[late]

However, the 1st article I clicked supported my opinion that economics as a discipline is owned by the rich.

It's also changing, case in point, look at Stiglitz. He went from one of them to the leading champion of Progressive thought in economics...

They say a journey of a 1,000 miles begins with a single step, so one down..

[Steve_American]

The *problem* with rationing is that it's -- surprisingly -- *supply*-sided, just as much as any MMT / Keynesian approach. It says 'Let's see what the supply is, first, and then we'll put in some kind of rationing system / economy for the afterthought of *distributing* that a-priori 'supply'.

I disagree. In WWII the US Gov. added to the supply of things for the people to use. It took control of the economy. If it felt that the people needed more of something, it could (but rarely did) see that more of that was produced.
What the Gov. was constrained by was real resources. But, even here, it did find more resources when it needed to and could. It was also constrained by the amount of labor it could use. But, here it did work to get more women out of their homes to come and work. For, example the Gov. had day-care in factories and banks opened branch offices there too, etc.
.

[ckaihatsu]

I disagree. In WWII the US Gov. added to the supply of things for the people to use. It took control of the economy. If it felt that the people needed more of something, it could (but rarely did) see that more of that was produced.
What the Gov. was constrained by was real resources. But, even here, it did find more resources when it needed to and could. It was also constrained by the amount of labor it could use. But, here it did work to get more women out of their homes to come and work. For, example the Gov. had day-care in factories and banks opened branch offices there too, etc.
.

Obviously you're discussing *logistics* to the point of obfuscating the *politics*.

The U.S. public, then as now, had *zero* interest in bourgeois nation-state warfare, and the U.S. economy would not have been saved if not for its arms selling to both sides.

Sure, I can appreciate the 'positivist' and quasi-*collectivist* aspects of governmental centralized administration, but I think you're omitting the *darker* side of the economy then, namely that it was in a fucking *inter-imperialist world war*, with tens of millions killed worldwide.


Components of Social Production

Spoiler: show

‭History, Macro-Micro -- politics-logistics-lifestyle

Spoiler: show

[late]

I disagree. In WWII

One of many problems with a government managed economy is cheating gets worse over time, as do distortions.

For a good example, look at Soviet Russia..

[QatzelOk]

Anyone that grew up in a poor neighborhood knows this. Where I group up there are no trees, no green spaces, just lots of asphalt and concrete. Pretty wonderful.

Back in the 80s, the French-speaking neighborhoods of Montreal were still noticably poorer than Anglo hoods. (this is no longer the case)

But back then, Anglo friends would remark that "French people don't like trees," and they would say this because super-dense French neighboorhoods had wide streets, skinny sidewalks, and no trees.

The reason for this is.. because the rich car-driving English needed these central francophone neighborhoods to drive thruTM. So there was no room for trees for French people to avoid heat stroke. Everything had to be paved to allow wealtheir anglophones to drive thruTM these neighboorhoods without stopping.

Ever since francophones got caught up in income and education, their neighborhoods have gotten more trees and more traffic-calming. And Anglo drivers can't stop complaining about this - adding a language-politics component to bike paths and car-free streets that other cities in N.A. don't have to this degree.

The ONE PERCENT speak English a lot here, and need for our city to be a paved expanse of parking lots to park their SUVs. Meanwhile, their own neighboorhoods feature giant trees, traffic-calmed dead-ends, and massive yards to store your possessions in.

They often spend less than half of their lives in these giant homes, as they're constantly flitting around the world in airplanes - out seeking some kind of authenticity... elsewhere. Because they know their lives are fake and leveraged.

One of many problems with a government managed economy is cheating gets worse over time, as do distortions.

One of the major problems with a corporation-managed economy (like ours) is that they collapse from unsustainable product consumption. You can trash the Soviets all you want, but when their modern economy collapsed, everyone lived in apartments next to a tramway - cheap living.

When the American economy collapses, corporate-built suburbia will burn to the ground (figuratively) and not many people will have housing that is useful to them. Detroit is a great model for what comes next in a very-American collapse.

[ckaihatsu]

Why South Africa is still so segregated

[QatzelOk]

Why South Africa is still so segregated

And the left side of that grassy moat... produces many times more greenhouse gasses per capita.

Because they can!

Systemic racismTM is all about protecting your hyper-consumption by externalizing the suffering of others.

[ckaihatsu]

One of the major problems with a corporation-managed economy (like ours) is that they collapse from unsustainable product consumption.

Excellent point. I would call this the 'private-sector ethos'.

You can trash the Soviets all you want, but when their modern economy collapsed, everyone lived in apartments next to a tramway - cheap living.

When the American economy collapses, the corporate-built suburbia will burn to the ground and not many people will have housing.

I can't say that I'm really congruent with the whole overextended-lifestyle line -- if anything the rest of the world should *also* be at Western standards of living, but without the exploitation, oppression, and spoiling of the natural terrain, of course.

I don't think we're at a societal state of impending-chaos, batshit-crazy-wise, mostly because everything is much more orderly and informed than ever before, now that everyone's digitally empowered -- *anyone* could readily administrate / co-administrate over whatever, nearby, using common daily personal-organizer-type digital implements and email (etc.). (Technically, I advocate Bash scripting since I use it myself for graphics rendering.)


Termux on Android, for a Linux command line on your smartphone, for a 'killer app' to-do list

viewtopic.php?p=15161660#p15161660

[late]

You can trash the Soviets all you want, but when their modern economy collapsed, everyone lived in apartments next to a tramway - cheap living.

Also cheap dying.

[Steve_American]

One of many problems with a government managed economy is cheating gets worse over time, as do distortions.

For a good example, look at Soviet Russia..

@late, if I'm right and ACC (global warming) will quickly become much worse than it is now, then people will be glad to accept whatever is necessary to survive. WWII showed that when people think it is a matter of 'life and death' they will accept rationing.

Also, the rationing would be temporary. As soon as possible after it is clear that ACC is a disaster, other arrangements can be agreed on.

.

[ckaihatsu]

@late, if I'm right and ACC (global warming) will quickly become much worse than it is now, then people will be glad to accept whatever is necessary to survive. WWII showed that when people think it is a matter of 'life and death' they will accept rationing.

Also, the rationing would be temporary. As soon as possible after it is clear that ACC is a disaster, other arrangements can be agreed on.

.

*Statism*, then -- ?

[Steve_American]

Obviously you're discussing *logistics* to the point of obfuscating the *politics*.

The U.S. public, then as now, had *zero* interest in bourgeois nation-state warfare, and the U.S. economy would not have been saved if not for its arms selling to both sides.

Sure, I can appreciate the 'positivist' and quasi-*collectivist* aspects of governmental centralized administration, but I think you're omitting the *darker* side of the economy then, namely that it was in a fucking *inter-imperialist world war*, with tens of millions killed worldwide.

I think that you are ignoring the likely fact that ACC (global warming) will be worse than WWII by orders of magnitude, if too little is done very soon.
And I am very pessimistic that anything meaningful at all will be done for the next 3 years.

The US gave arms to Allies after 1941 and never sold arms to enemies in WWII.

.

[ckaihatsu]

I think that you are ignoring the likely fact that ACC (global warming) will be worse than WWII by orders of magnitude, if too little is done very soon.
And I am very pessimistic that anything meaningful at all will be done for the next 3 years.

The US gave arms to Allies after 1941 and never sold arms to enemies in WWII.

.

German subsidiaries in the Nazi period

On August 3, 1933, Hitler received,[clarification needed] in one of the first meetings with US businessmen, Sosthenes Behn, then the CEO of ITT, and his German representative, Henry Mann.[11][13][14]

In his book Wall Street and the Rise of Hitler, Antony C. Sutton claims that ITT subsidiaries made cash payments to SS leader Heinrich Himmler. ITT, through its subsidiary C. Lorenz AG, owned 25% of Focke-Wulf, the German aircraft manufacturer, builder of some of the most successful Luftwaffe fighter aircraft. In the 1960s, ITT Corporation won $27 million in compensation for damage inflicted on its share of the Focke-Wulf plant by Allied bombing during World War II.[11] In addition, Sutton's book uncovers that ITT owned shares of Signalbau AG, Dr. Erich F. Huth (Signalbau Huth), which produced for the German Wehrmacht radar equipment and transceivers in Berlin, Hanover (later Telefunken factory) and other places. While ITT - Focke-Wulf planes were bombing Allied ships, and ITT lines were passing information to German submarines, ITT direction finders were saving other ships from torpedoes.[15]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ITT_Inc.# ... azi_period

[Steve_American]

@ckaihatsu,

German subsidiaries in the Nazi period

On August 3, 1933, Hitler received,[clarification needed] in one of the first meetings with US businessmen, Sosthenes Behn, then the CEO of ITT, and his German representative, Henry Mann.[11][13][14]

In his book Wall Street and the Rise of Hitler, Antony C. Sutton claims that ITT subsidiaries made cash payments to SS leader Heinrich Himmler. ITT, through its subsidiary C. Lorenz AG, owned 25% of Focke-Wulf, the German aircraft manufacturer, builder of some of the most successful Luftwaffe fighter aircraft. In the 1960s, ITT Corporation won $27 million in compensation for damage inflicted on its share of the Focke-Wulf plant by Allied bombing during World War II.[11] In addition, Sutton's book uncovers that ITT owned shares of Signalbau AG, Dr. Erich F. Huth (Signalbau Huth), which produced for the German Wehrmacht radar equipment and transceivers in Berlin, Hanover (later Telefunken factory) and other places. While ITT - Focke-Wulf planes were bombing Allied ships, and ITT lines were passing information to German submarines, ITT direction finders were saving other ships from torpedoes.[15]

So, US Corp. owned factories in Germany and other Europen nations made stuff for the Germains.
So what?

Did any stuff made in the US get shipped to and sold to Germany? At least after 1940 ended.

.

[ckaihatsu]

@ckaihatsu,



So, US Corp. owned factories in Germany and other Europen nations made stuff for the Germains.
So what?

Did any stuff made in the US get shipped to and sold to Germany? At least after 1940 ended.

.

So you're saying that what ITT did during WWII was *okay*, then -- ?

[Steve_American]

So you're saying that what ITT did during WWII was *okay*, then -- ?

No. I'm not saying that. It was bad.

However, cash payments in a war when cash doesn't limit production, really doesn't matter much at all.

What matters in wartime is stuff, not money.

.

[ckaihatsu]

So you're saying that what ITT did during WWII was *okay*, then -- ?

No. I'm not saying that. It was bad.

Okay, then we agree that it was simply *one happenstance extent* of how capitalism intrinsically operates, namely war profiteering.

My prior point stands, then:

[T]he U.S. economy would not have been saved if not for its arms selling to both sides.

---

However, cash payments in a war when cash doesn't limit production, really doesn't matter much at all.

Yet ITT clearly profited during wartime, with U.S. complicity. Wouldn't this kind of thing normally be considered 'treason', or 'aiding the enemy', or something -- ?


---

What matters in wartime is stuff, not money.

.

'Spheres of influence', at all scales:

In the following two years the CIO added just 400,000 members to those gained in its first 22 months. In 1939 the number of strikes was only half that of 1937. What is more, the union leaders increasingly reverted to collaboration with the employers and to restricting agitation by the membership. In the auto union there was an attempt to ban any publication not approved by the leadership, while there were to be no elections in the newly formed steel union for five years. The spontaneous grassroots militancy of 1934-36 gave way to tight control from above.

Many activists tried to resist this trend. But, as in France and Spain, their efforts were made much more difficult by the behaviour of the Communist Party. It had played a leading role in the militancy of 1934-37, with many of its activists taking positions as organisers in the CIO union drive, and by their courage and daring had attracted large numbers of new recruits. Until 1935 the Communist Party insisted that Roosevelt was a capitalist politician and the New Deal a fraud. Then it made a U-turn and welcomed Roosevelt and the New Deal Democrats with its own version of ‘Popular Front’ politics. The party worked with the union leaders to spread illusions about the role of these politicians and to discipline rank and file trade unionists who might disrupt cosy relations with the Democrats. This continued for the next ten years, except for a brief interlude during the Hitler-Stalin pact at the beginning of the Second World War. It helped the union leaders establish bureaucratic control over most unions—a control which they would use in the 1940s to destroy any Communist influence.

Harman, _People's History of the World_, p. 517

---

From slump to war

The slump led to tensions between states as well as between classes. The rulers of each country sought to ease the pressure on themselves at the expense of their rivals abroad. One after another they tried to expand the sales of domestically produced goods by devaluing their currencies and raising tariff barriers. The widespread tendency was towards ‘autarchy’—the production of as many goods as possible within the boundaries of the national state.

The state was also more involved than ever before (except during the First World War) in direct economic activities—rationalising some industries by forcing the closing of inefficient firms, and establishing direct state ownership of some sectors so as to enhance the prospects of others. Even the Conservative ‘national’ government in Britain nationalised the electricity supply, the national airlines and coal mining rights.

In some of the less industrially advanced countries of Latin America and Europe the process went considerably further. ‘Populist’ governments like that of Vargas in Brazil and later Peron in Argentina established large state-owned sectors. A right wing government in Poland laid down a long term economic plan, and Mussolini in Italy set up state-run companies in an attempt to dampen the impact of the world economic crisis.

However, there was a contradiction between the use of the state to try and bolster each national group of capitalists and the desire of all capitalists for access to resources beyond the narrow boundaries of the individual state. The only way to reconcile this contradiction was to expand the area which the state controlled. Formal empires and informal ‘spheres of influence’ became all-important. The autarchy was that of ‘currency blocks’ dominated by the major powers—the dollar block, the sterling area, the gold block (centred on France and its empire), the mark block and the USSR. As the economist Alvin Hansen pointed out in 1932:

Each country strives to develop spheres of influence where the encroachment of capitalists of other nations is resented. At times the US has prevented the European powers collecting their debts in Latin America by naval blockades… Similarly, the long struggle (not yet terminated) between European powers over domination of Africa, the Near East and, indirectly, by economic, financial and military patronage to control the Balkan states, is a record of international strife and friction that the penetration of foreign capital has entailed.236

Harman, _People's History of the World_, pp. 519-520

[ckaihatsu]

The victors were the Soviet Union and the United States (also England, France and Nationalist China, but they were weak). Both these countries now went to work—without swastikas, goose-stepping, or officially declared racism, but under the cover of "socialism" on one side, and "democracy" on the other, to carve out their own empires of influence. They proceeded to share and contest with one another the domination of the world, to build military machines far greater than the Fascist countries had built, to control the destinies of more countries than Hitler, Mussolini, and Japan had been able to do. They also acted to control their own populations, each country with its own techniques-crude in the Soviet Union, sophisticated in the United States—to make their rule secure.

The war not only put the United States in a position to dominate much of the world; it created conditions for effective control at home. The unemployment, the economic distress, and the consequent turmoil that had marked the thirties, only partly relieved by New Deal measures, had been pacified, overcome by the greater turmoil of the war. The war brought higher prices for farmers, higher wages, enough prosperity for enough of the population to assure against the rebellions that so threatened the thirties. As Lawrence Wittner writes, "The war rejuvenated American capitalism." The biggest gains were in corporate profits, which rose from $6.4 billion in 1940 to $10.8 billion in 1944. But enough went to workers and farmers to make them feel the system was doing well for them.

https://www.historyisaweapon.com/defcon ... eswar.html

[late]

1) @late, if I'm right and ACC (global warming) will quickly become much worse than it is now, then people will be glad to accept whatever is necessary to survive. WWII showed that when people think it is a matter of 'life and death' they will accept rationing.

2) Also, the rationing would be temporary. As soon as possible after it is clear that ACC is a disaster, other arrangements can be agreed on.

1) Good point.

2) Maybe not a good point, but we will see.

[QatzelOk]

...if anything the rest of the world should *also* be at Western standards of living, but without the exploitation, oppression, and spoiling of the natural terrain, of course.

It's not possible to have a WesternTM standard of living without the evils you mention.

The rich have been "buying" back their poor slave classes by offering their hand-me-down consumer advances once they've moved on to the next tech.

So when the rich get a new tech, they use it to dominate everyone - until they have acquired a more advanced tech - ideally, one that can be used to control the other techs. The poors can enjoy the Internet now that a handful of rich people control it.

Tech always works that way. The rich push the latest tech, but only AFTER they control it, and can use it as a control mechanism over their cattle (the 99%).

And this process has also created mega-consumption of useless products like cars - those two tonne machines that get us from bungalow in the middle of nowhere to mall in a huge open field on the edge of nowhere.

It was all built to be car-dependent. The rich did this - created car-dependent cultures.



What year on this chart do you think the USA is at right now?