Charlie Rose

Gelles  04/11/2012 07:58 AM Report

mc2030, I did hurl tired requests outside the scope of Pinker's sound ideas. But I explained this was because Pinker's page was open for input and Fukuyama's was not.

At the near-beginning of all this hurling, I contributed:

"A thoroughly delightful interview."

..... So the nonsense you refer to was the product of REMant's mind and others not me.

mc2030  04/10/2012 09:21 PM Report

While everyone was busy hurling the same tired nonsense on each other on this discussion board, Steven Pinker was dropping some serious knowledge on the Charlie Rose Show. Come on, people.

Gelles  04/06/2012 09:25 AM Report

It's almost 6am, Friday the 6th.

I suppose the idea of debt-free extra DEBT-FREE money for government to pay out as the INVESTMENTS in infrastructure, education, R&D, total energy independence and adoption of a more rational national security policy than buying and burning oil to enrich the wrong forces and risk greater undesirable climate change, etc., all of which Charlie Rose identified as goals for current operations we would ignore only at great peril, may not sit well with many who would rather not reform basic profit and loss accounting at the moment.

So what do I suggest for such mental midgets: well, we can do what we must with debt-based money by happily increasing our debt to GDP ratio as high as necessary.

A very high debt ratio is easily tolerable for as long we keep prime interest rates very low. If we chose to live one percent interest, the capital congress can invest will do the job it must.

We should also, however, protect all cash deposits from inflation with the same borrowed money.

We should also, borrow all money we need directly from the Federal Reserve IF one percent interest does not sell enough bonds, including TIPS type, to other buyers.

We should also suggest to all nations to import less if imports threaten middle class security or necessary domestic industrial development.

..... If, say, China and America are unable to produce a lowers cost than under-developed nations, the more developed must nevertheless limit cheaper imports BUT simultaneously help such lower-cost nations to supply their own needs and develop their own economies by means other than exports.

Finally, all nations must employ planned logistical success ahead of casino capitalistic notions about free trade and hard money.

Hard money -- YES -- sound money certainly. But not HARD TIMES as the price for ignorance of how to produce the material basis of sustained prosperity and peace.

Gelles  04/06/2012 06:11 AM Report

When I write "shoe" for show, it is because keyboards are too error prone and people are too anxious to type when they hear words in their heads. There are many fixes for this problem. But Charlie Rose insists on only one: let those idiots correct their post before then push "submit".

Gelles  04/06/2012 06:07 AM Report

The shoe with Fukuyama and Gideon Rose is rather disgusting because they did not state the obvious -- we all need full demand and full employment and manufacturing at home. But Charlie Rose asked a key question: Can an intelligent conversation be held if are leaders are as dumb as blocks of wood?

Gelles  04/06/2012 06:02 AM Report

Obama or Romney must promise not redistribution but full employment at very high wages. This will create at the bottom, as our base, a highly paid workforce that can shop to keep the system running. At the top, rich can get richer still, and inflation in necessities can be prevented.

We shall confine inflation to capital assets and collectibles.

If either of these two candidates allow production to stay off shore, they will be useless. Yes to Buffet's import certificates or any scheme that does the same.

Useless failures as presidents is a recipe for decline and replacement by a better nation more deserving to be leader of the new world order coming because we fail.

Gelles  04/06/2012 05:53 AM Report

The self-correction of profit and loss accounting has not happened. Instead, we go to war and wipe out the enemies' currency. This cannot work with nuclear war.

Gelles  04/06/2012 05:50 AM Report

The problem was agreed by all to be the problem of creating global trade and domestic tranquility in harmony with human appetites for regular meals and outlets for their dreams and ambitions.

Toward these ends, the immediate need to resolve the accounting errors that limit necessary retail demand to payrolls that, themselves, limit sales when they are too low and limit profits when too high. The resolution to this ancient chestnut is money sent to payroll that does not lower profit. So, where does such EXTRA MONEY come from?

It comes from extra gold if people will love it more than what it buys. It also comes from extra banknotes if people will love to save it more than spend it. And the same goes for deposits you never exchange for gold or banknotes, because bank statements by on line services or the old fashioned mail serve the same purpose.

So, the introduction of debt-free extra money in sufficient amount to make you rich -- but scarce enough in your mind to make you believe it holds its value, is a vital answer to the deficit in DEMAND.

In addition, we need to cater to human ambition by being sure to reward genius and hard work and punish crime and corruption.

Gelles  04/06/2012 05:34 AM Report

Francis Fukuyama, Gideon Rose of Foreign Affairs, and Charlie Rose, our host, examined on 5 April the possibility of global recovery based on political leadership and/or inherent self-correcting tendencies that can resolve:

..... A need for retail demand when payrolls are thin, investment weak, money's worth and composition (is it gold, paper, production or ammunition?) in question, AND

..... Conflicts between West and East, Capital and Labor, Muslim and Christian, Modernity and Legacy, -- continue unabated.

These talkers examined all this. This writer will dispatch it all ASAP.

Gelles  04/06/2012 05:23 AM Report

PINKER SUGGESTS THERE IS A TREND TOWARD LESS VIOLENCE.

FUKUYAMA SUGGESTS THE END OF HISTORY MAY LIBERAL DEMOCRATIC CAPITALISM OR NOT! -- IT MAY INSTEAD REQUIRE MORE CRISES TO ALLOW OVER-20% UNEMPLOYMENT TO EXPLODE THE SYSTEM INTO RATIONAL SELF-CORRECTION.

GIDEON ROSE AND FOREIGN AFFAIRS MAGAZINE LOOK TO THE GREAT DEPRESSION, WWII, AND MORE RECENT TIMES FOR HINTS.

CHARLIE ROSE ASKS IF A SERIOUS CONVERSATION OVER POLITICAL LEADERSHIP NECESSARY TO SOLVE PROBLEMS IN POLITICAL-ECONOMY IS POSSIBLE -- NOW OR EVER.

TONIGHT'S SHOW, APRIL 5, 2012, IS NOT YET ON THIS ARCHIVE. BUT IT IS A LOGICAL FOLLOW-ON TO VIOLENCE AND HUMAN NATURE. LET US CONTINUE IN SEVERAL POSTS HERE -- IN LOWER CASE

SharkswithfrikingLazers  04/06/2012 02:30 AM Report

Where is "The Tipping Point" on population and violence?

When is there too many people on earth and violence errupts?

SharkswithfrikingLazers  04/06/2012 02:28 AM Report

He looked great all dressed up: red tie, gray suit, gray hair and red lips.

SharkswithfrikingLazers  04/06/2012 02:25 AM Report

We have had war after war after war after war. We are now in never ending wars.

Perhaps we have had a genocide on warriors.

Then violence would have declined.

Unless of course the deceased warriors kept their semen stored on ice at home.

SharkswithfrikingLazers  04/06/2012 02:22 AM Report

Too bad we don't all live in Whoville, home of the merry and warm-hearted Whos.

Then when the Grinch comes to steal all our all oil we would not resort to violence but would still sing and be happy.

Abundance keeps violence way, way down or just living in Whoville.

Gelles  04/05/2012 09:55 AM Report

A thoroughly delightful interview.

I think of nationalism, epitomized by WW I and WW II, wherein nationalism trumped ideology and class struggle, and death tolls were immense, as a curse -- but also as a blessing -- when VICTORY was won and the nuclear suppression of world wars commenced.

I think of class struggle, wherein the money power has trumped all others -- temporarily.

Then I think of misery as well as violence. The former is no friend of the human race. It is true we make ourselves miserable -- when others do not do it for us. Still, as Pinker said, problem solvers address violence and all other things we don't like. If we see poverty, ignorance and boredom, as problems, they suddenly have solutions.

REMant brings up both solitude and individual sovereignty. There is much to be desired by anyone when he is not the supreme power in sight. Such a state of anarchy, really is no solution to anyone but a hermit.

Alexis de Tocqueville was a great author, observer, scholar and discoverer of the dangers of majority rule and general intellectual sloth.

I do not see him as one who would tolerate REMant's sui generis pet ideas -- especially REMant's nonsense about Whigery being a coherent living political force against an agenda REMant might create if he could.

Getting serious about Wilson and Pinker and possible positive futures, I believe firmly the possibility of discarding debt as we did debtor's prisons in the past, and running the world. more or less, like we ran America from 1941 to 1945, is a necessary step about to be taken to implement the idea of ABUNDANCE that follows trends established by current technology, engineering and logistics.

xubi  04/05/2012 08:13 AM Report

@tabs what a daft individual you are. linking the holacaust and abortions. if you are not a woman just let go of abortion business.

tabs  04/04/2012 04:08 PM Report

"One death is a tragedy, a million deaths a statistic" Koba the man of steel

So Mankind has become less violent? According to a large proportion of American society the state has sanctioned and legalized murder in the form of abortion. Further if Hitler had decreed that the Jewish women of Europe have mandatory abortions it wouldn't have been called a Holocaust but good Progressive Social Policy under the rube rick of Woman's Reproductive Rights?

Ellen_Dibble  04/04/2012 01:15 PM Report

Is this scientific? Or just a convenient assemblage of facts? If humanity has galloped towards relying on Our Better Natures in the last 60 years, I would like to personally take some of the credit for that. I mean, I've been trying. But I'm thinking we are actually going in the opposite direction, and I smell snake oil or some such, and I think I'd better check this out.

REMant  04/04/2012 12:19 PM Report

We are less violent, yes, but no more affectionate, which seems to be implied here. Any amount of actual historical examination would reveal that. Social scientists realizing the insufficiency of their fields are prone to invade the historian's domain, but without putting in the time and effort required invariably come away with only popular misconceptions, that is unless they were only looking for confirmation in the first place.

What we ARE, is more reasonable and objective, by-and-large, altho we seem actually to be going backwards. But if you want an illustration of his point, just go to one of Italy's better-preserved Renaissance cities prickled with family bastions. The problem with the thesis is tho that prior to the 19th c wars were confined largely to border skirmishes and conducted under a code of honor, all of which, with the advent of "democracy," have vanished. Churchill commented about this in his WWII memoir.

Ethology, too, long ago showed that organized warfare eclipsed universal territorial defense when food was in short supply among apes, so it would appear that IQ has led to aggression, not vice versa. And the females of many species do a lot more defending of their young than males, who often are entirely absent.

Pinker is, likewise, completely wrong about the German idea of right, which reflects honor, as it does in Japan, both countries quite anti-cosmopolitan.

And though the ancien regime, like some savage tribes, had recourse to violence, they didn't engage in much thought control. That came with the Progressive's predecessors. Who also established police. Which, incidentally, were met with riots. Even before Foucault, Tocqueville spent a large part of Democracy in America on this, viz: "Under the absolute sway of an individual despot the body was attacked in order to subdue the soul, and the soul escaped the blows which were directed against it and rose superior to the attempt; but such is not the course adopted by tyranny in democratic republics; there the body is left free, and the soul is enslaved." (Vol I, Chap XV, Pt 2)

This entire hour would seem to be another attempt of Charlie's at high-brow Progressivism, designed to defend tyranny by assertions of its inevitability and desirability, as in Samuel Butler's Erewhon, with its straighteners (http://www.hoboes.com/FireBlade/Fiction/Butler/Erewhon/erewhon10/) and Colleges of Unreason.

Or Orwell's novels, particularly 1984, where perpetual war is justified as collective good, and the populace is kept in, to use Tocqueville's words, "perpetual childhood." It is typical of Whiggism.

Since it's been a while since I quoted the conclusion of Democracy in America it may be well to do so again:

"I think then that the species of oppression by which democratic nations are menaced is unlike anything which ever before existed in the world: our contemporaries will find no prototype of it in their memories. I am trying myself to choose an expression which will accurately convey the whole of the idea I have formed of it, but in vain; the old words 'despotism' and 'tyranny' are inappropriate: the thing itself is new; and since I cannot name it, I must attempt to define it. I seek to trace the novel features under which despotism may appear in the world. The first thing that strikes the observation is an innumerable multitude of men all equal and alike, incessantly endeavoring to procure the petty and paltry pleasures with which they glut their lives. Each of them, living apart, is as a stranger to the fate of all the rest - his children and his private friends constitute to him the whole of mankind; as for the rest of his fellow-citizens, he is close to them, but he sees them not - he touches them, but he feels them not; he exists but in himself and for himself alone; and if his kindred still remain to him, he may be said at any rate to have lost his country.

"Above this race of men stands an immense and tutelary power, which takes upon itself alone to secure their gratifications, and to watch over their fate. That power is absolute, minute, regular, provident, and mild. It would be like the authority of a parent, if, like that authority, its object was to prepare men for manhood; but it seeks on the contrary to keep them in perpetual childhood: it is well content that the people should rejoice, provided they think of nothing but rejoicing. For their happiness such a government willingly labors, but it chooses to be the sole agent and the only arbiter of that happiness: it provides for their security, foresees and supplies their necessities, facilitates their pleasures, manages their principal concerns, directs their industry, regulates the descent of property, and subdivides their inheritances - what remains, but to spare them all the care of thinking and all the trouble of living?

"Thus it every day renders the exercise of the free agency of man less useful and less frequent; it circumscribes the will within a narrower range, and gradually robs a man of all the uses of himself... After having thus successively taken each member of the community in its powerful grasp, and fashioned them at will, the supreme power then extends its arm over the whole community. It covers the surface of society with a network of small complicated rules, minute and uniform, through which the most original minds and the most energetic characters cannot penetrate, to rise above the crowd. The will of man is not shattered, but softened, bent, and guided: men are seldom forced by it to act, but they are constantly restrained from acting: such a power does not destroy, but it prevents existence; it does not tyrannize, but it compresses, enervates, extinguishes, and stupefies a people, till each nation is reduced to be nothing better than a flock of timid and industrious animals, of which the government is the shepherd...

"They devise a sole, tutelary, and all-powerful form of government, but elected by the people. They combine the principle of centralization and that of popular sovereignty; this gives them a respite; they console themselves for being in tutelage by the reflection that they have chosen their own guardians. Every man allows himself to be put in leading-strings, because he sees that it is not a person or a class of persons, but the people at large that holds the end of his chain. By this system the people shake off their state of dependence just long enough to select their master, and then relapse into it again. A great many persons at the present day are quite contented with this sort of compromise between administrative despotism and the sovereignty of the people; and they think they have done enough for the protection of individual freedom when they have surrendered it to the power of the nation at large. This does not satisfy me: the nature of him I am to obey signifies less to me than the fact of extorted obedience." (Vol II, Bk 4, Chap 6)

Personally, I think, Harvard is more concerned about notoriety and pandering than it is scholarship. Truth there will certainly not set you free. Work, maybe. It has I believe already conferred on Oprah the title of model entrepreneur. Why it doesn't build up a gigantic football program is beyond me. Perhaps they are afraid of that much democracy. Or that ppl will begin to see them for what they really are.