One of the key components of my 'dissident' approach to economic science [or political economy] is my assertion that all ownable things - assets - come in four categories:
1. Keyn. anything in the category that J M Keynes described as chartalist in his definitive Treatise on Money. These are all the immaterial creations of the human mind that can be claimed as the possession of the person who invented them, or of the person who was able to capture such command over them as would be recognised in a court of law. Thus people and corporate entities [governments, local government, institutions, companies etc] come to be the 'owners' of control of the land, and owners of shares, stocks, bank deposits, patents, copyrights, brand names, trademarks etc. Most defined keyns can be sold . The most massively increasing category of keyns in the contemporary economy are items of intellectual property [or 'intellectual keyns' shown as ik in my text].
2. Quon. A material asset whose price includes both the costs of assembling the material thing and a charge for the intellectual property that the owner of the object is able to enjoy with the material thing. The owner of the ik sells the user a right to enjoy the benefits of their brand, and the intellectual property that inheres in the object.
3. Jev. A material asset whose price when resold is determined by its perceived rarity and aesthetic quality, rather than by its cost of production or its contemporary usefulness in any material sense to the owner. Thus this category covers antiques, works or art etc; which can be bought and sold and which - over time - often appreciate in retain price, so they can be assets of increasing inventory 'value'.
4. Marcom. These are commodities which are sold at prices that equal, or are close to, the cost of production and delivery [allowing for a reasonable return on capital to the producers and distributors], with no premium for any ik such as occurs in the price of a quon.
There are huge implications that arise from this differentiation of assets. I refer to two today.
A. Firms that are licensed and regulated as 'banks' have huge privileges. In particular, because they manage keynic money for natural and corporate persons they get special guarantees from the state. The most extreme version of this protection was the 'rescue' of the banking system in 2007-9, whose effects are still affecting everybody in the advanced economies. Despite the huge direct and indirect cost of 'saving' the banks, governments and their agents, the central banks [e.g. the Bank of England] have done nothing that definitively separates the socially-necessary and economically-indispensable banking functions of the huge complex firms that include banking divisions from the parts of the firm that trade in stocks and shares, bonds, investment advice, creating and trading in derivatives and futures and other speculative keyns. Thus the entire western world remains at risk from rogue trading or sheer incompetence in these pampered businesses. This remains one of the biggest risks to civilisation; even allowing for jihadism, rogue states, cybercrime, plague and famine.
B. Hundreds of thousands of people and firms own ik that has become increasingly desired by more and more people over the past twenty years. Computer games, films and records and all accessed from cyberspace, and social media have become massive foci of consumption; and although the ownership of such assets is widely diffused, a small number of points of access are used by the vast preponderance of users. Thus Google, Alibaba, Facebook and a few other leading points in the cyberworld are absolutely dominant. The creators of these platforms have established their intellectual property with immense rigour, and are constantly extending their [patented] means of checking on their customers so that they can increasingly tailor 'special offers' that will tempt them to spend their money and their time at the profitable direction of the ik owner. This gives more power over the consumers and their world to a small number of firms than has ever been held by firms that control material commodities. Economic models have not even begun to cope with it: the Econocracy have been content to monopolise their fantasies while Silicon Valley has established a much firmer hegemony than the professors can comprehend. Politicians are increasingly exercised by the new sort of power that is held by the dominant holders of the ik that shapes hundreds of millions of consumer's lifestyle; and don't know what to do about it. They can't even work out how to tax the massive cash flow that they receive.
My basic taxonomy of economic assets forms a basis on which public control, exercised by the political system of the state, can properly be established over the cybernauts within a sensible structure of political economy. One small step for man?
Showing posts with label jihadism. Show all posts
Showing posts with label jihadism. Show all posts
Tuesday, 17 October 2017
Friday, 11 August 2017
Settlement, Colonisation and Exploitation
The recently-concluded trial of several men in Northumbria for sexually exploiting children and young women has been recognised as a representative case of a type that has arisen in several English towns and cities. Muslim clerics have been among those who have recently made statements to the effect that here is a pattern of behaviour that is unacceptable in modern Britain. Women of indigenous British origin are first classified as being beneath the contempt of Muslim men, and once the whole female population has been condemned to a less-than-equal status, weak individuals within the category can be selected for sub-human exploitation.
It is notable that the so-called Islamic State has also classified the women of some non-Islamic tribes and religions as worthy of enslavement and concubinage; and it can be noted that this behaviour is of much more recent origin than the exploitation of girls in Rotherham and other places in England. The Nazis exploited Jewish women as "field whores" for the army; as did the Japanese Empire with Korean "comfort women". Thus it can be emphasised that nothing in this piece assumes that the cases in the UK over the past two decades [many of which have not yet been brought to the courts, and some may never properly be pursued] are a particular aberration of British Muslims. It is a tragically recurrent theme in human history; but its recent appearance in the United Kingdom merits attention against the broad sweep of history.
One of the major achievements of the nineteenth century Factory Acts was to ensure [eventually] that children were not unduly exploited in the workplace. A feature that is less well-remembered is that overnight working by women was banned from the factories and workshops, where there had been cases of extreme intimidation and bullying as well as sexual aggression. That provision against women working at night continued after the Second World War, and it is firmly embedded in my memory that as the Lancashire cotton industry collapsed in the later nineteen-fifties, some of the more successful firms decided to expand production by 24-hour working, In the absence of an available male workforce, some of the mills began recruiting Commonwealth citizens, mostly from the Indian sub-continent. In the first instance the men came alone: only later did they bring their wives [or import their brides]. Then there developed a pattern of settlement, whereby as the native Brits withdrew from the terraced houses where their forebears had lived while they were in the mills, abundant cheap housing was available for more immigrants to occupy. Ethnic sub-groups attracted their families into the areas where they were becoming settled, and eventually colonies of like-minded people created mutually self-reinforcing communities who became big enough for ethnic food, dress and religious traditions to become installed. Settlements had become colonies; and just as the British and the French had tried to establish settlements in the territories that they occupied, so these mainly-Islamic groups did in the UK and in the French Faubourgs. Some of the European colonies - especially in Africa - have been eradicated, or eroded, Algeria is no longer part of France, but there is a huge swathe of Africa where the language of education and commerce is French. Robert Mugabe is progressing his plan to eradicate the British-descended settlers from Zimbabwe; but English will remain the language of trade and teaching. Further south, there are members of the ANC would would like to deal with white South Africans as Mugabe has done with those who called themselves Rhodesians.
The tragedy of the British towns and cities is that immigrant colonies based on religious, ethnic and cultural similarities have been allowed - in some cases, encouraged - to regard themselves as distinct from the rest of society, protected by the concept of 'diversity' and by the pressure within the police force to eschew 'racism'. This has ensured that most of the colonists have been exempt from the application of the law and the prosecution of crime as they are applied to the indigenous British [and to the Afro-British population, where matters like stop-and-search have become extremely sensitive].
Minorities of the colonists have developed into exploiters. They have formed moralistically reinforced views on the degeneracy of British society, and twisted the outcome into a licence to treat weak and ignorant individuals from outside the colony as fair game for any sort of exploitation.
Add to that mix the option for any colonist also to decide to embrace a violent Jihadist interpretation of the prevalent religion [usually to the horror of their family and friends, whose lives can be endangered along with those of the targeted group] and we have the situation that Lord Evans has predicted will lead to a supply a Jihadist recruits from the colonies for at least two decades to come.
The situation must be recognised and understood as it is, before either the specifics of the protection of minors from the 'host population' or the roots of Jihadism can be tackled. No government willed it to turn out this way, but a mixture of past affluence and constant concession to the racism of the colonists has created a mess that must now be resolved.
It is notable that the so-called Islamic State has also classified the women of some non-Islamic tribes and religions as worthy of enslavement and concubinage; and it can be noted that this behaviour is of much more recent origin than the exploitation of girls in Rotherham and other places in England. The Nazis exploited Jewish women as "field whores" for the army; as did the Japanese Empire with Korean "comfort women". Thus it can be emphasised that nothing in this piece assumes that the cases in the UK over the past two decades [many of which have not yet been brought to the courts, and some may never properly be pursued] are a particular aberration of British Muslims. It is a tragically recurrent theme in human history; but its recent appearance in the United Kingdom merits attention against the broad sweep of history.
One of the major achievements of the nineteenth century Factory Acts was to ensure [eventually] that children were not unduly exploited in the workplace. A feature that is less well-remembered is that overnight working by women was banned from the factories and workshops, where there had been cases of extreme intimidation and bullying as well as sexual aggression. That provision against women working at night continued after the Second World War, and it is firmly embedded in my memory that as the Lancashire cotton industry collapsed in the later nineteen-fifties, some of the more successful firms decided to expand production by 24-hour working, In the absence of an available male workforce, some of the mills began recruiting Commonwealth citizens, mostly from the Indian sub-continent. In the first instance the men came alone: only later did they bring their wives [or import their brides]. Then there developed a pattern of settlement, whereby as the native Brits withdrew from the terraced houses where their forebears had lived while they were in the mills, abundant cheap housing was available for more immigrants to occupy. Ethnic sub-groups attracted their families into the areas where they were becoming settled, and eventually colonies of like-minded people created mutually self-reinforcing communities who became big enough for ethnic food, dress and religious traditions to become installed. Settlements had become colonies; and just as the British and the French had tried to establish settlements in the territories that they occupied, so these mainly-Islamic groups did in the UK and in the French Faubourgs. Some of the European colonies - especially in Africa - have been eradicated, or eroded, Algeria is no longer part of France, but there is a huge swathe of Africa where the language of education and commerce is French. Robert Mugabe is progressing his plan to eradicate the British-descended settlers from Zimbabwe; but English will remain the language of trade and teaching. Further south, there are members of the ANC would would like to deal with white South Africans as Mugabe has done with those who called themselves Rhodesians.
The tragedy of the British towns and cities is that immigrant colonies based on religious, ethnic and cultural similarities have been allowed - in some cases, encouraged - to regard themselves as distinct from the rest of society, protected by the concept of 'diversity' and by the pressure within the police force to eschew 'racism'. This has ensured that most of the colonists have been exempt from the application of the law and the prosecution of crime as they are applied to the indigenous British [and to the Afro-British population, where matters like stop-and-search have become extremely sensitive].
Minorities of the colonists have developed into exploiters. They have formed moralistically reinforced views on the degeneracy of British society, and twisted the outcome into a licence to treat weak and ignorant individuals from outside the colony as fair game for any sort of exploitation.
Add to that mix the option for any colonist also to decide to embrace a violent Jihadist interpretation of the prevalent religion [usually to the horror of their family and friends, whose lives can be endangered along with those of the targeted group] and we have the situation that Lord Evans has predicted will lead to a supply a Jihadist recruits from the colonies for at least two decades to come.
The situation must be recognised and understood as it is, before either the specifics of the protection of minors from the 'host population' or the roots of Jihadism can be tackled. No government willed it to turn out this way, but a mixture of past affluence and constant concession to the racism of the colonists has created a mess that must now be resolved.
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