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Musings Report 2018-4 1-27-18 Are We on the Edge of Profound Social Disorder?
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For those who are new to the Musings reports: they are basically a glimpse into my notebook, the unfiltered swamp where I organize future themes, sort through the dozens of stories and links submitted by readers, refine my own research and start connecting dots which appear later in the blog or in my books. As always, I hope the Musings spark new appraisals and insights. Thank you for supporting the site and for inviting me into your circle of correspondents.
Welcome to January's MUS (Margins of the Unfiltered Swamp)
The last Musings of the month is a free-form exploration of the reaches of the fecund swamp that is the source of the blog, Musings and my books.
Are We on the Edge of Profound Social Disorder?
We are in a very peculiar point in history. On the one hand, we're reassured that all is well because Every One of the World’s Big Economies Is Now Growing (NYT).
Yet at the same time, we read that "Something Is Very Wrong With The Global Economy": Richest 1% Made 82% Of Global Wealth In 2017 and are asked, Can the World Survive a Winner-Take-All Global Economy?
Even the authors of the rah-rah NY Times piece on the wonderfulness of the global economy expressed concern that this "growth" may not be distributed any more equally than the previous 10 years of "recovery."
We already know absolutely nothing will change because neither the inputs no feedback loops in the global economy have changed. As Donella Meadows explained in her seminal paper Leverage Points: Places to Intervene in a System, the only ways to change a system's output (in this case, widening income and wealth inequality) is to change the inputs or add a new feedback loop.
The status quo has not changed the inputs or added any new feedback loops, so the output of the system--extremes of widening income and wealth inequality--cannot possibly change.
The word "precariat" describes much of the modern working class--those in the less skilled sectors of the gig economy, informal/black market economy or in the traditional corporate-employment economy but with irregular work hours and little in the way of benefits.
Since the corporate media (MSM) is largely a haven for well-educated bourgeois with some family wealth and upper-middle class social circles, media coverage of the slow drip of financial anxiety in the lives of precariats is sparse. If you talk to people working in the lower pay service sector, you get a snapshot of a great many people living paycheck to paycheck, worrying about any unexpected expense (car repair, dental work, etc.) and mundane things that never worry a "protected" upper middle class employee like scraping up the cash to buy their child a new pair of shoes for his/her birthday.
If we compare this reality with financiers and their worker bees skimming millions from what Adam Taggart calls "the river of money" (mostly credit, of course), we have to wonder why the US hasn't already exploded in class warfare.
The fuse is lit, as "fixes" like Universal Basic Income (UBI) that are embraced by the likes of Mark Zuckerberg don't actually re-enfranchise precariats, i.e. offer a real stake in the nation's productive capital. As as result, they're just Band-Aids over a sucking chest wound.
Much of my work is focused on explaining the intrinsic limits of the two "solutions" offered by conventional ideologies, think tanks, pundits, etc.: the market (i.e. the neoliberal fix for everything) and the state (government can fix everything). As I have explained, our problems are now exacerbated by markets and centralized power, not fixed by these dynamics.
I've endeavored to lay out a Third System that is decentralized, democratic and not dependent on either the financialized, globalized marketplace or the centralized Savior State.
The core dynamic of my system is the universal opportunity to acquire productive capital in all its forms. The core dynamic driving the current extremes of wealth/income inequality is the system's rewards go almost exclusively to the existing owners of capital. The conventional solutions ("tax the robots," UBI, more job training, etc.) don't actually change the reward structure or the opportunity to acquire capital. This is why they have failed and why they cannot do anything but fail: they don't grasp the problem and they don't actually change any inputs, incentives or add new feedback loops.
There are solutions, but they lie beyond the status quo of stale, failed ideologies that have lost touch with the real economy and those being left behind by a system that radically favors owners of capital and those closest to central bank credit spigots. We can do better, and if we don't, the only possible output of such an unequal system is profound social disorder.
From Left Field
Fed Up With Drug Companies, Hospitals Decide to Start Their Own -- an excellent idea...
Jerry Z. Muller on The Tyranny of Metrics -- one of my favorite topics...
There Is More Than One Opioid Crisis -- sharp analysis...
The concentration of monopoly power in the hands of a handful of employers in local labor markets -- this is an under-reported/analyzed topic...
AI is coming. Here are 5 ways to win when it arrives -- not sure "win" is the right word...
Mapping the blockchain project ecosystem -- excellent overview... much more here than bitcoin....
A New, New Hope: Luke Skywalker and the Soul of Baby Boomer Men -- a bit histrionic in places but makes some thoughtful points about generational differences...
Are Aliens Plentiful, But We’re Just Missing Them? -- got me thinking, worth a read...
Macro Blockchain #1: The End of Aggregation Theory -- all about cutting out the middlemen...
Can the World Survive a Winner-Take-All Global Economy? -- short answer: no.
When Japanese People Die, Their Land Goes Into Purgatory -- never knew this...
The Literary Prize for the Refusal of Literary Prizes -- Jean-Paul Sartre famously refused the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1964; nobody has refused the prize named for him...
"When I am working on a problem, I never think about beauty... but when I have finished, if the solution is not beautiful, I know it is wrong." R. Buckminster Fuller
Thanks for reading--
charles |
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