There are two types of people – those who refuse to classify people, and those who put everyone into some sort of category.
Here, we are going to strip everyone of their individualism and insist that they place themselves into one of eight ranked groups. These rankings reflect the degree to which an individual is engaged in do-it-yourself activities.
Sometimes, literary sources can be just as schizophrenic as the authors writing about them. Such is the case here. Reading http://www.dictionary.com/browse/do-it-yourself one finds that the phase do-it-yourself is “has its origins in 1950 – 1955”, at the same time that it is used “asamodifier,attestedby1941.Theexpressionismucholder.” Depending on what “much older” means, one might be able to call it a mid-20th century term. It relates to amateurs, and is defined as “the practice or hobby of building or repairing things for oneself, usually in one’s own home.”
Class 0. User
This class of person has no role in the acquisition of an object, but in some manner of speaking has that object thrust upon them for their use.
Class 1. Shopper
There are two operative words that distinguish a shopper from a user. The first is that the shopper selects the object. The second that she pays for it.
Class 2. Assembler
Here one is entering the “flat-pack” universe. Ideally, an assembler can follow instructions, so that the object ends up looking and functioning as intended.
Class 3. Hacker
The primary characteristic of a hacker is her ability to modify an object, especially in terms of appearance or operation.
Class 4. Constructor
It is at this level that fabrication skills become important. Craftsmanship is a term often used to describe the necessary skill sets. Since the start of the new millennium, many have seen computer programming as a new form of craftsmanship. For further details, see: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Software_craftsmanship
Class 5. Prototyper
Experimentation is a key word to describe the activities of someone in this class. Engineering is not an activity that leads instantly to nirvana. Vague ideas ha ve to be fleshed out. Proposed solutions have to be tweaked, teased and tinkered with. The results are not always beautiful.
Class 6. Designer
Once engineering is complete, product design can begin. While many think of aesthetics, ergonomics is also an important consideration. With design work completed, batch and other forms of small-scale production can be used to make a limited series of objects.
Class 7. Manufacturer
The preliminary step before large-scale manufacturing involves real-world testing. Not everyone will treat an object as delicately as its designer. Thus, it is important that insights be gained into how an object will be used, and misused. There will be few amateurs at this level but new opportunities are arising through programs such as Kickstarter or Indiegogo.
An inspiring real world example
Cedar Anderson’s work over a decade developing a revolutionary bee hive shows just what can be done. World class innovation, performed by amateurs. See: https://www.honeyflow.com.au/ especially the Flow Story.
Three generations of the Andersons, with their revolutionary bee hive (Photo: https://www.honeyflow.com.au)
Precious Dollar continues her occupation of this blog, with a new series focusing on what ordinary people can do to promote the economic welfare of everyone, rather than on the economic ambitions of the elite.
On 2015-06-16, almost exactly one year ago, Donald Trump announced his candidacy to be President of the United States. Now, he is the official Republican candidate. Yet, rather than representing the ideals of the party, many regard Trump as being a conduit for the disenchanted, the poor and oppressed.
In the United Kingdom, similar rage is being expressed in the Brexit referendum. Again, large segments of the population are letting political leaders know their discontent. From my perspective, Leavers are contenting themselves at finding a scapegoat for their problems – immigrants. They are blaming the economic ills they experience on these people, rather than looking at the root cause, the unfair distribution of wealth and income.
Podemos is a Spanish political party, founded in March 2014. It is the successor of the anti-austerity 15-M Movement. It addresses inequality, unemployment and economic malaise that followed in the wake of the European debt crisis. It seeks full application of the 128th article of the constitution (“All wealth of the country in all its forms and no matter who owns it, is subordinated to the people’s interest”).
The reason Podemos is mentioned is the need to change rage into action. I have not seen anything in Trump’s campaign that indicate an understanding of a need for a new world order, with an emphasis on affordable health and education, and with greater equality in terms of income and wealth. Similarly, I don’t think any reduction in migration in Britain will make any noticeable improvement in the standard of living of the working poor in Britain.
Podemos is not perfect. It is grounded in nationalism, rather than universalism. It is still a political party, with all the evils that represents.
This is a translation taken from a post of Cunning Hired Knaves: https://hiredknaves.wordpress.com/2014/01/20/podemos-translated-manifesto/ It is the manifesto titled Mover ficha, which literally means to move a piece on a board game, as in chess, but which might best be translated as Making a move. It is from the new political initiative in Spain called Podemos, literally We can, or We can do it. The signatories are listed at the bottom of the original document.
“Making a Move”
Turning outrage into political change
Just as with other moments in history, we see today a European continent submerged in perplexity. Whilst the majorities look back with nostalgia on the past that is lost, certain powerful minorities, with no criterion other than their own survival, show that enrichment is their flag and impunity their horizon. Never in Europe have there been so many people discontented with their loss of rights, and, at the same time, so few perspectives for challenging this outrage through a voting option that excites while at the same time, shows the capacity to represent the majorities under attack and a capacity for committed and efficient administration that makes the best possible options become real. Many find it intolerable that in the greatest crisis in the system since the crash of 1929, those forces that claim to be progressive are at their weakest point, thereby condemning the majorities in our countries to a kind of melancholy that leads to resignation and political depression. But we have gone through worse times and have been able to overcome the difficulties. Why should now be any different?
The elections to the European Parliament will be held at a time of a profound crisis of legitimacy for the European Union. In our case, we are faced with the greatest loss of credibility for the regime born out of the 1978 Constitution. Movements of political outrage such as the 15M connected with a clear popular will: against the sacrifice of rights on the altar of markets driven by speculation and plunder. The impotence or abdication of responsibility by governments, the voluntary ineptitude of government political parties, the conversion of parliaments into bureaucratic organs deprived of political power and the stupor of the unions have left citizens abandoned to their own fate. As in so many other countries, the confusion is being used to turn private debts into public ones, for the transfer of common goods developed over decades to private interests, and to dedicate what remains of public resources to the funding of narrow and private business interests. We are faced with a financial coup d’état against the peoples of the south of the Eurozone. Those who are in charge are selling off the country and our future in pieces. The rise in repression (with more authoritarian laws, the rise in fines in a situation of economic impoverishment, and even, obstacles to the exercise of civil and political rights) is the final element of a landscape dominated by the deepening of social and gender inequalities and increased plunder of natural resources. It is not strange to see the apparent pessimism and defeatism among sectors who, however, would need only a spark of excitement to exit the trap of despair.
The citizen safety laws (which turn the forms of protest inaugurated by the 15M into offences), the return of the repression of women’s freedom, the curtailment of democracy at the local political level, the greater control over communications media and the control of the judiciary seek to create a scenario where fear suspends democracy. Forms on the pathway to authoritarian regimes wrapped up in electoral processes ever emptier of content. Does it make sense that the 90% of the population suffering the brunt of these policies should have no access to tools to create a brighter future?
But it is not true that we are consigned to defeat. Despite their efforts, we can see that this wall is not unbreachable, and that, from below, it is possible to put a stop to these processes that are dismantling our democracies. Today our demand for a politics that goes back onto to the streets, that talks like the majority of people who have had enough, is a reality. Our demand for a greater generosity from representatives, for a greater horizontality and transparency, for a return of the republican values of public virtue and social justice, for the recognition of our plurinational and pluricultural reality is more real than ever. It is decades since our desire for making our own decisions and answering our own questions was so real. The caste is driving us into the abyss for their own selfish benefit. It is only from the citizens that the solution can come, as happened with the protection of jobs, the defence of families through the blocking of evictions, or the guarantee of public services: small but meaningful victories. Popular mobilisation, civil disobedience and confidence in our own abilities are essential, but so too is the forging of keys in order to open the doors that they want to close on us: to bring to the institutions the voice and the demands of this social majority that no longer recognises itself either in this EU or in a corrupt regime that has no possible regeneration.
In the next European Parliament elections there needs to be a candidacy that offers itself to the wave of popular indignation that astounded the world. We are glad to see the advance of the forces of the left, but we are conscious of the need to do something more in order to set in gear the changes we need. It is a time for courage and for not allowing the closure of the window of opportunity that the commitment of so many good people has opened. We need a candidacy of unity and of rupture, led by people who express new ways of relating to politics and which will entail a real threat to the two-party regime of the PP and PSOE and those who have taken our democracy hostage. A candidacy that in addition to stewardship of what is public, proves able to involve the majorities in the configuration of their own future. A candidacy that responds to the young people who are invited to get out of the country, to workers who day by day see their rights diluted, to women forced to go back to demanding what should obviously be theirs, to older people who are finding it was not enough to have struggled and worked for a lifetime. A candidacy that advances from spaces already conquered and manages to go beyond the present paralysis. A candidacy that makes the move that turns pessimism into optimism and discontent into popular will for change and democratic openness.
A candidacy for the recovery of popular sovereignty: it is the citizens who have to decide, not the selfish minority who have brought us here. People’s needs come first. Austerity and cutbacks are choking the economy and our lives. There must be a derogation of article 135 of the Spanish constitution and a moratorium for a citizen debt audit that determines what parts of the debt are not legitimate; the illegitimate debts will not be paid. Alternative policies are needed in order to establish a tax on financial transactions and controls on the movement of capital, along with the nationalisation of the private banking sector. Those administrations in our country that have adopted the prescriptions of austerity are proof of how useless they are for resolving people’s problems. We want a candidacy that therefore opposes the cuts that are being applied in the name of austerity by the Government of the Partido Popular in the State but also by the PSOE and other parties in different Autonomous Communities. We want another Europe, one that is just, the Europe of rights and democracy, not that of plunder and contempt for the peoples.
A candidacy that, faced with governments in the service of the 1% minority, calls for a ‘real democracy’ based on the sovereignty of peoples and their right to decide their future freely and in solidarity. Democracy holds no fear for us democrats; we are delighted that Scottish and Catalan people can talk and say what future they desire. As such, one that supports the consultation called in Catalonia for the 9th of November.
A candidacy that defends decent wages and pensions, a progressive tax regime so that those who have the most pay the most, one that goes after tax fraud, that rejects redundancies in profitable firms, and that stands for the sharing of all jobs, including domestic work and unpaid care work. It is essential to defend decent labour conditions for young people condemned to eternal precarity or exile.
A candidacy for the right to decent housing. There must be a programme to build public housing, as well as a model of decent and affordable rents. The human drama of evictions can and must be ended, by suspending every single one and by approving retrospective surrender of houses by way of payment, as demanded by the Mortgage Victims’ Platform.
A candidacy that rejects every form of privatisation of public services and common goods: education, health, justice, transport, information, housing and culture, that stands for its reversal in all of these and opts for their democratic management. They are rights and must be under public control. A candidacy that stands for a radical democracy where binding referendums and popular legislative initiatives form an important part of a new legal order following a constituent process.
A candidacy that combats against gender based violence and defends the rights of women over their own bodies, and as such, the right to decide if they want to end their pregnancy or not. And that also defends freedom of sexual orientation and identity against every form of discrimination and homophobia. A candidacy for the unbreakable right to be and to love as one wishes.
A candidacy that seeks a change in the productive model so that it is at the service of people, through an ecological reconversion of the economy, through the nationalisation and socialisation of energy firms, and through food sovereignty.
A candidacy that defends citizen rights for everyone and demands derogation from immigration laws. A candidacy for a country in which everyone is a citizen and no-one is invisible, prisoner of over-exploitation, persecution or marginalisation due to institutional xenophobia.
A candidacy that rejects military interventions, that stands for an exit from NATO and is a firm defender of relations of solidarity between peoples.
A candidacy that is the result of an open participative process for citizens, in the elaboration of its programme and in the composition of its list, based upon the criteria of the presence of social, political and cultural activists, with role rotation and income equivalent to the average wage. A candidacy with commitment to transparency and accountability, with financial resources independent from the private banking sector and from lobby groups.
Those of us signing this manifesto are convinced that now is the time to make a step forward and that by making it many more will join us. Those at the top tell us that nothing can be done except resign ourselves, and, at best, choose between the same colours as always. We think it is no longer time for giving up but for making a move and pulling together, by offering tools to outrage and the desire for change. In the streets “SÍ se puede” (“Yes, it can be done”) is repeatedly heard. We say: “Podemos” (“We can do it”).
Next time, Precious Dollar will be looking at co-operatives.
Once again, Precious Dollar reports on post-modern economic (and other) values.
One academic game that can be played by almost anyone is to find the start date for post-modern society. While some are very general, Charles Jencks proposes 1972-07-15 at 15:32. It is based on the demolition of the Pruitt-Igoe brutalist housing complex in St Louis, Missouri. Another date, favored by some economists is 1971-08-13, the day Richard Nixon ended the last remains of a Gold Standard. If the de facto end is preferred, then one should look to Franklin Roosevelt, and 1933-06-05. A characteristic of post-modern society is that the rule book has been thrown out. Everything is allowed.
Perhaps the greatest failure of the Clinton administration, was its determination to open the world to free trade, by abolishing tariff barriers. Because of their lower wages, this meant that countries in the developing world, like China, could produce and sell goods cheaper than producers in the developed world, like USA. Clinton tried to sell the American public “cheapness”, but even in the beginning, it was a hard sell.
Bill Clinton’s administration passed trade legislation that lowered trade barriers with other nations. It negotiated about 300 trade agreements with other countries. This alienated many previous supporters, including labor unions. These argued that lower tariffs and more relaxed trade barriers would eliminate American jobs. Clinton argued that free trade would allow the U.S. to increase exports, growing the American economy. He also stated a belief that free trade could result in economic and political reform in developing countries. What that reform would consist of was never discussed.
Lawrence Summers
What Clinton failed to do was to place any restrictions on developing country exporters. They did not have to meet any requirements with respect to child labor, slavery, hours or work, other matters affecting working conditions, or protection of the environment. This is far from an exhaustive list. This meant that there was no level playing field. Countries that improved worker safety were penalized, while those who didn’t profited. That is, the owners of the companies profited, the workers simply had to accept their fate.
Clinton’s last Secretary of the Treasury, Lawrence Summers, stated that lowered tariffs reduced consumer prices and kept inflation low, and were technically “the largest tax cut in the history of the world.“
Fast forward to Ottawa, Canada on 2016-06-01.
Canada’s Minister of Foreign Affairs Stephane Dion, right, meets with Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi on Parliament Hill in Ottawa, Wednesday 2016-06-01. THE CANADIAN PRESS/Adrian Wyld
Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi lost his temper after Amanda Connolly asked Canadian Foreign Affairs Minister Stéphane Dion a question about three touchy subjects: Hong Kong book sellers critical of Beijing that have gone missing, the country’s aggressive moves in the South China Sea, and the detention of Canadian citizen Kevin Garratt in China. “Why is Canada pursuing closer ties with China, how do you plan to use that relationship to improve human rights and security in the region, and did you specifically raise the case of the Garratts during your talks?”
Amanda Connolly
After Dion answered, Wang was asked a question by Chinese state-run media CCTV news, a question that within it made accusations about foreign aggression toward China. Rather than answering, Wang attacked Connolly, through a translator, for asking about human rights.
“I have to say that your question is full of prejudice against China and arrogance where I have heard that come from and this is totally unacceptable. I have to ask whether you understand China. Have you been to China?” Wang said, then repeated familiar Communist Party of China defenses, becoming increasingly upset. He noted that Chinese law also incorporates civil rights, and ended with ,”I would like to ask you to please don’t ask questions in such an irresponsible manner and we welcome good will suggestions but we reject groundless or unwarranted accusations.”
Ryan Dunch, University of Alberta, China Institute, professor of history and classics said there is a lack of experts who understand the nuances of China. Canada has a knowledge gap that threatens to put Canada at a political and economic disadvantage, unable to protect its own interests when making deals with China.
Dunch said that Canadians need to be able to interpret what’s being said when the government of China scolds or says, ‘We’ve got human rights in our constitution.’ The same protections and legal process to ensure such rights are upheld in Canada do not exist in China, and many Canadians may not understand the difference.
Another example, Dunch said, is the Chinese government’s insistence that it is the definitive voice of every citizen, although China is a vast country with many different views and opinions. China’s current government claims, “an absolute and unlimited mandate to be the sole authoritative voice for the Chinese nation.”
“It’s important for Canadians and Canadian business to be able to develop an informed, critical perspective for understanding the statements coming from the Chinese government and the Chinese media,” Dunch said.
Charles Burton, Brock University, associate professor, notes that the Canadian government has said it intends to address concerns about human rights through trade and engagement, but does not seem to be contemplating any other actions to address human rights issues. Such a passive attitude toward Beijing and a poor understanding of it in the past is something Hong Kong is now coming to terms with. In the 1980s it was generally assumed that after China took over Hong Kong from the United Kingdom in 1997, the country would become more democratic.
Hong Kong residents, who had come to enjoy freedoms that mainland residents did not, were therefore fairly passive towards Beijing’s actions on human rights, expecting it to change. Instead, in 2014, Hong Kong saw massive street demonstrations following Beijing’s refusal to allow the region to hold completely open elections. China no longer talks about democracy as an ultimate political goal, instead referring to it as being a western ideal.
“That realization in Hong Kong I think is what is spawning the localism movement,” Burton said. “A conflict is happening because the expectations of Hong Kong people with regard to the mainland have not been fulfilled, and they were naive to think so.”
Burton said he is concerned about how Canada makes deals with China, noting that many Ottawa advisers don’t speak a Chinese language, let alone have an intimate understanding of the country. The federal government is too reliant on advice from big business more concerned with economic growth than human rights and other worries. “Any government in Canada doesn’t seem to have the sophistication to be able to engage in a China policy that satisfies both Canadians’ concern over human rights and security and our desire to grow our economy. The government just doesn’t understanding the importance of having the expertise necessary.”
“People now have a very determined attitude that our government has to represent Canadian values, and in our dealing with China we cannot compromise the things that make Canada great: our respect for human rights and rule of law,” Burton said.
A Nik Nanos poll shows 76 per cent of Canadians have a negative view of free trade with China.
Kai Nagata of the anti-pipeline group Dogwood Initiative said it’s been evident to him for some time that Canada’s politicians are willing to put Beijing’s concerns ahead of Canadians’. Dogwood Initiative wants Canadians to “stand up to China” over its demand for a pipeline and tanker port in British Columbia as a condition to start free trade talks.
He said China is dangling a free trade deal in front of the Liberal govenment and using it to get Canada to accept an “unusual amount of diplomatic abuse.” He said Ottawa’s timid response doesn’t give him hope the Liberal Government will stand up for Canadians’ concerns. “I wonder how much (China) cares about rights and title of First Nations on the west coast and how much they care about the rights of British Columbians who don’t want more oil tanker traffic through our communities.”
In January, 2016 David H Autor, David Dorn & Gordon H Hanson published The China Shock: Learning from Labor Market Adjustment to Large Changes in Trade.
China’s emergence as a great economic power has significantly changed patterns of world trade, and challenged thinking about how labor markets adjust to trade shocks. Autor et al are particularly concerned about the substantial adjustment costs and distributional consequences.
They write that these impacts are most visible in the local labor markets in which the industries exposed to foreign competition are concentrated. Here, adjustment is remarkably slow, with wages and labor-force participation rates remaining depressed (and unemployment rates remaining elevated) a full decade or more after the China trade shock started, usually regarded as 2000, the year China joined the World Trade Organization. Regions that have been hit hard, have not recovered. Workers in these industries and regions don’t go on to better jobs, or even similar jobs in different industries. Instead, they shuffle from low-paid job to low-paid job, never recovering the prosperity they had. Many end up on welfare. This is very different from earlier decades, when workers who lost their jobs to import competition usually went into higher-productivity industries, to the benefit of almost everyone.
Popular opinion seems to be exactly right about the effect of trade with China — it has killed jobs and damaged the lives of many, many Americans. Economist researchers have shown that public misgivings about free-trade reassurances have been completely justified.
Autor et al. sternly rebuke the economics profession for relying too much on theory, and not enough on evidence, when it comes to the mantra that free trade is good. Part of the problem is the definition of “good.” According to most models of trade, reducing trade barriers raises efficiency, increasing total gross domestic product. Unfortunately, efficiency says nothing about fairness. Almost any trade model shows that some people, industries and regions lose out.
If most people experience slight gains from lower import prices, and a few lose their livelihoods and have to go on welfare, economists call that a “good” outcome, because of the focus on efficiency. The public has more important concerns, regional job losses rank higher than efficiency. This makes people regard economists as callous and out of touch.
Autor et al. see economists as (stubbornly) unwilling to question benchmark theories, even when evidence contradicts them. While total national employment declined in response to trade with China, standard trade models predict that this shouldn’t happen. The authors present evidence that real-world economies are worse at adjusting to big changes than their economic models assume. It is expensive and time-consuming for workers to retrain and relocate. It takes time and money for businesses to change their business models. Evidence shows these adjustment costs overwhelming trade gains.
Autor et al. concede their warning is too late for China. Its economy is slowing and its costs are rising rapidly. No new prospective trade partners will be able to replicate anything close to the China shock. In other words, the China free trade experience is unique.
What Autor et al seem to be saying is that the initial cheapness that free trade provided American and other consumers, will soon be over. Despite this, the harm caused by the shock continues.
Concrete Economics, by Stephen S Cohen & J Bradford DeLong was also published in 2016. They suggest that economists should spend more time studying history rather than ideology. One of the main points made by Cohen & DeLong is that the American economy has been repeatedly reshaped ever since Alexander Hamilton’s first, foundational redesign.
The authors remind readers how the economy actually grew and the major role played by government in redesigning and reinvigorating it. The government not only sets the ground rules for entrepreneurial activity, but invests directly and indirectly in infrastructure.
Beginning with the contrast between Thomas Jefferson’s attempt to continue an agrarian economy, and Alexander Hamilton’s determination to shape an industrial society, through the imposition of tariffs. This encouraged the birth of New England manufacturing at the dawn of the nineteenth century. This work also looks at other pragmatic changes (not all for the better) made over time. The second transformation examined was that from slave to free labour, in the aftermath of the American Civil War. This period also looked at the concept of homesteading, and providing free land, to encourage western settlement.
One of the most critical periods in world history, came with the depression of the 1930s. Franklin Roosevelt had to find solutions to a devastated economy. The New Deal was the name of this redesign. It was needed because austerity wasn’t working! In March 1933, one third of non-farm workers were unemployed. Half of home mortgages were in default. The stock market had lost 80% of its 1929 value, farm prices had collapsed, as had house building. Car production was at 25% of pre-depression levels, banks were defaulting on depositors. Even the rich and powerful were scared and powerless. FDR rewrote the rules.
Since then rules governing the economy have been rewritten several times, including during the post-world war II period during the reign of Eisenhower. It was yet again changed by Reagan, and his conservative successors. It is important to understanding how an economy has been redesigned in the past, to provide a blueprint for how it might again be redesigned and reinvigorated for today.
The point being made here is that it is possible to makeover an economy. Economics is not sacred. It can serve different masters, although currently the elite 1% appear to be the only ones fully served. It can be changed at any time.
Remember too, that there are other values that are more important than volatile economic principle of the month. Working conditions, health and environmental concerns take precedence in most people’s minds over cheapness and free trade. Fortunately, the important values can be accommodated into any and every economic system, if there is a will to do so.
Soon cheapness will no longer be an option, and an unpleasant future may await the former middle and working classes, if they continue to allow the elite to determine how the economy is run. If economic change is to occur, one has to ask one basic question. How do you want the economic system to serve you?
I’m Precious Dollar. My role at the Unit One Collective is to discuss world economic issues.
Today, I’d like to report on the work of one of my heros, Yanis Varoufakis, once the Greek finance minister. He has written two influential books – The Global Minotaur and, most recently, And the weak suffer what they must? This week Yanis is in Sydney, Australia, to promote his new book. At a talk at the Sydney Writers’ Festival, he said that Australia could be a new Greece.
Yanis is not just someone who views Australia from afar. He lived and taught economics in Sydney from 1988 to 2000, and is an Australian citizen. There is an election campaign in Australia, and one issue being debated is that of negative gearing – a tax minimization strategy for property investors. Investors are being subsidized by taxpayers to invest in existing housing stocks, to the detriment of productive investments.
Yanis points out two unrecognized economic truths about Australia. There is massive private debt; the social economy is unsustainable. Private debt has created a (property) bubble in which the upper middle class are living an unsustainable, luxurious lifestyle, despite a national current account deficit.
Companies are shuffling more paper, rather than producing more stuff. Chinese investors are buying more (subsidized) property, but car manufacturing stopped in 2013-4 with a loss of 200 000 jobs. This is a major error.
Yanis contrasts Australia with the United States. While American ideology focuses on a free market, American practice is for the state to invest heavily in whole networks of innovation and production: the military industrial complex, the medical industrial complex, even the prison industrial complex. They create networks of value creation, and actually produce things. In contrast, Australia is divesting itself of production.
Mariana Mazzucato in her 2013 The Entrepreneurial State:debunking public vs. private sector myths debunks the myth that the state is a lumbering, bureaucratic monster inhibiting a dynamic, innovative private sector. In a series of case studies—from IT, biotech, nanotech to today’s emerging green tech—Mazzucato shows that the private sector only invests after an entrepreneurial state has made the high-risk investments. Every technology that makes the iPhone ‘smart’ was government funded: the Internet, GPS, its touch-screen display and even Siri.
Mazzucato argues that the State has not only fixed market failures, but has also actively shaped and created markets. In doing so, it sometimes wins and sometimes fails. The State’s active risk taking role is unacknowledged. The public sector socializes risks, while rewards are privatized.
Yaris notes that capitalism is undermining itself. Capitalism is failing to produce sufficient good-quality jobs. Millennials are getting heavily indebted to get a good education, and who are expecting to be able to land decent jobs. Simultaneously artificial intelligence is on the cusp of destroying hundreds of millions of good-quality jobs without replacing them.
Karl Marx predicted in the 19th century that the evolution of technology was going to destabilise the capitalism that created it.
Yaris ended his talk in Sydney with some simple questions for Australians: Do you need to have a crisis before you plan for the future? Are you going to move headlong into a crisis simply because you are refusing to plan ways of preventing the bursting of the bubble? Do you want to be forward looking or backward looking as a nation?
A more complete version of Yanis’ talk can be found here: http://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/may/25/yanis-varoufakis-australias-negative-gearing-is-scandalous
“Spiritual Growth! material sustainability.” is my current motto. Unfortunately, there has been far too much emphasis on economic growth, especially for those who have too much from before, and not enough demand for the one product where supply always exceeds demand – spirituality. Since I’ve now passed my 60th birthday, it is probably time to start a blog. My main concerns in life have to do with the survival of this planet. Additional economic growth, will almost certainly place additional pressure on our planet’s ability to survive. Additional spiritual growth, with its focus on God, will lead to a more harmonious life.
One work that examines the problem of unnecessary economic growth is “Prosperity without growth!” Unfortunately, most economists – as well as politicians – have ignored this problem. Their only solution is growth whether it suits or not.
