Michael Hudson on Fictitious Capital
We need more people capable of rethinking the processes they're trying to scale up, and actually exploring indirect methods that will scale ... because our current practices won't.
Michael makes many great points - except his suggestion that we do not want other countries to industrialize doesn't ring true. Since WWII we've consistently gone to great lengths to make China and many other countries into industrial, exporting powers. Are we changing our minds? Doubtful. That would be schizophrenic.
The bigger issue that we're finally failing at is making our own population able to buy & utilize everything that we AND the rest of the world can produce. Not only that, we're failing to keep our group intelligence growing fast enough to demand insanely useful products, instead of cheap, intoxicating distractions ... including most of the trinkets sold at WalMart. Not only are we voluntarily utilizing less, our remaining selections are declining in quality.
Did our form of national schizophrenia manifest post-WWII, with the assumption that we could ALWAYS utilize everything the entire world produced, while completely neglecting our responsibility to manage and scale up our own utilization rates? Is it that simple?
We have the whole world making whatever they can for us to utilize, and willing to export whatever we ask them to. So what are we DOING with our historic opportunity? With all our extra time and options? It's handed to us on a silver platter ... and we're failing to take the ball and run with it? How long can we keep doing that, and why would we even start the habit of sitting idle, neglecting continuous mobilization? Nothing is stopping us from being all that we can be ... except our own, collective policy choice.
Michael's also got it wrong about foreign countries lending us "money" by buying treasuries. Pervasive confusion over that simple yet key point seems to be one of the main reasons we decline to seize our opportunities.
Yet he is right that other countries purposely depreciate their currencies in order to maintain exports to the USA. However, the only connection between that decision and their own development is conscious policy. It's not an obligatory relationship. Buying our T-bonds is completely separable from both issues.
Other countries could all make more effort to develop their own ability to consume what they produce. The only impediment to that is class-based hoarding in all those countries.
We really do have to save the entire world from it's own useless misers, who are distributed throughout all countries as the mindlessly-hoarding 1%. The BEST way to do that is by setting an example of how to do so, by first saving ourselves from our own useless misers. Methods drive results.
It boils down to the 99% everywhere allowing a tiny minority to wage a class war against humanity. That small fraction are ignorant "traders" that don't understand they needn't even wage their war of suppression & hoarding. There are even better ways for traders to benefit all, while also delivering even more real benefits to themselves than they can presently imagine. Their mercantile thinking is holding us all back, keeping us from being anywhere near what we could be. Plus, we - the 99% - are the ones passively letting their trade lobbies get in the way of our own national aspirations. It's our own fault. If we're going to pursue democracy, we have to start acting like co-owners.
If there is intelligent life elsewhere in the universe, I hope they don't contact us until we sort this out. It's embarrassing. We can do so many amazing things, but we can't organize our efforts to increase our own adaptive rate? Seems hard to believe.
Yet he is right that other countries purposely depreciate their currencies in order to maintain exports to the USA. However, the only connection between that decision and their own development is conscious policy. It's not an obligatory relationship. Buying our T-bonds is completely separable from both issues.
Other countries could all make more effort to develop their own ability to consume what they produce. The only impediment to that is class-based hoarding in all those countries.
We really do have to save the entire world from it's own useless misers, who are distributed throughout all countries as the mindlessly-hoarding 1%. The BEST way to do that is by setting an example of how to do so, by first saving ourselves from our own useless misers. Methods drive results.
It boils down to the 99% everywhere allowing a tiny minority to wage a class war against humanity. That small fraction are ignorant "traders" that don't understand they needn't even wage their war of suppression & hoarding. There are even better ways for traders to benefit all, while also delivering even more real benefits to themselves than they can presently imagine. Their mercantile thinking is holding us all back, keeping us from being anywhere near what we could be. Plus, we - the 99% - are the ones passively letting their trade lobbies get in the way of our own national aspirations. It's our own fault. If we're going to pursue democracy, we have to start acting like co-owners.
If there is intelligent life elsewhere in the universe, I hope they don't contact us until we sort this out. It's embarrassing. We can do so many amazing things, but we can't organize our efforts to increase our own adaptive rate? Seems hard to believe.
This is a great post Roger...
ReplyDeleteWith what we are able to witness happening, I also often feel embarrassed/humiliated by it....
rsp,