Day 250: Economics Nobel Prize reduced to Laughingstock

“The award was for their work on the pricing of financial assets. Together they concluded that predicting the price of stocks and bonds in the short term is virtually impossible. But they showed it is possible to forecast the broad course of prices over longer periods, such as the three to five years.

Shiller was among those who warned in the 1990s that the run-up in stock prices as part of the Internet stock bubble was the result of "irrational exuberance." 

Last decade, Shiller made similar warnings about the run-up in U.S. home prices. That proved to be correct when the housing bubble burst and plunged the nation into the worst economic downturn since the Great Depression.”

http://money.cnn.com/2013/10/14/news/economy/shiller-nobel-economics/index.html?iid=s_mpm

Our expectations and standards of economics and economists really has reached an all-time low when we hand out Nobel prizes for work on how to improve one’s gambles in the financial market and for predicting failures in our economic system.

While we still haven’t mastered basic resource management, whereby we ensure that everyone has got access to those resources which safeguard human subsistence – we rather place value and importance on the speculative side of economics which only cares about profit and unsubstantiated growth at the expense of issues of real importance, such as eradicating poverty and starvation.

We entertain ourselves with the fringe side of economics while we haven’t even got the basics in place. Resource inequality and living standards disparity are skyrocketing. We’ve never had this many people living in poverty and we’ve never had this much wealth and ‘know how’ in the world.

And still, even though we have everything in place to create a world where everyone lives a life of comfort and dignity, we’re not moving the puzzle pieces in place to bring a better world into being.

Economics as a discipline has failed us in every way. Economics should be disqualified as a field from receiving any form of recognition of praise until we have put into place the basics as a foundation where everyone is able to secure their life. This should be the primary focus of economics, and so long primary structures and logistics are not in place to support life on earth – we shouldn’t bother indulging ourselves in fictional economics pertaining gamble and speculation.

If we really want to do something worthwhile in the name of economics, we would start with providing a safety net such as a Living Income Guaranteed, which practically ensures that everyone is provided with the means to live their life, without being deprived of basic necessities and living in a survival state of being - the way life is supposed to be lived.

To find out more about the Living Income Guaranteed, visit:

www.basicincome.me 

basicincomeguaranteed.wordpress.com

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Day 187: Why is Art so Expensive?

In one of the Afrikaans newspapers was an article on "Now everyone wants to have a Tretchi".

In the article, the author asks questions regarding the price of art - and why some art pieces are suddenly more expensive (though he's more talking about one artist in contrast to other artists - while from my perspective the same questions can apply to ALL Art).

The first thing that comes up when you ask people why Art is so expensive is the principle of Supply and Demand. There's only the one art piece which is unique in itself, only one person can have it and so in order to compete and exclude others from gaining access to it the price goes up.

But then the question of demand is not answered. Where does this demand come from? Where is this high willingness to pay for a physical object which may or may not even be aesthetically pleasant. I mean, Piero Manzoni canned his shit and it's called art.

It's all just based on consensus. A bunch of people agree that something is Art and now it's Art and now apparently it is 'valuable'. And if you want to be 'in' and you want to be part of this alternate reality called 'the art world' -- you want that painting/art piece that everyone agrees one is more worthy than other art pieces. I mean how ridiculous is that -- it's completely subjective. It's based on what other people agreed before them 'is art' and filter/interpret art through what they think they know about art. So they're not even looking at the actual piece for what it is, it first has to be filtered through someone's entire art knowledge before they have something to say about it.

Yes, art can be cool. I did art at some point and it's a fun medium to explore to express yourself and communicate in a different language where the art world has its own established 'symbolism' that you can use to convey a message.

But selling a painting like The card Players from Paul Cezanne for $267 million dollars? That's not what arts about, that's just a mind game. Especially if you consider that Paul Cezanne is looong dead and is never going to see any of the money -- so it's not supporting him in any way whatsover. If you look at Van Gogh, he had a terrible life -- what's in it for him when Portrait of Dr. Gachet was sold for $147.8 million. Surely, there's more important things you can do with your money? The person who actually deserved to get some money for the labour he put into the piece is long gone and you have a world where half of the population lives in misery -- so deciding to spend that amount of money on a piece of canvas with paint which together forms a picture over deciding to use your money to change the world for the better = it sounds kind of psychopathic to me.

The documentary "Exist through the Giftshop" by Banksy shows the whole Art scam quite clearly. In it, they follow around Thierry Guetta whose really into street art and basically a street art-wannabe and he ends up with his own exhibition selling pieces. And it's not like he put tons of work in the pieces because he mostly hired people to do the work for him and there's also not really a profound meaning behind any of his work. But because he's able to simulate art and 'make it look like art' = people believe it's art and make it art in their head. People come to his show and ask him questions and give their insight into what they are seeing and they're just making profound shit up and he just agrees with whatever they say = now it's art.

So art is all in the mind of the beholder and really has no other value than the time spent working on it and the money spent on acquiring the materials.

In Equal Money Capitalism Art will be valued as an expression -- not as an object to create an obsession about which leads to mental disorder like throwing tons of money away to get a piece while millions suffer.

You will also no longer be limited by people having to buy your art so you can survive and make more art -- your will be supported within developing and exploring your expression.

Expression and Creative Licensing

This will be more a ‘hobby’ point. For those people whose only income is derived from such activities, they’d have to be part of a greater collective like a Cultural Centre where many points of expression are explored and presented, where the general public can come and check it out and participate in community projects. It will be a place of coming together, having fun events, meeting people – socialising, which are all things people really enjoy.

In essence it’s about self-expression. You want the freedom to express. You will have the freedom to express and you will have the support that will give you the freedom to express. The concept of ‘ownership’ is only relevant to those points that are necessary to make your life function, like a house, a car – things like that. The other things are not really an ownership, because there’s nothing new. You’re simply expressing something that already exists. You are using notes in a particular sequence -- which forms a melody. The melody already existed - it’s just a coincidence that you’re the one that came up with that particular melody. The same goes for the lyrics of a song: the words you use for a song already exist, it’s just coincidence that you come up with it or another person comes up with it – it’s equally possible.

So it’s not about ownership there, or about having a copyright, or controlling it. That’s exactly the point we want to move away from – control. So that people can express themselves, if they like it.

http://economistjourneytolife.blogspot.com/2013/01/day-171-life-force-and-expression-in.html

This will allow a lot more people to enjoy and explore art as a point of Expression without the money constraints being in place -- while more people will also be able to enjoy appreciate one another's art. This will allow for Art to take on a whole new dimensions as there will be actual freedom to express.

Related articles

• Day 171: Life-Force and Expression in Equal Money Capitalism
• Day 180: The Word 'Capitalism' in 'Equal Money Capitalism'
• Day 173: Supply, Demand, Business and Scarcity in Equal Money Capitalism

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119: The Yes Men

The Yes Men, a movie, follows a couple of anti-corporate activist-pranksters as they impersonate World Trade Organization spokesmen on TV and at business conferences around the world.

The story follows Andy and Mike from their beginnings with GWBush.com, and on to their tasteless parody of the WTO's website. Some visitors don’t notice the site is a fake, and send speaking invitations meant for the real WTO. Mike and Andy play along with the ruse and soon find themselves attending important functions as WTO representatives.
Delighted to speak for the organization they oppose, Andy and Mike don thrift-store suits and set out to shock their unwitting audiences with darkly comic satires on global free trade. Weirdly, the experts don’t notice the joke and seem to agree with every terrible idea the two can come up with.
Exhausted by their failed attempts to shock, Mike and Andy take a whole new approach for one final lecture.
The Yes Men is directed by Dan Olman, Sarah Price, and Chris Smith, whose previous credits include the 1999 Sundance Winner “American Movie.” It was released by United Artists. -  From http://theyesmen.org/movies/theyesmen

This is a documentary I watched today, which was quite interesting, funny and sad at the same time.

Within the documentary they show how these two guys go around to conferences and TV interviews, pretending to be representatives of the WTO. Within these interviews/conferences, they assume the opinion of the WTO, which is pro trade liberalization and so will always defend/protect the WTO as if they really are part of it. What they however do, is take these points to quite an extreme where they propose new policies which are quite ludicrous, but in a way do very closely resemble how the WTO works/operates -- it's just more emphasized.

So in the documentary for instance, they show how they go to a conference in Finland to talk about 'The Future of Textiles'. For this conference, they created this golden tight costume, which has got an inflatable penis attached to it, with a screen on the head of the penis. In this conference where lots of educated people are sitting, they showcased the suit on how managers can overcome the obstacle of work and monitoring their workers in Third World Countries while at the same time enjoying leisure time. So here, the suit is set up with monitoring devices and sensors, where the manager can keep an eye on the slave workers in Third World Countries and send them shocks to implants in their shoulders -- all from the suit.

At the conference, the guy who is doing the presentation is wearing the costume underneath his suit, and after his 'assistant' rips his suit off and the costume is revealed, he does a presentation of the suit along with showing an animation clip with all the benefits of this amazing suit. So this is one of the funny parts, because here's apparently a guy from the WTO, which is considered to be one of the representative points of capitalism and our current economic system -- walking around in this conference in a penis suit.

One of the sad parts however, is that they've been in this game for quite a while, and previously when they did this type of gigs, they were already going a bit 'over the top' but no-one seemed to notice that they were pulling a joke. They expected people to immediately find out what they were doing and get thrown out, but instead everyone received their message very well and encouraged what they are saying. So that's pretty scary -- where simply because the WTO represents that point of 'authority' -- people will simply accept whatever they say and support it, within believing that it's the right thing to do without being critical in anyway whatsoever.

So now with this penis suit, they thought it was going to be quite clear and they were pulling off a joke, and that they were going to be thrown out -- and as I was watching the moment in suspense, I was completely flabbergasted by the level of apathy in the audience and how they were not at all questioned or thrown out.

Some of the things you see in the documentary, where they do their speeches, are really quite disturbing and completely 'off of this world' and the complete zombie-ness of the audience/participators is just....scary.

I definitely recommend watching this documentary, as it clearly shows how our so called 'educational elite' is completely clueless as to what to do with this world, and are just brainwashed zombies who will accept anything 'society' throws at them from if they perceive them as an 'authority' -- even if what they throw at them goes beyond any form of reason and is completely ridiculous. It also shows the extent of the human problem and how much work there is to be done in terms of re-educating human beings and supporting them to for the first time become being with actual common sense and integrity. Because right now, humanity's really a joke -- and a bad one at that.

Related articles

• Day 98: The Unholy Trinity
• Day 102: Liberalism
• Day 119: True Activist Power
• Day 113: Inner Structure of an Equal Money System - Part 3
• Day 110: Evilution - Neocolonialism

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