In redux from 1937, the financial system is collapsing, except it is worldwide. What to expect in coming weeks: the ATM card will stop working, and for those who rely upon credit cards, too bad. All major banking functions will stop, causing a collapse across the nation, from air and car travel to basic services around your city and town. Thought you had a job, not any more. Massive layoffs will occur with 100s of thousands suddenly with no work.
Welcome to a new world, a new existence, say good bye to Empire America, and welcome the state of anarchy.
B) I have no words for point B. I've tried. Fifteen minutes I've spent trying to formulate a response to whatever that is up there that you posited. I've failed. My only conclusion is that we should go drinking sometime.
nicely lethal thread, actually. Well, certainly a collapse of some sort … of a capitalism of some sort. harbour my doubts over whether it will kill off the global economy or that it will lead to an irredeemable anarchy as such (a bit melodramatic, eh?). mayhap it’ll survive under a new guise, less uni/usa-polar and more multi-polar ,maybe?
and perhaps a more tangible relationship between capital, peoples and their governments?
in this funny world, two of the countries least affected by this self-dissolution of the abstract are syria and iran, economically insulated and monetarily far less abstract.
the more abstract, that is, in being removed not once but twice, money banking on itself. the elsewhere cited poignant story of the illinois sheriff and eviction notices is telling; the targeting of the first order of abstraction (the paying tenants) in place of the second order (landlords). abstraction might just yet turn vengefully on itself.
I wonder whether some degree of insularity i.e. the limitation of abstraction and equivalency is the way to go … or whether they, the powers that be, will evolve an even higher order of abstraction, a totally new financial language they share like sisters sharing a bedcover instead of a flu virus one of the sisters created . i, of course, can’t imagine what the second proposition would be like though. Or maybe, they’ll keep on crawling on until the flu wears out and then revert back to the per usual. its quite a per usual world, pending the time we completely per usual ourselves away.
on the great show ThIsIsHeLl! they are playing five interviews the show had about the credit collapse before the collapse happened. check it out if you have an attention span. they also have a hangover cure!
I think maybe there is too much reliance on the banks and financial institutions. Maybe what we need, in terms of lending and investment is: easy and effective mechanisms (legal or contractual, accounting, etc.) for things like: *barter* or borrowing from individuals rather than banks... Sort of like venture capital, except it's more personal. Small business investment that is one man to another.
Start internet business separate from banks that empower private individuals to *become the bank*, in whatever capacity they are able to...
Something like:
Ebay, in the way that it empowers individuals to become retailers in bite sized steps.
Youtube, in the way that it empowers individuals to become media programmers.
There are online website... Like legalzoom.com... Something online...
Some sort of investment website that empowers collaboration in a more personal and communicative way... Connects people in a business and financial way... Something like Facebook for small business.
it combines social networking with personal financial planning... It mines your dataa, you can share personal financial information anonymously almost like facebook but in a way that is secure and you can, for example find out where the best price of cable tv service or anything... groceries, see where your spending is graphically...
a light bulb went off in my head today. granted a very dim one bulb, but i saw a story on the bbc about chinese factory workers who were not getting paid, starting to protest and (potentially leading to widespread civil unrest) as a result of the downturn in purchases in the usa. it occurred to me that the usof a needs to revitalize its manufacturing economy not just to stave off the artificial wealth created by financial services but to counter the rise of china. if the us of a wants to remain the world power(i'm not saying that it should or that i am supporting us to remain the power) it could do so by reinvigorating our own production capacities in terms of consumer goods to keep the rise of china at bay. just thinking...
vado, i think you're right, and it's something i've been thinking about as well. instead of turning former manufacturing/warehouses into yuppiefied living spaces, as if that's not dead already, re-invest into those large spaces to create a renewed manufacturing sector. many if not most of these facilities have rail connected to it. these places would need some upgrading, but then that's half the fun. i think we'll have to return to a locally based mftr'g type of economy. it seems as though the world has just been reset to the 1930's and maybe that's not a bad thing after all?
also if manufacturing was re-regionalized transportation costs would be reduced. well since so much wealth was placed on real estate rather than actual goods and real estate has collapsed and was overvalued (misvalued) from the get go, we should perhaps return to this method. of course, this would spell the end of shipping container architecture.
i love barter... fix your neighbor's closet door and she bakes you a banana bread...
everybody should have a vegetable garden... including compost... get back to the earth...
we'd train people in crafts as their side jobs... everybody knows how to make something... furniture, grow food, do casework, make pottery, make clothing, brew ale, etc...
all people would still have their day job, and then they have their trade, and we will always have an option of barter with their friends and neighbors, and nobody is ever out of work...
and you could even trade your architectural design services for example, for a dentist to clean your teeth for 10 years, or a plumber to fix your toilet...
you can barter if you like but there's really no need.
in the usa last year 9 billion dollars were spent on consumer goods.
in china 1 billion was spent. that's with almost four times the population.
in india it was 800 billion...
by increasing our manufacturing at home and levelling tariffs on imports we would create jobs and real wealth.
china is also a potential market, not just cheap labor supply
funny thing is that while people make less, the standard of living in china is not as low as the relative income... things are cheaper
these emerging economies will become consumers too
what we should invest in for manufacturing is new industries where we have a technological or resource edge... education and building skill sets to be competitive... things like sustainable energy technologies... invest and excel in order to have something to export, and make us more competitive locally... infrstructure and "economies of scale" but also "economies of agglomeration": i.e. there are economic benefits to urban density and location for industries: if you have enough financial organizations in close proximity to each other, they can share service inputs or other resources... also market proximity... like a food court benefits each restaurant while the same restaurant if it were alone wouldn't fare as well.
silicon valley for example...
also, as the economy in these countries grow, so will the relative cost of labour in these countries...
the key is not to stifle the growth of the global pie (which is futile loong term anyway), it's positioning your own country to hold a certain percentage of the pie while making the whole pie bigger and better for everybody... you don't need to manufacture everything at home, but maybe you manufacture strategically to be the leader in certain industries... different cities and regions develop efficiencies in certain things... but also to develop a kind of growth that heals rather than damages our planet... we should become the world leader in sustainable energy research and production, be the country of invention, not just production
develop the renewable clean energy silicon valley... knit a region of manufacturing and research regions together via infrastructure investments... things like high speed rail
I was talking to an electrical contractor....and they were in the process of doing a major demolition project so their was alot of metals coming out of the building which are recycled...sent to China.
Included were some major transformers which were to be shipped intact. Well since everything has gone down the tubes the People in China are no longer interested so their sitting in their yard.
i think we typically think in extremes in western society way too much...just because we are in the information age does not mean every tom, dick, and harry does not want to break their back anymore when they work.
manufacturing like farming is something some people just need to do.
break the unions down first, that's half the problem. when people have a safety net they don't work hard enough, hence lowering the competition rate.
i saw this today surfing the web - MDI read their industrial strategy.
in NYC way to many people have tried to cut corners specifying Chinese products, products that lack NYC approval and frankly are so substandard you might get cancer from the product. Why would you pay $1mil. bucks in Brooklyn for a condo that may have Chinese cabinets that may have formaldahyde (?) or some other carcinogen in them.
chinese labor is subsidized by the government. it is unfair competition and manufacturing wages here would be high to allow for the workforce to afford the consumer products it would produce...
i think Karl Marx might just make a come back. reading the beginning of "The Povery of Philsophy" and he currently discussing the problem of assuming that labor determines the exchange value of a product. Something about supply & demand, and its a little too ideological to assume their could be such things as labor notes (that's really Engels intro comementary)
The MDI concept is interesting but fails at classic economies of scale. True what they save on being local over the average wholsale cost is measurable however when your Ford, and you order 5 million of the same part from Canada or Mexico, the scale rules. Even the bulk shipping via freight train becomes cheaper than point to point trucking. There are advantages to the Detroit "Fordist" model of manufacturing. It's biggest weakness is labor costs. Not just hourly wage but also benefits. Remember that the benefits that are guranteed open the door to price gouging by the benefit suppliers. If I gurantee 350,00 UAW workers a healthcare plan for 30 years, every health care provider knows Im locked in and will rape me. Now I have a huge segment of the population in guranteed contracts ( especialy in the past when these plans were dreamed up) so I can now export this to the mainstream workforce. Afterall if I got 20% of the union workers paying x, then I can charge you something close to x as well.
I guess the biggest debate about Healthcare is this - they keep saying let the free market rule when talking about the current system, but the current system is anything but a true free market. Medical costs are regulated, Government plans and union plans distort the market and the companies themselves are in bed with the lawmakers and tort lawyers. But soon, very soon, the doctors will just go back to menue pricing when their salries, as is starting, begin to take a hit.
The collapse of Capitalism
Welcome to a new world, a new existence, say good bye to Empire America, and welcome the state of anarchy.
The Houston Chronicle
Thanks for the warning... I hadn't heard. I need to get my affairs in order.
Umm, the quote above must have been in one of the comments in response to the linked story, because it's not from the story itself.
Anti:
A) Do you even know what 1937 refers to?
and
B) I have no words for point B. I've tried. Fifteen minutes I've spent trying to formulate a response to whatever that is up there that you posited. I've failed. My only conclusion is that we should go drinking sometime.
Capitalism isn't going anywhere, and it shouldn't.... But it needs a good leash to keep it from running wild and shitting all over the place.
nicely lethal thread, actually. Well, certainly a collapse of some sort … of a capitalism of some sort. harbour my doubts over whether it will kill off the global economy or that it will lead to an irredeemable anarchy as such (a bit melodramatic, eh?). mayhap it’ll survive under a new guise, less uni/usa-polar and more multi-polar ,maybe?
and perhaps a more tangible relationship between capital, peoples and their governments?
in this funny world, two of the countries least affected by this self-dissolution of the abstract are syria and iran, economically insulated and monetarily far less abstract.
the more abstract, that is, in being removed not once but twice, money banking on itself. the elsewhere cited poignant story of the illinois sheriff and eviction notices is telling; the targeting of the first order of abstraction (the paying tenants) in place of the second order (landlords). abstraction might just yet turn vengefully on itself.
I wonder whether some degree of insularity i.e. the limitation of abstraction and equivalency is the way to go … or whether they, the powers that be, will evolve an even higher order of abstraction, a totally new financial language they share like sisters sharing a bedcover instead of a flu virus one of the sisters created . i, of course, can’t imagine what the second proposition would be like though. Or maybe, they’ll keep on crawling on until the flu wears out and then revert back to the per usual. its quite a per usual world, pending the time we completely per usual ourselves away.
or rather collapitalism. beh.
"the key is in Baghdad"
on the great show ThIsIsHeLl! they are playing five interviews the show had about the credit collapse before the collapse happened. check it out if you have an attention span. they also have a hangover cure!
I think maybe there is too much reliance on the banks and financial institutions. Maybe what we need, in terms of lending and investment is: easy and effective mechanisms (legal or contractual, accounting, etc.) for things like: *barter* or borrowing from individuals rather than banks... Sort of like venture capital, except it's more personal. Small business investment that is one man to another.
Start internet business separate from banks that empower private individuals to *become the bank*, in whatever capacity they are able to...
Something like:
Ebay, in the way that it empowers individuals to become retailers in bite sized steps.
Youtube, in the way that it empowers individuals to become media programmers.
There are online website... Like legalzoom.com... Something online...
Some sort of investment website that empowers collaboration in a more personal and communicative way... Connects people in a business and financial way... Something like Facebook for small business.
This website is interesting: https://www.wesabe.com/
it combines social networking with personal financial planning... It mines your dataa, you can share personal financial information anonymously almost like facebook but in a way that is secure and you can, for example find out where the best price of cable tv service or anything... groceries, see where your spending is graphically...
a light bulb went off in my head today. granted a very dim one bulb, but i saw a story on the bbc about chinese factory workers who were not getting paid, starting to protest and (potentially leading to widespread civil unrest) as a result of the downturn in purchases in the usa. it occurred to me that the usof a needs to revitalize its manufacturing economy not just to stave off the artificial wealth created by financial services but to counter the rise of china. if the us of a wants to remain the world power(i'm not saying that it should or that i am supporting us to remain the power) it could do so by reinvigorating our own production capacities in terms of consumer goods to keep the rise of china at bay. just thinking...
vado, i think you're right, and it's something i've been thinking about as well. instead of turning former manufacturing/warehouses into yuppiefied living spaces, as if that's not dead already, re-invest into those large spaces to create a renewed manufacturing sector. many if not most of these facilities have rail connected to it. these places would need some upgrading, but then that's half the fun. i think we'll have to return to a locally based mftr'g type of economy. it seems as though the world has just been reset to the 1930's and maybe that's not a bad thing after all?
also if manufacturing was re-regionalized transportation costs would be reduced. well since so much wealth was placed on real estate rather than actual goods and real estate has collapsed and was overvalued (misvalued) from the get go, we should perhaps return to this method. of course, this would spell the end of shipping container architecture.
or there would be a glut of shipping containers, which could mean high rise shipping container architecture.
nobody wants to work in a factory except for robots...
maybe as they get older, u.s. can put the videogame generation back to manufacturing...they can def press buttons, program, automate...
hell, i would work in a factory if it meant i could put food on the table.
how about lets just bring back barter...
i love barter... fix your neighbor's closet door and she bakes you a banana bread...
everybody should have a vegetable garden... including compost... get back to the earth...
we'd train people in crafts as their side jobs... everybody knows how to make something... furniture, grow food, do casework, make pottery, make clothing, brew ale, etc...
all people would still have their day job, and then they have their trade, and we will always have an option of barter with their friends and neighbors, and nobody is ever out of work...
and you could even trade your architectural design services for example, for a dentist to clean your teeth for 10 years, or a plumber to fix your toilet...
you can barter if you like but there's really no need.
in the usa last year 9 billion dollars were spent on consumer goods.
in china 1 billion was spent. that's with almost four times the population.
in india it was 800 billion...
by increasing our manufacturing at home and levelling tariffs on imports we would create jobs and real wealth.
"a light bulb went off in my head today. granted a very dim one bulb"
my favorite line today
btw, is this the same thread as "the end of architecture"?
and i like your idea, vado, but can you get workers in this country to work for $20 a week?
china is also a potential market, not just cheap labor supply
funny thing is that while people make less, the standard of living in china is not as low as the relative income... things are cheaper
these emerging economies will become consumers too
what we should invest in for manufacturing is new industries where we have a technological or resource edge... education and building skill sets to be competitive... things like sustainable energy technologies... invest and excel in order to have something to export, and make us more competitive locally... infrstructure and "economies of scale" but also "economies of agglomeration": i.e. there are economic benefits to urban density and location for industries: if you have enough financial organizations in close proximity to each other, they can share service inputs or other resources... also market proximity... like a food court benefits each restaurant while the same restaurant if it were alone wouldn't fare as well.
silicon valley for example...
also, as the economy in these countries grow, so will the relative cost of labour in these countries...
the key is not to stifle the growth of the global pie (which is futile loong term anyway), it's positioning your own country to hold a certain percentage of the pie while making the whole pie bigger and better for everybody... you don't need to manufacture everything at home, but maybe you manufacture strategically to be the leader in certain industries... different cities and regions develop efficiencies in certain things... but also to develop a kind of growth that heals rather than damages our planet... we should become the world leader in sustainable energy research and production, be the country of invention, not just production
develop the renewable clean energy silicon valley... knit a region of manufacturing and research regions together via infrastructure investments... things like high speed rail
maybe in the midwest
vado
in these times of energy conservation, having dimmer light bulbs go off in your head is fine
I was talking to an electrical contractor....and they were in the process of doing a major demolition project so their was alot of metals coming out of the building which are recycled...sent to China.
Included were some major transformers which were to be shipped intact. Well since everything has gone down the tubes the People in China are no longer interested so their sitting in their yard.
snook
its cause the Chineese are looking for love in all the wong places
i think we typically think in extremes in western society way too much...just because we are in the information age does not mean every tom, dick, and harry does not want to break their back anymore when they work.
manufacturing like farming is something some people just need to do.
break the unions down first, that's half the problem. when people have a safety net they don't work hard enough, hence lowering the competition rate.
i saw this today surfing the web - MDI read their industrial strategy.
in NYC way to many people have tried to cut corners specifying Chinese products, products that lack NYC approval and frankly are so substandard you might get cancer from the product. Why would you pay $1mil. bucks in Brooklyn for a condo that may have Chinese cabinets that may have formaldahyde (?) or some other carcinogen in them.
chinese labor is subsidized by the government. it is unfair competition and manufacturing wages here would be high to allow for the workforce to afford the consumer products it would produce...
i think Karl Marx might just make a come back. reading the beginning of "The Povery of Philsophy" and he currently discussing the problem of assuming that labor determines the exchange value of a product. Something about supply & demand, and its a little too ideological to assume their could be such things as labor notes (that's really Engels intro comementary)
The MDI concept is interesting but fails at classic economies of scale. True what they save on being local over the average wholsale cost is measurable however when your Ford, and you order 5 million of the same part from Canada or Mexico, the scale rules. Even the bulk shipping via freight train becomes cheaper than point to point trucking. There are advantages to the Detroit "Fordist" model of manufacturing. It's biggest weakness is labor costs. Not just hourly wage but also benefits. Remember that the benefits that are guranteed open the door to price gouging by the benefit suppliers. If I gurantee 350,00 UAW workers a healthcare plan for 30 years, every health care provider knows Im locked in and will rape me. Now I have a huge segment of the population in guranteed contracts ( especialy in the past when these plans were dreamed up) so I can now export this to the mainstream workforce. Afterall if I got 20% of the union workers paying x, then I can charge you something close to x as well.
I guess the biggest debate about Healthcare is this - they keep saying let the free market rule when talking about the current system, but the current system is anything but a true free market. Medical costs are regulated, Government plans and union plans distort the market and the companies themselves are in bed with the lawmakers and tort lawyers. But soon, very soon, the doctors will just go back to menue pricing when their salries, as is starting, begin to take a hit.
mdler: New England is being sent to China!
So how is that emergency socialism intervention working for y'all? When will the banks will pay back these loans and who will pay in the end?
the grasp over tangible resources that the funny money possesses weakens...
it seems as though every company that i have a credit card with is in need of a big bailout.
so you imagine any credit you take from them they will use to pay back the loans from government or not?
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