ulysseous’s Recent Comments

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  Melman Redux

  I have been an avid reader of Seymour Melman's work for several years now and am very glad to see him making his way into a discussion such as this because his thesis is far more fundamental to an understanding of our current economic crisis (can anyone dispute we are in a structural crisis in this country?) than the petty semantics of "free" vs. "fair" trade.  

  What I think is essential to understanding the loss of competence, as Melman and any rational observer sees it, is that job skills are perishable, not only between generations, but within a generation as well.  Manufacturing jobs that require a degree of complex skills are even more perishable such that, once industries leave a particular country, there is no longer any way to domestically retain that set of skills.  Melman offers several anecdotal stories of foreign engineers coming into US factories and being asked by the workers if they are there to study US manufacturing methods, only to be told that they were there to teach the Americans methods they had long since lost.  

  We are not talking about no longer being able to produce dime store widgets.  When the NYC Metropolitan Transportation Authority wanted to upgrade its subway system with new subway cars, it had to order them from abroad because there is no longer any domestic production of subway or train cars.  We are not just talking about the production means, but the production know-how. That is the loss of manufacturing competence that is replicated across vital areas of our economy.  

  Economics 101 tells us that value in a society is created only when something is produced that in turn creates more value.  These are referred to as capital goods and they form the core of a vibrant economy.  Manufacturing machines that in turn help create new things, whether they be buildings, ships, etc., grow an economy.  Our manufacturing sector is measured in hundreds of thousands of jobs, rather than the millions it once numbered, and grows smaller virtually by the day.  This means that growth in our economy comes only in pirating the growth of other economies and infusing the value they create into our own economy.  

  This helps explain trade deficits.  In a service-based economy, value is shuffled around without any real value being created and profits come not from growth in capital goods, but in the extraction of profits as this imported value changes hands.

  As to the US-USSR comparison, you really have to read Melman for the complete answer.  To summarize, he makes the point that as in Soviet Russia, the defense sector does not act in collusion with the military in some kind of co-equal combine (though the original phrase Eisenhower wanted to use was the military-industrial-congressional complex), but as a production arm firmly under its control and direction.  The military rigorously controls production at defense companies far exceeding what one thinks of as a simply contractual relationship and will shape contracts for the maintenance (and enrichment) of certain companies, spreading the massive share of public largess that comes its way to ensure that its several client companies are well rewarded for their service and adequately taken care of, seconding concerns of a purely defensive or military nature to the imperatives of corporate welfare.  

  This is almost an exact replica of the Soviet model of several client companies that formed the core of the military sector under rigorous, centralized state management.  The expansion of so-called "homeland defense" spending has this kind of centralized, state-managed planning writ large.  As Melman often pointed out well before it was fashionable, resources devoted to such enterprises deprive other areas of our economy from necessary resources, leading to further decay.

  As an economy and as a society, over the past 50 years we have been sold out by politicians who lack vision to capitalists who lack morals for a society that lacks fundamental security and stability.
  On It can happen here posted 2 years ago 8 Responses

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  The ground truth on global warring

  While I appreciate the attempt to talk about global warming and global warring on the level of large-scale issues of imperialism and the drive to conquer resources and the people who have inadvertently planted themselves on top of them,  there is also the conduct of war that brings out important environmental issues about how war is conducted on a day to day basis that rarely get talked about.  

  It begins with the thousands of military trucks burning dirty diesel fuel are left idling across the entire Iraq and Afghanistan, not to mention the thousands of other large convoy vehicles that crawl across the dangerous roads carrying supplies to soldiers on far-flung bases.  Fuel is provided at a cost-plus rate by KBR (cost of service plus a fee, meaning it is in KBR's interest to maximize the cost of the product being supplied) and since it is not coming out of the pockets of the drivers, there is no incentive to conserve and military practice is to have trucks running well before the start of a mission and for its entire duration.  As far as KBR is concerned, the more we use, the more they get paid.

  Soldiers and contractors alike bathe in water mixed with any number of chemicals to ensure a basic level of purity for personal hygiene.  The chlorine is so pervasive, I can smell it on my skin for hours after taking a shower. Are those chemicals removed before it is returned to whatever source it was pumped from?  I highly doubt it.

  The lack of sanitation infrastructure means that much of the human waste is discharged into streets and canals.  I am not an engineer, but the sheer volume of human waste clogging roads and ditches, especially in the cities, can not help but find its way into what few streams and rivers flow in this country.  Beyond the human toll in disease and sickness that the lack of basic services 4 years into this war has caused, there is the environmental toll.

  When it comes to drinking water, virtually the only reliable source in Iraq comes from large 1 liter bottles made of Polyethylene terephthalate (PET), which ironically enough, is made from petroleum.  There are yards full of shipping pallets stacked high with these bottles that are destined, once consumed, to be discarded carelessly either into a trash bin (least likely) or along the side of the road (more likely).  The legacy of trash will scar this land long after the armies of occupation have left.

  KBR employees, many of whom are Third Country Nationals (TCNs), use an arsenal of cleaning products during their multiple daily passes of latrines and showers. The ones cleaning our camp don't seem to go through the trouble of diluting the cleaning solution they use, leaving an unbearable toxic cloud behind that leaves the latrine uninhabitable (but supposedly "clean") for hours.  I can't help but think that whatever unpleasantness it may provide us, the daily exposure the workers endure with little or no protective equipment will live with them the rest of their lives.

  Fires rage in trash dumps all across the various military bases burning any and all manner of detritus, leaving a toxic smell that can only be the mark of environmentally damaging materials.  A friend of mine was told to have her health records updated with the annotation that she had spent time at a base where a particularly nasty fire raged constantly and there was suspicion that the cloud it produced might be dangerous.

  And speaking of trash, imagine 150,000 soldiers and an equal number of contractors, dining on plastic plates or from Styrofoam containers with plastic utensils, and drinking from Styrofoam or paper cups at least three times daily (if not more often).  In the current state of occupation, it is cheaper for a contractor to serve meals on disposable serving ware than take the time and energy to wash plates and silverware.  I suppose the mountains of trash are just used as fuel for the fires.

  This is all in addition to the effects of actually war-fighting (think depleted uranium, lead bullets, and other materials from expended munitions).  The mere condition of occupation creates a situation that is rife with ecological destruction and environmental degradation.  Given that there is no oversight (who is going to do an environmental impact study in a war zone?), how are we to know the true extent of just being here is having on the environment locally as well as globally?  

  The toll on the people and the society will be deep and lasting, but I fear the environmental impact will be far-more insidious, not least because it goes largely unacknowledged and unreported.On Stopping global warring and global warming posted 2 years, 1 month ago 16 Responses

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  Another Take

  A counter to this bourgeoisie notion of cooking as leisure is the More-with-Less Cookbook. It comes out of the Mennonite tradition and connects the issue of waste to the greater web of political and religious values that sees us as caretakers of the Earth's limited resources.  Even if you don't agree with the spiritual take on the values of thrift and aversion to waste, it is still a very practical guide to making out of a little and enjoying the rich bounty our world has to offer.On How a cookbook renaissance heated up the sustainable-food movement posted 2 years, 9 months ago 18 Responses