Iceland: "A New Era of People Power in the Streets?"

[cobben]

Good article on the canary in the debt mine.

The Icelandic Volcano Erupts

Can a Hedge-Fund Island Lose Its Shirt and Gain Its Soul?


http://www.tomdispatch.com/post/1750...n_the_streets_

" . . .
Where Iceland goes from here is hard to foresee. But as Icelandic writer Haukar Már Helgason put it in the London Review of Books last November:

"There is an enormous sense of relief. After a claustrophobic decade, anger and resentment are possible again. It's official: capitalism is monstrous. Try talking about the benefits of free markets and you will be treated like someone promoting the benefits of rape. Honest resentment opens a space for the hope that one day language might regain some of its critical capacity, that it could even begin to describe social realities again."

The big question may be whether the rest of us, in our own potential Argentinas and Icelands, picking up the check for decades of recklessness by the captains of industry, will be resentful enough and hopeful enough to say that unfettered capitalism has been monstrous, not just when it failed, but when it succeeded. Let's hope that we're imaginative enough to concoct real alternatives. Iceland has no choice but to lead the way. "

[Master Shake]

Re: Iceland: "A New Era of People Power in the Streets?"

Good article on the canary in the debt mine.

The Icelandic Volcano Erupts

Can a Hedge-Fund Island Lose Its Shirt and Gain Its Soul?


http://www.tomdispatch.com/post/1750...n_the_streets_

" . . .
Where Iceland goes from here is hard to foresee. But as Icelandic writer Haukar Már Helgason put it in the London Review of Books last November:

"There is an enormous sense of relief. After a claustrophobic decade, anger and resentment are possible again. It's official: capitalism is monstrous. Try talking about the benefits of free markets and you will be treated like someone promoting the benefits of rape. Honest resentment opens a space for the hope that one day language might regain some of its critical capacity, that it could even begin to describe social realities again."

The big question may be whether the rest of us, in our own potential Argentinas and Icelands, picking up the check for decades of recklessness by the captains of industry, will be resentful enough and hopeful enough to say that unfettered capitalism has been monstrous, not just when it failed, but when it succeeded. Let's hope that we're imaginative enough to concoct real alternatives. Iceland has no choice but to lead the way. "

Is the solution socialism?

[BadJuju]

Re: Iceland: "A New Era of People Power in the Streets?"

How laughable! Let us abandon the primary mover of civilizations over the past two hundred years (capitalism) and see where it takes us. :confused:

[flintlock]

Re: Iceland: "A New Era of People Power in the Streets?"

Funny how some confuse capitalism with outright fraud.

[Master Shake]

Re: Iceland: "A New Era of People Power in the Streets?"

Funny how some confuse capitalism with outright fraud.

I think the primary problem with the excesses of capitalism, which goes beyond cronyism and the outright fraud that develops in cycles over time, is scale. Larger and larger enterprises are the natural result of competition and are driven by economies of scale. However, it seems that once you hit a certain point, you get “diseconomies” of risk, and enterprises become “too big to fail” (and ultimately too unwieldy and non-competitive as well).

Also, when businesses get very big, they are much more able to buy favors from government, both in the form of weak regulation and tax breaks, and so corrupt the system. Ditto for Big (Intrusive) Government. Apart from standard left-right politics, maybe we need to focus more on scale. There’s a lot to be said for smallness, both in business and government. Maybe we place too much emphasis on mere efficiency and the concomitant centralization and regulation that attends large enterprises. Seems to me that a good chunk of the left and right, at least the more populist left and right, would favor smallness.

[Mn_Mark]

Re: Iceland: "A New Era of People Power in the Streets?"

Apart from standard left-right politics, maybe we need to focus more on scale. There’s a lot to be said for smallness, both in business and government. Maybe we place too much emphasis on mere efficiency and the concomitant centralization and regulation that attends large enterprises. Seems to me that a good chunk of the left and right, at least the more populist left and right, would favor smallness.

It's difficult to speak in general terms about things like "smallness" or "largeness" and be clear about what you mean, but when I think of "smallness" I recall a recent article about how people in countries that have been experimenting with micro-loans for individuals to start businesses with are complaining that their countries are being "Africanized", i.e. impoverished by being limited to very small businesses (street vendors for example) that do not achieve any meaningful economies of scale. I think it is quite possible that the wealth of the West is due to some large extent to the economies of scale introduced by people like Henry Ford. The idea that smallness is good has a certain appeal that I can understand. But I am suspicious of the general tone of Luddite-ism, the general idea that we should move back to a pre-industrial
sort of arrangement. (I'm not saying that's what Master Shake meant, but it's the sense I get from people like Jim Kunstler.)

I'm also suspicious anytime someone talks about how "We" should do this or that. What that means is that government will force people who don't think that's a good idea to go along with it anyway. I am a firm believer that the best system is the system that evolves organically according to the actual desires and motivations of free people making their own decisions. Let the government protect people's private property rights and provide remedies for fraud. Otherwise let it get out of the way.

As for Iceland, I am sadly amused by their "relief" that "unfettered capitalism" and "free markets" are a failure and now they can whole-heartedly get back to the socialism that they only half experimented with leaving. A workable free market requires both free markets and individual responsibility. The problems the world is experiencing are, in my opinion, caused by two things: (1) a recurring generational financial cleansing that would occur no matter what the structure of the financial system was, and (2) the deregulation of business without also putting responsibility back on the shareholders/investors/creditors/citizens for holding the businesses accountable. When government explicitly or implicitly guarantees that people won't lose money, as they do via the FDIC, then people are careless. That's what's happened.

People who are impoverished in Iceland now are not impoverished because of free markets. They are impoverished because they got greedy and thought their investments were no-lose, or they are impoverished because their government got itself involved with guaranteeing private financial risks and put all of their money at risk. If the government had stayed out of it, a prudent individual could have protected themselves quite nicely by not engaging in "no-lose", risky investments. But when the government gets involved, it makes no difference if an individual is prudent or not, they will be dragged down with everyone else by the government's involvement in guaranteeing private risk-taking.

So now instead of learning the PROPER lessons, which is "don't use government to socialize losses" and "don't think that 'it's different this time'", the Icelanders (and most Westerners) are thinking the lesson is "capitalism is a failure; government needs to protect us from losses; and let's get rid of these big businesses and live the 'small is beautiful' thing." It's a shame they're throwing capitalism out the window since they didn't really try it - they only tried half of it. You gotta do it all the way for it to work.

[tsetsefly]

Re: Iceland: "A New Era of People Power in the Streets?"

Good article on the canary in the debt mine.

The Icelandic Volcano Erupts

Can a Hedge-Fund Island Lose Its Shirt and Gain Its Soul?


http://www.tomdispatch.com/post/1750...n_the_streets_

" . . .
Where Iceland goes from here is hard to foresee. But as Icelandic writer Haukar Már Helgason put it in the London Review of Books last November:

"There is an enormous sense of relief. After a claustrophobic decade, anger and resentment are possible again. It's official: capitalism is monstrous. Try talking about the benefits of free markets and you will be treated like someone promoting the benefits of rape. Honest resentment opens a space for the hope that one day language might regain some of its critical capacity, that it could even begin to describe social realities again."

The big question may be whether the rest of us, in our own potential Argentinas and Icelands, picking up the check for decades of recklessness by the captains of industry, will be resentful enough and hopeful enough to say that unfettered capitalism has been monstrous, not just when it failed, but when it succeeded. Let's hope that we're imaginative enough to concoct real alternatives. Iceland has no choice but to lead the way. "

unfettered capitalism? if we only had capitalism! What caused this was a conjoined effort by interest groups (FIRE economy) in conjunction with government policies.

So the people will rise up??? and propose what? a Bolshevik revolution? that turned out great... The problem is society as a whole is morally bankrupt we cant expect them to choose adequate leaders...

Also, when businesses get very big, they are much more able to buy favors from government, both in the form of weak regulation and tax breaks, and so corrupt the system.

Business can grow as big as it wants but if there is no massive government to dole out favors left and right then their only advantage is that which the market will give them. The problem is and always will be big government.

[bvaliant]

Re: Iceland: "A New Era of People Power in the Streets?"

It's a shame they're throwing capitalism out the window since they didn't really try it - they only tried half of it. You gotta do it all the way for it to work.

This is a predictable response from an adherent of a discredited system: "It works fine, you just didn't do it right." It's an externalizing response as described by Attribution Theory. Humans have a tendency to internalize success and externalize failure. I'm not implying that this necessarily makes your statement wrong or your system wrong.

I'm economically agnostic, so I'm not looking forward to any particular new economic religion taking the place of global capitalism -- and I have no idea what it will look like.

[bobola]

Re: Iceland: "A New Era of People Power in the Streets?"

Anything big is scary...corporations or governments.

Description of the free online documentary called; The Corporation

“The documentary shows the development of the contemporary business corporation, from a legal entity that originated as a government-chartered institution meant to effect specific public functions, to the rise of the modern commercial institution entitled to most of the legal rights of a person. One theme is its assessment as a "personality", as if it were a human being, effected via the diagnostic criteria in the DSM-IV; Robert Hare, a University of British Columbia psychology professor and a consultant to the FBI, compares the profile of the contemporary profitable business corporation to that of a clinically-diagnosed psychopath. The documentary concentrates mostly upon North American corporations, especially those of the U.S”.

http://www.thecorporation.com/

[Mn_Mark]

Re: Iceland: "A New Era of People Power in the Streets?"

This is a predictable response from an adherent of a discredited system: "It works fine, you just didn't do it right." It's an externalizing response as described by Attribution Theory. Humans have a tendency to internalize success and externalize failure. I'm not implying that this necessarily makes your statement wrong or your system wrong.

I'm economically agnostic, so I'm not looking forward to any particular new economic religion taking the place of global capitalism -- and I have no idea what it will look like.

Thank you so much for your psychological analysis. Now that I know I engaged in an "externalizing response as described by Attribution Theory" I guess my concerns have been answered. Nothing like applying a $3 label to someone else's argument rather than dealing with the specifics!

You could say the same thing about every single argument ever put forth in history by someone defending what they believe in. "Oh you're saying that because you're defending what you believe in." Gee, thanks Einstein. That added a lot to the conversation.

My point stands: for a free market to work properly you must have both freedom and responsibility. If you take away the responsibility - if government steps in to bail people out from the results of their bad choices - you will have the catastrophe we're facing. And the catastrophe is no reflection on capitalism because we haven't had capitalism. We've had a system where gains are privatized and losses are socialized. That is not capitalism.

But the left wing of the political spectrum will not stand for a system where people are responsible for their losses. Thus we have the FDIC and a hundred other ways that moral hazard passes the costs of private risk-taking on to the government. So we've had a system where the political left gets their socialized losses and the political right gets their private gains. The real answer is private gains and private losses, but apparently we're going to have to learn first hand how a system of socialized gains and socialized losses works.

[Jay]

Re: Iceland: "A New Era of People Power in the Streets?"

I think the primary problem with the excesses of capitalism, which goes beyond cronyism and the outright fraud that develops in cycles over time, is scale. Larger and larger enterprises are the natural result of competition and are driven by economies of scale. However, it seems that once you hit a certain point, you get “diseconomies” of risk, and enterprises become “too big to fail” (and ultimately too unwieldy and non-competitive as well).

Also, when businesses get very big, they are much more able to buy favors from government, both in the form of weak regulation and tax breaks, and so corrupt the system. Ditto for Big (Intrusive) Government. Apart from standard left-right politics, maybe we need to focus more on scale. There’s a lot to be said for smallness, both in business and government. Maybe we place too much emphasis on mere efficiency and the concomitant centralization and regulation that attends large enterprises. Seems to me that a good chunk of the left and right, at least the more populist left and right, would favor smallness.

A good place to put this link:

http://www.flixxy.com/political-systems.htm

It might be less about the right vs. the left and more about the Republic vs. the Oligarchy.

[bvaliant]

Re: Iceland: "A New Era of People Power in the Streets?"

Nice rant! Try typing in all caps next time: you might sound even more earnest.

we're going to have to learn first hand how a system of socialized gains and socialized losses works.

We're going to have to learn first hand how a system of privatized gains and socialized losses works.

FTFY

Your religion broke. Sucks to be you.
;)

[loweyecue]

Re: Iceland: "A New Era of People Power in the Streets?"

How laughable! Let us abandon the primary mover of civilizations over the past two hundred years (capitalism) and see where it takes us. :confused:

The primary mover in the last 200 years was capitalism? Good grief man, I am sure it may have played a role but if there was one mover then it is/was technology. I am concerned with the general level of kool aid drinking when it comes to capitalism and with how pervasive it seems to be. Capitalism is just another failed system.

Is there a better system? I dont know but lest not glorify this to be something it is not.

[BadJuju]

Re: Iceland: "A New Era of People Power in the Streets?"

The primary mover in the last 200 years was capitalism? Good grief man, I am sure it may have played a role but if there was one mover then it is/was technology. I am concerned with the general level of kool aid drinking when it comes to capitalism and with how pervasive it seems to be. Capitalism is just another failed system.

Is there a better system? I dont know but lest not glorify this to be something it is not.

How is capitalism a failed system, sir? The only failed system I see is government.

[Master Shake]

Re: Iceland: "A New Era of People Power in the Streets?"

The primary mover in the last 200 years was capitalism? Good grief man, I am sure it may have played a role but if there was one mover then it is/was technology. I am concerned with the general level of kool aid drinking when it comes to capitalism and with how pervasive it seems to be. Capitalism is just another failed system.

Is there a better system? I dont know but lest not glorify this to be something it is not.

Would we have had such a technological revolution under any of capitalism's competitors?

Or, would we be a "better" society with less technology?