Reviving Schaeuble’s Augean Stables?

The other day, I was writing in a mail to colleague, saying I would soon send some comments on what had been suggested to be

the great vision on E future ! A very stimulating
document !

the White Paper on the future of Europe announced here, actually not agreeing with such an assessment. In that mail I stated as well:
We have had last weekend the annual meeting of the European academy – by accident I could take part. Surely many good “large visions”, but again some lack of realism – you may have read the Europe-book I published several years ago – it was not about providing a vision, but at least I guess some of the obstacles that remain in place and play a fundamental, i.e. structural role.
And indeed it is a challenge to present “the large vision”, and be nevertheless concrete and also vice versa, to ending in some trap of policy making technology.
And just when I revisited Juncker’s meagre ‘vision’, I received a mail, with the link to Paul Mason’s article. Though I may agree in both cases with many details, I do not agree with the point of departure also of the “6th vision”, i.e. Paul’s proposal (https://www.socialeurope.eu/2017/03/option-six-a-europe-of-democracy-and-social-justice/), suggesting

What follows, the Option Six Proposal, is a genuine attempt to preserve the EU and the Eurozone as global institutions.

Why is such attempt worthwhile? Isn’t any analysis challenged first and foremost to state that any of these goals is first and foremost asked to define and clearly answer cui bono, not least in terms of what is the overall and genuine “benefit”, the common wheal, the additional value … . in the present formulation it sounds very much like “we have to have it because …. we have to have it was everything else did not work and seems not to work …, and paradoxically: we always have had it, more or less as matter of Rostow in Brussels  (to allude to Arrighi’s “Smith in Beijing”).

In this way, the Juncker proposal is very much abut accepting “the end of history”, making a few more or less technical proposals to manage this end.

BUT:
  • It is about the economic “model”
  • not the economic reality which is characterised by being able to utilise indeed exceptional conditions to establish – name it as you like: a strong city or a tentatively emerging world empire
  • So far, in other words, the “success” was by and large established as systematically driven by exception, (at most) only little by a a stabled, lasting, and sustainable normality (including norm)
  • This supposed strength is defined as matter of emerging from defining itself against others, not by taking a suggested genuine “own stronghold” as point of reference
  • and in reality it is just contrary to what is stated as needed for the future: “they deliberately make no mention of legal or institutional processes – the form will follow the function.” (page 15)
  • That suggests to change – but does not really reflect from the outset why this is/was so far exactly the instituionalist perspective, determining even most of the (affirmative and critical) theoretical reflection, few exceptions granted (as of course most the SQ work, humbly my own work etc., but missing here are many approaches that would claim to be fundamentally critical …)

State of the Union Address 2016: Towards a better Europe – a Europe that protects, empowers and defends

is little convincing, suggesting that

The next twelve months are the crucial time to deliver a better Europe: 

a Europe that protects;

a Europe that preserves the European way of life;

a Europe that empowers our citizens,

a Europe that defends at home and abroad; and

a Europe that takes responsibility.

A very benevolent reading suggesting at most the vision of an institutionalist setting FOR the citizens, but not of Europe and by Europeans.
And speaking there also about
A EUROPE THAT PRESERVES OUR WAY OF LIFE
overlooks that this way of life is characterised more and more and systematically by tensions, exclusion, and a process of peripheralisation of many, allowing a Mr Schaeuble (referring now to the metaphors of those disrespect they use) to act as if he would be herdsman of PIIGS, forgetting that HE and the likes are those who behaved like King Augeas – mind what the story says:
Now King Augeas owned more cattle than anyone in Greece. Some say that he was a son of one of the great gods, and others that he was a son of a mortal; whosever son he was, Augeas was very rich, and he had many herds of cows, bulls, goats, sheep and horses.
And
Every night the cowherds, goatherds and shepherds drove the thousands of animals to the stables.
It is not very likely from this that the King was hard working – not to obtain the large numbers and not by looking after the animals…
I guess, more has to be done than waiting for better administrators.

puzzling attractions …

I once asked students, for the exams, to write a brief essay on the following:

Why are we frequently impressed by looking at the poor and this lives: at least seemingly simple and content with what they have?

I recently looked at Davis’ Book on The Planet of Slums, reading there:

Urban inequality in the Third World is visible even from space: satellite reconnaissance of Nairobi reveals that more than half of the population lives on just 18 percent of the city area.This implies, of course, colossal contrasts in population density. “The gulf between rich and poor in Nairobi, one of the world’s most unequal cities,” writes journalist Jeevan Vasagar in the Guardian, “is starkly illustrated by its neighborhoods. In the leafy suburb of Karen there are fewer than 360 inhabitants per square kilometer, according to the 1999 census; parts of Kibera have more than 80,000 people in the same sized area.” But Nairobi is scarcely unique in forcing the poor to live in slums of anthill-like density while the wealthy enjoy their gardens and open spaces. In Dhaka 70 percent of the population is estimated to be concentrated into only 20 percent of the surface area.4 Likewise in Santo Domingo, two thirds of the population, living in tenements and squatter settlements, uses only one fifth of urban space, with the poorest eighth in the central city slum crowded into 1.6 percent of the city’s area.s Bombay, according to some urban geographers, may be the extreme: “While the rich have 90 percent of the land and live in comfort with many open areas, the poor live crushed together on 10 percent of the land.”

I recently said, travelling through a city that is a well-known tourist spot, that I would not really like it …- this being answered by something like

But didn’t you find all the narrow narrow side streets, so nice for a stroll?

I dared outing myself, replying

Yes, that is exactly what I found? And I longed for space, for the opportunity to escape, like air, being compressed, looking for gaps to escape or waiting for the point where the pressure is getting so high that it opens to one way to escape, one way, with two faces: implosion or explosion.

academics making life difficult ?

Making life difficult by complicated, complex thoughts …! – This is the image academics have the bear with quite often – the absent-minded professor is the common proposition.

So the scene:
Imagine there is a train station, you receive a mail message on the phone and it is important enough to receive immediate attention: you want to download it on your tablet, allowing you to work on the issue while travelling. Free internet available as service of the train station, so you try … the annoying process of registration (big data needed, even from a small aunt like you)  … the connection fails … – well, that’s life and you have to assess the text (some peer reviewing) later, other work to do during the train journey.
Sitting in the train, a few minutes later, a mail on your phone tells you the user name, different from the one sent via SMS.
As you are still in the area of the train station  you want to connect … – big data, all is connected in the global village … – but now you are required to register for another network, not the train station int the railway company …, of course registration is free, zero marginality, the time you spent doesn’t count, i.e. the value of your time is considered to be equal to zero. Curiosity lets you do stupid things – so you register again, fail again …

… The voice out of the speaker reminds you in a very clear, not to say sharp and loud – voice: keep your mobile phones low level, don’t upset your neighbours … – pick and choose, the announcement is made n different languages, all in the clear and loud voice:

BE QUIET, DO NOT UPSET YOUR NEIGHBOURS!!

Isn’t this something that has to bring the day’s trinity to my mind, the one is the presentation heard earlier, dealing with data robbery and the working customer as new type of consumer, and the Un(der)paid Innovators: The Commercial Utiliza- tion of Consumer Work through Crowdsourcing.

The other thing coning to mind is a phone call made earlier, chatting with a Hungarian friend about the near-to-impossibility of living globally in a narrow-minded world where national sentiments are put higher than moral sentiments, even conflating them under the hegemonic meaning of the idea of a “commonwealth” of the Wealth of the Nations.
The dream you still have and of which you receive with all this the confirmation that it is a dream, something you just imagine, thus being a bit interpreting the world without (having the power to) changing things.

Escaping the world of dreams, of the supposed holiness of the trinity capturing your mind, you add a fourth element (which actually leaves father, son and Holy Spirit behind, overcoming them): a beautiful day, a beautiful landscape through which you pass, and possibly some readers from different countries wondering if this is a story that happened in the “own” country, wherever this might be … and where the only “academic” to the little tale was that the train left exactly 15 minutes later than scheduled – the academic quarter. – Perhaps to is not about academics making life complicated but the injustice of a narrow-minded system, extremely “diversified” = uncoordinated by privatisation, a world that  suggests sharing as means of encapsulating (within) large “social networks” that loose their democratic dynamics.

confusing distinctions

Fetters …. – is there a difference between legs and brain?

Somebody – from the field of youth and social work – proposed to me that, in order to overcome a clash of events, I could post my lecturers as video online, thus being able to be in a way present in two locations. Later the issue came up the other way round, and I proposed:

You can deal with the problem of bringing a “client” to the municipality by utilising modern technology – e.g. electronic footcuffs ensuring that the person goes to the municipality – so you do not have to accompany the person and can be vIrtually present in two places.

But, if I may ask, is the difference between electronic footcuffs, e-registration forms, and e-calculations and payments of penalties and benefits, forcing “clients”, cynically classified even as users, to walk and think and behave according certain standards and electronic braincuffs of video teaching, highly standardised contents and multiple choice exams, forcing students to walk and think and behave according certain standards?

Click one of the following for a possible answer?

Strange … – or simple alienation

Walking along, moving on a narrow lane, along a wide line – wide, as in the Russian term Ясная Поляна, which cannot be translated , with its inherent link to wide and bright … white …, as witty? .. Imagine it is not an imagination but you move in a space that really transcends time and you and you live in a time that does not refer to any space … – where The Stranger is actually not a stranger anymore as we all are truly and everywhere and anytime at home.

the latest issue of The International Journal of Social Quality

A bit of advertisement – the copy of a mail I received via a mailing list:

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Sharing economy …

… or being Pawlowian dog?

There are so many “likes” and endorsements and people one “knows”, i.e. with whom one is “friends” or to whom one is linked in, gated in a research “community” …, and one gets frequently messages about having been found or people following you on academic sites while you are yourself googling around the world … – it really sometimes suggests that we are all brothers and sisters now — such a joyful time os sharing being endorsed and not alone: yes, somebody …

… has endorsed you …, and likes you … and was interested in y0ur work … and wants to be linked to you and be part of your network and … there are all these messages about your achievements, and how many people read your articles and quoted it and watched your videos

… and there are at least two things that may makes us especially think, two remarkable facts even if we state that the figures are actually correct (though I do know for sure that they often are not):

First, there on the WWW (as well as in the traditional print media) the reported figures are actually often remarkably low. Second, there is a misconception by high figures: for instance publishers sell “packages” to libraries, and if one is “lucky” enough to be part of such package, one benefits from the package numbers – something I currently suspect: For instance, I contributed to a book titled KONDRATIEFF WAVES . Juglar – Kuznets – Kondratieff which has high scores. I am seriously wondering if any of these reading brothers and sisters even recognised the title of my contribution in the book (the downloads of the entire book brings the scores …), dealing with Indicators – More than Evidence and Maths – well, this probably is not the only contribution that drowned in the floods of contributions.

But the Pawlowian dog begins for me at another point, and lets me ask if I am part and guinea pig of any larger test scenario.

People endorsing me for several things – and I am of course most grateful. And then people do this not I know that they do not know what I am working on AND they can know that they are endorsing me for something I hardly know anything about, let alone deserving to be endorsed as expert.

So may be that the question underlying big brothers test is the following: How much expertise do people accept on there shoulders, even if they are not experts at all?

Latest when somebody endorses me for …believing everything — I will turn the endorsement down – may be my biographer(s) can add little notes here and there – before the work will emerge as biography and pos to print, saying probably more about the biographer than about the biographee.
Ma grazie lo stesso ….  è molto gentile, mi obbligando molto …

Uncivilised people

Much had been, will be and can be said about tax evasion. One point is that there is an obvious link between paying taxes and civilisation, which, if turned around, demands to conclude that those who evade paying taxes, and of course especially those who do it on  a lagre scale for personal enrichment, are simply uncivilised people. A link that is also confirmed as being “legally relevant”, even the US-law considering in some way civilisation as legal(ly relevant) issue. the issue in question had been raised by judge Holmes, in the case

Compania General de Tabacos v. Collector, 275 U.S. 87 (1927) – Compania General de Tabacos de Filipinas v. Collector of Internal Revenue (U.S. Supreme Court, No. 42, Argued October 18, 19, 1927, Decided November 21, 1927, 275 U.S. 87)

Holmes stated there that

Taxes are what we pay for civilized society, including the chance to insure.

The Quote Investigator came up with several other occasions and perspectives on bringing up this link  between civilisation and  payment of taxes.

And it is surely worrying then to see how many uncivilised people are occupying positions not only in big business it also in governments and national and international governing and  governance bodies. However, mind ….

Peanuts …

A commonly known – und uncontested – pattern is that people who are more or less poor, have to turn every cent, 人民币, копейка, centavo … around and round before spending it … – so different to those who have enough, barely looking at the denomination.

And so it is as well on the “other side”, those who are at the receiving end, or those who are dealing with the “payers” – these are then people who do the same with the money they receive or that have to check, when closing a bank account, transferring petty money from these poorish people into another account or even country etc.: every cent, 人民币, копейка, centavo … has to be turned around and around again and again, forms have to be completed … .

The prayers of the rich and superrich may be better, more substantial, in any case surely: “closer to the higher ecehlons”, to those whom they elected as the political leaders and to heaven?.

Capital is said by a Quarterly Reviewer to fly turbulence and strife, and to be timid, which is very true; but this is very incompletely stating the question. Capital eschews no profit, or very small profit, just as Nature was formerly said to abhor a vacuum. With adequate profit, capital is very bold. A certain 10 per cent. will ensure its employment anywhere; 20 per cent. certain will produce eagerness; 50 per cent., positive audacity; 100 per cent. will make it ready to trample on all human laws; 300 per cent., and there is not a crime at which it will scruple, nor a risk it will not run, even to the chance of its owner being hanged. If turbulence and strife will bring a profit, it will freely encourage both. Smuggling and the slave-trade have amply proved all that is here stated.[1]

And so is it with all the rest of it – cum grano salis and at times inversely: A petty crime will be most likely detected and at court it will be turned around and around like the cents until a reason is found to penalise it I the most stern manner. The major and definitely criminal offense of speculators and other “functionaries” may even get away with some fanfares, re-interpreting the delict as support of economic development, act of fostering investment and growth and good deed.

You remember Brecht’s Macheath, asking in Act 3, scene 3

What is the burgling of a bank to the founding of a bank?

Indeed, we have to take up again o the wisdom of the ancestors, already struggling with a world characterised by these patterns

To nonsense, reason’s self they turn; Beneficence becomes a pest; Woe unto thee, that thou’rt a grandson born! As for the law born with us, unexpressed;– That law, alas, none careth to discern.

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[1]            T.J. Dunning, l. c. [Trades Union and Strikes], pp. 35, 36; in: Marx, Karl, 1867: Capital; Volume I; in: Karl Marx/Frederick Engels. Collected Works; Volume 35; London: Lawrence & Wishart, 1996: 748, footnote 2