Shop so you can Work so you can Shop...

http://www.moneymarketing.co.uk/regulation/bank-deputy-governor-tells-savers-to-spend/1019205.article

Charlie Bean, BoE deputy governor, has called us all to spend more. Why? Because this will create jobs. Why? So we can work more. Why? So we can spend more? Why? So the economy can grow. Why? So investors have something to invest in. Why? So they can get an income without working. Why? Because people don't like to work. So taken as a whole it is rather crazy to have a system which reduces the amount of work, by increasing the amount of work. Of course we know the reason this insanity exists its because only "a class" of people are allowed not to work, and they do this by forcing work onto another class of people. Endlessly fascinating how mad this species is.

But I suppose it is consistent. We like private property and we hate public spending and taxes. So now the Conservatives have put the money in our pockets by cutting public spending it is only natural that we have to do the spending that previously the government was doing. And what we the sheep can't see is that 60 million people buying flowers for their garden at 3.99 a flower is going to create a swathe of Britain covered in identical cheap plants - while a central park committee with a budget of just £240 million would be able to provide a very much better swathe of Britain for everyone to enjoy - larger, cheaper and better. Apply that to everything and we see how jobs are created by private ownership and fragmenting society into small inefficient family units who then have to work harder.

And no-one is going to listen to Charlie Bean because the Right wing in the West have been busy turning everyone into small time owners and capitalists. Now we have a right to invest our savings so that we can earn back the dividends that many people think righly belong to the people who did the work in the first place. The tabloids (owned by capitalists and preaching the message of capitalism) fail to note that while the tax payer takes money from us to spend on us, the dividend paymenst are taken from us to spend on investors for their own amusement. This never gets criticised for some reason - wonder why ;-)

The standard retort is that without dividends what incentive is there to invest? Well a friend recently sent me a BSc thesis to read on Capital structure and it was pointed out that creating too much debt in a company will frighten investors off so the share price will drop and this will hamper the ability of the company to borrow more. So actually the banks are the real supply of money anyway and investors hold the company to ransom threatening to sell in times of trouble. Quite what the investing public are supposed to see that a bank seeking to find investments itself can't see is a mystery to me. The whole stock market still seems extraneous and essentially the betting shop for upper class people. It doesn't work either as the crashes show. And while talking of investment banks that can lend upto 14 times more than they have (even after the new Basel III rules) don't really have any right to charge interest on that money because they don't own it. But given that such free money is so available why do companies need investors at all?

And it is even madder than this because the banking system even with all this free liquidity has actually been lent by the common man the eventual estimated sum of £80,000 for each worker in the UK. We are lending the banking system almost as much money as most of us will ever be lent. I hope people get the cheque for the 5% interest they are due! If we had all this money in the first place why do we ever need to go to a bank? Next time I want a house I'll just go to the treasury and ask for the money that they so quickly found for the banking sector...

Except of course it doesn't work like this because we are "us" and they are "them". It is the same old structure as has always been of ruling elite and the common people who support them. Why anyone ever thought things would ever change is a mystery to me. This is what humans are like: face it. It is the same now as times of war, the ruling elite get threatened and they ask us to bail them out. I've never seen why we should? They take the position as ruling elite and so having built the system up they create their own problem in keeping it propped up. It is not our problem at all. If it meant that much to them I suggest they took it all a bit more seriously when they had to the chance. Mr Bean I suggest would do better to use his authority not to prop up a system that doesn't work, but rather to create an economic system that actually did worked. But that wouldn't be playing the game and he wouldn't be in the ruling elite for long. If he ever needs a starter in this project I suggest he builds the system around the "Bernanke Helicopter". The problem is the distribution of wealth not (while we have oil and machine labour) the supply of labour. But the elite would never accept this because they wish to keep the right not to work to themselves; so be it, my view is sink with the ship if you won't jump over board.

A stat I wanted to find a while ago: In UK we use 165 Gj/person/year. Calculated from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_energy_consumption_per_capita

A high sustainable output rate while cycling is about 200W (200j/sec). Using this rough value we use the equivalent energy each per year of 26 slaves cycling at a good rate non stop all year.

Also http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orders_of_magnitude_(power)

Actually 200W is the useful output; 500W is the total energy consumed so better calculation is 10 slaves working 24hours. So 30 slaves working physical labour for 8 shifts/day.

The brain is estimated to use between 20-40Watt. Say 40Watt for hard thinking jobs. So an intellectual army of 400 slaves doing thinking for us!

The only problem is that slaves don't eat oil... but imagine if they did!

Oh and of course there is me contributing my labour to this slave work force!

That is how much work gets done for us by oil. That is why it is a nonsense to say that we really have to work at all. Increasingly jobs are created by the ruling elite chosing an economic model that fragments the efforts of the masses and forces them into petty private ventures. As long as we think in terms of just 1 person and what 1 person can do, we create inefficiencies that create jobs.

This is a different analysis from the paranoid people who think that the elite do this to control us. I take Thorstein Veblen's argument that what the ruling elite fear most is not revolution but the sheer productivity of the masses. Somehow this much be controlled and directed toward the rich to ensure that social hierarchy is maintained because as argued in this blog the human species needs social hierarchy (for some reason) just as rabbits, mice and primates do.

It is not an orchestrated conspiracry. There are people pulling on all sides of the rope. For now however we know that Charlie Bean has sold out to the city to support the economic status quo. Ed Miliband on the other hand has not and it is a relief to see him speak up for the other team for once - been a long time!