Comments for The Memory Bank

Comment on On profit and rent in the history of capitalism by keith

keith — Sat, 10 Dec 2011 18:56:16 +0000

Thanks for posting this comment, Mark. I agree with you that the digital is the third phase of the machine revolution whose origins lie in World War 2 and that this is by far the most transformative phase of recent history.

Sony is an interesting case. My daughter helped to launch Blu-ray, so I have something of an in there. We think that they make their money from manufacturing machines like Play-station, Walkman and flat-screen TVs. But 75% (or so) of their revenues come from DVDs. They have been the feudal baron of the rent-protection regime, as in the famous case where they were caught for putting spyware in CDs, but now, faced with Apple’s even more restrictive DRM monopoly, they have joined with Microsoft and others to form a cloud-based digital downloading scheme, Ultra-violet, which claims to be more ‘open’ than Apple. But of course they are unlikely to succeed because of their established corporate bad habits. This kind of dialectical movement appeals to me and I look forward to finding out more through your book.

Comment on On profit and rent in the history of capitalism by keith

keith — Sat, 10 Dec 2011 18:44:22 +0000

These are good questions, Amy. My comment arose out of a thread considering debt refusal in the contemporary US and then from an argument that rent-seeking in North America and Europe today is no different in principle from Victorian capitalism. My interest lies in asking how accumulation in the anglo-saxon economies that led the neoliberal turn of the last three decades differs from the Old Regime whose overthrow was capitalism’s original justification. In other words, I want to add some precision to the argument that the game is up for the West.

This does not mean that I am indifferent to the new forms emerging in the rest of the world. I am currently writing a book about African development in the 20th and 21st centuries, my main intellectual base these days is in South Africa and I consume voraciously what I can about India and Brazil in particular. So from that point of view, your comment is more about what my post was not than about what it was. I would like to pursue your questions, but don’t know how to here without writing a different post.

Comment on On profit and rent in the history of capitalism by Msrk Stahlman

Msrk Stahlman — Sat, 10 Dec 2011 18:31:52 +0000

Keith:

Yes, the DIGITAL does portend enormous upheaval — some of which I hope to capture in my still-being-written book, The Digital Bomb.

Note also, that the “national capital” you assign to the 20th century did not develop under conditions of the “mechanical” dominance that enamored Marx in the 19th but rather was driven by “electric” technology — which is why McLuhan also must be studied and understood, staring with “The Gutenberg Galaxy.”

The “digital age” depends on Moore’s Law, which was first announced in 1965 but didn’t begin to have economic impact until integrated circuits took over from ANALOG transistors in the 1970s. But, by any account, we are roughly 40 years into this new era and, in strictly media “environmental” terms, roughly 20 years into the effects of the Internet. That’s a good part of our lifetimes. So, what do we know about our own times and places?

When I launched Wall Street coverage of SONY in 2005, I specifically tasked the company to shift from “royality” payments to become a “services” company — which as you can imagine was an interesting topic to discuss with the Hollywood-rooted (and investment-banking trained) US-based management. Btw, the company was set-up under that name in the 1950s with the “free” grant of the exclusive Japanese license to Western Electric transistor patents and has extracted most of its surplus since then from television and audio patent payments — making it a “rent” based corporation from the beginning.

We have been living our DIGITAL lives for many decades (at least in the “post-industrial” regions), so, as we’ve discussed, why don’t we have a lively debate about DIGITAL economics? There’s just no spare “rent” to pay for it?

Mark Stahlman
Brooklyn NY

Comment on On profit and rent in the history of capitalism by Amy Wohl

Amy Wohl — Sat, 10 Dec 2011 18:17:40 +0000

As countries that were not in the original equations become increasingly important (Brazil, China, India, perhaps Russia, and much of Africa) we need to account for their not necessarily capitalist styles. We also need to understand what will happen if they are unable to maintain the hypergrowth that has helped them emerge from their former status. Will this cause a condemnation of capitalism and an attempt to revert to more centralized control? Will the growing middle class permit controls that they see as preventing them from moving forward? Or is this movement, once started, irreversible?

It’s all well and good to look at the established economies and their capitalism or semi-capitalist styles (or the semi-socialist states of western Europe), but it is in the emerging economies that many of the new rules will be established or renounced.

Comment on The euro crisis seen as an episode in the history of money by John Bryden

John Bryden — Sat, 03 Dec 2011 10:20:48 +0000

This is a great paper Keith, and we must all think fast about the question you raise (the dialogue of the deaf). At the moment the crisis is destroying democracy as we know it, and in several directions. First, money markets are actually removing governments (eg Greece, Italy) – it is not people who re doing this – and replacing them with ‘functionaries’ who no doubt belong to at least one of the two camps you identify. This is very dangerous. Second, governments seem to be hell bent on killing off the social sciences in order to focus on ‘real science and technology’ which is supposed to assure us of a competitive future. E.g. the coalition government in the UK’s recent actions to remove teaching grant from social sciences and humanities. This at a time when at least some social scientists have been trying to reassert their role in terms of working with social movements, rather than being led by the governments. Etc etc. I could go on.
But for me, living in Norway, I feel our social and political system is worth something, which is worth fighting for – a good decentralised and relatively egalitarian social democracy with good free education for all, and attention to human rights issues. The national state assures this. Joining a fiscally united EU would not!

Comment on Reviews of the Book by Louis Oziak

Louis Oziak — Sat, 03 Dec 2011 09:48:20 +0000

The above referenced illustration can be found here:

http://normeconomics.com/distribution.html

Comment on World War III by sam

sam — Thu, 01 Dec 2011 09:41:46 +0000

afpak region leading to a war is a very high possibility,but possibly the real cauz is goin to be the real china,aka TAIWAN,.wich super power is gonna tolerate a “part of mainland” claiming independence on the muscle of another power half the world away,the day the us falls weak, the seventh fleet will be routed in taipei waters ,the chicoms ARE just waiting and watching,as mao once said we can wait for a 100 years ,some day some super power may may fall weak n then BOOOM!

Comment on World economy heading for a double dip recession? by Clyde Lasenby

Clyde Lasenby — Sat, 26 Nov 2011 10:36:57 +0000

K_ Says:”The limits to growth are not set by the environment, but by how willing we are to exploit it”

Comment on Full circle: Africa’s moment has come by keith

keith — Fri, 25 Nov 2011 08:59:05 +0000

I was not, Rachel. I found only one online reference to the book and no link to it, also nothing on Amazon. So how does one reach it?

Comment on Full circle: Africa’s moment has come by Rachel Olwanda

Rachel Olwanda — Fri, 25 Nov 2011 08:37:18 +0000

By the way, are you aware that there is already a book by the title “Africa’s Moment” by Pete Ondeng? Google it.

Rachel