Global economy growing at fastest rate in 30 years

[Cowperson]

This might explain the price of oil. The IMF says the global economy is growing at its fastest clip in 30 years. Another story has China's oil imports up 40% in the last 12 months as one example.

Is this about globalization or some other factor?

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/business/3701898.stm

Cowperson

[Agamemnon]

This is a link to a book-summary "When Corporations Ruled the World". Basically talks about the myth of global economic growth and how the way we measure growth may not be the best way to measure when taking into account quality of life.

I don't necessarily stand by the stuff strongly, but I do believe that the current never-ending growth paradigm with roots from the Industrial Revolution (unlimited resources, limited labour) all the way to now (limited resources, unlimited labour) is pretty screwed up.

Interesting stuff.

http://www.pcdf.org/corprule/myths.htm

[Cowperson]

Originally posted by Agamemnon@Sep 29 2004, 06:58 PM
This is a link to a book-summary "When Corporations Ruled the World". Basically talks about the myth of global economic growth and how the way we measure growth may not be the best way to measure when taking into account quality of life.

I don't necessarily stand by the stuff strongly, but I do believe that the current never-ending growth paradigm with roots from the Industrial Revolution (unlimited resources, limited labour) all the way to now (limited resources, unlimited labour) is pretty screwed up.

Interesting stuff.

http://www.pcdf.org/corprule/myths.htm

We should be more than skeptical of an economic model that calls on us to give up all loyalty to place and community, says we must give free reign to securities fraud and corporate monopolies and deny workers the right to organize, and tells the poor to run faster and faster after a train they have no chance of catching-so that a few hundred thousand people can become multi-millionaires by destroying nature and depriving others of a decent means of livelihood.

Interesting but not particularly valid since it ignores human nature, the human part of us that wants more. The trickle down effect of globalization in places like China and India is becoming obvious. As is the hunger in those places for more.

There was also this paragraph.

Perhaps the most important discovery of all is that life is about living-not consuming. A life of material sufficiency can be filled with social, cultural, intellectual, and spiritual abundance that place no burden on the planet. It is time to assume responsibility for creating a new human future of just and sustainable societies freed from the myth that greed, competition, and mindless consumption are paths to individual and collective fulfillment.

That sounds like it was written by Captain Picard. Utopia but ignoring human nature.

Cowperson

[Agamemnon]

Originally posted by Cowperson@Sep 29 2004, 08:12 PM
That sounds like it was written by Captain Picard. Utopia but ignoring human nature.

That must be why I love Startrek so much (Picard's on right now)

[Lurch]

Interesting but not particularly valid since it ignores human nature, the human part of us that wants more. The trickle down effect of globalization in places like China and India is becoming obvious. As is the hunger in those places for more.

Interesting, but why is it that different cultures have historically set up many different cultural organizations besides capitalism. Many cultures did not even conceive of property rights until exposed to Europeans. IF greed is inextricably linked to human nature, it seems ineveitable that all cultures should have developed similar structures b/c any attempt to circumvent greed would have resulted in unstable society.

[Cowperson]

Originally posted by Lurch@Sep 29 2004, 08:44 PM

Interesting, but why is it that different cultures have historically set up many different cultural organizations besides capitalism. Many cultures did not even conceive of property rights until exposed to Europeans. IF greed is inextricably linked to human nature, it seems ineveitable that all cultures should have developed similar structures b/c any attempt to circumvent greed would have resulted in unstable society.

I would answer that by saying there are many cultures that required broad co-operation for survival and broadly speaking, many other cultures which developed economically at different paces based on the resources available to them.

As even the lowest common denominator is drawn (sucked!!) into the global economy, it might be interpreted that part of their nature changes.

Meanwhile, you have people in this country perfectly happy to be fishing and trapping and living in a log cabin on the MacKenzie River with scarcely an electronic convenience in their lives.

They're the minority though, not the majority.

Cowperson

[RougeUnderoos]

Without getting into an entire philosophical debate about it... I don't really agree that it's human nature to want more more more. Maybe it's a "trait" of some people, but it's obviously not just inherent in all of us.

You yourself (Cowperson) were talking just last week how you are a very "non-consuming consumer".

You quoted this line above: "sustainable societies freed from the myth that greed, competition, and mindless consumption are paths to individual and collective fulfillment" and said it sounded nice but ignores human nature. Does it? By the sounds of things, you actually do live that way. You are freed from the myths, correct? I like to think I am as well. Are we going against human nature? I don't think so.

[Cowperson]

Originally posted by RougeUnderoos@Sep 29 2004, 11:02 PM

You yourself (Cowperson) were talking just last week how you are a very "non-consuming consumer".

You quoted this line above: "sustainable societies freed from the myth that greed, competition, and mindless consumption are paths to individual and collective fulfillment" and said it sounded nice but ignores human nature. Does it? By the sounds of things, you actually do live that way. You are freed from the myths, correct? I like to think I am as well. Are we going against human nature? I don't think so.

I spend money on travel, experiences generally being more important to me than material aspects. Within that context, I'm willing to ratchet up the costs to enhance the experience - staying at a quality place across the street from Central Park in New York, as an example, versus some cheaper place off the beaten track.

I have a sizeable and fairly expensive acreage, which is an experience in itself given the different lifestyle from city life. I don't balk at the bills when Mrs. Cowperson fills it with all manner of consumer choices but I'm not much use in helping with the shopping of those articles since the project doesn't interest me much.

So . . . to answer your observation, I still need money or wealth to do the things I like to do. Those things just don't happen to be material but rather experience orientated and require a certain wealth in any event.

In that, I'm not particularly different than most.

A global cruise in the best cabin available is $150,000 per person. I looked it up . . . but, if I were nutty enough to do that, I'd probably wear a t-shirt and shorts the whole time.


Without getting into an entire philosophical debate about it... I don't really agree that it's human nature to want more more more. Maybe it's a "trait" of some people, but it's obviously not just inherent in all of us.

It's an issue of degrees.

Not everyone is going to spend their lives happily fishing and hunting from a log cabin on the Mackenzie River but neither would everyone be happy commuting an hour and a half every morning and working 14 hours a day on Wall Street, seeing the kids and wife on the weekends but earning a million a year.

Periodically in the National Geographics which cross my desk, there is the inevitable article of a South American tribal elder lamenting losing his young people to logging jobs or the big cities of Brazil.

How often do you see that theme played out in various indigenous culture's around the world?

The big sucking sound is the trickle-down of globalization gradually pulling a broadening spectrum of people into a monochrome world of apartments, cars and cell phones.

Is that a bad thing?

Cowperson

[dangler22]

Yes it is a bad thing because we are using up many unrenewable resources from our economic development. Not to mention the impact deforestation, irragation, pollution etc. is having on the environment. While population has been decreasing in developed countries it has been soaring at an exponential rate in impoverished ones. I could go on and on about why we are basically screwed(in our lifetime) if we don't smarten up now, but it is too depressing.

[Lurch]

As even the lowest common denominator is drawn (sucked!!) into the global economy, it might be interpreted that part of their nature changes.

Wouldn't the far simpler explanation be that greed (or the need for material goods) is a learned behaviour and our current western social structure teaches this behaviour over and above all other behaviours?

[Cowperson]

Originally posted by Lurch@Sep 30 2004, 02:17 PM

Wouldn't the far simpler explanation be that greed (or the need for material goods) is a learned behaviour and our current western social structure teaches this behaviour over and above all other behaviours?

How did certain tribes in Africa conclude, long before they ever met a white man, that two cows made him wealthier and more attractive to women than one cow?

Cowperson

[Lurch]

How did certain tribes in Africa conclude, long before they ever met a white man, that two cows made him wealthier and more attractive to women than one cow?

That's weak!!! How did North American and South American indigenous people develop without property rights? Logically, ONE counterfactual disproves something, i.e. you could offer probably dozens of cultures that independently developed concepts of wealth and ownership, but as long as ONE other culture developed social structures devoid of these features, the logical conclusion is that these are not ineveitable outcomes. Ergo, since there are MANY cultures that reached quite a high level of sophistication without property rights (and therefore without material wealth), it seems sensible to conclude that while individual humans are certainly capable of greed, it is not a cultural necessity nor necessarily a base instinct.

[Flame Of Liberty]

Originally posted by Cowperson@Sep 29 2004, 07:39 PM
This might explain the price of oil. The IMF says the global economy is growing at its fastest clip in 30 years. Another story has China's oil imports up 40% in the last 12 months as one example.

Is this about globalization or some other factor?

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/business/3701898.stm

Cowperson

Cow, about the `growth` of the economy, suppose the global economy produced in year 2003 two apples and three oranges. In year 2004 it produced 3 apples and 2 oranges. Did the economy grew, fell or remained the same? Are we better off, worse off or remained the same? And why is growth good?

[troutman]

I can't help but think of my college philosophy courses:

Jean Jacques Rousseau:

"Let us return to nature."

"The first man who, having fenced off a plot of land, thought of saying, 'This is mine' and found people simple enough to believe him was the real founder of civil society. How many crimes, wars, murders, how many miseries and horrors might the human race had been spared by the one who, upon pulling up the stakes or filling in the ditch, had shouted to his fellow men: 'Beware of listening to this imposter; you are lost if you forget the fruits of the earth belong to all and that the earth belongs to no one.'" -- Rousseau, Discourse on Inequality, 1755

The theory of the 'noble savage'
Rousseau contended that man was good by nature, a "noble savage" when in the state of nature (the state of all the "other animals", and the condition humankind was in before the creation of civilization and society), but is corrupted by society. He viewed society as artificial and held that the development of society, especially the growth of social interdependence, has been inimical to the well-being of human beings. (wikipedia.org)


Karl Marx:

Marx was especially concerned with how people relate to that most fundamental resource of all, their own labor-power. Marx wrote extensively about this in terms of the problem of alienation. As with the dialectic, Marx began with a Hegelian notion of alienation but developed a more materialist conception. For Marx, the possibility that one may give up ownership of one's own labor — one's capacity to transform the world — is tantamount to being alienated from one's own nature; it is a spiritual loss. Marx described this loss in terms of commodity fetishism, in which people come to believe that it is the very things that they produce that are powerful, and the sources of power and creativity, rather than people themselves. He argued that when this happens, people begin to mediate all their relationships among themselves and with others through commodities. (wikipedia.org)

[Cowperson]

Originally posted by troutman@Sep 30 2004, 02:43 PM
I can't help but think of my college philosophy courses:

Jean Jacques Rousseau:

"Let us return to nature."

"The first man who, having fenced off a plot of land, thought of saying, 'This is mine' and found people simple enough to believe him was the real founder of civil society. How many crimes, wars, murders, how many miseries and horrors might the human race had been spared by the one who, upon pulling up the stakes or filling in the ditch, had shouted to his fellow men: 'Beware of listening to this imposter; you are lost if you forget the fruits of the earth belong to all and that the earth belongs to no one.'" -- Rousseau, Discourse on Inequality, 1755

The theory of the 'noble savage'
Rousseau contended that man was good by nature, a "noble savage" when in the state of nature (the state of all the "other animals", and the condition humankind was in before the creation of civilization and society), but is corrupted by society. He viewed society as artificial and held that the development of society, especially the growth of social interdependence, has been inimical to the well-being of human beings. (wikipedia.org)


Karl Marx:

Marx was especially concerned with how people relate to that most fundamental resource of all, their own labor-power. Marx wrote extensively about this in terms of the problem of alienation. As with the dialectic, Marx began with a Hegelian notion of alienation but developed a more materialist conception. For Marx, the possibility that one may give up ownership of one's own labor — one's capacity to transform the world — is tantamount to being alienated from one's own nature; it is a spiritual loss. Marx described this loss in terms of commodity fetishism, in which people come to believe that it is the very things that they produce that are powerful, and the sources of power and creativity, rather than people themselves. He argued that when this happens, people begin to mediate all their relationships among themselves and with others through commodities. (wikipedia.org)

Wow. This is getting good!!

That's weak!!!#

My simple example of one cow/two cows provided evidence that this isn't a white man/western culture thing. That was the point.

Having established that, are we actually disagreeing?

This is the paragraph of mine you objected to:

Interesting but not particularly valid since it ignores human nature, the human part of us that wants more. The trickle down effect of globalization in places like China and India is becoming obvious. As is the hunger in those places for more.

I don't think I was objecting to the notion that cultures developed without the notion of property rights or the motivation for property rights.

I said once exposed to cultures that DO have the motivation built in, that most times that motivation is transferred quite readilly to the "purer" culture. Its a clean kill.

And it's an easy transfer because the motivation was probably there all the time but without an outlet.

Cow, about the `growth` of the economy, suppose the global economy produced in year 2003 two apples and three oranges. In year 2004 it produced 3 apples and 2 oranges. Did the economy grew, fell or remained the same? Are we better off, worse off or remained the same? And why is growth good?

You're worse off. This is the issue that came up between 2002 and 2003 when corporate earnings were ostensibly zooming but coming off a seriously eroded base. Same thing.

The IMF report concluded the globe was advancing at its fastest pace since 1973. Obviously, the global economy is far larger than in 1973 but that wasn't the comparison.

It should be interesting to know that in about 1973, global stock markets fell about 50%, similar to the 2000-2002 period. It's an interesting similarity.

Why is growth good? It might depend on your perspective. In North America, where we all have cell phones, cars, a roof over our heads, etc, you might put less of a premium on it than you would in a place like India where those things would be considered luxuries.

A woman in India might consider a USA call center opening there to be an unbelievable blessing, perhaps even the difference between life and death.

In Nova Scotia, a call center opening is the difference between a low paying job and welfare or working at 7/11.

Perspective would place a value on why growth is good.

Did I tell you guys I'm busy today? I got too many arguments going on.

Cowperson

[Agamemnon]

I might suggest that the IMF isn't exactly the best source for unbiased economic information. The IMF has quite the capitalist, free-trade agenda that it (obviously) highly supports. Not saying their numbers are cooked, but I wouldn't be surprised if the accouting for global growth was a little wonky. I remember hearing a friend say that a countries GDP was something like the sum of all economic transactions in a country, meaning if there's an oil spill, and we spend millions cleaning it up, those millions went into economic transactions that caused the economy to 'grow', when really we just cleaned up a bunch of crap.

I'm not the hugest IMF or Worldbank fan in the world.

[Flame Of Liberty]

Originally posted by Cowperson@Sep 30 2004, 04:16 PM
You're worse off.

Why? How can you say 2 apples and 3 oranges is better than 3 oranges and 2 apples? Are you comparing interpersonal utility? Are you comparing average prices? In school they taught us that you cannot lump sum apples and oranges.

To calculate a total, you must add things. To add things together, they must have some unit in common. It is not possible to add refrigerators to cars and shirts to obtain the total of final goods. Because the total real output cannot be meaningfully defined, it cannot be quantified.

Suppose I made 2 transaction. In the first transaction, I buy a TV for $1000. In the second transaction, I buy one shirt $40. The price or the rate of exchange in the first transaction is $1000/1TV. The price in the second transaction is $40/1shirt. To calculate the average price, we must add these two ratios and divide them by 2. However, $1000/1TV cannot be added to $40/1shirt, implying that it is not possible to establish an average price.

GDP is an empty, meaningless concept. By definition then, growth doesn`t mean anything either. If your government builds a pyramid, Canadian GPD will skyrocket. How is that `good`?

[Flame Of Liberty]

Originally posted by Agamemnon@Sep 30 2004, 04:40 PM
I might suggest that the IMF isn't exactly the best source for unbiased economic information. The IMF has quite the capitalist, free-trade agenda that it (obviously) highly supports. Not saying their numbers are cooked, but I wouldn't be surprised if the accouting for global growth was a little wonky. I remember hearing a friend say that a countries GDP was something like the sum of all economic transactions in a country, meaning if there's an oil spill, and we spend millions cleaning it up, those millions went into economic transactions that caused the economy to 'grow', when really we just cleaned up a bunch of crap.

I'm not the hugest IMF or Worldbank fan in the world.

That is why IMF has nothing to do with capitalism and free trade. Lets not confuse World Bank and IMF for some kind of free marketers.

[Cowperson]

Originally posted by Flame Of Liberty+Sep 30 2004, 03:47 PM--></div><table border='0' align='center' width='95%' cellpadding='3' cellspacing='1'><tr><td>QUOTE (Flame Of Liberty @ Sep 30 2004, 03:47 PM)</td></tr><tr><td id='QUOTE'> <!--QuoteBegin-Cowperson@Sep 30 2004, 04:16 PM
You're worse off.

Why? How can you say 2 apples and 3 oranges is better than 3 oranges and 2 apples? Are you comparing interpersonal utility? Are you comparing average prices? In school they taught us that you cannot lump sum apples and oranges.

To calculate a total, you must add things. To add things together, they must have some unit in common. It is not possible to add refrigerators to cars and shirts to obtain the total of final goods. Because the total real output cannot be meaningfully defined, it cannot be quantified.

Suppose I made 2 transaction. In the first transaction, I buy a TV for $1000. In the second transaction, I buy one shirt $40. The price or the rate of exchange in the first transaction is $1000/1TV. The price in the second transaction is $40/1shirt. To calculate the average price, we must add these two ratios and divide them by 2. However, $1000/1TV cannot be added to $40/1shirt, implying that it is not possible to establish an average price.

GDP is an empty, meaningless concept. By definition then, growth doesn`t mean anything either. If your government builds a pyramid, Canadian GPD will skyrocket. How is that `good`? [/b][/quote]
Oops. I blew through your question and misread it. My fault. I thought you had taken one apple out of the mix and asked if we were worse off!! Well, of course you are!!

To your question, I don't think you can simplify it to that degree - 2 apples and 3 oranges versus 3 apples and 2 oranges.

You could elevate it to wonder, as one example, if the outsourcing of USA jobs to India and China is consequential or not. Some argue yes and others argue productivity is rising.

The economists here would love to get into that one with you.

Cowperson

[troutman]

Economic subjectivism
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.

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

Economic subjectivism is the theory that value is a feature of the appraiser and not of the thing being valued. That is, things do not have inherent value, but have value only insofar as people desire them.

Globalization

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

Globalization (or globalisation) in its literal sense is a social change, an increased connectivity among societies and their elements due to transculturation; the explosive evolution of transport and communication technologies to facilitate international cultural and economic exchange.

Chief Seattle's Thoughts

http://www.kyphilom.com/www/seattle.html

How can you buy or sell the sky, the warmth of the land? The idea is strange to us.

If we do not own the freshness of the air and the sparkle of the water, how can you buy them?

We know that the white man does not understand our ways. One portion of land is the same to him as the next, for he is a stranger who comes in the night and takes from the land whatever he needs. The earth is not his brother, but his enemy, and when he has conquered it, he moves on. He leaves his father's grave behind, and he does not care. He kidnaps the earth from his children, and he does not care. His father's grave, and his children's birthright are forgotten. He treats his mother, the earth, and his brother, the sky, as things to be bought, plundered, sold like sheep or bright beads. His appetite will devour the earth and leave behind only a desert.


Economics

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

Concepts from the Utilitarian school of philosophy are used as analytical concepts within economics, though economists appreciate that society may not adopt utilitarian objectives. One example of this is the idea of a utility function, which is assumed to be the means by which individual economic actors decide what makes them "happy" and what decisions they make in pursuit of that happiness.

Utilitarianism is both a theory of the good and a theory of the right.

As a theory of the good, utilitarianism is welfarist, holding that the good is whatever yields the greatest utility --'utility' being defined as pleasure, preference-satisfaction, or in reference to an objective list of values.
As a theory of the right, utilitarianism is consequentialist, holding that the right act is that which yields the greatest net utility.