A Non-Platonic Twitter Dialogue: In a Better World than This, This Is What Twitter Would Have Been Used for: Bhandari, DeLong, Riley, et al.; Martin Wolf; Mike Konczal; Very Briefly Noted; & ¶s
This post was crazy fun. It all starts with this interdisciplinary Rakesh guy accusing @DeLong of thinking like J.S. Mill and our hero refusing to take it as a compliment and instead insisting that he's a lot like Freddie-from-Barmen, but different. Yeah, but maybe, compared to Mill, not different enough.
What Mill brings to the table is separability. Some feudal-mode-of-production guy once wrote 'qui bene distinguit bene docet," and sure enough, Mill is clear-headed enough to say that all sorts of constraints apply to the production of wealth, but "it is not so with the distribution of wealth." Mill thought that we had slouched damn near to utopia on the production side, but were idiots when it came to distribution. Mill did NOT think "rules" of distribution were inseparably bound to the forces or relations of production. He thought that there were many possible distribution schemes, "but what practical results will flow from the operation of those rules must be discovered, like any other mental or physical truths, by observation and reasoning." I don't think he means introspection here. I think he means "Let's try some things and see what works."
Brad, I don't think you improve on Freddie-from-Barmen by discerning new forces-and-relations-of-production-regimes, each with its new determinate distribution regime. As I see it, the forces-and-relations stuff is all idealistic, internal-relations nonsense. It's too many connections and too few distinctions, cats chasing dialectical tails. We have better tools for measuring constraints and imagining possibilities. We have human ingenuity to build on and human nature to contend with. A so-so economist, Mill still saw this clearly. Let's forget Engels and move on.
re: Fed Raises Rates and Says It Isn’t Done Yet. We Think It Is. - Morningstar, Inc.: ‘Even as the Fed says it expects “ongoing” rate hikes, we expect the next move will be to cut rates by year-end…
Given the lead time on interest rate changes, this timing would support the paranoid Thumb On The Scales theory that the Fed is engineering a recession in time for the election ending in the quarters after.
I really enjoyed the analogy made (my paraphrase) of the government administrative “software” dictates usage and maximization of technological “hardware,” that software drives the utilization of hardware and not the other way around. Hardware does not write the software; it merely defines possibilities. Software, however, may fail to materialize the hardware’s potential.
As an aside, there was earlier discussion on the birth of the 1870 Hinge Point. That this hinge was realized by the fusion of the industrial research lab, large corporation, and global economy. However, I would submit these factors were forged together within a crucible of a specific make up, of which one component was that of an administrative type government and movement away from a feudal monarchy system. I would add 3 other components to the make-up of this crucible, but administrative government was by far most important. Such a government allowed for large geographical control, rule of law replete with a judicial system, and implementation of public projects and goals. It was noted that Japan had an industrial revolution similar to the Global North. It appeared to me that Japan separated itself from the Pacific Rim countries during the Meiji Restoration, creating a constitutional type government, similar to the other Global North countries.
In the Global North, the large corporation is driven by profit, and can realize it if it understands the rule of law properly and is a good steward of its resources. Here, technology can be exploited multi-dimensionally. On the other hand, for real-existing socialism, the corporation is centrally controlled with centrally defined objectives, with a going concern in which profit is not a prime motivation. As a result, the Engel-Marx software was unlikely to maximize technology to its fullest in any dimension.
One illustration of the Hegelian dialogue is less an academic discussion and more of conflict in practice. The result is creative destruction and evolution towards a new system. Continuous conflict allows for continuous refinement. Historically, the Soviet-NATO conflict was less socioeconomic and more military in nature; therefore, the economic-social dialogue did not occur and real-existing socialism did not make its contribution to government and socialism, which was Communism’s original purpose. Admittedly the China story is still being written.
Another example of evolving North is that of public-private investment in technology whether it is the transistor or, in this case, fusion technology. In a Foreign Affairs article by Mazzucato, A Long Way From Nuclear Fusion, “Ultimately, governments’ task is neither to pick winners nor to give unconditional handouts, subsidies, and guarantees but to create a distributed network of “willing” players. Because of the nature of the energy market, these players are likely to be those leading government projects, a network of which should span public-sector research groups, university laboratories, and private businesses. Ideally, governments and the private sector should work to reestablish a decentralized network of ambitious actors advancing nuclear fusion.”
Although this is about technology, I believe a similar type of dialogue can be observed regarding national social contract as we move towards utopia.
Barro: It would be quite easy for Republicans to become a sunny optimistic party. They would just have to advocate for raising incomes and rate of increase of incomes of most and in the longer run essentially everyone: lower deficits (left to them to decide whether tax increases or expenditure reductions are best politically), much higher immigration of skilled people, rebated tax on net emissions of CO2, liberalized urban land use policies, freer trade with EBC. Just environmentally, fiscally prudent Reganism without the trade restrictions. :)
This post was crazy fun. It all starts with this interdisciplinary Rakesh guy accusing @DeLong of thinking like J.S. Mill and our hero refusing to take it as a compliment and instead insisting that he's a lot like Freddie-from-Barmen, but different. Yeah, but maybe, compared to Mill, not different enough.
What Mill brings to the table is separability. Some feudal-mode-of-production guy once wrote 'qui bene distinguit bene docet," and sure enough, Mill is clear-headed enough to say that all sorts of constraints apply to the production of wealth, but "it is not so with the distribution of wealth." Mill thought that we had slouched damn near to utopia on the production side, but were idiots when it came to distribution. Mill did NOT think "rules" of distribution were inseparably bound to the forces or relations of production. He thought that there were many possible distribution schemes, "but what practical results will flow from the operation of those rules must be discovered, like any other mental or physical truths, by observation and reasoning." I don't think he means introspection here. I think he means "Let's try some things and see what works."
Brad, I don't think you improve on Freddie-from-Barmen by discerning new forces-and-relations-of-production-regimes, each with its new determinate distribution regime. As I see it, the forces-and-relations stuff is all idealistic, internal-relations nonsense. It's too many connections and too few distinctions, cats chasing dialectical tails. We have better tools for measuring constraints and imagining possibilities. We have human ingenuity to build on and human nature to contend with. A so-so economist, Mill still saw this clearly. Let's forget Engels and move on.
re: Fed Raises Rates and Says It Isn’t Done Yet. We Think It Is. - Morningstar, Inc.: ‘Even as the Fed says it expects “ongoing” rate hikes, we expect the next move will be to cut rates by year-end…
Given the lead time on interest rate changes, this timing would support the paranoid Thumb On The Scales theory that the Fed is engineering a recession in time for the election ending in the quarters after.
Just because your (sic) paranoid...
I really enjoyed the analogy made (my paraphrase) of the government administrative “software” dictates usage and maximization of technological “hardware,” that software drives the utilization of hardware and not the other way around. Hardware does not write the software; it merely defines possibilities. Software, however, may fail to materialize the hardware’s potential.
As an aside, there was earlier discussion on the birth of the 1870 Hinge Point. That this hinge was realized by the fusion of the industrial research lab, large corporation, and global economy. However, I would submit these factors were forged together within a crucible of a specific make up, of which one component was that of an administrative type government and movement away from a feudal monarchy system. I would add 3 other components to the make-up of this crucible, but administrative government was by far most important. Such a government allowed for large geographical control, rule of law replete with a judicial system, and implementation of public projects and goals. It was noted that Japan had an industrial revolution similar to the Global North. It appeared to me that Japan separated itself from the Pacific Rim countries during the Meiji Restoration, creating a constitutional type government, similar to the other Global North countries.
In the Global North, the large corporation is driven by profit, and can realize it if it understands the rule of law properly and is a good steward of its resources. Here, technology can be exploited multi-dimensionally. On the other hand, for real-existing socialism, the corporation is centrally controlled with centrally defined objectives, with a going concern in which profit is not a prime motivation. As a result, the Engel-Marx software was unlikely to maximize technology to its fullest in any dimension.
One illustration of the Hegelian dialogue is less an academic discussion and more of conflict in practice. The result is creative destruction and evolution towards a new system. Continuous conflict allows for continuous refinement. Historically, the Soviet-NATO conflict was less socioeconomic and more military in nature; therefore, the economic-social dialogue did not occur and real-existing socialism did not make its contribution to government and socialism, which was Communism’s original purpose. Admittedly the China story is still being written.
Another example of evolving North is that of public-private investment in technology whether it is the transistor or, in this case, fusion technology. In a Foreign Affairs article by Mazzucato, A Long Way From Nuclear Fusion, “Ultimately, governments’ task is neither to pick winners nor to give unconditional handouts, subsidies, and guarantees but to create a distributed network of “willing” players. Because of the nature of the energy market, these players are likely to be those leading government projects, a network of which should span public-sector research groups, university laboratories, and private businesses. Ideally, governments and the private sector should work to reestablish a decentralized network of ambitious actors advancing nuclear fusion.”
Although this is about technology, I believe a similar type of dialogue can be observed regarding national social contract as we move towards utopia.
Barro: It would be quite easy for Republicans to become a sunny optimistic party. They would just have to advocate for raising incomes and rate of increase of incomes of most and in the longer run essentially everyone: lower deficits (left to them to decide whether tax increases or expenditure reductions are best politically), much higher immigration of skilled people, rebated tax on net emissions of CO2, liberalized urban land use policies, freer trade with EBC. Just environmentally, fiscally prudent Reganism without the trade restrictions. :)