End of the Dream

No, not third division Rangers FC but the United States of America.

The "American dream"- consisting of the traditional ideals of freedom, equality and an upward social mobility achieved through hard work - turns out to be a myth, according to Howard Friedman, a statistician and health economist at the United Nations. The United States, the land of opportunity is no more.

Friedman drew this conclusion after systematically comparing the United States to 13 other wealthy countries in five key areas: health, education, safety, democracy and equality. All wealthy countries with GDP per capita exceeding $20,000, and have populations of more than 10 million. They are: Australia, Belgium, Canada, France, Germany, Greece, Italy, Japan, Portugal, The Netherlands, South Korea, Spain and the United Kingdom.

In the last 30 years, the gap between rich and poor has widened. The top 1 per cent of US citizens saw their incomes grow by 275 per cent between 1979 and 2007, according to the Congressional Budget Office. At the same time, the bottom one-fifth of US citizens only experienced income growth of 18 per cent. The US has very little socio-economic mobility compared to other wealthy nations. Canada has nearly twice the level of socio-economic mobility as the US.

"The amount of support poor people get in the US is much less than in any other country in terms of social benefits. There's not much of a safety net to help you out. On the other hand, if you do well, you can do very well in the US. In America, if your parents were poor, you were more likely to be poor compared to other countries. The top student from a poor neighborhood has roughly the same chance of graduating from college as the worst student from a wealthy neighborhood" said Friedman.

Americans spend on average nearly two to four times more on healthcare than any other wealthy country, yet have lower life expectancies. Americans are confident that the US education system is one of the best in the world, but again, the data indicates that this perception is not supported by facts. In 1960, the US had the 12th-lowest infant mortality rate in the world, but it sank to 34th by 2008.  The US used to have the highest rate of college education and now it barely makes it into the top 15

A Chinese report on the US said that in the last 20 years, incomes of 90 per cent of US citizens have stagnated, while incomes of the richest 1 per cent have grown by 33 per cent. According to the report, the US has the largest prison population in the world per capita and the highest rate of incarceration. One out of every 132 Americans is behind bars. In his book, Friedman notes that US incarceration and homicide rates are 10 times higher than Japan's. "There's an interesting financial incentive. Not all prisons are run by the state. Those privately run prisons make profits when people are put into jail, so they support laws that improve incarceration," he said

Nothing new in New Zealand

New Zealand today has one of the worst rates of income inequality compared with other developed or wealthy countries. Two-income families are increasingly worse off than single-income families were a generation ago.

Inequality has increased here faster than in any other Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) country. Most of the increase has been the result of larger rises in overall incomes for the top 20 per cent of income earners; and incomes for the bottom 20 per cent have decreased over the two decades from the mid-1980s. To make things worse, wealth is even more unevenly distributed than income and the level of wealth inequality is twice that of income inequality.

The most recent statistics available show wealth inequalities have increased to the extent that the top 10% of the population accounts for 51.8% of the country's net worth, while the bottom 50% of people owns just 5.2%

Over 500,000 people live in households with "negative wealth" - that is, they have more debt than income - and half of New Zealand income earners cannot afford to save.

Those on middle incomes are also bearing the brunt of the rich getting richer and the poor getting poorer, among them 200,000 children living in poverty. Federation of Family Budgeting Services chief executive Raewyn Fox  said she had seen a large increase in the number of people who might be considered "well off" coming in for advice on how to handle their money. She said easy access to credit (another ploy of the rich) was a trap that too many people fell into, without giving thought to the future and something tipping the balance and leaving them in a financially dangerous position.

truth - the wounded casualty of war

“The human rights situation in Libya now is far worse than under the late dictator Muammar Gaddafi,” stated Nasser al-Hawary, researcher with the Libyan Observatory for Human Rights. Hawary is no fan of the Gaddafi regime. The former Salafist and political oponent of Gaddafi was imprisoned numerous times as a poitical dissident by Gaddafi’s secret police. Hawary emerged from his periods of incarceration beaten and bloodied, but not broken.

Despite the interim National Transitional Council’s (NTC) pledge to bring the more than 6,000 detainees currently in detention to trial or to release them, only some have been freed while the atrocities committed by pro-revolutionary rebels have been overlooked. Armed militias controlling the streets and enforcing their version of law and order is a problem even in the major cities where the NTC has supposedly retaken control.

“All the young men here have guns,” former rebel fighter Suheil al Lagi tells IPS. “They are accustomed to sorting out political differences and petty squabbles this way, or they rob people using weapons. The high unemployment and financial hardship is aggravating the situation...This is not the new Libya we fought for and we may have to take up arms again if the corruption and greed continue. This time against the new government,” warns al Lagi.”

Meanwhile in Syria, amidst the slaughter, the propaganda and misinformation war carries on unabated. A government attack on the Syrian village of Tremseh was described by the media as a massacre of innocent civilians. The BBC's Jim Muir says the UN initial findings are more in line with the government's claims that it was attacking what it calls "nests of terrorists" or rebel hideouts.

SPEND, SPEND, SPEND

All over the world capitalism is experiencing an economic recession. Even formerly booming Japan is feeling the pinch with markets in free-fall. Amidst this period of uncertainty and fear there is of course one section of the population that continues to spend, spend, spend as usual. "An apartment that is believed to be the most expensive one-bedroom property in the world is on sale in Tokyo with a price tag of a cool Y1.8 billion (£14.72 million). .... The price means that 1 square foot of the property costs £3,320.33. The owner of the penthouse apartment – whom Sotheby's would only identify as a successful and married businessman – spent 18 months completely refurbishing the property from a four-bedroom family home." (Daily Telegraph, 13 July) The owning class continue to indulge themselves no matter the economic world climate. RD

What is wage slavery?

“At one time in the U.S. in the mid-nineteenth century, a hundred and fifty years ago, working for wage labor was considered not very different from chattel slavery,” so said Noam Chomsky. In the decade between 1846 and 1855, more than three million immigrants came to the United States, with a vast majority of them settling in the free states of the North. By 1855, foreign-born residents were becoming a majority group; immigrants approached or exceeeded half the total population of several Northern cities.The growing industrial economy of the North swallowed these new workers into its factories, employing them for long hours at low wages. These manufacturing jobs were repetitious and sometimes hazardous. And from their meager earnings, Northern labourers had to pay for every one of life's necessities. For some Southerners of the period, the situation of Northern workers looked a lot worse than slavery. In fact, they argued, unlike the "wage slavery" of the North, the slavery system in the South provided food, clothing, medical care, and leisure to slaves, caring for them throughout their lives.

When you sell your labour, you sell yourself, losing the rights of free men and becoming vassals of a monied aristocracy that threatens annihilation to anyone who questions their right to enslave and oppress. The invisible hand of the market clamps on to workers invisible hand-cuffs. Capitalism cannot function unless it subordinates workers, so the employers close ranks and built their class domination backed by the power of the State. But workers are not commodities; they are human beings.

Class inequality increases over time because employers pay workers less than the value of what they produce. However, this exploitative relationship is hidden by the lies that a) employers create jobs and b) workers are lucky to have them. In fact, labour creates all wealth, and capitalists are lucky that workers keep producing it for them.

We are taught that workers who are better off have achieved this position at the expense of workers who are worse off — that men benefit from the oppression of women, that whites benefit from the oppression of blacks, that workers in richer nations benefit from the exploitation of workers in poorer nations, and so on. If this were true, then class solidarity would be impossible. Fortunately, it’s not true at all. There is no middle class. There are only workers with "half-decent" jobs, and workers who don’t have decent jobs. The purpose of pitting workers against one another is to prevent unity. Accepting the lie that some workers benefit from the oppression of others does not serve the need of the oppressed to end their oppression, nor does it serve the need of the working class to unite. On the contrary, it feeds the employers’ strategy of divide and rule. The presumed beneficiaries of oppression feel guilty around their oppressed co-workers who, in turn, feel resentful toward their more ‘privileged’ brothers and sisters. Only employers benefit when workers are divided. The differences in wages and benefits between various sections of the working class go to the employers.  When workers unite, they raise the living standards of all workers.

Capitalism is not a system of fair exchange as argued by free-marketeer propertarians. The interests of employees and employers are sharply at odds.This creates conditions of conflict and employers have to take ever-stronger measures to exert and maintain control. Hostility and resentment among workers thrives. When workers challenge the employers’ right to dictate what happens in the workplace, they challenge capitalism itself. The word of the manager is the law, and endless time and energy is expended rationalising its essential goodness. But where is a person less free than in the typical workplace? Workers are denied bathroom breaks. They cannot leave to care for a sick child. Some workers have been reduced to little better than slave-like conditions. In the current climate of unemployment, the worker has little choice but to submit. And pretend to like it. A medieval peasant had plenty of things to worry about, but the year-round control of daily life was not one of them. Historians points out that in pre-capitalist societies, people toiled relatively few hours over the course of a year compared to what we work now. They toiled and sweated during harvest-time when there was an urgency, true, but there was ample free time during the off-seasons. Holidays were abundant through fairs and holy days – as many as 200 per year. Marx saw that modern industrial production under capitalist conditions would rob workers of control of their lives as they lost control of their work. Unlike the blacksmith or the shoemaker who owned his shop, decided on his own working conditions, shaped his product, and had a say in how his goods were bartered or sold, the modern worker would have little autonomy. His relationships with the people at work would become impersonal and hollow. Clearly, the technological wonders of our capitalist system have not released human beings from the burden of work. They have brought us more work. They have not brought most of us more freedom, but less.

Many working people have unconsciously accepted the conditions that exist as somehow natural, unaware of how the machine is constructed and manipulated to favor elites. Fear and frustration can even make us crave authority. We collaborate in our own oppression. Workers should not permit themselves to be treated like machines, ruled by despots determined to drive down what few freedoms and rights we possess, and to crush our physical and mental health, all in the interest of wage slavery and accumulation of capital.

ANOTHER WORKER DIES

Socialists look at the world differently from other people. maybe that is why this piece of information makes us sick. " Kane Gorny, 22, from Balham, south London, phoned 999 from his bed at St George's Hospital, in Tooting, because he was so thirsty. The inquest heard a nurse failed to give him his diabetes medication and police were sent away when they responded to his call in May 2009. .... Recording a narrative verdict at Westminster Coroners' Court, deputy coroner Dr Shirley Radcliffe said: "Kane was undoubtedly let down by incompetence of staff, poor communication, lack of leadership, both medical and nursing, a culture of assumption." (BBC News, 12 July) Let us face it, if Kane Gorny had been a member of the owning class he would have had the best possible medical attention and he would be alive today. Being a member of the working class in Britain today could mean that you or your children die at 22 years of age just like Kane. RD

DESPERATE WORKERS

In their desperate struggle to survive many workers from Africa try to get to Europe by any means possible. "The only survivor of 54 Africans who tried to cross to Italy in an inflatable boat has described throwing overboard the bodies of fellow passengers who died during the voyage. Abbes Settou, from Eritrea, who was rescued by Tunisian fishermen, said the migrants, including three members of his family, and ten women, slowly died of hunger, thirst and exhaustion." (Times, 12 July) According to the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) some 170 migrant have died attempting the Mediterranean crossing this year. Capitalism's hellish conditions force workers into unbearable situations. RD

take a pill

Half a million more anti-depressant pills have been prescribed for Scots.  5,015,323 anti-depressants which include Prozac and Citalepram were dispensed by the NHS in 2011-12

Fact of the day

Data of the Delhi government states that the per capita income in the national capital is 176, 000 Rupees yearly, but the truth seems to something different as one person dies of huger or poverty in every week here. An under-estimate according to those in the field.

"Autopsies of the abandoned and homeless are completed in a routine fashion. The investigating officers hardly ever try to find their relatives and attempt to understand the reason behind the death,'' said an NGO worker. Not all the deaths accounted for. Many are never brought to public notice

Trump in a bunker

There has been plenty of coverage of Donald Trump's newly opened golf course and his campaign agains wind-power but less about just where his enormous wealth came from. In March 2011 Forbes estimated Trump's net worth to be $2.7 billion, with a $60 million salary. Many praise his “success” as if it were self-made.

Trump was born in New York City in 1946, the son of real estate tycoon Fred Trump. Fred Trump’s business success not only provided Donald Trump with a posh youth of private schools and economic security but eventually blessed him with an inheritance worth an estimated $40 million to $200 million. It is critical to note, however, that his father’s success, which granted Donald Trump such a great advantage, was enabled and buffered by governmental financing programs. In 1934, while struggling during the Great Depression, financing from the Federal Housing Administration (FHA) allowed Fred Trump to revive his business and begin building a multitude of homes in Brooklyn, selling at $6,000 apiece. Furthermore, throughout World War II, Fred Trump constructed FHA-backed housing for US naval personnel near major shipyards along the East Coast.

In 1974 Donald Trump became president of his father’s organization. During the 15 years following his ascension, he expanded and innovated the corporation, buying and branding buildings, golf courses, hotels, casinos, and other recreational facilities. In 1980 he established The Trump Organization to oversee all of his real estate operations. Trump eventually found himself in serious financial trouble. In 1990, due to excessive leveraging, The Trump Organization revealed that it was $5 billion in debt ($8.8 billion by some estimates), with $1 billion personally guaranteed by Trump himself. The survival of the company was made possible only by a bailout pact agreed upon in August of that same year by some 70 banks, allowing Trump to defer on nearly $1 billion in debt, as well as to take out second and third mortgages on almost all of his properties. If it were not for the collective effort of all banks and parties involved in that 1990 deal, Trump’s business would have gone bankrupt and failed.

Nor should his anti-government intervention rhetoric be treated seriously. In 2005 Trump supported a Supreme Court decision on Kolo v. New London, which affirmed the government’s ability to transfer land from one private owner to another for the purpose of economic development in the area. Trump has taken advantage of eminent domain laws on multiple occasions, once even demanding that an elderly widow give up her home so that he could build a limousine parking lot.

Trump made clear his own interpretation on the creation of his wealth: “Over the years I’ve participated in many battles and have really almost come out very, very victorious every single time. I’ve beaten many people and companies, and I’ve won many wars. I have fairly but intelligently earned many billions of dollars, which in a sense was both a scorecard and acknowledgment of my abilities.”

Yet, from the moment of his birth, Trump was set up for success. The large inheritance left to him by his father, coupled with the contributions and the protections of society and the US government made his ascension to the Forbes 400 list almost inevitable. Nevertheless, Trump fails to recognize this phenomenon and continues to express his belief that he did it alone.

Who is being milked?

Milk has probably played an important role in many a youths personal history, whose first paid job was perhaps as a milk-boy delivering it to door-steps. The importance of milk in the global food story can’t be overestimated. Mankind first learned the value of keeping animals alive for dairy production as early as 9,000 to 7,000 B.C.

Dairy farms are on the verge of extinction. The price farmers are paid for milk is set to fall. The latest cuts will see farmers being paid around 25p a litre for milk, compared to more than 30p it costs to produce.  Today’s milk business is dominated by a handful of large supermarkets and processing dairies, Wiseman, Unigate and so on. Milk is plentiful and cheap, with supermarkets frequently using it as a loss-leader. Dairy farmers sprayed thousands of liters of milk outside the European Parliament in Brussels on Tuesday, creating a "milk lake" to protest against low prices. Protesters from around Europe, including Italy, Germany, Ireland and France blocked off a square with tractors. In the UK thousands of farmers protested at Parliament. The "milk lake" was intended to symbolize an oversupply of milk in the European market, with protesters ringing cowbells and denouncing moves to phase out production quotas, resulting in more milk on the market and lower prices - excess milk production and less little farmers are getting paid. Marc Tarabella, a "socialist" member of the European Parliament, said the protesters had a just cause. "Their fight is also ours," he said. "How can we accept that some workers are working at a loss? Working to lose money? We cannot close our eyes to this human and social drama."

In Britain dairy farmers are being pushed to the brink by the latest cuts to the price they are paid for their milk, farming leaders warned as more than 2,500 farmers gathered in London to protest against the reductions. The farmers are angry at the latest round of cuts of up to 2p per litre, which come on top of similar cuts in the spring, recently announced by major milk processors. They say the cuts will force many farmers out of business, pushing up the price of milk for consumers in the long term.

National Farmers' Union deputy president Meurig Raymond said: "These latest cuts are the feed bills, the wages, the housekeeping and will take us well into loss-making territory, with many farmers losing up to 6p per litre. Society has to recognise what these dairy farmers have been put through by a market place that doesn't work and is not fair."

Robert Wiseman, one of the dairies announcing cuts, said: "The decision follows a collapse of in the value of cream in each litre of farm gate milk over the last 12 months. We have done everything we can to minimise the reduction in our farm gate milk price but we must now reflect the substantially lower returns from the markets which we serve."

The farmers' complaints against supermarket prices are not entirely misplaced, but their real problem in large part is due to plummeting world prices. Production at the world's four biggest dairy regions has increased simultaneously. New Zealand is up 9 per cent, Australia rose by 3.6 per cent and the US and European Community by 2 per cent.

Many dairy farmers, in their bid to drive down costs, now keep their cows off pasture, feeding them instead on high-energy cereals and maize, and on high-protein crops like soya. Herds are getting bigger, and some farmers are choosing to keep them inside for much of the year or even all of it. US-style mega-dairies — in effect, battery-farmed cows — are now threatened for the British countryside. Professor Ton Baars, a global expert on the health qualities of dairy foods, says milk produced this way contains lower levels of key disease-fighting nutrients, such as omega-3 fatty acids, vitamins and the anti-cancer substance CLA. From a health point of view, the best milk comes from cows grazing fresh pasture in which there are plenty of clover plants and deep-rooting herbs such as plantain, dandelion and chicory.

Farmers’ relentless drive for cost savings has put increasing pressure on the long-suffering dairy cow. A milch-cow is now forced to produce twice the volume of milk provided by her 1960s forbears, and it’s taking a heavy toll on her health, fertility and lifespan. Actress Joanna Lumley has taken up the cudgels on behalf of dairy cows. She’s heading an animal rights’ campaign aimed at giving them the sort of protection in European law that’s provided for battery hens. One of the key guarantees she’s seeking is the animals’ freedom to graze fresh pasture, at least in summer.

The rule of the market - it is the whey of the world

As others see us

"Scottish author, Robert Louis Stevenson of Treasure Island fame, penned a novella that many consider to be a foundation stone of modern fiction’s addiction to substances, transformation and death – The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. Dr. Jekyll liked to swallow chemicals turning himself into something unpredictable, Mr. Hyde. It’s a good metaphor for the calamity that is tearing Scottish soccer apart.

Think of Scottish soccer as a test tube in Dr. Jekyll’s lab marked with skull and cross bones, WARNING – DO NOT SHAKE! Sitting at the top of the mix is the colors of Irish green and British blue – green is the substance called Glasgow Celtic Football Club bonded to the blue known as Glasgow Rangers Football Club. Mix them up and they can explode but when they sit side by side at rest they produce something called the Old Firm, a successful alliance of opposites that has largely dominated Scottish soccer, economically and culturally, for over a hundred years. The elements that make up their wholes would require too long a label to delineate – suffice to summarize it as an emulsion of historical grievance, religious division, sectarianism, and nationalist politics that produces a soccer clash unrivaled anywhere in the world. The Old Firm is the defining intense soccer rivalry. Super hot, beyond sport.

But now things have changed. The tube has been ruptured. The blue half of the mix has evaporated. Rangers have been declared bankrupt due to many years of mismanagement. They consumed a hubristic formula of reckless expenditure in an effort to destroy their other half, Celtic. They failed. And were left weak to the point of death like Dr. Jekyll.

They have been discharged from the top Scottish league. The league rules and the animosity of rival clubs and their fan bases dictated their plunge. They now face the prospect of starting from scratch in the bottom division of Scottish football, three levels below the top tier. The economic implications are negative. Fears for other teams evaporating are real. Rangers worked the pump of investment in the Scottish game – their games with Celtic broadcast globally, a premium brand – the Old Firm was the bank that all the other clubs had an interest in. No Old Firm game and it could mean less or no money from TV contracts, and therefore less monies to share with the other clubs. The prospect of Scottish soccer boiling down is now a possibility.

The Scottish Football Association believes it may be the end for the Scottish game should Rangers not be allowed to return to the top flight within a year. Besides the economic armageddon for the clubs, the chiefs have warned of “social unrest” if Rangers are exiled to the deep. It’s an extraordinary claim that social strife could result as a consequence of a soccer club going bust. The commentary from Scottish soccer fans has ranged from celebratory dances on Rangers grave to dire warnings of revenge when/if Rangers return from the shadows.

Dr. Jekyll was unrecognizable after swallowing the poison – disfigured, mean and hostile – and finally death. Will Scottish soccer follow the script or synthesize a new beginning free from the mix of the Old Firm chemistry?"

http://blog.sfgate.com/soccer/2012/07/10/the-strange-case-of-scotlands-rangers-football-club/

 The price paid by Charles Green for Rangers included a £1.5 million fire sale for Ibrox Stadium, Murray Park and the club’s valuable car park. The knockdown value was approved by administrators Duff & Phelps despite them valuing the assets at three times that price just two weeks earlierat over (£4.5million) . And when David Murray sold the club to Craig Whyte two years ago, he had the same land, bricks and mortar assets valued at £110 million. The difference between the valuations compared with what they actually sold for has left fans scratching their heads.

The report also revealed that Green also factored in a fee of £2.75 million to buy the contracts and registrations of the club’s players, which would have been worth £25 million in an open market.

Rangers made trading losses of almost £4 million from the time it was placed in administration. Duff & Phelps have collected almost £3 million in fees from Rangers.


Stop supporting capitalism !

A SENSE OF VALUES?

We live in a society that sees millions of workers trying to survive from day to day on the equivalent of less than $2 a day and yet we can have a news item such as the following. "A baseball enthusiast has discovered a trove of sports cards hidden inside a soot-covered cardboard box in his grandfather's attic – with an estimated collected value of more than £2 million. ..... Kissner and his family said the cards belonged to their grandfather, Carl Hench, who died in the 1940s. (Daily Telegraph, 11 July) Pieces of old cardboard are valued more than human life inside capitalism. RD

trumped by the capitalist

Donald Trump opened his new £100m golf course. Trump had flown into Aberdeen on a private jet emblazoned in gold with the Trump brand.

The course is built across a stretch of stunning land overlooking the North Sea, some of which had been designated a site of special scientific interest (SSSI) because of the way the dunes moved northwards over time. Trump claims to have stabilised the land to create the "greatest golf course in the world". The Golf Environment Organisation, which vets courses and is backed by the European Tour, complained of the course's "considerable negative impact on what was one of the UK's most valuable mobile sand dune systems".

Trump denying there were any protesters, declaring after the first nine holes: "The environmentalists love what I have done." A second question about the environmental impact saw the billionaire shepherded by an aide away from the media and towards the VIP refreshment tent.

Later Trump said "Nothing will ever be built around this course because I own all the land around it," he said with a smile. "It's nice to own land."

Susan Monro home is just 100 metres away from the course clubhouse and she refused to sell up so Trump  piled an 8 metre high sand berm around her house, blocking her sea views. Huge gates have been erected at the end of her lane and she complains Trump's security staff shine lights into her home at night.

Another local who resisted Trump's attempts to buy him out is now forced to live behind a row of tall spruce trees planted on Trump's orders at the edge of his property which screen off spectacular views of the dunes and the sea.

Trump once declared "It's our property, we can do what we want."

Utopia's Here

We live a world based upon scarcity. Scarcity is neither natural nor necessary. Imagine if computers grew on trees, and the world was a gigantic forest, then in a monetary sense computers would be worthless. It would be impossible to sell computers if an over-abundance of computers existed because people could easily acquire computers for free. In the world of post-scarcity everything will be free. Nearly all of the major scarcity that exists today is not due to an actual lacking of material or energy. Our world has the capacity for everyone to have a very nice life materially. The reality is that global material abundance can be produced with current technologies. Food is one example, where there is more than enough produced for everyone on the planet , but politics and economics prevent fair distribution. The bottom line is that in the fundamental resources of this planet there exists in various orders of magnitude more energy, raw material and biological resources than humanity requires, and it is a matter of developing systems that use and distribute them more efficiently. Imagine a world where you can grow all your own food in a fully automated greenhouse. Your water falls freely from the sky or wells up from the earth and is filtered and cleaned automatically. Any time you want a new device or product, you can find a design online, perhaps customise it, and fabricate it locally or have it delivered using an automated delivery service. And your children have access to the best education ever conceived, for free and you have access to abundant free energy. What need will you have then to engage with the monetary economy?

Post-scarcity almost by definition implies "post-economic" as economics is based on scarcity. A post-scarcity society means that the necessities of living (and plenty more) will be available for everyone who requires it. There may well still be occasional shortages of  certain items that have purposefully not been made publicly available or are simply too scarce, but for the majority of people this will be irrelevant. The important point is that for the first time the general population will be able to live comfortably without having to sell their labour-power and owe anyone else their time. People will not have to suffer drudgery and what amounts to wage slavery during the best years of their lives. Wage-slavery is not liberty.We are owned, cradle to grave.  Working from pay-check to pay-check, often toiling at more than one job, in order to provide just the essentials of life is exactly the life that our great grandparents lived. That’s not the future our that our they had in mind for us. We should be celebrating that there is no longer any need to pay greedy corporations because technology means we can get what we want for free. Our mainstream economic dogma emphasizes competition and an income-through-jobs link which creates a vast amount of social stress in a society. People often throw their lives away because they are depressed and unhappy by financial misery. Money and governments only exist to regulate scarcity therefore if you are depressed regarding your lack of money, or the unfairness of your government, you must understand there is a reason to hope; that there is a reason why you shouldn’t give up hope.

Industrial capitalism has succeeded beyond it's wildest dreams. So much so, that over half a century ago, we had to start scrambling to find ways to soak up the embarrassing abundance of productive human capacity in the system. The world has long reached a pinnacle of productive efficiency impossible to visualise just a century ago. We’ve had the technology to provide material comfort to everyone on the planet for decades now. Denial of this fact will only doom us to decades of continued deprivation.  We need not quibble over "whether or not" the post-scarcity scenario "can" or "should" come to pass because it exists in the here and now. Of course, we need to make some crucial adaptations to the bygone system which brought us this far, by which we mean a change from capitalism to communism. People need to engage in a political struggle to bring about the changes. The transition beyond our current institutions to a post-scarcity society may be harder than actually developing the technologies required to support a post-scarcity world. Social change doesn't come by decree from the politicians. It comes from the bottom up, from those who see clearly and say, "I can see a better way to do things, a better way to live". This isn't to say what is proposed here will happen, but that it could happen – it is feasible from a physical and technological viewpoint. It is a matter of spreading the knowledge that these things are possible and enough people choosing to work towards it. We have the devices that allow people to effectively communicate. They're called lap-top computers and smart phones.

We have the new forms of energy that is free for all to use with no negative environmental impact. They are called solar, wind, and geothermal. Solar power and other forms of energy-reclamation will create free supplies of unlimited energy for everyone. By employing open collaborative design, digital manufacturing and advanced automation in combination, everything we need should be trivial to fabricate and distribute — from the basics like clean water, good quality food, medicine and suitable housing, to increasingly essential material goods such as vehicles, computers and mobile phones – all the way up to purely luxury items. Decentralizing production of these things will also allow more equal access to them and side-step many of the issues involved in distributing them. These methods could overcome nearly all significant scarcity that may persist due to the economic framework we have inherited from capitalism. We will create food and other products almost out of thin air. Technology will become extremely sophisticated. We will effortlessly grow food and manufacture products (via 3D printing) within our own homes. Everything will be decentralized and everyone will be empowered. We can build technology of any complexity from free open-source designs and digitally fabricate them from raw materials which are themselves extremely abundant. With every year that goes by, the methods of fabrication become more decentralized and the open-source designs become better, making this a more attractive and feasible option. In the future nothing will need to be fixed because molecular nano-technology will ensure everything is self-repairing. In this post-scarcity future, where everything is free, there will be no reason to feel unhappy; despair will be vanquished. We will enjoy this utopia for longer because medical technology will slow down aging and most illnesses will be curable. Earthquakes, hurricanes, drought, landslides, tsunamis, famine, disease — these things are a part of life on Earth. But with the intelligent application of technology, some can be eliminated, some can be rendered harmless and others can be dealt with as best we can.  Better building methods, particularly in earthquake-prone areas, can reduce the numbers who die in earthquakes to nearly zero. The same is true for hurricanes. If food production, water treatment and power generation are all decentralized, people are no longer dependent on roads and infrastructure to keep them alive in a disaster area.

 Public libraries have been lending out books to people, for free, for hundred of years or so. Now we have indestructible book called an e-book that could be read 10 billion times without ever falling apart. The readers have the ability to "manufacture" copies of their own, on their computer. It's a post-scarcity book. It works the same way with all digital goods -- from entertainment to communication to the software you use to do your job. All monetary systems are abolished. Instead, if someone wishes something they only have to ask for it and public automated industry provides it. In theory, there will be no limit to how many resources an individual can consume. In the real world and in practice human wants are not infinite.The majority of post-scarcity economies develop towards steady state economies compared to the continuous growth economies common in scarcity economies. This is due to the fact that if post-scarcity economies grow at their full speed eventually local resources may become depleted thus increasing the strictness of supramonetary approaches and leading back towards a scarcity economy. It should be noted however that the resources available to a post-scarcity economy are huge (potentially multiple solar systems worth of matter and energy) so population growth is not the biggest issue. Rather steady state economic principles are often put in place to preserve Nature. People have already embraced a growing environmental consciousness of  “Reduce, Re-use, Recycle” to protect the biosphere. No matter how efficient or advanced a post-scarcity economy is there will always be a time limit to how fast commodities and services can be provided often referred to as the "wait-time". For many items wait-time is an insignificant factor to the consumer (most everyday items can be provided for in minutes). However if the wait-time is deemed to be an issue then logistical management  including mechanisms for quickening supply can be designed. For example; if a household automated-fabricator is asked to provide a complex or large item it may be quicker and more efficient for a neighbourhood  industrial-sized automatate-fabricator to manufacture the item and transport it to the consumer. Communities can devise their own particular priority allocating systems to determine access to fast track wait-time lists.

The biggest challenge is that despite technologies of abundance is that we still think in terms of scarcity. Recently, Canon announced that over the next few years some of its camera factories will phase out human workers in an effort to reduce costs. That means robots will soon be making the next generation of cameras, possibly as soon as 2015. Civilisation is ever closer to a near-workerless world. Under capitalism people feel that this increasing automation is a threat. A threat to their livelihoods. The reality is that automation is likely to provide situations where people will be left free to be creative and in activities that they want to be part of. Open design will enable people to be involved in the development and customisation of the goods they want in a way not seen before and reverses the trend of people simply being passive consumers. Creativity is something that can give huge satisfaction to people but if not fulfilled can cause great frustration and dissatisfaction. It enables an individual to have more control over their environment and life. Human beings are inherently industrious; not indolent, slothful, and lethargic. We are not lazy and useless, by nature. We are imaginative, daring, productive, adventurous, curious, persistent, and artistic creatures. Unfortunately a large proportion of people today in both white and blue collar jobs would really rather be doing something else than the jobs they are employed to do. Many feel that what they are doing is not directly relevant to their lives or is not particularly interesting and feel they are simply a cog with little control in a larger machine. Currently they have to do it to afford food, shelter and goods. A post-scarcity society enables them to have the time and space to work on things that are important to them, and to learn the skills needed to reach their goals and have room to be more creative. In a post-scarcity culture, not having to spend the best part of the day working for a living also frees people up to spend more time with each other - something that is vital for a proper community and it will permit for a greater variety of working life than offered today.

Using current existing known technology:
We can provide abundant clean water for everyone on Earth.
We can produce enough food to feed everybody in the world without harming the environment
We can meet our energy needs ten-fold using clean, renewable energy
We can build high-quality houses in a day or two, providing shelter for those presently living in slums
We can provide safer, more efficient, less polluting transport

We can provide mobile Internet access to everyone on Earth, connecting them to the world's informational and educational resources. Through open collaboration, this can network vast amounts of human intelligence, which can greatly accelerate scientific and technological progress. We can freely disseminate instructional materials throughout the internet, providing education of unprecedented quality to everyone on Earth. We can organize the World's medical knowledge, so that people have access to the highest-quality medical information and advice at all times.

There is widespread concern about an "overpopulation problem" which some claim makes abundance impossible. The world's population is about 7 billion. This number is growing with the UN predicting a possible 10.6 billion for 2050. After that, the UN expects the population to begin to fall. Assume that the population continues to rise beyond 2050 and reaches 40 billion, well beyond any UN estimate, would we be overpopulated then, in relation to available resources?

Food.
Without expanding farmland, we could grow enough food for 80 billion people using low-tech permaculture techniques only.
 Water.
Our planet has about 1260 quintillion liters of water. This means that 40 billion people using 200 liters a day each would use, over the course of a year, less than 0.00025% of the world's water.
Energy.
The world used 15 terawatts of energy in 2008. If rising population and increasing technology increased this 100-fold to 1500 terawatts, we would still only need to convert less than 0.9% of the sunlight that falls on Earth. It is highly likely that we will have nuclear fusion reactors and space-based solar panels before our energy needs come anywhere near this level.
Land.
The planet's surface (including oceans) is about 510 million square kilometers. According to Wikipedia, one-eighth of this, 63,750,000 sq. kms, is habitable land. For a population of 40 billion people, this is 1593.75 sq.m habitable land per person, equivalent to a average population density of 628 people per sq.km. This is comparable to a fairly densely populated country like Taiwan.

We can do more with less. 100 years ago, 8000 square meters of land was needed to grow food for a person. It can now be done on a few hundred square meters. Why? Because human intelligence has figured out how to extract more resources from a fixed amount of material. The effect of human intelligence is always to enable us to do more with less. Better solar cells can make more electricity from less sunlight, we can make a more powerful computer chip using less material than a few years ago, and more efficient vehicles can travel the same journeys with much less petrol. Human ingenuity is the key that unlocks all other resources. The greater the population, the greater the store of human intelligence. A large population that is well networked and educated will concoct and communicate all kinds of technological solutions that enable us to do more with the resources we have. And so, paradoxically, an increased population can mean that we have more resources to go around.

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“The most potent weapon in the hands of the oppressor is the mind of the oppressed.”—Steve Biko

King Cash at Ibrox

The Charles Green consortium have told Rangers supporters that it would take at least £50 million for them to sell the newco club – a figure which would give them an astonishing 900 per cent profit on their initial £5.5m investment.

 A representative from Rangers Unite asked: “What would you see as an exit price?”
Director Imran Ahmad replied: “On a bad day the club is worth £50m.”

That statement will call into question the decision by controversial joint administrators Paul Clark and David Whitehouse, of Duff & Phelps, to sell the club and its assets to Green’s group for a cut-price £5.5m. Ahmed’s estimation of the true worth of the club is likely to enrage creditors and fans alike.

 Duff & Phelps have been paid an estimated £200,000 per week during their time at Ibrox.

Stop supporting capitalism!

Woody Guthrie

Both the Observer  and the Independent on Sunday carry  articles on Woody Guthrie who was born 100 yrs ago this month.

Socialist Courier draws attention to the insightful  Socialist Standard article written by Glasgow branch member Andy Armitage which is slightly less hagiographic than the above.

Phil Ochs’s tribute to Guthrie, “Bound for Glory” culminates with the lines: “Why sing the songs and forget about the aim / He wrote them for a reason why not sing them for the same.”

Woody Guthrie may have been a fellow-traveller of the Communist Party at times but a helluva lot of his songs reflect the thoughts and aspirations of socialists everywhere.

Keep on walking

46 parades of up to 8,000 Orangemen will march through Glasgow's city centre today with a number of them converging on Cathedral Square. In all, 174 parades taking place throughout the Strathclyde police force area. Henry Dunbar, Grand Master of the Orange Order, said: "The annual Glasgow Boyne Celebrations is the city's biggest street event" An impressive event, perhaps, but highly divisive and sectarian in character. 

The Orange Order warned that Scotland is a "nation in turmoil" and raised concerns over the "separatist campaign". Grand Master Henry Dunbar urged members to back the Union. The Orange Order called on the Church of Scotland to stand up for the country's protestant heritage. "We are dismayed by the dismal failure of our national church, the Church of Scotland, to exert influential leadership in matters of faith and morality. It is a sad reflection that in today's society, many protestants now consider that the Orange Order is more in harmony with their values and aspirations than the Kirk. We as an institution never envisaged nor aspired to be in such a position, and it is an appalling indication of how far the Kirk deteriorated. Sadly, it appears that we are in a situation where the Kirk can no longer command high public regard and influence."

Socialist Courier has recently blogged on the Orange Lodge and the Church of Scotland here

The Battle of the Boyne, is remembered every year by Loyalists on the 12th of July although it took place on July 1st, 1690. It is celebrated on July 12th simply because somebody was mathematically challenged - in 1752 the change to the Gregorian calendar necessitated a re-calculation of all historical dates to determine anniversaries. July 1st (old style) really became July 11th (new style). The wrong date has become enshrined in Loyalist tradition ever since. The (mis-dated) anniversary of the Battle of the Boyne only became the focus of celebrations for the Orange Order ever since its foundation as a quasi-Masonic defensive association of lodges dedicated to preserving the Protestant ascendency in 1795. The victory of Prince William of Orange at the Battle of the Boyne did not change the penal laws against Irish Presybeterians in Ulster or the fact that in many cases they were forced to pay a tax for the upkeep of the local Anglican clergy even though they were not attached

Did Protestants fight Catholics during the Battle of the Boyne? Yes, they did. And Protestants fought Protestants and Catholics fought Catholics. To portray the battle as a religious conflict would be nowhere near the truth. William had the support of Pope Innocent XI and a Pontifical High Mass was celebrated in thanksgiving for the deliverance from the power of the Catholic Louis XIV and the Catholic James II. Catholics were fighting on both sides. And so were Protestants.

It was all about politics. It was not even really about Irish issues and was ultimately about the English crown on a foreign field and European alliances. William's European allies were mainly drawn from the League of Augsburg - an anti-French cabal of nobility, but included Catholic states as well. Irish issues were never really raised and Irish freedom was never mentioned. The majority of James' troops were the "Gaelic Irish" regiments.The Jacobite "cause" was a very nebulous concept to them. James enjoyed the support of the French, providing nearly a third of his fighting force And William's army relied mainly on Anglo-Irish forces. William's troops was even more diverse, with Dutch, German, French Huguenot soldiers and even Danish mercenaries fighting for him.

Was it a white  horse William rode on the day?  This is disputed by historians and current consensus seems to be that it was a dark horse and it is even more unlikely that he rode across the Boyne in triumph. He would have had to dismount and, less heroically, lead his horse across.

Was the Battle of the Boyne the decisive? Although crossing of the Boyne was important towards securing Dublin the defeat of James at the Boyne was neither the end of the war nor the start of a Williamite string of victories. The one decisive battle of the Williamite Wars was the Battle of Aughrim (County Galway) in 1691. Curiously enough fought on July 12th ... according to the old calendar!

Also known as the Williamite Wars it was effectively a fight between two factions of landlordism to decide which of them should have the right to exploit the people.

James Connolly was to write "...all the political struggles of the period were built upon the material interests of one set of usurpers who wished to retain, and another who wished to obtain, the mastery of those lands...The so-called Patriot Parliament was in reality, like every other that sat in Dublin, merely a collection of land thieves and their lackeys; their patriotism consisted in an effort to retain for themselves the spoils of the native peasantry; the English influence against which they protested was the influence of their fellow thieves in England hungry for a share of the spoil...It is unfortunately beyond all question that the Irish Catholics shed their blood like water and wasted their wealth like dirt in an effort to retain King James upon the throne. But it is equally beyond all question that the whole struggle was no earthly concern of theirs; that King James was one of the most worthless representatives of a race that ever sat upon the throne; that the "pious, glorious and immortal" William was a mere adventurer fighting for his own hand, and his army recruited from the impecunious swordsmen of Europe who cared as little for Protestantism as they did for human life; and that neither army had the slightest claim to be considered as a patriot army combating for the freedom of the Irish race...The Catholic gentlemen and nobles who had the leadership of the people of Ireland at the time were, one and all, men who possessed considerable property in the country, property to which they had, notwithstanding their Catholicity, no more right to title than the merest Cromwellian or Williamite adventurer. The lands they held were lands which in former times belonged to the Irish people - in other words, they were tribe-lands...."

As Connolly concludes "It is time we learned to appreciate and value the truth upon such matters, and to brush from our eyes the cobwebs woven across them by our ignorant or unscrupulous history-writing politicians."

capitalism- the meat grinder

 "Securing 1250 jobs through the new Centre of Excellence at Halls in Broxburn is fantastic news. Vion's investment in their new training centre is a major vote of confidence in the Scottish workforce and Scotland's economic future." -  Alex Salmond, 22 September 2011
The company then received funding of £1.495m from Scottish Enterprise and up to £500,000 from Skills Development Scotland.

Vion has warned that it could be forced to close its West Lothian plant, with the loss of 1,700 jobs. Bosses said the Hall's of Broxburn site had continued to record "unsustainable losses" - 5 July 2012 - less than a year later.

With 8,000 pigs a week currently being processed at the plant, which makes sausages, black pudding and haggis, it is the biggest pig processor in Scotland. VION UK is part of the Netherlands-based VION N.V., and currently employs almost 12,000 staff at 40 facilities across the country and is a major supporter of the UK farming industry, producing and processing beef, lamb, pork and chicken, as well as a range of sausages, cooked meatsVion's UK chairman Peter Barr said "There is significant over-capacity in the UK meat industry" Last month in a press release about future cost-cutting and stated "We are further optimizing our production, logistics, ICT and sales, thus also reducing costs. Unfortunately, this will not be possible without streamlining certain activities and making some redundancies."

Union leaders hit out at the sudden nature of the announcement earlier tonight and said staff were “shocked and angry”. Stewart Forrest said “The first question we want answered is why the company has waited until this 11th hour before engaging with its employees and their union. Usdaw was given no indication of the true seriousness of the situation and that is extremely regrettable and in my view totally unacceptable.”

Socialist Courier once again points to the worthless declarations from the SNP that an independent Scotland means very much to workers employed by companies who set business plans and commercial strategy, corporately, as a multi-national, outside a Scottish government's providence.

 And for those who hold out co-operatives as way to go VION is not a listed company and has one shareholder, the Dutch Zuidelijke Land- en Tuinbouworganisatie (ZLTO), an agricultural and horticultural association with some 18,000 members. Vion VION's turnover is €9.5 billion and the company employs 26,500 staff.

A return to Shetland's independence

Some may recall a slightly tongue-in-cheek post by Socialist Courier on Shetland Independence.

It appears from this Guardian report that the possibility that Scottish independence may actually lead to demands for Shetland's independence from Scotland.

Tavish Scott, the MSP for Shetland, and a Liberal Democrat, explains "There is a strong feeling here. It's that there is an opportunity in this referendum for Shetland to get what it really wants, which is more control of its own affairs. The point is that Shetland doesn't want the centralisation of the SNP. Devolution did allow Scotland to go its own way and now it should let Shetland go its own way."
The editor of the Shetland Times, Paul Riddell, has even gone as far as to describe Shetland as "a bit like a little Cuba, a semi-socialist, semi-autonomous paradise!"
Socialist Courier hopes not too much like the Castro dictatorship but we understand the sentiment that he expresses.

There is an old adage of the islanders: "All the Shetland ever got from Scotland was dear meal and greedy ministers."

When nationalism is let out of Pandora's Box all kinds of unintended consequences can arise.

 Freedom for Castlemilk!!