ferrelhadley
There is no love between us anymore.
Do fuck off.
Global financial system implosion begins
- Thread starter Falcon
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Frank Merton
Active Member
Yea, I overdid my revenge; sorry.
ferrelhadley
There is no love between us anymore.
All the political and economic flim flannery in the world will not coax out more energy from a oil deposit than is already there. Ayatollah and the others have the cart and horses in the wrong order. Economics and politics is just a thin veneer over physical reality.
Politics and economics are not the bigger picture.
You work out the energy supply first, then discuss its consequences on the human fairy tales we use to distribute the energy among ourselves.
I agree with you. But politics and economics - in some new form - is also the mechanism by which any response to that physical reality will be enacted, so it would be as well to engage with it.
Please understand, I'm not advocating the peculiar, inflammatory and anachronistic form of politics favoured by Ayatollah, only the principle that politics is relevant.
Frank Merton
Active Member
The thing I am not hearing is that markets decide, no matter what the politicians do. You can create subsidies and taxes and quotas and rations. What you do is create smuggling and forgeries and corruption and artificial shortages and gluts and so on, and in the end the markets decide (the laws of economics are much like the laws of physics that way -- you can use them to advantage sometimes but you can't ignore or repeal them).
littlebabyjesus
one of Maxwell's demons
No, you can't separate the two out like that. Politics and economics affect the ways in which humans work to find energy supplies. While strictly speaking, energy supply is fixed, in practice, for us, it isn't - the amount of energy we can find/generate is directly affected by the amount of political and economic energy we can devote towards finding them.
For instance, to replace fossil fuels we vitally need to start devoting a sizeable chunk of the energy remaining from fossil fuels to the building of the infrastructure that will replace it. To do that requires diverting that energy away from other things. To do that involves direct engagement with politics and economics.
Crispy
The following psytrance is baṉned: All
I see your point, but raise you another. What if the decision that the markets make is wrong? Horribly damaging and self destructive and irrational? Do we stand aside, shrug and say Ah Well?
Monkeygrinder's Organ
Dodgy geezer swilling vapid lager
This really isn't true at all - or at least if the laws of economics exist we haven't found them. Economies just don't behave like economics textbooks say a lot of the time.
Britain, during the 2nd World War, suspended market mechanisms and imposed rationing under threat of force. The fact that the resulting system created smuggling, forgeries, and corruption does not alter the fact that general welfare was higher under imperfect rationing than it would have been under perfect market conditions, under conditions of physical restriction of necessary resources.
That restriction was political. This restriction is physical. Is there anything about the nature of the restriction that alters the conclusion?
littlebabyjesus
one of Maxwell's demons
Quite right. As Richard Feynman said of social sciences 'Where are the laws?'
Crispy
The following psytrance is baṉned: All
And the great difficulty we face today is convincing anyone that the medium-long term threat we face today is just as severe as the short-term threat we faced then.
Also, the "threat of force" bit.
littlebabyjesus
one of Maxwell's demons
Yep, of course. No such thing as 'perfect market conditions' in any case. But what are market forces? They are simply the product of aggregate human behaviour. Saying that you can't buck the markets, Thatcher-style, is a rather odd idea: claiming in effect that you can't affect human behaviour by behaving differently.
ferrelhadley
There is no love between us anymore.
The physical system does not give the slightest fig about what economic policies or political theories are being applied.
Everything we do is set by the constraints of the underlying physical system.
Politics and economics comes a very distant second.
Regions that are running out of underground water reserves are running out based on how much water is pulled out. Not whether there is a lovely fluffy socialist system distributing the water to each according to his need or some capitalist system distributing according to who has money or whatever.
Frank Merton
Active Member
Well are you so sure it is wrong? How do you decide? Who decides?
As a general rule what markets "decide" is automatic and needs no politics; politics is where the messes and the injustices are created.
Often in trying to "fix" markets, selfish interests are what prevail. They get their way for awhile to the detriment of the rest of the world, and then in the end market forces return.
littlebabyjesus
one of Maxwell's demons
Resources are depleted, wasted, distributed unevenly for political reasons. And 'the physical system' is not something that you or I or anyone else properly understands yet. How much better we come to understand it in the future depends on political and economic factors.
I repeat, you cannot separate the two out like that. By trying to do so, you end up making bad mistakes.
Economics is a pseudo-science, in the formal sense that it extends itself by devising principles to explain why its core concepts fail to explain reality, rather than by extending its core concepts to discovery novel truths about reality. To say that it contains laws that can't be ignored is not even wrong.
Crispy
The following psytrance is baṉned: All
If it is cheaper to shit in the lake than build toilets, then the market will decide to shit in the lake. By the time fish gets expensive enough to force a change in shitting practices, the fish are all dead and you starve to death. Markets don't plan.
If we are clever enough to see that shitting in the lake is killing the fish, then we have to stop shitting in the lake. Such changes in behaviour are resisted by the fishermen, who would have to lose some of their profits to pay for the toilets.
The decision is made by humans, with their amazing powers of forward planning, rather than humans, with their amazing powers of self-preservation.
Frank Merton
Active Member
But you can't. Thinking otherwise is like trying to tell the tide to not come in. By the way, these understandings are far older than Margaret Thatcher.
littlebabyjesus
one of Maxwell's demons
Read my post again: You, a human, cannot affect the sum total of human behaviour by changing your behaviour? You necessarily do.
Frank Merton
Active Member
That is primitive Marxism and I thought humanity had grown out of such ideas. I live in a Marxist country and we have. Changing human behavior is not the right approach. It tends to lead to all sorts of horrors and fails anyway.
littlebabyjesus
one of Maxwell's demons
It's actually just a rather trivial truism. All kinds of people are constantly devoting themselves to changing the behaviour of others in all societies. There are whole industries dedicated to it: advertisers.
Frank Merton
Active Member
Ok, human tastes can be influenced, but the basic human drive for face is well understood and you don't get people over it. Not even a thousand years of Buddhist preaching has succeeded.
But we do.
Whatever is happening in the relationship between the industrial northern hemisphere and its southern hemisphere resource base, specifically in the terms of references of the IMF and World Bank, it's not "the market".
Whatever is happening in the relationship between the US and its client energy states housing its troops, it's not "the market".
If the market is not visibly operating in the foundational structures of the global political economy, it's hard to argue that you can't buck markets.
Frank Merton
Active Member
You can buck markets; you can also build dykes to keep the ocean out. Sometimes that is the only thing to do, but think a little about what you are saying. Look, this is so repetitive and you all just keep saying the same things. It's like going to indoctrination camp, and I don't need it. Just remember that whenever someone wants to buck the market, they have an axe they are grinding. Just be careful it isn't intended for your neck.
Economics is not anywhere near being a science.One prominent economist (I can't recall which one at the mo.) said "all economics is black magic and not very good black magic at that".
Also don't get me started on the "invisible hand of the market" cunts are trying to pull the religion scam all over again.
Also don't get me started on the "invisible hand of the market" cunts are trying to pull the religion scam all over again.
littlebabyjesus
one of Maxwell's demons
Don't bleat when you get challenged.
An interesting statement, but one which fails to acknowledge that some axes need grinding in ways that markets can't.
Frank Merton
Active Member
Ad hominem
Frank Merton
Active Member
And you think you know when and when not.
littlebabyjesus
one of Maxwell's demons
You were bleating about the responses to your posts. You did similar to me on another thread when you shut off from a discussion when CIA plots were mentioned. I gave you a starter for references to look at, but you went away.
You are starting to look like someone who is not prepared to look at evidence showing that they are wrong.
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