Klassisk

Kort varsel, men: I kveld skal jeg være ordstyrer på en debatt om Norge som klassesamfunn i regi av Norsk sosiologiforening.

Klasser i Norge – et problem vi bør ta på alvor?

Velkommen til debatt!

Ja, vi vet at Norge er et samfunn der ressurser som inntekt, helse og livsmuligheter fordeler seg ulikt på tvers av sosiale klasser - men er det et så stort problem at vi bør gjøre noe med det? Og hva må i så fall til for å jevne ut forskjellene?

I panelet:

Magne Flemmen - universitetslektor i sosiologi. Har skrevet masteroppgave om rekruttering til den økonomiske overklassen i Norge.

Magnus Marsdal – journalist, forfatter av Frp-koden og Mannen uten egenskaper og andre problemer i norsk politikk. Styreleder i Stiftelsen Manifest.

Heidi Nordby – nestleder for et av lokallagene til partiet Høyre i Oslo, programleder i talkshowet studio 5 i TVNorge-kanalen FEM. Også kjent som den liberale bloggeren VAMPUS.

Trond Blindheim – sosiolog og rektor ved Markedshøyskolen i Oslo.

Tid: Torsdag 30. oktober, kl. 19
Sted: Dattera til Hagen (Grønland 10)

Møteleder: Martin Grüner Larsen

Spørsmål? Kontakt Irene Prestøy Lie på 91546566

the Wall Street crash is a failure of the imagination

Yesterday was the 79th anniversary of Black Monday, and today is Black Tuesday, two important days in the 1929 crash on Wall Street. Just, y'know, as an observation.

"Anyone who bought stocks in mid-1929 and held onto them saw most of his or her adult life pass by before getting back to even." said Richard M. Salsman* about the crisis, according to the Wikipedia page. So there's that.

This is one of those classical "prisoner's dilemma" situations we find ourselves in frequently in our society. What this situation makes clear is that if everyone maintains trust in the collective illusion of the market, the market will keep stable. What the stock market crash really is, is something that us literature majors can tell you all about (see? We can be useful - even in a depression! Hire me! Hire me!). It's basically a wavering in suspension of disbelief. Everyone has suddenly realised that their money really is Monopoly money and are panicking. Like Wile E. Coyote going over the cliff, suddenly looking down like an idiot. Stock market crashes, in effect, are simply a colossal, systemic, collective failure of the human imagination. And bright ideas are what's going to get us out of it.**

Society is a consensus reality we choose to participate in. A story that we tell ourselves. But some parts of that story have a really bad plot, bad grammar and poor writing. We need to rewrite those parts of the story without anyone getting hurt. This is the time, in other words, to remember that all money is pretend money. The only thing we get to decide is what kind of game we're playing. Are we playing capitalism or socialism? Monopoly or Junta, so to speak?

In short, if everybody would just hold on to their damned assets and be cool, we would all be fine in a pretty short time, while the "real" economy and the market got back in synch. If we could also reimagine what the world economy is supposed to look like while we're at it, that would be a fantastic added bonus.

* * *

* BONUS TRACK:

But then, Richard M. Salsman's Wikipedia page indicates that he is an objectivist Austrian school eejit. Let me share with you, as a gift, the titles of some of his papers and books:

* "The False Profits of Antitrust", chapter in The Abolition of Antitrust

* “The Cause and Consequences of the Great Depression”:

- “Part 1: What Made the Roaring ’20s Roar”,
- “Part 2: Hoover’s Progressive Assault on Business”
- “Part 3: Roosevelt's Raw Deal”
- “Part 4: Freedom and Prosperity”, January, 2005, pp. 14–23.

* “Bankers as Scapegoats for Government-Created Banking Crises in U.S. History”

* “‘Corporate Environmentalism’ and Other Suicidal Tendencies”

* “Banking without the ‘Too-Big-to-Fail’ Doctrine”

* Breaking the Banks: Central Banking Problems and Free Banking Solutions

Remember, my friends, this is not the time for gloating or schadenfreude. This is a time for honest, serious, dedicated work.

No, I'm just kidding. This is the time for merciless mocking. And it's a good time to put these people out of a job. And also a good time for reading Keynes and Marx.

** Mandatory endorsement: And obviously, that's going to be easier with an imaginative, creative, flexible US president. Like, say, candidate Obama. An inflexible, uncreative, volatile, insecure president like McCain? Not so much.

And now, a word from Karl Marx

The subjects of every state ought to contribute towards the support of the government, as nearly as possible, in proportion to their respective abilities; that is, in proportion to the revenue which they respectively enjoy under the protection of the state…. The necessaries of life occasion the great expence of the poor. They find it difficult to get food, and the greater part of their little revenue is spent in getting it. The luxuries and vanities of life occasion the principal expence of the rich, and a magnificent house embellishes and sets off to the best advantage all the other luxuries and vanities which they possess. A tax upon house-rents, therefore, would in general fall heaviest upon the rich; and in this sort of inequality there would not, perhaps, be any thing very unreasonable. It is not very unreasonable that the rich should contribute to the public expence, not only in proportion to their revenue, but something more than in that proportion.

Oh, wait. That was Adam Smith.

I remember reading that quote years ago in this brilliant little email that was circulating. Anybody have that lying around? It's not on Google. Anyway, after I read that I started tittering every time conservative hacks argued for market fundamentalism using Adam Smith as an argument.

(I totally stole this post from Edge of the American West, btw, which you should all be reading.)

All that stuff you buy comes from somewhere and is made by someone. A blog post over at Crooked Timber - which you should be reading* - discusses this problem taking this series of photographs from a Chinese sweatshop as its starting point. It nicely connects the dots between Adam Smith's invisible hands and Karl Marx's commodity fetishism, using the metaphor of invisible hands.

* [Edit: Holy dangling modifier, Batman! I meant the blog, not the blog post. Although you should read the blog post as well.]