Tuesday, June 08, 2010

Michael Hudson explains Neo-serfdom pt27

Scroll forward to 13:30 and sit back whilst Prof. Hudson lets rip with his smooth, easy-listening, duck-like tones...





IMHO it's worth spending a little time switching onto what Hudson has been saying all these years because the explanatory and, more importantly, the predictive power of his model of how economics works is solid. If you want to know how things are expected, by the powers that be, to play out in Austerity UK he most definitely is worth listening to


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24 comments:

Anonymous said...

very interesting.

well over the past week the BBC have been telling us (even the religious fuckwits on BBC radio 4) have been preparing us for the "austerity measures" that will soon be upon us.
see the Tesco boss Terry Leahy is bailing out whilst the going is still good!,a sign perhaps?

Anon said...

Looking through Michael's website I can make some initial observations:

He's right on when it comes to finance capital and PPPs being a key issue, along with the property bubble. Plus points for mentioning Henry George and Adam Smith. However I don't see how a government monopoly is any more desirable than a private monopoly. In fact with the blurring of government and private interests since ~1900, they're almost identical.

I'm not sure making things like train services public sector again is a good solution, bearing in mind what we have that passes for a government. The ideas of land tax or perhaps even an airwaves tax aren't bad ones, but I'm not sure profit-seeking\the private sector is inherently bad on its own.

Henry Ford might have arguably been a ruthless capitalist, however he provided stable employment on reasonable terms (because he realised it reduced staff turnover), made the car affordable for millions, and avoided bean counting.

Hudson also doesn't realise that profit alone is not the end goal here as far as the big picture is concerned...

Stef said...

Hudson makes a big distinction between finance capital and industrial capital, between earned income and unearned income

A Ford like employer gets a pass in Hudsonworld. (Aside from the fact that, as a condition of working for Ford he got to dictate how you lived your personal life and he employed a team of private detectives to monitor his employees - but that's another story)

wrt regards to nationalising services Hudson's beef is with monopolies and price gouging. Nationalisation is one solution, regulation another. But there are some things which are naturally monopolistic - especially infrastructure. And if you turn your infrastructure over to landlords (check out the recent road privitisation 'solution' from NM Rothschild) you are well on your way back to feudalism

And no, gross profit isn't the be all and end all, but what Hudson is arguing against is the path that would lead us all towards becoming rent-paying serfs of the finance capitalists and speculators. Once that situation is fully re-established gross profit would be a moot point

Stef said...

Here's one of apparently irresolvable conudrums that faces anyone tasked with unfucking the British econmy...

Property prices cannot be allowed to fall because so people and business would go down the toilet if they do

OTOH If the UK's current property valuation levels are maintained at anything like current levels, the costs of doing business or making anything in the UK will continue to be uncompetitive and the UK won't be able to produce its way out of the hole

You'll be hearing a lot about keeping wages down in the months and years ahead but not much discussion about what workers and businesses are having to pay the largest chunk of their income on

Stef said...

solutions you won't be hearing about in the context of the proposed austerity measures..

- property prices have to fall

- debt will have to be written off and sent back into the nothingness from where it came

- private monopolies and cartels have to be crushed

- the burden of taxation must be shifted from producers to the rentiers

- bonkers fantasyland high-volume, silly face value, derivative nonsense has to be subject to some kind of small transaction tax

- money supply can only be increased in line with increases in production

you could go on all day

Stef said...

the wiki entry on rent-seeking has some nice turns of phrase...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rent_seeking

Anon said...

Hudson makes a big distinction between finance capital and industrial capital, between earned income and unearned income

A Ford like employer gets a pass in Hudsonworld. (Aside from the fact that, as a condition of working for Ford he got to dictate how you lived your personal life and he employed a team of private detectives to monitor his employees - but that's another story)


Point taken, and yes I did use ruthless for a reason - he wasn't perfect. To be honest the spying thing has only gotten easier with the internet..

wrt regards to nationalising services Hudson's beef is with monopolies and price gouging. Nationalisation is one solution, regulation another. But there are some things which are naturally monopolistic - especially infrastructure. And if you turn your infrastructure over to landlords (check out the recent road privitisation 'solution' from NM Rothschild) you are well on your way back to feudalism

Would you oppose changing the way our roads work if the sale and operation was be based on competitive bidding?

Can't say I enjoy the current system of stepped road tax (which encourages scrapping older cars and larger ones for tiny hybrids making the so called CO2 problem worse) and fuel duty. Watching the roads be carved up by bus lanes, bad junctions, and little in the way of alternative routes being constructed is disheartening to say the least.

And no, gross profit isn't the be all and end all, but what Hudson is arguing against is the path that would lead us all towards becoming rent-paying serfs of the finance capitalists and speculators. Once that situation is fully re-established gross profit would be a moot point

I would support land tax and possibly other levies in similarly "fixed" non producable areas to fund legitimate governance.

Anon said...

*correction - brand new hybrids that increase CO2 output during their production

Stef said...

'Would you oppose changing the way our roads work if the sale and operation was be based on competitive bidding?'

the only way you're going to stop a private cartel or monopoly screwing people hard is to regulate them tightly, right down to scrutinising their books on a regular basis to ensure they don't syphon off income out of the way before it is declared as an 'official' profit

if you're regulating a business that tightly there's not much functional difference between public or private so I personally wouldn't run the risk of privatising core infrastructure

it's worth remembering that if and when the winning bidder fucks up, after running down the business and disposing of whatever assets it can, the state would then have to step in a clear up the mess

heads the private company wins, tails the rest of us lose

I'm certainly no lover of Big States but when they achieve monopoly private corporations are absolutely merciless

Anon said...

There has to be a better way of doing it than the current system though. I'd prefer a fixed fee for each vehicle and some kind of mechanism that ringfences the resulting funds for infrastructure. Obviously the public would need to apply pressure to get the desired results...ie remain vigilant.

Stef said...

I probably use this example too much but I frequently refer to Bechtel's fun and games with the Bolivian water supply

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bechtel#Bolivia

it got to a point where Bechtel was taxing people for collecting rain water

when you have a situation where the powers permitted to elected governments are sold over to private corporations for a little funny money that's my personal definition of fascism

Stef said...

"There has to be a better way of doing it than the current system though"

for sure

Stef said...

any system is liable to corruption

a genuinely press press, an informed and motivated public, a decent system of representation (bound by some constitution of inviolable rights and responsibilities) would be a start

Stef said...

that would be a free press

though a press press would be good also

Anon said...

Yes, those would be a good start.

What do you think of this?

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20100603/ap_on_re_us/us_banking_time;_ylt=AssTxpQ67GHPcAIPuX_ssuWs0NUE;_ylu=X3oDMTFlbThyMGVhBHBvcwM3MARzZWMDYWNjb3JkaW9uX3Vfc19uZXdzBHNsawNiYW5rc2FsbG93bWU-

Essentially a new currency system operating on a local level. Now if I could persuade some more people to barter their skills with me...

Stef said...

historically, as soon as any system like that has started to take hold, the Banksters/ State have stamped on its face, good and hard

Stef said...

Here's some quality bollocks related to the subject of this post...

"Homeownership – not renting – at heart of government housing strategy"

http://www.guardian.co.uk/money/2010/jun/08/homeownership-government-housing-strategy

because paying 50%+ of your income to a bank, not a landlord, isn't like renting at all

Anon said...

Think I might go find a farmer who's prepared to pay me in shelter and a share of crops\water\utilities instead of fiat currency...

Anon said...

The commenters on that Guardian article suggest it may not be doom and gloom all round. Especially the second one.

Stef said...

people are starting to wise up

got the Internet to thank for that

Anonymous said...

There is no fucking housing problem!!

lets all move to Ireland.

Ghost estates in Ireland

Anonymous said...

Ghost estates part 1.wmv

Stef said...

Lol fantastic video

alternatively, everyone could move to Spain, or Florida, or Detroit...

this video is 77 minutes long, but morbidly fascinating -

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2OpXhd7iau8

alternatively, people could just stay in the UK and do up live in one of the 1,000,000 empty properties here

that's before you start thinking about holdiay/ 2nd homes

Anonymous said...

With regard to the nationalisation / privatisation debate.

I often wondered why the tories didn't privatize currency.

(Someone once told me that passports and fiat currency were crimes against humanity; I reckon that Lemkin would agree with him).