THURSTON ROBERT MACAIRE HOWELL P 10 11

Added layers of city-county, state, and sectional rivalries make effective economic or industrial policy impossible.

If so-called ‘public private partnerships’ PPPs, really take off, one can expect enormous unfettered poaching from largely foreign participants, call them Public-Global-Partnerships, or PGPs for short.

Old republicanism at the founding of the nation centered political participation on private property. It preferred small agrarian, geographically-based units, and restraints on property.

On trade, old republicanism was ‘protectionist’. The Republican party, starting with Lincoln, adopted protectionism, called at that time the ‘American system’, from the time of Lincoln until the time of FDR in 1930.

Globalization after 1930 has been claimed to have fostered ‘market’ states. Technology had already eliminated most western farmers. Commerce and finance are now global, abstract, not geolocal.

Multinationals are not identified with a place or country. As far back as 1931, General Motors in Europe, in Belgium specifically, criticized American protective tariffs, calling for free trade and laissez faire, not out of any sense of altruism, and without regard for the American economy.

Back then, GM didn’t fear foreign competition. Take a look at the situation now.

Contrary to popular mythology, the Smoot-Hawley Tariff did not bring about the Great Depression.

An argument can be made that post-WWI international trade, currency issues, and financial arrangements, including trends toward greater international economic and financial interdependence, amid widespread post-war recovery efforts, caused the Depression.

STULTIFERA NAVIS PATENTS EDITORIAL AND THE WHIG INTERPRETATION OF HISTORY FOR UGLY PHILOSOPHERS AND THEIR FRIENDS

These editors really have no clue.

Why do print media show good reasons why their freedom of press should, in the public interest (whatever that used to be), be curtailed?

R&D has been a sore spot for lazy fare regimes' 'firms' for a long time now.

Intellectual property has been pirated by 'strategic partners' now for decades, TEAM PLAYERS, even when it was not traded away in co-production arrangements, licensed then distributed, etc.

Markets flooded with cheap knock offs, by the billions.

'Nothing government can do'. 'Private enterprise at work'.

'Anomalies' of a free market.

Re patents, take a look at some of the passages in say, Trading Places re the history of certain US tech companies innovations in the mid 20th Century, and how they were handled by the stultifera navis. There are many other books on the subject. (I especially like the title Manufacturing Matters.)

I like especially his passage re the Crash of '87, and how people tried to explain what might have caused it. Spoonfeeding: p. 3. I had an acquaintance at that time, who had predicted and had bet a small amount against the market, made 12 million or so dollars, that day, Bloody Monday, October 19, 1987. Whether they were tightly related or not, it's illuminating re loss of competitive dominance.

For the economists, historians, or God forbid philosophers, out there, the quote at the beginning of Ch.5, Naohiro Amaya, is especially fun, re The Whig Interpretation of History. There aren't that many Whiggish thinkers, for example Francis Fukuyama, (in Butterfield's sense) in Japan. We have most of them, over here.

These Whigs are also often Maverick Executive types (see previous posts on this topic), and Prestowitz has an entertaining passage on just this aspect of American business mythology, at p. 13, 14.

Naohiro is talking about something (doing metaphysics?)that might actually qualify as a 'basic presupposition' in Collingwood's sense, (for the really squirrely, and perhaps also ugly), philosophers out there.

I can of course explain how things, in one or two better previous possible worlds, should have been done, but those did not become the actual worlds we have since been left with.

A PROPOS SARTREAN SARTORIALISM: WHY NOT MARILYN MONROE BONOBO TOO

Why not a theatrical reference for the past day or so's topics?

How about Cyrano de Bergerac.

I would start with Jose Ferrer's classic 1950 version.

Variation on Sartrean Pygmalion mise en scene:

The top bonobo, on the pillar, reflected toward the viewer in Martin's bathroom mirror, in the last post, might have the name ROXANE on her chest. He is looking at her in the mirror, as the pillar is behind him. She should have, in the mirror, for him and for us, the features of Marilyn's face, from the poster on the wall behind even her. There are reasons to believe that she was, though perhaps not an intellectual as such, nevertheless not just another pretty face; Arthur Miller kept her around for a longish time.

Martin-Macaire's nose would, of course, have to be lengthened, somewhat.

SARTREAN BONOBO CARTOONS CONCEPTS

This topic of Sartrean ugliness, raised today by Andy Martin in the Stone has of course other hilarious possibilities, some of which could be variations on previous cartoon mise en scene posts on this site.

Sartreans were notoriously frisky, ugly, and licentious,

like bonobos, and the bonobo illustrations could be turned to good advantage, to highlight some of their more arresting 'intellectual' exploits.

A really talented graphic artist might even be able to depict a zig zag bonobo pillar three bonobos tall, call a 'Pyramid of Phenomenologists', (Cf. earlier posts re The Pyramid of Experts) situated behind Martin, in the earlier graphic, and it might ambiguously indicate three images reflecting toward the viewer, the third being that of the face of the top bonobo, in the mirror, rather than, that of Socrates, or Martin.

Why not show something, not only ugly, but also, revealingly, bestial?

Re: RE 'PRICE' WARS POST SITUATION, VERSUS THE 1789 ANCIEN REGIME SITUATION

I should point out, as a rather enormous footnote, that liberal market cap MNCs, which heretofore have flourished in this environment, have been, are being, and will be, gradually dismembered, by various increasingly draconian regimes, on the horizon, in favor of ones which they, quite understandably, can better control.

Those execs or strategists, who might have thot that they, and their evanescent organizations, could gain the 'upper' competitive hand, in the perhaps not-so-market states of the future, may possibly have a surprise.

Maybe I am all wrong about this.

But, then, it doesn't matter that much, given the unfolding situation, either way.

THE STONE ANDY MARTIN'S SOCRATES CARTOON and PAUL ADAMS' COMMENT

AT LEAST THE SITE IS GOOD FODDER FOR AN OCCASIONAL CARTOON.

ditto Paul Adams' Stony Brook comment. Really.

See also awbradley's insightful comment, on the commercialization (glamourization) even of something like philosophy. It does have to sell......

Thus:

MISE EN SCENE:
Picture Martin, handsome, distinguished, in a large Victorian bathroom, preferably dressed in an elegant silk smoking jacket with cigarette holder in hand, looking admiringly at his image in the mirror on the half opened medicine cabinet door, above the sink.

He should look more than a little like one of Daumier's images of a dapper Robert Macaire, also often depicted in a smoker.

He is turned half away from the picture surface. We see the image in the mirror as that of a very ugly bust of Socrates with the name 'Socrates' legible at bottom of bust, scowling and yelling at Martin:
"Get To Work You Fool or I'll hit you with an 'Ugly stick'"

A dog, at Martin's feet has the name "PHAEDO" across its chest. Large poster of Marilyn Monroe on side wall of bathroom. Black and white checkerboard bathroom floor tiles.

The Caption above: Beauty Is As Beauty Does
The Caption below: The Existentialist Pygmalion Power

Imagine the music from the British television show "Are You Being Served" playing in the background.............

RE: IL PLEU CHATS ET CHIENS CARTOON 1871 PARIS 21 ST CENTURY USA ALSO ANDY MARTIN THE STONE REFERENCE

The graphic referred to yesterday might also contain a panther, lolling limp wristed at one side; he should look like the Pink Panther.

He should have the words PINK 'ELEPHANT' across his torso.

He might be sporting some jewelry and accessories.

There might also be a rather mangy hound dog, with the word BLUE(POULOU) on his torso, cf. Andy Martin Phenomenology Ugly The Stone Article.

The caption for this might also read, somewhere, of course:

BOUCHERIE ENTRE CHIEN ET LOUP

OR A PROPOS ANDY MARTIN'S THE STONE ARTICLE:

BOUCHERIE PHAEDO ET POULOU

Sir Michael Howard after 9 11

Quoted in Pravda, no less. The last sentence is really my favorite:

But to use, or rather to misuse the term 'war' is not simply a matter of legality, or pedantic semantics. It has deeper and more dangerous consequences. To declare that one is 'at war' is immediately to create a war psychosis that may be totally counter-productive for the objective that we seek. It will arouse an immediate expectation, and demand, for spectacular military action against some easily identifiable adversary, preferably a hostile state; action leading to decisive results.

"The use of force is no longer seen as a last resort, to be avoided if humanly possible, but as the first, and the sooner it is used the better. The press demands immediate stories of derring-do, filling their pages with pictures of weapons, ingenious graphics, and contributions from service officers long, and probably deservedly, retired. Any suggestion that the best strategy is not to use military force at all, but more subtle if less heroic means of destroying the adversary are dismissed as 'appeasement' by ministers whose knowledge of history is about on a par with their skill at political management.

"Figures on the Right, seeing themselves cheated of what the Germans used to call a frischer, frцhlicher Krieg, a short, jolly war in Afghanistan, demand one against a more satisfying adversary, Iraq; which is rather like the drunk who lost his watch in a dark alley but looked for it under a lamp post because there was more light there. As for their counterparts on the Left, the very word 'war' brings them out on the streets to protest as a matter of principle. The qualities needed in a serious campaign against terrorists -- secrecy, intelligence, political sagacity, quiet ruthlessness, covert actions that remain covert, above all infinite patience -- all these are forgotten or overriden in a media-stoked frenzy for immediate results, and nagging complaints if they do not get them.

DINO 21ST CENTURY PARIS COMMUNE CARTOON: LAZY FARE

A propos reprises of past periods of angry conflicts, including that of Paris 1870,1871, here is a

Mise en scene for a cartoon:

Pictorial reference ala The Siege of Paris, R. Baldick, Macmillan, 1964, Chapter "Waiting For News", draw a scene following that of the cartoon, p. 161:

The image is like that of the cartoon, but the dog in the foreground is labelled in block capitals "DINO".

Nearby a greyhound or german shepherd, named eg "Entr (Wiener) Preenur", sits at attention.

A small frisky horse named "Mav Rick Shank", frolics rearing on its hind legs, boisterously, next to it. (Cf. earlier posts re The Maverick Executive.)

A big reclining striped tiger nearby might read "Team Tony Tank".

Their distressed owners are each making tearful arrangements, handkerchiefs, etc., for their transfer to the butcher depicted in the shop.

Some small hanging carcasses in the background window, as in the cartoon, would add the necessary poignancy, and round out the scene.

(Here's a bonus for the really talented illustrators, Gahan Wilson types, out there; see cartoon on p. 131, and create a sequel with that mise en scene, same general themes and characters.)
The caption above reads: "COMME UNE 'LAZY FARE'"

The caption below, in French:
Boucherie 'Il Pleu Felines et Canines'

RE 'PRICE' WARS POST SITUATION, VERSUS THE 1789 ANCIEN REGIME SITUATION

Our situation is only somewhat analogous, mainly in terms merely of domestic political magnitude, to that of 1789.

Similarly, also, there were well established advanced regimes surrounding France in 1789.

But they were mobilizing to take retribution on an upstart, very dissimilar from today.

Further differences today include:

There are now well established, powerful, both western and nonwestern regimes (each oriented intracivilizationally rather than West-dynastically), dotting the globe, not necessarily favoring political unrest or military action, here or anywhere, but intent if necessary on 'capitalizing' geopolitically on any American upheaval, just as they have since the 1950s in connection with the 'economic' slide in that direction.

Although some analysts I can think of say no one today has designs on military hegemony (weak militaries everywhere, trading partners, strategic partners, etc.), WSJ today, has a China versus US article, example of growing adversarial relationship, coming as a 'surprise' to a naive US administration; China moving ahead aggressively on advanced weapons systems, tougher talk; just as US and USSR ostensibly moving in opposite direction.
(Give me a break. These developments have been on the cards now for decades.)

One enormous difference, at a glance, 1789 versus now, is that there is not a 'fixed' ancien regime, longstanding if tottering, against which the French revolution rebelled, among these regimes today; but rather a suppressed but well founded civilizational suspicion, often based on age old rivalries, of each toward every other, and powerful vested or emerging interests, in every case inevitably affected by substantial shifts in the advantage of any other, particularly regarding rapidly waning global natural resources.

No one elsewhere is likely to mimic any revolutionary regime change happening here, unless they have a major hand in fashioning it, 


because, for one thing, contrary to popular opinion here, they generally weren't sold on our existing (so called) political system in the first place, except as an economic market victim of now waning importance to them (sucked out like a weasel), 


and what we replace it with is otherwise unlikely to be adopted as a model abroad. 


Certainly they will not look in future to America as either a market or a source of technological expertise, except perhaps military technology. 


Most of them have now taken most of our technology worth having, by gift, theft, license, or other voluntary transfer.

As Schama (one of my least favorites) points out, in The History of Britain, the Romans' main conquest question was usually:

What is there there worth having?

Re Companies Chasing Federal Turnaround Funds

This is an example of prior posts on this site: laisez faire entrepreneurship concepts, a fragmented system of governance, pseudo specialization, the Casanova hand of the market re education.

Just providing funding, with ostensible criteria, is not the same as a planned or guided unified natiional effort in education.

Local education authorities, overlain by state and/or federal funding and curriculum carrots and sticks, has not worked.

Just get a load of some of the supposedly 'required' text books in most local schools. You cannot physically carry them they each are so heavy and expensive. That is the free hand of big education publishers, their profit motive, and large committees of book writers, rather than education materials needs, feeding on local education systems.

That is all they have, structurally, in the quiver;

rather than unified disciplined control of the education process.

HAYEK: AYN RANDISM WITH CREDENTIALS

We have long been on the real road to serfdom, Hayek's.

(A Rand 'scholar', Steven Horwitz, has actually tried to flesh these two deep thinkers out, together....
this is kind of analogous to going to the NYT The Stone site for your philosophy education.)

Cleverer regimes have known this ideological weakness of ours for decades, and 'capitalized', so to speak, on our pathetic Hayekism.

Isn't that rather ironic.

Given America's inherent structural political fragmentation, it really has had no feasible industrial policy alternative to a more or less agressive form of laissez faire, a fact also very well known to outsiders since WWII.

see Adam Smith's Invisible Robot Hand post from yesterday

RE THURSTON P. 2 AND KRUGMAN'S EDITORIAL TODAY: WHEN THE LIGHTS GO OUT

This was Thurston's phrase p.2, posted earlier on this site:

"When the lights go out, you’re back in the middle ages."

Thurston Robert Macaire Howell p. 9

compartmentally ever seeking ways to accomplish urgent and myopic foreign policy objectives, to subsidize away what little remains of a ‘home market’.

Both major political parties have by now embraced free-trade consumerist globalization based on political patronage more than on military strategy or diplomatic calculation.

Until recently there was talk of a lame service economy. But we’ve been getting rid of services too. States’ bar news have seminar ads such as this: “Legal Process Outsourcing (lpo) in India—What You Need To Know About Who, How, Why, and Why Not”. Anything goes!

With 50 state bars and the federal system overlying them, it is surprisingly easy for focused and dedicated foreign regimes and firms to poach on this and other erstwhile domestic service industries.

With appraisal and other fields’ basic data going on-line, who will need high paid American appraisers, or other specialists, when Indian or other ones come on-line in 1, 5, or 10 years?

Some have called urban redevelopment a ‘zero-sum game’ which fosters false competition between municipalities for consumer businesses rather than creating new producers.

Relocation of production to cities does not happen, especially by globally-competing and uncoordinated local efforts.

AGRICULTURE THE END OF CHEAP POWER AND WEAK GOVERNMENTS

In the past, for almost all of recorded history, all people lived on food grown largely by local agriculture. Where they got too far into one kind of 'cash' crop or narrow agricultural produce, they often suffered the consequences.

Many readers of Irish descent are here solely because their great great great grandparents starved to death in the potato famine, barely 150 years ago.

French vineyards, their big cash crop at that time, were virtually wiped out at about the same time.

Most peasants mostly never left the vicinity of their birth.

They worked as serfs or peasants, and lived by working soil where they lived.

There were some notable exceptions, empires, which had cities, and armies, provisioned either from nearby hinterlands, or from granaries within transportation distances.

A good example is the use the Roman Empire made of the Italian hinterland, but also supplemented by the Egyptian grain trade, and others.

Today we have agribusiness, engineered narrowing, selection, production, and cartellization of food itself,

and cities are generally no longer even in a weak position, as they usually have been, to fall back on uncartellized hinterlands, for food. They are in virtually no position to do so, with exceptions.

Americans have, as a society, as have many globalized others, only in this century, let their sense for food survival, not to even get into food 'security', slide.

It is just another example, as so many others, where everyone came to rely on compartmentalized specialists, so called scientists, companies, legislators, etc., on the assumption that human progress was somehow under way.

The world wars seem to have played a crucial part in this willingness to give up whole areas of traditional life for the sake of an ostensibly better specialized method. The experts' word, whatever the expert was, came to be taken for granted.

So if 'fragile' global food commerce networks weaken, and they are already situated within notoriously fragile developing and developed economies (all economies are now 'fragile', (discography: Yes 'Fragile')), as every economics pundit will confirm, or become too expensive (foreign demand push/pull free enterprise),

or even toxic, as has increasingly been the case,

or get bought by wealthier folks here or there,or for some reason break down,

what do people then do?

Is requiring local agricultural capacity, or even basic electric power, something governments should be required to make provision for, at the local level?

How about letting your state or county government handle something like that?

Who else is going to do something like that?

Surely you don't want a federal bureaucracy getting into something like that.

No; I say leave it to local boards of county commissioners to control, at the local level, or even to city commissions, or why not even tiny community associations (direct democracy), with their boots on the ground. Let them worry about stuff like that.

And, isn't that something also best left to clever market forces, big players like ENRON, or some other big outfits, Wal-Mart, Archer Daniels Midland, Halliburton, Con Agra, Purina, Coca Cola, PepsiCo, Dow, BP, something like that?

Those on whom hungry, or starving, 'consumers', in droves, can rely, when, not if, it ever really hits the fan?

Notable examples of the kinds of things that happen, even now, show up in places like Florida before or during hurricane seasons, where hoarders buy up all of such and such from the stores. Petroleum is frequently in peculiarly short supply, here and there; market forces for sure.

FOR ALL THE TEAM PLAYERS OUT THERE: THE MAVERICK EXECUTIVE'S TEAM

One of my favorite passages is Chapter 4,

"How He Likes His Management Team"

This is really hilarious.

I am not going to ruin it by excerpting it here.

ADAM SMITH'S INVISIBLE ROBOT HAND THE MAVERICK EXECUTIVE AND OLD SCHOOL TEAM ROBOT CARTOON SKETCH RE NYT

Let's take a look, just a moment at p. 170 171, para. 2, 5, The Maverick Executive, again, re Adam Smith's 'invisible hand'.

Perfectly consistent.

Mise en scene for a "Jil and Mari" cartoon:

Two woman executives talking, in a city street in front of a church/temple/mosque(might look a little like all three), in suits.

Mari has two young 'children', a boy and a girl, next to her on either side.

These three are all wearing wide vertical striped, doublebreated, Oxford school type dark blazers, ties, white pants or skirt, black shoes.

The children look quite bolt upright, and rather robotlike (SEE THE EDITORIAL AUGUST 9, DAY AFTER THIS ORIGINAL POST, IN THE NYT), looking in the same direction, expressionlessly:

Jil: "Wasn't that a great service!"

Mari: "Yes, I feel so uplifted."

Jil: "Let me ask you, Mari, where did you learn your solid sense of morality, of integrity?"

Mari: "Why, on the job of course! We do have some robots now, but some of us are still real people! I have always been sort of a team player, at heart. It's amazing really, but the robots are good team players too!

They were made in India; that helps a lot."

RE: HP Hewlett Packard MR. HURD RESIGNATION: A MAVERICK EXECUTIVE ?

Well:

It is beginning to sound as if Mr. Hurd may have poked his nose into an old book my uncle, rest his soul, was so fond of. My uncle had been a personal friend of the author, Robert N. McMurry.

Coincidentally, I had an OB 'organizational behavior' course, at BU, long ago, and just to stir the pot at that time, I apparently did a report on this book, which I was familiar with from my uncle, comparing then BU Boston University President John R. Silber, a redoubtable academic and administrative figure, (and also an academic philosopher to boot; a sort of Plato philosopher/king of academia), to the protagonist of McMurry's book. Professor Mirvis is now at BC, apparently.

McMurry sends up, and/or pommels, Douglas McGregor's theories, throughout.

I found notes from my talk, the other day, or would have forgotten forever this reference.

For those who have the time, I cannot recommend highly enough, for its sheer repugnance and entertainment value, if nothing else,

in this time of what I would call desperate, maverick, 'entrepreneurship',

this book: THE MAVERICK EXECUTIVE

My favorites in this book, among myriads, are the pages beginning at say p.
165, "His Basic Intolerance". My personal favorites in this chapter are para.
numbers 2, 5, and 7, p. 170-171.

I used to refer to my roommate, at BU, a term of endearment, as "Maverick".

RE THE STONE: FREEDOM AND REALITY....

If you want to fritter away valuable thinking time, go to this NYT 'PHILOSOPHY' site.