To Andrew and Tom: Apart from academics and proles who read WSN there is
the unemployed. I am unemployed, or should say in newspeak a Jobseeker. I
am an unregistered paranoid, and I also suffer from another debilitating
metal disorder, Knight's Move Thinking - I come to conclusions which are
not readily understood by the majority. Not that there is anyone to
listen to conclusions, most people avoid me in the street since I have a
bad habit of taking longer than sixty seconds to reply to simple
questions. I don't go into bars any more, I'm not really allowed, in fact
ten years ago I and two others were thrown out of a bar in Glasgow for
engaging in an 'intellectual conversation'. The bar steward said we were
distracting customers from taking their refreshments.
Now, this is where you will see where it all goes wrong form me - I spend
too much time reading economics - and this is where I find the nexus of
the anti-systemic discussion. R. K. Moore wrote on 3rd October,
>As for "electoral mechanisms"... why is this so lightly dismissed? I
>envision a day when elections are no more, and my grandaughter asks >me "You mean you had the vote and you didn't try to legally organize to >use
it effectively?"
Well, the whole thing is this, the circus of voting is a complete waste
of time. At least that is my conclusion. Why it is so lightly dismissed
is because of the following - (from The Coercive State. The Decline of
Democracy in Britain, by Paddy Hillyard and Janie Percy-Smith)
These guidelines note that the has two roles. First, it is
involved in combating 'terrorism and subversion'. Terrorism is defined as
'the use of violence for political ends, including any use of violence
for the purpose of putting the public or any section of the public in
fear'. Subversive activities are defined as 'those which threaten the
safety or wellbeing of the state, and which are intended to undermine or
overthrow Parliamentary democracy by political, industrial or violent
means'.
Interception of communications can be made for similar reasons, engaging
in criminal activity, terrorism or acts which undermine the economic
wellbeing of the state.
What bothers me is the term 'Parliamentary democracy'. Those elected are
effectively an oligarchy, rule by the few. But then the notion of
democracy to mean all persons to become involved in all matters is from
books written over two thousand years ago and is of no account nowadays.
So, when this communication is read by the I will be
flagged and the information posted to - the Jobcentre perhaps?
Additionally, since I have communicated with persons known or unknown I
am conspiring. There is a law against conspiracy, persons do not have to
commit a criminal act, all they have to do is take part in 'unlawful'
activities, such as discussing ways of undermining Parliamentary
democracy. In the event of a trial a conspirer has to prove innocence,
unlike a real criminal where the prosecution has to prove the person was
guilty of an offence. Besides that, as Hillyard and Percy-Smith say,
'Courts do not usually admit rumour or hearsay as evidence, but, in
conspiracy charges, such hearsay is allowed as evidence of the conspiracy
in question. So, holding certain political views may be held to be
evidence of participation in a conspiracy to commit certain political
acts'. Like in days of old when you were dunked, if you drowned you
proved your innocence, if you lived you were in for a really hard time.
I do not wish to undermine Parliamentary democracy by violent means. What
I'd like to see is the following,
Subversive activities are defined as 'those which threaten the safety or
wellbeing of the state, and which are intended to undermine or overthrow
Parliamentary democracy by violent means'.
Of course I will never get the knock at the door for stating the obvious,
everyone knows Parliamentary democracy is dead. What no one knows is what
will follow on when it is buried. The answer does not lie in politics, it
lies with an economic concept.
Have a read of the following, which Chris Chase-Dunn pointed to on
Tuesday. Planet-Wide Citizen's Income: Antidote to Global Apartheid
Myron J. Frankman
In particular, the following data,
>The UNDP's Human Development Report 1997 reports that the ratio of the
>income share of the world's richest 20% to the world's poorest 20%
>(based on national estimates of income distribution data) has gone from
>30:1 in 1960 to 61:1 in 1991 to 78:1 in 1994. (8)
Plot the data on a graph and it might look as if a 99:1 might be reached
in about twenty or fifty years. No, more like the year AD 10,000,000 plus
or minus 5,000,000 years.
Here is the process whereby this estimate is calculated. Or at least a
simple illustration. Take ten persons and give each one a token or a
dollar bill. Each person is numbered from 1 to 10. They are going to play
a trivial game. A ten sided die is rolled and say number six comes up.
Number six loses and goes out of the game. Then numbers 7, 8, 9 and ten
move along the table to become numbers 6, 7, 8 and 9 respectively. A nine
sided die is rolled so that one player gets the token which the original
number 6 lost. So now there are nine players, eight of them have one
token and one has two.
The next event is to repeat the process so that one other player goes out
of the game. Of course, if the number which is shown is the same for the
player with the two tokens then that player remains at the table. Thus,
the game doesn't end after ten events, in fact if this is run a few times
the average life of the game is about forty four events. Upon running
this about fifty times the lowest number of events is thirteen and the
highest was ninety four.
Looking at the graph of how long it takes for an event to occur it will
be seen that in nearly every game six or seven players have gone after
about ten events. When there are two players left, the expected number of
events, for ten tokens, is twenty five. If the graph is expressed in
mathematical terms there is a difficulty, the relationship is neither
algebraic nor transcendental. You have to know the number of players and
the number of tokens before the graph can be constructed. In the range of
say event two to about event fifty the graph is close to what can be
constructed using the exponential operator, 'e'. The use of this
approximation will never show the whole process, the process has to start
at zero and come to an end, this cannot be done using 'e' since you
cannot start at zero and the process will never end. If such a graph for
five billion players is superimposed over the graph of the UNDP data then
it is easy to see the 'game' will last for a very long time.
Practically, it is unlikely any economy will see a concentration greater
than about 90:1, thus, if the money system is small and the number of
people in the system is small then it will stall when the 90:1 condition
is approached. Thus, to keep the world money system going, what needs to
be done is to amalgamate systems, hence the Euro. In about fifty years
the world might see an American dollar which is the currency for the
whole of north and south America. But of course this is Knight's Move
Thinking.
Consider another experiment. This time with no money, in which there are
ten persons or families and they live on an island. Each of the ten are
taken to be an economic entity, all have exactly the same mental and
physical ability, the all work the same hours and trade where there is
absolute perfection in exchange. Now the game will be changed. By the
throw of the die each of the ten units will be subjected to slight
advantage and disadvantage. The net effect is of course zero. Or at least
this is the expected effect. Yes, this is trivial, each of the ten
entities will lose and gain once the experiment is started, and the game
can go on for ever. Easy to set up and insert counters to see at any
point in the game who is winning and who is losing, the average, the
grand average and so on.
Looking at graphs of the total effect there is nice smooth curves which
do pass on occasion through zero, but the overall picture is one of gain
or loss for considerable time periods. All of this is trivial because
every time a game is run a different picture emerges. What isn't so
trivial is when a counter is placed which measures variance. This always
increases, and the graph of variance has the same characteristics as the
one produced in the token game. Also, a point is reached where two
entities never lose, leaving the computer on all night with two 'winners'
they are still there in the morning. Repeating this process about twenty
times the same thing happens, two entities end up with all the advantage.
Generally about six are left with no advantage, and when they do get a
run of good luck it is soon lost. Happens every time. If I were to leave
the computer running for a week then I might find one entity with all the
advantage. What is absolutely certain is that a condition of equity, or
near to what was seen at the beginning of the experiment, will NEVER
happen.
This is not unlike the classical experiment in chemistry or physics where
two gasses are separated in a container by a partition. When the
partition is removed, the gasses mix. Taking their random movement in the
container the possibility does exist that some day the original
arrangement will be found. What is shown in the experiment with ten
entities is the reverse, order has been created out of chaos. Or at least
this is what the winners will say if it were possible to visit the
island.
Imagine for a second if the Grand Designer of this small universe were to
make a visit at the point where there are two 'winners'. It is likely
that the 'losers' would expect some kind of salvation, 'the losers will
inherit the earth', or whatever. But what is the only thing the Grand
Designer can say - 'So you think things are bad, well, you ain't seen
nothing yet'.
So here comes some more Knight's Move Thinking.
Globalisation = Concentration of wealth and resources = A NATURAL
PROCESS.
Not only that, the process runs 'downhill', or as the chemists and
physics might call it, an exothermic process. It runs by itself, it
contains sufficient energy for the process to work. So what is the fuel?
Never mind that, look at the ashes left behind, dispossession,
alienation, marginalisation, and Jobseekers.
Attacking the system, modifying, compromising, whatever, nothing will
stop it. The time for the definitive analysis is when it ends, which is
too far in the future. It wont end anyway, it will wither away, but only
if a system, and a small one, is created where the money system is under
democratic control. That is, when you sit at your PC or television, and
you get a message - Do you want to end the money system? Are you sure you
want to end the money system? If you do then click on YES.
A second later the second system comes into being, provided a majority of
people do likewise. I'd only go for Yes if the effect was to put more
cash into the account - how many people would take a chance on that right
now? The system requires no experts, no managers, no politicians, each
individual gets a graph showing concentration every day, when the day
comes it will be the day when there will be gnashing of teeth. . .
W.K.