I want to address the people who are making wise cracks about socialism and irresponsible homeowners who got bad mortgages, who have children they "can't afford," and those who didn't "prepare themselves" for the "new economy" (whatever that was).
Stop being part of the problem, and prepare to start being part of the solution.
First of all, I am sick of hearing people (mostly conservatives) who state that people do not have a right to own a home, have children etc.
You are dead wrong and that is, as I've pointed out, one of the problems with this phony and mean spirited "free market" "capitalism" that has ruined this country and much of the western economies.
True capitalism arose from agrarian societies where people built their own shelters and supplied their own food, and had as many children as the food supply could support.
I have explained that human beings arose and developed civilization and genuine capitalism via understanding that there is a natural expectation that one can create for one's self shelter, food and a family.
Thus any capitalism that does not realize that every human has a right to basic shelter, food and the ability to have unrestricted children (not as "economic options") is not genuine capitalism.
This does not mean that everyone is entitled to a McMansion. But it is not the fault of the people when society herds them so that that is the only choice that they have.
At this point in so called civilization this country at the very least should have been overflowing with cheap homes and apartments, and jobs that allow everyone to have shelter, whether a home or an apartment. Likewise children should have been recognized as a human right and a treasure, not as pawns in the abortion ping pong video game.
I am still shocked to my very core of being at where this country has gone. There is no excuse that there is not an abundance of good jobs, that while paying modest wages are more than sufficient for one person to comfortably afford housing and to support a family.
There is NO EXCUSE for this disaster that is ongoing. The very least conservatives and well paid liberals can do is shut the F*** up, while you are pulling in your very undeserved salaries living in your McMansions that you do not deserve at all.
I could reach through this screen and punch in the face the next fat ass "expert" behind a microphone that bleats that people do not have a right to a home. F*** YOU.
I just read that a man in Ohio, a carpenter, lost his job, so he killed his wife (who had reduced hours at a senior home) and his son, and then himself.
HOW CAN ANY OF YOU LOOK AT YOURSELVES IN THE MIRROR WITHOUT SHAME?
If you are not going to help than at least shut up and be grateful for what you have, especially you miserable ignorant media moron asshats.
Showing posts with label Housing. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Housing. Show all posts
Wednesday, February 18, 2009
Saturday, November 1, 2008
Capitalism/Financial crisis tutorial Part 16
Yes, I'm still thinking about economics and ways to continue providing good information via these tutorials! This evening I want to restate and amplify a crucial problem with capitalism as it is practiced today. I've already offered those thoughts, but want to explain it again from a different slant and with more supportive information.
The basic problem with capitalism is that it veered away from its understanding that subsistence needs (food, clothing and shelter, to put at its basic definition, though that list increases as society requires more sophisticated basic needs for survival, such as education, health care and transportation) must be easily available and at its most basic level, extremely affordable. This is because genuine capitalism never provided the subsistence part of what humanity needs. Genuine capitalism is the way to generate income from surplus. (Be sure to read my previous tutorials for explanation of subsistence and surplus). Capitalism never was the provider of subsistence, since for most of human history that was obtained by human day to day activity, where people built their own homes, grew their own food, herded their own animals, used animals for transportation, fed their animals by grazing on free range, and made their own clothes. Capitalism developed on top of that subsistence foundation; capitalism never provided it. Yet now capitalism MUST provide subsistence because as the population increased and society progressed, obviously people no longer live as individual subsistence level providers in most of the world. So true capitalism must provide a service and capacity that was not part of its origination. Thus, to implement true capitalism and provide for the greater good, one has to continually remind one's self that capitalism should not assume that people have a capacity for self sufficiency that is not in truth provided. For example, even the most earnest independent person could not live outside of capitalism and provide their subsistence needs. They could not build a house with their own hands, grow their own food, hitch up their horse to go to town, barter for education or health care for their children, and essentially live as our ancestors have, yet at the modern standard of living. People would rapidly fall afoul of every bureaucratic and monetary nightmare if they tried (zoning boards? documentation requirements? how to afford the building materials? inability to raise their own food?). I mean, it's silly, but I have to walk you through that to realize that capitalism was build "on top of" a society that was already providing subsistence (as rudimentary and unsatisfactory as it was) to the population. Capitalism became the way that the subsistence person, the corn farmer I use throughout these tutorials, take the surplus of their corn and by selling it on the free market, gain cash to purchase what they cannot provide for themselves.
So how did we get here from the birth of capitalism? We've already discussed the birth of capitalism itself, being the farmer who raises enough for his family plus surplus to take to market and sell for cash. The second step in social and economic progress was called "specialization." That meant that instead of every family making their own clothes, a person or family might "specialize" in making more clothes than they need for their own family, thus selling the rest for cash. Instead of every man knowing how to repair his plow, for example, trades developed such as blacksmiths, where, for cash, they provide specialized service to those who used to need to have the "know how" individually or within family. Trades and guilds developed (both in the west and in the middle east areas, by the way), where specialists, such as gold smiths or tanners, organized to protect their knowledge, ensure a quality of service, and also train the next generation of apprentices. And then the next stage was the industrial revolution, where the development of machinery freed humans from incredibly labor intensive work that subsistence products required. This, then, transformed much of the economy from basic subsistence of individual and family self providers to having a "job" with a paycheck, where the paycheck at first supplemented but eventually became the only means to obtain subsistence needs.
Simply put, true capitalism does not exist without moderation and "good will." Because capitalism came about on top of the existing base of self sufficient subsistence, which no longer exists in modern society, capitalism cannot succeed without a market ethics of good will, moderation and benevolent intention that supplies the free market subsistence sector of the economy. The market can accommodate (and would indeed adjust to and deal with) a small number of capitalists who seek only to "make a killing." But if everyone shares that ethos, then capitalism must, by definition, fail. Again, I'm not arguing for lower standards of living and certainly not for price fixing or "income redistribution." Heavens no! That only adds gasoline to the fire. The basic problems are that people have become capitalist rogue warriors, who have taken their eyes off the road, using tunnel vision to drain and concentrate wealth rather than focus on keeping high quality product and high quality jobs available from decade to decade without price increases. We don't have enough people who want to create a genuine commodity business (such as building homes) whose objective is to give say twenty people a full time job and to earn a reasonable "good" living for themselves. Even if people still feel that way, everyone is on the treadmill now and they quickly find they can't follow their vision. The treadmill is the siphoning of both jobs and wealth from the economy as a whole by increasing prices for the "essentials" while decreasing jobs. If capitalism was allowed to work the way it really should, someone should be able to go anywhere in this country and find a good quality $40,000 home to purchase, and find employment or other means of entrepreneurial cash raising to afford all that is now required for subsistence. Trust me, if I had been building homes the past thirty five years of my working life, things would be a lot different than they are now. The house I sold for $40,000 thirty years ago would still be available for $40,000 today, but with more features and safety, not less. I sure would not be charging $160,000 for a house that would have sold for $40,000 thirty years ago, and I'd not be building houses that force people into onerous debt and unending job/unemployment stress. This is just one example. Somehow people have convinced themselves that capitalism means to jack up needs, jack up prices, jack up profit, all in a kind of market warfare where people chase after money just to grab as much of it as they can for themselves. Capitalism, true capitalism, cannot survive and work properly when everyone has that mindset. I've seen this coming for thirty years now and it is a very big shame, because it certainly is not the fault of capitalism, but its been warped beyond recognition.
I hope you find this helpful, if not cheerful, ha. That's a "ha" of sympathy, not of genuine mirth. I've not felt mirth for a long, long time. I'm even more stressed, in some ways, than everyone else, because I've seen all the horrible mistakes as they are first occurring, knowing the dire outcomes in advance, and dreading them. It's not the fault of capitalism itself, or of Democrats, or Republicans, of conservatives or of liberals. It is the fault of the triumph of greed and immaturity, combined with a darkening attitude toward life, community and family, which then renders many people to not feel emotionally invested in a shared optimistic future, which genuine capitalism requires.
The basic problem with capitalism is that it veered away from its understanding that subsistence needs (food, clothing and shelter, to put at its basic definition, though that list increases as society requires more sophisticated basic needs for survival, such as education, health care and transportation) must be easily available and at its most basic level, extremely affordable. This is because genuine capitalism never provided the subsistence part of what humanity needs. Genuine capitalism is the way to generate income from surplus. (Be sure to read my previous tutorials for explanation of subsistence and surplus). Capitalism never was the provider of subsistence, since for most of human history that was obtained by human day to day activity, where people built their own homes, grew their own food, herded their own animals, used animals for transportation, fed their animals by grazing on free range, and made their own clothes. Capitalism developed on top of that subsistence foundation; capitalism never provided it. Yet now capitalism MUST provide subsistence because as the population increased and society progressed, obviously people no longer live as individual subsistence level providers in most of the world. So true capitalism must provide a service and capacity that was not part of its origination. Thus, to implement true capitalism and provide for the greater good, one has to continually remind one's self that capitalism should not assume that people have a capacity for self sufficiency that is not in truth provided. For example, even the most earnest independent person could not live outside of capitalism and provide their subsistence needs. They could not build a house with their own hands, grow their own food, hitch up their horse to go to town, barter for education or health care for their children, and essentially live as our ancestors have, yet at the modern standard of living. People would rapidly fall afoul of every bureaucratic and monetary nightmare if they tried (zoning boards? documentation requirements? how to afford the building materials? inability to raise their own food?). I mean, it's silly, but I have to walk you through that to realize that capitalism was build "on top of" a society that was already providing subsistence (as rudimentary and unsatisfactory as it was) to the population. Capitalism became the way that the subsistence person, the corn farmer I use throughout these tutorials, take the surplus of their corn and by selling it on the free market, gain cash to purchase what they cannot provide for themselves.
So how did we get here from the birth of capitalism? We've already discussed the birth of capitalism itself, being the farmer who raises enough for his family plus surplus to take to market and sell for cash. The second step in social and economic progress was called "specialization." That meant that instead of every family making their own clothes, a person or family might "specialize" in making more clothes than they need for their own family, thus selling the rest for cash. Instead of every man knowing how to repair his plow, for example, trades developed such as blacksmiths, where, for cash, they provide specialized service to those who used to need to have the "know how" individually or within family. Trades and guilds developed (both in the west and in the middle east areas, by the way), where specialists, such as gold smiths or tanners, organized to protect their knowledge, ensure a quality of service, and also train the next generation of apprentices. And then the next stage was the industrial revolution, where the development of machinery freed humans from incredibly labor intensive work that subsistence products required. This, then, transformed much of the economy from basic subsistence of individual and family self providers to having a "job" with a paycheck, where the paycheck at first supplemented but eventually became the only means to obtain subsistence needs.
Do you begin to see the problem? Capitalism came into spontaneous being as surplus was developed by individuals, as a way to raise cash. It's not like someone thought up the idea of capitalism and invented it. The "free market" used to be, quite literally, the food market, where farmers took their surplus to obtain cash. So capitalism came about "in motion," just like jumping on a moving train. People were "getting by" without jobs, cash or free markets by providing their own housing, clothes and food, as poverty stricken and inadequate as it was for most of humanity through most of history. Capitalism is "what do you do with the surplus in order to obtain cash?" But what does a modernizing society do to provide for basic needs, the subsistence products? This was the final new development called "mass production."
The theory is that as humans progress in technology and efficiency, spurred by the industrial revolution (and then later by the science revolution, including development of tools such as computers), and there is a growing number of consumers, things that used to be created laboriously by hand one at a time became "mass produced" and hence cheap to obtain. And indeed, much of modern prosperity came from exactly this theory, which kind of retrofitted capitalism from the front end where it emerged (surplus crops in the free market for cash) to the back end, which is how to obtain subsistence needs. But it was only a partial success, and that is why we have a financial crisis today, and why the capitalism success story is uneven and fickle.
We do not have true capitalism anywhere in the world today because we have deviated from the natural development of capitalism provided subsistence product. One problem is that capitalism began to be defined as the effort by individuals and the companies they control to "make as much money as possible." It did not used to be this way. Sure, there were always incredibly wealthy plutocrats. But for much of the "youth" of capitalism, small businesses developed where all the capitalist entrepreneur wanted to do was "earn a good living." He or she did not think of themselves as defining their success as "making as much money as they can." It is simple mathematics. A population cannot increase its prosperity if every person is striving to make as much money as possible. While there is a moral tone to what I'm saying, I'm sticking to just arguing the mathematics. With the same amount of profit one can have either one person who makes a million dollars a year, or ten who make one hundred thousand a year, or twenty who make fifty thousand a year. I'm NOT talking about Communism or income redistribution. I'm explaining how capitalism used to work, right up until the past few decades. People used to not try to be "a millionaire" or to "make a killing." Thus there was a golden age of small businesses and the growing middle class, people who wanted to "do well," but did not compete to suck and isolate the most wealth as possible out of the system.
The second problem was the warping of the notion of "standard of living." Again, I'm not arguing for diminishing one's standard of living; I'm all in favor of increased standard of living and increased prosperity. But here's the problem. True capitalism brings better and better standard of living at the SAME or LOWER price, not higher. Capitalism became warped so that instead of a wider base of affordable and higher quality subsistence (for example housing) product being constantly on the market at the same or lower price, a forced march was imposed on society, one where one must earn more and more in order to pay for more and more "must haves," where one income is certainly not enough, and where prices only increase while quality diminishes. Again, this is not how it was in the beginning. There is nothing in capitalism itself that requires that wealth be increasingly concentrated among "winners" in the market, while prices for subsistence "must have" products only increase (and now we see the quality going down as prices go up as "corners are cut.")
Simply put, true capitalism does not exist without moderation and "good will." Because capitalism came about on top of the existing base of self sufficient subsistence, which no longer exists in modern society, capitalism cannot succeed without a market ethics of good will, moderation and benevolent intention that supplies the free market subsistence sector of the economy. The market can accommodate (and would indeed adjust to and deal with) a small number of capitalists who seek only to "make a killing." But if everyone shares that ethos, then capitalism must, by definition, fail. Again, I'm not arguing for lower standards of living and certainly not for price fixing or "income redistribution." Heavens no! That only adds gasoline to the fire. The basic problems are that people have become capitalist rogue warriors, who have taken their eyes off the road, using tunnel vision to drain and concentrate wealth rather than focus on keeping high quality product and high quality jobs available from decade to decade without price increases. We don't have enough people who want to create a genuine commodity business (such as building homes) whose objective is to give say twenty people a full time job and to earn a reasonable "good" living for themselves. Even if people still feel that way, everyone is on the treadmill now and they quickly find they can't follow their vision. The treadmill is the siphoning of both jobs and wealth from the economy as a whole by increasing prices for the "essentials" while decreasing jobs. If capitalism was allowed to work the way it really should, someone should be able to go anywhere in this country and find a good quality $40,000 home to purchase, and find employment or other means of entrepreneurial cash raising to afford all that is now required for subsistence. Trust me, if I had been building homes the past thirty five years of my working life, things would be a lot different than they are now. The house I sold for $40,000 thirty years ago would still be available for $40,000 today, but with more features and safety, not less. I sure would not be charging $160,000 for a house that would have sold for $40,000 thirty years ago, and I'd not be building houses that force people into onerous debt and unending job/unemployment stress. This is just one example. Somehow people have convinced themselves that capitalism means to jack up needs, jack up prices, jack up profit, all in a kind of market warfare where people chase after money just to grab as much of it as they can for themselves. Capitalism, true capitalism, cannot survive and work properly when everyone has that mindset. I've seen this coming for thirty years now and it is a very big shame, because it certainly is not the fault of capitalism, but its been warped beyond recognition.
I hope you find this helpful, if not cheerful, ha. That's a "ha" of sympathy, not of genuine mirth. I've not felt mirth for a long, long time. I'm even more stressed, in some ways, than everyone else, because I've seen all the horrible mistakes as they are first occurring, knowing the dire outcomes in advance, and dreading them. It's not the fault of capitalism itself, or of Democrats, or Republicans, of conservatives or of liberals. It is the fault of the triumph of greed and immaturity, combined with a darkening attitude toward life, community and family, which then renders many people to not feel emotionally invested in a shared optimistic future, which genuine capitalism requires.
Tuesday, October 7, 2008
Capitalism/Financial Crisis tutorial Part 9
I am now going to explain how the United States diverted from true capitalism, using the housing crisis as the example.
I've explained that true capitalism arose from individual grassroots farmers, who were the majority of humans for most of their history, who provided for themselves their own subsistence needs (food, clothing and shelter) and who sold surplus crops and livestock for cash.
In true capitalism human "progress" is used to ensure that all humans can always obtain plentiful and cheap subsistence needs, and that includes a home, whether an apartment or a house. The devices of capitalism are confined to usage on the "surplus" side of human needs.
This is why God forbids the charging of interest (called usury) in all of the sacred books, to the Jews, to Christians and to Muslims. This is so that profits are not made via the providing of the basic subsistence needs for life. It's not that God doesn't think people should earn profit from financial deals. God is saying that profits should not be made from the providing of basic subsistence needs and that instead, the capitalist motivation is that producers of housing and so forth are giving themselves jobs and a means of income for their families and workforce.
So let's break it down, comparing "before" and "after," with "before" being most of human history. Every person has a God given right to provide their family with food, clothing and shelter. "Jobs" as such did not exist. One's "job" was to grow food, tend herds and build shelters for one's self, for one's family, for one's extended family, and for one's community. You see examples of this in traditional developing nations (though the examples are often sad shacks in impoverished areas, such as Haiti) and also in the USA among the Quaker and similar communities. Quakers provide with their own hands their need for food, shelter and clothing, and they sell their surplus in the markets for cash. Thus Quakers are examples of pure capitalism as it evolved throughout human history. I bet that is a surprise for you to read.
Now, let's look at the "good" "after" before looking at the "bad" after. For a while the United States made the transition from the agricultural society that I've described above to an industry and financial markets based society, which is inevitable and can be done correctly. I'm far from saying that people need to stay "stuck" in "primitive" agricultural "survivalist" scenarios. No, far from it. I am explaining how capitalism was born in those agricultural subsistence/surplus distinctions in economic sectors and how to maintain true capitalism one must maintain those distinctions between subsistence and surplus sectors of the economy.
So the "good" after was the use of human "know how" and development of industry with its concepts and tools to do two things. One is to create "jobs," where one obtains a paycheck in return for productive work. What I mean is that people did not pay paychecks for people to sit around and be "muses" and throw pottery, hold seminars and paint paintings. The concept of a job came from the second development which was "specialization." Instead of everyone having to be a farmer or a carpenter, providing subsistence goods and products to their own family, people specialized in "jobs" in order to "mass produce" subsistence goods and services. Thus, instead of growing food for one's own family and taking the surplus to market to sell for cash, certain people became "professional farmers" who grew food as their "job" to take to the marketplace, the marketplace itself evolving into a series of "jobs" in "stores." Likewise, instead of building one's own home, one was able to buy a home using cash from your "job" that had been built by a professional "home builder."
The United States flourished in this transition. The key to this working is that there must be a job and subsistence product available to virtually everyone. This is because human "development" takes away the freedom of humans to self support. You see people instinctively know that that is a loss on both sides of the political spectrum, actually. You see, for example, the homeless recapture, but under miserable in intolerable conditions, the "staking out of a claim" of land and "building their own home." You also see "survivalists" have that mindset. Humans need and must have a way to sustain themselves that is NOT enslaved to surplus side capitalism and its machinations and tools. This is one of the things that Communists and socialists also instinctively realize, but they totally destroy that object with their fail philosophy that denigrates properly working capitalism. Genuine capitalism would have provided a good job with a good paycheck that allows everyone to obtain entry level good quality housing and other subsistence products. And the United States came very close to understanding this and being on the road to achieving it, but for several problems, which I call the "bad after."
First of all, the United States was hampered by segmentation of its society along racial lines. One cannot have true capitalism if entire segments of the society are denied equal access. So just as the Afro-American population yearned to be part of the American dream of capitalism that I described above (good paying job and access to all of subsistence good quality product, including housing), racist legacy and continuing racist mentality meant that it would not even occur to active "capitalists" to treat entire segments of the citizenry as being part of the great uplifting of capitalism. The urge to capitalism is incredibly strong and Afro Americans managed to achieve quite a bit of it, but hemmed in by the "redlining" not of housing but of racism. For example, they sent their kids to college, but to "black colleges." They worked at jobs, but at "black jobs." They achieved middle class objectives, such as producing many fine teachers, but they were confined, again, to their reduced form of capitalism in their constricted society. The Civil Rights movement did not come about because Afro-Americans wanted abortion, broken families, welfare, and the right to show rear end cracks in music videos. The Civil Rights movement came about because Afro-Americans of that generation fully understood and endorsed the correctness of genuine capitalism, and were desperate to be part of it.
If, back in the 1950's and 1960's, genuine capitalists broke the race barriers and set the example, rather than waiting for the government and society as a whole, the history of the United States would be vastly different today than it has become, sadly. All it would have taken is a few "Donald Trumps" for the middle class, who were color blind, to have changed human social history in the United States. The USA would not be as divided and self destructive as we see that it is now.
The second mistake was the infecting of the "subsistence" side of the capitalist equation with "surplus side" looting and river boat gambling. It's one thing to use usury and financial tools to loot and so forth when one is "money managing" the "surplus side" of the capitalist economy. It was a dire mistake for providers of subsistence product, however, to profit seek like horny dogs within the "subsistence" side of the economy. They destroyed the jobs side of the equation and they used subsistence products to gain wealth rather than to be the modest and moderate means of "making a living" for themselves and their family.
Here's an example. My brother graduated from college in the early 1960's. He married and got a good job. They moved into an apartment that we in the family thought was "fancy" and "upscale," marveling that they could afford it. I don't remember what it cost but it was cheap. Anyone with a decent job could have an easily affordable apartment or rental unit in a home. In fact, that was part of the building boom, because with many jobs many people needed housing to start their family. In a very short amount of time they bought their first house, which I saw being built, as it was new in a housing development. It cost $17,000.
In TRUE capitalism, a new couple starting out should be able to do exactly the same thing as my brother and his wife paying the exact same price, pretty much. Yep, you heard me. Inflation is the death of capitalism and there is no excuse for it. I should be able to walk out of my apartment and get a job that is good and pays sufficient for me to get an apartment at the rate that they paid (certainly less than the $700 I must pay now) and also buy a house near my job for $17,000. For thousands of years humans lived off of the land, providing with their own hands, and paying in gold or silver, whose value was unchanging and never manipulated, when there was a need for cash. "The value of gold" itself did not go "up and down" when true capitalism was developed. Sure, a gold coin could buy different amounts of goods at different locations during different circumstances. But there was no mentality that "as time goes on jobs become scarcer and things become more expensive." That is suicidal insanity, and that's the economy we in the USA, and dragging many along with us, live in in this world today.
Genuine and moral capitalism would have meant that there were always many capitalists who build affordable housing at the same prices it has always been available for AND who provided jobs that pay sufficiently to meet all subsistence needs. The government would not have needed to price fix or manipulate for this to happen: that is the genuine beauty of capitalism as it truly was meant to be, it would have happened just as it started to develop, but was hijacked and polluted before it was established.
It is proof of one of the great scandals that anyone with an education knows that over time, humans know how to provide the same product faster and cheaper, and better quality, than even just a few years before. Thus, baseline good homes should have been consistently available at the same price throughout the past forty years. As time goes by people value add and do things better and faster in the same amount of time, not get more incompetent, greedy and stupid. If a house build in the 1960's sold for $17,000 then obviously that house could have been built even faster, cheaper and with more features for that same $17,000 in 1980 or the year 2000! But Americans brainwashed themselves. They let jobs be destroyed, they allowed greed to infect all segments of society, and they were trained to "expect" "upward mobility" without understanding how that actually takes place. And so we arrived in a society where the mantra, the chant, of both "liberals" and "conservatives" is that people "pay what the market will bear."
Look at the hard lesson you all have learned about how oil prices infiltrate and inflate prices of everything everywhere. In a true capitalist society we would have had a broad secure foundation of many good paying basic jobs whose paycheck would allow the purchase of that $17,000 home or $200 per month apartment. We would have ridden through gas prices more serenely because the subsistence base of the capitalist economy would have been secure. Instead, prices of everything was jacked up over the past thirty years because "surplus" risks were taken with subsistence products in order to fill the pockets of looters. And the looters are not just the banks and hedge fund managers. Everyone bought into the myth of "upward mobility" but built on sand castles and air, by raising expectations, but kicking the foundation of capitalism (the subsistence side being available for all) right out from under the entire country. Your local banker, real estate dealer and everyone else is just as guilty and colluding as anyone else. Everyone has bought into this mutant view of "capitalism" that allows the "markets" to be manipulated, looted, and destructive of the equality of access of benefit to the broad base of people. I could go on and on with numerous examples, but this tires and enrages me so much that I'll leave it here for now. LOL. *sigh*
I think you get my point. Today should have been entirely different than it is now. There should have been a job and a home for every one who wanted and needed one, and it would have been there due to properly running capitalism, untainted by excessive greed and unreality. It really has become a disaster of incredible proportions, not just because of the crumbling of the fake infrastructure and individual financial disasters, but because of the loss of ethics that true capitalism that is moral actually imbues and instills. Much of the depravity and loss of morals and ethics in society comes from the hijacking of genuine moral capitalism, turning it into a mutant "market rules" greed machine, with warts.
I've explained that true capitalism arose from individual grassroots farmers, who were the majority of humans for most of their history, who provided for themselves their own subsistence needs (food, clothing and shelter) and who sold surplus crops and livestock for cash.
In true capitalism human "progress" is used to ensure that all humans can always obtain plentiful and cheap subsistence needs, and that includes a home, whether an apartment or a house. The devices of capitalism are confined to usage on the "surplus" side of human needs.
This is why God forbids the charging of interest (called usury) in all of the sacred books, to the Jews, to Christians and to Muslims. This is so that profits are not made via the providing of the basic subsistence needs for life. It's not that God doesn't think people should earn profit from financial deals. God is saying that profits should not be made from the providing of basic subsistence needs and that instead, the capitalist motivation is that producers of housing and so forth are giving themselves jobs and a means of income for their families and workforce.
So let's break it down, comparing "before" and "after," with "before" being most of human history. Every person has a God given right to provide their family with food, clothing and shelter. "Jobs" as such did not exist. One's "job" was to grow food, tend herds and build shelters for one's self, for one's family, for one's extended family, and for one's community. You see examples of this in traditional developing nations (though the examples are often sad shacks in impoverished areas, such as Haiti) and also in the USA among the Quaker and similar communities. Quakers provide with their own hands their need for food, shelter and clothing, and they sell their surplus in the markets for cash. Thus Quakers are examples of pure capitalism as it evolved throughout human history. I bet that is a surprise for you to read.
Now, let's look at the "good" "after" before looking at the "bad" after. For a while the United States made the transition from the agricultural society that I've described above to an industry and financial markets based society, which is inevitable and can be done correctly. I'm far from saying that people need to stay "stuck" in "primitive" agricultural "survivalist" scenarios. No, far from it. I am explaining how capitalism was born in those agricultural subsistence/surplus distinctions in economic sectors and how to maintain true capitalism one must maintain those distinctions between subsistence and surplus sectors of the economy.
So the "good" after was the use of human "know how" and development of industry with its concepts and tools to do two things. One is to create "jobs," where one obtains a paycheck in return for productive work. What I mean is that people did not pay paychecks for people to sit around and be "muses" and throw pottery, hold seminars and paint paintings. The concept of a job came from the second development which was "specialization." Instead of everyone having to be a farmer or a carpenter, providing subsistence goods and products to their own family, people specialized in "jobs" in order to "mass produce" subsistence goods and services. Thus, instead of growing food for one's own family and taking the surplus to market to sell for cash, certain people became "professional farmers" who grew food as their "job" to take to the marketplace, the marketplace itself evolving into a series of "jobs" in "stores." Likewise, instead of building one's own home, one was able to buy a home using cash from your "job" that had been built by a professional "home builder."
The United States flourished in this transition. The key to this working is that there must be a job and subsistence product available to virtually everyone. This is because human "development" takes away the freedom of humans to self support. You see people instinctively know that that is a loss on both sides of the political spectrum, actually. You see, for example, the homeless recapture, but under miserable in intolerable conditions, the "staking out of a claim" of land and "building their own home." You also see "survivalists" have that mindset. Humans need and must have a way to sustain themselves that is NOT enslaved to surplus side capitalism and its machinations and tools. This is one of the things that Communists and socialists also instinctively realize, but they totally destroy that object with their fail philosophy that denigrates properly working capitalism. Genuine capitalism would have provided a good job with a good paycheck that allows everyone to obtain entry level good quality housing and other subsistence products. And the United States came very close to understanding this and being on the road to achieving it, but for several problems, which I call the "bad after."
First of all, the United States was hampered by segmentation of its society along racial lines. One cannot have true capitalism if entire segments of the society are denied equal access. So just as the Afro-American population yearned to be part of the American dream of capitalism that I described above (good paying job and access to all of subsistence good quality product, including housing), racist legacy and continuing racist mentality meant that it would not even occur to active "capitalists" to treat entire segments of the citizenry as being part of the great uplifting of capitalism. The urge to capitalism is incredibly strong and Afro Americans managed to achieve quite a bit of it, but hemmed in by the "redlining" not of housing but of racism. For example, they sent their kids to college, but to "black colleges." They worked at jobs, but at "black jobs." They achieved middle class objectives, such as producing many fine teachers, but they were confined, again, to their reduced form of capitalism in their constricted society. The Civil Rights movement did not come about because Afro-Americans wanted abortion, broken families, welfare, and the right to show rear end cracks in music videos. The Civil Rights movement came about because Afro-Americans of that generation fully understood and endorsed the correctness of genuine capitalism, and were desperate to be part of it.
If, back in the 1950's and 1960's, genuine capitalists broke the race barriers and set the example, rather than waiting for the government and society as a whole, the history of the United States would be vastly different today than it has become, sadly. All it would have taken is a few "Donald Trumps" for the middle class, who were color blind, to have changed human social history in the United States. The USA would not be as divided and self destructive as we see that it is now.
The second mistake was the infecting of the "subsistence" side of the capitalist equation with "surplus side" looting and river boat gambling. It's one thing to use usury and financial tools to loot and so forth when one is "money managing" the "surplus side" of the capitalist economy. It was a dire mistake for providers of subsistence product, however, to profit seek like horny dogs within the "subsistence" side of the economy. They destroyed the jobs side of the equation and they used subsistence products to gain wealth rather than to be the modest and moderate means of "making a living" for themselves and their family.
Here's an example. My brother graduated from college in the early 1960's. He married and got a good job. They moved into an apartment that we in the family thought was "fancy" and "upscale," marveling that they could afford it. I don't remember what it cost but it was cheap. Anyone with a decent job could have an easily affordable apartment or rental unit in a home. In fact, that was part of the building boom, because with many jobs many people needed housing to start their family. In a very short amount of time they bought their first house, which I saw being built, as it was new in a housing development. It cost $17,000.
In TRUE capitalism, a new couple starting out should be able to do exactly the same thing as my brother and his wife paying the exact same price, pretty much. Yep, you heard me. Inflation is the death of capitalism and there is no excuse for it. I should be able to walk out of my apartment and get a job that is good and pays sufficient for me to get an apartment at the rate that they paid (certainly less than the $700 I must pay now) and also buy a house near my job for $17,000. For thousands of years humans lived off of the land, providing with their own hands, and paying in gold or silver, whose value was unchanging and never manipulated, when there was a need for cash. "The value of gold" itself did not go "up and down" when true capitalism was developed. Sure, a gold coin could buy different amounts of goods at different locations during different circumstances. But there was no mentality that "as time goes on jobs become scarcer and things become more expensive." That is suicidal insanity, and that's the economy we in the USA, and dragging many along with us, live in in this world today.
Genuine and moral capitalism would have meant that there were always many capitalists who build affordable housing at the same prices it has always been available for AND who provided jobs that pay sufficiently to meet all subsistence needs. The government would not have needed to price fix or manipulate for this to happen: that is the genuine beauty of capitalism as it truly was meant to be, it would have happened just as it started to develop, but was hijacked and polluted before it was established.
It is proof of one of the great scandals that anyone with an education knows that over time, humans know how to provide the same product faster and cheaper, and better quality, than even just a few years before. Thus, baseline good homes should have been consistently available at the same price throughout the past forty years. As time goes by people value add and do things better and faster in the same amount of time, not get more incompetent, greedy and stupid. If a house build in the 1960's sold for $17,000 then obviously that house could have been built even faster, cheaper and with more features for that same $17,000 in 1980 or the year 2000! But Americans brainwashed themselves. They let jobs be destroyed, they allowed greed to infect all segments of society, and they were trained to "expect" "upward mobility" without understanding how that actually takes place. And so we arrived in a society where the mantra, the chant, of both "liberals" and "conservatives" is that people "pay what the market will bear."
Look at the hard lesson you all have learned about how oil prices infiltrate and inflate prices of everything everywhere. In a true capitalist society we would have had a broad secure foundation of many good paying basic jobs whose paycheck would allow the purchase of that $17,000 home or $200 per month apartment. We would have ridden through gas prices more serenely because the subsistence base of the capitalist economy would have been secure. Instead, prices of everything was jacked up over the past thirty years because "surplus" risks were taken with subsistence products in order to fill the pockets of looters. And the looters are not just the banks and hedge fund managers. Everyone bought into the myth of "upward mobility" but built on sand castles and air, by raising expectations, but kicking the foundation of capitalism (the subsistence side being available for all) right out from under the entire country. Your local banker, real estate dealer and everyone else is just as guilty and colluding as anyone else. Everyone has bought into this mutant view of "capitalism" that allows the "markets" to be manipulated, looted, and destructive of the equality of access of benefit to the broad base of people. I could go on and on with numerous examples, but this tires and enrages me so much that I'll leave it here for now. LOL. *sigh*
I think you get my point. Today should have been entirely different than it is now. There should have been a job and a home for every one who wanted and needed one, and it would have been there due to properly running capitalism, untainted by excessive greed and unreality. It really has become a disaster of incredible proportions, not just because of the crumbling of the fake infrastructure and individual financial disasters, but because of the loss of ethics that true capitalism that is moral actually imbues and instills. Much of the depravity and loss of morals and ethics in society comes from the hijacking of genuine moral capitalism, turning it into a mutant "market rules" greed machine, with warts.
Sunday, October 5, 2008
Capitalism/Financial Crisis tutorial Part 2
In the first post in this series I explained that capitalism was "invented," or better said, "discovered," on a person by person basis by farmers. I gave you a definition of capitalism that is, rather than using technical terms and theoretical concepts, a statement of how capitalism first arose, and thus should be the constant model for successful understanding and use of capitalism. This definition of capitalism is as follows.
A farming family grows corn for its own survival, since that is what the family and their livestock consumes. This is called "subsistence," which is the bare minimum of necessity that allows the family to survive. When the family reaches a point of stability of production of their "necessary" amount of corn, they may prosper enough to produce more corn than they need, and this extra is called "surplus." Surplus corn is sold in the market for cash. The process by which the surplus is transacted for cash is called "capitalism." The term "supply and demand" is not the same as capitalism, nor is the term "the market," because those are the techniques by which the surplus is produced, priced and successfully sold (or not). Thus those are devices and mechanisms of capitalism, not capitalism itself.
I gave an example of bad decision making in the previous post, where I explain that the ethanol initiative erroneously cut into the subsistence level of corn, rather than focus on producing surplus corn for the express use of ethanol. I chose that example because it's one that received a lot of press plus everyone can understand it. Plus it was an obvious easy step from my "corn" subsistence and surplus definition of capitalism.
Now that you, dear readers, have had a chance to think about my first post on this subject, I want to summarize the error that has crept into modern assumptions about capitalism and also show you another "right out of today's news" example of how to spot the errors and have correct interpretation of statements, perspectives and events instead.
The problem that everyone has with understanding and correctly managing (or laissez faire "allowing" of) capitalism is that they treat the "subsistence" part of the economy and people's lives as if it is the "surplus." That is the great error in contemporary capitalism, and thus it is not true to the spirit of capitalism. Capitalism was never meant to rule subsistence goods and products. Capitalism arose in the global culture whereby individuals and families were able to glean the food and shelter they needed for their own survival with their own hands, so long as they were able bodied and they lived in locations and times when survival was successful. Thus capitalism always referred to surplus products, not subsistence products.
So let's look back to the ethanol disaster model of capitalism done totally wrong. There are two errors. The first is that a product, ethanol, was legislated, rather than coming into development because there was a market demand. Ethanol is an option, not a subsistence essential. Gasoline is, on our modern economy, a subsistence essential. Ethanol is a variation that in theory offered attractive market attributes (domestically produced and allegedly lower emissions). Thus as a non-subsistence product the market should have "demanded" (that is, freely wanted and desired) ethanol, rather than it being legislated as governmental policy.
The second error is that the raw material used in production of ethanol, corn, is a subsistence product, because it is a food that is essential to both humans and livestock, and thus the subsistence level of corn should not have been touched or used by the ethanol "initiative." Surplus corn should have been planned, generated and grown for any ethanol initiative, rather than force a subsistence product, being food and livestock corn, to "go to the market" and allow ethanol producers to exploit subsistence product, thus causing great price and availability instability. As a result "surplus" principles (supply and demand, "the market is always right," and so forth) were forced upon the "subsistence" portion of the equation, which is a grave economic and moral error.
So now whenever you hear someone talk about "supply and demand," "market forces," and "the market is always right," you would be correct and indeed you must insist that those principles apply only to "surplus" product, not "subsistence" product. This is not the same as "price fixing" by the way. I am not saying that subsistence product must be forced to be "affordable." What I am saying is that subsistence product will always be affordable so long as it is not contaminated by the risk that rightly belongs only to the "surplus" side of the capitalism equation.
Therefore, I will give you the first hint of how to think of the mortgage crisis. Housing is, at its basic level, "subsistence," as everyone needs shelter. Housing can be enhanced to be "surplus," in that it can be "more than you need." The economic "masters of the universe" were allowed to force virtually all housing from surplus into subsistence. Only surplus priced (and therefore "risky") housing was offered, and replaced in total the supply of subsistance priced housing. In other words, they raised the prices of all housing to "surplus" levels, and thus put them into the surplus "supply and demand" and "risk" pool, eliminating the supply of "subsistence" low, stable, widely available and safely priced houses. I'm amazed that this disaster survived as long as it did. For twenty years all houses have been deliberately over priced so that people were forced to take "surplus" risk and pay "surplus" prices for what should have been "subsistence" housing. That is not "capitalism," that is looting and immorality. Enabling people who needed subsistence priced housing into surplus priced housing compounded rather than fixed the error, because it allowed all real estate producers, investors and gamblers to maintain surplus housing pricing over the entire economy, forcing the disappearance in total of subsistence priced housing. Thus the "activists" share the blame with the "gamblers," because both colluded to enable that subsistence priced housing disappears and is replaced by surplus priced housing.
I hope this is helpful. I'm sure that is it. In the next post I will show you how to read an opinion piece in a newspaper and identify what part of capitalism (or not) the "experts" are talking about, and the errors (or good points) that they may be making. This will help you to discern the correctness and context of both the "facts" and the experts' "opinions." In future tutorials I will explain how both liberals and conservatives are "wrong," and how they have both forgotten and been herded into an erroneous definition of capitalism.
A farming family grows corn for its own survival, since that is what the family and their livestock consumes. This is called "subsistence," which is the bare minimum of necessity that allows the family to survive. When the family reaches a point of stability of production of their "necessary" amount of corn, they may prosper enough to produce more corn than they need, and this extra is called "surplus." Surplus corn is sold in the market for cash. The process by which the surplus is transacted for cash is called "capitalism." The term "supply and demand" is not the same as capitalism, nor is the term "the market," because those are the techniques by which the surplus is produced, priced and successfully sold (or not). Thus those are devices and mechanisms of capitalism, not capitalism itself.
I gave an example of bad decision making in the previous post, where I explain that the ethanol initiative erroneously cut into the subsistence level of corn, rather than focus on producing surplus corn for the express use of ethanol. I chose that example because it's one that received a lot of press plus everyone can understand it. Plus it was an obvious easy step from my "corn" subsistence and surplus definition of capitalism.
Now that you, dear readers, have had a chance to think about my first post on this subject, I want to summarize the error that has crept into modern assumptions about capitalism and also show you another "right out of today's news" example of how to spot the errors and have correct interpretation of statements, perspectives and events instead.
The problem that everyone has with understanding and correctly managing (or laissez faire "allowing" of) capitalism is that they treat the "subsistence" part of the economy and people's lives as if it is the "surplus." That is the great error in contemporary capitalism, and thus it is not true to the spirit of capitalism. Capitalism was never meant to rule subsistence goods and products. Capitalism arose in the global culture whereby individuals and families were able to glean the food and shelter they needed for their own survival with their own hands, so long as they were able bodied and they lived in locations and times when survival was successful. Thus capitalism always referred to surplus products, not subsistence products.
So let's look back to the ethanol disaster model of capitalism done totally wrong. There are two errors. The first is that a product, ethanol, was legislated, rather than coming into development because there was a market demand. Ethanol is an option, not a subsistence essential. Gasoline is, on our modern economy, a subsistence essential. Ethanol is a variation that in theory offered attractive market attributes (domestically produced and allegedly lower emissions). Thus as a non-subsistence product the market should have "demanded" (that is, freely wanted and desired) ethanol, rather than it being legislated as governmental policy.
The second error is that the raw material used in production of ethanol, corn, is a subsistence product, because it is a food that is essential to both humans and livestock, and thus the subsistence level of corn should not have been touched or used by the ethanol "initiative." Surplus corn should have been planned, generated and grown for any ethanol initiative, rather than force a subsistence product, being food and livestock corn, to "go to the market" and allow ethanol producers to exploit subsistence product, thus causing great price and availability instability. As a result "surplus" principles (supply and demand, "the market is always right," and so forth) were forced upon the "subsistence" portion of the equation, which is a grave economic and moral error.
So now whenever you hear someone talk about "supply and demand," "market forces," and "the market is always right," you would be correct and indeed you must insist that those principles apply only to "surplus" product, not "subsistence" product. This is not the same as "price fixing" by the way. I am not saying that subsistence product must be forced to be "affordable." What I am saying is that subsistence product will always be affordable so long as it is not contaminated by the risk that rightly belongs only to the "surplus" side of the capitalism equation.
Therefore, I will give you the first hint of how to think of the mortgage crisis. Housing is, at its basic level, "subsistence," as everyone needs shelter. Housing can be enhanced to be "surplus," in that it can be "more than you need." The economic "masters of the universe" were allowed to force virtually all housing from surplus into subsistence. Only surplus priced (and therefore "risky") housing was offered, and replaced in total the supply of subsistance priced housing. In other words, they raised the prices of all housing to "surplus" levels, and thus put them into the surplus "supply and demand" and "risk" pool, eliminating the supply of "subsistence" low, stable, widely available and safely priced houses. I'm amazed that this disaster survived as long as it did. For twenty years all houses have been deliberately over priced so that people were forced to take "surplus" risk and pay "surplus" prices for what should have been "subsistence" housing. That is not "capitalism," that is looting and immorality. Enabling people who needed subsistence priced housing into surplus priced housing compounded rather than fixed the error, because it allowed all real estate producers, investors and gamblers to maintain surplus housing pricing over the entire economy, forcing the disappearance in total of subsistence priced housing. Thus the "activists" share the blame with the "gamblers," because both colluded to enable that subsistence priced housing disappears and is replaced by surplus priced housing.
I hope this is helpful. I'm sure that is it. In the next post I will show you how to read an opinion piece in a newspaper and identify what part of capitalism (or not) the "experts" are talking about, and the errors (or good points) that they may be making. This will help you to discern the correctness and context of both the "facts" and the experts' "opinions." In future tutorials I will explain how both liberals and conservatives are "wrong," and how they have both forgotten and been herded into an erroneous definition of capitalism.
Monday, July 14, 2008
Earth could easily support twice the population
I'm sick of hearing people be anti-life and anti-baby and using existing poverty and environmental degradation as their sickening excuses.
If people lived charitably and were "their brother's keeper," there would be a dramatic reduction in poverty and an improvement in environmental quality right here and now. It would take me about a week to draw up the plan how it could be done, I mean, duh.
Further, the technology and knowledge exists in order to produce food and shelter in abundance that could feed and house and yes, promote a cleaner, not a more degraded, environment if people actually gave a rat's ass to do so, even if the population doubled.
But the money, the willpower, the morals and the know how are being pissed off in other directions and it has been an unbelievable waste, collectively and individually.
Sheesh, I'm so sick of people who want to deny life to other people just because they can't get off their pimply spotted asses (either literally or mentally) long enough to be both charitable AND intelligent.
!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
If people lived charitably and were "their brother's keeper," there would be a dramatic reduction in poverty and an improvement in environmental quality right here and now. It would take me about a week to draw up the plan how it could be done, I mean, duh.
Further, the technology and knowledge exists in order to produce food and shelter in abundance that could feed and house and yes, promote a cleaner, not a more degraded, environment if people actually gave a rat's ass to do so, even if the population doubled.
But the money, the willpower, the morals and the know how are being pissed off in other directions and it has been an unbelievable waste, collectively and individually.
Sheesh, I'm so sick of people who want to deny life to other people just because they can't get off their pimply spotted asses (either literally or mentally) long enough to be both charitable AND intelligent.
!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Monday, February 4, 2008
Yes, yes, yes!
http://www.catholicnewsagency.com/new.php?n=11682
snip
Australian Catholics to build affordable housing for mortgage crunch
Melbourne, Feb 4, 2008 / 06:31 pm (CNA).
In an effort to alleviate housing problems in the Australian southeast state of Victoria, Catholic and other church charities are seeking approval to become developers and operate housing associations, The Age reports.
The charities say that they want to use prime real estate that they own to develop affordable rental homes for the needy. Up to 300,000 Australians are at risk of losing their homes this year by defaulting on their mortgages. 750,000 households are estimated to struggle to pay food and essential service bills.
snip
The Catholic-affiliated St. Vincent de Paul Society, Unity church-associated UnitingCare Victoria, and the Salvation Army want to develop land owned by their churches, including city properties and large tracts of land. The St. Vincent de Paul Society has land and property in Victoria worth at least $57 million, and hopes to partner with the Catholic Church in Victoria and others to acquire surplus property for development.
snip
Australian Catholics to build affordable housing for mortgage crunch
Melbourne, Feb 4, 2008 / 06:31 pm (CNA).
In an effort to alleviate housing problems in the Australian southeast state of Victoria, Catholic and other church charities are seeking approval to become developers and operate housing associations, The Age reports.
The charities say that they want to use prime real estate that they own to develop affordable rental homes for the needy. Up to 300,000 Australians are at risk of losing their homes this year by defaulting on their mortgages. 750,000 households are estimated to struggle to pay food and essential service bills.
snip
The Catholic-affiliated St. Vincent de Paul Society, Unity church-associated UnitingCare Victoria, and the Salvation Army want to develop land owned by their churches, including city properties and large tracts of land. The St. Vincent de Paul Society has land and property in Victoria worth at least $57 million, and hopes to partner with the Catholic Church in Victoria and others to acquire surplus property for development.
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