[LINK] business as *usual* (was Re: 'business as unusual')

[Craig Sanders]

On Tue, Aug 18, 2009 at 07:18:48AM +0000, stephen at melbpc.org.au wrote:
> Speaking of in-sightful, thoughtful articles, this seems another ..

here's an opposing, more cynical (more realistic) view:

> "The future of capitalism in five minutes: meaning-driven business in 
> fast times"
> 
> by Tim Leberecht  July 19, 2009 2:41 AM PDT 
> http://news.cnet.com/8301-13641_3-10290185-44.html
> also: http://www.ft.com/indepth/capitalism-future
>
> [...]
>
> Like the pope and his archbishop, economist Umar Haique argues that we 
> need to re-boot capitalism. 

we don't need to re-boot it, we need to bury it.


> "The value equation of industrial-era capitalism was toxically        
> imbalanced. Why is industrial era business so destructive - why does  
> it slash and burn rainforests, endanger entire species, vaporize      
> culture and community, marginalize the poor and disadvantaged, and    
> erode our health and vitality? Because none of those have value in    
> an industrial economy: none are capitalized. So the bean counters of  
> the world are free to plunder and ruin them - because, economically,  
> they actually don't exist.  20th century capitalism, in other words,  
> marginally valued pure financial capital too highly, while marginally 
> valuing human, natural, social, and cultural capital at zero - or, at 
> the limit, negatively."                                               

actually, it's a lot simpler, a lot less theoretical, and a lot more
pragmatic than that.

capitalism slashes and burns and loots and plunders because that is the
fastest way to return a profit NOW. the *only* thing that matters is
that the current shareholders get their returns as fast as possible. the
future[1] has no value. worse, it has negative value - anything left for
the future is value that could have been extracted now, or that could
be extracted by somebody else to compete against them.

[1] anything beyond the next quarterly return or the next shareholder's
meeting.


> One example of the "capital deepening" Haique envisions are carbon    
> assets: "Once they're capitalized, they become next-gen assets:       
> assets that can be traded, hedged, remixed, tweaked, open-sourced, or 
> shared.                                                               

capitalising the forests isn't the solution. that's just the same shit
wrapped up in "New & Improved!" toilet paper. it's just window-dressing
on privatisation, on transferring the last remaining "unowned" (i.e.
Terra Nullis, owned only communcally by indigenes, peasants, and
villagers - the irrelevant poor) land into corporate ownership.

the only solution is hanging the plutocrats, and that aint ever going
to happen (at least not in sufficient numbers to make any difference;
and certainly not without just replacing them with a different bunch of
even worse - more bloodthirsty - arseholes) so the world is doomed. it's
all downhill from here. the vermin that fucked us all over last year are
already creeping back out of the woodwork preparing to screw us again.

> The difference is that they're assets with intrinsic, durable, human  
> value - not the lemons Wall St was in the business of hawking. It is  
> only by capitalizing the things we really value that the spark of     
> value creation can be lit again."                                     

Wall Street doesn't give a damn whether what it's hawking has any actual
value or not. what Wall Street cares about is whether those at the top
of the game game can get even richer and get out of the game leaving
some other sucker holding the bag.

as has been so amply demonstrated by the debacle that came to a head
over the last year. this was no surprise, could not and should not have
been a surprise. it was inevitable. the only thing that mattered was
that some other sucker got stuck with the bill while the players made
off with the loot (as it happened, it's the public that got stuck with
the bill - trillions of dollars of "bailout" money around the world).


> [...]
> Former Harvard professor Shoshana Zuboff would agree with Haique.
>
> She is the author of The Support Economy: Why Corporations Are        
> Failing Individuals and the Next Episode of Capitalism, and in her    
> recent BusinessWeek article "The Old Solutions Have Become the        
> New Problems," she proposes companies charter what she calls the      
> "i-Space":                                                            
>
> "Business is no longer just about the product. Now it's about         
> solutions for the individual. Economic value is hidden in consumers'  
> unmet needs and is released by providing people with the means to     
> fulfill those needs. But in order to release new value, you need to   
> get out of organization space and into the subjective space where     
> individuals live.  I call it 'I-Space.' This means shedding the       
> 'us-them' mentality. Now everyone is an insider."                     

how many times do we have to listen to this same hype-laden i-Wank?

just like capitalising the forests, it's the same old shit dressed up
in well-researched & carefully-chosen "socially responsible"-sounding
words. it's propaganda to sell the next round of scams and
ripoffs...create and hype-up the bubble, cash in while you can, leave
the suckers to get covered in crap when it bursts.


> [...]

> This trend even extends to the world of finance - arguably the one    
> industry sector that has suffered most from excessive short-term      
> innovation and is in greatest need of real transformation.            

they didn't suffer from "excessive short-term innovation". they didn't
suffer at all. they looted the treasuries of the world and the rest of
us suffered by having to pay for their theft.

what they did was the natural and *inevitable* result of capitalism. it
was capitalists doing what capitalists do. nothing more, nothing less.



craig

-- 
craig sanders <cas at taz.net.au>

BOFH excuse #290:

The CPU has shifted, and become decentralized.