Re: Einstein: Time's man of the century [China]
You're welcome Ed. Just a few further thoughts. Ray Ed Goertzen wrote: ==Ed G said: Many thanks to Ray for his detailed answer. (snip) Ed said; I have to agree with Kazantzakis. In an excellent book by David Astle "Babalonian Woe" (Copyright 1975) he traces the causes of conflicts from the time of Summerian dominance and attributes them to the infectious anomaly of monetary systems. I tend to think that it had more to do with literacy. Literacy freed the memory and allowed for communication over distances in a general fashion. This created the first "information of scale" if I may paraphrase the economists. Ed continued: =The jacket quote is enlightening. "The intellectual faculties however are not of themselves sufficient to produce external action; they require the aid of physical force, the direction and combination of which are wholly at the disp[oasal of money, that mighty spring by which the total force of human energies is set in motion. [Augustus Boeckh; Translated: The Public Economy of Athens, P, 7; Book 1, London 1828. Money as a symbol or substitute for an object or effort was and is tied to literacy. I said: Einstein made the same point, more politely, in his essay. I think you could ask what "needs" the Europeans "had" that made them finally use the printing press, an earlier import that sat for a good while before Europe broke forth with books for the common man. You could also remember the problem with the first Millennium being that the Spanish Catholics didn't understand zero or Al Jabaar until they had expelled the Moors and the Jews just prior to the 1500s and translated their books. Ed replied: I would question the "needs" to which Einstein refers. My contention continues to be that, while the printing press "sat for a good while" it was only when its use as a means of excercising power over peoples minds, thereby "moving" them, was realised, that it came into popular usage. (i.e. it obtained the financial backing that popularised it employment.) That is not my understanding. I believe it was tied to the trauma of the loss of oral information through the plagues and the fragility of the existing libraries written by hand and subject to fire. Even in the 20th century the Steinway Piano company used the same logic to build the manual from the information contained in the minds of their individual craftsmen. Two generations later, the families of those craftsmen are still pissed off about the theft of their grandfather secret knowledge. Value went from people to process and the people were then downgraded to hired hands from irreplaceable experts. The piano has never been the same since certain information simply is not literary. But the printing press and later the computer did protect the written information by dissemination. Ray continues: After expelling the above there was ample reason to get these violent and disruptive folks out of the country and into some safe activity like murdering the Inca for gold to cover the ballrooms of Europe. But, I think it is a mistake to mislabel the intent as profit. No one wanted Cortez or Pizarro around in Spain. Ed answers:I see that as making my point. It is not neccessarily the invention that is either good or bad for humanity. It is the (profit) purpose to which the invention (new idea etc.) can be put in terms of geopolitics. I tend to think that culture and the external world shapes our perceptions and options but I think we can control those through manipulation of the external. I agree that something can be either good or bad but my examples were of two very violent and pathological personalities who anti-social acts made their own countries glad to have them abroad. (snip) As I pointed out: The violence behind the ethnic cleansing, that had taken 700 years of constant warfare, lent itself to conquest and Empire. The bankers were the economic structure of choice but certainly not the motivation or the intent for all of that murder and pillage that spread around the world, including China, by the Hunter/Gatherers from the Europe of the time. (See the NYReview of Books URL mentioned later.) Ed continues: Without trade we could not have progressed beyond the family stage into the extended and tribal stage of social organization. (in fact, even within families trade takes place, albeit without the monetary accounting practices.) At the time of Summerian acendance "money" as an intrinsic value for purposes of trade already was well established within and between city states. There was trade in the Americas from the tip of Tierra del fuego to the arctic but various things were used instead of "money" i.e. cacao beans, wampum, quetzal feathers etc. The market in Tenochtitlan was the largest in the world at the time. They were also a violent people but it had little to do with money, profit or capital in the sense that we think of it today. Cortez remarked that they had "thought him a God" but after the fought to the
How capitalism works (sic!) (Was Re: Einstein: Time's man of the century [China] )
Title: How capitalism works (sic!) (Was Re: Einstein: Time's man of the century [China] )
Dear Friends
I snip from an exchange between our friends, and, then, comment.
--
From: Ray E. Harrell [EMAIL PROTECTED]
To: Ed Goertzen [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Subject: Re: Einstein: Time's man of the century [China]
Date: Fri, Jan 14, 2000, 2:23 AM
I asked and still am asking:
why a
sedentary China is considered less advanced than a predatory Europe?
(snip)
Ed's reply:I have made the point before, (perhaps generously ignored), that
the international trade that took place between nation states in antiquity
were facillitated with money. The anomaly of monetary systems created a
balance of payments imbalance. That imbalance required the armys of the
creditor nations (and their mercinaries, paid for with money) to collect
the debts.
True in Europe, I suppose but seems like it has to be more complicated
than that. Almost all professions have a theoretical framework for
the reason the world revolves around their view of it. Why should
economists be any different.
*
I'll try, at the end, to reproduce the essence of an analysis of the way in which the pie is cut up under capitalism.
The relevence to this discussion, is the fact that, once the owners of capital (land, knowledge/information and money) have received/appropriated part of the produced 'goods,' they have to find a buyer for it, if they are to convert those goods into a commodity (money) that is useful/valuable to them.
Once this had been done in the early phase of proto-capitalism ('Mercantilism') the proto-capitalists (the merchants) *then* had need of using these monetary surpuses for further gain/profit.
This was their greed and their self deception, since trading for profit was un-Christian (see The Gospel of Thomas Verse 64 for a clear statement of Jesus' view of trading.)
They. thus, pressurised the religious/secular authorities to trash, yet further, the Christian ethical code, by demanding the legitimation of usury (money lending for profit), which, in England, Henry VIII did for them in 1545.
(see Harry Page 'In Restraint of Usury' for historical background, and, also, see Verse 95 in The Gospel of Thomas for Jesus ' comment on usury:
If you have money, do not lend it at interest, rather, give it to some-one from whom you will not get it back.
- I particularly like the book 'The Gospel of Thomas' by Richard Valantansis - all Christians should be aware of the words there - at present they are not aware!)
The problem with usury (well, one of the problems with usury!) is its compound nature, and, thus, the exponential nature of the devilry that it creates - as we see in today's planetary mayhem.
The *only* solution to all the world's suffering is the abolition of usury - hence our Campaign for Interest-Free Money and its petition to Governments to a) abolish usury and b) the create Public Service, interest-free Banking and Financial systems.
(Please let others know this? Thanks.)
Now, that diagram (apologies if it doesn't e-transfer well):
__A
Wages
-
Salaries
-
Perks
___B
Interest on lent money
_
Dividends on shares ('owned knowledge')
_
Rent on owned land
__C
Proceeds of sale of energy, raw materials
___D
(The vertical scale from A - C is Surplus or Added Value on the cost of energy and raw materials.
The step A - B is the return on labour.
The step B - C is the return on the three factors of production (aka 'Capital')
(You can see from this, how conflict arises, how wages get pushed down in a competitive market and how the workforce never receives enough money to buy back its production, and, so, why inflation is caused.)
BTW - I'm a mechanistic organic chemist, rather (thank heaven) than a classically-trained economist, hence my diagrammatic representations.
HTH !
Many hugs
j
*
Re: Einstein: Time's man of the century [China]
==Ed G said: Many thanks to Ray for his detailed answer. Ray Evans Harrell, [EMAIL PROTECTED] replied to Brad and Ed G Brad said: Needham's orienting question was: Why, when China was in many ways more advanced than Europe even in the 1500s, did Europe "take off" but China remained in feudalism? His answer, which he did not like, was that Capitalism seems to have been the engine which drove not just the West's economic exploitation of the whole world, but also the great flowering of genuine Enlightenment in the West. When Kazantzakis wrote out the "story" to explore these questions in Odysseus a 20th Century Sequel he came up with the answer that it was war that did it. =I have to agree with Kazantzakis. In an excellent book by David Astle "Babalonian Woe" (Copyright 1975) he traces the causes of conflicts from the time of Summerian dominance and attributes them to the infectious anomaly of monetary systems. =The jacket quote is enlightening. "The intellectual faculties however are not of themselves sufficient to produce external action; they require the aid of physical force, the direction and combination of which are wholly at the disp[oasal of money, that mighty spring by which the total force of human energies is set in motion. [Augustus Boeckh; Translated: The Public Economy of Athens, P, 7; Book 1, London 1828. Ray's post continued: "I praise you Helen for your heaving thighs that lit in slothful men a raging war that opened minds and widened seas." Einstein made the same point, more politely, in his essay. I think you could ask what "needs" the Europeans "had" that made them finally use the printing press, an earlier import that sat for a good while before Europe broke forth with books for the common man. You could also remember the problem with the first Millennium being that the Spanish Catholics didn't understand zero or Al Jabaar until they had expelled the Moors and the Jews just prior to the 1500s and translated their books. I would question the "needs" to which Einstein refers. My contention continues to be that, while the printing press "sat for a good while" it was only when its use as a means of excercising power over peoples minds, thereby "moving" them, was realised, that it came into popular usage. (i.e. it obtained the financial backing that popularised it employment.) Ray continues: After expelling the above there was ample reason to get these violent and disruptive folks out of the country and into some safe activity like murdering the Inca for gold to cover the ballrooms of Europe. But, I think it is a mistake to mislabel the intent as profit. No one wanted Cortez or Pizarro around in Spain. I see that as making my point. It is not neccessarily the invention that is either good or bad for humanity. It is the (profit) purpose to which the invention (new idea etc.) can be put in terms of geopolitics. Ray continues: The same could be said for Ceasar and Rome. Better that they fight "out there." See what happened when he stayed home too long!If El Cid had lived, he would have been off to America in no time at all. The violence behind the ethnic cleansing, that had taken 700 years of constant warfare, lent itself to conquest and Empire. The bankers were the economic structure of choice but certainly not the motivation or the intent for all of that murder and pillage that spread around the world, including China, by the Hunter/Gatherers from the Europe of the time. (See the NYReview of Books URL mentioned later.) ==Without trade we could not have progressed beyond the family stage into the extended and tribal stage of social organization. (in fact, even within families trade takes place, albeit without the monetary accounting practices.) At the time of Summerian acendance "money" as an intrinsic value for purposes of trade already was well established within and between city states. Ray continues: As to Needham, the real question for me and my tradition, is why a "sedentary China" is considered less advanced than a predatory Europe? Braudel not withstanding, the Europeans allied their businesses with their Navies and in China's case made today's drug cartels look positively virginal.The trade routes of Gengis were no more violent than the opening of Hong Kong. The case has been made that the Hordes that so traumatized Europe were actually more beneficial, and liberal in their tolerance of all but fealty issues, than the Spanish and Brits on any level in their Empires. Again Einstein makes the point: "most of the major states of history owed their existence to conquest. The conquering peoples established themselves, legally and economically, as the privileged class of the conquered country. They seized for themselves a monopoly of the land ownership and appointed a priesthood from among their own ranks. The priests, in control of education, made the class division of society into a
