Dear Roger (and Jonathan, who is addressed near the end),
Roger, You wrote 14/5 9:18 -0400:
'Huh?'
My mother taught me never to react in such a way. 'It sounds stupid and is
not very respectful.'
Besides, it is not very informative.
Please either ignore as an aside (which it was) or describe in some more
detail what problems you have with what I wrote 1/5 23:52 +0200:
'The possibility of defining "facts" and "truth" and eradicating "bias" is a
SOM myth.
The possibility of defining the direction of evolution "across the greatest
span and depth" is the MoQ myth, that is to be unmasked by the next jump in
intellectual progress'
I was describing the 'indisputable core idea' of intellectual patterns of
values founded on SOM respectively MoQ as I see them.
You also wrote about 'the fact that some significant factions involved in
this crisis actually DON’T WANT PEACE. They want supremacy.'
I pin my hopes on another 'fact': that nobody wants something completely
autonomous. People's wants are interdependent, they form patterns that
change. You don't need to kill a man to change his wants. But I will return
to that in my forthcoming post on 'Quality Economics'.
Can you explain why you read 'protectionist theories' into my description of
the dependence of Dutch economy on cheap labor in the South and/or in my
personal buying preferences for ecologically grown food and Southern
products for which the producers got a fair price?
I am not promoting protection of Dutch markets against products produced
with cheap labor. Rather the opposite. I would like lower tariff barriers
around the European Union against Southern products, which would enable them
to sell their products at higher prices and pay their laborers more.
Personally, I am not boycotting low wage products, but preferentially buying
higher wage products enabling their producers to become less poor and more
educated.
No, a banana multinational that offers 'an adult a ... wage higher for a job
better than that prevailing in the local economy (or lack thereof)' is not
exploiting that adult. I wouldn't call that wage fully 'voluntary' however
if that adult has few other options and none as attractive as the options
which I can choose from. And the global economic system as a whole IS
exploitative if only because we bar those adults from the South from the
options we have in the rich countries by restricting immigration. Capital
and goods can move relatively freely around the globe seeking the most
profitable and least risky investment opportunities (mostly in already rich
countries) respectively markets with the greatest purchasing power (and the
least people who really need them). The global movement of people (at least
of those that would threaten the wage levels of those who have voting power
in the rich countries) is severely restricted.
More immigration is not a solution of course. We should feel obliged to
create better paying jobs and opportunities for free enterprise in the South
however.
You wrote:
'Correct me if I am wrong, but macro-economically (in a free,
market-prevailing environment), relative wages are directly proportionate to
relative productivity.'
You are referring to the micro-economic theories (micro because they are
describing behavior of individual consumer and producer entities) of the
so-called neo-classical school. These theories are describing relationships
between prices and quantities of goods and services sold, between wages and
amounts of labor performed, between interests and indebtedness etc.. These
theories can be proved to be valid (on the individual level) only under
unrealistically strict conditions such as perfectly rational behaving humans
and perfect markets. Ever since these theories were coined in the decades
around 1900, neo-classical economist have been busy (and 'earning' Nobel
prizes) categorizing and deducing consequences of the many 'irrationalities'
in human behavior and 'imperfections' in economic phenomena. These are only
'irrational' and 'imperfect' if you presuppose that the model described by
these theories is a normal state of the economy. Conscious human activity
(the intellectual level) is dominated by rationality (the dominant
consciousness level according to Wilber), even if mythic thinking (social
hierarchies, religious fundamentalism, patriotism, 'moral majority' etc.)
and post-modern thinking (deep ecology, humanistic psychology, liberation
theology, human rights etc.) also play an important role. (I'm borrowing
from John B.'s 25/3 5:20 +0100 post here.) Human behavior mainly follows
social patterns of values however, which usually stay unconscious (as long
as
behavior is not consciously justified).
This business of micro-economists is fuelled by contending interest groups
favoring more or less of specific types of government intervention in the
economy and needing arguments to support their interests. Macro-economics is
quite a different discipline. It deals with statistics from national
accounting systems, tries to find correlations between the variables it
finds in these statistics and paints a more or less plausible picture of
their future development. The hypotheses macro-economists need to find
correlations and to interpret them as cause-effect relationships in one or
the other direction are often borrowed from micro-economic theories of
course, but the (econometric) models macro-economists work with show very
little resemblance with the (theoretical) models of micro-economists in
which exclusive proportionality of wage with productivity could be 'proved'.
A macro-economist won't come any further than stating that wage levels are
partially determined by productivity among a whole lot of other
determinants. A good macro-economist will recognize that correlations
he works with are very much determined by the national accounting systems
from which he derives his statistics (and when comparing internationally: by
the differences between and incompatibilities of these systems) and by the
definitions of his variables. If you define wages as the money paid to
employees per man-hour and productivity of labor as the money received from
customers per man-hour (and national statistics don't allow for much more
sophisticated definitions) it is not strange that you find a strong
correlation. Only different proportions of interests paid and profits
distributed can spoil your correlation.
You can borrow (selectively) from micro-economics the idea that different
proportions of wage-, interest- and profit-income generated in production
are a result of different technologies employed (more or less
labor/capital/knowledge-intensive) and paint a prima facie plausible picture
of a different choice/availability of technology determining relative
productivity and consequently determining relative wages. You can also
borrow from Marx. (Marx was essentially a micro-economist too and
neo-classical economics of the late 19th and early 20th century was a barely
disguised attempt to counteract Marxist argumentation.) Then relative
wage-levels are primarily determined by relative political and legal power
of capital owners versus wage laborers and 'productivity' is a meaningless
variable, because all that is produced is produced exclusively by labor,
can therefore only be measured objectively in terms of its labor content
and all other income than wages is not the result of the 'productivity' of
other production factors but of expropriation.
So, in short, I dispute your idea that macro-economics disproves my
association of injustice with international differences in wage-levels.
Macro-economics cannot prove (for several reasons, indicated above) that
relative wages are exclusively justified by relative productivity, even if
the global labor market would be free (which it is least of all supposed
'markets' for 'production factors' because of immigration restrictions).
Why do you wrongly construe my plea against a Dutch 'disproportionate share
of world resources like oil, natural gas and mining products' as a plea
against 'purchas[ing] resources from undeveloped nations'? If they were
wealthy enough, they would need these resources themselves. World trade in
raw materials in general and natural resources in particular is not the most
effective way of making 'undeveloped' nations more wealthy. The production
capacity of raw materials, needing relatively little technology and
infrastructure, is usually so large compared to the demand for it, that
world market prices only allow for a very meager remuneration of labor.
Because of the large scale concentrated way of extraction of most natural
resources, often by foreign owned companies, purchasing them doesn't help
populations that 'starve to death' a lot. More often than not it rather
supports exploitative elites.
Even if buying from the South what they can produce and what we can use
(even if don't need it very urgently) is not the most effective way of
making them more wealthy, buying at a better price is a better way to do so
than buying at world market prices.
You wrote:
'I agree that the nations [Israel and a prospective Palestinian state] won’
t be balanced. That is a problem that is easily solved (via international
intervention or other means).'
I don't think international intervention is a solution, let alone an easy
solution. Israel, being the strongest, simply will not agree and cannot be
easily forced to agree. (Would you agree with international intervention,
Jonathan, when you 'do not accept
the right of "supra-national" authority to grant or deny statehood', as you
wrote 4/5 23:00 +0300? And do you think that Israel, founded as it is on
national self determination, could be forced to agree?) What other means
besides international intervention do you see to set up and balance a
Palestinian state?!?
I very much hope that you were right to some extent when you wrote 'your
solution is closer to the Israeli one and mine is closer to what the
Palestinians want'. I have the impression that this is certainly not true
for all Israelis and all Palestinians... I am not bothered by agreeing on
solutions with Israelis. I'm only biased against the way they act, not
against their ideals.
I agree that 'no border ... is defensible against all ... advanced
weaponry.' So why put so much energy in defending borders at all, with the
side effect of creating more hostility between those on both sides of the
border? Why not make it one state with one police force that can deal with
violence between different groups?
'Peace has rarely been solved by forcing incompatible people and cultures to
live together', as you wrote. Neither has it been reached by forcing peoples
that have each other in a stranglehold to separate and by giving them each
an own state with which they can threaten each other even more seriously.
Whichever is the best solution has to be reached voluntarily or it is no
solution at all.
Yes, 'they all can’t just get along'. The tragedy is that they just have to
and that having separate sovereign states (even if they both could be led to
agree on how to create them) won't help them to get along. Israel would
still be able to keep this Palestinian state in an economic stranglehold and
the Palestinians would have additional (military) means to threaten the
Israelis.
With friendly greetings,
Wim
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