In America’s frontier days, anyone diverting a town’s creek water to their private, profiteering purpose was not merely considered wrong, but guilty of Biblical-level immorality.
I would think this should be considered a criminal offense, much the same as bombing desalination plants. If these guys are so smart ,why can't they figure out a way to use cooling towers and recycle water? And why are we paying for the power plants to be built. The oligarchy must be destroyed, go back to pre Reagan tax rates, use the money to pay down the national debt (where it came from originally) and break up the monopolies.
Yes! Yes! Yes! It's always a fascist or communist government trying to take over the world and our current administration is playing right alongside international corporate economic structure with monster machines. Is their goal to waste away life on Earth?
If you live in a state like Minnesota and Wisconsin (or any state anywhere) that has water - BE AWARE - the BILLIONAIRES are coming for you..... This time it is YOUR WATER!! And they with the help of the Corrupt Republicans and the Corrupt Roberts 6 in America will stop at NOTHING to get it!! You will be FORCED to give up your water so that it can go to wherever and whatever the BILLIONAIRES want it to go.......and you will have NO SAY in the matter because the Corrupt Trump regime and the Corrupt Republicans and the Corrupt Roberts 6 will MAKE YOU GIVE IT UP! Unless they are ALL taken down and shut down once and for all!!!!!!!
They would shout with glee if they drained Superior dry. And beware mining in the Boundary Waters. Mining is not a long term employment opportunity. Neither is the idea of super computer sites.
Here in Oregon and I would guess in Texas, there is always a politician who will give them millions in tax breaks to locate here. The richest companies in the world use so much of our water and power it costs us on both ends of this reckless deal. Joan Ragan
THANK YOU JIM for calling attention to this HUGE threat to everyone's water. Please do urge people to not only contact their own local and state elected "leaders" but to also seek out and join in local and regional efforts (called coalitions) to fight the installations of Data centers. They tend to move in and co-opt local officials' agreement before the general public even learns what's going on. There is local resistance going on in many places.
And nationalize the big oil companies. The Democratic Party should have a plan to nationalize the big oil corporations ready to go, just like how the Red states had a plan ready to go when the Supreme Court announced their Louisiana v. Callais decision. But that's not how the Democratic Party rolls. Not anymore. Who wants to take on Big Oil when they're stuffing money into your pockets faster than you can hide it in your offshore accounts?
The only way I ever see humanity surviving the Chinese water torture of a death that global warming will cause is replacing our government of the billionaires, by the billionaires, for the billionaires with...
Let me guess. Was it "Of the People, by the People, and for the People"? Hey - I'm a People too, even if I only have two coins to rub together. Remember 'Two coins in a bag make more noise than a hundred'
The hyperscalers and their co-conspirators the venture capitalists, justify this mad stampede to overbuild data center capacity, as the free market approach necessary to ensure that "the Chinese don't get there first" with AI. And, of course conveniently, it feeds their egos and their avarice at the same time. Something as potentially consequential as AI should be developed collectively, under public control, with international cooperation. This would not only ensure that it is developed with the public welfare as a driving motivation, it would also help prevent unrestrained plundering of public resources to build an infrastructure that will no longer be needed once the development phase is over. Whatever incremental technological edge may be gained from this unrestrained approach, will pale in comparison with the potential damage that can be done. Humanity has good reason to be both thrilled about and terrified by the development of artificial intelligence, but the only people who stand to gain from unrestrained development are the hyperscalers and venture capitalists - the rest of us will pay the price.
Nice try, but NO on the "they're stupid" deflection. The D elite dumped the New Deal and abandoned the majority working class long ago. After '08, the Ds bailed out Wall St. while the millions of us who lost jobs, pensions, homes got nothing. How smart is it not to have noticed decades of suffering in the Rust Belt and the well documented deaths of despair? Or is it okay because we're nothing but "a basket of deplorables"?
We're in it because the professional class 20%er D loyalists seem to have no problem with a D party bought and paid for by corporate economics. Again I ask: how smart is it to refuse to see gross suffering for decades?! Now that MDs and professors are being treated like assembly line employees and AI threatens while collar workers, I say welcome to our world. That blue collar sacrificial lamb was a bellwether!
You want to win? First, forego the unwarranted sense of superiority. We mere workers are part of the common good. Look at economic history. Learn how to run political campaigns that appeal to more than upper middle class status quo. I say this as a blue collar rank and file activist for 28 years and former local Dem campaign manager. I lived through the neolib Ds, apologists for econopathy, usurping the party once ours. Don't believe me? I can deliver the stats. Or just do a search for Jim Hightower's writings on populism. See last Fri. on Jim's prescient book /There's Nothing in the Middle of the Road But Yellow Lines and Dead Armadillos./
Or does your diagnosis "we're in it" only apply when the better off begin to feel the pain? The majority of us have been "in it" for decades.
Re-read the case I presented in detail! Or are you're so sure your limited view is the only acceptable one that it doesn't matter what I've said?! Not that difficult to grasp; as I said, just read last Fri. post and just maybe you'll get it. Why the deep anger at the Ds after 40 years at a party that betrayed us. Especially important as I said "If you want to win"...elections, that is. If your aim is to "win" an argument personally by demonstrating we mere workers and rural people are stupid, keep at it. Defend the indefensible. You're making a fine case why we workers need a party of our own.
Central Oregon, thought in the past to have unlimited water resources and cheap Bonneville power, is facing the same issues you describe in Texas. In the past dozen years, Prineville, forty miles east of Bend, has become a mega data center hub with both Apple and Meta having built massive campuses with the support of local tax incentives. The immediate impact here is that both private and municipal wells are having to be drilled to much greater depths at great cost as the data monsters suck up the aquifer. There is now another of these tax incented public disasters on the horizon in La Pine 25 miles to the south. With surface water over appropriated and climate change induced drought, the Deschutes River aquifer is in danger of being permanently sucked away from local landholders by outside corporate entities who can afford longer straws.
I was talking to some tech billionaires just the other day and they told me that their AI was going to solve all our problems. No water? No problem! AI will figure it out. No jobs? No problem! AI will figure that out too! No life, liberty, or pursuit of happiness under the billionaire-owned regime?
Faith that science and tech will solve all problems is known as "the technological quick fix." Its promise and in-depth critique around since the '70s. Decades later, evidence is clearly on the side of the techno-agnostics. We elders remember as kids hearing "better living through chemistry." Uh, DDT? Ooops. Then "energy too cheap to meter" selling the benefits of nuclear energy. Three Mile Island, Chernobyl, and Fukushima. Really, really big ooops. Never mind techno profiteers hiding behind the curtain; AI is the answer!
And think about most of the population in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan who live close to the poverty line and after many elections the Upper Peninsula looks solidly red. Go figure. I was an R until the second election of Reagan when I realized trickle down economics did not trickle down. And came to the realization if you don't own the company you need a union.
Carol, I listened to an interview with an economist who was calling out trickle-down economics as a scam wrapped in pseudo-science. He talked about how he sat in economics classes at the University of Michigan as a student, listening to professors tell him and his classmates that globalization was a logical consequence of trickle-down economics and that it would result in an even higher tide of profits lifting all boats.
At the same time that he was in class being lectured about all the trickle-down globalization rainbows and unicorns, jobs were being offshored. And next door, in Detroit, the auto industry union labor boat was sinking.
Truth is it's /trickle up/ econopathy. An old line labor activist, I started studying econ theories just before the huge 1999 anti-WTO demonstrations called "The Battle of Seattle." The current system, supported by Ds as well as Rs, comes from Milton Friedman and the neoclassical Chicago School of Econ. He supported Pinochet because "democracy interferes with Market efficiency" Chi School is little more than anti-New Deal, anti-Keynes; it's assertions based on assumptions, not empirical evidence. Among them: the only human motivation is in EconSpeak the utility function, individual personal gain. Destruction of human communities and ecosystems are externalities, thus irrelevant. Etc. Etc. The worst? They've done their own calculations on climate change based on an assumption the rate is linear. (It's actually logarithmic.) Therefore very expensive amelioration and extensive disruption of the econ system aren't cost effective because changes will be small, gradual. I recommend reading or listening to alt. economist Steve Keen. His analyses are {gasp} empirical.
I worked in engine rooms of ships and ferries, good union jobs, plus serving on a maritime safety committee. So I know something about boats and tides. That metaphorical rising tide doesn't lift small boats full of holes or firmly anchored to the bottom.
"Small boats full of holes" is brilliant, Rafi. I reckon those holes are what you called "externalities". Thanks for mentioning Steve Keen. I'm interested in economics and I'm biased toward empirical facts. Totally biased, you might say.
I've read your comments for a while now, and I respect your knowledge, thoughts, and opinions. I've done some writing about economics that I'd like to share with you. It's from a scene where a renegade economics professor is lecturing a class. I'd very much appreciate it if you'd give it a look and tell me what you think:
“If trickle-down was going to happen, the mathematics used in the analyses of the models would have had to include a variable that’s missing. For all of their elegance, the economist’s equations do not include a fundamental variable, a variable that most people would agree should not only be included, but should also be the most heavily weighted. That is to say, this missing variable should reflect not only what is most important, but the degree to which it is the most important.
The mathematics applied to the models use variables to express productivity, efficiency, and profit, primarily. So what is the variable that the neoclassical economists have left out of their neoliberal economic equations? The missing variable is human well-being. It’s disregarded. It has no place in calculations whose only interest is in maximizing profits.
It turns out that homo economicus has led us astray. He’s led us to believe that human happiness and well-being depend on profits. Only profits. Of course, in the real world, it’s a lot more complicated than that. Legitimate, reality-based science makes it clear that human beings are naturally cooperative, emotional, and moral. They’re not relentlessly selfish and perfectly rational like homo economicus. What makes a human being happy and what makes homo economicus happy are two very different things.
And it turns out that the mechanical metaphor for an economy that neoclassical economics uses doesn’t hold up. The neo-liberal narrative and its heuristics, although plausible, are not the unshakeable truths that they make themselves out to be. In fact, the narrative and its heuristics are based on pseudo-science. None of it is reality-based.
Legitimate, reality-based science shows how an ecosystem is a far better metaphor for an economy than a machine. The exchanges that take place in an economy happen between human beings. They’re dynamic. They reflect the cooperative, emotional, and moral nature of the humans involved. The exchanges that take place in an economy are not the ‘for every action there is an equal and opposite reaction’ types of exchanges that occur in machinery. They are not what the machine metaphor model would lead us to believe.
A humanized economics would have a very different narrative and different heuristics, and result in radically different economic policies than what we have in America today.
What would the narrative of a reality-based, humanized economics look like? It would probably be something along these lines:
‘Markets provide a matrix where we can nurture exchange, prosperity, trust, and the potential for a better future for everyone. Market competition stimulates innovation and progress. The enforcement of regulations are essential in order to prevent unfair competition and the hoarding of wealth. The purpose of a corporation is to improve the welfare of all stakeholders in the corporation including its customers, its workers, and the community, as well as its shareholders.
The goal of economic policy should be to include as many people in as many ways as possible. This is the source of growth in market economies. Policy should strive to create a robust base of consumers. Workers who are well-educated and well-paid. Policy should encourage and support innovators and entrepreneurs, and it should encourage and support workers’ unions.’”
"Nature red in tooth in claw" was a conceit of the Robber Barons and same for libertarian techies who believe that as econ winners they should rule. Ecosystems are like plants, especially trees, growing in obligate symbiosis with fungi on on their roots. That alone makes cooperation the dominant mode, and there are many other symbioses, including in and on the human body. An economist who recognized this decades ago was Herman Daly, who once wrote a book on econ with a theologian because he acknowledged something else vital for human life all too often ignored by empiricists and rationalists--the need for meaning.
The dynamic aspect is not considered by the econ dogmatists; in effect, their model is static. Apparently they've never heard of chaos and complexity theories. Their model assumes everything can be reduced to two people in a barter system who have equal access and perfect information as to what's available everywhere and at what cost. The other aspect missing is time. Keen and allies really go after them on this one.
As for the metaphor of a machine, at least that would be grounded in physical reality. Besides, those of us who've worked with them directly know they seem to have distinct personalities.
So yes, I appreciate and basically agree with your argument. Its effectiveness would depend on the audience. Well educated progressives, fine. I can tell you by experience we workers have the same discussions, just in less formal language and with way more adjectives like "f*ckn' this or that" than is usually the case for university professors.
Or do what is in effect both--co-ops and worker owned businesses. My logger grandpa was a Wobbly, (I.W.W.) advocates for worker run locally based production. A variety of Populism. The technical term is "anarcho-syndicalism" way scarier than need be. Sort of socialism but decentralized therefore no top down commands. IMHO also fits with the diff between free enterprise and capitalism. Free enterprise is the privately owned production of physically real goods and services. Capitalism is about manipulating that abstraction known as money. Financialism, now dominant, is parasitical on the real producers--labor and inventive entrepreneurs.
Rafi, I remember sometime in the early 70s watching Walter Cronkite do a news segment about how industrial automation was going to result in a 30-hour work week and greater prosperity for average Americans.
How about mandating that these complexes must be self-sufficient in electricity and water? So, mucho solar and mucho desalination senors. By the way. Mr Hightower, sir, u belong in the US Senate. I’ve thought so since I read my first Hightower Lowdown and told u so when u spoke at McAllister College. In the traditional of Maury Maverick and Senator Yarborough who were solid Dems getting elected from Texas. By another way, I got the winning ticket, sir. Beshear for Pres and AOC for VP in ‘28. I believe Beshear is open minded enough to move forward gradually with a progressive agenda. Together they win 80% of blacks, 65-70% of Hispanics, and 40% of whites.
It is simultaneously dispiriting and provocative to read about America's billionaires. What can be done to stop them from this "water-grab" (if you have a better term for it, please share)? And how is it that we the people appear to be powerless to stop them? DO they now "own" ... US?
The news this morning had a jobs report and how many jobs were replaced by a.i. The scariest thing is the stock market is being driven by a.i. stocks building data centers everywhere majority of the public is against. Reminds me of the dotcom bust.
Yep. The stock mkt is gambling among the privileged. Not about health of econ or nation. Trading stocks isn't investing; it's like when you buy a used truck the $ doesn't go to Ford. Add the price inflation by corporations through stock buybacks financed by mass layoffs affecting millions of workers while deflecting profits away from production. To the benefit only of CEOs and Wall St. banksters. Notice the Ds don't mention it; if they did their corporate donors wouldn't like it.
Mikey Johnson has been a major barrier against banning congressional trading which has something to do with trump making over 3,ooo trades so far this year. Not too many congress critters have made any noise about it, inflation would be lower if speculators weren't reaping more than the workers actually doing something. When investments in oil spike just before announcements about Iran and the straits of Hormuz there is a serious problem with the markets.
In the film "The Matrix," humans are hooked up to provide energy to computers and AI. Why not skip the tedious steps it took to get there and do it now? They're draining us and entire environments dry anyway. Tie us soon to be unemployed nobodies into a national phlebotomy grid, circulating our blood to cool the all important machines.
I would think this should be considered a criminal offense, much the same as bombing desalination plants. If these guys are so smart ,why can't they figure out a way to use cooling towers and recycle water? And why are we paying for the power plants to be built. The oligarchy must be destroyed, go back to pre Reagan tax rates, use the money to pay down the national debt (where it came from originally) and break up the monopolies.
Yes! Yes! Yes! It's always a fascist or communist government trying to take over the world and our current administration is playing right alongside international corporate economic structure with monster machines. Is their goal to waste away life on Earth?
If you live in a state like Minnesota and Wisconsin (or any state anywhere) that has water - BE AWARE - the BILLIONAIRES are coming for you..... This time it is YOUR WATER!! And they with the help of the Corrupt Republicans and the Corrupt Roberts 6 in America will stop at NOTHING to get it!! You will be FORCED to give up your water so that it can go to wherever and whatever the BILLIONAIRES want it to go.......and you will have NO SAY in the matter because the Corrupt Trump regime and the Corrupt Republicans and the Corrupt Roberts 6 will MAKE YOU GIVE IT UP! Unless they are ALL taken down and shut down once and for all!!!!!!!
They would shout with glee if they drained Superior dry. And beware mining in the Boundary Waters. Mining is not a long term employment opportunity. Neither is the idea of super computer sites.
Billionaires want it all, for their benefit and no one else. They are already planning for a world of ONLY them and NO ONE ELSE!!!
sigh
Here in Oregon and I would guess in Texas, there is always a politician who will give them millions in tax breaks to locate here. The richest companies in the world use so much of our water and power it costs us on both ends of this reckless deal. Joan Ragan
THANK YOU JIM for calling attention to this HUGE threat to everyone's water. Please do urge people to not only contact their own local and state elected "leaders" but to also seek out and join in local and regional efforts (called coalitions) to fight the installations of Data centers. They tend to move in and co-opt local officials' agreement before the general public even learns what's going on. There is local resistance going on in many places.
Candidly,nationalizing the industry makes the most sense.
And nationalize the big oil companies. The Democratic Party should have a plan to nationalize the big oil corporations ready to go, just like how the Red states had a plan ready to go when the Supreme Court announced their Louisiana v. Callais decision. But that's not how the Democratic Party rolls. Not anymore. Who wants to take on Big Oil when they're stuffing money into your pockets faster than you can hide it in your offshore accounts?
The only way I ever see humanity surviving the Chinese water torture of a death that global warming will cause is replacing our government of the billionaires, by the billionaires, for the billionaires with...
Darn... Where was I going with that?
Let me guess. Was it "Of the People, by the People, and for the People"? Hey - I'm a People too, even if I only have two coins to rub together. Remember 'Two coins in a bag make more noise than a hundred'
The hyperscalers and their co-conspirators the venture capitalists, justify this mad stampede to overbuild data center capacity, as the free market approach necessary to ensure that "the Chinese don't get there first" with AI. And, of course conveniently, it feeds their egos and their avarice at the same time. Something as potentially consequential as AI should be developed collectively, under public control, with international cooperation. This would not only ensure that it is developed with the public welfare as a driving motivation, it would also help prevent unrestrained plundering of public resources to build an infrastructure that will no longer be needed once the development phase is over. Whatever incremental technological edge may be gained from this unrestrained approach, will pale in comparison with the potential damage that can be done. Humanity has good reason to be both thrilled about and terrified by the development of artificial intelligence, but the only people who stand to gain from unrestrained development are the hyperscalers and venture capitalists - the rest of us will pay the price.
TBF all of these rural communities voted for the leopard to eat their face. I feel bad for those that didn’t though.
Nice try, but NO on the "they're stupid" deflection. The D elite dumped the New Deal and abandoned the majority working class long ago. After '08, the Ds bailed out Wall St. while the millions of us who lost jobs, pensions, homes got nothing. How smart is it not to have noticed decades of suffering in the Rust Belt and the well documented deaths of despair? Or is it okay because we're nothing but "a basket of deplorables"?
Consider the alternative, which is easy to do because we're in it.
We're in it because the professional class 20%er D loyalists seem to have no problem with a D party bought and paid for by corporate economics. Again I ask: how smart is it to refuse to see gross suffering for decades?! Now that MDs and professors are being treated like assembly line employees and AI threatens while collar workers, I say welcome to our world. That blue collar sacrificial lamb was a bellwether!
You want to win? First, forego the unwarranted sense of superiority. We mere workers are part of the common good. Look at economic history. Learn how to run political campaigns that appeal to more than upper middle class status quo. I say this as a blue collar rank and file activist for 28 years and former local Dem campaign manager. I lived through the neolib Ds, apologists for econopathy, usurping the party once ours. Don't believe me? I can deliver the stats. Or just do a search for Jim Hightower's writings on populism. See last Fri. on Jim's prescient book /There's Nothing in the Middle of the Road But Yellow Lines and Dead Armadillos./
Or does your diagnosis "we're in it" only apply when the better off begin to feel the pain? The majority of us have been "in it" for decades.
I’ve been a Hightower subscriber for like 20 years and he’s never once said vote gop to spite corporate dems. So I’m not sure what your point is.
Re-read the case I presented in detail! Or are you're so sure your limited view is the only acceptable one that it doesn't matter what I've said?! Not that difficult to grasp; as I said, just read last Fri. post and just maybe you'll get it. Why the deep anger at the Ds after 40 years at a party that betrayed us. Especially important as I said "If you want to win"...elections, that is. If your aim is to "win" an argument personally by demonstrating we mere workers and rural people are stupid, keep at it. Defend the indefensible. You're making a fine case why we workers need a party of our own.
Central Oregon, thought in the past to have unlimited water resources and cheap Bonneville power, is facing the same issues you describe in Texas. In the past dozen years, Prineville, forty miles east of Bend, has become a mega data center hub with both Apple and Meta having built massive campuses with the support of local tax incentives. The immediate impact here is that both private and municipal wells are having to be drilled to much greater depths at great cost as the data monsters suck up the aquifer. There is now another of these tax incented public disasters on the horizon in La Pine 25 miles to the south. With surface water over appropriated and climate change induced drought, the Deschutes River aquifer is in danger of being permanently sucked away from local landholders by outside corporate entities who can afford longer straws.
I have relatives in those areas. Of course as unimportant nobodies, they're expendable along with the entire ecosystems they live in.
Now hold on just a minute...
I was talking to some tech billionaires just the other day and they told me that their AI was going to solve all our problems. No water? No problem! AI will figure it out. No jobs? No problem! AI will figure that out too! No life, liberty, or pursuit of happiness under the billionaire-owned regime?
Hold on. Wait a second...
AI says, "Danger, danger. That does not compute."
Faith that science and tech will solve all problems is known as "the technological quick fix." Its promise and in-depth critique around since the '70s. Decades later, evidence is clearly on the side of the techno-agnostics. We elders remember as kids hearing "better living through chemistry." Uh, DDT? Ooops. Then "energy too cheap to meter" selling the benefits of nuclear energy. Three Mile Island, Chernobyl, and Fukushima. Really, really big ooops. Never mind techno profiteers hiding behind the curtain; AI is the answer!
And think about most of the population in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan who live close to the poverty line and after many elections the Upper Peninsula looks solidly red. Go figure. I was an R until the second election of Reagan when I realized trickle down economics did not trickle down. And came to the realization if you don't own the company you need a union.
Carol, I listened to an interview with an economist who was calling out trickle-down economics as a scam wrapped in pseudo-science. He talked about how he sat in economics classes at the University of Michigan as a student, listening to professors tell him and his classmates that globalization was a logical consequence of trickle-down economics and that it would result in an even higher tide of profits lifting all boats.
At the same time that he was in class being lectured about all the trickle-down globalization rainbows and unicorns, jobs were being offshored. And next door, in Detroit, the auto industry union labor boat was sinking.
Truth is it's /trickle up/ econopathy. An old line labor activist, I started studying econ theories just before the huge 1999 anti-WTO demonstrations called "The Battle of Seattle." The current system, supported by Ds as well as Rs, comes from Milton Friedman and the neoclassical Chicago School of Econ. He supported Pinochet because "democracy interferes with Market efficiency" Chi School is little more than anti-New Deal, anti-Keynes; it's assertions based on assumptions, not empirical evidence. Among them: the only human motivation is in EconSpeak the utility function, individual personal gain. Destruction of human communities and ecosystems are externalities, thus irrelevant. Etc. Etc. The worst? They've done their own calculations on climate change based on an assumption the rate is linear. (It's actually logarithmic.) Therefore very expensive amelioration and extensive disruption of the econ system aren't cost effective because changes will be small, gradual. I recommend reading or listening to alt. economist Steve Keen. His analyses are {gasp} empirical.
I worked in engine rooms of ships and ferries, good union jobs, plus serving on a maritime safety committee. So I know something about boats and tides. That metaphorical rising tide doesn't lift small boats full of holes or firmly anchored to the bottom.
"Small boats full of holes" is brilliant, Rafi. I reckon those holes are what you called "externalities". Thanks for mentioning Steve Keen. I'm interested in economics and I'm biased toward empirical facts. Totally biased, you might say.
I've read your comments for a while now, and I respect your knowledge, thoughts, and opinions. I've done some writing about economics that I'd like to share with you. It's from a scene where a renegade economics professor is lecturing a class. I'd very much appreciate it if you'd give it a look and tell me what you think:
“If trickle-down was going to happen, the mathematics used in the analyses of the models would have had to include a variable that’s missing. For all of their elegance, the economist’s equations do not include a fundamental variable, a variable that most people would agree should not only be included, but should also be the most heavily weighted. That is to say, this missing variable should reflect not only what is most important, but the degree to which it is the most important.
The mathematics applied to the models use variables to express productivity, efficiency, and profit, primarily. So what is the variable that the neoclassical economists have left out of their neoliberal economic equations? The missing variable is human well-being. It’s disregarded. It has no place in calculations whose only interest is in maximizing profits.
It turns out that homo economicus has led us astray. He’s led us to believe that human happiness and well-being depend on profits. Only profits. Of course, in the real world, it’s a lot more complicated than that. Legitimate, reality-based science makes it clear that human beings are naturally cooperative, emotional, and moral. They’re not relentlessly selfish and perfectly rational like homo economicus. What makes a human being happy and what makes homo economicus happy are two very different things.
And it turns out that the mechanical metaphor for an economy that neoclassical economics uses doesn’t hold up. The neo-liberal narrative and its heuristics, although plausible, are not the unshakeable truths that they make themselves out to be. In fact, the narrative and its heuristics are based on pseudo-science. None of it is reality-based.
Legitimate, reality-based science shows how an ecosystem is a far better metaphor for an economy than a machine. The exchanges that take place in an economy happen between human beings. They’re dynamic. They reflect the cooperative, emotional, and moral nature of the humans involved. The exchanges that take place in an economy are not the ‘for every action there is an equal and opposite reaction’ types of exchanges that occur in machinery. They are not what the machine metaphor model would lead us to believe.
A humanized economics would have a very different narrative and different heuristics, and result in radically different economic policies than what we have in America today.
What would the narrative of a reality-based, humanized economics look like? It would probably be something along these lines:
‘Markets provide a matrix where we can nurture exchange, prosperity, trust, and the potential for a better future for everyone. Market competition stimulates innovation and progress. The enforcement of regulations are essential in order to prevent unfair competition and the hoarding of wealth. The purpose of a corporation is to improve the welfare of all stakeholders in the corporation including its customers, its workers, and the community, as well as its shareholders.
The goal of economic policy should be to include as many people in as many ways as possible. This is the source of growth in market economies. Policy should strive to create a robust base of consumers. Workers who are well-educated and well-paid. Policy should encourage and support innovators and entrepreneurs, and it should encourage and support workers’ unions.’”
"Nature red in tooth in claw" was a conceit of the Robber Barons and same for libertarian techies who believe that as econ winners they should rule. Ecosystems are like plants, especially trees, growing in obligate symbiosis with fungi on on their roots. That alone makes cooperation the dominant mode, and there are many other symbioses, including in and on the human body. An economist who recognized this decades ago was Herman Daly, who once wrote a book on econ with a theologian because he acknowledged something else vital for human life all too often ignored by empiricists and rationalists--the need for meaning.
The dynamic aspect is not considered by the econ dogmatists; in effect, their model is static. Apparently they've never heard of chaos and complexity theories. Their model assumes everything can be reduced to two people in a barter system who have equal access and perfect information as to what's available everywhere and at what cost. The other aspect missing is time. Keen and allies really go after them on this one.
As for the metaphor of a machine, at least that would be grounded in physical reality. Besides, those of us who've worked with them directly know they seem to have distinct personalities.
So yes, I appreciate and basically agree with your argument. Its effectiveness would depend on the audience. Well educated progressives, fine. I can tell you by experience we workers have the same discussions, just in less formal language and with way more adjectives like "f*ckn' this or that" than is usually the case for university professors.
Or do what is in effect both--co-ops and worker owned businesses. My logger grandpa was a Wobbly, (I.W.W.) advocates for worker run locally based production. A variety of Populism. The technical term is "anarcho-syndicalism" way scarier than need be. Sort of socialism but decentralized therefore no top down commands. IMHO also fits with the diff between free enterprise and capitalism. Free enterprise is the privately owned production of physically real goods and services. Capitalism is about manipulating that abstraction known as money. Financialism, now dominant, is parasitical on the real producers--labor and inventive entrepreneurs.
Rafi, I remember sometime in the early 70s watching Walter Cronkite do a news segment about how industrial automation was going to result in a 30-hour work week and greater prosperity for average Americans.
Must've taken a wrong turn at Albuquerque...
As the Warner Bros Loony Tunes series all ended with: Th Th That's All, Folks!
But at least we kids learned to be skeptical about Acme products. The current neoclassical (neolib) econ system is nothing but Acme writ large.
How about mandating that these complexes must be self-sufficient in electricity and water? So, mucho solar and mucho desalination senors. By the way. Mr Hightower, sir, u belong in the US Senate. I’ve thought so since I read my first Hightower Lowdown and told u so when u spoke at McAllister College. In the traditional of Maury Maverick and Senator Yarborough who were solid Dems getting elected from Texas. By another way, I got the winning ticket, sir. Beshear for Pres and AOC for VP in ‘28. I believe Beshear is open minded enough to move forward gradually with a progressive agenda. Together they win 80% of blacks, 65-70% of Hispanics, and 40% of whites.
Thank you for this, Jim. I always appreciate what you have to say and will forward to others
It is simultaneously dispiriting and provocative to read about America's billionaires. What can be done to stop them from this "water-grab" (if you have a better term for it, please share)? And how is it that we the people appear to be powerless to stop them? DO they now "own" ... US?
The news this morning had a jobs report and how many jobs were replaced by a.i. The scariest thing is the stock market is being driven by a.i. stocks building data centers everywhere majority of the public is against. Reminds me of the dotcom bust.
Yep. The stock mkt is gambling among the privileged. Not about health of econ or nation. Trading stocks isn't investing; it's like when you buy a used truck the $ doesn't go to Ford. Add the price inflation by corporations through stock buybacks financed by mass layoffs affecting millions of workers while deflecting profits away from production. To the benefit only of CEOs and Wall St. banksters. Notice the Ds don't mention it; if they did their corporate donors wouldn't like it.
Mikey Johnson has been a major barrier against banning congressional trading which has something to do with trump making over 3,ooo trades so far this year. Not too many congress critters have made any noise about it, inflation would be lower if speculators weren't reaping more than the workers actually doing something. When investments in oil spike just before announcements about Iran and the straits of Hormuz there is a serious problem with the markets.
These fetishists (Rs and almost all Ds) treat The Market as a infallible deity. One we're to serve, not as an economics to serve us.
I downloaded this website ( www.mediajustice.org/tools. ) and damn well intend to do something about it!
In the film "The Matrix," humans are hooked up to provide energy to computers and AI. Why not skip the tedious steps it took to get there and do it now? They're draining us and entire environments dry anyway. Tie us soon to be unemployed nobodies into a national phlebotomy grid, circulating our blood to cool the all important machines.
Data centers should provide their own power and water and not drain public resources. The new robber barons.