Tuesday, December 17, 2013
THE BIGGEST THING OBAMA CAN DO FOR THE COUNTRY
50 Social institutional innovations that changed the world
THE BIGGEST THING OBAMA CAN DO FOR THE COUNTRY
The important innovations must be social rather than technological. Infrastructure includes development banks at the 12 Federal reserve districts, to complement Federal Regional Councils planning and building projects WPA PWA type The Reconstruction Finance Corporation (RFC) was an independent agency of the United States government, Act of January 22, 1932, c. 8, 47 Stat. 5, during the administration of President Herbert Hoover.
President Obama can do the same thing with an executive order and without any new authority, create the developments banks out of private (Federal reserve is private) organizations with bank holding companies with access to the Fed discount window at regional and Washington and NY reserve banks.
The RFC was modeled after the War Finance Corporation of World War I. The agency gave $2 gold ($35 = $1200 today's 400) billion in aid to state and local governments and made loans to banks, railroads, mortgage associations and other businesses. The loans were nearly all repaid. It was continued by the New Deal and played a major role in handling the Great Depression in the United States and setting up the relief programs that were taken over by the New Deal in 1933.[1]
A Federal Regional Council was established by President Nixon by Executive Order 11647, dated February 10, 1972 as amended.
Frederic V. Malek, Special Assistant to the President, agreed with the President that the Federal Bureaucracy was Democratic and leftist and not carrying out Nixon's policies.
Malek's idea was by transferring sign off authority to the FRC and it's Regional Administrators or Commissioners, with the Chairman, a direct appointment from the White House OMB power would then shift from the agencies and Washington to the regions and the President.
The regional offices were playing an important role in entitlements - a bigger share of the budget than civilian discretionary programs.
They approved 100's of millions in payment to the states for Welfare and social programs. This allowed Nixon to balance California's budget for Ronald Reagan and other republican governors using 4a of the social security act. Payments of highway funds, other formula grants could be controlled by OMB. Funds could be withheld for any reason or not. It was a form of impoundment or line item veto on budgets so desired by all presidents.
A special task force of corporation executives was requited and appointments made. The idea was to give the President the executive power the constitution envisages. but had been diminished especially for Republicans. But it got caught up in conspiratorial theories.
http://www.aspeninstitute.org/people/frederic-malek
background on this truely remarkable man.
Things like banking, insurance, income taxes, pensions, stock markets, stock companies, are critical to progress and hard to adopt in USS was and developing Haiti - more so than the horse collar - I see people plowing here in Bali with water buffalos pulling on the horns without a proper collar, talking on a cell phone.
https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=Peter+Pflaum&sm=12
Civilization: The West and the Rest; that the Western World's 500 years of predominance is over, thanks to growing debt problems in the U.S. and Europe, and dwindling populations.
Civilization: The West and the Rest; that the Western World's 500 years of predominance is over, thanks to growing debt problems in the U.S. and Europe, and dwindling populations.(see below)
God, give me grace to accept with serenity
the things that cannot be changed,
Courage to change the things
which should be changed,
and the Wisdom to distinguish
the one from the other.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Serenity_Prayer
Harlan Green © 2011
It's true that the rest of the world is catching up to the developed West, and want what we have. For instance, the U.S. with 5 percent of the world's population can no longer count on corralling 25 percent of its resources. Our military -- a major source of budget deficits -- is already stretched thin, for one thing, and can't afford to invade another Iraq for its oil resources.
It's also true that the U.S. has declined -- not as a military power, but in almost all the measures of social and economic well-being. This is reflected in studies just now coming out by sociologists and psychologists, as well as economists. Richard Wilkinson is one such researcher who has managed to bring together a huge amount of research -- especially on how income inequality affects citizens' well-being.
We have discussed how this has affected individual states in past blogs, but never misery at the national level. The list is long. The U.S. has highest prison incarceration rate of any county, and income inequality next to Bulgaria, yet the highest per capital income rate.
So Professor Ferguson really means the West will continue to decline if we continue on the path of Oligarchy, where a few at the top have most of the wealth, and the rest of us have to borrow to maintain our standard of living. Then wealth will continue to be transferred to the developing giants who are willing to lend us money -- China, India and Brazil with their young and growing populations.
But Dr. Ferguson's theme isn't new. Root causes of the rise and fall of western civilizations were earlier explored by UCLA Professor Jared Diamond in his books Guns, Germs, and Steel, and Collapse in far more convincing fashion. Our technological superiority was enabled by having major resources such as oil, benign climates that allowed cultivation of the major foodstuffs, and domesticated animals that gave us immunity to the major diseases that have wiped out native populations where such animals didn't exist.
The challenge in 2014 is institutional government making the changes necessary in the new world order. The important innovations must be social as well as than technological.
http://www.forbes.com/sites/gregsatell/2013/10/27/how-ibms-watson-will-change-the-way-we-work/
IT in health care is well represented in the Forbes article, as social systems are just as important as technical ones.
New Learning Organization
For decades, management theorists have been talking about how organizations need to continually learn by eschewing the traditional command and control approach in favor of empowering their employees.
http://www.digitaltonto.com/2013/how-the-machines-are-learning-to-take-over/
Today, as computers are beginning to perform legal discovery, making medical diagnoses and even evaluating creative work such as music and screenplays. In other words, they are learning many of the same things that people do, except they do not get tired or sick, never ask for a raise and when they get too old to function effectively, their hardware can be replaced.
This of course, presents a dilemma. How can organizations empower their people at the same time they outsourcing their jobs to algorithms and microchips?
The answer is this: Effective professionals, rather than focusing on building skills to recognize patterns and take action, will need to focus on designing the curricula, to direct which patterns computers should focus on learning and to what ends their actions should serve.
In personal enlightenment comes the Marcus Aurelius: Meditations, moment the existential realization of what I can change and what I can't and wisdom to know the difference. The challenge in 2014 is institutional government making the changes necessary in the new world order.
Civilization: The West and the Rest; that the Western World's 500 years of predominance is over, thanks to growing debt problems in the U.S. and Europe, and dwindling populations.(see below)
God, give me grace to accept with serenity
the things that cannot be changed,
Courage to change the things
which should be changed,
and the Wisdom to distinguish
the one from the other.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Serenity_Prayer
The important innovations must be social rather than technological. Infrastructure includes development banks at the 12 Federal reserve districts, to complement Federal Regional Councils planning and building projects WPA PWA type The Reconstruction Finance Corporation (RFC) was an independent agency of the United States government, Act of January 22, 1932, c. 8, 47 Stat. 5, during the administration of President Herbert Hoover. It was modeled after the War Finance Corporation of World War I. The agency gave $2 gold ($35 = $1200 today's 400) billion in aid to state and local governments and made loans to banks, railroads, mortgage associations and other businesses. The loans were nearly all repaid. It was continued by the New Deal and played a major role in handling the Great Depression in the United States and setting up the relief programs that were taken over by the New Deal in 1933.[1]
A Federal Regional Council was established by President Nixon by Executive Order 11647, dated February 10, 1972 as amended.
Frederic V. Malek, Special Assistant to the President, agreed with the President that the Federal Bureaucracy was Democratic and leftist and not carrying out Nixon's policies.
Malek's idea was by transferring sign off authority to the FRC and it's Regional Administrators or Commissioners, with the Chairman, a direct appointment to the White House OMB power would shift from the agencies and Washington to the regions and the President. A special task force of corporation executives was requited and appointments made. The idea was to give the President the executive power the constitution envisages. but had been diminished especially for Republicans. But it got caught up in conspiratorial theories.
http://www.aspeninstitute.org/people/frederic-malek
background on this truely remarkable man.
President Obama can do the same without any new authority, create the developments banks out of private (Federal reserve is private) organizations with bank holding companies with access to the Fed regional and Washington and NY reserve bank. THIS IS THE BIGGEST THINK HE CAN DO FOR THE COUNTRY
Things like banking, insurance, income taxes, pensions, stock markets, stock companies, are critical to progress and hard to adopt in USS was and developing Haiti - more so than the horse collar - I see people plowing here in Bali with water buffalos pulling on the horns without a proper collar, talking on a cell phone.
https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=Peter+Pflaum&sm=12
50 Social innovations that changed the world
more or less in chronological order rank order in [ ] top 10
1. Irrigation that
2. created a structured bureaucracy, land measurement and administration in Egypt and Mesopotamia
3. mathematics [3]
4. creation of nations as workable structures
5. empires based on bureaucracy and military discipline
6. writing, instructions could be sent over distance – Incas used knots [1]
7. written rules and laws - the lawyers and courts as independent
8. alphabet [11]
9. agriculture and and animal husbandry skills that could be recorder and spread
10. history as peoples myths and lessons
11. democracy in Athens -
12. rhetoric - philosophy – applied mathematics
13. 0 zero [12]
14. Universities, scientific societies, [13]
15. religious orders, The church built on Roman Model
16. The Holy Roman Empire not holy, not roman, not an empire
17. currency and letters of credit [2] money
18. double entry bookkeeping
19. money and banking by goldsmiths in Amsterdam, Florence
20. paper money in France Mr Law script was a disaster that caused a revolution
21. Treaty of Westphalia (1648) nation states
22. Joint Stock company (mutual fund) to spread risk of merchant adventurers
23. Insurance
24. the stock market
25. corporations [4] limited liability
26. copy rights, patents,
27. colonial administration - East Indies Company
28. federalism - US constitution
29. income taxes [5]
30. payroll deductions
31. social security pensions
32. civil service as in Germany [10]
33. public schools Land grant colleges
34. scientific agriculture [8] breeding hybrid
35. science in medicine [9] Public Health Vaccines
36. public health by Florence Nightingale and JS Mills [6]
37. international press - media (WWI) and propaganda
38. research organizations such as bell labs, Medlo Park
39. The League of Nations and UN
40. international organizations such as the postal union, maritime, trade, standards
41. United Nations (UN), Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE), Council of Europe (CoE), [7]
42. European Union (EU; which is a prime example of a supranational organization), and World Trade Organization (WTO).
43. NGO Red Cross, YMCA, boy scouts
44. social media facebook G+
45. Chess
46. sports clubs and leagues
47. open society rational secular practical Freemasons enlightenment
48. records census, birth and death - statistical vital information
49. economics Bureau of economic research
50. political science survey research
The Decline of the West (German: Der Untergang des Abendlandes), or The Downfall of the Occident, is a two-volume work by Oswald Spengler, the first volume of which was published in the summer of 1918. Spengler revised this volume in 1922 and published the second volume, subtitled Perspectives of World History, in 1923.
The book introduces itself as a "Copernican overturning" and rejects the Euro-centric view of history, especially the division of history into the linear "ancient-medieval-modern" rubric.[1] According to Spengler, the meaningful units for history are not epochs but whole cultures which evolve as organisms. He recognizes eight high cultures: Babylonian, Egyptian, Chinese, Indian, Mexican (Mayan/Aztec), Classical (Greek/Roman), Arabian, Western or "European-American." Cultures have a lifespan of about a thousand years. The final stage of each culture is, in his word use, a 'civilization'.
The book also presents the idea of Muslims, Jews and Christians, as well as their Persian and Semitic forebears, being Magian; Mediterranean cultures of the antiquity such as Ancient Greece and Rome being Apollonian; and the modern Westerners being Faustian.
According to the theory, the Western world is actually ending and we are witnessing the last season — "winter time" — of the Faustian civilization. In Spengler's depiction, Western Man is a proud but tragic figure because, while he strives and creates, he secretly knows the actual goal will never be reached.
It's hard to say whether Harvard Historian Niall Ferguson means what he says in his new book,
Civilization: The West and the Rest; that the Western World's 500 years of predominance is over, thanks to growing debt problems in the U.S. and Europe, and dwindling populations.
It's true that the rest of the world is catching up to the developed West, and want what we have. For instance, the U.S. with 5 percent of the world's population can no longer count on corralling 25 percent of its resources. Our military -- a major source of budget deficits -- is already stretched thin, for one thing, and can't afford to invade another Iraq for its oil resources.
It's also true that the U.S. has declined -- not as a military power, but in almost all the measures of social and economic well-being. This is reflected in studies just now coming out by sociologists and psychologists, as well as economists. Richard Wilkinson is one such researcher who has managed to bring together a huge amount of research -- especially on how income inequality affects citizens' well-being.
We have discussed how this has affected individual states in past blogs, but never misery at the national level. The list is long. The U.S. has highest prison incarceration rate of any county, and income inequality next to Bulgaria, yet the highest per capital income rate.
But does he really believe that the United States and Europe "will tip over from weakness to outright collapse"? It's true that U.S. public debt has doubled over the last 10 years, but that is due to a very ill-advised shift of wealth to the top-most income brackets by conservative administrations over the past 30 years. It was epitomized by GW Bush's attempt to fund 2 wars and a Medicare drug program without any public sacrifice -- i.e., by borrowing the monies while lowering taxes.
And we know from the #OccupyWallStreet protests and economic historians that the growth in income inequality has reached its limit. It turns out most Americans did have to sacrifice -- the 99 percent whose incomes stagnated because they didn't benefit from the tax cuts, loopholes and such that have also elevated corporate profits as a share of GDP to the highest in history.
So Professor Ferguson really means the West will continue to decline if we continue on the path of Oligarchy, where a few at the top have most of the wealth, and the rest of us have to borrow to maintain our standard of living. Then wealth will continue to be transferred to the developing giants who are willing to lend us money -- China, India and Brazil with their young and growing populations.
But Dr. Ferguson's theme isn't new. Root causes of the rise and fall of western civilizations were earlier explored by UCLA Professor Jared Diamond in his books Guns, Germs, and Steel, and Collapse in far more convincing fashion. Our technological superiority was enabled by having major resources such as oil, benign climates that allowed cultivation of the major foodstuffs, and domesticated animals that gave us immunity to the major diseases that have wiped out native populations where such animals didn't exist.
It follows then that the major reason for the huge debt loads isn't too much government. Governments can easily pay for public services that lift all boats if sufficient growth is kept up. But there has been a steady decline in economic growth rates in the U.S. since the 1970s, at the same time as wealth was being transferred upward and government services cut.
Such a wealth transfer also meant diminished income growth for the majority of Americans -- the wage and salary earners who make up 80 percent of consumers. And so overall aggregate demand, which is the willingness of consumers and businesses to spend, is diminished. We also know that higher corporate profits have in fact created greater market instability, and retarded economic growth rates. In his New York Times Op-ed, "It's Consumer Spending, Stupid", and various blogs, economic historian James Livingston says what has been known to most modern macro economists -- consumer and government spending have driven economic growth over the past century, not corporate profits.
The underlying cause of that economic disaster (the Great Depression of 1929-33, 1937-38) was a fundamental shift of income shares away from wages/consumption to corporate profits that produced a tidal wave of surplus capital that could not be profitably invested in goods production -- and, in fact, was not invested in good production... By the same token, recovery from this economic disaster registered, and caused, a momentous structural change by making demand for consumer durables the leading edge of growth.
We know Niall Ferguson has taken the opposite tack. His glorification of empires has made him blind to the results. The west's predominance was at the expense of exploiting underdeveloped countries, and when they began to want more of what we have, our privileged position began to decline. Isn't that what we want? To be an island of privilege among a sea of poverty does not make for a stable, or more peaceful world.
Harlan Green © 2011
THE BIGGEST THING OBAMA CAN DO FOR THE COUNTRY
The important innovations must be social rather than technological. Infrastructure includes development banks at the 12 Federal reserve districts, to complement Federal Regional Councils planning and building projects WPA PWA type The Reconstruction Finance Corporation (RFC) was an independent agency of the United States government, Act of January 22, 1932, c. 8, 47 Stat. 5, during the administration of President Herbert Hoover.
President Obama can do the same thing with an executive order and without any new authority, create the developments banks out of private (Federal reserve is private) organizations with bank holding companies with access to the Fed discount window at regional and Washington and NY reserve banks.
The RFC was modeled after the War Finance Corporation of World War I. The agency gave $2 gold ($35 = $1200 today's 400) billion in aid to state and local governments and made loans to banks, railroads, mortgage associations and other businesses. The loans were nearly all repaid. It was continued by the New Deal and played a major role in handling the Great Depression in the United States and setting up the relief programs that were taken over by the New Deal in 1933.[1]
A Federal Regional Council was established by President Nixon by Executive Order 11647, dated February 10, 1972 as amended.
Frederic V. Malek, Special Assistant to the President, agreed with the President that the Federal Bureaucracy was Democratic and leftist and not carrying out Nixon's policies.
Malek's idea was by transferring sign off authority to the FRC and it's Regional Administrators or Commissioners, with the Chairman, a direct appointment from the White House OMB power would then shift from the agencies and Washington to the regions and the President.
The regional offices were playing an important role in entitlements - a bigger share of the budget than civilian discretionary programs.
They approved 100's of millions in payment to the states for Welfare and social programs. This allowed Nixon to balance California's budget for Ronald Reagan and other republican governors using 4a of the social security act. Payments of highway funds, other formula grants could be controlled by OMB. Funds could be withheld for any reason or not. It was a form of impoundment or line item veto on budgets so desired by all presidents.
A special task force of corporation executives was requited and appointments made. The idea was to give the President the executive power the constitution envisages. but had been diminished especially for Republicans. But it got caught up in conspiratorial theories.
http://www.aspeninstitute.org/people/frederic-malek
background on this truely remarkable man.
Things like banking, insurance, income taxes, pensions, stock markets, stock companies, are critical to progress and hard to adopt in USS was and developing Haiti - more so than the horse collar - I see people plowing here in Bali with water buffalos pulling on the horns without a proper collar, talking on a cell phone.
https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=Peter+Pflaum&sm=12
Civilization: The West and the Rest; that the Western World's 500 years of predominance is over, thanks to growing debt problems in the U.S. and Europe, and dwindling populations.
Civilization: The West and the Rest; that the Western World's 500 years of predominance is over, thanks to growing debt problems in the U.S. and Europe, and dwindling populations.(see below)
God, give me grace to accept with serenity
the things that cannot be changed,
Courage to change the things
which should be changed,
and the Wisdom to distinguish
the one from the other.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Serenity_Prayer
Harlan Green © 2011
It's true that the rest of the world is catching up to the developed West, and want what we have. For instance, the U.S. with 5 percent of the world's population can no longer count on corralling 25 percent of its resources. Our military -- a major source of budget deficits -- is already stretched thin, for one thing, and can't afford to invade another Iraq for its oil resources.
It's also true that the U.S. has declined -- not as a military power, but in almost all the measures of social and economic well-being. This is reflected in studies just now coming out by sociologists and psychologists, as well as economists. Richard Wilkinson is one such researcher who has managed to bring together a huge amount of research -- especially on how income inequality affects citizens' well-being.
We have discussed how this has affected individual states in past blogs, but never misery at the national level. The list is long. The U.S. has highest prison incarceration rate of any county, and income inequality next to Bulgaria, yet the highest per capital income rate.
So Professor Ferguson really means the West will continue to decline if we continue on the path of Oligarchy, where a few at the top have most of the wealth, and the rest of us have to borrow to maintain our standard of living. Then wealth will continue to be transferred to the developing giants who are willing to lend us money -- China, India and Brazil with their young and growing populations.
But Dr. Ferguson's theme isn't new. Root causes of the rise and fall of western civilizations were earlier explored by UCLA Professor Jared Diamond in his books Guns, Germs, and Steel, and Collapse in far more convincing fashion. Our technological superiority was enabled by having major resources such as oil, benign climates that allowed cultivation of the major foodstuffs, and domesticated animals that gave us immunity to the major diseases that have wiped out native populations where such animals didn't exist.
The challenge in 2014 is institutional government making the changes necessary in the new world order. The important innovations must be social as well as than technological.
http://www.forbes.com/sites/gregsatell/2013/10/27/how-ibms-watson-will-change-the-way-we-work/
IT in health care is well represented in the Forbes article, as social systems are just as important as technical ones.
New Learning Organization
For decades, management theorists have been talking about how organizations need to continually learn by eschewing the traditional command and control approach in favor of empowering their employees.
http://www.digitaltonto.com/2013/how-the-machines-are-learning-to-take-over/
Today, as computers are beginning to perform legal discovery, making medical diagnoses and even evaluating creative work such as music and screenplays. In other words, they are learning many of the same things that people do, except they do not get tired or sick, never ask for a raise and when they get too old to function effectively, their hardware can be replaced.
This of course, presents a dilemma. How can organizations empower their people at the same time they outsourcing their jobs to algorithms and microchips?
The answer is this: Effective professionals, rather than focusing on building skills to recognize patterns and take action, will need to focus on designing the curricula, to direct which patterns computers should focus on learning and to what ends their actions should serve.
In personal enlightenment comes the Marcus Aurelius: Meditations, moment the existential realization of what I can change and what I can't and wisdom to know the difference. The challenge in 2014 is institutional government making the changes necessary in the new world order.
Civilization: The West and the Rest; that the Western World's 500 years of predominance is over, thanks to growing debt problems in the U.S. and Europe, and dwindling populations.(see below)
God, give me grace to accept with serenity
the things that cannot be changed,
Courage to change the things
which should be changed,
and the Wisdom to distinguish
the one from the other.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Serenity_Prayer
The important innovations must be social rather than technological. Infrastructure includes development banks at the 12 Federal reserve districts, to complement Federal Regional Councils planning and building projects WPA PWA type The Reconstruction Finance Corporation (RFC) was an independent agency of the United States government, Act of January 22, 1932, c. 8, 47 Stat. 5, during the administration of President Herbert Hoover. It was modeled after the War Finance Corporation of World War I. The agency gave $2 gold ($35 = $1200 today's 400) billion in aid to state and local governments and made loans to banks, railroads, mortgage associations and other businesses. The loans were nearly all repaid. It was continued by the New Deal and played a major role in handling the Great Depression in the United States and setting up the relief programs that were taken over by the New Deal in 1933.[1]
A Federal Regional Council was established by President Nixon by Executive Order 11647, dated February 10, 1972 as amended.
Frederic V. Malek, Special Assistant to the President, agreed with the President that the Federal Bureaucracy was Democratic and leftist and not carrying out Nixon's policies.
Malek's idea was by transferring sign off authority to the FRC and it's Regional Administrators or Commissioners, with the Chairman, a direct appointment to the White House OMB power would shift from the agencies and Washington to the regions and the President. A special task force of corporation executives was requited and appointments made. The idea was to give the President the executive power the constitution envisages. but had been diminished especially for Republicans. But it got caught up in conspiratorial theories.
http://www.aspeninstitute.org/people/frederic-malek
background on this truely remarkable man.
President Obama can do the same without any new authority, create the developments banks out of private (Federal reserve is private) organizations with bank holding companies with access to the Fed regional and Washington and NY reserve bank. THIS IS THE BIGGEST THINK HE CAN DO FOR THE COUNTRY
Things like banking, insurance, income taxes, pensions, stock markets, stock companies, are critical to progress and hard to adopt in USS was and developing Haiti - more so than the horse collar - I see people plowing here in Bali with water buffalos pulling on the horns without a proper collar, talking on a cell phone.
https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=Peter+Pflaum&sm=12
50 Social innovations that changed the world
more or less in chronological order rank order in [ ] top 10
1. Irrigation that
2. created a structured bureaucracy, land measurement and administration in Egypt and Mesopotamia
3. mathematics [3]
4. creation of nations as workable structures
5. empires based on bureaucracy and military discipline
6. writing, instructions could be sent over distance – Incas used knots [1]
7. written rules and laws - the lawyers and courts as independent
8. alphabet [11]
9. agriculture and and animal husbandry skills that could be recorder and spread
10. history as peoples myths and lessons
11. democracy in Athens -
12. rhetoric - philosophy – applied mathematics
13. 0 zero [12]
14. Universities, scientific societies, [13]
15. religious orders, The church built on Roman Model
16. The Holy Roman Empire not holy, not roman, not an empire
17. currency and letters of credit [2] money
18. double entry bookkeeping
19. money and banking by goldsmiths in Amsterdam, Florence
20. paper money in France Mr Law script was a disaster that caused a revolution
21. Treaty of Westphalia (1648) nation states
22. Joint Stock company (mutual fund) to spread risk of merchant adventurers
23. Insurance
24. the stock market
25. corporations [4] limited liability
26. copy rights, patents,
27. colonial administration - East Indies Company
28. federalism - US constitution
29. income taxes [5]
30. payroll deductions
31. social security pensions
32. civil service as in Germany [10]
33. public schools Land grant colleges
34. scientific agriculture [8] breeding hybrid
35. science in medicine [9] Public Health Vaccines
36. public health by Florence Nightingale and JS Mills [6]
37. international press - media (WWI) and propaganda
38. research organizations such as bell labs, Medlo Park
39. The League of Nations and UN
40. international organizations such as the postal union, maritime, trade, standards
41. United Nations (UN), Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE), Council of Europe (CoE), [7]
42. European Union (EU; which is a prime example of a supranational organization), and World Trade Organization (WTO).
43. NGO Red Cross, YMCA, boy scouts
44. social media facebook G+
45. Chess
46. sports clubs and leagues
47. open society rational secular practical Freemasons enlightenment
48. records census, birth and death - statistical vital information
49. economics Bureau of economic research
50. political science survey research
The Decline of the West (German: Der Untergang des Abendlandes), or The Downfall of the Occident, is a two-volume work by Oswald Spengler, the first volume of which was published in the summer of 1918. Spengler revised this volume in 1922 and published the second volume, subtitled Perspectives of World History, in 1923.
The book introduces itself as a "Copernican overturning" and rejects the Euro-centric view of history, especially the division of history into the linear "ancient-medieval-modern" rubric.[1] According to Spengler, the meaningful units for history are not epochs but whole cultures which evolve as organisms. He recognizes eight high cultures: Babylonian, Egyptian, Chinese, Indian, Mexican (Mayan/Aztec), Classical (Greek/Roman), Arabian, Western or "European-American." Cultures have a lifespan of about a thousand years. The final stage of each culture is, in his word use, a 'civilization'.
The book also presents the idea of Muslims, Jews and Christians, as well as their Persian and Semitic forebears, being Magian; Mediterranean cultures of the antiquity such as Ancient Greece and Rome being Apollonian; and the modern Westerners being Faustian.
According to the theory, the Western world is actually ending and we are witnessing the last season — "winter time" — of the Faustian civilization. In Spengler's depiction, Western Man is a proud but tragic figure because, while he strives and creates, he secretly knows the actual goal will never be reached.
It's hard to say whether Harvard Historian Niall Ferguson means what he says in his new book,
Civilization: The West and the Rest; that the Western World's 500 years of predominance is over, thanks to growing debt problems in the U.S. and Europe, and dwindling populations.
It's true that the rest of the world is catching up to the developed West, and want what we have. For instance, the U.S. with 5 percent of the world's population can no longer count on corralling 25 percent of its resources. Our military -- a major source of budget deficits -- is already stretched thin, for one thing, and can't afford to invade another Iraq for its oil resources.
It's also true that the U.S. has declined -- not as a military power, but in almost all the measures of social and economic well-being. This is reflected in studies just now coming out by sociologists and psychologists, as well as economists. Richard Wilkinson is one such researcher who has managed to bring together a huge amount of research -- especially on how income inequality affects citizens' well-being.
We have discussed how this has affected individual states in past blogs, but never misery at the national level. The list is long. The U.S. has highest prison incarceration rate of any county, and income inequality next to Bulgaria, yet the highest per capital income rate.
But does he really believe that the United States and Europe "will tip over from weakness to outright collapse"? It's true that U.S. public debt has doubled over the last 10 years, but that is due to a very ill-advised shift of wealth to the top-most income brackets by conservative administrations over the past 30 years. It was epitomized by GW Bush's attempt to fund 2 wars and a Medicare drug program without any public sacrifice -- i.e., by borrowing the monies while lowering taxes.
And we know from the #OccupyWallStreet protests and economic historians that the growth in income inequality has reached its limit. It turns out most Americans did have to sacrifice -- the 99 percent whose incomes stagnated because they didn't benefit from the tax cuts, loopholes and such that have also elevated corporate profits as a share of GDP to the highest in history.
So Professor Ferguson really means the West will continue to decline if we continue on the path of Oligarchy, where a few at the top have most of the wealth, and the rest of us have to borrow to maintain our standard of living. Then wealth will continue to be transferred to the developing giants who are willing to lend us money -- China, India and Brazil with their young and growing populations.
But Dr. Ferguson's theme isn't new. Root causes of the rise and fall of western civilizations were earlier explored by UCLA Professor Jared Diamond in his books Guns, Germs, and Steel, and Collapse in far more convincing fashion. Our technological superiority was enabled by having major resources such as oil, benign climates that allowed cultivation of the major foodstuffs, and domesticated animals that gave us immunity to the major diseases that have wiped out native populations where such animals didn't exist.
It follows then that the major reason for the huge debt loads isn't too much government. Governments can easily pay for public services that lift all boats if sufficient growth is kept up. But there has been a steady decline in economic growth rates in the U.S. since the 1970s, at the same time as wealth was being transferred upward and government services cut.
Such a wealth transfer also meant diminished income growth for the majority of Americans -- the wage and salary earners who make up 80 percent of consumers. And so overall aggregate demand, which is the willingness of consumers and businesses to spend, is diminished. We also know that higher corporate profits have in fact created greater market instability, and retarded economic growth rates. In his New York Times Op-ed, "It's Consumer Spending, Stupid", and various blogs, economic historian James Livingston says what has been known to most modern macro economists -- consumer and government spending have driven economic growth over the past century, not corporate profits.
The underlying cause of that economic disaster (the Great Depression of 1929-33, 1937-38) was a fundamental shift of income shares away from wages/consumption to corporate profits that produced a tidal wave of surplus capital that could not be profitably invested in goods production -- and, in fact, was not invested in good production... By the same token, recovery from this economic disaster registered, and caused, a momentous structural change by making demand for consumer durables the leading edge of growth.
We know Niall Ferguson has taken the opposite tack. His glorification of empires has made him blind to the results. The west's predominance was at the expense of exploiting underdeveloped countries, and when they began to want more of what we have, our privileged position began to decline. Isn't that what we want? To be an island of privilege among a sea of poverty does not make for a stable, or more peaceful world.
Harlan Green © 2011
