The old-fashioned future
Sep. 12th, 2005 11:51 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
imomusIf we like something we tend to say that it represents the future and describe any movement towards it as "progress" and "modernization" and "success". We also make sure to call the opposite of the thing we like "conservative" and associate it with the past, and with failure. We describe our liked thing with swishy modern-sounding words like "streamlining" and "efficiency" even when the things being "streamlined" away are people losing their jobs, and it's not quite clear who exactly is benefitting from the "efficiency". Well, actually, it is clear, but we don't choose to dwell on that. It's divisive, you see.
The thing we like, if we're quite a sizeable majority of the press covering the Japanese election yesterday and the reasons leading up to it, is capitalism. Free markets, the international flow of capital, that sort of thing. We love that stuff, and we can't get enough of it. We love it when a politician gets that religion, because it means he's going to start handing over power and money locked up in the public sector to our guys in the private sector. So we call him a "reformist" and a "liberaliser" rather than "a man in the public sector who seems to be cutting off his nose to spite his face by handing power over to the private sector". And because we like him, we portray the conservative party he's in as a radical and liberal party, and his holding onto power as a radical shift in power. Yes, the Japanese people are sick of things as they are, and have spoken up loudly for change! And so the LDP, which has been in power in Japan almost without interruption for the last several decades,has been ousted is still in power! Hurrah for radical change, and hurrah for the-future-not-the-past!
In the past, of course, "reform" used to mean curbing the excesses of capitalism; passing legislation that stopped people employing children in their factories, widening suffrage, limiting working hours, building up adequate public health systems, and so on. But now "reform" means precisely the opposite. It means dismantling public assets and loosening up the legislation that restricts capital in its dealings with labour, the state, and the environment.
Koizumi won a landslide in yesterday's Japanese general election, an election he called in order to consolidate his power after losing a vote to privatize the Japanese post office. The Japanese post office is the world's largest publicly owned savings bank. It's a win-win situation for the government and the people of Japan; people know that because it's backed by the government, they won't lose their savings. And the government has a huge pile of cash with which to finance public building projects: bridges, dams, and so on. These pieces of infrastructure are often described as "unnecessary", but they keep people working and serve communities on remote islands, and so on. As do small post offices which would no doubt be closed down under a privatised system. What Koizumi proposes would simply funnel a lot of the cash being used currently for public projects like bridges into the profits of private shareholders in banks. Why is that "reform"?
So Koizumi lost the vote to privatise the post office in parliament. He then called the election and purged the rebel MPs and is going to do it all again. Why did he win the election? Not because a massive majority of people want postal privatisation, but because he enlisted a bunch of celebrities to replace the excluded rebel MPs. And also because of a vague sense that "modernisation" and "reform" are necessary. But again, what does "reform" mean when it's just a question of syphoning cash out of the public realm into the private one?
Here's a right wing thinktank licking its chops over the prospect of privatisation and explaining exactly who it helps:
"If the Japanese public abandons the caution fostered by unlimited government guarantees and preferential tax treatment for PSS [Postal Savings Bank] deposits, and begins to invest their savings in private banks and other investment vehicles -- the country's economy will never be the same. Huge amounts of pent-up capital would then be moved into private financial markets. This would help to bolster not only Japan's incipient economic recovery but, over time, financial markets around the world."
People (especially people who've read Alex Kerr's book "Dogs and Demons" uncritically) sometimes call Japan a "construction state" and deplore the fact that 97% of all major rivers in Japan are dammed and 100% are lined with concrete, and that 55% of Japan's coastlines are covered in concrete laid down by government programs. Government programs which will cease if the Post Office Savings Bank is privatised. Kerr's arguments are mostly aesthetic; he thinks concrete reinforcements on coasts and rivers are ugly: "The gray concrete of the once-natural beach lines is punctuated by piles of countless concrete and iron tetrapods — four-legged anti-erosion barriers that look like large jacks and are often as large as bulldozers."
But death by drowning is ugly too, as we've seen in New Orleans. Our vision of a future which can only get more and more "liberalized" (in other words, capitalist) might be blocking our view of a future climatologists tell us is now increasingly certain: a future in which global warming causes sea levels to rise and weather patterns to become more extreme. I suspect the people of New Orleans would have been happy to have a bit more "ugly" concrete between them and the sea. Each year Japan is experiencing more and more devastating typhoons, which endanger life by depositing huge amounts of rainfall in very brief periods, making rivers burst their banks. Are the private banks who profit from post office privatisation going to construct barriers against that?
It's not just because I don't like it that I call Kerr's notion that concretisation programs are "unnecessary" completely outdated. Concretization gets ever more necessary with every typhoon. The irony is that the unrestrained economic activity Koizumi thinks is the inevitable future will contribute directly to the rising sea levels. So what we're "progressing" towards is precisely the kind of world where we'll need huge government spending on exactly the things Kerr and Koizumi deplore: massive publicly-funded concretization schemes.
Tell me if you agree or disagree with this statement: "Capitalism prefers instability to stability and cure to prevention. Rather than letting governments prevent disasters by programs of public works, capitalists would prefer disasters to happen periodically, claiming lives, and the survivors be compensated afterwards from insurance schemes... assuming they've signed up for them."
Neo-Marxist theorist Kojin Karatani once described the Japanese system as "capitalist communism". The thinktank I link above uses the word "conservative" to describe the same phenomenon (it also uses the term "retail investor" to describe what I would call a "citizen"):
"The typical Japanese retail investor remains conservative in their outlook. Many confuse investment and speculation and equate the stock market with a casino. As a result, they have preferred the security of guaranteed bank deposits and especially that of the Postal Savings System (PSS), even though this has resulted in annual interest rate returns of less than 1%."
Let's have that again in English:
"The typical Japanese citizen remains somewhat capitalist-communist in attitude. Many correctly realise that if they invest their money in the private banking system it will be used for speculation in that international casino, the stock market, rather than being spent on projects they can see and appreciate in Japan; bridges, dams, post offices near where they live, and so on. As a result they have preferred the security of guaranteed bank deposits and especially that of the Postal Savings System (PSS), even though this has resulted in annual interest rate returns of less than 1%."
Putting security over percentage interest return, putting public works over private profit, putting utility over capitalist "streamlining" and "synergies" (which call themselves "efficiency" without saying who they're efficient for), and thinking of the international capitalist system as a "casino", these are what make the Japanese "communist capitalists". And what Koizumi—caving in with admirable "resolution" to the demands of international capital markets—is doing is trying to make the Japanese "capitalist capitalists". Great, just what the world needs, more capitalism.
The thing we like, if we're quite a sizeable majority of the press covering the Japanese election yesterday and the reasons leading up to it, is capitalism. Free markets, the international flow of capital, that sort of thing. We love that stuff, and we can't get enough of it. We love it when a politician gets that religion, because it means he's going to start handing over power and money locked up in the public sector to our guys in the private sector. So we call him a "reformist" and a "liberaliser" rather than "a man in the public sector who seems to be cutting off his nose to spite his face by handing power over to the private sector". And because we like him, we portray the conservative party he's in as a radical and liberal party, and his holding onto power as a radical shift in power. Yes, the Japanese people are sick of things as they are, and have spoken up loudly for change! And so the LDP, which has been in power in Japan almost without interruption for the last several decades,
In the past, of course, "reform" used to mean curbing the excesses of capitalism; passing legislation that stopped people employing children in their factories, widening suffrage, limiting working hours, building up adequate public health systems, and so on. But now "reform" means precisely the opposite. It means dismantling public assets and loosening up the legislation that restricts capital in its dealings with labour, the state, and the environment.
Koizumi won a landslide in yesterday's Japanese general election, an election he called in order to consolidate his power after losing a vote to privatize the Japanese post office. The Japanese post office is the world's largest publicly owned savings bank. It's a win-win situation for the government and the people of Japan; people know that because it's backed by the government, they won't lose their savings. And the government has a huge pile of cash with which to finance public building projects: bridges, dams, and so on. These pieces of infrastructure are often described as "unnecessary", but they keep people working and serve communities on remote islands, and so on. As do small post offices which would no doubt be closed down under a privatised system. What Koizumi proposes would simply funnel a lot of the cash being used currently for public projects like bridges into the profits of private shareholders in banks. Why is that "reform"?
So Koizumi lost the vote to privatise the post office in parliament. He then called the election and purged the rebel MPs and is going to do it all again. Why did he win the election? Not because a massive majority of people want postal privatisation, but because he enlisted a bunch of celebrities to replace the excluded rebel MPs. And also because of a vague sense that "modernisation" and "reform" are necessary. But again, what does "reform" mean when it's just a question of syphoning cash out of the public realm into the private one?
Here's a right wing thinktank licking its chops over the prospect of privatisation and explaining exactly who it helps:
"If the Japanese public abandons the caution fostered by unlimited government guarantees and preferential tax treatment for PSS [Postal Savings Bank] deposits, and begins to invest their savings in private banks and other investment vehicles -- the country's economy will never be the same. Huge amounts of pent-up capital would then be moved into private financial markets. This would help to bolster not only Japan's incipient economic recovery but, over time, financial markets around the world."
People (especially people who've read Alex Kerr's book "Dogs and Demons" uncritically) sometimes call Japan a "construction state" and deplore the fact that 97% of all major rivers in Japan are dammed and 100% are lined with concrete, and that 55% of Japan's coastlines are covered in concrete laid down by government programs. Government programs which will cease if the Post Office Savings Bank is privatised. Kerr's arguments are mostly aesthetic; he thinks concrete reinforcements on coasts and rivers are ugly: "The gray concrete of the once-natural beach lines is punctuated by piles of countless concrete and iron tetrapods — four-legged anti-erosion barriers that look like large jacks and are often as large as bulldozers."
But death by drowning is ugly too, as we've seen in New Orleans. Our vision of a future which can only get more and more "liberalized" (in other words, capitalist) might be blocking our view of a future climatologists tell us is now increasingly certain: a future in which global warming causes sea levels to rise and weather patterns to become more extreme. I suspect the people of New Orleans would have been happy to have a bit more "ugly" concrete between them and the sea. Each year Japan is experiencing more and more devastating typhoons, which endanger life by depositing huge amounts of rainfall in very brief periods, making rivers burst their banks. Are the private banks who profit from post office privatisation going to construct barriers against that?
It's not just because I don't like it that I call Kerr's notion that concretisation programs are "unnecessary" completely outdated. Concretization gets ever more necessary with every typhoon. The irony is that the unrestrained economic activity Koizumi thinks is the inevitable future will contribute directly to the rising sea levels. So what we're "progressing" towards is precisely the kind of world where we'll need huge government spending on exactly the things Kerr and Koizumi deplore: massive publicly-funded concretization schemes.
Tell me if you agree or disagree with this statement: "Capitalism prefers instability to stability and cure to prevention. Rather than letting governments prevent disasters by programs of public works, capitalists would prefer disasters to happen periodically, claiming lives, and the survivors be compensated afterwards from insurance schemes... assuming they've signed up for them."
Neo-Marxist theorist Kojin Karatani once described the Japanese system as "capitalist communism". The thinktank I link above uses the word "conservative" to describe the same phenomenon (it also uses the term "retail investor" to describe what I would call a "citizen"):
"The typical Japanese retail investor remains conservative in their outlook. Many confuse investment and speculation and equate the stock market with a casino. As a result, they have preferred the security of guaranteed bank deposits and especially that of the Postal Savings System (PSS), even though this has resulted in annual interest rate returns of less than 1%."
Let's have that again in English:
"The typical Japanese citizen remains somewhat capitalist-communist in attitude. Many correctly realise that if they invest their money in the private banking system it will be used for speculation in that international casino, the stock market, rather than being spent on projects they can see and appreciate in Japan; bridges, dams, post offices near where they live, and so on. As a result they have preferred the security of guaranteed bank deposits and especially that of the Postal Savings System (PSS), even though this has resulted in annual interest rate returns of less than 1%."
Putting security over percentage interest return, putting public works over private profit, putting utility over capitalist "streamlining" and "synergies" (which call themselves "efficiency" without saying who they're efficient for), and thinking of the international capitalist system as a "casino", these are what make the Japanese "communist capitalists". And what Koizumi—caving in with admirable "resolution" to the demands of international capital markets—is doing is trying to make the Japanese "capitalist capitalists". Great, just what the world needs, more capitalism.
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(no subject)
Date: 2005-09-12 10:40 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2005-09-12 11:26 am (UTC)I don't know if you've read George Monbiot's stuff on Blair's PFI privitisations, but the figures are jaw-dropping. Hundreds of millions siphoned out of the public purse into capitalists' pockets.
(no subject)
Date: 2005-09-12 11:33 am (UTC)there are people, who don't own pencils, you know? explain that to WIRED.
(no subject)
Date: 2005-09-12 11:42 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2005-09-12 12:05 pm (UTC)Can disasters and destruction, particularly of the environment, which 'contribute to the economy' (and the relationship of the much-desired 'strong economy' with the circumstances of the individual within that economy seem ever more detached) be seen as sacrifices to that God, personified in avatars like GDP?
I like the concept of 'concretisation' - if lower-level neopagans of the aforementioned stripe are to worship anything it should be concrete, aluminium, whatever they make microchips out of etc - the household gods who intercede in our relationship with the true deity.
(no subject)
Date: 2005-09-12 12:27 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2005-09-12 12:36 pm (UTC)Agree that it matches what I've seen.
(no subject)
Date: 2005-09-12 12:38 pm (UTC)*nods* As a giant rampaging Uncle Sam said in an issue of The Sensational She-Hulk, "Remember, son, success is the only thing that counts — and if you can't count it, it ain't success!"
(no subject)
Date: 2005-09-12 12:47 pm (UTC)O_O ...by the late God, it can. (I'm a believer in the free market myself, but one who holds that most of today's self-proclaimed "free marketeers" wouldn't know a real free market if the Invisible Hand slapped them upside the head with it. For one thing, my concept of the free market is predicated on a free marketplace of ideas, which most of these people abhor.)
Can disasters and destruction [...] be seen as sacrifices to that God
They already are, just not phrased in specifically religious terms.
if lower-level neopagans of the aforementioned stripe are to worship anything it should be concrete, aluminium, whatever they make microchips out of etc
"Hail President Reagan! Hail Western Science!" (Elliot McGucken, at his now-apparently-defunct buy-the-Great-Books-of-the-Western-Soul page, explaining the lesson we're supposed to learn from nineteen eighty-four)
(no subject)
Date: 2005-09-12 12:54 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2005-09-12 12:59 pm (UTC)I've always found it weird that capitalist apologists, when you point out the failures of the free market to them, tell you they were/are all caused by the market *not being free enough*.
> a free marketplace of ideas
Do you think that intellectual property rights should be scrapped then, or perhaps only held by individuals, rather than corporations?
(no subject)
Date: 2005-09-12 01:01 pm (UTC)That's practically Commie talk these days :)
http://www.monbiot.com/archives/2004/12/29/a-scandal-of-secrecy-and-collusion/
(no subject)
Date: 2005-09-12 01:19 pm (UTC)I'm sure you would at least agree that the postal service is run inefficiently. And it only makes sense: the company faces no competition, their workers have no motivation to be more productive, and ultimately the Postal Service will continue to be propped up year after year (spending other people's money), regardless of whether or not it's running efficiently.
I see that some Japanese are concerned that the end of these superfluous public works projects will spell death for certain rural regions which they've been propping up. That may be the case in the short term, but the country as a whole will ultimately benefit.
I think it's strange that people expect the government to take care of them and cover them when they make poor decisions. If you live in a region with a non-existant economy, understand that it's your decision to live there and you need to take responsibility for that. Another example of this would be from New Orleans: if you live 14 feet below sea level, in Hurricane Alley, make it your business to keep a gallon of water and a box of crackers on hand.
Interestingly, there may be a silver lining here. You've always expressed your preference for high-density urban living. Well, if these superfluous public works projects dry up in the rural regions, we may see people moving closer to these areas.
(no subject)
Date: 2005-09-12 01:23 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2005-09-12 01:32 pm (UTC)while basically symphatic to your position, there's plenty to be said about the inneficiency , as well as short-sighted over-efficiency of the whole public building affair.
There is pressure and dramatic as it may sound i think fundamentally japan in in the same position it was after the black ships came. it has to make some crucial decisions.
(no subject)
Date: 2005-09-12 02:14 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2005-09-12 02:22 pm (UTC)You know, is the public health service "inefficient" when it saves someone's life? I mean, they'll probably only get sick again and come back for more treatment...
McGazz put it very well above: "In Capitalist terms, "efficiency" only ever means "efficiency at making money". Never efficiency at providing a good service, efficiency at providing jobs, efficiency at keeping communities together, efficiency in use of resources etc etc"
Quack Opera
Date: 2005-09-12 02:47 pm (UTC)Momus, you're a great snake oil salesman.
(no subject)
Date: 2005-09-12 02:51 pm (UTC)Since you can rationalize anything, perhaps you can help the LDP justify Japan's involvement in Iraq and the impending re-write of Article 9 to the Japanese people?
(no subject)
Date: 2005-09-12 02:52 pm (UTC)Well, I would tend to think that a customer that comes back is better than one who just drops in once (and do not pay...)
To make it simple. Inefficient means that they spend more of taxpayers money per performed service (be it good or bad). After all, if those money can be used elsewhere, for example to save lives in hospitals, efficiency is maybe not so horrible. Then you can argue for or against to run things in private (there are many bad and good experiences out there), but to argue against that public service should be efficient seems very counterproductive.
/bug
(no subject)
Date: 2005-09-12 02:53 pm (UTC)I think a statement like that shows only a hostile, on-the-surface understanding of how business works.
If one store provides faster service than another, eventually people are going to switch to the faster store. Efficiency in service = making money (granted, these private postal carriers will be government-granted monopolies, so service may not be much more efficient).
The more money a company makes, the more people it's able to hire, and the more it's able to pay them. A company burdened by taxes and poor spending decisions has money tied up in other places. As far as resources are concerned, a company is encouraged to use as few resources as it can in order to save cash. In the case where a company is harming the environment in some fashion, it is (and should be) in the government's power to regulate that behavior. Companies also have incentive to be environmentally-conscious: when corporate watchdogs expose companies for bad practicies, it turns off potential customers and hurts their bottom line (along with governmentally-imposed fines).
The issue here is how long should the government prop up these would-be ghost towns with these completely inessential and wasteful projects? It all sounds really great. I mean, if I want to live by myself on my own private island, shouldn't the government build a bridge and create a factory just to accomodate me? Where should it end?
(no subject)
Date: 2005-09-12 03:01 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2005-09-12 03:06 pm (UTC)i also have heard from a respected authority on coastline erosion that the japanese concretizing of the coastline actually does not do a thing; that it's sort of based on bad engineering. certain european countries have ditched the seawall in favor of natural sand dunes. i much prefer it.
(no subject)
Date: 2005-09-12 03:25 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2005-09-12 03:32 pm (UTC)