We are the Foundation

Exactly. We all want the Gucci Bag. What you are asking for is truly revolutionary, but how are you going to accomplish this if you have absolute zero saying on how we get educated, no power to create the media that people consume 24/7, no real possibility to influence the way politics work?

I feel there is an urgent need to do something. Anything. But you walk first and then you run.

SO …

you're all

yes

cuts scene back to US hypocrisy

  Quote

It may seem contradictory that the Senate is threatening to raise barriers to trade with China even as it has just passed bilateral trade pacts with Colombia, South Korea and Panama. But those treaties were first signed four to five years ago. Public support for free trade has been withering for a decade, tracking the decline in middle-class American manufacturing jobs. The main cause of that decline is rising productivity, which lets factories produce more stuff with fewer workers, but cheap Chinese imports have also been a factor. America’s resentment of China has grown as its economy sputters while China’s has galloped ahead. Barack Obama has pinned his hopes for recovery on a doubling of exports, a goal that China’s many barriers to trade, from discriminatory government procurement to the undervalued yuan, impede.

http://www.economist.com/node/21532288

im just curious about why the thread title changed.

  On 10/15/2011 at 10:45 AM, xxx said:

To be fair, Australia has a bit of immunity to all of this nonsense. Historically, they have taken sovereign debt very seriously and are one of the few Western countries in the world that is not literally dangling off the cliff financially. Oz has a wealth of natural resources as well. In fact, from everything I've heard about Australia's way of doing things, they stand alone as a country who is not batshit insane regarding the interface between economics and politics. Granted, I'm not Waltzing Matilda here and I'm sure there's plenty of warts to be discussed but all of the shit that's gotten us where we're at (cowboy financial systems, crushing debt, mathematical shenanigans, etc.) is not something Australia does.

We still share a common cynicism for mainstream politics/media and of the constant parrot-nattering of talking points that passes for public debate here. True that the marriage of corporation/government isn't that bad in Australia, though it looks like we won't be far off behind U.S the way things have been heading. Many Aussies feel the govt's role should be to redistribute wealth fairly, and our track record for that has been pretty good up until recently. For example, Qantas's CEO received a 4mill pay rise yet the company can't "afford" to keep engineers in Australia happy (and keep jobs local).

Similar to you guys, we have special interest groups who don't represent the majority of us yeilding excessive power in government (christian lobbying, farmers in QLD). Not so long ago, the fairly popular Prime Minister we elected was disposed and substituted coup-style, by the orders of mining magnates, after his proposal to increase tax on mining multinationals.

  On 10/16/2011 at 5:55 PM, GORDO said:

im just curious about why the thread title changed.

GML

  On 10/16/2011 at 5:52 PM, m u st co n t r ol t h o 4 said:

cuts scene back to US hypocrisy

 

  Quote

It may seem contradictory that the Senate is threatening to raise barriers to trade with China even as it has just passed bilateral trade pacts with Colombia, South Korea and Panama. But those treaties were first signed four to five years ago. Public support for free trade has been withering for a decade, tracking the decline in middle-class American manufacturing jobs. The main cause of that decline is rising productivity, which lets factories produce more stuff with fewer workers, but cheap Chinese imports have also been a factor. America’s resentment of China has grown as its economy sputters while China’s has galloped ahead. Barack Obama has pinned his hopes for recovery on a doubling of exports, a goal that China’s many barriers to trade, from discriminatory government procurement to the undervalued yuan, impede.

 

http://www.economist.com/node/21532288

It should be noted that the Korea-US FTA agreement has just been ratified by US Congress (last month i think) and the Korean national assembly hasn't ratified it at all. So the idea that trade with other nations is ruining the US simply another canard.

Trade has to be managed, absolutely - the idea of a strictly free market is ridiculous, and will only lead to greater increases in abuse of the system. But trade in and of itself is not inherently bad.

here's some news that could be good:

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/politics/bank-of-canada-head-calls-occupy-protests-entirely-constructive/article2202064/

  On 10/16/2011 at 6:35 AM, chenGOD said:

So grow your own fruit - you have a garden do you not?

We rent a house, because we can't afford to buy one. You can't alter the garden when you're renting. We have got some lettuce and tomatoes and various herbs and strawberries growing out of pots though. Also, i don't have a new phone i've got an hand-me-down ancient one from my brother. Our TV we've had for five or so years now. It was a big investment, and in a couple of years, when the tech we want gets cheaper we'll replace it. I thought of a lot of rebuttals to everything else you were talking about on my walk yesterday, but i can't be fucked thinking it all through now tbH. Like you said we've been friends for ages now, so don't take that as me not caring about that. I just don't want to argue about stuff like this on watmm anymore, haven't for years. I just come in and say my bit, if you don't agree well that's cool. But you are deluded about the benefits of globalization man. It's not there for our well being, it's there cause it makes corporations and their creditors and investors richer, that's it. A country like you suggest with my garden, should be self sufficient. Ideas should cross borders, and so should specialist goods. But with generalized things , we should try, in the service of everyone living within the bounds of a nation to find a way to do it for ourselves. For example, there's billions of dollars being spent on building a natural gas supply port north of brisbane. And instead of using under utilized local manufacturers now that our housing boom has slid away. They're prefabbing everything in the cheapest country to do so and shipping it all here, then flying in teams of workers to put it all together. What is the point for the people who live here if we see no local economic benefit to this overseas investment in stealing all our natural gas by fracking some of our best farmland ? Globalization is mostly a scam to open up borders and push down global wages. You can point to the odd payoff, but they are things that we did before we liberalized our border controls and dropped our tariffs.

why couldent there be just a truely GOOD person running the show !!???? obama was a lie i guess the only obtion left is.....

RICHIE BALL

  On 10/17/2011 at 1:03 AM, delet... said:

  On 10/16/2011 at 6:35 AM, chenGOD said:

So grow your own fruit - you have a garden do you not?

 

We rent a house, because we can't afford to buy one. You can't alter the garden when you're renting. We have got some lettuce and tomatoes and various herbs and strawberries growing out of pots though. Also, i don't have a new phone i've got an hand-me-down ancient one from my brother. Our TV we've had for five or so years now. It was a big investment, and in a couple of years, when the tech we want gets cheaper we'll replace it. I thought of a lot of rebuttals to everything else you were talking about on my walk yesterday, but i can't be fucked thinking it all through now tbH. Like you said we've been friends for ages now, so don't take that as me not caring about that. I just don't want to argue about stuff like this on watmm anymore, haven't for years. I just come in and say my bit, if you don't agree well that's cool. But you are deluded about the benefits of globalization man. It's not there for our well being, it's there cause it makes corporations and their creditors and investors richer, that's it. A country like you suggest with my garden, should be self sufficient. Ideas should cross borders, and so should specialist goods. But with generalized things , we should try, in the service of everyone living within the bounds of a nation to find a way to do it for ourselves. For example, there's billions of dollars being spent on building a natural gas supply port north of brisbane. And instead of using under utilized local manufacturers now that our housing boom has slid away. They're prefabbing everything in the cheapest country to do so and shipping it all here, then flying in teams of workers to put it all together. What is the point for the people who live here if we see no local economic benefit to this overseas investment in stealing all our natural gas by fracking some of our best farmland ? Globalization is mostly a scam to open up borders and push down global wages. You can point to the odd payoff, but they are things that we did before we liberalized our border controls and dropped our tariffs.

You want cheaper tech, and cheaper specialized goods, this is the way to get them.

Coltan for example - which you guys actually have in Australia - but probably not enough to meet your demand. This requires trade then, or foregoing production of computers/mobiles/playstations etc.

Countries tried being self-sufficient, but that leads to stagnation. Look at examples from South America, look at India's manufacturing sector. Look at the collapse of the Soviet Union (under production, no incentive to innovate, plenty of incentive for plant managers to cheat on their reports), look at Mao's Great Leap Forward where they produced steel of such low quality it all had to be fucking binned.

Are you gonna see benefit in that natural gas facility by having lower natural gas costs? This report from the government (I know, you can't trust the government) seems to indicate you guys have cheaper natural gas prices than America and Europe. As you seem to have large reserves, the more you develop these, the more you should be able to reduce your costs at home.

Are you willing to pay more to cover increased capital costs?

Globalization is not a recent thing - what is recent is advances in shipping technology which makes it cheaper.

Look if you're willing to go without these things that came about due to globalization, then by all means, go for it. But don't bitch when you can't play video games, when you can't eat produce that isn't grown locally, when costs for clothing rise and so on.

  On 10/17/2011 at 3:05 AM, chenGOD said:

Look if you're willing to go without these things that came about due to globalization, then by all means, go for it. But don't bitch when you can't play video games, when you can't eat produce that isn't grown locally, when costs for clothing rise and so on.

I am ok with all these things.

  On 10/17/2011 at 3:35 AM, autopilot said:

  On 10/17/2011 at 3:05 AM, chenGOD said:

Look if you're willing to go without these things that came about due to globalization, then by all means, go for it. But don't bitch when you can't play video games, when you can't eat produce that isn't grown locally, when costs for clothing rise and so on.

 

I am ok with all these things.

Clearly not - you're posting on a device that was made possible cheaply through globalization.

i think "Clearly not" is incorrect.

Fine - it's not clear, but even if autopilot is using a top of the line Mac Pro, he has still reaped the benefits of globalization.

Sure, I won't argue that. But I still have no reason to think that he isn't ok with forfeiting his top of the line mac pro and denouncing globalization.

  On 10/17/2011 at 9:02 AM, essines said:

Sure, I won't argue that. But I still have no reason to think that he isn't ok with forfeiting his top of the line mac pro and denouncing globalization.

that's the thing though - the 300 dollar acer is also a result of globalization. In all actuality the top of the line mac pro is more in line with what you'd be paying, and probably for less power, if it wasn't for globalization.

Anecdote time - in 1986 (maybe 87?) my parents made a big investment in a Mac Plus. Cost 3000 CDN, which is like $5500 today. It had 1MB of RAM, an 8Mhz processor, no internal hard drive and a 9" black and white monitor. And that wasn't even top of the line for PCs...COmpaq made a beast of a machine back then which sold for like 15K. We could have gotten an Amiga, but I think we got the Mac cause some family friends ran a Mac authorized retailer.

Anyways - look at what 5500 can get you today!!

I think globalization is here to stay. It's a very powerful tool like math or advertising, it is just in the hands of the wrong crowd and we should not accept the fact that macs / clothes / money are OK but for example you can't move freely across borders if you are poor or have the wrong skin color.

These are all luxuries, though, ChenGOD. Granted, I'm as guilty of the next guy of taking advantage of the way things currently are to enjoy a lifestyle the majority of us arguably did not earn, but I wouldn't be heartbroken if next week, due to third world demand of fair wages, I could no longer browse a forum that's been stripped of personality by the owner.

  On 10/17/2011 at 3:05 AM, chenGOD said:

  On 10/17/2011 at 1:03 AM, delet... said:

  On 10/16/2011 at 6:35 AM, chenGOD said:

So grow your own fruit - you have a garden do you not?

 

We rent a house, because we can't afford to buy one. You can't alter the garden when you're renting. We have got some lettuce and tomatoes and various herbs and strawberries growing out of pots though. Also, i don't have a new phone i've got an hand-me-down ancient one from my brother. Our TV we've had for five or so years now. It was a big investment, and in a couple of years, when the tech we want gets cheaper we'll replace it. I thought of a lot of rebuttals to everything else you were talking about on my walk yesterday, but i can't be fucked thinking it all through now tbH. Like you said we've been friends for ages now, so don't take that as me not caring about that. I just don't want to argue about stuff like this on watmm anymore, haven't for years. I just come in and say my bit, if you don't agree well that's cool. But you are deluded about the benefits of globalization man. It's not there for our well being, it's there cause it makes corporations and their creditors and investors richer, that's it. A country like you suggest with my garden, should be self sufficient. Ideas should cross borders, and so should specialist goods. But with generalized things , we should try, in the service of everyone living within the bounds of a nation to find a way to do it for ourselves. For example, there's billions of dollars being spent on building a natural gas supply port north of brisbane. And instead of using under utilized local manufacturers now that our housing boom has slid away. They're prefabbing everything in the cheapest country to do so and shipping it all here, then flying in teams of workers to put it all together. What is the point for the people who live here if we see no local economic benefit to this overseas investment in stealing all our natural gas by fracking some of our best farmland ? Globalization is mostly a scam to open up borders and push down global wages. You can point to the odd payoff, but they are things that we did before we liberalized our border controls and dropped our tariffs.

 

You want cheaper tech, and cheaper specialized goods, this is the way to get them.

Coltan for example - which you guys actually have in Australia - but probably not enough to meet your demand. This requires trade then, or foregoing production of computers/mobiles/playstations etc.

Countries tried being self-sufficient, but that leads to stagnation. Look at examples from South America, look at India's manufacturing sector. Look at the collapse of the Soviet Union (under production, no incentive to innovate, plenty of incentive for plant managers to cheat on their reports), look at Mao's Great Leap Forward where they produced steel of such low quality it all had to be fucking binned.

 

Are you gonna see benefit in that natural gas facility by having lower natural gas costs? This report from the government (I know, you can't trust the government) seems to indicate you guys have cheaper natural gas prices than America and Europe. As you seem to have large reserves, the more you develop these, the more you should be able to reduce your costs at home.

Are you willing to pay more to cover increased capital costs?

 

Globalization is not a recent thing - what is recent is advances in shipping technology which makes it cheaper.

 

Look if you're willing to go without these things that came about due to globalization, then by all means, go for it. But don't bitch when you can't play video games, when you can't eat produce that isn't grown locally, when costs for clothing rise and so on.

Actually our power comes from coal, and at current retail prices, we pay a lot more for this power than do the koreans that burn our coal that we've shipped to them. Gas here is being sold on the international market, so we don't get a home advantage national pride discount. Thanks to globalization we pay the going rate. Which is increasing. Perhaps the wholesalers can get it for less, but the end consumer has seen dramatic rises in power and gas prices over the past decade. Since we cleverly deregulated the power market, and then sold off the retail arms into private hands.

Plus i don't mind things that we can't make here being brought in from elsewhere, i stated that already. But simple things that we can make we bloody well should. A country is like a giant family unit. You have to look after your own first and foremost. We can't hope to fairly gloabally compete on price with cheapo fabrication plants in third world countries, nor can we compete with the market power of giant economies like the US or china. So we shouldn't. We should focus on making sure everyone here has a decent job making a fair wage, which is done easily by building more of our stuff here at home. We used to do it before, it wasn't hard. It made us rich and the envy of the world in terms of lifestyle and liveability for the people. Now we're pissing all that away just to conform with that misdirected mantra, 'you can't stop progress'.

fuk it and fuk them.

Here is an interesting 8,000 words article that attempts to explain how fucked we all are right now.

  Quote

For the economic mainstream, disorders like inflation, public deficits and excessive private or public debt result from insufficient knowledge of the laws governing the economy as a wealth-creation machine, or from disregard of such laws in selfish pursuit of political power. By contrast, theories of political economy—to the extent that they take the political seriously and are not just functionalist efficiency theories—recognize market allocation as just one type of political-economic regime, governed by the interests of those owning scarce productive resources and thus in a strong market position. An alternative regime, political allocation, is preferred by those with little economic weight but potentially extensive political power. From this perspective, standard economics is basically the theoretical exaltation of a political-economic social order serving those well-endowed with market power, in that it equates their interests with the general interest. It represents the distributional claims of the owners of productive capital as technical imperatives of good, in the sense of scientifically sound, economic management. For political economy, mainstream economics’ account of dysfunctions in the economy as being the result of a cleavage between traditionalist principles of moral economy and rational-modern principles amounts to a tendentious misrepresentation, for it hides the fact that the ‘economic’ economy is also a moral economy, for those with commanding powers in the market.

http://newleftreview.org/?page=article&view=2914

tl dr: it's time to choose your side in the battle.

  On 10/17/2011 at 2:16 PM, m u st co n t r ol t h o 4 said:

I think globalization is here to stay. It's a very powerful tool like math or advertising, it is just in the hands of the wrong crowd and we should not accept the fact that macs / clothes / money are OK but for example you can't move freely across borders if you are poor or have the wrong skin color.

And I totally support the idea that immigration flows need to be made easier, like the first modern wave of globalization.

  On 10/17/2011 at 3:14 PM, autopilot said:

These are all luxuries, though, ChenGOD. Granted, I'm as guilty of the next guy of taking advantage of the way things currently are to enjoy a lifestyle the majority of us arguably did not earn, but I wouldn't be heartbroken if next week, due to third world demand of fair wages, I could no longer browse a forum that's been stripped of personality by the owner.

Talk is talk autoPilot - sell your computer, stop buying fruit and produce that's not local to where you are, don't drive a foreign made car, don't use your mobile phone.

  On 10/17/2011 at 3:21 PM, delet... said:

 

Actually our power comes from coal, and at current retail prices, we pay a lot more for this power than do the koreans that burn our coal that we've shipped to them. Gas here is being sold on the international market, so we don't get a home advantage national pride discount. Thanks to globalization we pay the going rate. Which is increasing. Perhaps the wholesalers can get it for less, but the end consumer has seen dramatic rises in power and gas prices over the past decade. Since we cleverly deregulated the power market, and then sold off the retail arms into private hands.

Plus i don't mind things that we can't make here being brought in from elsewhere, i stated that already. But simple things that we can make we bloody well should. A country is like a giant family unit. You have to look after your own first and foremost. We can't hope to fairly gloabally compete on price with cheapo fabrication plants in third world countries, nor can we compete with the market power of giant economies like the US or china. So we shouldn't. We should focus on making sure everyone here has a decent job making a fair wage, which is done easily by building more of our stuff here at home. We used to do it before, it wasn't hard. It made us rich and the envy of the world in terms of lifestyle and liveability for the people. Now we're pissing all that away just to conform with that misdirected mantra, 'you can't stop progress'.

 

fuk it and fuk them.

Actually you pay less for coal than Koreans do (who only get about 25% of their power from coal). In fact you pay less for coal power than much of the world - additionally your electric rates compare favorably to much of the world: http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:GLvKmeKYXVoJ:www.med.govt.nz/templates/MultipageDocumentTOC____21846.aspx+Australia+electricity+prices+compared+internationally&cd=2&hl=en&ct=clnk

And you get huge government subsidies on natural gas. So no, you don't pay the world price.

Increases are probably the result of energy companies developing renewable power - R&D to make renewable energy efficient is not cheap.

You keep banging on about producing stuff at home - here's a scenario. Let's say you lot had continued to produce at home, and not engaged in trade. Great, your workers are making a fair wage and everybody's happy - for a while. What happens when you need some external resource to produce a good? You have to trade for it. But what do you trade? Your products haven't improved in quality as rapidly as the rest of the world because they haven't been competing against everyone else. So no one wants your inferior quality goods (and remember, you can only trade when there is demand for your goods). So ok, you buy the external resource necessary - where is the company going to get the money to buy it? Raise prices on the goods that they sell? That will reduce domestic demand (and I don't like supply side economics, so I try and look at things from the consumers point of view) and the company will produce less. If they produce less, they have to sell at higher prices still to maintain the wages, upkeep of capital, research and development. Selling at higher prices, reduces demand again. Bang company is out of business, workers are out of a job, and you don't have anywhere to go because you've only focused on manufacturing.

In theory autarky sounds wonderful - in reality, it just doesn't work. Would you buy a Tata? You know why India's manufacturing is shite and China's isn't? Because India closed themselves off to the world.

And what made you the envy of the world was your beaches, barbeques and beer.

your argument certainly seems sound, but i don't buy into that "talk the talk" argument. it seems like an over-generalization, though i spose this whole argument is pretty generalized.

Instead of polemicist arguments, there should be focus on a middle way methinks. More regulation worldwide (but by whom? and what should specifically be regulated?). No country can survive in complete isolationism, but there is a need for protectionism to fight against a globalized trust system coming into existence. Artificial price manipulation over regions, etc.

So lets say, just theoretically, that instead of completely dropping any usage of any foreign product, you place incremental tariffs on certain imported goods, by say, 2 percent (at this point im talking out of my ass) on industries or companies known for human rights abuses/corruption,etc. And hold that tariff while the industrial sector regenerates, incrementally increase it while slowly cutting down on income/corporate tax...might help bring some of the corporate interests back into the fold? Or is this a pipe dream?

That reminds me chen, have you read the findings from the Socrates Project?

This argument is too black and white to be of any benefit, IMHO. Globalization is not a heavenly monolith of progress, nor is isolationism/uber-protectionism indicative of "the good ol' days". Especially with crises like these its easier to fall back on the older two sides of a coin rather than surmise on the creation of the third one.

In economics its always Keynesians versus Austrian school or Milton Friedman. Yet I think both sides are pretty hard pressed to come up with a proper explanation for what precisely is occurring, and the solution therein that would fit within their ideological spectrum.

So I spose I am in favor of globalization, but for the idea that some advancement can be made in the world of macroeconomics/trade theory. At least we know the beginning of true progress is the process in which the reins of democracy are tightened by the populous. Hopefully then we as democratic/republican nations can begin to re-evaluate trade relationships and revitalizing the industrial sector.