12.29.10
Posted in you've got mail at 12:32 pm by nemo
RG mail
http://www.nydailynews.com/opinions/2010/12/22/2010-12-22_the_economic_outrage_of_2010_cowardly_leaders_failed_to_help_working_people__and.html
New York Daily News December 22, 2010
The economic outrage of 2010: Cowardly leaders failed to help working
people — and coddled the rich
*The bankers used their money and political influence first to buy
deregulation, then to get a massive bailout and finally, this year, to
prevent effective reregulation.*
By Joseph Stiglitz
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Posted in you've got mail at 12:31 pm by nemo
RG mail
http://original.antiwar.com/paul-craig-roberts/2010/12/27/2011/
Antiwar.com December 28, 2010
2011
The lawlessness of the U.S. government, which has been creeping up on us
for decades, broke into a full gallop in the years of the Bush/Cheney/Obama
regimes.
by Paul Craig Roberts
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Posted in you've got mail at 12:27 pm by nemo
RG mail
http://www.democracynow.org/2010/12/28/from_snowstorms_to_heat_waves_how
Democracy Now! December 28, 2010
From Snowstorms to Heat Waves, How Global Warming Causes Extreme Weather and
Climate Instability
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Posted in you've got mail at 12:26 pm by nemo
RG mail
http://www.alternet.org/story/149339/2010%3A_a_precedent-setting_year_in_the_fight_against_coal_
AlterNet / By Joshua Frank
2010: A Precedent-Setting Year In the Fight Against Coal
Who said environmentalism is dead? When it comes to coal, the movement is
alive and well.
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12.28.10
Posted in Science & Religion at 12:34 pm by nemo
How Did God Get Started?
These analyses rarely work because they are really about the thinking emerging in the Axial Age monotheims. They don’t really help us understand Paleolithic ‘theology’ (in quotation marks).
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Posted in Evolution at 12:32 pm by nemo
The Great Explosion
The complete inability of Darwinism to explain human evolution, or even desribe the creature that so evolved, is the ongoing scandal of the whole subject. But the public is easily fooled, leaving the illusion in place. But this regime is dangerous over time: the oversimplified view of man is becoming a self-fulfilling prophecy as man is conditioned to be a robot conforming to reductionist thinking!
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Posted in General at 12:26 pm by nemo
The science of Christmas: we could grow our own fairy lights, say the tree wise men
Thanks to genetic modification, we may soon be putting our presents under a self-illuminating Christmas tree, writes Roger Highfield.
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Posted in General at 12:23 pm by nemo
A New Wrinkle in Time
With the decline of the wristwatch, will time become just another app?
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Posted in cosmology at 12:20 pm by nemo
When the Black Hole Was Born: Astronomers Identify the Epoch of the First Fast Growth of Black Holes
ScienceDaily (Dec. 28, 2010) — Most galaxies in the universe, including our own Milky Way, harbor super-massive black holes varying in mass from about one million to about 10 billion times the size of our sun. To find them, astronomers look for the enormous amount of radiation emitted by gas which falls into such objects during the times that the black holes are “active,” i.e., accreting matter. This gas “infall” into massive black holes is believed to be the means by which black holes grow.
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Posted in Critique of Evolutionary Economy at 12:18 pm by nemo
The illusion that capitalism drives history is a fallacy that Marx should have exposed, but instead embraced. In many ways, Marx is not the person we thought he was, and his legacy is a subtle obstacle to creating a real left. More on this soon.
————— From yesterday: The right to exit markets
With respect to previous posts today yesterday on market ideology…
In a way Marx confused the issue here, because, just at the moment of liberating thought from economic determinism, he produced ‘historical materialism’ which actually embraced economic laws of history. History is not driven by economics. Period, over and out.
The point here is that markets, economies in general, are subsystems in world history that evolves in a different way as a whole (check out the eonic effect!!!).
Markets are created by men, and too often created by exploitative elites. There is no historical necessity for them, save that they have shown a potential to create wealth. But after creating the great American Middle Class and then destroying it it is surely time for its victims to start saying ‘NO’ to market shibboleths. Men made markets, men can unmake them. That’s why mathematical economics is so misleading: it suggests a set of natural economic laws, that men must submit to. And then they added fake calculus to silence the public completely.
These are fictions, designed to ennare you. They have certainly confused economists.
The basic idea is: there are no absolute economic laws of the market that drive history. Human free will interacts at all points, and can change them as needed. The idea we should absolutely surrender to markets and never intervene is a case of consistency run amok. These systems were created after people like Adam Smith noticed that markets are often more efficient if left alone. OK, but the fetish made from that insight has been a series of monumental distortions.
It is up to you: decide to live in a sane system, not a market driven madhouse. And demand that.
Remember: you have a basic RIGHT to live in a non-market or modified market system that can provide the basics of social democracy. You don’t have to be a plaything of economic elites who use economic ASSHOLES with PhD’s to provide cover.
I am suspcious of Marx, he missed the point at the last moment, and produce a bad theory. We should drop it, and look to his earlier insights into theory and ideology.
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Posted in Critique of Evolutionary Economy at 12:14 pm by nemo
Popular post: The American public is being exploited by economic pseudo-science, bad journalism, and the conspiracy of Wall Street gangsters, some of them on Obama’s staff.
It is not impossible to balance capitalism and social democracy.
——————————
Just read: Europe’s Promise: Why the European Way Is the Best Hope in an Insecure Age
Steven Hill
I recommnd this book to anyone struggling with the massive doses of economic gibberish flooding the American media. It can help to put the situation into perspective, and as a self-defense against the market ideology that reigns over all public discourse. And it is a false ideology, totally out of control, and made worse by the way smart geekish types like Greenspan et al. promote it oblivious to reality.
Hill’s book shows how the American system has gone astray, and how some form of social democracy can be successful. Unfortunately even the far left is confused here, and cannot bring anything but stale marxism to the table.
You MUST be wary of all public media sources here, ALL of them. There aren’t any that are sane, except possibly the Kuttner brand and its variants which have no infleunce. What is dangerous here is the way Obama has thrown away a priceless opportunity to challenge the market mania, turning out to be a trinagulated mess like Clinton, who is actually getting kudos for being one of the wreckers of the American economy.
All the cable brands are disinformation and unreliable. The gross lies of Fox News are obvious, but the subtle gymnastics of CNN are almost worse in their slyness.
In general, human gullibility is exploited by Darwinism, mathematical economics, market mythologies, and outright lies. If you want to study market economics, go back and start with Adam Smith, who is the least poisonous of this brand, which is backed, to the oblivion of clueless liberals, by the Social Darwinist ideology of Darwinian biological pseudo-science. Liberal intellectuals can get unfooled by market ideology, but Darwinism keeps them enthralled.
Reading Hill’s book makes one wonder what on earth happened to the American populace? Are they too stupid to resist this economic brainwashing? I hope not.
Note (and this the reason far leftists won’t buy into this type of argument): this brand of social democracy in Europe is a creation of conservatives. Conservatives, take note. Why conservatives have been loonies in the USA is a mystery.
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Posted in General at 12:08 pm by nemo
Turing vs God By SCHRODINGER’S CAT
Added: Tuesday, 28 December 2010 at 11:44 AM
http://richarddawkins.net/discussions/569696-turing-vs-god
At first glance, the Turing Test seems quite sensible. The issue is whether one could construct a machine that responds in such a manner as to cause a human operator to believe that they are actually communicating with another human being.
Fundamental to the test is the notion that if the operator could in no way spot the difference, then one will have artificially generated human intelligence….and above all that elusive human quality ‘understanding’.
There are various counter-arguments to this hypothesis, John Searle’s ‘Chinese Room’ variant being foremost. However I’d like to raise an objection that bears more closely on religion, and God in particular.
Proponents of the ‘God’ idea often make the claim that the inabilty to prove that he exists is not the same as proof that he doesn’t. This, of course, is fallacious reasoning. But look again at the logic of the Turing Test…..isn’t it predicated upon precisely the same sort of fallacy ?
How does the inability to prove that the machine isn’t displaying intelligence, and doesn’t even remotely understand what it is doing, in any way demonstrate that it does ? I would contend that so great a figure as Alan Turing has fallen for the same logical fallacy as the ‘God’ argument. Can’t prove something false, therefore it must be true.
I wonder…are all arguments of the form ‘You are unable to prove….therefore’ necessarily fallacious ? Can anyone think of an example that isn’t ?
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Posted in Evolution at 12:04 pm by nemo
Finest Chocolate May Get Better: Cacao Tree Genome SequencedScienceDaily (Dec. 28, 2010) — The production of high quality chocolate, and the farmers who grow it, will benefit from the recent sequencing and assembly of the chocolate tree genome, according to an international team led by Claire Lanaud of CIRAD, France, with Mark Guiltinan of Penn State, and including scientists from 18 other institutions.
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Posted in General at 12:03 pm by nemo
Bees One of Many Pollinators Infected by Virus Implicated in Colony Collapse Disorder
ScienceDaily (Dec. 28, 2010) — Penn State researchers have found that native pollinators, like wild bees and wasps, are infected by the same viral diseases as honey bees and that these viruses are transmitted via pollen. This multi-institutional study provides new insights into viral infections in native pollinators, suggesting that viral diseases may be key factors impacting pollinator populations.
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Posted in General at 12:01 pm by nemo
Structure of Key Molecule in Immune System Provides Clues for Designing DrugsScienceDaily (Dec. 28, 2010) — A team from the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine and Utrecht University has deciphered a key step in an evolutionarily old branch of the immune response. This system, called complement, comprises a network of proteins that “complement” the work of antibodies in destroying foreign invaders. It serves as a rapid defense mechanism in most species from primitive sponges to humans.
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Posted in you've got mail at 11:59 am by nemo
Of Luxury Cars and Lowly Tractors
By P. SAINATH
http://www.counterpunch.org/sainath12282010.html
At least 17,368 Indian farmers killed themselves in 2009, the worst figure for farm suicides in six years, according to data of the National Crime Records Bureau (NCRB). This is an increase of 1,172 over the 2008 count of 16,196. It brings the total farm suicides since 1997 to 2,16,500. The share of the Big 5 States, or ‘suicide belt’ — Maharashtra, Karnataka, Andhra Pradesh, Madhya Pradesh and Chhattisgarh — in 2009 remained very high at 10,765, or around 62 per cent of the total, though falling nearly five percentage points from 2008. Maharashtra remained the worst State for farm suicides for the tenth successive year, reporting 2,872. Though that is a fall of 930, it is still 590 more than in Karnataka, second worst, which logged 2,282 farm suicides.
Economist K. Nagaraj, author of the biggest study on Indian farm suicides, says, “That these numbers are rising even as the farmer population shrinks, confirms the agrarian crisis is still burning.”
Maharashtra has logged 44,276 farm suicides since 1997, over a fifth of the total 2,16,500. Within the Big 5, Karnataka saw the highest increase of 545 in 2009. Andhra Pradesh recorded 2,414 farm suicides — 309 more than in 2008. Madhya Pradesh (1,395) and Chhattisgarh (1,802) saw smaller increases of 16 and 29. Outside the Big 5, Tamil Nadu doubled its tally with 1,060, against 512 in 2008. In all, 18 of 28 States reported higher farm suicide numbers in 2009. Some, like Jammu and Kashmir or Uttarakhand, saw a negligible rise. Rajasthan, Kerala and Jharkhand saw increases of 55, 76 and 93. Assam and West Bengal saw higher rises of 144 and 295. NCRB farm data now exist for 13 years. In the first seven, 1997-2003, there were 1,13,872 farm suicides, an average of 16,267 a year. In the next six years 1,02,628 farmers took their lives at an average of 17,105 a year. This means, on average, around 47 farmers — or almost one every 30 minutes — killed themselves each day between 2004 and 2009.
Among the major States, only a few including Karnataka, Kerala and West Bengal avoided the sharp rise these six years and lowered their average by over 350 compared to the 1997-2003 period. In the same period, the annual average of farm suicides in the Big 5 States as a whole was more than 1,650 higher than it was in 1997-2003. — Sainath.
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Posted in you've got mail at 11:57 am by nemo
http://www.project-syndicate.org/commentary/sachs173/English
America’s Political Class Struggle
Jeffrey D. Sachs
2010-12-27
NEW YORK – America is on a collision course with itself. This month’s
deal between President Barack Obama and the Republicans in Congress to
extend the tax cuts initiated a decade ago by President George W. Bush
is being hailed as the start of a new bipartisan consensus. I believe,
instead, that it is a false truce in what will become a pitched battle
for the soul of American politics.
As in many countries, conflicts over public morality and national
strategy come down to questions of money. In the United States, this is
truer than ever. The US is running an annual budget deficit of around $1
trillion, which may widen further as a result of the new tax agreement.
This level of annual borrowing is far too high for comfort. It must be
cut, but how?
The problem is America’s corrupted politics and loss of civic morality.
One political party, the Republicans, stands for little except tax cuts,
which they place above any other goal. The Democrats have a bit wider
set of interests, including support for health care, education,
training, and infrastructure. But, like the Republicans, the Democrats,
too, are keen to shower tax cuts on their major campaign contributors,
predominantly rich Americans.
The result is a dangerous paradox. The US budget deficit is enormous and
unsustainable. The poor are squeezed by cuts in social programs and a
weak job market. One in eight Americans depends on Food Stamps to eat.
Yet, despite these circumstances, one political party wants to gut tax
revenues altogether, and the other is easily dragged along, against its
better instincts, out of concern for keeping its rich contributors happy.
This tax-cutting frenzy comes, incredibly, after three decades of elite
fiscal rule in the US that has favored the rich and powerful. Since
Ronald Reagan became President in 1981, America’s budget system has been
geared to supporting the accumulation of vast wealth at the top of the
income distribution. Amazingly, the richest 1% of American households
now has a higher net worth than the bottom 90%. The annual income of the
richest 12,000 households is greater than that of the poorest 24 million
households.
The Republican Party’s real game is to try to lock that income and
wealth advantage into place. They fear, rightly, that sooner or later
everyone else will begin demanding that the budget deficit be closed in
part by raising taxes on the rich. After all, the rich are living better
than ever, while the rest of American society is suffering. It makes
sense to tax them more.
The Republicans are out to prevent that by any means. This month, they
succeeded, at least for now. But they want to follow up their tactical
victory – which postpones the restoration of pre-Bush tax rates for a
couple of years – with a longer-term victory next spring. Their leaders
in Congress are already declaring that they will slash public spending
in order to begin reducing the deficit.
Ironically, there is one area in which large budget cuts are certainly
warranted: the military. But that is the one item most Republicans won’t
touch. They want to slash the budget not by ending the useless war in
Afghanistan, and by eliminating unnecessary weapons systems, but by
cutting education, health, and other benefits for the poor and working
class.
In the end, I don’t think they will succeed. For the moment, most
Americans seem to be going along with Republican arguments that it is
better to close the budget deficit through spending cuts rather than tax
increases. Yet when the actual budget proposals are made, there will be
a growing backlash. With their backs against the wall, I predict, poor
and working-class Americans will begin to agitate for social justice.
This may take time. The level of political corruption in America is
staggering. Everything now is about money to run electoral campaigns,
which have become incredibly expensive. The mid-term elections cost an
estimated $4.5 billion, with most of the contributions coming from big
corporations and rich contributors. These powerful forces, many of which
operate anonymously under US law, are working relentlessly to defend
those at the top of the income distribution.
But make no mistake: both parties are implicated. There is already talk
that Obama will raise $1 billion or more for his re-election campaign.
That sum will not come from the poor.
The problem for the rich is that, other than military spending, there is
no place to cut the budget other than in areas of core support for the
poor and working class. Is America really going to cut health benefits
and retirement income? Will it really balance the budget by slashing
education spending at a time when US students already are being
out-performed by their Asian counterparts? Will America really let its
public infrastructure continue to deteriorate? The rich will try to push
such an agenda, but ultimately they will fail.
Obama swept to power on the promise of change. So far there has been
none. His administration is filled with Wall Street bankers. His top
officials leave to join the banks, as his budget director Peter Orszag
recently did. He is always ready to serve the interests of the rich and
powerful, with no line in the sand, no limit to “compromise.”
If this continues, a third party will emerge, committed to cleaning up
American politics and restoring a measure of decency and fairness. This,
too, will take time. The political system is deeply skewed against
challenges to the two incumbent parties. Yet the time for change will
come. The Republicans believe that they have the upper hand and can
pervert the system further in favor of the rich. I believe that they
will be proved wrong.
Jeffrey D. Sachs is Professor of Economics and Director of the Earth
Institute at Columbia University. He is also Special Adviser to the
United Nations Secretary-General on the Millennium Development Goals.
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Posted in General, you've got mail at 11:53 am by nemo
Published on Tuesday, December 28, 2010 by Countdown w/ Keith Olbermann
The GOP War on Government: Gutting Public Employee Unions, Public Services, and Cutting Taxes for Wealthy
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Posted in you've got mail at 11:50 am by nemo
Published on Tuesday, December 28, 2010 by The Independent/UK
Two Years After Operation Cast Lead, Gaza Remains Imprisoned
by Jody McIntyre
http://www.commondreams.org/view/2010/12/28-0
It feels strange to spend time over the Christmas period in a quiet Yorkshire village with family; this time last year, I was on my way to the Gaza Strip. It was the second time I had travelled to Gaza; the first time was in March 2009, just a few months after Israel had launched Operation Cast Lead, a twenty-two day assault on the Strip, in which 1,400 Palestinians and 13 Israelis were killed. Hard to describe as a conflict, a massacre perhaps, but a tragedy undoubtedly.
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Posted in you've got mail at 11:49 am by nemo
Published on Tuesday, December 28, 2010 by The Toronto Star
Canada Discovers Trickle-Up Economics
by Linda McQuaig
http://www.commondreams.org/view/2010/12/28
There was always skepticism about claims that, as the rich became richer, income would “trickle down” to others. What wasn’t perhaps foreseen was that the trickling would actually be in the other direction, and that it would be more of a torrent than a trickle.
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Posted in you've got mail at 11:48 am by nemo
Published on Tuesday, December 28, 2010 by CommonDreams.org
Pharmaceutical Industry Fraud
by Ralph Nader
http://www.commondreams.org/view/2010/12/28-3
The corporate defrauding of taxpayers (eg. Medicaid and Medicare) and prescription drugs with skyrocketing prices was the subject of a report by Public Citizen’s Dr. Sidney Wolfe and his associates (see citizen.org).
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Posted in you've got mail at 11:46 am by nemo
Published on Tuesday, December 28, 2010 by Associated Press
Where Are The Jobs? For Many Companies, Overseas
Corporate profits are up. Stock prices are up. So why isn’t anyone hiring?
http://www.commondreams.org/headline/2010/12/28-3
In ths Feb. 17,2009 file photo, an engine technician works on a vessel engine at the Caterpillar company in Friedrichsort near Kiel, northern Germany. More than half of the 15,000 people that Caterpillar Inc., maker of the signature yellow bulldozers and tractors, has hired this year were outside the U.S. (Associated Press)Actually, many American companies are — just maybe not in your town. They’re hiring overseas, where sales are surging and the pipeline of orders is fat.
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12.27.10
Posted in General at 2:44 pm by nemo
Supercomputing Research Opens Doors for Drug Discovery
ScienceDaily (Dec. 27, 2010) — A quicker and cheaper technique to scan molecular databases developed at the Department of Energy’s Oak Ridge National Laboratory could put scientists on the fast track to developing new drug treatments.
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Posted in General at 2:39 pm by nemo
Econostream != Eonic Sequence
One of the best ways to put economic histories in perspective is to study something that shows a different dynamic behind Large Scale History. In the absence of that we tend to confuse the momentum of economies with historical dynamics. But a careful study shows that economies are a dependent variable in the mix. We have a responsibility therefore to not let economics become a force that controls us. At the point where economies destroy natural environments and we are still mesmerized by market ideology, we have transgressed the limits of sound theory into that strange hybrid of propaganda and economic reasoning that Marx denounced as ideology, only to create another one based on historical materialism.
Endless confusion arises from confusing the rise of modernity and the emergence of capitalism. Our model clarifies the difference and produces a strange result, at first sight: capitalism is not a stage of history. It has always existed, and its modern apotheosis is merely an intensification, nearly a rebirth of a primordial category of civilization. It is ironic we arrive at this Marxian echo via a critique of Marx, with none of the vexed issues that forever obscure the insights of this challenger of reigning ideology. Such an insight might as well be a tenet of liberalism , and we note that liberal culture struggled mightily to balance its limits in the hybrid social democratic experiments.
In our model, we can spot the problem at once, because we can see that capitalism ceases to have macrodynamic status. We may indifferently say that capitalism, empirically but not theoretically, is a de facto stage of history (because it happened that way) or a cream puff overamped by the eonic sequence, which remorphs what it finds already in its direct path. Any other approach is tantamount to surrender to the egregious mechanized ‘alienation’ that, taken seriously, would rapidly undo the very economic system in question. These systems require intelligent choices at all points, and threaten to degenerate almost immediately into ideologically induced chaos. If the system goes out of control then intervention is required.
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Posted in Critique of Evolutionary Economy at 2:10 pm by nemo
With respect to previous posts today on market ideology…
In a way Marx confused the issue here, because, just at the moment of liberating thought from economic determinism, he produced ‘historical materialism’ which actually embraced economic laws of history. History is not driven by economics. Period, over and out.
The point here is that markets, economies in general, are subsystems in world history that evolves in a different way as a whole (check out the eonic effect!!!).
Markets are created by men, and too often created by exploitative elites. There is no historical necessity for them, save that they have shown a potential to create wealth. But after creating the great American Middle Class and then destroying it it is surely time for its victims to start saying ‘NO’ to market shibboleths. Men made markets, men can unmake them. That’s why mathematical economics is so misleading: it suggests a set of natural economic laws, that men must submit to. And then they added fake calculus to silence the public completely.
These are fictions, designed to ennare you. They have certainly confused economists.
The basic idea is: there are no absolute economic laws of the market that drive history. Human free will interacts at all points, and can change them as needed. The idea we should absolutely surrender to markets and never intervene is a case of consistency run amok. These systems were created after people like Adam Smith noticed that markets are often more efficient if left alone. OK, but the fetish made from that insight has been a series of monumental distortions.
It is up to you: decide to live in a sane system, not a market driven madhouse. And demand that.
Remember: you have a basic RIGHT to live in a non-market or modified market system that can provide the basics of social democracy. You don’t have to be a plaything of economic elites who use economic ASSHOLES with PhD’s to provide cover.
I am suspcious of Marx, he missed the point at the last moment, and produce a bad theory. We should drop it, and look to his earlier insights into theory and ideology.
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Posted in Critique of Evolutionary Economy at 1:51 pm by nemo
Just read: Europe’s Promise: Why the European Way Is the Best Hope in an Insecure Age
Steven Hill
I recommnd this book to anyone struggling with the massive doses of economic gibberish flooding the American media. It can help to put the situation into perspective, and as a self-defense against the market ideology that reigns over all public discourse. And it is a false ideology, totally out of control, and made worse by the way smart geekish types like Greenspan et al. promote it oblivious to reality.
Hill’s book shows how the American system has gone astray, and how some form of social democracy can be successful. Unfortunately even the far left is confused here, and cannot bring anything but stale marxism to the table.
You MUST be wary of all public media sources here, ALL of them. There aren’t any that are sane, except possibly the Kuttner brand and its variants which have no infleunce. What is dangerous here is the way Obama has thrown away a priceless opportunity to challenge the market mania, turning out to be a trinagulated mess like Clinton, who is actually getting kudos for being one of the wreckers of the American economy.
All the cable brands are disinformation and unreliable. The gross lies of Fox News are obvious, but the subtle gymnastics of CNN are almost worse in their slyness.
In general, human gullibility is exploited by Darwinism, mathematical economics, market mythologies, and outright lies. If you want to study market economics, go back and start with Adam Smith, who is the least poisonous of this brand, which is backed, to the oblivion of clueless liberals, by the Social Darwinist ideology of Darwinian biological pseudo-science. Liberal intellectuals can get unfooled by market ideology, but Darwinism keeps them enthralled.
Reading Hill’s book makes one wonder what on earth happened to the American populace? Are they too stupid to resist this economic brainwashing? I hope not.
Note (and this the reason far leftists won’t buy into this type of argument): this brand of social democracy in Europe is a creation of conservatives. Conservatives, take note. Why conservatives have been loonies in the USA is a mystery.
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