Dedicated to the pitres Daniel Kahneman, Tirole, Blanchard-Summers et ali.*
Aristophanes’ « Women on top » (Scit 2012) (Ecclesiazumae ) in https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pLVX0WX8QDI
Aristophanes’ « Peace » (2009 Production) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rJs5iOjrNXQ
Check also:
b ) « Another America is possible » in http://rivincitasociale.altervista.org/another-america-possible-feb-1-2017/ , as well as the whole Category with the same description in the same site.
Comment:
Time to revisit Aristophanes’ burlesque and invigorating look at society. In a second reading I realized that he was no Burkean and no Nietzschean. Although, like Marc Aurelius, his well-intentioned naturalistic criticism missed the ineluctability of the transition to a new civilisation. Aristophanes missed the point about urbanisation as much as Marc Aurelius missed the call for a new Humanism – end of Human sacrifices, slavery and cruelty – contained in the early Pythagorean-Christian message.(1) However, civilisational progress without respect for equality and for both the Dialectics of Nature and of History (2) misses the point too. See « Joachim of Fiore and the second Pythagorean-Christian formulation » in http://rivincitasociale.altervista.org/joachim-of-fiore-and-the-second-pythagorean-christian-formulation-3-july-2019-translated-july-9-2019/
With my solidarity,
Paul De Marco
NOTES:
1 ) « PISTHETAERUS: Quite so. One might say perch.
But since the universe is polarized
From there, its name at present is the pole.
However, once it is settled and policed
The pole will then become a metropole!
Mankind you’ll master like a midget-swarm …
Blockade the gods like hungry Melians. »
Aritsophanes’ Birds, in The complete plays of Aristophanes, Bantam ed. May 1971, 14th printing, p 236
2 ) For the Dialectics of Nature and of History merging into Man as a non-Hegelian Contradictory entity, see my Methodological introduction, in the Livres-Books Section of my venerable old Jurassic site www.la-commune-paraclet.com . See also the article « Mariage, Unions civiles et institutionalisation des moeurs» in the Pink section of the same site.
* ) If you read French you can check this link: http://rivincitasociale.altervista.org/notes-de-lecture-dun-rapport-sur-la-productivite-et-la-competitivite-entendues-de-maniere-marginaliste-28-29-juillet-2019/ .
The essential distinction between microeconomic productivity and macroeconomic competitiveness is detailed in my Book III – 2005 – and in my Synopsis of Marxist Political Economy – 2013 – in the Livres-Books section of www.la-commune-paraclet.com . My Book III was the first to point to the coming speculative-economic crisis of 2007-2008. To verify this affirmation you only need to use the term « montage » in the Search function.
The pseudo-Nobel J. Tirole sells a microeconomics without macroeconomics which is a logical fraud that is just good for big transnationals firms and their anti-State fiscal harmonisation accounting practices through fiscal paradises, Bahamas included – for some 3 trillion ? (It is a ex ante/ex post logical fraud. For a résumé see http://rivincitasociale.altervista.org/the-pseudo-economic-science-of-the-bourgeoisie-here-is-why-we-should-quickly-change-economic-paradigm/.) Basically Tirole proposed 3 ideas which turned out to be three major socio-economic catastrophes – the 1993 call for financial deregulation ended up with the subprime crisis of 2007-2008; the « contrat unique » led to the Italian Jobs Act and the French Loi Travail which essentially destroyed Labor laws hence the distinction between full-time jobs and precarious gig or shitty jobs; and, finally, imperfect competition seen solely from the angle of the GAFAM, namely no more Baby Bells just a few rules about customers’ satisfaction – obtained through more or less legal cookies which gather information that is then treated and sold without your permission. If you refuse the collection you simply have no access to the service … (Aristophanes’ quoting Brassens would sing « Chez l’épicier pas d’argent, pas d’épices. Chez la Belle Suzon, pas d’argent, pas de cuisses ». ) Apparently, Tirole is now working on Kahneman’s primitive animalistic behaviorism …
As for Blanchard-Summers – 2019 – they are proposing a new take on the Zero lower bound crap. This brilliant idea sustains that if you can manage real interest rate lower than real GDP growth rate, then – in the absent of disturbing shocks – you could wipe out the public debt without budgetary consequences. They use a long statistical series to prove the point but they forget the fundamental difference between public credit – such as prevailing after the Second World War up to the 70s and 80s – and private credit managed by a privatised central bank that is subordinated to a dozen so-called private primary banks. In the first case, one only needs to cover the needs for administrative costs and tax-deducted bank provisioning, hence interest rates are structurally low. In the second case, the systemic engine is profit maximization.
They also forget the 2013 change in the national accounting system: by a stroke of the pen this added some 3 % to 3.5 % to GDP thanks to a revaluation of drugs, prostitution, evasion, same armament spending and some intellectual property rights. Of course, this hardly adds any momentum to the real economy where real jobs are usually created. Hence, the fiscal base – already destroyed by gigantic tax expenditures – is shrunk as much as paycheck levies to finance Social Security. Add to this a Marginalist statistical devilish trick, namely less-costly public services are not included in the GDP because they are considered as lacking a « market price » . However, if they are privatized – thus costing more, for example US private health-care costs almost double compared to universally accessible public health-care in the EU – they simply disappear from the definition of the public debt. This is also true for the public debt defined by the Maastricht Treaty.
Please note why I have introduced the concept of « global net revenue » of the households against the falsified Marginalist concept of « disposable income ». The « global net revenue » of the household take into account the fact that the Worker or Employee is a member of a species that is based on sexual reproduction. Hence, to the individual salary necessary to renew his/her labor force needs to be added the differed salary needed to pay for social security programs – pensions, UI etc. Furthermore, income taxes and other taxes should be added, at least that part which comes back to households as universal access to social services and public infrastructures. Disposable income abstracts from these two essential components. Just imagine having access to a universally accessible public health-care program costing only 9% or 10 % of GDP as opposed to the wasteful US private system – around 18 % of GDP with some 40 million people left out? – as well as universal access to common and public goods – Education, water, non-Enron public utilities, public transportation, public housing etc – and non-paying highways, national parks and so on and so forth. The disposable income would go much further … The anti-dumping definition enshrined at the WTO excludes any reference to labor rights and to environmental criteria thus silently and blindly enforcing a race to the bottom, namely an individual salary without its two other fundamental components. This is Reaganian neoliberal monetarist public policy in a nutshell.
We only need to point out that productivity and competitiveness acquired through 60 or 80 billion dollars a month in buybacks might qualify for productivity in Marginalist terms but certainly not in scientific terms.
This new proposal is in line with the great priests’ narratives. For instance, Bernanke worked on a PhD thesis dedicated to inflation, in the singular. Hence, as President of the FED, he proposed QE and other liquidities with the hope of furthering hyperinflation. In his mind and that of his surnumerary over-represented and overpaid colleagues, this should have shifted the weight of debt financing to the US creditors, in particular China and Japan. Instead the pitre Bernanke ended up with a tremendous « credit crunch ». And now Powell is left to gather the pieces and is impeded to complete his reset.
These people are obviously on the loose with their crackpot philo-Semite Nietzschean narratives.