Blog 46 Boxing Day, 2016
Unless you happened to get a set of stuffed leather mitts for Christmas, "Boxing Day" must have another meaning. Well, Children, I can tell you. Boxing Day was the day after Christmas Day, when all the boxes the gifts came in were packed away for use another year. You might call it domestic recycling. That was Step One.
Then, your boxes stored, you took your Christmas money and went shopping.
When the owners of stores checked the figures at the end of a Boxing Day, they found they were onto a good thing, and extended their pre-Christmas Sale prices another day, and advertised their Boxing Day Sale! That was Step 2.
Lately, I notice, it has become "Boxing Week Sale!" And surely we can predict a universal Boxing Month Sale! Wow! Then, the Boxing Year Sale, December 26 to December 24!!
Certainly the corporate chain stores, whose employees have forgotten that Sunday used to be called "the day of rest", will rejoice at Boxing Year. The shareholders will demand it, ecstatically.
But what about the money - what the Cogs Blog is all about?
Where does the money come from for a year-long Boxing Day? I should expect to see department stores, as long as they exist at all, to be manned (or womanned) by robots. (Shapely female robots for the Men's Department, of course.) Some wage-savings there will go straight to the bottom line. And the corporate bosses who work seven days a week anyway, will convince the government that its job is to provide the customers with money to spend. Governments will do as they are told as always and, instead of taxing, will just send out a steady flow of GAI payments.
GAI? It's an old idea: Guaranteed Annual Income - for all citizens. Maybe, Baby, its time has come at last!
And where will the governments' money come from? Won't that be inflationary?
Oh, come on, now, get with it. Government money (the kind with the presidents' pictures on it) is rapidly disappearing. And banks don't print money. Banks create credit, which already covers almost all of our money needs. So governments can create credit, too. Indefinitely.
As for inflation, so what? Even if it happens, the law of money will still operate: money goes where money is. It will still accumulate at the top. The Forbes Five Hundred listing of the world's richest people will simply list more billionaires and fewer millionaires, then more trillionaires than billionaires. Quadrillionaires? Sure. We might want to shorten the names of our monetary units to "bills", "trills" and "quads". Everybody will soon forget the zeroes. This is no pipe dream. (Some old folks can remember when a loaf of bread cost 12 cents. Really.) Inflation is just something we do already. Only, with GAI, everybody gets what they want. The poor get three meals a day. The management classes get do their satisfying, creative work. The shareholders get their dividends, and the accumulation addicts, accumulate.
All that sounds like an almost boringly good alternative to the world's current situation..
Happy New Year!
Your devoted blogger.
Monday, 26 December 2016
Sunday, 18 December 2016
Blog 45 "Free" Trade and Global Power, or Why Danny Won't Mow My Lawn.
Blog 45 Free Trade and Global Power
I hired a boy to mow my lawn. At least I think I did. It was his idea. He knocked on my door and asked if he could mow my 1500 square feet of ratty turf. Ten dollars. His lawnmower. "Okay," I said "Start Monday." He did a good job. Every Monday he came. Every Monday, I paid.
About halfway through the summer, I received a birthday present, a shiny green power mower. Well, that should be an improvement, I thought. I'll save a hundred dollars over the summer and also benefit from some needed exercise. So when Danny came on Monday, I told hin that would be his last cut. I paid him, and added a $10 tip.
That evening Danny returned with his lawyer father, who told me that I could mow my own lawn, but I had to pay Danny another $120 for another twelve weeks of the season, plus another $10 tip. He used the phrase, "compensation for the loss of future profits." Keep that phrase in mind. We'll get back to it.
Neighbourly discussion followed, which got nowhere (though at one point he did attempt to twist my arm behind my back. I stepped on his instep, and he swore, but let go of my arm. Finally we hailed a passing neighbour and asked him if he would help resolve a dispute, acting as a third party we both trusted. He agreed, and we each stated our case. He thoughtfully turned it over and then said, "Well, if I am going to be a judge here, I'll have to charge you $10, plus a $10 tip, each."
To avoid an assault charge, I capitulated, and paid..
Does that phrase "compensation for loss of future profits" suggest what the next 200 words of this blog is about?
Part 2
Well, it's a new breed of international trade treaties, which began with Chapter 11 of NAFTA, the North American Free Trade Agreement, 1994, a deal between, Canada, the United States and Mexico.
NAFTA's Chapter 11 is not about trade; it was about investor protection. Essentially, it says that if an investor (read: "corporation") of one signatory country invested in another country, and that country's governments made any regulations or laws that affected the profits of "the investor", said investor could claim compensation from the offending national government for loss of profit, including loss of future profits. (You may want to read that sentence again.)
The lawsuit format is as follows:
Each party, the investing corporation and the national government that made the regulation, appoints one adjudicator, and the two appoint a third one. Two out of three is a win.
(I read a recent piece on the exorbitant fees charged by the three adjudicators.)
Every so-called free trade agreement since 1994 has contained these investor protection clauses.
From the corporations' point of view, all of the hundreds of pages of a treaty's trade provisions about tariffs on turnips and regiulations about raisins are mere window dressing. What counts is the investor protection clauses.
In the current global conflict between global corporations and national states, when this joker is in the pact, the deck is stacked. There are now, in fact, dummy corporations set up for the sole purpose of suing a national government for loss of future profits!
Time for the nation states to fight back?
Actually, they are. At least some peoples are - by turfing out corporate-friendly governments and electing... Well, you know who...
Okay.
Okay!
Well, at least I feel good about the exercise, and the green mower works well, too.
I hired a boy to mow my lawn. At least I think I did. It was his idea. He knocked on my door and asked if he could mow my 1500 square feet of ratty turf. Ten dollars. His lawnmower. "Okay," I said "Start Monday." He did a good job. Every Monday he came. Every Monday, I paid.
About halfway through the summer, I received a birthday present, a shiny green power mower. Well, that should be an improvement, I thought. I'll save a hundred dollars over the summer and also benefit from some needed exercise. So when Danny came on Monday, I told hin that would be his last cut. I paid him, and added a $10 tip.
That evening Danny returned with his lawyer father, who told me that I could mow my own lawn, but I had to pay Danny another $120 for another twelve weeks of the season, plus another $10 tip. He used the phrase, "compensation for the loss of future profits." Keep that phrase in mind. We'll get back to it.
Neighbourly discussion followed, which got nowhere (though at one point he did attempt to twist my arm behind my back. I stepped on his instep, and he swore, but let go of my arm. Finally we hailed a passing neighbour and asked him if he would help resolve a dispute, acting as a third party we both trusted. He agreed, and we each stated our case. He thoughtfully turned it over and then said, "Well, if I am going to be a judge here, I'll have to charge you $10, plus a $10 tip, each."
To avoid an assault charge, I capitulated, and paid..
Does that phrase "compensation for loss of future profits" suggest what the next 200 words of this blog is about?
Part 2
Well, it's a new breed of international trade treaties, which began with Chapter 11 of NAFTA, the North American Free Trade Agreement, 1994, a deal between, Canada, the United States and Mexico.
NAFTA's Chapter 11 is not about trade; it was about investor protection. Essentially, it says that if an investor (read: "corporation") of one signatory country invested in another country, and that country's governments made any regulations or laws that affected the profits of "the investor", said investor could claim compensation from the offending national government for loss of profit, including loss of future profits. (You may want to read that sentence again.)
The lawsuit format is as follows:
Each party, the investing corporation and the national government that made the regulation, appoints one adjudicator, and the two appoint a third one. Two out of three is a win.
(I read a recent piece on the exorbitant fees charged by the three adjudicators.)
Every so-called free trade agreement since 1994 has contained these investor protection clauses.
From the corporations' point of view, all of the hundreds of pages of a treaty's trade provisions about tariffs on turnips and regiulations about raisins are mere window dressing. What counts is the investor protection clauses.
In the current global conflict between global corporations and national states, when this joker is in the pact, the deck is stacked. There are now, in fact, dummy corporations set up for the sole purpose of suing a national government for loss of future profits!
Time for the nation states to fight back?
Actually, they are. At least some peoples are - by turfing out corporate-friendly governments and electing... Well, you know who...
Okay.
Okay!
Well, at least I feel good about the exercise, and the green mower works well, too.