Comments on: Oh, what the heck… here’s Mark Jones

By: Tom

Tom — Mon, 27 Jun 2005 21:31:05 +0000

Stan, I’m wondering where I could find more of Mark Jones’ writing. I’ve read what you’ve posted/linked and am looking for more. Any help would be greatly appreciated. Thanks.

tom

By: Jon Flanders

Jon Flanders — Sat, 21 May 2005 01:36:43 +0000

“The ideology of entropy says wonâ€™t. But entropy is a concept of physics - matter without consciousness or will - and it may or may not apply to sociology, where we are looking at people who can make choices.”

Quite true, to a point. The problem in the USA is that the “built environment”, as Mark put it, severely limits our choices.

We have paved over choice farmland near the cities, and when the crunch comes, will lack the energy resources to unpave it. We will need to expand railroads to replace cars, but have created a suburban complex that is too diffuse to take advantage of rail transportation.

Portions of the country that might be able to adjust could be overwhelmed by refugees from places like Las Vegas that crater from the loss of fossil fuel and fossil water.

And so on.

By: howard

howard — Thu, 19 May 2005 21:14:39 +0000

[replying to peggy’s thought] I’m just thinking out loud here, and would appreciate hearing as well from someone else who can give a deeper explanation, but here’s my understanding:

Capitalism as such exists to accumulate. To simply take even just the same rate of profit every year, or any profit at all, you must as a capitalist get excess value from somewhere. Your choices are: get it from your workers, or get it from somewhere else. In the “developed” economies of the US, Europe, et al, relatively less is taken from the workers, and more is taken from the “somewhere else”, that is, “developing” economies. In addition, the capitalist financial system, like the shark that must keep swimming or die, must continually create its profits by lending or investing its depositors’ funds out at a higher rate of return than it gives to those depositors — creating more pressure to generate excess value somewhere else in the system.

Also, since one of the main tenets of capitalism (as well as earlier forms of wealth accumulation) is “buying cheap and selling dear” then it follows that for capitalism to function, there must be places where the same commodities do not have the same value, either because of imperfect information, cultural differences, or power relations. Thus, capitalism by its very nature requires inequality of some sort.

I agree with Peggy that the physics concept of entropy doesn’t have to apply to human organizations — or, if it did, it would apply equally to worker and capitalist organization.

By: peggy

peggy — Thu, 19 May 2005 10:00:51 +0000

What I have made out of this is that whatever oil may or may not be left in the ground is not the problem. The problem (initial and not necessarily most important) is in the cost of extracting the oil from the ground. At any given place - say Texas - even if there is infinite oil beneath the ground, only so much can be extracted within the limits of technology. In Texas, the limits of the technology of oil extraction have been reached. They could go on extracting oil at or near this limit until the cows come home, but for some reason, staying at or near the peak/plateau of production is not an option. Why? Because for some reason Capital requires growth, more and more. This is the thing I don’t get. Why does Capital require growth? Why can’t Capital get along making the same profits year after year? You have certain expenses, you sell your product at a profit, the same expenses, the same product, the same profit year after year. the profit is from the labor. Labor is recompensed. If labor owns the company, labor gets paid what it puts in. If labor is not paid enough, it goes elsewhere, or in the absence of this option, it slows down, reducing the company’s profits, or it revolts altogether. For the moment, oil pays labor well.

Resources get depleted. But so, you adapt. As the costs of oil production rise, labor may adapt better than Capital. People who travel from Sri Lanka to Dubai now as oil-labor will cease to do that as they are paid less.

Yes I agree it would be good for labor to organize internationally. So far, that has not happened, for all the reasons everyone knows. In the future, maybe labor will organize internationally and maybe it won’t. The ideology of entropy says won’t. But entropy is a concept of physics - matter without consciousness or will - and it may or may not apply to sociology, where we are looking at people who can make choices.