Ask Chomsky:

[psikeyhackr]

I never thought I'd defend marketing, but to say that it is based on "deceit" and that it turns people into something they aren't to buy things they don't need is a value-laden statement that grossly misunderstands human wants and needs. The Mad Men understand human nature better than Chomsky.

Capitalism is the best system to supply human needs and capacities. No other system comes close to it.

Are you kidding? I worked for IBM. They introduced the Datamaster 23 to replace the 5100. Both machines were on a table in my department. I wrote two benchmarks to test the speeds, a bubble sort and a prime numbers program. The old machine was almost twice as fast as the new one. But I never saw the term benchmark on any documentation when I was there.

It is not what you are told. It is the obviously important information that has been consistently disappeared.

41 years after the Moon landing and our capitalist economists forget to mention the depreciation of all of the consumer automobiles in the world. LOL

Try getting reliability data on all these netbooks.

If accounting had been mandatory in the schools for the last 50 years wouldn't it still be CAPITLISM? So why don't economists or educators suggest it?

psik

 

[Toro]

I never thought I'd defend marketing, but to say that it is based on "deceit" and that it turns people into something they aren't to buy things they don't need is a value-laden statement that grossly misunderstands human wants and needs. The Mad Men understand human nature better than Chomsky.

Capitalism is the best system to supply human needs and capacities. No other system comes close to it.

Are you kidding? I worked for IBM. They introduced the Datamaster 23 to replace the 5100. Both machines were on a table in my department. I wrote two benchmarks to test the speeds, a bubble sort and a prime numbers program. The old machine was almost twice as fast as the new one. But I never saw the term benchmark on any documentation when I was there.

It is not what you are told. It is the obviously important information that has been consistently disappeared.

41 years after the Moon landing and our capitalist economists forget to mention the depreciation of all of the consumer automobiles in the world. LOL

Try getting reliability data on all these netbooks.

If accounting had been mandatory in the schools for the last 50 years wouldn't it still be CAPITLISM? So why don't economists or educators suggest it?

psik

I am writing this on a Mac. I junked my PC years ago. But its awfully difficult to say with a straight face that the world isn't a better place today with the enormous amount of technological innovation brought to us by corporations and the capitalist system. Yes, I'm sure that one computer you saw way back when was better than that other computer, but the point is that computers are ubiquitous everywhere, brought to you IBM, Microsoft, et. al. Its hard to say that you have been manipulated into buying a computer and getting onto the Internet.

 

[candycorn]

Chomsky is a discredited communist self-hating Jews. He is only taken seriously by far leftist antisemitic loons! I doubt he even believes his own propaganda, because its so illogical it can't be called intellectual!

I just looked at his Wikipedia page. Sounds like a nut in most cases...especially the Nuremburg statement. He's dead on about 9/11 Conspiracy Theories though. Credit where it is due.

Not sure why people give credence to his views? Not being on CNN seems to give credibility to some people.

 

[daveman]

I never thought I'd defend marketing, but to say that it is based on "deceit" and that it turns people into something they aren't to buy things they don't need is a value-laden statement that grossly misunderstands human wants and needs. The Mad Men understand human nature better than Chomsky.

Capitalism is the best system to supply human needs and capacities. No other system comes close to it.

Are you kidding? I worked for IBM. They introduced the Datamaster 23 to replace the 5100. Both machines were on a table in my department. I wrote two benchmarks to test the speeds, a bubble sort and a prime numbers program. The old machine was almost twice as fast as the new one. But I never saw the term benchmark on any documentation when I was there.

It is not what you are told. It is the obviously important information that has been consistently disappeared.

41 years after the Moon landing and our capitalist economists forget to mention the depreciation of all of the consumer automobiles in the world. LOL

Try getting reliability data on all these netbooks.

If accounting had been mandatory in the schools for the last 50 years wouldn't it still be CAPITLISM? So why don't economists or educators suggest it?

psik

I am writing this on a Mac. I junked my PC years ago. But its awfully difficult to say with a straight face that the world isn't a better place today with the enormous amount of technological innovation brought to us by corporations and the capitalist system. Yes, I'm sure that one computer you saw way back when was better than that other computer, but the point is that computers are ubiquitous everywhere, brought to you IBM, Microsoft, et. al. Its hard to say that you have been manipulated into buying a computer and getting onto the Internet.

Compare the technological innovations in the United States with those in the Soviet Union 1922-1991.

No contest.

 

[candycorn]

Are you kidding? I worked for IBM. They introduced the Datamaster 23 to replace the 5100. Both machines were on a table in my department. I wrote two benchmarks to test the speeds, a bubble sort and a prime numbers program. The old machine was almost twice as fast as the new one. But I never saw the term benchmark on any documentation when I was there.

It is not what you are told. It is the obviously important information that has been consistently disappeared.

41 years after the Moon landing and our capitalist economists forget to mention the depreciation of all of the consumer automobiles in the world. LOL

Try getting reliability data on all these netbooks.

If accounting had been mandatory in the schools for the last 50 years wouldn't it still be CAPITLISM? So why don't economists or educators suggest it?

psik

I am writing this on a Mac. I junked my PC years ago. But its awfully difficult to say with a straight face that the world isn't a better place today with the enormous amount of technological innovation brought to us by corporations and the capitalist system. Yes, I'm sure that one computer you saw way back when was better than that other computer, but the point is that computers are ubiquitous everywhere, brought to you IBM, Microsoft, et. al. Its hard to say that you have been manipulated into buying a computer and getting onto the Internet.

Compare the technological innovations in the United States with those in the Soviet Union 1922-1991.

No contest.

You could generally foretell the economic fortunes of a country by what it's companies export. What did Russia/USSR ever export? I really can't think of anything besides vodka and maybe nesting dolls.

As you said, no contest.

Of course one of the reasons our companies are so innovative, so predatory in going after market share, and were so nimble was due to the democratization of credit thanks to the central banks et al. We had companies getting easy credit selling to consumers who could get easy credit. Now that credit has tightened and we have an economic downturn; things look totally tragic in some cases but the innovations you spoke of remain. Better to have the crash from a high place than to never have seen the high place at all I'd say.

 

[daveman]

I am writing this on a Mac. I junked my PC years ago. But its awfully difficult to say with a straight face that the world isn't a better place today with the enormous amount of technological innovation brought to us by corporations and the capitalist system. Yes, I'm sure that one computer you saw way back when was better than that other computer, but the point is that computers are ubiquitous everywhere, brought to you IBM, Microsoft, et. al. Its hard to say that you have been manipulated into buying a computer and getting onto the Internet.

Compare the technological innovations in the United States with those in the Soviet Union 1922-1991.

No contest.

You could generally foretell the economic fortunes of a country by what it's companies export. What did Russia/USSR ever export? I really can't think of anything besides vodka and maybe nesting dolls.

As you said, no contest.

Of course one of the reasons our companies are so innovative, so predatory in going after market share, and were so nimble was due to the democratization of credit thanks to the central banks et al. We had companies getting easy credit selling to consumers who could get easy credit. Now that credit has tightened and we have an economic downturn; things look totally tragic in some cases but the innovations you spoke of remain. Better to have the crash from a high place than to never have seen the high place at all I'd say.

The USSR did have one major import: The failed leftist economic and social model known as Communism.

 

[uscitizen]

A lot of marketing is convincing people they need something they really do not need.

 

[daveman]

A lot of marketing is convincing people they need something they really do not need.

Yet no one is forced to buy anything.

Well, except for health insurance now.

 

[georgephillip]

Chomsky is a discredited communist self-hating Jews. He is only taken seriously by far leftist antisemitic loons! I doubt he even believes his own propaganda, because its so illogical it can't be called intellectual!

I just looked at his Wikipedia page. Sounds like a nut in most cases...especially the Nuremburg statement. He's dead on about 9/11 Conspiracy Theories though. Credit where it is due.

Not sure why people give credence to his views? Not being on CNN seems to give credibility to some people.

Can you name a single commander-in-chief through out all US history who would not qualify as a war criminal under the seven Nuremberg Principles?

 

[Toro]

A lot of marketing is convincing people they need something they really do not need.

You can make that argument, but define what "they really do not need." There is really very little in the world that anyone "needs." Almost everyone could learn to live with less, but that's not the point. We consume what we do because we want to do so. Most everything is driven by want, not need. And once we have it, most people don't want to give it up.

Another argument is that marketing defines needs.

 

[Liability]

* * * *
The USSR did have one major import: The failed leftist economic and social model known as Communism.

Wasn't that the shit they tried to export?

 

[georgephillip]

If we take Wiki as a neutral starting point: "Human nature is the concept that there is a set of inherent (essential attribute or set of attributes that make an object or substance what it fundamentally is...), distinguishing characteristics, including thinking, feeling and acting that humans tend to have."

While there have been "successful" individuals in human culture for thousands of years (tribal chiefs and feudal lords) capitalism has elevated the value of greed above cooperation and empathy.

In August of 1998 Chomsky offered these insights On Human Nature and capitalism:

"Question: Do you think that different social and economic circumstances either block or reinforce certain dispositions -- that, for example, whatever there might be in the way of a natural tendency towards selfish and aggressive behavior is reinforced by the capitalist market society?

"Chomsky: There's no doubt about it. Let's take Germany, for example. In the early 20th century Germany was the most advanced Western culture -- in music, the arts, science. In the passage of a few years, it entered the absolute depths of human history. Small changes in German society allowed people like Joseph Mengele to flourish rather than people like Einstein or Freud. The market is a radical experiment which violated fundamental human needs and capacities. You can see this in the violent struggles that were required to impose market conditions on people. In the United States, for example, about one sixth of the gross national product, over a trillion dollars per year, is devoted to marketing. Marketing is manipulation and deceit. It tries to turn people into something they aren't -- individuals focused solely on themselves, maximising their consumption of goods that they don't need.

I never thought I'd defend marketing, but to say that it is based on "deceit" and that it turns people into something they aren't to buy things they don't need is a value-laden statement that grossly misunderstands human wants and needs. The Mad Men understand human nature better than Chomsky.

Its also ridiculous to blame what happened in post-WWI Germany on "the market." The German government destroyed the value of the mark. That is a gross distortion of history.

Capitalism is the best system to supply human needs and capacities. No other system comes close to it.

Capitalism is the most efficient system at socializing cost and privatizing profit, as events from the Gulf of Mexico to Gaza prove daily. How much profit would western corporations earn if they were required to clean up all their environmental damage and compensate all the victims of war crimes at fair market value?

The Mad Men might understand human greed better than Chomsky; however, they're clueless about morality. But then, Henry Ford found out how much use capitalism has for treating others as you would want them to treat you.

 

[candycorn]

Chomsky is a discredited communist self-hating Jews. He is only taken seriously by far leftist antisemitic loons! I doubt he even believes his own propaganda, because its so illogical it can't be called intellectual!

I just looked at his Wikipedia page. Sounds like a nut in most cases...especially the Nuremburg statement. He's dead on about 9/11 Conspiracy Theories though. Credit where it is due.

Not sure why people give credence to his views? Not being on CNN seems to give credibility to some people.

Can you name a single commander-in-chief through out all US history who would not qualify as a war criminal under the seven Nuremberg Principles?

Here is what Chomps said:

If the Nuremberg laws were applied, then every post-war American president would have been hanged.

Upon reflection, if we did live under the Nuremberg principles, that may be the case. So I withdraw my statement about him sounding like a "nut" on this count. On my first reading I thought he was sponsoring the hanging of Presidents. In fact, he may do so but just from that single statement I quoted above, I don't see where is doing that.

Ooopsie.

 

[Toro]

Capitalism is the most efficient system at socializing cost and privatizing profit, as events from the Gulf of Mexico to Gaza prove daily. How much profit would western corporations earn if they were required to clean up all their environmental damage and compensate all the victims of war crimes at fair market value?

The Mad Men might understand human greed better than Chomsky; however, they're clueless about morality. But then, Henry Ford found out how much use capitalism has for treating others as you would want them to treat you.

Most costs are not socialized. Most costs are born by private interests. Yes, there are externalities but I can look up and down the balance sheets and income statements of corporate America and it dwarfs what is paid out by the government.

If you want to do a net net calculation of the costs incurred in the third world, governments acting in the name of the people have incurred massive costs, far outstripping those of corporations, especially when you realize that corporate investment is lifting literally hundreds of millions of people out of extreme poverty in the third world. I would agree that western interests have done enormous damages in some places, particularly Africa, but those were done mainly in the name of the state, not of corporations and certainly not of free markets.

Likewise, there has been no system ever invented than the one today that has created so much wealth and lifted so many to the highest standards of living possible than capitalism. So if you're looking at the external costs of companies, look at the external benefits as well. Its awfully difficult to say that the world would be better returning to the 18th century, before the advent of modern capitalism, and when there was very little economic growth and human advancement beforehand.

The Mad Men may be amoral, but Chomsky's view of morality leaves much to be desired.

 

[georgephillip]

Among the things we're taught not to think about or ask what they mean occurred in Gaza seven days before four Blackwater contractors took their last wrong turn "and ended up in the wrong neighborhood in Fallujah."

"On March 22, 2004, Israeli forces assassinated in Gaza the spiritual leader of Hamas, Sheikh Yassin -- a withering old man, blind and confined to a wheel chair. The Blackwater operatives in Fallujah were killed by a group that described itself as the "Sheikh Yassin Revenge Brigade." One of the trucks that dragged the bodies of the mercenaries had a large poster of Yassin in its window, as did many Fallujah storefronts.

Gen. Conway may already know the full story. As his retirement nears, he may feel free to point out the actual sequence of events stretching from Gaza to Fallujah and join other realists who have served in the U.S. military and noted the increased dangers to U.S. troops that flow from the widespread perception that U.S. policy is identical to that of Israel."

Political assassinations also come with externalities never paid for or acknowledged by those who profit most from war and its crimes.

Obama Boxed In by Generals

 

[georgephillip]

Capitalism is the most efficient system at socializing cost and privatizing profit, as events from the Gulf of Mexico to Gaza prove daily. How much profit would western corporations earn if they were required to clean up all their environmental damage and compensate all the victims of war crimes at fair market value?

The Mad Men might understand human greed better than Chomsky; however, they're clueless about morality. But then, Henry Ford found out how much use capitalism has for treating others as you would want them to treat you.

Most costs are not socialized. Most costs are born by private interests. Yes, there are externalities but I can look up and down the balance sheets and income statements of corporate America and it dwarfs what is paid out by the government.

If you want to do a net net calculation of the costs incurred in the third world, governments acting in the name of the people have incurred massive costs, far outstripping those of corporations, especially when you realize that corporate investment is lifting literally hundreds of millions of people out of extreme poverty in the third world. I would agree that western interests have done enormous damages in some places, particularly Africa, but those were done mainly in the name of the state, not of corporations and certainly not of free markets.

Likewise, there has been no system ever invented than the one today that has created so much wealth and lifted so many to the highest standards of living possible than capitalism. So if you're looking at the external costs of companies, look at the external benefits as well. Its awfully difficult to say that the world would be better returning to the 18th century, before the advent of modern capitalism, and when there was very little economic growth and human advancement beforehand.

The Mad Men may be amoral, but Chomsky's view of morality leaves much to be desired.

"Markets have inherent and well-known inefficiencies. One factor is failure to calculate the costs to those who do not participate in transactions. These "externalities" can be huge. That is particularly true for financial institutions.

"Their task is to take risks, calculating potential costs for themselves. But they do not take into account the consequences of their losses for the economy as a whole.

"Hence the financial market "underprices risk" and is "systematically inefficient," as John Eatwell and Lance Taylor wrote a decade ago, warning of the extreme dangers of financial liberalization and reviewing the substantial costs already incurred - and also proposing solutions, which have been ignored.

"The threat became more severe when the Clinton administration repealed the Glass-Steagall act of 1933, thus freeing financial institutions "to innovate in the new economy," in Clinton's words -- and also "to self-destruct, taking down with them the general economy and international confidence in the US banking system," financial analyst Nomi Prins adds.

"The unprecedented intervention of the Fed may be justified or not in narrow terms, but it reveals, once again, the profoundly undemocratic character of state capitalist institutions, designed in large measure to socialise cost and risk and privatize profit, without a public voice.

"That is, of course, not limited to financial markets. The advanced economy as a whole relies heavily on the dynamic state sector, with much the same consequences with regard to risk, cost, profit, and decisions, crucial features of the economy and political system. "

In Chomsky's moral universe a single billionaire would not be worth more than 20,000 public school teachers, and taxpayers wouldn't be paying for the Sixth Fleet's protection of corrupt US oil companies' profit margins in the Persian Gulf.

Viewpoints

 

[Toro]

As an active participant in the financial markets, I wholeheartedly agree with the conclusion that in the financial markets, governments socialize some of the risks. It is not true that governments socialize all of the risks. But they do socialize a lot. And it is a fair criticism.

But this is because decades ago, the government chose to bail out the financial markets. In 1987, Alan Greenspan slashed interest rates after the market crash in October of that year, supplying liquidity to market participants so that markets wouldn't freeze up. He did it with the best of intentions - he was afraid of a repeat of the Great Depression. However, he institutionalized what became known as the Greenspan Put - that the Fed, i.e. the government, would bail out the financial markets when it got into trouble. And sure enough, every time the market got into serious trouble over the next few decades, the Fed came to the rescue.

As you could imagine, with market participants knowing that the Fed would be there to bail them up, they took on more and more risk. This is known as "moral hazard." This moral hazard grew larger and larger based on the actions of the government. Had the government not bailed out the market in 1987, there is no doubt in my mind that investors would never have gotten bigger each time before another market crisis - bond market crash in 1994, Long-Term Capital Management collapse in 1998, Tech Bubble crash in 2001-02, and now The Housing Bubble. Each one of these crises was bigger than the last, and each time the government came rushing to the rescue.

Of course, the Financial Crisis has many causes, but the Fed is almost certainly the main cause. And the introduction of The Greenspan Put and increasing moral hazard was a big part of the Fed's actions and philosophy, whether intended or not.

 

[georgephillip]

I just looked at his Wikipedia page. Sounds like a nut in most cases...especially the Nuremburg statement. He's dead on about 9/11 Conspiracy Theories though. Credit where it is due.

Not sure why people give credence to his views? Not being on CNN seems to give credibility to some people.

Can you name a single commander-in-chief through out all US history who would not qualify as a war criminal under the seven Nuremberg Principles?

Here is what Chomps said:

If the Nuremberg laws were applied, then every post-war American president would have been hanged.

Upon reflection, if we did live under the Nuremberg principles, that may be the case. So I withdraw my statement about him sounding like a "nut" on this count. On my first reading I thought he was sponsoring the hanging of Presidents. In fact, he may do so but just from that single statement I quoted above, I don't see where is doing that.

Ooopsie.

candycorn:

"Nut" might be the one noun even his fiercest critics wouldn't apply to Chomsky. Like everyone, I suspect, Noam has made his share of mistakes, but he seems to hold firmly to one moral anchor: the principle of universality.

"ONE moral truism that should not provoke controversy is the principle of universality: We should apply to ourselves the same standards we apply to others - in fact, more stringent ones. Commonly, if states have the power to do so with impunity, they disdain moral truisms, because those states set the rules.

"That's our right if we declare ourselves uniquely exempt from the principle of universality. And so we do, constantly. Every day brings new illustrations.

"Just last month, for example, John Negroponte went to Baghdad as US ambassador to Iraq, heading the world's largest diplomatic mission, with the task of handing over sovereignty to Iraqis to fulfill Bush's 'messianic mission' to graft democracy to the Middle East and the world, or so we are solemnly informed."

In this Khaleej Times article from August of 2004, Chomps(?) explains Negroponte's contributions to Ronald Reagan's war on terror in Central America during the 80s.

A Wall Street Journal article from April 2004 notes human rights activists accused Negroponte of "covering up abuses by the Honduran military...to ensure the flow of US aid to (Honduras) which was the base for President Reagan's covert war against Nicaragua's Sandinista government."

In 1984 Nicaragua took its case against the US to the World Court in the Hague...

"The court ordered the United States to terminate the 'unlawful use of force' -- in lay terms, international terrorism -- against Nicaragua and to pay substantial reparations. But Washington ignored the court, then vetoed two UN Security Council resolutions affirming the judgment and calling on all states to observe international law.

"US State Department legal adviser Abraham Sofaer explained the rationale. Since most of the world cannot be "counted on to share our view", we must "reserve to ourselves the power to determine" how we will act and which matters fall "essentially within the domestic jurisdiction of the United States, as determined by the United States" - in this case the actions in Nicaragua that the court condemned."

Things got even worse for Nicaragua after Reagan left.

"Today, Nicaragua is the second-poorest country in the hemisphere (above Haiti, another main target of US intervention during the 20th century).

"About 60 per cent of Nicaraguan children under age two are afflicted with anaemia from severe malnutrition - only one grim indication of what is hailed as a victory for democracy."

"Several days after Negroponte's appointment, Honduras withdrew its small contingent of forces from Iraq. That might have been a coincidence.

"Or maybe the Hondurans remember something from the time Negroponte was there that we prefer to forget."

 

[daveman]

* * * *
The USSR did have one major import: The failed leftist economic and social model known as Communism.

Wasn't that the shit they tried to export?

D'oh! Yes indeed.

 

[daveman]

Capitalism is the most efficient system at socializing cost and privatizing profit, as events from the Gulf of Mexico to Gaza prove daily. How much profit would western corporations earn if they were required to clean up all their environmental damage and compensate all the victims of war crimes at fair market value?

The Mad Men might understand human greed better than Chomsky; however, they're clueless about morality. But then, Henry Ford found out how much use capitalism has for treating others as you would want them to treat you.

Just curious...how does Chomsky's "morality" come into play in his whitewash of the Khmer Rouge atrocities?