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| Joined: | Mon Nov 21st, 2005 |
| Location: | California USA |
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Anyone,
The people talking in that Real News report appear to be misunderstanding political economy.
If I could jump into the discussion my viewpoint may lead the discussion toward greater understanding.
I could report a few facts followed up by a few questions.
Fact 1:
No living being survives without gaining more power than the power consumed in life; and therefore there must be at least a bare minimum of power required to sustain life, and that supply of power can be accurately measured in some way.
Which way?
Answer:
Surplus wealth, measurable as purchasing power.
As surplus wealth is created that fact is physically measurable; as surplus wealth flows into physical places where surplus wealth is stored. Surplus wealth is the measure of effective economic activity.
An economy is positive, growing, gaining, progressing, advancing, as the supply of surplus wealth increases.
An economy is negative, contracting, recessing, depressing, dying, consuming itself, as the supply of surplus wealth decreases.
That is "Economy" in a nutshell.
Politics concerns the employment of economic power toward the direction of economic power; where does surplus wealth go, who makes what, when, and where does the surplus wealth flow, in which direction, which physical stores of surplus wealth fill up, which stores of surplus wealth are used up, which people decide where surplus wealth flows?
There can be no politics without surplus wealth.
Once the living beings accumulate surplus wealth, there is now more power than necessary to live at the moment when surplus wealth begins to flow into storage. The surplus then can be used to make more surplus wealth, a process called investment.
How can surplus wealth be increased above the bare minimum?
Answer:
When the power to purchase, or when the store of surplus wealth, is consumed in the process of making more surplus wealth, and the expense, or cost, does in fact result in more surplus wealth after the surplus wealth invested is used up, to get more surplus wealth, then there is more surplus wealth in fact, as surplus wealth returns back into physical storage.
Words may fail to convey the actual physical increase in surplus wealth realized during the process of gaining more surplus wealth, and therefore an example illustration may help convey the truth.
A person having a measure of power above the bare minimum can spend that power on a process by which the end result is a steady flow of power returning to the person who spent the measure of power above bare minimum.
1. A farm (organic production)
2. A factory or production facility (inorganic production)
3. A voluntary association of more than one person all working toward the same goal of increasing the supply of surplus wealth and using that supply of surplus wealth toward the goal of increasing surplus wealth.
4. Crime
1.
A farm can be one person spending a measure of surplus wealth on the process of accumulating all the things necessary to grow and then have more food.
A. A measure of surplus wealth not spent on anything before a farm is built and running.
B. The measure of surplus wealth is spent on all the things necessary to grow food.
C. Surplus wealth increases by that expenditure as the food supply increases through the process of farming and surplus wealth in the form of food begins flowing into various storage.
A. Surplus wealth is X, an amount that is enough to start a farm, or buy a lot of beer and lap dances
B. Surplus wealth is less than X to get the farm running, no one has anything yet that can be used to start a farm.
C. Surplus wealth is greater than X when the food piles up in storage after investing X toward the goal of farming.
If there is only one person then the one person has to do everything, every job, every thought, and every action required to turn the small supply of surplus wealth into a larger supply of surplus wealth with the investment goal of farming.
A factory can be one person spending a measure of surplus wealth on the process of accumulating all the things necessary to make and then have more things, a single person running a very small factory, making 1 chair a day, or two wooden spoons a day, or five charcoal briquettes an hour. The lone factory worker fills up a storage of surplus wealth once the factor is set up and running.
If one single person made enough food to last one year and then one person stopped farming so as to make things in a single person factory, and if that one person made a thing that stored water, investing surplus wealth in the work of making that thing, then one single person would then have another process by which the amount of surplus wealth is used to increase the amount of surplus wealth. Water flows into physical storage.
The single person uses power to increase food power, with a farm, and the single person uses power to increase water power, with a well, a pump, and a tank.
Power is used to gain more power, and then the supply of power increases as more food flows into storage, and as more water flows into storage.
One person can take a vacation, having so much wealth, as wealth fills the physical spaces where wealth was once not available, not flowing, not until the person invested the power toward the creation of more power.
A. No expenditure of wealth toward the creation of more wealth.
B. An expenditure of wealth toward the creation of more wealth.
C. Actual wealth filling up the physical spaces where once there was no wealth.
A situation where wealth is filling up the physical spaces where once there was no wealth won't occur without someone, or some group, deciding to spend wealth toward the goal of making wealth flow into physical spaces where more wealth can accumulate.
Economy is positive when political decisions are made to make economy positive and economic action is effective.
A single person governing his own actions can decide to spend surplus wealth on beer and lap dances, or a single person can govern his own actions by investing surplus wealth in the work required to make more surplus wealth - rather than less surplus wealth.
Even if the decision is made to spend wealth on a process by which the plan is to have more wealth flowing into a physical space where once there was no wealth, even if that is the plan, the end result may not be a flow of wealth into a physical space where once there was no wealth, and the end result of the plan may well be less surplus wealth after the implementation of the plan, as the supply of surplus wealth is wasted, and the supply of surplus wealth decreases back toward a bare minimum.
A political decision that intends to increase surplus wealth but fails is in one way better than spending the surplus wealth on beer and lap dances, and that one positive economic increase in surplus wealth comes in the form of knowledge. That plan failed that time. The political decision to repeat that plan, follow that plan exactly the same way, expecting a different result would be potentially wasteful. Think. How many times can a person learn the same lesson?
Stick your hand in a fire.
Your hand burns.
Do you need to learn that lesson twice?
How can anyone ever know if their plan does increase the supply of surplus wealth?
Does a person have to ask a banker, or can a person use the scientific method, can a person, for example, measure their own body weight?
How much surplus wealth are you transporting? How much does it cost you to transport excess weight?
A single person is limited in the capacity of using power to create more power, or using surplus wealth in the work of increasing the supply of surplus wealth.
Is there a way to increase the power beyond the power a single person commands?
Answer 1:
Yes, any number of people cooperating toward the work of spending power to make more power can increase that power and increase that power exponentially, or much greater than the sum of one person added to another person.
Answer 2:
Yes, take surplus wealth from those who create it.
1. Cooperation
Person power X (one person alone)
Person power Y (another person alone)
Total power is greater than X plus Y when two people cooperate.
2. Crime
Person power X (one person alone)
Person power Y (another person alone)
Total power is less than X plus Y when one person takes power (victimizes) the one creating power.
1. Cooperation
Much greater power is possible when people cooperate in the work to use power to make more power because people can specialize, divide costs, and thereby more than double the rate of increase of surplus wealth flowing into physical spaces where once there was no surplus wealth.
A farmer can farm while a pump and tank maker makes pumps and tanks, and another person can drill the well, and the water flows.
The farmer keeps the food flowing. The factory worker keeps things flowing. The utility man keeps the water, or the electricity, or the natural gas, or the motor fuel flowing.
Each person can save a whole lot of time and effort by having someone else do one of the necessary jobs so that each person does not have to stop doing one job, start doing another job, and the savings in time and effort results as those costs are divided by the number of people working toward the same thing: to use surplus wealth toward to work of creating more surplus wealth.
If one person can be wealthy alone there is no logical reason why many people can not be extremely wealthy working together - without crime.
Labor can be divided and people can specialize at certain jobs, then the capacity to invest surplus wealth (so as to make huge piles of expanding supplies of surplus wealth) is a very real human capacity - a proven reality.
Before cooperation, division of labor, specialization, and economies of scale (dividing the costs among many rather than a few = the reason why cell phones, computers, and other mass produced things become so cheap), before cooperation, the amount of surplus wealth potential is no more than the sum of all the people working alone, no one gains a lot of surplus wealth, everyone only gains as much surplus wealth as they alone can create alone.
After cooperation the sky is the limit, surplus wealth can be measured as Pyramids, space ships to Mars, etc.
But then there is crime.
1. Crime
Crime is when a person expends power toward the work of extracting power from any supply of surplus wealth, or source of surplus wealth, whereby the criminal does not add to that supply. The criminal has in mind only the work of exploitation: to take, not give, to subtract, not add.
If the number of criminals exceed the entire capacity of positive economic human activity (spent on creating surplus wealth) there would be no surplus wealth as all the production of surplus wealth would be flowing to the criminal and the criminals do not create surplus wealth, by definition, they have only one plan, and their plan is to take.
One criminal can hatch a plan and implement that plan and the result may be a flow of surplus wealth flowing into physical spaces that are then available to the criminal to be used to increase that flow of wealth to the criminal. The criminal can hire more criminals to "help" subtract from those who create surplus wealth.
One criminal can reduce the supply of surplus wealth. Two criminals cooperating can increase the rate at which the supply of surplus wealth is reduced.
The same criminal could have that power to make more power instead.
The same group of organized criminals have the power to make more power instead.
One criminal not only reduces the supply of power, the same criminal could have added to the supply of power instead.
One organized crime ring, or cabal, could use their cooperative power to rapidly increase the supply of wealth rather than rapidly decrease the supply of wealth (Wars of aggression for example could be used to make solar panels and electric cars for example).
One infant and one elderly person may not have the power required to add to the supply of surplus wealth, and one criminal could conceivably be consuming the last of the supply of surplus wealth that could feed the infant or the elderly, leaving one child starving and one elderly person frozen to death. The same criminal could add to the supply for infants or elderly or emergencies, etc.
If the goal is to produce more wealth than the wealth consumed, by any person under the sun, then cooperative effort is the obvious solution.
Crime is the obvious problem.
If the goal is to take from the supply of surplus wealth, and not add to it, when the same time and energy spent taking could be time and energy spent adding to the supply, how is that goal not criminal?
Answer:
Don't ask the criminal - they lie.
How can anyone ever know if their actions driven by their thoughts result in an increase in the supply of surplus wealth?
How much do you weigh?
Answer:
If your plan includes a steady increase in the number of people tortured and murdered so as to reach millions of numbers of people tortured and murdered, by that plan (invade fill in the blank for example), then your plan is probably not increasing the supply of surplus wealth, your plan is criminal - if there ever was one.
The people who have control over the supply of money have control over all the people who use that money and their plan includes torture and there plan includes mass murder and their plan is criminal, and they torture, and they mass murder and ignoring that fact does not make that fact go away. The bodies are flowing to their early graves, and the road traveled is miserably and torturous.
Arguing over the best method by which legal criminals could, if they only would, use power to increase the supply of power, rather than decrease it, is a stupid plan. How many times does a victim have to learn the same lesson?
This lesson:
Society in every state is a blessing, but Government, even in its best state, is but a necessary evil; in its worst state an intolerable one: for when we suffer, or are exposed to the same miseries BY A GOVERNMENT, which we might expect in a country WITHOUT GOVERNMENT, our calamity is heightened by reflecting that we furnish the means by which we suffer.
Criminals lie, criminals hire liars to lie, and the same lesson repeats.
This lesson:
Let us not forget that violence does not and cannot flourish by itself; it is inevitably intertwined with LYING. Between them there is the closest, the most profound and natural bond: nothing screens violence except lies, and the only way lies can hold out is by violence. Whoever has once announced violence as his METHOD must inexorably choose lying as his PRINCIPLE. At birth, violence behaves openly and even proudly. But as soon as it becomes stronger and firmly established, it senses the thinning of the air around it and cannot go on without befogging itself in lies, coating itself with lying's sugary oratory. It does not always or necessarily go straight for the gullet; usually it demands of its victims only allegiance to the lie, only complicity in the lie.
I think that the goal to ignore the torturing mass murderers, or to believer their lies, is a goal that will not increase the supply of surplus wealth - not while the legal criminals control the supply of money; the power to purchase.
That goal, ignoring or believing the legal criminals and their lies, cannot be a goal where the people actually desire more surplus wealth, rather than less, because the only way to get to an increasing supply of surplus wealth is one that deals with the torturing mass murderers who have control of surplus wealth and they spend it on torturing and mass murdering - wars of aggression for profit, for example.
Any discussion on political economy that does not accurately identify the greatest ongoing expenditure of surplus wealth by legal criminals conducting aggressive wars for profit is a discussion that avoids the discussion of the creation of surplus wealth.
If the discussion goes ahead and ignores the legal crimes of torture and mass murder by legal criminals who have taken over the power of government and the power over the supply of money then the discussion is a discussion concerning how to spend the supply of surplus wealth, consume it, not add to it.
Some facts (that can be accurately measured):
A. Gasoline powered vehicles cost 80% more per mile than electric powered vehicles even when the electricity used is produced by burning coal.
B. Solar power is now about 10% less costly compared to the coal burning electricity supply.
C. There is an inevitable move from things that people can't afford toward things that people can afford (sooner or later).
If people are not now moving from things that people can't afford toward things that people can afford why are they not now moving in that direction?
Answer:
Ignorance
People who are paying more for less now don't yet know how to pay less for more; if they did they would.
When they do, they will.
Why are they ignorant?
Answer:
The people whose job it is to keep people informed are ignoring the greatest story ever told whereby the criminals have taken over the force of government, and the power over money, and those same lying criminals are now using that power, and that force, to torture and mass murder millions upon millions of innocent victims.
Once falsehood is allowed to infest, like cancer, it spreads, and the body is consumed by it.
The speaker says that Solar is not cost competitive with coal.
Did you hear that in the Real News report?
Do you believe that nonsense?
Look at your electric bill right now. You can save money on that bill by calling a Solar Panel installing company up - so long as you live in a sunny place, and they guarantee that your bill will be less. How can that not be proof that Solar is cost competitive with coal?
You pay less money for electricity.
How do you pay less money for electricity?
You switch from the Electric Company power supply and you begin making power at home by turning sunlight into electricity and you pay less per month for electricity.
Which planet is the one where solar is not competitive with coal in the work of making electricity?
This planet is the planet that already has people turning sunlight into electricity with solar panels and by that method they spend less power to get more power compared to burning coal to make electricity.
Solar panels on individual homes are not the most efficient solar method compared to using mirrors to focus sunlight on a heat exchanger where a liquid is used to capture heat, store heat, and then heat is used to turn turbines that generate electricity.
With solar there is a steady supply of sunlight, daily flowing, and this power supply, sunlight, is used to make electricity, how much does sunlight cost?
There is a steady supply of coal used to make electricity, how much does coal cost?
Sunlight costs nothing.
Coal costs something.
A solar plant cost less to build and run than a coal plant. There is no need to run a constant supply of coal by rail to the solar plant as the fuel used to run the solar plant is sunlight traveling through space, and then through the atmosphere.
Who is fooling whom?
A Solar Panel on a home eliminates all the costs of pushing electricity though all those high voltage wires running from central electric power plants to each home.
A person can now buy an electric car and save 80% on each mile traveled and reduce the travel cost per mile even more by changing from coal burning electricity to home produced electricity with solar panels.
Why are these guys lying? Where is the measure of coal costs? Where is the measure of solar costs?
They, in the Real News report, say that ethanol is not cost effective. Why is ethanol sold in Brazil, right at the pump with petroleum fuel, if it is not cost competitive?
Even if ethanol was marginally cost effective relative to petroleum, then algae as an organic source of power, used to make motor fuel, is much more cost effective because algae grows much faster than other organic plants, and the fuel used up by algae is CO2. Algae turns CO2 into motor fuel.
Ha, ha, ha, they laugh, in the Real News report, while they either lie willfully, or while they pass on lies unwilling.
Either way the facts are not reported and their job is left undone, unless their job is to keep the victims ignorant.