On being occupied, and the process of occupation...

There was a time, within my lifetime, that "occupied" had meanings ranging from "being used" as in a house or toilet, to "doing something" deriving from the idea of "occupation". The active meaning of the latter has now transmogrified to include the first, so that the idea of "occupation Wall St" and its international derivatives has made a profession of inhabiting a space to prevent its use by others. Perhaps on reflection that idea is not as new as it has been presented. F'rinstance it was a regular family occurance for one member (usually my mother) to complain about the toilet being used as a reading room; a practice that went as far as the old man installing a small bookshelf on the wall behind the toilet so that books were not left on the floor.

So that history has somewhat coloured my attitude to those who have occupied Wall St, or closer to home, Aotea Square. Add to that a strong feeling that it was the wrong people making the wrong protest about the wrong thing and you might begin to understand why the ol probligo has been fairly quiet on the occupy front. OK, and to take the point from a recent post me old mate Al put up, I will explain why.

The wrong people? It is usual in recent times for protest to be led by the young, the idealist, those who want to improve this world for their own benefit. There is nothing wrong with that really, but I do think that the protest should be led by those who have put their faith in a system in expectation that they would gain due benefit for their participation and have been sadly let down as a consequence of their trust.

The wrong protest? The right protest would be against those whose actions led to the loss. The bankers are in part to blame, no question! But I do not believe them to be the reason, though they are part of the cause. The politicians are no more to blame than the bankers. Politicians respond to the same kind of pressures as bankers; to give people what they want. I don't think that individuals are at fault either. So to protest about the "profits made by the bankers" is a waste of time in my book. And that leads to the last...

The wrong thing? The fault really starts with the fundamental nature of our society; the basis of which is measuring societal success in terms of profligance, material and monetary wealth rather than ethic, virtue and contribution.

To which end comes a book review that is very a propos the general theme. Debt (written by David Graebe) is a book which I shall be reading as soon as I can lay my hands on a copy through the local library.

Debt's striking synchronicity with OWS should not overshadow the fact that it's also a formidable piece of anthropological scholarship. The book spans the concept's evolution from the great Axial Age civilizations—adapting Karl Jaspers's label to describe the period between 800 BCE and 600 CE in Greece, India, and China—into the age of global conquest, and finally though its bizarre mutations over the past forty years. As Graeber shows, debt could not have taken the form that it did during the Axial Age without the appearance of currency, but it was also far from being only, or even principally, an economic matter. Debt was originally a moral and cosmological notion, about our debt to the gods (in India), to our parents (in China), or to the cosmos (in Greece, and sometimes in India).

I need to put the idea of debt into the context of my opening argument. Bear in mind here that I am using "debt" in both sides of the transaction; it is an obligation, it is the act of being obliged to another, of owing.

The change that has taken place is from a communal debt to creator, to cosmos, to the principle of personal debt. The measurement of personal debt I suspect does precede currency by some great margin. As evidence of that I can point to Maori who, before European contact, had a strong sense of personal indebtedness which could lead to either death or enslavement as payment of those debts. There was no monetary measurement of either cause nor settlement; cause could include losing mana (societal position) to the "debtor" requiring utu (revenge for the loss and reinstatement) as payment.

In the barter economy, survival would have depended upon ethic and virtue (like simple honesty) in dealings between individuals. Hence an agreement to provide in return for a provision (work for work, work for material object) could also operate without the need for currency.

I suspect that currency was put in place primarily so that those in power - the mafia of the time - could easily obtain a portion of the value of each individual's global indebtedness. That value in return was used to obtain the services necessary to maintain the power to collect; the coertion that libertarians like to hate.

To return to the review -

The guiding principle of Graeber's sweeping global history is that debt must not remain the exclusive property of economic historians, and moreover, that anthropologists are better equipped to take on the issue. The foundational myth on which economics rests, and which Graeber relishes debunking, is the "touchingly utopian" idea that money emerged directly out of primitive barter systems and had only to do with interest-maximizing exchange. Arguing against this from an anthropological perspective, Graeber claims that debt is the basis of society, and as such is inherently ineliminable. He illustrates this point through the example of debt to one's parents: to seek to cancel that debt would be impossible. Graeber describes a system of gift-giving in traditional societies that takes place over time, and involves gifts of slightly more or less value than the ones that preceded them, thus ensuring that everyone is always slightly in debt or in credit to everyone else. This sort of debt, he says, is nothing less than the continual creation of society. It is not so much that we owe something to society, but that society "just is our debts."

But there is also a foundation principle that has not changed in all of that time; from the time of the Axis Wars. It is a principle that I would dearly like to see whether Graebe has picked up on; it is the main reason for wanting to read his book. It is the action that society took against people who did not comply with the "accepted debt" under which they lived. In times past (and I base this on the Ancient Greeks in particular) the consequence of not complying with societal expectations was to be excluded from the protection of that society. That would mean living in what was essentially enemy territory, making and getting as best one could; truth be told it was an effective death sentence.

That prompted the idea that the process of indebtedness has changed indeed, and changed most rapidly over the past 300 years. The bridge at that time between cottage industry to industrialisation saw changes to society, and not least to the processes of economics. That change continues. It is evidenced by the recent (the last 40 years) change toward the "technology based" society.

The debt to society no longer exists. Debt has evolved to the extent that it is now expressed solely in currency terms. Debt is now owed to others, in return for complying with societal expectations.

From the review, it seems that I will not at all agree with Graebe's conclusion, no matter how much I might agree with his rationale.

[Graebe] believes that ... at a moment when capitalism seems unsustainable, the great hope for the future is to turn back to traditional human economies of mutual, loving indebtedness. For Graeber, capitalism is as much a fantasy as any utopian option: "We could no more have a universal world market," he writes, "than we could have a system in which everyone who wasn't a capitalist was somehow able to become a respectable, regularly paid wage laborer with access to adequate dental care. A world like that has never existed and never could exist. What's more, the moment that even the prospect that this might happen begins to materialize, the whole system starts to come apart."

One of the problems of history is that there is no winding back the clock. I do not think that a graceful return to (for example) an agrarian society is any more possible than the Russians or the Chinese have tried to make it. It may come about if there is a cataclysmic close to industrialisation - the kind of cataclysm that made the dinosaurs extinct be it physical disaster or disease.

I think that what I am struggling with is the separation of "capitalism" as an economic process from the underlying engine that "requires" continual growth. To that extent I know that I already disagree with Graebe but I acknowledge that the disagreement could be based upon differing ideas of what "capitalism" is.

If there is an evolutionary step to come from the current and future economic crises it is going to have to start with a re-evaluation of the relationship between society, capital, and the idea of indebtedness. In particular, the idea that societal expectations can be met by possession of material wealth will have to change; the idea that societal wealth can be represented by increasing personal indebtedness will have to change; the idea that there is a free lunch for some may have to go as well.

On the subject of strange things and ...

...an idle moment at the office desk found this interesting juxtaposition.


Chance? Or intended?

The perturbing case of the missing link...

Now here’s a thing. This article humped into the ol’ probligo’s scanners a short while back, a propos of nothing very much at all. I think it was from following sub-links. Anyhoos, I picked up the address and saved as it is an interesting topic and has some useful potential.



I dropped off the net and then tried to find it again a short while later. Nothing! Search Granny Herald with their own engine. Nothing! Hmmm… something not quite right here! Search again “Nat china cash”; most recent result is 2007. “Nat china donation”; zip! “China national donation”; latest is dated April 2011 about ANZAC poppies in the South Island. Even “Chinese cash nat” (three words from the headline) only picks up an article of 8 December concerning Chinese involvement in forestry CNIF.



Very strange indeed!!

In the wake of the jonkey...

From Spiegel, by way of ALDaily comes thoughts on the state of politics and, directly from that, of democracy as a political form.

Habermas is an 82 y-o "philosopher" who has some considerable standing in Europe in particular and his name has passed my way on occasion in the past as well.

Jürgen Habermas, 82, wants to get the word out. He's sitting on stage at the Goethe Institute in Paris. Next to him sits a good-natured professor who asks six or seven questions in just under two hours -- answers that take fewer than 15 minutes are not Habermas' style.

Usually he says clever things like: "In this crisis, functional and systematic imperatives collide" -- referring to sovereign debts and the pressure of the markets.

Sometimes he shakes his head in consternation and says: "It's simply unacceptable, simply unacceptable" -- referring to the EU diktat and Greece's loss of national sovereignty.

...

In the past, there were enemies; today, there are markets -- that's how the historical situation could be described that Habermas sees before him. He is standing in an overcrowded, overheated auditorium of the Université Paris Descartes, two days before the evening at the Goethe Institute, and he is speaking to students who look like they would rather establish capitalism in Brussels or Beijing than spend the night in an Occupy movement tent.

...

Habermas accepts all this without complaint. He steps up to the lectern and explains the mistakes that were made in constructing the EU. He speaks of a lack of political union and of "embedded capitalism," a term he uses to describe a market economy controlled by politics. He makes the amorphous entity Brussels tangible in its contradictions, and points to the fact that the decisions of the European Council, which permeate our everyday life, basically have no legal, legitimate basis. He also speaks, though, of the opportunity that lies in the Lisbon Treaty of creating a union that is more democratic and politically effective. This can also emerge from the crisis, says Habermas. He is, after all, an optimist.

...

He rails against "political defeatism" and begins the process of building a positive vision for Europe from the rubble of his analysis. He sketches the nation-state as a place in which the rights of the citizens are best protected, and how this notion could be implemented on a European level.

He says that states have no rights, "only people have rights," and then he takes the final step and brings the peoples of Europe and the citizens of Europe into position -- they are the actual historical actors in his eyes, not the states, not the governments. It is the citizens who, in the current manner that politics are done, have been reduced to spectators.

His vision is as follows: "The citizens of each individual country, who until now have had to accept how responsibilities have been reassigned across sovereign borders, could as European citizens bring their democratic influence to bear on the governments that are currently acting within a constitutional gray area."

(emphasis is mine)

That is based upon a premise that government as a process has changed; that it no longer serves "the people" (as in the catch-cry of old); that the process of government has become the means of perpetuating the careers of the "representatives". There is a strong parallel here with the "statism" cry of the libertarians. There are parallels to the "anti-socialism" of the Republicans.

(Confirmation Bias warning here!)

Very near the top of google (on the very first page) in response to "politic opinion europe economy" comes this -

On the other hand the economic policies exercised by the EU as a whole, with anachronistic, counter-productive, centralized protectionist policies, with an increasingly aging population and with the accumulation of excessive debts at private and public level; left the continent in a position of witnessing too little growth based on too much debt - an unsustainable cycle. The European leadership seeks to address the cancer of debt in all of Europe, both eurozone and EU, by means of issuing more debt. This is in practice what the EFSF is, the "stability bonds" and the ECB monetizing debts will be. There can be no end to the cost once new debt is issued to pay for the old one. Only sustainable growth, emancipated from cumbersome bureaucratic techniques can fix the problems EU is facing.

In another more recent post he concludes -

All this is caused by the denial of the powers of the European (and local) establishment, to accept that the crisis is fundamentally caused by quasi-bankrupt banks and by a single currency that should have never been created, but was produced to satisfy the arrogance of its architects, who thought that they could design an economic project to achieve political ends.

That does beg the question - fairly severely - of the cause of the "quasi-bankruptcy" of European banks. Was it the result of the same lending policies as led to the demise of Lehmanns and the need to rescue several other American banks as well as BOS in Britain? Was it the result of the prospect of default on sovereign debt by PIIGS? He is right in that current policies are aimed more at perpetuation rather than cure.

And at this point I can tie back directly to the Jonkey and his government's policies for the next three years. First contrast between NZ and Europe is that not one of the European governments is proposing the sale of government owned assets. Is this because they do not exist? Someone could help me with that one please.

More to Habermas' point, none of the governments in the PIIGS grouping has said anything at all about the real problems. I like Protos-stavrou's comment on the CAP in Europe - About 40% of the total expenditure of the Europe group is subsidy for a sector that produces 2% of GDP. I mean to say, that definitely comes under the "Say WHAT!!??!!" heading.

It also raises the point made by Whanga-Ray (returning here to the Jonkey) that one of the easier targets for the new government will be universal superannuation. That is likely, but it is also a problem for the Jonkey. The logical solution is to defer the qualification age to, say, 67. There is one major difficulty - that was Labour's policy and has already been put down by Jonkey as not an option. There are some quite attractive alternatives within that major strategy - such as paying less super for earlier take-up, more for later take-up. Will Jonkey sugar the pill? I doubt it.

Whenever the Gnats have talked of reducing government expenditure they have always taken the direct route; first to go are the budget items which will lose the least votes, the items which have received the greatest criticism in the past and so the likes of adult education bites the dust; next in line are those who vote for "them", and so we have the reductions in day-care subsidies, changes to the DPB and Unemployment benefits; then...

There is no question that the Jonkey is almost solely responsible for the ressurrection of Winnie the Pooh. His reported comments (directly attributed to the tea-pot tape and reported by W-t-P himself) that NZ First's supporters were "dying out" have created a multitude of Erinnyes that will be richly deserved for the next three years. To make matters worse for the Jonkey, every step he takes toward monkeying with the rate of superannuation is going to create severe pains in the back seats.

And that comes back to Habermas -

Jürgen Habermas is angry. He's really angry. He is nothing short of furious -- because he takes it all personally.

He leans forward. He leans backward. He arranges his fidgety hands to illustrate his tirades before allowing them to fall back to his lap. He bangs on the table and yells: "Enough already!" He simply has no desire to see Europe consigned to the dustbin of world history.

"I'm speaking here as a citizen," he says. "I would rather be sitting back home at my desk, believe me. But this is too important. Everyone has to understand that we have critical decisions facing us. That's why I'm so involved in this debate. The European project can no longer continue in elite modus."

Enough already! Europe is his project. It is the project of his generation.

...

And then he's really angry again: "I condemn the political parties. Our politicians have long been incapable of aspiring to anything whatsoever other than being re-elected. They have no political substance whatsoever, no convictions."

Hear!Hear!!

And, I guess, that leads down a path toward the "Occupy..." protests of the past few months. The WSJ I think has a recent op-ed talking about "blind campaign donations" of past and the next Presidential election in the US. As I pointed out in my last post, DHC laments the connect between Maori Party and iwi corporations. That is a trend that started decades ago in NZ with the Round Table and similar political "ginger groups" with the last major infiltration coming from the Brethren Church. Forget the "open market" arguments, they are as relevant as climate change in this context.

This from Wiley Post says it all...

Almost the end of The Agony -

I quite enjoy reading Deborah Hill Cone in the busyness section of Granny Herald. Not because I necessarily agree with her POV, but simply because it is often one of the better writes in the paper.

And so it is this morning with her take on elections and electorates. In fact I think that I can sympathise with her personal agony of being an Epsom Saltie.

What caught my eye was her wave in the general direction of one of the elephants currently occupying the room. Hers is the one carrying the "youth unemployment" label.

Billionaire Sir Richard Branson this week wrote a piece warning the British Chancellor he is creating a "lost generation" of young people who will never know work, and advocated some drastic policies.

In this country, it is still too much of a buzz kill to address the reality of long-term youth unemployment of 25 to 30 per cent, or how to transform an underclass of people stuck on welfare.

But she actually closes with a very accurate posit on the nature of NZers and their attitude to elections and governmental retaliation (translate that with the story of the old radio programme earlier...).

We feel the decisions that affect us are taken way above our heads, in so much as they are the operation of large economic forces over which we have no control. This is probably true. But sometimes we do have at least a small opportunity to exert our agency.

Tomorrow is one of those days. I just wish I could vote for someone who has woken up.

Which earns from me a heartfelt "Hear, hear!"