Economic Totalitarianism

[username18333]

As capitalism marches off the plank of zero marginal costs, what happens to physical value?

Baudrillard presents hyperreality as the terminal stage of simulation, where a sign or image has no relation to any reality whatsoever, but is “its own pure simulacrum” (Baudrillard 1994, 6). The real, he says, has become an operational effect of symbolic processes, just as images are technologically generated and coded before we actually perceive them. This means technological mediation has usurped the productive role of the Kantian subject, the locus of an original synthesis of concepts and intuitions, as well as the Marxian worker, the producer of capital though labor, and the Freudian unconscious, the mechanism of repression and desire. “From now on,” says Baudrillard, “signs are exchanged against each other rather than against the real” (Baudrillard 1993, 7), so production now means signs producing other signs. The system of symbolic exchange is therefore no longer real but “hyperreal.” Where the real is “that of which it is possible to provide an equivalent reproduction,” the hyperreal, says Baudrillard, is “that which is always already reproduced” (Baudrillard 1993, 73). The hyperreal is a system of simulation simulating itself.

(Red colorization mine.)

Possession is to the hyperreal what control is to the real.

Epicurus believed that, on the basis of a radical materialism which dispensed with transcendent entities such as the Platonic Ideas or Forms…

“[V]alue” (generalizethis) is not “physical” (generalizethis); therefore, “physical value” (generalizethis) does not exist (in the real) to have something (thereof) “happen[] to [it]” (generalizethis).

[Erdogan]

...

Hats off to you, trollercoaster, two scary (totalitarian) articles.  Bravo.

I yesterday read the NY Post one about the various databases that O's team is preparing.  Forced desegregation, coercion on towns to ruin themselves.  Preparation to go after whomever they choose.  What kind of liberty is that?

And I smiled when I saw the crooksandliars.com name of their site.  Then I read the piece on Wesley Clark's proposal.  Scary!  Gen. Clark has proposed some weird shit since he retired, may we now see "The Real Wesley Clark" now that he no longer is in the military.

The combination of government spying on individuals, loss of freedom of expression, loss of the rule of law, means the overthrough of freedom, and rule by fear.

Today, a normal person tries to avoid writing things on open media including nonencrypted messages, because they fear being targeted, wrongly, as a terrorist. Next step is that they fear the same also in private, encrypted communication, because they can not trust their own friends or relatives not to flag them.

[username18333]

The combination of government spying on individuals, loss of freedom of expression, loss of the rule of law, means the overthrough of freedom, and rule by fear.

Today, a normal person tries to avoid writing things on open media including nonencrypted messages, because they fear being targeted, wrongly, as a terrorist. Next step is that they fear the same also in private, encrypted communication, because they can not trust their own friends or relatives not to flag them.

(Red colorization mine.)

Nietzsche’s philosophy contemplates the meaning of values and their significance to human existence. Given that no absolute values exist, in Nietzsche’s worldview, the evolution of values on earth must be measured by some other means. How then shall they be understood? The existence of a value presupposes a value-positing perspective, and values are created by human beings (and perhaps other value-positing agents) as aids for survival and growth. Because values are important for the well being of the human animal, because belief in them is essential to our existence, we oftentimes prefer to forget that values are our own creations and to live through them as if they were absolute. For these reasons, social institutions enforcing adherence to inherited values are permitted to create self-serving economies of power, so long as individuals living through them are thereby made more secure and their possibilities for life enhanced. Nevertheless, from time to time the values we inherit are deemed no longer suitable and the continued enforcement of them no longer stands in the service of life. To maintain allegiance to such values, even when they no longer seem practicable, turns what once served the advantage to individuals to a disadvantage, and what was once the prudent deployment of values into a life denying abuse of power. When this happens the human being must reactivate its creative, value-positing capacities and construct new values.

(Red colorization mine.)

As summary Kant named four kinds of government:
1. Law and freedom without force (anarchy).
2. Law and force without freedom (despotism).
3. Force without freedom and law (barbarism).
4. Force with freedom and law (republic).

(Red colorization mine.)

[Epicurus] regarded the unacknowledged fear of death and punishment as the primary cause of anxiety among human beings, and anxiety in turn as the source of extreme and irrational desires.

(Red colorization mine.)

[generalizethis]

As capitalism marches off the plank of zero marginal costs, what happens to physical value?

Baudrillard presents hyperreality as the terminal stage of simulation, where a sign or image has no relation to any reality whatsoever, but is “its own pure simulacrum” (Baudrillard 1994, 6). The real, he says, has become an operational effect of symbolic processes, just as images are technologically generated and coded before we actually perceive them. This means technological mediation has usurped the productive role of the Kantian subject, the locus of an original synthesis of concepts and intuitions, as well as the Marxian worker, the producer of capital though labor, and the Freudian unconscious, the mechanism of repression and desire. “From now on,” says Baudrillard, “signs are exchanged against each other rather than against the real” (Baudrillard 1993, 7), so production now means signs producing other signs. The system of symbolic exchange is therefore no longer real but “hyperreal.” Where the real is “that of which it is possible to provide an equivalent reproduction,” the hyperreal, says Baudrillard, is “that which is always already reproduced” (Baudrillard 1993, 73). The hyperreal is a system of simulation simulating itself.

(Red colorization mine.)

Possession is to the hyperreal what control is to the real.

Epicurus believed that, on the basis of a radical materialism which dispensed with transcendent entities such as the Platonic Ideas or Forms…

“[V]alue” (generalizethis) is not “physical” (generalizethis); therefore, “physical value” (generalizethis) does not exist (in the real) to have something (thereof) “happen[] to [it]” (generalizethis).

Not my point. My point is how does the way we value physical things transfer or change--what becomes valued? Do states that only wield physical force get lowered on the totem as digital worlds creep into our lives. But thanks for the lecture, dad, but remember context next time.

[Erdogan]

username18333; Nietzches analysis of value was interesting. Must read him (at some point in the distant future ).

The connection between value and price:

Value depends on the individual valuer (the subject), according to what supports his life best, everything (in his life) taken into account.

When each valuing individual starts to trade, the result of each trade is a price. The price is historical only, because the valuations change instantly and partly inconcient (using fast thinking). A price is expressed as a pair, apples can be priced in cows, and cows in apples. Money is also such a thing that is valued individually by everyone. Since money is practical for exchange (that is why those things are called money anyway), we see prices expressed in money a lot. And with many traders in the same arena, we have a market.

The (historical) price of something is a guideline for every trader. If he knows the price of yesterday, he knows the approximate value that others placed on the thing in the past. Therefore he can calculate, and it is also quicker to find the bid or ask point that is likely to succeed with an executed trade.

tl;dr Value is individual. Price is historical, exposes others' valuations.

[username18333]

My point is how does the way we value physical things transfer or change--what becomes valued? Do states that only wield physical force get lowered on the totem as digital worlds creep into our lives. But thanks for the lecture, dad, but remember context next time.

[…]

[E]ach step in the chain doesn't seem to be related. I'm also not sold on the existence of this hyperreality.

1.  “[E]ach step in the chain” (r3wt) strips a subconscious pattern of behavior of its primitivism. (E.g., nations “close the border” whereas [chimp] colonies “improve[] a male chimp’s access to resources”.)

2.

"tates" (generalizethis), as well, are not "physical" (generalizethis) and, therefore, cannot, within the real, "wield physical force" (generalizethis): those subject to the "virtual reality" (i.e., hyperreality [i.e., any network of symbols that, exclusively, references symbols]) do so (in reality, not in effect [for their collective delusions about the constitution of Real]).

[username18333]

username18333; Nietzches analysis of value was interesting. Must read him (at some point in the distant future ).

(Perhaps I have not been clear?)

Value depends on the individual valuer (the subject), according to what supports his life best, everything (in his life) taken into account.

It would seem to me that, under postmodern Epicureanism, "[v]alue" (Erdogan), an element of the hyperreal (as indicated by its definition in terms of "the individual" [Erdogan], which references an undefined group wherefrom "the individual" [Erdogan] constitutes such), exists for "the individual valuer" because they are both symbols of a network thereof (exclusively). "[H]is life" (Erdogan), as an element of the real ("his" can be understood to reference any male human physically extant), does not relate to value in any tangiable way. Instead (again, under postmodern Epicureanism), it (i.e., fear) is "the sum of all fears" as they are manifest for a given stimulus (i.e., "capital"). As fear mounts, value does so in turn.

The (historical) price of something is a guideline for every trader. If he knows the price of yesterday, he knows the approximate value that others placed on the thing in the past. Therefore he can calculate, and it is also quicker to find the bid or ask point that is likely to succeed with an executed trade.

An extrinsic assessment of this "sum of fears" would constitute "price" (Erdogan).

When each valuing individual starts to trade, the result of each trade is a price. The price is historical only, because the valuations change instantly and partly inconcient (using fast thinking). A price is expressed as a pair, apples can be priced in cows, and cows in apples. Money is also such a thing that is valued individually by everyone. Since money is practical for exchange (that is why those things are called money anyway), we see prices expressed in money a lot. And with many traders in the same arena, we have a market.

So his "solution" is NIRP and a cashless society to prevent anyone from escaping paying negative interest rates on their wealth. And use this resource extraction to continue to backstop the $250 trillion of debt in the world. In order words, Summers thinks we are stupid enough to be a dog chasing our tail wherein the excess "capital" is money we are expropriating from ourselves to prop up "capital" that would otherwise evaporate in a contagion of defaults. And then claim this excess capital that we stole from ourselves (via NIRP) is what is causing the excessive market demand for return of capital (aka safe haven) and thus NIRP.

Soc. We shall know better, my good friend, in a little while. The point which I should first wish to understand is whether the [capital] or [money] is beloved by the [1‱] because it is [money], or [money] because it is beloved of the [1‱].

(Germaneness mine.)

[Erdogan]

username18333; Nietzches analysis of value was interesting. Must read him (at some point in the distant future ).

(Perhaps I have not been clear?)

Value depends on the individual valuer (the subject), according to what supports his life best, everything (in his life) taken into account.

It would seem to me that, under postmodern Epicureanism, "[v]alue" (Erdogan), an element of the hyperreal (as indicated by its definition in terms of "the individual" [Erdogan], which references an undefined group wherefrom "the individual" [Erdogan] constitutes such), exists for "the individual valuer" because they are both symbols of a network thereof (exclusively). "[H]is life" (Erdogan), as an element of the real ("his" can be understood to reference any male human physically extant), does not relate to value in any tangiable way. Instead (again, under postmodern Epicureanism), it (i.e., fear) is "the sum of all fears" as they are manifest for a given stimulus (i.e., "capital"). As fear mounts, value does so in turn.

The (historical) price of something is a guideline for every trader. If he knows the price of yesterday, he knows the approximate value that others placed on the thing in the past. Therefore he can calculate, and it is also quicker to find the bid or ask point that is likely to succeed with an executed trade.

An extrinsic assessment of this "sum of fears" would constitute "price" (Erdogan).

When each valuing individual starts to trade, the result of each trade is a price. The price is historical only, because the valuations change instantly and partly inconcient (using fast thinking). A price is expressed as a pair, apples can be priced in cows, and cows in apples. Money is also such a thing that is valued individually by everyone. Since money is practical for exchange (that is why those things are called money anyway), we see prices expressed in money a lot. And with many traders in the same arena, we have a market.

So his "solution" is NIRP and a cashless society to prevent anyone from escaping paying negative interest rates on their wealth. And use this resource extraction to continue to backstop the $250 trillion of debt in the world. In order words, Summers thinks we are stupid enough to be a dog chasing our tail wherein the excess "capital" is money we are expropriating from ourselves to prop up "capital" that would otherwise evaporate in a contagion of defaults. And then claim this excess capital that we stole from ourselves (via NIRP) is what is causing the excessive market demand for return of capital (aka safe haven) and thus NIRP.

Soc. We shall know better, my good friend, in a little while. The point which I should first wish to understand is whether the [capital] or [money] is beloved by the [1‱] because it is [money], or [money] because it is beloved of the [1‱].

(Germaneness mine.)

I have problems understanding this. Removing myself from the discussion.

[username18333]

I have problems understanding this. Removing myself from the discussion.

Hark, “the pious or holy” (Plato) “the capital or money” (qtd. in username18333) is “a yoke” (Jer. 28.14).

Baudrillard presents hyperreality as the terminal stage of simulation, where a sign or image has no relation to any reality whatsoever, but is “its own pure simulacrum” (Baudrillard 1994, 6). The real, he says, has become an operational effect of symbolic processes, just as images are technologically generated and coded before we actually perceive them. This means technological mediation has usurped the productive role of the Kantian subject, the locus of an original synthesis of concepts and intuitions, as well as the Marxian worker, the producer of capital though labor, and the Freudian unconscious, the mechanism of repression and desire. “From now on,” says Baudrillard, “signs are exchanged against each other rather than against the real” (Baudrillard 1993, 7), so production now means signs producing other signs. The system of symbolic exchange is therefore no longer real but “hyperreal.” Where the real is “that of which it is possible to provide an equivalent reproduction,” the hyperreal, says Baudrillard, is “that which is always already reproduced” (Baudrillard 1993, 73). The hyperreal is a system of simulation simulating itself.

(Red colorization mine.)

The truth is that the State is a conspiracy designed not only to exploit, but above all to corrupt its citizens… Henceforth, I shall never serve any government anywhere.

Tribe is hyperreal and begets possession. Possession is [hyper]real and begets money. Money is hyperreal and begets state. State is [hyper]real and begets hyperreality.

I have never wished to cater to the crowd; for what I know they do not approve, and what they approve I do not know.

[generalizethis]

My point is how does the way we value physical things transfer or change--what becomes valued? Do states that only wield physical force get lowered on the totem as digital worlds creep into our lives. But thanks for the lecture, dad, but remember context next time.

[…]

[E]ach step in the chain doesn't seem to be related. I'm also not sold on the existence of this hyperreality.

1.  “[E]ach step in the chain” (r3wt) strips a subconscious pattern of behavior of its primitivism. (E.g., nations “close the border” whereas [chimp] colonies “improve[] a male chimp’s access to resources”.)

2.

"tates" (generalizethis), as well, are not "physical" (generalizethis) and, therefore, cannot, within the real, "wield physical force" (generalizethis): those subject to the "virtual reality" (i.e., hyperreality [i.e., any network of symbols that, exclusively, references symbols]) do so (in reality, not in effect [for their collective delusions about the constitution of Real]).

How much do i value your opinion?   This symbol has been closed for work. 

[THX 1138]

This article, The End of Capitalism Has Begun", by Paul Mason (plugging his new book) might be of interest. OK, it's flawed, it mentions the "M" world which many here will baulk at, and is perhaps a little too optimistic, but some interesting points I think, and is kind of relevant to what's being discussed in this thread.

"Without us noticing, we are entering the postcapitalist era. At the heart of further change to come is information technology, new ways of working and the sharing economy. The old ways will take a long while to disappear, but it’s time to be utopian"

"Postcapitalism is possible because of three major changes information technology has brought about in the past 25 years. First, it has reduced the need for work, blurred the edges between work and free time and loosened the relationship between work and wages. The coming wave of automation, currently stalled because our social infrastructure cannot bear the consequences, will hugely diminish the amount of work needed – not just to subsist but to provide a decent life for all. Second, information is corroding the market’s ability to form prices correctly. That is because markets are based on scarcity while information is abundant. The system’s defence mechanism is to form monopolies – the giant tech companies – on a scale not seen in the past 200 years, yet they cannot last. By building business models and share valuations based on the capture and privatisation of all socially produced information, such firms are constructing a fragile corporate edifice at odds with the most basic need of humanity, which is to use ideas freely."

"Even now many people fail to grasp the true meaning of the word “austerity”. Austerity is not eight years of spending cuts, as in the UK, or even the social catastrophe inflicted on Greece. It means driving the wages, social wages and living standards in the west down for decades until they meet those of the middle class in China and India on the way up."

"...once knowledge becomes a productive force in its own right, outweighing the actual labour spent creating a machine, the big question becomes not one of “wages versus profits” but who controls what Marx called the “power of knowledge”... In these musings, not published until the mid-20th century, Marx imagined information coming to be stored and shared in something called a “general intellect” – which was the mind of everybody on Earth connected by social knowledge, in which every upgrade benefits everybody. In short, he had imagined something close to the information economy in which we live. And, he wrote, its existence would “blow capitalism sky high”."

http://www.theguardian.com/books/2015/jul/17/postcapitalism-end-of-capitalism-begun

[generalizethis]

^ 

Good piece. Once a direct neural to computer interfaces reach the point where neurons can interact intimately with data, the bony veil of our skull will be lifted and our brain's capacity will expand into computer assisted consciousness. Though some may want to sit in their dusty recliners and muse (too much) over the meaning of symbols, without really getting that it's subjective and can't be redistributed in the value driven world with out some sort of mental violence--usually in the form of name and link dropping. I want to be inside the computer and see what alien values arise, if any....

[TPTB_need_war]

The block chain is a central component, but (afaik) everyone has been doing it (slightly but thus catastrophically) wrong.

But how to do it right? That's the big question.

For me at the moment, I posit and claim it is no longer a question, rather a secret to be proven. Apology for that. I am moving as fast as I can.

Next step is that they fear the same also in private, encrypted communication, because they can not trust their own friends or relatives not to flag them.

That is why in the Knowledge Age you create an anonymous identity and operate from it when doing any digital exchange. You do not tell anyone this identity, not even your wife.

With your physical identity you discuss only safe topics such as "how is the weather?" or "the grand kids are growing up fast".

[TPTB_need_war]

As capitalism marches off the plank of zero marginal costs, what happens to physical value?

...

Capitalism is dead and we're all scared shitless so we keep running around the track playing the "remember when?" game.

What replaces this system?...

Answer:

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=355212.msg11917056#msg11917056

The zero marginal costs are only in the physical realm. The knowledge component can never be 0 unless you can make entropy reversible and stop time.

[trollercoaster]

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/europe/spanish-ghost-airport-that-cost-1bn-to-build-sells-at-auction-for-10000-10399433.html

[generalizethis]

As capitalism marches off the plank of zero marginal costs, what happens to physical value?

...

Capitalism is dead and we're all scared shitless so we keep running around the track playing the "remember when?" game.

What replaces this system?...

Answer:


https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=355212.msg11917056#msg11917056

The zero marginal costs are only in the physical realm. The knowledge component can never be 0 unless you can make entropy reversible and stop time.

What if you could turn off? Stop your time. We can't, at least not in our current state, but an AI could experiment with what happens when time moves forward, but you do not. Could you scale yourself down to a point where there isn't even interactions with or on a subatomic level--to achieve a state of non-movement? Humans tend to think in terms of expansion, but what if AI goes the other way?

Dying (Emily Dickinson)

I heard a fly buzz when I died;
The stillness round my form
Was like the stillness in the air
Between the heaves of storm.

The eyes beside had wrung them dry,
And breaths were gathering sure
For that last onset, when the king
Be witnessed in his power.

I willed my keepsakes, signed away
What portion of me I
Could make assignable,-and then
There interposed a fly,

With blue, uncertain, stumbling buzz,
Between the light and me;
And then the windows failed, and then
I could not see to see.

This is Emily playing with the idea of past, present, and future colliding. Though her future self cannot see beyond the last moment, but maybe that is the real divine state: a point of zero-interaction.

[TPTB_need_war]

Expert Bernstein and his expert collaborator Tanga on the crypto "apocalypse":

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lqLyvO2Apm8

[username18333]

^ 

Good piece. Once a direct neural to computer interfaces reach the point where neurons can interact intimately with data, the bony veil of our skull will be lifted and our brain's capacity will expand into computer assisted consciousness. Though some may want to sit in their dusty recliners and muse (too much) over the meaning of symbols, without really getting that it's subjective and can't be redistributed in the value driven world with out some sort of mental violence--usually in the form of name and link dropping. I want to be inside the computer and see what alien values arise, if any....

how can you be certain of anyone else's existence but your own?

That system would then be able to identify cases where the latter exists in the absence of the former, and hence, to learn to distinguish between cases of veridical perception and cases of hallucination. Such internal monitoring is viewed here as constitutive of conscious experience: A mental state is a conscious mental state when the system that possesses this mental state is (at least non-conceptually) sensitive to its existence. Thus, and unlike what is assumed to be case in HOT Theory, meta-representations can be both subpersonal and non-conceptual.

No mechanism whereby a self could ascertain the extrinsic-thereto could exist extrinsic to it; therefore, the self cannot be (conclusively) said to perceive anything beyond itself. However, “the self” is an element of the phenomenology of consciousness and exists within the real only insofar as the "meta-representations" (Cleeremans 1, 4, 6-7, 10-1) that precipitate it so exist.

[generalizethis]

^ 

Good piece. Once a direct neural to computer interfaces reach the point where neurons can interact intimately with data, the bony veil of our skull will be lifted and our brain's capacity will expand into computer assisted consciousness. Though some may want to sit in their dusty recliners and muse (too much) over the meaning of symbols, without really getting that it's subjective and can't be redistributed in the value driven world with out some sort of mental violence--usually in the form of name and link dropping. I want to be inside the computer and see what alien values arise, if any....

how can you be certain of anyone else's existence but your own?

That system would then be able to identify cases where the latter exists in the absence of the former, and hence, to learn to distinguish between cases of veridical perception and cases of hallucination. Such internal monitoring is viewed here as constitutive of conscious experience: A mental state is a conscious mental state when the system that possesses this mental state is (at least non-conceptually) sensitive to its existence. Thus, and unlike what is assumed to be case in HOT Theory, meta-representations can be both subpersonal and non-conceptual.

No mechanism whereby a self could ascertain the extrinsic-thereto could exist extrinsic to it; therefore, the self cannot be (conclusively) said to perceive anything beyond itself. However, “the self” is an element of the phenomenology of consciousness and exists within the real only insofar as the "meta-representations" (Cleeremans 1, 4, 6-7, 10-1) that precipitate it so exist.

Live in your own bony box. I'll go where my bliss takes me. 

[username18333]

Live in your own bony box. I'll go where my bliss takes me.  

He who is not satisfied with a little, is satisfied with nothing.

(“Box,” as you use it, appeals to psychological conditioning, not reason.) If a (mathematical) limit cannot be defined with an arbitrary (numerical) constant 𝛿, it cannot be defined.