Dialectics of History

Discuss the future with a leading technologist, businessman and philosopher

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Spiralman
Posts: 107
Joined: Wed Mar 25, 2009 5:07 pm

The Price is Right: 5BR, 3.5BA McMansion in Las Vegas for $2

Post by Spiralman »

The Price is Right: 5BR, 3.5BA McMansion in Las Vegas for $23,000

http://www.trulia.com/sold/Las_Vegas,NV ... ce;a_sort/
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A house like that might have sold for $600,000 at the peak last year.
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Spiralman
Posts: 107
Joined: Wed Mar 25, 2009 5:07 pm

Just 53% of Americans Say Capitalism Better Than "Socialism"

Post by Spiralman »

Just 53% of Americans Say Capitalism Better Than "Socialism" [ahem State-Capitalism]

http://www.rasmussenreports.com/public_ ... _socialism

[
Even though they probably mistakenly think that Socialism = State Ownership, the mere fact that “socialism,” regardless of meaning, is no longer a dirty word, is a watershed moment in post-WW2 American history.

Maybe that’s why I feel so comfortable sending you the following links as well
;)
]
Liberty
A study in bourgeois illusion
Christopher Caudwell 1938

http://www.marxists.org/archive/caudwel ... iberty.htm
1907-1937
Image

COMBAT LIBERALISM
Selected Works of Mao Tse-tung
September 7, 1937
http://www.marxists.org/reference/archi ... wv2_03.htm

Frederick Engels
Socialism: Utopian and Scientific, 1880
http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/wo ... p/ch03.htm
........
If the crises demonstrate the incapacity of the bourgeoisie for managing any longer modern productive forces, the transformation of the great establishments for production and distribution into joint-stock companies, trusts, and State property, show how unnecessary the bourgeoisie are for that purpose. All the social functions of the capitalist has no further social function than that of pocketing dividends, tearing off coupons, and gambling on the Stock Exchange, where the different capitalists despoil one another of their capital. At first, the capitalistic mode of production forces out the workers. Now, it forces out the capitalists, and reduces them, just as it reduced the workers, to the ranks of the surplus-population, although not immediately into those of the industrial reserve army.

But, the transformation — either into joint-stock companies and trusts, or into State-ownership — does not do away with the capitalistic nature of the productive forces. In the joint-stock companies and trusts, this is obvious. And the modern State, again, is only the organization that bourgeois society takes on in order to support the external conditions of the capitalist mode of production against the encroachments as well of the workers as of individual capitalists. The modern state, no matter what its form, is essentially a capitalist machine — the state of the capitalists, the ideal personification of the total national capital. The more it proceeds to the taking over of productive forces, the more does it actually become the national capitalist, the more citizens does it exploit. The workers remain wage-workers — proletarians. The capitalist relation is not done away with. It is, rather, brought to a head. But, brought to a head, it topples over. State-ownership of the productive forces is not the solution of the conflict, but concealed within it are the technical conditions that form the elements of that solution.

This solution can only consist in the practical recognition of the social nature of the modern forces of production, and therefore in the harmonizing with the socialized character of the means of production. And this can only come about by society openly and directly taking possession of the productive forces which have outgrown all control, except that of society as a whole. The social character of the means of production and of the products today reacts against the producers, periodically disrupts all production and exchange, acts only like a law of Nature working blindly, forcibly, destructively. But,with the taking over by society of the productive forces, the social character of the means of production and of the products will be utilized by the producers with a perfect understanding of its nature, and instead of being a source of disturbance and periodical collapse, will become the most powerful lever of production itself.

Active social forces work exactly like natural forces: blindly, forcibly, destructively, so long as we do not understand, and reckon with, them. But, when once we understand them, when once we grasp their action, their direction, their effects, it depends only upon ourselves to subject them more and more to our own will, and, by means of them, to reach our own ends. And this holds quite especially of the mighty productive forces of today. As long as we obstinately refuse to understand the nature and the character of these social means of action — and this understanding goes against the grain of the capitalist mode of production, and its defenders — so long these forces are at work in spite of us, in opposition to us, so long they master us, as we have shown above in detail.

But when once their nature is understood, they can, in the hand working together, be transformed from master demons into willing servants. The difference is as that between the destructive force of electricity in the lightning in the storm, and electricity under command in the telegraph and the voltaic arc; the difference between a conflagration, and fire working in the service of man. With this recognition, at last, of the real nature of the productive forces of today, the social anarchy of production gives place to a social regulation of production upon a definite plan, according to the needs of the community and of each individual. Then the capitalist mode of appropriation, in which the product enslaves first the producer, and then the appropriator, is replaced by the mode of appropriation of the products that is based upon the nature of the modern means of production; upon the one hand, direct social appropriation, as means to the maintenance and extension of production — on the other, direct individual appropriation, as means of subsistence and of enjoyment.

Whilst the capitalist mode of production more and more completely transforms the great majority of the population into proletarians, it creates the power which, under penalty of its own destruction, is forced to accomplish this revolution. Whilst it forces on more and more of the transformation of the vast means of production, already socialized, into State property, it shows itself the way to accomplishing this revolution. The proletariat seizes political power and turns the means of production into State property.

But, in doing this, it abolishes itself as proletariat, abolishes all class distinction and class antagonisms, abolishes also the State as State. Society, thus far, based upon class antagonisms, had need of the State. That is, of an organization of the particular class which was, pro tempore, the exploiting class, an organization for the purpose of preventing any interference from without with the existing conditions of production, and, therefore, especially, for the purpose of forcibly keeping the exploited classes in the condition of oppression corresponding with the given mode of production (slavery, serfdom, wage-labor). The State was the official representative of society as a whole; the gathering of it together into a visible embodiment. But, it was this only in so far as it was the State of that class which itself represented, for the time being, society as a whole:

in ancient times, the State of slaveowning citizens;
in the Middle Ages, the feudal lords;
in our own times, the bourgeoisie.

When, at last, it becomes the real representative of the whole of society, it renders itself unnecessary. As soon as there is no longer any social class to be held in subjection; as soon as class rule, and the individual struggle for existence based upon our present anarchy in production, with the collisions and excesses arising from these, are removed, nothing more remains to be repressed, and a special repressive force, a State, is no longer necessary. The first act by virtue of which the State really constitutes itself the representative of the whole of society — the taking possession of the means of production in the name of society — this is, at the same time, its last independent act as a State. State interference in social relations becomes, in one domain after another, superfluous, and then dies out of itself; the government of persons is replaced by the administration of things, and by the conduct of processes of production. The State is not "abolished". It dies out. This gives the measure of the value of the phrase: "a free State", both as to its justifiable use at times by agitators, and as to its ultimate scientific inefficiency; and also of the demands of the so-called anarchists for the abolition of the State out of hand.
......
Communist Manifesto, 1848
http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/wo ... o/ch01.htm

Spiralman
Posts: 107
Joined: Wed Mar 25, 2009 5:07 pm

Re: Dialectics of HistoryEmpty Restaurants, Falling Rents, Aband

Post by Spiralman »

Empty Restaurants, Falling Rents, Abandoned Boats, and Collapsing Auction Sales & Bernanke's Deflation Preventing Scorecard

http://globaleconomicanalysis.blogspot. ... rents.html

[Data is hammering home the message of overproduction crisis.

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Almost 50% of total food budget spent in restaurants!
That represents a serious industrialized encroachment of one of the historic forms of labor that went on in the nuclear family.
I wouldn’t be surprised if this dynamic even continues in a new form during the crisis as people still spend less money and labor eating in their own homes, and spend more time and money eating with groups of people, either at friends and neighbors houses, at their job site itself, or in soup kitchens, prisons, and military mess halls.
]

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Bernanke's Deflation Preventing Scorecard

http://globaleconomicanalysis.blogspot. ... nting.html

[
Helicopter Ben’s money drops have achieved nothing, aside from proving several schools of economic thought, whether pro- or anti- stimulus, to be woefully wrong.

So, instead of providing the only monetary or fiscal stimulus that could have worked at all, which would have been targeted at the Global South, where in many countries folks are not massively indebted, and where there is an acute shortage of basic infrastructure – sanitation, electricity, irrigation, roads, rail, telecommunication, education, medical, housing, etc, they shot their wads ineffectually.

History has taught us repeatedly that overproduction crises inevitably lead to wars – civil and international.

Future American Helicopter drops might look more like the following linked video, as the Obama Administration will try to wipe out (overly)productive forces around the world, in part, like Bush’s Iraq adventures as a make-work program for the Red States, but this time targeting Afghanistan/Pakistan, Russia via assistance to Eastern Europe or China.

Apocalypse Now..Ride Of The Valkyries
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gz3Cc7wlfkI
]

Spiralman
Posts: 107
Joined: Wed Mar 25, 2009 5:07 pm

Obama may cede Iran's nuclear rights via Kazakhstan and Japa

Post by Spiralman »

Obama may cede Iran's nuclear rights via Kazakhstan and Japan; Russia and China are not amused

http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Middle_East/KD10Ak03.html

[Hopefully neither Israel nor Saudi Arabia prevents this trend of warming American-Iranian relations from continuing. For the first time in several years, I’m optimistic that Iran won’t be attacked. There could be an economic recovery in Iran from a reduction in tensions, sanctions and having affordable electricity; but it will be tempered by the likely continuing decline in revenue from oil as global demand continues to contract. If the Saudi oil minister’s advisor warned in January, global oil demand could crash by 45%.]
.....
According to the Wall Street Journal, the Obama administration is "carefully considering" the setting up of an international uranium fuel bank in Kazakhstan, which could form the exit strategy for the historic US-Iran standoff. That is why the visit by the Iranian President Mahmud Ahmadinejad to Astana, Kazakhstan, on Monday assumes exceptional importance.
.......
What emerges is that Japan might also play a key role in the US-Kazakh nuclear paradigm and any resultant new opening with Iran.
......
Curiously, Japan and Kazakhstan have an expanding cooperation program in the nuclear field. There is much complementarity between the two countries since Japan is the world's third-largest importer of uranium, next only to the US and France, while Kazakhstan possesses the world's second largest reserves of uranium after Australia. Japan currently imports only 1% of its uranium from Kazakhstan and hopes to increase it to 30-40% in the next decade or so.

As for Kazakhstan, at 1.5 million metric tons, it holds roughly 19% of the world's total uranium deposits. More than half of the Kazakh deposits are also available for extraction by in-site leaching, which is a cheap and environmentally friendly method in comparison with extraction from open pits or deep shaft mines. Kazakhstan produced 6,637 metric tons in 2007 and 8,521 metric tons in 2008. The production is expected to jump to 11,900 tons in 2009.

Japanese companies like Marubeni have moved into Kazakh uranium mines. Within the framework of a series of cooperation agreements, Japan has agreed to provide technology assistance to Kazakhstan for processing uranium fuel and building light-water reactors. One key agreement in October 2007 enabled Kazatompom, a Kazakh state company, to acquire 10% of Westinghouse Electric from Japan's Toshiba at a cost of $540 million.

All in all, therefore, Kazakhstan is gearing up as a leading player in the global uranium market while Japan is eager to secure a stable supply of uranium for its growing nuclear energy industry. Japan is a notoriously reticent partner in nuclear cooperation and the fashion in which it made an exception in the case of Kazakhstan is truly extraordinary. From the US perspective, Japan would be an ideal partner for fleshing out the idea of a nuclear fuel bank in Kazakhstan since it has an advanced nuclear fuel cycle industry. Japan's Rokkasho reprocessing plant gives it a unique status as the first country to have such facility, though a non-nuclear weapon state. Japan is also committed to commercialize practical fast breeder reactor cycles. At the same time, Japan has been right in the vanguard of nuclear disarmament and non-proliferation.
......

Spiralman
Posts: 107
Joined: Wed Mar 25, 2009 5:07 pm

Japan Drafts $154.4 Billion Stimulus; Grow Solar Power Capac

Post by Spiralman »

Japan Drafts $154.4 Billion Stimulus; Grow Solar Power Capacity TWENTY-fold by 2020; Eco-cars 1M/yr

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/09/busin ... f=business

[
#1 largest solar panel producer in the world is a Japanese company – Sharp Electronics.
Other Japanese companies include Sanyo, Kyocera, and Mitsubishi

China is heavily represented throughout the top solar PV producer list, but with less familiar names such as #2 Suntech, #5 Gintech, #8 China Sunergy, #10 Solarfun, #13 Baoding Tianwei Yingli, #15 JA Solar, and #17 Ningbo.
Other Asian countries with companies on the list include Taiwan with #9 Motech and Korea with #18 Trina.

Image

I should add that Japan’s goal of growing Solar capacity by 20-fold will quite easily be achieved if solar only doubles its installed capacity every 24+ months.
Last year worldwide Solar’s installed capacity grew 92%.
So Japan’s goal could be achieved if last year’s growth rate was cut in half.

Globally, by 2020, direct solar power production should reach 3% - 4% of total global installed power generation capacity.

Given the above, according to the Solar Learning Curve of 20% - 40% of cost reduction per doubling - which has held true since 1970, and has led to the price of solar panels dropping 3-fold every decade – by 2020, solar power will cost 1/3 of Coal, Oil, Nuke and Gas (CONG) power plants, and by the end of the following decade of 2020 – 2030, solar will be then 1/9 the cost of CONG, and we will see solar account for 80% of all power generation on the planet as every other power plant that requires fuel to be consumed and lots of maintenance labor and spare parts replacements will be at a severe cost disadvantage, will be outcompeted by solar, and have to be shut down to avoid losing money.

All of the CONG plants that have been recently built, and are still being planned and built, will be white elephants by the 2020’s, regardless of Carbon taxes.

Spiralman
Posts: 107
Joined: Wed Mar 25, 2009 5:07 pm

ŒNew¹ US shopper to emerge from crisis

Post by Spiralman »

http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/fc8dd740-2463 ... abdc0.html
The behavioural changes have included cutting back on “aspirational” luxury shopping. People are using cash and debit cards more than credit, while favouring lower-cost stores such as Wal-Mart and Costco. At supermarkets, well-known national brands have lost ground to retailers’ lower-cost own-brand products.

A survey carried out in October and November by TNS, the market research group, also found the frugal mood had affected US consumers who do have the money to spend – with families earning more than $100,000 using discount coupons more often and seeking out money-saving offers.

Joan Lewis, head of consumer and market research at Procter & Gamble, the world’s largest consumer products company, says there is a remarkable consistency in these shifts, in both developed and developing markets. “We think that many of these changes we have seen will remain for a long time,” she says.
.........
Context-Based Research, which sent its cultural anthropologists out to US cities in December, said it heard consumers talking of “community”, “hard work”, and “taking responsibility”.

Robbie Blinkoff, Context’s principal anthropologist, says he expects to see the emergence of a new “reflective consumerism”.

He also says it is still hard to gauge the inevitable impact of the recession on young people. “When I pull out a credit card, my eight-year-old daughter says, “you are using debit, not credit, right, Dad?” It’s funny. But that will stick with her for the rest of her life.”
[
Folks – typically lefty academics, “deep ecologists,” or economists or righty stock and homeownership promoters - who think that when the economy bottoms because Bernanke and Geithner have gunned the printing presses, there will be runaway inflation because suddenly Americans will go back to spending like crazy either are schizophrenic or really don’t move in the real world, where folks are suffering under enormous debts and are terrified that they are in grave danger of never being employable again with no retirement money or healthcare to survive afterwards.

This failure to understand that there has been a fundamental generational change in thinking regarding debt/savings, work, consumption, etc. underpins all of the useless bailout and stimulus packages as well as the fretting about their impacts.
Sadly, this incorrect notion that things will somehow go back to being the 1980’s or 1990’s again is widespread all around the world, and countries that have depended upon exporting their products to the US already are in pain, and it’s only going to become more incredibly painful, even worse than for the Americans.

And unless these countries focus on import substitution (especially through wind and solar and with hydroponics and drip fertigation for agriculture) and regional trade, currency and wage level coordination/integration they will be desperately competing with each other to sell their sugar, cotton, tea, coffee, cocoa, textiles, electronics, autos, chemicals, furniture, oil, etc. to a shrinking American spending budget both household and corporate.
]

Spiralman
Posts: 107
Joined: Wed Mar 25, 2009 5:07 pm

Pentagon preps for economic warfare & First Solar Energy Pla

Post by Spiralman »

Pentagon preps for economic warfare & First Solar Energy Plant Completed in Iran

http://news.yahoo.com/s/politico/200904 ... 5WW5OyBhIF
......
Participants described the event as a series of simulated global calamities, including the collapse of North Korea, Russian manipulation of natural gas prices, and increasing tension between China and Taiwan. “They wanted to see who makes loans to help out, what does each team do to get the other countries involved, and who decides to simply let the North Koreans collapse,” said a participant.

There were five teams: The United States, Russia, China, East Asia and “all others.” They were overseen by a “White Cell” group that functioned as referees, who decided the impact of the moves made by each team as they struggled for economic dominance.

At the end of the two days, the Chinese team emerged as the victors of the overall game – largely because the Russian and American teams had made so many moves against each other that they damaged their own standing to the benefit of the Chinese.

Bracken says he left the event with two important insights – first, that the United States needs an integrated approach to managing financial and what the Pentagon calls “kinetic” – or shooting – wars. For example he says, the U.S. Navy is involved in blockading Iran, and the U.S. is also conducting economic war against Iran in the form of sanctions. But he argues there isn’t enough coordination between the two efforts.

And second, Bracken says, the event left him questioning one prevailing assumption about economic warfare, that the Chinese would never dump dollars on the global market to attack the US economy because it would harm their own holdings at the same time. Bracken said the Chinese have a middle option between dumping and holding US dollars – they could sell dollars in increments, ratcheting up economic uncertainty in the United States without wiping out their own savings. “There’s a graduated spectrum of options here,” Bracken said........
[
I wonder if they included all of the maneuvering going on regarding Carbon Taxes and Renewable Energy subsidies, which if you read liberal Thomas Friedman’s writings or energy baron T Boone Pickens Plan or neocon James Woolsey, are unambiguously targeted against Russia, Arab states, Iran and Venezuela’s power, ie “National Energy Independence.”

Meanwhile Americans and Europeans are just dishonestly using “Combat Climate Change” as their fig leaf so they can pretend that they are concerned about negative impacts on the Global South.

When anyone who puts themselves in the position of the oil exporters or the non-oil exporting poor nations knows that they are suffering from energy poverty, and that putting up solar farms or wind farms in the South not only addresses Climate Change, but a whole host of very immediate social and ecological issues.

Environmentalists don’t like it when I say this, but they really need to get over their own self-importance and desire to be seen as heroic martyrs fighting against the Establishment, and see that they are almost completely irrelevant, if not mainly whining obstacles, in the drive for renewable energy.

All of the subsidies that have been put into solar and wind over the last 4 decades have been driven by rich nation, national energy security (eg. Germany, Japan, Spain, US, UK, Holland) , and lately, by attempts of some Global South nations (eg China) to break free of US hegemony.

Climate Change scientists debate what percentage of global warming comes from human versus non-human natural drivers (like solar cycles, volcanoes, African dust storms, Southern Decadal Oscillation, etc), but maybe they should do the same and they would discover that >90% of all the drivers for solar and wind subsidies and carbon taxes have been national energy security, and lately, job creation.

Even when the Pentagon is past years has cited Climate Change as something important it is as a global threat to the stability of the empire, yet ironically, if they really believed that and weren’t just using it as an excuse to win over liberals, the US Army Corps of Engineers would be installing giant solar farms in Iran as we speak, thereby in a single stroke removing Iran’s necessity for setting up nuclear power plants.

Instead we see Iran financing on their own their first solar power plant.
First Solar Energy Plant Completed in Iran
http://ecoworldly.com/2009/01/02/first- ... d-in-iran/

When we start seeing Transnational Subsidies of Renewables where the rich nations pay for setting up these solar and wind power plants in the poor nations, then I won’t automatically consider all of the talk about Combating Climate Change to be completely dishonest propaganda trying to disguise economic warfare against Russia, Arab states, Iran, and Venezuela.
]

Spiralman
Posts: 107
Joined: Wed Mar 25, 2009 5:07 pm

World Economy Slams Brakes on China's Foreign Exchange Reser

Post by Spiralman »

World Economy Slams Brakes on China's Foreign Exchange Reserve Accumulation

http://apnews.myway.com/article/20090411/D97G8G300.html
.....
China's reserves, already the world's largest, increased by [only] $7.7 billion in the first quarter - $146.2 billion less than the same period last year, the People's Bank of China said in a notice on its Web site.
......
[
I think it’s a good bet that by Fall, China will be drawing down on its reserves, which is the same thing happening to all of the major exporting countries from Japan to Germany to Arab state to Russia.

The key question will be how will they leverage the Ying/Yang - Challenge/Opportunity of this crisis to deploy their remaining funds for restructuring their economies so that they can be more internally or regionally coherent, profitable and increase the economic and social flexibility of the majorities of their regions’ populations.
]

Spiralman
Posts: 107
Joined: Wed Mar 25, 2009 5:07 pm

The Bank of Happiness: Bartering Services to Combat the Rece

Post by Spiralman »

The Bank of Happiness: Bartering Services to Combat the Recession

http://globaleconomicanalysis.blogspot. ... ssion.html

[Great article from Mish.
He even addresses at the end how the US IRS has laws in place to tax this.]
.......
The trouble with a money-free system is working out how different services compare. For example, how does a babysitter, who may charge £8 an hour, exchange services with a plumber, who may charge £40 an hour?

One solution is to value everyone’s time equally; this is the basis of time banks. One hour equals one time credit; the aim is to maintain a balance of zero, meaning that you have given as much time as you have received. An estimated 300 lets and time banks operate in Britain, numbering 100,000 people.

The time banking movement was set up Dr Edgar Cahn in America. Cahn’s view was that “the real work of society, which is caring, loving, being a citizen, a neighbour and a human being” was not addressed by market economics.
.......
[A certain Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels may have beaten them to this parts of this idea:

Critique of the Gotha Program
http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/wo ... a/ch01.htm
What he has given to it is his individual quantum of labor. For example, the social working day consists of the sum of the individual hours of work; the individual labor time of the individual producer is the part of the social working day contributed by him, his share in it. He receives a certificate from society that he has furnished such-and-such an amount of labor (after deducting his labor for the common funds); and with this certificate, he draws from the social stock of means of consumption as much as the same amount of labor cost. The same amount of labor which he has given to society in one form, he receives back in another.
In the paragraph immediately following Marx continues to explain how this system of exchange is related to the capitalist system of exchange:

Here, obviously, the same principle prevails as that which regulates the exchange of commodities, as far as this is exchange of equal values. Content and form are changed, because under the altered circumstances no one can give anything except his labor, and because, on the other hand, nothing can pass to the ownership of individuals, except individual means of consumption. But as far as the distribution of the latter among the individual producers is concerned, the same principle prevails as in the exchange of commodity equivalents: a given amount of labor in one form is exchanged for an equal amount of labor in another form.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/To_each_ac ... ntribution


[
Interesting times indeed when Socialist and Communist ideas are being highlighted by libertarian, capitalist advisor bloggers like Mish Shedlock after having been cycled through UK/US and Estonia, a former state in the Soviet Union, is now Singing for Socialism [the 1989 Estonian independence movement was called the Singing Revolution].
]

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