hoi.polloi wrote:... and for synthesizing my work with your interesting theory.
Thank you for your kind words, Simon and Hoi... though I might add that it is not
mine; these ideas have been around for nearly a century, but not acknowledged or understood due to the smoke covering it. And more than a theory, I hope to show that it is a new way of thinking itself -- quite frankly since no one teaches nowadays to overcome the dialectic
in every thought, it is a bit hard to communicate.
aa5 wrote:The state used to be a relatively small part of Western economies. Fluctuating between 5-10% of the economy until the 20th century... I believe a serious crisis hit the West early in the 20th century. The crisis was that the pace of science and technology became so rapid that it was making jobs obsolete faster than new jobs were being created.
Exactly, and this shows again how the
functions have their effect. When the human community is small, then a slight overlap and confusion between the economic and the state functions (with chimeras like "economy of the country") do not do much harm. But yoke it up with the powerful trans-national economic power of the colonizers, and you can even predict that things are going to spiral out of control. Economic realities go beyond borders and are global by their very nature, and the State simply became a puppet of the economy because of that, resulting in a "global state".
hoi wrote:First, you're drawing up the whole question in my mind: what are "jobs" even for exactly?
Jobs are right at the intersection of "human rights" (to sustenance, to live) and "productive economy" (benefit the world), and it looks like there have been several struggles to come to terms with them. When the state essentially takes over the sustenance function, then we have the Welfare state, Universal Credit that Apache mentioned, or even the Basic Income. Even minimum wage is a partial arrangement since it does not guarantee a sustenance.
Perhaps it is being missed that the government may have a say in requiring a sustenance level to be maintained in the society, but
it can have no role in bringing it about. For an analogy... say there is an anti-discrimination clause for a specific position, in a school or a business. The putting in of that clause is government or rights-activity. But the government cannot hire the person for the company's position, that is an overreach of functions. It can only state: "Whatever you do, do it without discriminating" and then let the company figure out the rest.
However, when it comes to jobs, one expects not only the law that safeguards basic sustenance,
but also wants the sustenance itself to come from the state. That, IMHO, is where the blunder is. It is functionally incompatible. You cannot express 'x' axis by using 'y' axis.
aa5 wrote:I used to believe that in a society, wages were directly tied to productivity. Because when I looked at nations the wage levels as an average matched the productivity. What I didn't see is there is the usual supply & demand dynamic at work
A related question is: Whether a particular item
should be produced? No one asks that question, because they're left with the dialectic of capitalism-communism... where one is entirely coerced by greed, or by the State. Capitalists believe in the invisible hand of supply and demand, as a dogma. The trouble is there is an enormous of amount of unnecessary production (arms industry for example) and the government cannot do anything there. It is only something that is NOT government or industry that can address this question. In all events, the third aspect of society that does not govern, but guides/educates/researches has been shrunk and ignored.
This also relates to the Alaskan drinking problem mentioned by kickstones... there is no system of education or cultural development for adults that can lead anywhere, and when the solution is only mediated between the government and the industry, the solution collapses at the individual level. If all we have to look forward to in terms of true research is full of government or industry sponsored-biases, what motivation is there to live and discover anything new in life?
antipodean wrote:
What about a society (Nation) that doesn't have much of a need for Accountants & Lawyers etc. Academic minded people therefore gravitate towards the sciences, and you actually have a surplus of Doctors. When you think of Cuban exports,
Once again, the word Nation, the government entity (Cuba) and the economic function (exports) are all mixed up. It is quite a deeply ingrained habit!
Farcevalue wrote:If there was a mention of the reliance on violence by any nation or state in order to achieve its ends in the above posts, I may have missed it, but violence should always be at the forefront of any analysis of the state.
That has become the result today, due to the unholy marriage of industry and state, with the offspring as an out-of-control military. If a state has only enough resources to maintain a periodic police force, and not the military-industrial backing to launch a full-fledged army onto its citizens or others, the violence would not have to become such a big part of things.
I like the analogy of driving a car. The capacity of the car to be driven at a certain speed is determined by the scientific and engineering skill of its makers (cultural aspect). Whether one should actually drive at those speeds is decided by the lawmakers (rights-aspect) to post safe speed limits, with advise from the engineers. Whether one is actually able to drive a car depends on the availability of gas and money in the pocket to pay for it (economic aspect). The three aspects mutually intermingle (in the person driving it), but still remain
functionally distinct.
If the economy gains the upper hand, then one is forced to follow the oil prices and car manufacturers' whims who might have strong-armed the system into eliminating public transport. If the government takes over, then the absurdity of policing extremes and physically impossible demands (you are not allowed to skip the light in the middle of the day when all roads are clear) follow. If the cultural aspect gains dominance, then one has all these wonderful ideas that can make travel cheap and safe for everyone, but there is no one to implement it.