I’m travelling, so posting will be light to non-existent for a while yet. In the meantime, another Monday Message Board. Post comments on any topic. As usual, civilised discussion and no coarse language. Lengthy side discussions to the sandpits, please.
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John Quiggin 
Here is an issue I hope could stimulate impassioned comments. Last week I inadvertently went to one of these Self Managed Superannuation Funds information sessions. What was interesting were the details about the total Australian superannuation pile of money, arguably the biggest bag of loot available for transitioning to a sustainable future. At 1.4 trillion dollars its not chicken feed.
Worrying issues from a sustainability/social justice point of view included:
– there wasn’t even the slightest nod to environmental sustainability, the energy crisis or the financial crisis??!! (expected but still depressing).
– the world is divided into cash, cash extracted by blatant exploitation, property and shares plus a galaxy of wonderful asset amalgamating products.
– the audience was all about me me me i.e. tax avoidance/minimization to zero and given the level of vested interest (one’s whole pension retirement future) a rising body of potential angry protestors.
– prudential investment rules seems to rule out low yielding (from narrow neoliberal criteria) long term ethical investments.
– the increasing SMS take as people increasing distrust government (consider Argentina and Cyprus)
– superannuation is making rentier capitalists of us all once we reach retirement directly or by default through managed funds.
– the system’s dubious fund managers predominantly know the difference between rye grass and astro turf. (no one’s fault – just good business).
While none of this should actually be new to anyone who has filled out a superannuation form it does beg the question where moneys for big changeovers are likely to come from and the stability of this system which is arguably one of the most financially solvent globally.
For example ZCA proposed $200 billion to replace power plants with solar thermal suggesting a total energy changeover would be of the order of 500 to 1000 billion – in effect approaching the entire superannuation take and probably unacceptable. A big ask.
More general is the question of how to fund multiple diverse big infrastructure changes in the future – e.g. high speed rail to replace all the major road transport corridors? I just don’t see government having the money or private moneys funding the changes needed without a massive change in the whole economic system that would make the older nationalization programs look like a walk in the park and shake the superannuation system to its bones.
@Newtownian
You sum up the dilemmas very well. Here is my take.
1. Money is notional, not real.
2. If there is not real energy, real resources and real production to back up all this notional money “wealth” then money wealth is worth nothing.
3. If the environment is not liveable money wealth means nothing.
4. As real resources fail, the investments that depend on them fail to make a return and go bust. The money wealth disappears without even a puff of smoke.
It’s Ecological Economics 101.
@Newtownian
I don’t suppose they had anything to say about the carbon bubble, did they?
Newtownian – By carbon bubble do you mean ‘Bucky balls’ (after Buckminster Fuller, that famous physicist)? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Buckminsterfullerene
Or do you mean like the great South Pacific bubble – the repercussions of which was instrumental in establishing the Bank of England?
Maybe the tulip bubble in Europe?
I only mention these ‘cos anyone moderately conversant with the infinite number of ways the unscrupulous can invent rip-off schemes would have to expect that some race- memory might have developed in our collective psyches by now in much the same way ‘fright means flight’ to a normally adjusted human being.
Yet apparently not: and in consequence the majority get suckered generation after generation.
Ikonoclast – points 1 to 4 has offered a fair summation which cannot be denied – unless you happen to be one of those exploiting the sheeple.
If all that moolah (or figures on paper) was actual currency or credits immediately available to individuals and our government wouldn’t that have some initiatives being progressed?
Instead there is this pretence that the squillions salted away ‘somewhere’ are being managed and utilized efficiently and honestly.
Yet every day at an accelerated pace this is becoming proven not to be the case.
A few years back – ‘buy Telstra shares’ said JH. Just go out and spend your life savings on something you already, collectively, own,
Give us a break!
@Newtownian
You went “inadvertently”? Come on, admit it – you’re a masochist!
I think Europe is the canary in the coal mine. What exactly is happening in Europe? Why is the entire Euro zone apparently descending into a Great Depression? For those who think “Great Depression” terminology is excessive here are some quick, simple statistics;
Great Depression: Unemployment rates of about 20% to 30% country by country around the world.
Current European Depression unemployment rates:-
Spain 27.2%
Greece 27.0%
Cyprus 14.0%
Italy 11.5%
France 10.6%
Germany 6.9%
G.B. 7.8%
Euro Zone 12.0%
All of these figures show signs they are climbing further. Those who think a crisis is not already underway have their heads in the sand.
Theories about the cause of the Euro crisis abound. The main theories are in no particular order;
(a) Too much debt;
(b) Too much government debt;
(c) Too much Austerity;
(d) Not enough Austerity;
(e) Peak oil;
(f) Peak energy.
I incline to the theory that it’s budget Austerity when budget stimulus is required to stimulate aggregate demand. However, the whole design of the Euro Zone system makes good economic policy almost impossible. In addition, real resource limits are also starting to hurt the economy. Peak oil is past although peak gas, peak coal and peak energy are not, yet. Increasing Asian competition means more oil and gas is going to Asia and less to Europe. So, while some problems could be changed by changing economic policy, other problems are no intractable and due to worsen due to the peak resources situation approaching.
When will Europe recover? The answer is never. Europe is the forerunner for the developed world. Europe is showing the path of collapse into the Endless Depression.
To come back to topic, market linked superannuation is in for an endless downward spiral to zero. All those monies will be wiped out eventually. I am no financial adviser but normally I would be advising those about to take market linked superannuation to first pay down all debt. But even that advice is perhaps not certain anymore. Overall, I am not competent to advise and have no crystal ball. Suffice it to say, high risk investments would seem to be a bad bet. Be aware that banks can fail. Any or all of our big banks could fail. Depending on how laws stand at the time of failure and how much money you have and where, all, part or none of your deposits might be guaranteed. Yes, you could even lose the lot in “safe” banks.
Recipients of government defined superannuation cannot consider themselves safe. Governments can and do cut public service wages and defined super payments in depression style crises. This is irrespective of the wisdom or otherwise of doing that in relation to an aggregate demand crisis.
The thing that history teaches us is that no crisis is like the last one. A new crisis will have new features. We can only theorise about these new features. Reality is always more complex and surprising than our most complex theories and models. My theory is that one major new feature of this economic crisis will be the conflict and antithesis between the need to stimulate aggregate demand and the impossibility of doing so in the face of real resource shortages. This raises the possibility, I think, of inflationary depression. It’s hard to think of any strategy to meet this.
I’m already hoarding bullets and tinned food in preparation for surviving the mutant-filled hellscape once known as “Australia”.
Then again, the Coalition might lose.
@Sancho
I know your comment is in jest. Even so, certain countries have provided or will provide large laboratory experiments of how well the “hoard tins and bullets” strategy works for a population. Syria is current example. The US will be a future example.
Hoarding is a zero sum game. Bullets are a negative sum game. Such activities just bring on chaos and disintegration faster.
As a general rule, any piece of writing that calls post-modernism or post-structuralism “Marxist” or “neo-Marxist”, or describes a prominent post-structuralist thinker as a “Marxist” or “neo-Marxist”, will be complete rubbish.
@Paul Norton
Where is this coming from, Gandalf?
Tks all for the feedback. Comments:
Non-farmer – I didn’t say anything about a carbon bubble. But the markets do seem to be alternating between different bubbles.
Sancho
– Survivalism is nonsense and Mad Max provides a more likely scenario.
– Modern money is really sets of exchangeable contracts – its partly about trust or if you like debt and obligation (some great lectures by Margaret Atwood on this stuff).
– A big part of the current malaise is people trusted mistakenly high finance and now that trust is partly evaporated. The trouble is societies generally function on trust and neoliberalism is undermining that because it promotes the view that everyone is your competitor (enemy) and are hence untrustworthy.
– We have vastly more resources than we need if we used them efficiently. So its not too late and there is a lot that can be tried.
– Thinking about soft survivalism it makes more sense to buy some dirt and a bunch of photovoltaic panels, and hoard fertiliser and aluminium – these will always be useful, and reflect energy prices, and fertiliser (especially P) may be in short supply soon.
Ron
– In part yes it was inadvertent.
– That said approaching career decline/retirement/use by date focuses you on the third age and taking this more seriously.
– There is also the memory of 2008 when we nearly lost all and ‘taking responsibility for your money’. This brings out your ‘greed is good’ tendencies.
– Thinking about it, getting to understand superannuation isn’t unlike Dante’s journey through the nine levels of hell http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inferno_(Dante).
Ikonoclast – so many comments but briefly.
– Though environment is paramount. money is still real, its just not corporeal so we have trouble getting our heads around it. ‘Information’ is a useful buzz word but doesn’t explain things. Plans and models aren’t real in your sense either but they are incredibly powerful. And we use both when discussing climate change responses.
– There is this great Noam Chomsky youtube on the limits of human thought and suggests human limitations in understanding money. He includes himself and describes himself as a Mysterian (see youtube for Chomsky, Norway and Ghost in Machine) – wonderful alternative to atheism and not to be confused with Japanese SF aliens.
– Re ecological economics – you are preaching to a choirboy. The difficulty is human focused society still dominates our lives. Even survivalist hippy hermits still use industrial artefacts.
I’ve been trying to work out why this doesn’t have a headline?
Beyond that I’ve been waiting for a Sandpit because it seems to be the place John Quiggin would prefer it.
For the MMT-oriented among you – since you are not all on FB where there is an Australian oriented MMT group, I give you guys this:
http://groups.google.com/group/mmt-australia
At first it would like to MMT proponents and advocates – the critics can come later
I hope to see you there Ikonoclast.
Crikey. I’d forgotten how serious this place can be.
I’m optimistic about the future. The causes for pessimism are vastly overstated and largely a product of media sensationalism.
The world won’t be unfecked overnight, but things are on the up and the forces of progress and rationality are still winning despite the current period of backlash.
@Newtownian
Depending on the circumstances, major infrastructure investment can “pay for itself” which means it does not need to be funded with an increase in taxation or money printing. The mechanism is that, if the infrastructure investment results in improve productivity and higher economic growth; then future taxation revenue will also increase due to higher nominal GDP assuming the tax rate remains unchanged.
Multiplier of the public investment will be important if the public investment is to “payment for itself”. The multiplier will be affected by various factors such as how efficiently is the investment planned (this can reduce the cost of the investment while achieving the same outcome); the state of the economy; and the increase in productivity and economic growth as a result of the investment, e.g. upgrading an old railway systems such as that in Australia and US to that of Japan, South Korea and China standards.
Studies of the effects on the output from public investment varies in its results. For example:
Alan J. Auerbach & Yuriy Gorodnichenko, 2012. “Measuring the Output Responses to Fiscal Policy,” American Economic Journal: Economic Policy, American Economic Association, vol. 4(2), pages 1-27, May.
This paper suggests the fiscal multiplier of public investment spending for the US range from 2.12 to 3.02 depending on the economic circumstances. If we assume this result is correct, this means that 47% to 33% (depending on the fiscal multiplier) of the EXTRA ouput measured in real terms (income) as a result of the investment would have to return to the government as taxation revenue plus a few extra percent depending on the government bond rate as the government will have to take on debt to fund the investment, for the public investment to “pay for itself”.
There also also studies that suggests:
“We conclude that the euro countries can be gathered in four groups according to the nature of the economic and budgetary impact of public investment. The first group includes Austria, Belgium, Luxembourg, and Netherlands, where the economic effects are either negative or positive but very small and, therefore, cuts will be harmless for the economy and effective from a budgetary perspective. The second group includes Finland, Portugal, and Spain, where public investment does not pay for itself and, therefore, cuts are an effective tool of budgetary consolidation although they are harmful for the economy. The third group includes France, Greece, and Ireland where public investment just pays for itself and therefore cuts are not an effective way of achieving long-term budgetary consolidation and are harmful for the economy. Finally, the fourth group includes Germany and Italy, where public investment more than pays for itself and, therefore, cuts are not only harmful for the economy but also counterproductive from a budgetary perspective.”
Alfredo Marvao Pereira & Fatima Pinho, 2006 “Public Investment, Economic Performance and Budgetary Consolidation: VAR Evidence for the 12 Euro Countries”, College of William and Mary, no. 40.
Note this paper is published before the GFC.
Increase in taxation is needed if a new perpetual spending item is introduced which its fiscal multiplier is not large enough for the spending to “pay for itself”. Why this is the case is well explained in Professor Quiggin’s post “Money for nothing?” https://johnquiggin.com/2011/10/18/money-for-nothing/.
Ikonoclast @9, in the first instance a review article in the latest edition of Quadrant which, amongst other things, makes a critical references to the policies and activities of the German Greens in the 1960s, even though the German Greens only came into existence in 1980.
And the article describes Baudrillard as a “neo-Marxist”.
@Paul Norton
More proof of the conspiracy.
Paul, the article was in the latest Quadrant. Surely you don’t need parse the terminology to conclude that it’s probably rubbish. 😉
Tim, this is true.
@Newtownian
A non farmer
Sorry Newtownian, my apologies.
It was actually that ‘Ben’ who mentioned the bubbles..
Nothing changes though.
The reivers in this society manipulate ‘bubbles’ and the sinusoidal wave form of boom and bust in order to take advantage of whatever hint of ‘insider knowledge’ they might glean from their equally corrupt mates.
I pause here to make it clear in my mind before I say more.
Okay. Out there countless millions are doing their best to make themselves a life.
Most subsist from week to week or from day to day.
Many perish in that endeavour.
Meanwhile the bludgers at the top, every day, piss more up against the bar urinal than most of the poor earn in a month.
And they do that by manipulating the markets.
And all the time these oxygen thieves are doing that – the dimbulbs are actually acting against their own interests.
Why so?
‘Cause they don’t give a continental. ‘Cause they are as completely stupid as any mob of outlaws. ‘Cos their psychopathic attitude (or is that non-attitude) holds no place in their psychopathy, in any way, manner, or degree for the fate; not even for their own brethren – nor their sisterhood.
Newtownian –
Do you honestly believe there will be any return for all those credits the proletariat have been forced to pay in to some nefarious scheme they have absolutely no contact with or control over – nor oversight?
I mean, for all too many years they’ve been denied a ‘theoretical’ percentage of their miserable wages.
It has ‘theoretically’ been paid into something quite ethereal.
None of those poor bludgers will ever see any of that.
Find some way of proving otherwise.
Give us a break, please, and prove otherwise.
@Senexx
They seem to want me to sign up. I never sign up. Like Groucho Marx said “I wouldn’t want to belong to any club that would accept people like me.”
Late stage capitalism is really moving into surreal territory now. Max Keiser is a bit of a showman and a ratbag but his rants raise some serious issues. This is all going to end in tears (and blood) for billions.
http://www.maxkeiser.com/2013/05/the-monarchs-of-money/
@Sancho
I’d like to share this optimism.
What would be your top three examples to support that comment?
I might add that Max Keiser seems to be a Silver Bug which I certainly don’t agree with. Commodity Money bugs are just as nutty as endless growth cornucopians and AGW deniers. Then again, with Max Keiser the Silver Bug thing just might be a send-up.
My analysis of the forces at work tells me that everything is unsustainable and will collapse. That is not a popular message. For most of my day each day, even I have to pretend it’s not true for practical purposes. It is essentially too big and too horrific to contemplate for long. That way lies madness.
@Ikonoclast
Why not? I imagine like half the planet you have a gmail account, perhaps half a dozen of them. Many do
On a different topic – one of the businesses the Coalition highlighted as endangered by the CPRS and Carbon Tax has changed it’s tune; it expects to reduce it’s emissions from 82,000 to 25,000 tonnes per annum by taking advantage of some of the financial assistance the scheme includes for upgrading plant that will reduce emissions and costs and, in the process, help position itself for the future.
From the Beaudesert Times article –
Thank you for sharing that link, as it is somewhat reassuring, that there are still conservative and prudent businesses out there who plan ‘in the long term’. The long arm and greedy fingers of the Murdocracy have obviously not reached the Beaudesert Times yet, eh?
@Ikonoclast
in your list icono.
liquidity?
probably way off beam but.
the amount of liquidity locked up and paying nothing into the societies it has garnered from seems to be a big part of what is happening.
taking from a society put in place by the efforts of those who preceded us and evading/avoiding/refusing to contribute in any way to maintain these societies by hiding massive amounts of liquidity held by private/corporate entities.
i read somewhere that a huge proportion of the worlds wealth is held by something like nineteen thousand individuals.
whether this is accurate or not is irrelevant in the face of the reality of a very small number of unaccountable and probably unknown individuals holding a disproportionate level of political power.
there is currently a world wide land aquisition happening.cash for land in huge quantities,Africa, Southeast Asia and even Europe .
the hidden political consequences of this is what we are living through.
models and ideologies don’t do anything but delineate small jigsaw pieces of the whole picture.
the liquidity is essentially stateless.
two cents worth.
i suppose it could be call
“strike action”
@MONTIE
Thanks for the comments which are interesting – my responses # in reply:
” Do you honestly believe there will be any return for all those credits the proletariat have been forced to pay in to some nefarious scheme they have absolutely no contact with or control over – nor oversight?”
# My own doubts were what prompted the question to the crowd and my curiosity about the wonderful world of self managed superannuation funds. (Is it my imagination that financial industry is adapting to our post 2008 scepticism or instead its my oversight and the current deluge of SMSF stuff has always been there???)
” I mean, for all too many years they’ve been denied a ‘theoretical’ percentage of their miserable wages. It has ‘theoretically’ been paid into something quite ethereal. None of those poor bludgers will ever see any of that. Find some way of proving otherwise. Give us a break, please, and prove otherwise. ”
# You lost me a bit there. I agree money is definitely ethereal or should I say non-corporeal. But its still real. An analogy? Ocean waves are real and powerful but they aren’t strictly speaking solid.
# 2008 has shown you can definitely lose depending on which super lotto you pick or are assigned to which I think was your point. The excuse given seems to be we are all responsible for our ‘investments’ and have to educate ourselves about the wonderful world of finance (i.e. we are to blame, no Goldman Sachs). In this regard have a look at https://www.vivomiles.com/for.schools.php . The bigger plan (conspiracy?) seems to be to turn the next generation into petit bourgeois rentier capitalists (= financially literate)
# Regarding super funds being real, as I understand it there is nothing except bureaucracy stopping anyone from transferring their super into a self managed fund which they control and in theory could split between say a small investment flat. Which seems to me pretty real.
But your point is still valid in that this only works if you have enough super to make it worthwhile. If you don’t (Your mug proletariat) you are stuck with an industry or retail fund and playing a transfer game which few do.
@A non Farmer
Ta ANF – spoken like a good bolshie. But as old Karl said “Philosophers describe the world, the point is to change it” presumably by analysing what is going on.
Now K. Marx did this by identifying big interest groups such as the proletariat and the petite bourgeoisie (though he apparently didn’t use the expression rentier capitalists) as a prelude to understanding how the interacted. This suggests we should do the same and not be locked into his initial analyses, useful as they were.
The way things are going, the superannuation system seems to be creating a new group of sorts – (‘retiree’) petite rentier capitalists comprising all of us directly of by default whose notionally self controlled pension/income is dependent on how much they can screw out of the working young and old here and abroad.
@Tom
Tks for the insights. Useful.
“Depending on the circumstances, major infrastructure investment can “pay for itself” which means it does not need to be funded with an increase in taxation or money printing.”
I agree with you on principle but the main sticking point seems to be this ‘Depending’. PV looks like it is doing that after an initial kick start – especially with rising electricity prices, PV economics having become favorable and us living in a good climate.
What worries me though is that many other essential changes will have a lot more trouble getting off the ground or be still born. The electric car is one current well known example where to really be viable you need a massive network of cables and charging to make it more than inner city/boutique (whether we should all have private cars is a different matter).
As a different example we should be investing in tighter phosphorus recycling now while the stuff is relatively abundant and cheap and high grade. Unfortunately there is no non-dubious financial mechanism I am aware of for investing say superannuation and getting a short to medium term benefits (=pension).
It would be different if we could internalise real future costs of very expensive fuel and fertiliser. But current economics doesn’t let us do that. And then there is the problem of trade rules.
@Newtownian
You are quite right that a new class of “petite rentier capitalists” has been created by the superannuation industry. They are currently quite a powerful voting block and becoming more so. People talk of the “grey vote” but they grey vote divides into at least three blocs in my opinion;
1. Self-funded retirees with private superannuation (petit (little) rentier capitalists);
2. Retirees on government defined benefit schemes (“sinecure” retirees);
3. Pensioners (old age pension).
Of course, there are some overlaps between these groups. As a disclosure point, I am a “sinecure” retiree. The governments (federal, state and local) are moving or have moved from offering defined benefit schemes to forcing their employers into market linked schemes (private super in essence). So sincure retirees are being phased out.
Also, as part of the neoliberal project to break up unions and worker power, many workers are now no longer “workers” but self-employed. Thus they become trades-persons, contractors, sub-contractors and so on. So as well as the petit rentier capitalists we now have the petit entrepreneurs running their “business of one”. They become petit capitalists as soon as they employ staff (other than the wife – usually – who answers the non-mobile phone number, cooks, cleans, shops, washes, gardens, housekeeps, raises the kids and does the books, tax returns and records).
All of these people have been made to feel and believe that they are capitalists, part of the chosen class and their fortunes can rise for ever in an unlimited world of opportunity. Soon the crunch will come, when the siphoning of money right to the top of the mega-capitalist class is too great and the shortage of resources at the start of the production chain is too severe, for the overall system to continue. Be prepared for more and more countries to start looking like Syria. That’s what it will turn into. Probably, the most well-ordered countries with strong, effective government and a modicum of resources remaining can avoid that extreme fate. But more than half the globe will certainly collapse.
All
Something more on these lines (serendipity?).
http://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2013/05/excess-german-savings-not-thrift-caused-the-european-crisis.html
The thesis of this article is in part that excess savings in Germany (only marginally different reasons than here in Oz) caused the current problems which are feeding back to us in the wildly fluctuating value of different investment sectors. The article is somewhat academic but very readable.
The central point is ‘savings’ or ‘super’ have to go somewhere – and in system without real productive growth they in effect redistribute wealth. The article is about how Germany started saving in response to current account problems (Keating banana republics anyone?) and this money had to go somewhere which created the credit bubble and destabilized Europe.
Which is what Australian super seems to me to have been doing too. The solution given though is productive growth – which given ecological sustainability needs is the last thing the planet needs. 1st Solution gets a nice bottle of socialist chardonnay.
@Ikonoclast
Talk about the contradictions of capitalism.
Can I say I think we are in perceptual harmony – with the difference that I am on the verge of entering category 1.. So clearly I am one of these emerging microcapitalists – and it is putting me on the horns of a dilemma – go along with the system and be fat and happy on the way to the falls, be self sacrificing leaving someone else to go laughing to the bank – or take a non existent third way (Blair humbug).
The emerging perspective is interesting to say the least. But consider – where will the government (and as interestingly ‘quangos’ such as universities) get the funds for sinecures and pensions from in the future if not by raising taxes on super.
The one saving for sinecures is that politicians on the same arrangements will be loathe to lose them so you are probably safe for the moment.
As to the environment being increasingly degraded well….. the question of what ‘ethical investments’ really constitutes would make a good request for another day (JQ are you listening from the ether?). Is this really an oxymoron like military intelligence, democratic capitalism or green growth?
@Newtownian
I don’t think any punters, except maybe the super rich, are safe. Market linked super can fail and government pensions and defined benefits can be wound back. Since real goods will be less abundant in future (due to resource depletion and over-population) there are two basic ways the financial system can adjust or be adjusted by the manipulators. These are debt defaults, where money is wiped out of existence and inflation where the existing money chases less and less goods. Of course, a combination of the two is possible too. Our fortnightly super payments could halve and prices at the supermarket could double. And in a short span too, maybe five years although that five years might not start just yet.
As for money in banks, all banks can fail except state owned banks. And any government could do what Cyprus planned; a haircut of all depositors. Indeed, Canada is preparing such legislation now. Government bonds, issued by relatively safe, stable governments with their own full currency sovereignty, might be the only safe place for cash. Note, I said “might be”.
I take, or attempt to take, a philosphical view. Human life on this planet has rarely been secure. Our period of relative security has been the exception, not the rule. Things will return soon to the historical norm. As Hobbes said, albeit of a time before civilization;
“… where every man is Enemy to every man; the same is consequent to the time, wherein men live without other security, than what their own strength, and their own invention shall furnish them withall. In such condition, there is no place for Industry; because the fruit thereof is uncertain; and consequently no Culture of the Earth; no Navigation, nor use of the commodities that may be imported by Sea; no commodious Building; no Instruments of moving, and removing such things as require much force; no Knowledge of the face of the Earth; no account of Time; no Arts; no Letters; no Society; and which is worst of all, continuall feare, and danger of violent death; And the life of man, solitary, poore, nasty, brutish, and short.”
@Ikonoclast
Both sides of politics would like to reduce numbers of “contractors” due to loss of PAYE.
Dear May,
What you say at #29 about the consolidation of wealth into only a few hands is true.
Of course much of what they control is nothing but zeros on paper and their control of a fair amount of physical assets also owned by them by way of other pieces of paper managed by the sort of sycophants willing to play their game.
All a bit of a scream if you take the time to think about it.
Writing and the keeping of records in the dim-dark past – the ancient civilizations of the two rivers and along the Nile, etc.
The scribes, the priests, noble houses and dynasties.
And all these years later we are all still mug enough to keep falling for the same old disreputable, ultimately scurrilous, destructive games.
Of course it is difficult to organize the rabble to come up with a better alternative to the masses being subsumed to the rule of greed.
But, hey, the oligarchy aren’t doing a very good job either.
Everyone seems to acknowledge a near future – too many people and not enough resources.
Best way to demonstrate that is to arc up ‘Google Maps’ and fly over some parts of the world.
Room quite definitely is running out for, say, rifle ranges or flying fields for model aeroplanes.
Meanwhile, as you say, some small klatch of ‘faceless men and women’ are buying up big time all over the place (including in Australia) and I’m damned sure that their chief interest ain’t into plinking with their .22 or flying their toy plane without interruption.
So what ARE they up to?
In my view they are establishing a new regime. As May mentions it is about the destruction of Nation States as quickly, quietly and efficiently as they might manage.
AND they are doing that with the gazillions of credits withheld from all you poor overworked punters for all your working lives.
In closing permit me to say – some years ago just before they ‘retired’ me – a defence paper (for comment) was sent to me.
The scenario at question was (from memory) about the escalation of stateless terrorism (or the destruction of nation states) being financed by exactly the sort of thing being discussed here.
In other words, in about 2002/3, our defence establishment had identified, as a priority, the need to achieve some level of forward planning enabling the Commonwealth of Australia to nip that sort of stuff neatly in the bud.
Going by recent news, they’ve dipped out Big Time!
Hobbes eh? In 2009 Lord Robert May, past President of the Royal Society in an interview with Robyn Williams on RN:
“… a fascinating meta level evolutionary question of is the trajectory we’re on, which doesn’t look very hopeful at the moment, it looks like a trajectory that at best is going to go to the world of the cult movie Blade Runner and more likely to Mad Max. Is that a trajectory that any inhabited planet gets as it gradually begins to understand the world, use that mastery to do well intentioned things (everybody lives longer, everybody has more energy subsidies, life gets better and better) but all of a sudden you realise it’s just out of control and there are more people than the planet can sustain, putting a footprint on it that’s unsustainable…is what we’re doing an inevitable part of evolution on an inhabited planet or are we aberrant?”
Hobbes, Blade Runner, Mad Max, and given yesterdays big twister in Oklahoma, may as well add Frank Herbert’s Dune as well.
Hello Ootz.
Leave Hobbes out of it.
His mate Calvin loves his tiger very much.
http://bestofcalvinandhobbes.com/
And the trajectory you mention?
More of a screaming terminal crash.
Bladerunner?
Or the more simple form of anarchy – ‘Clockwork Orange’?
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0066921/
It is all happening out there in a street near you.
Question is, Why?
Could the concept of ‘divide and conquer’ have something to do with it?
Or could it be that the oligarchy have it right?
That the peasantry simply cannot act in their own best interests?
If you want to investigate that scenario – I’d suggest getting hold of a few of the more esoteric novels written by one Michael Moorcock.
Going back to movies – try out ‘Zardoz’
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0070948/
‘Cos, buddy, we are coming far too close to that scenario than we want to contemplate.
Just my fifty cents worth – but a world of cogitation for you if you chase up my poor suggestions.
@Ootz
“any inhabited planet”? Is Lord May saying he has experience with other inhabited planets? He’s not one of those reptilians, is he?
Lord May is Australian, Tim, so it’s unlikely.
2 or 3 people have mentioned the sleepwalking toward a cliff phenomena evident now on a mass scale . They weren’t saying it is ,but, Im sure thats not a new thing . Its an essential part of being human -in order to live each day in the face of our own death .We are all very good at putting impending doom out of our minds . Its not remarkable . Sleepers must eventually wake , simple things like high petrol prices will do it on a mass scale .
but i didn’t say anything about the United Nations at all.
fascinating.
and as for going by the “news”.
which bit of “news” are we talking about here?
a small klatch?
possibly,possibly,if the nineteen thousand number is correct,then that doesn’t even amount to the population of a small town in India or China.
and as for the area of control being nothing but “zeros on paper”?
i beg to differ.
what is not done, what is held back through lack of available resources, is a continuing problem and reality,due to liquidity not flowing to areas of neccessity.
it looks very much like a “capital strike”
if sovereign states throughout the world had not increased liquidity,an even larger transfer of assets would have occurred from the time of the “GFC”until now.
a depression is after all,the means by which massive wealth transfers occur.
nobody tracks the beneficiaries of depressions,they are to busy counting the cost,trying to figure out how it happened and trying to make sure it doesn’t happen again.
(but it would be kinda interesting to see who came up trumps in the “South Sea” bubble,who lucked out from the “Tulip Mania”,who cleaned up in the “Great Depression”.)
efforts by sovereign states to retrieve liquidity parked (legally or illegally)beyond the reach and use of sovereign states is a subject of concern and the intent to release this liquidity more than just a conversation.
the undeniable (as long as deniability could be maintained it was) appearance of historically active stateless entities claiming the sovereignty of private property over and above the sovereignty of countries from which they obtain their profits has occurred.
the above may be just bulldust but in a world of secrets and lies, who knows?
repent the end is nigh?
or
repent!
the end is nigh.
Newtonian @ 36 “.. the question of what ‘ethical investments’ really constitutes would make a good request for another day”
Given that Bill McGibben is on LateLine to night, what would it take for a notable Australian Super Fun board to become ‘ethical’ and decide to start divest carbon?
I think the ethical super funds have been out performing the couldn’t care less ones .
May – lets hope the end is ‘high’ not ‘nigh’ – no need to repent .
I’d like to have a vote here on wether the future will be Mad Max or Bladerunner ! Maybe some parts of the world will be one and some regions the other .Its a bit like that now -that would be an extension of the current situation . I’m worried about the ability of citizens of Western nations to pull together if sudden crises comes . Our first instinct is to fear others . Americans will shoot each other until the bullets run out . Some countries will do much better as they still have fresh memory of working together in crisis . Golden Dawn in Greece and the English Defence League look scarily similar to the Nazi s in pre war Germany .
“I think the ethical super funds have been out performing the couldn’t care less ones”
No hard figures to hand, but my understanding is the former have tanked hard compared to the latter.