“Logistics”, an 857-hour movie, tracks a pedometer from shop back to factory(readpassage.com)
readpassage.com
“Logistics”, an 857-hour movie, tracks a pedometer from shop back to factory
https://readpassage.com/i-watched-an-857-hour-movie-to-encounter-capitalisms-extremes/
289 comments
The crazy part is that this journey is only the tip of the iceberg for this pedometer. It is made of many components, all of which follow similar journeys to the pedometer factory from their respective factories. And the components are made of raw materials, which are also shipped around in a similar manner after being mined. And the mining itself displaces those who live in that space.
Yeah its unfathomable, we were inspired by an article in the German magazine Der Spiegel about the components of an electric toothbrush. Our dream was to follow the components of the pedometer all the way back to the mines, however, we haven't done so yet.
“Yet”
That’s such an awesome way to end that comment.
That’s such an awesome way to end that comment.
I, Pencil: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=67tHtpac5ws
That's a great perspective to have on what it takes to make even the simplest things, like a pencil. Unfortunately, (but not unsurprising), Friedman makes the grand claim that capitalism crates harmony in the world at the end of the video, but besides that, it was a interesting and quick watch. Thanks for sharing it.
> Unfortunately
What’s the argument against capitalism/international trade in this context? Trade increases the cost of war, which is a good thing, right?
What’s the argument against capitalism/international trade in this context? Trade increases the cost of war, which is a good thing, right?
It depends on what someone means by “capitalism”. Some people use a definition which is more specific than just “trade”. So for example we tend to see firms owned by individuals who are materially separate from most of the workers, and some people see this phenomenon as part of what we ultimately call “capitalism”. Control of firms by a small number of people can lead to choices which are good for the leadership but bad for most of the workers. If you have a larger economy made up of firms with this structure, then you can see a great number of choices made that benefit a small number of people to the detriment of a large number of people. Essentially, this arrangement has a tendency to enrich a minority, concentrating capital in a way that perpetuates this cycle. Eventually you end up with a whole lot of people living in desperation barely able to survive while a small number of people are unfathomably wealthy.
One might ask if such an arrangement is good for society if most people are left struggling to survive.
However this is all based on a rhetorical question: does “capitalism” the word include this arrangement of firms? Is unrestricted free trade likely to lead to this arrangement of firms? Would a different structure of firms, like cooperative ownership, alleviate some of those problems? You could still have “trade” in an economy of cooperatives. But would that still be “capitalism” or would this be considered something else?
People are divided on whether it should be called something else. But a lot of people who think we should “move beyond capitalism” do not want to eliminate free trade, just the societal norm where most firms are controlled by a small number of people.
One might ask if such an arrangement is good for society if most people are left struggling to survive.
However this is all based on a rhetorical question: does “capitalism” the word include this arrangement of firms? Is unrestricted free trade likely to lead to this arrangement of firms? Would a different structure of firms, like cooperative ownership, alleviate some of those problems? You could still have “trade” in an economy of cooperatives. But would that still be “capitalism” or would this be considered something else?
People are divided on whether it should be called something else. But a lot of people who think we should “move beyond capitalism” do not want to eliminate free trade, just the societal norm where most firms are controlled by a small number of people.
> Is unrestricted free trade
I have never met two people who can agree on how this would actually work. Just some basic questions:
Is there still government controlled currency and interest rate? If not, how is the money supply in the economy managed? Am I allowed to print my own currency?
Is there intellectual property? If there are no trademarks, there is no such thing as counterfeit goods, so I can produce a laptop and call it macbook.
Does that mean Cartels are allowed? Is market manipulation allowed? Presumably unrestricted trade means I can run pyramid schemes and call them banks?
What happens if the seller lied about the product?
Is there adverse possession of property and planning permission? If not, can I dig down or build up as far as I want? What if I block sunlight to your solar panels on purpose?
Can I sell my kidney? If yes, can I trade in someome else's kidneys?
Can I give out loans with crazy interest rates? If yes, you just legalised debt bondage, a form of slavery.
Is there bancrupsy?
Are there air rights and rights over electromagnetic spectrum?
Any conceivable set of anwers to these question amount to rules and regulation. You can't actually function in anarchy
I have never met two people who can agree on how this would actually work. Just some basic questions:
Is there still government controlled currency and interest rate? If not, how is the money supply in the economy managed? Am I allowed to print my own currency?
Is there intellectual property? If there are no trademarks, there is no such thing as counterfeit goods, so I can produce a laptop and call it macbook.
Does that mean Cartels are allowed? Is market manipulation allowed? Presumably unrestricted trade means I can run pyramid schemes and call them banks?
What happens if the seller lied about the product?
Is there adverse possession of property and planning permission? If not, can I dig down or build up as far as I want? What if I block sunlight to your solar panels on purpose?
Can I sell my kidney? If yes, can I trade in someome else's kidneys?
Can I give out loans with crazy interest rates? If yes, you just legalised debt bondage, a form of slavery.
Is there bancrupsy?
Are there air rights and rights over electromagnetic spectrum?
Any conceivable set of anwers to these question amount to rules and regulation. You can't actually function in anarchy
I didn’t read it as an advocation for anarchy. In my mind, they were saying we are still in feudalism and serfs type system when it comes to corporations. The rulers of these corporations can make arbitrary decisions and rule their “kingdoms,” exiling anyone who shakes the boat too hard.
They were asking what comes next and what would that look like.
They were asking what comes next and what would that look like.
Worth noting that I am not advocating for unrestricted free trade. But the person I was responding to seems to be pro-capitalism so when I make my arguments for a post-capitalist future (depending on your definition of capitalism, as I mention in my above comment), I use terms that a pro-capitalist can understand. That is, I couch my language in real world effects of the arrangement of capital, and advocate for a world where firms are managed by collectives. In familiar company I identify as a libertarian communist. For anyone spooked by this, I am referring to a voluntary society where people who agree that collective management is best work with others who feel the same way. And yes this can be accomplished in the current society. As such a plan would involve coordination with others, I necessarily must discuss it with others, so here I am.
To the person I am responding to: I would suggest listening to some lectures from the Mises Institute on youtube. They aren't my people, but they have some nice theory if you want to know what they think. I do think that if you want to have a voluntary society, it is worth understanding Austrian economic theory.
To the person I am responding to: I would suggest listening to some lectures from the Mises Institute on youtube. They aren't my people, but they have some nice theory if you want to know what they think. I do think that if you want to have a voluntary society, it is worth understanding Austrian economic theory.
Thanks for the comment. I really don't know anything about these kinds of discussions. I tend to not know what people mean when they say they're anti-capitalist on Mastodon, but this gives me a clue. Interesting to read!
You say you'd refer to what you're talking about as "libertarian communist." I'm not worried about this term, I'm just curious! Do you know of a resource that lays out and summarizes some of these ideas? I don't expect you to teach me them, but it sounds like you might know where to even begin. I don't even know what terms to search for right now!
You say you'd refer to what you're talking about as "libertarian communist." I'm not worried about this term, I'm just curious! Do you know of a resource that lays out and summarizes some of these ideas? I don't expect you to teach me them, but it sounds like you might know where to even begin. I don't even know what terms to search for right now!
Haha actually I can teach them to you as I published a video on this very subject!
https://youtu.be/KFcd5EQgMEQ
I also recently enjoyed this video which explains the benefits of collective ownership as a possibility in our economy:
https://youtu.be/HG4Y8bgUwQ0
“Anarchism” is also a term often used to describe libertarian communism. The term has been co-opted by people who are trying to describe chaos, but the term anarchism has a rich history, explained here:
https://youtu.be/CDMGfsUjS_I
That should get you started!
https://youtu.be/KFcd5EQgMEQ
I also recently enjoyed this video which explains the benefits of collective ownership as a possibility in our economy:
https://youtu.be/HG4Y8bgUwQ0
“Anarchism” is also a term often used to describe libertarian communism. The term has been co-opted by people who are trying to describe chaos, but the term anarchism has a rich history, explained here:
https://youtu.be/CDMGfsUjS_I
That should get you started!
I was going to respond to you point by point, but I realised halfway through you might not read it anyway, so I will focus on two misunderstandings you seem to hold, that affect all of your questions:
First, this is a very revealing question:
> Can I give out loans with crazy interest rates? If yes, you just legalised debt bondage, a form of slavery.
For a loan to turn into slavery, you presuppose a system that can by threat of violence convert debt to forced work. In a true anarchy, there's just no way to go from debt to forced work.
Under anarchy, debt is a voluntary cooperative agreement between two people where they think one can use the pooled resources of both more effectively than they could alone, in exchange for a cut of the fruit of the labour.
Both parties enter into this agreement fully aware that those fruit may never materialise and, critically, that there is no way to employ violence to ascertain that they do.
However, a community is not made out of two people. If one person routinely dishonours their loan agreements, they will find it hard to cooperate with other vital functions of society, for example to acquire food or tools or utilities or communication.
This leads into your second misunderstanding. You seem to imagine that a person under no regulation can "build up as far as I want".
As an individual, there is only so far up you can build. Realistically, you can personally forage material and build for at most 10 hours per day and then you need to forage food and get rest. As an individual, you cannot use machinery because you cannot, as an individual, get the petroleum to drive the machinery.
If you are going to build anything of consequence, you need to enlist the help of other people. In a capitalist society, this is somewhat easy: you can convert capital into tall buildings, regardless of what the local community wants. This is why capitalism needs regulation, to account for what the local community wants.
In an anarchist organisation, you will find it really hard to recruit builders that will voluntarily ruin their own local environment.
This theme continues throughout your comment:
- if you block my solar panels and the community disagrees with your reasoning, you might find it hard to live comfortably in that community because other people will be less inclined to help you acquire your creature comforts.
- if you start a pyramid scheme and call it a bank, the community bank rating association will give it a shitty score.
- if you repeatedly lie about the items you are selling, you will get a bad marketplace rating too -- just like what happens already in less regulated markets today.
- free banking was never the disaster currency monopolists would like it to be. Sure, it had its fuckups, but so does the current system. The problems may even have been more frequent, but also of a much lower magnitude.
First, this is a very revealing question:
> Can I give out loans with crazy interest rates? If yes, you just legalised debt bondage, a form of slavery.
For a loan to turn into slavery, you presuppose a system that can by threat of violence convert debt to forced work. In a true anarchy, there's just no way to go from debt to forced work.
Under anarchy, debt is a voluntary cooperative agreement between two people where they think one can use the pooled resources of both more effectively than they could alone, in exchange for a cut of the fruit of the labour.
Both parties enter into this agreement fully aware that those fruit may never materialise and, critically, that there is no way to employ violence to ascertain that they do.
However, a community is not made out of two people. If one person routinely dishonours their loan agreements, they will find it hard to cooperate with other vital functions of society, for example to acquire food or tools or utilities or communication.
This leads into your second misunderstanding. You seem to imagine that a person under no regulation can "build up as far as I want".
As an individual, there is only so far up you can build. Realistically, you can personally forage material and build for at most 10 hours per day and then you need to forage food and get rest. As an individual, you cannot use machinery because you cannot, as an individual, get the petroleum to drive the machinery.
If you are going to build anything of consequence, you need to enlist the help of other people. In a capitalist society, this is somewhat easy: you can convert capital into tall buildings, regardless of what the local community wants. This is why capitalism needs regulation, to account for what the local community wants.
In an anarchist organisation, you will find it really hard to recruit builders that will voluntarily ruin their own local environment.
This theme continues throughout your comment:
- if you block my solar panels and the community disagrees with your reasoning, you might find it hard to live comfortably in that community because other people will be less inclined to help you acquire your creature comforts.
- if you start a pyramid scheme and call it a bank, the community bank rating association will give it a shitty score.
- if you repeatedly lie about the items you are selling, you will get a bad marketplace rating too -- just like what happens already in less regulated markets today.
- free banking was never the disaster currency monopolists would like it to be. Sure, it had its fuckups, but so does the current system. The problems may even have been more frequent, but also of a much lower magnitude.
It's well-known that unregulated capitalism leads to monopolies. In the past, the corporations literally raised armies and slaughtered smaller competitors.
So, monoplies (and feudalism, and dictatorships, and pretty much any centralization of power) are bad.
The obvious solution is to have strong antitrust regulation. That leads to regulatory capture and corruption. I'm not sure what happens next. We haven't had a democracy that was also a superpower collapse yet. Rome comes to mind, but they didn't have nukes and a global for-profit surveillance network propping them up.
Anyway, we really need to start enforcing antitrust law, and get back to de facto "majority rules" in the US.
So, monoplies (and feudalism, and dictatorships, and pretty much any centralization of power) are bad.
The obvious solution is to have strong antitrust regulation. That leads to regulatory capture and corruption. I'm not sure what happens next. We haven't had a democracy that was also a superpower collapse yet. Rome comes to mind, but they didn't have nukes and a global for-profit surveillance network propping them up.
Anyway, we really need to start enforcing antitrust law, and get back to de facto "majority rules" in the US.
Pollution - shipping basic goods around the globe 3 times to make the simples itema creates a lot of unnessesary pollition.
Fragility - one byte from a bat, one lockdown in China and United Kingdom runs out of toilet paper.
Fragility - one byte from a bat, one lockdown in China and United Kingdom runs out of toilet paper.
I'd like a source for the first. Given no other information, the best estimate of the energy footprint of the manufacturing process for an item is its shelf price.
This works particularly well for cheap items, where raw material costs (which are mostly just the energy cost of mining and refining) and shipping costs dominate. Usually, things are shipped around so they can be processed in the most specialized/energy efficient facility available. For small items, the pollution associated with shipping via ocean freight is miniscule.
As for the second point, the current system is fragile, but compared to what? If I had to pick a pandemic to live through at any point in time so far, covid would be my first choice.
This works particularly well for cheap items, where raw material costs (which are mostly just the energy cost of mining and refining) and shipping costs dominate. Usually, things are shipped around so they can be processed in the most specialized/energy efficient facility available. For small items, the pollution associated with shipping via ocean freight is miniscule.
As for the second point, the current system is fragile, but compared to what? If I had to pick a pandemic to live through at any point in time so far, covid would be my first choice.
> the best estimate of the energy footprint of the manufacturing process for an item is its shelf price.
Not really? This depends on the relative price of the energy of delivery and the value of the other parts of the good. And energy is so cheap, we seem pretty comfortable wasting it.
I've noticed where I live in California most markets sell this kind of jam made in France called Bonne Maman. Not even fancy markets, but the big local supermarket chains. What is weird about this is that California is a huge producer of fruits. I can buy jam made in a nearby town at one of the fancier markets near here, but the big supermarket chain buys jam from France.
This seems like a senseless waste of energy. I refuse to buy the jam from France because it's so wasteful. There's a lot of perverse incentives in our economy, and price cannot optimize for every variable. Capitalism is not as resource efficient as some basic theories would purport it to be.
Not really? This depends on the relative price of the energy of delivery and the value of the other parts of the good. And energy is so cheap, we seem pretty comfortable wasting it.
I've noticed where I live in California most markets sell this kind of jam made in France called Bonne Maman. Not even fancy markets, but the big local supermarket chains. What is weird about this is that California is a huge producer of fruits. I can buy jam made in a nearby town at one of the fancier markets near here, but the big supermarket chain buys jam from France.
This seems like a senseless waste of energy. I refuse to buy the jam from France because it's so wasteful. There's a lot of perverse incentives in our economy, and price cannot optimize for every variable. Capitalism is not as resource efficient as some basic theories would purport it to be.
The transport of the French jam is likely rounding error. This BBC Future article goes into more detail:
https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20220429-the-climate-bene...
Search the page for "the climate impact of food miles" to jump to a graph that breaks down the source of CO2 emissions for various types of food. (The caption also references the source article from Science 2018.) Of the things there, the jam is probably closest to coffee or chocolate.
I'd be more worried about Bonne Maman's packaging's CO2 footprint. However, our kitchen floor is concrete, and the kids break a glass every month or so. We stopped buying glasses for them and use the (extremely low quality glass) jam jars instead. When they get older, we'll look for jam that comes in larger containers.
https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20220429-the-climate-bene...
Search the page for "the climate impact of food miles" to jump to a graph that breaks down the source of CO2 emissions for various types of food. (The caption also references the source article from Science 2018.) Of the things there, the jam is probably closest to coffee or chocolate.
I'd be more worried about Bonne Maman's packaging's CO2 footprint. However, our kitchen floor is concrete, and the kids break a glass every month or so. We stopped buying glasses for them and use the (extremely low quality glass) jam jars instead. When they get older, we'll look for jam that comes in larger containers.
[deleted]
Ask Germany how trade with Russia is working out currently.
It’s all comparative advantage and win-win scenarios until you find yourself dependent on despicable foes for your food, energy, and basic necessities.
The vulnerability created in those situations may actually encourage bad actors to declare war opportunistically.
It’s all comparative advantage and win-win scenarios until you find yourself dependent on despicable foes for your food, energy, and basic necessities.
The vulnerability created in those situations may actually encourage bad actors to declare war opportunistically.
It's an insightful video, however it doesn't mention the possibility that workers can be exploited through unfair wages, work hours or conditions, so that the various parts of the pencil industry can cut higher margins. Choosing an economic system vs another isn't enough.
You’re not wrong!
Capitalism is an obsession over capital at the expense of everything else. If going to war serves the interests of capital, then it will be done without any questions.
It's a one-sided view.
Capitalism has many problems. The video only highlights a possible advantage.
Capitalism has many problems. The video only highlights a possible advantage.
Thanks, that was great
There is also one more focused on manufacturing from Red Bull. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iptAkpqjtMQ
The food industry is similarly crazy, and would perhaps even better illustrate the problems.
Why did they do this backwards? It sounds like they took the trip in reverse. I thought they recorded it forward (tracking an actual object the whole time) and presented it in reverse, but it looks like they didn't actually follow a real object. They just chose a path and took the path in reverse, using the types of transportation that such an object might in theory have taken:
> They write that, “Four years later we found ourselves on the largest container ship in the world on our way from Sweden to China.” As per the trip: “We had started the journey by truck to Middle Sweden, then by freight train to the port of Gothenburg, and after four weeks at sea, we filmed from a truck again, this time from the port of Shenzhen to a factory in Bao’an.”
The idea of following a single, real object from point of manufacture to destination--documenting all the transfers and hiccups along the way--is interesting to me. Presenting it in reverse chronological order is an artistic decision I'm ambivalent about. But it doesn't sound like that's what they did. They didn't track a pedometer; they just took freight vehicles along a path that maybe the thing went on, without following the actual transfer of the item from box to container, from truck to ship, etc.
I'm disappointed. I was ready to actually watch the whole thing. But it's contrived.
> They write that, “Four years later we found ourselves on the largest container ship in the world on our way from Sweden to China.” As per the trip: “We had started the journey by truck to Middle Sweden, then by freight train to the port of Gothenburg, and after four weeks at sea, we filmed from a truck again, this time from the port of Shenzhen to a factory in Bao’an.”
The idea of following a single, real object from point of manufacture to destination--documenting all the transfers and hiccups along the way--is interesting to me. Presenting it in reverse chronological order is an artistic decision I'm ambivalent about. But it doesn't sound like that's what they did. They didn't track a pedometer; they just took freight vehicles along a path that maybe the thing went on, without following the actual transfer of the item from box to container, from truck to ship, etc.
I'm disappointed. I was ready to actually watch the whole thing. But it's contrived.
Absolutely, the best thing would have been to actually follow a specific, unique product. We tried for one and a half years to get the company where we bought the pedometer to cooperate with us. It was impossible. But we managed to get the company to tell us which route they used in most cases.
In that case, since the ship sailed to China not form China, I find it surprising that the ship arrived full in China. I thought China exports dwarf their imports, and there would have been plenty of times a ship returns below full capacity to China.
I wonder what were they importing on that ship.
I wonder what were they importing on that ship.
If you want goods imported in containers from China, you have to have empty containers in China.
The ship may be full of empty containers.
The ship may be full of empty containers.
Are the containers actually full? Or just the empty containers ready to refill?
Your ideal film is the opening of the film Lord of War (edited for time).
https://youtu.be/VHn1zogeyO4
https://youtu.be/VHn1zogeyO4
Same intro but in 4K HDR (or it will be once YouTube finishes processing it)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yGLBvQ0mvb0
Disclaimer, I cut this clip.
Disclaimer, I cut this clip.
One of the most entertaining intros of any movie, ever.
It's only contrived in the way all art is contrived. The very idea of an 857 hour move mostly filming the bridge of a containership is a contrivance in the extreme.
Hi there, creators of Logistics here. Super happy to see this featured on Hacker News.
Feel free to ask us anything!
official site is logisticsartproject.com
Feel free to ask us anything!
official site is logisticsartproject.com
Since several of you have asked how to watch the movie, we spontaneously decided to stream the first 21 hours of Logistics on Twitch. Since it will soon be night here in Sweden, we will not be able to keep track of the stream. We're keeping our fingers crossed that it works. Unfortunately we will not be able to stream the entire film this time, but hope to do so later.
The stream is live now at https://www.twitch.tv/logisticsartproject
The stream is live now at https://www.twitch.tv/logisticsartproject
Why is it silent? Was a camera with an acceptable microphone too expensive/difficult to maintain?
The article makes a big deal out of finally seeing a person. Is that person aware of the movie?
Sounds like an interesting film, thanks for answering questions about it.
The article makes a big deal out of finally seeing a person. Is that person aware of the movie?
Sounds like an interesting film, thanks for answering questions about it.
We couldn't figure out what sound to have, so we opted for silence. We also hoped it would be more contemplative without sound.
Yes he is aware that the camera is recording, he needed to wash the windows on the bridge.
Yes he is aware that the camera is recording, he needed to wash the windows on the bridge.
Did you track GPS data along with the video?
I suppose it would be nice if you could view a map with the current position while watching the movie.
I suppose it would be nice if you could view a map with the current position while watching the movie.
What was the hardest thing about accomplishing this?
What was the easiest?
Any advice for other film-makers?
What was the easiest?
Any advice for other film-makers?
Some of the hardest things were:
- Gathering facts about the product, where it was manufactured and what its shipping routes were.
- Getting permission to film during the trip.
- Finding a technical solution (in 2011) that could record continuously during the entire journey of the container ship.
It was comparatively easy to design the concept, it then took a very long time to implement.
We are not professional filmmakers, but something that helped us was to be stubborn.
It was comparatively easy to design the concept, it then took a very long time to implement.
We are not professional filmmakers, but something that helped us was to be stubborn.
Being stubborn is highly underrated!
Thanks for doing this!
It brings me to a story from two years ago about Norwegian (...) fish - branded as "environment friendly" - is sent from Norway to China for filleting, and then back to the market. About 25% of all the cod sold by one of the biggest companies in Norway has endured this trip.
It's worth mentioning that the fish in question comes from "all over the world", but still.
Google translation: https://www-nrk-no.translate.goog/norge/miljomerka-torsk-ver...
It brings me to a story from two years ago about Norwegian (...) fish - branded as "environment friendly" - is sent from Norway to China for filleting, and then back to the market. About 25% of all the cod sold by one of the biggest companies in Norway has endured this trip.
It's worth mentioning that the fish in question comes from "all over the world", but still.
Google translation: https://www-nrk-no.translate.goog/norge/miljomerka-torsk-ver...
Where can we see it?
Right now only at the library at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore. We had the full film up on Vimeo for a year but it was too expensive too keep it there. Its hard to find a good cheap place to host a movie of this length.
Would love to help you get this back online if you are interested! Happy to host it or point you in the right direction if you'd like to do it yourself.
Sounds great! Our email is in our profile.
out of curiosity, how big is the file?
EDIT: never mind, I see you answered this in another comment:
> The original film is around 10TB of mpeg2 1080p 25mbit/sec 25 frames per second.
> We later transcoded to h264, it now clocks in at about 2TB.
EDIT: never mind, I see you answered this in another comment:
> The original film is around 10TB of mpeg2 1080p 25mbit/sec 25 frames per second.
> We later transcoded to h264, it now clocks in at about 2TB.
[deleted]
Have you considered archive.org?
Really great suggestion -- @logisticsfilm you should consider it!
Also https://ubu.com/ might be interested to host/distribute it and it's a great fit as well.
Also https://ubu.com/ might be interested to host/distribute it and it's a great fit as well.
[deleted]
Are you open to distributing via torrent?
So far we have chosen not to because we consider the core of the work to be the continuous length of the film. A torrent would enable timelapses and short versions. But we will think about it.
That can/will happen regardless of distribution via Vimeo or torrent or YT or whatever.
Torrent doesn't enable that any more than any other distribution channel.
Torrent doesn't enable that any more than any other distribution channel.
Yea, a bit confused about that as well.
Maybe they mean providers could offer the download in chunks? But yea, there's nothing stopping someone getting the full file and just ffwding that.
Maybe they mean providers could offer the download in chunks? But yea, there's nothing stopping someone getting the full file and just ffwding that.
What’s wrong with a timelapse? Seems like the perfect opportunity.
This is weird. No normal person is going to watch 857 hours. The only person to watch that long are movie industry people, so they can write about it.
Separate question, how do you monetize this?
Separate question, how do you monetize this?
It’s art.
Is this a case for PeerTube?
The Polygon Gallery (North Vancouver, BC) hosted The Clock a few years ago. But staying open for a 24 hour long film must be much easier than for a month long film.
Sounds like a good fit for Cloudflare's R2 (and see if they keep their word).
Could you continuously stream it on twitch or YouTube or the like?
Great idea, thanks!
Since several of you have asked how to watch the movie, we spontaneously decided to stream the first 21 hours of Logistics on Twitch. Since it will soon be night here in Sweden, we will not be able to keep track of the stream. We're keeping our fingers crossed that it works. Unfortunately we will not be able to stream the entire film this time, but hope to do so later.
The stream is live now at https://www.twitch.tv/logisticsartproject
Since several of you have asked how to watch the movie, we spontaneously decided to stream the first 21 hours of Logistics on Twitch. Since it will soon be night here in Sweden, we will not be able to keep track of the stream. We're keeping our fingers crossed that it works. Unfortunately we will not be able to stream the entire film this time, but hope to do so later.
The stream is live now at https://www.twitch.tv/logisticsartproject
Youtube has commercials which we would like to avoid, but we had not considered twitch. Perhaps that's a good idea. We have livestreamed it before, but it's quite a commitment to keep a stream running 24/7 for 37 days.
Torrents?
Can I please buy a copy?
unfortunately its not for sale, but we are actively looking for a place to host it as a VOD again. Send us an email if you want to be notified if and when its available again. (email in profile)
Split it in different pieces and upload it on YouTube?
How many times have you watched it yourself?
Here is more of container shipping pron.
A container ship is sailing through a water highway, docks. The containers are getting unloaded/loaded.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h16zyxiwDLY
A container ship is sailing through a water highway, docks. The containers are getting unloaded/loaded.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h16zyxiwDLY
Also this one by JeffHK: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AHrCI9eSJGQ
Also worth a listen: the Omega Tau podcast episode on container ships:
https://omegataupodcast.net/146-container-shipping/
https://omegataupodcast.net/146-container-shipping/
in the same vein (tho lots shorter) i reccomend giving I, Pencil a read: https://fee.org/resources/i-pencil/
oh nice! didn't know about this book.
Is it available anywhere? Article says was on Vimeo but that it was taken down.
I don’t see any info on their page either https://logisticsartproject.com/
I wonder how large (in file size) the final cut was and what codecs were used. Such slow moving footage probably compresses well, but at 857 hours of footage it’s probably still big.
I don’t see any info on their page either https://logisticsartproject.com/
I wonder how large (in file size) the final cut was and what codecs were used. Such slow moving footage probably compresses well, but at 857 hours of footage it’s probably still big.
We had the film on Vimeo for a year but had to take it down due to the cost of Vimeo hosting.
The original film is around 10TB of mpeg2 1080p 25mbit/sec 25 frames per second.
We later transcoded to h264, it now clocks in at about 2TB.
The original film is around 10TB of mpeg2 1080p 25mbit/sec 25 frames per second.
We later transcoded to h264, it now clocks in at about 2TB.
How about bittorrent? I'll seed for ya.
Out of curiosity, why aren’t you on other platforms? Is it mainly due to the size, maintaining rights, or a combination?
Size and rights are definitely an aspect, but so is context. If we were to upload this to YouTube for example we imagine that the film would be interrupted by commercial breaks every now and then. Plus there is the 12 hour length limit.
We did livestream it on Youtube back when you could opt out of commercials. And in a way a livestream is our preferred way of showing the work but doing so from home forces us to make sure the stream is running 24/7 for 37 days...
We did livestream it on Youtube back when you could opt out of commercials. And in a way a livestream is our preferred way of showing the work but doing so from home forces us to make sure the stream is running 24/7 for 37 days...
Yeah, you should definitely find a way to stream it from a third location. You have the same problem as the lofi girl stream: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=jfKfPfyJRdk
Before their problem with content ID last month, their stream had been uninterrupted for two years.
Before their problem with content ID last month, their stream had been uninterrupted for two years.
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I want to see (edited highlights) of the film now.
It is extraordinary but then again it's just "the container will be here in three weeks"
It is extraordinary but then again it's just "the container will be here in three weeks"
72 minutes edit [1].
[1]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QYFG0xP12yE
[1]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QYFG0xP12yE
Actually we did not create this, its made out of 2 minute clips we hosted on our web page a few years back. The original film has no sound.
Well thank you for creating such an amazing piece of ... art / documentary / politics.
Please do tell us where we can see the full work / where it is available.
Please do tell us where we can see the full work / where it is available.
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> I Watched An 857-Hour Movie To Encounter Capitalism’s Extremes
International trade is not the same thing as capitalism. International trade existed before capitalism, and if capitalism disappeared tomorrow, short of everyone simultaneously adopting anarcho-primitivism, we would still have trade between nations.
International trade is not the same thing as capitalism. International trade existed before capitalism, and if capitalism disappeared tomorrow, short of everyone simultaneously adopting anarcho-primitivism, we would still have trade between nations.
I think ideally we'd have shared information (open source hardware designs) and distributed manufacturing. This would be a bit more robust, and avoid shipping, while making repair and recycling a lot easier.
I think that would mitigate some problems, but you'd still have many situations where specialization + transportation is cheaper (and even less energy intensive) than full decentralization.
And in any case, that's mostly orthogonal to capitalism. Capitalism is far from the only economic system where people keep secrets.
And in any case, that's mostly orthogonal to capitalism. Capitalism is far from the only economic system where people keep secrets.
yes this article seemed very obsessed with capitalism more than the movie itself. does the theory of marxism hold that there would be no more container ships, no products shared between nations, no people whose job it is to drive ships, trains and trucks anymore? that's all specific to capitalism? really? like if I wanted a pedometer, someone down the street would be making them ? or we just have no gadgets at all?
>like if I wanted a pedometer, someone down the street would be making them ?
If I wanted to strawman marxists, yes; that is what they believe ;)
To be more real, eh... if you look at how soviets did their planning they really did attempt to have everything "within 15 minutes." While that probably doesn't apply to something as specific as a pedometer... they do tend to extend that philosophy as far as it will go... reasonably or not.
If I wanted to strawman marxists, yes; that is what they believe ;)
To be more real, eh... if you look at how soviets did their planning they really did attempt to have everything "within 15 minutes." While that probably doesn't apply to something as specific as a pedometer... they do tend to extend that philosophy as far as it will go... reasonably or not.
Do you have a source that talks about Soviets avoiding centralization/specialization?
Well, I wouldn't say specialization was "avoided" more so it was just incredibly difficult due to it being a planned economy.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Council_of_Ministers_of_the_So...
This may provide some insight. I don't want to claim to be a USSR historian, I've just done some light research on another topic that crossed paths and I fell down a well for awhile lol.
The problem was that they were so centralized, it made innovation incredibly difficult. Simply put, if there were problems, even if people had solutions, it was damn near impossible to get anything implemented.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Council_of_Ministers_of_the_So...
This may provide some insight. I don't want to claim to be a USSR historian, I've just done some light research on another topic that crossed paths and I fell down a well for awhile lol.
The problem was that they were so centralized, it made innovation incredibly difficult. Simply put, if there were problems, even if people had solutions, it was damn near impossible to get anything implemented.
I really enjoyed Ascension https://g.co/kgs/agLbnp
> Going on the Logistics journey means encountering a staggering depiction of alienation, isolation and just how much capitalist social relations have distorted our ability to understand time and space.
Bit of a stretch. Would anarchist shipping take less time or be less boring somehow?
Bit of a stretch. Would anarchist shipping take less time or be less boring somehow?
One could question the decision to make the pedometer on the other side of the world. Or even its necessity in the first place.
You can decide on its necessity for yourself by buying it or not. You are not entitled to make that choice for other people.
One could, if "one" were an intellectual who thought himself qualified to question everything, because reasons.
Someone wants a pedometer, and magically, or not so magically, one appears on a shelf near them, or on their doorstep.
Someone wants a pedometer, and magically, or not so magically, one appears on a shelf near them, or on their doorstep.
Why did they want the pedometer? Did they come to that desire in isolation, or were they advertised to by the pedometer maker?
Maybe they're humans with agency? Just a thought.
I feel this line of thinking leads to no where.
What is "in isolation"? I'd honestly be shocked if the majority of people buying this pedometer were buying it due to an ad of any sort. Seems more likely they simply needed a pedometer. They needed one because they wanted to count steps... etc, etc, eudemonia
What is "in isolation"? I'd honestly be shocked if the majority of people buying this pedometer were buying it due to an ad of any sort. Seems more likely they simply needed a pedometer. They needed one because they wanted to count steps... etc, etc, eudemonia
Increased likelihood of piracy, less stuff shipped overall, probably less of the blandness inherent in economy of scale.
I mean, it seems like the guy went into the viewing already with a notion that capitalism is bad, and then watched a lot of really boring video, and then attributes the self-imposed tedium to how capitalism "distorts or ability to understand time and space". Only someone predisposed to this perspective would think that makes any sense at all.
Money isn't bounded by time nor space, it is actually a trivial observation but for him the movie shows a physical manifestation of that idea
I'm sorry, I don't understand that kind of writing. I know what each individual word means and I understand the sentences, but altogether none of it makes any sense.
> "Money isn't bounded by time nor space"
Wha? Money is not a constant of the Universe. Expressed as currency, it's explicitly limited to particular regions and eras. I cannot use Finnish markka in the US (bound by space) nor even in Finland (bound by time).
It's literally bounded by time and space, like everything. Seriously, anti-Capitalist rhetoric relies on these sort of poetic images, but cannot level any kind of effective critique.
> "Money isn't bounded by time nor space"
Wha? Money is not a constant of the Universe. Expressed as currency, it's explicitly limited to particular regions and eras. I cannot use Finnish markka in the US (bound by space) nor even in Finland (bound by time).
It's literally bounded by time and space, like everything. Seriously, anti-Capitalist rhetoric relies on these sort of poetic images, but cannot level any kind of effective critique.
Certainly the parties involved would have a better understanding of the time and space under discussion, because they would have taken part in the decisions about sourcing and logistics.
I don't think anarchy is the negation of capitalism.
Nah GP actually has a good radical/reductionist approach by jumping straight to anarchies.
In practice, was communism less alienating than capitalism? I doubt it.
Soviet workers used to say "We pretend to work, and they pretend to pay us."
Czech workers during the communist era used to say “If you’re not stealing from the state, you’re stealing from your family” (“Kdo neokrádá stát, okrádá rodinu”)
The side effect of capitalism is that not only money becomes concentrated, but also power. Not only because money buys power, but because the one who ones the machines can dictate how the one who operates it works. Anarchism refutes the idea that one has power over another, and as such accumulation of money and not owning the means of production is antithetical to anarchism
This reminds me of a small organic farm owner who said something to the effect of “why can’t I just trade my extra produce with the farmer down the street who has extra eggs? And then I can use the eggs to make pastries and trade those with my neighbor who makes homemade clothing?” Someone responded, “congrats, you just invented capitalism.”
Since eggs go bad and produce is heavy, maybe we could invent a durable “value storage” or “token” or “fiat” to trade instead. Storage and transmission of this value store could become useful trades in their own right.
This sounds like a very natural thing to do, almost like it would arise on its own without anyone having to _force_ this on anyone, as opposed to literally every other economic system, including your definition. In your “anarchism” how do you enforce the non-ownership of the means of production except by force? Do you force the farmer not to grow anything?
Since eggs go bad and produce is heavy, maybe we could invent a durable “value storage” or “token” or “fiat” to trade instead. Storage and transmission of this value store could become useful trades in their own right.
This sounds like a very natural thing to do, almost like it would arise on its own without anyone having to _force_ this on anyone, as opposed to literally every other economic system, including your definition. In your “anarchism” how do you enforce the non-ownership of the means of production except by force? Do you force the farmer not to grow anything?
> congrats, you just invented capitalism.
No, thats not capitalism but trade. You need to read up on what actually is capitalism and how accumulation of useful resources (wheat, cocoa, spice) is different from accumulation of money. Basically: it only makes sense inasmuch as you can consume the accumulated stuff, so a million ton of wood logs won't matter as much as one million ton of coins.
> This sounds like a very natural thing to do, almost like it would arise on its own without anyone having to _force_ this on anyone, as opposed to literally every other economic system, including your definition.
You're still thinking in a capitalistic world and you don't seem like you can't get out of it. The whole point of alternative economic systems is to produce enough for everybody. Such that needs are provided by the community. If everyone has what they need, why would there be a price on anything ? Why would more-than-enough wheat trade against more-than-enough wood ? It doesn't make sense. Trade happens because it's a way to solve scarcity, but the whole idea behind anarchism is to understand what is needed and make sure there is no scarcity there.
> In your “anarchism” how do you enforce the non-ownership of the means of production except by force? Do you force the farmer not to grow anything?
In anarchism, all decisions are taken by everyone. No one forces anything on anyone. I know, it's a hard concept to grasp, but communities can think and decide what's best for them.
The farmer can grow whatever they want, but if it doesn't benefit the community then they are on their own. It's all about what is good for the group and what makes us go forward, together.
No, thats not capitalism but trade. You need to read up on what actually is capitalism and how accumulation of useful resources (wheat, cocoa, spice) is different from accumulation of money. Basically: it only makes sense inasmuch as you can consume the accumulated stuff, so a million ton of wood logs won't matter as much as one million ton of coins.
> This sounds like a very natural thing to do, almost like it would arise on its own without anyone having to _force_ this on anyone, as opposed to literally every other economic system, including your definition.
You're still thinking in a capitalistic world and you don't seem like you can't get out of it. The whole point of alternative economic systems is to produce enough for everybody. Such that needs are provided by the community. If everyone has what they need, why would there be a price on anything ? Why would more-than-enough wheat trade against more-than-enough wood ? It doesn't make sense. Trade happens because it's a way to solve scarcity, but the whole idea behind anarchism is to understand what is needed and make sure there is no scarcity there.
> In your “anarchism” how do you enforce the non-ownership of the means of production except by force? Do you force the farmer not to grow anything?
In anarchism, all decisions are taken by everyone. No one forces anything on anyone. I know, it's a hard concept to grasp, but communities can think and decide what's best for them.
The farmer can grow whatever they want, but if it doesn't benefit the community then they are on their own. It's all about what is good for the group and what makes us go forward, together.
Nobody’s stopping you from starting a anarchist syndicate or commune or kibbutz or whatever. They are out there, but I don’t think they are any kind of utopia.
> radical projects tend to founder, or at least become endlessly difficult, the moment they enter into the world of large, heavy objects: buildings, cars, tractors, boats, industrial machinery. This is in turn is not because these objects are somehow intrinsically difficult to administer democratically; it’s because, like the DAN car, they are surrounded by endless government regulation, and effectively impossible to hide from the government’s armed representatives.
Concretely, for a collective to possess a car, they have to (by law) elect a president or whatever, to conform to undemocratic standards of corporate governance. It's literally impossible to do what you suggest in our current system.
Concretely, for a collective to possess a car, they have to (by law) elect a president or whatever, to conform to undemocratic standards of corporate governance. It's literally impossible to do what you suggest in our current system.
I don't understand how your comment is relevant
Let's assume I start my own demurrage currency and division of labor, there is an obvious problem that if the project has any success whatsoever, it will be shut down by the central bank because I am stepping on their toes.
Even if the central bank is not banning my currency, I will still have to pay taxes in the national currency, I have absolutely nothing against paying taxes but the point of the entire idea is that taxes will be paid in the new currency, if there is a constant outflow of my currency into euro or whatever, then the demurrage currency will go out of circulation very quickly. This problem isn't unique to demurrage, it is true of any non legal tender currency but foreign currency has countries where the money can be used to pay taxes which gives it a leg up over any non national currency.
So now I must go to a tax haven even though I have no desire to avoid paying taxes. Most tax havens are islands that are incredibly far away from any continental mainland. The cost of living will be much higher because of shipping costs and exporting will be prohibitive for anything that with a short shelf life and isn't priced in whole euros per kilogram.
Even if I find a tax haven, I will have to migrate there and most tax havens are incredibly expensive to migrate to, requiring $250k of investments for permanent residence. Once I am there I will need to cover my own living expenses there. This means I am going to need a remote job or work in some tourist industry as anything else is nonviable due to the extreme distances and the lack of land to be self sufficient for the island as a whole.
Even if I successfully migrate, I will now need to buy my own land and start a land trust that charges a land value tax and pays out every resident a citizen's dividend.
Once I have done all that, I am going to need to start a regular business that competes in the capitalist system, because I cannot rely on the island to immediately recognize my currency as legal tender instead I would have it start out offering payment in both the national currency and the local currency while offering 0% financing in the local currency to encourage people to use it.
All of this is incredibly difficult, it will take decades of working in the capitalistic system to escape it and then there is the very real risk of it failing.
There is no way I can succeed at this. Everything is stopping me. I could try to skip doing this legally by conquering my own land with military force but that isn't what I believe in.
So what I have decided to do is try my luck and see how far I can go by planning to retire in one of those locations but I have no delusions that my plans will actually happen within a lifetime if I go at it individually.
Even if the central bank is not banning my currency, I will still have to pay taxes in the national currency, I have absolutely nothing against paying taxes but the point of the entire idea is that taxes will be paid in the new currency, if there is a constant outflow of my currency into euro or whatever, then the demurrage currency will go out of circulation very quickly. This problem isn't unique to demurrage, it is true of any non legal tender currency but foreign currency has countries where the money can be used to pay taxes which gives it a leg up over any non national currency.
So now I must go to a tax haven even though I have no desire to avoid paying taxes. Most tax havens are islands that are incredibly far away from any continental mainland. The cost of living will be much higher because of shipping costs and exporting will be prohibitive for anything that with a short shelf life and isn't priced in whole euros per kilogram.
Even if I find a tax haven, I will have to migrate there and most tax havens are incredibly expensive to migrate to, requiring $250k of investments for permanent residence. Once I am there I will need to cover my own living expenses there. This means I am going to need a remote job or work in some tourist industry as anything else is nonviable due to the extreme distances and the lack of land to be self sufficient for the island as a whole.
Even if I successfully migrate, I will now need to buy my own land and start a land trust that charges a land value tax and pays out every resident a citizen's dividend.
Once I have done all that, I am going to need to start a regular business that competes in the capitalist system, because I cannot rely on the island to immediately recognize my currency as legal tender instead I would have it start out offering payment in both the national currency and the local currency while offering 0% financing in the local currency to encourage people to use it.
All of this is incredibly difficult, it will take decades of working in the capitalistic system to escape it and then there is the very real risk of it failing.
There is no way I can succeed at this. Everything is stopping me. I could try to skip doing this legally by conquering my own land with military force but that isn't what I believe in.
So what I have decided to do is try my luck and see how far I can go by planning to retire in one of those locations but I have no delusions that my plans will actually happen within a lifetime if I go at it individually.
> If everyone has what they need, why would there be a price on anything?
Will everyone really always have what they need, or is that a theoretical state that is actually very unlikely to be achieved? Also, is it in human nature (in general, discounting outliers) to be entirely satisfied and not want more, especially in relation to the people around you?
> The farmer can grow whatever they want, but if it doesn't benefit the community then they are on their own.
What happens if more than just one farmer opts out of the anarchistic lifestyle, they embrace capitalism, and outcompete the anarchists? Could that ever reach a point where it would be necessary to stop them by force in order to preserve the anarchistic society?
Basically I’m curious how things would shake out in reality, compared to theoretic models that presupposes that everyone acts in the best interest of society as a whole (given that they can all agree on what that is), and not themselves in particular (which I think is more realistic, on average).
Will everyone really always have what they need, or is that a theoretical state that is actually very unlikely to be achieved? Also, is it in human nature (in general, discounting outliers) to be entirely satisfied and not want more, especially in relation to the people around you?
> The farmer can grow whatever they want, but if it doesn't benefit the community then they are on their own.
What happens if more than just one farmer opts out of the anarchistic lifestyle, they embrace capitalism, and outcompete the anarchists? Could that ever reach a point where it would be necessary to stop them by force in order to preserve the anarchistic society?
Basically I’m curious how things would shake out in reality, compared to theoretic models that presupposes that everyone acts in the best interest of society as a whole (given that they can all agree on what that is), and not themselves in particular (which I think is more realistic, on average).
> Will everyone really always have what they need, or is that a theoretical state that is actually very unlikely to be achieved?
Just like our current system, there is no guarantee that everyone will have all their needs met. What differs, though, is what happens when those needs aren't met. On one side all you can do is complain and hope, on the other you get to raise the point to the community and you share the power to solve the problem.
> What happens if more than just one farmer opts out of the anarchistic lifestyle, they embrace capitalism, and outcompete the anarchists?
An anarchist society will produce enough for everybody. You can't outcompete what is already available for free through the community.
> Could that ever reach a point where it would be necessary to stop them by force in order to preserve the anarchistic society?
If that's what the society decides, then yes. It's all about the community decides for themselves.
> and not themselves in particular (which I think is more realistic, on average).
That's actually not true, the myth of the individualistic human, sold with stories of the proud family man who is the only one on earth who's able to save their progeniture, is largely wrong.
Just like our current system, there is no guarantee that everyone will have all their needs met. What differs, though, is what happens when those needs aren't met. On one side all you can do is complain and hope, on the other you get to raise the point to the community and you share the power to solve the problem.
> What happens if more than just one farmer opts out of the anarchistic lifestyle, they embrace capitalism, and outcompete the anarchists?
An anarchist society will produce enough for everybody. You can't outcompete what is already available for free through the community.
> Could that ever reach a point where it would be necessary to stop them by force in order to preserve the anarchistic society?
If that's what the society decides, then yes. It's all about the community decides for themselves.
> and not themselves in particular (which I think is more realistic, on average).
That's actually not true, the myth of the individualistic human, sold with stories of the proud family man who is the only one on earth who's able to save their progeniture, is largely wrong.
>Someone responded, “congrats, you just invented capitalism.”
What? That isn't capitalism. Where is the obsession over owning all the land, all the farms, all the factories? These people aren't interested in capital, they just want to trade.
>Since eggs go bad and produce is heavy, maybe we could invent a durable “value storage” or “token” or “fiat” to trade instead.
Egyptians simply deposited grains at grain banks and obtained something akin to clay tablets. Those clay tablets had an annual storage fee because grains spoil. They had no capitalism because the nature of their money made them willing to trade without charging any extra fees that come from the superiority of money over goods.
The fact that we started with a system like that and had almost no trouble for thousands of years means the modern capitalist is more ignorant about the nature of money than even people 4000 years ago.
Or rather the opposite is the case, people are fully aware of the nature of money and how making it superior over eggs gives the money capitalist the ability to extort concessions from the farmer. Since money is necessary as a medium of exchange, the money capitalist can always refuse to trade until the economy is about to collapse because all the spoiling goods in the economy are going bad and producers refuse to replenish their stock until the people are suffering from starvation and then become ready to accept debt under even worse conditions. To prevent this from happening, you are going to pay that fee ahead of time, you are going to constantly borrow new money into the economy.
>This sounds like a very natural thing to do, almost like it would arise on its own without anyone having to _force_ this on anyone, as opposed to literally every other economic system, including your definition.
The government declares a single currency to be legal tender, that is effectively a state enforced monopoly. I honestly can't comprehend how people like you stick their head in the sand.
>In your “anarchism” how do you enforce the non-ownership of the means of production except by force?
Grains spoil, so that just means money must spoil and the easiest way to make money spoil is by eliminating the zero lower bound cash, either by abolishing cash which was introduced by force through the government so undoing it requires no additional force, alternatively the government can issue cash with an expiration date, which again just dials back the amount of force being used to issue risk free, perfectly liquid and costless cash.
>Do you force the farmer not to grow anything
Why the hell would I need to tell anyone to do anything? Telling the farmer to not grow anything is what the money capitalist does because that is how he gets to extort the farmer and break his spirit.
By the way, by money capitalist I mean anyone holding money liquid and immediately spendable without paying for that privilege and for the harm they are causing to society at large
I am honestly frustrated by comments like yours. Abolishing capitalism requires no force, no revolution, no deaths, no jealousy, no redistribution, merely a free market that actually lives up to that name, not a capitalistic market labeled as free market. In fact, capitalism itself leads to the abolishment of capitalism, hence the only problem that we need to solve is, once capitalism ends itself, how do we keep it that way instead of it devolving into a depression or another world war?
What? That isn't capitalism. Where is the obsession over owning all the land, all the farms, all the factories? These people aren't interested in capital, they just want to trade.
>Since eggs go bad and produce is heavy, maybe we could invent a durable “value storage” or “token” or “fiat” to trade instead.
Egyptians simply deposited grains at grain banks and obtained something akin to clay tablets. Those clay tablets had an annual storage fee because grains spoil. They had no capitalism because the nature of their money made them willing to trade without charging any extra fees that come from the superiority of money over goods.
The fact that we started with a system like that and had almost no trouble for thousands of years means the modern capitalist is more ignorant about the nature of money than even people 4000 years ago.
Or rather the opposite is the case, people are fully aware of the nature of money and how making it superior over eggs gives the money capitalist the ability to extort concessions from the farmer. Since money is necessary as a medium of exchange, the money capitalist can always refuse to trade until the economy is about to collapse because all the spoiling goods in the economy are going bad and producers refuse to replenish their stock until the people are suffering from starvation and then become ready to accept debt under even worse conditions. To prevent this from happening, you are going to pay that fee ahead of time, you are going to constantly borrow new money into the economy.
>This sounds like a very natural thing to do, almost like it would arise on its own without anyone having to _force_ this on anyone, as opposed to literally every other economic system, including your definition.
The government declares a single currency to be legal tender, that is effectively a state enforced monopoly. I honestly can't comprehend how people like you stick their head in the sand.
>In your “anarchism” how do you enforce the non-ownership of the means of production except by force?
Grains spoil, so that just means money must spoil and the easiest way to make money spoil is by eliminating the zero lower bound cash, either by abolishing cash which was introduced by force through the government so undoing it requires no additional force, alternatively the government can issue cash with an expiration date, which again just dials back the amount of force being used to issue risk free, perfectly liquid and costless cash.
>Do you force the farmer not to grow anything
Why the hell would I need to tell anyone to do anything? Telling the farmer to not grow anything is what the money capitalist does because that is how he gets to extort the farmer and break his spirit.
By the way, by money capitalist I mean anyone holding money liquid and immediately spendable without paying for that privilege and for the harm they are causing to society at large
I am honestly frustrated by comments like yours. Abolishing capitalism requires no force, no revolution, no deaths, no jealousy, no redistribution, merely a free market that actually lives up to that name, not a capitalistic market labeled as free market. In fact, capitalism itself leads to the abolishment of capitalism, hence the only problem that we need to solve is, once capitalism ends itself, how do we keep it that way instead of it devolving into a depression or another world war?
Was the author inspired by the filmmakers not to edit this piece down to a sensible, non-redundant length?
The author mentioned that they started out looking for the world's longest horror film but ended up finding a film which exposes capitalism's underbelly and brings home why life is turned into a blur by capitalism.
If you ask me though, based on this paragraph they did actually find the world's longest horror film! As for the anti-capitalism hints in the article, try watching an 857 hour film without starving in a non-capitalist economy!
"There came a point about three weeks into my viewing where the maddening, non-Euclidean shape of Logistics fully formed in my mind. I had an unnerving migraine. I could barely get myself together, let alone watch a boat not move for nine hours. I thought about quitting or taking a few days off, but then it occurred to me: the crew of the ship couldn’t quit, and the filmmakers couldn’t take a day off. I was now a part of this filmic thing, and I couldn’t stop until it was done."
If you ask me though, based on this paragraph they did actually find the world's longest horror film! As for the anti-capitalism hints in the article, try watching an 857 hour film without starving in a non-capitalist economy!
"There came a point about three weeks into my viewing where the maddening, non-Euclidean shape of Logistics fully formed in my mind. I had an unnerving migraine. I could barely get myself together, let alone watch a boat not move for nine hours. I thought about quitting or taking a few days off, but then it occurred to me: the crew of the ship couldn’t quit, and the filmmakers couldn’t take a day off. I was now a part of this filmic thing, and I couldn’t stop until it was done."
I think I could handle watching the boat, 857 hours of silence would drive me insane. I wonder if they supplemented their own background music.
Not quite that long, but the Norwegian national broadcaster NRK did a week-long trip one one of the coastal shipping routes in the nortern part of the country. Might be of interest for you. I know they used to offer the whole thing as a torrent, but it can also be found here:
https://tv.nrk.no/serie/hurtigruten-minutt-for-minutt
There is a 3 hour "movie" of the train trip through the middle of the Australian desert. (Adelaide to Darwin).
Trailer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gotY2slaL_E
Still. For my tastes at least, this is time better spent than The Cremaster Cycle.
You don't have kids do you? Silence is under-rated.
If this were an ambient display on a wall in a living space or work space, I wonder what effect that would have on mood and mode.
the mid-section of this article is just rephrased paragraph after rephrased paragraph, each less philosophically sound than the last.
we get it, the film is an art piece making a point about how capitalism compresses time and space into inconsequential objects. it was a big undertaking schedule-wise. you don’t have to say this backwards and forwards 5 times
compress your article space and time-wise
we get it, the film is an art piece making a point about how capitalism compresses time and space into inconsequential objects. it was a big undertaking schedule-wise. you don’t have to say this backwards and forwards 5 times
compress your article space and time-wise
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While not nearly as harrowing a journey nor the commitment as watching the film described in this article, reading this article in its entirety was surprisingly riveting and oddly fulfilling.
I found the opposite. to me it felt like retracing the same two - admittedly interesting and valuable - meta points over and over*, while refusing to describe what the film was actually like to watch. I assume it did actually get to that point, but I stopped reading after the nth paragraph that I didn’t feel provided any new information.
this isn’t to say you’re wrong to enjoy it, or that my impressions were correct, just that I felt differently. I’m also extremely aware of the irony of complaining about the length of an article about the experience of watching an 857 hour film, but c’est la, as they say
*i.e. how it is an art piece about capitalism compressing time and space into innocuous objects; and how much of a time and schedule commitment it was for him
this isn’t to say you’re wrong to enjoy it, or that my impressions were correct, just that I felt differently. I’m also extremely aware of the irony of complaining about the length of an article about the experience of watching an 857 hour film, but c’est la, as they say
*i.e. how it is an art piece about capitalism compressing time and space into innocuous objects; and how much of a time and schedule commitment it was for him
Not a critique if the film, but rather the article ablut it:
>> Logistics may have been birthed into this world in 2012, but the past few years have given the film a second life, with the pandemic laying bare the fragility of just-in-time logistics.
I so hoped we got past that already... JIT had nothing to do, as a root cause that is, with the supply issues the world is facing since the pandemic. I hate this meme so much.
That being said, I live the film project! Even if I would never watch 35 days plus on part of my day job, the idea is great so!
>> Logistics may have been birthed into this world in 2012, but the past few years have given the film a second life, with the pandemic laying bare the fragility of just-in-time logistics.
I so hoped we got past that already... JIT had nothing to do, as a root cause that is, with the supply issues the world is facing since the pandemic. I hate this meme so much.
That being said, I live the film project! Even if I would never watch 35 days plus on part of my day job, the idea is great so!
Do you have a good resource for getting to grips with the current supply issues going on around the world? I'm sure there isn't just a single issue responsible for the huge variety of symptoms cropping up, but it'd be great to get past the memes and get some deeper understanding.
The wikipage for the Bullwhip effect is a good place to start. The ASCM has some blog posts about this topic as well (https://www.ascm.org/ascm-insights/).
At the core of the current problems are the demand and aupply shocks caused by Covid and lockdowns early on in the pandemic. You can think of it as the same thing that impacted toilet paper, just on a global scale across all industries. Tgen we had the mess of containers not being where they should be (again, due to covid lockdowns and shipping disruptions) which made a recovery from the lockdown induced disruptions difficult. On top of that we have the war in Ukraine, which cut of Ukraine and Russia from flobal trade. While it seems that everything is coming from Ukraine at the moment, it is true that some things do, especially food stuffs and automotive parts. That happened while global supply chains still coped with the effects of Covid disruptions.
What JIT did, again not as a root cause, was to make these disruptions being felt much faster due to lower inventory levels. Not that any JIT was in place between suppliers in China and customers in, e.g. Europe so. With that long trabsportation lead times JIT is just impossible.
Tge alternative so, having huge buffer stocks, would have helped neither. Simply because one component shortage can bring supply chains down. Holding ebough stock of everything to buffer those global issues would require so much inventory that nobody can afford it, or the resulting products. High inventory has its own challenges so, and not per se resilient.
In the puplic mind JIT is associated with zero inventory (JIT aims for the minimum inventory which is never zero in reality). The current issues are, in the publics view, easily explained by insufficient inventory (which they are not). So it is easy to combine those two and blame JIT for everything.
At the core of the current problems are the demand and aupply shocks caused by Covid and lockdowns early on in the pandemic. You can think of it as the same thing that impacted toilet paper, just on a global scale across all industries. Tgen we had the mess of containers not being where they should be (again, due to covid lockdowns and shipping disruptions) which made a recovery from the lockdown induced disruptions difficult. On top of that we have the war in Ukraine, which cut of Ukraine and Russia from flobal trade. While it seems that everything is coming from Ukraine at the moment, it is true that some things do, especially food stuffs and automotive parts. That happened while global supply chains still coped with the effects of Covid disruptions.
What JIT did, again not as a root cause, was to make these disruptions being felt much faster due to lower inventory levels. Not that any JIT was in place between suppliers in China and customers in, e.g. Europe so. With that long trabsportation lead times JIT is just impossible.
Tge alternative so, having huge buffer stocks, would have helped neither. Simply because one component shortage can bring supply chains down. Holding ebough stock of everything to buffer those global issues would require so much inventory that nobody can afford it, or the resulting products. High inventory has its own challenges so, and not per se resilient.
In the puplic mind JIT is associated with zero inventory (JIT aims for the minimum inventory which is never zero in reality). The current issues are, in the publics view, easily explained by insufficient inventory (which they are not). So it is easy to combine those two and blame JIT for everything.
Thanks for that, I appreciate it. I'll take a look into the ASCM's posts.
I've been a fan of Matt Stoller's work on monopolies for some time. He's a bit aggressive, but I find his analysis interesting. What do you think of the argument that monopolistic concentration makes issues like this worse? E.g. as put forward in this article https://mattstoller.substack.com/p/too-big-to-sail-how-a-leg...
> In other words, mega-ships like the Ever Given are a new phenomenon that are tied not to economic logic but to the consolidation of ocean carrier lines and their ability to offload risk onto counter parties. As Jensen observed, without the consolidation, “ships would likely not have grown above 12,000-14,000 TEUs [twenty-foot equivalent units].” So we’ve moved from a grid with lots of different size ships owned by different lines that could dock in lots of ports, to one dominated by hundreds of mega-ships that can only go to certain ports, all controlled by a de facto small cartel. The game in the business is to acquire market power and then use mega-ships to offload costs onto others and block new entrants.
I've been a fan of Matt Stoller's work on monopolies for some time. He's a bit aggressive, but I find his analysis interesting. What do you think of the argument that monopolistic concentration makes issues like this worse? E.g. as put forward in this article https://mattstoller.substack.com/p/too-big-to-sail-how-a-leg...
> In other words, mega-ships like the Ever Given are a new phenomenon that are tied not to economic logic but to the consolidation of ocean carrier lines and their ability to offload risk onto counter parties. As Jensen observed, without the consolidation, “ships would likely not have grown above 12,000-14,000 TEUs [twenty-foot equivalent units].” So we’ve moved from a grid with lots of different size ships owned by different lines that could dock in lots of ports, to one dominated by hundreds of mega-ships that can only go to certain ports, all controlled by a de facto small cartel. The game in the business is to acquire market power and then use mega-ships to offload costs onto others and block new entrants.
That article is actually a little shallow. The Ever Given had close to nothing to do with any issues at US ports (the majority of the Asian traffic to the US goes to west coast ports). Larger ships are good in terms of economics of scale. That card was over played a bit in the past it seems, so. There are still huge fleet of smaller ships out there, feeder vessels, connecting smaller ports to those served by the huge vessels. We are currently working, in container shipping, in hub and spoke system. Whether or not that is better then direct lines is a good question, there benefits to both models.
And calling container lines a cartel is strong claim. In fact, for years prior to Covid container rates were so low that companies were barely profitable. There can be the argument made that those low rates contributed to the bankruptcy of Hanjin. Cartels usually don't result in low prices.
That being said, the container issues, and there were a ton of those prior to Covid, during Covid and now that need to be solved, are a logistics issue. Serious enough to have impacts on supply chains, but not enough by themselves to screw things up to the degree we see right now.
>> The game in the business is to acquire market power and then use mega-ships to offload costs onto others and block new entrants.
That sentence could use detailed explanation, because as it is it doesn't make any sense to me.
And calling container lines a cartel is strong claim. In fact, for years prior to Covid container rates were so low that companies were barely profitable. There can be the argument made that those low rates contributed to the bankruptcy of Hanjin. Cartels usually don't result in low prices.
That being said, the container issues, and there were a ton of those prior to Covid, during Covid and now that need to be solved, are a logistics issue. Serious enough to have impacts on supply chains, but not enough by themselves to screw things up to the degree we see right now.
>> The game in the business is to acquire market power and then use mega-ships to offload costs onto others and block new entrants.
That sentence could use detailed explanation, because as it is it doesn't make any sense to me.
So...buying items made in your country is an extreme right winger thing.
And if you buy shitty stuff from communist china then it's exteme capitalism.
Would you watch a real time "movie" of the countless man-years it took to design and develop the infrastructure that made it possible for you to "watch", write and publish about this? I thought so.
Would you watch a real time "movie" of the countless man-years it took to design and develop the infrastructure that made it possible for you to "watch", write and publish about this? I thought so.
I use a simple webview browser on Android because it's 10x faster than something heavy like Firefox. Every few months I come across a site, like this one, where the page flashes into the screen before being redirected to a data URI. Does anyone know what causes this? I'm inclined to think of trackers and ads, but it's a bit hard to debug without developer tools.
This is what the submission redirects me to, a 1x1 image the browser says: data:image/gif;base64,R0lGODlhAQABAAAAACH5BAEKAAEALAAAAAABAAEAAAICTAEAOw==
This is what the submission redirects me to, a 1x1 image the browser says: data:image/gif;base64,R0lGODlhAQABAAAAACH5BAEKAAEALAAAAAABAAEAAAICTAEAOw==
Container ships seem very inefficient. Is that why shipping from taobao is horrible?
Depends what you pay for.
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just how much capitalist social relations have distorted our ability to understand time and space.
This is meaningless bullshit. The fact you can purchase, for an hour's wage, a digital pedometer than was built on one continent from raw materials from another and then shipped to a third is a breathtaking triumph.
This is meaningless bullshit. The fact you can purchase, for an hour's wage, a digital pedometer than was built on one continent from raw materials from another and then shipped to a third is a breathtaking triumph.
For whom? The hundreds or thousands of people who need to be exploited under harsh conditions to make it a reality? Or the one person who gets a gadget?
What a lovely article and piece. Tremendous. I don’t think I will make such a commitment to this film as did the author, but in a way I feel it is perhaps the only way to understand it: at the speed of undilated time.
> It was on, in front of my eyes, while I worked, ate and lived.
Either you're working or you're watching a movie. I know people who claim they do both at the same time, but I don't think they're actually doing either.
Either you're working or you're watching a movie. I know people who claim they do both at the same time, but I don't think they're actually doing either.
“either you’re working or you’re listening to music”.
the progression of my career has looked like this:
- need total quiet: no music, no talking.
- some music is fine: it can’t have lyrics though and it’s best if it’s more textural.
- i can listen to (and process the lyrics to) hip hop and rap and still type.
- i can listen to YouTube educationals and catch about a third of the content.
- i can rewatch movies i’ve seen before and keep up with the important plot parts.
sure, for the parts of the day where i’m working out differential equations or solving circuits and such, i go back to silence. but if 90% of your work is just plumbing values from one place to another… if you’ve progressed anywhere along that sequence i listed then i think it’s naive to take that simple “either/or” view of things.
the progression of my career has looked like this:
- need total quiet: no music, no talking.
- some music is fine: it can’t have lyrics though and it’s best if it’s more textural.
- i can listen to (and process the lyrics to) hip hop and rap and still type.
- i can listen to YouTube educationals and catch about a third of the content.
- i can rewatch movies i’ve seen before and keep up with the important plot parts.
sure, for the parts of the day where i’m working out differential equations or solving circuits and such, i go back to silence. but if 90% of your work is just plumbing values from one place to another… if you’ve progressed anywhere along that sequence i listed then i think it’s naive to take that simple “either/or” view of things.
It is in fact possible to do certain repetitive tasks and keep track of a simple movie or tv show at the same time.
I find neither particularly enjoyable though.
I find neither particularly enjoyable though.
Yes, if one is doing menial work, sure. I thought the author was a writer, which is in my opinion creative work requiring full attention.
The author is a professional writer, so depending on what specific writing tasks they're doing, they may be able to do portions of their job almost automatically, devoting far less than full attention to their work. (I know a few writers who do this.) Additionally the movie is silent, so I'd imagine that leaves the language parts of the brain fairly free when watching the movie.
That’s true. Although now that I read the article, the quoted sentence comes right after they mentioned 9 hours of a stationary ship so I guess it’s possible to keep that on in the background and not miss the plot.
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> However, if Logistics showed me anything, it’s that time belongs to the working people of this world, when we can find ways to take it.
So deep. So profound.
> Logistics is the filmic annihilation of capitalist relations to time by a force of ultra-cinematic space. Logistics isn’t a feat of temporal duration, it’s a feat of spatial presence.
Such overwrought prose. Such "forcing everything into a Marxist framework."
Leonard A. Read talked about the pencil and how no one person could possibly make one, in 1958: https://www.econlib.org/library/Essays/rdPncl.html?chapter_n... and he wasn't the first, either.
The supply chain expands, but the principle stays the same.
So deep. So profound.
> Logistics is the filmic annihilation of capitalist relations to time by a force of ultra-cinematic space. Logistics isn’t a feat of temporal duration, it’s a feat of spatial presence.
Such overwrought prose. Such "forcing everything into a Marxist framework."
Leonard A. Read talked about the pencil and how no one person could possibly make one, in 1958: https://www.econlib.org/library/Essays/rdPncl.html?chapter_n... and he wasn't the first, either.
The supply chain expands, but the principle stays the same.
> Such overwrought prose. Such "forcing everything into a Marxist framework."
One of the reasons Marx is so popular is that his writing is vague enough that people can read a very wide range of meaning into the words. Religious leaders and politicians often follow the same playbook to great success.
One of the reasons Marx is so popular is that his writing is vague enough that people can read a very wide range of meaning into the words. Religious leaders and politicians often follow the same playbook to great success.
Marx is popular because his first volume divides people into the good guys and the bad guys by cleanly separating classes so everyone who hates their boss or landlord is quick to agree with Marx. Even Marx himself doesn't believe everything he wrote in the first volume, in fact, most of the good answers and thinking are actually in the third volume which nobody including me has read. The parts that I have read could have come out of my mouth with only minor modifications.
Stalin had only read scraps of the first volume, the one that divides people into good and evil, the one that doesn't actually try to find the underlying problem, it was only natural that he was doomed to failure. Imagine being wrong while fully believing your cause to be infallible.
The problem with Marx isn't that he is vague, it is that you have to read 2700 pages of difficult to read text which nobody, not even the staunchest supports have done. Why? Because it would take more than 160 hours to both read and understand what he has written. You may have to reread it twice because the third volume gives you a new context for the first and second.
Marxism is doomed due to bounded rationality.
Stalin had only read scraps of the first volume, the one that divides people into good and evil, the one that doesn't actually try to find the underlying problem, it was only natural that he was doomed to failure. Imagine being wrong while fully believing your cause to be infallible.
The problem with Marx isn't that he is vague, it is that you have to read 2700 pages of difficult to read text which nobody, not even the staunchest supports have done. Why? Because it would take more than 160 hours to both read and understand what he has written. You may have to reread it twice because the third volume gives you a new context for the first and second.
Marxism is doomed due to bounded rationality.
> most of the good answers and thinking are actually in the third volume which nobody including me has read
If no one, including you, has read it, then how can anyone, including you, possibly know whether or not it contains "the good answers"?
If no one, including you, has read it, then how can anyone, including you, possibly know whether or not it contains "the good answers"?
My art school friends used to point out "artful ambiguity" as a key success factor beneath religious leaders, political movements and pop music.
Sure, also "early access" video games. People are willing to pay a lot for them because it is still ambiguous enough that everyone can imagine it will turn out into specifically their future vision.
>One of the reasons Marx is so popular is that his writing is vague enough that people can read a very wide range of meaning into the words.
I don't think this is true, and I say this as someone who's read Marx (almost) back to back. The ambiguities are sometimes mathematical, and there are debates as to meaning in some places, but the overal thesis and critiques are anything but vague, whether you agree with them or not.
I don't think this is true, and I say this as someone who's read Marx (almost) back to back. The ambiguities are sometimes mathematical, and there are debates as to meaning in some places, but the overal thesis and critiques are anything but vague, whether you agree with them or not.
https://content.csbs.utah.edu/~ehrbar/cap1.pdf
For those interested, I recommend Michael Heinrich's biography of Marx ('Karl Marx and the Birth of Modern Society'; volume 1 covers the young Marx up to the end of his studies and delves deep into the intellectual and political context of that time in Germany and Europe. Very informative.)
His 'An Introduction to the Three Volumes of Karl Marx's Capital' is on my to-read list:
https://files.libcom.org/files/Karl%20Marx%20and%20the%20Bir...
https://files.libcom.org/files/Michael_Heinrich,_Alex_Locasc...
For those interested, I recommend Michael Heinrich's biography of Marx ('Karl Marx and the Birth of Modern Society'; volume 1 covers the young Marx up to the end of his studies and delves deep into the intellectual and political context of that time in Germany and Europe. Very informative.)
His 'An Introduction to the Three Volumes of Karl Marx's Capital' is on my to-read list:
https://files.libcom.org/files/Karl%20Marx%20and%20the%20Bir...
https://files.libcom.org/files/Michael_Heinrich,_Alex_Locasc...
That was a magnificent essay. Thank you for posting it!
Most people have no clue where/how everyday things are made. Reminds me of this video where a teenage girl was saying food comes from supermarkets, not farmers
My grandparents (who were farmers) would frequently joke that city folk always thought beets came from cans at the store and didn't know they grew in the ground.
I imagine the same city folk laughed at all the things country rubes like my grandparents didn't know. Of course, one being the child of an immigrant and the other immigrating as a child, and quite poor to boot, they would have faced plenty of derision for that as well. IIRC they also didn't get indoor plumbing and toilets until the early 1950's, so they probably would have been laughed at for that too.
I imagine the same city folk laughed at all the things country rubes like my grandparents didn't know. Of course, one being the child of an immigrant and the other immigrating as a child, and quite poor to boot, they would have faced plenty of derision for that as well. IIRC they also didn't get indoor plumbing and toilets until the early 1950's, so they probably would have been laughed at for that too.
It does make one wonder how long the supply chain can get before people forget what's on the other side of it. The Roman's only had a vague concept of how silk was made and where it came from. The Chinese a vague idea of daqin, the opposite of the Qin empire.
A farmer be forgiven for believing that their fertilizer is made from manure and not petrochemicals made thousands of miles away?
A farmer be forgiven for believing that their fertilizer is made from manure and not petrochemicals made thousands of miles away?
Farmers know absurd amounts about the fertilizer they're using. Frankly, they probably know more about any given facet of the modern world than the average person. Having to pull multi-million dollar lines of credit and constantly staying up-to-date with any technology that touches your business will do funny things to people. That extends to most people that make things; they know who it goes to and how it gets there, but the person who gets it doesn't know where it came from and how it got to them.
Yeah there was a viral video awhile back where this young woman on a family farm was sitting in her tractor talking about how everything worked. The tractor has more computer screens than my desk ever had and a GIS system.
> That extends to most people that make things; they know who it goes to and how it gets there, but the person who gets it doesn't know where it came from and how it got to them.
People who make things seriously, at least. People who think groceries come from the store and haven’t thought past that will still be able to cook a meal while a more serious home cook or a good professional chef knows more about where their ingredients come from. But this only goes a couple levels deep at most. The chef might know where the farmer’s fertilizer comes from (I think that’s part of what’s implied by “organic food”) but the farmer will definitely know. But for petrochemical fertilizer, there’s a whole petrochemical supply chain before that which the fertilizer manufacturer will understand even better than the farmer.
> That extends to most people that make things; they know who it goes to and how it gets there, but the person who gets it doesn't know where it came from and how it got to them.
People who make things seriously, at least. People who think groceries come from the store and haven’t thought past that will still be able to cook a meal while a more serious home cook or a good professional chef knows more about where their ingredients come from. But this only goes a couple levels deep at most. The chef might know where the farmer’s fertilizer comes from (I think that’s part of what’s implied by “organic food”) but the farmer will definitely know. But for petrochemical fertilizer, there’s a whole petrochemical supply chain before that which the fertilizer manufacturer will understand even better than the farmer.
"City folk encountering their country cousins" used to be a standard trope of comedy. The very fact that it's not anymore tells you all you need to know about urbanization.
That was pretty much the entire joke behind both Green Acres and the Beverly Hillbillies, to show the difference of cultures in America in an absurd way. Seeing everything become homogeneous is kind of sad
Sort of...Green Acres seemed more to exploit that difference to create an absurd environment in general. (Filmways had a lot of trained farm animals around anyway.) The recurring joke was that Eddie Albert had an idyllic vision of being a lawyer retiring to farm life, and all of the objectively insane things people there did made perfect sense to everyone except him, including Eva Gabor.
In 1957, the BBC pranked people for April Fools' day claiming that spaghetti comes form spaghetti trees.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spaghetti-tree_hoax
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spaghetti-tree_hoax
The video is worth a watch' https://youtu.be/tVo_wkxH9dU
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There used to be plenty of how stuff is made documentaries on tv, so I don't know. Nowadays I don't see tv, not that linear medium anyway, so is it gone?
There's still plenty of professionally produced documentaries. There are a zillion videos on Youtube which talk about how stuff is made. Plenty of videos telling you how to make your own stuff. There's subreddits directly or indirectly dedicated to this. There's also quite a bit of how-stuff-is-made on TikTok too.
Speaking of the latter, there's one related phenomenon on TikTok which I never see talked about, but is quite interesting / educational. Some production workers set up a TikTok live feed at work so you can see their part of how things are made or shipped. I've seen factory workers in Vietnam, farmers from all over the world, loggers, construction workers, and too many craftsmen to count. Once had insomnia and ended up watching a 5 AM livestream of a sawmill worker methodically turning various sized tree trunks into uniform planks. That was oddly relaxing and fascinating.
Speaking of the latter, there's one related phenomenon on TikTok which I never see talked about, but is quite interesting / educational. Some production workers set up a TikTok live feed at work so you can see their part of how things are made or shipped. I've seen factory workers in Vietnam, farmers from all over the world, loggers, construction workers, and too many craftsmen to count. Once had insomnia and ended up watching a 5 AM livestream of a sawmill worker methodically turning various sized tree trunks into uniform planks. That was oddly relaxing and fascinating.
(Since you mentioned it) I just recently watched all of Stuff Made Here (brilliant guy and channel). One thing really opened my mind - he built his own CNC machine! Now that I know this I could almost believe that I could build anything too. At least that it's possible to build at home.
Interesting about TikTok. But all the content niches are so segregated now due to algorithm recommendations, I'm not sure if these are being watched by only the interested, or are they watched by "everyone" in general?
Interesting about TikTok. But all the content niches are so segregated now due to algorithm recommendations, I'm not sure if these are being watched by only the interested, or are they watched by "everyone" in general?
Some how-stuff-is-made videos do get wide play despite the algorithmic silos. The ones that do best are the ones that are rather peaceful & mesmerizing. That grabs the people interested in the technical aspects, the people who get ASMR tingles easily, and the people who fall into the /r/oddlysatisfying crowd. Those 3 groups often make for a large audience.
That is classic “evergreen” content, so it’s probably still airing.
They have a Star Trek-style replicator.
"Computer, 1 whole of chicken please. Roasted."
"Computer, 1 whole of chicken please. Roasted."
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So the entire freighter journey is shown in real time, to show how “crushing” (a word used in the article) capitalism is? Because before capitalism, there were no freight ships, or what?
Every week my office restocks on bananas from Latin america
Every week at least a few end up in the trash, because they turned black and no one wants them anymore
So some dude, thousands of kilometers away, grew his bananas, put them in a boat, for a weeks long trip to Europe, followed by hundreds of kilometers in a truck, to end up in my office trash
This is a simple example
It's not about what was possible before, of course we've been shiping stuff world wide for a long time, it's about the scale and banality of it and the scale and banality of waste that comes with it. Nothing is measured with the "absurdity" scale, everything is measured with the "money" scale. A lot of what we now consider normal is complete madness
Every week at least a few end up in the trash, because they turned black and no one wants them anymore
So some dude, thousands of kilometers away, grew his bananas, put them in a boat, for a weeks long trip to Europe, followed by hundreds of kilometers in a truck, to end up in my office trash
This is a simple example
It's not about what was possible before, of course we've been shiping stuff world wide for a long time, it's about the scale and banality of it and the scale and banality of waste that comes with it. Nothing is measured with the "absurdity" scale, everything is measured with the "money" scale. A lot of what we now consider normal is complete madness
So some dude, thousands of kilometers away, grew his bananas, put them in a boat, for a weeks long trip to Europe, followed by hundreds of kilometers in a truck, to end up in my office trash
Along with millions of other bananas that got eaten. You're arguing against economies of scale here, and you'll need to show your work rather than dismissing long-distance trade as "madness".
Along with millions of other bananas that got eaten. You're arguing against economies of scale here, and you'll need to show your work rather than dismissing long-distance trade as "madness".
That's the thing. Under capitalism the only way to measure something is money. Millions of tons could be sold, profit was made, so it's OK to throw away a few tons.
Environment, living and working conditions, resources and materials being taken from non-renewables sources, all of those are unimportant under capitalism, all of those are unimportant with capitalism and are the reason why no one asks themselves whether it's really worth shipping fruits from the other side of the world. Sometimes even by plane.
Environment, living and working conditions, resources and materials being taken from non-renewables sources, all of those are unimportant under capitalism, all of those are unimportant with capitalism and are the reason why no one asks themselves whether it's really worth shipping fruits from the other side of the world. Sometimes even by plane.
People did ask themselves. They found, yes, it's worth. You might disagree, but I don't I think the number of rotten bananas a process produces offers any meaningful answer. At best it's a baseline and by itself about as useful as "x people die from y every year". What about it? Is that number supposed to be good or bad and what is the bigger context?
Doing stuff causes other stuff to happen. People die in car accidents, but a lot of death is prevented because we have cars, but then people also die because of pollution or get depressed because of noise pollution, and it keeps goin from there. It's hard. Let's be empathetic with each other, and good, and also think a lot about what is going on.
Doing stuff causes other stuff to happen. People die in car accidents, but a lot of death is prevented because we have cars, but then people also die because of pollution or get depressed because of noise pollution, and it keeps goin from there. It's hard. Let's be empathetic with each other, and good, and also think a lot about what is going on.
The problem isn’t capitalism; it’s the imperfection of humanity. No economic system in history has eliminated waste. The only industrialized alternative to capitalism was notoriously even more wasteful.
Price systems work by simplifying and transmitting information relevant to production and consumption decisions. If the price goes up, consumers who can go without the thing can stop buying it and producers who can make more of the thing can start making it, and they each have the incentive to do so.
When it comes to externalities with the environment, these can be incorporated into the price system. That’s how a carbon tax would work. It turns out that the intuitions of would-be central planners are often completely wrong.
The truth is, lots of people do ask themselves if it’s really worth it to ship bananas from Latin America to Europe. They work for the fruit company and their decision is based on the costs and benefits. If there are costs that they aren’t considering, then the solution is to incorporate those costs into the price system, not to have some banana commissar decree that oceanic banana shipping is banned because, in his enlightened gut feeling, it’s “absurd”.
Price systems work by simplifying and transmitting information relevant to production and consumption decisions. If the price goes up, consumers who can go without the thing can stop buying it and producers who can make more of the thing can start making it, and they each have the incentive to do so.
When it comes to externalities with the environment, these can be incorporated into the price system. That’s how a carbon tax would work. It turns out that the intuitions of would-be central planners are often completely wrong.
The truth is, lots of people do ask themselves if it’s really worth it to ship bananas from Latin America to Europe. They work for the fruit company and their decision is based on the costs and benefits. If there are costs that they aren’t considering, then the solution is to incorporate those costs into the price system, not to have some banana commissar decree that oceanic banana shipping is banned because, in his enlightened gut feeling, it’s “absurd”.
Imperfection of humanity? A lack of resource extraction taxes doesn't have anything to do with humanity at large. Any hypothetical society could implement them today and the topic would be over. There is not much more you could do, frankly.
This may be a bit pedantic, but I think it's worth discussing.
> The problem isn’t capitalism; it’s the imperfection of humanity. No economic system in history has eliminated waste.
The fact that no economic system yet implemented at scale has eliminated waste does not necessarily imply that waste is unavoidable; we'd need to convincingly show that no such economic system could be possible. Similarly, I don't believe we can conclude that capitalism minimizes waste among all feasible, stable economic systems.
As far as balancing exploration and exploitation goes, it might be argued that we should focus on reaping the benefits of our current economic system and deprioritize the exploration new economic systems, but it's too much at this point (imo) to assert that exploration is futile.
My other thoughts:
• "Capitalism or central planning" is a false dichotomy; there are economic systems besides capitalism that have free markets.
• The goal of capital holders in a capitalist system is not efficiency (in the colloquial sense), but profit – planned obsolescence is perhaps the perfect example of this.
• I agree with you that central planners can be catastrophically wrong, and my current opinion is that incorporating externalities into the pricing system (through taxes) is a good idea. It can be difficult to correctly identify, distinguish, and price externalities; I wonder if a benefit of more local economic systems is that there are fewer externalities (by which I mean, actors experience more of the effects that they cause and impose fewer incidental effects on third parties), which would reduce the number of things we need to manually identify and correct.
> The problem isn’t capitalism; it’s the imperfection of humanity. No economic system in history has eliminated waste.
The fact that no economic system yet implemented at scale has eliminated waste does not necessarily imply that waste is unavoidable; we'd need to convincingly show that no such economic system could be possible. Similarly, I don't believe we can conclude that capitalism minimizes waste among all feasible, stable economic systems.
As far as balancing exploration and exploitation goes, it might be argued that we should focus on reaping the benefits of our current economic system and deprioritize the exploration new economic systems, but it's too much at this point (imo) to assert that exploration is futile.
My other thoughts:
• "Capitalism or central planning" is a false dichotomy; there are economic systems besides capitalism that have free markets.
• The goal of capital holders in a capitalist system is not efficiency (in the colloquial sense), but profit – planned obsolescence is perhaps the perfect example of this.
• I agree with you that central planners can be catastrophically wrong, and my current opinion is that incorporating externalities into the pricing system (through taxes) is a good idea. It can be difficult to correctly identify, distinguish, and price externalities; I wonder if a benefit of more local economic systems is that there are fewer externalities (by which I mean, actors experience more of the effects that they cause and impose fewer incidental effects on third parties), which would reduce the number of things we need to manually identify and correct.
> Price systems work by simplifying and transmitting information relevant to production and consumption decisions. If the price goes up, consumers who can go without the thing can stop buying it and producers who can make more of the thing can start making it, and they each have the incentive to do so.
This myth has been proven wtong again and again. It assumes that everything is available through a market; if my city doesn't have good cycling infrastructure, where do I put money so it improves ? Where do I find a more efficient justice system and how is its price ?
It assumes that all decisions are taken rationally based on a thorough analysis of the situation. The mere existence (and efficiency) of advertising, and the luxury sector, show that a not insignificant part of decisions are not taken based on self-interest.
It assumes that everyone has enough money to "vote with their wallet". I don't need to tell you how out of touch this assumption is when there is a whole class of people considered poor, aka not able to buy whatever they want/need.
> When it comes to externalities with the environment, these can be incorporated into the price system.
If you take into account how much a system like planet Earth provides and give it a realistic cost you realize it doesn't work. Take the ISS: it's cost around 100 billion dollars and provides the bare minimum for ~10 persons. That means that planet Earth costs at a minimum 10 billion dollars per capita, and that's far from covering it all.
The only thing you can do is have a central system that puts limits on capitalism, by introducing taxes and such. Which exactly means it's not able to handle everything.
> not to have some banana commissar decree that oceanic banana shipping is banned because, in his enlightened gut feeling, it’s “absurd”.
I hope the arguments people are giving are not making you believe that the only alternative is a central authority acting on feelings. That would be a complete misconstruction of the opposing POV.
This myth has been proven wtong again and again. It assumes that everything is available through a market; if my city doesn't have good cycling infrastructure, where do I put money so it improves ? Where do I find a more efficient justice system and how is its price ?
It assumes that all decisions are taken rationally based on a thorough analysis of the situation. The mere existence (and efficiency) of advertising, and the luxury sector, show that a not insignificant part of decisions are not taken based on self-interest.
It assumes that everyone has enough money to "vote with their wallet". I don't need to tell you how out of touch this assumption is when there is a whole class of people considered poor, aka not able to buy whatever they want/need.
> When it comes to externalities with the environment, these can be incorporated into the price system.
If you take into account how much a system like planet Earth provides and give it a realistic cost you realize it doesn't work. Take the ISS: it's cost around 100 billion dollars and provides the bare minimum for ~10 persons. That means that planet Earth costs at a minimum 10 billion dollars per capita, and that's far from covering it all.
The only thing you can do is have a central system that puts limits on capitalism, by introducing taxes and such. Which exactly means it's not able to handle everything.
> not to have some banana commissar decree that oceanic banana shipping is banned because, in his enlightened gut feeling, it’s “absurd”.
I hope the arguments people are giving are not making you believe that the only alternative is a central authority acting on feelings. That would be a complete misconstruction of the opposing POV.
> The only industrialized alternative to capitalism was notoriously even more wasteful
Or eating locally grown stuff that doesn't need to be shipped form the other side of the planet, but when you say that people think you're the mad man... I'm telling you, the whole system is mad, you're just too deep into it to realize, the dissonance would be too strong
Or eating locally grown stuff that doesn't need to be shipped form the other side of the planet, but when you say that people think you're the mad man... I'm telling you, the whole system is mad, you're just too deep into it to realize, the dissonance would be too strong
What exactly is your basis for thinking it’s crazy to ship things from the other side of the planet? What cost benefit analysis have you done to come to this conclusion? Or are you just appealing to your own amateur intuitions?
If there’s an ecological cost that isn’t being accounted for, the solution is to adjust policies so the cost is reflected, e.g. via a carbon tax. And I’m sure if we had a carbon tax, we would eat more locally grown food because it would be more cost effective. On the other hand, different parts of the world vary widely in terms of what can be grown there and how efficiently it. It’s a complicated problem that can’t be solved top-down, and certainly can’t be solved by some armchair hippie going “the whole system is mad, man!”
If there’s an ecological cost that isn’t being accounted for, the solution is to adjust policies so the cost is reflected, e.g. via a carbon tax. And I’m sure if we had a carbon tax, we would eat more locally grown food because it would be more cost effective. On the other hand, different parts of the world vary widely in terms of what can be grown there and how efficiently it. It’s a complicated problem that can’t be solved top-down, and certainly can’t be solved by some armchair hippie going “the whole system is mad, man!”
By what system would you ensure that people only eat locally grown food, though?
Are you under the impression that Ecuadorians never discard brown bananas?
Right. In a system where people feel forced to work crazy hours in the middle of the ocean; in a system where someone else pays the externalities of petroleum; in a system where the raw materials for a freighter can be dug up by people who may not need to understand why anyone would need bananas shipped to them; in a system rich people have shaped so that it feeds them whatever exotic fruits they desire... only in such a system can shipping bananas to be thrown out be considered "cheap because economies of scale".
Economies of scale means individual suffering turns into statistical noise.
Economies of scale means individual suffering turns into statistical noise.
Because the environment is so much less polluted and working conditions are so much better in non capitalist countries?
I don't know if there's been a good example of an actually non-capitalist country yet. I'm not a historian, but all examples I can think of have a small class of people owning the means of production. They aren't always the bourgeoisie but sometimes a political elite or dictator's following.
What I can say is that on a more local scale, the non-capitalist systems I've had experience with have been much more pleasant than the ones where a small set of people held most of the power over production.
What I can say is that on a more local scale, the non-capitalist systems I've had experience with have been much more pleasant than the ones where a small set of people held most of the power over production.
So if there are no examples of non-capitalism to compare too this makes the claim of 'x is caused by capitalism' all the more ridiculous.
There are two ways to make causal claims: by empirics and by theory. That is a theoretical claim, not an empirical one. Ideally we should have both.
Can you name a mostly capitalist country? Most countries have a significantly socialist element, greater than 30% of the economy.
For example, the government sector makes up a third of New Zealand GDP. https://www.statista.com/statistics/436523/ratio-of-governme...
Also if you look at how you “spend” your own time you might find that a lot of it is not on purely capitalist hours, but instead time is spent on hobbies, sports, children, friends, family and other pursuits that would be regarded as non-capitalist.
Edit: I would be regarded as a capitalist within New Zealand (I am a successful founder, I don’t much believe in agricultural/industry subsidies), but I would be regarded as on-the-left in the US (I’m generally supportive of government health systems and social equality).
For example, the government sector makes up a third of New Zealand GDP. https://www.statista.com/statistics/436523/ratio-of-governme...
Also if you look at how you “spend” your own time you might find that a lot of it is not on purely capitalist hours, but instead time is spent on hobbies, sports, children, friends, family and other pursuits that would be regarded as non-capitalist.
Edit: I would be regarded as a capitalist within New Zealand (I am a successful founder, I don’t much believe in agricultural/industry subsidies), but I would be regarded as on-the-left in the US (I’m generally supportive of government health systems and social equality).
They're virtually all playing the capitalist game, slapping "communist" in your country/government name isn't enough
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I actually see a food bank "gleaner" regularly at my Safeway. Bananas with any black spots at all are considered unsaleable, although they're perfectly edible.
So long before they turn all black, they're taken to the food bank and given away to whomever wants them at their central location. If a banana does make it all the way to black, it means someone bought it and then didn't eat it.
There is actually competition among the food banks for supermarkets' unwanted food. One will go to the supermarket manager and ask for their unwanted food and get told "Sorry, we're already giving it to Second Harvest."
It isn't only produce. The gleaner regularly fills up his car with breads, milk, and lots of other stuff.
So long before they turn all black, they're taken to the food bank and given away to whomever wants them at their central location. If a banana does make it all the way to black, it means someone bought it and then didn't eat it.
There is actually competition among the food banks for supermarkets' unwanted food. One will go to the supermarket manager and ask for their unwanted food and get told "Sorry, we're already giving it to Second Harvest."
It isn't only produce. The gleaner regularly fills up his car with breads, milk, and lots of other stuff.
This is a failure of your office, not of the logistics network. The bananas arrive just fine, why does your office stock so many they go bad?
I eat plenty banana and almost never throw any away. And when I do, the reason is never "because I didn't eat it in time".
I eat plenty banana and almost never throw any away. And when I do, the reason is never "because I didn't eat it in time".
You can take them home to add to your compost bin. Then you can put this excellent and free compost in your garden.
In that case we shipped literal dirt around the world so that he could put it in his garden. Is that any less absurd?
It is kind of odd how we ship grains and soybeans farmed in the rain forest to a factory farm in the US and then end up with huge poo lagoons that in theory would have to be shipped back to the farms in the rain forest to act as fertilizer. Instead people just abandon the land and continue with their slash and burn agriculture on a different plot of land.
What do you propose as an alternative?
Eat locally grown food?
This may come as a surprise, but there's plenty of wastage in locally shipped produce too. It's not so much the distance as the act of picking things and putting them into boxes, and taking them out of boxes again that does it.
So, no banana for you, eat potatoes instead?
You haven't tried the vast majority of fruits, veggies, meats, fishes out there and I'm sure you don't feel like you're life is miserable because of it
That argument makes no sense. Presumably, jimbobimbo already sources ~100% of their intake from some producer outside of their apartment, to not be stuck on eating the mushrooms growing in the bathroom.
Just because there is even more out there to miss out on doesn’t make missing out on bananas less of an issue.
I assume you can just stop to eat altogether, because you’re not consuming the vast majority of food out there.
Just because there is even more out there to miss out on doesn’t make missing out on bananas less of an issue.
I assume you can just stop to eat altogether, because you’re not consuming the vast majority of food out there.
You do understand that this position comes across as incredibly paternalistic? It's like mom telling a child they can't have a cookie until they finish their broccoli first.
I don't have to try "the vast majority" of other stuff to enjoy the banana.
I don't have to try "the vast majority" of other stuff to enjoy the banana.
To be fair, if a system that allows anyone in the world at any time to enjoy a banana is unsustainable in a way that may cause human civilisation to end due to our environment collapsing, then perhaps we need to look into finding a different system. However I’m pretty sure that making human beings sacrifice short-term benefits for long-term sustainability, at scale, is almost impossible.
I don't know if you're sarcastic or not, because this is exactly what I mean by using a monetary scale. It's free to me but it still is an incredible waste of energy, time and ressources
I'm being serious, and I do this when possible. My non-gardening relatives will sometimes even drop off a pile of unusable produce for such purposes when visiting.
Ideally, it's better not to overproduce and overbuy. But I'm suggesting making the best of a situation where the bananas can either go to the landfill or still be of some use.
Ideally, it's better not to overproduce and overbuy. But I'm suggesting making the best of a situation where the bananas can either go to the landfill or still be of some use.
Blackened bananas can also be frozen and used later to make banana bread.
The economies of scale make this nearly no different than you wasting a locally grown banana. Very little energy was spent on that particular banana to get it do you.
Alternative: You’ve never eaten a banana because they don’t grow in Europe. How does this measure in the absurdity scale?
Who cares, I haven't tried the majority of fruits, vegetables, meats out there, I'm fine
Life isn't a race to consume everything as much and as fast as possible
Life isn't a race to consume everything as much and as fast as possible
A lot of people would care, that’s the issue. Even if you personally have achieved an enlightened state where you’re perfectly able to voluntarily forego trying to do and acquire things that are contributing to an unsustainable society, it doesn’t mean that you can extrapolate from that and construct a stable system where everyone else does the same.
Human beings are greedy and shortsighted, and they especially want to have more than the people they surround themselves with. Any sustainable solution will need to take this into account.
Human beings are greedy and shortsighted, and they especially want to have more than the people they surround themselves with. Any sustainable solution will need to take this into account.
It’s not like each individual banana was artisinally grown in a flower pot. They literally grow on trees.
And petrol grows in the soil so I guess we're all right then
I took a single banana as an example, now think about the millions of animals we slaughter every year which end up straight to the bin etc.
It's like cars, a single car is fine, 1.4 billion cars are not, I think most people just don't comprehend the scale of it all
I took a single banana as an example, now think about the millions of animals we slaughter every year which end up straight to the bin etc.
It's like cars, a single car is fine, 1.4 billion cars are not, I think most people just don't comprehend the scale of it all
Petrol does not, in fact, “grow” on human timescales.
I can recommend “The Fish that Ate the Whale” [1] — this race against time for bananas is a tale told over many different phases of shipping.
[1] https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/13166586-the-fish-that-a...
[1] https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/13166586-the-fish-that-a...
I don’t like the waste but I also like bananas. Not sure what to make of your example.
I apologize for my ignorance: under what economic system do a small fraction of bananas not get bruised during shipping? Sign me up!
Yeah it's called efficiency, which you can never have 100% of
Observing the absurdity of something doesn't necessarily mean you have a more desirable alternative. I can observe that it's absurd that my apples were shipped halfway around the world without saying "so i don't want them".
Capitalism is absurd, what it makes humans do is absurd. It's also useful and has some worthwhile properties.
Capitalism is absurd, what it makes humans do is absurd. It's also useful and has some worthwhile properties.
It makes about as much sense as saying watching paint dry defines the experience of having decorated walls.
Trade is capitalism. It's how we push forward. It's inevitable, but some people do hardcore roleplay that it's not. The world is worse for that.
Trade exists apart from capitalism, and is found in any number of alternative economic systems. Capitalism is about who has ownership of productive assets. Conflating capitalism with trade makes it seem like no alternative economic systems are possible.
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People trade under socialism and communism, too. Stone age tribes trade. Families trade. Communes trade. Everybody trades.
> People trade under socialism and communism, too.
In trivially provably less efficient ways.
In trivially provably less efficient ways.
> efficient
Economists and market fundamentalists keep using that word. I do not think it means what they think it means.
Economists and market fundamentalists keep using that word. I do not think it means what they think it means.
Economists know what words mean.
Efficiency can mean a lot though. It depends on what you want to maximize and what to minimize.
They also know that free trade is superior to planned economies, soviet union style.
Planned economies haven't worked in the US, either. For example, before Reagan deregulated the airlines, the airline schedules, routes, and fares were set by the FAA.
The result is airliners often flew nearly empty.
Once that was deregulated, a titantic shift occurred, such as the emergence of the hub-and-spoke system. Airplanes have been packed since then.
The FAA bureaucrats proved incapable of efficiently setting routes, schedules, and fares.
In the 1970s, the Energy Department decided a gas station's gas allocation. They did this for every gas station in the country. The result was simultaneous gluts and shortages of gas. Reagan deregulated that with his very first Executive Order, and the gluts, shortages, and gas lines disappeared literally overnight.
Planned economies just don't work.
The result is airliners often flew nearly empty.
Once that was deregulated, a titantic shift occurred, such as the emergence of the hub-and-spoke system. Airplanes have been packed since then.
The FAA bureaucrats proved incapable of efficiently setting routes, schedules, and fares.
In the 1970s, the Energy Department decided a gas station's gas allocation. They did this for every gas station in the country. The result was simultaneous gluts and shortages of gas. Reagan deregulated that with his very first Executive Order, and the gluts, shortages, and gas lines disappeared literally overnight.
Planned economies just don't work.
You mean centrally planned? Companies plan decentrally.
At what level of regulation is a market free? As an example of a hard to capture word.
Regulation to prevent use of force and fraud, and contract enforcement, and dealing with externalities.
According to that definition we don't have a free market and in theory we will never have a free market. Which is ok. The idea of a free market is an ideal to strive towards. The problem with the idea of a free market though is that in practice it is used as a political weapon for the sake of specific interest groups rather than to the benefit of everyone. No attempts to make markets more free are visible.
People argue against land value taxes and carbon taxes. These policies are intended to reduce externalities and reduce the amount of force necessary to live a good life. Imagine all the wars fought because we have inefficient land allocation schemes or all the damage caused by climate change leading to loss of soil fertility in specific countries and the following refugee crisis. In a hypothetical free market wars would be pointless because you can always get what you want through mutual agreement, for a fair price and without any violence.
People argue against land value taxes and carbon taxes. These policies are intended to reduce externalities and reduce the amount of force necessary to live a good life. Imagine all the wars fought because we have inefficient land allocation schemes or all the damage caused by climate change leading to loss of soil fertility in specific countries and the following refugee crisis. In a hypothetical free market wars would be pointless because you can always get what you want through mutual agreement, for a fair price and without any violence.
Who decides when "dealing with externalities" has been done in a proper way?
The very word "externalities" and the state of the global environment don't inspire much trust in the efficient management of "externalities" through capitalism.
Pointing this out doesn't mean that I am a socialist ot communist, I don't like this this kind of black and white thinking.
Wouldn't "efficiency" mean that we use natural resources sustainably?
That's not happening as far as I see.
The very word "externalities" and the state of the global environment don't inspire much trust in the efficient management of "externalities" through capitalism.
Pointing this out doesn't mean that I am a socialist ot communist, I don't like this this kind of black and white thinking.
Wouldn't "efficiency" mean that we use natural resources sustainably?
That's not happening as far as I see.
> Who decides
The government, of course.
The government, of course.
Before "capitalism" (globalization really I guess), you were eating apples from your neighbor's garden, wearing shoes made by your town's shoemaker, not from half around the world.
This is not correct, the ancient world and the ancient Mediterranean especially saw food get transported by sea. Rome.had to import much of it's food, for instance, as did Athens.
Well you're not wrong, but that was still the exception, and on a smaller scale. So maybe food wasn't the best example to get my point across. Like you said, they had to, it's not like some clever Roman said "hey you know what, I'll just buy cheap stuff from overseas to make more money and then fuck our farmers." Nobody sent locally harvested produce for processing to a country half around the world and then back. Or look at when ancient Rome and China did trade. That was for luxury goods, not for basic household items the average Joe would buy.
Expand that to things like olive oil, wine, lumber, jewelry, and the like, you'd have to go back before the bronze age.
Not sure that’s the strongest take you could have made.
Some things cannot reasonably be produced domestically.
Some things are about attempting to shrink labour costs.
It’s cheaper for Britain to send its shellfish to China to be de-shelled by hand, then send it back than it is to pay some folks to do it in the UK (or mechanise the task).
This is an extreme example (and a real one) that highlights what the parent is talking about.
Even when accounting for the human, fuel, cooling and spoilage cost of shipping around the world it’s “cheaper”, but that doesn’t make sense to me because at the end of it there is much less fuel and much less fish than it would have otherwise been.
There’s also not a strong reason to buy shoes made in China except for economic reasons, and more recently supply chain ones.
We can weave fabrics and we have domestic cotton. However, the economics (pushed cheaper by dirt cheap freight) are emphasising a global supply chain where one isn’t needed in most cases.
I’m picking on China a bit but it applies to basically everything where the labour is cheaper and the supply chain bends itself in a more inefficient path (everything else being equal) to capitalise(heh) on the lower labour costs.
Some things cannot reasonably be produced domestically.
Some things are about attempting to shrink labour costs.
It’s cheaper for Britain to send its shellfish to China to be de-shelled by hand, then send it back than it is to pay some folks to do it in the UK (or mechanise the task).
This is an extreme example (and a real one) that highlights what the parent is talking about.
Even when accounting for the human, fuel, cooling and spoilage cost of shipping around the world it’s “cheaper”, but that doesn’t make sense to me because at the end of it there is much less fuel and much less fish than it would have otherwise been.
There’s also not a strong reason to buy shoes made in China except for economic reasons, and more recently supply chain ones.
We can weave fabrics and we have domestic cotton. However, the economics (pushed cheaper by dirt cheap freight) are emphasising a global supply chain where one isn’t needed in most cases.
I’m picking on China a bit but it applies to basically everything where the labour is cheaper and the supply chain bends itself in a more inefficient path (everything else being equal) to capitalise(heh) on the lower labour costs.
> It’s cheaper for Britain to send its shellfish to China to be de-shelled by hand, then send it back than it is to pay some folks to do it in the UK
This is a tiny fraction of a much bigger picture. The shellfish do not get their own private ship. It's cheap because the UK is already importing so much that when the ships return to China empty, they might as well pick up some shellfish on their way home. Then, the de-shelled shellfish is valuable enough to get a spot on the next full ship heading out again.
Not nearly as crazy sounding.
This is a tiny fraction of a much bigger picture. The shellfish do not get their own private ship. It's cheap because the UK is already importing so much that when the ships return to China empty, they might as well pick up some shellfish on their way home. Then, the de-shelled shellfish is valuable enough to get a spot on the next full ship heading out again.
Not nearly as crazy sounding.
I think it's still as crazy sounding! We send shellfish around the globe and back to get them de-shelled. Not because they do it better, but cheaper. And for the company doing it it makes sense, since they benefit, and the now unemployed countrymen get compensated by the government, ie. taxes, ie. everyone.
And yes, of course there's always one more step that leads you to where you got in the end. Nobody established a new shipping route and built a new dedicated ship just to start de-shelling in China.
It's like when you look at some complex software that has a batshit crazy architecture, spaghetti code, 5 different code styles, hacks and is half procedural half OOP, and whatever else you consider a crime. But then you look at its history, how it's almost 30 years old, started procedural on a different OS, how its requirements vastly changed and extended over the decades in ways nobody could possibly anticipate, and suddenly, most of the crazy things don't seem so crazy anymore if you know the story behind the individual "crimes" committed. But thst still doesn't mean that looking at the whole picture can't reveal a batshit crazy codebase that you wouldn't touch with a 5ft pole if you can avoid it.
And yes, of course there's always one more step that leads you to where you got in the end. Nobody established a new shipping route and built a new dedicated ship just to start de-shelling in China.
It's like when you look at some complex software that has a batshit crazy architecture, spaghetti code, 5 different code styles, hacks and is half procedural half OOP, and whatever else you consider a crime. But then you look at its history, how it's almost 30 years old, started procedural on a different OS, how its requirements vastly changed and extended over the decades in ways nobody could possibly anticipate, and suddenly, most of the crazy things don't seem so crazy anymore if you know the story behind the individual "crimes" committed. But thst still doesn't mean that looking at the whole picture can't reveal a batshit crazy codebase that you wouldn't touch with a 5ft pole if you can avoid it.
> The shellfish do not get their own private ship. It's cheap because the UK is already importing so much that when the ships return to China empty, they might as well pick up some shellfish on their way home
Is the implication then that the space would be completely vacant?
How can you be certain that there's never been a ship commissioned because the demand became too great and thus more ships needed?
Even if it wasn't just shellfish, there's a million different things that ship back and forth and it shouldn't be necessary, it's enabled by cheap freight and cheap labour: but those things are an equivalent burden to the planet and our sum-total of ecological resources. So it's very wasteful when you think in those terms and not in our faux-scarcity monetary terms.
Is the implication then that the space would be completely vacant?
How can you be certain that there's never been a ship commissioned because the demand became too great and thus more ships needed?
Even if it wasn't just shellfish, there's a million different things that ship back and forth and it shouldn't be necessary, it's enabled by cheap freight and cheap labour: but those things are an equivalent burden to the planet and our sum-total of ecological resources. So it's very wasteful when you think in those terms and not in our faux-scarcity monetary terms.
> a global supply chain where one isn’t needed in most cases.
And you say this from your vast expertise in global economics?
Things evolved this way because a whole globe full of individual actors thought they made sense, based on prices. If they cease to make sense, those same actors will start doing something else because the prices they see will change.
It could take a while, but so would having another meeting of the Global Planning Committee.
And you say this from your vast expertise in global economics?
Things evolved this way because a whole globe full of individual actors thought they made sense, based on prices. If they cease to make sense, those same actors will start doing something else because the prices they see will change.
It could take a while, but so would having another meeting of the Global Planning Committee.
I’m drunk right now, so I can’t give you much rebuttal honestly.
But it’s kinda funny you said this:
> And you say this from your vast expertise in global economics?
Because I actually have a masters degree in international economics (with a focus on China) from Lund university in Sweden.
But it’s kinda funny you said this:
> And you say this from your vast expertise in global economics?
Because I actually have a masters degree in international economics (with a focus on China) from Lund university in Sweden.
Well, sorry, then you're certainly qualified to reorganize the whole world's economy.
I am certainly qualified to understand it.
No doubt. You must have global companies calling you all the time, seeking to hire you for your expertise. Why not work for one and apply it?
> You must have global companies calling you all the time, seeking to hire you for your expertise.
Technically yes, though that’s because I’m working in tech.
I think you’re being sarcastic, though but you should understand that my education is not esoteric.
30 people in my class. Countless classes of the same curriculum in the same years. Countless years that this has been a thing.
I’m not sure what your problem is. That someone knows something with regards to global economics? That despite understanding economics I gave an argument from the ecological perspective?
Honestly. Get over yourself, you’re not as smart as you think by trying to drag people down.
I mean. For christs sake if not a person with a masters degree in this topic, then who on earth can weigh in with an opinion do you think?
Technically yes, though that’s because I’m working in tech.
I think you’re being sarcastic, though but you should understand that my education is not esoteric.
30 people in my class. Countless classes of the same curriculum in the same years. Countless years that this has been a thing.
I’m not sure what your problem is. That someone knows something with regards to global economics? That despite understanding economics I gave an argument from the ecological perspective?
Honestly. Get over yourself, you’re not as smart as you think by trying to drag people down.
I mean. For christs sake if not a person with a masters degree in this topic, then who on earth can weigh in with an opinion do you think?
> if not a person with a masters degree in this topic, then who on earth can weigh in with an opinion do you think?
Who on earth? Someone with skin in the game -- someone who actually makes business decisions about shipping and manufacturing things. As opposed to studying them and teaching about them.
Who on earth? Someone with skin in the game -- someone who actually makes business decisions about shipping and manufacturing things. As opposed to studying them and teaching about them.
> Someone with skin in the game -- someone who actually makes business decisions about shipping and manufacturing things. As opposed to studying them and teaching about them.
Cool.
I’m CTO at a company of 150 people.
To be fair, we make video games.
I’m sure you’ll find a way to disqualify me from having an opinion in some other way.
Cool.
I’m CTO at a company of 150 people.
To be fair, we make video games.
I’m sure you’ll find a way to disqualify me from having an opinion in some other way.
This reminds me of that fields medal HN comment. Different scale but same theme.
But this was still sustainable, what happened in the last century on the other hand....
You could do that in the modern day too, if the West decided to stop their exploitation of developing/colonial countries.
Instead, they’ve decided that minimum wages at home need to be X $£€ and X/100 everywhere else, so they can offshore everything. Nobody is forcing the West to make shoes in China!
Instead, they’ve decided that minimum wages at home need to be X $£€ and X/100 everywhere else, so they can offshore everything. Nobody is forcing the West to make shoes in China!
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