Historic urbanisation -- was this brutal to the people?

[Denny Crane!]

Nope, in fact nowadays they are taken to abject poverty en masse to feed the well developed middle class with Nike shoes and electronic component raw materials .

Try another one. Labour has become a precious commodity in China and factories have to actively compete for labour by offering higher money and more benefits.

Of course I guess it was better when they all lived on the farms in abject poverty? God damn capatilism destroying culture, you know the culture of starvation

[Marie Louise von Preussen]

Try another one. Labour has become a precious commodity in China and factories have to actively compete for labour by offering higher money and more benefits.

Of course I guess it was better when they all lived on the farms in abject poverty? God damn capatilism destroying culture, you know the culture of starvation

Are you telling me there is no abusive, less than a $1 a day labour in the world anymore? LOL. In fact you don't even have to travel to China or the Phillipines to see it, just go to your nearby illegal immigrant ghetto. It's big business because big capital likes to have a flux of underpriced labour flowing all the time.

That's not point of this thread so I'll refrain from discussing this. Fact is that exploitation permeates society, has existed and will always exist. The only reason why a comfortable middle class can parade on their wealth & then claim for "social justice" is because cheap labour is actively exploited, from the very raw materials of your PC to your clothes, and even your food, considering the situation of farm workers in Third World agricultural exporters. See for yourself. And then people hypocritically claim that they live in some sort of improved utopia without injustice or oppression. That is, no injustice and no oppression as far as they can see.

...Your picture of the Ancien Regime is also highly based on propagandistic and highly dubious accounts, such as that of the "average peasant under Louis XIV". It's another myth that they teach in school, and one that admittedly clouds the judgment of the historical layman deeply.

[Denny Crane!]

Are you telling me there is no abusive, less than a $1 a day labour in the world anymore? LOL. In fact you don't even have to travel to China or the Phillipines to see it, just go to your nearby illegal immigrant ghetto.

Was recently in Thailand, in one of the most prosperous places $1 an hour is considered a bloody good wage.

The amount you get per hour or per day is relative to the prices in the area. Money up north in england can be less than half of that down south in England and you can be better off. My brother is earning half what he earned down south but is paying less than half the mortgage and much less for everday items.

So in the poor places in China $1 a day might be a much better wage than the stinking poverty and depredation that is available in their local village and the farms. Now if it wasn't attractive then why do they do it?

It's big business because big capital likes to have a flux of underpriced labour flowing all the time.

If it is underpriced then people won't do it.

The people on minimum wage now are no better off than when we used to employ them before the minimum wage amendments. Labour is a commodity like anything else, left unregulated then wages and prices relative to those wages reach balance pretty quickly.

That's not point of this thread so I'll refrain from discussing this. Fact is that exploitation permeates society, has existed and will always exist. The only reason why a comfortable middle class can parade on their wealth & then claim for "social justice" is because cheap labour is actively exploited, from the very raw materials of your PC to your clothes, and even your food, considering the situation of farm workers in Third World agricultural exporters.

Yes and it is government that keeps third world agriculture poor, I fail to see your point other than an uneducated jab at big business. Big business is to blame in one sense, farmers unions pushing for susbsidies.

See for yourself. And then people hypocritically claim that they live in some sort of improved utopia without injustice or oppression. That is, no injustice and no oppression as far as they can see.

I did, have you? As part of an investigation into importing I actively sought out and visited factories.

Seriously I hope you have before you start throwing crap like this out other wise you are going to look really silly.

...Your picture of the Ancien Regime is also highly based on propagandistic and highly dubious accounts, such as that of the "average peasant under Louis XIV". It's another myth that they teach in school, and one that admittedly clouds the judgment of the historical layman deeply.

Nice strawman, this is one of the charateristic tactics of the philosophical layman.

[Marie Louise von Preussen]

Was recently in Thailand, in one of the most prosperous places $1 an hour is considered a bloody good wage.

The amount you get per hour or per day is relative to the prices in the area. Money up north in england can be less than half of that down south in England and you can be better off. My brother is earning half what he earned down south but is paying less than half the mortgage and much less for everday items.

So in the poor places in China $1 a day might be a much better wage than the stinking poverty and depredation that is available in their local village and the farms. Now if it wasn't attractive then why do they do it?

Heh, many reasons! Including them being shoved off their farms. Have you ever heard of the phenomenon of mechanization and the subsequent agricultural exodus that it caused? For that's the point: rural life for the peasantry is not economically efficient, neither it is meant to be. When it is made so, a process which the Third World has been going through only fairly recently, then the masses are forced to seek employment in the cities. Happened in XIX century England, is happening now, not because they "like it" or because they hold more than a delusion of the true nature of working in industry.

If it is underpriced then people won't do it.

You have never came to a place where the situation, as such, was either minimum employment or starvation eh? Because that's what's happening now where I live, in Latin America: people are working without any sort of legal guarantee just so they can earn half-wages and survive. Survival beats the hell out of any economic theory that does not postulate it, especially amongst a highly populated mean where cheap and unqualified labour is prevalent.

The people on minimum wage now are no better off than when we used to employ them before the minimum wage amendments. Labour is a commodity like anything else, left unregulated then wages and prices relative to those wages reach balance pretty quickly.

LOL you have never been to Victorian England right? I too used to believe Laissez-Faire capitalism was the epitome of greatness, that was before I realized its destructive implications were gigantic. De facto, it means Big Capital can do and manipulate as it pleases, including the Labour Market, while the people below them have to endure it.

Yes and it is government that keeps third world agriculture poor, I fail to see your point other than an uneducated jab at big business. Big business is to blame in one sense, farmers unions pushing for susbsidies.

LOL

Third World agriculture can be fairly efficient, in fact more efficient than agriculture in developed countries, as the recent developments in the markets show us. The point I'm making, is that the average labourer or farmer who toils in them lives the most miserable sort of existence, more even so than when he was a little subsistence farmer with his plot of inefficiently harvested land. That is, if he has an employment at all, and that's why there's an exodus to the cities. Between starving to death and living with less than a $1 a day, only a fool would choose to starve. Or a man who wants suicide, alas.

I did, have you? As part of an investigation into importing I actively sought out and visited factories.

Seriously I hope you have before you start throwing crap like this out other wise you are going to look really silly.

I think you should stop surrounding yourself with idealism and wake up for the facts. Pretty much any statistic or research or whatever, if that's what you like, will go at odds with your affirmation that Third World labour is all fine and dandy.

Nice strawman, this is one of the charateristic tactics of the philosophical layman.

Not one. You very clearly called the culture of the Rococo one of "starvation", a silly, biased thing based on centuries old diatribes and propaganda pamphlets. I suggest you dig up Ladurie's "The Ancien Regime", which although is not flattering of it, it seeks a nice and tidy balance by stating that life back then was not exceptionally easy, but neither the sort of picture which schoolbooks paint to us. If that was true, then all the people who claimed for revolution decades later would be all dead of starvation, eh? LOL

You may better take this discussion elsewhere, if you wish. Though there's not much to add: if you try to add an utilitarian and mechanistic frame to the Ancien Regime, you will fail. There's more utilitarianism in a single block of brutalist concrete than there is in the whole of Rococo-Baroque-Neo-Classical architecture; the people who idealized this sort of structure were not interested in making money, as the picture of Tocqueville of the old aristocracy as "disinterested" in "labour for the sake of money" showed a century later. Thus we came to your only sensible statement, that Capitalism destroys the culture. Capitalism ravaged the old cultural tradition of Europe and America, replacing it by culture centered on the cult of profit and utility, which is inevitably low level mass entertainment. Brutalism & such depredations are perhaps one of its clearest results.

[Denny Crane!]

Heh, many reasons! Including them being shoved off their farms. Have you ever heard of the phenomenon of mechanization and the subsequent agricultural exodus that it caused? For that's the point: rural life for the peasantry is not economically efficient, neither it is meant to be. When it is made so, a process which the Third World has been going through only fairly recently, then the masses are forced to seek employment in the cities. Happened in XIX century England, is happening now, not because they "like it" or because they hold more than a delusion of the true nature of working in industry.

Forced to seek employment in the city? No they weren't in 19th century england. Poverty had been a fixed property of peasant life in most communities. Subsistence farming or farming under brutal landlords is a nasty way to live, the alternatives in the cities were of course preferable though a combination of corporatism, explosive growth and odd tax ideas led to slums that weren't well catered for but still relative to the time not that bad compared to back breaking rural life.

It wasn't a hugely better life but it offered more opportunity a lot of the time. Rural life up to mechanisation was horrendous.

The conditions in urban society were poor...but not always just because of the poor wages.

A quote from Spencers ''man vs the state''

See then what legislation has done. By ill-imposed taxes, raising the prices of bricks and timber, it added to the costs of houses; and prompted, for economy's sake, the use of bad materials in scanty quantities. To check the consequent production of wretched dwellings, it established regulations which, in medieval fashion, dictated the quality of the commodity produced: there being no perception that by insisting on a higher quality and therefore higher price, it would limit the demand and eventually diminish the supply. By additional local burdens, legislation has of late still further hindered the building of small houses. Finally, having, by successive measures, produced first bad houses and then a deficiency of better ones, it has at length provided for the artificially-increased overflow of poor people by diminishing the house-capacity which already could not contain them!

Where then lies the blame for the miseries of the East-end? Against whom should be raised "the bitter cry of outcast London?"

That and the enclosure acts between 1750 and 1830 had a large effect also helped the massive urbanisation.

How do you explain the massive rises in living standards in the 1800's btw? Most people and by that I mean everyone I've ever talked to saw mechanisation as something that fundamentally improved everyones lives. When you make an economy more efficient everyone benefits due to the reduced costs of basic commodities and the automatic raising of living standards almost universally assuming the government doesn't mess it up as they routinely manage to do in communist autocracies.

You have never came to a place where the situation, as such, was either minimum employment or starvation eh? Because that's what's happening now where I live, in Latin America: people are working without any sort of legal guarantee just so they can earn half-wages and survive. Survival beats the hell out of any economic theory that does not postulate it, especially amongst a highly populated mean where cheap and unqualified labour is prevalent.

What caused the poverty? I saw the poverty in china before big companies moved in and started ''exploiting'' it, I see now that labour is a premium commodity that is beginning to exploit business.

So your in latin America where corrupt governments, and even more corrupting external influences result in a craphole.

Your anger shouldn't be at businesses.

LOL you have never been to Victorian England right? I too used to believe Laissez-Faire capitalism was the epitome of greatness, that was before I realized its destructive implications were gigantic. De facto, it means Big Capital can do and manipulate as it pleases, including the Labour Market, while the people below them have to endure it.

Yes because the tremendous rises in living standards is so baaad! Products were becoming progressively cheaper as technology made incomes higher and higher. The poor and the rich were tremendously more well off at the end of the 19th century than at the beginning of the 18th century. The industrial revolution led to more wealth, more education, more rights and a better life for everyone in England. If it was so destructive then how come everyone was better off?

LOL

Third World agriculture can be fairly efficient, in fact more efficient than agriculture in developed countries, as the recent developments in the markets show us. The point I'm making, is that the average labourer or farmer who toils in them lives the most miserable sort of existence, more even so than when he was a little subsistence farmer with his plot of inefficiently harvested land. That is, if he has an employment at all, and that's why there's an exodus to the cities. Between starving to death and living with less than a $1 a day, only a fool would choose to starve. Or a man who wants suicide, alas.

Sorry but before you start commenting on the growth of economies and the effects of mechanisation and urbanisation on society it would help to study some economics and perhaps the evidence of what has happened when it occurs.

Societies become ten times better off, it always happens when commodities are reduced greatly in price as is the case whenever more efficiency is introduced into an economy. The pie gets bigger. International trade is not Zero Sum.

Africa and the Third World has many problems. Primarily one thing is that the markets have been closed to them for much of their existance as a country. Farmers can't find markets for their food, because of aid frequently they find the markets bottom out because of ''aid'' or food dumping from the CAP. The CAP is arguably one of the greatest evils to exist ever. Similarly there are blocks put on the exports of things like Cotton or they are required to ship it out at a fixed price leading to the case of one ghanan manufacturer who had to import ghanan cotton from the USA to make his clothes because of a trade barrier not to mention that just 40 years ago we were still using Africa to fight proxy wars in our battle against the commies something which not many people like to face when we look at the problems africa faces. I guess it is easier just to blame....well take your choice some people blame culture, others race and I guess you are sticking with mechanisation. God forbid we fix the real problems and stop killing people.

And you know what it gets even worse and it is people like yourself who seemingly know bog all about the subject that really tick me off because it helps promogulate bad politics instead of people putting pressure on good things to happen for these countries. Let me try and spell it out for you really simply, about third world subsistence farming and what happens when mechanisation is resisted and they remain poor.

How about the current land grab that is happening. As foreign corporations and international bodies like the IMF move in and snap up between 39 and 49 million acres a year, land that should be owned and developed by african business interests but is available because the land is all smallholdings who are eager to sell for the temporary prosperity the money brings as an escape from subsistence farming. Ultimately the land grab will benefit the african societies but not half so much as if they had developed the business interests of their own.

I'm assuming you might listen to words of the royal society if you will not listen to me (the layman)

Subsistence farmers are having to purchase food, but don't have resources to do this. Nor do they have the resources to purchase fertilisers or seeds, all of which is leading to a decrease in production and food crisis.

Why is this? Because subsistence farming produces low yields, is inefficient and results in famine because surplus isn't present nor is profit in order to reinvest in high yield technology.

African countries are beginning to respond to the free trade agenda by lowering tariffs and protection of farmers. However, there is a controversy as subsidies continue in the US and EU, and also in Asia - South Korea, Japan and China. The UK should be encouraged to lead by example to level the playing field for African agricultural programmes.

Should but we don't, Why? Because people like yourself and NGO's insist that industrialisation is harmful instead of raising the standards of people. Ignorant views keep people starving and it is extremely disturbing.

According to the Royal society in the UK there are many examples of NGO's promoting traditional farming practices for cultural reasons against scientific solutions like mechanisation, fertilisers and pesticides and are part of the reason why these economies don't develop and suffer famine.

Though Africa receives a disproportionate amount of food aid, if this food was purchased locally it would lead to millions of dollars being put into the hands of the African farmers. This would promote domestic production and improve livelihoods.

As mentioned.

2005. Agriculture is very affective in raising the GDP.
* Farmers access to development and technology must be improved, and governments should play their role to put in the necessary infrastructure - roads between markets for example. All this will require huge expenditure.
* There is a strong need to develop capacity in the continent - both human and institutional. Need to develop the Africans own capacity to build capacity. * Africa today has the fastest rising stock market in the world. China, Japan and India are all coming to Africa and there is a strong possibility for collaboration between Britain, Africa and Asia.

Thailand is another good example and I'll quickly type up a quote from a report I have on farming in that country:

''Generally thai small farmers like other southeast asian developing countries depend on monocommodity farming, mainly on crop. They are poor lack propert training skill and know how knowledge in toiling the lands. Apparently there are still certain constraints barring the adoption of new technology resulting in low productivity.

At present agriculture in thailand covers such a large number of small farms with limited resources. Land labour and capital. The ability to allocate and utilise there limited resources of maximising the economic refers is called management.

Under existing farming systems in thailand farmers who are mostly small holders with living standard at subsistence level integrate livestock to crop production. There are many farms of crop livestock integrating which vary according to different socio econominc needs. There systems exist even long before any attention assistence or involvment was given by the public.

The agricultural extension strategy with the prime objective of in erasing farmers production through improved technical practices. Secondarily it aims also to improve rural family life by teaching home economics to women and to creat farmer youth clubs. Emphasis is on production technologies and only second priority is given to economic matters such as farm planning and management, credit and input supply and product marketing. Reccommended practice are given from experts.........blah blah blah....

The basic point of this is that it is a good guide for effective NGO practice in raising income and living standards through a move away from subsistence farming and into technological farming and away from poverty something you seem to consistently fail to understand.

.....The mains objectives of the department of agricultural extension in the 7th national economic and social development plan 1992-1996 and the 8th NESDP 1997-2001 are to:

1. Maintain and stabilise the agricultural secotro growth rate and commodity prices by promoting integrated farming systems for satisfactory income and good qualitfy of life of farmers also included are the promotion of natural resources conservations and environment rehabilitation.

2. Generate even income distribution and raise farmers incomes by developing a pattern of farm home improvement in the home through farm house models and improve food processing technology and handicraft for agriculture business by farm wome.

3. Improve administrative system in DOAE by ....blah blah

It goes on to note the uptake of research and technology to improve life''

Apologies it is translated from Thai and my touch typing is not what it was for grammar and error.

It should also be noted that Africa has the highest level of urbanisation at 30% and that is because subsistence farming produces low yields and drives them there.

I think you should stop surrounding yourself with idealism and wake up for the facts. Pretty much any statistic or research or whatever, if that's what you like, will go at odds with your affirmation that Third World labour is all fine and dandy.

I don't think it is all fine and dandy. I think the places that have seen foreign investment are absolutely reaping the benefits and the places that didn't are not.

(that is a strawman fyi that you just presented)

The problems are all to obvious, and the fact that you are blaming business just places you as part of the problem not the solution. I've no doubt you'd like to see more government control and initiatives yet it is clear it is the places that encourage business that see rising living standards and increases in GDP leading to more money for the people and for education and aid.

Not one. You very clearly called the culture of the Rococo one of "starvation", a silly, biased thing based on centuries old diatribes and propaganda pamphlets. I suggest you dig up Ladurie's "The Ancien Regime", which although is not flattering of it, it seeks a nice and tidy balance by stating that life back then was not exceptionally easy, but neither the sort of picture which schoolbooks paint to us. If that was true, then all the people who claimed for revolution decades later would be all dead of starvation, eh? LOL

You may better take this discussion elsewhere, if you wish. Though there's not much to add: if you try to add an utilitarian and mechanistic frame to the Ancien Regime, you will fail. There's more utilitarianism in a single block of brutalist concrete than there is in the whole of Rococo-Baroque-Neo-Classical architecture; the people who idealized this sort of structure were not interested in making money, as the picture of Tocqueville of the old aristocracy as "disinterested" in "labour for the sake of money" showed a century later. Thus we came to your only sensible statement, that Capitalism destroys the culture. Capitalism ravaged the old cultural tradition of Europe and America, replacing it by culture centered on the cult of profit and utility, which is inevitably low level mass entertainment. Brutalism & such depredations are perhaps one of its clearest results.

You are really punching above your weight here as someone who has both had interests in manufacturing in the third world and subsistence farming in the third world to try and tell me I'm idealising it or reffering to it through the blinkers of ideology. I seem to know a lot more about it than you and had more experience of it.

The people who live subsistence cultures are distinctly unhappy with it, starving to death or living lives eking out what little food they can produce and what anything else they can survive on. The largest area of Thailand that consists of subsistence farming and little other industry, issan country bordering laos also produces vast quantities of sex workers because it is people seeking an escape from a life of poverty and hardship.

Sorry but it is not me who is blinded by ideology but you by text books. I have been out in these places, researched vastly the current situations of these people and been deeply involved with people trying to make a change in the situations rather than getting everything out of history books.

It is almost highly offensive because the things you are against are exactly the things the Africans and others need to end their poverty and starvation. It is foreign investment, a lack of interference from both their own government but especially ours and above all modern business practices and consolidation.

You might tell me it seeks a nice and tidy balance by stating that life back then was not exceptionally easy, but neither the sort of picture which schoolbooks paint to us.

Get out of the history texts and go tell an African or thai or chinese subsistence farmer that his life is just not ''exceptionally easy'' and he'll probably spit on you.

[G-Megas-Doux]

People are always going to be oppressed everywhere and throughout history. New ideas are just as much about putting down the "upstarts" as old ones. Using people’s desire to aspire is a tactic that modern government uses to distract from real problems by addressing it in a useless manner but claiming it is a social experiment that we must know the answer to. Corruption cannot be stopped or limited because the corrupt hide it or create new ways that people have to discover for themselves. This is what is known as "The System" we all live in it, Brutalism was just the tool of the time. Back on topic yes I would love to see better constructed buildings and a variety of the aesthetically pleasing rather than garish in your face foolishness, that Brutalism has founded and that various government departments have failed almost every step of the way.

[Marie Louise von Preussen]

Forced to seek employment in the city? No they weren't in 19th century england.

That *flat out* falls against every history of the Industrial Revolution that is floating around there. Peasant communes in Britain had been in extinction not "since 1750", as you claim (do some research!), but since at least the Late Middle Ages! The enclosure movement proper gained special strength during the XVII century.

I won't bother again at pinpointing the consequences of the Enclosure movement on the peasant populations. They were literally forced to give up their land and the cultivation of grain and other staples (which they relied on) to give way to pasture and the capitalistic creation of sheep en masse. That's industrial agriculture for starters, and their pronounced effect upon the agrarian populations is not well known "in theory", which you soo deride but cannot cease to adhere to, but well attested in the last 4 centuries and it falls well against your statement that the peasants "chose" to go. When you're devoid of your old glebe, the only choice was to immigrate: guess where they went to? The big city, to live inside slums, and to provide a cheap and abundant workforce for the growing industry. It's not a matter of "choice", a buzzword which the laissez-faire theorists almost magically elevate to angelical proportions, but flat out coercion of an entire chaste. Humanizing it, or amending its effects by looking at the economic efficiency of the new Estates is a futile and despicable attempt.

How do you explain the massive rises in living standards in the 1800's btw?

"Massive risings in living standards"??? LOL. The average industrial worker in 1830's London, Manchester or any of the new grown industrial centers lived in conditions which a peasant would look down upon. You only ought to refer yourself to the Blue Books, instead of losing yourself in cheap technicalities such as the price of cement or corn. That is irrelevant; Plutocracy exists whether or not disguised in "Free Market" or not, and that agrarian plutocracy would cling to Protectionism until the 1840's shows how well their dominance over British politics was.

Interestingly, a similar condition exists in the modern-day United States and the massive bailouts given. Well everything's fine and well, or when confined to the real of theory, all of the big chaps and the US Economy were an "example" of Laissez-Faire and freedom of the individual. Then, all of sudden, comes the crisis and the Government without thought or question dumps money into the failing but influential industry en masse.

Same history with the "Laissez-Faire" economy of late Victorian England, or early XX century United States. It was "Laissez-Faire" all in theory, but it was de facto controlled by the interests of big industry, which made and remade trusts and caused whole market crashes because of its predatory interests. That's unlimited plutocracy, I reiterate .

What caused the poverty? I saw the poverty in china before big companies moved in and started ''exploiting'' it, I see now that labour is a premium commodity that is beginning to exploit business.

So your in latin America where corrupt governments, and even more corrupting external influences result in a craphole.

Your anger shouldn't be at businesses.

He he he...

Outsourcing, as a widespread economic practice, was centered solely around the growing interest in cheaper labour and non-regulated economic practices. By "non-regulated" is implicit the lack of legislation (or the enforcement of the same) over economic practices, environmental and safety concerns, to name just a few. That's another consequence of unrestrained plutocracy: a predatory economy where Big Biz runs everything, from the Government, the Media, to everything else including the mass of labourers, all of them rotating around the economy. It trivializes all the rest, and makes economic activity the sole measure of intellectual, cultural and moral progress.

... Which, taking back to the neglected topic of this thread, is exactly the ruin of high culture, of art for itself, and of the kinds of things which produce architecture that is bearing of a minimum of appreciation. It becomes merely a function of profit, for economic activity and utility now rule supreme. Even under a non-Laissez-Faire environment .

And of course the side effect is that to feed the children of such an "economic progress", you ought to have an unrestrained source of cheap raw materials and cheap labour. That's where the Congolese workers or the Burmese children enter into, resulting most naturally, in "oppression". The immense material progress of XIX Century Britain and the immense material wealth that the average middle class consumer has in his hands nowadays is only possible because of the exploitation of entire peoples in unfavourable conditions which generate cheap products en masse; there you have an explanation for the wave of illegal immigration and the smuggling of people into developed nations, there you have an explanation for the sub-human working conditions of the average factory worker in the East and in Central America, there you have an explanation for the riddle of the average African or Latin American farmer or miner working in sub-human conditions for Big Biz. I won't bother to state the Obvious to you about these well known and well studied facts just because you seem to be clouded by the rosey ideology of "Government regulation = bad" (as if that made a difference!) and "private initiative = good", a dogma by all means.

Yes because the tremendous rises in living standards is so baaad! Products were becoming progressively cheaper as technology made incomes higher and higher. The poor and the rich were tremendously more well off at the end of the 19th century than at the beginning of the 18th century. The industrial revolution led to more wealth, more education, more rights and a better life for everyone in England. If it was so destructive then how come everyone was better off?

You still seem to miss the point of this discussion. I am not discussing if somehow the Ancient Roman was more comfortable than the Medieval, or the Englander was more "comfortable" in the XIX century than in the XVIII, even though you wished to derail this into a mere discussion into economics, and I replied to some of your points.

"Material Comfort", be it of the few at the expense of the many as of today or in any other manner, is not the last measure of anything as I'm concerned, except of the economicist philosophies that spawned since the Industrial Revolution. It all goes down to a Cult of Utility, a spiritual underlining which breaks down all achievement of life into a search for material progress. Everything is now seen as essentially geared towards economic achievement, and that destroys the moral underlining for Pure Art, and "art" in itself becomes merely the use of popular motives for the achievement of profit and utility, aka mass entertainment, brutalism, capitalism and so on.

Unmistakably, this is a fairly predictable trend in modern history through which elegant and grand architecture ceased to exist and the masses of dull and practical cement blocks which we know all too well took possession of the scene. Same thing with every other art, btw, which is now purely dominated by and moved by economic concerns. You constantly pointing out at how big or how much we have built and produced since the Industrial Revolution has not a jot of relevance . The Pure Fact is that "Culture" nowadays has became a mere slave to economics, be it in theorizing new aspects of economic progress or simply providing a profitable medium of consumption regardless of its actual merits.

We are speaking two different languages here, I know . But since then, be warned that your effort to deny "Oppression" as a function of economic progress and achievement is wholly futile, as anyone with a minimum grasp of history and its actualities show. You are missing the point.

Sorry but before you start commenting on the growth of economies and the effects of mechanisation and urbanisation on society it would help to study some economics and perhaps the evidence of what has happened when it occurs.

Societies become ten times better off...

He he he

What exactly are you trying to prove here? That the average middle class Englander has more shoes or a more comfy bed than his peasant ancestors? You have been attacking a strawman, of all the arguments that you made, repeatedly and repeatedly since the start of your previous post. Your unwavering devotion to the Gospel of Material Progress & Profit is so sacred that you're making me scroll horizontally just to grasp at your missing points! LOL

I AM NOT asking for a bland summary on agricultural markets or agricultural development in the Third World. I took it for granted that subsistence agriculture was in essence a low wield economic mean, which I explicitly affirmed... Let's just pretend this didn't happen and move once again to the points.

FACT #1 - Is there Poverty and "Oppression" in the Modern World? Duh A simple research can affirm this: http://www.globalissues.org/article/...acts-and-stats.

FACT #2 - Is the Peasant "Poor"? Duh

FACT #3 - Is the average illegal immigrant, factory, urban or agriculture worker in the Third World "poor"? Duh

http://www.foodproductiondaily.com/P...ncovered-in-UK

http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/htm...6_congo21.html

http://www.ilo.org/global/About_the_...5207/index.htm

http://findarticles.com/p/articles/m...7/ai_19016001/

Get out of the history texts and go tell an African or thai or chinese subsistence farmer that his life is just not ''exceptionally easy'' and he'll probably spit on you.

Heh, you're once again, attacking a strawman. You're the only idealist here, alas: point where I said that peasants were rich and lived fat and comfortable lives? I have only precisely stated, using a reputable study by a reputable historian whom you can't just flat out deny by preference, that the living conditions during the Ancien Regime were not as the exaggerated as the schoolbook notion which you seem to hold.

You're the only one who claims that unregulated Capitalism can end social injustice, poverty and turn the world into a bright utopia where everyone can eat and afford luxuries while resisting all sorts of societal, cultural and class realities that result in difference and in "oppression", under its broader meaning, of lower social strata when the evidence shows that feeding the market requires a lot of hard work, which is certainly performed by people whose living standard is by all accounts miserable. Then and again, there's not much difference between the aristocratic oppressor and the modern capitalist one, who outsources his company to countries that employ child labour, buys diamonds from mine workers that get trinkets for their work or invites illegal immigrants to his country so they can work for nil and live under miserable conditions. But then and again, I don't think it's possible to abolish class distinctions by accentuating them and by concentrating wealth, except if I'm somehow dreaming or mad .

And congrats, really, for the entirely off-topic discussion! It was entertaining though .

[Denny Crane!]

That *flat out* falls against every history of the Industrial Revolution that is floating around there. Peasant communes in Britain had been in extinction not "since 1750", as you claim (do some research!), but since at least the Late Middle Ages! The enclosure movement proper gained special strength during the XVII century.

Pre industrial revolution was never particularly relevant to what I studied nor particularly important to the arguement here. The actions of an authoritarian state does not disrupt my arguement. When a state produces legislation that interferes in the natural equilibrium or movement of resources and labour it will have negative effects or distortions. Therefore the dates of which I have not particularly studied are irrelevant to my point.

I won't bother again at pinpointing the consequences of the Enclosure movement on the peasant populations. They were literally forced to give up their land and the cultivation of grain and other staples (which they relied on) to give way to pasture and the capitalistic creation of sheep en masse. That's industrial agriculture for starters, and their pronounced effect upon the agrarian populations is not well known "in theory", which you soo deride but cannot cease to adhere to, but well attested in the last 4 centuries and it falls well against your statement that the peasants "chose" to go. When you're devoid of your old glebe, the only choice was to immigrate: guess where they went to? The big city, to live inside slums, and to provide a cheap and abundant workforce for the growing industry. It's not a matter of "choice", a buzzword which the laissez-faire theorists almost magically elevate to angelical proportions, but flat out coercion of an entire chaste. Humanizing it, or amending its effects by looking at the economic efficiency of the new Estates is a futile and despicable attempt.

It isn't a despicable attempt at all as no serious free market advocate will defend government interference in the rights to property or interference in the econonmy such a characterisation is quite ridiculous and inane and shows a profound misunderstanding of any kind of free market, laissez faire or libertarian theory. Any attempt to understand history of events of that time will take into account any kind of government action and study how it effected human interaction which is the benefit of austrian economics over classical economics which tends to discount human intervention within the market and relying soley on empiricism.

In amidst all this diatribal ranting about choice, in which I did distinguish that there was coersion you fail to reinforce the point that you made the claim that mechanisation forced them in and further that they were then exploited by corporate elements comparitive to standards existing in rural lives.

"Massive risings in living standards"??? LOL. The average industrial worker in 1830's London, Manchester or any of the new grown industrial centers lived in conditions which a peasant would look down upon. You only ought to refer yourself to the Blue Books, instead of losing yourself in cheap technicalities such as the price of cement or corn. That is irrelevant; Plutocracy exists whether or not disguised in "Free Market" or not, and that agrarian plutocracy would cling to Protectionism until the 1840's shows how well their dominance over British politics was.

At what point did you think I would argue that plutocracy didn't exist? Free market does not exist in a plutocratic environment, the point was not about whether or not a truly free market existed but that with modernisation and mechanisation the amount of wealth in society the ''size of the pie'' increased exponentially. The increases in efficiency allowed for what we have today.

Similarly people like yourselves would lambast thatcher and her monetarist policies which created a lot of discontent in the 1980's but venture capital and our service industry exploded out of four decades of declining manufacturing but the trouble it caused cemented the future of Britain for the future decades by building thriving industry out of a failed economy.

Interestingly, a similar condition exists in the modern-day United States and the massive bailouts given. Well everything's fine and well, or when confined to the real of theory, all of the big chaps and the US Economy were an "example" of Laissez-Faire and freedom of the individual. Then, all of sudden, comes the crisis and the Government without thought or question dumps money into the failing but influential industry en masse.

Oh dear lord you think the current crisis is laissez faire? Where are you reading about economic theory? The dummies guide to communist propaganda about economics? This is beginning to resemble an arguement with a Russian Nationalist. Is what I am about to say a waste of time? I suspect so...

Talk to some real economists seriously. If you are not willing to believe a word I say, PM Viking Prince, Manstein16 or preferably JP226 and perhaps you might actually begin to grasp the basics which is probably all I have after reading a dozen or so books on mixed economic and political theory. But seriously this is tripe that you are posting.

Laissez faire economics does not occur when you have massive government involvement and intervention in the government. In the presence of the Fed you cannot have Laissez Faire. When the people who wrought the crisis, who were instrumental along with the idiotic politicians and the regulations they brought in are actually in collusion with the government it cannot be considered even remotely free. One wonderful example of this is the jobs given to ex Goldman Sachs employees in the new regulatory schemes. The very people who could be implicated as being culpable are being placed in charge of regulating the new standard. It is a joke.

In Britain where I reside we have never had more regulation, however the FSA was very much a case of jobs for the boys (an english expression) and proved remarkably ineffective but the real problems like Amercia was in the legislation and effects of governments action. I could go into it but I suspect I'd be wasting my time if you think that we are under laissez faire right now as doubtless you wouldn't see it.

You know there is a thread entitled ''I am a communist'' in which a person labelled the democratic republic of Congo as capatilist. Thats kind of what I'm equivocating this to.

Same history with the "Laissez-Faire" economy of late Victorian England, or early XX century United States. It was "Laissez-Faire" all in theory, but it was de facto controlled by the interests of big industry, which made and remade trusts and caused whole market crashes because of its predatory interests. That's unlimited plutocracy, I reiterate .

The mechanisation and industrialisation was good, the corporatism was bad. Big deal? It still resulted ultimately in good things for the world, efficiencies in labour and manufacture are good.

Oh nooooo you labelled corporatism as bad which is pretty much the exact reason I'm a free market anarchist advocate that distrusts big business and government in equal regard and would given the choice implement a government or social organisation that wasn't allowed to publicise risk and privatise profits and adequately protected the rights of ordinary people against special interests including governments.

Your sidetracking here. Attacking business and government isn't going to win anything but agreement from me but trying to paint them as evil is ridiculous. They are a function not a thing of themselves. The power that they get to hurt people is generated through force. Attacking someone like Nike for their involvement in china is ridiculous as it is foreign investment alone that has mitigated the evil of the government regime there. Capatilism and that only, incentivisation that is at the root of all human endeavour is the thing that has led to an improvement in working lives there.

It is only by labour becoming a commodity, by the rapid rise of the manufacturing sector that has allowed China to drag itself out of the hole it was in. A hole largely created by disastrous chinese government initiatives. Which is why your original statement was so ludicrous.

He he he...

Outsourcing, as a widespread economic practice, was centered solely around the growing interest in cheaper labour and non-regulated economic practices. By "non-regulated" is implicit the lack of legislation (or the enforcement of the same) over economic practices, environmental and safety concerns, to name just a few. That's another consequence of unrestrained plutocracy: a predatory economy where Big Biz runs everything, from the Government, the Media, to everything else including the mass of labourers, all of them rotating around the economy. It trivializes all the rest, and makes economic activity the sole measure of intellectual, cultural and moral progress.

I am very strongly assuming you are an anarcho capatilist by this statement then. Since the current state capatilist set up encourages this. Again see above though to see how ridiculous your assumption is that outsourcing is bad. It is the only thing that has driven reform and created wealth in places like India and China.

Perhaps in the pursuit of your idealism you think this is bad? In truth the growth of business and wealth is the only path to liberty, the idealisation of freedom from violence and coersion can only really take place within a well educated relatively economically prosperous populace which can only happen in a semi capatilistic society. What we have now is the lesser evil but by no means a good system. China are a step or so behind us, perhaps you can propose an alternative route.

I'm sure Africa would love to hear it, I reckon communism has killed enough so you tell me.

... Which, taking back to the neglected topic of this thread, is exactly the ruin of high culture, of art for itself, and of the kinds of things which produce architecture that is bearing of a minimum of appreciation. It becomes merely a function of profit, for economic activity and utility now rule supreme. Even under a non-Laissez-Faire environment .

Noooooooooooooooooooooooooooo.... Good god. Ok who built them? Who provided the funding for these buildings? What did you say to me before?

Do your research...



Between 1950 and 1971 Birmingham City Council built 464 housing blocks of five or more storeys. The city pursued parallel programmes of building high-rise flats both in the central areas on slum cleared land and in its suburbs on greenfield sites. Examining Birmingham's post-war suburban housing programme, this article suggests that the use of high-rise in suburban areas represented an important change in the nature of British cities, both in the use of a particular building type on the urban fringe and also in the location of high-density workers' housing far outside of the city core.

...........................

During this time, local authorities desired to impress their voters by building futuristic and imposing tower blocks, which would signify post-war progress.[1] Both Patrick Dunleavy and Lynsey Hanley agree that architects and planners were influenced by Le Corbusier’s promotion of high-rise architecture.[2] The modern tower blocks were to include features that would foster desired forms of resident interaction, an example being the inclusion of Le Corbusier’s ‘streets in the sky’ in some estates.[3

....................................

Who do you think moved Glasgow away from the architecturally attractive city it was into the slum it became eh? It wasn't capatilism son. The humaniterian concerns of the local authorities took over and built hundreds of thousands of homes and tenement ''blocks'' before and mainly in the post world war 2 period. In true glasweigan style get your bloody facts straight son, wasn't the private industry who built these crapoles.

And of course the side effect is that to feed the children of such an "economic progress", you ought to have an unrestrained source of cheap raw materials and cheap labour. That's where the Congolese workers or the Burmese children enter into, resulting most naturally, in "oppression". The immense material progress of XIX Century Britain and the immense material wealth that the average middle class consumer has in his hands nowadays is only possible because of the exploitation of entire peoples in unfavourable conditions which generate cheap products en masse;

Oh jesus christ I knew it. Your a socialist with zero economic understanding I might as well stop now.

Economics is not a zero sum game. Do you even vaguely understand that? We do not have to make others lose in order to win. In fact the development of Africa would be a massive economic boom for the entire world, this is why all capatilist, free market or libertarian people advocate getting the hell out of these places and individual lives because we understand that basic principle.

There isn't one size of a pie. You don't just have a slice and that is it, that isn't how the world works. Christ you've seen the industrial revolution and obviously in a bit of depth, how this remarkably inescapable fact hasn't reached you is beyond me.

You know what is even worse, and I brought it up before and I'll bring it up again you misrepresent business as exploiting the people of the african nations when in fact anyone who knows anything about Africa knows that the governments are responsible, both the nationals, supranational and host nations. Beijing has been implicit in the sponsorship of a corrupt government in the Congo, previous to that it was the lap dog of communism like many other countries in Africa that were used as proxy agents in the ideological war.

Seriously are you going to stop talking crap about Africa which you clearly know nothing about?

there you have an explanation for the wave of illegal immigration and the smuggling of people into developed nations, there you have an explanation for the sub-human working conditions of the average factory worker in the East and in Central America, there you have an explanation for the riddle of the average African or Latin American farmer or miner working in sub-human conditions for Big Biz. I won't bother to state the Obvious to you about these well known and well studied facts just because you seem to be clouded by the rosey ideology of "Government regulation = bad" (as if that made a difference!) and "private initiative = good", a dogma by all means.

Ughhh see above. I'm sure putting a block on all human movement and probably all trade in your eyes would be a good thing.....all I can suggest is if you don't believe me contact one of those many well educated people I mentioned before who would offer a far more reasoned explanation but to quickly give a summation:

Factory workers in the east. Well I already have. Labour is now beginning to exploit the business not the other way around because labour is becoming a precious commodity which you would know if you had looked into it or visited it (I have done both) and I don't like repeating myself btw. Central america is a corrupt hellhole which is to a large part a product of the USA and completely unrelated to this arguement due to that. Though Brazil will progress and is doing so to rival any economy going to date.

It is obvious to any students of contemporary history specifically economics. I'm assuming since you fail to mention Africa at all here you concede everything I said there.

You still seem to miss the point of this discussion. I am not discussing if somehow the Ancient Roman was more comfortable than the Medieval, or the Englander was more "comfortable" in the XIX century than in the XVIII, even though you wished to derail this into a mere discussion into economics, and I replied to some of your points.

I'm just replying to everything you said point by point.

"Material Comfort", be it of the few at the expense of the many as of today or in any other manner, is not the last measure of anything as I'm concerned, except of the economicist philosophies that spawned since the Industrial Revolution. It all goes down to a Cult of Utility, a spiritual underlining which breaks down all achievement of life into a search for material progress. Everything is now seen as essentially geared towards economic achievement, and that destroys the moral underlining for Pure Art, and "art" in itself becomes merely the use of popular motives for the achievement of profit and utility, aka mass entertainment, brutalism, capitalism and so on.

Right so poverty with high art is preferable? Are you sick?

The brutalism you so deride in architecture was spawned by an explosion in government, the restoration of good architecture can only be resolved by more money being plowed back into private hands (the same hands that created the first works of art I might add).

The irony is the tenemenats and high rise you so deride were created by government, the nice architecture was created privately and has all but ceased since the great wars and the explosion of regulation and government.

And yes I'd rather see less high architecture and more people living good lives than the alternative. I'm wierd like that.

Unmistakably, this is a fairly predictable trend in modern history through which elegant and grand architecture ceased to exist and the masses of dull and practical cement blocks which we know all too well took possession of the scene. Same thing with every other art, btw, which is now purely dominated by and moved by economic concerns. You constantly pointing out at how big or how much we have built and produced since the Industrial Revolution has not a jot of relevance . The Pure Fact is that "Culture" nowadays has became a mere slave to economics, be it in theorizing new aspects of economic progress or simply providing a profitable medium of consumption regardless of its actual merits.

The standard of living and wealth in western culture has never been higher and the conception of what is beauty and art has changed. Culture is where you find it, it doesn't have to be in buildings though I'd rather suggest that all those buildings that were created that were of such fine art as FERRETS54 pointed out were built off the back of poor people and poverty. Now wealth is spent on the accumulation of more wealth, we'd like it to be more fair but everyone has access to health care and we don't get as fine as buildings, that is a good thing.

Culture means many things to many people. Culture to me means scar tissue on the brain, I can understand beauty, art, architecture and philosophy which I hold in particularly high regard but the slavish regard for something indefinable at the expense of peoples health seems almost fanatical.

We are speaking two different languages here, I know . But since then, be warned that your effort to deny "Oppression" as a function of economic progress and achievement is wholly futile, as anyone with a minimum grasp of history and its actualities show. You are missing the point.

I'm seeing it actually. You seem to think that development and growth will just occur naturally because its nice, like puppy dogs and fairies. Perhaps if governments really really want it will happen. Because that works so well.....oh wait....no it doesn't.

Not sure I'm the deluded one here. I have a minimum grasp of history, never enough to delve into the most intricate of details mainly centered around roman history and british 19th century political reform however the understanding economic and political theory seems to set you up far better than it has you to understand the topic of progress.

The very fact that you think the West has to exist off the back of oppression betrays your vast lack of comprehension of how progress works, economics and the world in general. Perhaps and I have no doubt you know many more historical facts but the very fact that you believe in a zero sum game economic theory says everything. Hit the books man and re-evaluate there is something wrong here and it isn't me.

He he he

What exactly are you trying to prove here? That the average middle class Englander has more shoes or a more comfy bed than his peasant ancestors? You have been attacking a strawman, of all the arguments that you made, repeatedly and repeatedly since the start of your previous post. Your unwavering devotion to the Gospel of Material Progress & Profit is so sacred that you're making me scroll horizontally just to grasp at your missing points! LOL

I AM NOT asking for a bland summary on agricultural markets or agricultural development in the Third World. I took it for granted that subsistence agriculture was in essence a low wield economic mean, which I explicitly affirmed... Let's just pretend this didn't happen and move once again to the points.

ope, in fact nowadays they are taken to abject poverty en masse to feed the well developed middle class with Nike shoes and electronic component raw materials

Well sorry but this is the original point and it just isn't true. People who work in Nike Factories aren't in abject poverty. Hell it is such an abusive claim Nike could well take you to court for it if it was worth their while since it is such a deleterious claim.

TIME visited Nike plants in China and Vietnam recently and found them to be modern, clean, well lighted and ventilated, and paying decent wages by local standards--although by no means are they trouble free. Make no mistake: these are factories, not amusement parks, and even in developing Asia, where jobs are scarce and getting scarcer, this is not the employment of choice. It's low-tech assembly work that hasn't changed much since Nike chairman Phil Knight first started sourcing sneakers in Japan 35 years ago. Since then, the work has migrated in search of ever cheaper labor.

Seriously I've no doubt you know some of the historical facts and documents but I suspect you have no clue about anything else your expounding upon in this thread, I've certainly seen that already with your claim about congo.

Heh, you're once again, attacking a strawman. You're the only idealist here, alas: point where I said that peasants were rich and lived fat and comfortable lives? I have only precisely stated, using a reputable study by a reputable historian whom you can't just flat out deny by preference, that the living conditions during the Ancien Regime were not as the exaggerated as the schoolbook notion which you seem to hold.

You're the only one who claims that unregulated Capitalism can end social injustice,

Ummm no. I didn't. Though if you could quote me on it that would be appreciated just to show that you aren't talking crap again. Seriously a quote please.

Are you perhaps arguing with two different people at the same time and just assuming one of them is me? Or perhaps working yourself into such a state that your assuming all sorts of things I didn't. You see I can happily quote every last statement I respond to, please do the same.

poverty and turn the world into a bright utopia where everyone can eat and afford luxuries while resisting all sorts of societal, cultural and class realities that result in difference and in "oppression"

Again quote me to prove you aren't talking crap. I've stopped using the word strawman, now just quote me when you say I've said something, actually physically quote the words.

Free markets, lack of government intervention and regulation lead to dramatic increases in wealth. Economic increases have benefited society, the welfare state alternatively not so much and as we see and as you are SO concerned about the welfare housing program is responsible for a great deal of the things you seem to despise.

Ideally yes I'd like to see a fair free market with more even distribution of wealth and think such a thing would stimulate cultural expression. I don't think the government arbitrarily taking money off me to build a supermarket trolley statue is a valid expression of culture but rather arbitrary similarly with a million other things that happen without consent or resort to the democratic process as well as all the waste inherent in that. The decline of culture begins with the wars, where it was caused is your guess but you can probably guess what I think it was.

under its broader meaning, of lower social strata when the evidence shows that feeding the market requires a lot of hard work, which is certainly performed by people whose living standard is by all accounts miserable. Then and again, there's not much difference between the aristocratic oppressor and the modern capitalist one, who outsources his company to countries that employ child labour, buys diamonds from mine workers that get trinkets for their work or invites illegal immigrants to his country

]

Whoa whoa whoa. Invites illegal immigrants in? Please pass the name on to me because I'll immediately turn it over for prosecution.

Oh sorry you were just making crap up for the sake of a debate.... As for child mining, indeed I have given you my thoughts on Africa.

Do you just want to continue an insulting diatribe on business or do you want to see child slavery end? Really? What about child soldiers? Did they just get forgetten in a bout of amnesia in your tirade against business or did they just not fit into your ideological tirade? I'd rather see all child labour, prostitution and conscription in Africa and I've already outlined the basics of how it would happen.

so they can work for nil and live under miserable conditions. But then and again, I don't think it's possible to abolish class distinctions by accentuating them and by concentrating wealth, except if I'm somehow dreaming or mad .

And congrats, really, for the entirely off-topic discussion! It was entertaining though .

It is entertaining, I enjoy a vociferous debate by the way

[Prodigal]

The thing is, they aren't forced into the job, and that's what you make it sound like, Louis. Those jobs pay them higher than any other jobs available would. If they didn't, they wouldn't have taken the job. Common sense here, common sense. At least I thought it was...

[Kiljan Arslan]

well antonis your forgetting occasions where the job payed alot less then it promised and forced the worker into debt slavery.

[Prodigal]

And how exactly does that happen Arslan? They can always quit and get another job.

[Kiljan Arslan]

Debt slavery is where there forced to continue to work at a job because there held in debt. Its what is happening in dubai right now. It happened in company towns as well.

[Genius of the Restoration]

Just a thought but wouldn't this have been better served in the Fight Club? The OP is really just responding to Louis' statement and doesn't present anything to talk about. Can you edit it to frame what this is all about? It isn't really clear to me.

[Marie Louise von Preussen]

@Denny Crane,

I finally took some time to check your reply... And it all went as expected :facepalm:.

Can I just ask you, when are you going to take off your economicist blinkers and wake up for real worthwhile artistic debate? Art is not a function of capital neither determined by economic regulations or the living standard of the average Joe.

I think your own sweeping statement here of relevance was this one:

Culture is where you find it

Which denotes that you have nil basis for any kind of artistic judgment. Really, "art is where you find it"? So if I crap on my neighbor's car, is that "art"? If I spit on the ground and take pictures of it, is that "art"? You don't seem to be concerned at all with artistic merit or anything of relevance into this thread; rather, you have been nigh well tossing economic arguments as to why your particular intellectual system is fine and how exploitation, suffering, poverty and oppression will "end" through it regardless of the facts, well backed by my own or any brief and obvious research, that exploitation still exists en masse in the world where your wonderful fairy land of ideas should have brought it down and flattened the whole world into an american megalopolis completely stuck in economic and utilitarian concerns.

The course of events is always fairly predictable: poverty will not end, oppression will not end, the Congolese will still work for trinkets a day and the demand for cheap mass labour will still open insalubrious Mattel factories in whether damn corner of the world that has to offer it. And you will still come back like a doctrinaire and argue that the holy grail of the Universe, the Sacred, Life, the Human Mind and all is the accumulation of capital and the mass production and consumption of goods. For that's precisely what the world values alone nowadays, and look! We still have privileged families who earn high wages and live comfortably, and we still have a mass of battered people going to work all days and earning minimum wages for their livelihoods just like forever! No system, not even your "wonderful" and already tested idea of progress and "freedom" will ever change such a situation to any significant extent. Rather than arguing whether or not the implications of your philosophy allow room for artistic merit or whether or not the nature of deregulation is per se conducive to exploitation, you have made sweeping statements calling me an ignorant and blaming all economic hardship on a bizarre strawman of "economic regulation", your opposing ideal, regardless of whether or not you have provided a detailed and impartial analysis of economic crises in history to argue such a sweeping statement confidently.

Needless to say you still argue that Rococo was a "culture of starvation", in your own words, without providing a damn historical backing or study to argue it. The XVII and the XVIII century witnessed the blooming and rise to prominence of the middle class to an extent never witnessed in European soil for milennia, and yet, nay, it was a culture of starvation .

Keep floundering and dreaming with your fairy land systems, missing the point deliberately and turning more debates off-topic just because it pleases to expose how great your economic ideas are like a missionary. There are millions of people like you out there. Religiosity assumes a thousand forms, progress belief and gospels being one of them.

And finally, all your statements are untrue. Unless you do have the kind of historical backing to deny that Colonialism was founded on the oppressive exploitation of peripheral regions, which is presumably nil since you have not provided a jot of historical credibility or even took a second of your time to rub your eyes off the economicist crap and the disjointed and random sort of details which you have for a backing. I am not even a Socialist, to be true: in fact if I were to state my political beliefs where it is applicable and relevant, which is not here, I defend a moderately regulated market economy. But then Economics is the least of my concerns, and I do well know and am versed in studies analyzing the crushing influence of economic utilitarianism and materialism into artistic creation. You have not even disproved my main point that the domain of economic thought destroys culture and turns art into mass, low quality entertainment geared towards mass consuption (aka the commodization of art, akin to the commodization of everything else by "capitalistic" and utilitarian thought); that you seem well nigh to NOT UNDERSTAND what the hell I'm talking about is that I clearly referred myself not just to this or that economic frame, or this or that ideal economic doctrine, but to everything that falls under the broad spiritual and philosophical spectrum. Communistic societies were just as utilitarian, progress worshipping and economicist as modern Capitalism, and thus it fitted them well to indulge in clearly tasteless and purely practical architectural styles such as Brutalism. Here "Pure Art", that is art by itself (which you will never understand considering your deliberate blinkered focus) and independent of economic considerations, is sacrificed for money - the same thing which you and every other economist in the world view as the final quantum of all existence. Guided by faith, which stems from an essentially all practical, skeptic and materialist interpretation, everything, nay anything, is tossed aside for money and becomes a movable commodity.

... No wonder then that our cities should be inhabited by all dull blocks of concrete . Because economy is now the last measure of all things, and again: regardless if it carries any sort of philosophic or moral merit, regardless if it ends "exploitation" or not (which in about two centuries since the Industrial Revolution it has not), regardless if everything that accompanies it has to be crushed for it. It's that sort of attitude, the assumption that greater wealth is the measure of all existence, that creates the modern speculator, business fraudster or multi-national corporation extending to non-developed countries in insalubrious conditions: "profit is everything". And the all too used but still memorable "Greed is Good". You cannot conceive of any "capitalistic" medium otherwise, be it laissez-faire, or even be it a form of state capitalism, as good analysis of the USSR prove it was. Regardless of the means or the superficial differences, the same moral underlining is always there.

Alas, Communism and Capitalism, when subjected to deep scrutiny, have far more similarities than differences. Setting aside all doctrinaire spouting about "Collectivism" which misses the point, the underlining of Marx can be summed by a quick reading of the Wealth of the Nations. Both seek the same conditions and both are wholly theoretically similar (both assume materialistic & utilitarian conditions as well as the cult of economic progres), the only dissimilarity lying in the purely ostensible and superficial mechanic means. The best analogy would be to two machines of the same model & specifications, but programmed differently - rock bottom, they are still the same! Let's reiterate the facts: Marx was a disciple of Smith, and Marx sought the same underlying conditions postulated by Smith, only under a different medium.

Finally, the title of this thread misses the point again. What are you arguing? Whom are you arguing with ? We can't even go to the Fight Club without a detailed and specific subject in mind!

[Kjertesvein]

I agree with Mr. Restoration on this. Can't you two get a room

[removeduser_487563287433]

It would be hard to overestimate just how dangerous urbanisation has been for humans during our history.

The advent of agriculture and urbanisation was disasterous for human quality of life. Our life expectancy dropped from the days of our hunter gathering days along with the quality and variety of our diet, both of which would not recover until the industrial revolution. This poor quality of life, combined with terrible hygenic conditions and high population density made humans amazingly vulnrable to disease, which took a merciless cull on our ancestors. In Shakespeare's time the population of England was still miles from recovering from the Black Death that had ravaged Europe 200 years before. Shakespeare's London was the largest population centre in the western world, but had a death rate that greatly outpaced the birth rate. The city only continued to grow from immigrants from the countryside and protestant refugees from France. Plague struck the city again in the 1660s - and was only brought under control when the entire city burnt down - another vulnrability of urbanisation - displayed in the destruction of Lisbon from earthquake, Dunwich by storm and countless others by purposeful sack and slaughter.

Only in the late 19th century did we start developing technologies to make living in cities relatively safe, although thousands of people were still being choked to death by smog in London in the 1950s. Considering how many countless billions have been killed by cities since we settled on the first rivers thousands of years ago, and still are today in less fortunate parts of the world, I wonder if it was wise to adopt agriculture at all.

[Marie Louise von Preussen]

It would be hard to overestimate just how dangerous urbanisation has been for humans during our history.

The advent of agriculture and urbanisation was disasterous for human quality of life. Our life expectancy dropped from the days of our hunter gathering days along with the quality and variety of our diet, both of which would not recover until the industrial revolution. This poor quality of life, combined with terrible hygenic conditions and high population density made humans amazingly vulnrable to disease, which took a merciless cull on our ancestors. In Shakespeare's time the population of England was still miles from recovering from the Black Death that had ravaged Europe 200 years before. Shakespeare's London was the largest population centre in the western world, but had a death rate that greatly outpaced the birth rate. The city only continued to grow from immigrants from the countryside and protestant refugees from France. Plague struck the city again in the 1660s - and was only brought under control when the entire city burnt down - another vulnrability of urbanisation - displayed in the destruction of Lisbon from earthquake, Dunwich by storm and countless others by purposeful sack and slaughter.

Only in the late 19th century did we start developing technologies to make living in cities relatively safe, although thousands of people were still being choked to death by smog in London in the 1950s. Considering how many countless billions have been killed by cities since we settled on the first rivers thousands of years ago, and still are today in less fortunate parts of the world, I wonder if it was wise to adopt agriculture at all.

That's actually very true.


... Though I don't think it is universally applicable. European cities until the XIX century were notoriously insalubrious, and that combined with the not so exemplary hygiene of the time made disease much more common.

I would argue that certain Ancient cities had good enough sanitation, starting with Greek urban centers in the Hellenistic Age, that greatly reduced the mortality rate in the gradually more and more crowded cities of the time. These Greco-Roman sanitation works remained in use for a long time, Greco-Roman baths being frequently visited until the XVI century saw the rubbing of cloth as the only popular standard of cleanliness take prominence. There was also a fairly well developed medicine, though accessible mostly for well off people first plus a continuous supply of food.

There are other factors which contributed to the reduction of plague and urban disasters in Western Europe, the rebuilding of London after 1666 and the displacement of the black rat by the less noxious brown rodent being them.

[Lost Sultan]

See Danny, even the retarded (well, retarded by our own standards) laissez faire economists of England based their theory on “labor mobile, capital immobile” assumption. It partially made sense at the time. The capital was land and you could not move land. The labor came from the people who could easily move anywhere. Say, Americas for example.
But, what is the situation now?
The source of capital is not just land anymore. Land is only a single source of capital among many others. Right now, it is the opposite of a significant source of capital. In industrialized nations, agriculture is less than %5 of the pie. The pie is dominated by factories.
The problem with that is factories can be removed and reassemble anywhere. So, if a factory owner starts to dislike the working standards the regulation of a state established, he/she can move anywhere where there is a lack of that type of regulation or a where no regulation exists at all.
What about labor? If you didn’t like the working conditions in your own country, can you easily move to another? Would the physical act of gathering your belongings and going to somewhere else complete your immigration process? No.
So this is a world where the labor is immobile, and capital is mobile! This means that laissez faire is disastrous for quality of life.

[removeduser_487563287433]

Think again. Rome had a population density that we would outlaw today if inflicted on lifestock. The buildings were so vulnrable to destruction by fire and collapse that you can find poetry about poor plebs musing on how they will be the last to burn, living at the top of their death trap block of insulae. The sewer was no help against the waves of disease that decimated the cities population time and time again and in summer the stench of the place was so overpowering that anybody with the means to leave did so. It was unsustainable in terms of supply, with Roman food supply always being on a knife edge, solely maintained by a continuous and massive logistical operation to import grain from Africa and later Britain. If for any reason this supply was cut then starvation and violence on a massive scale was inevitable. You would not choose to live in Ancient Rome if you knew about it, rather than basing your view on a false and romanticised view of ancient sophistication.

[Marie Louise von Preussen]

Think again. Rome had a population density that we would outlaw today if inflicted on lifestock. The buildings were so vulnrable to destruction by fire and collapse that you can find poetry about poor plebs musing on how they will be the last to burn, living at the top of their death trap block of insulae. The sewer was no help against the waves of disease that decimated the cities population time and time again and in summer the stench of the place was so overpowering that anybody with the means to leave did so. It was unsustainable in terms of supply, with Roman food supply always being on a knife edge, solely maintained by a continuous and massive logistical operation to import grain from Africa and later Britain. If for any reason this supply was cut then starvation and violence on a massive scale was inevitable. You would not choose to live in Ancient Rome if you knew about it, rather than basing your view on a false and romanticised view of ancient sophistication.

Well that depends. I do not deny there were slums, but the view of Rome as a gigantic and uniform slum is quite deluded as the one presented by Classicists. Depending on where you live and your living conditions, you might as well have had the chance of leading a moderately decent life in reasonable conditions, with good sanitation. Just props.