US POLITICS SPRING 2011: Let's just call off this country.

i think we all need to get high to have this conversation unfortunately

im also not a scholar of china or chinese thought or of the enlightenment or really of anything but wouldnt the argument be that capitalism and the post-enlightenment western notion of self go hand-in-hand and that chinese bros desire to get paid only insofar as said chinese bros have also taken on the idea of the subject? (not to mention that what does it mean for a chinese dude/dudette to 'want' to 'get' 'paid' and for what reasons and does 'getting' 'paid' even mean the same thing to "us" as it does to "the chinese" &c &c more quote marks)

I thought the localist anarcho-whatthefuckist view was that we should return to a life of the soil instead of the crippling reliance on technology which distances ourselves from...eh, I don't get it, but I though cucumbers were part of it.

they are, so are long walks in the woods

wait is this lesbian porn now

Hollywood has taught me that all disaffected urban professionals would prefer to be picking cucumbers are you saying Hollywood is full of liars

lol Dan

max I feel you on all that & yet I just want to get what difference it makes in practice, like what are the alternatives for society that don't take on the ~Enlightenment self~? I want to imagine this whole new world but I end up just thinking of Hobbiton, like it's that hard for me to figure out what the alternatives are.

all concepts of rights currently in effect rest on the notion of the enlightenment self. it may be basically fake mysticism if you dig into it, but i'll take it, given the real alternatives.

there is no self, only aerosmith

max I feel you on all that & yet I just want to get what difference it makes in practice, like what are the alternatives for society that don't take on the ~Enlightenment self~? I want to imagine this whole new world but I end up just thinking of Hobbiton, like it's that hard for me to figure out what the alternatives are.

― Euler, Wednesday, April 20, 2011 2:50 PM (3 minutes ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

fascism? this is kind of where heidegger ended up, right?

i mean, that or writing epic fantasy series

my only point was that provided that FOX NEWS didn't succeed in convincing most of the country that OPEC is to blame for the whole thing, that the speculation driving up oil prices to levels that are fundamentally harmful to hundreds of millions of people could be used to persuade these hundreds of millions that things like the free market and deregulation are not exactly all that they're cracked up to be, and that maybe even something sinister like 'socialism' would be preferable to the current sstatus quo...

(to which iatee responded: 'mouthbreathers who still drive cars can suck it!')

Here's where I recommend Jacques Barzun again, who argued that what we call "the Enlightenment" and its consequences are overstated.

American "capitalism" has essentially changed since Reagan, amping up the unregulated-theft factor

(or, back to the pre-Teddy Roosevelt, pre-union future)

so did heidegger! xp

oil prices are harmful to millions of people! In that it's still too cheap.

iatee OTM. oil shoul be like $100/gallon imho. that would result in some serious changes purt quick

thinking I'll take Visa ads on my trains over dirigisme

but at least those trains would run on time

http://henpantha.files.wordpress.com/2008/10/sarah-palin-wink.jpg?w=300&h=269

my only point was that provided that FOX NEWS didn't succeed in convincing most of the country that OPEC is to blame for the whole thing, that the speculation driving up oil prices to levels that are fundamentally harmful to hundreds of millions of people could be used to persuade these hundreds of millions that things like the free market and deregulation are not exactly all that they're cracked up to be, and that maybe even something sinister like 'socialism' would be preferable to the current sstatus quo...

(to which iatee responded: 'mouthbreathers who still drive cars can suck it!')

― music loves drugs (Drugs A. Money), Wednesday, April 20, 2011 2:55 PM (1 minute ago)

well all of these are right - opec sucks and can pretty much manipulate prices at will, which it has in the past and will continue to do. we also do depend far too much on their oil and are pretty myopic when it comes to how we're going to deal with energy in the future - demand plays a role but not as large of one as the received wisdomocracy would have you believe. and speculation due to negligent deregulation over the past few decades has played a sigificant role in oil prices as well (and food prices, and other commodities) - it's the latter thing that doesn't get much press unfortunately

http://www.infrastructurist.com/2011/04/20/americas-low-gas-prices-a-global-perspective/

do you believe in American exceptionalism drugs? are we a magic people who don't have to abide by the laws of supply and demand?

we have an alternative to capital: politics. sucks, doesn't it!

"democracy is the horizon of something something" - jacques derrida

American "capitalism" has essentially changed since Reagan, amping up the unregulated-theft factor

I have a friend whose thesis concentrates on how the American political system has been afraid to accept the ways in which capitalism has changed.

we've had this conversation before, and someone made the v sensible point that inflated fuel prices = inflated shipping prices = goods all of a sudden become way more expensive, but that all got lost in the hubbub of a bunch of ppl criticizing the poor rural for not having the sense to be born in a densely populated municipal area

poor ruralrural poor

well part of that is shitty planning

oil and food prices rise together for reasons other than just transport costs, though - ie unregulated speculation in commodities markets

how is that a contestable or relevant point? xp

yeah I noticed you alluded to that in yr last post k3vin; makes sense...

which part?

'oil prices going up eventually increases prices' - why would I disagree with that?

first of all, where are you getting 'eventually' from?

the fact that prices are sticky

'hey you've decided to live a lifestyle dependent on a single limited resource that's inevitably going to get more expensive over time, I guess capitalism doesn't work after all'

implication here is that ppl who rely on petroleum--those who have to drive great distances to work for example--get what they deserve in rapidly inflated gas prices, but that ignores the fact that higher oil prices necessitates higher food prices, which affects us all, whether we 'choose' to drive cars or use gas or not, and completely dismisses the main point re: oil prices going up bcz of scarcity due to finite resources vs. oil prices going up bcz rich ppl tryna get richer buying barrels to create a scarcity so as to increase the value of those barrels. That I imagine would piss ppl off.

when it comes down to it everything we buy (including cheap things people buy IN DA BIG CITY, including food) is underpriced because we don't incorporate externalities very well. whether or not the current price of oil is speculation, it's still closer to the *cost* of using oil and will help us adapt our economy to a more sustainable one in the long-term as a sustainable one involves making decisions based on the real costs of things. so yeah: shit will be expensive and we will consume less. sucks.

right on; that makes sense

basically it's better that we tax oil til the price = the 'cost' cause then we can do nice things w/ that tax money, ie counteract the shitty effects of our lifestyle on the planet, come up with ways that we don't need to use oil, etc.

but even if that price increase isn't taxes and we're handing that money to wall street/saudis, we're still better off when we have to adapt to a market w/ more realistic prices. in the long-term, whether or not this is speculation is pretty much irrelevant: gas will be very expensive*. chinese people are building burbs and malls too.

(*relative to its current price)

I don't disagree with anything you've said in yr last two posts, and I definitely appreciate the grave ecological position that the advent of the automobile has put us in, but just indiscriminately sneering at folks who rely on petroleum-based transportation rubs me the wrong way something fierce. Sorry for the jibes.

Are there any studies on whether domestic manufacturing jobs would rebound if the cost of shipping from around the world were to rise? Sorry if this has already been addressed.

Capitalism will ultimately fail because the core element upon which it is built, the profit margin, is a lie. In order to practice capitalism you must lie about the worth of whatever you are selling to make a profit. It requires you to miscommunicate with others in society, for your own benefit and to the detriment of others. With technology this lie is exponentially blown up and that's why we have this oil commodities stuff that's going on now.

What we have in America is free market capitalism for some and public welfare for others, and the roles are pretty much the opposite of what we are told. Deep down people WANT socialism and they WANT a communal society but we haven't evolved mentally and spiritually to the point where we are ready for it. So you end up with people wanting these things but only for themselves, as a one-way street. It's going to take a colossal world-wide paradigm shift in perception before we get past whatever systems we are currently using. The Golden Rule of Do Unto Others is going to have to take the place of He Who Has The Gold for every human on the planet.

man that post is like a beautiful handmade mailbox, and i'm like a teenager with a bat hanging out of his best friends' car...

I thought banaka was retired?

sweet heaven

*evolves mentally and spiritually*

Oil's actually doing a better job in the past 5 years (excepting the post Lehman hedge deleverage) than the past 30. Brent will be above $200 in latter 2013 (future flows coming onstream are known, and developing world demand has a lot of inertia), and there's still storage available for about $2/bbl/month. There's a carry trade in buying now and storing for when demand outpaces supply, which is exactly what futures markets are for.

Of course, those who want to save the world from climate change may prefer $500 or $1000 oil. That's coming, too, but mostly due to the U.S. dollar losing its reserve currency status over the coming decade.

For most ordinary ppl here, the extraordinary rise in health, longevity, leisure and consumption that has occurred over the last several hundred years is due to the dynamic innovation and productivity gains mostly due to capitalism and the rights and social welfare institutions due to democracy, and union and associative pressure. This false dischotomy of capitalism vs, is as outdated as teapartier's romance of the 18th century - okay, maybe 80 some odd years younger.

Finding out how to make that sustainable is the question, as it always has been only now the stakes are higher and the time window is smaller.

In order to practice capitalism you must lie about the worth of whatever you are selling to make a profit.

What? My labor, insight, expertise, time, ready availability of capital are worth nothing? If you want to make some argument about natural resources, riverine laws, airwaves belonging to the nation, fine, but please make sure that I'm paid something for doing productive work. Oh, and how do you price that? Name a more efficient way than the market? Does the market fail us in certain areas? Yes. Should we take collective steps to counter that? Sure.

excepting the post Lehman hedge deleverage

Godammit Lens!

For most ordinary ppl here, the extraordinary rise in health, longevity, leisure and consumption that has occurred over the last several hundred years is due to the dynamic innovation and productivity gains mostly due to capitalism and the rights and social welfare institutions due to democracy, and union and associative pressure.

Yeah I've heard this before, you forgot about education...