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Oct. 13th, 2005 11:37 amI worry all the time that other people around me can read my mind, especially when i'm thinking bad things about them.
Oct. 13th, 2005
how greed became a virtue
Oct. 13th, 2005 01:17 pmAccording to the "unseen hand" theory of market operation, the quest for profit in a competitive free market will magically lead to the development and production of the best products possible. Consumers will reject inferior products in favor of better ones as they come on the market. Once a need is identified, an entrepreneur will develop a product to fill that need, and this way, the market itself will see to all the needs of the population.
As i pointed out in a previous post, the only truly "free market" we have is the one for widgets, and in recent years there has certainly been an explosion of new and exciting widgets. Cell phones that take pictures and let you surf the internet, portable music players that can hold your entire CD collection, and so on.
The big problem is that our participation in most markets is not fully voluntary. Most of us cannot stop buying food or selling labor. In other markets the choice not to participate could create considerable hardship or reduction in quality of life -- housing, clothing, heating, medicine, and so on. Other products are physically or psychologically addictive; these have historically been very profitable (and have even played an important role in the growth of empires).
A mindset has developed where people are pushed into being "good consumers;" there is a lot of pressure in the media to consider consumption a civic duty, on a par with voting and paying taxes. It is as if producers have come to think of consumption as something they are owed.
It is said that this could be countered by asserting one's independence and will -- and that is true, to an extent. (In the past i have asserted that developing the will and freeing it from archontic/memetic fetters is the original purpose and use of esoterica.) My concern is that people do not seem to have an equal ability to assert their independent will, and for even those who can, there is a lot of pressure against it.
There's the use of memetic programming -- advertisements designed to "colonize" the brain and implant emotional investments in certain kinds of products. This is a modern version of the memeplex i've called Viceroy.
Our educational system appears designed to discourage independence in thought and deed when it comes to the market; children are not taught to research before they buy, to budget their money, to see through advertisement scams. Producers circle around schools and colleges like sharks because young people are fresh meat, more apt to be taken advantage of.
On top of this is the mechanism i've mentioned in previous posts: the fact that those who come to the market with an existing disadvantage find that disadvantage amplified. Those whose access to the market is limited, or who operate with limited information, will find themselves taken advantage of. For example, it has been well documented that the poor pay more for things; those who sell primarily to the poor charge more because they can. Markets in poor areas of town charge more; poor people without cars are much less able to take advantage of price competition. The poor are charged higher interest rates and are even encouraged to express gratitude for having the opportunity to show they aren't a "credit risk."
The profit motive also encourages dishonesty. In the last few years the American public has been subjected to a plethora of greed-driven scams, some of which affected whole sectors of the population. The stock market crash of 2001 could well be the largest scam in history; New York A.G. Eliot Spitzer (my hero!) is still rooting out the corporate culture of unethical practices in the insurance and stock brokerage industries. Enron engineered an energy crisis in California in 2002 before it crashed. Don't forget Ford and Firestone; Vioxx; war profiteering in Iraq by Halliburton and MCI/WorldCom; and on and on and on.
In the absence of effective laws and enforcement promoting and preserving market competition against oligarchy, monopoly, and monopsony, and in the absence of a culture promoting and preserving individuality and will, the market will inevitably devolve into an oligarchical collective, where rich merchants and industrialists warp the political and cultural landscape via influence peddling and advertising to suit their greed.
So an economic system that trusts the profit motive cannot possibly be just. In the absence of true freedom, the market amplifies social stratification and turns those at a disadvantage into prey.
As i pointed out in a previous post, the only truly "free market" we have is the one for widgets, and in recent years there has certainly been an explosion of new and exciting widgets. Cell phones that take pictures and let you surf the internet, portable music players that can hold your entire CD collection, and so on.
The big problem is that our participation in most markets is not fully voluntary. Most of us cannot stop buying food or selling labor. In other markets the choice not to participate could create considerable hardship or reduction in quality of life -- housing, clothing, heating, medicine, and so on. Other products are physically or psychologically addictive; these have historically been very profitable (and have even played an important role in the growth of empires).
A mindset has developed where people are pushed into being "good consumers;" there is a lot of pressure in the media to consider consumption a civic duty, on a par with voting and paying taxes. It is as if producers have come to think of consumption as something they are owed.
It is said that this could be countered by asserting one's independence and will -- and that is true, to an extent. (In the past i have asserted that developing the will and freeing it from archontic/memetic fetters is the original purpose and use of esoterica.) My concern is that people do not seem to have an equal ability to assert their independent will, and for even those who can, there is a lot of pressure against it.
There's the use of memetic programming -- advertisements designed to "colonize" the brain and implant emotional investments in certain kinds of products. This is a modern version of the memeplex i've called Viceroy.
Our educational system appears designed to discourage independence in thought and deed when it comes to the market; children are not taught to research before they buy, to budget their money, to see through advertisement scams. Producers circle around schools and colleges like sharks because young people are fresh meat, more apt to be taken advantage of.
On top of this is the mechanism i've mentioned in previous posts: the fact that those who come to the market with an existing disadvantage find that disadvantage amplified. Those whose access to the market is limited, or who operate with limited information, will find themselves taken advantage of. For example, it has been well documented that the poor pay more for things; those who sell primarily to the poor charge more because they can. Markets in poor areas of town charge more; poor people without cars are much less able to take advantage of price competition. The poor are charged higher interest rates and are even encouraged to express gratitude for having the opportunity to show they aren't a "credit risk."
The profit motive also encourages dishonesty. In the last few years the American public has been subjected to a plethora of greed-driven scams, some of which affected whole sectors of the population. The stock market crash of 2001 could well be the largest scam in history; New York A.G. Eliot Spitzer (my hero!) is still rooting out the corporate culture of unethical practices in the insurance and stock brokerage industries. Enron engineered an energy crisis in California in 2002 before it crashed. Don't forget Ford and Firestone; Vioxx; war profiteering in Iraq by Halliburton and MCI/WorldCom; and on and on and on.
In the absence of effective laws and enforcement promoting and preserving market competition against oligarchy, monopoly, and monopsony, and in the absence of a culture promoting and preserving individuality and will, the market will inevitably devolve into an oligarchical collective, where rich merchants and industrialists warp the political and cultural landscape via influence peddling and advertising to suit their greed.
So an economic system that trusts the profit motive cannot possibly be just. In the absence of true freedom, the market amplifies social stratification and turns those at a disadvantage into prey.
Human Rights Watch has posted a horrific, nightmarish account of 600 prisoners in the Orleans Parish Prison who were abandoned for four days as floodwaters rose to chest level on the first floor. 517 are still unaccounted for. (Thanks to ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
purejuice, ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-community.gif)
poor_planning for the link)
Since Hurricane Katrina, over 1000 prisoners have been kept at "Camp Amtrak," a makeshift jail in and around the Greyhound/Amtrak station, sleeping in open-air pens and eating cold MRE rations. Reports of police abuse and forced labor are starting to emerge from Camp Amtrak. (Thanks to_raven_ for the link)
There's so much more post-Katrina ugliness still going on, raw and evil, i don't even know where to start. There are some reports for example that people have returned to their apartments to find new people living in their apartments at much higher rent, their stuff out on the curb, despite a supposed ban on evictions in Louisiana until Oct. 25. There's no legal recourse, because the courts are still closed. It's unclear what provisions if any are going to be made to help the displaced poor people of New Orleans return, since so many homes are completely unsalvageable. Most likely FEMA will put them up in desolate trailer parks for 18 months and then kick them out.
purejuice, poor_planning for the link)“The water started rising, it was getting to here,” said Earrand Kelly, an inmate from Templeman III, as he pointed at his neck. “We was calling down to the guys in the cells under us, talking to them every couple of minutes. They were crying, they were scared. The one that I was cool with, he was saying ‘I'm scared. I feel like I'm about to drown.' He was crying.”
Some inmates from Templeman III have said they saw bodies floating in the floodwaters as they were evacuated from the prison. A number of inmates told Human Rights Watch that they were not able to get everyone out from their cells.
... “It was complete chaos,” said a corrections officer with more than 30 years of service at Orleans Parish Prison. When asked what he thought happened to the inmates in Templeman III, he shook his head and said: “Ain't no tellin’ what happened to those people.”
Since Hurricane Katrina, over 1000 prisoners have been kept at "Camp Amtrak," a makeshift jail in and around the Greyhound/Amtrak station, sleeping in open-air pens and eating cold MRE rations. Reports of police abuse and forced labor are starting to emerge from Camp Amtrak. (Thanks to
_raven_ for the link)When they entered the room, public defender Clyde Merritt briefly explained the options while the defendants strained to hear him. In most cases, he told them, they could plead guilty and they would be sentenced to about 40 hours of "community service." If they wished the maintain their innocence, he said, they would be sent to Hunts Correctional Facility where they could wait as long as 21 days to be processed, no matter how minor or unsupported their charges.
... In the end, given the choice between unpaid work and continued incarceration, nearly all chose to plead guilty.
...[Don Antenen, a prisoner support activist from Cincinnati, Ohio, said,] "The police are basically arresting people for curfew violations and public intoxication and just using it as a way to get free labor to clean up the prisons and court houses and the police stations. They’re just using it as a way to get people to do their dirty work for free."
There's so much more post-Katrina ugliness still going on, raw and evil, i don't even know where to start. There are some reports for example that people have returned to their apartments to find new people living in their apartments at much higher rent, their stuff out on the curb, despite a supposed ban on evictions in Louisiana until Oct. 25. There's no legal recourse, because the courts are still closed. It's unclear what provisions if any are going to be made to help the displaced poor people of New Orleans return, since so many homes are completely unsalvageable. Most likely FEMA will put them up in desolate trailer parks for 18 months and then kick them out.