One thing war does is cull the existing shrubbery and obliterate the prices usury generated. Once culled, those with resources simply sow the seeds of the next cycle on fertilized soil.
The problem for the global south is they are triply pooched. They have been made to flay apart their economic, cultural and monetary independence, to homogenize themselves and supply the ticky tacky of the global core and receive its ticky tacky outputs. They are cogs, not functional wholes.
Except now the global north's core is has changed direction, because Fukushima, Covid, Ukraine and now Climate Change. On shoring leaves the cogs short, but still obligated to collect dollars to service debt, to buy machinery and the very basics of sustenance they no longer can make and in fact are obligated to not make themselves where that process is being obliterated.
That chain's economic solvency depends on the core's financial stability; it's hard to remain solvent when extreme weather tears at existing productive capacity globally. Insurance is struggling with the cost. If it falters, bye bye property value, investment and lending, hello a debt deflation crises that makes the GFC a mild influenza year.
The nonsense of buying things like renewables when they are a product of a global chain that isn't viable is the worst deployment of finance. Ever.
Almost everything I say is also true of most people in the global north, because the globalized economy is simply the extension of the national industrialization process, today's finance was engineered to produce, in the wake of WWII. Towns also play the same role as the global south.
Its whether whether growth—derived as the rate of change of a continuous function—is a meaningful or valid way to interpret changes in the size of economies over time. And the question is 'what growth'? Employment to grow exponentially to beyond the numbers of Chinese citizens? Demand to grow exponentially - beyond the resources of the planet? Output to grow exponentially...beyond the capacity/resources of any one nation, or of the world economy as a whole?
Keynes measured the levels of economic activity: employment, investment, demand. If, as during World War 2 demand was too high relative to the limited amount of consumer goods..inflation woudl result. So demand had to be managed..it could not rise at the rate of change of a continuous function.
Its not rocket science. But it is orthodox /mainstream/micro economics.
Thanks for explaining. I think you are right that growth per se could be unsustainable. But can we grow indefinitely within the carrying capacity of the environment? Perhaps not, but why not try? We might direct public investment in renewable energy, in recycling technologies, organise our economy so that 100% of output is recycled. We can at least try vs giving up saying this is impossible. Just my take!
Today, however, the information economy, of which the financial sector is a principal constituent, is intensely creative, energy light and seemingly limitless in growth.
Finance and growth, however, are not necessarily compatible. See GFC and crypto.
Twice Keynes was rejected in post-war treaty negotiations. At the Versailles negotiations in 1919 that were the subject of 'The Economic Consequences of the Peace', and at Bretton Woods in 1944 where his 'Bancor' proposal was rejected in favour of the Gold-backed US Dollar reserve. The consequences of the latter are playing out right now as the USA and its major debt-holders, addicted to the seignorage on bond issuance, and pay-outs of interest and redemption respectively, are terrified of the 'end of dollar-ponzi' crash, and are prepared to go to war to destroy those economies that wish to transact outside the dollar-system.
While I accept the proposition of Clara E. Matteo and others that it was austerity that let to fascism in the 1920's/30's, and that the conditions placed on Germany would not explain the rise of fascism in Italy, the sense of injustice, particularly the ridiculous 'guilt clause', would help explain the fervour of Nazism.
The close succession of revisionist texts by Tooze & Tampke in 2014 & 2019 respectively are ad-hominem attacks whose broader purpose is to discredit Keynes's economic work in its entirety, prompted by the post-GFC re-emergence of Keynesian and successor schools of thought that challenge Neoliberal orthodoxy.
Before Waterloo, the French were extracting saltpetre from manure to make gunpowder. The irresistible drive to war was the discovery of Fritz Harber and the promise of infinite explosive capacity. Beyond the carnage was the infinity of population growth driven by unlimited nitrates. Growth is six billion extra souls in a hundred years. By 1900 we had discovered the finite planet and the search for infinity that followed has taken us way beyond planetary limits. Rolling back from there and towards the economic focus on human needs, to which Keynes alluded and to which Kate Raworth added planetary limits, requires a revolution of the sort that lies on the other side of destruction and chaos. Can we do better than that? Only if we impoverish the rich, before they resort to violence.
The rich, for all their narcissism, are no different from cyanobacteria about 2.4 billion years ago. Big brains don't mean much, really, in terms of outcomes.
One thing war does is cull the existing shrubbery and obliterate the prices usury generated. Once culled, those with resources simply sow the seeds of the next cycle on fertilized soil.
The problem for the global south is they are triply pooched. They have been made to flay apart their economic, cultural and monetary independence, to homogenize themselves and supply the ticky tacky of the global core and receive its ticky tacky outputs. They are cogs, not functional wholes.
Except now the global north's core is has changed direction, because Fukushima, Covid, Ukraine and now Climate Change. On shoring leaves the cogs short, but still obligated to collect dollars to service debt, to buy machinery and the very basics of sustenance they no longer can make and in fact are obligated to not make themselves where that process is being obliterated.
That chain's economic solvency depends on the core's financial stability; it's hard to remain solvent when extreme weather tears at existing productive capacity globally. Insurance is struggling with the cost. If it falters, bye bye property value, investment and lending, hello a debt deflation crises that makes the GFC a mild influenza year.
The nonsense of buying things like renewables when they are a product of a global chain that isn't viable is the worst deployment of finance. Ever.
Almost everything I say is also true of most people in the global north, because the globalized economy is simply the extension of the national industrialization process, today's finance was engineered to produce, in the wake of WWII. Towns also play the same role as the global south.
well that will be top of my cinema queue!
It is mindless growth that I object to. Growing and making things by improved science and technology is what we should concentrate on.
Isn’t the issue unequal growth, vs growth per se?
Without growth, it is unlikely China would have ended absolute poverty. India has to grow if it wants to end absolute poverty.
I am afraid I don’t understand your objection to growth.
Its whether whether growth—derived as the rate of change of a continuous function—is a meaningful or valid way to interpret changes in the size of economies over time. And the question is 'what growth'? Employment to grow exponentially to beyond the numbers of Chinese citizens? Demand to grow exponentially - beyond the resources of the planet? Output to grow exponentially...beyond the capacity/resources of any one nation, or of the world economy as a whole?
Keynes measured the levels of economic activity: employment, investment, demand. If, as during World War 2 demand was too high relative to the limited amount of consumer goods..inflation woudl result. So demand had to be managed..it could not rise at the rate of change of a continuous function.
Its not rocket science. But it is orthodox /mainstream/micro economics.
Read the Carnegie article: https://carnegieendowment.org/research/2024/07/global-economic-governance-whats-growth-got-to-do-with-it?lang=en
Thanks for explaining. I think you are right that growth per se could be unsustainable. But can we grow indefinitely within the carrying capacity of the environment? Perhaps not, but why not try? We might direct public investment in renewable energy, in recycling technologies, organise our economy so that 100% of output is recycled. We can at least try vs giving up saying this is impossible. Just my take!
Bricks and mortar economy.
Today, however, the information economy, of which the financial sector is a principal constituent, is intensely creative, energy light and seemingly limitless in growth.
Finance and growth, however, are not necessarily compatible. See GFC and crypto.
Twice Keynes was rejected in post-war treaty negotiations. At the Versailles negotiations in 1919 that were the subject of 'The Economic Consequences of the Peace', and at Bretton Woods in 1944 where his 'Bancor' proposal was rejected in favour of the Gold-backed US Dollar reserve. The consequences of the latter are playing out right now as the USA and its major debt-holders, addicted to the seignorage on bond issuance, and pay-outs of interest and redemption respectively, are terrified of the 'end of dollar-ponzi' crash, and are prepared to go to war to destroy those economies that wish to transact outside the dollar-system.
While I accept the proposition of Clara E. Matteo and others that it was austerity that let to fascism in the 1920's/30's, and that the conditions placed on Germany would not explain the rise of fascism in Italy, the sense of injustice, particularly the ridiculous 'guilt clause', would help explain the fervour of Nazism.
The close succession of revisionist texts by Tooze & Tampke in 2014 & 2019 respectively are ad-hominem attacks whose broader purpose is to discredit Keynes's economic work in its entirety, prompted by the post-GFC re-emergence of Keynesian and successor schools of thought that challenge Neoliberal orthodoxy.
Before Waterloo, the French were extracting saltpetre from manure to make gunpowder. The irresistible drive to war was the discovery of Fritz Harber and the promise of infinite explosive capacity. Beyond the carnage was the infinity of population growth driven by unlimited nitrates. Growth is six billion extra souls in a hundred years. By 1900 we had discovered the finite planet and the search for infinity that followed has taken us way beyond planetary limits. Rolling back from there and towards the economic focus on human needs, to which Keynes alluded and to which Kate Raworth added planetary limits, requires a revolution of the sort that lies on the other side of destruction and chaos. Can we do better than that? Only if we impoverish the rich, before they resort to violence.
The rich, for all their narcissism, are no different from cyanobacteria about 2.4 billion years ago. Big brains don't mean much, really, in terms of outcomes.