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grufty jim 1978 posts |
Sep 23, 2008, 18:28
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Damn! I had a long involved (and potentially rather dull) response all typed out and the browser crashed. Bastid thing! I really can't be arsed to type it all again, so the condensed version is as follows... stray wrote: This wouldnt work, would take too long (the market would *poof* vanish in the meantime), would cost even more, and would put even more money into the pockets of those responsible. You may well be right, stray. But there is one single factor that makes me think that something along the lines of my suggestion should be attempted... which is: I don't think this bail-out is going to work. And let's face it, that's a good enough reason to try something -- anything! -- else. So given the choice between two bail-out plans which may not work, I will choose the one that prioritises the homeowners, rather than the one that prioritises the financial sector.
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stray 2057 posts |
Edited Sep 23, 2008, 19:10
Sep 23, 2008, 19:08
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grufty jim wrote: . But there is one single factor that makes me think that something along the lines of my suggestion should be attempted... which is: I don't think this bail-out is going to work. And let's face it, that's a good enough reason to try something -- anything! -- else. So given the choice between two bail-out plans which may not work, I will choose the one that prioritises the homeowners, rather than the one that prioritises the financial sector. I myself don't have that much faith in the current bail out plan, however it is much too early to say it will fail. We don't know how the fund is going to be managed, and we also do not know how the debt will eventually be sold back into the market (potentially making a profit for the govt). What you seem to be arguing for is completely removing the debt from the market by allowing the govt to write it off completely (rather than the current plan of taking it out of the market to be reintroduced later). What you seem to be arguing for is a completely no-risk mortgage market. Can you imagine how the market would behave in the future once you've set this precedent ? It's bad enough that no govt can afford the banks to collapse thereby assuring some kinda bailout, but to simply pay off the outstanding loans for those who hold them would be insane. The message would be 'don't worry if you cant pay your mortgage, the govt will pick up the tab'. This would completely overheat the housing market making things much, much worse. In fact, there would no longer be a market. You also cannot say 'oh, this is a one time deal', a market doesnt understand one time deals from it's govt, they always become precedents for it and they subsequently act accordingly. No, we cannot allow this debt to vanish, it just has to be taken away, managed, then sold back. If there was an alternative to this bail out then a set of small deals, for each bank, a la the AIG deal might work. The AIG deal is not a bail out, it is still going to go to wall and collapse. All the fed is doing is making sure it does it slowly, in a piecemeal fashion so it doesnt take the whole banking sector down with it. These debts, (noone knows which are good or bad), aren't worth a lot right now, without the underwriting of them by AIG nothing would be worth shit. As they are offloaded from the makret, a little bit more of AIG will be slowly buried. If I've got what you're arguing for wrong though, I apologise, you'll have to set me straight.
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grufty jim 1978 posts |
Edited Sep 23, 2008, 20:50
Sep 23, 2008, 20:46
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stray wrote: If I've got what you're arguing for wrong though, I apologise, you'll have to set me straight. To an extent you have my position right, stray. Though you're seeing it through a rather narrow filter (no fault of yours, I've not explained it and I don't expect you to be psychic). What needs to be understood about my position is that it's far more extreme and wide-ranging than you suggested. I'm talking about a top-to-bottom restructuring of our entire society. I do not claim to be in possession of a detailed plan of how this can be achieved, though I am going to start working on one fairly soon (as soon as I complete my current project). I believe that our society is suffering from a psychosis. And I use that word in the literal sense. As you may or may not know I'm just about to complete a Masters degree in Psychoanalytic Studies, specialising in Group Psychodynamics. I believe I can demonstrate that the twin mechanisms of a global free-market in resources and the international media have generated a collective psyche that includes most of the human race. I also believe this collective psyche is suffering from a psychosis. Indeed, it is my thesis that the following two statements are saying the same thing in different language (the first in the language of environmental systems theory, the second in the language of group psychodynamics): 1. "This society is unsustainable" 2. "The collective mind generated by this society is suffering from a psychosis" My point about the credit crisis is that I believe the sooner we begin this process of radical restructuring the more likely we are to succeed (though I also feel there's a chance it may already be too late). The money being used in this bail-out could instead be used to kick-start this process. It won't be of course. And I'm not suggesting that there's even a sliver of hope that the Dubya Bush administration would be so forward-thinking or so radical. I'm merely expressing my opinion on the issue. EDIT: For those interested in Group Psychodynamics; the field has evolved significantly over the past 100 years. Briefly (and therefore not very accurately) it begins with Freud's "Civilization and Its Discontents" and evolves through the work of Bion, Fromm, Reich and finally to arguably the most important person in the field, Gregory Bateson. If anyone wants suggestions as to further reading in the area, I'd be happy to make some recommendations.
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stray 2057 posts |
Edited Sep 23, 2008, 23:17
Sep 23, 2008, 23:04
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oh right. Sorry, personally I'm looking at this, and possible outcomes in a more rational sense than you obviously are. I'm not looking at it in 'a come the glorious day comrades' sense, but more in a 'whats going to happen then ?' sense from my understanding of economics and how the market works. I sit back and eat popcorn watching it all play out, and how it effects the election over there. I'm not even pretending I have a solution, other than a nihilistic 'kill the fucking market' branch of Marxism. Sure, I'm an anachronism, what of it ? Which is why I'm sticking to straightforward analsyis, and guessing the outcome further down the road. You're disregarding the mathematical and legal mechanics in favour of some airy-fairy psychological group dynamic argument. Fair enough. But discussing your ideas with you would just cause my eyes to roll until they fall out. Sorry. Yeah, the market is a mess because our underlying pyschology and society are fucked. Thats a lovely piece of sophistry, not one its possible to argue with now is it ? I also love how you validate it further by describing the depth of history there is, in research terms, into your field *eye roll* oopise, there they go, better stop. I'm sure you're perfectly qualified to come up with a newly restructured society, with an associative financial system, that will make us all well behaved non greed orientated fluffy bunnies *eye roll*--plop* shit, lost one. Seriously, I'm slowly walking away from you now *waves* All hail emperor Grufty. I'll stick to political argument in a political field. If you however manage to come up with something, anything, not based on a subjective analysis of a limited case study then please let me know. Edit : Yes the 'system' effects our group psychology. FFS. SO ??? Regulation/correction naturally occurs within any system. To even go down the road that you can fix any system from a purely symptomatic approach from a subjective POV is the road to madness. I know of this, for complex systems are my field. Yes, I did go mad. tl;dr. Its obvious, nothing new and you're approach to solve the problem is entirely the wrong way round. A problem which frankly you aren't qualified to understand.
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grufty jim 1978 posts |
Sep 23, 2008, 23:15
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Thanks for such a patronising and insulting response.
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stray 2057 posts |
Edited Sep 23, 2008, 23:25
Sep 23, 2008, 23:22
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Thats okay. I find you're argument and completely hatstand approach to economics and politics equally patronising and insulting. I'm sure I'm not the only person who'll take similar offence. Well not here in u-know obviously. Try it on an economist or another mathematician, particularly one like me who has done the futile 'knowledge management' apply 'metrics to behaviour' shuffle. You're original post of what you meant I replied to did reek of 'I know best' in your usual patronising sense too as it goes.
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grufty jim 1978 posts |
Sep 23, 2008, 23:38
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stray wrote: Thats okay. I find you're argument and completely hatstand approach to economics and politics equally patronising and insulting. I'm sure I'm not the only person who'll take similar offence. Well not here in u-know obviously. Try it on an economist or another mathematician, particularly one like me who has done the futile 'knowledge management' apply 'metrics to behaviour' shuffle. You're original post of what you meant I replied to did reek of 'I know best' in your usual patronising sense too as it goes. You haven't the faintest idea what I'm talking about, stray. Oh, and it's "your", not "you're" in both the second sentence and at the beginning of the last. How's that for patronising?
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Sir John Dunn 530 posts |
Edited Sep 23, 2008, 23:59
Sep 23, 2008, 23:53
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Game over, Stray and Jim. Give me the ball. Life’s too short. Direct your anger towards Unsung. There’s a Big Bang slagging thang going on!
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grufty jim 1978 posts |
Edited Sep 24, 2008, 14:03
Sep 24, 2008, 02:38
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Before I start; a general point about my tone. I apologise to anyone who finds me patronising. That's really not my intention, though I obviously have limited control over how people interpret me. I am by nature a rather solitary person and spend more time with books than people. As a result I'm aware I've developed a demeanor than rubs some people the wrong way. However, for the first time in a long time I've reached a stage in my life where I actually quite like myself. And my girlfriend, family and friends all seem to like me too. So I shan't be seeking to change merely because some people resort to personal abuse when I express an opinion. I wouldn't presume to tell stray -- or anyone else who is driven to such abuse -- how to live their life, but if someone finds my tone problematic, then ignoring me might be a better response than naked aggression. For all our blood-pressures. Ultimately though it's up to you, and if you feel the need for name-calling then I guess there's little I can do about that, aside from lament it. Indeed I had intended to ignore stray's boorish and insulting response completely. I posted my views on a particular issue and was greeted with a torrent of personal abuse in reply. I've never found such discussions to be particularly productive. I was amused, though, to read stray's promise to "stick to political argument in a political field". Given the abusive nature of modern political discourse, that may indeed be appropriate. I was also tickled by the fact that he opened his comment with the claim that he was being "more rational", before quickly descending into an ugly, frothy-mouthed tirade including a somewhat laboured "eye-rolling" theme. Glass houses and all that. However, I do wish to defend myself against what I see as unjustified and unprovoked attack (someone needs to, and Gregory Bateson's dead). So I'd like to clarify some things. After all, it's possible, even if not very probable, that other readers may be interested in my theories. I will assume that stray has nothing more to say to me on this issue as he himself has already made it abundantly clear that's the case, and I'll take him at his word (from claiming that "discussing my ideas" would cause him physical harm, to his assertion -- halfway through his response, confusingly enough -- that he was "walking away from me", waving). The first thing to realise is that I'm neither looking at this from a "come the glorious day comrades" sense, nor from a "what's going to happen then?" sense. I am attempting to analyse modern civilisation using the tools of psychoanalysis. I'm far from the first to do this of course, but I believe I may be the first both to carry out such an analysis using Bateson's 'Ecology of Mind' as a starting point; and to identify the 'double bind' as a primary causal factor in the psychosis I believe has gripped our culture. I'm hoping that my thesis is well received, but I'm also aware that it may not be. Nonetheless, if I didn't honestly believe that I was onto something, I wouldn't have been capable of sustaining my research for the past year. Self-belief and self-doubt are both necessary, but the former must outweigh the latter if one is to achieve anything of significance. Like stray, "complex systems" are also my field. For the best part of a decade I worked in industry as a systems analyst. I was exceptionally good at my job. In my case I was working on large industrial systems; optimising multi-site production and distribution; rather than computer systems. Though there are similarities between the two disciplines, one must factor human psychology (both individual and group) into industrial systems analysis to a greater extent than one would with IT systems analysis (though obviously it is not entirely absent there either). I brought many lessons from that experience back into academia with me. One of the most significant was a practical understanding of group psychodynamics. During the past year of research and study at Trinity (including tutelage from some of the acknowledged experts in the field) I have added a great deal of theory to that practical knowledge. So despite stray's insistence to the contrary, I am confident that I'm well qualified to understand and discuss the psychodynamics of large groups. This does not make my theories correct, but it does mean they do not come from a position of unqualified ignorance. To suggest otherwise may be satisfying to a name-caller, but is quite wrong. stray wrote: Yeah, the market is a mess because our underlying pyschology and society are fucked. I'd like to make it clear that despite stray's claim that this statement is "sophistry" (given the context, I think he may be confusing "sophistry" with "tautology", as it's perfectly possible to argue against sophistry... indeed sophistry positively invites rebuttal), it is neither sophistry nor tautology. In fact, it isn't even close to what I was trying to say and misses my point entirely. The market is not a mess because "our underlying pyschology and society are fucked". My claim is that the market is an active component of our group psyche (in Freudian terms it represents a collective pleasure principle). So in the language of group psychodynamics, the quoted statement would translate as "our collective pleasure principle is a mess because our underlying psychology and collective mind are fucked". That's not a tautology, it's just nonsensical and it comes close to being the opposite of what I'm actually saying, which is that we are suffering a psychosis, in part because our collective pleasure principle is largely unrestrained (it is not sufficiently modified by a collective reality principle). My criticism of the proposed US financial bail-out, therefore, is based upon the belief that such a bail-out is actively feeding that psychosis. It is - in Batesonian terms - reinforcing a double bind. I won't explain the double bind theory of schizophrenia here, as it's extremely complex and would take more than a few paragraphs. The important thing to know is that it involves a disruption to the mechanisms by which individuals or groups process new information and occurs when the individual or group is exposed over a prolonged period to contradictory information at differing levels of communication.* That's not the extent of it, of course. And it doesn't begin to answer the question of how this situation has developed (where is our double bind?). As Bateson points out in "Bali: The Value System of a Steady State", many -- perhaps most -- human cultures develop healthy reality principles (note: he does not use that particular Freudian term, though his 'ecology of mind' is not incompatible with the Freudian topography). Which, in very simplistic terms, allows them to remain in rough equilibrium with their environment. This is itself a tad misleading as the ecology of mind refutes the idea that a culture can be viewed as being separate from its environment; the claim that it is "in equilibrium" with its environment is a convenient shorthand to express something in an easily comprehensible fashion despite being technically questionable. But as Bateson also remarked; "nature is a dirty, double-binding bitch". The question is less about where our double bind might be, and more about why we were susceptible to it, and how we may go about remedying our susceptibility and reversing the effects (if indeed that's possible). Given the fact that "the double bind is endemic to human life", there is no question of removing it, only of removing our tendency to be damaged by it. The first step in that process, however, must be to cease reinforcing it. * To those already familiar with Bateson's double bind (and this will make no sense to anyone else, I'm afraid) I'd liken the proposed bail-out to the visit of the schizophrenogenic mother who cautioned her psychotic son against being afraid of his feelings, but only after she had communicated the opposite message to him through her response to his embrace.
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handofdave 3515 posts |
Sep 24, 2008, 13:43
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I'll indulge in adding to my previously mentioned metaphor for humanity's stage of growth being that of a late adolescent... Not only do we possess power without wisdom, but as you liken our way of life to a form of mass schizophrenia, the teen years are the age when that genetically passed on form of the disease emerges. If humanity is a sort of collective teenager, these are the most dangerous years we have ahead of us. We will either run ourselves off the road or survive to become a mature species. The teenage human totality is rightly proud of it's achievements, but also selfishly unwilling to give up the dangerous ones, or repeal it's stubborn denial of responsibility and accept that it does bear the consequences of its actions. Often, this learned trait does not become integrated until the teenager experiences trauma as a result of it's own behavior. We've been experiencing this in cycles for as long as we've been around, but we're obviously reaching a critical juncture in the timeline of the planet. And of course, humanity as a whole does not follow the same path- I'm generalizing quite freely, just in conjecture; a way of thinking about such a huge subject at a condensed angle.
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