global financial crash yay!

[vimothy]

And it seems to me that, WRT the financial crisis, fear is as great a statan as greed.

But the issue of collective action, in fact of collective decision making, which might be even more difficult, is a thorny one. Can humanity decide anything?

 

[vimothy]

Ah, I agree. The institutions, the structures, must also be negotiated -- a form of trade. Everything, in the final analysis, is a compromise.

I also believe in mutants.

 

[IdleRich]

"there still remains this persistent sense that the economy is somehow something other to humans. It isn't... The economy is us, we are the economy, humans create the economy - the economy is an expression of human activity, and we control the economy (we, humanity) to the extent that we control ourselves, to the degree that we do, and in the ways that we do."

But what are the practical implications of this difference? It seems to me that we can understand it in either way if we choose but what advantages does the second have over the first.

 

[josef k.]

the question is control. who controls the economy? how is the economy controlled?

relatedly, what control do losers and weirdos such as ourselves (i speak for myself, really) have over the economy?

are we being dominated by alien powers, and their alien agents?

or is the alien perhaps inside?

 

[IdleRich]

"relatedly, what control do losers and weirdos such as ourselves (i speak for myself, really) have over the economy?"

This is what I was getting at - any individual (and even any organisation or country or whatever) has no control over the economy. So even if it is in reality part of humanity we have as little control over it as if it were not.

 

[josef k.]

I don't agree that we have no control... I think we have some... a little bit. We can spread fear, for example, if we wanted to, when our friends ask us things, and then perhaps they will spread fear, and then perhaps they will spread fear, and so on, and so forth...

 

[vimothy]

There are different levels of economic activity, though -- for example, the popular distinction between micro and macro.

 

[josef k.]

please go on... if you can.

micro and macro

i to a

(a) = autre.

(i) = i.

 

[padraig (u.s.)]

or is the alien perhaps inside?

this I reckon...both collectively inside our society (the total sum of us) in that & within each one individually...

 

[vimothy]

What do you call 'em -- fallacies of composition? Just because something is true on one level, doesn't mean it will hold on the other. The most frequently cited example of this is probably the "paradox of thrift", a theory at the heart of Keynesian macro. The paradox of thrift basically says that increases in the rate of aggregate saving will lead to a fall in income, i.e. that while saving more makes you wealthier as an individual, if everyone saves more at the same time, then everyone will become poorer, not richer.

 

[padraig (u.s.)]

This is what I was getting at - any individual (and even any organisation or country or whatever) has no control over the economy. So even if it is in reality part of humanity we have as little control over it as if it were not.

I don't think this is true at all...every decision made pretty much by anyone anywhere at anytime is exercising a degree of control over the economy...in so much as the economy is an expression of how we collectively live; how we extract & use resources, trade them, allocate them...

or maybe it's better to say that the economy is something which cannot be controlled, only effected...by decisions...& externals of course...

 

[josef k.]

What do you call 'em -- fallacies of composition? Just because something is true on one level, doesn't mean it will hold on the other. The most frequently cited example of this is probably the "paradox of thrift", a theory at the heart of Keynesian macro. The paradox of thrift basically says that increases in the rate of aggregate saving will lead to a fall in income, i.e. that while saving more makes you wealthier as an individual, if everyone saves more at the same time, then everyone will become poorer, not richer.

I wonder if there is a truth which holds between levels... perhaps the truth of paradox itself... which is an xcellent word now i think about it... orthodox, heterodox, paradox...

 

[josef k.]

global trade must equal zero.

 

[Mr BoShambles]

or maybe it's better to say that the economy is something which cannot be controlled, only effected...by decisions...& externals of course...

This is OTM.

Not sure what you had in mind with the "externals"? The environment - Mama Tierra - is about all i can think of (and even the environment isn't really external since it both shapes and is shaped by human activity).

I don't believe that anything is truly controlled - not the economy, or the state, or any organization. Instead they are shaped by human agency - the aggregated effects of an infinite number of micro-interactions between people acting in complex webs of interdependency, with imperfect knowledge, in a terrain of pervasive uncertainty. Power is asymmetric and relational - i.e. it is embodied in the relations between objects not the objects themselves. What this means is that some people can excercise greater influence over a given situation/process than others. But no one person or group of people can entirely control anything let alone everything. And unintended outcomes are guaranteed.

 

[padraig (u.s.)]

Not sure what you had in mind with the "externals"? The environment - Mama Tierra - is about all i can think of (and even the environment isn't really external since it both shapes and is shaped by human activity).

yeah nature is I what I meant - tho "nature" encompasses a ton of things within it (climate, weather, soil erosion, etc.) many of which are interconnected. "external" is perhaps not the most accurate term - "forces (sometimes) entirely beyond human agency to effect" is maybe better if rather unwieldy? also keep in mind that despite our power to occasionally radically reorder the environment (with mixed & often disastrous results) we still generally tremble before the power of nature...or don't understand what the hell we're meddling with...

I don't believe that anything is truly controlled - not the economy, or the state, or any organization. Instead they are shaped by human agency - the aggregated effects of an infinite number of micro-interactions between people acting in complex webs of interdependency, with imperfect knowledge, in a terrain of pervasive uncertainty. Power is asymmetric and relational - i.e. it is embodied in the relations between objects not the objects themselves. What this means is that some people can excercise greater influence over a given situation/process than others. But no one person or group of people can entirely control anything let alone everything. And unintended outcomes are guaranteed.

I fully agree & think this whole paragraph was exceedingly well put. bravo sir.

 

[swears]

I don't believe that anything is truly controlled - not the economy, or the state, or any organization. Instead they are shaped by human agency - the aggregated effects of an infinite number of micro-interactions between people acting in complex webs of interdependency, with imperfect knowledge, in a terrain of pervasive uncertainty. Power is asymmetric and relational - i.e. it is embodied in the relations between objects not the objects themselves. What this means is that some people can excercise greater influence over a given situation/process than others. But no one person or group of people can entirely control anything let alone everything. And unintended outcomes are guaranteed.

Huh, seems like you haven't heard about the NWO zionist freemason space lizard people. What kind of web forum is this?

 

[Agent]

i secretly hope it all goes under.

 

[Mr BoShambles]

i secretly hope it all goes under.

why?

 

[josef k.]

I don't believe that anything is truly controlled...

"Truly" controlled - no. Not in the sense of decisively monopolized. But decisions are taken everyday (on the micro level) and so there is an aspect of control in the answers supplied... to the question of how the environment is going to be shaped today.

The shaping, in other words, is managed.

 

[Mr BoShambles]

I agree josef. I certainly don't think that it is all just random chaos. I think its helpful to view the social world as a giant game (a la Bourdieu) in which we are all actors/players. This is the way some guys I linked to earlier describe it:

Because of the scale and complexity of the game being played by these actors, it can only result in unpredictable and unexplained consequences no matter how clear and logical the strategy pursued by any actor. This is a paradoxical world where we are forming and being formed by the web of interactions both at the same time. Our knowledge of the game we are playing is imperfect, and we only realise this as we play the game and reflect on the consequences of having played it. Rather than displaying an ‘if. . .then’ causality, our understanding of the temporality of what we are involved in is cyclical: we act in the present, informed by the past and in anticipation of the future, and our understanding of that past is constantly revised as a result of our acting.

Dispensing with a mechanical and predictable worldview in favour of this more complex game-type paradigm to me does not imply embracing chaos nor accepting futility in the pursuit of managed social change.

Recognising that the world is less certain and predictable, and thus accepting that we have less control than we’d like to think, should be seen as a progressive move towards a more realistic set of assumptions with which to guide our thinking.

EDIT: This is all pretty academic though, given that - as Swears points out - the illuminati are out there plotting the NWO in darkened rooms whilst feeding on dead babies with their forked reptilian tongues. Or summat like that