Category: capitalisms

As I ponder the themes of this site, I discover relevant current events, listing them in the nascent blog.

People or profit: Which comes first?

Profit rules as the engine of capitalism. Take this example: A Bank of America supervisor pressures employees to come to work in NYC despite the threat of the Covid-19 epidemic and pleas to remain home. The CEO, Brian Moynihan, purports himself as a responsible corporate head committed to CSR, including putting people before profit. Maybe not all senior execs got the memo. Read the NYT article for yourself. Then read how the CEO expresses his choice: the growth of shareholder return, i.e. profit. Of course.

Corporate media, like all media, must be critically assessed. Here the choice of the primacy of profit or people, or nature, becomes a primary ethical norm. Never lose sight of this fundamental ethical choice. Act accordingly as a consumer, investor, citizen, stakeholder. You matter.

Note that if corporations put profit first (what I call the Friedman Doctrine), the notion that capitalism will meet the challenges of CSR is unlikely, if not impossible. The choice is clear:

• Dark Money will seize its opening on behalf of capitalism, business as usual (BAU). Coalitions within capitalism will prevent any internal threat to its dominance. Wresting away control will be unlikely: See my Statement of Concern.
• The mirage of CSR will evaporate as hard decisions over people and the planet (literally a broad pro-life agenda) give way to profit.

The call for the USA from the NYT

Today, April 9, 2020, the New York Times published a bold initiative: The America We Need.

The larger project, however, is to increase the resilience of American society. Generations of federal policymakers have prioritized the pursuit of economic growth with scant regard for stability or distribution. This moment demands a restoration of the national commitment to a richer conception of freedom: economic security and equality of opportunity. That

Snippets for SBC initiative.

Steps to compose DW pages. Topics to build in DW as survey reference pages. Must get stuff up and out. Must publish to reference links. List must include note and destination.

• NYT re authoritarianism re corona Disaster Capitalism. Klein’s concept of the Shock Doctrine
• Larry Fin, BlackRock, on CSR := Braudel III.

My contention about capitalism recognizes that historical events can shift the political-economic establishment (PE) rapidly. I will take QuickNotes here. The Covid-19 pits the economy against public health, money interests vs human health — a formidable test case that deserves close attention, as here.

The PE response talks about relief policies including expanding fiscal spending, financial market support (as always), and shared benefits beyond the endogenous financial crisis of 2007-2008. The implementation could be less clumsy, more adaptive, and quicker than anything since the New Deal. The Fed has done their part and the talk from the Oval Office appears pragmatic, less ideological. Much remains to unfold, so watch closely.

Social distancing and hunkering in place has disrupted the way that workers work, and much could stick. The Cloud appears popular, adaptive, and useful. Given that the productivity of the PE has slowed since 2008, this could be a breakthrough. The workers’ quality of life at the workplace could be permanently improved. Watch this emerging trend closely.

Explicit recognition of the plight of working folks could put checks in the mail, or digitally through the Cloud. Promises only so far but since wages have been stagnant since the late 1970s, this could be noteworthy.

I have presented capitalism as a potentially handy kit of tools such as responsive markets and macro-economic acounts (GDP) that tell the truth, fiscal and monetary policies that work for average folks, not just the plutocracy. Certainly, systemic PE dysfunctions shall persist: inequality, fiscal crisis, climate and overall ecological assault, and dispossession around the world, typically within rural areas.

The November elections loom. Cynics worry that Trump could try to postpone the elections if the pandemic persists or, as models suggest, intensify. However, the GOP fear of a massive Blue Wave, may open up popular support that has now been expected. Again, watch closely.

The Covid-19 pandemic could still intensify, with historically significant tragedies. However, a recession appears likely, so the business investment may continue to shrink and federal deficits explode.

Stakeholder capitalism along the lines of the EU could emerge, a potential game-changer. If a recession, or even widespread fear of an economic collapse, can open up such a possibility — but Dark Money will actively work against any threat to the profit of the plutocracy.

Quick Notes

• See my notes that focus on how flexible is capitalism: people over profits?
• Totems of shareholder capitalism need to speak out: Starbucks is in. Diamond, Buffet are silent. Cohn and the general Chamber response is “enough, already.”
• Trump tolerates Fauci, epitomizing health vs corporate pressure.
• War production nibble over masks.

Because I am locked out of my legacy blog, I am unwilling to again trust WordPress, dirty and vulnerable but powerful and convenient.

• Even as I write this blog entry, I notice plugins that I did not, and would not, choose.
• Spam, spam, more spam. Use filters, but must give away data.
• Few authors, including me, understand the complicated CMS and SQL engine. HTML need not be complicated. I have spent probably twenty hours on this. Should I really be hand-editing PHP and SQL scripts?

WordPress locked me out since November.

Why the lapse? I am still locked out of my original blog, with my dedicated server support team unable to remedy: lots of my writing has been lost. So, I have lost confidence in WordPress blogging. Here, I keep to work on the fly while I concentrate on HTML5 in my legacy ProfWork.org site, where I have published over a thousand pages without a server hitch, not so WordPress.

What’s on my mind now.

In this blog, I identify long-term, strategic cases and trends worth watching:

• Does the Aramco IPO provide a tell on energy future: Less than $2 trillion? See my Evernote. Key questions:
  • Will the shale fracking boom continue?
  • US oil demand through 2121: recession or growth slowdown?
• The World Economic Forum, about to convene at Davos, will focus on global cooperation about what has abruptly topped public opinion concern: climate.
• The recent media attention to population slowdown, with profound long-term consequences, such as to China and the USA.
• Will GDP growth slowdown in the USA in the 2020s? The Congressional Budget Office forecasts GDP deceleration and surging federal budgetary deficits. [I will dig out the source.]
• Attention to hotspots such as the burning alive of the Amazon and of Australia — while their respective governments persist in climate denial.
• I will not cover the upcoming Presidential election in the USA but comment only if warranted in covering the concerns above.

Enough substance to digest.

Okay, I am a capitalist, probably you too if you are reading this. I have benefitted, sort of like I’m a fish swimming in the ocean of an economy into which I was born (in Jersey City in the propitious month of August 1945). Fish don’t notice water the way that we don’t notice the capitalism that flows all around us. This is changing, however.

The post World War II years were good for me, representing a benign respite from the Great Depression and World War II that intervened in my parents’ biographies (see Mills). “Mutatis mutandis,” say economists: “All things change.”

But I am concerned that capitalisms will collide with climate catastrophe, and maybe I will be around in 2030 — at 85 — so that I can herein speculate as to the outcomes.

I have had the privilege to offer courses around the broad theme of global sustainability, such as Economy, Ecology, and Ethics. I no longer restrict myself to a broad and innovative curriculum, but can transcend into speculation. This is the purpose of this site. So let’s dive into this ocean.

BTW, I am emphatically not a Marxist, so let’s get that out of the way as well. I find Marxism and Marxists stubbornly and rigidly dogmatic. However, I also recognize that capitalism drives for profit, thus requires economic growth, and will not give up its business model or its privilege. Period.

Further, capitalism in the hegemonic US will utilize its citizenship privileges granted by the Roberts Court in its Citizens United holding but will not embrace its civic obligations. The large corporation will likely seek to corrupt the public realm to capture the overall political economy with its prodigious financial resources, while it shamelessly greenwashes with its supportive ideology and propaganda (Korten). My daring to even write these words will inflame many of capitalism’s adherents, who will continue to troll me.

Plural Capitalisms?

So why the plural? For these reasons:

• Approach capitalisms as cases exist in practice (Gray) in its manifold forms: Scandanavia, US, Brexit, China, Venezuela, Germany, Hong Kong, etc. These targets will not stand still, so pay close attention, now. Tomorrow. Do not give in to determinisms of any kind: You surrender your freedom to see beyond the dilemma.
• This invites comparative analysis and learning its flexibility and adaptability: Capitalisms’ adaptability must be discovered to find its limits and to . . .
• Accommodate capitalisms to bend to sustainability (a useful shorthand, explained later). A disclaimer: Although I offered classes in public policy, I do not advocate grand plans such as the Green New Deal: Such futile schemes will be staunchly and effectively repulsed, will be unwieldy in practice, and will ultimately generate a sharp pushback. The private sector can nimbly adapt. Maybe: Got a better idea? Let me know.
• Spot advantages, innovations, and strategic opportunities when they appear, or anticipate these. Leonard Cohen said it well in his Anthem: “There is a crack in everything, that’s how the light gets in.” Notice my ambivalence to capitalisms, which forces me to resolve my cognitive dissonance. I work this through as I write.
• Aristotle stated in his magisterial Metaphysics, Volume 7, that the only problem worthy of philosophy was an Aporia (Owen): No known path through the conundrum. This obsessed Martin Heidegger, a situation which do not go well as he descended into Nazism. The coming catastrophe of capitalism and climate is my Aporia, thus I am compelled to discover my journey in this blog. Pity my beloved wife, Kathleen, as she puts up with my obsessive folly.
• As you set out on this journey, adhere to the more humble road toward decentralization, devolution, community, autonomy, federalism. Below, I will argue from Braudel, Keynes, and Adam Smith that localism trumps globalization. Build on the household, the community, the civic engagement rather than rely on Neoliberalism and unfettered corporate capitalism. Turn toward the tactile, accessible, caring and away from the dominance of the distant, the remote control, the glitz, the unattainable and anti-life of globalization, the ultimate impersonal and dehumanizing. As Hesse said in his Siddhartha, “Do not seek, find.” Go Zen. Think globally, act locally — but strategically, as my old friend and colleague Murray Bookchin said to me a long time ago.
• Better, nurture Life and reject, defy, struggle against all that defiles, disrupts, diminishes, or degrades Life, Creation, the dignity and potential of the human Soul, and more broadly Nature. Do not tolerate abusive anything, anywhere, anytime (see Jensen). Start now: never stop.
• But can capitalisms support, rather than plunder, exploit, objectify, commodify all life, matter, and humanity? This reverts back to the Aporia itself.
• Finally, due to the looming catastrophe of climate collapse on the horizon, I suggest that the answers had prudently be discovered and actually implemented in the coming decade, 2020-2030. I remain quite pessimistic but move forward: Onward! Join me, on your unique path. We will meet along the journey.

How to Approach Capitalisms?

Three books might help:

• The Making of the by Dudley Dillard. I took a graduate course with the marvelous Professor Dillard at the University of Maryland in the fall of 1963. His magnus opus had just been published. Dillard navigated each turn and development, but also introduced me to . . .
• Karl Polanyi, The Great Transformation, sharply distinguished formal economics, masquerading as science, an substantive economies, the actual practices, institutions, cultures that comprise the concrete, specific economies that hopefully sustain us.
• Fernand Braudel opened a potential path as he organized his trilogy.
• Marx, especially in his three volumes of Capital, to his great credit, identified the tensions and contradictions within capitalism — Marx never used the term capitalism. Thus, capitalisms of all sort must resolve their internal dialectic. Therein might lie a piece of the map, lighting a clearing on the journey.