Karl Marx Shrugged?

nesf

johnathan woss wrote: »

We should be striving to feed ourselves locally where possible.

Yes and no. Food prices here are artificially very high, that's the only reason that allows New Zealand lamb to be cheaper considering that a) it's transported a stupidly long distance which even with cheap oil is expensive and b) not been produced in an extreme low cost country.

Protectionism will not feed the masses, the sooner the CAP system is dismantled the better in this country. We should not be heavily subsidising farmers by driving up food prices which makes life even harder on the worst off in this country. Let Irish farmers produce high end produce and sell it to the middle class but please do not try and block the sale of cheap meat to those who can't reasonably afford the prices Irish farmers are demanding.

Valmont

donegalfella wrote: »

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While I agree (parts that I understand anyway) with most of what you say, the vision of some sort of Randian utopia is ridiculous. There will always be shortages and famines and wars, free market or no free market. I do think that the free market is the best system we have but it is far from perfect. It seems you are falling into the trap that a number of Marxists fall into and that is putting your preferred ideology on a pedestal and somehow making it seem unfalsifiable. Particularly by denying that apparent embodiments of this ideology are not actually the ideology as it should be a la the "it wasn't real Marxism! Look Marx didn't say this!" argument.

johnathan woss

So New Zealand can produce sheepmeat cheaper than Ireland. Big deal. It's one of their largest exports.
The ONLY reason they can transport it cost effectively is because the market doesn't price oil correctly (considering how important it is and how little cheap stuff is actually left).

People like df are in for a very rude awakening but most of them will continue to ignore the nature of the world we live in and blame government (which does deserve a large part of the blame but for different reasons).

Permabear

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johnathan woss

How much are you willing to bet that human population will be 9 billion in 2042 ?

cavedave

johnathan woss How much are you willing to bet that human population will be 9 billion in 2042 ?

There are population projections here. I cannot find a prediction market running a world population bet.

CiaranC

donegalfella wrote: »

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Thanks in the large part to socialised medicine and education?

DadaKopf

It seems you are falling into the trap that a number of Marxists fall into and that is putting your preferred ideology on a pedestal and somehow making it seem unfalsifiable. Particularly by denying that apparent embodiments of this ideology are not actually the ideology as it should be a la the "it wasn't real Marxism! Look Marx didn't say this!"

Well, now, hold on a minute, buck'o'me'lad. Everyone ascribes to some ideology one way or another - you, for example, agree with the free market.

I do, however, agree in your point about unfalsifiability and, in fairness, the two broad ideological positions we're discussing have, to an extent over time, been modified to fit reality. But that is what these things are: models of reality (whether social or objective).

But this is a very complex line of argument. I could only mention some things that come to mind.

Neo-classical and neo-Keynesian economics are positivist theories - that is that the methodologies of science, applied to the study of society, can understand the world in its entirety and therefore improve it. These dominant forms of economics embody an ethical sense but these moral judgements are presented as objective truth. The marxian tradition is different; while Marx did stumble in his belief in positivism (but who didn't at that time), Marx provided an alternative framework for understanding (or 'critiquing') the political economy of his day. Rather than starting from a Newtonian starting point, he fused three traditions: classical economics, German critical philosophy and emerging sociology. So, in other words, it was a novel combination of social science and philosophy (a combination of logic, ontology and ethics). The goal was to investigate where the contradictions of the system lie. Moreover, his very complex theory accepted that much of the world is subjective, that knowledge evolves and that any moral solution to the social crisis of his day would have to, inevitably, find different expressions due to specific times and places, in other words history and culture.

Now, Marx offered a critique of the system from his perspective. The thing is that it's true: Marx is often assumed to have said things that he didn't. He even said once, after Russian revolutionaries were reworking his own ideas, 'I am not a Marxist'.

Objectivist theories about the triumph of human reason and freedom are entirely consistent with the observed experience of history since the Enlightenment, or the so-called "Age of Reason."

OK. A few things. Have you read instrumentalist and marxian critiques of rationalist scientific method? Instrumentalists, such as Putnam, have argued forcefully that scientific rationality is not immune to the human propensity to choose and use information instrumentally - in other words, to pick and choose information to develop theories that are useful, but might ignore much of what's important because it hasn't been identified as useful. Prior to this, the marxists! - well, German critical theorists Adorno and Horkheimer, in their Critique of Enlightenment argued through their tradition that Enlightenment rationality commenced by choosing an endpoint and filling in the gaps - choosing what you want the answer to be and assembling information in a coherent framework to support that choice. This is as much a critique of Marx as Comte or anyone else. Important, however, to accept that they recognised the different, but interconnected, registers of natural and social science. Moreover, you have the critiques of Popper who argued that all scientific theories are only proveable through falsification. The post-modernist revolution - the linguistic turn - was as much an outcome of the problems associated with advanced capitalism as a realisation as the breakdown in many of the promises (indeed core assumptions) of Enlightenment rationality.

And, just to say, you seem to have this idea the capitalist west didn't go mad using science to measure everything, to answer everything. Look, both east and west went nuts thinking science could know all and fix all about society. The Rand Corporation, for example, spent billions in the 1950s-1970s calculating the USSR's movements, predicting the likelihood of war. At the same time, the USSR used computers to calculate needs and supplies in the command economy. Everyone was at it: believing science could answer and predict everything. There was an unacceptable belief in its power. Hopefully, we're past that. It's because the enlightenment was great in some ways, but it got out of control. And on these two ideological sides, it's always the eejits who shout loudest who get to influence things, and they're usually the extremeists.

However, the history of Marxist regimes shows that communist totalitarianism gradually reverses the progress made by free societies. Famine and disease become more common. Technological progress stagnates or regresses. Life expectancies decline—overall life expectancy in the Soviet Union fell by four years from 66 to 62 between the mid-1960s and the mid-1980s.

Sure, bad things have happened. Lets also remind ourselves that after Russia's big bang and the advent of the free-market principle to Russia, conditions have further deteriorated. Granted, Russia is not exactly a free market in your sense, more of a Frankenstein's monster, but it reveals the impossibility of extricating oneself or one's country from history. Just look at what happened in Ecuador in the 1990s and Cambodia under Pol Pot.

It must be said that other political economic systems are possible. Many, many. I do not believe that West is best - it's clear that it's continuing to struggle under its own contradictions. It is simply globalised Western traditonalism. Fascinating work undertaken by anthropologists have even shown how societies not yet fully connected to capitalism are very economically productive; analysing their systems, some are even more economically active and socially stable than capitalist economies. But, obviously, they're very variable.

It'd be worth us all doing a thought experiment, since we've talked so much about how totally awesome a Randian libertarian world would be. How about a completely different world... a world with, say, different ideas of land use/ownership, different ideas about social organisation... doesn't have to be communistic. Who can make the imaginative leap - to dare to be utopian?

Permabear

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nesf

DadaKopf wrote: »

At the same time, the USSR used computers to calculate needs and supplies in the command economy. Everyone was at it: believing science could answer and predict everything.

Right, I disagree with a fair amount of what you wrote but I can mostly capture it in the above line. The centralised economy problem is not proof of the the flaws of positivism, it is merely an example of what an engineer would call an ill-formed problem. It is a highly non-linear problem that is extremely difficult to solve. A solution does exist but it would require an enormous amount of information to be available to the people working out the distribution/production of goods question (in fact, the amount of information is unobtainable since you would need private information only known to each agent in the system). This amount of information, I'm sure we'll all agree, isn't realistic for any planner to have.

The best example I can give is one of pouring a bucket of sand out onto the floor. If you somehow know the exact starting position of each grain of sand in the bucket it is possible (though extremely difficult) to accurately calculate where each piece of sand will go when it is poured out of the bucket. Any uncertainty about the position of each and every grain of sand, no matter how small, will change the answer utterly. It's a highly non-linear problem that is extremely sensitive to initial conditions (i.e. chaotic). This isn't a problem with rationalism just a problem with naive applications of determinism. These systems are still deterministic but that doesn't mean it's possible to exactly solve them.

Economies make buckets of sand look like nice simple linear systems. It's essentially why economic forecasting is so problematic, even if the equations being used are correct, and mistake in the setting of initial conditions will throw your answer way off. This doesn't mean that science shouldn't be applied to these questions however, only that we need to be mindful of the limitations of our methods. The core problem here isn't that science doesn't work but that the problems are chaotic making any error in measurement a severe problem even if you have the correct method.

silverharp

DadaKopf wrote: »

Neo-classical and neo-Keynesian economics are positivist theories - that is that the methodologies of science, applied to the study of society, can understand the world in its entirety and therefore improve it. These dominant forms of economics embody an ethical sense but these moral judgements are presented as objective truth.

A real scientist would disagree , any science that couldn't forecast the Cat 5 Hurricane that the world is going through now should be dumped as junk or worse then useless.

asdasd

The core problem here isn't that science doesn't work but that the problems are chaotic making any error in measurement a severe problem even if you have the correct method.

Quite. It reminds me of the Soviet Functionary who came to London, and remarking at the goods in the shops and the size said - but who feeds London?

The answer is "lots of people". And it works.

any science that couldn't forecast the Cat 5 Hurricane that the world is going through now should be dumped as junk or worse then useless

I dont think that economics is a serious science, but that doesnt mean there are kernals of the truth in there. People react to incentives, for instance.

unfortunatley we have the deaths of millions of people to prove that is the case.

In China, the three years beginning with 1959 were known as the Three Years of Natural Disasters （三年自然灾害). Food was in desperate shortage, and production fell dramatically. By the end of the Three Years of Natural Disasters, which was the direct result of the failed Great Leap Forward campaign, an estimated 20 million people had died from widespread famine......

Liu Shaoqi decided to end many Leap policies, such as rural communes, and to restore the economic policies used before the Great Leap Forward.

Because of the success of his economic reforms, Liu had won prestige in the eyes of many party members both in the central government and among the masses....

I wont quote the rest. but Mao comes back to power, reinstates the communes and millions more die.

johnathan woss

asdasd wrote: »

Quite. It reminds me of the Soviet Functionary who came to London, and remarking at the goods in the shops and the size said - but who feeds London?

The answer is "lots of people". And it works.

It works under certain conditions.

It will not work forever.

That is what economists don't understand. They observe transitory arrangements/systems/ whatever and try to extrapolate universal laws from them.

asdasd

That is what economists don't understand. They observe transitory arrangements/systems/ whatever and try to extrapolate universal laws from them.

I would be inclined to agree with the critique of economics. Your implied critique of markets, however - which have existed throughout human history, and more even exist where banned ( as in the Soviet Union, or the drug trade) - is flawed. Markets spontaneously come into being when people have stuff to trade. Nobody plans capitalism from the centre, that is what the soviet functionary did not understand.

Small time capitalism is the hero here. Large corporations can have monopolies and i dont really care if monopolies are public or not - i.e. the railways.

However, were bureaucrats to run the distribution of food in London, London would starve.

DadaKopf

Oy, this is going nowhere. Bye, bye. I'm not putting enough effort into my posts because I don't care enough. There are better uses for my time right now.

asdasd

DadaKopf shrugged.

Or, more correctly, lost.

oscarBravo

donegalfella wrote: »

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It could be argued, with equal merit, that the corresponding rightist cliché is: no matter what goes wrong, blame government.

asdasd

It could be argued, with equal merit, that the corresponding rightist cliché is: no matter what goes wrong, blame government.

Yes, the Libertarians do that, true. While most of us see the financial crisis as a problem of too little regulation, they see it as too much.

Rather surprisingly.

Permabear

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nesf

oscarBravo wrote: »

It could be argued, with equal merit, that the corresponding rightist cliché is: no matter what goes wrong, blame government.

asdasd wrote: »

Yes, the Libertarians do that, true. While most of us see the financial crisis as a problem of too little regulation, they see it as too much.

Rather surprisingly.

Screw too little regulation, the problem was poor regulation that was trusted, which is far more dangerous than too little regulation.

asdasd

libertarians see the problem as one of irresponsibly expansionist monetary policy.

The irresponsibly expansionist monetary policy is, to my mind, equivalent with lax regulation, as in higher interest rates regulate the money supply more ( by dimishing it).

This isnt a rhetorical question.

What is the libertarian argument for how the money supply should be decided? No government? Banks producing their own money?

silverharp

nesf wrote: »

, the problem was poor regulation that was trusted, which is far more dangerous than too little regulation.

Thats for sure , I remember Clarkson wrote a piece that the way to improve driving safety would be to take out all the safety features and put a big spike in the steering wheel. The anology isnt perfect but no regulation of the financial sector would have been superior to what we had. People would have asked more questions and not fallen asleep at the wheel on the assumption that ratings were worth the paper they were printed on.

Permabear

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asdasd

So there's no single "libertarian argument" that dominates all others.

Assuming libertarians are really anti-government on this one, then the only anti-government argument I can think of, and correct me, is to allow banks to issue their own currencies. This would replace national currencies. Each bank, then, determines it's own interest rates, more solid banks gaining more savers ( also offering lower interest rates provided the currency holds up, or tends to appreciate, and this garners more borrowing). i think in that case the supply of paper being unlimited, banks would lend even more ferociously into a boom, and redraw more empatically during a bust.

P. Breathnach

asdasd wrote: »

Assuming libertarians are really anti-government on this one, then the only anti-government argument I can think of, and correct me, is to allow banks to issue their own currencies. This would replace national currencies. Each bank, then, determines it's own interest rates, more solid banks gaining more savers ( also offering lower interest rates provided the currency holds up, or tends to appreciate, and this garners more borrowing). i think in that case the supply of paper being unlimited, banks would lend even more ferociously into a boom, and redraw more empatically during a bust.

You don't mention the prospect of widespread bank failures. It's all starting to look a bit eighteenth century. That's not a good place to go.

earwicker

donegalfella wrote: »

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The Sokal affair was not as simple as you've made it out to be.

Social Text didn't have any peer-review at the time Sokal pranked it. That's not to excuse the editors; simply to suggest that a proper peer-review process would have caught the problems. The editors also had several problems with the paper that Sokal refused to change, which suggests that they had some reservations about its content.

I assume you've heard of the Bogdanovs? There are other such affairs. It seems that science is not immune to being pranked either.

nesf

P. Breathnach wrote: »

You don't mention the prospect of widespread bank failures. It's all starting to look a bit eighteenth century. That's not a good place to go.

19th/early 20th century tbh. And yes, this is why few economists recommend allowing clearing banks to bust.

Permabear

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silverharp

asdasd wrote: »

Assuming libertarians are really anti-government on this one, then the only anti-government argument I can think of, and correct me, is to allow banks to issue their own currencies. This would replace national currencies. Each bank, then, determines it's own interest rates, more solid banks gaining more savers ( also offering lower interest rates provided the currency holds up, or tends to appreciate, and this garners more borrowing). i think in that case the supply of paper being unlimited, banks would lend even more ferociously into a boom, and redraw more empatically during a bust.

Ideally new currencies would be backed by gold , silver or some other commodity or even an algorithm ,companies like goldmoney.com already exist where you hold you account on line in gold grams, in this case the reserves are not lent out. The important features are simply that ithe money is not gov controlled , the fractional reserve element would be done away with as well , borrowers and savers would agree to trade with each other using the bank as an agent. Overnight inflation would be history, money would get back to being a simple medium of exchange, not a tool for every central planner that has a God complex.

turgon

I know this is off topic, but would any of the previous posters know of any good books as an introduction to the liberal economics they are describing? Its a very interesting discussion to read.