Dear Friends of Society on several mail lists,
The following four replies to my previous post "Ends of Globalization"
illustrate various obstacles in the way of our progress toward a sustainable
global society. To each reply I have added an appropriate, from my point of
view, comment in the format: (WSB, comment. WSB). The second initial is in
case the comment is so long that your mind wanders and you forget who is
commenting.
Below the four replies, please find the full text of two nine months old
posts with additional insight on the obstacles to a sustainable global
society. When the two posts are viewed on line at URL
<http://www.geocities.com/Athens/Academy/3142/IR/items/19990119WesBurtSustaina
bleFuture.html>,
direct linls to macro model Figure 6 and micro model Figure 7-9 are included
in the text.
I welcome the replies of Colette Fagan, Christoph Reuss, Diana G. Collier,
and John Courtneidge because they teach me what I need to know.
Kind regards,
WesBurt
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Subj: Re: The ends of globalization
Date: 99-09-20 07:10:30 EDT
From: [log in to unmask] (Colette Fagan)
Reply-to: [log in to unmask]
To: [log in to unmask]
Dear Wes Burt,
I am not sure how I have come to end up on your mailing list, but
would like to be removed from it. Please arrange this, or let me
know which global mailing lists you are distirbuting to.
Thank you.
(WSB: Dear Ms. Fagan,
Your address <[log in to unmask]> is not on my copy list, so here are
the global mailing lists which I post to.
CC: WesBurt (# of Members)
BCC: [log in to unmask] (?) No distribution
BCC: [log in to unmask] (?) Sorry, only the moderator
may send mail to this list.
BCC: [log in to unmask] (?) 99-09-19 20:23:10 EDT (4
min)
BCC: [log in to unmask], (?) 99-09-20 05:50:17 EDT
(9 hrs)
BCC: [log in to unmask] (?) 99-09-19 20:24:10 EDT
(5 min)
BCC: [log in to unmask] No distribution
BCC: [log in to unmask] No distribution
BCC: [log in to unmask] (?) 99-09-19 20:43:58
EDT (24 min)
BCC: [log in to unmask] (?) 99-09-19 20:39:07 EDT
(20 min)
BCC: [log in to unmask], (?) 99-09-20 02:24:51 EDT (6
hrs)
BCC: [log in to unmask] (51) 99-09-19 20:24:08
EDT (5 min)
BCC: [log in to unmask] (10) 99-09-19 20:24:13 EDT
(5 min)
BCC: [log in to unmask] (15) No distribution
BCC: [log in to unmask] (2) 99-09-19 20:24:15 EDT
(5 min)
BCC: [log in to unmask] (21) No distribution
BCC: [log in to unmask], (22) 99-09-19 20:24:10 EDT (5
min)
(Burt's copy (99-09-19 20:19:21 EDT) (55)
Minimum total readers 140
Your request calls to mind a paraphrase of the Twenty-third Psalm:
Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death. I will fear no
evil: for I have illuminated the valley before me. WSB)
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Subj: Re: The ends of globalization
Date: 99-09-20 16:33:06 EDT
From: [log in to unmask] (Christoph Reuss)
To: [log in to unmask] 99-09-20 16:55:57 EDT (22 min)
CC: [log in to unmask], [log in to unmask]
On Sun, 19 Sep 1999, Wes Burt quoted EU Commissioner Pascal Lamy:
> Globalisation: a win-win process
I guess a nice illustration of this "win-win process" is the ongoing
EU--U$ trade war over U$ hormone beef. If Globalisation finally succeeds,
the EU will lift its ban on this beef saturated with genetically engineered,
carcinogenic growth hormones, so the EU's consumers can finally eat the stuff!
Clearly a win-win process: U$ corporations can sell more hormones, beef and
cancer drugs, and the EU farmers in Mr. Lamy's country can resume exporting
their Foie Gras and truffles, without those nasty 100% punititive tariffs on
them. (So much for teaching other countries what Free Trade means !)
Mr. Lamy surely hopes this will happen before the local farmers will have
devastated all McDonald's outlets in his country...
> ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ snip ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
>
> Debating the threats of globalisation
>
> I am particularly aware of the requirement for debate on trade policy.
> I know that part of public opinion in Europe focuses more on the risks
> than the benefits of globalisation. Such opinion is concerned about
> possible instability, aggression, loss of identity. I do not share
> these concerns, but we have to take on board these worries, and seek
> to convince our fellow European citizens that the answers lie in the
> quality of our own internal policies, and in progress towards
> multilateral rules. We must not allow globalisation to become an
> alibi, or to be seen as a malign influence. This requires reflection,
> dialogue, openness to debate. <<
Too bad that so far, the EU Commission's policy represented quite the
opposite of "reflection, dialogue, openness to debate" as far as the
citizens are concerned. Let's hope the new Commission will do a better
job than the old one (which had to go after the great scandal), but
Mr. Lamy's NewSpeak style doesn't seem to give much reason for hope...
Chris
(WSB: It seems that Chris, in Switzerland, sees the European Union and the
United States as equally objectionable proponents of globalization at the
expense of each small nation's soverignty. This is to be expected when the
U.S. has a 5% of GNP deficiency of purchasing power in its domestic market,
and the European Union is trying to copy the U.S. public policy. In previous
notes and in Figure 1 of the global model I have pointed to Switzerland as
the best example of a sustainable society to be found in the World Bank's
ATLAS of 200 nations. Their Catholics and Protestants have kept the peace
for a century or more and they use only 1/3 of the water and energy, per
capita, used by the U.S. Does that mean that the Swiss are unwashed and
unheated compared to Americans? I don't really know, I've never been in
Switzerland. WSB)
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Subj: [ATTAC] response to WesBurt
Date: 99-09-20 16:33:32 EDT
From: [log in to unmask] (Diana G. Collier)
Reply-to: [log in to unmask]
To: [log in to unmask]
Ref WesBurt's remark, that we might respond to Pascal Lamy by attempting to
"overcome Europe and Canada's fear of a more powerful and prosperous United
States" -- I suggest that we must question exactly what the notion of a
prosperous US is. In point of fact, measured in scores of international,
domestic and NGO researches on social wellbeing indicators in relation to
health, shelter, education, economic equity, etc., the US generally lags at
the bottom of the list of industrialized countries. Even if "prosperity"
disregards the wellbeing of the citizenry and is registered solely in terms
of soaring markets/GDP, can this possibly be sustainable when it is
purchased at the cost of degradation of the human capital component? Is this
US model, then, the model globalization should be following??
This comment on degradation of "US human capital" is amply backed up by a
new publication, Discovering America As It Is, by former high-profile Soviet
dissident, Valdas Anelauskas, see
http://www.bookmasters.com/clarity/b0015.htm. This book of 584 pages has
literally 80 pages of citations of scholarly researches demonstrating the
devastating effect American public policy has had on the American people
over the past decade and a half. (The book has been endorsed by leading
American social critics such as Howard Zinn, David Gill -- Director, Dept.
for Social Change, Brandeis, and Ward Churchill).
What this book documents is that European countries provide a much better
model for development -- but how long will they be able to maintain this, if
the U.S. is able to convey its model as "more successful"?
Diana G. Collier
(WSB: In the 1970s I also thought that European countries provide a much
better
model for development than the U.S. because they, together with the Japanese,
had stabilized their economies after World War II by eliminating the 5% of
GNP deficiency in purchasing power among their parenting families, which is
the root cause of the English Disease in the U.K. and the U.S. The
performance of European countries during the 1980s and '90s suggests they may
have either contracted the English Disease or may have shifted too much of
their total tax burden from direct taxes on personal income to indirect taxes
on their capital plant and thereby contracted the Russian Disease. WSB)
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Subj: [ATTAC] Re: response to WesBurt
Date: 99-09-20 19:24:00 EDT
From: [log in to unmask] (john courtneidge)
Reply-to: [log in to unmask]
To: [log in to unmask]
Dear Friends,
I snip:
>
What this book documents is that European countries provide a much better
model for development -- but how long will they be able to maintain this, if
the U.S. is able to convey its model as "more successful"?
<
The certainty is that the next paradigm shift will occur in western Europe
(see Eric Hobsbawm's 'The Age of Revolutions') because, I believe, the call
for socialism is most widely developed and the human institutions are most
deeply embedded.
The call for Public Service Banking is thus irresistible and, thus accounts
for the world elite's (note singular) call for enhanced global ownership
'rights' (ha!) over intellectual property (even more-so, ha!)
Onward Friends - let knowledge be shared !
j(WSB: Perhaps the world elite's (note singular) have "socialism" in mind
when they say, one to another: "Moses commanded us a law for our inheritance,
it is our inheritance, not theirs! I know the law well enough, if John would
name the three most socialist nations in the World Bank's ATLAS of 200
nations, then I could know socialism also. WSB)
>>>>>>>>>>>>> End four replies and Burt's comments<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<
>>>>>>> Begin Burt's two posts on Ian Ritchie's list of resources at URL
<<<<<<<< <http://www.geocities.com/Athens/Academy/3142/IR/items/>
A Sustainable Future, How???
by Wes Burt, 19 January 1999
This note fairly summarizes my present understanding of the obstacles to a
sustainable future and provides a way to surmount those obstacles. The
primary obstacle is the fear with which our teachers, managers, and governors
(the 13th. tribe) regard the public. As long as the conventional wisdom
asserts that we live in THE ZERO-SUM SOCIETY and that THE ZERO-SUM SOLUTION
is the only solution, then the establishment quite properly may truly believe
that if they give the public an inch, the public will take a mile. And P. T.
Barnum affirmed the common practice and belief when he said: "Never give the
suckers an even break!"
That baseless self-delusion of the comfortable classes was discussed by Jose'
Ortega y Gasset in THE REVOLT OF THE MASSES, 1930. In a word, we can hold out
until violent change is inevitable, or, we can engage in a constructive
dialog to find alternatives to THE ZERO-SUM SOCIETY and THE ZERO-SUM SOLUTION.
A lesser obstacle is that the public does not possess a commonly accepted and
technically valid conceptual model of an industrial economy with which they
can reliably evaluate the constructive dialog. It is only necessary to
present a technically valid conceptual model to a few folks who are open
minded about new ideas to remove this lesser obstacle. A few people speaking
with one voice can overcome a multitude of Devious Defenders of the Status
Quo (DDotSQ).
>From a technical point of view, my understanding of this problem was complete
in 1969, since then I have only added to my presentation historical and
religious references in support of the technical solution to our social
disorders, which is, to apply the same financial rules to our people that we
consistently apply to our capital assets. As they used to say, when Ronald
Reagan was public relations spokesman for one of America's best managed
corporations, "People are our most important product."
The economic and environmental data from The World Bank and other sources
shows that progress toward a sustainable future is being made by those
nations that treat their people like capital assets. We English speaking
people are not following their example, we are not even able to talk about
their progress. One way around this obstacle may be to concentrate on
developing a technically valid model of the whole society, building on
figures 4 & 5, and avoid questions of "who gets what," and "whose ox will be
gored," until the technical validity of the model is confirmed by public
dialog and the public has in hand a reliable means of evaluating its long
range interest.
The attached file Fig 6b is based on Fig 4 or Fig 5 as previously
distributed, and is scaled upward as if The Optimum Policy (TOP) had been in
place long enough to raise the U.S. GDP/capita up to the $37,180 GDP of
Switzerland in 1994. This particular way of representing a national economy,
is just a different way of looking at things. It ties together that old folk
lore "it takes a village to raise a child" with the old wives tale that is
heard from time to time in business circles and asserts that about 10% of net
sales should be invested in the engineering budget (capital investment),
another 10% for executive compensation, and the next 10% for debt service and
stockholders. This structure of 30% G&A rates helps explain why other
industrial nations are investing 25% of GDP in their capital plant while the
USA and UK are investing only 16% of GDP.
But more importantly, this conception of the social order provides a way of
looking at a whole national society as a unit, as a single self-regulating
closed system with 260,000,000 active elements in the U.S., the nature of
which has not changed much in the last 10,000 years.
In other words, this model provides what is missing from Jude Wanniski's 1978
book, THE WAY THE WORLD WORKS, is missing from IN DEFENSE OF CAPITALISM,
1937, by James H. R.. Cromwell and Hugo E. Czerwonky, and is missing from A
THEORY OF MONADS, 1922, by H. Wildon Carr, D.Litt., University of London,
that is, a framework that can integrate the whole earth and all of man's
capital improvements with the cardinal principle of human nature as described
by Benedict De Spinoza in A THEOLOGICO-POLITICAL TREATISE, 1670, when he
wrote:
"Now it is a universal law of human nature that no one ever neglects anything
which he judges to be good, except with the hope of gaining a greater good,
or from the fear of a greater evil; nor does anyone endure an evil except for
the sake of avoiding a greater evil, or gaining a greater good. That is,
everyone will, of two goods, choose that which he thinks the greatest; and,
of two evils, that which he thinks the least. I say advisedly that which he
thinks the greatest or the least, for it does not necessarily follow that he
judges right. This law is so deeply implanted in the human mind that it ought
to be counted among eternal truths and axioms."
Spinoza's axiom and the propensity of people to improve their condition are
the only motivating forces in the continuous-flow life-support process
illustrated by Fig 6b. When the model was last updated on 09/27/94, I missed
one minor correction. Government spending, B to C, should be a clear gap in
the world market, at 0 degrees in the economic cycle. Letter "D" was intended
to indicate the "Indirect Tax" line , slightly below line "C" which marks the
top of the real physical economy. Recall that in the late U.S.S.R.,
"deductions from enterprises and organizations (indirect taxes) accounted for
more than 92%," of the states financial resources (Source: Seventy Years of
Soviet Government, 1987, Novosti Press Agency). Have any of you re-drawn Fig
6b to show the level of indirect taxes in Russia or the European Union today?
As Adam Smith said in his First Maxim of Taxation (Page 777 of The Wealth of
Nations): "the expense of government is the same as the expense of
management." He seemed to expect that his readers would know all about "the
expense of management" and could apply that knowledge to public policy.
Either Smith did not know his readers, or his readers had something else in
mind than good government. For the capital plant at 90 degrees, the three
tithes of management are Development and Construction (D&C), Executive
Compensation (E. C.), and Interest and Dividends (I & D).
For the workforce and their dependents at 270 degrees, the first tithe of
government is for the Support and Education of children, the second tithe is
for Executive Compensation of the Thirteenth Tribe who constitute both
management and government, and the third tithe is for defense, justice, and
welfare. Notice that the first tithe is critical for both management and
government, because an impairment of either function reduces the flow of GDP
through both functions which operate in series. So The Optimum Policy (TOP)
consist of keeping the first tithe both adequate and out of the budgets of
either households, or, corporate profit centers. Notice at 270 Degrees, the
half-tithe for K to 12 education has been a public expense since the 19th
century in the U.S., while the half-tithe for support of children and other
household dependents is shown on Fig 6b as subsidized from total taxes but
spent by the family. The half-tithe for support of children is still
regarded by U.S.tax law as a "consumption expense" of the family.
I think the model could be more clearly presented by inverting the order of
functions in the real economy between lines 0 and C, so as to have the most
important function, the tax structure, at the bottom of the stack, the
personal spending next, the dependent flow of Purchased Material at the top
of the real physical economy, and the speculative activity above line "C"
like the head on a mug of beer.
Any suggestions on how to improve the model, and make it more familiar to the
public, would be welcome. After the model is corrected and accepted by the
frequent posters, we can go back to Fig 8.GIF to show again why The Optimum
Policy (TOP) consists of nothing more than giving "Joe Six-Pack" the same
even break we give our developing capital assets? What in Hell are the DDotSQ
trying to accomplish by keeping the public ignorant of this simple structure
which Thomas Paine proposed to England and France in 1792-7 and Bertram
Russell described in a few thousand words in his 1915 book, PRINCIPLES OF
SOCIAL RECONSTRUCTION? Whose payroll are they on? Why don't they see the
urgent need for some "damage control," or at least the kind of lip service to
this financial structure which we read in the encyclical letters of the
Catholic Church since 1891?
The Whole Divine Law (Fig7-9b)
The last American economist, Henry Carter Adams, addressed our past and
present second-best public policy in his 1887 essay, RELATION OF THE STATE TO
INDUSTRIAL ACTION, American Economic Review, VOL. I, 1887, when he wrote:
"I am not arguing for any particular line of public policy, but rather for a
change in the attitude of mind with which men commonly regard the agency of
government; for great reforms are, after all is said, nothing but a change in
the way people look at things."
Everything bad that Ayn Rand, the Austrian economists, and their American
students have said about government is certainly true. But the one thing that
only governments can do successfully is to distribute a public expense
uniformly over the productive members of society by means of a flat tax rate
applied to all income. So we do need a change in the way we look at
government, and we must learn the different results produced by direct taxes
at flat rates on all income (Thomas Paine's "from each according to his
ability), and, indirect taxes at different rates on selected products of the
capital plant (only people pay taxes).
Then H. C. Adams went on to write:
"And it may not be inappropriate to say, as guarding somewhat against
misunderstanding, that I consider the attitude of mind by which this essay
has been directed to be essentially conservative. It stands opposed to
anarchy on the one hand, which is individualism gone to seed, and to
socialism on the other, which , both historically and logically, is a revolt
against the superficial claims and pernicious consequences of LAISSEZ-FAIRE.
Its purpose is to conserve true democracy, and this it would do by weakening
the influence of commercial democracy which now rules the minds of men."
Since the word, CAPITALISM, has been made meaningless by the advocates of
postmodern relativism, we might find it useful to call our present condition,
commercial democracy, as Adams did one-hundred and twelve years ago. That is
to say, we live in a society that has all of the mechanisms for effective
democracy still in place, and still in working order, but yet the commercial
interests exercise an undue influence on public policy, to the detriment of
the environment and our quality of life. The closest analog I can think of to
illustrate our condition is the biology experiment which begins with a stable
and healthy colony of laboratory rats.
Rats, as you know, are in the middle of the obnoxious species continuum,
somewhat larger than cockroaches but smaller than poor people, and we can
learn a lot about poor people by experimenting on rats. Anyway, the
experiment calls for restricting the rat colony's living space and reducing
its daily food supply. I have never seen the experiment performed, but I hear
that all sorts of social pathologies are demonstrated and I also hear that it
takes a strong stomach on the part of the experimenter to continue the
process to its logical conclusion, or "die-off."
Our human condition is much like that of the rats. There is no direct
connection from the experimenter to the individual rat, nor from our public
policy to the individual citizen. The experiment imposes less space and less
food. Our public policy has imposed for the last hundred years and more 4-10%
unemployment and a 2-3%/year decline in the value of our money. But the
single imposition on either the rat colony or the nation produces a different
response in each rat, and a different response in each citizen, so it is a
mind stretching intellectual effort for the rat or the citizen to reason from
his own experience back to the root cause of his experience. People can see
the cause of the rat's experience because they are outside the system. They
cannot see the cause of their own, until they find a conceptual framework,
and make the intellectual effort, that lets them view the whole system from a
vantage point outside of the system. This is what drawings, charts, and
visual-aids help people to do, that is, to stand outside the system under
discussion and look at the whole system in operation. Notice that the system
operates, regardless of whether or not we look at it, understand it, neglect
it, or change it to our heart's desire.
The attached file Fig7-9b.GIF has been re-sized to display properly on your
monitor and print properly on 8.5x11 inch paper, so the outsized image of
previous posts is no longer an excuse for not discussing the systemic defect
of omission in our public policy which is illustrated by the three charts.
That defect of omission is the lack of a dependent allowance adequate to
remove from the family budget the head tax of $5,000/year/dependent on
parenting families, which is the root cause of our social disorders.
For those of you who have read the REVELATION of St. JOHN THE DIVINE, and
think I am adding something to the bible by pointing out that the ten
commandments are incomplete, I beg to differ. Something was taken away from
the bible long ago and those who took it away, and everyone else, have
suffered ever since. I don't think anyone will be punished by God for
restoring those parts of the Law which may be found in the book of Numbers,
but are not taught to Englishmen and Americans.
For those of you who have not read the bible, the relevant parts of the last
book of the bible, written in A.D. 96 on the island of Patmos after the
Temple had been distroyed, and the Jews dispersed, reads as follows:
(REV. 22:18) "For I testify unto every man that heareth the words of the
prophets of this book, If any man shall add unto these things, God shall add
unto him the plagues that are written in this book:"
(REV. 22:19) "And if any man shall take away from the words of the book of
this prophecy, God shall take away his part out of the book of life, and out
of the holy city, and from the things which are written in this book."
>>>>>>> End Burt's two posts on Ian Ritchie's list of resources at URL
<<<<<<<<
<http://www.geocities.com/Athens/Academy/3142/IR/items/>
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