A thread for Democrats Only

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JEWELSTAITEFAN

Thursday, May 10, 2018 2:21 PM

Quote:
Originally posted by SIGNYM:
Quote:
As an old man, Heilbroner's preferred capitalist model was the highly redistributionist welfare states of Scandinavia; he stated that his model society was "a slightly idealized Sweden."-
It doesn't matter what Heilbroner likes, or doesn't like. As HISTORY book and an explanation of what various economic theorists were trying to solve, it was very informative. you wanted to know what I recommended. I STILL recommend the book. Pick any edition you like: you'll know infinitely more than you do now.

Quote:
Then Signym read another book, that can’t be found at the moment.
But I recapped some of the arguments in the book for you, and if you were interested in actually being informed instead of bitching endlessly, you would have learned something from that too.

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Now Signym rejects most economics theories as unrealistic and replaced them with what? With nothing!
Not true. I've posted extensively about what I think America needs to do. Apparently, you "forgot" it.

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I am sure that Scandinavia, especially Heilbroner’s slightly idealized Sweden, did not achieve prosperity by rejected [sic] the same economic explanations rejected by Signym. Scandinavians are not tweeting "NO EVIDENCE", which is very dissimilar [???] to Signym, Trump, and the Republican voters.
Norway is making a lot of money from North Sea oil. Sweden exports arms, machinery, motor vehicles, paper products, pulp and wood, iron, steel products, chemicals. Denmark is self-sufficient in energy producing oil, natural gas, wind and bio energy. Its principal exports are machinery, chemicals and food products. Iceland went thru its own financial crisis and is busy digging out of its previous debt by exporting fish.

ALL of the nations are exporting nations, with a positive or neutral balance of trade,
NONE of the nations adopted the Euro, which says something about sovereignty.

You can't have a "redistributive" economy if you don't have any production to redistribute.

I look forward to when you find your 2nd book title.
Perhaps you could start a thread on Economic Theories or Practices, Policies. To make a repository of reference material to be found?

Kinda funny how second posts whatever was read a few minutes before, claiming it as the the best idea ever, but whines if you don't procure an entire bulletproof theory at the drop of a hat.

SECOND

Thursday, May 10, 2018 4:53 PM

Quote:
Originally posted by SIGNYM:

. . .
ALL of the nations are exporting nations, with a positive or neutral balance of trade,
NONE of the nations adopted the Euro, which says something about sovereignty.

You can't have a "redistributive" economy if you don't have any production to redistribute.

Robert L. Heilbroner's book does mention "the political leadership, the diplomatic skills, and the social inspiration that must play crucial roles in preventing these strains from undoing the workability of capitalist societies." Trump’s unilateralism and isolationism were not mentioned.

American greed and American indifference to the poor, which are two features of Trumpism, were mentioned. Also: "difficult challenge of reducing climate-warming emissions in the richer nations that are their source". Trump unilaterally withdrew from the Paris Agreement to handle that "challenge". https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paris_Agreement

From Chapter XI, "The End of the Worldly Philosophy?" from The Worldly Philosophers, 1999

And so our discussion leads us to consider the second of the larger questions I posed at the outset of this chapter—namely, the “end” of our subject in terms of its purpose, its aim. If economics is not to be a science of society, what is to be its ultimate social usefulness?

My answer is that its purpose is to help us better understand the capitalist setting in which we will most likely have to shape our collective destiny for the foreseeable future. Having for many years endorsed the ideas and objectives of democratic socialism, that is not an easy assertion for me to make. But given the experience of socialism in its twentieth-century forms, it is difficult to expect its benign rebirth in the century to come. Indeed, taking into account the strains and stresses clearly visible in the decades ahead, it is all too likely that any prospective socialism, especially in the less developed areas where its advent is most likely, will again develop tendencies for political megalomania, bureaucratic inertia, and ideological intolerance.

To be sure, these strains and stresses will exert their destructive force on capitalist societies as well. Ecological dangers, foremost among them global warming, will bring not only the need to contain the damage of climatic change in the poor nations, but the even more difficult challenge of reducing climate-warming emissions in the richer nations that are their source. Add to this the alarming spread of nuclear weaponry on the one hand, and ethnic, racial, and religious hatreds on the other, and the stage is surely set for problems and tensions from which the capitalist powers cannot be insulated. Finally, there is the fast-growing problem of a globalized economy that arises largely within individual capitalisms, but then escapes their control to become a supranational presence that threatens the sovereignty of the wealthiest of them. In sum, here is a prospect as threatening, if not as desperate, for the rich capitalist world as that which confronts the poor precapitalist or presocialist one.

What could be the purpose of vision and analysis under these conditions? It must be evident that there is little for economics to offer with respect to the political leadership, the diplomatic skills, and the social inspiration that must play crucial roles in preventing these strains from undoing the workability of capitalist societies. Nonetheless, a worldly philosophy has a unique potential to provide the visionary guidance that will help at least some capitalisms make their way as safely as possible through the coming decades.

Let me stress some capitalisms. To say it one last time, the distinctive properties of all capitalisms are the drive for capital, the guidance and constraints of a market system, and the blessings—admittedly, often mixed—of a bifurcation of power into two interpenetrative but still independent sectors. To this, however, must be added a capacity for adaptation and

SECOND

Thursday, May 10, 2018 5:27 PM

Quote:
Originally posted by SIGNYM:

A book that I have recommended many times on this website already is "The Worldly Philosophers" by Heilbroner. It's a classic about the history of economic theories which not only presents the theories but also the issues of the day and the social and political problems that the theories were trying to address. From Adam Smith thru Karl Marx and Keynes. I read it when I was 12 (in the early 60's) and there have been many editions since then. I can't speak to later editions, but the one I read was profoundly interesting. I recommend it highly.

Chapter VIII - "The Savage Society of Thorstein Veblen" has much to teach Signym about Trump as the saboteur of capitalism.

The new book The Theory of Business Enterprise came out in 1904. It was even more coruscating and still more curious than his first. For the point of view that it advocated seemed to fly in the face of common sense itself. Every economist from the days of Adam Smith had made of the capitalist the driving figure in the economic tableau; whether for better or worse, he was generally assumed to be the central generator of economic progress. But with Veblen all this was turned topsy-turvy. The businessman was still the central figure, but no longer the motor force. Now he was portrayed as the saboteur of the system!

Needless to say, it was a strange perspective on society that could produce so disconcerting a view. Veblen did not begin, as Ricardo or Marx or the Victorians, with the clash of human interests; he began at a stage below, in the non-human substratum of technology. What fascinated him was the machine. He saw society as dominated by the machine, caught up in its standardization, timed to its regular cycle of performance, geared to its insistence on accuracy and precision. More than that, he envisaged the economic process itself as being basically mechanical in character. Economics meant production, and production meant the machinelike meshing of society as it turned out goods. Such a social machine would need tenders, of course—technicians and engineers to make whatever adjustments were necessary to ensure the most efficient cooperation of the parts. But from an overall view, society could best be pictured as a gigantic but purely matter-of-fact mechanism, a highly specialized, highly coordinated human clockwork.

But where would the businessman fit into such a scheme? For the businessman was interested in making money, whereas the machine and its engineer masters knew no end except making goods. If the machine functioned well and fitted together smoothly, where would there be a place for a man whose only aim was profit?

Ideally, there would be none. The machine was not concerned with values and profits; it ground out goods. Hence the businessman would have no function to perform—unless he turned engineer. But as a member of the leisure class he was not interested in engineering; he wanted to accumulate. And this was something the machine was not set up to do at all. So the businessman achieved his end, not by working within the framework of the social machine, but by conspiring against it! His function was not to help make goods, but to cause breakdowns in the regular flow of output so that values would fluctuate and he could capitalize on the confusion to reap a profit. And so, on top of the machinelike dependability of the actual production apparatus in the world, the businessman built a superstructure of credit, loans, and make-believe capitalizations. Below, society turned over in its mechanical routine; above, the structure of finance swayed and shifted. And as the financial counterpart to the real world teetered, opportunities for profit constantly appeared, disappeared, and reappeared. But the price of this profit seeking was high; it was the constant disturbing, undoing, even conscious misdirecting of the efforts of society to provision itself. . . .

Examples of Trump style financial chicanery followed by . . .

In the light of th

6IXSTRINGJACK

Thursday, May 10, 2018 5:59 PM

I see this thread has devolved into pure philosophical bullshit territory now.

Do Right, Be Right. :)

SECOND

Thursday, May 10, 2018 6:58 PM

Quote:
Originally posted by 6IXSTRINGJACK:
I see this thread has devolved into pure philosophical bullshit territory now.

Do Right, Be Right. :)

6ix, when elderly adults write, you sneer at them for being too philosophical or too rich or too SJW or living in an ivory tower, not practical like yourself. That is a bone-headed attitude of yours.

Signym brought up a book, The Worldly Philosophers by Robert L. Heilbroner, as a common reference point. 6ixStringJack can read the same book for free:
https://thepiratebay.org/torrent/12143671/The_Worldly_Philosophers_._R
obert_L._Heilbroner_._epub

I recognize the America and the economics Heilbroner describes. Maybe that gives Signym and me something in common, for once. Maybe not. Signym's usual descriptions of America and economics are ignorant fantasies from my view of America, unlike Heilbroner's. I believe Heilbroner knows what he writes about while at the same time everything Signym writes smells unreal. Maybe unreal because Signym hasn't read Heilbroner since she was 12, so that is enough time for her to invent her own highly articulate, yet completely imaginary version of America. Too bad Heilbroner is not alive to straighten out Signym. He wrote 20 more books: www.amazon.com/Robert-L.-Heilbroner/e/B000APQA7M/
https://thepiratebay.org/search/Robert%20Heilbroner/0/99/0

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly

SIGNYM

Thursday, May 10, 2018 8:28 PM

Quote:
A book that I have recommended many times on this website already is "The Worldly Philosophers" by Heilbroner. It's a classic about the history of economic theories which not only presents the theories but also the issues of the day and the social and political problems that the theories were trying to address. From Adam Smith thru Karl Marx and Keynes. I read it when I was 12 (in the early 60's) and there have been many editions since then. I can't speak to later editions, but the one I read was profoundly interesting. I recommend it highly.- SIGNYM

Quote:
Chapter VIII - "The Savage Society of Thorstein Veblen" has much to teach Signym about Trump as the saboteur of capitalism.

The new book The Theory of Business Enterprise came out in 1904. It was even more coruscating and still more curious than his first. For the point of view that it advocated seemed to fly in the face of common sense itself. Every economist from the days of Adam Smith had made of the capitalist the driving figure in the economic tableau; whether for better or worse, he was generally assumed to be the central generator of economic progress. But with Veblen all this was turned topsy-turvy. The businessman was still the central figure, but no longer the motor force. Now he was portrayed as the saboteur of the system! ...

So the businessman achieved his end, not by working within the framework of the social machine, but by conspiring against it! His function was not to help make goods, but to cause breakdowns in the regular flow of output so that values would fluctuate and he could capitalize on the confusion to reap a profit. And so, on top of the machinelike dependability of the actual production apparatus in the world, the businessman built a superstructure of credit, loans, and make-believe capitalizations. Below, society turned over in its mechanical routine; above, the structure of finance swayed and shifted. And as the financial counterpart to the real world teetered, opportunities for profit constantly appeared, disappeared, and reappeared. But the price of this profit seeking was high; it was the constant disturbing, undoing, even conscious misdirecting of the efforts of society to provision itself...
-SECOND

Yes, I read about Thorstein Veblen. As best I recall, his big grotch was the "rentier economy" ... people who made money simply by charging "rent" on the resources that they owned: land, minerals, NATURAL GAS [THAT WOULD BE YOU, SECOND], other natural resources, housing, bank credit etc.

In his view, this "rent" was "unearned income". Broad-brush, the concept covers MANY resources for which "rent" can be charged, but Veblen came to focus on the "rent" charged for "money", which is what we would call "interest on loans". (By contrast, Marx felt that "ownership of the means of production" was the only REAL ownership that counted. In Marx's view, human labor was the only source of real wealth, and so ownership of the means of production was the wellspring of real wealth creation. I suppose I could make Marx and Veblen compatible by saying that while production is the wellspring of real wealth, ownership is the wellspring of theft/concentration of wealth. But I digress...).

Now, here's the funny thing: WHICH ENTITIES CAN BE SAID TO "OWN MONEY"? Again, in broad brush, you "own money" to the extent that you have money in your bank account.

BUT WAIT! The G20 has agreed that the money that you put into "your" bank account ISN'T YOURS. It's an unsecured loan to the bank, so in reality YOU DON'T OWN YOUR BANK ACCOUNT, THE BANK DOES.

Looking even further, however, YOU DO NOT HAVE THE LEGAL RIGHT TO PRINT MONEY. BANKS DO. They create money by loaning money that THEY DON'T HAVE. They plop $100,000 into your bank account; of that $100,000 NONE of it is required to be backed by cash in the vault. On

SIGNYM

Thursday, May 10, 2018 9:00 PM

Quote:
I look forward to when you find your 2nd book title.
Perhaps you could start a thread on Economic Theories or Practices, Policies. To make a repository of reference material to be found?

Good idea.

-----------
Pity would be no more,
If we did not MAKE men poor - William Blake

America is an oligarchy
http://www.fireflyfans.net/mthread.aspx?tid=57876

CAPTAINCRUNCH

Thursday, May 10, 2018 9:13 PM

Quote:
Originally posted by second:Signym's usual descriptions of America and economics are ignorant fantasies from my view of America, unlike Heilbroner's. I believe Heilbroner knows what he writes about while at the same time everything Signym writes smells unreal.

+1

I also note for the record that Consumers are rarely, A) mentioned as being an involved party, or B) held responsible for their actions in the Kiki/Signym anti-corporate, anti-bank, anti-younameit fantasy world they talk about.

SIGNYM

Thursday, May 10, 2018 9:26 PM

Quote:
Signym's usual descriptions of America and economics are ignorant fantasies from my view of America, unlike Heilbroner's. I believe Heilbroner knows what he writes about while at the same time everything Signym writes smells unreal. - SECOND

+1
I also note for the record that Consumers are rarely, A) mentioned as being an involved party, or B) held responsible for their actions in the Kiki/Signym anti-corporate, anti-bank, anti-younameit fantasy world they talk about.- GSTRING

Well, thank you for bringing your vast intellect and excellent sense of "smell" to the discussion! Clearly, you know what you post about!

-----------
Pity would be no more,
If we did not MAKE men poor - William Blake

America is an oligarchy
http://www.fireflyfans.net/mthread.aspx?tid=57876

SIGNYM

Thursday, May 10, 2018 11:14 PM

I moved almost this entire page to here http://www.fireflyfans.net/mthread.aspx?bid=18&tid=60986&mid=1
052623#1052623 for continued theoretical discussion of economics

-----------
Pity would be no more,
If we did not MAKE men poor - William Blake

America is an oligarchy
http://www.fireflyfans.net/mthread.aspx?tid=57876

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