19 Facts About the American Economic Collapse.

[loosecannon]

it is the only situation that does exist. Time is an illusion. It cannot be defined without reliance on relative terms.

There are, as I have repeatedly stated, occasions when it is useful to project, like career planning etc. But when discussing the disparity of wealth and transactions it is grossly misleading to assert that a hypothetical future prospect is more significant than a present reality.

 

[antagon]

time is a consistent, stable and predictable illusion, such that it;s crucial to economics. if you don't account for it, you are not studying reality. that's why this slice analysis is inane. if you are trying to purge 'illusion' from economics and examine a ridiculous world, why do you acknowledge possession in the first place? possession is far more illusory than time. money and value is far more illusory than possession. what qualifies your selective recognition of illusion, and how do you maintain this methodology as more valid than convention?

 

[antagon]

fail. the econocrats are not describing the US, and neither is marx. marx's argument assumes that production is exclusive to subsistence stocks, doesn't it. a worker producing tennis balls, a luxury or transporting them to market, a service, is exempt from the necessary relationship of surplus value (aka profit) and this same worker's purchasing power to sustain himself.

the econocrats have based their arguments on this fallacious observation of marx' it seems. they've never been to the US.

Marx was describing the relationship between capitalist and labor anywhere where capitalism and labor engage in production. The quote said as much explicitly differentiating between market capitalism and production capitalists.

But in the US today, much of the service sector is subject to corporate dynasty and has the same feature of exacting surplus value from their labor to create the profits of the capitalist corporation.

I am not sure that you made a point beyond observing that the economy has advanced beyond mere industrialization into a service sector economy. And the format has evolved, but it usually retains the same basic underlying theme. Capitalism is by definition about making a surplus, or profit at the direct expense of others. It has no other nature. It is by design a means of redistributing wealth, to ones own advantage, and to another's disadvantage.

the vicissitude of capitalism is indeed an antagon theme. the way it plays into digesting marx' criticism is in the fact that he only bore witness to what i would characterize as the first two versions of organized capitalism. in the version since, without abandonment of private ownership of the means of production, capitalist policy has taken on some of his observations and affected labor and social standards which further nullify the zero-sum relationship between profit and wages.

this is not the exclusive issue with marx' criticism. portraying the idea of profit coming at the direct expense of wages presumes that wages aren't agreements between employers and employees. again, in a way i characterize as fallacy, this argument assumes one agreement to be at one party's expense, but doesn't examine the same nature of the agreement at the market. this is similar to your illusion characterization of time. when the widget is sold, it is also an agreement. villainizing consumers for gaming producers would be absurd. there is no difference, however, between what you and marx contend and the this implication at the ultimate market.

marxists would have to answer to my hypothesis earlier that labor is a market just like any other, and which is entered by rational parties who decide in a win-win contract to interact in the way they do. how could this characterization of surplus-value survive the willing participation in the job/labor markets? how could mechanized production and other proceeds from innovation be justified to be wholly values due workers as marx contends. i argue marx has a predilection to workers -- that's no secret -- but it has skewed his observations from reality.

 

[loosecannon]

antagon, time does not exist. There is no such thing as time.

It is on a par with luck, magic, virtue, good, evil, ownership and space. All things that we perceive, even tho they are all mirages.

For that matter there is no future or past, there is only a never ending succession of new present moments. Just because Newtonian physics relies on values for time and space and proves itself accurate millions and millions of times without fail doesn't mean it is true, or real, or right. It just means Newton constructed an amazingly accurate model of the universe at a certain scale.

But Newtonian physics breaks down completely when it is tested against objects moving at the "speed" of light.

Words like speed of course always are used in relative context and could be explained in entirely other ways other than distance/time. Since there really is no such thing as distance/time. It is just another one of those models that accurately but imperfectly describes the universe within certain scales. Nothing more, a usefull illusion.

A friend of mine who rewrote modern physics had a favorite saying: anytime you use the word "if" in a statement, everything that follows "if" is bullshit.

Assuming the future needs to be qualified as an "if/then" scenario. Esp since economics is absurdly inexact compared to Newtonian physics. Or a very poor model of the universe.

 

[loosecannon]

how could this characterization of surplus-value survive the willing participation in the job/labor markets?

Because markets are not rational, nor are they free, and they are distorted by factors like disproportionate bargaining clout, manufactured scarcity and monopoly, as well as barriers to entry, cronyism, racism, nationalism, regulation, corruption, conspiracy, cartels, politics, immortal corporations, and capital accumulation. Just to name a few.

The aggregate coefficient of advantage that employers wield worldwide over labor is beyond overwhelming, hence the race to the bottom in wages and benefits as labor becomes almost completely fungible in a globalized marketplace.

 

[antagon]

antagon, time does not exist. There is no such thing as time.

It is on a par with luck, magic, virtue, good, evil, ownership and space. All things that we perceive, even tho they are all mirages.

For that matter there is no future or past, there is only a never ending succession of new present moments. Just because Newtonian physics relies on values for time and space and proves itself accurate millions and millions of times without fail doesn't mean it is true, or real, or right. It just means Newton constructed an amazingly accurate model of the universe at a certain scale.

But Newtonian physics breaks down completely when it is tested against objects moving at the "speed" of light.

Words like speed of course always are used in relative context and could be explained in entirely other ways other than distance/time. Since there really is no such thing as distance/time. It is just another one of those models that accurately but imperfectly describes the universe within certain scales. Nothing more, a usefull illusion.

A friend of mine who rewrote modern physics had a favorite saying: anytime you use the word "if" in a statement, everything that follows "if" is bullshit.

Assuming the future needs to be qualified as an "if/then" scenario. Esp since economics is absurdly inexact compared to Newtonian physics. Or a very poor model of the universe.

i've made no argument against the illusory nature of time. i just asked why you feel singling time out of the other illusory observations in your pie makes your approach to economic analysis useful. ownership of pie pieces is an illusion. the value attributed to the pie's pieces is an illusion. money as a representation of value is illusory. explain your slice mechanism, man, or this arbitrary recognition of illusion.

 

[antagon]

how could this characterization of surplus-value survive the willing participation in the job/labor markets?

Because markets are not rational, nor are they free, and they are distorted by factors like disproportionate bargaining clout, manufactured scarcity and monopoly, as well as barriers to entry, cronyism, racism, nationalism, regulation, corruption, conspiracy, cartels, politics, immortal corporations, and capital accumulation. Just to name a few.

The aggregate coefficient of advantage that employers wield worldwide over labor is beyond overwhelming, hence the race to the bottom in wages and benefits as labor becomes almost completely fungible in a globalized marketplace.

subjective (for the reasons you point out) and irrational are different observations. if employees enter into contracts with employers, how is that choice irrational? if that choice is rational, how can the profits from goods or services to which the employee is related in the production sales or distribution be perceived to be at their expense, exclusively?

is production the only factor which plays into costs? are costs the only determining factor in value. with this perspective, what happened to the mechanism of supply and demand with regard to determining market values?

 

[loosecannon]

i've made no argument against the illusory nature of time. i just asked why you feel singling time out of the other illusory observations in your pie makes your approach to economic analysis useful. ownership of pie pieces is an illusion. the value attributed to the pie's pieces is an illusion. money as a representation of value is illusory. explain your slice mechanism, man, or this arbitrary recognition of illusion.

It isn't arbitrary, it is applied across the board. If wealth is distributed in a disproportionate way in the present moment, it is. And in light of the fact that our economic ideology is designed to accomplish exactly that it speaks for itself.

I am not the author of the pie analogy, I reject it. But if you are gonna adhere to a system that divides wealth amongst characters, static observations are far more rational than projections relying on future results.

I have said this several times but I feel deeply that the argument you are supporting was authored by folks intent on deception.

 

[mudwhistle]

#1 The United States has lost approximately 42,400 factories since 2001. About 75 percent of those factories employed over 500 people when they were still in operation.

why only go back to 2001? The Sucking sound of US manufacturing jobs going over sees started well before then.

Oh I know. It makes Bush look bad if you only go back to 2001.

NM

gotcha

I'd rather go back to Jan. 09'

 

[loosecannon]

subjective (for the reasons you point out) and irrational are different observations. if employees enter into contracts with employers, how is that choice irrational?

There is no one answer to that question and it isn't always irrational, but it often is. For example why do people play lotto? Is that transaction rational?

There is no fundamental difference between the way that sweatshops become populated with slave labor and the way that poor, irrational people agree to terms of the lottery. Or Casino gambling, where the game IS clearly stacked against them.

is production the only factor which plays into costs? are costs the only determining factor in value. with this perspective, what happened to the mechanism of supply and demand with regard to determining market values?

Nothing about the market is rational, nothing.

Demand is manufactured.
Supply is often monopolized.
Labor costs are reduced by mechanization.
Capitalism is irrational.
Value can be enhanced with marketing which is often a direct appeal to irration.

Rational market theory is as bullshit as is free market theory.

 

[mudwhistle]

or 50 instead of 500.

Or maybe instead of #1, it was supposed to be #2.

In any case didn't you start a thread based on an article that claimed only 2.4 million US jobs have been sent to China since 2001?

http://www.usmessageboard.com/polit...to-china-do-politicians-care.html#post2802746

2.4 million US jobs HAVE been sent to China from 2001 to 2008. You can't possibly deny that FACT, right? Admit it.

Worse,

a half million were moved there JUST THIS YEAR!

Tell me you know that! At least go research it.

At some point, you guys have got to join THIS reality.

The half a million that were moved this year were all Bush's fault.

 

[antagon]

marx' arguments employ deception too. prices are tied to market pressures like supply and demand rather than costs like his argument assumes. costs are not exclusively derived from labor, but are comprised of a number of inputs which vary by product with no necessary correlation to purchasing power. hence marx' zero-sum arguments are deliberately inaccurate, but convincing to some.

your fallacy impinges on this ridiculous slice mechanism which you feel purges economics of future promises, however, you recognize wealth by way of value which is itself a promise of future value.

the distribution and division of wealth which you have referred to is facilitated by a marketplace as a result of multiple win-win transactions including employment. while you've not described an alternative mechanism, you point to disproportion as if it indicates proof that it is a product of your argument that disproportion is a profit-expense relationship. this doesnt cut it. again, disproportion and zero-sum are two separate observations.

can you present what mechanism effects this zero-sum economy?

 

[mudwhistle]

marx' arguments employ deception too. prices are tied to market pressures like supply and demand rather than costs like his argument assumes. costs are not exclusively derived from labor, but are comprised of a number of inputs which vary by product with no necessary correlation to purchasing power. hence marx' zero-sum arguments are deliberately inaccurate, but convincing to some.

your fallacy impinges on this ridiculous slice mechanism which you feel purges economics of future promises, however, you recognize wealth by way of value which is itself a promise of future value.

the distribution and division of wealth which you have referred to is facilitated by a marketplace as a result of multiple win-win transactions including employment. while you've not described an alternative mechanism, you point to disproportion as if it indicates proof that it is a product of your argument that disproportion is a profit-expense relationship. this doesnt cut it. again, disproportion and zero-sum are two separate observations.

can you present what mechanism effects this zero-sum economy?

I'm not gonna even pretend I want to understand that.

It looks like it came right out of a Economics 101 textbook.

I'm not impressed. No offense.

Maybe you could put it in layman's terms.

 

[antagon]

I'm not gonna even pretend I want to understand that.

It looks like it came right out of a Economics 101 textbook.

I'm not impressed. No offense.

Maybe you could put it in layman's terms.

that was a reply to loosecannon's post, not an attempt to impress you or anything. anyhow, i'm a layman; it reads like plain english to me.

 

[loosecannon]

can you present what mechanism effects this zero-sum economy?

Piece of cake, the economy is exactly as large as it is in any given moment. And it's wealth divided as it is.

The reality mechanism is evoked.

And the pie argument never was mine. I expect it was invented by those liars who intended to debunk it with mendacity and spin.

I doubt Marx ever intended to be dishonest. He pretty much wrote the book on economics as a science. He was a clinician's clinician, a technician's technician, a complete science nerd. Typically his kind, like Einstein, only bend in order to make hypothesis meet with proof.

He too was just building useful models that may or may not prove accurate. So far Marx's models are the most accurate in all of economic history. But still fully imperfect.

Einstein was completely aware that his theory of relativity was beyond deeply flawed (dead wrong), but he presented it anyway because he couldn't match up a mathematical proof to what he really wanted to assert.

He also knew beyond any doubt that quantum mechanics was a fully failed model but he lost in the Einstein-Bohrs debates and had to let it slide.

The reality is that we can invent ever more complex models that are both increasingly accurate and increasingly fictional merely because the math forces us to abandon rational in pursuit of what math allows us to manufacture "proof" of.

Economic theory will always be junk science.

But the reality of present day wealth disparity and a capitalist plot to create wealth disparity will exist for eons to come.

 

[antagon]

that's poetic. i reject the association of your any given frame in time as being a reflection of reality because you only selectively acknowledge future promises to make a point, and you can only establish that there is a distribution, but not that there is an expense-profit relationship between the parties. this is not a mechanism, it is an observation. marx put forward a mechanism, albeit far shorter than my own proposal from a basis in reality. i've proposed relationships in commerce and in the job/labor markets that are mechanisms whereby interactions are win-win. you have not presented a win-lose mechanism. theft is one such mechanism, but you've not tied the entire function of the economy to acts of theft -- an absurd presumption, but one which would support your idea that the observation of disparity is a result of expense-profit mechanics in the economy.

i disagree about marx' brilliance.

 

[loosecannon]

Marx was brilliant in his day. He predicted a political revolution that would sweep the world and it did, and very much as he described it. He also predicted that capitalism would be prone to boom and bust cycles as mechanization continually reduced the value of goods produced causing cyclical imbalance and counter correction. He was right again. And he did all of that before the industrial revolution even began.

As for asserting a singular mechanism that creates wealth disparity, or for that matter accepting your proposed mechanism, the economy is not founded on any one mechanism. There are hundreds or millions of mechanisms working at once.

But the over arching theme of the global economy is that of immense wealth for the few living alongside immense poverty for the majority. 50,000 people die of malnutrition every day.

Clearly there are mechanisms that continually produce the same result. Capitalism is the engine that continually innovates new mechanisms to reach that same end, as it's stated purpose.

 

[antagon]

just explain one such mechanism which is responsible for the wealth of some coming at the direct expense of others. it's not that difficult. there was no marxist revolution - save for a few incidences. his conversion of ownership away from the capitalist model was not necessary.

 

[loosecannon]

there was a marxist revolution in Russia, and a social revolution toward social democracy spanning the rest of the industrialized world.

just one such mechanism is the divine right of bankers to borrow money at reduced rates and invest it in Bonds and stocks and commodities, while the rest of the world's dollar holders pay for it with inflation and higher interest rates. And a stealth wage decrease.

Seriously, antagon, where can you look and not see such a mechanism? They are legion. Systemic.

How could it be that capitalism has always resulted in massive wealth disparity if overwhelmingly powerful mechanisms did not exist to distribute wealth disproportionately?

 

[antagon]

there was a marxist revolution in Russia, and a social revolution toward social democracy spanning the rest of the industrialized world.

just one such mechanism is the divine right of bankers to borrow money at reduced rates and invest it in Bonds and stocks and commodities, while the rest of the world's dollar holders pay for it with inflation and higher interest rates. And a stealth wage decrease.

Seriously, antagon, where can you look and not see such a mechanism? They are legion. Systemic.

How could it be that capitalism has always resulted in massive wealth disparity if overwhelmingly powerful mechanisms did not exist to distribute wealth disproportionately?

inflation affects all of these transactions the least of which is the street, cannon. we've discussed this.

this is a mechanism, at least. kudos for that. it doesnt explain income disparity like mine does, however. i say mine, but this is not of my making, it is just the way things go when people make choices with their time and money: through win-win commerce, the organizers and owners of capital make out better. that does not mean that they did so at the expense of those who did not make out alright.

owning capital avails an advantage while not putting anyone at a necessary disadvantage. lets go back to my backhoe.

i was able to estimate that i make about $27k a year net profit from the backhoe plus an occasional commission. between operating it and doing other tasks, one guy makes about $45k a year. because i have two backhoes, a skiploader, a dumptruck a crew truck and a stakeside, 6 guys make a decent living in the field, and a sales guy does even better. as the owner, manager and a spare sales guy, even though i dont make the larger share of each transaction, i manage a share of every transaction. just like the ownership at microsoft or wal-mart come away with a sliver of all of their transactions.

the disparity between what i earn and what the lowest paid guy earns is pretty big. this is because he does the least skilled work and works the least hours. disparity in this situation, and i would argue in general, is due to the extent of participation in the economy and the level of participation.

this is why the disparity between me and e.l. yeager (california bridge contractor) is considerably bigger than between me an my least guy. i'm not stealing from anyone or manipulating inflation. yeager doesn't even know me -- him and his are engaged in greater participation than i have managed, and by far. he's not stolen anything from me either. that is not relevent to wealth. i dont think any mechanism of exploitation of the poor plays a significant roll in wealth. this is why there's more wealth where there are fewer poor. there are fewer poor when there is more wealth. the high tide really does float more ships.