Why is the world in such dire economic straits, and what can we do about it?

POSTED BY: SignyM
UPDATED: Sunday, August 23, 2026 20:19
VIEWED: 10090
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SIGNYM

Saturday, December 19, 2015 9:15 PM

Quote:
Originally posted by JAYNEZTOWN:
another flaw for me in the US system is how open its scientific property is, I mean imagine you have an American company, it got support, tax cuts, grants whatever help and they invest in research....a better machine on how to freeze ice, or a better offroad motorbike or a new computer chip for a phone or something...whatever the item. For me this 'item' is a product of America, yet outsourcing and crony capital globalism should not mean that an American physics product or artistic chemical product or scientific product ends up in Japan or China or Italy or India or S.Korea two weeks later...so many times have I seen and heard of America simply giving away its best technology for a few bucks it just makes me shake my head. If America invents a new engine, a new computer or new aqua vehicle or a new chemical prodict I feel the United States should have intellectual access to its products for at least 4-5 years in a controlled enviornment inside America, if it is sold then it must be sold for a high price then after 4 or 5 years of course it should be sold or give out to the rest of the world. It's ridiculous how quick America gives away items it has taken years to have studied and researched.

Ummm... Americans .... American corporations, specifically, don't "give away" valuable technology, and they sure don't sell it for cheap. Usually, they "license" the patent for a cut of the profits. Another reason to transfer technology is for overseas production ... if you're a chip-maker and you've just invented a process to create dies with incredibly tiny etches, but you want to make a lot of profit on it, you might invest in a chip-fab elsewhere ... say, South Korea. I think what you're really saying is that there are no more "American" companies ... no corporations with loyalty to the nation which nurtured them. Only internationals chasing the almighty dollar. (?)

Valuable technology which winds up overseas without making a profit for SOMEbody is stolen via corporate or foreign-government espionage. Our inventions are officially well-protected by a system of patents, copyrights, and trade secrets.

OTOH, what chaps my ass is how basic research- funded by the American taxpayer through research grants - is "monetized" by corporations - turned into a source of profit, with no recompense to the taxpayer for the use of the information.

Universities are getting wise to all that: they're now patenting everything, even the littlest paper, in case it turns into a money-maker some day. But IMHO, research is done best in a milieu of free-flow information. All of this patenting and copyrighting and registering simply slows down discovery. After all, can you imagine how slow progress would have been if someone had to pay the inventors of the alphabet every time they wrote something, or the inventors of the steam machine had to pay the discoverers of fire?

I think "monetizing" discovery is an internally contradicted concept. Most of the major discoveries (fire, agriculture, animal domestication, alphabet, the nature of gravity and the solar system, microscopic life) were NOT made in order to "make money" under capitalism. Trying to "make money" on knowledge just kills the process of development. The two processes don't play well together.

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You can't build a nation with bombs. You can't create a society with guns.

1KIKI

Sunday, December 20, 2015 6:06 AM

"In the case of money concentration, they result in repeated depressions when too much money is concentrated in the hands of too few, and there aren't enough customers to drive production (another oscillation) which leads to revolt."

I was wondering if there's a negative feedback before it all blows up. But I don't see one.

Small differences in wealth/ power lead to larger differences in wealth/ power until you have a minuscule but powerful minority which not only runs the economy (whatever it is - feudal, mercantile, capitalist ...) but also the religion/ social ethic.

On the flip side you have the vast majority of people. The things that people fear I think are pain and death, and the pain and death of people they love. So long as the systems allows them (and/ or their family) to live, and they (and/ or their family) aren't in TOO much pain for TOO long, they'll hew to the trodden path - rather than risk disturbing a system that has preserved life and some comfort to date. In fact, the less they have to lose, the harder they'll cling to what little they have. *

It takes a lot to drive the populace to a revolution against the powerful. Either they have nothing left to lose, or they have enough of a cushion to risk going for more, or they see the powerful as relatively weak. (I see the last two as operative in the American revolution, which was fomented by a large number of wealthy men, who saw England as a distant force. OTOH I think the French in the French revolution, and the Russians in the Russian revolution were starving masses who had just about nothing to lose.)

So, unless your society specifically makes wealth be divested to avoid concentrations, I don't see a way out of the rise then crash-and-burn cycle.

* And, I believe this happens because even though we like to credit ourselves with being intelligent, we're not logic-driven, we're program-driven. We have both biological and social programs that run us, that we're not even aware of.

SAGAN: We are releasing vast quantities of carbon dioxide, increasing the greenhouse effect. It may not take much to destabilize the Earth's climate, to convert this heaven, our only home in the cosmos, into a kind of hell.

JAYNEZTOWN

Saturday, January 8, 2022 9:55 PM

Serbian Strong!?

Serbia says Australia Is Treating Our Star Tennis Player Like a Terrorist

https://hotair.com/ed-morrissey/2022/01/07/serbia-australias-treating-
our-star-tennis-player-like-a-terrorist-n439923

JAYNEZTOWN

Friday, October 14, 2022 2:58 PM

'Who Gets to Build the Next Software Stack of Civilization?'
https://www.wired.com/story/who-gets-to-build-the-next-software-stack-
of-civilization/

Blake Masters Is the Most Dangerous Candidate in America
https://www.aol.com/news/blake-masters-most-dangerous-candidate-000107
726.html

SIGNYM

Saturday, October 15, 2022 5:22 AM

Wow, we used to have great conversations before everyone got tied up in RUSSIA!RUSSIA! and red-pilling!

Thanks for bringing this back from the past. These ideas are still worth pursuing, and I will pursue them, and try to fold in my "society as an organism" and "robustness v efficiency" thoughts.

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

SIGNYM

Saturday, October 15, 2022 5:23 AM

This was the original thought...

Quote:
Originally posted by SignyM:
First of all, why are so many nations in such trouble? It seems like every nation's cause is a little bit different from every other nation's:

The USA has a significant wealth gap, and personal consumption fueled by credit.
The USA and Britain had massive real estate bubbles.
The Greek government overspent its budget.
Portugal, Ireland, Greece and Spain (PIGS) didn't have personal over-consumption and a high personal debt load, but were the recipients of over-investment from other EU nations.
Despite a lot of “socialist spending” and redistributive policies, the Icelandic government ran in the black. Iceland was brought down when it's three major banks engaged in out-and-out commercial bank fraud.
Italy, which is a large exporting economy, got caught by rising interest.

If we are to prevent this all from happening again, what are we to make of all of these disparate causes? Each nation seems to belie whatever cause we want to attribute to another nation. So we can rule out Fannie and Freddie because they don't apply to Europe. We can rule out socialist spending that doesn't apply to the USA. We can rule out government deficits and the wealth gap because those don't apply to Iceland, and we can rule out personal debt because that doesn't apply to the PIGS. There is a lot they DON'T have in common!

But, the one thing they DID have in common was “investment” in projects or sectors which were not about to generate a return, even in the medium-term. In the USA and Britain, the over-investment was in homes. In the PIGS, it was in large infrastructural projects; in Greece it was also in government bonds, in Iceland it was actually in fraudulent self-dealt bank loans for commercial projects.

The other thing to realize is that this has happened before: In the 1970's, due to a huge increase in oil prices, the Middle East nations (Saudi Arabia particularly) became the holders of a mountain of cash, specifically the USA dollar, and invested in huge infrastructural projects in Brazil, Chile, and Argentina- projects which could not be supported on a cash basis due to lack of either internal or external demand. This led to the Latam debt crisis of 1982. The same thing happened to the Asian "tiger" economies of 1997: over-investment by outside money created a "bubble" which led to an ephemeral rise in GDP, leading to the illusion of growth, which sucked in more money, until the illusion of growth could no longer be sustained. The same problem started the Great Depression.

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It seems there are epidemics of horrible investments, rash investments, possibly even desperate investments, not just now but throughout history. Rich people who have bought all of the yachts, mansions and jets that one can possibly buy and are now looking to make money with their money.

So why do the investments go sour?

Well, I think in a way it's the eternal mismatch of production and consumption under capitalism. Think of it this way: If the world produces a trillion dollars worth of goods and services, but the small fraction of ppl who own the companies only pays their workers $900 billion, the companies can only sell $900 billion dollars worth. That's $100 billion worth of goods and services that's not about to be sold, and $100 billion in the hands of a few who are NOT going to “spend” all of that money, they are going to “invest” a certain amount. Now, that investment can either go to loans (to increase consumption – which won't be ultimately affordable), or to increase production (which can't be sold to ppl who can't afford the goods), or to consolidate ownership, or to increase automation (which throws even more ppl out of work,who will not be able to buy much), or to speculation (diamonds, artwork, tulip bulbs) ... Each time money goes through the production-consumption cycle, more money goes up into the stratosphere... there is a bigger and bigger bundl

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