BBC Radio 4's 'Start the week' programme today featured a very temperate debate on 'Money & Morality' between Michael Sandel, Diane Coyle and Grigory Yavlinsky.
Although it did dig into ecomomics, it only (in my view) got as far as society in the abstract, and didn't really get at the concept of the human/biological needs that the economy truly needs to fulfil.
Towards the end of what (in their defence) was only a 28 minute long programme, Coyle gave an opinion with which I strongly disagree. "We need growth ... because it brings jobs." I won't restate here wy I disagree with that, but I will try to contact Coyle to tell her why I think she is wrong to say that.
Monday, 21 May 2012
Nothing new (or much) to say
http://www.myfinances.co.uk/savings/2012/05/20/g8-summit-ends-with-pledge-for-eurozone-focus-on-jobs-and-gr
So the g8 summit can be summed up in 2 words: Jobs and Growth. Fantastic conclusion to an international summit - a two word summary ('more' jobs is to be inferred). I suppose the summit itself generated work for people, making it good in itself by the reckoning of these sound-bite economics.
Are they not even bothering to break down these buzzwords a little bit? Do they just say them now? Jobs, growth austerity, debt, deficit? They have nothing new left to say and nothing new left to do. They are a spent force.
They can't start to relate these terms to actual human needs and problems, because if they do, they immediately expose the inbuilt contradictions in the system.
Growth cannot be infinite on a finite planet
Growth is growth in GDP, and GDP includes things we do not want to see, but which nevertheless cost £ and so count in GDP. GDP also excludes things we do want to see.
Jobs. Why do we want more jobs? We don't want more jobs at work, or in our homes. We don't want our services to cost more, but more jobs will do just that.
And even 'they' don't want more jobs in the public sector. Public sector jobs are bad jobs and must be privatised or got rid of. Private sector jobs are good, even though the private sector needs to be efficient nd therefore achieve the same with fewer jobs.
The only way we can get more jobs without being less cost efficient is by consuming more - there's you growth - and being less resource efficient. When we've used everything up or polluted the planet so it can no longer sustain us we will all die and there won't be any more need for jobs or growth. Meantime, we need to rush as fast towards this cataclysm as we can.
So the g8 summit can be summed up in 2 words: Jobs and Growth. Fantastic conclusion to an international summit - a two word summary ('more' jobs is to be inferred). I suppose the summit itself generated work for people, making it good in itself by the reckoning of these sound-bite economics.
Are they not even bothering to break down these buzzwords a little bit? Do they just say them now? Jobs, growth austerity, debt, deficit? They have nothing new left to say and nothing new left to do. They are a spent force.
They can't start to relate these terms to actual human needs and problems, because if they do, they immediately expose the inbuilt contradictions in the system.
Growth cannot be infinite on a finite planet
Growth is growth in GDP, and GDP includes things we do not want to see, but which nevertheless cost £ and so count in GDP. GDP also excludes things we do want to see.
Jobs. Why do we want more jobs? We don't want more jobs at work, or in our homes. We don't want our services to cost more, but more jobs will do just that.
And even 'they' don't want more jobs in the public sector. Public sector jobs are bad jobs and must be privatised or got rid of. Private sector jobs are good, even though the private sector needs to be efficient nd therefore achieve the same with fewer jobs.
The only way we can get more jobs without being less cost efficient is by consuming more - there's you growth - and being less resource efficient. When we've used everything up or polluted the planet so it can no longer sustain us we will all die and there won't be any more need for jobs or growth. Meantime, we need to rush as fast towards this cataclysm as we can.
Thursday, 17 May 2012
Quantifying planetary resources
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fSxIT3LixaE&feature=youtu.be
This short and clear presentation by Jason Lord entitled "visualising a systems approach" quickly gets to the subject of the planet as a closed system. To manage a closed system we have to know about it. In an RBE we want to manage the system for the benefit of society generally - that is we want to use the finite carrying capacity of the earth as efficiently as possible to sustain human life. This means the radical minimisation of waste.
To know what the carrying capacity of the earth is we have to collect data and take measurements, and this talk gives an important example of where this is already being done - namely NASA's Earth Observation System of satellites. The point is this is now, not in the future.
In the talk Jason also explained how using data gathered from this site in a super computer, they ran a weather model that predicted the planetary weather for 20 days with very good accuracy.
This short and clear presentation by Jason Lord entitled "visualising a systems approach" quickly gets to the subject of the planet as a closed system. To manage a closed system we have to know about it. In an RBE we want to manage the system for the benefit of society generally - that is we want to use the finite carrying capacity of the earth as efficiently as possible to sustain human life. This means the radical minimisation of waste.
To know what the carrying capacity of the earth is we have to collect data and take measurements, and this talk gives an important example of where this is already being done - namely NASA's Earth Observation System of satellites. The point is this is now, not in the future.
In the talk Jason also explained how using data gathered from this site in a super computer, they ran a weather model that predicted the planetary weather for 20 days with very good accuracy.
Monday, 14 May 2012
MOOCs
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Massive_open_online_course
BBC TV's Click ran an item on MOOCs, featuring Stanford's udacity heavily, but also udemy, which is a portal to various on line courses. The University of Phoenix offers something similar as does MIT under the MITx brand, and the University of Michigan as Coursera; and I-tunes offers I-tunes U.
It was impressive to see the academics interviews talk of their desire to remove the elitism from education and of offering their materials for free. In a resource based economy, as many limits to education as possible would be removed - and we already know that there are people who are motivated by education itself to spread education far and wide - a task that technology can really assist.
BBC TV's Click ran an item on MOOCs, featuring Stanford's udacity heavily, but also udemy, which is a portal to various on line courses. The University of Phoenix offers something similar as does MIT under the MITx brand, and the University of Michigan as Coursera; and I-tunes offers I-tunes U.
It was impressive to see the academics interviews talk of their desire to remove the elitism from education and of offering their materials for free. In a resource based economy, as many limits to education as possible would be removed - and we already know that there are people who are motivated by education itself to spread education far and wide - a task that technology can really assist.
Sunday, 6 May 2012
support for business
I know politicians need sound bites, but I still have a problem with easily parroted maxims that don't bear any real exxamination. I heard newly re-elected London Mayor Boris Johns on talk of "support for business" and it kind of sounds good. It's got the word support in it, which is a warm word, like growth.
But business is an abstract thing. It has no physical referent. We have to go through / past it to find such a referent. Businesses provide jobs and deliver goods and some services. The goods and services will at least in part be worthwhile things. The jobs, in the main, will be a means to get the money to procure the goods and services one needs.
So if someone speaks of support for people, they are closer to a physical referent; we can quickly see how that support might entail people having adequate nutrition and water, protection from the environment, and access to education, amongst their human needs.
If people want to support business because it will lead to the fulfilment of human needs that's fine, but why be indirect? When people say specifically that they want to support business, it naturally arouses suspicion that they don't in fact want to see that human needs are fulfilled. And if you press them on it they fling out labels - socialism, communism.
What is it that they in fact want to see happen by the supportuing of business? We suspect it is the enrichment of their friends and them at the expense of others who have to work in those businesses to stave off the day when they can no longer pay the increasing amount of money they owe.
But business is an abstract thing. It has no physical referent. We have to go through / past it to find such a referent. Businesses provide jobs and deliver goods and some services. The goods and services will at least in part be worthwhile things. The jobs, in the main, will be a means to get the money to procure the goods and services one needs.
So if someone speaks of support for people, they are closer to a physical referent; we can quickly see how that support might entail people having adequate nutrition and water, protection from the environment, and access to education, amongst their human needs.
If people want to support business because it will lead to the fulfilment of human needs that's fine, but why be indirect? When people say specifically that they want to support business, it naturally arouses suspicion that they don't in fact want to see that human needs are fulfilled. And if you press them on it they fling out labels - socialism, communism.
What is it that they in fact want to see happen by the supportuing of business? We suspect it is the enrichment of their friends and them at the expense of others who have to work in those businesses to stave off the day when they can no longer pay the increasing amount of money they owe.
Friday, 4 May 2012
Bread
I watched a very interesting TV programme on the history of bread in the UK (part of the Timeshift series).
There is a subtle interplay of science and monetary economics. The technical developments in bread production enabled far greater volumes of bread to be produced more cheaply, thus enabling poorer people to obtain it. But there was little hesitation by the bakers interviewed or in the developments depicted about the benefit in financial terms to the bakers and corporations.
The primary purpose of food should be to deliver nutrition. In the early days of the period covered by the programme, British wheat with low nutritional quality was used to make a bread which was unpalatable and hard to eat by people with poor teeth (a feature of poor hygiene and nutrition). So white bread, even though it is nutritionally inferior in theory, through being more palatable and softer, could yet have been more nutritionally valuable, but that the labour costs of refining the flour rendered it costly and therefore sought after as a sort of delicacy.
It's well known that people's diet during the second world war was on the whole very good. What people should/could eat had been studied from a nutritional point of view. Whilst there is no reason that people shouldn't enjoy bread from an aesthetic point of view, at a planetary level, the number one priority for food is its nutritional function, not its aesthetic, nor its ability to produce financial gain for its producers. The defence of current free-market capitalism that it can produce benefits through the profit motive would have a problem for me even if the evidence of millions starving didn't undermine the claim. If you want to adequately nutrify a population, you have a technical problem to directly be addressed. Why construct a complex free market system (using) some of society's best minds to produce a secondary funcion of nutrifying the world's inhabitants? Is there a theistic belief in the free market capitalist system such that anything society wants done must be (or claimed to be) contingent on it? Or is it just a distraction from the task in hand, critcisms of which are deflected or met by the claim that it can deliver social goals?
There is a subtle interplay of science and monetary economics. The technical developments in bread production enabled far greater volumes of bread to be produced more cheaply, thus enabling poorer people to obtain it. But there was little hesitation by the bakers interviewed or in the developments depicted about the benefit in financial terms to the bakers and corporations.
The primary purpose of food should be to deliver nutrition. In the early days of the period covered by the programme, British wheat with low nutritional quality was used to make a bread which was unpalatable and hard to eat by people with poor teeth (a feature of poor hygiene and nutrition). So white bread, even though it is nutritionally inferior in theory, through being more palatable and softer, could yet have been more nutritionally valuable, but that the labour costs of refining the flour rendered it costly and therefore sought after as a sort of delicacy.
It's well known that people's diet during the second world war was on the whole very good. What people should/could eat had been studied from a nutritional point of view. Whilst there is no reason that people shouldn't enjoy bread from an aesthetic point of view, at a planetary level, the number one priority for food is its nutritional function, not its aesthetic, nor its ability to produce financial gain for its producers. The defence of current free-market capitalism that it can produce benefits through the profit motive would have a problem for me even if the evidence of millions starving didn't undermine the claim. If you want to adequately nutrify a population, you have a technical problem to directly be addressed. Why construct a complex free market system (using) some of society's best minds to produce a secondary funcion of nutrifying the world's inhabitants? Is there a theistic belief in the free market capitalist system such that anything society wants done must be (or claimed to be) contingent on it? Or is it just a distraction from the task in hand, critcisms of which are deflected or met by the claim that it can deliver social goals?
Politics
With various local elections happening in the UK yesterday (May 3) there is pleny of coverage on news broadcasts of results as they come in, and the views of pundits. The non politicians focus on the figures, the impact of individual votes on the outcomes for the various bodies to be elected. The politicians play down any worsening of their electoral success and play up any increase.
Politicians featured in the news I have seen (not much) have said things that suggest they should change what the party does/stands for in order to achieve electoral success. One peer opined that the "economy is flat on its back" but went on to refer to the effect of this on their electoral success, as if that were more important.
It is difficult to avoid the conclusion from what I have seen that politicians are just using gaming strategies; what can we say (which is really nore important for their purposes than what will we do) to bring ourselves electoral success.
Stripping away the analysis about what will bring electoral success to see what it is these politicians are offering to do for the direct benefit of their constituents, specifics are hard to come by: jobs, growth, more police on the beat, reduced fares. These are the kinds of bullet point 'policies' we mainly hear.
From my point of view, I want to know what these politicians can and will do for the benefit of the human needs of their constituents. This may include what they will press for as well as what they can actually deliver, though in the latter case I don't think there is actually much. This is because it is only science and technology that can actually deliver true benefits to humanity.
Politicians featured in the news I have seen (not much) have said things that suggest they should change what the party does/stands for in order to achieve electoral success. One peer opined that the "economy is flat on its back" but went on to refer to the effect of this on their electoral success, as if that were more important.
It is difficult to avoid the conclusion from what I have seen that politicians are just using gaming strategies; what can we say (which is really nore important for their purposes than what will we do) to bring ourselves electoral success.
Stripping away the analysis about what will bring electoral success to see what it is these politicians are offering to do for the direct benefit of their constituents, specifics are hard to come by: jobs, growth, more police on the beat, reduced fares. These are the kinds of bullet point 'policies' we mainly hear.
From my point of view, I want to know what these politicians can and will do for the benefit of the human needs of their constituents. This may include what they will press for as well as what they can actually deliver, though in the latter case I don't think there is actually much. This is because it is only science and technology that can actually deliver true benefits to humanity.
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