Do you really, truly believe there is something to look forward to
for the planet ?
for the human race?
for civilization?
for civilization as we know it?
for Canada and/or North America?
for industry and commerce?
for democracy?
for social justice?
for buffalo?
for the automobile?
What faith have you lost, when and how?
What belief still drives you to action?
I have two young adult kids (23 and 20). I have to believe there will be a world for them, even if the evidence is not too good.
I try not to affect the planet too much - no plane flights for 11 years, and no car for even longer. I think people who depend on cars will be priced out of the market unless they are very wealthy. I expect the rural/suburban car-based culture will become more and more financially unsustainable as it has already become environmentally unsustainable.
As far as climate goes, I think the volcanos in Iceland will keep things cool and wet for the next few years.
Democracy: I am all for it. The more the merrier, even into Industrial Democracy. More democracy will make the world a better place, and more democracy is something worth fighting for.
Perhaps it is all going to end tomorrow, but there is nothing I can do about that. Best to try to live each day like it could be my last, however hackneyed that may sound....
Right on, Uncle John.
And if Homo sapiens has to give way someday, perhaps we can, like Farley Mowat, think good thoughts about the importance of that for other species.
Of course I believe in the future, but I also believe in the past.
Whenever I hear questions like this I have a stock response: "Go visit Drumheller, or the dinosaur park by Brooks, Alberta." Walking around that geography tells you that all your narcissistic concerns amount to little more than a microscopic layer of dust in the great sediment bed of life.
Good point al-Q
Or look at a piece of Tyndall Stone and realize that the ammonite fossils got smoked in an extinction that killed 95 percent of all life on earth. And even stranger, they call that extinction an "event" although it was several things that took place over the course of 3 million years,
Or take a sideways glance at the sun, and realize that it is going to turn this whole place into a boiling stovetop in about a billion years, and a molten ball shortly thereafter.
But there is a good chance that something right here - like the Yellowstone supervolcano - is going to take care of things long before that.
That said, of course there is something to look forward to. What's the sense in worrying about the unknown if you don't appreciate and make the best of what we have here and now?
Yes, knowing about history, human or natural, gives me a bit of perspective. Doesn't mean I'm not upset with the way things are, or how they are going, nor does it mean there's no point to fighting for what is right, as we'll blunder through like we always have.
Just that the sun will always rise tomorrow, for the next billion years or so.
Maybe the question should be framed as, "do you believe you can have a positive effect on the future." I have great fear for the future of the youth generation that is now between 16 and 35. I have kids and nieces and nephews in this age and its fucking a tough world out there. Many old farts don't understand what it means to be working two or three part time jobs. You lose one of those jobs there is no safety net. If you get hurt or ill when you are not at work you become destitute unless you both can bring yourself to ask your family for help and that they can and will be able to help.
However they are facing the type of future that forged one of the strongest generations of activists this nation has ever seen. I hope that the BC NDP will win power and that Dix proves himself able to start back on the road to a more equitable and just society. We have some really good people coming forward for nominations in Burnaby's 2 seats that the NDP doesn't hold now. If the best of them become MLA's they will put the emphasis on the areas of greatest need.
I am very concerned about the state of the economy for people my kids' ages. I have spoken to a number of people in my cohort who have kids in my kids' cohort, and they all say how difficult it is for them to find work. Union organizing seems to be a solution.
I am very concerned about the state of the economy for people my kids' ages. I have spoken to a number of people in my cohort who have kids in my kids' cohort, and they all say how difficult it is for them to find work. Union organizing seems to be a solution.
My son is in that cohort. The truth in BC is that the retail unions sold out this generation over a decade ago. They were beaten into taking two tiered contracts. So when my son worked at a union retail outlet he got the privilege of paying into a pension plan. The only problem was the vesting was 8 years. Not many of his cohort make the 8 years so they have all helped top up the boomers pensions. He didn't care it was just another deduction but when I looked at his plan it pissed me off.
Home Depot had better benefits and earlier access and they were non-union. He doesn't even think about unions and he was raised in a very strong union house. I am afraid that until the UFCW and other retail unions throw off their two tier agreements they will have a hard time getting any young people fired up. Giving them the solidarity speech rings a little hollow. "Join the union were all members are siblings and equals. However some equals get paid more and have better benefits and pensions than other equals."
So, the elder socialists fight on for the next generation. I expected nothing less. And some of you still think this country can turn around. That doesn't altogether surprise me, either. Heartening, really.
It is a trait to be found in many species. But, you're right, in ours, it does seem more common among Homo gregarious than Homo economicus.
Our youngest daughter asked tonight, when we were watching some speculative documentary on life on other planets, whether our world would end. She and I had talked about, the day before, people who make money from preying on people's beliefs and fears about death, their god's wrath, etc. and the role of religion in that particular grift.
Even so, she still wanted to know whether anything was forever. I think she's at the age where the immediate future isn't the be all and end all. She's thinking beyond her own life to something larger. So, it's time for the god talk (much more complicated than the sex talk, which will come in a year or three).
I said, "well, there are people who believe in god, and then there are people like your Dad and me who think god is in the same category as fairies and leprachauns. My kid said, "how dare you question the existence of leprachauns!"
I am humbled by her understanding of humour.
If the USA fails - and their economy is tanking - they seriously will take others down with them. And alarm bells have been going off for a while about food production worldwide on the decline - so, yeah, I'm a bit worried. I don't expect to be around when the sh*t really hits the fan, though - probably in the middle of the next decade, if not earlier.
Don't be afraid to tell the kiddies you just don't know. It's a humbling thing not knowing, and I guess some people have issues with it. I mean, we've witnessed alleged grown ups swear up and down that Elvis bin Laden and his invisible army of darkness was real and not patron saintes for the warfiteering industrial complex for years and years. There was no suggesting an alternate possible reality to them otherwise.
I'm not sure that being taken down will be such a bad thing. The cold war economies were all for show anyways. We know that now.
I think 30 years from now it will be accepted truth that 9/11 was a false flag operation and just another desperate attempt by a failing empire to regain lost international prestige and influence. The truth will come out eventually when there is nothing left for them to protect from democracy and populism.
30 years from now Europe could be a world hub for science and technology and trading freely with China and India. Those countries are the future. They will make up the future as they go.
And Canada may even break free from restrictive trade agreements with a democratically elected NDP government and possible left-wing coalitions running the country for the most part in future. I don't see this neoliberal ideological arrangement with the US and Mexico lasting very much longer. Fresh faces and new ideas will fill the halls of power in Ottawa some fine day. One fine day in the future, 99 percent of us will realize we far outnumber the elites and seize rightful ownership of the land from sea to sea to shining sea. The old ways will be forgotten. Some day.
From the looks of things these days, America might just kick it over before we do....
Yes there are plenty of good lefties in the States who just might takeover things for a while. They have used socialism before in rebuilding America to resemble a civilized nation. I don't underestimate them. The people are their greatest assets.
I am very concerned about the state of the economy for people my kids' ages. I have spoken to a number of people in my cohort who have kids in my kids' cohort, and they all say how difficult it is for them to find work. Union organizing seems to be a solution.
I'm sure I'm going to get jumped on but how is union organizing a solution to the simple fact that there are no jobs?
When things have melted down before, we see some decent Pheonix' rise from the ashes. It's difficult, because we want to know just what that bird will look like, and have a hand in decorating it. But things are often just too fluid, too unpredictable for us to do either.
Union organizing, for example. The whole closed shop, organizing drive thing is an artifact. It's been made an artifact by globalization, Free Trade, and the unabashed take over of business of our legislatures.
But what we can do for the kids today is provide a different kind of union where it isn't contingent on the work place. More like a membership in a paralegal "club", where you pay a fee, and get access to specialists in employment standards, worker's comp-- all the things a union does except collective bargaining, with maybe consumer protection thrown in. That might be used as an organizing tool for the old style closed shop union, or it might morph into something else.
Don't forget that they way we have been shafted isn't through in your face legislation as much as through lack of enforcement of existing laws and regulations. The only way to shift that is by grabbing the bull by the horns and re-creating enforcement from the grass roots.
And, that's is just one example, from the Union idea. There's other similar ways of adapting that can be done similarly in other social movements that I don't think people have tried because we want to turn the clock back and fight on ground that has been irrevocably ripped out from underneath us.
I have hope for the future because of pragmatism. Somebody will hit on something, and the game will change, the pedullum will swing.
But what we can do for the kids today is provide a different kind of union where it isn't contingent on the work place. More like a membership in a paralegal "club", where you pay a fee, and get access to specialists in employment standards, worker's comp-- all the things a union does except collective bargaining, with maybe consumer protection thrown in. That might be used as an organizing tool for the old style closed shop union, or it might morph into something else.
Don't forget that they way we have been shafted isn't through in your face legislation as much as through lack of enforcement of existing laws and regulations. The only way to shift that is by grabbing the bull by the horns and re-creating enforcement from the grass roots.
...
I have hope for the future because of pragmatism. Somebody will hit on something, and the game will change, the pedullum will swing.
Well said. I agree that the union movement must go back to its roots and I believe you just described its roots. Long before unions were legal there were Fraternal Organizations that provided some of the things our social safety net used to provide.
In BC your analysis of the non enforcement of rights is the correct one. The laws protecting workers are still supposedly on the books. If you have a problem with your boss, say they don't pay you overtime, no problem go online and download a 27 page form, fill it out and BRING IT TO YOUR BOSS. If they don't fix the problem then you can get an Employee Standards officer involved. I know it sounds strange but few young workers in the province bother following the process. The ones that do find that they get laid off at the first convenient time. Not fired of course because that would be against the law. Laid off because of shortage of work says it all and seems to be an easy out.
Pope John Paul 1st was murdered by a rightwing cabal who, all religion aside, understood the war on drugs, for instance, MUST NEVER be stopped, as too much power depended upon maintaining a politically correct storyline, which we're forcefed everytime we watch the news. Stalin murdered 100 million communists, the rw talking point goes; communism is/was a diseased philosophy, see! The 'reign of terror' during french revolution washed europe in blood; colonization brought civilization to backward peoples, gorillas were horrible monsters, as were whales and wolves, the free market' determined business success according to inherent value of the enterprise. We all grew up learning this stuff (see 'lies my teacher told me') and the media enforces the big lie as a matter of everyday routine (In an episode of 'Family Guy', an oftentimes critical-of-rightwing-hypocrisy tv cartoon, the little boy built a machine that took travellers to alternate universes, and one of the alternate universes was where, because USA didn't nuke Japan, the Japs won WW2 and...blah blah blah! -the point being that the nuking of the Japan cities occured AFTER Japan already trying to surrender; there are actual telegrams from Hirohito dated a month before Hiroshima!) To tell the truth now, and that's even w/out telling millions of heavily armed American tough patriot guys, that nearly 400 of their brothers were sacrificed like lambs on sept 11/01-in order to galvanize a war against islamic reactionaries who were basically our allies anyway...i don't think i've even heard the idea of admitting 911 =inside job mentioned on the msmedia, yet! How could they do it? Almost certainly impossible
The thing is they don't change the legislation because they know there would be a public uproar, so they change the regulations, or they gut the enforcement.
By forcing enforcement, you accomplish one of two things. You get the protection under the law, and illustrate to the beneficiaries the importance of good laws and regulations and how we need more of them, or you force the hand of the establishment to actually legislate the protections out of existance-- which exhausts a peacefull means of protection and change, flushing out how nasty these people really are to increasing numbers of people.
It helps to look at this as a process.
I think union organizing will make for a better world in the future. There are millions of unorganized workers in Canada and hundreds of millions more around the world. Union membership has been going down, and so have relative wages. I think that is no coincidence. I believe there is a good economic case to be made for union organization. Higher wages will generally go to consumption, and through pensions and other investment programs some will also go to business investment. After WW2 there was an informal social contract with higher wages and the implementation of social programs to help the poor, the sick, and the old. The people with the money do not give some up unless they are threatened with losing it all. On the left, they can argue whether the presence of the state capitalist/deformed workers' state USSR was one of those threats, however the economic boom post-WW2 can be explained through said higher wages and social programs, as well as infrastructure projects.
Continual unionization of the workforce will raise wages, and make for a more prosperous society in general.
Organize Organize Organize
That is a mantra many of us from the union movement have been screaming at the leadership for 20 years. Like in too many areas they have followed the capitalists and the individual unions have been growing by mergers and raids. Bigger is not better unless the bigger has a very decentralized power structure. If it is too hierarchal it stifles democracy and organizing gets harder.
Perhaps the problem is that the traditional (AFL-CIO-CLC) unions are based on old Industrial complexes like steel and autos and forestry which have been outsourced. Now the workforce has moved away from those areas and the union movement has not caught up. For example the IWW's Starbuck's Workers Union might be a good idea for something new. Then there is Wal*Mart, McDonald's, and Tim Horton's and all these places where workers seem to be these days. Not to mention the thousands in telemarketing these days. And I read on rabble about a successful drive to organize taxi drivers in Hamilton. This could spread to Toronto and other cities.
The people with the money do not give some up unless they are threatened with losing it all. On the left, they can argue whether the presence of the state capitalist/deformed workers' state USSR was one of those threats, however the economic boom post-WW2 can be explained through said higher wages and social programs, as well as infrastructure projects.
There wasn't much capitalism in the former USSR. There was very little profit motive except for black market profiteering which was illegal. Private property laws were nil next to non-existent.
It was state socialism.
Continual unionization of the workforce will raise wages, and make for a more prosperous society in general.
We can unionize the service sector and retail industry, but outside of those lower paid jobs there isn't much left. They've offshored a lot of the means of production from the 1950s to 1990s under various guises of free trade. Canadians have become renters in our own land. We don't have a national energy policy anymore - the Yanks dictate that to our corrupt stooges in Ottawa, too.
Re the USSR and capitalism: It may have been called state socialism, and there may have been (mostly sub-standard) social services for all workers and little or no property (or person) protection for any workers. But the ruling class who controlled all the wealth and held all the power certainly owned and guarded private stuff.
The people had no say in how wealth was distributed and used, in what industry, agriculture and commerce the nation would pursue, by what methods, or in what rights they themselves had. Not unlike western capitalism in its final stages, about ten years from now, when the rulers will have finished consolidating theirs and demolishing ours.
Re union organizing: Unions will almost certainly be outlawed within the next decade. First weakened, discredited and bypassed, of course.
Do you really, truly believe there is something to look forward to
yep...
for the planet ?
The planet was here long before we were and will be here long after we are no longer in this form
for the human race?
You betcha....
for civilization?
What is civilization?
for civilization as we know it?
Um, there are differing "civilizations" around the globe, perhaps some will be gone while others will arise.
for Canada and/or North America?
do they exist currently?
for industry and commerce?
Always,
for democracy?
Egalitarianism will be the way of the future.
for social justice?
as above
for buffalo?
They have already survived the worst we have thrown at them, why not?
for the automobile?
Hopefully not
What faith have you lost, when and how?
in so called lefty intellectuals, they have done more to harm social justice in the recent past than anyone else.
What belief still drives you to action?
Eternity
@Fidel I think there is a HUGE number of non-unionized workers in all these new service and retail industries. They have barely scratched the surface. The old (unionized) 2,000-worker GM plant in Scarborough at Eglinton & Lebovic has been replaced by a mall called "Eglinton Town Centre". In and around that area is a huge retail/big box area which probably has close to the number of employees that GM had. Very few of these workers are unionized. The area does well business-wise. Thousands of cars in the area at all times of the day and night.
I think that even from the point of view of traditional economics higher wages are good. The pressure to unionize workers will extract more concessions for the working people from government than parliamentary action IMO.
@absentia: I surely hope not. I think that is something worth fighting against.
Re the USSR and capitalism: It may have been called state socialism, and there may have been (mostly sub-standard) social services for all workers and little or no property (or person) protection for any workers. But the ruling class who controlled all the wealth and held all the power certainly owned and guarded private stuff.
The Sovs had universal health care, social housing and daycare in 1920's Moscow. They were actually decades ahead of us in that regard. Here in Canada there were thousands of people dying of tuberculosis and preventable diseases in the 1930s and 40s. Much of Canada was like a third world country right up to the 1960s. I've been to parts of Northern Ontario that are still third worldish.
And members of the Soviet politburo were said to be materially poorer than the average Western world vacationer to the Soviet Union then. There were certainly incentives and rewards for being a top member of the party then, like larger apartments and maybe a dacha in the Caucasus. But their wealth was miniscule compared to concentration of wealth among the one or two percent elite here in the west.
And if workers of the former Soviet Union did not own the means of production, they at least owned their jobs and apartments. There were certain guarantees for Russians for 70 years that do not exist today under a system of state capitalism since 1991.
The people had no say in how wealth was distributed and used, in what industry, agriculture and commerce the nation would pursue, by what methods, or in what rights they themselves had. Not unlike western capitalism in its final stages, about ten years from now, when the rulers will have finished consolidating theirs and demolishing ours.
The former USSR was a group of developing countries for a long time. They never had this illusion that is fading away here in North America, state capitalism based on consumerism and unrealistic consumption levels. The Soviet Union did not collapse all on its own. They had help from within and without.
The Soviet state did decide those things though. The state-owned GOSBANK paid everyone's wages. There were no stock markets in the former USSR because profiteering was illegal. Usury and living off the avails of rent and compound interest was illegal.
Here we gave up partial state financing of state social programs and social democracy in general by 1974. The fact that the Government of Canada created a quarter of the money supply through the still nationalised Bank of Canada from 1938 to 1974 is proof that socialism works. Today Canada is a state capitalist economy as is the Russian economy.
The USSA is something else though. They have used state socialist methods throughout American history to shore up failed ideas for laissez-faier capitalism and state capitalism gone awry. Purer forms of state capitalism exist in India and Haiti and Pakistan and El Salvador and so on. There are few social supports paid for by the state in those third world capitalist countries.
I like it!! - the question I mean.
The future?
The planetary biosphere is undergoing some upheaval but it will recover in a few thousand years or so, and as usual after a collapse, life comes back more diverse, stronger, better. I give it about 100 years from now until the oceans cannot support life, which spells the end of life on land as we know it. Things are going to get ugly for awhile.
After the "crash of the biosphere" people will be living a different life than we do now [but I won't detail it]. The human race will survive in some form, but I think there might be a step backwards mentally. We are going insane due to our expanded consciousness and diminished intuitive abilities.
In the more distant future, after we recover from the crash of the biosphere, technology will die out in favor of enlightenment where we live etherally, getting the energy to run our bodies from just the oxygen in the air, levitation is our transportation, and we will be communicating telepathically. Its all good.
Of course, there is the chance that humans, the newest and most fragile life form on earth, WON'T survive the crash of the biosphere, but consciousness will rise again one day on earth in another species. I hope they will be nicer.
@Fidel I think there is a HUGE number of non-unionized workers in all these new service and retail industries. They have barely scratched the surface. The old (unionized) 2,000-worker GM plant in Scarborough at Eglinton & Lebovic has been replaced by a mall called "Eglinton Town Centre". In and around that area is a huge retail/big box area which probably has close to the number of employees that GM had. Very few of these workers are unionized. The area does well business-wise. Thousands of cars in the area at all times of the day and night.
With the dollar as high as it is, how much longer can they hold out against offshoring? Certifying those workers would be an incentive to offshore. That's how neoliberalism removes power from workers to bargain on equal footing with owners. And how can they bargain effectively with absentee corporate landlords holding the offshoring trump card?
I think, and believe it or not, that we have to work re-gain those relationships between owners of the means of production and workers. We are only tilting at windmills in the mean time. But yes, certifying workers is a good idea, too. But we should also try to guide the Quixotes of Canada in the direction of real giants the same time. For this we need federal power first and foremost, and then with introduction of a modern electoral system a united front on the left. The NDP realizes it could have powerful allies in other leftist parties, but right now their democratic voices have been gagged by an obsolete electoral system designed to prevent government of and for and by the people.
"we have to work re-gain those relationships between owners of the means of production and workers."
Isn't the "blurring" of this distinction really fundamental to explaining why it hasn't been abolished before now?
Not sure what you mean, George. Explain please.
Let me take a stab at that... There seem to be four distinct economic roles that we play, namely shopper/consumer, worker, investor, and entrepreneur. We are all shoppers, and consumer spending is the biggest chunk of GDP. One argument for unionization is that it will tend to put more disposable income in the pockets of workers. Even if we are just shoppers and workers, our interests conflict. As workers, we tend to want prices to be high for the products/services we make, however as shoppers we tend to want those prices to be low.
Our role as investors really defines the "blur" GV was talking about, if I have this right. Through our public and private pension funds we are all investors. Not only that, but a huge number of us trade stocks and bonds on our own accounts through computers, and still others of us have rented out our basements or own other income properties. Indeed enough of us are in this 'shareholder' and 'landlord' class as investors to make a FPTP majority. But likely not a 50% + 1 majority. In a way share ownership has been 'democratized' and brought to the masses, however I think many small investors are coming to the conclusion the system is rigged not in their favour. The big guys still control everything through insider trading and the ability to appoint Board members.
Thus many of us simultaneously play the role of bourgeois investors and proletarian workers, causing more than a little economic multiple personality disorder, and causing academic boot-lickers to claim that we are at the 'end of history'. How many would give up their paltry 'investment portfolios' for a living wage and a living pension? Despite what one of our Red Banks might say, We are not "richer than we think".
The entrepreneurial class are those who put invested money in motion. Commonly known as the management class, these are among the true leeches off of the common wealth. Some smaller entrepreneurs invest their own money, however the system will tend to gobble them up...
Things are not as clear cut as they were when Marx wrote his work. We have to disentangle our roles and decide what we really are before we can make any progress.
"we have to work re-gain those relationships between owners of the means of production and workers."
Isn't the "blurring" of this distinction really fundamental to explaining why it hasn't been abolished before now?
Why base societal structure on an abhorrent concept like dividing an entire species into owners and workers?
Such concepts - and crucifiction as a redemptive act, and gladiatorial contest as public entertainment - being acceptable to the majority of 21st century people is why i don't believe in a future.
@Noah Scape: That's the kind of thing i was hoping for - speculation and perhaps a little light introscpetion. Introspeculation? Maybe i put in too many possible topics. Maybe we can play with each one in seperate threads at some future time.
@Fidel: It's true there was less to steal in early USSR. But never underestimate the power of graft - lots of little dribbles - say, for a permit to further subdivide a room, or a few bags of cement disappearing out of the concrete for a school that will henceforth always leak - adds up over time ro substantial bank accounts in Paris... But let's not go to Moscow today.
A very fine stab, Uncle John.
Yes, the genius of modern capitalists is PR. Making us believe that increase can continue forever. Conning us into investing in our own exploitation and decimation. I mean, you can get people to protest against closing the factory the effluent from which is killing their kids. Love is hate; victory is defeat...
I believe in a future of massive climate change. I believe in peak oil, and that it is occurring now. I believe in a future where the bankrupt American Empire collapses. I believe that our children are smarter than we are, and pray that they are smart enough.
I despair at how difficult it has become to access the truth - that it has become a full-time unpaid labour.
But, hey! We have enough trees left to make two more, really, really big stone heads. So, shut up and keep chopping.
"we have to work re-gain those relationships between owners of the means of production and workers."
Isn't the "blurring" of this distinction really fundamental to explaining why it hasn't been abolished before now?
Why base societal structure on an abhorrent concept like dividing an entire species into owners and workers?
Such concepts - and crucifiction as a redemptive act, and gladiatorial contest as public entertainment - being acceptable to the majority of 21st century people is why i don't believe in a future.
@Noah Scape: That's the kind of thing i was hoping for - speculation and perhaps a little light introscpetion. Introspeculation? Maybe i put in too many possible topics. Maybe we can play with each one in seperate threads at some future time.
@Fidel: It's true there was less to steal in early USSR. But never underestimate the power of graft - lots of little dribbles - say, for a permit to further subdivide a room, or a few bags of cement disappearing out of the concrete for a school that will henceforth always leak - adds up over time ro substantial bank accounts in Paris... But let's not go to Moscow today.
You see, Fidel, there are still lots of private firms...there's an owner and there's the workers.
But usually, when they get big enough( Google, etc. etc.) they go public, and everyone can buy shares, speculate, invest their savings for their old age, including the blessed workers. That "blurs" things. And as you see from Absentia's response, some folks don't even want to hear about such things.
Our role as investors really defines the "blur" GV was talking about, if I have this right. Through our public and private pension funds we are all investors. Not only that, but a huge number of us trade stocks and bonds on our own accounts through computers, and still others of us have rented out our basements or own other income properties. Indeed enough of us are in this 'shareholder' and 'landlord' class as investors to make a FPTP majority. But likely not a 50% + 1 majority. In a way share ownership has been 'democratized' and brought to the masses, however I think many small investors are coming to the conclusion the system is rigged not in their favour. The big guys still control everything through insider trading and the ability to appoint Board members.
This is a very pervasive myth. It is similar to the West Jet commercials that claim the airline is owned by its employees. Marketing lies pure and simple. Designed to make us feel like we are all equal in Canada. There is no free market there is no democracy in the market. Both of those are examples of the "big lie."
Individuals and Institutions
The largest single players in Canada’s financial markets are now the "institutional investors": organizations such as mutual funds or pension funds which represent the pooled assets of numerous smaller investors. These institutional investors control huge sums of capital. The largest private pension fund in Canada, the Ontario Teachers’ Pension Plan, held $55 billion in assets at the end of 1997. The largest mutual fund in Canada, the Templeton Growth Fund, controlled some $10 billion in assets at the end of 1998. These large pools of accumulated capital naturally imply a degree of concentrated decision-making power much larger than for other market players. Company executives regularly make the rounds of the important institutional investors, detailing their earnings forecasts and business plans, and working hard to maintain the goodwill of these most powerful of financiers.
Yet the large size and high visibility of particular institutional investors does not necessarily imply that wealth ownership in this new era has somehow become a more diverse and even-handed undertaking. These institutional investors, despite their large individual size, still account for only a minority of total equity ownership. Figure 1 indicates the total ownership of corporate equities in Canada, as described by the national wealth accounting system of Statistics Canada. Despite their visibility and concentrated decision-making power, pension funds owned just 12 percent of all equities as of the end of 1997. Mutual funds, which represent the pooled purchase of assets by individual investors, account foranother 9 percent. The large majority of all equities–60 percent as of the end of 1997–is still owned by Canadians who purchase company shares directly. Other assorted investors–including non-residents, banks, insurance companies, and governments–hold the remaining 18 percent of equities.
So the direct ownership of shares by individuals is still the dominant form of corporate ownership in Canada. And there is some evidence that this dominance may become more marked in the future, not less. For example, the proportion of Canadian workers who are covered by workplace pension plans has actually declined in recent years–from 45 percent in 1993 to 42 percent in 1997. This reflects the growth of various forms of employment (such as part-time work, contract and temporary positions, small business jobs, and burgeoning self-employment) which are unlikely to provide pension coverage and other standard occupational benefits. So it is unlikely that the collective importance of pension funds in equity markets will grow in coming years, and it may even shrink.
Most company shares are owned directly by individuals, yet ironically the direct ownership of corporate shares is one of the least common forms of financial investment in Canada. A 1996 survey sponsored by the Toronto Stock Exchange indicated that just 21 percent of adult Canadians own any corporate shares directly (and only 37 percent of Canadians own any shares whatsoever, whether directly or througha mutual fund). The more burdensome information requirements, transactions costs, and risk associated with purchasing the shares of individual companies has made mutual funds the equity investment vehicle of choice for most personal investors. This already hints at the extent to which financial wealth in Canada is concentrated among a small share of the population: only about one-fifth of households own any corporate shares directly, but those direct holdings alone collectively account for 60 percent of all equity ownership (not even counting the shares owned by these same households through indirect means, such as mutual funds).
In short, it is the rare personal investor who possesses the knowledge and resources to investigate comparative investment opportunities, hire brokers to make the necessary ongoing transactions, and maintain stockpiles of specific equities and other assets stored away in their safety deposit boxes. Yet it is precisely these investors who account for the lion’s share of equity ownership. Perhaps the "typical" personal investor of today bears a closer resemblance to Mr. Moneybags–the top-hatted capitalist of Karl Marx’s writings–than to the unpretentious millionaire-next-door emphasized in the modern-day lore of the personal investing movement.
http://ble945.igc.org/index_files/FINANCIAL%20CONCENTRATION%20AND%20SOCI...
Right on, NS.
Now all we have to do is convince the poor bastard on that lathe that he can hope to fill his piggy bank by the end of his working life in some other - non-market - fashion. Convince his union as well.
That is, it would be nice if all understood.
Well if by telemarketing you actually mean call centres (not sure if you are) they are actually drying up here. A cousine of mine did support for wireless internet and his job was shipped to Costa Rica. A lot of the call centres in Canada did not make economic sense given the high dollar (that Dutch Disease thing that Elizabeth May referred to but did not give enough attention, emphasis).
A high Canadian dollar can kill service jobs as well as industrial jobs.
Perhaps the problem is that the traditional (AFL-CIO-CLC) unions are based on old Industrial complexes like steel and autos and forestry which have been outsourced. Now the workforce has moved away from those areas and the union movement has not caught up. For example the IWW's Starbuck's Workers Union might be a good idea for something new. Then there is Wal*Mart, McDonald's, and Tim Horton's and all these places where workers seem to be these days. Not to mention the thousands in telemarketing these days. And I read on rabble about a successful drive to organize taxi drivers in Hamilton. This could spread to Toronto and other cities.
Well instead of walking out of the plant when the owners announce it closing, taking it over like that Avi Lewis documentary and instead convert the production to solar panels or parts for a wind mills.
I am very concerned about the state of the economy for people my kids' ages. I have spoken to a number of people in my cohort who have kids in my kids' cohort, and they all say how difficult it is for them to find work. Union organizing seems to be a solution.
I'm sure I'm going to get jumped on but how is union organizing a solution to the simple fact that there are no jobs?
I'm sure I'm going to get jumped on but how is union organizing a solution to the simple fact that there are no jobs?
Work still needs to be done. There are no jobs, partly because a lot of jobs have gone east or south (but that's temporary - who will have the money to buy all the crap they're producing?) but also because the same amount of work is distributed among fewer and fewer workers, and desperate people hired at lower wages.
So here is an idea for organizing: instead of collectively negotiating for salary and benefits, and going on strike if the employer won't bend, everybody in the union quits and becomes an independent contractor. (First, we have an internal agreement of our requirements, with a mutual understanding that we all draw that same bottom line, but can go up any amount.) Then the employer has to negotiate individually with each stubborn person. Like to drive the man screaming nutbar! Can you imagine the Wisconsin teachers doing that? And in the meantime, you can do the same work at home, or in a small shop or wherever, since you're in business for yourself.
You see, Fidel, there are still lots of private firms...there's an owner and there's the workers.But usually, when they get big enough( Google, etc. etc.) they go public, and everyone can buy shares, speculate, invest their savings for their old age, including the blessed workers. That "blurs" things. And as you see from Absentia's response, some folks don't even want to hear about such things.
I think what blurs things here in the west is credit. Workers in North America have not shared in rising corporate profits since 1980.Unions and high wages are not at the root source of any inflation or general economic malaise today as they claimed to be the case in the 1970s. Instead the workers have been granted increasing access to credit and pay as long as you want mortgages. It's an economy of debt servitude and increasingly toll booth style economies. The overall means of production is now the money supply and credit. They can strangle the economy to lifelessness and decide when recessions will happen in coordination with buying dictatorial reign for their stooges in government. Their political capital among voters is at all time lows, and still the phony majority machine works in their favour.
@Fidel: It's true there was less to steal in early USSR. But never underestimate the power of graft - lots of little dribbles - say, for a permit to further subdivide a room, or a few bags of cement disappearing out of the concrete for a school that will henceforth always leak - adds up over time ro substantial bank accounts in Paris... But let's not go to Moscow today.
Corruption existed in the former USSR, it's true, and especially in the latter years and by 1980 when Moscow intelligentsia began sounding as if they'd been coached by the US Republican Party. What happened was a revolution from above in Russia with help from European and U.S. oligarchs. And the same people who were there in Bush I's and Clinton's administration who had hands in perestroika and pauperization of Russia in the 1990s are there in Obama's administration today. They are now doing to Americans what they did to tens of millions of Russians and Eastern Europeans in the 90s.
abstantia! what futur do you want?
Take your time to find the answer!
Do you really, truly believe there is something to look forward to
for the planet ?
for the human race?
for civilization?
for civilization as we know it?
for Canada and/or North America?
for industry and commerce?
for democracy?
for social justice?
for buffalo?
for the automobile?
What faith have you lost, when and how?
What belief still drives you to action?
i see over a millions pssible futur some are bright some are not, but most of them are gray, for each problem that you see today open new possibility in the futur. Thing like the price of oil if it raise green energie will come faster. as for humanity right now i see lot of corruption but corruption put light on other thing, the improvement of integrity standard, the wake-up of our collective conscience, we think more as a community and we just start to rebelle. Also the next economic crise. might bring up an other quiet revolution which will improve our life quality. the law of chaos: from order came chaos. from chaos came order!
thing won't be for the best but won't be for the worst ether!
What i want is entirely different, quite impossible - and irrelevant. I'm old, won't be here much longer, and have been lucky enough to live most of my life (except for the early part, in the worker's paradise) in a period of peace, in a prosperous, progressive country. Fifty years of that is pretty good, given what most people, most times, have had. Only, unlike many of the people who shared this precious, beautiful, rare bubble of good life with me, i know that it's the exception, not the norm.
What has happened in human history so far is all the same: small, brief bubbles of good life in long cycles of bad and worse. As technology develops, we are able to do ever more harm, on vaster areas, faster. There is a natural limit to the harm any entity, any system, any planet can endure before it expires. I see no cessation, no amelioration and no change of leadership that might even suggest a will to slowing down the harm. Previous civilizations have behaved similarly and collapsed. They were local and limited; other civilazations replaced them. We are now global, unlimited and of enormous number. I see a logical climax and denoument.
The latest one out with that message, absentia, is Paul Gilding with his The Great Disruption. Now, unlike some (i.e.James Lovelock) I understand he sees our species surviving that disruption, although with our social structure drastically modified, for all the reasons some foks have spoken about and tried to address for about a half-century now. There's the "optimists" and the pessimists, as always...although the optimism has to be winkled out, as in James Howard Kunstler's The Long Emergency.
I continue to hope that the Great Unread will come to realize what is coming down the pike and act on it, but I find myself chastized for using that expression. Hell, one can get into trouble here for suggesting that there are too many of our species on the planet. Perhaps someone will come up with something acceptable, hereabouts. In the meantime, we "soldier on, turning a blind eye"(Great Gaia, all those cliche' expressions) and try not to mention the "emperor's state of undress." Whatever happens, the "sun also rises", will, probably, for a very long Earth time, and that is the most hopeful note that one can find in Ecclesiastes, where many doubts were expressed. I used to find that reading it got one through the sermons, which never mentioned that Book, or others, like eye-of-the needle James.
What is destroying our future is also destroying our present: oil is the crisis. We are currently in the Oil War with three failing fronts. Oil is depleting our acquifers, polluting our surface water, etc and so on and so forth. So why is oil not at the forefront of our discussions right now? We are killing Arabs and Muslims and on the verge of killing Venezuelans to get at what will kill us in the short and long term. Oil is the crisis, oil is the crisis so why is that not being said aloud in the public square. People can put together videos for flash mobs or cute jokes about a mayor kicking a kid in the face but we cannot get a campaign video about oil.
