Germany Superstar

I was reading that Germany is now the most productive and competitive economy amongst the developed economies. Wow, what happened here too ?!?! A few short years back it was considered a slow eurosclerotic economy with too much welfare and too little consumption. The truth is obviously completely different, Germany has been an economic powerhouse and top notch producer of everything and Science and Technology since at least the 1960s and will continue to be.

They were also comparing it to Ireland and Spain that were also considered economic superstars just 2 years ago and now have fallen in disgrace (or is that out of fashion?). Ireland based its economy on US companies bringing in software jobs and financial jobs and housing price inflation inducing them to build more and more houses just like Spain but without the software and financial stuff.

I could never understand the logic of housing price inflation: for the private citizen selling it may appear to be a gain, but on a macro level it is the stupidest thing that a society can do: everyone gains with low housing prices and according to the Right Wing bible of free market economics, low housing prices and rents do wonders for job flexibility, innovation, competition, social mobility (and all the other abstract words I doubt really mean anything), you name it. But the Right Wing thugs kind of just forget everything they always profess when it comes to housing prices and the natural law of physics that says “housing prices must always go up” (so as to filter out as many workers as possible). Just like at the macro level everyone thought that Hitler was the guy to follow, everyone thinks housing prices going up is “good”, but on a personal - single level everyone knows it is ridiculous.

Anyways, the fact that Spain and Ireland “built too many houses” is actually a sign that they really did all the right things, building more houses for a society means overcoming a basic resource scarcity and making that society wealthier and in fact from Lisbon to Moscow Europe in general probably has 20 million empty houses, they should be really rich by now. Oh, I forgot, housing prices is just a proxy for power relationships, for rich beating up poor as usual.

The truth is Germany may have some 3 million workers in manufacturing, some 2,000 very efficient corporations employing a thousand people with a strong eye towards a “collective effort” and serializing work, and some 10,000 small corporations employing 100 workers, also very efficient and serialized (another way of saying office politics and fluff BS is kept to a minimum, maybe…).

That is way more than enough for the world: the article goes on saying other European countries must become like Germany, but they forget to say they don’t have to, Germany provides for more than enough of what is needed, there is not enough room for other corporations at that level of efficiency, and in fact if demand increases, the Germany companies will just pump up production and all by hiring very few new workers.

I don’t think there is much room in the world for another Mercedes and BMW manufacturer, let alone in Spain, and even if there were, they would just subtract this manufacturing from the US or someplace else.

The Right Wing doesn’t seem to know how to add and subtract, according to them all countries should become as efficient as Germany, they don’t realize that the modern Technological Economy makes it in such a way such that it can’t work because it is not needed, one Germany is enough, another 3 Germanys and you can close all manufacturing in Brazil, the USA and JAPAN.

We need Free Salaries, Cheap Rents and huge ambitious public - private projects employing millions worldwide for Rockets to Mars, High Speed trains, etc.

From:

kunstler.com/blog/2011/04/blowin … smoke.html

Power Struggles, Power Relationships, How people behave and interact with each other…

One thing that is confusing, that deceives people is to think that what you do is done for some kind of “common good”, for the “good of the economy”, for “progress”: nothing further from the truth, what is done is done exclusively according to a power structure, according to a hierarchy whether explicit or invisible, according to who can force who to do what. There is no common good, or common gain in most economic endeavors there are only profits for a few, labor for most (when it is there and real) and some side effects where most people gain, mostly due to the application of technology and creation of new technology that just happens to benefit everyone (better cars, computers, internet, TV, etc.). But that is a side effect, is not the real goal, it just happens.

Most economic sectors evolve and evaporate so to say, are attracted to a point where they find the maximum expression of power relationships, of power struggles; so for example, housing prices started to inflate, there was some kind of gain to be made on this on behalf of the sellers and banks and home builders etc., it expressed a very clear power struggle, basically a fight between rich and poor, a fight between who was setting the price and who was forced to follow the prices going up, who was being crushed (the weaker), so this became an ever more important part of the economy, you had a constant increase of real estate agents, of house flipping, of banks lending loans and especially subprime loans. Kind of like saying that 2 entities that are perfectly in equilibrium and satisfied and unaware of each other will search each other out, no matter what, just to fight, even if they are separated by millions of miles.

No common good was generated by this, maybe the only real common good that was generated, as a side effect, was the construction of more homes than were needed, in the US there are 15 million empty homes, in Europe from, Lisbon to Moscow there are maybe 20 million empty homes. In a rational economic system, these extra homes would mean that those societies are richer, have more resources, there is more general wealth because a basic resource such as homes is more abundant: and the expression of this common wealth would be through low to very low house prices or low to very low rents. What happens instead is economic crisis in the US and 20 % unemployment in Spain.

So why does this happen ? Because the economic system is not geared towards distributing the common wealth that is generated anyways, even as a side effect, but is geared towards searching out as many power struggles as possible, so people can “express themselves”, can “make a statement”. This economic system and society is deeply right wing, completely biased towards creating as many status challenges - conflict/confrontation points - judgment points - and winner/loser assignments as possible, it is geared towards the maximum expression and total saturation of all productive endeavors into power relationships and power struggles.

This must be overthrown, changed, and to change this it is necessary to introduce free salaries, cheap rents and huge public - private projects hiring millions for Rockets to Mars, Skyscrapers, etc. These projects give meaning and status to millions of unemployed young people worldwide, it gives them goals, something to believe in, to be proud of, to look forward too, that is being constructed as a collective effort.

An another note, I was wondering how thousands of trillions of molecules in a man can add up to create a thinking mind, a unit that is monolithic and self contained in consciousness and thought: how do the single molecules, each unaware and without thought combine as entities to create a monolithic single entity ? At what point is there distinction of self and other, at one point is there one entity as opposed to many independent. How does a delimitation emerge naturally, that combines a number of independent parts into a single part ?

So when the world population reaches a thousand trillion, it will undergo a phase transition and become a single entity, a single mind, each individual mind unaware (or maybe aware ?) of the global mind…

Right Wing Thug answers:

“The rent shouldn’t be cheap, should be the right price, like everything else.”

I answer:

No, it should be cheap because, homes are abundant, there are millions empty, building them is just a political choice, the desire to create a false scarcity by not building them where needed, etc.

The right price of rent should be compared to MINIMUM WAGE, and that should be both in the US and the EU (not as mexicans would think Estados Unitos, but European Union) everywhere at about 200 dollars a month for 1,200 sq ft (90 sq m) home.

Now, go on, protect the status quo, protect beating up the weak and poor, go on, and never mention that all those millions of young people in the Middle East, North Africa and Latin America need JOBS and HOUSES otherwise, what else can they do ? break up everything, war, revolution, kill.

Also:

From last week,

Right Left dichotomy: it is mostly an “artistic” choice, an “existential” preference, an answer to boredom, the choice is essentially a choice of what religion you want to embrace, as both are essentially symbols, abstractions and man is an abstraction driven machine simply navigating pain/pleasure circuits and associating these pain pleasures very loosely with some abstractions, mostly man made pain/pleasure and assignments of abstractions that will generate said pain/pleasure (ex. laid off because you worked less than 12 hours a day which is the norm in our office, etc.):

1. Right wing wants “Risk Taking” as an emotional roller coaster, as a way to get high, as a way to play an imaginary slot machine all day long, are you winning, are you losing, what is your status, who did you defeat today, etc. An answer to boredom, doesn’t want stability, wants constant change, constant challenges, we do need people like this to start the “startups” that will hire a few hundred here and there, they have their use. They want “incentives”, they don’t find the incentives in what they do, but in what they win, in how much they gain compared to another, the other person is always present as a comparison point, as in constant competition, competition is the constantly measuring and interacting of items between themselves so as to constantly define them, modify their behavior, the measurement is the definition of the item.

2. Left wing wants stability, the incentive is in the simplicity in a sense, they are more geared towards collective efforts, towards large scale efforts, this is what most people really desire, we need these kinds.

Both religions think that everybody should be either one way or another, nothing further from the truth, we need both, but most people are simply naturally left wing, don’t want constant instability, risk taking, emotional narrative and roller coaster all day long, don’t get bored that easily that they need that constant high.

Now, given that a healthy economic system can use both, but the ratio is mostly 10 to 1 (or something like that), 10 stability seeking people, 1 person looking for risk taking and opening his own business. So given millions of people, it is absurd to think they can all be playing an imaginary slot machine of risk taking and incentives based on how much they gain compared to another game: it simply can’t work, there are simply not enough possibilities or opportunities for this in the real world.

A healthy economic system uses a mix of both, it can use the risk taking start up to generate new sectors, but if this doesn’t cut it, the government should start new public projects, it is that simple. There is no “one size fits all”, but the dominating economic model which is completely and totally biased towards the right wing thinks that one size fits all, either you are a risk taking, startup, your own boss and small business or you deserve to drop dead because you are not contributing to productivity or competition. This is totally false.

But the present economic model wants to pretend that everyone must be right ring, risk taking, incentive based living. This is false, also because competition in most sectors has been achieved, is saturated, you can’t really get much more competition out of most sectors, it is a diminishing return proposition, so maybe at this point the dominating mostly right wing economic model wants to propose simply slugging it out, fighting each other, war.

We have millions of now educated and connected unemployed young people in the Middle East and North Africa and also in Latin America, what are we going to do with them ? make them all go crazy and slug it out, make them start revolutions and wars ? No, we need huge large scale projects to employ millions of these, the governments worldwide must start as many as possible. Is it better to spend money on the tomahawks blowing things up in Libya or getting all those young men building apartment houses ? Is that so hard to understand ? Why do people not see this ? Is it so hard to understand that they need HOUSES and JOBs ? I never once heard anyone ever mention this in all the wars that are fought in Irak, Afghanistan and now Libya.

Another thing I was thinking is the serialized and accumulating labor processes, where the labor of many adds up into something greater than the parts. If you look at natural evolution it did just that completely by blind chance, it started out with some carbon molecules and ended up creating a thinking man, which is itself a huge accumulated and serialized effort product. A man is made up of a thousand trillion molecules all executing chemical reactions and interactions in perfect equilibrium to produce thinking minds, Mind over Matter. It is strange how an ensemble of millions of people cannot produce something greater than the parts, or has great difficulty in doing so, maybe we are still at the very beginning of the turbulent initial phase, just like natural evolution started out randomly with some carbon molecules bumping into each other.

Maybe when humanity reaches a population of thousands of trillions, just like the number of molecules in a man, and an advance enough technology it will undergo a phase transition and know how to serialize and accumulate all labor processes to create a higher level mind, a single MIND composed of thousands of trillions of other minds.

From:

kunstler.com/blog/2011/04/blowin … smoke.html

“Will it be a black swan or an entirely predictable catastrophe when Saudi Arabia’s ten million barrels a day go offline as suddenly and as spectacularly as Libya’s one point five million?”

Nothing will happen. Gas prices will go up. Big Deal. The EU and JAPAN have dealt with 10 dollars a gallon gas and even more for decades and got by perfectly, not only living their own “happy motoring” but actually exporting much of their “happy motors” to the US.

Oh, I forgot, in the US oil and gas is A SINGLE POINT OF FAILURE BECAUSE THE ENTIRE SYSTEM IS BASED ON LONG DISTANCE CAR CENTERED SUBURBIA.

They need to create small centers with at least apartment house buildings of 7 to 10 floors (a lot of nice designs can be found in Switzerland, Germany, France and JAPAN, Skyscrapers would be better, but they are not very popular on this blog), and hook up all these centers with Mass Transit in the form of BUSES.

Words are important. They are the mechanism that is used to brainwash, maybe a better term would be “to program”, just like a computer, to program the neural networks of millions of people worldwide into a very simple one track mind - mentality. for example, everyone keeps on saying that the revolutions in North Africa and Middle East are for “democracy” and freedom". These words are used so much by everyone, it isn’t even funny. And yet exactly what would be democracy ? The possibility to choose a government “that should do your ECONOMIC interests”, because when you really get down past all the fluff, it is only the economic - materialistic well being that those millions of young people are looking for.

And exactly what are these materialistic - economic interests ? HOUSES and JOBS / or IF NO JOBS FREE SALARIES.But no one even thinks that they need these 2 things, they themselves, those young people just chant, like a broken record, we need democracy and freedom. They have been totally brainwashed with this Right Wing Thug system, where they will give you all the freedom and democracy you want, BUT WILL NEVER GIVE YOU JOBS OR AT LEAST, IN ALTERNATIVE A FREE SALARY, AND THEN A DECENT HOME WITH CHEAP RENT.

That is what is needed by millions worldwide, only that, the basics. But as soon as you start talking about homes and house prices and rents, especially cheap rents as appropriate to minimum wages, everyone’s program “crashes”. It is like a short circuit, like when patrizia says “rents should be the right price”, it is totally impossible to conceive or imagine. They weren’t programmed to think in those terms, they can’t even conceive of it. What ? Cheap Rents, Are You Crazy ? Of course, who asks for cheap rents is Crazy! Because it is exactly through the mechanism of house values and high rents that so many small property owners can express their Power Status, their power relationship to either the unemployed of the minimum wage workers. House ownership and house prices are the huge wall of exclusion that property owners work all their life for to build, as a statement of status, as a statement of power, as a statement of power relationships to the weaker classes.

But this is constructed by design, this is completely artificial, is a system that the capitalists have constructed to exclude the lower classes and wage a total class warfare against millions of weaker people worldwide. It is not natural, it is not correct, it is simply a statement, that goes like this :

“since our economy is so rich it could easily provide for cheap rents for everyone, it is totally available (in fact there are 15 million empty homes in the US and 20 million in Europe from Lisbon to Moscow), but since millions of others have been programmed to hate on the weaker, to express themselves through the power relationship and power status home prices and rents represent, these cheap rents or home prices will not be furnished, indeed, it is desired that they keep on going up as high as possible”.

So then, it would be more honest to say to all those millions of young kids around the globe needing JOBS and HOUSES, you won’t get it, WE SIMPLY WILL NOT GIVE IT TO YOU, JUST BECAUSE, because we said so, with no other deeper metaphysical or economic reason available, because there are none. It is only me (richer) against you (poorer) and you (poorer) will lose always because you are the weaker class. Of course they are more sophisticated than this: they will say skill sets, competition, productivity, you have to deserve it, small businesses, be your own boss, etc. a never ending list of excuses to hide their egotism, that is hidden even to themselves, they don’t even notice how they are themselves programmed.

Now, go on, all those young kids fighting revolutions and wars in Libya or wherever, keep on saying you need democracy and freedom, AND NOT THAT WHAT YOU REALLY NEED IS JOBS AND HOUSES.

Even because if they were to say they needed JOBS and HOUSES, that would directly restrict to a very narrow choice the political choices that could be made: You are then forced to give them jobs or a free salary, and build and provide homes with cheap rents. This is too blunt. The real war, power struggle, fight would become very apparent to everyone, there would be no more hiding behind words, concepts and abstractions, like economic growth, investments, etc.

So everyone is extra careful never to mention what exactly is really needed, what is creating so much unhappiness and anger worldwide, be extra careful, maybe the huge deception would become too apparent…

"
“No, it should be cheap because, homes are abundant, there millions empty, building them is just a political choice…”

Hey, Moron. Go invest your hard earned money in some apartments. And then rent them out cheaply.
"

I answer:

We are in a trap. The solutions to at least the major problems like Houses, Salaries (or Jobs, whichever you prefer, it is irrelevant, because they only reflect power relationships in a Technological Economy that produces all it needs with very little real labor needed at all) and Energy are all very simple and completely available. Just give out Free Salaries or create real jobs with huge public - private endeavors like Skyscrapers and Rockets to Mars, Cheap Rents, and use high density living, apartment houses - clustered centers or Skyscrapers like Seoul and BUSES for mass transit.

Simple. Very simple and too simple. But we have all the past investment of past labor (Your hard earned money and rent out cheap), prices of houses in New York and Paris are high, etc. We only look at the situation on the ground, and the situation on the ground is the only thing we can even imagine, we can even conceive, all other possibilities cannot even be conceived, as if that is the only game possible, as if they are laws of physics. In fact, they are, they are arbitrary laws that have evolved and have put a gridlock on everything, nothing can possibly change (if not for worse). We are trapped in a process that is beyond any control, but this process is geared towards giving only advantages to the dominating classes.

For example, a simple law that forces Rents and Home prices in New York and Paris to be tied to minimum wage, bar none, so minimum wage is 800 dollars a month, rents or mortgages (you can buy if you want, nothing wrong with that) cannot be more than 200 dollars a month would easily finally solve this problem. Who loses ? No one, everyone gains. Don’t like that solution. ? Ok, another solution could be the “government” can build homes for the minimum wage workers, and build enough so that there is no fake “scarcity” inducing prices up (by the way, home builders and apartment builders would love this, and the government can pay all of this with the trillions of dollars the FED constantly prints and gives, for free, to AIG, the Banks, and so many other already super rich entities: at least the money would be given for real work to produce real goods).

If rents and home prices are high in New York and Paris, that is a law of physics that no one even ever doubts. No one even can imagine it being different, no one even ever challenges it. It is a given. It is like this and cannot be any other way and will always be like this, just like the sky is blue. Same for “labor always costing, oh so much”, same for everything that even slightly attempts to challenge the status quo and dominating classes. But everyone thinks they have “something to lose” if this arrangement changes, everyone thinks that they are gaining by high rents and union busting, and beating up all the lazy slob workers, by lamenting resource scarcity, etc. Everyone is so completely brainwashed by all of this, that it is virtually impossible to hope for any change.

So go on, wall street, keep on robbing, hike up prices of real estate as much as possible, kick out all the lazy bum workers (workers are all, by definition, lazy bums robbing money from the poor entrepreneurs and employers and capitalists) go on. Go on, everyone, keep on saying oil is finishing therefore there is not enough room for anyone to live anymore (all the “others” should simply die off or slug it out like in Libya) kick out all public workers, they are all parasites. Go on, concentrate money in as few hands as possible.

from:

kunstler.com/blog/2011/04/blowin … smoke.html

“People migrating from more populated to less populated areas is like a natural law of physics.”

I answer:

WRONG. Just the opposite, they go from less populated areas to more populated areas. They go to where the JOBS are. So it is always and will be increasingly so, in fewer more populated mega-cities. Why is this ? Because everyone wants the “market” to do its own thing, and hates “big government” or planned economies, or any intelligence applied to problems as that would interfere with how perfect the anarchy of the free market is.

Why do people concentrate in large numbers ? because large numbers of people generate large enough markets to sell all kinds of goods and services, hence creates jobs. Also, because many jobs are essentially often “status challenges - conflict/confrontation points - judgment points - assignment of winner and loser” endeavors (as much REAL work is no longer necessary in a Technological Economy), so large numbers of people have to search each other out and fill up a small area so as to measure each other, compete with each other, be physically next to each other to be aware of each other, etc.

I phantom the world 100 years from now will be not more than 100 cities with 100 million people each inside, in millions of Skyscrapers…

On house prices and rents: they always have to go up because there are so few real possible sectors that can give a return, most industrial endeavors and economic endeavors are saturated, have given all the returns they could in the past, with low growth and few new sectors to exploit, the profit myth and profit motive can only squeeze out from the basic needs of people: tomorrow you will pay water more and more, same with health care, same with food, etc. Any basic need can be a profit motive point.

But the dominating economic model always talk about flexibility (low home prices and more rents would go a long way for this wouldn’t it, but they never mention this), skill sets, competition, productivity, etc. Obviously skill sets, productivity, etc. are only applicable to workers not to property prices that have a “special” status. Then how does increasing house prices and rents increase any of those attributes ? Pumping up rents and house prices has nothing to do with skill sets or competition, etc. but are considered “good” for the economy, what a deception: this alone shows how it is all essentially a power relationship.

The guy before talked about all the stores in the town (centralia?), etc. but if you notice, most of them are all in optional sectors, not real first level necessities: and that is the problem, this economic system can generate jobs only according to what is valued culturally, what is valued almost “artistically”, being that the basics are taken care of with so few workers. So the sectors that hire depend on optional, aesthetic choices, artistic choices, on a kind of shared lanugage where the items of value are decided upon by fashion, and arbitrary decisions. But these sectors, when they emerge, undergo rapid optimization and automation and rapidly kill the new jobs they created, and most optional sectors have been invented and saturated and optimized. So now what ? That is the problem with labor today and why there will be less and less work, it depends on pure whims, pure options, pure fashion, on things that are not needed and necessary but on pure random consumption. This will generate very few jobs, while so many forces are at work to try to take away all the basics from people and make them pay more and more for them. And in the meanwhile the population of those needing jobs increases, but the problems are not overpopulation, but on the profit motive not creating enough opportunities anymore.