"Forge Ahead" - Forge Your Own - "Think for Yourself"
- Michael Folk
- Feb 14, 2023
- 22 min read
Updated: Feb 15, 2023
Bismallah Ar-Rahman Ar-Raheem Al Hamdu Lillah Rabiil Alameen.
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Great - so much of what I was looking for :
The Fight Club: Debt Q&A Hannah Arendt Center for Politics and Humanities at Bard College • 14K views Nika Dubrovsky, widow of the late David Graeber, has established "The Fight Club" to keep David's unique way of challenging conventional wisdoms alive. Each "Fight" will pit leading advocates,...
---> Sounds like a pretty good way of pricing carbon and the environment ("negative externalities" as well, of course) into the economic-capitalist system I think and so, could make a way towards having a circular economy.
...could be a pretty decent way, I don't know of anything or any other way I can think of that would be a better solution and way and that could be politically possible though it would definitely be hard politically to make it happen in the United States - and people, of course, want things easy - "the problem of democracy"...always want the economy to soar, always want "more" - of this and that, (and so, politicians don't want to look bad) but we will never have all that we want and this life and world is NOT MEANT to be like "heaven or Jannah" - its the real world, it is hard, we are always going to have problems, it's the way of things. Our gov. doesn't stop, the billionaires don't stop doing what they do, is work whether good or bad (its a "race") :
This - this is it. Really on to something -
- A land value tax...
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This seems good yeah...but men, "guard your gaze":
Why It’s Wrong to Blame ‘Humanity’ in the Abstract for Climate Change, w/ Justin Podur BreakThrough News 4K views It’s widely accepted that humans are driving climate change and environmentalism has become mainstream. But what if “humanity” in the abstract isn’t to blame? Is it true that humans...
-- How could we, at this point, implement, reparations, or so-called "climate justice" at this point? It would be impossible - it is impossible to pay back to people the oppression brought about by slavery, colonialism and neo-colonialism - (debt-based slavery - usury control - plunder of resources and "human capital"...). We can only do so much and "forge ahead". - Only Allah Subhannah Walla Tallaha - God - can bring full justice. That is the Truth. No one can bring back the dead except Allah - God. None can or could stand in for another person and their sins nor could we be helped or given mercy except if God wills/allows it. If God so willed, the heavens and the earth could just stop "being" or could go into total anarchy and destruction. That's true. Subhannah Walla Tallaha.
Ask Prof Wolff: Is Capitalism a Religion? Democracy At Work • 7.8K views ***Help us reach 300,000 subscribers! We are very close to reaching this important milestone but need your assistance. Please like, subscribe, and share these videos with friends and family....
Do We Really Live Under Capitalism? Second Thought 116K views One of the most common objections to critiques of capitalism is "we don't have real capitalism, we have corporatism" or "crony capitalism" or even "techno-feudalism." These claims are often...
Cursing cursing, lots of cursing but pretty good points : YOUR KIDS DONT GET TO GO TO COLLEGE! Complex System Managers and the Student Debt Crisis | TOL Clip Entitled Millennials • 216 views In this clip from his "Thinking Out Loud" series, Double D discusses the roots of the Student Debt Crisis. He examines how making education class restricted has instituted a form of social...
Is good to just, have a clean heart. To not be hateful or lustful of people and things, but!, yes, as far as the system goes, it is right and good if something is not right and good and is unjust, we should feel that it is wrong and/or disgust or revolting against that, which is wrong and not so good and/or not so just and imperfect. See through the matrix...don't be an oppressor and be hateful and everything towards people, be against the system and systems that make things like this. - It could very well be that, you're more blessed in actuality, than the people who have all this and that. Or it could be the opposite, that they're just better and "less sinful people" etc...but, you may have more knowledge and experience and be blessed in other ways..."We don't know".
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Pretty good vids:
How to learn any language in six months | Chris Lonsdale | TEDxLingnanUniversity TEDx Talks 31M views
Im sure this is good: How To Become A Master In The Art of Public Speaking (Part 1 of 2) | Eric Edmeades Mindvalley Talks 2.5M views
Youtube has so much stuff, so much stuff...everything available at the tip of a finger - the Internet - it is good in a lot of ways but I miss the older days...CD's and things - people and more material things - interaction -
I saved...43 videos to my queue and then to a playlist that night...I mean, that's kind of, that is, a trap of the matrix. Keeping one glued to their T.V. screen. All this knowledge etc. but, is too much. You do have to "go slow" and "keep things simple stupid". Have more focus on a specific goal or thing, to really make progress on that thing...and it is hard. What's the best way? Oh, I'll get an app. Then that app, I'll have to manage that and mess with it, which takes time, then oh that, and that...how will I squeeze all this in...priorities...
This seems really good - I get the message - how fully? Mmm - ? - but um, this message is, I think, a really great one for most all of us (But I do know what I'm doing...or trying to do...learn...though I'm definitely not the best - uh, fear etc. emotional weakness - laziness - excuses - is bad, is bad. I do think though really, yeah, it is time for me to go ahead now, get out there - ) - I think we, the society, or - as a culture - there is too much fear and too much negative-PC type stuff and uh, afraid of being disliked or...afraid of being offensive, afraid of judgement, afraid of this and that :
Extract yourself from the matrix Rasmus Ronholt 82K views Had myself a little rant this morning :) 6 week container Conscious Creator: https://www.rasmusronholt.com/creator Instagram: @rasmusronholt Podcast and newsletter:
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Yep: Quran Burner takes his own life (Signs of the Quran) TheDeenShowTV 220K views
#Quran #thedeenshow #Islam https://www.thedeencenter.org/build-it Quran Burner takes his own life (Signs of the Quran) WATCH MY PREVIOUS VIDEO ▶ https://youtu.be/r9P16aeN9rM SUBSCRIBE...
This goes well with the above, "don't settle for this" "extract yourself from the matrix" video:
Social Fabric And The Ben Shapiro Paradox Auron MacIntyre • 7.9K views We discuss the issues facing modern conservatism and how the right's economic stance can stand at odds with its social goals. Follow me on Twitter: https://twitter.com/AuronMacintyre
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Really interesting Islamic World History Eschatology perspective video - great job Shiekh - such insight: Israel's Attack on Iran Shiekh Omar Baloch • 5.4K views
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Conversation with Robert F. Kennedy JR. | How The Powerful Captured The Public During The Pandemic Kim Iversen 32K views Robert F. Kennedy JR joins the show...catch the full interview here: https://rumble.com/v288tw7-conversation-with-robert-f.-kennedy-jr.-how-the-powerful-captured-the-publi.html ---- Thank...
Powerful:
interestingly many on both sides of even
0:37 them in my family agreed you know that
0:40 the pandemic had driven people crazy
0:42 that people were going overboard my aunt
0:45 was out there protesting down in Orange
0:46 County the lockdowns and the mandates
0:49 and uh you know so there was a lot of
0:51 resistance and I wonder what it is that
0:53 actually made people made people that
0:55 way and some you know I'm sure you've
0:57 thought about it what is it about those
0:59 30 percent you know is it that maybe we
1:02 lack emotion you know and so we didn't
1:04 get afraid you know what there was a
1:08 during the 1950s and on 1960s and early
1:12 70s the CIA did a lot of experiments
1:15 with universities about with almost 200
1:18 universities around the country with
1:20 social scientists
1:22 to study humans human human behavior and
1:25 they were they were experimenting with
1:26 all kinds of things with psychiatric
1:28 drugs with psychedelic drugs LSD Etc
1:33 uh with torture with sensory deprivation
1:37 um and and all kinds of means for
1:40 controlling not only individuals
1:43 but entire populations with propaganda
1:46 fear all these things so you add all of
1:48 these universities getting hundreds of
1:50 thousands and millions of dollars from
1:52 uh the CIA or from CIA front groups
1:56 uh for programs that were called MK
1:58 Ultra the reason it's called MK is that
2:01 that sounded that was a con for mind
2:03 control so MK Dietrich MK Ultra MK Naomi
2:07 uh operation artichoke operation
2:10 Bluebird many many others
2:12 were all about funneling money to these
2:15 universities to study controlling human
2:17 behavior and one of the famous studies
2:20 was called the Milgram experiment
2:22 and Stanley Milgram was a Yale associate
2:25 professor and it was associated with the
2:28 MK Ultra program
2:30 took people from every Walk of Life
2:32 students professors uh business people
2:36 blacks whites Etc
2:38 and he would put them in a room
2:40 with a man dressed as a doctor and the
2:43 dog and they would be seated at a table
2:47 with a dial in front of them and the
2:49 dial they were told was hooked up to a
2:51 subject in the Next Room who when they
2:54 Twisted that dial that subject would get
2:56 an electric shock
2:58 and the subject in the Next Room they
3:00 could hear him screaming and bleeding
3:02 and begging and struggling
3:05 and the higher they turned it up the
3:07 more screaming there was
3:08 and all of the people who are involved
3:11 in the experiment at one time another
3:12 begged the doctor not to make them turn
3:14 it off but he kept telling turn it
3:16 higher turn it higher turn it higher
3:19 67 of them turned it to 250 Watts where
3:23 it was marked potentially fatal
3:27 oh
3:28 um they were violating their own values
3:30 but because a
3:33 uthority figure was telling them to do
3:36 it that order and that kind of respect
3:40 for authority got them to to overrule
3:43 override
3:44 their most fundamental values compassion
3:47 and kindness and mercy Etc
3:50 33 of the people got up and walked out
3:54 and said I'm not going to do it and I
3:56 think that 33 that you're you know that
3:59 we're seeing now are the people who you
4:02 know that group in the population
4:05 that may be from a whole range of
4:08 political backgrounds and parties
4:10 who just has that you know maintains
4:13 that capacity for critical thinking
4:15 and it's not subject to being
4:19 um you know to to that override from
4:21 Authority
4:22 and it seems to me you know it has
4:24 struck me many many times in the last
4:27 year that we're all now in the in the uh
4:29 in the grips of this huge Milgram
4:32 experiment
4:34 where we have a doctor Anthony fauci who
4:37 is this trusted Authority
4:39 who's telling us to do things that we
4:41 know are wrong like censor speech like
4:44 close all the churches in the country
4:46 for a year with no scientific evidence
4:49 no citation no public hearings no public
4:52 debate
4:53 uh who can who who's ordering us to put
4:56 on mass even though he a minute a week
4:58 before that mass don't work
5:00 who's ordering us to close every
5:02 business in the country 3.3 million
5:04 businesses with no due process no just
5:07 compensation violation again of the
5:09 Constitution
5:10 who's telling us to get rid of jury
5:12 Charles the sixth and seventh amendment
5:14 uh when it comes to injuries by
5:18 companies that are you know providing
5:21 these countermeasures like vaccine
5:23 company no matter how negligent they are
5:24 no matter how
5:26 Reckless they are no matter how Grievous
5:29 your injury
5:30 you can't see them and here's what the
5:32 Seventh Amendment says
5:34 it says no Americans shall be deprived
5:37 of the right
5:38 to a trial before a jury of his peers in
5:41 case their controversies exceeding 25 in
5:44 value
5:45 so very simple there is no pandemic
5:48 exception and by the way there were
5:50 numerous the framers of the Constitution
5:53 knew all about epidemics there were two
5:55 epidemics during the Revolutionary War
5:57 on malaria epidemic that disabled the
6:00 armies of Virginia
6:01 a small box epidemic that that literally
6:05 froze the army of New England while it
6:07 was conquering Canada they had already
6:09 entered Montreal
6:11 and Canada without that epidemic would
6:13 be part of the United States today
6:15 so and then between the end of the
6:17 Revolution and the signing of the
6:19 Constitution there were epidemics in
6:21 every city that killed tens of thousands
6:23 of people yellow fever Colorado smallpox
6:26 and many others so the framers knew all
6:28 about it but they didn't put an epidemic
6:32 or pandemic exception in the United
6:34 States Constitution it's a new thing
6:37 now we had a
6:39 we had a civil war and and Lincoln at a
6:42 time when our country was really you
6:44 know this far away from being destroyed
6:47 669 000 Americans died it's like you
6:50 know 20 million people died today and
6:53 yet when he tried to get rid of habeas
6:56 corpus the Supreme Court said he can't
6:58 do that there's no exception for war
6:59 there's no exception for
7:03 um of course there's no exception for
7:04 pandemics we had a
7:06 a Spanish flu epidemic in 1918 that
7:10 killed 50 million people
7:13 and yet we did not stop the Constitution
7:16 from functioning so you know this was a
7:19 new thing it it made no sense when you
7:22 looked at the science
7:24 about a certain number of people were
7:26 susceptible to just saying okay we're
7:28 going to do what we're told
7:30
people when they're scared fear is a
7:33 really
7:34 uh
7:36 potent motivator it's a potent
7:38 instrument of totalitarian control
7:40 that's why
7:41 Franklin Roosevelt
7:43 in his inaugural address
7:46 that the only made the famous statement
7:49 that is you know was the Mantra until
7:51 the pandemic of the democratic party
7:53 which is the only thing we have to fear
7:55 is fear itself
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Michael John Parenti is an American political scientist, academic historian and cultural critic who writes on scholarly and popular subjects. He has taught at universities as well as run for...
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Agree (so much of the time with Alexander M. - saw the news of the "Chinese Spy Balloon" -) and uhm, yep...conflict with China - It's crazy - -> "Pray for the Nations". - That's right. That's good. :
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Oh geez: - Yeah, can say, whatever about environmental "extremist" laws/activism but what would you rather have? Authoritarian government coming in, kicking you out of your home or the WEF telling you what to eat OR to actually have government - democracy - and big action that puts/prices carbon into the market and taxes it, etc.? (even if it raises the costs of real goods etc. - real happiness is not being stuck in our homes alone (not knowing our neighbors - having very little community, etc.) or lettings the things we own own us)
- "the only thing to fear, is fear itself" - and whatever happens, there will be the fall of the American Empire ORrevolution/revolt if things keep going as like they are, I believe anyway - OR destruction - nuclear destruction and devastation... - Pray for the Nations - Pray for Peace and Truth and Goodness to prevail...:
7 Years until Expropriation: EU draft Law Threatens Property Owners! a.i. Financial • 110K views The EU is currently working on a draft law that would practically expropriate older residential buildings. If they do not meet the new European energy efficiency standards then these buildings...
Need to watch: Lawyers and Firms and Corporate Entities, Oh My! | The Laws of Capitalism Episode 3 New Economic Thinking •53K views
Really nice - very good video (Christian):
Praying for the Nations | Global Talk Global Talk • 108 views
Looks - sounds, interesting: What Victory Looks Like | Guest: Charles Haywood | 12/28/22 Auron MacIntyre • 11K views Charles Haywood of The Worth House joins me to discuss some of his recent debates on how the right should conduct itself and what victory actually looks like. Apple: https://podcasts.apple.com/u...
Chas Freeman: We Must Change America to Avert War Schiller Institute • 7K views Mike Billington of Executive Intelligence Review interviews Chas Freeman, leading American China scholar Join the Schiller Institute on Feb 4 to build a growing movement to stop war and create...
La Illaha Ill LAllahu...There is no god but Allah Subhannah Walla Talla but yes...
Nice. Knowledge!... :
Create Living Soil, Good Compost, & Intensive Growth in your home garden. GrowFoodWell • 621K views *Join your Host, Tom Bartels from GrowFoodWell.com for this Free 32-min video that can transform your food garden this year! * How the Soil Food Web can jumpstart your garden! * 3 simple compost...
Amazing - Subhannah Allah...
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This seems really good, interesting, though I don't know how good or productive it is (for me at least, anyway, is a bit of uh "intellectual entertainment" possibly), but I really enjoy some of the viewpoints and things, even though - They're conservatives and I'm a leftist - so what?...It'd be good talking with these fellows...:
The Populist Delusion | Guest: Academic Agent | 5/22/22 Auron MacIntyre 22K views Academic Agent joins me to discuss his new book The Populist Delusion. His channel: https://www.youtube.com/c/TheAcademicAgent Buy the book: https://www.imperiumpress.org/product-
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I Survived It: My Experience in a Chinese Concentration Camp | Uyghur Camp Survivor Mihrigul Tursun Muslim Community Center - MCC East Bay • 1.4K views - Complete talk: https://youtu.be/eqeFVzdjgOw - More recordings about Uyghur Muslims: http://mcceastbay.org/uyghur Mihrigul Tursun is a reported former Uyghur detainee from Xinjiang, China....
Oh geez...that's horrible...I may be wrong. Definitely may be. I do think that if it is true, it can be that bad and that widespread can it? They would have to cover it up a lot, and, I think it is true that minorities in China are, generally, treated well, and it is a fact that they have more certain privileges...but, yes, it is still true that I think they had re-education camps, but also, yes, there were and was a problem with "Muslim" terrorists/terrorism. Still though, yeah, that's really horrible.
- I'm not saying I like or would want the U.S. to be like China. To control the media (being against free speech and a free media), to be "authoritarian" communist (left) - No...I am for increasing democracy and don't like PC - "police control" (political correctness) and so much middle men and government rules and regulations and top-down control but...if the top down is for improving (our) lives and also the environment, if it can offer a better system and systems, yes...ultimately Government dictates whether it be - or is - controls/restrictions or freedoms/rights and so the direction of...ways and means...(so - yes, I am left but also not authoritarian, I am quite a socialist, but maybe not quite fully socialist, nor not quite uh, believing that "democratic socialism" goes quite far enough. Nor am I down a lot, like socialist/communist anarchist - I don't know, I don't think think that, without much order and top-down "correction control", that things would go to well, possibly in any society, but especially in a very liberalized and very capitalist (problem: - "capitalist capture") you know, world, and America...
Right/Left or whatever politics one has though - it doesn't matter - I can still like you or dislike you...yeah... it's, you know, just politics. Things are complicated. We're all people. :).
- You don't have to like me, I could still like you. You could like me a lot, and maybe I still wouldn't like you or like you as much as you like me. - You can't tell a person what they should like or dislike. Everyone is different. That's a good thing. Quran verse (Surah 2 ~155 - "You may dislike a thing even though it is good for you and you may like a thing though it is bad for you....And Allah Subhanna Walla Tallaha knows best").
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I didn't watch much- I like the title: Prophetic "It's All About Love" Or "Hate" Paul Begley 3.3K views
The dark truths WikiLeaks revealed w/Stefania Maurizi | The Chris Hedges Report The Real News Network 29K views From backroom deals between Hillary Clinton and Goldman Sachs to US covert operations in Haiti, Tunisia, Italy and beyond, WikiLeaks revealed the dark underbelly of US power. Author and journalist...
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Was thinking last night - Like, shouldn't we have like Presidents (of the United States of America) who can speak like 5 languages? Right. Like, there's a lot of kids out there who learn multiple languages. There's really smart people out there. I mean, if you could speak and write English, Chinese, Arabic and Spanish you could communicate with like 80% of people nearly on the planet...right...
College Professors...why aren't they, more active in running for National Representatives (Congress)? very smart very well-informed people. Their job is academics. Research. They're on the cutting edge. Surrounded by it. ...Yeah, some...are like, kind of isolated from the working class and working-class realities, right (pushing WOKE kind of stuff...some, but really no, actually a lot are smart, older people with good intentions but colleges aren't democratic anymore, professors have to push certain things - it's regulated - like a certain amount of climate change stuff is regulated, is has to be mentioned and brought up in science classes, - I'm not gonna deny it or lie about it, that's dumb...) - but they're smart people actually who also understand, it's just that, it's like they don't see, don't ugh, realize, the uh, the possible effects on people, once people start becoming too 21st C. liberalized in the society, thinking they/we can do anything. "Hey man/woman, I'm smart enough". "I won't end up in a bad spot. Nothing bad will happen to me. I can party, I can drink, go here, go there," "nothing bad will ever come of these things"...right. "The sexual revolution". War - "I'm for peace. I won't be deceived." "I'm a good/decent person". Kind of like...- "I have enough time, I don't need to work on my homework or study more"...Not to be condemning but anyway, I know, I know, I've lived...Allah/God says, yep, and this is true "Don't be arrogant!". "Us Westerners and secular humanists, athiests/agnostics, "we are better and more humane than these religious people...barbarians", or even believers (Muslims Christians, Buddhists, whoever...) "We are better and more humane"...well, could be true, could be false...everybody is on their own journey - (blessed...).
Michael Malice Brings Anarchy To The Jimmy Dore Show The Jimmy Dore Show 181K views Podcaster, author and agent provocateur Michael Malice recently appeared on The Jimmy Dore Show to discuss his dedication to anarchism, the two-party system, the breakup of the Soviet Union...
would call yourself an anarchist I still don't know really what that is so anarchism is the political philosophy or
5:22 ideology that is based in the view that political Authority is inherently illegitimate right so killing someone
5:28 isn't wrong simply because it's illegal and something is not moral simply because it is mandated so when you have
5:35 that as your basis of approaching you know our political system lots of things
5:40 that we are taught to the contrary since we're children uh fall away you know pretty quickly and there's a recognition
5:47 that the people in power like Pelosi and Mitch McConnell aren't it's not
5:53 Republican versus Democrats they are literally a music literally literally gangsters with two rival gangs and they
6:01 have their Turf Warfare and you know people in this country have this idea that gangsters are like you know like
6:06 lower class and they've got tattoos and they've got all these rings but it's it's much more like a Godfather and yeah
6:13 just because they dress nice does it mean that they're not thugs who are on the take and you know you have her on my
6:18 show and you made this point yourself you you're like it's not that people are it's not like America is just like regular corrupt right if the politicians
6:26 were like you know what I'm gonna hire my brother to do this job or my wife's gonna have this job who cares you know
6:32 what I mean it's the the level of complete inherent corruption that's
6:37 baked into the cake which I think and it's something from an anarchist perspective is not resolvable uh that I
6:43 think that is inherent to the nature of government uh you know that is what speaks to my anarchism the anarchism
6:50 others if you look behind me on my shoulder I'd Emma Goldman she was on the cover of my new book she was probably
6:55 the queen bee of anarchism if anarchism had Queens but how do you uh how do you organize a
7:04 society of anarchists well societies are organized peacefully you
7:09 organize them voluntarily uh we're having an anarchist relationship right now even though this is your show you could run it however you want uh and you
7:16 would have you wouldn't have the biggest threat something that you and I completely agree on is the interface
7:23 between Corporate America and the government wherein every single regulation for the most part is written
7:30 by people in giant corporations to ensure there's no competition so to have any kind of measure of competition is a
7:37 anathema to this entire system and be healthier to the masses
7:42 and so do people call you a right winger
10:34
31 counties in Iowa voted for Bernie Sanders then
10:40 voted for Trump is that because of racism?
no that's because they were desperate for someone with a message
10:45 that wasn't uh from a corporation and go ahead
one of the points I made in
10:52 my book then you write
and I think people increasingly understand
Hillary Clinton will always have more in common
10:58 with Mitch McConnell than she will with some union member who voted blue his entire life
which she did not as a
11:05 former Goldwater girl and when you put it like that it's indisputable that is such a good point
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Steve Keen - "The New Economics: A Manifesto - pg's. 100-110 - very good.
Notes: Change is constant. One can say there is much aggregate demand for change. -Within the population of the United States and abroad.
What is most obvious is that the people who are most resistant to such change - (A positive feature of capitalism in many respects) are the ones with the most interest in preserving the current systems as they are (or, simply put, "preserving the status quo").
- Neoclassical economics is one such aspect and maintainer of the status quo and so it reckons that any and all who challenge it, even if they are right, and their work offers a better view and/or representation of true reality (today, in the past and in actual human and scientific material reality) that they get conscientiously held back (oppressed), and the purporters and supporters of the status quo, get helped up.
- People take sides -
Quotes:
Chapter: Economics, energy and the environment :
"The key difference between Smith and these long forgotten pre-Classical economists were their respective views about how output and wealth are created. This is obvious when one compares the very first sentences of Smith's The Wealth of Nations (Smith1776) to Cantillon's An Essay on Economic Theory (Cantillon1755). Cantillon attributed all wealth to land:
Land is the source or matter from which all wealth is drawn; man's labor provides the form for its production, and wealth in itself is nothing but the food, conveniences and pleasures of life. (Cantillon 1755, p. 21)
Smith using very similar language, attributed the wealth of nations to labour (pg. 101)."
"The Physiocratic approach, in contrast, asserted that without the 'free gift' of Nature (Turgot 1774, p. 16), there would be no production at all. Though this could not be known at the time, from the point of view of modern physics, the Physiocrats were correct and Smith was wrong - and so too, therefore, are modern models of production, because they pretend that output can be produced without inputs from nature, and also, without waste. Both these beliefs are fallacies, according to the Laws of Thermodynamics.
The key 'free gift of Nature' is energy: without energy, not only can no work be done, life itself can't exist. ..." - Pg. 102.
..." 'entropy' - necessarily rises over time: "
... "Economics has violated these laws ever since the Physiocrats, whose correct speculations about production emanating from the 'free gift of Nature' actually predate the invention of the word 'energy' by half a century (Smith 1998). This ignorance has persisted despite the staggeringly tight correlation that exists between global energy use and global GDP (see figure 4.2)".
"Therefore, if you don't explicitly - or at least implicitly - capture the role of energy in production in your economic (Pg.103) model, your economic model is wrong, both theoretically and empirically." (Pg. 104)
..."An insight [came] to me in 2016..." 'capital without energy is a sculpture' and 'labour without energy is a corpse' (Keen et al. 2019 p. 41)" ... "Energy can therefore be incorporated into models of production simply by treating both labour and capital as means by which energy is harnessed to perform useful work" - (Pg. 104-105).
..." All of these explanations fall foul of the Laws of Thermodynamics."
And...
"The modified production equations also necessarily express the generation of waste. Since the equations include a term for the efficiency with which energy input is turned into useful work, the balance of that energy is waste energy. The same thing applies when matter is included: if energy is used to convert raw materials into useful materials, then production also generates waste materials. This forges a fundamental link between economics and ecology, in place of the Neoclassical treatment of pollution as an 'externality', which can hypothetically be reduced to zero with appropriate property rights and price (Coase 1988; Major et al. 2016). To produce output we must create waste; waste can be minimized but not completely eliminated, and it must be dumped into the biosphere - at least while production occurs only on Planet Earth - otherwise there can be no production. Equally, production requires physical resources from the environment, which is omitted from modern Neoclassical models, but which can be incorporated into the Goodwin-based models used in chapter 3, which incorporates a resource constraint into a Goodwin model in which energy is the essential input to production.
Bringing energy into models of production also resolves the long-running dispute over what is the source of economic growth over time - the surplus of outputs over inputs - with an existential answer: there is no surplus. ...The Neoclassical riposte (of Marxist thought) was that labour and capital together were responsible for the increase in utility from increasing production over time. Post Keynesian economists simply accepted that a surplus was produced, as did economists inspired by Piero Sraffa (Sraffa 1960), without speculating about what gave rise to it (Backhouse 1988; Hamouda and Harcourt 1988)." - Pages 107-109.
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4.1 Our unsustainable future
This was never a sustainable situation. If you think otherwise - if you are, perhaps, a climate change sceptic (many economists are) - then consider this argument by a physicist (Murphy 2012). As our economies grow, their use of energy grows. With continued growth, we were bound to alter the planet so much that our economy would end up destroying life on Earth - and this has nothing to do with global warming. It is instead a consequence of the Laws of Thermodynamics.
By the Second Law, using energy to perform useful work necessitates a predictable amount of waste energy generation. Ata sustained rate of global economic growth of 2.3 per cent annum - ... -the waste energy would increase the temperature of the surface of the Earth to 100 degrees C some time in the twenty-fifth century
... at a 2.3% growth rate conveniently chosen to represent a 10x increase every century), we would reach boiling temperature in about 400 years. (Murphy 2012) - Pgs. 109-110
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We have reached the point vividly described by KennethBouldingalmost thirty years ago, of a 'spaceman economy' rather than the 'cowboy economy' in which capitalism originated:
The closed earth of the future requires economic principles which are somewhat different from those of the open earth of the past. For the sake of picturesqueness, I am tempted to call the open economy the 'cowboy economy,' the cowboy being symbolic of the illimitable plains and also associated with reckless, exploitative, romantic and violent behavior, which is characteristic of open societies. The closed economy of the future might similarly be called the 'spaceman' economy, in which the earth has become a single spaceship, without unlimited reservoirs of anything, either for extraction or for pollution, and in which, therefore, man must find his place in a cyclical ecological system which is capable of continuous reproduction ofmaterial form even though it cannot escape having inputs of energy. (Boulding 1992)
Regrettably, we have reached this point blindly, since of all the schools of thought throughout the history of economics, only the Physiocrats had a theory of value which was consistent with the Laws of Thermodynamics. Though the Physiocrats erred in believing that only agriculture received the 'free gift of Nature' - when today we know that manufacturing and services also exploit the free gift of energy via fossil fuels, nuclear and solar energy - they were correct in seeing production as being fundamentally based on turning what Nature provides 'for free' into commodities for sale. I pine for the economics that could have developed had Cantillon, Turgot and Quesnay provided the foundations of economics, rather than Adam Smith:
the produce of the land divides into two parts. The one comprehends the subsistence and the profits of the husbandman, which are the rewards for his labour, and the conditions on which he agrees to cultivate the field of the proprietor; the other which remains, is that independent and disposable part, which the earth produces as a free gift to the proprietor over and above what he has disbursed; and it is out of this share of the proprietor's, or what is called the revenue, that he is enabled to live without labour, and which he can carry where ever he will. (Turgot 1774, pp. 9, 15-16, emphasis added)
An economics built on these foundations could easily have had its error of attributing all wealth to agriculture, once physicists had developed an understanding of energy. It would have correctly anticipated a future world, far from the 'cowboy economy' in which economic theory originated, when accumulated pollution and resource depletion could undermine both production and the biosphere itself. Economists would have expected continued growth to lead to ecological problems - and their warnings would have been far more sophisticated than that provided by Malthus (Malthus 1798). Economics would have warned us of the dangers of exponential growth on a finite planet long before the process became a threat to the continued existence of capitalism.
I can say only one thing in favour of the work by Neoclassical economists on climate change: it is so bad that, once it becomes obvious how serious a threat climate change is, revulsion at how Neoclassical economists have trivialized the dangers may finally lead to the overthrow of Neoclassical economics itself.
--> 4.2 Revolution by revulsion
" Pgs. 110-112
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