Some of my favorite examples of this are in certain passages in Kennan, Russia and the West Under Lenin and Stalin.
The reluctance to join WW I, until the Russian Revolution provided an ostensible reason to fight a 'rich man's war'.
The revolution was welcomed here back then. President Wilson's statement, classic.
BOOMERBUSTER
OLD CELLO
Sunday, September 30, 2012
Saturday, September 29, 2012
Friday, September 28, 2012
FRET LESS STRINGS
String players who can play in tune, with in tune sympathetic vibrations, with dynamics and rhythm also correct and expressive, on good instruments, vanishingly rare, for a variety of different kinds of reasons.
Thursday, September 27, 2012
RE BBC JAPAN CHINA MINISTERS IN SEVERE MEETING
Please.
Send in Mary Poppins.
She can solve their problems with her parasol.
Send in Mary Poppins.
She can solve their problems with her parasol.
Thursday, September 20, 2012
RE THURSTON HOWELL ROMNEY NYT BROOKS
He occasionally writes a sensible essay, as he does here.
He paints Romney very much as my fictional variation on Thurston Howell III.
Term search: Thurston.
My Thurston had said, 06, at Boca :
"Who do you think they will bail out, you or me?"
He paints Romney very much as my fictional variation on Thurston Howell III.
Term search: Thurston.
My Thurston had said, 06, at Boca :
"Who do you think they will bail out, you or me?"
Monday, September 17, 2012
RE BBC CHINA PROTESTS JAPAN SUSPENDS SOME COMMERCIAL OPERATIONS IN CHINA
This is a good thing to do.
Also, in the Muslim world, suspend operations too,
most everywhere, very prudent.
The other shoe is dropping now all around.
Also, in the Muslim world, suspend operations too,
most everywhere, very prudent.
The other shoe is dropping now all around.
Sunday, September 16, 2012
BBC AMERICANS ARE BEGINNING TO WORRY ABOUT AN ASIAN WAR OVER ISLANDS ETC
Amazing that Americans should only now be wondering about this, after fomenting growth, first of one, then the other, then another, and so on, and resulting rivalries over there, for decades.
It can hardly be that the grand strategy was to get them fighting each other.
No, something much more pedestrian was afoot: laissez faire globalist market capitalism, unmoored from any strategy whatsoever.
It can hardly be that the grand strategy was to get them fighting each other.
No, something much more pedestrian was afoot: laissez faire globalist market capitalism, unmoored from any strategy whatsoever.
Friday, September 14, 2012
ONE OF THE GREAT THINGS ABOUT MERCANTILISM
Was that it was used quite often as a doctrine to restrict or prohibit trade, or even god forbid take over trade, as well as at times to promote or encourage international trade, for national or imperial interests.
Economic 'sanctions', trade restrictions or prohibitions, are now normally a holding back of otherwise widely available market access.
Simply preventing, or at least hindering, others from economically expanding, at one's expense (a non Smithian concept admittedly), when done on other than adverse overt military terms,
has not been on the West's agenda.
Economic 'sanctions', trade restrictions or prohibitions, are now normally a holding back of otherwise widely available market access.
Simply preventing, or at least hindering, others from economically expanding, at one's expense (a non Smithian concept admittedly), when done on other than adverse overt military terms,
has not been on the West's agenda.
RE APRES RAHM, LE DELUGE BROOKS NYT
The theory he retreats to here
can be summarized in just one word:
bull.
can be summarized in just one word:
bull.
Wednesday, September 12, 2012
RE THOMAS FRIEDMAN IN CHINA WE (DON'T) TRUST
Friedman, very predictably now, slamming his erstwhile globalization darling.
And doing it trying to talk about a term like ' trust ',
a term the meaning of which has now been lost here for a long time,
and which exists elsewhere politically only fleetingly.
And doing it trying to talk about a term like ' trust ',
a term the meaning of which has now been lost here for a long time,
and which exists elsewhere politically only fleetingly.
Wednesday, September 5, 2012
Saturday, September 1, 2012
RE E J DIONNE THE VITAL CENTER SO TO SPEAK
Just a remark here to mention I have been going back into this little tome, Why Americans Hate Politics.
He purports to be a rather well informed political theorist and historian.
One little detail I would point out about his reporting on the vital center issue Ch 5, p. 117:
"From the end of WW II until the 1960s, there really was broad agreement within the country..."
'Fundamental' as it is, he doesn't think hard enough to criticize it against both parties when it comes to its fundamental tenets:
"a free market economy... to underwrite a globalist foreign policy, a modest welfare state, and steadily increasing standards of living...."
The really idealistic naive parts,
which it does not even occur to Dionne to tackle,
even though they are fundamental to both parties he criticizes,
were the free market economy as connected with a globalist foreign policy, together with the unrealistic goal of a perpetually rising standard of living.
It has been precisely these shared fundamentals which have been so catastrophic for America as a commonwealth.
He purports to be a rather well informed political theorist and historian.
One little detail I would point out about his reporting on the vital center issue Ch 5, p. 117:
"From the end of WW II until the 1960s, there really was broad agreement within the country..."
'Fundamental' as it is, he doesn't think hard enough to criticize it against both parties when it comes to its fundamental tenets:
"a free market economy... to underwrite a globalist foreign policy, a modest welfare state, and steadily increasing standards of living...."
The really idealistic naive parts,
which it does not even occur to Dionne to tackle,
even though they are fundamental to both parties he criticizes,
were the free market economy as connected with a globalist foreign policy, together with the unrealistic goal of a perpetually rising standard of living.
It has been precisely these shared fundamentals which have been so catastrophic for America as a commonwealth.
Saturday, August 25, 2012
RE MERITOCRACY AND THE TOP 1 PERCENT
See my discussion,
http://bozonbloggon.blogspot.com/2012/08/i-keep-meaning-to-talk-about-so-called.html
but it will not make sense perhaps.
One needs to look at such things as ethnic political and economic advancement, think Catholic, Jewish, Protestant, etc.
There are many books on these different areas.
Stephen Birmingham apparently made it a cause celebre of his authorship.
I especially recommend, as a starter, Real Lace.
McDonnell & Company was not, unfortunately, a stellar example of a meritocracy or a technocracy or even The Bell Curve.
http://bozonbloggon.blogspot.com/2012/08/i-keep-meaning-to-talk-about-so-called.html
but it will not make sense perhaps.
One needs to look at such things as ethnic political and economic advancement, think Catholic, Jewish, Protestant, etc.
There are many books on these different areas.
Stephen Birmingham apparently made it a cause celebre of his authorship.
I especially recommend, as a starter, Real Lace.
McDonnell & Company was not, unfortunately, a stellar example of a meritocracy or a technocracy or even The Bell Curve.
Friday, August 24, 2012
if David Brooks and Thomas Friedman are right about it having been a meritocracy here since WW II
see prior posts here, and their recent nyt articles,
high professional credentials, (' Rand ian ? ') superlative individuals, entrepreneurs, average is over for CEOs, technicians, specialists, symbolic analysts, gurus, etc.,
then how can Timothy Egan, nyt,
also be right?,
about the Republican Crackpot Caucus, apparently
making even medieval folks look bright by comparison?
Call it the bozo ization of NYT punditry.
I recommend a hard dose of The Credential Society.
Also The Global Class War, especially talk about The Party of Davos.
Many CEOS get hired to run companies in industries they know nothing about. Their executive skills are represented to be fungible across virtually any field or industry. There are literally countless examples over many decades now.
high professional credentials, (' Rand ian ? ') superlative individuals, entrepreneurs, average is over for CEOs, technicians, specialists, symbolic analysts, gurus, etc.,
then how can Timothy Egan, nyt,
also be right?,
about the Republican Crackpot Caucus, apparently
making even medieval folks look bright by comparison?
Call it the bozo ization of NYT punditry.
I recommend a hard dose of The Credential Society.
Also The Global Class War, especially talk about The Party of Davos.
Many CEOS get hired to run companies in industries they know nothing about. Their executive skills are represented to be fungible across virtually any field or industry. There are literally countless examples over many decades now.
RE GALT, GOLD AND GOD KRUGMAN RAND RYAN AND IT ALL
While I agree with Krugman here on Rand, one idea she had, along with many non Rand people, who have reflected on it, except economists, is that one needs stability and personal security in money.
You can't get stability or personal security in money by letting regimes compete with each other by manufacturing debt currencies.
The fact that paper money has long been merely backed, more and then less, and finally not at all, by convertibility into metal, is part of the sad history of US banking politics.
(Think also about Confederate paper money. There was a lot of it. What happened to it?)
If Krugman were right about connecting Ryan's monetary views causally with something like the Great Depression, 1929 to the late 30s;
then what is wrong causally with his discussion of the US having nevertheless been on mostly paper money since the early 19th Century?
The technical answer, as he of course is aware, is that it was not mainly a question of a gold standard at all, (much less of something like Hawley Smoot) but of a multitude of things, cascading down from WW I, and from the huge speculations which had preceded it, not least of which was early financial as well as commercial globalism, and imperialism, too.
Krugman can't have it both ways, even against a Rand intellectual idiot like Ryan.
The dark secret, were we in a world of national economies instead of a global one,
is that one could very well stimulate economic activity on a metal standard without printing debt currency to stimulate economic activity;
(begging the larger question of whether one should really want limitless economic (read "economists'") growth, in a finite and antagonistic world, in the first place, a question even Stephanie Flanders broached recently).
One enormous irony here re the US banking establishment, is that even on a paper debt currency basis, enormous bloated banks obviously cannot even be made, merely voluntarily, to loan fiat debt currency, even while now awash in it under mountains of quantitative easing paper money.
You can't get stability or personal security in money by letting regimes compete with each other by manufacturing debt currencies.
The fact that paper money has long been merely backed, more and then less, and finally not at all, by convertibility into metal, is part of the sad history of US banking politics.
(Think also about Confederate paper money. There was a lot of it. What happened to it?)
If Krugman were right about connecting Ryan's monetary views causally with something like the Great Depression, 1929 to the late 30s;
then what is wrong causally with his discussion of the US having nevertheless been on mostly paper money since the early 19th Century?
The technical answer, as he of course is aware, is that it was not mainly a question of a gold standard at all, (much less of something like Hawley Smoot) but of a multitude of things, cascading down from WW I, and from the huge speculations which had preceded it, not least of which was early financial as well as commercial globalism, and imperialism, too.
Krugman can't have it both ways, even against a Rand intellectual idiot like Ryan.
The dark secret, were we in a world of national economies instead of a global one,
is that one could very well stimulate economic activity on a metal standard without printing debt currency to stimulate economic activity;
(begging the larger question of whether one should really want limitless economic (read "economists'") growth, in a finite and antagonistic world, in the first place, a question even Stephanie Flanders broached recently).
One enormous irony here re the US banking establishment, is that even on a paper debt currency basis, enormous bloated banks obviously cannot even be made, merely voluntarily, to loan fiat debt currency, even while now awash in it under mountains of quantitative easing paper money.
Thursday, August 23, 2012
I KEEP MEANING TO TALK ABOUT SO CALLED TECHNOLOGY TECHNOCRACY AND MERITOCRACY ISSUES MORE IN DEPTH
Here is a nice summary of the technocracy, credential ist educational, specialization ist, advanced industrial capitalism, myth:
" Industrial society develops through the application of scientific advances to new forms of technology.... As a result, the school requirements of jobs change. Unskilled positions are greatly reduced, first with the decline of agriculture, then of heavy manual labor; skilled positions become proportionately more common with the rising demand for skilled technicians, clerical workers, and professional specialists. The requirements for administrative leadership positions are upgraded too, in the larger, more complex, and technically more innovative modern organizations. According to this explanation, elites must come to depend on skill rather than on family background or political connections. In general, modern societies move away from ascription to achievement, from a system of privilege to a technical meritocracy. " Randall Collins, "The Myth Of Technocracy", The Credential Society.
Most people, if you tell them something like this, they don't even understand what kind of thing you are saying, first of all.
Then next, they don't believe you...........
They have been taught a million different times and ways this is not what their particular field, or credential, or skill, or expertise, or multiples of them, are somewhat all about.
Everyone thinks not only that he is special, but that he is special for objective, technical, and professional, reasons.
Term search symbolic analysts, Reich, Steingart, etc.
" Industrial society develops through the application of scientific advances to new forms of technology.... As a result, the school requirements of jobs change. Unskilled positions are greatly reduced, first with the decline of agriculture, then of heavy manual labor; skilled positions become proportionately more common with the rising demand for skilled technicians, clerical workers, and professional specialists. The requirements for administrative leadership positions are upgraded too, in the larger, more complex, and technically more innovative modern organizations. According to this explanation, elites must come to depend on skill rather than on family background or political connections. In general, modern societies move away from ascription to achievement, from a system of privilege to a technical meritocracy. " Randall Collins, "The Myth Of Technocracy", The Credential Society.
Most people, if you tell them something like this, they don't even understand what kind of thing you are saying, first of all.
Then next, they don't believe you...........
They have been taught a million different times and ways this is not what their particular field, or credential, or skill, or expertise, or multiples of them, are somewhat all about.
Everyone thinks not only that he is special, but that he is special for objective, technical, and professional, reasons.
Term search symbolic analysts, Reich, Steingart, etc.
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