Isaac Chan > Recent Status Updates

Hobson concluded that the only reason for the British empire to be persuaded to embark on so many imperialist ventures, was that 'the business interests of the nation as a whole are subordinated to those of certain sectional interests that usurp control ...' I'm thinking, do nations even have 'business interests as a whole'? Krugman taught me – no. (In 'Competitiveness: A dangerous obsession')

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And yes, I have already learned of Hobson and his fascinating theory of underconsumption due to inequality from Kenneth Waltz. The masses cannot spend! And the rich won't spend enough due to satiation and diminishing marginal utility.

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Hobson responded to imperialists like Cecil Rhodes in 1898, who claimed that expanding the British empire was the best way to create markets for British products and jobs for British workers. I wonder – what's wrong with just trading with those countries? Coz you can't force them to accept your terms?

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Finally, I think why one should 'keep a remembrance of former intimacy' is coz you can always, always learn from your past friendships/ relationships.

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... enemies. There's always negative utility to having an enemy. What if life brings the 2 of you tgt in the future, or you need them in the future? Always seek a margin of safety. And you might even be friends with them in the future anyway, when both parties have matured.

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'To those who have been our friends we ought to make some allowance for our former friendship, when the breach has not been due to excess of wickedness.' What an interesting thought. But ... how would one 'make some allowance' for one's former friendship?

I interpret this as - you can drift apart from, or even fall out with, your former friend, but there's zero need to declare war with them, and be ...

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... tbf, Jon never deceived me – & frankly, telling your bro that you're friends with them for their 'character' is so gay and weird lmao.

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Some thoughts: 'There is ntg strange in breaking off a friendship based on utility or pleasantness, when our friends no longer have these attributes.' So I wonder if it was coz I lost certain attributes, that Jonjon broke off our friendship. Also, 'when a man has deceived himself and has thought he was being loved for his character, when the other person was doing ntg of the kind, he must blame himself; ...

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... young woman complains if the old man ever declines in his financial position.

Hopefully, I'm not just in it for pleasure, because as Aristotle cautions, this kind of relationship crumbles. And I don't think I am, anyway.

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... view of relationships, i.e. the demarcation into the lover and the beloved, while relationships are supposed to consist of 2 lovers, but then I can't say that this isn't a realistic description of most relationships, i.e. driven by animalistic pleasure by the old man, and financial utility by the young woman.

And the lover, ofc, complains that the gold-digger does not love in return, while the ...

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'The lover complains that his excess of love is not met by love in return, while often the beloved complains that the lover who formerly promised everything now performs nothing. Such incidents happen when the lover loves the beloved for the sake of pleasure while the beloved loves the lover for the sake of utility' ... damn what an interesting explanation. Idk why Aristotle presents such a one-sided ...

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... Veblen's time), but these days the folk wisdom goes that only the poor pretend to be rich, and thus make fucktard purchases, whereas the rich have nothing to prove and thus are smart with their money. And it's precisely that the rich are smart, that they became rich in the 1st place. It would be unwise to generalize tho, ofc.

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Veblen seemed to take the effort to stress the point that even poor people engage in conspicuous consumption as well – 'no class of society, not even the most abjectly poor, forgoes all customary conspicuous consumption ...', as if this is a big deal. Why? I'm not surprised in the slightest. Maybe times have changed (and, if so, it probably reflects the tremendous economic growth we've had since ...

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But now, I think: 'Every spending has an opportunity cost. That stimulus to the producers of said wasteful goods is just what is seen. What is not seen is the spending that would've been otherwise directed towards useful goods, or even productive investment in the real economy. Thus that conspicuous consumption is a waste, at the end of the day, similar to the broken window.'

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Regarding this commentary on Veblen's conspicuous consumption and waste, Bastiat made me rethink smtg:

Prior to Bastiat, I might have thought: 'How can any consumption be a waste? Even if it's spent on leisure goods that are "manifestly incapable of doing anything that is of any use" (Veblen's words), that spending still stimulates industry.'

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... suspicious of government, which they saw as corrupted and captured by the elite.

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Henry George wrote (paraphrasing): The 'truth in socialism' was that to make the economy work for everyone, the state would have to play a bigger role.

Was George one of the first socialist-leaning thinkers who thought that the state was necessary for redistribution, then? (As if the state isn't run by people, too, who in turn respond to incentives) Recall that the earliest socialists were deeply ...

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... seems that he doesn't, since capital always demands a risk premium.

And so it turns out that the law of declining profitability first appeared in the Grundrisse.

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The Grundrisse's biggest innovation in terms of econ theory was the 'law of declining profitability' of capitalism. Yes, this was Marx's main point of the self-contradictory nature of capitalism. I've forgotten what Piketty's view about this is already, i.e. whether he thought *r* would naturally decline due to diminishing marginal returns, but given his stance that r seems to always remain above g, it ...

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This is pretty interesting coz mainstream econ always assumes that productivity gains from mechanization lifts all boats even tho we live in the former system, and it has proven to be empirically true - we have never had more leisure than ever before! And Keynes predicted that we would work 15 hour weeks even while living in the former system.

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According to Marx, mechanization in the former system only benefits capitalists, and generates displacement and automation for workers; whereas in the latter system, the productivity gains mean that 'all members of society' are free to enjoy leisure.

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Marx makes an interesting distinction in the 'Grundrisse' - he distinguished between mechanization (i.e. automation) in a system based on wage labour and the profit motive, where science 'appears, in the machine, as smtg alien and exterior to the worker', and mechanization in a future society where machines are 'the property of associated workers'.

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... instantly chastise anyone who even betrays a hint of Eurocentrism.

Marx thought that England had a 'double mission' in India - one to destroy old Asiatic society, one to regenerate the material foundations of Western society in Asia. But he did despise the extractive aspects of colonialism.

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It turns out that Marx still held Eurocentric beliefs - e.g. he identified an 'Asiatic' mode of production based on 'Oriental despotism' and isolated village com.m.unities that 'restrained the human mind within the sm.allest possible compass, making it the unresisting tool of superstition'. Pretty interesting and laughable to me, given that it's the modern left who loves Marx now, yet they would ...

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Furthermore, it turns out that Engels had an extremely unscientific and sloppy way of predicting recessions – he simply extrapolated from previous cycles of 5 or 6 years and projected them directly into the future! LMAO!

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... ‘the proletariat increases in geometric proportion’. Over time, the proletariat simply outnumbers the rich capitalists so greatly, that a revolution follows naturally.

I find this interesting due to the links to demographical argument as well – the intuitive observation that the rich have less children.

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An interesting, clear window into Engels's thought is helpfully provided here. I had always wondered why Marx thought capitalism. was self-contradictory, but Engels's ideas on the matter may be way easier to understand – rising inequality and class conflict. As the capitalists increase their concentration on the ownership of the means of production, the middle class gets increasingly hollowed out, thus ...

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... undeniably true that the equilibrium unemployment insight has been assimilated into mainstream econ thinking.

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'Engels noted the presence of "an unemployed reserve army of workers" '– so it seems that Engels made this point before Marx did.

On that note, I find it interesting that modern mainstream econ holds the same conclusion as Marx and Engels, i.e. Shapiro-Stiglitz involuntary equilibrium unemployment. Although one could say that Stiglitz is becoming (or has become) as big of a crackpot as Marx was, it is ...

'Fourier and the British cooperators struggled to find investors willing to finance their ambitious plans' - LMAO! So, in the end, the communal cooperators ultimately still, had to rely on ... capitalism.