Who Is IOZ?: Carney

Friday, January 27, 2012

Carney

An anarchist's take on the "social safety net", which is, like Penelope's shroud, forever woven and unwoven while everyone sits around getting drunk on the host's booze: when contemplating the necessity of a safety net, it is perhaps worth asking if the highwire act is worth it to begin with.

36 comments:

Anonymous said...: foodie friday?; 1:28 PM
Anonymous said...: "Don't sorry me, babe. And shake the tail when you walk. You're better than that."; 2:08 PM
Leonard said...: I think the "highwire act" here must be our lives. And yeah: most people seem to think life is "worth it", at least if our revealed preference is taken at face value.; 2:16 PM
sevenleagueboots said...: Safety net has been commended as being strongly vaginal which bothers some men. The word itself makes some men uncomfortable. Safety net.; 2:32 PM
rob payne said...: Our “safety net”, has been and is so miserly that it is perhaps natural to wonder if it is worth it until you get to the point where it’s all that stands between you and that can of cat food. The question might be is a monetary system worth it. Of course people often confuse culture with State and both with monetary systems but it is only cultures that use monetary systems that develop different classes and thus the need for safety nets. Then there is the fantasy that po folks is somehow saintly but if those same po folks were rich they would act just like the rich.; 2:42 PM
Professor Coldheart said...: The question might be is a monetary system worth it. Of course people often confuse culture with State and both with monetary systems but it is only cultures that use monetary systems that develop different classes and thus the need for safety nets.

Well, you've confused me. Are there States without monetary systems? Because, to answer the host's rhetorical question from the previous post, the State exists because Hammurabi said, "Whoa, hold up, everyone turn out your pockets RIGHT FUCKING NOW." The rest is just pub trivia.; 3:23 PM
rob payne said...: Sure, states have monetary systems though the monetary system of Mesopotamia wasn’t exactly like the currency we have today. But consider that the only Native American tribe that developed a monetary system also developed different classes. In other tribes everyone was pretty much equal; some didn’t even have “leaders”. States are about laws like the Code of Hammurabi and laws are written for the benefit of those writing them usually at the expense of others. What ancient Mesopotamia had could hardly be considered a monetary system like we have today yet it was a state.

Mesopotamia’s monetary system dates back to only about 2,000 BC yet there were various empires dating back to 5,300 BC so there were states without currency and even so the early monetary systems of 2,000 BC were merely forms of receipts not actual currency. States are states and monetary systems are monetary systems. One state can contain more than one culture and vice versa.; 5:00 PM
Ben said...: rob -

They may not have had a monetary system, but they had debt. In fact, that's how monetary systems came to be: as a medium of transacting the debt schemes the early states required.

I don't know if I'm telling this lot stuff it already knows, but David Graeber wrote a pretty good anthropological account of the development of debt and monetary systems called Debt: The First 5,000 Years. He's also an anarchist! and his writings on the subject may be of interest to a few people here. For starters: http://theanarchistlibrary.org/authors/David_Graeber.html; 5:50 PM
rob payne said...: Ben,

Thanks for the link, very interesting stuff. I only took one class in anthropology so I’m no expert and I suppose I use the term state much too loosely but the author does say that the idea of the monetary system we are familiar with coincided with the first states, he didn’t say that a monetary system was the state itself. Or at least that’s how I read it. Still, it seems to me that the cause for the need of safety nets is monetary systems themselves. Here in the US where the family unit is de-emphasized with the idea that education and pulling oneself up by the bootstraps so that everyone is self-sufficient within the monetary system and nobody looks out for one another and the ascendency of predatory banking overlords if we don’t have safety nets a lot of people are basically screwed. I recall reading that all national boundaries are the result of state violence which makes sense to me and is reinforced by what I read at your link. At any rate it seems to me that without monetary systems which are forms of slavery and state violence as the author says we wouldn’t need safety nets if people returned to something akin to what the so-called primitive peoples had where everyone was more or less equal and looked out for one another and had no monetary system. I’m not saying do away with science and technology though with the recent news regarding Apple’s Chinese factories where people are essentially slaves working seven days a week for little money and are subject to death from Apple’s draconian company policies regarding worker safety that said technology doesn’t come without a price in human misery. Anthropology may be a “soft” science but for me it is certainly the most interesting science. People are weird.; 6:57 PM
NutellaonToast said...: In a rare moment of agreement with Leonard, yes, eating and a roof over your head are worth it. Got any other easy ones?; 7:25 PM
Karl Franz Ochstradt said...: Graeber's interesting and all, but "debt" is a broad phrase, the kind that in modern lingo means "financial obligation with interest accruing" but in small communities where barter was the order of the day, it means that as between two people exchanging goods and/or services between them, one has more to offer at the moment of exchange.

Another way to look at it would be for single adults meeting for the purpose of long-term joint-effort ("relationship") building. If one brings a child or two to the situation, that forms a sort of "debt" that two single people joining don't have.

There's all kinds of ways to see "debt." A person shouldn't take away from Graeber that finance is an obligation in all societies, that it must exist, that it's the only solution.; 7:29 PM
Compound F said...: Antinoos drannk the wine, dined on kine, then got plugged in the neck, much as we all will, even though we, in contrast, have been stomping grapes and tending the herd, while the host is wandering off some where on Odyssey Dawn.

People are owed money, but somehow the exponential debt-machiners have created too many claims on too little actual wealth. The music stops; I just noticed Germany wants "financial sovereignty" over the original democrats. Either way is not much of a system to begin with.; 5:08 AM
Anonymous said...: Oh yeah. No need for the struggle. Hunters and gatherers live very easily I am told.

Do you really think that dismantling welfare capitalism would somehow usher in a great era of plenty? Seriously, are you cracked or just incoherent?; 5:38 AM
Compound F said...: to amplify upon Anonymous upthread, we are approximately 7 billion people too late to suddenly abolish authority and have a free-for-all, even tho' that's exactly what's shaping up. Weaned? Beaten? does it matter?; 6:12 AM
Anonymous said...: @538
And there you have it, gentlemen.

Like Blintzen asked Ron Kalininovich Paul.

Should we let them die? I.E. hand over your wallet, or grandma gets it.

Capt'n Obvious; 8:17 AM
Pied Cow said...: If by "social safety net" you mean military-related government spending which enables the existence of an upper-middle and middle class, bear in mind that a significant diminution in those expenditures would translate to late BMW and Lexus payments, decreased cell phone usage, diminished utilization of universities that tailor their programs to the propagation of the upper middle class, reductions in cable television entertainment packages, financial stress on theme parks and other public entertainment venues, and so on.

Such thinking is simply mean-spirited. The mere thought of asking leading members of the community to endure such privation is much more than a well-ordered society can possibly tolerate.; 9:12 AM
Compound F said...: No, anon. "Over-shoot and collapse" is a real problem, biological, without good answers.

Witticism (such as...whatever it was you said) has its place next to the campfire, if only you could light one.

I might as well go to booman's joint for this kinda garbage.

The world is full of bone-breakers, when it needs Cuviers.

Fuck us.; 9:15 AM
Anonymous said...: http://www.lewrockwell.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2012/01/peter_jesus_drone.jpg; 9:23 AM
Anonymous said...: Compound,

"the world needs x".

Isn't that presumptuos?

The Dull Sycophant (fka Capt'n Obvious); 9:33 AM
Karl Franz Ochstradt said...: 5:38 Nonny: "Think of the children!"

Myself: Nobody made you have children. Time to take some responsibility for yourself, and quit playing at The Victim. Also, that was some really shitty reductio ad absurdum so please hurry up and dislocate your shoulder while patting yourself on the back for your "humorous put-down." Please!; 11:40 AM
Jack Crow said...: "Debt" is not a modern phrase. The Babylonian, Hebrew, Assyrian, Akkadian and Sumerian words for sin also mean indebtedness. The Greek and Roman words for clientage also imply low moral worth and submission.; 3:40 PM
Compound F said...: "the world needs x..."

Mother Nature "takes care" of its own, obviously.; 4:56 PM
Marvino said...: A Gift for you assholes: http://a1.sphotos.ak.fbcdn.net/hphotos-ak-ash4/431198_557112669656_7500037_31391959_1155977976_n.jpg; 5:23 PM
JTG said...: Even if one believes that government and social safety nets are good, it still doesn't make any sense to support a Democratic Party that has been complicit in shredding the social safety net and promoting privatization and deregulation themselves.

Yet the pwogs say everything is the fault of libertarian losers who can't even win local elections.; 6:43 PM
stephanie g said...: JTG:

No, progs say everything is the fault of those evil Republicans who fight the will of the people while simultaneously fooling the apparently retarded electorate into voting for them over and over. The Dems just need to figure out how to trick the people better into voting for them so they can do what the people REALLY want or...something. Yay Democracy!; 5:44 AM
Anonymous said...: Shut up, you stupid shitbox.; 6:57 AM
Anonymous said...: Wow, someone discovered you can swear on the Internet!

How cute!

The Dull Sycophant; 7:48 AM
rob payne said...: Democracy is just another form of tyranny where the main difference is that more propaganda is needed. The idea that the majority is always right is absurd. Do you really want the majority telling you how to live your life? 58 percent of Americans believe creationism should be taught along with evolution. 51 percent believe in flying saucers. 80 percent believe in angels. 13 percent of Americans believe in evolution, and 50 percent believe in bigfoot. So much for the majority.; 12:52 PM
Sorry said...: "By George!" said Mr. Bounderby, "when I was four or five years younger than you, I had worse bruises upon me than ten oils, twenty oils, forty oils, would have rubbed off. I didn't get 'em by posture-making, but by being banged about. There was no rope-dancing for me; I danced on the bare ground and was larruped with the rope."

I too believe in creationism, flying saucers, angels, evolution & bigfoot, but I'm skeptical of statistics.; 2:13 PM
Anonymous said...: My jury's out on Sasquatch.

But that moon landing? 100% fake.

The Dull Sycophant; 2:30 PM
antonello said...: Sasquatch? Probably not. But chupacabras? I just know those little fuckers are out there.; 3:30 PM
rob payne said...: …but I'm skeptical of statistics.

Too true, or as an old curmudgeon or some such said statisticians use statistics like a drunk uses a light pole to prop himself up. Still, this is Amarricuh.; 4:26 PM
JTG said...: stepanie,

True, saying it's all the GOP's fault is par for the course for pwoggies, but they've also been hypocritically beating up on the losertarians since Obama won the election.

And why is it that the butthurt pwogs don't use screen names? The skull-measuring paleocon trolls at least do.; 5:16 PM
Leonard said...: JTG: It is not hypocritical to beat up on heathens and heretics. Progressivism is a faith; as such, the libertarians are worse than Republicans because the libertarians are heretics.; 10:26 AM
demize! said...: "Oh yeah. No need for the struggle. Hunters and gatherers live very easily I am told."
Actually I think its been proven Hunter Gatherer societies had much more free time than your current wage slave. Im not a primitivist in the least, but I fall on the not selling ones birthright for a mess of pottage side of the debate.; 4:49 PM
Brian M said...: Until the modern era, lower class (i.e., the "99%") members in agricultural (and early industrial) societies on the whole were much less healthy than hunters and gatherers. This system "won" because there are a lot more (albeit individually oppressed) peasants produced than hunters.

The modern era of relative ease is over...especially once peak oil, climate change, and the disruptive realities of modern capitalism REALLY take hold. I would venture that the slaves awoken at 2:00 a.m. and slaving for 12 hours straight in a hot, stifling, noisy factor(those so flexible Chinese factories, man! remarkable!) so that Saint Stevie of Cupertino could have glass screens instead of plastic might find a pre-modern life more comfortable?

I don;t know...no primitivist here, either...but; 7:01 PM

Friday, January 27, 2012

Carney

36 comments:

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