Mind's Eye Re: turning the world Greek

That's more like it rigsy. I think we have to avoid the 'same old
answers'. Some of the literature runs to likely fantasy. David Li,
the man behind the financial application of the Gaussian copula is
portrayed as Tong-Triad connected because of his name (etc.) Much is
made of Adam Smith's thought experiment on 'barter to money' and that
the practical incidence of this is 0% in societies studied by
anthropologists. Economics is full of assumptions that are probably
wrong.
Something Vam often says about 'learned authority' is right - there is
too much of "Wittgenstein 1958" around to prove oneself erudite rather
than shorthand for 'you can read the argument yourself - to do so
here would delay mine in old ground'. Spreadsheets manipulate
numbers, but underlying this one is manipulating relationships between
numbers and what they represent. You don't get many undergraduates
into the second part and very few into the last.

If you call something given number value in a spreadsheet 'money' (in
chemistry we called stuff colour, spin, charge and a host of other
names) and whatever money is is actually very variable, it's likely
the number value won't work as you hope. In many respects, I'd say
Wittgenstein was right we should look at definitions in practice or
use. The money that left the Weimar and Hitler's Germany (or more
recently by truck load from Argentina) is not the same as the stuff we
pay our grocery bills with. The men buying Mexican prostitutes in New
York with 'money' aren't doing the same as we do with the stuff
either. What has money become when its being used to buy politics?
Money from vice, rackets and other forms of business and financial
theft and fraud is indistinguishable from anything derived from fair
toil thanks to the banks. This, of course, is only the beginning of
the deconstruction. My hope would be we could complete this process
and reassemble the spreadsheet.

On might say our governments are buying the abandoned estates. TARP
and QE have inflated stock and bond markets and this protects vast
claimed investment in derivatives. Smart money is in cash or liquid
assets waiting for the fire sale. The Bilderburgers ave already
bought themselves a vast Greek retreat.

Sub-atomic particles have charge, colour, strangeness, up, down, top,
bottom, spin, charm (labels) and I'm pretty sure we could devise a
complex notion of money that told us a lot more about its role in the
world. Half-a-million Indian farmers committed suicide in the last
decade because of usury. Micro credit schemes are being used in the
Yemen to steal farmers' land. The Enclosures go on.

On 2 Sep, 13:46, rigsy03 <rigs...@yahoo.com> wrote:
> Maybe. I'll admit spreadsheets are a mystery- my notion is changing
> the bed linens.
>
> England lost most of a generation in WWI and her empire at the end of
> WWII. How does this impact your theory? Your losses were America's
> gain.
>
> 92,000 people are a leap forward from past controls and ownership.
>
> Taxation has never been "fair", has it? The best I can do is consider
> them a form of charity at best and human corruption at worst.
>
> Economics cannot be approached without considering the social demands/
> changes- particularly of the 20th C.
>
> And who is buying the abandoned vast estates? Setting the socio-
> economic markers?
>
> Yes- it's alchemy- another branch of fantastic belief systems with its
> own language and methods similar to a liturgy.
>
> And tecnology has become so user friendly it's like we have been
> lulled away by the Pied Pipers of Silicon Valley.
>
> On Sep 1, 5:20 pm, archytas <nwte...@gmail.com> wrote:
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
> > For once rigsy I don't think you grasp any of the point.  I certainly
> > don't want to see the public sector running the private sector.  We
> > mostly nationalised over here because the private sector wasn't
> > working and it's difficult to find evidence that privatisation has
> > worked.  I use Andrew's 'Monopoly'  to explain the focus on finance.
> > Most of it is unnecessary and at odds with the cost-cutting of
> > efficient business. It's also a form of taxation without
> > representation.  About 92,000 people own most of the Earth.  You are
> > right, of course, that democracy is something we have wrong.
>
> > Pr[T < 1 T < 1] = O, O - 1 (F (1), O -1 (F(1), y would be the Gaussian
> > copula derivatives trading is based on if I had the right symbols.  It
> > was produced by Dr Li who is back in China.  It's nonsense as science
> > - what we call a scalar in maths.  Joseph Farrell even suggests it
> > might be a red plot in 'Babylon's Banksters'.  The maths is churned
> > out like religious liturgy and yet is as flawed as working out our
> > weekly budgets using income we make up rather than receive.     It's
> > alchemy.
>
> > On 1 Sep, 21:36, rigsy03 <rigs...@yahoo.com> wrote:
>
> > > What makes you think the public sector can run the private sector? As
> > > in the past, the two are often in oppostion. Again, just make some
> > > historical substitutions.
>
> > > There are systems of meritocracy that work. The military is one
> > > example but there are others. Merit is not always measured by
> > > financial gain.
>
> > > Wealth can only buy "so much" of an advantage- the rest is up to
> > > character.
>
> > > The private sector probably works harder because they can see/use the
> > > rewards whereas the public sector is hamstrung and dependent on others/
> > > policy/elections. (Rat/mouse experiments.)
>
> > > What is misunderstood is the concept of Democracy- which was a very
> > > controlled system in ancient Greece. America has become the symbol of
> > > Democracy but there is much misunderstanding about individual and
> > > group rights. We offer the opportunity to suceed which is not the same
> > > as a free ride.
>
> > > Who has set up the systems that control personal/national finances?
> > > Sometimes individuals but usually with the permission and regulation
> > > of the government- which was once controlled by the Papacy, for
> > > instance, and some may now be controlled by Islam or other strict
> > > "isms".
>
> > > "Rents" are the price one pays to live in a society. (Even apps are
> > > leased and cannot be transferred.)
>
> > > At any rate, few systems survive with an empty treasury/debts that
> > > soar above GDP.
>
> > > If voters want to be dazzled rather than directed they will continue
> > > to vote for entertainers rather than managers.
>
> > > On Sep 1, 7:35 am, archytas <nwte...@gmail.com> wrote:
>
> > > > A common phrase in my childhood when we couldn't understand something
> > > > was 'it's all Greek to me'.  Greece, Spain, Portugal and Italy are all
> > > > Euro periphery nations now on the brink of collapse.  I've been trying
> > > > to explain what's going on in a series of lectures recently.  I start
> > > > from the premise that economics is all Greek to me.  This is some
> > > > combination of me not understanding the muck and my belief that what
> > > > it's all about is a politburo imposing the Greek fate on us all.
> > > > Michael Hudson has written extensively on this.
>
> > > > Most of us can't debate economics because we can't get our attitudes
> > > > out of the Idols that generate our 'understanding'. I usually start
> > > > with a few questions about debt and what money is.  It's rare anyone
> > > > has much sensible to say on either, let alone knowledge of the history
> > > > on might find in, say, David Graeber's 'Debt: the first 5000 years' or
> > > > Paul Ormerod's 'Dr Strangelove's Game'.  I veer off a little and
> > > > explain that when I started university teaching, you could base a
> > > > course on text like this aiming at truth than than quantitative
> > > > manipulation.  These days, education has shifted towards producing
> > > > technocrats with instantly transferable job skills.  Teaching doesn't
> > > > get much further than compiling and manipulating spreadsheets.
>
> > > > Ask yourself who owns the debt, what is its size in comparison with
> > > > the productive economy.  The answers are startling, but less so than
> > > > the general ignorance in which we have been educated not to know.  I
> > > > test the latter with a bit of computerised button-pushing before I
> > > > start.
>
> > > > The debt is several times the productive economy - or rather the
> > > > consuming economy.  It's owned, in the main, by a small number of
> > > > people through stock markets and bonds (bonds are much bigger than
> > > > shares these days).  As few as 92,000 people own most of it around the
> > > > world.  These are the politburo or alien lizards who run the show.
>
> > > > I venture off into some Thorstein Veblen and a book on Germany and the
> > > > world wars by an Italian - 'Conjuring Hitler'.  This is really to show
> > > > that current economics isn't new at all.  I run through some economic
> > > > modelling and then ask what results we'd get if we designed our
> > > > spreadsheets from history rather than theory, including a turn on
> > > > delta, gamma and Poisson leap hedging.
>
> > > > My last question is 'where did the money go'?  You see, all the
> > > > spreadsheets work, but they don't show what money is or where it ends
> > > > up.  Something called the Cantillon effect helps here.  Money is
> > > > effectively 'radioactive'  and the plan worldwide Greek.  We cut
> > > > schools, police and welfare services and the money goes to a rich
> > > > oligarchy who fund our politics, destroying the hope of democracy.
> > > > Viewed as a physical system, economics is a control system that uses
> > > > more resources in control than in production.  We don't go for this in
> > > > science, except in highly complex experiments as at CERN and
> > > > Fermilab.  The essence of economics is a plot by a government of he
> > > > rich to own everything and rent it back to us.  This is the essential
> > > > Greek model.
>
> > > > It's easy enough to get to this stage.  The arguments can be made very
> > > > accurately.  This is only stage one.  Underlying the argument are the
> > > > Idols - complex soaked-up collective ignorance that actually prevent
> > > > economics as a science and our recognition that finance is a
> > > > complicated, religious control fraud (Veblen comes free on the Net).
>
> > > > Lecture two starts with the question 'what is our evidence that
> > > > private sector disciplines work better than the public sector and if
> > > > so, why is the private sector so interested in running the public
> > > > sector rather than producing radical, innovative, better
> > > > alternatives'?  This is something of a Wittgensteinian turn as I think
> > > > organisation itself is misunderstood in private versus public sector
> > > > debate.  Underlying this is the ideology of meritocracy and its
> > > > contradictions that money buys unfair advantage and wealth results in
> > > > rents the rest of us pay.
>
> > > > Is your country turning Greek?- Hide quoted text -
>
> > - Show quoted text -

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