
protestants envy Catholic's certainty and create their own little world with
mega churches, a semi hierarchy and their own schools. The answer,
I believe is not a pendulum but a historical evolution more akin to Democratic
decline into despotism. Meanwhile the elite wealthy have
collaborated by absorbing the complex secular culture as their turf and making
it economically unavailable. That has driven the masses to
religion for culture, welfare and community. A Baptist is a
Baptist no matter where in the world. All they need to do is move
their letter from one church to another and they have full voting rights in
the congregation. All they need to do to be a member is swear
allegiance to the sovereign of the Baptist church. Its free and
they make a big deal about that and the forgiveness before the big Kahuna
because the payment was made for his anger. But does the
system work? Well, it is certainly less murderous than the
coliseum and is more sensitive than "let them eat cake." But
is it a really intelligent system?
Keith, you are seeing some anti-intellectual
elements appear in England. That is not surprising as the
breakdown of Empire caused immigration into England and diversity
appeared. The answer to diversity in the Western tradition
is the liberal secular state that guarantees equal rights, availability of
education, community development, healthcare and the right to work for
the best potential of your talent. That is the balance
to religion and what keeps religion from turning cancerous. It is
also the balance to unfettered trade and greed. Everything is
about balance and not about nature. Humanity decides balances and
bases the answers on the current situation both in the human and natural
worlds.
Today we are a planet alive with a coming change
in the magnetic poles that severely effects the environment and yet we can't
even decide how to take care of our poor in an environmental situation of our
making. Nature is beyond our imagination. That is a
problem with the current myths. We can't seem to consider all
humans as potential rather then considering them as things to be economically
exploited. Personally, I think modern "classical" economics is as
cancerous in its needs as is runaway religion. I also believe that
assigning nature to human activities is always a very dangerous
proposition. That is not our gifts as animals compared to the rest
of the animals. The silliest thing of all is the concept of
property. The only property is Intellectual property that
you arrive and leave with. Everything else belongs
here. Everything else is about negotiation, wisdom and the courage
to be who you are to the best of your potential and to find your peace with
your fellow humans.
REH
----- Original Message -----
Sent: Saturday, November 22, 2003 8:46
AM
Subject: Slightly extended (was Re:
[Futurework] David Ricardo, Caveman Trade vs. Modern Trade
Ed,
I'm a bit non-plussed by your answer,
I'm afraid. Let me try again -- see below. (This is slightly extended from
the one I sent you and forgot to copy to FW.)
At 07:13 22/11/2003
-0500, you wrote:
Keith:
> Today, currency has no value, except as much as
the confidence that people have in
> their respective governments
to maintain printing to sensible quantities.
> Exchange rates and
trade balances are thus now complicated by all sorts of
> political
factors besides trade. Hence we have currency speculators (rather
>
than the more benign currency arbitragers.)
I know we've
been over this again and again and again, but I guess we need one more
round. How can you say currency has no value when it very clearly
has value against other currencies, which is why we have speculators, and
against all goods and services, which is why my local grocer will give me
something for it? Like everything else, its value changes, but value
is there. Your real complaint may be that value has become much too
fluid, that you can't count on something having the same value tomorrow as
it has today, and that this buggers up all kinds of transactions.
This can be worked on (and central banks do work on it) without reverting
to something as archaic and inherently unworkable as the gold
standard.
If people have confidence in
government (as they generally did at the turn of the last century) then
they'll accept their government's word that the un-backed pound is the same
pound as it was a fortnight previously when it was backed by gold. And once
by far the greatest economic power in the world (as the UK was at that time)
had done so, then foreign investors and traders would also have confidence
and other governments followed suit. And that's what's happened ever
since -- unless one individual government or another plays hanky-panky with
its economy (e.g. Argentina, the fourth most prosperous country in the world
100 years ago), and its currency takes a nose dive in comparison with
others.
We've also had this out before. Yes, gold was patently
insufficient as a practical money-in-your-pocket currency by around 1870
'cos there wasn't enough of it physically. In its place, a paper currency is
perfectly practicable for day-to-day transactions -- so long as it was
transferable into real value (e.g. gold) if necessary. When it's not
transferable into value then it's at the mercy of governmental
policies.
Despite the ups and downs of finding new resources such as
gold or platinum which had effects on the valoue of currency, money has
never inflated as much as paper-only currencies have in the last half
century. Even when the Spanish brought heaps of South American gold into
Europe in the 17th century money only inflated about two-fold -- in the
1970s, when all our paper currencies inflated 24-fold! (This is
ignoring bouts of hyper-inflation which individual countries can bring on
themselves.)
I think we're probably gradually proceeding towards a
world-wide currency -- namely the US$. The quicker we get there the better
because there'll be no currency fluctuations and if there's inflation or
deflation then the currencies of all countries go up and down in step. In
effect, we'll be in a similar siutation to when we had a gold-backed
currency. (This is not to say that inflation or deflation won't still remain
important -- they still will be -- but one major factor of international
stress will be eliminated.)
Keith
Keith Hudson, Bath,
England, <www.evolutionary-economics.org>
