Linearity, Cause and Effect...

Philosophy Forums Society, Government, and Economics
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Linearity, Cause and Effect…

People love linearity, love to see clear cut causes and effects, love simple explanations which they can logically follow, problem is, the modern global economy no longer follows any kind of linearity or cause and effect, and in fact it has been like this for some decades now. This is because technology and optimizations has simplified, automated and optimized most of the production processes worldwide. This implies the need for less and less labor, work is really no longer needed, and this process is destined to continue and become ever more dominant.

But people simply can’t wrap their heads around this idea: it is too non linear, they can’t see that technology, communications, and the fact that we now have increased the global workforce by hundreds of millions that are even disciplined and educated has created an automatic economy, an economy where the old rules no longer apply.

But, in order to keep on feeding the rich, the banks, in order to keep everyone convinced that it is right and justified to not give the basics to everyone, the right wing thugs keep on feeding the huge ideological construction and brainwashing that has been going on for the last 50 years.

Here is a list of all of the false linear, and cause and effects that everyone loves to believe is true, that everyone accepts without ever challenging or questioning them, because they are completely and totally brainwashed BIG TIME on all of this:

  1. We need more “education”, “more skills” to create jobs. FALSE, there has never been an era where there are so many educated and skilled workers worldwide of all kinds, so many scientists, etc. We need more information workers and scientists like a hole in the head, in fact all of those skilled technicians, workers, etc have only given us subprime loans, ipads, and all methods to rob money from the weaker social classes. We really don’t need another IPAD, or another programming language, we need CHEAP RENTS, and CHEAP BASIC HEALTH CARE for all. Maybe all of those math and science majors could be needed if we were sending trillions of rockets to colonize the solar system and building trillions of skyscrapers, or many other large scale projects…

For decades I have been hearing that we need more math and science experts, then how come thousands have been laid off in the last decade ? How come they can’t find jobs ? So then they are not needed ? Oh, I see, as you grow old, you don’t know how to do math and science anymore ? Oh, I see… What a huge pile of crap people believe in. The truth is most innovation in these fields have been done, most of the calculations that had to be done, have been done, We haven essentially run out of really new and productive math and science to do (although, I admit, this may be another subtle form of resource scarcity myth, but anyways, I don’t buy into the idea that we need so many more techies…).

  1. We need to be more “competitive” and “innovative” to create jobs. Since no one really knows what on earth these 2 words mean, and since they can mean anything and nothing, everyone accepts this as some kind of metaphysical truth. FALSE, we have almost all of the really useful innovations already invented, and corporations now exactly how to increase competitiveness by laying off, putting robots in factories, making software do most linear types of jobs, or offshoring low level manufacturing jobs to bangladesh at 200 dollars a month, etc. This is just another abstract word, impossible to ever meet, impossible to ever measure, impossible to do anything about that justifies firing people and not giving the jobs and CHEAP RENTS people really need to live. This plays in nicely into the hands of the rich, they will just keep on hogging up all the wealth, after all there will never be enough competition or innovation.

  2. Hard Work will make the economy richer. FALSE, there has never been an era where hard work is meaningless and actually most of the time counter productive. JAPAN has performed Hard Work for decades and they have been in a stagnation for decades, the same with Silicon Valley. In fact the myth of hard work in software and programming is what killed alot of companies: they thought that just because they “worked” 70 hours weeks they were creating great software. What fools, software is like mathematics, you have to simply know exactly how to write the correct equation, the simplest and smartest equation to get something done, this has nothing to do with “Hard Work”, or the time at the job, it is totally non-linear, in fact most of the best programs and ideas are simply that, smart constructions that can be done in little time and with little effort, but with alot of SMARTS. But this linear, cause and effect idea, that hard work achieves something is what everyone loves. This plays in nicely into the hands of the rich, they will just keep on hogging up all the wealth, after all, the lazy slob workers will never work hard enough and there will never be enough math - science experts.

  3. Workers are lazy slobs, the unions killed manufacturing, etc. In fact the idea of hard work and that poor slobs should work 3 minimum paid jobs for the economy, or that this is a sign of progress feeds in the instinct of wanting to beat up other people, the instinct of wanting to punish other people because they didn’t work hard enough, it feeds into the very attractive and simple and linear idea that hard work will generate wealth and well being. But it is totally false, it just serves to give ever more to the rich by squeezing people at the bottom, and everyone accepts this and buys into it. This plays in nicely into the hands of the rich, they will just keep on hogging up all the wealth, after all workers are all lazy slobs.

  4. We live in a world of resource scarcity, there is not enough for everyone. Another idea people are in love with, it is so simple to feed on and believe this linearity, this simple cause and effect, there are not enough houses so it is correct and justified that they cost so much, there is not enough health care, same story, etc. In fact there has never been an era of more resources available for all, and an ever increasing amount available exactly because of technology ( and all of those math and science experts) , but we just love to believe that there is not enough for everyone. So cut the jobs, cut the pensions, fire people, lay them off, get rid of the “entitlements”, etc. Funny how this word “entitlement” is so popular, how people love to beat up other people, how they love to take something away from others. This plays in nicely into the hands of the rich, they will just keep on hogging up all the wealth, after all there are resource scarcities, there will never be enough resources for everyone.

  5. TAX cuts will generate jobs. FALSE, if anything we need more taxes, as taxes are the only mechanism that forces some wealth to flow to the weaker social classes from the stronger. But taxes are a sin, taxes are for the common good, but the idea of the common good is a disgrace, is a sin, you don’t want to give anything to all of those millions of lazy slobs robbing you hard earned money through taxes.

  6. Home Ownership is an investment. FALSE, a home is something you use, end of story, and in fact according to the myths of “flexibility” it is much smarter to rent, so that you can change places and jobs according to the new flexible economy. Homes shouldn’t cost much at all, in the US there are 10 million empty homes, in Europe from Lisbon to Moscow there are maybe 20 million empty homes. Homes are not a scarcity and home ownership is not an investment. Get over it. I hope the prices collapse worldwide, a really hope this housing crisis gets worse and worse!

:sunglasses: Privatize the economy, more private companies as opposed to public will improve the economy. FALSE. What on earth do private companies have that a public company can’t have ? Nothing, it is just another excuse to fire people and rob more money from the poor. A public company with GOOD MANAGERS can operate just as efficiently, if not even more so, than a private company.

The real simple cause and effect, that could really improve the lives of millions, namely A BASIC JOB OR SALARY EVEN 500 DOLLARS A MONTH, AND A RENT OF 100 DOLLARS A MONTH for 1000 sq feet (80 sqm) house, is totally ignored and out of the question. Oh, but this is a disgrace, saying this is a sin, oh, you want to “kill the economy” if you do this, oh, no, this can’t be done, etc.

Instead of governments and obama simply stating and executing a very simple program, cheap rents for all, and millions of jobs to all from public or public - private entities producing all kinds of items, they just keep on talking about abstract concepts, impossible to measure, impossible to define, impossible to manipulate like innovation, competition, education, totally arbitrary in how these things are then judged etc. Invent an abstract word, and make believe that that word is the solution.

But just keep on feeding the beast, we have resource scarcity, there is overpopulation, we need more innovation and education, we need to be competitive, all things impossible to measure or achieve, but plays in nicely in transferring all the wealth into the hands of the already rich.

There are many other ideological constructions people have been brainwashed with, it is so dominant and extended that it is really nearly impossible to list them all and even see through them. But since no one clearly explains them, this is an attempt.

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Another hugely false cause and effect, false linearity is the fear of overpopulation: this is one of those huge lies that everyone worldwide believes in. The exact opposite is true, there has never been a time when population growth has decreased so rapidly so quickly. As soon as a country reaches a somewhat higher standard of living, birthrates collapse, and in fact many countries have negative birthrates. The population today is 7 billion, the very worse case prediction is that it could reach 15 billion by 2050. But that is nothing at all, the world is a hugely empty place, with just 1/10 of the land area of the USA you could easily host, in all luxury and creature comforts a cool trillion people in skyscrapers. But colonizing the solar system you could easily host thousands of trillions in all creature comforts with them all having free salaries, with machines doing all of our thinking and working and even all our living.

But you have this doomsday atmosphere, this insecurity of all of these scarcities, of all of these catastrophies that are going to happen. No trust in the future, no vision forward for progress, all doomsday and the sky is falling pessimism that plays in very nicely in the hands of the rich and capitalists. The best friends of the banks and rich and capitalists are the environmentalists, the doomsdayers, those that love to reveal all of the imaginary resource scarcities.

Even if global warming is true for example, we can easily solve all those problems technically, even food can be created with genetically modified lifeforms, etc.

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And also, all the pessimism, doomsday ideology, all the resource scarcity ideology justifies all kinds of fights and conflicts, all kinds of arrogance, since THERE IS NOT ENOUGH FOR EVERYONE. That is the crux of the problem: there is enough, way more than what anyone thinks, and it could easily be given to all if we had a progressive government that really looks towards the future.

Check out:

kunstler.com/blog/2011/01/the-ea … fts-1.html

"The office vacancy rate in Hartford has passed 30%. "

That is called EXCESS CAPACITY, that is the opposite of resource scarcity.

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The US economy is like a poker game, first the companies hire you and pay you a high salary, then when you least expect it, you get fired or laid off or whatever. Then, by that time your are used to a higher standard of living, like a drug addict, and you have to do all you can to try to maintain it, through debts or whatever. Then you got this huge BS of training for something new, something the “market” now needs, some new hot skill. There are always new hot skills being invented, we must live in really advanced societies since all of these new skills are needed for all of these huge advancements going around. Most of those skills is a bunch of BS, fluff, crap, not needed, not necessary, like the subprime experts or financial experts that always need to find new ways to ripoff the common slob. So more debt for schooling, etc. What a mega ripoff, not only fired, but also in a mental prison because you have to keep up to your old lifestyle.

Many can’t see through all of this BS, through this idiotic system, it serves only to fool and ripoff all of the ordinary slob workers and makes them run around like rats trying “to keep up”. But keep up to what ? To the crappy McMansion that is falling apart anyways because cheaply made ? To the big car ? To exactly what ?

Anyways, back to the serious stuff: we must KILL MOTHER NATURE, Nature is our enemy, I can’t understand what the environmentalists like so much about nature, trees, etc. Nature is and has always been our enemy. We must get it on the run through the entire solar system. We need to convert entire planets into huge skyscrapers, into steel and concrete, for thousands of trillions of people, giant balls of steel and glass and concrete full of supercomputers, no nature at all here, trillions of skyscrapers inside the SUN, a solid state civilization, with thousands of trillions of people. Interstellar highways, highways connecting planets, thousands of trillions of huge cars driving across the solar system using the worst and most polluting possible gasoline, nuclear engines, all kinds of huge mega pollution, our goal is to increase pollution and make the environment as nature unfriendly as possible. Hate nature, kill it, get a life.

From:

kunstler.com/blog/2011/01/the-ea … fts-1.html

Right Wing Thug says:

“Maybe I’m alone on this one, but I don’t consider shitty 1970s office parks to be “resources.” Freshwater and topsoil, the things humans actually need, have been in steady decline since we started spreading wheat seeds on the ground. At the same time human numbers, and perceived “needs,” have skyrocketed.”

I answer:

Just because you don’t like the style of the buildings doesn’t mean that we don’t have EXCESS CAPACITY, and soil and topsoil must be completely eliminated and covered with steel and concrete.

We need an IRON FIST COMMUNIST DICTATORSHIP, a TECHNOLOGICAL DICTATORSHIP that performs MIND OVER MATTER BIG TIME, in fact the computers should tell us what to do, what to construct, how many skyscrapers and supercomputers from the planet’s nucleus up into the higher atmosphere, billions of stories high.

One giant skyscraper occupying the entire volume of all of the planets in the solar system.

Instead we have puny obama, that shits his pants in order to protect the poor private health care operators, because they have to steal all your money and house if you get sick, and then finish you off anyways with all the insane drugs they give you. But drugs are good, they are artificial, they are not “natural”.

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It is a bit like being a prisoner of your past success, a prisoner of your posessions, or your status. A bit like not being able to let go after you have invested so much time and energy in your perceived success, whatever form it takes. Like the guy that worked 60 hour weeks for 3 years and doesn’t want to lose it all: he will work even more and harder to keep it, or be sure he doesn’t lose it, but he is a prisoner of his own work, of his own effort. Or better of his past effort, that past effort and work now haunts him ever more, now crushes him ever more. And the more he “invests” in it, the more the walls of the prison become higher.

But what he should do is simply let it go, I had it, I lost it, end of story, who cares, it is in the past now, it really never existed, as it is irrelevant if it existed or not.

But we become prisoners of ourselves…

Free your mind, let it go, let it all go, it is all useless crap anyways…

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Another huge lie, another false linearity that all of the economists of all stripes worldwide repeat like a bunch of broken records, like robots (and these are all those ones that went to “prestigious and expensive universities”, but they can’t seem to think with their own minds, what morons) is the lie that THE ECONOMY MUST GROW:

I ask, exactly what must grow ? do we need more cars ? do we need more houses, more offices, more iphones, etc. ? No one really understands what this growth thing is, another huge abstraction, denotation, another huge indirection that leads to no where or just goes around in circles forever.

An economy grows when it goes from poor to a decent standard of living, like what the US went through from 1950 to 1970, or better yet, what Western Europe and JAPAN went through from 1950 to 1980 or so. That is when people started buying their first cars, TVs, their houses (or rented them, when rents were rational), etc. They started their consumer economy, end of story. But the growth ends, the economy ends its growth, becomes developed, becomes a kind of steady state economy, no more real growth necessary or even possible or available. Unless you want to grow through bubbles, then you make people buy more than what they need, they get in debt and buy McMansions, more car then they need, etc. The US bought 15 million cars a year a few years ago, now it is buying about 10 million, but this is the real number of cars, the mostly substitution number of consumer goods that should get bought. Services won’t cut it, because services are mostly make believe crap, are not needed, or are frauds. We don’t need health insurance companies, we need free public basic health care like all the civilized world has.

So what has to grow ? No one knows, no one understands, no one cares, but don’t underestimate the importance of all of these abstractions, because these are the abstractions that governments and economists use to drive and pilot investments and all the trillions of dollars the rich (and banks and capitalists) have hogged themselves with. And they also decide what kinds of laws, what political economy to follow like that other huge myth of “tax cuts”.

China and India and others are growing simply because a part of their population (and I strongly doubt that that part will ever be more than 20 to 30 % in the best possible world) are going from poor to middle class. Which simply means they are buying their cars, TVs, they are getting their bigger houses, more consumption, end of story. Afterwards, they will stagnate (really means remain steady state) just like JAPAN, or the EU or USA.

But no economist ever says, maybe what we really need is simply a salary of 500 dollars a month and rents of 100 dollars (for 1000 sqft - 90 sqm home) so people can get on with their life. Maybe basic free health care, etc. No they will never say any of this, it is too true, too real, and too concrete. They will always talk of abstract concepts, things that can never be measured, understood, or achieved, (aside the fact that the measure of economic growth itself is such a huge lie, the numbers are completely and totally made up, none of those numbers are even closely true).

Don’t underestimate the importance of all of these abstractions, make believe linearities and causes and effects, this is what governments and corporations use to manipulate entire societies, only so that they can keep on hogging trillions like pigs.

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Nameta9: Re:Skyscrapers – The quality of life is an issue of too many humans inhabiting the Earth. I do not, and do want to live in a skyscraper. Your argument has many holes in it. Earth’s food supply is finite (i.e., it can only sustain a limited number of human beings). Over population is not a myth. It is a very real possibility for those who are today under 30 years-of-age. While - as you point out - the aggregate birthrate has fallen, the number of war- and conflict-related deaths has also drastically declined. Simultaneously, medical and agricultural sciences have come light years in recent decades. The average global life expectancy continues to climb. I’m afraid that you are - yourself - guilty, not only of linear thinking, but, also, of [i]tunnel vision/i]. I don’t know how old you are, but, I recommend that you read more factual literature and further your formal education.

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With regards to this, to be more precise,

THE LIE IS “THE ECONOMY MUST GROW IN ORDER FOR THERE TO BE MORE EMPLOYMENT AND MORE WEALTH TO DISTRIBUTE, MORE JOBS AND MORE HIGH PAYING JOBS.”

Now, aside from the fact that this idea of growth is vague, abstract, not really easy to measure or define, or let’s say, many people measure and define it differently, the real condition the “developed economies” find themselves in is a race condition.

On one hand many jobs have been optimized, automated, shipped to China, India, etc. (this shipping of jobs and importing their goods may ultimately be a way to control other countries, a way of subtly including other country’s economy into the US economy be making them become a part of it), and many of these jobs won’t be coming back, on another hand, house prices and the cost of living in the developed countries is very high.

So there are 2 race conditions, 1) between jobs being created faster than automation - optimization and offshoring, and 2) how fast housing cost and costs of living can go down. But in both races, the developed countries are destined to lose because automation and optimizations and offshoring still has a very long way to go before “saturating”, and house prices are going down too slowly. If the economy “grew” 10 % a year maybe the developed countries could have a chance, but as it is, they are stuck with little work and high house prices.

Since growth will not occur, no matter what they make you believe is true, the only solution is to give out free salaries and cheap rents, or less bluntly, hire millions of people in public and private - public corporations and offer houses having cheap rents.

The other magic wand solution, the more innovation, more research and more education creating jobs is not going to happen either no matter how many times they repeat this mantra. If anything, this activity will help kill more and more jobs by the very nature and definition of research and innovation, namely finding ways of doing things cheaper, more optimized and ultimately with less labor. There are only so many IPADS and financial products you can invent, only so many new courses and skill sets before the deceptions become clear.

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From:

kunstler.com/blog/2011/01/the-ea … fts-1.html

Right Wing Thug says:

“… nobody is going to be giving out free salaries or free rents anytime soon so don’t hold your breath.”

I answer:

I just like the quality of my analysis.

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Nameta9: I am new to this forum so I might be wrong, but I think you might just be preaching to the choir here. Even David2012 seems to basically agree with some sort of moderate left perspective.

David2012:
On food scarcity: I think you are right when you say “Earth’s food supply is finite (i.e. it can only sustain a limited number of human beings).”
BUT when it comes to this scarcity (which is real) I do not believe it is an immediate, pressing concern. One solution off the top of my head would be to stop eating so much meat. If we did this as a species, there would just be way too much grain and vegetable produce, and private agricultural concerns would lose out on the deal. But hardly anyone is promoting this solution because we’re just not there yet. I’m NOT saying “Stop eating meat.” I eat meat all the time. What I’m saying is, I don’t buy that limited food is an immediate problem, or else meat would be more expensive.

Instead I would like to say:
It has always seemed to me that the rhetoric of resource scarcity and overpopulation might be covertly rooted in an “If you can’t feed 'em, don’t breed 'em!” mentality. I’m not calling you a racist. All I’m saying is that we need to be very wary of the way past popular discourse about “Those poor starving people over there [in the third world]” informs the things we say about food scarcity and overpopulation.

Nameta9:
When I clicked on the thread named “Linearity, Cause, and Effect…” I thought you were going to talk about expected outcome utility.
This is the process of defining the probability of an outcome if you decide x and describing the utility of that outcome. This process makes the difference between taking a risk and gambling.
There are three factors in determining expected outcome utility: [un]certainty, [non]linearity, and lags
Having a finite range of possible outcomes indicates certainty, an infinite range indicates uncertainty.
Correlating the probability of each outcome to each possible action indicates linearity. (think of a line graph on an x/y axis)
The presense of lags concerns the utility of given outcomes.

These three factors together indicate the complexity of the system you are trying to model for expected outcome utility.
So, this is something that experts complain about a lot in the context of the housing crisis and accompanying global financial downturn. They say, the global economy is a very complex system. In terms of these three factors, this is the same as saying, “The global economy is now a system which is on the whole uncertain, nonlinear, and fraught with lags.”

I hate the environment like you do, but an ecosystem provides excellent intuitive examples. First: uncertainty. There is an infinite possibility of outcomes of global warming. After all, we’re dealing with an eternity of biosphere here, whatever happens in it. Second it is nonlinear. By this I mean there are all sorts of feedback loops. The more stuff we pump into the atmosphere, the more greenhouse effect, which makes holds in even more gases, or something like that, sue me I’m not a biologist. Then if icebergs start to melt, the temp of the oceans changes, what does that do? All these feedback loops contribute to nonlinearity. As far as lags, these are things like, if we stopped polluting today, have these feedback loops already been put irrevocably into motion. As in, what is the lag time before a change in action will affect your outcomes.

So, if we reject nonlinearity, we are saying that the global economy is a very complex system. The upshot of this, is that risks are less liable to modeling expected outcomes. This means a few things. First, there should probably be strong, enforceable regulations on financial markets. Second, we should do everything possible to distribute risk among the greatest number of agents. These agents are ultimately people. This is the concept behind mandated health insurance. If healthy people pay, they are sharing the risk distribution, until each agent’s risk reaches a zero limit. This is a very good reason to have a liveable safety net for people. It seems to me that what you are talking about for the most part nameta9, is improving the safety net by offering everyone 500 bucks a month and 100 bucks rent [aka forty acres and a mule]. And I think that this is a very good idea. Where’s my forty acres and a mule?

By the way, I volunteer for Communist Dictator 2012. Now I suppose we arm a cell and make revolution then give your authorities to me.