To clarify re: economics, I really don’t know all that much about radical centralism so I was wondering how they approach economic issues. Frex liberals tend to think of economics in terms of making sure the poor and hungry get taken care of and have a way up. Free market conservatives tend to think of it in terms of letting the marketplace do its thing as efficiently as possible, with as little regulation as possible. Social conservatives tend to think of economics in terms of preserving the status quo. By getting a fix on where radical centralism fits into this mix, I’ll have a better grasp of what they’re all about … if they indeed do fit into this mix.
To begin with, you need to understand that economic policies are not the same as economics as a science, just as engineering is not the same thing as physics, although it is based on physics. Of course, the parallel is not a perfect one, because the laws of physics are established with reasonable certainty, and uncontroversial, and the laws of economics are not.
Oh, and in answer to your question: In normative terms, Radical Centrists have no ideological problem with government intervention in the economy for the sake of spreading prosperity as widely as possible; they are entirely commited to that, in general terms. Therefore, I would simply presume that they subscribe to a school of economic science which holds that it is possible for such intervention to be done effectively and produce the intended results.
It seems to me like EvilCaptor’s question is asking where the “Radical Center” would fall within the left and right paradigm.
Something I never understand is why “expanding the middle class” is such an all encompassing answer. First off, I think that the judgement of what actually is poverty is way off, because it’s so Western centric to begin with. We use ourselves as the standard by which all other societies should be measured as though our society is the best one. Perhaps it is time we started thinking that maybe the idea that our society is the best is a myth, and that what we have isn’t all that it’s cracked up to be.
Let me ask one simple question: “Do you think the biome could support a global middle class?”, I think it’s important to answer that question, and then if your answer is yes, then my second question is “how?” I think these two questions are of paramount importance before discussing whether or not to create “asset building incentives.”, asset building incentives in and of themselves require faith that our system truly is what the whole world needs to adopt. However, with the amount of material waste we create, I tend to doubt it.
My other posts have been completely ignored in this thread, as often happens when it gets hijacked by the economists.
The general tone of this thread are of an alien autopsy of the “Radical Center” as something completely ‘other’ to the participants of the thread.
Erek
I posed substantially that question in this thread: “Can nine billion people enjoy the standard of living of the rich?” http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?t=264849 (It’s based on an article by Michael Lind, a prominet Radical Centrist and NAF member, who contends that it is materially, if not politically, possible.), No consensus emerged, but you might find the discussion informative.
Pardon. Your longest post to date was really long and hard to digest – and, IMO, just a bit off-topic. Your conclusion is, “Think Networked Kibbutzes or Hippy Communes.” Maybe a society made up of such social/economic associations would be healthier and more prosperous than what we’ve got now – but that does not invalidate the Rad-Centrist agenda, nor does it help us decide whether that agenda, on its own terms, is workable or not. At any rate, it’s not incompatible, is it? That is, if something like Boshara’s Stakeholder Program were enacted, and if it worked as intended, then some Americans could use their enhanced personal wealth to help found a commune of the type you describe; and then the model, if it proved successful, might catch on and spread to the point where most economic activity would be done in such settings – which I assume is what you consider a desirable future.
Nothing wrong with that, is there? It’s a new thing, a new set of ideas; it needs to be explained and evaluated in terms of things with which we are more familiar.
BTW, mswas, I think few “communes” exist at present for the same reason family farms have been squeezed out by giant agribiz plantations, and mom-and-pop stores have a hard time competing with Wal-Mart: Economies of scale. Larger-scale operations are, generally speaking, more efficient. Whether they are sustainable in the long run is a different question.
I really do not understand what this has to do with my remarks about the stakeholder act. This discussion of economics is pretty ancillary, especially since you left hanging what I feel are valid practical objections to this scheme. If you do not think they have merit, by all means, undermine them.
As for proven facts, well, that is rather an odd question. Neoclassical economics is a research program that can generate host of theories. Some hold up very well, others rather less so. Neoclassical economists disagree constantly.
Other metatheories of economics that reject some of the basic neoclassical assumptions (individuals are utility-maximizing, etc) are going the way of Ptolemaic astronomy. You don’t see too many Austrians anymore, and for good reason.
I do not see how you can contrast monetarist with neoclassical economics, since it uses the tools and relies on many of the basic assumptions of the neoclassical school. Anyway, Milton Friedman retracted many of the basic monetarist hypotheses a year or so ago. It is not in good shape. Post-Keynesian econ isn’t doing much better.
The point is, there is no ideological content to “economics.” The basic neoclassical assumptions are driven by deductive logic and mathematical convenience. The kinds of hypotheses that they generate can be ideological or not, depending on the economist. That said, there is a big difference between Paul Krugman’s newspaper columns and his publications in economic journals. You might never believe that the author is the same.
I think Boshara is thinking of setting up something along the lines of the Social Security Administration to disburse and/or invest these benefits. I don’t think the SSA’s administrative costs are significant compared to the amount of money it handles – at least, Bush hasn’t made an issue of that in his efforts to privatize the system.
From your lips to Dubya’s ears . . .
Of course, the monies in question need not be invested in stocks. They could simply be deposited in special interest-bearing bank accounts, or certificates of deposit.
Anyone whose financial position is significantly improved by the Stakeholder Program would, of course, not be eligible for any means-tested entitlements, such as AFDC, food stamps, and Medicaid. By this, I mean anyone for whom the programs enhancement of personal wealth translates into an increase in personal disposable income – which it almost certainly will, but the process takes time, maybe decades. For further explanation of this point, click on the link and read Boshara’s whole article (I excerpted only a few paragraphs).
Of course, we are already comfortable (or have been up to now) with the idea that some entitlements, such as Social Security retirement benefits and Medicare, should not be means-tested. Bill Gates can start drawing SS benefits when he’s old enough, if he wants to. Perhaps that should be changed – but it’s a different discussion.
My answer to your question would be “yes” but the relationship the middle class would have to its environment would have to be considerably different to what it is now. It is evident to me and in a few decades will become evident even to conservatives that we are going to have to deal with maintaining the entire Earth as an inhabitable biosphere, if we want to continue human civilization on its present scale. I think it’s very possible to support the entire population of the Earth in the comfort and convenience we now associate with middle class life, though the cultural forms that “middle class life” will take will likely vary greatly from culture to culture.
We will have to find more energy efficient fuels and forms of transportation, and use them in more ecologically viable ways. We will do these things, once it becomes evident to all that the other choices – global economic collapse or global warfare over shrinking supplies of nonrenewable resources. Sadly, we will NOT do things until it becomes evident to all. The Third World especially will lag in these efforts.
Sorry about the delay. I do not typically post over the weekend.
There is a brand new CBO study of this subject. I do not have time to read it now, but for your interest, it is located here. I will definitely take a look at it later as perhaps it can inform our discussion.
Indeed. Believe me, I do not exactly have strong negative feelings about the financial services industry, as it pays my salary. I am intimately aware of the high costs of regulation compliance. I am having a difficult time imagining how the government can regulate the maintenance of stakeholder accounts, as the costs of compliance would significantly erode the returns.
My friend, if you can find me an interest-bearing account or a CD that produces a 7% return, then you will be a very rich man someday.
I actually am very interested in the idea of means testing, but this is another discussion indeed.
First off let me say thanks for your thread on the biome. I will read it subsequently.
I am sorry it was hard to digest. I have a tendency to ramble. Off topic however, I disagree, for I consider myself a radical centrist, and did so before I even heard the term. Maeglin’s brother and I joked about ourselves as being the “Extreme Moderate Fringe”. So I was speaking as to what a “Radical Centrist” felt about the ideas broached. This is why I was referring to the “Alien Autopsy” aspect. I find that empirical discussion falls into a trap where it cannot come to a discussion with full understanding because identification with the issue is left out in order to remain detached. So I feel that while the rest of you are discussing it from an outside perspective, I am discussing it from an inside perspective. Nothing wrong with it, I just wanted to point it out.
Personally, I am against big government initiatives, and would rather see private initiatives. If American Express wants to offer initiatives for such collectives I’m all for it. I’d probably even accept grants from the government, but even so, if it came down to eliminating such programs in favor of lower taxes, I would go for it. Yes, you assume right, I think that a more collectivized society is the way civilization should go, it will reduce redundancy, which in the end is the only way I see to accomplish sustainability. If you try to wrap your mind around how many raw newtons it takes to produce/transport/dispose of the materials used to make a playstation, or even the packaging of a standard McDonald’s value meal, then you’ll see what kind of redundancy I am talking about reducing. In the current society we live in, the average person is competing with the average person. Too much “keeping up with the Joneses” ends up with people owning duplicates of the same stuff. Much of this can be shared, if we are going to implement asset building programs, I believe they should be geared toward rewarding those reducing redundancy.
I disagree with this. First off, there are quite a few communes in existence. Look at www.ic.org for just a small sampling. While economies of scale are a definite factor, I think that it came at a time when the average person’s network was much smaller. I would argue that the larger business’s social network has more to do with it. The quality rather than the quantity. A large corporation is nothing but a collective or a group of collectives. The top 1% lives a very collective lifestyle, much moreso than the average middle-class worker. They have networks of people all over the world, and even more than that, they can pick up the phone and make a connection more easily than the average middle-class worker. It’s not so much about employing new ways of living, but about using tools that were previously unavailable to the poorer classes.
The internet makes cutting out the middle-man much easier. If I need to make my own branded case for a router (I use this example because it is something we looked into) I would go to www.emachineshop.com and give them a CAD design that my 3D guy came up with for the case. Or if I wanted to help the Tsunami victims, I would go to http://www.architectureforhumanity.org/ rather than giving money to the Red Cross, or calling the hotline during the relief concert, or even buying the relief CD I am helping to promote for www.organicrecords.net . By giving to Architecture for Humanity (A collective of 1200 architects worldwide) I know my money is going more directly to people actually working on the relief effort by designing refugee camps, and cheap modular all-weather shelters. So the economies of scale aspect is more in my favor as an individual than ever before, because of greater access through information technology. So by networking with other collectives, we can increase our buying power as a group.
I feel like I addressed your first paragraph in my comments to BrainGlutton. Something I’ve been thinking about as I’ve given some thought to alternative energy sources is the idea of balance. For instance, if we are making biodiesel, ethanol and biodegradable DVDs out of corn, how many corn fields must we support? What impact will this have on the environment? What about hydrogen powered cars that will produce more rain? I still believe that eliminating redundancy from the way we use our material resources is the only way to create sustainability. Plowing forests because we quadrupled the number of corn fields we need to sustain our society, probably isn’t the best course either.
I disagree that the third world will lag in these efforts. They are less entrenched in existing technologies, and are oftentimes more quick to adopt newer tech. That’s why there are cell phones in Africa where there are no land lines. That’s why South Korea will have 100 megabit broadband before I will. Brazil has already attempted alcohol powered cars. I think these sorts of alternatives will be more prevalent in the third world, as will smaller generators designed to sustain a village without having to build a nationwide power grid. I think we ARE doing these things. There is a grassroots biodiesel movement that is gaining ground. www.biotour.org is a DJ friend of mine that has a biodiesel bus, and he runs around doing parties to promote biodiesel. It’s all happening, and I personally am tired of the idea of trying to convince the powers that be of anything, let them be the last to know, they’ll just jump on the bandwagon when they smell a profit motive.
The problem with collectivization is an inherent distrust in our culture toward our fellow man. This distrust is encouraged by entrenched ideas portrayed in the media, from the war on terror, to the nightly news reporting every rape in the city. Think about every time you saw a “hippy treehugger” ridiculed for believing in communal living or global warming.
I also believe that focusing on the “Future of America” is a mistake. There is one world, and one world government, with constituent states, and focusing on any one country without viewing it that way is only seeing a part of the picture. We live in a globalized world, and our policy should always reflect that. The idea of the nation-state is in the way of progress. We have taken Manifest Destiny to a global scale, and there is no turning the clock back on that one. No taxation without representation means as much now as it ever did.
Erek
Errmm . . . look, mswas, the “Radical Centrists” are the guys described in the OP. IOW, people espousing that particular complex of ideas got first dibs on the name, and they’re the ones everybody in general is referring to when they use it. If your ideas more or less accord with those, you are a “radical centrist”; if not, you’re not, even if you can make a case that your way of thinking is both “radical” and “centrist.” Sorry.
Again, terminology confusion. When people speak of a “collectivized society,” what they generally mean is collectivization of all society’s economic resources in a single collective at the national/governmental level (i.e., the Soviet Union) – not the kind of “collective” represented by an autonomous commune/kibbutz, and certainly not the kind of “collective” represented by corporation.
I see what you mean, all right, but I think you mean joules (units of energy) rather than newtons (units of force). BTW, is there a source for that? Something that could tell me, e.g., the amount of joules that went into making a playstation? Or comparing the input of energy (or other resources) that went into growing a tomato on an agribiz plantation vs. growing a tomato on an organic farm?
Bear in mind that what A calls “cutting out the middleman,” B might call “eliminating jobs.” Is efficiency in resource usage always the most important consideration?
The Democrats are pretty out of line with Thomas Jefferson’s views, but they still get to consider themselves democrats right? And the people referred to are the “New America Foundation” not the entirety of “Radical-Centrism”. I didn’t say I was part of the “New America Foundation”.
Conceded.
You are right joules is the proper term. And no, I don’t know of a source for that, but if there is one, that would be very interesting.
I feel that there is a lot of bloat in society that we accept in order to save people’s jobs. There is a lot of redundancy, as well as a lot of disrespect for jobs that do exist, based upon some arbitrary monetary value. Unfortunately our culture values money over most other things, that is why a movie that is crap that made a hundred million dollars is likely to make another hundred million dollars whereas a really quality movie that didn’t isn’t likely to be seen because it didn’t get the same coverage as the blockbuster.
Something I see very often is people in my community poor their heart and soul into creating a party for people to come to, and all the people who really love parties, and really want to go scoff at cover charges and try to get around them. They make their friends feel guilty for charging money for an event that cost THEM hundreds or thousands to manage the logistics of. They feel like the people doing it SHOULD be doing it for free, and oftentimes they do. However their “friends” who are upset about this cover charge will turn around and fork over $ 40 to some corporate entity like a movie theater, or a restaurant, or on some bullshit plastic tchotzke, or a video game, or whatever, without thinking twice.
In a lot of respects it’s a lack of a basic economics education that causes this sort of behavior. Going back to your Wal Mart example, if small townspeople had understood basic economics, then they would have understood that in the long run, buying things at Wal Mart probably wouldn’t really save them the 10 - 15 a visit over going to the local store, when they realize that the person at the local store is more likely to spend their earnings in town rather than shipping it off to corporate headquarters to benefit some nebulous corporate execs the townspeople will never see.
Keep in mind, I am not one of these “corporations are evil” types. I just think there could be a more naturalized hierarchical structure that benefits the entire structure up and down the line, than what we have. Too many people at the bottom feeling like they have no stake in their workplace, and too many people at the top detached from the day to day of their workers. The only true difference between a tribe and any other collective structure is the social connection of the people to one another. Otherwise hierarchically they are more or less the same.
To put it simply, I’d like to see more personal engagement. People being able to see the fruits of their labor, and benefit themselves and those around them based upon what they are able to accomplish, rather than putting work into the void, and pulling out a paycheck from the void a few weeks later.
Erek
Yes – and people of Jefferson’s views (a highly decentralist blend of populism and libertarianism) no longer get to call themselves “Democrats.” They’ve lost the rights to the name, for complicated reasons. Nor do Libertarians get to call themselves “liberals” even though they have some historic claim to the name. (Liberal and I have gone round and round about that.)
No, but the term definitely refers to people who espouse a particular range of views and policies, not just anything that might be characterized as “radical” and “centrist.” I suggest you carefully reread the OP.
Right, as I maintain that while I don’t necessarily agree with the NAF in their totality, I am pretty much in line with the Wiki definition. Therefore I would consider myself a Rad-Centrist, as opposed to belonging to the NAF. You gave two major sources in your OP. One I agree with, and the other I don’t agree with 100%, but tend to agree with more than I would tend to agree with the two halves of the establishment or even the Libertarian party.
Erek