futurework@dijkstra.uwaterloo.ca

[Thomas Lunde]

Title: 



Good points Ed and I stand corrected.  I have just being reading Chossodovsky's second posting on Albania which has brought to the forefront of memory just how different the real world is from CNN and CBC with their so called in-depth coverage.

Respectfully,

Thomas Lunde

--
From: "Ed Weick" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
To: "Thomas Lunde" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: Destruction of Albania (Part I)
Date: Fri, May 14, 1999, 6:08 PM


Hi Thomas,
 
Nice to know you are alive.  I don't see how my comments are irrelevant today.  Ireland is part of Europe, and continues to be in a state of war or rebellion or whatever.  Russia is part of Europe, and is a powder keg when it comes to inter-ethnic relations.  When I was there four years ago, the Chechyn war got all the publicity, but there were others going on at the same time.  The Balkans are part of Europe, and you know what is going on there.  
 
There are strong right-wing, meaning fascist movements in France and Germany.  Just because the latter has behaved like a model democracy for the past few decades does not mean that the old Prussian model of superiority couldn't emerge again.  German skinheads are causing all kinds of problems for non-German immigrants -- they can no longer go after the Jews because most of them have cleared out to Israel, but they are ever alert for new victims.
 
Europeans have been notorious for getting along when times are good, but let them turn bad and all of the old hatreds emerge.  Those hatreds are still there, latent for the moment, but by no means dead.
 
What got me about Reuss's comments was their sheer smugness.  The Swiss have been peaceful and stable for the past few centuries, but, as a safe haven for money, have gained from everybodies else's problems.  They've held themselves nuetral and have got very very rich by turning a blind eye to whether the wealth that poured in for safe keeping came from the mouths of Jews killed in the gas chambers or some other vile source. 
 
Best regards,
Ed
-Original Message-
From: Thomas Lunde <[EMAIL PROTECTED] <mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]> >
To: Ed Weick <[EMAIL PROTECTED] <mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]> >
Date: Friday, May 14, 1999 9:46 AM
Subject: Re: Destruction of Albania (Part I)

Dear Ed:

It's a good argument Ed but the first comment is current time and your comment is relevant 50 years ago.  I'm inclined to give the Europeans the benefit of doubt and grant that many  countries have been trying to address some of the social problems that our neighbour to the South ignores and which spills over into our culture.

Respectfully,

Thomas Lunde

--
From: "Ed Weick" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
To: "List Futurework" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: Destruction of Albania (Part I)
Date: Fri, May 14, 1999, 12:32 PM


>Funny, but here in Europe we don't have an army that has bombed 21
countries
>during the last 50 years (without having been attacked once).  We also
don't
>have the high rates of murder and prisoners that your peaceful country has.
>Nor do we need metal detectors in our schools to protect the kids from
>each other, or security guards on our campus to prevent the kids from
>massacrating their peers on Hitler's birthday.  We also don't have
>militia-men who kill dozens of civilians by blowing up a gov't building.
>Geez, we don't even have racial riots in large cities after some state
>officers have beaten up a citizen for his race.
>
>But I'm sure we'll have all that pretty soon if we follow the lead of your
>peace-loving and tolerant country, Ray.


How beautifully smug!  I  understand that your bankers made quite a lot of
money from the gold and jewelry that the Nazis took from death-camp victims.
Europe, if you read its history, was a cesspool of wars, repressions and
mass exterminations.  And it was Europeans who brought diseases and
enslavement to the Americas, accounting for the destruction of civilizations
and the deaths of perhaps 100 million people.  I'm sorry, I didn't mean to
get into this one, but on reading the above self-congratulatory puffery, I
just couldn't help it.  But perhaps I misunderstood.  Perhaps you intent was
some form  of comic irony.

Ed Weick

Basic Income re JK Galbraith

[Thomas Lunde]

 with economic growth
and rising incomes, the federal government, through the income and
corporation taxes, gets the money, and the cities, with everything from
traffic to air pollution, get the problems.  This is more acutelyt the case
when the effects of population growth and urbanization are added.  Various
ways have been suggested for correctinbg this anomaly, most of them calling
for subventions to the states and cities by the federal government.
Undoubtly the best way would be for the federal government to assume the
cost of providing a mimimum income and thus to free the cities from the
present burden of welfare costs.  (Actually, in Canada, with the discarding
of CAP, (Canadian Assistance Plan), we went from a federally mandated set of
minimum standards to a hodgepodge of provincial standards, most of them to
low to live on.   In fact in Ontario, our current neo-con government seemed
to follow Galbraith's advise and take the most of the cost of welfare and
education off the municipaitie's property tax base and move it to the
Provincial taxation.  As soon as this was accomplished, they reduced the
Welfare payments by 21% four years ago with no increases for inflation and
assuming inflation of 2% a year, the Welfare recipient now recieves a
reduced amount equivalent to almost a 30% reduction.  This is not including
"clawback" legislation that takes money that the Federal Government has
tried to put into the system to increase Welfare rates.  So much for
progress.)  In these years of urban crisis we want a system that directs
funds not to the country as a whole but, by some formula, to the points of
greatest need, which, unquestionably, are the large cities.  To transfer
income maintenance to the federal government - to free big-city budgets of a
large share of their welfare paymens - would be an enormous step in exactly
the right direction.

Respectfully,

Thomas Lunde 

RE Basic Income re JK Galbraith

[Thomas Lunde]

Title: RE Basic Income re JK Galbraith




Tom Walker wrote:

> JKG made a further contribution to economics by siring James K., whose book
> Created Unequal shows that carefully done equations and regressions can
> stand for something after all -- such as debunking the mythology of
> mainstream economists.
>
> regards,
>
> Tom Walker

Dear Tom:

I don't know if was you who posted James K's book, but I have been reading
it.  It's slow going but very insightful.  I have been marking it and intend
- time willing to provide a little summary of his essential points.  If a
few others would get it from their local library, it  could become a source
from which a good list discussion could ensue.  What he is attempting - is
to allow us to change perspective from which classical and monetarist
economics have established explanations - to a different viewpoint using the
existing data that other schools of economics have been using.  I find it a
little head wrenching at times because all I have read and thought about
economics has come from established perspectives - I would imagine others
may have a similar culture shock.

Respectfully,

Thomas Lunde

> http://www.vcn.bc.ca/timework/covenant.htm
>
>
> 

Re Basic Income re JK Galbraith

[Thomas Lunde]

Title: Re Basic Income re JK Galbraith 




Tom Walker wrote:

> JKG made a further contribution to economics by siring James K., whose book
> Created Unequal shows that carefully done equations and regressions can
> stand for something after all -- such as debunking the mythology of
> mainstream economists.
>
> regards,
>
> Tom Walker

Dear Tom:

I don't know if was you who posted James K's book, but I have been reading
it.  It's slow going but very insightful.  I have been marking it and intend
- time willing to provide a little summary of his essential points.  If a
few others would get it from their local library, it  could become a source
from which a good list discussion could ensue.  What he is attempting - is
to allow us to change perspective from which classical and monetarist
economics have established explanations - to a different viewpoint using the
existing data that other schools of economics have been using.  I find it a
little head wrenching at times because all I have read and thought about
economics has come from established perspectives - I would imagine others
may have a similar culture shock.

Respectfully,

Thomas Lunde

> http://www.vcn.bc.ca/timework/covenant.htm
>
>
> 

Re: From a Cathedral to a "Bazaar"

[Thomas Lunde]

Title: Re: From a Cathedral to a "Bazaar"



Dear Michael:

This is a very interesting post.  I participated in Galiganos government
sponsored list re work - sorry I can't be more specific, I have changed
computers and all my files are not easily available and memory fades.

However, I do remember the excitement I felt in being able to input and the
joy of meeting other citizen thinkers who had great experiences and ideas.
The end result was silence from the government.  No feedback - no official
position - no indication of what the experts thoughts were on the
information from the public particpators such as I.  I met some nice people
- in fact I think I found your list through references in this discussion.
I have also participated on a European List re Governance and again was
excited and educated by the participants and again let down that the
official world did not contribute or respond in any way.

Without having read your suggested references, I can only say that I want to
be able to enter into dialog with my government, business and other agencies
in which I have interests and opinions and I will look forward to your
continuing pointing in those directions.

Respectfully from a kindred spirit - by all means let's develop the bazaar
model by becoming active enough to force the "experts" to communicate with
the public.

Thomas Lunde

Re: From a "A Cathedral" of Public Policy to a Public Policy "Bazaar"

[Thomas Lunde]

Hi Ed:

Good points but --- the whole idea of this information age and governance is
not necesarily to compete with the experts but for the interested and -
hopefully intelligent poster to give input and broaden the debate by sharing
their opinions and viewpoints.  I think the idea of the bazaar - and I am
still trying to assimilate whether this is the correct label - is perhaps
more like the Acropolis of ancient Greece - I hope my memory is right in
these names or I will quite justly get flamed.  A common area or arena where
debate can take place in which those who have interests, ie the experts and
policy wonks and lobbyists have to justify their choices by critique by the
citizen.  At the end of the day, they are the ones who will make the policy
- no argument there - but now those decisions are made in the backroom and
not even the stakeholders who will be affected by the decisions have input
other than to present proposals which disappear into a black hole - hardly
acknowledged - never debated.

Your example of aboriginal issues is the result of your experience.  What is
being proposed is the creation of different experiences.  This may be messy.
It may step on toes that don't want to be stepped on - it may not even work,
but for the first time since the invention of representative democracy, a
technological methodology makes possible the idea of a blending of direct
democracy with representional democracy.  This is an experiment worth
engaging in.  And looking forward into the future and trying to envision how
decisions in 2030 or 2100 might look, we have to admit that their will be
changes and we - living now at the start of the Internet Age will be the
pioneers who experiment.  And that, to me is the key word - experimentation
and when you experiment in the scientific sense, failure is an appropriate
response which will eventually lead to success or other directions.

Respectfully

Thomas Lunde


--
>From: "Ed Weick" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
>To: "futurework" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
>Subject: Re: From a "A Cathedral" of Public Policy to a Public Policy "Bazaar"
>Date: Fri, May 28, 1999, 2:49 PM
>

> Mike,
>
> What your paper does not seem to recognize is that government does not
> usually respond to the public as a whole, but to particular groups and
> interests within the public.  This is not inappropriate if one views
> democracy as being founded on two often contradictory principles:
> recognizing the public interest as a whole; and protecting the rights and
> interests of individuals and groups.  Bringing the public as a whole into
> policy formulation via a medium such as the internet might, if the
> initiative were genuine and sincere, satisfy one of these principles but
> could violate the other.
>
> Much of my experience in government and outside of it as a consultant has
> been with aboriginal issues.  The content of these issues is complex.  One
> has to become very deeply immersed in them before one really gets to
> understand them to the extent of being able to make an effective
> contribution to policy.  I would question the willingness of most of the
> public to put enough time into developing an appropriate level of
> understanding.  Moreover, aboriginal people have a longstanding proprietory
> interest in aboriginal policy making.  They would strenuously resist an
> encroachment on this interest by the public as a whole.  I would refer to
> the recent angry babble out of British Columbia on the Nisga settlement to
> illustrate what I'm saying.
>
> Other fields of policymaking would encounter similar problems.  Could a
> life-long Toronto urbanite really understand the problems of marginalized
> prairie grain grower or the social devastation currently being faced by
> communities based on mining?  Perhaps the role of the internet here is to
> educate -- to put the farmer or miner into direct contact with the urbanite
> so that he can then go after his MP.  But to expect the urbanite to be
> sympathetic or even objective without such education is expecting too much.
>
> The role of government as cathedral is to try to balance a great variety of
> often mutually exclusive and mutually incomprehensible interests.  I've
> worked in the cathedral and like the idea of the bazaar, but I quite
> honestly can't see how it would work.  I read parts of the paper on the
> development of the Linux system.  I came away with the impression that
> widespread input to the development and debugging of that system worked
> because everyone who contributed had a pretty good idea of what it was about
> and how it worked.  I honestly cannot feel the same way about the
> development of Indian policy or many other issues government must try to
> resolve.
>
> Ed Weick
>
>
>>
>>(This is a draft of a paper that I'm developing that might be of interest
>>in this context.  Contents, criticisms, "hacking" is welcomed.
>>Distribution (with attribution) is encouraged.)
>>Etc.
>
> 

Created Unequal by James Galbraith

[Thomas Lunde]

A lengthy book review by Thomas Lunde

Lower taxes scream the headlines of the business press in Canada.  We are
not competitive shout the neo-cons and their corporate masters.  These and
similar mantras have been bombarding us with relentless waves of media
support.  In fact whole political party platforms such as Reform have made
this their guiding light.

Raise wages states James Galbraith, son of the famous John K Galbraith and
teaching economist at the University of Texas.  What!  Raise wages - what
heresy.  And yet there is a logic in this simple thought that is not being
debated.  Why have the rich been getting richer and the poor - poorer?  JK's
answer is that wages - the primary source of income for most Americans - and
Canadians has been falling since the 70's while income from interest has
been rising.  This has created a major inequality in income distribution
that has created many of the problems of our governments in terms of
deficits and cutbacks to social programs.  I could go on and on, but
starting on page 162 to 167, his summing up provides a good overall summary
of his major thesis without all the mind numbing explantions, graphs and
paradigm shifts from conventional economic theory used to prove his new
perspective.  I will let him explain in his own words.  Where I start is
were he has finished his analysis of knowledge workers, consumption workers
and service workers.

Page 162

In the period since 1973, investment and investment above all has driven the
interindustry wage structure.  This is true within the manufacturing sector
proper, and it is true between manufacturing and services, once the two are
properly demarcated.

The story of services, therefore, is that there is no separate story.
Industries associated with capital investment, with the production of
capital goods and particularly with the production of capital goods and
particularly with the production of new technologies, have done
comparatively well in modern times.  Industries and activities that rely on
any other source of prosperity, whether it be consumer demand or the
national security state, have done poorly.  The bottom has fallen away for
the non investment sector.

The implications of this finding go well beyond the analysis of the sources
of rising inequality.  They suggest that an entire civic mantra, on the
virtues of saving and of investment and on the deficiencies of American
society in this regard, has been misleading as both diagonsis and
prescription.  Comparatively speaking, we have not in lacked for investment.
Therefore we cannot have lacked for the saving required to finance
investment.  To the contrary, private business investment is the singular
activity that the American economy has continued to pursue, willy-nilly, at
a high rate and in a state of frenetic self-renewal, within a general
environment of stagnation and decline.  We lack for everything else that
accompanied rising private investment in the period from 1946 to 1973:
rising living standards, rising wages, falling poverty, increased employment
in the high-wage, nonmanufacturing sectors as government itself, and
especially for the public investmensts that raise collective living
standards and provide amenities that every citizen can enjoy.  Thus, the
floors that society had formerly placed under wages in the S(ervice) sector
have been progressively eaten away.

It is impossible to square this picture with the prevailing image of a
country afflicted by declining savings and private consumer profligacy,
though that image is relentlessly touted by a certain school of policy
advisers and their allies in academic economics.  The evidence presented
here contradicts it.  What we see from the movements of the wage structure
leads to the opposite conclusion.  Investment is the activity that has
survived and prospered, at least in relative terms, in an otherwise
declining economy.  And those in position to profit from spending on
investment equipment have done well, almost alone among manufacturing
workers, in the distribution of wages.

A surfeit of investment!  An excess of technological change!  But, on
reflection, how could it be otherwise?  Private business investment is the
source of the technological revolutions to which we are repeatedly
subjected.  These revolutions would be hard put to occur in a society that
was not investing; indeed they would not and could not occur in such a
society.  They therefore fit oddly into the picture of a savings-starved,
investment-short, happy-go-lucky culture with which we are constantly fed.
Investment brings us technology.  And these technological revolutions are
themselves the instruments of a massive transfer of wealth, away from
technology users and toward technology producers.  This pattern of
transfers, following the rhythms of the business cycle and of the
unemployment rate, is an ultimate source of rising inequality in wages.

But, one may ask, aren't the comparati

Re: Created Unequal by James Galbraith

[Thomas Lunde]

Dear Jim:

This, as I understand it is one of the main thesis's of the book.  That a
major redistribution of income has occurred since 1970 towards those who
recieve income from interest rather than from labour.  He also identifies
the "transfer state" as the other area of change in income redistribution.
I don't have the book in front of me know, but one of his most insightful
graphs to me was the one that showed 16% of income is recieved from interest
by the very rich and 16% of income is redistributed to the poor, the
elderly, the handicapped for a total of 32%.  In the 1960's, only 3% of
income was earned through interest and 3% redistributed through transfers.

This growth in "interest" income comes from the pocketbooks of the middle
class, those who have credit.  Following this logic is the angst of the
middle class who still earn their income through labour  and wages and find
that interest and taxes which fund the transfer payments are both taken from
their earnings.  This leaves them with less.  The neo-cons, with their call
for tax relief are responding to only one half of the problem, high taxes
which fund transfer payments while keeping the middle class in the dark
about the other half of the problem, the amount of their income which is
going to pay interest.

His solution to the transfer payments problem is to go back to a full
employment policy that he claims was in effect from 1945 till 1970.  More
people working means less transfers to those who are not working.  His
solution to the interest problem is to raise wages, the logic being that we
cannot save or have disposable income when are wages are too low and we
compensate by using credit which increases the wealth of those who use
capital to gain interest rather than using capital for the investment in
capital goods production.

Rspectfully,

Thomas Lunde



--
>From: Jim Dator <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
>To: Thomas Lunde <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
>Subject: Re: Created Unequal by James Galbraith
>Date: Mon, May 31, 1999, 5:23 AM
>

> Does Galbraith discuss the role of the rapid expansion of easy consumer
> credit during the time frame of his analysis?
>
>
> 

Re: FWD: (1 of 1) Blueprint to the digital economy ;

[Thomas Lunde]

Dear RF:

Well, you have opened a Pandora's box with this question.  I learn by
reading and observing and making statements which others challenge or agree
with, mostly on Lists.

I have shied away from E Commerce so far as it just hasn't, in my opinion
got a form - a definition and it seemed premature to try and assess what
changes it will make in the Capitalistic Model.  That it will have a major
effect is undeniable.  Will it change work patterns - will we stay at home
and order everything in - can we stop building highways and cars?  Will
being a Courier driver be the growth opportunity for future employment?  I
don't know and in a way, I'm almost afraid to know - things are bad enough
now without doubling the army of the unemployed by making most conventional
distribution systems such as stores and clerks obsolete.  I'm still trying
to figure out what went wrong in the industrial age.

Respectfully,

Thomas Lunde

--
>From: "RF Pearse (716) 475-6010" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
>To: Tom lunde <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>, Eva Durant <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
>Subject: FWD: (1 of 1) Blueprint to the digital economy ;
>Date: Mon, May 31, 1999, 8:44 PM
>

>
> Tom/Eva
>
> How will the new information age models
> (e-commerce - Digital Business)
> affect your industrial age economic models?
>
> (see attached)
> 

A litle help please?

[Thomas Lunde]

I have changed computers from Microsoft to Macintosh. While using Microsoft,
I was happy with Explorer, their web browser but now I am using 4.5 Explorer
on the Macintosh and I find it a very cumbersome browser, not so much for
web surfing, but this version of Outlook Express is archaic in addressing
along with several other features.  Is Netscape any better or Eudora?

Thanks,

Thomas Lunde

Re: Created Unequal by James Galbraith

[Thomas Lunde]

--
>From: Colin Stark <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
>To: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
>Subject: Re: Created Unequal by James Galbraith
>Date: Sun, May 30, 1999, 10:36 PM
>

> To me the essence of this excellent Review is in the Summary paragraph
> While the problem is clearly stated; the potential remedy of Direct
> Democracy is unstated
>
> Colin Stark

Dear Colin:

Let me answer your implied question by quoting the first paragrapgh of an
excellent book out from England called The Age of Insecurity by Larry Elliot
and Dan Atkinson - two writers who actually can make all this stuff
interesting and exciting - I highly recommend it.

Quote PageVII

The central struggle of our time is that between laissez-faire capitalism,
which represents the financial interest, and social democracy, which
represents democratic control of the economy in the interests of ordinary
people.  These ideologies are incompatible, in that at the heart of social
democracy is the one economic feature specifically and unashamedly ruled out
by the resurgent free market: security.  Social democracy offers nothing if
it does not offer security; the free market cannot offer security (to the
many at least) without ceasing to be itself. Instead it provides security to
the financial interest at the expense of the majority, upon whom is shifted
the entire burden of risk and "adjustment" whenever ther system hits one of
its peiodic crises.

Thomas:

Whether we have a DD system or a Representative System, the will of the
people is constant.  Security is the goal of all people.  People continually
vote for more security, medicare, unemployment insurance, pensions and other
supports.  Elected governments continually promise security.  And then - yes
you guessed it, the ideology of laissez-faire capitalism subverts the
politicians into other directions from which they recieved a mandate to act.
We then turf the buggers out because the next group convincingly sings the
theme song of security only to be subverted once again.  The real question
is which ideology should be dominant - democracy or capitalism.  The people
continually, whether marxists, socialists or capitalists, at their human
individual level, continually opt for more security.  The problem to me
seems less in how we elect them, but rather in how we can make them produce
the effects they promise.

Respectfully,

Thomas Lunde
>
> "Behind the battering rams, behind the decisions to use them in this way,
> behind the creation of the situations in which they could be used in such a
> way, were political figures and policy decisions-decisions, for example, to
> tolerate unemployment.  The economy is a managed beast.  It was managed in
> such a way that this was the result.  It could have been done differently.
> It was not inevitable even given the progress of technology and the growth
> of trade.  It was, in sense, done deliberately.  That is the real evil of
> the time."
>
> *
> At 01:11 PM 5/30/99 +, you wrote:
>>A lengthy book review by Thomas Lunde
>>
>>Lower taxes scream the headlines of the business press in Canada.  We are
>>not competitive shout the neo-cons and their corporate masters.  These and
>>similar mantras have been bombarding us with relentless waves of media
>>support.  In fact whole political party platforms such as Reform have made
>>this their guiding light.
>
> snip
>
>>Behind the battering rams, behind the decisions to use them in this way,
>>behind the creation of the situations in which they could be used in such a
>>way, were political figures and policy decisions-decisions, for example, to
>>tolerate unememplyemnt.  The economy is a managed beast.  It was managed in
>>such a way that this was the result.  It could have been done differently.
>>It was not inevitable even given the progress of technology and the growth
>>of trade.  It was, in sense, done delibertately.  That is the real evil of
>>the time.
> 

Re: Created Unequal by James Galbraith

[Thomas Lunde]

Dear Steve:

I couldn't agree more and of course it is not only immigrants but the
massive entry into the labour force of women - not that women shouldn't work
but that, in a large number of cases they didn't work in the 50's and 60's
but were - in many cases - forced into work in the 70's by the deliberate
sabotage of wages which made the one income family obsolete in most cases
for a middle class lifestyle.  These people wanted the best for their
children and made the necessary adjustments in their family life to provide
income, often at the very expense of that family life.  Penny wise and pound
foolish perhaps as we look at the social dysfunctions in our society.

Respectfully

Thomas Lunde

--
>From: Steve Kurtz <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
>To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
>Subject: Re: Created Unequal by James Galbraith
>Date: Sun, May 30, 1999, 9:46 PM
>

> Hi Thomas & all,
>
> Thanks for the clear, informative review. I've interacted with JG, and
> he has shied away from my questions about the impact of the sharp rise
> in the size of the labor force since WWII. I'm *not* disputing any of
> the factors described in the review; I'm suggesting that at the same
> time that technology and globalization have empowered capital and
> entrepreneurship at the expense of labor, the sharp rise in population
> has added to the woes of the lower and middle classes. Demand for
> housing and services rise, while wages are supressed.
>
> Policy and values don't operate in a vacuum. Industries desire for a
> passive, compliant labor supply has resulted in a continual high level
> of immigrants. In the US, this has finally been grasped by many in the
> African American, Latino, and other minority communities. Their wages
> and opportunities for self-improvement are directly impacted by
> immigration policy. Of course much of the migration pressure stems from
> global overpopulation. But numbers are a factor in wellbeing in North
> America nonetheless. Consider also the recent explosion of sprawl
> articles and discussions.
>
> Cheers,
> Steve
>
> (excerpt from TL)
>>   All of these changes had the effect of breaking down
>> the structures of solidarity that had held the American middle class
>> together for the first quarter-century after the end of World War II.
>>
>> The new instability of macroeconomics gave a powoerful boost to investment
>> and techology, both in absolute terms and as compared with consumption.
>> With each recession, waves of older factories disappeared.  With them went
>> the hard-won, high-paying jobs of the traditional blue-collar workforce.
>> But with each recovery, firms faced an imperative to replace lost capacity,
>> and to do it in the most cost-saving, labor-saving, technologically advanced
>> way available at that moment in time.  Waves of layoffs were followed by
>> waves of investment.  But the new investments were never designed to relieve
>> the distress of the previously unemployed.  They were designed instead to
>> substitutue entirely for them, and this they accomplished.
>>
>> At the same time, incomes policies were abandoned.  The idea that all
>> society should benefit equally from national productivity gains was replaced
>> by an ideology of the market, in which winner-take-all and the
>> devil-the-hindmost.  Minimum wages were allowed to fall in real terms;
>> safety net social expenditures came under assault.  There began a cult of
>> the entrpreneur,
> 

Re: Created Unequal by James Galbraith

[Thomas Lunde]

--
>From: "Durant" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>

> 
> the suggestion is to go back to keynesian economy, isn't it?

Dar Eva:

Far be it for me after reading one difficult book to answer this question
definitively.  And yet, you have hit the nail on the head.  Galbraith argues
that it was movement from a Keynesnian economy to a monatarist policy that
removed the goal of full employment from the economic equation.  The
monetarist with their Nairu which made unemployment a deliberate part of
economic policy effectively destroyed the concept of full employment, one of
the main planks of the Keynesians.  With that decision, came the following
consequences, high transfer payments to the unemployed, lower wages because
of surplus workers and income transfers from the middle class to the
capitalist class which had capital to loan.

>  But that came to an end in the 70s due to unsustainable public borrowing
> and cuts in profits/recession, didn't it?

Thomas:

I don't know.  Which came first, the chicken or the egg.  Did we borrow more
because unemployment went up and new social services were put in place to
alleviate and compensate those who were unemployed.  Was it because the
lords and masters of government didn't follow Keynesian Theory which said
stimulate in downturns and pay back in good times and they just forgot to
pay back?  Was it macroeconomics in terms of the basic price in energy in
1973?  Was it the elimination of work because of computerization?  Think,
would we still have full employment if we had not invented the computer?
Possibly.

> Now we reached the same "result" through a re-hashed
> monetarist and then neo-liberal avenue.
> What would be the new feature in this
> suggestion of renewed state intervention in re-distribution?

Thomas:

If the governments (plural) had constantly raised the minimum wage, for
example, in Ontario were I reside, it is $6.85 Canadian which is about $4.25
American to try and get a baseline number.  In 1968, Galbraith states the
minimum wage was equivalent to $6.50 American in 1994 - probably about $7.00
American in 1999 giving us poor, a shortfall of approximately $3.75 less for
every hour worked than I would have made in Ontario in 1968.  This amounts
to a shortfall of $150 a week or $600 a month for a person working for
minimum wage.

Now, if all the working poor were working making an extra $600 a month, this
would constitute a "state intervention".  My logic says that would make a
considerable difference from the current situation.

> How come the word "capitalism" was not mentioned?
> Non-virtual profits are falling - there is not enough to
> re-distribute.  Is the mechanism - markets/profits is working?
> The global markets are limited - there is, I'm afraid, the
> classic contradiction.
> Do you really think it can be fixed?

Thomas:

Well of course there is another answer to the comment "not enough to
redistribute" and that is there is no demand because 50% the people have
very little disposable income.  And Galbraith argues, to me quite
successfully, it is because the working poor after rent, grocery's and
transportation costs are broke.  And of course all those on welfare,
pensions, disability, etc have in most cases not seen any COLA increases
while small quarterly inflation figures constantly add up over the years.
My mother who is on governemt pension got her COLA increase for the last
year, I think it was $.52.  That is not realistic, is it?

Galbraith also argues that it is not just full employment that is necessary
but that prices should also be managed to some degree.  Part of the problem
of low profits is that competition - that highly touted good - has taken all
the profit out of goods production.  With little or no profit in the
production of goods, then the corporate tax contribution is almost nil,
which leaves governments to make up the shortfall through borrowing or
taxing labour income even more.  I am not against profits, as long as
profits are taxed fairly.  In the 60"s, government income was roughly equal
with 50% coming from labour income and 50% coming from corporate profit
income.  The ratio is now, 80% labour income and 20% corporate income.

As to virtual profits earned by speculation, when times are good, they
reinvest and do not declare any profits and when they lose, they claim their
loses and do not pay any taxes or greatly reduced taxes.  One of the
thoughts I had was that labour should have the same option.  If I get laid
off a good paying job and take a lesser paying job, why can I not deduct my
loss of income as a valid income loss just like business and speculators do?
>
> Eva
> [EMAIL PROTECTED]

Respectfully,

Thomas Lunde
> 

Re: Created Unequal by James Galbraith

[Thomas Lunde]

--
>From: Steve Kurtz <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>

> Fiat money is valued by what it can buy now, & how it is perceived
> relative to other currencies going forward. Thus all credits/tokens are
> in a sense 'virtual'; and the natural/material perpetual pie (gross &
> per capita) shrinks daily. Redistribution of tokens may be desirable in
> the views of many, but it would at best be temporary, short term
> 'symptomatic' medicine. Physical limits are real, and humans have
> already hit the wall in the opinion of many scientific experts.
>
> Steve

Dear Steve:

Your argument about "natural/material" value, rather than token value has
some merit.  I would appreciate your comments in the context of Galbraith
(not in quote) who gives these figures.  10% are employed in the knowledge
sector, 10% in the manufacturing of goods and 80% in the providing of
services.

Yes their may be limits on the amount of phospate or oil but in truth, it
seems that when it comes to employment most of us are exchanging human
energy for other humans satisfactions rather than hard manufactured goods.
What does a lawyer, accountant, dance instructor, janitor or lawn service
employee create in terms of the limits of "natural/material" goods, other
than some small amount of supplies in paper or fuel or use of a building.

In fact, if we went to a durable model of goods rather than a planned
obsolence model of goods, we could extend the life considerably of the
"natural/material" world.

Respectfully,

Thomas Lunde
> 

Re: Created Unequal by James Galbraith

[Thomas Lunde]

Sorry Jim, no specific references come to mind.  However, if you are of a 
similar age to me, you must remember that at one time you needed 25% down to
get a mortage.  Now, you can borrow your down payment on a credit card and
you need 5% or in some cases less.  These changes have come about in less
than 40 years.  Something is definetly not right, either this is the way it
should be or that is the way it should be but both conditions cannot
co-exist.

Respectfully,

Thomas Lunde

--
>From: Jim Dator <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
>To: Thomas Lunde <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
>Subject: Re: Created Unequal by James Galbraith
>Date: Mon, May 31, 1999, 7:28 PM
>

> Thank you very much for that explanation. It was not clear to me from what
> you originally sent that this was so, but now I see it could not have been
> otherwise.
>
> I will definitely have to get the book to read more now.
>
> Do you (or anyone else on this list) have additional sources to recommend
> about the role of consumer credit in both fueling the current economy, and
> skewing it in the way Galbraith/Lunde demonstrate?  I, too, feel this is
> the big dark secret that is never discussed in these terms (to my
> knowledge) in the general press, or politics.
>
>
> 

Re: Created Unequal by James Galbraith

[Thomas Lunde]

--
>From: Steve Kurtz <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>

> Dear Thomas,
> 
>> Your argument about "natural/material" value, rather than token value has
>> some merit.  I would appreciate your comments in the context of Galbraith
>> (not in quote) who gives these figures.  10% are employed in the knowledge
>> sector, 10% in the manufacturing of goods and 80% in the providing of
>> services.


Dear Steve:

I truly appreciate your lengthy answer.  Rather than going through it point
by point and as I am probably, rather imperfectly trying to defend JG's
ideas, it is probably more honest for me to take some time to transcribe his
descriptions  from which I made my comments.

Page 90 from Created Equal

As a first step, imagine a national economy entirely closed to trade.  Such
an economy will have three basic types of activity in it.  Some workers,
perhaps a fairly small number, will be employed as machine makers.  Highly
skilled, they build the instruments that others use and develop the
technologies that lead from one generation to the next.  We can call them
K-workers, where K stands for knowledge, or equally, for "capital goods."
K-workers are those who produce airplanes and machine tools and who write
software, as well as the architects and engineers and some of the other
professionals who give shape to the society in which we live.  They include
Reich's symbolic analysts, and then some.

We can often usefully distinguish between the truly irreplaceable knowledge
workers, those who actually control the keys to the kingdom, and their
production-line subordinates within the knowledge-based industries.
Depending on the nature of the production process, the latter may, or may
not, be in a position to share the bonanza of a technological gold strike.
But the K-sector as a whole is the conceptual entity to be reckoned with,
right down to its janitors and secretaries in many cases.

A large number of workers will be employed using the machines designed in
the K-sector.  They will produce the goods that the whole population
actually consumes: food, shelter, clothing, transportation, and
entertainment.  They will do so in factories using machinery accumulated
over the years from the K-sector output.  Some of their equipment will be
new, some older, some on the verge of retirement.  We can call these
workers, the machine users, the C-sector, where C stands for "consumption
goods."

The C-sector, which includes much run-of-the-mill machinery and intermediate
goods production as well as all of the mass production of consumer goods, is
no monolith.  Some factories are new, technologically advanced, up and
coming, and profitable.  Others are old, run down, overstaffed, costly to
maintain, and barely able to turn a profit.  Some C-sector factories employ
directly the amies of clerks, janitors, and secretaries they need to support
their productive operations-and pay these service workers wages scaled to
the C-sector norms.  Others contract out their service functions and perhaps
pay less for these easily replaceable supporting workers.

This description of diversity within the C-sector is offered at the level of
the factory, but it can be extended to the full range of companies and of
industries as well.  Companies are groups of factories.  Industries are
groups of firms.  At each level of grouping up, we will find differences of
efficiency, as unit cost, market power, and potential profitability at each
level of demand.  (To use a fancy phrase from a new branch of mathermatics,
fractal theory, we can say that these entities are "self-similar at
different scales.)  The C-sector is highly hetrerogenous.

Finally, there will be a large group of workers who use little or no capital
equipment, and who do not produce machinery or goods and are not employed by
companies that do.  These are the service workers, the S-sector, who live by
their labor alone.  They are the janitors, clerks, cashiers, secretaries,
hairdressers, nurses and orderlies, masseurs and masseuses who in the actual
economy of the United States make up 80 percent of the working population,
often employed in companies specialized to the provison of services and the
distribution of goods.

Thomas:

As I reread your answer, I am struck by the difference between JG's main
argument, that it is the inequality of wages that has created our current
problems in society, while your answer moves more into a wider environmental
aspect of the problems of our current industrial age.  Both of you are
right, it is just the JG's carefully constructed analysis and the terms he
uses are designed to provide a proof that is different than that which
current economic theory holds as true.  Your information, in my opinion, is
to prove that the current levels of population and their effect upon the
earth resources is the real problem.  I agree with both of you.

Respectfully,

Thomas 

Re: Created Unequal by James Galbraith

[Thomas Lunde]

--
>From: "Durant" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>


> So, the answer is yes, and the explanation for the failure of
> the welfare-state was far from adequate...
> We might as well go for something new if we have to
> go against the tide... We are running out of time, we
> cannot repeat past mistakes.
>
> Eva


Dear Eva:

I have been wrestling with the problem of jobs and poverty for several
years.  Up until JG's book, the best answer I could find was the Basic
Income as a means of redistributing income and banishing poverty and all
it's associate ills.  There have been other answers I have found attractive
suchs Georges rent ideas rather than private property.  What I have come to
accept - reluctantly, is that the world or an individual country is probably
not going to jump off the cliff towards a Basic Income or other creative
idea.  It will have to be incremental - unless chaos introduces a new
variable like a plague that wipes out 50% of the population or some other
unforeseen event.

Therefore, I was impressed with JG's analysis as the beginning of a long
dialog that must occur among the academics and government bureacrats and
could possibly lead to changes that create more jobs and less poverty.  Not
my ideal solution, but perhaps a possible one and as it addresses my goals,
one that I can support.

I agree we are running out of time but the lemmings in control will keep
going until they fall off the cliff and even then, they will argue for the
status quo all the way to the bottom and final impact.  It is only if some
of lemmings change direction slightly and a percentage follow them that we
may see change - a pretty cynical viewpoint isn't it.

Respectfully,

Thomas Lunde

Some more JG quotes

[Thomas Lunde]

This book has intrigued me more than almost any other book since reading 
Friendly Facism.  As I read it, I made notations of things that seemed
important.  JG spent a lot of pages on the concept that the K-sector
operates as a monopoly - that was a big idea and one I still am ruminating
on.  Another big idea was an intensive analysis of the C-Sector which
actually produces goods.

Page 126  Created Unequal

It seems fair to conclude that in investment, consumption, protection and
war, we have the four most important forces determining differences in the
way industries have performed in America since 1958.

Thomas

This idea of isolating forces that have affected change is a way of
analysing data differently - the same data that convention economics use but
with different insights.

Page 128

Once again, we have looked at the sources of change through time in American
industrial performance.  And what have we found?  We have found the traces
of the main macroeconomic and policy changes of the past generation.  These
are, first and foremost, the heightened instability and more rapidly
churning business cycle brought on mainly by unstable monetary policy-by the
actions of the Federal Reserve-in the years following 1970.  Second, we find
the effect of slower growth, and the squeeze on American wages and living
standards, turning up in a pattern of poor performance for industries most
sensitive to consumption demand. Third, we have found the effects of trade
protection, albeit strongly affecting a handful of industries, which
fluctuate with the exchange value of the dollar.  And finally we detect the
traces of military spending on industrial performance.

Macroeconomic and political causes of change in wage inequality are
mediated, at the industry level, by the filtering and polarizing forces of
technology, scale intensity, trade sensitivity, and war.  Government policy
did not determine, for the most part, which industries would be most
strongly affected by which forces.  But neither can the industries
themselves, once they have chosen a particular path of development, escape
from the circumstances that government policies create.  And in recent
times, three of the four major forces have been losers.  Only investment
have been a winner in the industrial performance sweepstakes, and this
accounts for the vast relative success of the K-sector firms over the past
twenty-five years.

Page 133

As it turns out, the causes of rising inequality are mainly macroeconomic.

Thomas:

To my understanding, JG is saying that the changes in economics and the
resultant inequality we now experience came about - not through market
forces or globalization, rather they came about by political decisions at
the macroeconomic level.  Rather than blaming the capitalists - to the
extent that I personally have been blaming them in my own thought, JG is
reframing my ideas to the concept that it was the political changes that
have caused the problem.  Though that may seem self evident, it also has
within it the solution, political changes are reversible!  If it was the
market or globalization as we have been led to believe - then there is a
sense of helplessness - we are at the mercy of forces beyond our control.
JG challenges this by reinterpreting the data and basically says that it was
the political decisions affected strongly by economic theory being used as a
guide that has led to most of the current problems.  Government - plural -
have  been dodging this answer because then the onus would then be on
governance to readjust the current situation with different policies.  Once
government-s are forced to face up to this through the data presented - then
meaningful and productive change can come about.  We are not helpless in the
face of impersonal market forces - the invisible hand does not exist - or
rather the invisible hand, like the emperor with no clothes is in reality
denial and the refusal of governance to change and accept responsibility.
New political leaders need to arise and challenge current political thought
with new policies based on a different reading of our past experience.  Once
this dangerous idea shows the promise of a political following, then leaders
will come forth who adopt differ policy basics.

Enough musing for the night.

Respectfully,

Thomas Lunde

Re: World Bank: 200 million newly poor on the planet (fwd)

[Thomas Lunde]

untries establish stronger social
>protections, the international community may
>be able to prevent the sudden
>impoverishment of millions of people when
>crisis strikes.''
>
>The bank has distributed to world
>policymakers a working paper that lays out
>plans for safeguarding the needy before and
>during financial crises. The paper gauges the
>impact of recent developments on the poor in
>East Asia, Latin America and Africa.
>
>Wage cuts, job reductions, lower rates of
>return on savings, reduced government
>benefits and drops in services such as health
>care and safety can all affect people directly
>and immediately, the paper says,
>recommending guidelines for programs that
>head off such problems.
>
>A ''pro-poor response'' to all crises could add
>up to 5 per cent to governments costs, but
>could be cheaper, in the long run, than hastily
>prepared relief operations that have no lasting
>impact, it says.

Thomas:

Is that actually logic I read?  Is it better to pay know to prevent later -
what a mind blowing concept.  We have been running on the gas of ideas that
imply do not pay now, it probably will not happen later - the ostrich form
of policy making and even if it does, we'll deal with it then.  This
brilliance is currently bringing us overpopulation, resource depletion,
species extinction and global warming and off course 25% of the worlds
population trying to live and raise a family on $8 per day.  Sure wish I had
went to Harvard so I could understand these things.

Respectfully,


Thomas Lunde
> 

Re: A Digital Future for Kosovo?

[Thomas Lunde]

Dear Colin:

What a delightfully imaginative idea.  It reminds me of an old joke, if you
are going nowhere, start a war with the US, after a few token battles,
surender.  The US will then loan or give you the money to rebuild your
country.  Not only should we punish aggressors, we should reward the
victims.  This would go a long way to ensuring future dictators from abusing
their population as they would get punished and their enemies would get the
rewards - poetic justice - I say:

Respectfully,

Thomas Lunde

>>Campaign for Digital Democracy
>>
>>A Digital Future for Kosovo?
>>
>>by Marc Strassman
>>
>>
>> Half a century after it wrecked havoc in Germany, the U.S. Air Force has
>>again reduced the infrastructure of a European nation to rubble.  Again,
>>the time has come to talk about rebuilding a country's devastated physical
>>plant.
>>
>> Why not do what worked so well for the Allies after World War II and
>>rebuild Kosovo, not as it was, but as it could be?  Why not use the
>>billions that will no doubt be appropriated and spent there to give its
>>million people the technology to not just restore their level of
>>subsistence, but to move them, en masse and now, into the 21st century,
>>the internet century.

futurework@dijkstra.uwaterloo.ca

[Thomas Lunde]

Re: Some more JG quotes

[Thomas Lunde]

--
>From: Steve Kurtz <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
>To: Thomas Lunde <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
>Subject: Re: Some more JG quotes
>Date: Thu, Jun 3, 1999, 12:48 PM
>

> Hi Thomas,
>
> If JG is really saying what you think he is, I think you say it more
> clearly. George Soros has expressed a similiar position in his recent
> book and articles. The pendulum will likely reverse, but when?
>
> Cheers,
> Steve

Thomas

Thought this would provide a little documentation to back up James
Galbraith's ideas.  As to when the pendulum will reserve - who knows!

Respectfully,

Thomas Lunde


>Date: Fri, 04 Jun 1999 12:42:27 -0700
>To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
>From: Sid Shniad <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
>Subject: STUDY PAINTS BLEAK JOB SCENE IN CANADA
>
>The National Post  June 3, 1999
>
>STUDY PAINTS BLEAK JOB SCENE IN CANADA
>
>   52% BELOW $15 AN HOUR
>
>   Jobless figures don't measure underemployment, report contends
>
>   By James Cudmore
>
>   Canadian workers are underpaid and underemployed, says a
>report released yesterday by Ryerson Polytechnic University.
>   The study, conducted by the Ryerson Social Reporting Net-
>work, observes that 52% of Canadians are paid less than $15 an
>hour, and that 45% of the country's workforce is engaged in
>"flexible" work, with people unable to find full-time or permanent
>jobs.
>   The study, which was produced through an analysis of labour
>force surveys by Statistics Canada surveys, stands in sharp contrast
>with the oft-expressed claim that the growing Canadian economy is
>creating a stronger, more secure labour market.
>   "We hear an awful lot about the new economic boom," said Dr.
>John Shields, the author of the study.
>   "But, I think there is still a real question about what that means
>for people in the labour market.
>   "This study clearly reveals a great wage differential between
>people who have stable jobs and those with flexible employment,"
>Dr. Shields said.
>   "The labour market is polarized between stable, secure types of
>employment and insecure, inadequately compensated employment."
>   According to Dr. Shields, 45% of Canadian workers are en-
>gaged in flexible work (defined as part-time and non-permanent),
>earning an average of $5 to $8 less an hour than full time workers.
>   The study goes on to suggest that these flexible workers have
>little chance of improving their wage.
>   "All of the indicators show that this is the emerging trend," said
>Dr. Shields, "It's the new labour market."
>   The Ryerson report also introduced a new employment-vul-
>nerability measure intended to reflect the amount of underem-
>ployment in the society, rather than just unemployment.
>   "Looking at traditional unemployment isn't enough," Dr. Shields
>said.
>   "It masks the tremendous underemployment in our economy,
>people who are working part time who don't want to be. They want
>more work, but just aren't able to find it."
>   While the official unemployment rate in the country is 8.4%, the
>Ryerson study estimates that as many as 20.3% of Canadians are
>underemployed or otherwise lack employment security and an
>adequate level of wages.
>   "If we look at the employment problem from that perspective,
>the real unemployment rate is two-and-a half times larger," Dr.
>Shields said.
>   "What's really going on in the labour market is an increase in
>more-peripheral and more-vulnerable types of employment," Dr.
>Shields says.
>   "I think that's very serious for families."
>
>
> 

Re: Basic Income re Galbraith circa 1966

[Thomas Lunde]

he federal government, through the income and
corporation taxes, gets the money, and the cities, with everything from
traffic to air pollution, get the problems.  This is more acutelyt the case
when the effects of population growth and urbanization are added.  Various
ways have been suggested for correctinbg this anomaly, most of them calling
for subventions to the states and cities by the federal government.
Undoubtly the best way would be for the federal government to assume the
cost of providing a mimimum income and thus to free the cities from the
present burden of welfare costs.  (Actually, in Canada, with the discarding
of CAP, (Canadian Assistance Plan), we went from a federally mandated set of
minimum standards to a hodgepodge of provincial standards, most of them to
low to live on.   In fact in Ontario, our current neo-con government seemed
to follow Galbraith's advise and take the most of the cost of welfare and
education off the municipaitie's property tax base and move it to the
Provincial taxation.  As soon as this was accomplished, they reduced the
Welfare payments by 21% four years ago with no increases for inflation and
assuming inflation of 2% a year, the Welfare recipient now recieves a
reduced amount equivalent to almost a 30% reduction.  This is not including
"clawback" legislation that takes money that the Federal Government has
tried to put into the system to increase Welfare rates.  So much for
progress.)  In these years of urban crisis we want a system that directs
funds not to the country as a whole but, by some formula, to the points of
greatest need, which, unquestionably, are the large cities.  To transfer
income maintenance to the federal government - to free big-city budgets of a
large share of their welfare paymens - would be an enormous step in exactly
the right direction.

Respectfully,

Thomas Lunde

Re: An Aside: On Rational Thinking

[Thomas Lunde]

Hi Bob:

Great answer and a good read.  I have two comments to make.  New 
information, whether through inductive reason, dreams, or pure creativity
can obsolete known truths - a point your references have made.  Going back
to some of the previous discussions re the "soul" that have been posted.
This body of knowledge whether from the insights of shamanism, pychotropic
drug use experiences, general religous experiences, or the study of ancient
religions such as Hindism, Buddism or North American Native cultures - has
fallen off the horizon of modern thinking.  This does not mean that the
truths, experiences, techniques are invalid, it just indicates that they
don't fit the current paradigm of the moment.  And this could change in a
moment - no matter what the rationalist, scientific, academic authorities
posit today.  The future is truly unknowable

Second, and I will repost your quote to juxataposition it with my
observation.  Much of what we assume we know, is based on imcomplete
information.  You posted:

> (ibid., p. 74)
>
> "... we might consider the sentiments in early and mid-nineteenth
> century America that eventually led to the abolition of slavery in the
> United States. Many people of course participated in leading popular
> thought and action, but we can cite a novel, Harriet Beecher Stowe's
> Uncle Tom's Cabin, and the impact of a political leader, Abraham
> Lincoln, as being among the major influences. The arguments for
> abolition arose from many facets of human experience and with varied
> kinds of religious and philosophical support. And in spite of
> counter-arguments and social inertia, a conviction that involved a
> change in assumptions about human lives did eventually carry the day.
> New social-industrial factors may well have been, as some have argued, a
> factor in the challenge. The humanist, in any event, can be responsive
> to the total situation of his times."

Thomas:

The above quote explains what most of us believe to be true about the
abolishment of slavery.  Nowhere in this account is the antecendents of the
abolishment of slavery given it's economic background as a strategy between
the two dominant powers of the early 1800"s,  France under Napolean and
England.  The following quote gives the requisite information.

Patriots and Profiteers by R.T. Naylor  Page 12

For over 150 years, the two powers hd contended for control of the world
sugar market.  France won.  By the turn of the nineteenth century, sugar
from its West Indian colonies cost 25 percent of that from the older British
plantations.  The Napoleonic Wars gave the British a chance to strike back.
First they attempted to capture St. Dominique (now Haiti), the source or
destination of 75 percent of France's colonial trade.  Unsuccessful, they
turned to indirect means.  In 1807 Britain declared the abolition of the
slave trade.  When the British captured the African slave trade posts and
commited the navy to stopping "illegal" traffic, they succceeded in cutting
off the supply to the French islands, which required several thousand new
slaves per year.  It was perhaps the world's first economic blockade
rationalized by "human rights" rhetoric.  And it worked.

Thomas:

As we muddle along with our rationalist explanations of many things, often
using selective statistics, historical interpretations, learned insights of
human behavior from the current academic theories as the rationale for our
current decisions, we refuse to acknowledge how incomplete our  background
of insight really is.  It is as if - we are playing cards in which the next
card to be dealt is truly unknown and unpredictable and yet, we assume from
the cards in our hands and the ones which have been played that we "know" or
can explain what the next card will be.

Of course, going around in this circle of destroying rational thought seems
to leave us with no way to make decisions about the future - I mean - after
all, if we can't trust the lessons of the past to provide predictability
then we are truly in a mess.  The antidote may come from less reliance on
what we know - which we often don't really know - to decisions based on
principles and values of what we hold to be our highest aspirations.  This
creates a discontinuity with all the past truths and allows us to creatively
strike out with new answers to current problems.

Respectfully,

Thomas Lunde



--
>From: Bob McDaniel <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
>To: FutureWork <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
>Subject: An Aside: On Rational Thinking
>Date: Wed, Jun 30, 1999, 3:54 AM
>

> Eva Durant wrote:
>
>> Uncompromising means, not changing opinions even when
>> presented rational reasons to do so. In the absence of such
>> what can I do?  What if my opinion is actually a good
>> approximation to reality,  
>
>

Re: Media / Oral Literacy

[Thomas Lunde]

--
>From: Robert Rosenstein <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>

> 
> It seems to me that the thrust of all this, if it continues, is away from
> a society in which everybody is (should be) reading and writing literate
> to one in which the overwhelming majority will be culturally-content with
> their daily entertainments (movies, sitcoms, music videos, award shows,
> specials), and manufactured news bits. In such a situation, there will be
> a privatization of knowledge, owned by the few and used for the benefit
> of the few - which is almost the situation, now.

Thomas:

A couple of thoughts on the above paragraph.  Most listening, watching
technologies are time specific.  Though you have mentioned several times the
attribute of being able to listen while doing something else, I would
comment that retention, reflection and musing get lost as the data stream
continues uninterruped.  The minute you take your attention from the TV,
radio or other media, there is no going back to catch what was missed.  It
is much like riding on a train.  As long as you sit at the window looking
out, you can see the current scenery, but you can't replay that which has
just went past, nor recapture that which happened while you glanced away or
left your seat for a minute.  The strength of reading as learning
information medium is that you can go back and re-read or compare with other
information and reflect on the juxtaposition of thought that has been
presented.

Similarly, with speaking.  It is a spontaneous event, unless speaking from
something memorized.  For most people, speaking is not prethought, it is
just a reflex action and the speaker is often surprised or delighted or
ashamed of what came out of his mouth as is the listener.  Also, speaking
limits vocabulary to approx 5000 common words in the language.  While
writing allows a greater vocabulary and language more specifically used.
Writing, focus's the communicator specifically on his message, allows
complex themes to be developed, fosters rational thought and specificity
rather than the generalizations commonly used when speaking.  A large part
of this is dealt with in great depth by Marshal McLuhan and his observations
that TV and radio represent a sensory change from visual (reading and
writing) to an oral society, which most of prehistory and history up until
Guttenburg operated in.  Oral societies are often tribal, ruled by emotion
and passion, foster different lifestyles and focus on different aspects of
reality than a visual society.  According to McLuhan, media shape the
sensorium of individuals and his major theme was that we are creating new
media which is reshaping the majority of the populations sensory intake
which will have the effect of changing society in ways that are totally
different from political philosophy's, economic theories and cultures.

Respectfully,

Thomas Lunde

The Servile State

[Thomas Lunde]

o him due to the job market surplus's.  Secondly, if he is on any kind of government assistance program, he is not legally allowed to refuse the job on pain of losing his benefits.  Both options, in my opinion lead to conditions of slavery.

The same observations could be applied to our current nurses strike in Quebec, where the government, in this case the employer can legislate fines, imprisonment, back to work legislation on workers who are refusing their labour because of inadequate compensation.  To avoid these penalities and go back to work is a form of slavery because the power of the state is used to force people to labour and denies them the right to remove their labour if they feel the terms and conditions of employment are not right.

Well, that's enough for an E Mail, but it has been a good read and I would advise others that there is much to be learned from Belloc's thought.

Respectfully,

Thomas Lunde 

Some Thoughts From "Can America Survive"

[Thomas Lunde]

Unless a solution is found to the problem of disposing of nuclear waste, 
continued use of fission is causing an environmental disaster of large
proportions. In fact, because the cost of eliminating the radioactive waste
(or storing it for thousands of years) is not known, it is not known whether
nuclear fission has an energy yield of greater than one. It may well be the
case that the current generation is imposing on future generations an energy
cost (for storage of radioactive waste from nuclear fission) that far
exceeds the amount of energy that we are obtaining from nuclear fission.
Mankind¹s current generation has clearly discounted the cost to future
generations to essentially zero, or it would not use nuclear fission until a
method was found for eliminating the radioactive waste.

Of course, this would not be the first time that a human generation has
totally disregarded the welfare of future generations. The present
generation of human beings is in the process of depleting all of the world¹s
natural gas and oil, and much of its coal. These fuels are obviously of high
value and are irreplaceable ­ once they are gone they are gone forever. The
present generation does not care a whit about the fact that it is denying
them to all future generations, forever. The same is true of species that it
exterminates. They are gone forever.

The current generation of human beings is in the process of making the
planet totally uninhabitable for all future generations. The industrialized
human species ­ economic man ­ is morally bankrupt. It is ravaging the
planet, consuming all of its wealth as rapidly as it can, all in the
interest of making a fast buck, regardless of the consequences to other
species or even later generations of its own. It is a cancer on the planet,
devouring its bounty and beauty, destroying an exquisite balance of nature
that has lasted for eons, and leaving in its wake a ravaged planet infected
with radioactive and toxic waste, polluted lakes, rivers, and seas,
decimated forests, extinguished species, and a poisoned atmosphere.

Thomas:

My, my, he does wax eloquent - but is he right?  It's a change of
perspective isn't it.  If your focus is on cheap energy then his are the
ravings of an idiot who wants to curtail a vital civic need, ie cheap
energy.  If your focus is economic and cheap energy is needed for industrial
growth, then his is a dangerous voice.  But - what if his perspective is the
correct assessment?  Then cheap energy and industrial growth become ills
equal to genocide or germ warfare.  What if the correct viewpoint is
sustainability rather than growth.  Then, we are following Hitler, following
policies that will exterminate the human race, rather than just the Jewish
race.

On FutureWork, our topic is work - which we, along with the rest of society
assume is essential for survival.  But what if work is the path to no
survival?  Are we then not philosophers arguing over how many needles can
fit on the head of a pin, without asking what the purpose of the argument
is?  When we examine work, which surprisingly enough we do, in my opinion,
in the most eclectic of fashions, all sorts of presuppositions, myths,
assumptions, verities, facts and truths come to light before our collective
minds and various experiences and learnings.  The Internet gives the
tradional and eccentric, the conventional and the doomsayer a forum for
discussion.  Is this not futurework?  As each of us read - and agree or not
with each posting, are we not retraining ourselves for some valuable but yet
unseen futurework?  I believe we are.

Respectfully,

Thomas Lunde







?

Re: FW Sennett on Insecurity, Feature from the Jobs Letter No. 102 ( 29 June 1999 )

[Thomas Lunde]

A few comments on Sally's Posting of Sennetts material.  Of course I and I'm
sure most of us on FW would find alignment with Sennet's thoughts and
conclusions and it would be redundant to go through this posting because he
has said it as well or better than I could say it.  The problem, as I see
it, is how can we get those who are articulate in seeing the problem our
way, is how to involve the media in such a way that a debate can be started
between those who hold views such as the paragrapgh below.  Like the ecology
movement which often talks to the converted and is ignored by the
mainstream, so the problems of work is often our articulate spokespeople are
talking to the converted, rather than debating those making policy.

>>"First, there is the "nevertheless" policy, which enforces full
>>employment after the end of normal full employment. This "New
>>Labour" policy believes that only work guarantees order and the
>>inclusive society. In this view, waged work has the monopoly of
>>inclusiveness.

Thomas:

The "nevertheless policy" which enforces full employment etc.  Shades of
"The Servile State", enforces!  Belloc states that whenever you are forced
by the full power of the state - or by the law - then your state is servile.
Can we read these lines to mean that it is not the result of work to produce
goods or services, rather that the result of work is to guareentee "order"
and that through working we are included in our society but if we don't work
at acceptable work then we are excluded!  Can it really be stated that
boldly!  Have we reached the state of acknowledging our servile state as an
atribute of citizenship - that we are only included if we work?
>>
>>"The second option is to rethink and redefine work as we have
>>done with respect to the family. But this also implies rethinking how
>>we deal with the risks of fragile work ...
>>
>> "Has work always had the monopoly of inclusiveness? If the
>>ancient Greeks could listen to our debates about the anthropological
>>need to work in order not only to be an honourable member of
>>society but a fully valued human being, they would laugh. The value
>>system that proclaims the centrality of work and only work in
>>building and controlling an inclusive society is a modern invention of
>>capitalism and the welfare state.
>>
>> "We need to see that there is a life beyond the alternatives of
>>unemployment and stress at work. We need to see that the lack of
>>waged work can give us a new affluence of time. We need also to see
>>that the welfare state must be rebuilt so that the risks of fragile
>>work are socialised rather than being borne increasingly by the
>>individual.
>>
>>"I would argue for a citizen's (or basic) income. My argument is
>>that we need a new alternative centre of inclusion -- citizen work
>>combined with citizen income -- creating a sense of compassion and
>>cohesion through public commitment. The decoupling of income
>>entitlements from paid work and from the labour market would, in
>>Zygmunt Bauman's words, remove "the awesome fly of insecurity
>>from the sweet ointment of freedom".
>>
>>"We must, in short, turn the new precarious forms of
>>employment into a right to discontinuous waged work and a right to
>>disposable time. It must be made possible for every human being
>>autonomously to shape his or her life and create a balance between
>>family, paid employment, leisure and political commitment. And I
>>truly believe that this is the only way of forming a policy that will
>>create more employment for everybody ..."
>>-- German sociologist Ulrich Beck, from "Goodbye To All That
>>Wage Slavery" New Statesman 5 March 1999.

Thomas:

Can one of those "new precarious forms" become a fixed time or quality
deficit required by every citizen ie 10 years of work or so many hours in a
lifetime?  Or can another be, as they have suggested a redefinition of work
to include child rearing and care of family as a useful societal condition -
shades of WesBurt here.  What other criteria might we consider -  to have
given to us the state of inclusiveness?  How about just being born?  No
criteria except we exist.  This kind of thinking and these kind of questions
need to brought before the public.  These are the kinds of questions that a
true demcratic society would  consider of value to discuss.   How do we
bring the right problems before the populace?  How do we contribute to those
who are articulate so that they can espouse these questions.  Now it is
true, that the answers of society may be different from my view - or your
view, but I think we could a

Re: FW JK Galbraith and Basic Income

[Thomas Lunde]

Thomas:  

One of things I have always like about Galbraith is that he accepts that the
poor are entitled and deserve some joy and comfort and security in their
lives. Something which the majority of the moderate and overly affluent want
to deny.  It is as if poorness is not enough, a little suffering is good for
the soul, especially if it someone elses suffering.

You know, being poor is not so bad, and most of us who experience it find
ways to still enjoy our lives.  However, it is the constant pressure from
those more fortunate that somehow if we have sex, go to a movie, have a
picnic in the park we are violating our status in life.  Give us a basic
income and get off our back, I think would be endorsed by the majority of
the poor.  Allow us to have dreams for our children and we will live
modestly.

Respectfully,

Thomas Lunde

--
>From: "S. Lerner" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
>To: [EMAIL PROTECTED], [EMAIL PROTECTED],
[EMAIL PROTECTED]@dijkstra.uwaterloo.ca
>Subject: FW JK Galbraith and Basic Income
>Date: Tue, Jul 6, 1999, 9:52 AM
>

> Much to my delight, the following appeared in today's Toronto Globe and
> Mail: A13  ("J.K.Galbraith, who is 90, delivered this lecture last week on
> receiving an honorary doctorate from the London School of Economics. It is
> reprinted from The Guardian." )
>
> Excerpt: "I come to two pieces of the unfinished business of the century
> and millenium that have high visibility and urgency.  The first is the very
> large number of the very poor even in the richest of countries and notably
> in the U.S.
>  The answer or part of the answer is rather clear: Everybody should
> be guaranteed a decent income.  A rich country such as the U.S. can well
> afford to keep everybody out of poverty.  Some, it will be said, will seize
> upon the income and won't work. So it is now with more limited welfare, as
> it is called. Let us accept some resort to leisure by the poor as well as
> by the rich."
>
>
>
> 

Re: [graffis-l] The Virtual Alchemists

[Thomas Lunde]

The following lengthy article, I think is very important.  I have long 
thought that the "replicator" used in the Star Trek space series was the
ultimate invention.  The creation of matter by basic molecular
reconstruction solves that Starships food problem.  On Earth, we may find
that a "replicator" technology might supply needed resource material we have
overused or perhaps even food that can be made as a manufactured product
based on mathematically knowing all the molecular compounds and developing
ways to combine them.  What freedom that would bring - that each person
might have the "means of production" as defined in Hilaire Belloc's book The
Servile State - and perhaps more than just production, but also, the
creation of all necessary and luxury items a person could desire - made from
recombining at the molecular level.  Is that  a possibilitythat can be drawn
from this article below?

Respectfully,

Thomas Lunde

--
>From: Mark Graffis <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
>To: graffis-l <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>, [EMAIL PROTECTED]
>Cc: Bob Sinclair <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
>Subject: [graffis-l] The Virtual Alchemists
>Date: Tue, Jul 6, 1999, 3:15 PM
>

> From: Mark Graffis <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
>
>
>TECHNOLOGY REVIEW
>MIT Bldg. W59-200 201 Vassar St. Cambridge, MA 02139 Tel
>617-253-8250 Fax 617-258-5850 [EMAIL PROTECTED] CURRENT ISSUE
>
>  July/August 1999
>
>
>  After a decade of calculations, the first wave of materials
>  designed from scratch on the computer are ready to be made and
>  tested. On the horizon: new substrates for optics and electronics.
>
>  By [16]David Voss
>
>  photo The first thing you notice about Gerbrand Ceder's materials
>  science lab at MIT is that there are no crucibles, no furnaces, no
>  crystal-growing instruments. Instead, you find a row of
>  high-resolution computer displays with grad students and postdocs
>  tweaking code and constructing colorful 3-D images. It's in this
>  room, quiet except for the hum of fans cooling the computer power,
>  where new high-tech ceramics and electronic materials that have
>  never been seen or made before are being forged. They are taking
>  form "in virtuo"designed from scratch on the computer, distilled
>  out of the basic laws of physics.
>
>  The next thing you're likely to notice is how young Ceder is. Quick
>  to laugh but intensely passionate in explaining his work, the
>  33-year-old associate professor is one of a new breed of materials
>  researchers, trained in traditional processing techniques, who have
>  turned to discovering materials using computers. The dream is
>  simple: Replace the age-old practice of finding new substances by
>  trial and error, with calculations based on the laws of quantum
>  mechanics that predict the properties of materials before you make
>  them.
>
>  You can, in theory at least, design metals, semiconductors and
>  ceramics atom by atom, adjusting the structure as you go to achieve
>  desired effects. That should make it possible to come up with, say,
>  a new composition for an electronic material much faster. Even more
>  important, tinkering with atomic structure on a computer makes it
>  possible to invent classes of materials that defy the instincts of
>  the trial-and-error traditionalists.
>
>  It's an idea that has been kicking around for at least a decade.
>  But with the explosion in accessible computer power, as well as the
>  development of better software and theories, it's becoming a
>  reality. Last year, Ceder and his collaborators at MIT synthesized
>  one of the first materials that had actually been predicted on a
>  computer before it existed. This new aluminum oxide is a cheap and
>  efficient electrode for batteries. And while it may or may not lead
>  to a better, lighter rechargeable battery, the success of Ceder's
>  groupand related work at a handful of other labsis proving that
>  useful materials can be designed from the basic laws of physics.
>
>  Designing from first principles represents a whole new way of doing
>  materials science, a discipline that Ceder describes as "a
>  collection of facts with some brilliant insights thrown in." It's a
>  transformation he's been aiming at since his undergraduate days in
>  the late 1980s at UniversitÈ Catholique de Louvain in Belgium. "My
>  background is heat and beat metallurgy," he explains. "But I always
>  thought there should be more to it, some way to calculate things
>  using all 

Re: Digital Monoculture

[Thomas Lunde]

What to me is surprising is the failure to recognize that the natural 
structure of capitalism is towards monopoly.  Monopoly is attained and
maintained by the concept of profit.  Mergers, stock ownership, credit, all
fall to those who have been the beneficiaries of large consistent profits
which give them the surplus to absorb more of any given market area or
product area or as in the case of stocks, holding massive amounts of wealth,
much like a cow that can continually be milked.  There is no social benefit
to this, no moral value that can be extrapolated from this, it just is a
nice byproduct of a system design.

Respectfully,

Thomas Lunde

--
>From: "Cordell, Arthur: DPP" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
>To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
>Subject: FW: Digital Monoculture
>Date: Tue, Jul 6, 1999, 2:01 PM
>

> While not directly related to FW, this seems sufficiently interesting to
> pass along  FYI
>
>  --
> From: Gary Chapman
> To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
> Subject: L.A. Times column, 7/5/99
> Date: Monday, July 05, 1999 10:30AM
>
> Friends,
>
> Below is my Los Angeles Times column for today, Monday, July 5, 1999.
> As usual, please feel free to pass this around, but please retain the
> copyright notice.
>
>
>  --
>
> If you have received this from me, Gary Chapman
> ([EMAIL PROTECTED]), you are subscribed to the listserv
> that sends out copies of my column in The Los Angeles Times and other
> published articles.
>
> If you wish to UNSUBSCRIBE from this listserv, send mail to
> [EMAIL PROTECTED], leave the subject line blank, and
> put "Unsubscribe Chapman" in the first line of the message.
>
> If you received this message from a source other than me and would
> like to subscribe to the listserv, the instructions for subscribing
> are at the end of the message.
>
>  --
>
> Monday, July 5, 1999
>
> DIGITAL NATION
>
> Troubling Implications of Internet's Ubiquity
>
> By Gary Chapman
>
> Copyright 1999, The Los Angeles Times
>
> Early last month, institutions around the world were crippled for
> several days by a new computer virus called the ExploreZip Trojan
> horse. A Trojan horse, in computer jargon, is a nasty software
> program that hides inside a file a user is likely to want to see or
> open.
>
> The ExploreZip virus -- more accurately, a computer "worm," which
> spreads more automatically than a virus -- affected machines running
> Microsoft's Windows operating system and Windows application
> software. Computers throughout the world were shut down, including
> some at Microsoft and other large corporations as well as the
> Pentagon.
>
> The ExploreZip worm was a more debilitating version of the Melissa
> virus that struck Windows machines earlier this year. Because of the
> apparent vulnerability of Windows-based machines, some computer
> experts have started to use the metaphor of a "monoculture" to
> describe our current computing predicament.
>
> The word "monoculture" comes from ecology and biology, another
> example of the merging of biological terms with computer jargon, like
> "virus" and "worm." In ecology, monoculture refers to the dominance
> or exclusive prevalence of a single species or genetic type in an
> ecological system -- a state typically regarded as pathological and
> dangerous. Agricultural monocultures, for example, are highly
> susceptible to blight, soil depletion, disease and other disasters.
>
> In computing, the recent use of the term has referred to the
> widespread dominance of Microsoft products. But we may want to extend
> the metaphor further and contemplate whether we're developing a
> universal digital monoculture, one with a troubling potential for
> negative side effects. Think of it as the perils of digital
> convergence.
>
> By now, nearly everyone assumes that almost everything we do will be
> absorbed into the digital "infosphere" -- as in IBM's advertising
> phrase "Connecting everything to everything." It's only a matter of
> time before television, radio, music, games, commerce and politics
> are assimilated into the Internet.
>
> This phenomenon is growing every day. We're about to step into the
> so-called "post-PC" era, when networked computing will permeate our
> homes and everyday objects such as refrigerators, telephones, cars
> and stereos. This model is known as "ubiquitous" or "pervasive"
> computing, when the Internet will be present in everything and
> everywhere.
>
> But few people stop to think of the vulnerabilities this might entai

Re: Irish Workfare

[Thomas Lunde]

Thomas:

I do apoligize for harping on the subject of slavery and the posting of
quotes from the book, The Servile State by Hilaire Belloc, but reality just
keeps supplying me with proof of his thesis.  The lengthy article posted
below by Ian Ritchie is just such a proof.

>From The Servile State   Page 122

There are but three social arrangements which can replace capitalism;
slavery, socialism, and property.

I may imagine a mixture of any two of these three or of all the three, but
each is a dominant type, and from the very nature of the problem, no fourth
arrngement can be devised.

The problem turns, remember, upon the control of the means of production.
Capitalism means that this control is vested in the hands of few, while
political freedom is the appanage of all.  It this anomaly cannot endure,
from its insecurity and from its own contradiction with its presumed moral
basis, you must either have a transformation of one or of the other of the
two elements which combined have been found unworkable.  These two factors
are (1) The ownership of the means of production by a few; (2) The freedom
of all.  To solve capitalism you must get rid of restricted ownership, or of
freedom, or of both.

Now there is only one alternative to freedom, which is the negation of it.
Either a man is free to work and not to work as he pleases, or he may be
liable to a legal compulsion to work, backed by the forces of the state.  In
the first he is a free man; in the second he is by definition a slave.  We
have, therefore, so far as this factor of freedom is concerned, no choice
between a number of changes, but only the opportunity of one, to wit, the
establishment of slavery in place of freedom. Such a solution, the direct,
immediate, and conscious reestalishment of slavery, would provide a true
soltuioh of the problems which capitalism offers.  It would guarantee, under
workable regulations, sufficiency and security for the dispossessed.  Such a
solution, as I shall show, is the probable goal which our society will in
fact approach.  To its immediate and conscious acceptance, however, there is
an obstacle.

Thomas:

The following article is an example of a State moving slowly towards
slavery.  And as the article mentions, it is the very business class, those
who, as Belloc identifies as the small minority who control the means of
production, who find the concepts of Socialism or Welfare state so abhorrent
to their goals of personal wealth creation who are supporting the political
moves that are leading the poor into slavery.  First, we can see that the
plight of the poor has to increase in misery and finally as a sop, the
authorities will bring forth as a panacea to the cruelty they have created,
"under workable regulations, sufficiency and security for the dispossessed."

Convince me that I am wrong?

Respectfully,

Thomas Lunde
--
>From: Ian Ritchie <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
>To: "'futurework'" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
>Subject: FW:  Irish Workfare
>Date: Wed, Jul 7, 1999, 4:13 AM
>

>
>
>> --
>> From:  B Sandford[SMTP:[EMAIL PROTECTED]]
>> FYI
>>
>> ICQ: 20816964
>> Fax: USA(707)215-6524
>>
>> ***
>> News via ainriail the Irish Anarchist Bulletin list
>> see http://flag.blackened.net/revolt/inter/email_lists.html
>> ***
>>
>>   Social Welfare Bill 1999
>>  Hassling people into very low paid jobs
>>
>>
>> The Scheme Workers Alliance organises people on
>> employment schemes to combat cutbacks and win the
>> extension of part-time workers rights. Uisce from
>> 'Workers Solidarity' spoke to Leo Duffy and Seamas
>> Carrehan of the SWA about the upcoming Social Welfare
>> bill.
>>
>> The Government is continuing its campaign against
>> working class people. Workfare was introduced last year
>> by Mary Harney, the Minister for Enterprise, Trade &
>> Employment. It forces people into shit low paid jobs by
>> cutting their social welfare completely. The next phase
>> in this assault is the proposed Social Welfare Bill
>> 1999.
>>
>> Contained in it are provisions for increasing welfare
>> benefits for the unemployed, pensioners and other people
>> on welfare. However, the increase would not even buy a
>> packet of cigarettes, the price of which was raised in
>> the last budget. Hidden among these titbits from the
>> Tiger's table is Article 26, a draconian piece of
>> legislation directed at further oppressing the working
>> class.
>>
>> "This Welfare Bill, and particularly the section dealing
>> with vehicle checkpoints, comes at the end of a three
>>

Re: Irish Workfare

[Thomas Lunde]

--
>From: Bob McDaniel <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
>To: FutureWork <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
>Subject: Re: Irish Workfare
>Date: Wed, Jul 7, 1999, 8:02 PM
>

> Just seeking some clarification here.
>
> Thomas Lunde wrote:
>
>> >From The Servile State   Page 122
>>
>> Now there is only one alternative to freedom, which is the negation of it.
>> Either a man is free to work and not to work as he pleases, or he may be
>> liable to a legal compulsion to work, backed by the forces of the state.  In
>> the first he is a free man; in the second he is by definition a slave.
>
> This does not seem to address workfare. Is it not true that a person must
first
> apply for welfare in order to receive it? If some form of work is required
s/he
> should be so informed. At that point the applicant may refuse to work
> presumably. No legal compulsion there. The person may then turn to
> non-governmental sources for aid (charity).

Thomas:

Good question Dan.  Belloc's main idea is that capitalism monoplizes the
"means of production" in the hands of the few and by doing that,
disenfranchises those who might or could be productive by not allowing them
to be productive.  Now, consider someone going on welfare and for the sake
of this answer, let's eliminate the handicapped, the addicted, etc and
assume that the person going on welfare is doing so because they cannot find
work, or the work they may be able to find does not give them enough money
for their needs.  Or they have specialist training and that they are
entitled to choose their work in that area in which they had developed
expertise.  If I was the father of six, minimum wage jobs will not solve my
problem.  If I was a printer, taking a job as a dishwasher would negate my
experience.

The welfare recipients problem is that he cannot be productive in the
workforce because he cannot find work or work that utilizes his previous
experience or skills - ie those controlling the means of production cannot
find a use for his labour that would allow them to siphon of a profit from
his efforts.  Now, capitalism in a pure form would state to that person - go
starve.  However, the state intervened with a concept of redistribution,
which basically alleviated the harsh judgement of capitalism and created a
degree of income for the unemployed.  Up until about 10 years ago, that was
considered fair and acceptable.  The tacit understanding was that this
minimal help was available to all - unconditionally as a "right" of
citizenship.

Then came workfare, which phonetically is heard as workfair, but it is far
from fair in my opinion.  The conditions of societal help then became the
negation of a persons "right" to choose his work and he is coerced by the
laws of the state to work at whatever the state chooses to demand of him.
This was a quantum shift from a free man in a society that valued him to a
slave in a society that was going to get it's pound of flesh.  As the
"capitalists" controlled property and capital, the person unable to work for
them is moved into a form of serfdom by the government - who is supposed to
protect his basic rights.

Now as to your second point, the right to refuse the contract and allow
someone of good heart to provide charity is another way of saying that those
who are disenfranchised of the right to work by those who own and use the
"means of production" for their own personal gain have no common
responsibility.  The State has moved from a position of supporting the idea
of redistributing income through welfare - to one in which the conditions of
welfare support is given through enforced labour.  So, the State is now in
the business of creating slaves.  The Capitalists have no responsibility and
are free to pursue their aims.

Now, truthfully, the citizens should never have been forced to see Welfare
funded from their income tax.  They are not the ones who disenfranchised the
worker by being unable to provide employment.  Rather, those who own the
means of production, should be taxed for those they disenfranchise - as it
is through their system of creating profit that workers do not receive the
full benefit of their labours.  So, quite frankly, in my opinion it is the
capitalists and property owners who should by law be required to provide the
"charity" that you speak of.
>
>>
>>
>> Thomas:
>>
>> ... it is the very business class, those
>> who, as Belloc identifies as the small minority who control the means of
>> production, who find the concepts of Socialism or Welfare state so abhorrent
>> to their goals of personal wealth creation who are supporting the political
>> moves that are leading the poor into slavery.
>
> While a definition of "business class" is needed here, we may _pro tem_
> consider it the equiv

Re: FW JK Galbraith and Basic Income

[Thomas Lunde]

Dear Eva:

Once again, you have cut through the BS of my thinking.  On the one hand, I
can find rational answers such as the Basic Income which I am sure will
provide a corrective for the capitalistic system.  I can also agree with
others answers, such as WesBurt's proposals or some of the thoughts of Tom
Walker.

Then I enlarge the problem by thinking/reading of population, energy,
resource depletion, or the book I picked up at the library today called Dark
Grey which deals with the demographics of an aging population and how
economics has no answer in providing a system in which we can save enough or
tax enough for a pension system for the elderly.  This morning, I read how a
research team in California are onto what they call the immortality cell in
which they have been able to extend the life of a fruit fly up to three
times it's normal lifespan.  A couple of days ago, I read an online book
called Can America Survive in which the author makes a very convincing case
that the Earth could support a sustainable population of only 5 million
hunter/gathers and 5 million living in an industrial/technological society.
Though we might quibble with the numbers, it seems rational to believe that
we can't keep 6 billion mouths and assholes functioning on this small planet
indefintely.

And yes, every state is debt and almost every person on the planet is in
debt to someone, somewhere.  So what happens when a chain of non-payment
begins?  It boggles my mind.  Unlike you, though, I do have some small
comfort - death happens to us all and I chose to believe in an afterlife -
in fact many afterlives.  I guess we'll have to each die before we find out
who is right on that belief.

Respectfully,

Thomas Lunde



--
>From: "Durant" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
>To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
>Subject: Re: FW JK Galbraith and Basic Income
>Date: Wed, Jul 7, 1999, 10:14 PM
>

> This is a utopia if based on capitalist
> economics. (Or have I already mentioned this?)
> Welfare capitalism was tried, and when the upswing
> collapsed, it failed. Even the richest states are in debt,
> even when they only spend pitifully small percentages
> on welfare.
>
> Eva
>
>> Thomas:
>>
>> One of things I have always like about Galbraith is that he accepts that the
>> poor are entitled and deserve some joy and comfort and security in their
>> lives. Something which the majority of the moderate and overly affluent want
>> to deny.  It is as if poorness is not enough, a little suffering is good for
>> the soul, especially if it someone elses suffering.
>>
>> You know, being poor is not so bad, and most of us who experience it find
>> ways to still enjoy our lives.  However, it is the constant pressure from
>> those more fortunate that somehow if we have sex, go to a movie, have a
>> picnic in the park we are violating our status in life.  Give us a basic
>> income and get off our back, I think would be endorsed by the majority of
>> the poor.  Allow us to have dreams for our children and we will live
>> modestly.
>>
>> Respectfully,
>>
>> Thomas Lunde
>>
>> --
>> >From: "S. Lerner" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
>> >To: [EMAIL PROTECTED],
[EMAIL PROTECTED],
>> [EMAIL PROTECTED]@dijkstra.uwaterloo.ca
>> >Subject: FW JK Galbraith and Basic Income
>> >Date: Tue, Jul 6, 1999, 9:52 AM
>> >
>>
>> > Much to my delight, the following appeared in today's Toronto Globe and
>> > Mail: A13  ("J.K.Galbraith, who is 90, delivered this lecture last week on
>> > receiving an honorary doctorate from the London School of Economics. It is
>> > reprinted from The Guardian." )
>> >
>> > Excerpt: "I come to two pieces of the unfinished business of the century
>> > and millenium that have high visibility and urgency.  The first is the very
>> > large number of the very poor even in the richest of countries and notably
>> > in the U.S.
>> >  The answer or part of the answer is rather clear: Everybody should
>> > be guaranteed a decent income.  A rich country such as the U.S. can well
>> > afford to keep everybody out of poverty.  Some, it will be said, will seize
>> > upon the income and won't work. So it is now with more limited welfare, as
>> > it is called. Let us accept some resort to leisure by the poor as well as
>> > by the rich."
>> >
>> >
>> >
>> >
>>
> [EMAIL PROTECTED]
> 

Re: Irish Workfare

[Thomas Lunde]

 from a workforce in which the government supported me
while my skills could not be used by capitalists until those skills were
needed again, to the present concept which is that my skills are irrelevant
and that I must work at whatever is available.  In the first instance, I
felt a considerable degree of freedom, in the second instance, the full
weight of the state and my personal survival is dependant on doing any work
I am directed to do.  I agree with Belloc, in the first instance, I felt a
free man, in the second instance, I feel a slave.  When the only option is
starvation for non-complaince, withholding my labour becomes a pointless
option.

Eva stated:
>
> The wast majority of us are wageslaves, whether we are
> happy with our particular situations/conscious of it or not.
> The state is an instrument of the status quo, it exist to
> enforce our status as wageslaves, and  maintain the status of the owners of
> the means of production (private property).
>
> If we were free, no enforcement/state would be necessary,
> as we would work because we see the need for it  or because we enjoy it,
> or both.

Thomas:

Again, Eva, I am total agreement with your statements.  That is why I see,
though my answer may not be the only one or even the best one, that the
concept of a Basic Income is the device that would give me back my freedom
from capitalistic slavery.
>
>> Such a solution, the direct,
>> immediate, and conscious reestalishment of slavery, would provide a true
>> soltuioh of the problems which capitalism offers.  It would guarantee, under
>> workable regulations, sufficiency and security for the dispossessed.  Such a
>> solution, as I shall show, is the probable goal which our society will in
>> fact approach.  To its immediate and conscious acceptance, however, there is
>> an obstacle.

Eva comments:
>>
>
> This is indeed, frightening. Especially as it seem to be
> repeated more and more often; the gist of it being, that
> democracy is mob's rule of the great unwashed, when
> clever, benevolent technocrats could govern us ever so well.
>
> Capitalism hasn't got the economic mechanism to provide
> continuous security for anyone - and last of all for the
> dispossessed. No form of government can change this.
> Hitler needed an artificial market (military/public work)
> and a war, to re-kindle the failing machinary. If you follow through your
> thread of thought, this is where you get.
> There is no capitalism
> with a human face, whether based on allegedly benevolent
> dictatorship or democracy. It hasn't got the economic machinary to
> support it other then for relatively short periods. That's why
> it is outmoded and all attempt of it's further zombification is
> madness, when we now have the conditions to do better.

Thomas:

True!
>
>
>> Thomas:
>>
>> The following article is an example of a State moving slowly towards
>> slavery.  And as the article mentions, it is the very business class, those
>> who, as Belloc identifies as the small minority who control the means of
>> production, who find the concepts of Socialism or Welfare state so abhorrent
>> to their goals of personal wealth creation who are supporting the political
>> moves that are leading the poor into slavery.  First, we can see that the
>> plight of the poor has to increase in misery and finally as a sop, the
>> authorities will bring forth as a panacea to the cruelty they have created,
>> "under workable regulations, sufficiency and security for the dispossessed."
>>
Eva concludes:
>
> The whole of the middle-classes are sliding down to
> the uncertainties and statelessness insecurity of the underclass.
> This experience will sling them out of the stupor created by the
> virtual wealth of the last 50 years. Such awareness will bring
> the next revolution and the long awaited syncronisation
>  of collective social relations with the collective and
> highly integrated work we already do: democracy, freedom and
> the shrinking and disappearing state.
>
>> Convince me that I am wrong?

Thomas:

Again I agree.  However, I am more pessimistic than you in that I believe
externalities like climate change, the peak of oil production,
overpopulation and war have and will overtake our collective will to change
and that the current systems will remain in place, much like a dictator uses
a crisis to maintain power.  As these catastrophes strike us with increasing
frequency, the state will get more draconian and capitalism will get more
vicious.
>>
>
> I did my best...
>
> Eva

Thomas:

Thanks
>
>> Respectfully,
>>
>> Thomas Lunde
>
> [EMAIL PROTECTED]
> 

Re: Digital Monoculture

[Thomas Lunde]

--
>From: "Ray E. Harrell" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
>To: Thomas Lunde <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
>Subject: Re: Digital Monoculture
>Date: Tue, Jul 6, 1999, 10:07 PM
>

> Hi Tom,
> Sitting here with a computer that more resembles a "Hot
> Rod" and that makes me very sorry not to have taken the
> auto mechanics course that my mother insisted upon and
> I resisted.   Sitting here with a machine that is not made
> by a big monopoly or with a decent warrenty.  A machine
> that the small businessman, who sold it to me at an inflated
> price and then went bankrupt, had promised service and
> quality for four years.  A machine that I must now spend
> time learning how to be an electrician, a mechanic and a
> programmer.   A machine that takes more time then I can
> spend working on it.

Thomas:

I do detect a note of frustration here and I can sympathize.  However, -
this is the same as a "but", I would offer another explanation to support
the monopoly theory I have been putting forth.  Large companies, having the
benefit of volume and profit in manufacturing, as well as profit from sales
often make it difficult for a small retailer to have enough margin to stay
in business.  I would venture that if the person who sold you the computer
could enter this conversation, his defence might be the same as mine.  The
large monopolies set the price so low for their product and give him such a
small mark-up that it becomes impossible for the small business to survive.
In other words, it is the large Company that has done you in.  Now, if you
had bought from Dell or Compact, there is no guareetee that you would be
better off.  I'm sure with a little inquiry, many posters could tell you the
horror stories of dealing with a name brand.
>
> I never worked on "hot rods" I bought new cheap cars so
> that I could spend time with my dates or traveling the country
> rather than sitting in the shop.

Thomas:

My answer has often been to buy used.  Not only do I not pay the big price
and all the profits, the equipment has probably been broken in, is working
fine and I usually get a pile of software thrown in.  My two cents - go look
for a used machine for a couple of hundred bucks or sometimes it just comes
as a gift.

Ray:

The question today is whether
> developing new art is more important than learning the inner
> workings of this mongrel.

Thomas:

In my opinion, developing art is more important.
>
> So next time I will buy Dell or Gateway or some other big
> company product that has a more "economie of scale"
> attitude and will take less of my time.
>
> Those Russian airplanes are coming in at half the
> price and have a lot of goodies on them with less
> attitude.
>
> Does it work?   That should be the answer before,
> will it sell?
>
> up with monoculture!
>
> REH
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
> Thomas Lunde wrote:
>
>> What to me is surprising is the failure to recognize that the natural
>> structure of capitalism is towards monopoly.  Monopoly is attained and
>> maintained by the concept of profit.  Mergers, stock ownership, credit, all
>> fall to those who have been the beneficiaries of large consistent profits
>> which give them the surplus to absorb more of any given market area or
>> product area or as in the case of stocks, holding massive amounts of wealth,
>> much like a cow that can continually be milked.  There is no social benefit
>> to this, no moral value that can be extrapolated from this, it just is a
>> nice byproduct of a system design.
>>
>> Respectfully,
>>
>> Thomas Lunde
>>
>> --
>> >From: "Cordell, Arthur: DPP" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
>> >To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
>> >Subject: FW: Digital Monoculture
>> >Date: Tue, Jul 6, 1999, 2:01 PM
>> >
>>
>> > While not directly related to FW, this seems sufficiently interesting to
>> > pass along  FYI
>> >
>> >  --
>> > From: Gary Chapman
>> > To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
>> > Subject: L.A. Times column, 7/5/99
>> > Date: Monday, July 05, 1999 10:30AM
>> >
>> > Friends,
>> >
>> > Below is my Los Angeles Times column for today, Monday, July 5, 1999.
>> > As usual, please feel free to pass this around, but please retain the
>> > copyright notice.
>> >
>> >
>> >  --
>> >
>> > If you have received this from me, Gary Chapman
>> > ([EMAIL PROTECTED]), you are subscribed to the listserv
>> > that sends out copies of my column in The Los Angeles Times and other
>> > published articles.
>>

Re: Soapbox

[Thomas Lunde]

times
to join the dominant view or not.

Now in many cases, consensus was not reached by all.  But those who accepted
a certain point of view could, as a group act out that limited consensus,
whether that was a war party or a move to new hunting grounds.  So, what's
my point?

The need, as I see it, is reflected in the acceptance that the medium of
persuasion is oral and the tool that best represents that media is the
Television.  Now, in a manner of speaking, what is required is to use the
medium of the Television to arrange a series of Councils in which subjects
can be discussed, not so much to arrive at an ultimate answer and course of
action, but to allow all the various viewpoints to be expressed until a
sense of consensus is reached and all or some feel compelled to act from the
decisions of that consensus.

We have been told that we are entering the 500 channel universe and it might
be possible, with the right influence for one of those Channels to be
dedicated to the concept of a World Council.  A Council that has an agenda
to discuss the big problems and ideas of our times.  That people of all
persuasions and expertise be invited to sit in these councils and discuss an
idea like capitalism or environment.  Now to do this effectively, in my
opinion, would require the removal of time constraints.

I once worked with a very brilliant therapist.  A session with Jim Tolchard
might be 5 minutes or 15 hours.  He was relentless in his pursuit of a
resolution to the clients presenting problem.  He completely ignored the
convention of a 1 hour therapy session or a weekly schedule.  To him, the
pursuit of the challenge before him was not in time - or for that matter
money.  The conventional therapy session, Marshal would label as a behavior
from someone from a visual culture, while Jim's model was more of a Shamans
approach in which time had no meaning.

Well, those are my thoughts.

Respectfully,

Thomas Lunde
>
> ___
> Get the Internet just the way you want it.
> Free software, free e-mail, and free Internet access for a month!
> Try Juno Web: http://dl.www.juno.com/dynoget/tagj.
> 

Re: interrelations between economic boom and simple living

[Thomas Lunde]

Robert Neunteufel

 In Europe we hear a lot about the long lasting economic boom and the
> success in job creation in the USA.
> On the other hand we hear about the success of bestsellers like Your
> Money or Your Life or the simple living movement.
>
> I'd like to ask the members of this list how they see the interrelations
> and / or contradictions between the economic boom and the simple living
> movement.
>

Dear Robert:

A nice question.  I see it as a clash of belief systems.  On the one hand,
you have those who have been through the educational system and have
accepted the concept of careers, work and materalism as put forth by the
Western worldview.  For most of these people, they have not questioned the
assumptions behind these beliefs and/or spent any time learning, reflecting
on mass productions, environment, resource use, or the future except as one
promising more and more.   Just down the street where I live, there are
homes for sale, 5 bedrooms, 5 bathrooms, in which two people live.  For
them, in my opinion, their value system is one of showing the world a
reflection of their percieved success.

Others, in a variety of ways, thinking, personal choice, innate conservatism
(not in the political sense) hold a differned world view.  In their homes,
of perhaps three bedrooms and one and one and a half bathrooms, you might
see a garden in the back instead of swimming pool.  An economical car in the
driveway instead of a four wheel sports utility.  They too like their
materialism and comforts, but have tempered their use by common sense.

Finally, you get antimaterialists, in truth a very small number, who ride a
bike to work, have a small wardrobe, live simply and would like to be able
to live simpler still.

Finally, to get around to your first two sentences.  What we hear is what
the media want us to hear.  The long lasting boom in the United States is
given many reasons, but mine is simple.  Money is a coward and a large chunk
of the world has been and is going through some very rough financial times -
therefore, money has flowed to the percieved safest place - the United
States.  It's like having a bunch of relatives send you their savings to use
to make more money.

When you have a surplus of money trying to make money you have a booming
economy.  The media find all this so fascinating - much like stories of the
Royal Family or Lifes of the Rich and Famous - so appearances are deceiving.
Co-existing with all that media hype are millions in the US and Canada who
are reading, thinking and making small changes within their life style -
very little of this impacts the media on a consistent basis.  Of course, let
us not forget the growing amounts of poor who are forced to a simpler
lifestyle by the greed of the rich.

Sort of a wandering answer,

Respectfully,

Thomas Lunde

--
>From: Robert Neunteufel <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
>To: Futurework <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
>Subject: interrelations between economic boom and simple living
>Date: Sat, Jul 10, 1999, 5:54 PM
>

> In Europe we hear a lot about the long lasting economic boom and the
> success in job creation in the USA.
> On the other hand we hear about the success of bestsellers like Your
> Money or Your Life or the simple living movement.
>
> I'd like to ask the members of this list how they see the interrelations
> and / or contradictions between the economic boom and the simple living
> movement.
>
> With best wishes from Austria / Europe,
>
> Robert Neunteufel
> 

Re: Irish Workfare

[Thomas Lunde]

Dear Melanie:

The latest I read about, as if they haven't suffered enough, is women from
the Balkans being lured to the Europe and England to work as prostitutes and
your right, it goes on ad infinitum.  It's disgusting, it's cruel and most
of us are powerless as individuals to do anything because many of us in
affluent countries who care are struggling to survive as well.  And yes, I
agree, it is "impossibly depressing" to know about which is why most of us,
I think, in self defence choose not to read, or think about it.  Thanks for
posting your feelings on this matter.

Respectfully,

Thomas Lunde

PS

99% of this could be eliminated with a Universal Basic Income

--
>From: Melanie Milanich <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
>To: Thomas Lunde <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
>Subject: Re: Irish Workfare
>Date: Fri, Jul 9, 1999, 6:14 PM
>

> Thomas,
>A few years ago on this list I quoted from a book I was reading, which I
don't
> recall the author or title now, however, it took your premise a bit further,
and
> suggested that the elite "haves" of the world were more or less desiring to
kill
> off the unnecessary people on the planet.   I don't want to dwell on it
because it
> is impossibly depressing an idea, but more and more I see how the homeless are
> being treated, as well as refugees and victims of various disasters locally
and
> around the world, and I do feel that we have lost the Judeo-Christian
philosophy
> that once existed in the1950s about helping our fellowmen and doing good to
others,
> all those kinds of things to believe in that the potential of all human beings
was
> valued.   Also I just bought a book from the bookstore, called
> Unwanted people, slavery today (or something like that I don't have it right
here)
> about the thousands, literally hundreds of thousands of women, children, youth
and
> adults who are in essense bought and sold for the sex trade, for beggars, for
> endentured labourers, and in African countries pure forms of slavery, buying
and
> sellling people exists today.
> As many countries economies collapse people turn increasingly to any way of
> survival. And there are some 800 million people without enough food or clean
water
> willing to do anything to get out of their plight.
> The Fortune 500 magazine put out its growing list of world billionaires last
week,
> but I don't hear any concern about all the unnecessary dying people.
> Melanie
> Thomas Lunde wrote:
>
>> --
>> >From: "Durant" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
>> >To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
>> >Subject: Re: Irish Workfare
>> >Date: Wed, Jul 7, 1999, 10:14 PM
>>
>> Thomas:
>>
>> First, this is not my writing, but a quote typed from a book - a book
>> written by a popular author in 1912.  They used different forms in writing
>> than what we use today, so, sometimes you have to work a little to get the
>> idea behind the cumbersome style.
>> >
>>
>> >> The problem turns, remember, upon the control of the means of production.
>> >> Capitalism means that this control is vested in the hands of few, while
>> >> political freedom is the appanage of all.  It this anomaly cannot endure,
>> >> from its insecurity and from its own contradiction with its presumed moral
>> >> basis, you must either have a transformation of one or of the other of the
>> >> two elements which combined have been found unworkable.  These two factors
>> >> are (1) The ownership of the means of production by a few; (2) The freedom
>> >> of all.  To solve capitalism you must get rid of restricted ownership, or
of
>> >> freedom, or of both.
>> >>
>> > Eva asked:
>>
>> > What political freedom?? (and what the *^%$*  is appanage, the
>> > dictionary didn't find any means to connect it to your sentence.)
>>
>> Thomas:
>>
>> Yes, I stumbled on this word appanage too when I was transcribing and I was
>> tempted to subsitute the word "appendage" but decided that perhaps I just
>> did not have enough education, so I left it as written.
>>
>> Now, as to political freedom.  Belloc maintains in greater detail in other
>> parts of the book, but alludes to it here in the phrase, "this anomaly
>> cannot endure" his perception of the basic contradiction between belief
>> systems.  On the one hand, the belief that democracy gives individuals
>> freedom by allowing them to choose who represents them and how they will be
>> represented by the political platforms of various parties - and I agree,
>> this is a very questionable freedom - and the anomaly t

Re: [GKD] ICT and Jobs

[Thomas Lunde]

Thomas:

Today in the Ottawa Citizen Career Section was an article lamenting the fact
the older programmers are having an increasingly difficult time getting
hired as Companies find it better to hire younger/cheaper and perhaps help
that has just learned the latest language.  My brother and I were discussing
a book review he had read about using the Internet to search for jobs and
how, even though you may be posting many resumes a week to job postings most
of them never even get a reply.  Having at one time worked in a private
agency, I know how daunting it is to have an employers job order and sit
down and try and review 20 or 30 resumes.  After awhile, you begin to not
look for positives, but use negatives of the most minute kind as an excuse
to eliminate a resume.  Finally, when you are down to 2 or three, the ardous
process of contacting, interviewing and deciding whether you want to try and
"sell" this applicant to an employer has to be made.

The Internet probably makes this process even worse. I can imagine coming
into the Human Resource office on any given morning and having several
hundred resumes in my E Mail.  The sheer volume prevents any kind of fair
assessment or comparison process to take place.  I'm sure different people
employ different strategies, the first one that fits, the one that has the
highest education, the one that worked for the biggest name brand, the
youngest one, the one with a degree from a good school, or throwing up your
hands in dispair and asking someone in the office if they know someone who
can do the job and by pass all the resumes.

Personally, when I worked in Calgary for a year at this agency, I was
fortunate to place three to four professional people a month for a variety
of reasons.  Some had to do with applicants who found other jobs by the time
I got to them, some was with personnel officer who changed specs mid stream,
or who were using multiple agencies, most had to do with time, it takes time
to read a resume, phone a person, have an interview.  And then of course,
there was the other side in which I had to contact a company, arrange an
interview, follow it up from the employees assessment and from the Companies
assessment and then I often had to act as the broker to help the match
along.  Finally, a placement and a commission.  By the way, I didn't make
very much money.

It seems to me, that the so called private sector with it's vaunted
efficiency has not found solutions to the complex hiring process and it has
become expensive, time consuming and probably still has a pretty low success
rate.  Anyone have any experiences or know of any solutions, I and millions
of job seekers and needy employers would like to hear them.

The following article makes some of these points and also points out that
the pace of change has made it even more complex.

Respectfully,

Thomas Lunde


[***Moderator's note: Members may recall that in August 1998, we posted
a summary of the ICT-JOBS Working Group discussion, which EDC and ILO
hosted in May-July 1998, and which had over 700 members. The article
below is another excellent summary of the ICT-JOBS discussion, with a
somewhat different emphasis.***]


Philippine Journal
October 9, 1998
Second opinion

  ICT: job creator or destroyer?
   by Roberto S. Verzola


Are information and communications technologies (ICTs) a net creator or
destroyer of jobs?

This was the topic which more than a dozen scholars, consultants and
union officials debated in an online conference sponsored by the
International Labor Organization (ILO) from May to July this year.

 It is both

As can be expected, the discussants all acknowledged that ICT was both a
creator and a destroyer of jobs. That machines and computers are taking
over work previously done by human beings was something nobody denied.
All agreed that ICT was destroying some types of jobs. But all likewise
acknowledged that ICT introduced new ways of doing things, creating in
the process new types of work which did not exist before.

Despite very strong opinions expressed by both sides, however, they
could not agree which role dominated.

  A job creator

Some discussants asserted that ICTs create new goods and services as
well as new market opportunities and income sources. Thus, they
stimulate general economic activity, which translates into more jobs.
The new ICTs, they said, are no different in their effects from the
industrial revolution, which enhanced our productivity and improved our
living standards. Historical records since the 19th century, they added,
showed that productivity, output and jobs have all risen together.
Today, the argument goes, ICTs help businesses save money, which these
businesses then invest elsewhere, creating new jobs. There is even a
shortage of skilled ICT workers.

 ... and a job destroyer

Other dis

Re: World Bank: 200 million...

[Thomas Lunde]

--
>From: pete <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
>To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
>Subject: FW: Re: World Bank: 200 million...
>Date: Fri, Jun 4, 1999, 8:28 PM
>

>  "Thomas Lunde" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
>
>>This is a pretty complete about face from the neo-con - monetarist
>>philosophy that has been dominating us from the 70's on.  Has the world bank
>>got religion or has some re-read Kenysian Economic Theory?
>
> Since James Wolfensohn took over, the WB seems to be exchanging black
> hats for white at as rapid a rate as they dare in the face of
> political orthodoxy. With the demise of many neo-con regimes in
> G7 countries in the last couple of years, the pace has quickened.
> It is one of the things that inspires me to optimism these days.
>
>   -Pete Vincent

Thomas:

Your paragragph has sat in my E Mail - it seems like forerver.  Why?  I have
been toying with the significant man theory - though it could be a woman.
How often, for better or worse, is one person able to direct and influence
the lives of millions of people?  Think of Pol Pot or Slobovan Milosvic or
Hitler.  What would our world history have been like if they had just got
cancer?  By the same token, how have the economies of the world been changed
Keynes, Friedman, Adam Smith and a significant book that grabs the times and
changes our course.

What about others that didn't make it over the hump, Louis Reil, Fremont who
could have been President instead of Abraham Lincoln.   Or Hiliare Belloc's
book, The Servile State.

On one level, it seems that events progress from some sort of logical
planning and yet, often from a back play of history, it can be seen that a
significant person changed the whole directions of country's and its ideals.
Nelson Mandella is a good example - 27 years in prison and yet somehow,
against all odds he becomes a leader and continues to hold the highest
ideals.

What is my point - I don't know.  It's the anomaly of it that intrigues and
frustrates me.  The original post led to a comment that the World Bank is
changing, not from internal policy discussions, not from direction from the
United States or United Nations, but because one man occupies the office
that was previously held by someone else.  What happens when Alan Greenspan
has a health problem, does the world veer and devolve into economic chaos or
does the next Central Banker create the reality of a Basic Income and change
our world forever.  It often seems like whoever is appointed or elected does
not even telegrapgh the changes they instigate and yet, all of sudden their
thoughts operate somehow to make world shaking changes.

If anyone has any books  to refer, I would be interested in their titles.

Respectfully,

Thomas Lunde
> 

Re: short article on pop. & devel.

[Thomas Lunde]

--
>From: Steve Kurtz <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>

> 
> POPULATION GROWTH IS PIVOTAL ISSUE IN ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT
> by Georgie Anne Geyer
>
> WASHINGTON -- It's not working.
> For years, people who were against family planning could argue, and
> hope, and pretend, and weave tales about the glories of open grasslands
> in Kazakhstan as an answer to the world's population problem -- and some
> people listened.
> But now, in a sudden rush of new information about both population
> pressures and the Earth's sheer sustainability, we can clearly see how
> foolishly self-destructive that approach has been and continues to be.
> (snip)

Hi Steve:

I just read the article you suggested and what I found most interesting is:

The fact is that we know now what works in developing peoples and countries
to limit population growth: a reasonably non-corrupt representative
government, appropriate forms of economic freedom, a just legal system, a
wise diversification of economic resources and income, a high investment in
education, women's rights AND family planning.

Thomas:

It would seem to me, that if we know what works and the above 7 points do
not seem so drastic that we couldn't - through the UN decide that each
country must re-align their political systems, create the structures
mentioned above and solve the biggest problem facing mankind
-overpopulation.  Given the alternatives, wars, starvation, misuse of
resources, the above changes seem quite benign.

Quote:

A prime example: Arab Tunisia on the northern coast of Africa had 4 million
people in 1957 when it gained independence from France; with a strong family
planning program, it now has 9 million people and is one of the
fastest-developing countries in the world. Its neighbor Algeria also had
about 4 million in 1957; today it has 30 million people and is ensnared in
seemingly endless civil war and chaos. There are many such examples.

Thomas:

I know it has been postulated before, but I think it is time, perhaps
evolutionary to make a conscious decision to outlaw war.  If that requires a
world police force, so be it.  Law and order, good government, good use of
unsustainable resources and deliberate use of sustainable resources only
make common sense.  Forget the economies of the marketplace in which we use
a half a gallon of gas to go the the convience store to pick up a pack of
cigerattes, it's time to bring in a higher level criteria other than just we
can do it and keep the price down.

Respectfully,

Thomas Lunde
> 

Re: Durability as a means of conservation...

[Thomas Lunde]

Title: Re: Durability as a means of conservation...



Dear Barry:

I have been missing your clear voice of reason for a long time.  I have always liked your idea of durability and though to a degree, like Jay Hanson's focus, it seems like a narrow focus and after awhile gets deleted from the consciousness.  There have been a number of consistent posters who have held a theme in front of the rest of us, sometimes to our slight shame.  Forgetting, at this late hour the gentlemans name, there was a poster with a strong theme of monopoly, in fact it kept intruding on our consciousness so much we banned him - interesting.

A lot of what he said has been paraphrased by others, as well as coming true in front of our eyes via Microsoft.  The only difference was his contention, as I remember, that no monopoly charges would come up because the Dept in Charge (forget name) had no will to prosecute even though there were laws on the books.

Your ideas of durability cut right to the heart of problem - and yet your solution has the same problem as other good ideas like Direct Democracy, the sheer inertia of the current system seems hardly to respond.  Or is it inertia?  On todays E mail came a lengthy article by Susan George and the power of ideas and on Graffis, there was a detailed expose on the dioxin scare in Belgium.  Both these articles presented compelling descriptions of how good ideas get pooh poohed away in various ways.  Your idea and it's accompaning explanation is so powerful that it should be quoted much like Garret Hardin's metaphor of the Commons - a simple explantion that has within the seeds of really solving some major problems.

Anyway, the hours late and I liked your essay a lot.

Respectully,

Thomas Lunde

--
From: "Barry Brooks" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
To: "futurework" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Durability as a means of conservation...
Date: Thu, Jul 15, 1999, 5:55 AM


Sustainable Economics 

by Barry Brooks 

Introduction: 

Durability is the key to building a sustainable affluent economy.  The use of durability would be simple and painless if it didn't conflict with job creation.   Our present leaders insist that we need to produce and waste more and more forever so we can keep "workers" busy.    For the leaders of the business world durability is not seen as a means of conservation, rather it is seen as a threat to expanding sales. 

Waste is good for the economy as we define it so we have waste instead of durability.   We can have a sustainable economy, but first we must find a way to end our dependence on growth and waste.  We don't have to get bigger and bigger. 

Today's System: 

Most of us agree that we should manage the economy to do more than just providing goods and services. We also want the economy to provide enough jobs to go around.  Recently, our economy has been able to provide goods, services, and jobs even during the rapid introduction of labor saving technology. 

The market insures that producers will either use the latest labor saving automation to cut labor costs or go out of business. We have learned from experience that automation will cause unemployment if we don't consume more as we can produce more. Our adoption of automation and the corresponding need for growth have made the consumer economy a necessity. 

Since the industrial revolution, economic growth has been the key to making enough jobs. Growth has compensated for the loss of jobs due to increased use of labor saving machines and computers. Our history of economic growth explains why machines haven't caused unemployment. Machines have given us affluence instead of leisure. 

 

The Problem: 

Economic growth has been a great success in providing goods, services, and jobs, but now the economy has grown so large that it is having a negative impact on natural systems and natural resources. Our economy has reached the vast scale where it can cause the extinction of whole populations of fish, clear-cut forests, pollute most water, and dirty the global atmosphere. This problem of being too large a burden on our planet threatens the survival of all human civilizations. 

The limits to growth have become common knowledge. One response has been that we have a new goals for the economy. We would like the economy to make the best use of scarce resources. We would like to keep our wealth and have a sustainable economy too. The big question is; how can we adjust to the limits to growth without accepting a lower standard of living? 

There seems to be a dilemma in the need to stimulate the economy to make jobs which is opposed to the need to slow the economy to avoid upsetting the natural balance too much. Federal reserve policy is being used to slow the economy, while congressional tax/borrow and spend is being used to stimulate the economy. It's like driving with the brakes and the accelerator pressed together. Our inconsist

Re: sjprt article on pop. & devel.

[Thomas Lunde]

Title: Re: sjprt article on pop. & devel.



Dear Peter:

Given the carnage of war - the wasted use of resources - the brutalities of
ethnic cleansing, torture, concentration camps, I am willing to entertain
any suggestions except the one you postulate which is fear of change.  If we
get to the point where we let slogans rule our lives, I prefer Jesus's -
Love thy neightbour as you love yourself.

Think of the ol west and the lawless frontier town with it's bully's,
drunkeness, gambling and prostitution.  You elect a marshal - or appoint and
their job is to arrest and present a case for the court in which a judge
makes a decision as to whether a law has been broken.

What's so different about an international police force?  Milosovec breaks
the international law - the police force is sent in to apprehend him, if his
military tries to prevent this, the whole international community
contributes forces to overcome, challenge or face down the local military.
The bad guy is arrested, a case is prepared, a judge decides.  War is
hopefully averted.  If not, the war is created by the person charged trying
to evade arrest and the full force of the resources of the world are used to
enforce the laws of the world.

Of course, in the ol frontier town, the brothel owner, the saloon keeper,
the bully rancher boss, did not want the law, but each of them individually
became less powerful against the resources of the community and when
necessary, vigilantes or a posse - acting as a citizens militia might have
to be invoked.

To continue to allow government leaders to borrow a country into financial
servitude while loading up their Swiss bank accounts, or to tyranize a
portion of their citizenry must be considered a violation of the rights of
citizens and those who do this must be held accountable.  Once it is
stopped, then we will wonder why it was not done sooner.

Respectfully,

Thomas Lunde

--
>From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] (Peter Marks)
>To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
>Subject: Re: short article on pop. & devel.
>Date: Tue, Jul 13, 1999, 1:36 PM
>

> On Mon, 12 Jul 1999, Thomas Lunde  wrote:
>
>> I know it has been postulated before, but I think it is time, perhaps
>> evolutionary to make a conscious decision to outlaw war.  If that requires a
>> world police force, so be it.
>
> Be careful what you wish for!
>
> I doubt you're suggesting that the US should serve such a function, so are you
> thinking of a UN police force capable of policing even the US?   If so, are
> you proposing this as an experiment to see if Lord Acton was right ("Absolute
> power corrupts absolutely")?
>
> If nothing else, such concentrated power would be an irresistible magnet for
> precisely those people whose instincts that power was created to control.  The
> danger of cooptation seems insurmountable.
>
> P-)

Re: short article on pop. & devel.

[Thomas Lunde]

Dear Peter:  

You have made many points, I hesitate to say good points because I disagree
with some of them.  Without going through all your comments, I would like to
keep this at a general brainstorming rather than a nitpicking exercise.

War exists.  For many reasons - all of them justifiable to someone at
sometime at someplace.  War in all it's manifestations is the negation of
the highest human ideals of family, community, safety, security and
humaness.  It destroys property, lives, environment, hope and sanity.  At
the end of the day, all wars end, so one might reasonably ask, if it is
going to end anyway, why not stop before it begins.

Reasons for war are many, but in most cases, there is oneindividual or
several holding some particular political power, or control of a resource,
or hereditary rights, who by using their position create the conditions by
which the rest of a citizenery are convinced - or forced into military
service and who do the actual fighting.

The obvious place of intervention is against the one or few.  Not against
the military and citizenery in massive armed conflict.  So what system,
organization, methodology can be imagined that would provide intervention
before we get to the state of armies and violence.  I have postulated a
"police force" which you seem to negate as having within it vices that are
as bad or evil as war.  I disagree.

For the sake of exploration, what other means than law and police might we
choose.  Perhaps the religions of the world should submit a panel that looks
at various countries and their leadership and brings the full weight of
spiritual morality against a leader who is creating the conditions of war -
but then what, if there is no force to enforce that validation.

Perhaps, a Universal Agency which has the rights to meet with and dialog
with any ruler and challenge their assumptions and bring into the light of
public scrutiny their pathologys or in some cases legitimate reasons and the
weight of public opinion can be brought to bear on their thoughts and plans.

Perhaps a singular law against violence similar to the one in the Ten
Commandments - Thou shalt not kill, should be used as justification for
abeyance or removal from office of any leader so accused and found guilty.

Perhaps, wars should be settled by champions, ie David and Goliath contests
or by teams as it appears the Mayans did.  Certainly more civilized than
modern war.

In the past many wars were caused by races, such as the Mongols or the Huns
or the Vikings, literally appearing from nowhere, determined to conquer.  Or
by religous crusades whether Christian or Muslim.  But now, we live in a
Global Village, short of an invasion from outer space, the communications of
the 20th Century eliminates those kinds of surprises.

Many wars were territorial, but all the territories of the world are now
filled, in fact even overpopulated by any reasonable standard.  Would the
world allow territorial expansionist wars - I think not.  Iran tried it, we
wouldn't let it, Serbia and Croatia tried it and we finally decreed that
genocide and ethnic cleansing for territorial expansion is no longer
acceptable.

Of course, the elimination of war would cause the greatest depression in
economic history - all those soldiers and military suppliers would have to
shed workers like crazy which would probably collapse our economic system.
But the irony of an economic system that can only exist by preparing for
war, fighting wars and recuperating from wars, from any objective viewpoint
has to indicate a mass psychological dysfunction.

Well, those are some of my thoughts

Respectfully,

Thomas Lunde

--
>From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] (Peter Marks)
>To: "Thomas Lunde" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
>Subject: Re: short article on pop. & devel.
>Date: Fri, Jul 16, 1999, 5:01 PM
>

> Thomas,
>
>> Given the carnage of war - the wasted use of resources - the brutalities of
>> ethnic cleansing, torture, concentration camps, I am willing to entertain
>> any suggestions except the one you postulate which is fear of change.
>
> We agree on the undesirability of the techniques and artifacts of war [we
> probably agree on many other things].  We just happen to disagree on the
> desirability of one particular tactic - an international police force - for
> eliminating them.
>
>> If we get to the point where we let slogans rule our lives, I prefer Jesus's
-
>> Love thy neightbour as you love yourself.
>
> Regardless of either of our preferences, I am convinced that Lord Acton's
> has (for good or bad) withstood the test of time better than most others.
>
>> Think of the ol west and the lawless frontier town with it's bully's,
>> drunkeness, gambling and prostitution.  You elect a marshal - or appoint and
>> their job is to arrest and present a case for the court in which a j

Re: Charles Leadbetter

[Thomas Lunde]

Title: Re:  Charles Leadbetter



PS:  I assumed on first reading that Ian had written this lengthy post, it
was only after I had read it again and written my comments that I realized
it was written by Charles Leadbetter, so rather than spend the time
re-writng, please accept my apoligies Ian and to other readers please
substitute Charles where I have assumed Ian.

Dear Ian:

Great essay, thought provoking and it ties in with a lengthy essay using
similar thoughts and language as one I read by Rifkin just a few days ago on
the net.  I'm troubled with your combined visions.  Though they have a
logical consitency and hold ideas that I could certainly endorse, they are
based on several presuppositions that I am beginning to question.

In todays Citizen was a lengthy article on the "immortality cell" in which
researchers have found ways to extend the replication of skin cells from
their normal dividing life of approx 70 times to over 400 times.  They
indicate that this could increase healthy lifespan to 120 years within the
lifetime of the researchers, who I would assume are in their 50's.
Therefore, within 20 years, we may have a creme or a simple medical
treatment that would literally double the lifespan of people.  At 6 billion
people, with a doubled lifespan, we are looking at the equivalent gain of
another 6 billion people to the demographics with this development.

On the net, I read about 6 employees of the Alaska gas pipeline saying that
safety violations have created conditions for a major disaster - not a
question of how, but when they maintain.  This points to a critical problem
the whole world over.  Infrastructure is wearing out and their is no money
to replace it, whether it is bridges, sewer systems, roads or pipelines that
carry vital energy supplies to create electricity, fuel industry, and heat
homes.

Jay Hanson, continually supplies me with information in which oil will peak
in 2005 while the conventional experts extend that a meagre 5 years.  Now
matter how pollyanish a person is, regarding alternate energy sources, the
possiblity of retooling our world and refinancing an alternate source while
dealing with the extra costs of the existing system, just boggle the mind.

And then there is global warming in which much of our capital may be going
into remedial work of repairing the damage caused by a weather system going
mad.

And then there is war.  Which causes us to drop everything and focuses all
our resources on the destruction of an enemy.  The byproducts of that,
damaged human beings, pollution, infrastructure damage, best brains
redirected to finding more effective ways of killing and on and on.

And then there is mutant germs, showing up in our hospitals, large germ
warfare stocks, often in countries that can no longer be trusted to keep
them safe, or other countries who may feel driven to use them.

And then there is nuclear power, nuclear waste.

And then there is shortage of drinkable water

And then there is loss of agricultural land and topsoil.

And then there is deforestation.

And then

And

Now, none of these issues are assumed to be critical in your respective
essays.  Rather, there is the assumption that, yes, they are there but ---.
In this case, I think we had better stay in front of the but.

Ian wrote:

It is no coincidence that all the three forces I have identified are
intangible: they cannot be weighed or touched, they do not travel in railway
wagons and cannot be stockpiled in ports. The critical factors of production
in this new economy are not oil, raw materials, armies of cheap labour or
physical plants and equipment. Those traditional assets still matter but
they are a source of competitive advantage only when they are vehicles for
ideas and intelligence.

Thomas:

Plainly stated in the above paragraph is the disclaimer " traditional assets
still matter".  I would question that assumption very strongly.  I would say
that reality is stronger than knowledge and those items are the reality
through which knowledge works and that without them, knowledge ain't worth a
tinkers damn.

Ian wrote:

> Knowledge is our most precious resource: we should organise society to
> maximise its creation and use. Our aim should not be a third way, to balance
> the demands of the market against those of the community. Our aim should be
> to harness the power of both markets and community to the more fundamental
> goal of creating and spreading knowledge.

Thomas:

Knowledge may turn out to be not our most precious resource, but the very
thing that has created the conditions of the most terrible future.
>
> This article is an edited extract from Charles Leadbeater's "Living on Thin
> Air: the new economy", published this month by Viking, £17.99
>
>> http://www.newstatesman.co.uk/199907120019.htm
>>
>>
>

Gwynne Dyer Article

[Thomas Lunde]

Title: Gwynne Dyer Article



This was in Saturday's Globe and Mail.  I found it scary and enlightening and well worth a good slow read.  If there is truth here, we all better be worrying more than we are - not that it will do a damn bit of good.

Respectfully,

Thomas Lunde

The panic has passed. Long live the panic
The world economy now depends on the American economy,
which depends on Americans continuing to shop till they drop,
which depends on the performance of the stock market ...
Could it crash again?
GWYNNE DYER

Saturday, July 17, 1999
'We have come a long way," said Michel Camdessus, managing director of the International Monetary Fund, in April, only six months after U.S. President Bill Clinton described the global financial crisis as "the worst in 50 years." So is the panic really over, then?
The markets are certainly acting as if it is. The Dow Jones industrial average shook off the Russian default last October and powered on up through the 10,000 mark, 5,000 points higher than it was when Federal Reserve Bank chairman Alan Greenspan warned against "irrational exuberance" in late 1996. Even in Asia, where the crisis began with the devaluation of the Thai currency two years ago this month, stock markets are staging miraculous recoveries, and even the real economies have begun to grow again (albeit much more slowly).
And then along comes that extremely long drink of cold water, John Kenneth Galbraith, 90 years old and as non-conformist as ever, to remind us all in the rural Ontario drawl he never lost that "the most serious [problem] is the ancient and unsolved problem of instability -- of the enduring sequence of boom and bust. The speculative crash, now called a correction, has been a basic feature of the system."
Damn. We thought the "new economic paradigm" had dispensed with all that.
Speaking at the London School of Economics last month, the Harvard sage rained on everybody's parade: "In the U.S., we are having another exercise in speculative optimism, following the partial reversal of last year. We have far more people selling derivatives, index funds and mutual funds (as we call them) than there is intelligence for the task. When you hear it being said that we've entered a new era of permanent prosperity . . . you should take cover. . . . Let us not assume that the age of slump, recession, depression is past."
Double damn. Especially since Mr. Galbraith is the world's authority on the last great depression (which, it should be remembered, came out of a clear blue sky).
In his seminal work, The Great Crash of 1929,Mr. Galbraith quotes one of the leading market analysts of the time, Professor Charles Amos Dice, who wrote just before the crash: "Led by these mighty knights of the automobile industry, the steel industry, the radio industry and finally joined, in despair, by many professional traders who, after much sack-cloth and ashes, had caught the vision of progress, the Coolidge market has gone forward like the phalanxes of Cyrus, parasang upon parasang, and again parasang upon parasang."
Prof. Dice's rhetorical flourish, which resonates oddly in the modern mind (haven't we heard this sort of talk somewhere else recently?), is a useful point of departure, because it lets us focus on what is the same, and what is different, between the current situation and that of early 1929. Not that a 1929 comes along very often, but even eight months ago some very serious players were scared that we were heading in that direction again. Some of them still are.
Not all market crashes lead to depressions, or even recessions, but the present situation is worrisome for two reasons. First, because this will be the first time we have a speculative crisis in a fully fledged and almost completely deregulated global market where everything connects to everything else. What happens to the Chinese yuan can have a direct and immediate impact not only on the stock markets, but also on the economies of all the developed countries.
Secondly, it is only the U.S. economy, still growing with astonishing speed eight years into the boom, that stands between the world and, at the least, a severe global recession. In a world where Europe has low growth, Japan has no growth, and the fragile recoveries in South-East Asia, Latin America and other "emerging markets" desperately need customers, the United States is the "consumer of last resort."
American consumers have risen gallantly to the task -- so much so that they are now spending 4 per cent more than they earn, and the U.S. balance-of-payments deficit doubled from $155-billion in 1997 to $310-billion last year. But their willingness to borrow and spend is intimately linked to the sense of prosperity they get from a rapidly rising stock market. So a crash could have much bigger effects than in "normal" times.
We are in unknown waters here

Re: Getting Something for Nothing

[Thomas Lunde]

Dear Tom:

I have read this quote several times.  Not easy to grasp the essentials but
as I read it, the author is saying that the whole concept of wages for
labour is based on a fallacy - that it cannot be so!

The reason, as I grok it, is that the energy it takes to maintain a human
life exceeds the amount of productivity that a persons labour will produce.

The conclusion is that until we add in the externalities of the "free"
energy which is more or less equally distributed on the Earth's surface as a
fact, whether the life in question is a billionare or a panhandler, the
concept of wages for labour is a shell game.

Can I take this to mean that in a "true" economic system, a Basic Income of
the equivalent free energy is given to every human being?  And following
from that any additional productivity can then be added to this monetized
Basic Income so that those who produce something recieve additional too
their Basic Income.

Rather than the current situation as basically advocated by the neo-con
mindset that if you don't work, you starve.  In other words he is saying no
one starves because everyone gets their share and some reduced amount who
chose to devote time to producing goods and services then get more.

In essence, then, this monetary payment for free energy would be added into
every product or service and that sum would be set aside to pay the Basic
Income?  As I said, this is not easy to grasp in reality, though I like his
debunking of the current explanations.

Help me out Tom,

Thomas Lunde
> GETTING SOMETHING FOR NOTHING
>
> "In the distribution to the public of the products of industry, the failure
> of the present system is the direct result of the faulty premise upon which
> it is based. This is: that somehow a man is able by his personal services to
> render to society the equivalent of what he receives, from which it follows
> that the distribution to each shall be in accordance with the services
> rendered and that those who do not work must not eat. This is what our
> propagandists call `the impossibility of getting something for nothing.'
>
> "Aside from the fact that only by means of the sophistries of lawyers and
> economists can it be explained how, on this basis, those who do nothing at
> all frequently receive the largest shares of the national income, the simple
> fact is that it is impossible for any man to contribute to the social system
> the physical equivalent of what it costs that system to maintain him from
> birth till death -- and the higher the physical standard of living the
> greater is this discrepancy. This is because man is an engine operating
> under the limitations of the same physical laws as any other engine. The
> energy that it takes to operate him is several times as much as any amount
> of work he can possibly perform. If, in addition to his food, he receives
> also the products of modern industry, this is due to the fact that material
> and energy resources happen to be available and, as compared with any
> contribution he can make, constitute a free gift from heaven.
>
> "Stated more specifically, it costs the social system on the North American
> Continent the energy equivalent to nearly 10 tons of coal per year to
> maintain one man at the average present standard of living, and no
> contribution he can possibly make in terms of the energy conversion of his
> individual effort will ever repay the social system the cost of his social
> maintenance. It is not to be wondered at, therefore, that a distributive
> mechanism based upon so rank a fallacy should fail to distribute; the marvel
> is that it has worked as well as it has.
>
> "Since any human being, regardless of his personal contribution, is a social
> dependent with respect to the energy resources upon which society operates,
> and since every operation within a given society is effected at the cost of
> a degradation of an available supply of energy, this energy degradation,
> measured in appropriate physical units such as kilowatt-hours, constitutes
> the common physical cost of all social operations. Since also the
> energy-cost of maintaining a human being exceeds by a large amount his
> ability to repay, we can abandon the fiction that what one is to receive is
> in payment for what one has done, and recognize that what we are really
> doing is utilizing the bounty that nature has provided us. Under these
> circumstances we recognize that we all are getting something for nothing,
> and the simplest way of effecting distribution is on a basis of equality,
> especially so when it is considered that production can be set equal to the
> limit of our capacity to consume, commensurate with adequate conservation of
> our physical resources."
> regards,
>
> Tom Walker
> http://www.vcn.bc.ca/timework/worksite.htm
> 

FW: Welcome to the Future!

[Thomas Lunde]

arine mammals, such as walrus and sea
lion populations. 

The tour is part of our campaign to stop new oil exploration in the Arctic, the last frontier, but at the same time one of the last crumbs on the global plate! 

"one of the last crumbs on the global plate!"  Yep folks, that's the semi official statement!  All the easy fields have been discovered - all the hard fields have been utilized, we are now down to the crumbs of petroleum energy reserves and you can guess what the cost is of discovering and opening up these kinds of resources.  But the kicker still comes from Jay, what if it costs more energy to get that crumb than is in the crumb itself - God forbid we may actually have to start dealing with reality instead of economics here.

Citizen:

Since last December the price for a barrel of West Texas intermediate crude oil, the industry benchmark, has gone from $11.30 to the $20 range.
 
Peak demand from motorists during the summer travel season is also pushing up prices at the pumps, Mr. Hawley said. 

But while the two factors might contribute to an upward trend in gas prices, they do not explain the radical jump in prices virtually overnight. Instead, the sudden increase is being attributed to the end of a price war among retailers.

Thomas:

"radical jump in prices."  I wonder what the reaction would be if there was a real radical jump in prices, let's say a doubling as all of a sudden we woke up to realize that the primary energy source of our civilization has been squandered due to low subsidized prices manipulated by oil companies and legislators for short term economic and politcal gain.  The day that happens, I would not like to be the Party in power - think back to 1973 and the anger and the gas lineups.  Only this time it won't be temporary.  In fact, a vehicle without fuel is a pretty clumsy boat anchor and we don't even have horses to make Bennet buggies andymore. 

Citizen:

"It's part of the normal cycle of ups and downs," said Mr. Knipping, adding that he expects prices will go down again shortly. 
Indeed, consumer reprieve might be on the horizon. The price of crude oil fell five per cent in yesterday's trading. The decrease represented the biggest drop in two months, after a Venezuelan oil official said the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries should increase output if New York oil futures reach $22 a barrel.

Thomas:

Ah, the warm cozy reassurances from officialdom.  And then the reality, the oil producing countries will probably allow more oil into the market if oil futures reach $22 per barrel.  I would guess that it won't be long before those with reserves wake up and realize that $44 per barrel has a nicer ring in the cash register than $22.  Capitalism thrives on shortages, that is where the biggest profits lie.  Once it starts, we will probably find that governments cannot stop it, in fact, because they will profit as well, they will issue us placebo's while at the same time reap in the extra taxes.  Gee, it's August, 1999.  I wonder what gasoline will be worth in August of 2000.  Just think if a few oil tankers and pipelines get sidelined via Y2K - perfect justification for price increases - right?

Respectfully,

Thomas Lunde 

Re: Durability as a means of conservation...

[Thomas Lunde]

Thomas:

Again, I find these comments having something to say that relates to
Arthur's Posting on used clothes.

--
>From: tom abeles <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>

>

> Durability is an interesting idea, let me puzzle on it and get your
> thoughts
>
> First, non-durability or a short half-life seems to be a very recent
> invention along with the idea of the "modern". Probably starting in the
> late 30's along with the 1939 World's Fair as discussed so brilliantly
> by David Gelernter in his book, 1939, The Lost World of the Fair. We
> were to be blessed with technology to cure all our ills and bring
> utopia. Only utopia never came. But like the carrot tied to the milk
> horse, there was always the promise that the next version would be the
> final solution...and the next... and the next where most "nexts" were
> more cosmetic than actual changes... and still utopia eludes is

Thomas:

It seems from the above paragraph, we are in some science fiction timeline
in which the reason why we keep doing what we are doing has been forgotten
and no one has the time to think about it, we just have to keep replicating
the formula - next, and next, and next  till we collapse.  Sort of like
mice on a treadmill in a laboratory experiment.

Tom
>
> Non durability is the Myth of the eternal hope that humans with
> technology can find the optimum solution

Thomas:

The optimum solution - the final solution - the mind wanders in this maze of
what if...

Tom:
>
> Durability is a smooke screen and a misdirection from the larger issue
> and the hard questions
>
Thomas:

I can see the insight in your statement.  The solution of durability
requires more definition - such as value of items - need, equity and future
responsibility.  And though Barry has mentioned these, they perhaps need to
be emphasized even more.

Respectfully,

Thomas Lunde
> thoughts?
>
> tom abeles
>
> 

Re: Charles Leadbetter

[Thomas Lunde]

--
>From: "Brad McCormick, Ed.D." <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
>To: Steve Kurtz <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>

> I think we need also to add the enormous entropy of the
> obsolescence of knowledge.  This is sometimes stated
> more "positively" as a shortening "half-life" of
> knowledge, so that by the time an engineer has
> been out of college 10 years, 50% of what (s)he
> learned is no longer current (or whatever the exact numbers
> are in each case).  (The especial affront of this is that
> it is not a consequence of "natural processes" outside
> human control, but of human symbolizing activity.)
Thomas:

I had just finished my reply to Arthur's Posting re used clothing and was
rereading some of the Posts when your comments jumped off the screen.  The
problem as you have noted is greater even than just material goods, or
waste.  It is also within our knowledge base.  Just recently, I was reading
a posting about all the early computer tapes, discs, hard drives, etc that
we are losing for two reasons, one the storage devices are deteriotating and
two we are losing the disk drives, operating systems, formats, in which this
knowledge was stored.  Why is this happening?  Like material goods, it seems
to be a by product of capitalism and continual growth.

We may very well become in a position of an advanced society in which there
is very little knowledge of how we got there and should there ever be a
discontinuity - such as an atomic war, plague or other catasrophe, we may
have destroyed the very resources and knowledge we would need to regain our
then current position.

There is also the problem, as you pointed out of continual learning.  It
sounds great, but it ain't easy and as you get a little older, the idea is
not to keep learning as it is to take what is learned and act wisely from
it.

Respectfully,

Thomas Lunde

Re: Rifkin - some final words

[Thomas Lunde]

--
>From: "Cordell, Arthur: DPP" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
 
> Much of my thinking and angst is to develop ways in which the broad
> middle class can continue to be a broad middle class.

Thomas:

I would reference my answer here to todays posting on used clothing from
you.  The fact that the conditions of the article exist - result largely
from your broad middle class.  If the results of having that class are the
conditions of waste and surplus described, then I would question whether a
middle class is a good thing.  What could go in it's place?  Perhaps a much
more equilitarian class so that there was no poor at the bottom, no rich at
the top and the middle class became - at whatever level sustainable - the
class.

Arthur:

It seems to be an admission of failure to turn to citizens in other, less
developed, countries for lessons in life skills.

Thomas:

Previous to our colonization of much of the world, there were many societies
that existed for long periods of time using life skills that allowed them to
exist within their enviroment and find happiness, peace and personal growth.
That most of our society does not have those things, might indicate that our
society is the aberrant one - not theirs.

Arthur:

> This, it seems, is something we wish to avoid.  A middle class, replete
> with careers, etc. has been a core element in creating and maintaining
> social cohesion.

Thomas:

I would question this assumption.  I would not think our society could be
held up as one having social cohesion.  First, it has existed for a very
short period of time.  Second, within our society are a great many stresses
and strains which we do not seem to have solutions for.

Arthur:

A lot of workers gave up a lot so that citizens in the
> developed countries could have many aspects of universality.  Sure, with
> globalization there will be continuing pressures to harmonize downward.
> I would question these pressures and argue that gloabalization is really
> about trying to get others to move upaward: in environmental laws,
> health and workplace safety, potable water, univeral literacy, etc. etc.
> etc.

Thomas:

To just give one small example of the negative effects of globalization,
which I'm sure you are aware off.  We buy agricultural products from Third
World Countries at prices that make them use their land for export income at
the expense of food for their own population.  The high ideals you postulate
just do not happen at the level of the marketplace - in my opinion.

Arthur:
>
> There is a certain fatalism in Ed's posting, a certain feeling that
> market forces have brought us here and the same forces will bring some
> sort of resolution.
>
> If we know that a problem is developing, one for which there may be a
> menu of possible remedies, it is , I believe, incumbent on policy
> analysts to develop and maintain such remedies ready for thoughtful
> hearing and analysis when conditions are appropriate and when the
> political voice has identified the appropriate time and mustered
> sufficient courage.

Thomas:

While the learned gentleman, supping well and having an after dinner drink
of fine wine, discuss the world, some mother in a third world country is
watching her baby die from diarehha.  This could be prevented with a saline
solution, a sterile needle and a plastic bag.  The problems are immediate,
urgent, desperate and the answers are mostly available.  We don't have a
shortage of food, we have a rotten distribution system.  And on and on.  The
courage you speak of - in my mind - exists in those who suffer and
continually try, not in someone who is afraid to speak up because it may
affect his career.

A classic example of misdirection of resources has just happened this week
with JFK Jr.  Think of the resources that have been expended to find this
young man's body so it can be buried.  The airspace and TV time, the wages
to reporters and anchormen, the learned pundits brought forth to wax sadly
about the Kennedy family.  Then think of all those Americans with Gulf War
Syndrome, who cannot even get their own government to recognize their pain.

Excuse my rant Arthur, it is not directed at you, but I think we have to
stop being nice about injustice and incompetence.

Respectfully,

Thomas Lunde
>
> arthur cordell

Re: used clothes

[Thomas Lunde]

Thomas:

I thought I would immediately judge this as bad, given my predeliction
towards simplicty.  However, as I read it through, I found myself with
conflicting pro's and con's.  On the one hand, it is a classical example of
Reagan's trickle down theory, in that somewhere down the line of excessive
consumption, the poor actually benefit by having access to clothes that they
could never afford.  And if there was not this surplus, those lives would be
more difficult and impoverished.

On the other hand, one must question a system of production, advertising,
distribution that is obviously so wasteful.  At some level, my mind is
stunned by these images the article described, even though I use second hand
clothes.  The only other image I can think of that has impacted me so
strongly is waste disposal.  In which pictures of barges filled with garbage
are towed out to sea and dumped or semi trailers are taking garbage from New
York to Virgina and filling massive landfills.

In a recent book I was reading, there were graphic depictions of animal
farms in Georgia and North Carolina in which animals are raised by the
thousands and effluent ponds are so large and smelly that whole counties
literally reek from the smell.

In the concept of markets, being the best mechanism for supplying goods and
services, one wonders were we leave the sane and responsible and enter into
the netherlands of excessive and destructive.  If this is happening in 1999,
one has to ask what the situation might be like in 2030 or 2100?

At some point there must be a place where intelligent planning is more
effective than market forces.  The question is; "How do we get from here to
there?"

Respectfully,

Thomas Lunde

--
>From: "Cordell, Arthur: DPP" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
>To: Futurework <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
>Subject: used clothes
>Date: Thu, Jul 22, 1999, 2:50 PM
>

> I am forwarding this piece from the NY Times.  It says something about our
> economy and maybe globalization, but I am puzzled whether its 'good' or
> 'bad' or 'both'.
>
> arthur cordell
>
> =
>
>
>  Monday, July 19, 1999
>
>
> Prosperity Builds Mounds of Cast-Off Clothes
>
> The New York Times
>
>Publication Date: Monday July 19, 1999
>National Desk; Section A; Page 1, Column 1
>
>
>PROVIDENCE, R.I. -- Hour by hour, cars and trucks back up to the
> Salvation  Army's warehouse loading dock on the edge of the prosperous East
> Side here and  disgorge clothing. Skirts and parkas, neckties and tank tops,
> sweat pants and  socks, a polychromatic mountain of clothes is left each
> week, some with price  tags still attached.
>
>Inside the warehouse, workers cull the clean and undamaged clothes,
> roughly 1  piece in 5, to give to the poor or to sell at thrift shops. They
> feed the rest  -- as much as four million pounds a year -- into mighty
> machines that bind them  into 1,100-pound, 5-foot-long bales. Rag dealers
> buy the bales for 5 cents a  pound and ship them off to countries like Yemen
> and Senegal.
>
>Nearly a decade of rising prosperity has changed the ways that Americans
> view  and use clothing, so much so that cast-off clothes have become the
> flotsam of  turn-of-the-century affluence. Americans bought 17.2 billion
> articles of  clothing in 1998 -- a 16 percent increase over 1993, according
> to the NPG Group,  a market research concern in Port Washington, N.Y. -- and
> gave the Salvation  Army alone several hundred million pieces, well over
> 100,000 tons.
>
>And because so few people make or mend their clothes anymore, among the
> changes has been this one, in 1998: The Bureau of Labor Statistics moved
> sewing  machines from the ''apparel and upkeep'' category of consumer
> spending to  ''recreation.''
>
>The clothing glut is a boon to the many charities like the Salvation Army
> that sort and sell old clothes. ''You choke on sweaters,'' said Capt. Thomas
> E.  Taylor, administrator of the Salvation Army's Providence center, one of
> the  three or four busiest of the organization's 119 across the country. No
> one in  the United States, Captain Taylor said, need ever go without being
> properly  dressed.
>
>At the warehouse, Judy Keegan was unloading a cargo of dresses, jeans and
> shirts.
>
>''I do this regularly,'' Ms. Keegan, who has four children, ages 6 to 15,
> said of giving away family clothing. ''I grew up with hand-me-downs, but if
> they  need something, we go buy it.''
>
>Joanna Wood, a social worker who was choking on linens, brought in a
> blanket  and comforter.
>
>'

Re: Cdn brain drain confirmed - in National Article - Jul 21 (fwd)

[Thomas Lunde]

>10th spot in the world of competitiveness. Maybe allowing our best to leave
>>the country is a humanitarian gesture, for if we kept our best at home, we
>>might be the most competive nation on Earth - whatever that means.
>>
>>Report states:
>>>
>> However, the IMD report gives Canada a poor score  for high personal income
>>taxes it suggests discourages individual work initiative. Canada ranked 35th
>>for low tax rates, while the U.S. ranked 7th. Hong Kong was the star
>>performer in keeping taxes low.
>>
>>Thomas:
>>
>>Now, let me see if I've got this right.  Mr. Brain goes to work, but
>>sometime during the day, he reflects on his personal tax load, so instead of
>>finishing the equation he was working on or reading the report he was
>>gathering information from, he suddenly is discouraged and his personal
>>initiative drops and he takes his Playboy magazine out of his desk for a
>>quick side trip into an unproductive pursuit.  Doesn't anyone in this world
>>of airy fairy reports have any sense?
>>
>>Oops, I just felt a drop in my individual initiative.  I will have to
>>terminate these comments, I feel the pressure of the tax load bearing down
>>on me and I feel I must protest by becoming unproductive.
>>
>>Respectfully,
>>
>>Thomas Lunde
>>
>>>
>>
>
> Michael Gurstein, Ph.D.
> ** NOTE ** New E-Mail as of Sept. 1, 1999 [EMAIL PROTECTED]
> ECBC/NSERC/SSHRC Associate Chair in the Management of Technological Change
> Director:  Centre for Community and Enterprise Networking (C\CEN)
> University College of Cape Breton, POBox 5300, Sydney, NS, CANADA B1P 6L2
> Tel.  902-563-1369 (o)   902-562-1055 (h)   902-562-0119 (fax)
> [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://ccen.uccb.ns.ca   ICQ: 7388855
> 

Some sanity Planning

[Thomas Lunde]

Title: Some sanity Planning



Thomas:

This, to me, is an example of the right use of planning.  Not only does it work economically by reducing the taxes through lower spending, but it provides a hands on experience for the students of proper environmental design at a most effective and impressionable time in the life of future adults.  Much of our knowledge comes from books and teaching/learning - true.  And much comes from the environment in which we grow up.  I know that much of my sense of what's right comes from my childhood on the farm, traveling across North America on family vacations, playing in schoolyards, going to government parks and camping.  I try to replicate some of my memories for my children, but for many kids, it is daycare while mom and dad work, eviction from schoolyards because there is no supervision, TV propagating mindless social values such as Friends and The Simpsons.

Respectfully,

Thomas Lunde



   EarthVision Reports
   07/21/99

   LOS ANGELES, July 21, 1999 - The enormously expansive Los Angeles
   Unified School District is giving itself an expensive facelift -
   tearing out thousands of acres of asphalt at hundreds of campuses and
   replacing it with grass and trees. Each school, according to an
   article published today in The Los Angeles Times, is developing its
   own landscaping plan. The district is footing the bill of about $190
   million, money that is partly from a 1997 school construction bond and
   partly from the Department of Water and Power's Cool Schools program.
   
   Concurrent to all the "greening," the district has also launched a
   program it is calling "sustainable schools," a term meant to suggest
   that each campus should produce its own energy, collect its own water
   and feed its own students. Although those lofty goals are not likely
   to happen anytime soon, The Times said in the article that each school
   will work hard to "become less of a drag on public resources." Some of
   the options currently being considered are solar panels on rooftops to
   generate electricity, and cisterns to capture rainwater for
   irrigation. The district is even considering building tunnels under
   classrooms to bathe the students in air cooled to the constant
   55-degree underground temperature.
   
   According to the article, the main inspiration for the Los Angeles
   initiative is the sketchbooks of Scott Wilson, a landscape architect
   and environmental visionary who is the founder of North East Trees, an
   organization that has planted thousands of trees across California's
   Arroyo Seco basin in the last decade.
   Associated Link:
   [1]North East Trees
   1. http://www.treelink.org/act/mem/netree.htm

   2. http://204.255.211.112/ColdFusion/news_top10.cfm?start=1

How interesting NAFTA may be found to be illegal!

[Thomas Lunde]

Title: How interesting NAFTA may be found to be illegal!



Thomas:

The things you find on the Internet are truly amazing.  I have not seen one word of this in the press or magazines I often review - and yet here is a time bomb that has been building while we have been worrying about Princess Di and JFK Jr. untimely demises.  

Respectfully,

Thomas Lunde

From: Mark Graffis <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>


Thursday, July 22, 1999

Obscure Lawsuit Could Alter U.S. Trade Policy
By EVELYN IRITANI, Los Angeles Times

Trade advocates are bracing for a ruling by a federal judge in Alabama
in a little-noticed lawsuit whose outcome could dramatically alter the
way the U.S. has conducted its trade policy over four decades. Sometime
in the next few weeks, U.S. District Judge Robert Propst is expected to
rule in a labor-backed lawsuit challenging the constitutionality of the
landmark North American Free Trade Agreement. The case has attracted
the attention of some of the nation's top legal scholars. Although a
finding of unconstitutionality would not undo the 1993 pact, it could
make it more difficult for the United States to commit itself to future
international endeavors and cast doubt on the legitimacy of a host of
other global agreements, according to Bruce Ackerman, one of the
nation's leading constitutional scholars. "It would destabilize the
existing system of international law," said the Yale University
professor. "It would be difficult to declare NAFTA unconstitutional
without calling into question our commitment to the WTO, the World Bank
and many, many other economic arrangements."

Such a scenario would also put the U.S. in the uncomfortable position
of being committed under international law to a trade agreement that
its own courts ruled in violation of its founding document.  "This is a
Rod Serling plot," said Robert Stumberg, an international law expert at
Georgetown University's Harrison Institute for Public Law. "We [would
now have] entered the twilight zone, where an agreement that is binding
on the U.S.  vis-a-vis the rest of the world cannot be enforced
internally."

The case itself turns on the relatively narrow question of whether
NAFTA, which links the economies of the U.S., Canada and Mexico in a
giant free-trade zone, is a trade agreement or a treaty.  That question
has historically been decided on a case-by-case basis as legal scholars
and politicians debated when a pact has a broad enough impact to meet
the higher test of a treaty.  During the first 150 years of U.S.
history, most of this country's major foreign policy commitments were
forged through treaties, according to Ackerman. But after World War II,
when international trade exploded, leaders began relying more heavily
on some form of congressional-executive branch agreement rather than
treaties to facilitate more commercial growth.  Between 1930 and 1992,
the United States ratified 891 treaties and 13,178 international
agreements, the government said.  The plaintiffs--the Made in the USA
foundation, a coalition of domestic manufacturers and unions, and the
United Steelworkers of America--argue that NAFTA's scope qualifies it
as a treaty that, under the U.S. Constitution, required ratification by
a two-thirds vote of the Senate, instead of the simple majority of both
houses of Congress that favored it.

The Clinton administration insists NAFTA is not a treaty but a
congressional executive agreement, a common tool in U.S.  trade policy
that requires the approval of a simple majority of both houses.  The
administration maintains that even if the plaintiffs win their
constitutional challenge, NAFTA would remain in place because the U.S.
is bound under international law to honor its commitments to foreign
governments.  "Under international law, we are not allowed to say,
'Sorry, Mexico, sorry, Canada, we didn't do this right,'" Justice
Department attorney Martha Rubio argued in court earlier this year.
Given the stakes, a successful challenge to NAFTA is likely to be tied
up in appeals for years as it wends its way to the Supreme Court,
according to trade lawyers--and to create a long period of uncertainty
for U.S. trade policy.  This legal skirmish is just the latest effort
by globalization critics to slow the Clinton administration's campaign
to open markets around the world. With the U.S. trade deficit headed
for another record year, unions and other groups are counting on
lawsuits, shareholder activism and old-fashioned protests to draw
attention to their concerns over job loss and erosion of national
sovereignty.

In spite of the robust U.S. economy and near-record low unemployment,
the Clinton administration has had a tough time convincing voters that
free-trade agreements such as NAFTA are in their best interests.  The
administration gives NAFTA credit for boosting trade between the U.S.
and its NAFTA neighbors by more than 44% and creating

Re: Marx, Keynes and Ancestors

[Thomas Lunde]

evant in modern-day practice and that no amount of artificial
> encouragement (unless it be for the tourist trade) will save it. New
> customs will arise in due course, and those will be respected, too.

Thomas:

Sad but true, in many cases.  However there is hope.  We recently divided
the NorthWest Territories to create Nanoviuk (Sp) which is the first
Province in the World, to my knowledge, which creates a political and
physical state based on the ethnicity of First Nations people, probably
because the North is too harsh for the whiteman.  With Inuit and Natives in
charge finally of their political destiny, we may see an adaption of their
orginal understandings and the modern world create something very different
that any of us could project.  (PS) Though it took a hundred years, I would
ask you to note that it was done peaceably.

Respectfully,

Thomas Lunde
>
> Keith
>
>
>
>
>
> At 09:27 25/07/99 +, you wrote:
>>
>>
>>--
>>>From: Keith Hudson <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
>>
>>
>>
>>> I'm not so sure about all this.  I used to think the same as Ed.  I think,
>>> now, that this point of view romanticises our ancestors. I rather think
>>> that if their society had been as natural/stable/satisfying as is often
>>> implied then it would have been a great deal more robust when faced with
>>> modern society.
>>
>>Thomas:
>>
>>It is not that their society was not robust.  It was, in my opinion, that
>>disease knocked the robustness out of their society.  I think we often skim
>>over the effects of what might happen to a culture when %30 - %90 die.
>>There was no way to fight the disease's of white culture - they mysteriously
>>came, decimated families, tribal groups, specialized skills and left the
>>remainder in a state of shock and forced to survive at the most primitive
>>level.
>>
>>At the same time, a culture that valued land through ownership,
>>disenfranchised their tradional ways, isolated them to reservations, made
>>promise they did not keep and exploited them shamelessly.
>>
>>And finally, there was gunpowder.
>>
>>Keith wrote:
>>
>>True, in many places, indigenous society and modern
>>> settlers both needed the same land and couldn't possibly co-exist, but in
>>> many other places the original culture could have survived more or less
>>> intact if they'd wanted it to.  Instead, when faced with all the gewgaws
>>> and temptations (including strong liquor) that modern man had to offer,
>>> then most indigenous societies folded up quite quickly -- voluntarily, as
>>> it were.
>>
>>Thomas:
>>
>>I find this most patronizing.  Settlers did not "need" the land, they wanted
>>the land to create wealth.  The Indians, in many cases were willing to share
>>but the white man wanted exclusive ownership.   As to their susceptability
>>to temptations, look in our own back yard at alcholism, drug abuse - not
>>only among the poor, but among our professional classes as well, cocaine is
>>not a poor man's drug.
>>
>>As to folding up, as you put it, I would choose to say overwhelmed by sheer
>>numbers.  Just as parts of England have been overwhelmed by immigration from
>>previous colonial peoples.
>>
>>What I would say is that they often survived despite these crippling
>>situations and in many cases have competed with us and succeeded.  The
>>culture of the Native North American Indians is growing, adapting, changing
>>the ways of European immigrants today.  I respect them immensely.
>>
>>Respectfully,
>>
>>Thomas Lunde
>>
>>> 
>>>
>>> Keith Hudson, General Editor, Handlo Music, http://www.handlo.com
>>> 6 Upper Camden Place, Bath BA1 5HX, England
>>> Tel: +44 1225 312622;  Fax: +44 1225 447727; mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]
>>> 
>>>
>>
>>
> 
>
> Keith Hudson, General Editor, Handlo Music, http://www.handlo.com
> 6 Upper Camden Place, Bath BA1 5HX, England
> Tel: +44 1225 312622;  Fax: +44 1225 447727; mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]
> 
> 

Re: Marx, Keynes and Ancestors

[Thomas Lunde]

-- 


--
>From: "Ed Weick" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
>To: "Thomas Lunde" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>, "Keith Hudson" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
>Subject: Re: Marx, Keynes and Ancestors
>Date: Mon, Jul 26, 1999, 10:17 PM
>

> Just a couple of points on Thomas Lunde's response to Keith Hudson:  Point
> one is that one should not romanticize American aboriginal people.  Prior to
> contact, they were enormously diverse, many peaceable, many warlike, some
> with very advanced cultures, others comparatively backward.  In many cases,
> they did not like each other.  Warfare, exacting tribute and the taking of
> slaves was not at all uncommon.  The conquest of Mexico by Cortez was as
> much a rebellion against the Aztecs by tributary states as a military
> victory by the Spaniards.

Thomas:

Given that I agree with most of this critique and I agree that I often speak
as if the First Nations were a homogenous group, I know they were not and
that there was continual warfare between Indians and Eskimos and various
Indian groupings.  And yes, I am guilty of jumping around from the highly
developed and large groupings of Eastern Canada to the more sparsely settled
and nomadic groups in areas more difficult to survive in.

Ed wrote:
>
> Point two is that Nunavut is a territory defined by legislation.  If it were
> a province, it would have to be entrenched in the Canadian Constitution, a
> much more difficult thing to do.  Moreover, the Government of Nunavut is a
> public government, not an ethnic one.  That it will be dominated by Inuit
> arises from the fact that some 80% of the population is Inuit.  There is
> nothing preventing non-Inuit from becoming members of the legislative
> assembly if they can get enough votes.  Much of the bureaucracy  will, for
> some time to come, consist of non-Inuit, though Inuit will no doubt become
> more representative as they develop management and professional skills.

Thomas:

I, conversely, expect that in fifty years this territory will evolve with a
distinct cultural identity that will reflect native experience rather than
just another legal entity in Canada.
>
> Personally, I'm skeptical about Nunavut's future.  It does not have much of
> a resource base, though there are potential diamond mines.  Its population
> of some 20,000 is not very well educated by Canadian standards and there are
> many social problems.  For quite some time, the major industry will be
> government, and the major source of government revenue will be transfers
> from the Government of Canada, and we know that he who pays the piper calls
> the tune even if he pretends not to do so.  Anyhow, that is my take on the
> situation.
>
> Ed Weick

Thomas:

The social problems you allude to are real.  They have been caused primarily
by our imposition of the money system in trade, the blatant use of alchol
and the interference from a southern bureacracy that knew little and learned
less, to say nothing of the imposition of the Christian religion and it's
effect through reservation schools and the destroying of the spiritual
culture that existed among the Native peoples.  Despite all this, I still
have faith that a people that have thrived in one of the harshest portions
of the Earth will overcome the handicaps we, the Canadians, the Hudson Bay
Company, the Church's have imposed on them.

Respectfully,

Thomas Lunde
> 

Re: Marx, Keynes and Ancestors second of II

[Thomas Lunde]

Thomas:

I will be cruel.  Without experience there is not understanding.  Without
feeling there is no wisdom.  Western man objectivies everything and very
little touchs him.  People study religion, they do not practise religion.
People study anthropology, they do not sit in the woods and feel the world.
People argue about abstractions, they do not test their arguments in
reality.

To know about nudity, you have to take your clothes off.  To know about
hunger you have to experience not eating.  To know about spiritual
experience you have to have some.  To know about trade, you have to trade.
In the west, we do not trade, we buy and sell.  The difference is we
objectify every value into the mathematics of money.  The "trader" arguing
with the native over the value of a beaver pelt imposed objectivity on the
trade - discounting the experience of traveling through the woods, setting
traps, removing the life of an animal, scraping the skin, feeling the
texture and beauty of nature expressed in the fur.  Discounting the stories
of the beaver and their relationship with the native and the exchange of
learning that each had from the spirit of the other.

Trade is about the exchange of values.  Western man imposes values based not
on use or creation, but on potential profit.  The capitalist defines the
rules.  The question is, "why should we play their game?"  We play the game
because the capitalist holds something we might value or aspire to own and
he sets the terms of it's price.  In most cases, the capitalist did not make
the knive or the gun but was able to buy that labour and craftsmanship
because they held the power of food and shelter.  They did this through
political systems that have the ultimate power of physical force behind
them.

Capitalism, as we in West know it, did not develop among indigeous people
because the food supply was always free.  Any native could set a snare,
start a fire and harden a stick to make a spear, pick a berry or dig a root
or catch a fish.  Any native could sleep in a leanto, make a tent or brush
shelter, build an igloo, drink water from the lake or stream.  Yes, that
food or shelter may not have met the standards of comfort we expect today
but it allowed them that rarest of values - true freedom.  Therefore, trade
was about exchanges inherent in the object being traded - not objectified
into an arbritrary monetary number enforced by force.

As I watch Ray, twist and turn, trying to use references, scholarship and
comments on his experiences to try and penetrate the objectivity of the
Western mind, I feel his spirit contracting like a wild animal forced to
come to terms with a cage.  A the same time I sense the nobility of the
spirit that tries to communicate values, relationships, experiences and
histories that come from his experiences - from his families experiences,
from his tribes experiences, from his race's experiences.

We, temporarily, are the conquerers.  That does not invalidate other truths,
it just means that in the long wheel of history, at this moment our thought,
our rules, our perspective is dominate.  Like most conquerer's we have the
arrogance of rightness - after all, science, rationalism, logic, capitalism,
military prowess, legal traditions are the proof of our rightness - right?

What don't we have?  We don't have spirit - we study the cosmos, we don't
experience the cosmos.  We talk of freedom and rights - but we don't have
freedom and rights except in the narrowest of definitions.  You do not have
the right to take food from the Earth or to use a portion of the Earth for
shelter - except within the rules.  Our government makes decisions for us,
creates regulations that define our behavior, create mazes we must go
through to recieve benefits, be they education or welfare.  The native in
the Council could listen and speak and then decide for himself whether to
particpate.  We do not have a standard of honesty, of respect for the truth.
Our truth, is the truth of self service.  We conceal what embarrases us, we
distort what prevents our success - how many resumes do you think are
truthful?

I am going to close this posting with a Graffis posting that perfectly
expresses the values of the West, that exemplifies the distortions we have
created because we have moved out of balance with the Earth and because it
points so succinctly towards the seeds of our civilizations downfall.

Respectfully,

Thomas Lunde

From: Mark Graffis <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>


New market for old farts ?? Free trade or protection?

Observer (London) Sunday July 25, 1999

Q: What causes as much air pollution as power station chimneys? A: Pig
farms

ROBIN MCKIE on how scientists have found nitrogen produced by manure on
animal farms is as damaging to trees as the smoke and steam from
industrial sites

They are as bad for the atmosphere as belching chimney stacks and
emissions from power stations. Scientists have discovered a

FW: The profit motif knows no conscience

[Thomas Lunde]

Title: FW:  The profit motif knows no conscience



Thomas:

This posting is from Graffis and re-posted from EnviroScan:


-- RISING COAL USE INCREASES AIR POLLUTION
   
   Coal consumption in the U.S. has risen almost 16 percent since 1992,
   says a report by the Environmental Working Group and the U.S. Public
   Interest Research Group (USPIRG). 

Thomas:

Coal used for generation of electricity has a lot of nasty byproducts.  I find it interesting that despite Kyoto and (the name eludes me at the moment) the big global warming seminar in South America, I believe in 1992 on George Bush's watch in which the US refused to sign, we are now seeing the blatant effects of lobby groups for the coal industry's gain coming home to roost.  Lest my American friends think I am picking on them, we in Ontario are about to embark on increased coal use also under the current neo-con government of Mike Harris.


Many older coal burning power plants
   were exempted from Clean Air Act standards. When Congress deregulated
   wholesale electricity sales in 1992, these old plants became more
   profitable because they compete with more recently built plants
   required to install pollution control equipment. 

Thomas:

Clearly stated - profitable - need more be said.

The report, "Up In
   Smoke," looks at federal data on 446 power plants across the nation,
   tracks the use of coal plants since the 1992 Energy Policy Act was
   passed, and calculates the resulting smog and global warming
   pollution. Increased electrical generation at coal burning plants
   emitted 755,000 tons of nitrogen oxide pollution and 298 million tons
   of carbon dioxide in 1998. By increasing coal generation, eight large
   utility companies, American Electric Power Company, Cinergy
   Corporation, Dominion Resources Inc, Duke Power Company, Edison
   International, The Southern Company, Tennessee Valley Authority and
   Associated Electric Coop each emitted as much smog pollution as one
   million cars.

Thomas:

Lest the eye skim read too quickly, note the statement, "each emitted as much smog pollution as one
   million cars."  Now, let's see 8 x 1,000,000 + 8 million!  Not mentioned was whether this was per year or over the 7 year period of 92 to 99.


 Increased smog pollution from Illinois, West Virginia,
   North Carolina, Missouri, Indiana and Georgia power plants each
   equaled that from two million cars.

Thomas:

Whoops, 6 x 2,000,000 + 12 million plus 8 million = 20 million car equlivalents - Now that's a lot of cars and that's on helleva lot of pollution.


"This summer, tens of thousands of
   Americans will go to emergency rooms due to smog," said Rebecca
   Stanfield, clean air advocate for USPIRG.

Thomas:

Let's see, " tens of thousands" is pretty vague, are we talking 10 thousand or 90 thousand.  Oh well, a thousand here or there is just another number, unless you happen to be one of them gasping and wheezing and being frightened out of your wits that you may have caught some terminal disease.  However, it is so comforting to know that the power utilities have turned a nice profit and that the Health Care system professionals are overworked and doing better than ever - for those who have insurance, that is.   

 "It's time for Congress to
   protect public health by closing the loopholes allowing old coal
   plants to pollute our air."
   
   * * *

Respectfully,

Thomas Lunde

Re: Canadian Indian Claims

[Thomas Lunde]

Thomas:

This is great stuff Ed and I thank you for taking the time to share it, I'm
learning.

Respectfully,

Thomas Lunde
--


--
>From: "Ed Weick" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
>To: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
>Subject: Re: Canadian Indian Claims
>Date: Fri, Jul 30, 1999, 3:54 PM
>

> Brad:
>
>>Another popular idea I find dubious is
>>providing reparations to the living for the
>>harms done to the dead.  Should a [black, indian,
>>etc.] M.D., lawyer, university professor,
>>etc. be paid reparations for the harm
>>done to his or her ancestors, who, being
>>dead, are presumably beyond the ability of
>>earthly things to affect them any more?
>>
>
>
> In the case of the settlement of aboriginal claims in Canada, it is not a
> case of reparations to the living for what was done to the dead.  It is a
> matter of recognizing longstanding rights which aboriginal people have held
> since time immemorial and which are now entrenched in the Canadian
> Constitution.  The dead held these rights, unique to aboriginal people, and
> passed them on to the living.  The living are now able to enter into a
> negotiating process in which the rights can be defined and distinguished
> from more general rights held by the Canadian population as a whole.  In
> this process, certain things to which the special rights apply, such as land
> and resources, may be relinquished or become part of the public domain, and
> it is for this that monetary compensation is paid.
>
> Canadian treaties and claims settlements, which have acknowledged aboriginal
> rights, have a rather mixed origin. The earliest treaties in which England
> was the main colonial power, those in the Maritimes, did not deal with
> rights but were essentially treaties of peace and friendship. In colonial
> French Quebec, the process was similar. Initially, the French saw Canada as
> fully occupied, and apart from establishing centers for trade with the
> inhabitants, did not expect to settle extensively themselves.  In both
> regions, Indian people were viewed as self-governing nations, and there was
> no question of having them relinquish their rights to land and self-
> government.  However, both regions were in fact settled.  While rights were
> not extinguished, aboriginal people were pushed to the margins of society.
> Subsequently, reserves in Quebec and the Maritimes were created in a variety
> of ways, including lands set aside by the Catholic Church or lands
> purchased by the Government of Canada.
>
> For much of the rest of Canada, more clearly defined constitutional and
> legal bases for settling aboriginal claims exist. Following the conquest of
> Quebec, what is known as the Royal Proclamation of 1763 was issued by King
> George III to establish a boundary between the colonies (including Canada)
> and Indian lands.  The latter generally lay west of Quebec (excluding
> Rupert's Land) and the Appalachian Mountains (in what soon after became the
> United States). Whites who had settled in Indian lands were asked to leave
> (whether they did so or not is another question). On their lands, as defined
> in the Royal Proclamation, Indians should not be "molested or disturbed".
> Purchase of the lands could only be made by the Crown. If Indians wanted to
> sell their lands, they could only do so if via an assembly for the purpose.
> Only specially licenced whites could carry on trade with the Indians.
> Rupert's Land was excluded from the Royal Proclamation because it was
> already under Royal Charter held by the Hudson's Bay Company.
>
> The Royal Proclamation was reinforced in western and northern Canadian lands
> by negotiation by the 1870 Order in Council by which the Northwest
> Territories (originally the North-Western Territory, which then included the
> prairies) and Rupert's Land were admitted into Confederation. It again
> recognized aboriginal title and provided that such title could not be
> extinguished except by negotiation with the Crown. However, the precise
> legal meaning of this OIC, and what requirements and limitations it imposes
> on government in settling aboriginal claims, is a matter of some ambiguity.
>
> More recently, Section 35 of the Canadian Constitution Act (1982) recognizes
> two sources of Native rights.  One is treaty rights, which consist of land
> ownership, harvesting, and limited environmental and wildlife management
> rights. It should be noted that Metis and non-status Indians are included as
> native people in the Constitution Act along with Indians and Inuit.
>
> While recognition of aboriginal rights has a long history in Canada, it is
> only recently that government dealings with these rights has been a process

RE: Nanotechnology

[Thomas Lunde]

Title: RE: Nanotechnology




-- Nanotechnology ‹ A Revolution in the Making
Vision for R&D in the Next Decade


Interagency Working Group on Nano Science, Engineering and Technology (IWGN)



Dr. M. Roco, IWGN Chair, [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Dr. J. Murday, IWGN Exec Sec, [EMAIL PROTECTED]


Thomas:

I asked Steve Kurtz to sent me that article on nanotechnology he posted on FW a few days ago.  Mindblowing is the word I would use.  Below is a few paragraphs that I garnered in following the suggested URL's in the article.  As this technology is being compared to equal with the Industrial Revolution, it is a proper discussion for FutureWork.  I would suggest that we discuss some of these statements which I have highlighted in Bold from our collective perspectives.

Abstract: 

A national initiative, "Nanotechnology for the Twenty-First Century: Leading to a New Industrial Revolution", is recommended as part of the fiscal year 2001 budg et. The initiative will support long-term nanotechnology research and development, which will lead to breakthroughs in information technology, advanced manufacturing, medicine and health, environment and energy, and national security. The impact of nanotechnology on the health, wealth and lives of people will be at least the equivalent to the combined influences of microelectronics, medical imaging, computer-aided engineering and man-made polymers developed in this century. The proposed level of additional annual funding approximately doubles (by $260 M) the current level of effort, incrementally increased over three years. This initiative will focus on fundamental research on novel phenomena, processes and tools; synthesis and processing by design; nanostructured devices, materials and systems that are high risk, broadly enabling and are designed to have major impact; as well as education and training of future nanotechnology workers and rapid knowledge and technology transfer.

International Perspective: The U.S. does not dominate nanotechnology research. There is strong international interest, with nearly twice as much research ongoing overseas as in the United States. Other regions, particularly Japan and Europe, are supporting work that is equal to the quality and breadth of the science done in the U.S. because they have determined that nanotechnology has the potential to be a major economic factor during the next several decades. This situation is unlike the other post-war technological revolutions, where U.S. enjoyed earlier advances. The 1991 Congressional Office of Technology Assessment report, Miniaturization Technologies, states that "the competitive position of U.S. R&D in miniaturization technology remains strong, although competition from Japanese and European industry and governments has increased."

Thomas:

These two ideas struck me strongly.  It will affect many fields and the US is only one of many players.  This has many implications, first, it will be a paradigm shift in all the areas affected, second, it might seriously challenge the dominance held by the US in information technologies which is largely responsible for America's dominant political, economic and military superiority in the current world picture.

I will be interested in your thoughts.

Respectfully,

Thomas Lunde

RE: Y2K - Out of sight - out of mind - but stillthere

[Thomas Lunde]

Title: RE: Y2K - Out of sight - out of mind - but stillthere



Thomas:

Doing some Web browsing, I came across this article.  The media have not been focusing our attention on this problem, but as the following article explains in chilling detail, the problem is still with us - a time bomb, perhaps, that could not only destroy our economy but the lives of millions.  For most of us, we are in the similar situation of a train going through an avalanche area.  We all know that the noise of the train could trigger an avalanche which could kill us, but we are on the train and there is no way off.  Perhaps lack of knowledge is the best placebo to fear.

Respectfully,

Thomas Lunde
-- 
The Co-Intelligence Institute // CII home // Y2K home




The Accidental Armageddon

 
http://www.theage.com.au/daily/990620/news/news22.html
 
By HELEN CALDICOTT
 
The Y2K bug could trigger a nuclear holocaust. So what are
the experts doing? Hoping for the best 
MANY of the world's chemical plants, nuclear reactors and
nuclear-weapon systems rely heavily on date-related
computer systems. So what will happen to them come the
millennium bug?
It is remarkable that the Pentagon, the United States Defence
headquarters, computerised its nuclear weapons, delivery
systems and early-warning systems, despite knowing there
was a date-related problem. And it beggars comprehension
that the nuclear power industry made the same mistake. 
There are 433 non-military nuclear power reactors in the
world, 103 of them in the US. All depend on an intact
coolant system. In most reactors, integral components of
the cooling system are computerised. So if any
date-dependent fixture breaks down, the reactor could melt
down within minutes.
How to deal with this? Even if the reactor is taken ``off line''
- that is, the fissioning process is stopped on 31 December
and the cooling system fails on 1 January - it will still melt
down within two hours. Indeed, even if the fission reaction
were to be stopped today, the core would still be so hot in
six months that it would melt down within 12 hours if the
coolant system failed.
But there's more. The circulation of coolant water is also
dependent on an external electricity supply and an intact
telecommunications system. If the millennium bug causes
power failures and/or telecommunication malfunctions,
reactors will be vulnerable. Because of this possibility, each
US reactor has been equipped with two back-up diesel
generators. But at best these are only 85 per cent reliable.
So, in the event of a prolonged power failure, the back-up
diesel generators will not necessarily prevent a nuclear
catastrophe. And 67 Russian-built reactors are even more
vulnerable, because they have no back-up generators.
What is more, the Russian electricity grid is itself at great
risk because, as one might expect, the political and
economic turmoil in that country means the Y2K problem
has hardly been examined. There are 70 old nuclear reactors
on old Russian submarines moored at dock in the Barents
Sea. If they were to lose the electricity grid powering their
cooling systems, they would melt.
About 80 per cent of France's electricity is nuclear
generated. Its government has announced it will close its
nuclear power plants for four days over the New Year. But
this will not stop meltdowns if the external electricity supply
is lost and the coolant fails to reach the intensely hot
radioactive cores. 
Because the air masses of the two hemispheres do not
generally mix at the equator, Australia is likely to be largely
protected from the fallout from any catastrophic radioactive
accidents in the northern hemisphere, where most reactors
are located. 
But Russia and America maintain an arsenal of up to 3000
nuclear warheads, targeted at each other and their allies.
These weapons are on hair-trigger alert, meaning only
minutes are allowed for either side to determine whether an
apparent attack is the result of a computer error. And
Australia is home to several of the Russian targets, among
them Pine Gap, Nurrunga, North West Cape and Tidbinbilla.
In the event of a nuclear war - accidental or deliberate - they
could expect to be on the receiving end of at least one
hydrogen bomb each.
The Pentagon, which maintains more computer systems
than any other organisation in the world, is in disarray about
Y2K. The Pentagon admits that it is physically impossible to
locate all the embedded microchips within the systems. And
even if a system is deemed Y2K compliant, each system
interfaces with others, so that a faulty embedded chip or
hardware problem in one system can infect another that is
deemed Y2K compliant, and ``bring it down''.
The US Deputy Secretary of Defence, John Hamre, was
quoted in October last year as saying: ``Probably one out of
five days I wake up in a cold sweat thinking (that the Y2K
problem) is much bigger than we think, a

Re: Trail of Tears

[Thomas Lunde]

Thomas:

I have been deeply disturbed over the postings we have been engaged in.  I
have spent many hours of my walks ruminating on postings by Ed Weike and Ray
Harrel and the themes of justice, injustice, governments, denial, cruelty to
the Natives, etc.  At the basis my unease is my inner sense of myself as a
Canadian who has traveled a lot, read a lot and thought a lot about native
governance, spirituality, relationships with the land and with the white
man.

I am not European and the culture of Europe that the school system and the
political thought from Western civilization have tried to instil in me has
failed.  I am North American from the tribe of Canadians.  We are a new
grouping that has insinuated itself across the land called Canada.  I am a
hybrid being.  The land itself has spoken to me in my lifetime with it's
beauty, it's solitude, it's vastness and it's difficult climate and terrain.
As I have searched for myself, I have had to include those who came before
me in this land, The First Nations People, because we are sharing this
experience and it has formed them as it is forming me and my children.

We have taken from those before us, not only some of their land, but their
understandings of life, governance and spirituality and incorporated these
gifts into our tribe.  The tribe of Americans have done the same.  And yet,
in a curious lack, we have failed to honour that which we recieved and found
valuable.  It is a denial of shame.  We have not had the cathrarsis of
freeing the repressed guilt of the Western European actions that our
forebearers created by their actions against the land and it's original
inhabitants.  We are in collective denial and individual denial of accepting
those gifts freely given by the people we have treated so badly.  We also
have denied the grandeur of the land and animals and plant life that we
collectively share.  We fear opening ourselves to the true possibilities
that would evolve if we accepted the co-existence of this place with all
that exists here.

There is a need ... to allow ourselves to grow.  To relinguish the European,
the Asian, the Middle East from our identity.  There is a need to
incorporate what we are - where we are and stand alone on those truth's.
Those who come from those other cultures - as my grandparents did, need to
make the paradigm shift from being half breeds, honouring cultures which we
no longer are part off and owning the cultures we have become and finally
including those who are our brothers - those who were here first - not just
the people, but the animals and the land and the fishes and the prairies and
the oceans and the sky.  For this place is different.  The vibrations of
this land are different and we collectively need to stop denying them by
holding onto other truths and embrace our own.  We are the New World and the
Old World needs our unique contribution.  The question is; can we accecpt
our heritage and become what those before us - in their highest achievements
exemplified and then add what we are to that potential?

Respectfully,

Thomas Lunde


--  The Co-Intelligence Institute CII home // Y2K home // CIPolitics home


American Indians: The original democrats     

Many people think that our democratic tradition evolved primarily from the
Greeks and the English. But those political cultures, steeped in slavery,
aristocracy, and property-power, provided only a counterpoint to the real
source of our federal democracy - the American Indians. In the following
selections from his book Indian Givers: How the Indians of the Americas
Transformed the World (Crown Publishers, NY, 1988), Jack Weatherford looks
into the historic record to correct the mythology we have been raised with.
-- Tom Atlee    

The most consistent theme in the descriptions penned about the New World was
amazement at the Indians' personal liberty, in particular their freedom from
rulers and from social classes based on ownership of property. For the first
time the French and the British became aware of the possibility of living in
social harmony and prosperity without the rule of a king. As the first
reports of this new place filtered into Europe, they provoked much
philosophical and political writing. Sir Thomas More incorporated into his
1516 book Utopia those characteristics then being reported by the first
travelers to America More's work was translated into all the major
European languages Louis Armand de Lom d'Arce, Baron de Lahontan, wrote
several short books on the Huron Indians of Canada based on his stay with
them from 1683 to 1694 [during which he] found an orderly society, but one
lacking a formal government that compelled such order

Soon thereafter, Lahontan became an international celebrity feted in all the
liberal circles. The playwright Delisle de la Drevetiere adapted these ideas
to the stage in a p

Re: Co-stupidity

[Thomas Lunde]

Title: Re: Co-stupidity



Thomas:

Sometimes, a new word cuts across previous arguments like a Bowie knife hacking a venison limb.  Co-stupidity is such a word.  No need to add my comments to this article - we are all living in the results of our collective -!

Respectfully,

Thomas Lunde

-- 
The Co-Intelligence Institute // CII home // Y2K home




What I most want to communicate about Y2K

 


If you only read one page on this site, let it be this one. -- Tom Atlee




Everything has changed save our modes of thinking, and we thus drift towards unparalleled catastrophes.
Albert Einstein
 
"Co-stupidity" describes the collective inability of groups, communities, organizations and societies to see what's happening in and around them, and to deal effectively with what they find. It is the opposite of collective intelligence. But it is vital to understand that to say a group or society is behaving co-stupidly or co-intelligently says nothing about the intelligence of the individuals involved. Some of the most co-stupid groups are made up of brilliant people who use their brilliance to undermine each other so that together they add up to nothing -- or who are trapped in a dysfunctional group process or social system that erodes or wastes their brilliance or, worse yet, transmutes it into collective catastrophe. On the other hand, people of very ordinary or even low intelligence can, if they collaborate well within a well-designed system, generate a level of collective brilliance that far exceeds what they could do under the control of a brilliant leader. Once we are in a group or society, our collective intelligence or stupidity has little to do with how clever or slow we are individually -- and everything to do with how well our system is designed, how good our process is, how wisely we handle information, and how well we all work together.


Y2K arose from a profound societal co-stupidity that does not reside within the specific people and institutions involved so much as within a system that calls forth actions which seem to make sense to the well-intentioned, smart people and organizations involved -- but which, when taken together, add up to potential catastrophe for all of society.

Such co-stupidity is not limited to Y2K, of course. We see it all around us -- not only in business meetings and the halls of government, but in our collective social lives. For example:

* We are collectively creating global warming by driving our cars and running our air conditioners. We don't intend to create global warming -- and most of us who are aware that we are doing it also fervently wish we weren't. But our society and economy are set up so that it is very difficult if not impossible for us to avoid participating in creating global warming. It is ultimately futile to blame and exhort individual citizens about their role in this when the system itself makes it so hard to behave any other way. 
* We are poisoning our children with the chemicals of everyday life. Again, we don't want to. But our society produces 75,000 synthetic chemicals, fewer than half of which have been tested for toxicity. As parents, we don't even know which of these chemicals are involved in the things our children do every day, in the air they breathe, in the things they touch. Our children's bodies are affected anyway, whether we know it or not. Childhood asthmas, cancers, brain problems, and other diseases are on a rapid rise. What do we make of this? 
* We are destroying our farmland. We are paving it over. We are poisoning our aquifers and watersheds with agricultural chemicals. We are removing nutrients from the soil by growing food and then not returning those nutrients through the composting of human and animal waste. Our use of chemical fertilizers undermines the natural fertility of the soil, so that it yields less and less each year unless more fertilizers are added (i.e., it is addicted to fertilizer). Tons of topsoil are washed or blown away by poor soil management practices. And now "we" (in the form of Monsanto and the USDA) are creating seeds designed to poison the next generation of seeds. And all this is happening while every individual and organization involved is doing their job, playing by the rules, and not intending to destroy the capacity of our nation to feed itself. 

As a culture, we don't see -- we don't really get it -- that we're doing these things. Individually and institutionally, we may or may not know something about all this -- but most of our attention is on other problems and other opportunities that are validated by the society we live in. Those individuals and organizations that do see what's happening have to st

Re: Co-stupidity

[Thomas Lunde]

Thomas:

Thanks for your detailed comments.  On one point we have agreement Douglas,
we have both got our dates set wrong on our computer.  I was puzzeled that
your message was at the bottom of my date ordered inbox - really,  Friday,
Feb 27, 1920 is further than I ever dared to err.

You wrote:

> I'm not sure "our system" was ever designed, I think it just grew.  Perhaps
> we could design a better system, but who is to do the designing?  We don't
> work well together, as Mr. Atlee has pointed out, so how can we succeed
> in designing a better system?

Thomas:

I'm sorry that you seem to have given up on the best idea I've seen.  The
"who" of course is problematic if you limit yourself to a one shot try.  I
would prefer a more plural form, say "whom" of many aspirants can produce
the "best" structure rather than system. (System: a complex whole; a set of
connected things or parts functioning together) (Structure: a set of
interconnecting parts of any complex thing; a framework.)

Try the formula "Structure determines the form of the processes" in which
structure is a defined state.  Hard to get a grip on but perhaps an example.
Representative Democracy is in my opinion a structure for political
goverance selection.  As a structure, it is predisposed to the concepts of
political parties and political parties exist like corporations over a long
period of time.  So you get a model of government in which those selected
are focused on the survival of their Party which is often at variance with
those who selected them - the governed.

You said:
>
> The same comment applies to "how good our process is".  It isn't.
> But what process have we for improving our process?  Not one that
> works, I suppose, or we'd notice the process improving.  Hands up how
> many people see things improving.

Thomas:

I view process as a direct result of structure - the formula - structure
determines the form of the process.  Therefore, to improve process, then you
make changes in structure.  If your structure is electing government through
the process of political party's and it is assessed by consensus that
politcal party's do not give good governance, then it seems to me that a
structure is needed that changes the process to something else.

Now, at one time, we had as a structure, heriditary monarchy.  Over time, it
became apparent that we got a lot of stupid monarch's who created a stupid
nobility which did really stupid things with the resources of a country.  So
we invented a new structure for the times - representative democracy.  Now,
the times have changed - we no longer live in a time constrained
agricultural society in which it often took days or weeks for information to
travel a few miles to one in which information is instantaneous.   We need a
new structure and from that will flow new processes which will produce
different results.

Now, this new structure can come on us willy nilly through historical
movements like globalization or can come to use through the design of
structures that allow a humane rather than capitalistic globalization in
which a structure is being created by those who influence or control the
market.

Now, I agree, that this does not solve the problem of the "who" or "whom",
but I think that they is we - yep, you and me and millions of others over
the next 10 years who are going to be creating all this noise on the
Internet - the new forum for change.  Out of that discontent and collage of
ideas will arise political leaders who can articulate the consensus of all
this discontent.  Much as the American and French Revolutions found leaders
to articulate the discontent within the monarchical societies.  Perhaps this
time we can do it without a war or a gullitine (sp).

Respectfully,

Thomas Lunde
--


--
>From: "Douglas P. Wilson" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
>To: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
>Subject: Re: Co-stupidity
>Date: Fri, Feb 27, 1920, 11:46 PM
>

> Well 'co-stupidity' is certainly an interesting word.  It seems somewhat
> similar to a word or phrase that I often use, 'error-covariance', but I
> prefer the latter because it carries a remedy along with it.
>
>> "Co-stupidity" describes the collective inability of groups, communities,
>> organizations and societies to see what's happening in and around them, and
>> to deal effectively with what they find.  ...
>
> We are not dealing with a universal truth here -- there are a few examples
> of groups, communities, organizations, and (perhaps) even societies that
> have functioned well, seeing problems and dealing with them effectively.
>
> But yes, it's mostly true, collective intelligence is much less common
> that collective stupidity.
>
> I can also agree with these

Re: Co-stupidity

[Thomas Lunde]

Dear Douglas:

I have taken the time to read your Web Page, but not your Social Technology
page.  You have obviously put in an immense amount of "thinking time" on
your ideas - and many of them I can heartily agree with.  Friendships and
relationships that are positive are very enriching and those that are not
can be very destructive - who needs it?  Same with jobs.  Who wouldn't like
to work with compatible people in a people structured environment rather
than the competitive ratrace that is the current capitalistic model.

So, at a superficial level, I find congruence with your outcomes and some
unease with your methodologies - partly because I am math aversive by nature
and I seriously distrust statistics and generalizations and approximations
that are often drawn from statistics.

You know, people are the problem.  Why?  My answer is because most of us are
terribly dysfunctional.  Why?  No one answer covers such a simple question
but one of my heroes is Joesph Chilton Pearce who wrote Crack in the Cosmic
Egg and a more recent book I am reading called Evolutions End.  Joesph's
answer is that we haven't figured out the methodology to work with natures
plan.  We have made bad guesses about human psychology, child birthing,
child development phases and we are working against nature, the result has
been dysfunctional people.  A leap of logic here, when you have
dysfunctional people, you have dysfunctional society's, dysfunctional
economic systems and dysfunctional relationships.

Joesph's answer is to start trying to raise more people from pre-natal to
adulthood who are not dysfunctional.  These people, not being dysfunctional
will then be able - from their more normal perspective, will be able to
devise new systems that make people more of what they could be.  Well,
that's a pretty utopian plan but it has a logic in it that is difficult to
deny.

If you are a hog breeder and the hogs you are working with do not carry
enough weight to make you a profit, you engage in a long term project to
breed hogs that grow bigger - quicker.  Now, I do not like my own analogy
but it has a big truth in it.  You can't make something better when your raw
materials are flawed.  You can't make a better people society when the flaws
in the people that created the dysfunctional society are the very ones
trying to design a new society.  My guess, you will just get another version
of a flawed society.

I could go through your lengthy reply to my post and make some comments of
agreement and defense.  I would rather challenge this topic with some new
ideas and get your response on them.  So I will leave the rebuttals to
another time and await your comments on this theme.

Respectfully,

Thomas Lunde
-- 

Re: Co-stupidity (and the flaws that cause it, or context that nourishes it)

[Thomas Lunde]

-- 


--
>From: "Thomas Lunde" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
>To: "Douglas P. Wilson" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
>Subject: Re: Co-stupidity (and the flaws that cause it, or context that
nourishes it)
>Date: Thu, Aug 5, 1999, 8:56 PM
>

>
> I would like to mention WesBurt at the start of this post.  I have just read
> his lengthy post and though I cannot follow all his economic arguments I can
> agree with his thesis.  Society has totally neglected the investment in it's
> children by not providing additional income for those years of parenthood.
> The capitalistic idea of paying a single man the same as a married man with
> children is obscene and only penalizes the parent and society as a whole.
> WesBurt's analysis is correct as far as it goes in my opinion, but it
> neglects the ideas I present below through Pearce's quote - and he is not
> the only author making these statements - they just don't get good book
> reviews.
>
> Now, it turns out that our Prime Minister may actually bring in a National
> Day Care system and guess what, it amounts to $5000 per child per year up to
> the age of six.  I would say that WesBurts math is pretty good.  In light of
> what Pearce says though, that $5000 per child would be better spent allowing
> the mother to mother her children rather than send them to day care.  If
> mother's mothered, we would not only get healthier psychological adults but
> their removal from the workforce into this highly specialized and natural
> employment would also lower the unemployment rate bringing some of our
> economy back into balance.
>
> Now to my answer to Douglas's points:
>
>
> --
>
> Thomas wrote:
>
>>> You know, people are the problem.  Why?  My answer is because most of us are
>>> terribly dysfunctional.  Why?
>
> Douglas wrote:
>>
>> Actually I don't think we are all that dysfunction by nature.  How
>> well or poorly people function depends on their social context or
>> social environment -- the people they live, work, and make love with.
>
> Thomas:
>
> Ah, that I had a scanner or ten hours to type in a proper response to this
> statement.  Given that I don't and I don't really want to paraphrase the
> power of the words in the following lengthy quote, let me say they come from
> the book Evolutions End by Joesph Chilton Pearce who has just spent two
> excruciating chapters talking about the childbirth practices in the United
> States and most of the Western World and how they have destroyed Natures
> birthing cycle which has created a lack of bonding, the first and most
> essential step in healthy child development.  At the risk of boring everyone
> on the list senseless, I am going to pick up his thread on Page 125.
>
> Quote:
>
> No good comes from discussing any of this.  An enormous literature has
> appeared over the years to no avail.  These obscene practices have become
> not just acceptable but the model for childbirth.  Our current generations
> are the unbonded victims shaped by the system, terrified of the thought of
> birth outside the medical umbrella, willing to pay any price to avoid
> personal responsibility for what is considered a dreadful experience.  As my
> New Zealand physician friend, Stephen Taylor, put it, this is really a basic
> war of man against woman.  In the male intellect's long battle with the
> intelligence of the heart, the real trump card was found in catching the
> woman when she is most vulnerable and stripping her of her power.  Now, it
> seems we have her --- and are surely had.  Beneath it all grows great anger:
> children angry at their parents; men angry at women because they didn't get
> what they needed from women at life's most critical point and still fail to
> get it; women angry at men for robbing them of their power and, identifying
> with their oppressors, rejecting motherhood and men in the process.  This
> has caused a rising tide of incompetence and inability to nurture and care
> for offspring.  The genetically encoded intuitions for nurturning have been
> shattered, and the results are cloaked by ever-so-practical
> rationalizations.  The largest growing work force of the 1980's were the
> mothers of children under age three.  Day care, an unknown phenomenon until
> recent years, is a major growth industry.  Seventy percent of all children
> under age four were in day care by 1985, and major concerns of the nation
> are how to get them all into day care --- and who will pay for it.
>
> Our species has survived throughout its history by women caring for women in
> childbirth, yet midwifery in the United States has been virtually illegal
> for the las

Re: [graffis-l] 'Smart' materials could soon revolutionize many products

[Thomas Lunde]

Thomas:

A little side article that gives us a more comprehensive look at where
nanotechnology is starting to take us.  What I would like to see, is a suit
that keeps you warm in the winter - now that would be a smart material.

Respectfully,

Thomas Lunde
--

> From: Mark Graffis <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
>
>
>Copyright © 1999 Christian Science Monitor Service
>
>By ALEX SALKEVER
>
>(August 8, 1999 12:12 a.m. EDT http://www.nandotimes.com) - When a
>helicopter chatters loudly overhead in Boston, most people look up and
>see the police or a traffic reporter. Harry Tuller sees ceramics.
>
>That's because the Massachusetts Institute of Technology scientist is
>working on a revolutionary type of helicopter rotor that can
>continuously change shape in midflight when zapped with electrical
>charges. These rotors, made of a new class of materials called
>electroceramics, could improve the performance and reliability of
>helicopter flight.
>
>Tuller's electroceramics are just one of a myriad of so-called "smart
>materials" that are increasingly emerging from labs and being used to
>enhance performance safety, and efficiency in a wide range of
>industries.
>
>Hybrid ceramic materials are embedded in snow skis to dampen
>vibrations and smooth out the ride on the slopes.
>
>JCPenney stores are using super-thin display signs that look like
>paper but contain words and numbers spelled out with thousands of
>pigment-filled capsules made of a new type of electrically sensitive
>plastic. These display signs, which can be reconfigured remotely, are
>a likely precursor to portable newspapers that are constantly updated
>with wireless data transmissions.
>
>Eyeglass frames made of "memory" metal alloys return to their original
>shape when a certain temperature threshold is passed.
>
>These gee-whiz materials are merely the start of a new era in which
>humanity will achieve stunning mastery over matter.
>
>"Only in the last decade, with the advent of more-powerful computers,
>have we started to acquire the tools for trying to predict in advance
>the relationship between a property and a structure," says Tuller.
>
>Knowledge is power
>
>Knowledge seekers have long coveted greater control over the materials
>that make up the world. Medieval alchemists futilely attempted to
>synthesize gold from lesser elements. And failure to understand the
>nature of matter and the chemical elements has proven disastrous. In
>the 19th century, physicians regularly prescribed heavy metals like
>arsenic as remedies, which sometimes proved fatal.
>
>But when people have gained some mastery of crucial materials, they
>have changed the course of history. Magnetic lodestones, for example,
>allowed Chinese sailors to create navigational compasses, which led to
>the first transoceanic explorations.
>
>But this pales in comparison to the threshold scientists stand upon
>today. For the first time ever, researchers can examine complex
>matrixes of molecules and predict how changing them will alter their
>properties.
>
>This new and far deeper understanding of how matter acts and reacts
>enables scientists to create materials that are not static but rather
>reactive and malleable in relation to factors such as temperature,
>electrical currents or physical stress.
>
>"A smart material can tell you something about a situation or a state
>of affairs by responding in a predictable way to some kind of
>stimulus," explains Art Ellis, a chemist at the University of
>Wisconsin at Madison.
>
>Smart and intuitive
>
>Unlike past advances in material science, which have been far more
>piecemeal, the current onslaught covers many fronts, from ceramics to
>metals to plastics. And it is churning out discoveries at an
>astonishing rate.
>
>Hand in hand with smart materials go recent advances in reducing the
>size of microprocessors and computers. Scientists are now hard at work
>integrating the two to create powerful systems that can be embedded in
>everything from clothing to performance-enhancing spark plugs.
>
>But some smart materials are so intuitive that they actually will
>eliminate the need for microprocessors that now generally control
>things like air bags or other mechanical processes.
>
>The U.S. Navy has created a diving wet suit with tiny wax capsules
>embedded in its material. The capsules melt at just below body
>temperature, taking heat from the skin of a diver who is

Re: Interesting - anti-Americanism or a point?

[Thomas Lunde]

Thomas:

Globalization is not necessarily an American issue - it is a business issue
from a capitalistic viewpoint of ever expanding growth.  The fact that it
dovetails with the American myth of the endless frontier and is dramatized
by the most powerful image machine of history as reflected in the media's of
North America seems to point the finger at America.

Historically, one can perhaps state that it is just another form of
expansionist history.  From Alexander The Great, to Rome, to the Vikings, to
the British Empire, the Catholic Church, Budda and Mohamed, and many others
in between, there seems to arise in history, movements that strive to
globalize.  All have ended up in the dustbin of history - as will
globalization.

What endures is family, sex, the need to eat and have shelter, the desire
for entertainment, happiness and a search for the meaning of life through
philosophy and religion and drugs.

Respectfully,

Thomas Lunde
--


--
>From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] (M.Blackmore)
>To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
>Subject: Interesting - anti-Americanism or a point?
>Date: Tue, Aug 17, 1999, 12:00 PM
>

> Copied from a discussion... any comments anyone? Is "globalisation" really
> an American issue?
>
> "Will we permit the future history of the world to become the history of
> America? Of the American Corporation - or more precisely the
> American-dominated financial system? And just how short a history will  we
> allow it to be?
>
> For globalisation isn't really a world phenomenon - it is largely American
> organisations with their culture, outlook, strategies and philosophies,
> which define the lives more and more people lead - and the deaths they
> die. It is a phenomenon from a particular place and time imposed upon
> global place and time. At least for now.
>
> This America extends its frontiers into new worlds, and takes over old
> ones. It strides time and space in a simultaneous perversion and
> continuation of its peculiar historical psychology of conquest. It now
> seeks to extend these frontiers into the totality of the human mind (or
> was the American Dream always a conquest of the mind?) Unprecededented
> control of information via corporatly controlled media creates corporately
> made minds, a populace with limited understanding of the real world they
> inhabit, shaped by selected information and mythologies of freedom. An
> engineered world-view to override all other perceived possibilities -
> there can be no alternative, therefore there is no alternative.
>
> Their reality may be hell or an ersatz heaven for those (anxiously) within
> reach of the orbits of privilege. But the reality of possibility that can
> be mentally grasped by the "kept stupid" is filtered through mindsets
> selected, designed, packaged and presented for consumption and for
> specific purposes.
>
> Even in rebellion - for the people are not happy but know not what to do -
> rebellion is channeled into paths that simultaneously emasculate
> possibilities for unravelling power, allows useful release for the
> minority who fail to be passive, and the excuse to suppress those who push
> too hard.
>
> If alternative ways are either inconceivable or, the very act of being
> different can only be dreams without possibility of substance, challenge
> to dominant power becomes impossible.
>
> And that forthcoming history a short history? Indeed. For without turning
> from the current course of environmental and human degradation future
> world history - or the history of civilisation - may be very short".
>
> 

Ruiminations on information

[Thomas Lunde]

 acquistion of a lawn chair and this small and inconclusive essay.  In
fact, I would guess that if you were to examine some of your activities, you
would find that impulse is quite a big player in the type and quality of
information you get and a very serious generator of experiences that you
live through.  Is this the "invisible hand" of human experience?

Respectfully,

Thomas Lunde
--

Re: Philosophy contemplated

[Thomas Lunde]

Thomas:

Yep, (Desire is a driving force for making things better.)  and Greko said
that greed is good.  The results are all around us and growing all the time
- the direct result of desire fanned by advertising.

It appears that not only do you like to be controlled by your desires but
your dog - the result of one of your desires also controls your activities.
Now as to impulses ?

The above is an attempt at humor - not sarcasm.

Respectfully,

Thomas Lunde
--


--
>From: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
>To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
>Subject: Re: Philosophy contemplated
>Date: Wed, Aug 18, 1999, 3:14 AM
>

> Gee, when my dog wants to go pee, he drags me out the door. If we manage to
> acquire something on our outing, I blame it on him because he is big enough
> to haul it home on his own.
>
> Philosophies which demand that one get rid of desires offend me. Desire is a
> driving force for making things better.
>
> David
> 

Re: re the plight of the middle class

[Thomas Lunde]

Thomas:

This is a thoughtful essay and I appreciate the effort that has went into
it.  However, to some degree I find it a rationalization that doesn't
include a whole lot of factors that we cannot deny.  Global warming and the
increasingly difficult weather situation.  Looming fuel shortages in
petroleum and the inability to develop sustainable energy sources of
sufficient amount to replace petroleum.  Population pressures.
Infrastructure breakdowns and replacement.

So, yes, in a 1950's world of low population, unlimited fuel supply,
reliable weather, etc, the idea of classes and mulitple income streams and
government redistribution may have been a good analysis.  From my current
prospective, Y2K looming a 100 days in our future, a stock market that is
over-inflated and a world economic situation which is far from optimum, I
find your analysis incomplete and overly optimistic.

Respectfully,

Thomas Lunde
--


--
>From: Ian Ritchie <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
>To: "'futurework'" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
>Subject: re the plight of the middle class
>Date: Mon, Aug 23, 1999, 3:46 AM
>

> FYI
> Keith Rankin's Thursday Column Whither the Bourgeoisie?
>
> We frequently hear these days about the plight of the middle class, or the
> middle classes. But who are the middle classes? Are they simply those people
> (or households?) who earn between the median income and the 90th or 95th
> percentile? Can we really regard salaried persons as middle class? (After
> all, salaries started out as stipends of salt paid to soldiers.)
>
> Historically, the bourgeoisie were urban capitalists: merchants, financiers,
> self-employed professionals, manufacturers. The middle classes were
> entrepreneurs; they worked for profit, not wages. They came to be seen as
> dour, because - unlike the upper (landed) and lower classes - they (being
> insecure, with less tangible assets than land) saved like crazy. Because
> they ploughed their savings back into their enterprises, or into others'
> enterprises, they were seen by the classical economists as the agents
> (although not the ultimate beneficiaries) of economic growth.
>
> The classes were defined according to the sources of persons' incomes: land
> rent (upper class), profit (middle class) and wages or peasant farming
> (lower class). The class system arose because most people received all their
> income from a single "fund" (eg the "wage fund").
>
> (You could even define whole nations according to this class system.
> Countries like Australia, New Zealand, Argentina and Saudi Arabia, which
> derived their income mainly from land, were upper class. Western Europe was
> middle class. The Third World was lower class.)
>
> Classical economics predicted that the lower classes would be something of a
> reserve army of labour (in perpetual oversupply), while the middle class
> capitalists would make the key investments. The upper classes would sit back
> and collect the rent, eventually leaving everyone else in penury. As late as
> the 1950s, this class division seemed to make sense, both for households and
> for nations.
>
> The class system went awry with the emergence of a salaried professional
> class, and the replacement of proprietorial and partnership businesses with
> the corporate business sector. "Businessmen" became managers. By the 1970s,
> the social elite, in fulfilment of Joseph Schumpeter's predictions in 1945
> (Capitalism, Socialism and Democracy), were working for wages. (Could any of
> us imagine Jane Austen's social elite being employees?)
>
> So, when we muse over the plight of the middle classes, are we musing about
> the future of professional employees? Or are we musing about
> entrepreneurship? Will those in the vanguard of the brave new knowledge
> economies be employees of corporate organisations? Or will they be
> electronically connected individuals selling their ideas to the highest
> bidders?
>
> Maybe we should bury the class system as a relic of the fading millennium.
> The era of the highly paid full-lifetime employee is dying, if not dead.
> Those 40-somethings who identify with that kind of career path, and who have
> made financial commitments on the expectation of fulltime careers with ever
> rising salaries, really do feel a sense of dread. Their perceptions of their
> standing in society are determined by both the particular professions that
> they are in, and the size of their salary packages. Although their social
> status is displayed through conspicuous consumption, their social status
> means much more to them than does the mere consumption of goods and
> services.
>
> The irony of the present times is that economic circumstances are propelling
> th

Re: Times article on Russia: Maimed by embracing the market

[Thomas Lunde]

Thomas:

Interesting article - thanks for re-posting.  It is amazing to me, how the
powers that be cannot see the results of their actions more clearly and
openly acknowledge their mistakes.  It is sort of - leadership denial, that
if it was analyzed would be considered pathological - and maybe it is.

Could it be that we are led by idiots and madmen in armoured limosines?

Respectfully,

Thomas Lunde
--


--
>From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] (M.Blackmore)
>To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
>Subject: Times article on Russia: Maimed by embracing the market
>Date: Wed, Aug 25, 1999, 12:00 AM
>

> Forwarded:
>
> Don't know if anyone's interested but yesterday's Times contained
> this rather negative and depressing report on the situation in Russia
> and elsewhere.
>
> -- jP --
>
>
> My comment: hey, big surprise, what?
>
> =
> Michael Binyon examines a devastating UN indictment of how, in the
> Nineties, privatisation in east Europe's former communist states has led
> only to human misery
>
>Maimed by embracing the market
>
> Attempts to transform the state economies of Eastern Europe and the former
> Soviet Union into a market system may prove to be the biggest departing
> mistake of this millennium, a United Nations report asserts. The
> transition of these countries has, in reality, been a Great Depression,
> plunging more than 100 million people into poverty, with many millions
> more hovering precariously above subsistence.
>
> This indictment of the way former communist economies have been privatised
> is made in the latest report on the region by the UN Development
> Programme, and is sure to provoke huge controversy. It claims that the
> social and economic upheavals of the 1990s have been calamitous for a vast
> swath of eastern Europe and Central Asia, leading to widespread poverty,
> alarming falls in life expectancy, widening inequalities between the
> sexes, falling investment in education, the collapse of public health and
> the spread of disease, crime, nationalist violence and suicide.
>
> The report, one of the most negative assessments of the change from
> communism to capitalism ever issued by a world organisation, paints a
> picture of human misery stretching from Hungary to Kyrgyzstan, from the
> Black Sea to the Arctic Circle. Basic security, freedom from hunger,
> economic and social rights, proper housing and decent pensions have all
> been swept away by the ferocious sacrifice of everything to the market,
> the report says.
>
> Centrally planned economies that overlooked political choice and
> individual rights have been replaced by policies under which individual
> responsibilty took centre stage without much consideration for those left
> behind, says Anton Kruiderink, the UNDP regional director for Europe and
> the former Soviet Union and author of the report. Neither blind trust in
> centralised authority nor in the market have proved capable of producing
> the democratic instruments needed to correct the distortions that both
> ideologies produced.
>
> In a foreword to this bleak document that could almost have been written
> by a diehard defendant of the old communist system, he cites World Bank
> figures showing that in 1989 about 14 million people in the former
> communist bloc lived on less than $4 a day. By the mid-1990s that number
> had risen to about 147 million.
>
> The main criticism of the report is that across Eastern Europe and Russia,
> the state has become too weak and institutional reform has been neglected.
> Society's values have been turned upside down, dissolving the glue that
> held them together. The new nations enjoy neither proper democracy nor
> proper regulatory instruments to make a market economy reasonable and
> equitable.
>
> "When transition becomes only a partial process, benefitting primarily the
> young, the dynamic, the mobile, the connected, and leaving behind the
> vulnerable, then the surge in poverty, already so visible, will
> destabilise societies and reverse whatever this new economic growth is
> capable of," Mr Kruiderink says.
>
> He adds: "Growing human insecurity is at the source of human violence, and
> when democracy gets equated with misery, its hope will turn into
> disillusionment, with many more volatile societies coming our way."
>
> There are, the report concedes, some bright spots. Slovenia and Poland
> have recouped their lost output and appear to have laid the foundations
> for a prosperous future. Similarly, although the Czech Republic, Hungary
> and the Baltic states face numerous difficulties such as falling birth
> rates, high suicide rates, growing unemployment and 

FW - Re-post re Y2K

[Thomas Lunde]

Title: FW - Re-post re Y2K




Y2K: The Homestretch
by Roberto Verzola


 As Y2K preparations reach their homestretch, fund movements
caused by the Y2K problem's differential effect on the perception of
financial risk associated with various countries, markets and firms
will become a major concern.

 This concern should be especially intense in Asia. It is here
where fund movements in 1997 caused a currency crisis that triggered
bankruptcies, recessions and devaluations in vulnerable countries that
eventually included Russia and Brazil.


State of Y2K readiness

 Last July 22, Inspector General Jacquelyn Williams-Bridgers of
the U.S. Department of State testified before a U.S. Senate Special
Committee on the Y2K Problem, where she reviewed Y2K-readiness
worldwide:

 * "Approximately half of the 161 countries assessed are reported
to be at medium-to-high risk of having Y2K-related failures in their
telecommunications, energy, and/or transportation sectors. The
situation is noticeably better in the finance and water/wastewater
sectors, where around two-thirds of the world's countries are reported
to have a low probability of experiencing Y2K-related failures";

 * "Industrialized countries were generally found to be at low
risk of having Y2K-related infrastructure failures, particularly in
the finance sector. Still, nearly a third of these countries (11 out
of 39) were reported to be at medium risk of failure in the
transportation sector, and almost one-fourth (9 out of 39) were
reported to be at a medium or high risk of failure in the
telecommunications, energy or water sectors";

 * "Anywhere from 52 to 68 developing countries out of 98 were
assessed as having a medium or high risk of Y2K-related failure in the
telecommunications, transportation, and/or energy sectors. Still, the
relatively low level of computerization in key sectors of the
developing world may reduce the risk of prolonged infrastructure
failures"; and

 * Key sectors in Eastern Europe and the former USSR are "a
concern because of the relatively high probability of Y2K-related
failures".


Failures in every sector, region and level

 Bridgers did not report how much of her assessment was based on
self-reported progress, and how much was based on
independently-audited reports. Since many Y2K progress reports are not
audited and therefore tend to be too optimistic, the situation could
actually be more serious than reported. One also wonders how the
financial sector can be at a low risk while sectors it totally depends
on like energy and telecommunications are at high-to-medium risk.

 Bridgers concludes: "the global community is likely to experience
varying degrees of Y2K-related failures in every sector, in every
region, and at every economic level. As such, the risk of disruption
will likely extend to the international trade arena, where a breakdown
in any part of the global supply chain would have a serious impact on
the U.S. and world economies."

 As actual reports/rumors of Y2K failures come in, the perceived
risks per firm, sector, and country will change. And as these
perceived risks change, fund managers and depositors will keep moving
their funds away from high-risk areas towards low-risk areas.

 This is simply rational economic behavior, part of the cold logic
of finance and investment. This is exactly how fund managers behaved,
when they withdrew their funds from Asia in 1997 to move them into
areas of lower risk.

 These sudden fund flows bear watching.

 Most well-informed fund managers would have access to similar
information and will therefore tend to move in similar directions.
Those who lack information will tend to follow the placement decisions
of the better-informed. This leads to "herd behavior," a
follow-the-leader or follow-the-crowd strategy which tends to magnify
small changes and cause huge impacts.


Beware of herd behavior and positive feedback

 With feedback, the situation is worse. If the resulting effects
in turn intensify the causes, this leads to even greater effects,
which then further feed back into the causes. This positive feedback
loop is a formula for rapid change, explosive growth, and extreme
instability. By removing barriers to capital flows, financial
liberalization increased the possibility of such positive feedback
loops. When foreign speculators in 1997, for instance, rushed to sell
their Thai baht for US dollars in fear of a baht depreciation, the
sudden demand for dollars caused the baht to depreciate. This further
fuelled the baht-to-dollar panic and eventually triggered the global
financial crisis whose repercussions we still feel, two years later.

 If Y2K problems change risk perceptions, which then trigger fund
movements that lead to herd behavior, the resulting rush can break the
weakest links in the system. Failures in the weakest links can then
lead to a bigger rush, which can overstress other links and cause even
worse fail

FW - Interesting re-post

[Thomas Lunde]

Title: FW - Interesting re-post




> From: Mark Graffis <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
>
>
>
> From: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
>
> Our Lost Wealth: People + Natural Resources = Real Wealth
>
>
> THE UNITED STATES WASTES MORE THAN $2 TRILLION ANNUALLY
>
>
> `Our Lost Wealth' is excerpted from Paul Hawken's `Natural Capitalism' the
> cover story of Mother Jones magazine's April '97 issue. Hawken argues that
> business' focus on `using more resources to make fewer people more
> productive' has the perverse effect of eliminating jobs when labor is
> plentiful while depleting our limited natural resources. The result:
> immense resource waste and incalculable social waste stemming from a
> growing population of un- and underemployed people.  Look for Mother Jones
> on your local newsstand or call 1-800- GET-MOJO to request a trial issue.
> Paul Hawken is an internationally known businessman and author.
>
> The United States prides itself on being the richest country in the world.
> yet we can't balance the budget, pay for education, or take care of the
> aged and infirm. How is it that we can have both a growing economy and a
> growing underclass?
>
> In politics, they say "follow the money." What you find is that
> the waste in resources and people shows up in our overall gross domestic
> product (GDP). Of the $7 trillion spent every year in the United States,
> we waste at least $2 trillion. What is meant by waste? Money spent where
> the buyer gets no value.
>
> GET OUT YOUR CALCULATORS
>
> The World Resources Institute has found that roadway congestion costs $100
> billion per year in lost productivity, not counting gasoline, accident and
> maintenance costs. Highway accidents cost $358 billion per year, including
> $228 billion in pain and suffering and $40 billion in property damage. We
> spend another $85 billion indirectly subsidizing free parking at shopping
> malls and workplaces. The hidden social costs of driving - hidden because
> they are not paid by motorists directly - also include disease and damage
> to crops and forests caused by auto exhaust. these charges total $300
> billion.
>
> We spend $50 billion a year to guard sea-lanes and to protect oil sources
> we would not need if President Reagan had not gutted emission standards in
> 1986. We spend nearly $200 billion a year in supplementary energy costs
> because we do not employ the same energy efficiency standards for our
> businesses and homes as do the Japanese.
>
> We waste around $65 billion on non-essential or fraudulent medical tests
> and, by some estimates, $250 billion on inflated overhead generated by the
> current health insurance system. We spend $52 billion on substance abuse,
> $69 billion on obesity treatments, $125 billion on heart disease, and,
> some estimate, as much as $100 billion on health problems related to air
> pollution.
>
> Legal, accounting, audit, bookkeeping and record-keeping expenditures to
> comply with an unnecessarily complex and unenforceable tax code cost
> citizens at least $250 billion a year; what Americans fail to pay the IRS
> adds up to another $150 billion.
>
> Crime costs taxpayers $450 billion a year; lawsuits, $300 billion. These
> figures don't include disbursements for Superfund sites, monies to clean
> up nuclear weapons facilities (estimated to be as high as $500 billion),
> the annual cost of 25 billion tons of material waste, subsidies to
> environmentally damaging industries, loss of fisheries, damage from
> overgrazing, water pollution, topsoil loss, government waste, gambling, or
> the social costs of unemployment. Conceivably, half the GDP is spent on
> waste.
>
> If we could shift a portion of these expenditures to more productive uses,
> we would have the money to balance our budget, take care of those who
> cannot care for themselves, raise wonderfully educated and responsible
> children, restore degraded environments, and help developing countries.
> If, for example, we had simply adopted stricter energy standards in 1974 -
> standards in use by Japan - and had applied the savings to the national
> debt, we would not have a national deficit today. (Reprint, Earth Times,
> May, 1997 edition)
>
>
> Copyright © 1996. The Light Party.
>
>
> The Light Party,
> 20 Sunnyside Ave., Suite A-156
> Mill Valley, CA 94941.
> Tel: (415) 381-4061 * Fax: (415) 381-2645
> Dedicated to "Health, Peace and Freedom for All"Your
> Feedback is important to us. Please send us  E-Mail.
> Our E-mail address is on our Home Page
>
> http://www.lightparty.com/index.html">   [Unable to display image]
> Back to The Light Party  Home Page...



-- 

FW: Putting on the line - could you do it?

[Thomas Lunde]

Title: FW:  Putting on the line - could you do it?



Thomas:

You may have noticed - a little ego here - I have not been posting lately.  Why!  Because I came to the realization that ideas and talk are not going to solve our multiple problems and I felt I had to withdraw and rethink this whole situation.   Tom Attlee, the author of the word co-stupidity which I posted an essay about to the list several months ago is perhaps feeling the same way - as are other groups he is working with.  They finally moved out of their comfort zone in a very big way to make a point of incredible value. (see essay below)

The image now in my mind is Tinneamin Square (sp?) - remember that image of the Chinese man standing in front of the tank and when the tank tried to go around him, he continued to move in front - in essence saying, "listen and respond or take my life" the choice is yours, I am just going to stand here (naked) and you make the decision.

I'm beginning to think that the only way we can slow and stop this insanity around us of poverty, Y2K, the effects of capitalism on the Earth and future generations is to take our clothes off and stand in front of the tank.  Instead of starving us, lying to us, tricking us, decieving us - just go ahead and kill us - we stand here naked before you.

Revolution is not the answer.  Dramatic helplessness may be.  I watch the news and see the people of Serbia, begging daily for Milosovic to just go away.  They are not crying for punishment or justice, they are just saying "Please, go away, allow us to regroup and rebuild and restructure our country."  That is what most of us want - for the existing structure to "just go away" and allow the rest of us to regroup, rebuild and restructure.  Take the damn money you have stolen, just go away.  Perhaps we have to give them the alternative - kill us or just go away, it is your choice and stand there in front of them - naked.

Respectfully,

Thomas Lunde
 
When you think about what you have to do in this culture to get your
priorities straight, it just boggles the mind!!   But it is always
heartening to hear about someone doing it.  I wonder if there will be any
copycat demonstrations elsewhere... -- Coheartedly,  Tom

Date: Mon, 4 Oct 1999 14:03:06 -0700 (PDT)
To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
From: Wendy Tanowitz <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: [y2k-nuclear] Nudes, not nukes!


Our Y2K World Atomic Safety Holiday campaign people were at a forum on
nuclear weapons last night. It was a ho-hum affair until Helen Caldicott and
Patch Adams related
a story about how they had called a press conference in Washington D.C. to
talk about the possibility of extinction because of y2k as it relates to
nuclear weapons and power. No one came. So last night, Helen said, "What
does it take to get their attention? Do I have to take my clothes off?"

Then Patch Adams asked the audience how many would be willing to take
their clothes off. Dozens raised their hands. One of our Y2K WASH
folks called the press, we all disrobed and marched down Van Ness
Avenue chanting, "disrobe for disarmament, and "Nudes, not nukes!"
The SF Examiner and Channel 5 did fair coverage--no frontal nudity, however.
They both get the story right about the reason we were doing this.

This is the story which appeared in the San Francisco Examiner today, 10/4.


http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/
examiner/hotnews/stories/04/naked.dtl

   Activists reveal naked truth about nuclear catastrophes

   By Ray Delgado OF THE EXAMINER STAFF

   Monday, October 4, 1999

   50 people march nude on Van
   Ness to draw attention to Y2K
   dangers

   Some activists get arrested to draw
   attention to their cause. Others scream
   and rant in hopes that people will
   listen.

   Some nuclear activists, on the other
   hand -- well, they get naked.

   About 50 people who gathered Sunday
   night near City Hall for a conference on
   the potential dangers of Y2K-induced
   nuclear catastrophes ended the session
   with a mass nude demonstration along a
   block of Van Ness Avenue. Desperate
   for press attention for their cause, they
   opted to get covered by uncovering.

   The nude march was led by Patch
   Adams, an activist and doctor who
   inspired the movie based on his
   lifetime of unconventional approaches
   to adversity.

   "Non-violent people like us really have
   so few tools to face a capitalist
   system," Adams told the crowd as they
   uncomfortably disrobed outside Herbst
   Theater in the War Memorial Building.
   "All we re

futurework@dijkstra.uwaterloo.ca

[Thomas Lunde]

Some thoughts on Aberattions

I was trying to explain the other day, to my 9 year old daughter about
wages, value, work and welfare.  Quite a challenge.  I found coming out of
my mouth some interesting thoughts.

Has it every occured that when you are on welfare, their seems to be a
principle in which if you are single, you recieve one amount of money -
while if you have dependants, you recieve more money.

But, once you move into the waged economy, your income is based on the job,
not on the number of dependants you have.  Which creates and interesting
anomaly.  Take a job - truck driver - value of job $15 per hour.  Now, if a
single man does this job, he is allowed to keep the whole $15 for himself
and spend it however he chooses.  We accept that idea without a question -
right.  Now, what if his co-worker has 3 children and a wife and one of his
children requires additional costs, let's say drugs.  The system is set up
so that he recieves the same $15, but is expected to spread that around to
cover 5 dependants.  Why would we chose to make the job the deciding factor
rather than a persons needs in regards to dependants.  Especially when in
other areas of income, we have accepted the thought that those with more
dependants require more money, such as welfare?

Well, it is the difference between two ways of thought - isn't it.  One is
the thought of socialism and the other is the thought of capitialism.  Take
for a point of interest housing.  We often see two middle aged people living
in suburban splendor - 20,000 sq ft of tastefully decorated, heated and
convienced comfort while we look at people raising kids who find themselves
in limited space, restricted furniture, living one on top of the other.  How
do we rationalize that?  Well, we do it through the capitalistic model,
which says as you gain experience, get older and have more responsibility in
the work world, you get paid more - in other words, by the job.  Perhaps in
a socialistic society, the family of children would be alloted the big house
on the basis of their needs and as the children grew, the living quarters
might be reduced as the needs grow less.

Now, if you were put in the position of a new world and you became the
economic god.  How would you decide.  The job is the determiner of wealth
and use of resources - or the needs of people become the determinant of
wealth and use resources?  Might not a very rational and humane system be
devised based on needs rather than qualifications?  What would be the
downside - well perhaps, some would say that all those lazy people who don't
want to work, would just have a lot of children.  Ha, anyone who thinks that
has never had to deal with children 24 hours a day.  A job is infinitely
easier than being around 2 or 3 young children for ten years or so.  On the
other hand, one could argue that perhaps many of the problems of society
would be eliminated if there was no poverty in families and children had
adequate family resources, parents who might be able to spend more time in
the family and that over time, many of the costs of the capitalistic society
would just not be incurred.

Of course, ruiminations like this come down to the hard fact, that those who
benefit from the current situation, also hold the bureaucratic power,
academic power, financial power and when in government the political power.
Now the argument might be made that if this was truly wanted, then there
would be a political movement towards this.  But most who hold jobs, who
have been brought up in the capitalistic way of thinking, cannot and will
not engage in a discussions of this manner, nor provide the money or the
structure which would allow an honest polling of the populace through a
vote.  Rather, the media, the academics, the rich, derail such thoughts and
aspirations by sheer neglect - they won't talk about it, promote it, argue
it or in any manner do anything but avoid it and riducule it.  And so the
world goes on, following a particular philosophy - without debate or
experiment into other ideas.

After I had went through this with my 9 year old, she sat quietly for awhile
and finally said, "I understand what you mean Dad and it sounds really good.
How come people don't pay you to talk about this?

To which I could only reply - they don't want to hear.

Respectfully,

Thomas Lunde
--

FW: [Ananda] Lighten Up

[Thomas Lunde]

Title: FW: [Ananda] Lighten Up




-- 


--
From: "M" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
To: "Ananda" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: [Ananda] Lighten Up
Date: Thu, Nov 11, 1999, 5:08 AM


 
DOWNSIZING HANDBOOK FOR EMPLOYEES 

As a result of the reduction of money budgeted for department areas, we are 

forced to cut down on our number of personnel.  Under this plan, older 

employees will be asked to go on early retirement, thus permitting the 

retention of the younger people who represent our future.  Therefore, a 

program to phase out older personnel by the end of the current fiscal year, 

via retirement, will be placed into effect immediately. 

This program will be known as SLAP (Sever Late-Aged Personnel). 

Employees who are SLAPPED will be given the opportunity to look for jobs 

outside the company.  SLAPPED employees can request a review of their 

employment records before actual retirement takes place. 

This phase of the program is called SCREW (Survey of Capabilities of Retired 

Early Workers). 

All employees who have been SLAPPED or SCREWED may file an appeal with the 

upper management. 

This is called SHAFT (Study by Higher Authority Following Termination). 

Under the terms of the new policy, an employee may be SLAPPED once SCREWED 

twice, but may be SHAFTED as many times as the company deems appropriate. 

If an employee follows the above procedures, he/she will be entitled to Get 

HERPES (Half Earnings for Retired Personnel's Early Severance) or CLAP 

(Combined Lumpsum Assistance Payment) unless he/she already has AIDS 

(Additional Income From Dependents or Spouse).  As HERPES and CLAP are 

considered benefit plans, any employee who has received HERPES or CLAP will 

no longer be SLAPPED or SCREWED by the company. 

Management wishes to assure the younger employees who remain on board that 

the company will continue its policy of training employees through our 

Special High Intensity Training (SHIT).  This company takes pride in the 

amount of SHIT our employees receive.  We have given our employees more SHIT 

than any company in this area.  If any employee feels they do not receive 

enough SHIT on the job, see your immediate supervisor. 

YOUR SUPERVISOR IS SPECIALLY TRAINED TO MAKE SURE YOU RECEIVE ALL THE SHIT 

YOU CAN STAND. 

 

Re: The X Files ("deus ex machina" excuses)

[Thomas Lunde]

>>> It's back to the game manager problem again.
>>>
>>Snip

>>So who decides who takes the role of the gamekeeper and
>>the role of animals?

Snip
>The problem is how to construct a global political "system" that can remain
>virtuous to its stated goals?
>
>Jay

Thomas:

This does seem to be the crux of all systems of government.  How to ensure
that those in charge remain "virtuous to its stated goals".  It would seem
to me that an agency like a "supreme court" - though not legal, I'm fishing
here, an agency that had the power to delve into every aspect of the
governing individuals at every level, I guess sort of like our Ombudsman in
Canada, would provide the necessary transparency or monitoring.  This agency
would have to be totally independant and also be allowed a far amount of
personnel to be effective.  Of course, what if they become corrupted, then
perhaps and agency to monitor the agency.  Well, it's pretty fuzzy thinking
here but, Jay, I think you have identified the right criteria.

What happens is that over time, those who govern lose their perspective and
start to see the worlds problems from the view of the continuance in power.
This leads to the two levels of government you alluded to, the backroom and
the front room.  If we could have complete transparency and an incorruptible
watchdog function and perhaps a totally unbaised press, ie not owned by
anyone who stands to profit individually or corporately we would go a long
way to improving the art of governing.

I would be interested in more thoughts in this area.

Respectfully,

Thomas Lunde
>

Re: The X Files ("deus ex machina" excuses)

[Thomas Lunde]

>Jay Hanson:
>
>>Unfortunately, there are no other alternatives.  Once we overshot carrying
>>capacity we were left with only two choices:
>>
>>#1.  Be managed like farm animals.
>>
>>#2.  Dieoff like wild animals.


Dear Jay:

I do not like either/or answers, I much prefer to seek the possibilities of
and/and answers.  Given, for the sake of argument, that we have overshot
carrying capacity, the third answer might be self management.  In other
words, when a truth becomes self obvious - which the carrying capacity
metaphor is not to the majority of the worlds population, then change
becomes possible - voluntary change.

Also, we have used a very successful strategy in the past which is war.
Though morally I don't condone war, it has successfully reduced populations
and provided the needed impedus for new thought and new paradigms.  It is
true, there are some ghastly tales around like Thor Hyderals books on Easter
Island about when a population exceeds the carrying capacity of an
environment.  However, even in that nightmare, there were eventually
survivors who did not have to resort to gamekeepers and found the strength
to start over again with reduced resources.

In nature, there are a number of examples of massive population die-off such
as lemmings and the seven year rabbit cycle that still retain the
possibility of regeneration without an outside authority, the gamekeepers
you postulate.

I would suggest that catastrophe is one of natures strategies for
eliminating gamekeepers, as in the case of the rabbits, the foxes and wolfs
also die off.

Respectfully,

Thomas Lunde


>

Re: The X Files ("deus ex machina" excuses)

[Thomas Lunde]

> The Age of Enlightenment has brought to ridiculous heights, the power of
the
> intellect while reducing the power of character which often arises out of
> feelings, honour, respect and overall character.  The book Brad
recommended
> several months ago, Cosmology identified the change from a society that
> allowed the differences of individuals to flourish, to one in which
> rationality decreed there is a right and wrong way.  We moved in my
opinion
> from an analog society to a digital society, but natures way, the animals
> way is analog, it is only man who sees right and wrong - the digital
> decision.  Our current mess is the result of a million - million right
> decisions.  Perhaps a few more decisions that could not be justified by
> rationality and were made from character might have given us a much
> different world.
>

ramble...  strawmen stuff. Just because we strive for rational
decision making, that doesn't mean that individuality should somehow
suffer;  and decisions do not have to be "digital" always.

Eva

Dear Eva:

Reading the morning paper, I read a book review of "Letters to Kennedy by
John Kenneth Galbraith.  To bolster my argument that character often will
produce better decisions than rationality, I will quote a quote.

Quote:  There's also a discussion on whether what is now known as "the
Kennnedy tax cut," a highly successful economic stimulus, was needed.
Galbraith thought not: "Too much about the tax cut has to be explained.  The
unemployed man has to be told that we cannot much increase his benefits but
we can reduce the taxes on the stiff who has a job.  We will have to
explain - indeed I will have to explain - to the underdeveloped lands why we
can afford only fairly modest aid programs at a time when we are cutting
taxes at home."

To me these are comments of character intelligence rather than rationality.
Obviously, Kennedy's advisors had come up with the idea that reducing taxes
would put more money in the hands of the consumer - a rational and logical
thought - which would increase the demands for goods and services - which
would improve economic activity - and because the working guy could buy more
he would feel beholden to the Democrats and be more inclined to vote for
Kennedy in the next election.  This is all logical and rational thinking.

However, Galbraith brings to the fore the unexplored consequences for which
Kennedy is also responsible - the plight of the poor and unemployed American
and the commitments and promises made to other countries in terms of foreign
aid.  Neither of which is rational but matters of honour and responsibility.

Given that a leader who makes decisions based on morality rather than
rational self interest, the possibility exists that more respect, honour,
and trust will be generated which will increase the relationship between
those governing and those governed.

In my sense of our current historical position, the rational argument has
become the de facto operating procedure in which any lie which serves the
goal of self interest is preferable to any action which may be morally right
and perhaps not serve the goal of self interest has become the dominant
paradigm.

Respectfully,

Thomas Lunde

Re: It's our final exam

[Thomas Lunde]

-Original Message-
From: Jay Hanson <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
To: Future Work <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Date: August 29, 1998 12:35 PM
Subject: It's our final exam


>>>Jay:
>>>Unfortunately, there are no other alternatives.  Once we overshot
carrying
>>>capacity we were left with only two choices:
>"Carrying capacity" is not a metaphor any more than "people are animals" is
>a methpor.  Both of these have explicit meanings and can be measured by
>scientists anywhere in the world.

Thomas:

Sitting and watching the "news" this morning, I was struck by the idea you
challenged that "carrying capacity" is not a metaphor but a "scientifically
explicit meaning".  The question is, is the carrying capacity based on the
standards of the American middle class, a Bangledesh mother in the middle of
a flood trying to feed her three children for another day, or an Albanian
sitting in a Serbian concentration camp with no rations for the last three
days but still alive?  These scientists that you seem to venerate have to
choose a set of criteria, is it calories per day, well Eskimos need more
calories in their environment than to African Bush pygmies in their
environment or well fed German burgers used to swilling calorie rich beer.
I don't think I see a one size fits all answer that "scientists" can put
forward as a "truth".

>"We humans no longer rely on the muscle of fight, the speed of flight, or
>the protective mask of shape and coloring for survival. We have come to
>depend on intelligence for life. This  is a fateful gamble. It has put at
>stake our collective survival, and that of the whole biosphere.

Currently reading "My Ishmael by Daniel Quinn" while sitting on the john, I
came across this astounding observation:

Page 37

Ishmael:  It's been extant in your culture for millennia."

"Excuse me, I said. (12 year old girl)  "You keep saying that - 'the people
of your culture' - and I keep not being sure what you mean by it.  Why don't
you just say 'you humans' or 'you Americans'?"

Ishmael:  "Because I'm not talking about humans or Americans.  I'm talking
about the people of your culture."

"Well, I guess you're going to have to explain that."

Ishmael:  Do you know what culture is?"

"To be honest, I'm not sure."

Ishmael:  "The word culture is like a chameleon, Julie.  It has no color of
its own but rather takes color from its setting.  It means one thing when
you talk about the culture of chimpanzees, another when you talk about the
culture of General Motors.  It's valid to say there are only two
fundamentally different human cultures.  It's also valid to say there are
thousands of human cultures.  Instead of trying to explain what culture
means when it's all by itself (which is almost impossible), I'm just going
to exp;ain what I mean when I say 'your culture.'  All right?"

"That's fine," I said.

Ishmael:  "In fact, I'm going to make it even easier than that.  I'm going
to give you two rules of thumb by which you can identify the people of your
culture.  Here's one of them.  You'll know your're among the people of your
culture if the food is all owned, it it's all under lock and key."

"hmmm," I said.  "It's hard to imagine it being any other way."

Ishmael:  "But of course it once was another way.  It was once no more owned
than the air or the sunshine are owned.  I'm sure your must realize that."

"Yeah, I guess so."

Ishmael:  "You seem unimpressed, Julie, but putting food under lock and key
was one of the great innovations of your culture.  No other culture in
history has ever put food under lock and key - and putting it there is the
conrerstone of your economy."

"How is that?" I asked.  "Why is it the cornerstone?"

"Because if the food wasn't under lock and key, Julie, who would work?"

Thomas:  You'll have to read the book to get the second rule of thumb.  The
point of that quote though Jay is that all that appears true is based on
some basic assumptions - things we often never question or go deep enough to
find out.  Imagine the effect of all the projections of science and the
economy if someone invented a way to provide human nutrition that wasn't
food as we know it and yet provided a healthy body.  Immediately, all the
experts, whether of science or economics would be blowing hot air.  The same
might be true of energy, if someone discovered how to use the energy of
anti-gravity, all the projections of our petroleum culture would be invalid.
Of course, those inventions are not here yet and may never be here and yet -
they might.
>
>"About five million years ago, the evolutionary line that led to modern
>humans diverged from African apes, the common ancestors of humans,
>chimpanzees, and gorillas.  Apes are knuckle-walking quadrupeds;  Homo is
an
>erect biped.  Apes have large jaws and they have small brains (in the range
>of 300-600 cubic centimeters).  Homo has a small jaw, and a fourfold brain
>size in the range of 1400-1600 cc.

>Only the scientists can save us now.   But I believe our future is 

Re: It's our final exam

[Thomas Lunde]

by injecting to much noise.  Debating on the other hand 
has a tendency to increase focus and lessen noise.
Chores to do, we'll discuss more later.
Respectfully,
Thomas Lunde
 
 
By4now 
Heiner     
    

Re: The X Files ("deus ex machina" excuses)

[Thomas Lunde]

>In a world of pure self-interest, can there be any paradigms of
>communication?

Thomas:  This question sounds like one of those zen koans where you feel
there should be an obvious answer and every time you put one forth, the
master answers "nyet".  My point was that when self interest, whether
personal, or national, or your local stockbroker is involved in which their
answer is related back to "whats the best for me" then you cannot trust that
answer.  For any statement "they" make will become fluid should their self
interest change.  This then becomes the paradigm - lack of trust.  This is
the spiral to chaos.
>
>MM
>
>Durant wrote:
>
>> It depends how you define and in whose interest rational thought is
>> used.
>>
>> Eva

Thomas:  Rational thought as I am groping with the concept is the idea of
logic in which a premise is put forth and then extrapolated out to a
conclusion.  Your statement mirrors mine in that no objective criteria is
used, rather the subjective criteria of "whose interest" is used.  As I can
never know what anothers real interest is and if they refuse to use open
criteria such as facts or previously agreed upon statements, then each
conversation or decision is open to directions that are wildly erratic.

Two instances:  One, in economic forecasting I constantly read something
like, "the banks have revised their forecasts for growth down to 2.% from
their previous forecast.  If I had made decisions based on their first
forecast, they in essence are changing the rules by their last forecast
making my "rational" decisions very irrational.

Two, politicians such as the current crisis make statements such as "I will
not resign" by Boris Yeltsin but he didn't say, "I may be forced to
re-evaluate the use of the powers of the office of the President" which may
make his leadership a figurehead and allow the return of a communist style
of government.  An honorable statement a week ago might have been, "I am
committed to market reforms but their is a strong group who are advocating a
return to a Communist style economy. Or, I wll resist that movement, or I
will consider the validity of that movement.  The IMF made a committment to
provide certain funds to Russia, today, I read that committment is being
withdrawn - how can I trust future IMF committments.

It's a murky subject full of what if and he said/she said type of
ambiguities but until we demand accountability at the level of
communication, then we don't have communication.

Respectfully,

Thomas Lunde
>>
>> ...
>> > In my sense of our current historical position, the rational
>> argument has
>> > become the de facto operating procedure in which any lie which
>> serves the
>> > goal of self interest is preferable to any action which may be
>> morally right
>> > and perhaps not serve the goal of self interest has become the
>> dominant
>> > paradigm.
>> >
>> > Respectfully,
>> >
>> > Thomas Lunde
>> >
>> >
>> >
>> >
>> >
>> [EMAIL PROTECTED]
>
>
>
>--
>
>
>
>Mark Measday
>UK tel/fax: 0044.181.747.9167
>France tel: 0033.450.20.94.92/fax: 450.20.94.93
>email: [EMAIL PROTECTED][EMAIL PROTECTED]
>Among herd animals, we are unique in that we can fall upon another herd
>and destroy it.  Or we can consciously decide to leave it in peace.  I
>can think of no other herd animal that has that capacity.
>Ed Weick
>
>

the lonely net

[Thomas Lunde]

THE LONELY NET
A two-year, $1.5-million study by researchers at Carnegie Mellon
University, funded by the National Science Foundation and major
technology companies, has concluded that Internet use appears to cause a
decline in psychological well-being.  A director of the study says, "We
are not talking here about the extremes.  These were normal adults and
their families, and on average, for those who used the Internet most,
things got worse."  One hour a week of Internet use led on average to an
increase of 1% on the depression scale, an increase of 0.04% on the
loneliness scale, and a loss of 2.7 members of the subject's social
circle (which averaged 66 people).

Thomas:  Boy, am I impressed with these statistics.  Imagine, a whole 1%
increase on the depression scale!  Them social scientists are really getting
accurate - not even the old plus or minus 5% disclaimer.  And shucks, a
whole 0.04% on the loneliness scale.  I'm beginning to feel that 1%
depression sneaking up on me right now as I think of the results of this
study.  I phoned my best friend, but he had his cell turned off and now the
loneliness is really hitting, I think, no mind you this is just a subjective
opinion, I must be topping out at 0.05% and I'm even afraid to check out my
social circle for fear it will increase my depression scale.  Nice to know
that all these things I am experiencing are scientifically validated by
scientist of the wonderful mathematic discipline called statistics!


Although the study participants used
e-mail, chat rooms, and other social features of the Internet to
interact with others, they reported a decline in interaction with their
own family members and a reduction in their circles of friends. "Our
hypothesis is, there are more cases where you're building shallow
relationships [on the Internet], leading to an overall decline in
feeling of connection to other people."

Thomas:  Now Jay and Eva and Brad and all those other FW's, I'm sorry to
have to finally admit that ours is a shallow relationship.  Why them
scientists have even formed a "hypothesis".  The next step is a full blown
theorem and then we really are condemned to becoming a fact.


Since the 169 study
participants, all from the Pittsburgh area, were not chosen in a random
selection process, it is not clear how the findings apply to the general
population, but a RAND Corporation senior scientist says,  "They did an
extremely careful scientific study, and it's not a result that's easily
ignored."  (New York Times 30 Aug 98)

Thomas:  Whoops, I wonder if these stats hold true for Ottawa, perhaps they
will form the baseline for a whole group of supporting studies.  Them folks
in Bangladesh better stop fighting floods and check out their depression
meter, there will be lots of grants given in Harvard and Yale to prove or
disprove this vitally important new set of insights.

Defined by science,

I remain your shallow correspondent,

Thomas Lunde

FW: working alternatives

[Thomas Lunde]

Dear Richard:

What a challenge!  Though I don't have an answer, it is the direction that
is interesting.  I agree we have built up a whole rational of logic based on
certain key concepts such as money, value, work, employment, income, savings
and a whole legal body of law and accounting practices to contain and make
valid these words.

To start some new thinking off, I would like to introduce a new concept.
Out of the linguistic studies of Noam Chomsky and NLP came the idea of a
class of words called "nominalizations".  A nominalization (I don't have the
time to look up the official description right now) is a word used as a
noun, but it is not a noun.  A noun is classically described a person, place
or thing and the test we use to decide whether a word is being used as a
nominalization is to ask the simple question, "Can you put it in a
wheelbarrow."  All other words used as nouns are verb forms that are being
used as nouns and from this "distortion" false logic begins and builds into
a major monster.

Well, I decided to get out the old books, so I will transcribe a small
portion.

Practical Magic
by Leslie Cameron Bandler
Page 51

4.Nominalizations, (words like "pride", "respect", "love", "confidence",
"harmony", are introduced as nouns in the sentence but they represent
activity and process in the person's deeper understanding and not static
nouns.)

Statement:

"There is no respect here."  (Note respect would be parsed as a noun)

Challenge Question

Who is not respecting whom?  (Note the conversion of the nominalization back
into a verb form.  This stops respect from being a thing and converts it to
it's rightful use as a process.)  As long as "respect" is a thing then you
end up with the logic of who has this thing or who doesn't have this thing.
We spend much of our life arguing and defending processes masquerading as
things when a properly framed question would remove this "distortion" and
allow a more accurate perception of reality.

Let's now take this to the topic's you have brought forth.  Work is
traditionally used as a nominalization - a thing.

Everyone must work.  (Accepted meaning is everyone must have this thing
called work in their life.)

Who is not working?  ( Moves the nominalization back into a process and
requires a different dialog from the first statement.)

I think you are right, that we have been hijacked by language and certain
improper usages have become so commonplace that we cannot readily recognize
the distortions they introduce into our thinking processes.  It is like
going back on a statement even further than questioning the assumptions, it
is the question of the form of the statement by having a formula that will
reveal that the form is improper, therefore whatever answer comes forth is
also flawed.

There is much more than this simple example to explore and if there is
interest, I can suggest books and we can engage in a List dialog on how to
remove some of the deletions, distortions and generalizations that occur in
converting reality into language.  The map is not the territory and the map
can never contain the territory, however the trick is to create a map that
accurately reflects the territory of reality by eliminating or reducing
deletions, distortions and generalizations by having questions that allow
for a fuller explanation of the reality that we are attempting to reflect
with language.

Respectfully

Thomas Lunde

FW working alternatives

[Thomas Lunde]

This is in response to Tor Forde's recent posting introducing the words
"arena and circuits".  First, let me say that this reframe is very good and
thoughtful and tends to broaden the scope of the problem by introducing new
language to a problem that is in gridlock with common terms.

Second to try and use my posting on nominalizations to help bring a little
clarity into this discussion, I would like to point out the difference in
the two words which Tor has used synonymously.  "Arena" is a noun, using the
test, it could be put in a wheelbarrow, albeit a very large one while
"circuits" is a nominalization of the process word circuiting.  For example,
the question to be asked would be, "Circuiting in what way?"

Tor Forde correctly answers that question in his explanation, "where
participation is creating values which fosters growth of humanity and the
spirit etc. and a better life for others, but where the participation is not
being rewarded by money."  However, without this explanation of his use of
the word circuit, the common understanding would be that these "circuits"
are actual things rather than processes.  As things they become amenable to
definition and movement while as processes they describe goals to be striven
towards.

As I write this, I realize my descriptions seem obtuse and perhaps not
practical which goes to show me that degree to which I have become
habituated to a common use of language that contributes to distortions in
logic.  In fact as I reread Tor's explanation, I find it filled with
nominalizations that I habitually accept as things but which are in
actuality "processes".

Take the following words, participation, growth, humanity, spirit, values,
life, rewarded, and translate them into the process forms and the sentence
could be re-written, "where participating is creating (and) valuing which
fosters (the) growing of humanizing and spiritualizing towards a better
living for others, but where participating is not being rewarded by money."

Time to get on with the day, so I'll leave this and hope for some comments.

Respectfully,

Thomas Lunde

Re: FW CNTU on the reduction of working time (fwd)

[Thomas Lunde]

rio, they
are even trying to make work mandatory for Welfare under a Workfare scheme
that is close to slavery and then legally make it impossible for Unions to
organize.   Let's cut to the quick here.  There is no mercy for lower waged
persons because it is by reducing their costs that capital makes their
profits.  Labour is a cost - therefore reduce wages equals more profits,
more profits equal more money to lobby for more beneficial laws to reduce
costs.  The circle goes round and round.

Also the reduction in working time must be an occasion to
> convert involuntary part time and temporary employment into full time and
> regular employment.

The reality is different of course.  Let's use lots of part time labour and
then we won't have to pay benefits or get involved with dismissal problems
if we have to readjust our workforce.  Quite frankly, if most business could
run their companies on part time help, there would not be one full time
employ on staff.

>
> We think that this way of seeing things, although more difficult and
> engaging than the usual "reduction with full compensation" slogan which
> hasn't been too successful since the mid 1970's, can be more productive in
> the work place.

I love these little euphemisms "can be more productive in the work place".
A classic example of double talk.  It should read, "can be more profitable
in the work place" with the profit accruing to the business owner not the
labour.

>This is more so  if the outcome is more jobs.

Quantity is not replacement for quality.  We can go back to a Greek slave
society in which everyone is working but 90% are getting room and board, a
little sexual harassment or sent out back for your daily whipping.

It means
> linking the reduction in work time to changes in the way work is organized
> and it means an occasion to democratize the organization of work. It
> involves real solidarity (not just discourse) between workers who have a
job
> and workers who don't. It gives more time for people to engage in
community
> building  and political action.

Excuse me for being obtuse.  Perhaps the question should be posed as to what
is required to have a healthy, well paid, educated workforce with time and
interest left over to be involved in the community and political actions
needed for a healthy society?  Perhaps what we want as human beings is a
safe, sane, respectful society in which we can contribute our labour and
intelligence towards long term goals that will benefit our children, our
environment, and our own lives.

Instead, we have a society that seems to work against it's citizens in the
workplace, creates problems for our environment, enriches the few at the
expense of the many and has no long term goals other than staying in this
insane marathon of corporate profits, no matter what the cost.

>
> Any comments would be appreciated.

Well, as you can see, I'm having a bad hair day.

Respectfully,

Thomas Lunde

Re: working alternatives

[Thomas Lunde]

Richard wrote:

Robert, the strategy of word clarification which you have chosen, seems
to assume that either (1) there was at some point in history, a clear
agreement (or god-given definition) relating a meaning to the word
'work', which only needs to be recovered, the puzzle being, which point
in history?, or (2) there is a range of operative meanings implied in
everyday speech, which the dictionary only roughly indicates, but which
need sorting out.  I suspect you are pursuing the latter - an exercise
which I undertook some years ago.

Thomas:

Unfortunately, the meaning of the word is the mind of the perceiver.  It
appears words and meanings get sort of hard wired in the brain/memory system
and for most of us are extremely different to change.  Jack Trout and Al
Reis have explored this in an advertising sense in their books dealing with
the marketing concept called "Positioning".  They make quite a case for the
idea of getting a brand name into the consumers mind first as it then
becomes very difficult to dislodge.  A simple question, "Which is the best
laundry soap?"  For most, a name will spring up into awareness.  Changing
this automatic response is the most difficult challenge a
marketing/advertising campaign can become involved in and the chances of
success are extremely limited.

Therefore, Trout and Reis usually suggest a new name rather than trying to
change a mind that is already made up.  This is called re-positioning and
has a higher chance of success.  So, going back to this word "work", which
as I have pointed out is not a noun, but a nominalization of the process
word "working", my advice would be a new word.  However, going back to Trout
and Reis for a little more practical wisdom, I find that they advise against
the concept of line extension.  For example, it is better to give a new
product a totally new name than it is to try and incorporate parts of the
previous successful brand name.  So in your example Richard in trying the
addition of prefixes and suffixes, according to Trout and Reis is usually
not successful.  Nor would concepts such a "paid work", which is like
calling a new soap, New and Improved Tide.  It is better, if you have a new
soap to have a new name.

Well, after that lengthy bit of ego tripping, you should expect me to have
the answer.  I don't.  Finding a new name is one of the most challenging
exercises one can engage in because to make a new word work, working, you
must find a new definition to attach to it that conveys the meaning you are
trying to identify.  Work has become as you mentioned Richard, so generic
that it covers too much and is therefore vulnerable.  However, the challenge
is to decide which of the aspects of work is releveant and to find an
underused word that you can attach your new meaning to.

To give you a small example, I am currently reading a book called
Cosmopolis.  Now, this book was referred to on the Internet and I requested
it from the library without really thinking about the meaning.  When I got
the book, I tried to decipher what Cosmopolis might mean - to no avail.
However, after reading the book, I now know the author meant the word to
mean there is a relationship between the Greek words cosmo and polis which
was explored in the 16th and 17th centuries by the philosophers of the day.
A new word, complete with meaning has been added to my brain/memory system
and yet if I use that word, for most it will have no meaning as it took time
and effort for the meaning to develop in my mind.

Respectfully,

Thomas Lund

Land Reform _ I don't think it will work!

[Thomas Lunde]

This is in response to Mr. Mueller's comments on land reform as a potential
solution for a large part of the world's poor. I am not in disagreement
with his solution, rather I think it is an admirable solution. I do not
think it is practical. To back up my assertion, I am going to give a
lengthy quote from the book "The Fight for Canada" by David Orchard. In
Chapter 23, called "Prying Open Mexico" he explains, to me, the reason I do
not think land reform will work. Summarized, the reason is the vested
interests of corporations and land owners and their collusion with
governments create such an overwhelming force that makes this solution
impractical.

Now, I am not naïve enough to believe that you don't know about Mexico and
it's attempt at land reforms, but I suspect that your knowledge may have an
American bias in that your reading has been from American writers.  This
quote is from a Canadian Nationalist who is using this piece of history to
make a point re Free Trade and American motives.  I had not intended to
comment, just to present the "quote" but in the process of transcribing, I
found myself so upset that I felt I had to comment to make the points that
I feel justify my comments re "land reform will not work because collusion
with governments."

Quote

As seen in Chapter 4, the United States seized by force all of Mexico's
territory north of the Rio Grande and Gila rivers. By 1910, the United
States owned more of Mexico than did all other foreign nations combined,
and most of the 15 million Mexicans were reduced to poverty-stricken
peonage (A peon had no legal rights; was usually paid in script, which was
worthless except at the landowner's store; and lived his life in debt to
the owner. At death, under Mexican law, the parents debts transferred to
their children.) Some 800 landowners owned more than 90 percent of rural
land, while 10 million peasants were landless. And at the very bottom of
the ladder were the Indians. Safe for tourists and extremely profitable for
foreign businessmen, "Mexico had become a mother to aliens and a step
mother to her own citizens." 

Comment

Previous chapters of David's book have dealt with the concept of "Pax
America" the continuing desire of a small element of American political and
business interests who felt after the American Revolution that it was the
"Manifest Destiny" for America to control the northern hemisphere and
because of this goal a whole host of actions were justified such as,
invading other countries, negotiating boundary lines behind the threat of
annexation or refusing to trade fairly. Mexico was one of the casualties of
this idea.

Think of those astounding figures - 800 landowners - some not even Mexican
arrayed against 10 million citizens.  The landowners controlled the wealth
and the government and through that the legal system and the army were able
to impose their will on 10 million individuals!

Quote

The Great Revolution, which began in late 1910, viewed foreign ownership as
a key issue. When Francisco Madero, father of the Mexican Revolution, took
power, overthrowing the 30-year dictatorship of Porfiro Diaz, the U. S.
government openly intervened. Madero's assassination was planned in the US
Embassy and carried out in February 1913. Soon known as the "pact of the
embassy," the assassination of Madero and his vice-president shook all of
Mexico. Said Mexican Congressman Luis Manuel Rojas: "I accuse Mr. Henry
Lane Wilson, the ambassador of the United States in Mexico of the moral
responsibility for the death of Francisco I Madero and Jose Maria Pino
Suarez." 

Comment

Even against the odds of government and money and the army, the Mexicans
revolted and actually won.
This led to Madero winning.  His win was terminated by his assassination. 
Who do you think is a credible suspect for his assassination?

Quote

One year later, US troops invaded the country. U.S. business, including the
newspaper Empire of William Randolph Hearst whose Mexican ranch was larger
than Rhode Island, heartily approved. Some American sailors had entered a
prohibited wharf area in the Mexican seaport of Tampico. Briefly arrested
by Mexican authorities, they were released with a fall written apology. The
apology was not enough, said American Admiral Henry Mayo, who demanded the
Mexican authorities raise the American flag and honour it with a 21-gun
salute. When Mexico refused, President Woodrow Wilson, backed by a standing
ovation in a joint session of Congress, ordered the entire American
Atlantic Fleet to Tampico. The city of Veracruz was bombarded, resulting in
hundreds of Mexican casualties, and then occupied for seven months by
several thousand American troops. Violent anti-American demonstrations
broke out across Mexico. The statute of George Washington in Mexico City
was knocked over and smashed, and American flags and businesses were burned
and looted by crowds chanting "Death to the gringos." The Mexican
government, the revolution still in progress, issue

No Subject

[Thomas Lunde]

[EMAIL PROTECTED]

FW Land Reform - It ain't going to work!

[Thomas Lunde]

This may be a double posting as I sent this out last week but have not seen
it posted - perhaps in our changing to Waterloo it got lost or I don't know
how to find it in the new system - anyway - here it is again 

This is in response to Mr. Mueller's comments on land reform as a potential
solution for a large part of the world's poor. I am not in disagreement
with his solution, rather I think it is an admirable solution. I do not
think it is practical. To back up my assertion, I am going to give a
lengthy quote from the book "The Fight for Canada" by David Orchard. In
Chapter 23, called "Prying Open Mexico" he explains, to me, the reason I do
not think land reform will work. Summarized, the reason is the vested
interests of corporations and land owners and their collusion with
governments create such an overwhelming force that makes this solution
impractical.

Now, I am not naïve enough to believe that you don't know about Mexico and
it's attempt at land reforms, but I suspect that your knowledge may have an
American bias in that your reading has been from American writers.  This
quote is from a Canadian Nationalist who is using this piece of history to
make a point re Free Trade and American motives.  I had not intended to
comment, just to present the "quote" but in the process of transcribing, I
found myself so upset that I felt I had to comment to make the points that
I feel justify my comments re "land reform will not work because collusion
with governments."

Quote

As seen in Chapter 4, the United States seized by force all of Mexico's
territory north of the Rio Grande and Gila rivers. By 1910, the United
States owned more of Mexico than did all other foreign nations combined,
and most of the 15 million Mexicans were reduced to poverty-stricken
peonage (A peon had no legal rights; was usually paid in script, which was
worthless except at the landowner's store; and lived his life in debt to
the owner. At death, under Mexican law, the parents debts transferred to
their children.) Some 800 landowners owned more than 90 percent of rural
land, while 10 million peasants were landless. And at the very bottom of
the ladder were the Indians. Safe for tourists and extremely profitable for
foreign businessmen, "Mexico had become a mother to aliens and a step
mother to her own citizens." 

Comment

Previous chapters of David's book have dealt with the concept of "Pax
America" the continuing desire of a small element of American political and
business interests who felt after the American Revolution that it was the
"Manifest Destiny" for America to control the northern hemisphere and
because of this goal a whole host of actions were justified such as,
invading other countries, negotiating boundary lines behind the threat of
annexation or refusing to trade fairly. Mexico was one of the casualties of
this idea.

Think of those astounding figures - 800 landowners - some not even Mexican
arrayed against 10 million citizens.  The landowners controlled the wealth
and the government and through that the legal system and the army were able
to impose their will on 10 million individuals!

Quote

The Great Revolution, which began in late 1910, viewed foreign ownership as
a key issue. When Francisco Madero, father of the Mexican Revolution, took
power, overthrowing the 30-year dictatorship of Porfiro Diaz, the U. S.
government openly intervened. Madero's assassination was planned in the US
Embassy and carried out in February 1913. Soon known as the "pact of the
embassy," the assassination of Madero and his vice-president shook all of
Mexico. Said Mexican Congressman Luis Manuel Rojas: "I accuse Mr. Henry
Lane Wilson, the ambassador of the United States in Mexico of the moral
responsibility for the death of Francisco I Madero and Jose Maria Pino
Suarez." 

Comment

Even against the odds of government and money and the army, the Mexicans
revolted and actually won.
This led to Madero winning.  His win was terminated by his assassination. 
Who do you think is a credible suspect for his assassination?

Quote

One year later, US troops invaded the country. U.S. business, including the
newspaper Empire of William Randolph Hearst whose Mexican ranch was larger
than Rhode Island, heartily approved. Some American sailors had entered a
prohibited wharf area in the Mexican seaport of Tampico. Briefly arrested
by Mexican authorities, they were released with a fall written apology. The
apology was not enough, said American Admiral Henry Mayo, who demanded the
Mexican authorities raise the American flag and honour it with a 21-gun
salute. When Mexico refused, President Woodrow Wilson, backed by a standing
ovation in a joint session of Congress, ordered the entire American
Atlantic Fleet to Tampico. The city of Veracruz was bombarded, resulting in
hundreds of Mexican casualties, and then occupied for seven months by
several thousand American troops. Violent anti-American demonstrations
broke out across Mexico. The statute of George Wash

FW Chainletter Capitalism re Douthwaite

[Thomas Lunde]

Quotes from The Growth Illusion by Richard Douthwaite

Page 82
Chapter Ned Ludd was Right

I start this quote after a metaphor in which he used an imaginary country
called Erewhon to illustrate this statement, "One of the distortions was
that new technologies made people redundant without the economy having
anything else equivalent for them to do, just as Ned Ludd feared was
happening in 1812.

So that the next question has to be, where are be redundant workers to go?
They have only two options:
 
1.  to remain unemployed "Which, as Erewhon has a system of state
unemployment relief, we can regard as becoming members of a special
category of state employees that provides no services in return for its
pay" 

An interesting way to describe those on Unemployment Assistance or Welfare.
 Of course with so many services having no monetary value, the capitalistic
system can find no way to generate a profit for such work and therefore
consign it to the outer darkness.  The state might be well advised to have
a contract with it's citizens that in return for a "basic income" that is
livable, other forms of work can be assigned and accomplished.  Of course,
if the state can only tax that which is labeled "income", they have a
conundrum, how can they tax enough to provide for an expansion of the
"special category of state employees" who are available for non-monetarized
work?  In todays Ottawa Citizen, Jean Chretien outlined a youth employment
initiative in which the government would put up $90 million dollars over
the next 3 years to employ 3000 young people for one year.  This works out
to about 300 young people for each province - surely not guaranteed to make
a dent in youth employment.  I would suggest that they would have been
farther ahead to give them $1000 per month in real money and $1000 in tax
deferred script which they could sell for $1000 to employers or education
institutes.  Or the script could be used as part of a downpayment on a home
of their own with the government accepting the script in lieu of cash for
the 7.5 mortgage qualifying payment.  Or, if you are interested, I have
about another 30 ideas.

1.  or to join the service sector proper and bid down the rates of pay
there until everyone seeking work is taken on or wages all to a level so
little better than unemployment pay that the mutual undercutting stops.  

This is the neo-con's preferred  solution.  Eliminate the minimum wage,
benefits, work hours and standardized work week and they will pick up the
slack.  A Faustian bargain if I ever heard one.  Of course, in the neo-cons
world, they resent even having to compete with Unemployment Insurance and
Welfare rates and would prefer that the government drop these two programs
which Douthwaite assumes would establish the baseline.
 
This latter outcome seems to be very close to what has actually happened in
the United States. In their 1986 report to the Joint Economic Committee of
Congress entitled the great American Jobs Machine, economics professors
Bennett Harrison and Barry Bluestone investigated the wages and quality of
the new jobs the United States was able to create in such great numbers
from the early sixties until the beginning of the present recession. "Were
we becoming a nation of low-wage hamburger flippers, nurse's aides,
janitors and securities guards as the mass media sometimes reported?" They
ask. "The demise of high-wage manufacturing jobs in cities like Detroit and
Youngstown, combined with the proliferation of McDonald's and K-Marts in
virtually every town provided an image of the American economy as a new
low-wage bastion." What is their answer? In a later book, The Great U-Turn
(1990), the write: 

During the first half of the 1980's the U. S. economy continued to turn out
new jobs at about the same rapid pace as during the previous decade, but we
discovered that a majority of the jobs created after 1979 were of dubious
quality when measured by the annual earnings the offered. America was
surely creating more than just hamburger flippers and security guards but
nearly three out of five (58%) of the net new jobs created between 1979 and
1984 paid $7,400 or less a year (in 1984 dollars). In contrast, less than
one in five of the additional jobs generated between 1963 and 1979 had paid
such low wages.  

This is the great shift between two types of income.  The first is labour
income which comes from the exchange of personal services and the second is
investment income which comes from profit and the exploitation of the those
who labour.  The conservative movement started in the late 60's as a
rejection by business to the "nanny state" which was introduced by Lyndon
Johnson and Pierre E. Trudeau in Canada.  Over the next ten years the
corporate agenda was able to reduce their own contribution to society and
increase the contribution of those who labour.  The state was complicit in
this shift by becoming susceptible to lobbying groups, political
contributions an

FW Capitalism is the Problem - Douthwaite

[Thomas Lunde]

The more I read and study this problem of unemployment, the more I am led
to the conclusion that the "root" causes lay within our capitalistic system
of distributing goods and services which are produced by human beings in
activities that we selectively label "employment".  Many of the other
activities that humans do, such as housecleaning, car washing and raising
children are excluded from the title of "employment" in an arbitrary
fashion under the criteria that no one is willing to pay, i.e. provide a
wage for the activity.  Common sense would agree that these and many other
activities are work and if we are going to live in a monetized society,
then there should be affixed a value to these activities.

Following is a quote that gives a recapitulation of how capitalistic
economies work.  It becomes apparent as we read this that loyalty, skill
level, good work habits, education, talent are nowhere mentioned.  Nor is
overtime, work weeks, pay schedules or any of the other criteria that
humans use to determine their economic self-worth. The employee is at the
mercy of a rigged game in which business and government are playing by a
set of rules and criteria in which the employee has no input and which can
violently, arbritarily and randomly affect his quality of life.  As
Douthwaite points out so eloquently, at the level of the rules of
capitalism, employees are just a victim to the needs of profit and taxes
with little or no consideration to the human level of families, children,
health, creativity and community.

As we on FutureWork continue to explore and educate ourselves around the
topic of work, it becomes apparent that to ignore the macro forces inherent
within an economic philosophy such as capitalism creates an incomplete
model for solving the concept of redistributing income through wages and
work.  And redistribute income we must, it is the single imperative of our
humanity.  If the system will not or cannot serve this imperative, then we
must actively seek another system.


Quotes from the Growth Illusion by Richard Douthwaite
Council Oak Books Tulsa
Published 1992 - 93
ISBN Number 0-933031-74-2

Chapter 2 (Page 18)

Why Capitalism Needs Growth

If a country's national income is as poor a measure of its people's
well-being as the last chapter suggested, why does every industrialized
country judge not just its government's success but its national vigour on
the basis of the size of its annual increase in GNP? Why are national
leaders never contend with moderate rate of growth and constantly striving
to speed up the process? 

It is not the results of growth that are important to the people who make
it happen. What matters is the process itself; and the more of that process
there is, the better politicians and business people like it. Growth means
change. More rapid growth means even more change; more change means more
market opportunities to be turned into profits. And more profits are not
only the systems motivating force but the source of the financial resources
needed for it to grow faster still. For a company director, corporate
growth creates a virtuous circle with increased profits leading to
increased investment leading to more growth, more profit and more
investment still. For his ally, the politician, national growth means more
tax revenues to spend and more influence in the world. 

Here it is baldly stated.  The system exists for growth with the attendant
side effects of change.  That the change affects people, jobs, security,
livelihood, investment in personal employability training, seniority and
everything else that we at the individual level consider important - has no
importance within the paradigms set forth for the needs of profit.

But it is not just that firms like growth because it makes them more
profitable: they positively need it if they are to survive. A fundamental
part of the modern capitalist system is the payment of interest on borrowed
money. If someone borrows $10,000 at 10 percent interest, there are only
two ways in which they can find the extra $1000 they will owe 12 months
later. One is by taking the money out of their salary or savings: in other
words, impoverishing themselves. The other is by investing in some business
enterprise which will give at least a 10% return so that they can pay the
interest from its profits. But where to the profits come from?  

So how did this situation come about?  Douthwaite explains that one of
businesses tools, the receiving of credit in return for repayment through
interest is one of the primary causes.
 
Profits can only be made in three ways, although combinations of these are
common. 

1.  Growth is one method. When an economy grows, incomes increase and
profits can come from those extra incomes without anyone having to be made
worse off. (This is why we pay such attention to the growth of GNP. Despite
its faults in other directions, the amount by which GNP increases from year
to year is a measure of the potential for 

FW More Douthwaite - I really love this guy.

[Thomas Lunde]

The Growth Illusion by Douthwaite

Quote from Chapter 9 
What Has All the Growth Done
Page 168 

I just love this little anecdote that follows, which, vast reader that I
am, had never heard of before.  Imagine learning it from a book by an Irish
professor over 25 years after the events described happened in my own
country and in the Province in which I lived for thirty years.  Having read
a lot of educational theory, as I have young children, one of the congruent
findings, to this tale, has been that "tests" have continually gotten
easier.  So the Grade levels and the assumed competency of those levels has
been continually falling since the 60's.  Television has been blamed and
praised and the argument, as so many, is littered with learned pros and
cons that prevent any definitive evaluation.  Each expert comes with his
credentials and convincing stories along with his conclusions which support
his research - which he often had to decide in advance when asking the
grant giving authorities to give him/her some money to do the study.  It
gets so bad that most new research is often just a rehash and reordering of
works that have been published and bear no relationship to common sense or
intelligent analysis or current information from other fields.  What passes
for analysis in the press is the journalistic credo of always presenting
two sides.  At least in a book, such as this one, we can enjoy and benefit
from a mono-theme in which the author can take as much time and as many
examples as required to develop his logic. Read on, this is lots of fun.

In 1973 Tannis Williams, a psychologist at the University of British
Columbia, learned that a town of 
2,500 people which had been unable to receive television was to be provided
with a signal in a year's time. She immediately began to study the town,
which she called (Notel), using standard psychological tests, and arranged
for the same tests to be carried out in two similar towns in the same area,
Multitel and Unitel, which had been receiving television for years. Guy
Lyon Playfair describes what she found in his book The Evil Eye: the
Unacceptable Face of Television: (1990) 

One of her findings was completely unexpected: Notel adults were a good
deal brighter than those of the two other towns. 

Stop and think for a moment.  The adults who did not watch television and
had not watched television were evaluated as being "brighter", an
interesting unscientific choice of words, than those in two other similar
towns.  When I was younger, I worked in Northern Canada for 19 years in
heavy construction.  Though my childhood was balanced by summers and
occasional school years on the farm, most of my time was urban and so I had
a good blend of the two environments.  What I noticed from my years in the
North was what is described as a "can do" attitude, not to be confused with
Candu which is in a very confused state.  Canadian construction workers
continually amazed supervisors from large, world wide companies with their
ability to get the job done under almost impossible conditions.  These were
"can do" guys who came off the farms of and small towns of the prairies and
local industries which had to constantly improvise because the economics
were slanted in favour of Eastern Canada and the West had a net loss of
income from its raw resources.  Later when I moved back to cities and urban
employment, I found that many people were good at their jobs but they were
not innovative nor did they have the attitude of improvising.  The
difference, I finally concluded, actually was a different form of
intelligence.

They were much better at creative problem-solving tests, and even those
individuals who were unable to solve the tasks they were given would try
for much longer than Multitel or Unitel people before giving up.

Again, when it is 40 below and you are three hundred miles in the bush with
a problem, it is not feasible to throw up your hands and phone for help -
you and those with you are it and you solve that problem or you suffer and
sometimes die.  I might add that the resourcefulness of Canadian soldiers
in two World Wars was the result of these civilians becoming soldiers and
by their attitude, they provided the example to the urban Canadians.

As for the children of Notel, they came out at the top of the three-town
league when they were given the Alternative Uses Task, a standard test in
which subjects are asked how many things they can do with something, like a
sheet of newspaper. 

Again, this is cultural, you learn this when you grow up in environments
that does not have surplus's or the help of specialists.  Children learn it
in their play and when they do ask their parents, they are advised to try
this or try that, not to give up and stop making a mess.  When resources
are scarce, innovation becomes a survival skill.  Thankfully, we still have
that environment and those kinds of men and women and though they are in a
minority, numbers are not the relevant evalu

FW Events beyond foreseeing and their effect

[Thomas Lunde]

I'll start my response to Sally's challenge by commenting on this article
which I pulled off the Ottawa Citizen's Internet Site on this fine Sunday
before I go to church.

After reading Ed's thoughtful piece, with many good comments, I was left
feeling unsatisfied with his answer.  Perhaps it is my apocryphal
skepticism about the results of linear projections or perhaps I read too
much science fiction as an adolescent, whatever.  The fact that the
population had doubled in my lifetime, that 6 billion consume a lot more
than three billion has to be a fact that eventually impresses itself on the
fabric of the Earth and our puny economic systems.  The following article,
I would maintain is but the beginning of the destabilizing forces about to
be unleashed by El Nino on a world that doesn't want to react to them, but
which will be forced to by the end of 1998. 

I have no doubt that these effects will create employment, whether it is
paid for or not.  We have created a finely tuned financial system in which
much of the slack - redundancy has been taken out under the neo-cons guise
of efficiency.  What is left, works like a finely tuned piece of machinery
and forgets the axiom of the weakest link.  Any complex system is only as
strong as its weakest link.  Our weakest link in my opinion is the shift of
income distribution from the income from work to the income from
investment.  And income from investment comes from constantly producing a
surplus, i.e. profit.  Should a significant number of agricultural, mineral
and manufacturing systems start to fail because of the environment, the
next thing to fail is the distribution of income through the speculation of
increased profits which is what is currently stock and currency markets of
the world.

When economic systems fail, it has a domino effect, as all those with
capital try to remove their capital and hoard it so they are in a position
to capitalize by investing in shortages where capitalism really can make
big profits.  As the speculators, nice guys like you and me with a job
managing a pension fund or a stock portfolio find themselves facing
disaster, they will do what they have to do to protect themselves.  If that
means shutting down a pulp mill or closing an automobile factory, so be it,
to them, their job is to protect the capital entrusted to them and to find
somewhere, somehow, a way to make a profit.  We only have to go back to the
Middle Ages to see that hoarding, local warfare, rioting become the norm as
the rich protect themselves with soldiers while the poor watch their
children starve.

Now if this seems very negative, the following article needs to be read and
reflected on with much more insight than just information and "isn't that
terrible, those poor people" which is the attitude of those not being
affected.  First and foremost, Mother Earth has its own needs which we have
been happily violating under the guise of making life better for all of us.
 Bertrand Gross quipped in Friendly Fascism, "Ecological irresponsibility
can pay - for the entrepreneur but not for society as a whole."  Those
farmers who started the individual fires now out control, did so for
reasons that were economic- they had to clear more land to plant more crops
to make more money so they could get on in the world.

Second, we must remember that the current GDP method of determining the
state of economic health will show healthy growth rates in all the
countries affected, even if all the economic activity is just to return
things to the current status quo and then after a time, we will be told
these countries are not keeping up because their new GDP figures are not as
high as the ones after the disaster.

Third, though their desire to improve themselves is laudable in current
neo-con thinking, and the fringe effects of their actions on millions of
people were unforeseen, still to those experiencing them very real and
where not part of their plans for their future.  This is one of the side
effects of self interest rather than communal interest and it has been
going on exponentially since Adam Smith first laid out the rules of the
capitalistic game.  I might add that the rich in this case will suffer
equally with the poor, which must be a disturbing thought - of course, they
could always kick $250,000 into the pot and emigrate to Canada.

The fact that many people believe that they saw something in the sky could
lead to a mass religious movement or panic.  The placebo of science, that
it is just a light refraction, does not hold much weight when your mother
has just died or children are crying all night because they can't sleep for
the smoke inhalation.  Also the majority of those people are not educated
and therefore do not have much faith in our western religion of science -
be prepared for anything, even Europeans at the turn of the century turned
out by their tens of thousands in Spain because they believed the Virgin
Mary had made an appearance.

Next, we have to look

FW Response to Land Reform proposal put forward by Ed Mueller

[Thomas Lunde]

This was an essay I developed in response to Ed Mueller's comments on land
reform before we closed the Colorado address.  I do not think it made it
onto FW list and I hope this isn't a duplicate posting, but I put a lot of
work in it and developed some viewpoints so here goes again.

Thomas Lunde


This is in response to Mr. Mueller's comments on land reform as a potential
solution for a large part of the world's poor. I am not in disagreement
with his solution, rather I think it is an admirable solution. I do not
think it is practical. To back up my assertion, I am going to give a
lengthy quote from the book "The Fight for Canada" by David Orchard. In
Chapter 23, called "Prying Open Mexico" he explains, to me, the reason I do
not think land reform will work. Summarised, the reason is the vested
interests of corporations and land owners and their collusion with
governments create such an overwhelming force that makes this solution
impractical.

Now, I am not naïve enough to believe that you don't know about Mexico and
it's attempt at land reforms, but I suspect that your knowledge may have an
American bias in that your reading has been from American writers.  This
quote is from a Canadian Nationalist who is using this piece of history to
make a point re Free Trade and American motives.  I had not intended to
comment, just to present the "quote" but in the process of transcribing, I
found myself so upset that I felt I had to comment to make the points that
I feel justify my comments re "land reform will not work because collusion
with governments."

Quote

As seen in Chapter 4, the United States seized by force all of Mexico's
territory north of the Rio Grande and Gila rivers. By 1910, the United
States owned more of Mexico than did all other foreign nations combined,
and most of the 15 million Mexicans were reduced to poverty-stricken
peonage (A peon had no legal rights; was usually paid in script, which was
worthless except at the landowner's store; and lived his life in debt to
the owner. At death, under Mexican law, the parents debts transferred to
their children.) Some 800 landowners owned more than 90 percent of rural
land, while 10 million peasants were landless. And at the very bottom of
the ladder were the Indians. Safe for tourists and extremely profitable for
foreign businessmen, "Mexico had become a mother to aliens and a step
mother to her own citizens." 

Comment

Previous chapters of David's book have dealt with the concept of "Pax
America" the continuing desire of a small element of American political and
business interests who felt after the American Revolution that it was the
"Manifest Destiny" for America to control the northern hemisphere and
because of this goal a whole host of actions were justified such as,
invading other countries, negotiating boundary lines behind the threat of
annexation or refusing to trade fairly. Mexico was one of the casualties of
this idea.

Think of those astounding figures - 800 landowners - some not even Mexican
arrayed against 10 million citizens.  The landowners controlled the wealth
and the government and through that the legal system and the army were able
to impose their will on 10 million individuals!

Quote

The Great Revolution, which began in late 1910, viewed foreign ownership as
a key issue. When Francisco Madero, father of the Mexican Revolution, took
power, overthrowing the 30-year dictatorship of Porfiro Diaz, the U. S.
government openly intervened. Madero's assassination was planned in the
U.S. Embassy and carried out in February 1913. Soon known as the "pact of
the embassy," the assassination of Madero and his vice-president shook all
of Mexico. Said Mexican Congressman Luis Manuel Rojas: "I accuse Mr. Henry
Lane Wilson, the ambassador of the United States in Mexico of the moral
responsibility for the death of Francisco I Madero and Jose Maria Pino
Suarez." 

Comment

Even against the odds of government and money and the army, the Mexicans
revolted and actually won.
This led to Madero winning.  His win was terminated by his assassination. 
Who do you think is a credible suspect for his assassination?

Quote

One year later, U.S. troops invaded the country. U.S. business, including
the newspaper Empire of William Randolph Hearst whose Mexican ranch was
larger than Rhode Island, heartily approved. Some American sailors had
entered a prohibited wharf area in the Mexican seaport of Tampico. Briefly
arrested by Mexican authorities, they were released with a fall written
apology. The apology was not enough, said American Admiral Henry Mayo, who
demanded the Mexican authorities raise the American flag and honour it with
a 21-gun salute. When Mexico refused, President Woodrow Wilson, backed by a
standing ovation in a joint session of Congress, ordered the entire
American Atlantic Fleet to Tampico. The city of

FW Will My Daughters Be Serfs?

[Thomas Lunde]

Will My Daughters Be Serfs?

I have just spent a couple of hours reading Fossilgate which was on the
FutureWork List.  It was about as exciting as a trip through Dante's
Inferno on your deathbed, in fact it could be an industrialized version of
the future for consumers rather than souls.  

The facts are simple, as simple as the amount in your bank account. 
Anything we withdraw from the petroleum reserves after the year 2000
diminishes the capital stock.  There will be no new deposits.  When it is
gone - it is gone.  The second truth is that when a resource becomes
scarce, its value increases.  The third fact is that everything we make has
a petroleum content.  Therefore, logic says that everything will go up as
soon as the news is out.  For those who hold petroleum, the longer they
hold it the more it is worth, therefore expect countries with reserves to
become very restrictive about selling their reserves and also, that they
will charge a continually escalating premium as the reserves continue to
deplete.

Forget our economic fiddling about inflation of 1 - 3%, those days will be
history.  Instead, expect inflation to jump drastically, let's put a figure
on it, let's say 50% - yep, chew on that for a minute.  Oil has twice
reached the $40 per barrel level, in 1974 and 1982 for short periods,
that's a precedent.  Expect the first increase to be at least that,
doubling the price of the petroleum content of every good and service you
consume.  This will cause a major deflation of your wealth and income. 
Because the prices are going up due to scarcity, there will be no
corresponding increase in wages.  Therefore, be prepared to try and exist
on 50 - 70% of your current income.

The worst is yet to come, massive industrial unemployment will follow
within months.  As everyone loses 30 -50% of their income, they will
purchase less of non-essentials because they won't have the money.  As the
capitalistic model strives for efficiency, large production runs have lower
prices.  When those runs fall below a certain volume, efficiencies of scale
disappear.  To stay in business, many businesses will be forced to raise
prices astronomically because of a shortage of consumer money - many will
close their doors.

Governments will not have the revenue or credit to maintain social services
even if they keep them at their current dollar level, their actual level
will be 50% less, not enough to even provide subsistence.  Expect massive
crime and rioting as people are literally fighting for life and the lives
of their families.  The model of self interest and competition we have all
grown up with will throw societies into Darwinian situations as the
strongest, formed into gangs, will prey on the weakest or god forbid,
actually gang up on the rich.

But a funny thing happens on the way to disaster.  As petroleum energy, in
all its manifestations from gasoline to plastic bags become more expensive,
human labour gains in value also.  Lets go back to 1600, when the world was
run on solar power.  (Yes, no matter how rich or blest you are, the bottom
line is that human life runs on solar power in that we take in food and
water that is the result of natural processes.)  The only excess energy
over human muscle was a horse, ox, dog or wind - all solar power energy
sources.  Now between 1600 and 2100, we discovered alternate energy
sources, first coal, then steam, then electricity, then petroleum and then
nuclear.  All stored energy of the planet rather than solar dependent
energy.  This allowed, along with technological innovation, a man to do
considerably more work than he could with real time solar power. 
Therefore, the more efficient we became in using this stored energy, in a
manner of speaking, the less value human muscle energy became.  For
example, one small tractor, a plow and one man, might do two acres of
plowing per hour.  Using muscle power, it might take a horse, a man and a
plow 8 hours to do two acres.  Therefore, if the market price for the
tractor is $20 per acre, then $40 dollars worth of work was done because of
cheap energy.  If a man, horse and plow did this, at the end of a day, we
would have to divide the 8 into 40 for an hourly rate of $4.50, one could
say, not enough wages for a man to live on therefore it is more viable to
use the cheap petroleum energy rather than the expensive solar energy.

But, if the cost of petroleum energy doubled, causing the cost to rise to
$80, then a man and a horse are now competitive at $10 per hour, an
adequate sum to buy the necessities of life.  So we can see that the
possibility exists that as the cost of petroleum rises, many things will
become more economical through human labour that have been eliminated by
our use of cheap powerful energy.

Remember, there are no shortcuts, when we pass 2000, we are using up the
last half of our capital stock of petroleum energy.  Therefore, in a funny
and unforeseen way, I see unemployment could be a temporary problem as the
cost 

FW New Career choices of the 21st Century

[Thomas Lunde]

I was responding to a friend on the West Coast who has been a bus driver
for BC Transit for the last 25 years and who E Mailed me about his car
troubles. (soon to be a thing of the past)  I started to answer and this
little tale rolled out of my humerous side.  I share it with you in the
spirit of fun.


Hi Greg,

Stay tuned for tuned for my next essay titled - "Welcome to the last car
you will ever own."  Perhaps when it is over, you will invest in a good ten
speed and get up an hour earlier to peddle to work.  As a senior bus
driver, they might even let you drive one of the few remaining diesels. 
Actually, on reflection, I see a return to the slave galley except it will
be with buses.  When you get on, you are taken to a seat with pedals, the
bus driver (slave driver) will walk up and down the aisle, flogging the
passengers to petal harder while his assistant steers the bus.  If the bus
does not have a full complement of slaves, it may get stalled on slight
hills, in which case the bus driver will put in a call and homeowners who
live near the hill will have to rush out and jump in the bus to petal. 
This will greatly lower the price of view property in the British
Properties.

Bus drivers will be chosen for their ability to inflict pain on passengers
through verbal abuse and harrasment.  Special training courses at BC
Transit will weed out the softies so that the system can function with
maximum efficiency.  Any passengers who are senior citizens will be given
special high gear ratio petals to compensate for their age.  The
handicapped will not be allowed to ride as there can be no dead weight on
the bus which would lower efficiency.  Drivers who manage to achieve high
speeds from their pedalers will receive achievement rewards.  Late night
runs will be eliminated due to lack of pedlars.  After fifty or so years,
Darwinian evolution will kick in and children will be born with
overdeveloped legs, which will become a sign of beauty, reflecting
increased survival capabilities.  With a corresponding decrease in head
size and and upper body weight, humans will truly sink closer to the
ground.  Lucien Bouchard and his descendants who come from voyager stock
will be the new patron saints and claiming direct lineage will guarantee
the lowest gear ratio seats to this worthy breed of people.

People who need hip replacements will be warehoused as unproductive.  Women
will become the dominant species having larger thighs and less upper body
weight.  Small breast size will be in along with narrow shoulders and short
hair.  If we invest now in pedal buses, already on the drawing boards of
GM, though classified as highly secret, we may become wealthy enough to
afford a surrogate pedlar to do our work.  Bicycles built for two will
become the sign of wealth with an overly developed pedlar conveying the
idle rich throughout the countryside.  Rickshaws will become a dominant
career option with courses being offered at our leading high tech
universities to develop three wheeled rickshaws to handle the parking
problem.  Mike Harris will be hailed as the Winston Churchill of the year
2000 for his pioneering work on developing "workfare" slaves to substitute
as a cost effective solution for the lack of petroleum.

Welcome to the future.