Globalisation v Parochialism

pqrdef

CLAPTON wrote: »

I would say that the general model will survive another 1000 years or so

It hasn't proved itself capable of surviving at all yet. We haven't reached a stable sustainable equilibrium since the start of the industrial revolution, and we don't seem to be heading towards one.

But wherever we're headed, the 19th/20th centuries will turn out to have been just a transitional phase, because they depended on the First World being rich while the rest of the world was poor.

And if you think we can fill the world with USAs you're crazy.

CLAPTON wrote: »

and expect no general return to cottage industries where people work long hours for peanuts.

That was when the only way to make things was by hand. Those days are gone. In the future, productivity will continue to increase and the problem will be to find enough things for people to do to earn a share of the food.

CLAPTON

John_Pierpoint wrote: »

Self employed truck driver?
"Skint" aged 64 but with a disabled wife and 10 kids?

Seriously I think someone who was over 55 and a single redundant male, would a whole lot better off driving a truck, than signing on every fortnight.

Mind you I did have reason to visit a warehouse that had had problems "restructuring" its labour force and their terms and conditions.
The "new deal" was on the notice board and I was surprised to see that the fork lift drivers were getting a higher rate than the Trans-European 40 tonne truck drivers.

I suppose it must be supply and demand.

If I was qualified I know which job I would rather be doing.



It depends who you thing "we" are.

I am glad I have not been a college graduate, learning that the world does not owe us a living.

There was some survey in the media about a week ago - In the last half a dozen years, as the world realised we are running out of money and oil, showing that our standard of living used to be No 5 and is now No 12 in the list.

If your criteria for wealth and happiness is keeping ahead of the Jones then maybe your future is unhappiness and misery;
if on the other hand your criteria for wealth and happiness is warmth, good housing, wonder food, opportunies to achieve you life goals, to travel, to enjoy friends and family, to have a good education, to have good health care etc then the present is good and the future is likely to be better.

CLAPTON

Triffid wrote: »

I assume this was said 'tongue in cheek':eek:

welcome to the board

you are welcome to add any views you wish

pqrdef

CLAPTON wrote: »

I would say that the general model will survive another 1000 years or so and expect no general return to cottage industries where people work long hours for peanuts.

I'll explain a bit more. The hidden assumption of the Adam Smith division-of-labour model is that the process of making something depends on what it is you're making. So you organise around the process and then produce as many identical items as possible to minimise unit costs.

But if you have a black-box replicator, like on Star Trek Voyager, then the process of making something is the same irrespective of what you're making. All the particularisation is in the programming.

Now, there's no longer an advantage in having one factory producing enough identical items to supply the whole world and shipping them everywhere. You can produce identical items wherever they're needed at no greater cost. Decentralised mass production.

Nothing like going back to the past.

Power has always been held by those who control scarcity - food, jobs, whatever. If the scarcity factor is taken out of the production system, power will then pass to those who control some other scarce resource.

John_Pierpoint

CLAPTON wrote: »

If your criteria for wealth and happiness is keeping ahead of the Jones then maybe your future is unhappiness and misery;
if on the other hand your criteria for wealth and happiness is warmth, good housing, wonder food, opportunities to achieve you life goals,to travel, to enjoy friends and family, to have a good education, to have good health care etc then the present is good and the future is likely to be better.

Warmth ?
Even Adam Smith would have noticed that energy prices are increasing faster than wages. There has been some small trade off, in that the costs of heating equipment has increased but so has its efficiency. However there is no magic bullet for replacing fossil fuels.
http://www.euractiv.com/energy/soaring-energy-costs-europeans-p-analysis-519884

Good housing?
Cramped and ridiculously expensive - certainly here in the South East - given the rapid increase in household formation, any improvement in the near future is unlikely.
When I (re)built my home in the 1970s the rule of thumb was 33% each for land, materials and labour, now 2/3rds of the cost and more has been capitalised into the scarce site value. http://www.guardian.co.uk/society/2013/apr/16/social-housing-standards-rabbit-hutch

Travel ?
In terms of price, I think the 1990s will prove to be the cheapest time in world history, for UK citizens. Then came the stealth and carbon taxes.
In terms of freedom, probably soon after the fall of the Berlin wall; we now live in a world where one man's travel is another man's terror opportunity. One country's tourist is another country's illegal immigrant.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/travel/travelnews/9802604/Indian-visa-costs-to-soar.html
Wonder food ?
I think I am with you on this one, if we ignore prices rises since the mid noughties and those now in "food poverty". There does seem to be a lot of hot air at the moment about the feeding of the 10 billion.
Enjoy friends and family ?
It is a shame about the high rates of family breakdown.Good education ?
Yes that has improved considerably in my lifetime - it is a shame that so many of the recipients of this massive subsidy fail to appreciate it and use it to their advantage. [or have I been travelling on too many buses at 15:30 ?]

Good health ?
I think I would say adequate health care - let down by a significant proportion of the population suffering from largely self inflicted ill health. Another massive state spending system that is not achieving its full potential.

Opportunities to achieve your life goals ?
That rather depends on what they are. There is something of an oversupply of poorly qualified teenagers world wide at the moment. Will their lives achieve anything?

The present is good and the future is likely to be better !
Something of a normative statement, but I hope you are right - there can be something amazing about the human spirit.

[In the US, 11% of people over the age of 12 take antidepressants, according to the US Centers for Disease Control research.

Many people feel better when they are on the drugs. But the precise mechanism is still not apparent. Antidepressants have an effect on serotonin levels in the brain, which seem to be related to emotional well-being. Yet the relationship between serotonin and happiness remains unclear.
"We're a bit blind about this," says University of Bristol's Stafford Lightman. Researchers do not have an animal model to study the effects of the drugs. "There is no such thing as a depressed mouse."]

CLAPTON

John_Pierpoint wrote: »

Warmth ?
Even Adam Smith would have noticed that energy prices are increasing faster than wages. There has been some small trade off, in that the costs of heating equipment has increased but so has its efficiency. However there is no magic bullet for replacing fossil fuels.
http://www.euractiv.com/energy/soaring-energy-costs-europeans-p-analysis-519884

Good housing?
Cramped and ridiculously expensive - certainly here in the South East - given the rapid increase in household formation, any improvement in the near future is unlikely.
When I (re)built my home in the 1970s the rule of thumb was 33% each for land, materials and labour, now 2/3rds of the cost and more has been capitalised into the scarce site value. http://www.guardian.co.uk/society/2013/apr/16/social-housing-standards-rabbit-hutch

Travel ?
In terms of price, I think the 1990s will prove to be the cheapest time in world history, for UK citizens. Then came the stealth and carbon taxes.
In terms of freedom, probably soon after the fall of the Berlin wall; we now live in a world where one man's travel is another man's terror opportunity. One country's tourist is another country's illegal immigrant.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/travel/travelnews/9802604/Indian-visa-costs-to-soar.html
Wonder food ?
I think I am with you on this one, if we ignore prices rises since the mid noughties and those now in "food poverty". There does seem to be a lot of hot air at the moment about the feeding of the 10 billion.
Enjoy friends and family ?
It is a shame about the high rates of family breakdown.Good education ?
Yes that has improved considerably in my lifetime - it is a shame that so many of the recipients of this massive subsidy fail to appreciate it and use it to their advantage. [or have I been travelling on too many buses at 15:30 ?]

Good health ?
I think I would say adequate health care - let down by a significant proportion of the population suffering from largely self inflicted ill health. Another massive state spending system that is not achieving its full potential.

Opportunities to achieve your life goals ?
That rather depends on what they are. There is something of an oversupply of poorly qualified teenagers world wide at the moment. Will their lives achieve anything?

The present is good and the future is likely to be better !
Something of a normative statement, but I hope you are right - there can be something amazing about the human spirit.

[In the US, 11% of people over the age of 12 take antidepressants, according to the US Centers for Disease Control research.

Many people feel better when they are on the drugs. But the precise mechanism is still not apparent. Antidepressants have an effect on serotonin levels in the brain, which seem to be related to emotional well-being. Yet the relationship between serotonin and happiness remains unclear.
"We're a bit blind about this," says University of Bristol's Stafford Lightman. Researchers do not have an animal model to study the effects of the drugs. "There is no such thing as a depressed mouse."]

half full or half empty?

If mana dropped from heaven you would probably say 'it won't last long'.

we live in a paradise; nearly all our ills are self inflicted.

so for those with a positive outlook, the opportunities lie before us if we choose to walk that path.

those that see only negatives will continue to do so whatever the reality before them

HAMISH_MCTAVISH

John_Pierpoint wrote: »

I was surprised to see that the fork lift drivers were getting a higher rate than the Trans-European 40 tonne truck drivers.

I suppose it must be supply and demand.

If I was qualified I know which job I would rather be doing..

That a forklift driver needs any qualifications at all beyond a couple of hours basic training is a big part of the problem.

TruckerT

HAMISH_MCTAVISH wrote: »

That a forklift driver needs any qualifications at all beyond a couple of hours basic training is a big part of the problem.

It's the scarcity issue, as mentioned earlier in the thread - FLT drivers have to renew their licence at regular intervals, and nobody wants to pay the price.

Truck drivers, like car drivers, are given a licence for life after a single short assessment.

TruckerT

TruckerT

John_Pierpoint wrote: »

Good health ?
I think I would say adequate health care - let down by a significant proportion of the population suffering from largely self inflicted ill health. Another massive state spending system that is not achieving its full potential

The Health Issue seems to be one of the hottest potatoes in the argument about the benefits of capitalism, and we are hearing more and more stories about the Health and Social Services' declining effectiveness.

The self-inflicted ill health is largely due to the increase in disposable income and the increased availability of unhealthy foods and drugs (made possible by capitalism, whose modus operandus is to generate new demands for previously unheard of products)).

But, nevertheless, we all enjoy better health and longer lives than our predecessors, even though some of those lives are not worth living due to all sorts of disabling accidents and incurable medical conditions. The problem now is that we cannot afford the cost of keeping us all alive.

And so we have a growing debate about the desirability of euthanasia.

TruckerT

TruckerT

grizzly1911 wrote: »

Some people are indeed the richest they have ever been.

Living standards are falling for many as are opportunities

CLAPTON wrote: »

most people are richer than they have ever been
more people are richer now than they were 10 years ago


and no, it isn't 'less dreadful'; its more wonderful.

we have a wonderful country and most people that want to and are willing to work can achieve a happy and worth while life here.

Clapton, please reconsider the 'point' of Grizzly's post.

TruckerT