MeisterEckhart wrote on Jun 16^th, 2022 at 9:50am:


Name one socialist nation that's the sexual free for all you describe....

Frank wrote on Jun 16^th, 2022 at 7:45am:


Neither Marx nor the ancient Greeks understood the implications of modern fiat currencies.

So your either/or proposition: a choice between  utopia or the current unsustainable 'survival of the fittest' capitalist chaos  - is uncomprehending nonsense. 

Oded Galor, an economist from Brown University, locates his investigation into inequality in precisely the terrain where Piketty daren’t look. At the centre of his argument is the idea of the Malthusian Trap, a problem encountered by agricultural civilisations from ancient times up to the industrial revolution.
A village that successfully cultivates crops will at first experience a surplus of food. This will allow its inhabitants to sustain more children and the population will increase. But that puts a greater strain on the food supply and the standard of living falls. In this cruel cycle, progress leads to failure. An extreme example is the culture of Easter Island, which flourished, consumed all the island’s resources, and collapsed.

Societies remained stuck in this cycle for thousands of years. But then something happened, a change, ‘triggering the phase transition in which the human species escaped from this poverty trap’, Galor writes. Suddenly ‘the Malthusian equilibrium quite mysteriously vanished and tremendous growth ensued’. The countries that escaped surged ahead. Those that did not were trapped in poverty. This, he argues, is at the root of the global inequality that we see around us now.

The escape was triggered by the industrial revolution, with its combination of population growth and new technology. Larger populations are, Galor writes, ‘more likely to generate both a greater demand for new goods, tools and practices, as well as exceptional individuals capable of inventing them’. This coincides with an emphasis on the value of education, which in turn drives more invention in a self-reinforcing cycle of improvement and growth.

The Journey of Humanity really comes alive when Galor digs into the deepest roots of inequality, explaining that ancient societies with agriculture based on grain developed faster than those based on tubers such as cassava, sweet potatoes and yams. ‘Grains could be more easily measured, transported, stored and therefore taxed,’ he writes, which led to societies that were complex and hierarchical. ‘Thus, the suitability of soil for either grains or tubers meaningfully influenced the formation of states.’

Even within grain-producing civilisations, the type of grain cultivated had deep implications for a society’s character and long-term prospects. The cultivation of rice, for example, ‘requires large-scale and therefore shared irrigation systems’. This has tended to form a more ‘collectivist, interdependent culture’. However, ‘land that is suitable for the cultivation of wheat, which requires a lower degree of cooperation, has contributed to the emergence of more individualistic cultures’.

According to Galor, global inequality is not simply a political or economic construct. It emerges from factors including geography, the volatility of weather systems, the incidence of disease and the presence of cultivable plant species at particular latitudes.
https://www.spectator.co.uk/article/the-trouble-with-thomas-piketty

What is Socialism?  by Leszek Kolakowski
This 1956 essay was seized by the censor and the student journal for which it had been written was closed down. The essay was then pinned up on a bulletin board at Warsaw University until - very shortly afterwards - the authorities took it down. From then on underground copies of it were circulated. It remained unpublished in Poland until after the fall of communism.

We intend to tell you what socialism is. But first we must tell you what it is not - and our views on this matter were once very different from what they are at present.

Here, then, is what socialism is not:
- a society in which someone who has committed no crime sits at home waiting for the police;
- a society in which it is a crime to be the brother, sister, son, or wife of a criminal;
- a society in which some people are unhappy because they say what they think and others are unhappy because they do not;
- a society in which some people are better off because they do not think at all;
- a society in which some people are unhappy because they are Jews and others are happier because they are not;
- a state whose soldiers are the first to set foot in the territory of another country;
- a state where people are better off because they praise their leaders;
- a state where one can be condemned without trial;
- a society whose leaders appoint themselves;
- a society in which ten people live in one room;
- a society that has illiterates and plague epidemics;
- a state that does not permit travel abroad;
- a state that has more spies than nurses and more room in prisons than in hospitals;
- a state where the number of bureaucrats increases more quickly than that of workers;
- a state where people are compelled to lie;
- a state where people are compelled to steal;
- a state where people are compelled to commit crimes;
- a state that possesses colonies;
- a state whose neighbours curse geography;
- a state where cowards are better off than the courageous;
- a state where defence lawyers are usually in agreement with the prosecution;
- a tyranny, an oligarchy, a bureaucracy;
- a society where vast numbers of people turn to God to comfort them in their misery;
- a state that gives literary prizes to talentless hacks and knows better than painters what kind of painting is the best;
- a nation that oppresses other nations;
- a nation that is oppressed by another nation;
- a state that wants all its citizens to have the same views on philosophy, foreign policy, the economy, literature, and morality;
- a state whose government determines the rights of its citizens but whose citizens do not determine the rights of their government;
- a state in which one is responsible for one's ancestors;
- a state in which some people earn forty times as much as others;
- a system of government that is opposed by the majority of the governed;
- one isolated country;
- a group of underdeveloped countries;
- a state that employs nationalist slogans;
- a state whose government believes that nothing matters more than its being in power;
- a state that makes pacts with criminals and adapts its worldview to these pacts;
- a state that wants its foreign ministry to shape the worldview of all mankind at any given moment;
- a state that is not very good at distinguishing between slavery and liberation;
- a state that gives free rein to proponents of racism;
- a state that currently exists;
- a state with private ownership of the means of production;
- a state that considers itself socialist solely because it has abolished private ownership of the means of production;
- a state that is not very good at distinguishing between social revolution and armed invasion;
- a state that does not believe that people under socialism should be happier than people elsewhere;
- a society that is very sad;
- a caste system;
- a state where people can be pushed around, humiliated, and ill-treated with impunity;
- a state where a certain view of world history is obligatory;
- a state whose philosophers and writers always say the same things as the generals and ministers, but always after the latter have said them;
- a state where city maps are state secrets;
- a state where the results of parliamentary elections can always be unerringly predicted;
- a state where slave labour exists;
- a state where feudal bonds exist;
- a state that has a monopoly on telling its citizens all they need to know about the world;
- a state that thinks freedom amounts to obedience to the state;
- a state that sees no difference between what is true and what it is in its interest for people to believe;
- a state where a nation can be transplanted in its entirety from one place to another, willy-nilly;
- a state in which the workers have no influence on the government;
- a state that believes it alone can save mankind;
- a state that thinks it has always been right;
- a state where history is in the service of politics;
- a state whose citizens are not permitted to read the greatest works of contemporary literature, or to see the greatest contemporary works of art, or to hear the best contemporary music;
- a state that is always exceedingly pleased with itself;
- a state that claims the world is very complicated, but in fact believes that it is very simple;
- a state where you have to go through an awful lot of suffering before you can see a doctor;
- a state that has beggars;
- a state that is convinced that no one could ever invent anything better;

Frank wrote on Jun 28^th, 2022 at 5:45pm:

Piketty has answered the call for brevity with a book which by his standards is the equivalent of a Post-it note. It’s certainly ‘brief’ – but is it a ‘history of equality’?

Alas, no. What we have instead is an eye-wateringly left-wing manifesto for dismantling economic inequality, both domestically and internationally. ‘Inequality is first of all a social, historical and political construction,’ Piketty writes, and the best way to tackle it is by creating ‘a new form of democratic socialism, decentralised and self-managing, ecological and multicultural, making it possible to structure a different world that is far more emancipatory and egalitarian.’

To start with, we need higher taxes. Much higher. Piketty notes: ‘Confiscatory tax rates have been an immense historical success.’ Any worries that this might crush business formation or choke economic growth are misplaced, as ‘it is the battle for equality and education that has made economic development and human progress possible, and not the veneration of property, stability and inequality’.

Inheritance also needs reform. It should be taxed and shared out, so everyone gets a piece. We need inheritance for all, along with a universal basic income and guaranteed employment, with the aim being ‘the gradual decommercialisation of the economy’. If that fixes inequality within countries, the inequality between countries can be reduced by liquidating the institutions of globalisation, such as the IMF, OECD and World Bank. Instead, we need a new set of transnational organisations with powers to levy taxes on the world’s largest corporations. The proceeds would be shared with poorer states, particularly the West’s former colonies.

In the sections where Piketty finally touches on the history of inequality, he turns his attention to the age of empire, and to the hideous injustices of that time, many of which, he says, still affect lives. ‘Colonialism and military domination permitted western countries to organise the world economy to their benefit,’ he writes, in a sentence that has the feel of tautology about it – the West dominated because it was dominant. This leads him to ponder ‘the reasons for the fiscal and military superiority developed in Europe’, which enabled countries such as Britain, France and Spain to exploit other nations.

At this point you can sense Piketty’s discomfort. An analysis of the deeper origins of European dominance would involve accepting that rapid economic advancement doesn’t only result from the drive for social and economic equality. It can come from more acquisitive instincts, which are politically unacceptable to a collectivist like him.

As a result, he condemns the West for being dominant and for driving global inequality, but is unable to say how it came to dominate in the first place. It is a significant gap in the argument.

Frank wrote on Jun 29^th, 2022 at 5:12pm:


Ah...all of that, just to show you, like the author,  are blinded by the TINA fallacy...

Frank wrote on Jun 30^th, 2022 at 1:23pm:


I first came across the term in Bill Mitchell's MMT blog, dedicated to exposing the delusions of mainstream 'flat-earth' neoliberal economics. 

Apparently the TINA fallacy was first proposed by Thatcher, faced with union calls for her to resign. 

(Hey, it took 1500 years for people to move on from Aristotle's conception of geocentricity, hopefully won't take that long to achive public sector debt-free money-creation).