Sandwichman wrote:
> Swami Antonio, if you please, Jim... What I meant is that you've got "your
> optimism of the will, pessimism of the intellect" beanie on backwards.
It helps to use concrete referents rather than cliches.
> And
> where did I say anything at all about unemployment, let alone "deny the
> existence of involuntary unemployment"?
You seemed to be denying the existence of the difference between
actual and potential real GDP, which (under capitalism) is linked to
the existence of involuntary unemployment. (Workers suffer when
capitalism has indigestion.) Or perhaps you were instead simply
avoiding the issue.
> I would say that the statistical
> measurement of unemployment becomes increasingly suspect to the extent that
> employment becomes more precarious and unstandardized. That's another story.
Sure, there are problems with the statistics. A lot of them. But it's
empirical nihilism to reject statistics altogether.
For example, the statistics about the number of hours that people work
for pay during a period such as a year or a month is increasingly
suspect (since employers like to get more work without more pay partly
by sneaking in unpaid hours), especially as employment becomes more
precarious and unstandardized. Does that mean that we should stop
considering the role of paid work-hours and drop the issue of
work-hours altogether? No, it means that we have to be careful and
critical in our use of the work-hour statistics.
> Down the road to nihilism? So you're saying GDP is God, then? If that's what
> you're saying, I'll gladly go down that road. GDP ain't just pining for the
> fjords, man. It's dead.
"Nihilism" is not just opposition to religion. Some web definitions:
-- a revolutionary doctrine that advocates destruction of the social
system for its own sake
-- nihilistic delusion: the delusion that things (or everything,
including the self) do not exist; a sense that everything is unreal.
-- complete denial of all established authority and institutions
(wordnet.princeton.edu/perl/webwn)
-- Nihilism (from the Latin nihil, nothing) is a philosophical
position which argues that existence is without objective meaning,
purpose, or intrinsic value. (en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nihilism)
-- Extreme skepticism, maintaining that nothing has a real existence;
The rejection of all moral principles; etc.
(http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/Nihilism.)
The kind of nihilism you seem to be approaching is the old one that
says "don't confuse me with facts."
_Of course_ GDP ain't God (as I've said many times -- but who
listens?) However, we have the unfortunate fate of living in the belly
of a beast whose health is measured by (real) GDP and that punishes us
when it over-indulges, etc. As I said before, workers suffer when
capitalism has indigestion. GDP may be "dead" in your mind, Tom, but
it's not dead for the capitalist system and its inmates. To declare
GDP "dead" without paying attention to the system of power which
apotheosizes it simply adds more legitimacy to that system. It's like
declaring the US war on Iraq a "victory" (the way the Wall Street
JOURNAL has done) even though that's not true.
When the system's health collapses and mass unemployment rises, there
are some who say "let's keep it that way, because it will solve the
environmental problems" (just like the fall from the 1920s to the
1930s did) just as there are those who say "workers are paid too much
and spend too much, so we have to stop this over-indulgence."
--