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On May 2, 2011, at 3:31 PM, Wojtek S wrote:
> ravi: "What I mean is this: of course it is a bullshit claim that
> there isn’t enough money to fund anything. But to demonstrate that you
> do not need scientific/economic theories about “the productive
> potential of modern economy” (or sing paeans to technology)"
>
> [WS:} Actually, you do need that. You need to show that taking away
> from the landowners or pursuing public investment policies that will
> ruin private investors will make the society as a whole better off.
> The claim that productivity will increase as a result of this
> expropriation serves that purpose. Otherwise, it is just simple Robin
> Hoodism - take away from the rich and consume it, so everyone will end
> poorer when the money finally runs out.
This puts the cart before the horse, or so they tell me in Left circles i.e., the “taking away” is not *from* the landowners, but *by* the landowners. Here in amateur short form, is the standard thesis: "all value comes from nature and the labour of humans. The surplus value of such labour is appropriated by the capitalist class through force, rents and control of means of production. The solution therefore is for the labourers to appropriate or convert to public ownership the means of production, which are today held to ransom in private hands.”.
The point being not so much that the current wealth in the hands of Wall St bankers needs to be wrenched from them a la Zimbabwe (where everyone ended up poorer), but that this Wall St banker wealth is a sign to why there is no money for certain things. A much clearer sign than the dubious promise of technological progress (or lack thereof).
At any rate, I do not see why the burden falls on one side to demonstrate “pursuing public investment policies that will ruin private investors” will “make the society as a whole better off”. After all, there is enough evidence that the opposite is not true: giving free reign to the looting of the public by private investors has not made society as a whole better off. Or has it? Are we comparing the USSR to USA?
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On May 2, 2011, at 4:53 PM, Somebody Somebody wrote:
> Somebody: Who? We all do. If you don't think preventing mothers from dying in childbirth and having children routinely live past the age of 5 is worthy, then by all means say so.
>
And yet mothers are dying in childbirth in the hundreds of thousands (just not in an equitable way), and 8.1 million children under five died in the year 2009 alone (according to Wikipedia). This is not because technological progress came to an end in 2008.
While I agree with Miles, and I think that privileged Western males should be the last people attempting to lecture the world on what it should or does desire from life, even using this reductive criteria of survival (at any cost; and indeed there is a cost, as Joanna’s posts have shown), techno-utopianism has not delivered the goods.
Of course that is not because vaccines do not work or because public health processes (instituted in the days of Mohenjadaro and Harappa) have not saved lives. But that is not the question before us… the statement under scrutiny is this one:
> "Having said that, personally, I do not see the hopes of
> mankind as resting entirely upon the feeble shoulders of the working
> class and poor. The main means of improving humanities condition is
> through technological progress."
Whatever subtle good is gained above by the use of the word “entirely” is sacrificed by the following use of “main means”. Even with the reduction of the “human condition” to basic quantitative measures of infant survival rates, technological progress turns out at best a mixed blessing.
> The funny thing is, when socialist countries and universal health care systems in social democratic states produce improved health outcomes and longer life-spans we point to these as achievements of the left and of collective planning. When these developments are noted in the capitalist world at large, we suddenly have to problematize the worthiness of these things. Come on.
The “left” above (in the term “achievements of the left”) being workers, humanists (including religious ones), lower middle-class intellectual idealists who find their ideals more valuable than wealth, so on… not technologists.
Let me put my argument in the clearest of terms: an equitable society without monopoly of power in the hands of a few, resting on the “feeble shoulders of the working class”, needs not much beyond the technology of ancient civilisations (with perhaps the addition of a few — very few -- more modern innovations like certain kinds of vaccination, safety measures, predictive devices, so on) can boast better outcomes for the “human condition” in the broadest terms or by the more reductive measures offered, than endless technological progress with the false promise of non-zero-sum results. The fundamental problem therefore is not that workers are feeble in a technological or medical/physiological sense, but in the sense of power relationship.
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On Jan 1, 2006, at 4:09 PM, Chuck Grimes wrote:
> I strongly disagree on both points, the working class is feeble, and technology will
> save us. To the first, go back and watch some of the great videos of the
> street actions in Tunisia and Egypt. Remember too that labor unions had
> already been organized outside the state apparatus.
Labour unions? Don’t be a silly romantic, man. Egypt was a Facebook and Twitter revolution. For crying out loud, the leader of the revolution was the CEO of Google Egypt or summit. It was the dang technology that done it! :-)
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On May 2, 2011, at 2:57 PM, Doug Henwood wrote:
> On May 2, 2011, at 2:51 PM, // ravi wrote:
>
>> First-time filmmaker Vicki Abeles, 49, a Northern California lawyer and mother of three, was moved to pick up a camera when her children started suffering from school-related headaches, stomachaches, and panic attacks. What she produced is a wide-ranging polemic against our current education system that is artless, occasionally overwrought, and undeniably powerful. It confirms—and stokes—the unease many parents have about how miserable much of childhood seems today. It also sets up Abeles as the anti-Amy Chua. In Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother, Chua's thesis is that if you let up, your kid will become a coddled American slacker. Abeles offers the antithesis. She argues that part of America's greatness is born of our misfits and dreamers, that our gift to our children is time to engage in "aimless" play.
>
> It'd be great if our kids were misfits like Herman Melville or Patti Smith. But they're just playing Wii.
>
But you don’t need to be Melville or Patti Smith, yes? There are minor geniuses, local talents, small innovators. Plus we would do better any day with a world full of Wii playing and “underperforming” American slacker kids than Amy Chua or Obama/Michelle Rhee/Cory Booker trained high-performing *dangerous* idiots. I say “American kids” because even though I have no more empirical data than Chua does, I have a strong enough conviction to put money on any wager that when it comes to any sort of innovation, originality or progress (in art, science, technology, humour, so on) the slacker US system has the Tiger Mothers beat.
—ravi