Life under Capitalism

Exhume to consume

Published on March 9, 2011

The good people of Crooked Timber are debating the replacement of human labour with machines as if the great robotisation/computerisation debates of the late sixties up to the mid-eighties never happened, nor for that fact the original industrial revolution, as if this has never happened before. But never mind that, at least Henry Farrell managed to get science fiction into the debate which in turn reminded me of Frederik Pohl’s great 1957 novella, “The Midas Plague”:

Frederik Pohl’s Midas Plague Equilibrium under which robots produce consumer goods so cheaply that they flood society, and lead the government to introduce consumption quotas, under which the proles are obliged to consume extravagant amounts so as to use the goods up (the technocrats fear that any effort to tinker to the system will risk reverting to the old order of generalized scarcity). This is a world of conspicuous non-consumption in which the more elevated one’s social position the less possessions one is obliged to have. Crisis is averted when the hero realizes that robots can be adjusted so that they want to consume too, hence easing the burden.

Frederik Pohl is a writer whose heart has always been on the left, having been a card carrying communist before World War II and the Hitler-Stalin pact, remaining a socialist/leftist afterwards, something that has always remained visible in his writing, both his solo work and his collaborations with C. M. Kornbluth in the 1950ties. Their novels The Space Merchants and Gladiator-At-Law are sharp social satires of aspects of 1950ties capitalism projected towards extremes, still relevant and recognisable today. The same goes for “The Midas Plague”. The idea of a world no longer defined by material scarcity is an old one in science fiction, from Iain Banks and his Culture novels all the way back to –as Henry’s post alluded to — E. M. Forster’s The Machine Stops. Where “The Midas Plague” differs from most other examples is that it does not show an utopia, false or otherwise, but a still recognisable capitalist society.

McMansions

It just flips the parameters of our own capitalist society: rich people live simple lives unencumbered by materialist possessions and get to enjoy the challenges of meaningful work, poor people are burdened by mountains of disposable consumer goods, having to spent more time using them up than doing any real work, spurred on by government rationing rather than advertising. The absurdity of this situation, in which ghettos consist of sixtyroom houses in a riot of loud, extravagant styles and poor people are forced to use up seven cars a year and dozens of suits a month makes clear the absurdities of real existing capitalism. The end result, of robots making an endless stream of consumables for other robots to wear out to make more consumables is the perfect endgame of capitalism.

And Pohl’s imagination is actually closer to our own reality than we might care to contemplate. We have after all a middle class that has loaded itself with debt to be able to afford the American dream of the big mansion, two point one cars, HDTV in every room and vacations in Europe, that lives a life that could be mistaken for that of a rich person, but is completely depend on keeping one step ahead of the next credit card payment. Meanwhile there are people genuinely making the argument that because poor people can afford colour televisions and Ipods they are no longer poor, even if they’re living in one bedroom apartments in suburban slums three hours away by bus from their lower than minimum wage job and working three of those to feed their children.

“The Midas Plague” cuts to the heart of that by showing that just having more and more possessions to use up does not make one rich or ruling class if you don’t actually have the power to accompany your “wealth”.

Dutch weapons used to suppress democracy protests in Bahrain

Published on February 19, 2011

A possibly Dutch AIFV on the Pearl Square in Bahrain

The “tanks” we’ve been seeing on the news from Bahrain suppressing the democracy protests at the Pearl Square are partially from Dutch origin. The armoured infantry fighting vehicle shown above is a YPR-765, of either Belgian or Dutch origin, sold to Bahrain in the mid-nineties. In total the Netherlands sold 25 of these vehicles, all armed with 25mm guns, as well another 35 M113 armoured personnel carriers, and a couple of support and command vehicles. As seen at the Broekstukken blog (Dutch) it amounted to roughly ten million euros worth of arms delivered to a regime that was far from democratic. This week the inevitable happened and these weapons, supposedly sold to Bahrain for self defence, have been used against Bahrain’s own citizens to keep a despotic regime in power.

Dutch governments over the years have been keen to lecture others on human rights, yet this is just a small example of our own moral failings. It shows that these same governments were quite keen to put profits before human rights when selling off surplus military equipment. Bahrain is not the only country we’ve sold those YPR-765 to: Egypt got 1207 of them from both Belgium and Holland. The Netherlands also sold them to Jordan, while Belgium helped supply Morocco and Lebanon with these vehicles. As long as a country was a loyal ally of America, its human rights record did not matter to our governments.

Oy! Paul di Filippo! S.O.D. got a message for you!

Published on January 26, 2011

Hey, di Filippo, if you’re really so worried about the number of people on this planet:

Did you ever feel that all the world’s problems–environmental, cultural, political–could be the result of just too many fucking people on the planet? (“Fucking,” as used here, is a precisely descriptive adjective, and not a mere kneejerk intensifier.) Nobody wants to talk about this issue, since it’s too fraught with ethical conundrums: First World versus Third World, Elites versus Marching Morons, People of Color versus People of Pallor, Age versus Youth, Healthy versus Sick, Coercion versus Choice. What a minefield! And, yes, I know the “good news” about how the rate of population growth has leveled off, leaving us with a projection of “only” nine billion souls for mid-century, and even a hollowing out of certain countries like Russia, Japan and Italy. But I still say the current population level is at the root of most of our troubles.

S.O.D. has the solution for you:

You first.

On a more general note, I agree with Lenny when he notes that overpopulation angst looks suspiciously loe bog standard capitalist propaganda about useless people, scroungers, dole scum, only on a global scale. The idea that our problems are unsolvable because there are too many people fecklessly breeding and hence natural resources are running out, is very convenient for those who have hogged the greater share of our world’s riches, while it lets the rest of us off the hook as well. No point in trying to change the world if everything you’re going to do is going to be swamped by the endless hordes of poor brown people. If there are too many people in the world and no matter how you divide its wealth the majority of people will remain poor and miserable, that means I don’t have too feel guilty about my own comfortable middle class lifestyle, or bother my betters about the far greater wealth they have amassed. It’s the sort of propaganda that does well with well meaning liberals and leftists, intelligent enough to see how difficult it is to change the system, but not intelligent enough to see through the fallacies of the overpopulation myth. It’s been that way ever since Malthus and sadly, science fiction has often been at the forefront of this propaganda effort, from “The Marching Morons” to Ideocracy.

German millionaires not impressed with Gates

Published on August 12, 2010

It seems I’m not the only one unimpressed with Bill Gates’ robber barons for a better tomorrow initiative. Der Spiegel gauges the reaction of various German millionaires, interviewing Hamburg-based shipping magnate and multimillionaire Peter Krämer, who echoes my criticism:

Krämer: I find the US initiative highly problematic. You can write donations off in your taxes to a large degree in the USA. So the rich make a choice: Would I rather donate or pay taxes? The donors are taking the place of the state. That’s unacceptable.

SPIEGEL: But doesn’t the money that is donated serve the common good?

Krämer: It is all just a bad transfer of power from the state to billionaires. So it’s not the state that determines what is good for the people, but rather the rich want to decide. That’s a development that I find really bad. What legitimacy do these people have to decide where massive sums of money will flow?

SPIEGEL: It is their money at the end of the day.

Krämer: In this case, 40 superwealthy people want to decide what their money will be used for. That runs counter to the democratically legitimate state. In the end the billionaires are indulging in hobbies that might be in the common good, but are very personal.

Even if done without ulterior motives, philantropism on such a massive scale is troublesome when it’s a small elite deciding which cause is worthy enough to support. It remains just another way in which somebody like Buffet or Gates can exercise their power. Far better for society as a whole if it was made impossible to garner such huge wealth in the first place. A large part of the fortunes of these billionaires is after all build on the very backs of the people they are now wanting to help.

No we should not retire later

Published on June 3, 2010

Raising the retirement age is a popular way to pay for the bankers’ crisis. Voters may not like it, but it’s delayed pain for most of them and if done smart enough it won’t trigger much resistance. But is it a good idea to raise the retirement age outside of this context? John Quiggin says yes, at least for Australia:

There are two main factors that should influence the age at which we retire. First, improving productivity means that any given standard of living can be achieved with less work, and we would expect at least some of this benefit to take the form of an increase in leisure, including more years spent in retirement. Second, and going in the opposite direction, we are living longer and (because of higher education levels and increased difficulty of entry to the workforce) starting work later[1]. So, with a fixed retirement age, the number of years out of the workforce is increasing, while the number in the workforce is decreasing.

[…]

Those who think employment conditions reflect voluntary bargaining might argue that this apparently unsatisfactory outcome must reflect the preferences of workers and employers. I don’t buy this, at least as far as workers are concerned. But even if it were true, preferences are affected by policy settings such as pension ages. Leaving the pension age unchanged when life expectancy changes pushes people to work harder since their required savings increase. This is, on the face of it, a bad outcome. So, it makes sense for public policy to encourage later retirement, and discourage ultra-long working hours.

In short, retirement schemes have been designed at a time when life expectancy was much less; now that we’re living longer and be able to enjoy our pensions for longer as well they are unaffordable, or so we’re told. Hence the choice John talks about: either work harder now to pay for the same pension, or retire later. But it is a restricted choice, one that in each case puts the burden on the worker, rather than e.g. cut into profits to pay for it. Raise employer contributions rather than employee contributions; after all productivity has risen as well, so we are making more money for our employers. These options are never on the table but instead this crisis is used yet again to wage class war against the working classes.

We spent approximately sixty years of our lives in study and work, from when we turn four of five and go to kindergarten, to sixtyfive when we finally get to enjoy retirement. That’s long enough. If more money is needed to keep our pensions safe, get it from those who can miss it, not those who have had to work hard their entire lives already.