France : PS A much needed paradigm shift

François Hollande's disastrous Presidency is nearing an end with his popularity running at around 4%, yes 4 %. Thankfully the voters in the PS [Parti Socialiste] rejected more of the same and thereby a complete election wipe out.

I supported and did some work for the campaign of Benoît Hamon, so why did I do so?

One over-riding subject:

That the current consumer [rampant capitalism/disaster capitalism] economy is unsustainable both in terms of climate change and the myth of full employment. Automation is inevitable and should be welcomed as a release from work provided that the social fabric is changed accordingly.

In a nutshell.

Hamon has argued that the digital age calls for a new social model in which wealth and the shrinking workload are spread out more evenly across society, people get more leisure time, and robots pay taxes on the wealth they create. He says work-related "burnout" should be recognised as an illness. And while critics say France’s 35-hour work week is too short, he wants to cut it further.

This requires in conjunction a redistribution of wealth and a minimum [and comfortable] guaranteed income, I call it bringing socialism into the modern era and about bloody time to.

Of course the screams from the neo-liberals were guaranteed, "how do we pay for it" they cried, well the simple answer is "you cant" if you keep the same old fashioned [capitalist] way of thinking. AI coupled with automation has already be termed as a "threat" we have to face this threat boldly and take it as a reality rather than a way for the oh so few to "rip-off" everyone else even more than today. You have to change how society operates before you have a revolution.

Technology is revolutionising the world and will only pick up speed its a shame politics in general has refused to keep up,expressly so in my opinion, as it is designed to feed the Oligarchs never ending needs.

The right have been blaming foreigners for their ills and "takin yer jobs", nice one Oligarchs, whilst ignoring the root cause. The lie can only last so long in the face of the technological reality, the concept work itself may become redundant. How do you prepare, pray that the markets expand to such a degree as we take down our biosphere or change the way we think. There is no other reachable habitable world out there, we have one shot at keeping this one liveable.

The neo-liberal lie of trickle down doesn't work, you need to insert a catheter, perhaps even an xxl pipeline. A guaranteed wage a reduced work week [even no hours] is one way to proceed, if much is automated do we even need money after all the richest just us it as a method for keeping score and debts keep the rest of us down and quiet through fear. perhaps society will never be equal, but the current situation is so one sided that most people are completely powerless.

New ideas scare the status quo, the right is mired in xenophobia, racism and fear, the centre is at the beck and call of the Oligarchs, perhaps the left can lead the change based on the rapidly changing reality, the extreme left are still mired in the Russian revolution.

Perhaps there is a way for fundamental change without tearing the whole thing down and without the need from suffering from authoritarian oppression and fear-mongering [hence wars]? Perhaps there really is a way to have real personal freedom?

The left should be for real change and in concert with the technological reality, we have to change otherwise the oppression used to preserve the status quo will become rapidly untenable.

Optimist? No, just trying to avoid catastrophe and realist knowing that the opposing forces are more than formidable.

Would I stop working? No, I enjoy what I do and if nobody else wanted to buy my calculations I'd still do them and perhaps have time to some other things I really would like to do; helping provide fresh clean water for example [its been quite a while since I was able to do that].

I hope this garbled essay provokes some thought.

Share
up
0 users have voted.

Comments

regimes.
The replacement of big Capital - where corporations administer prices rather than let competition set them - harms everyone except the international Wealthers. Here's hoping for better things for France.

up
0 users have voted.

"The justness of individual land right is not justifiable to those to whom the land by right of first claim collectively belonged"

@duckpin

up
0 users have voted.

@LaFeminista @LaFeminista I am eyeing France as a potential retirement site/bolt hole, but had serious reservations if LePen and Fillon were the main candidates. A strong showing for Hamon will reassure me the people of France have not gone as insane as we Americans appear to have done.

The idea of a guaranteed income is, I think, the organizing principle of the next wave of leftist politics. Add confiscatory taxation rates on very high incomes and wealth and carbon taxes, and we might just have a chance as a species.

up
0 users have voted.

Please help support caucus99percent!

@duckpin
Greece, Spain, Britain, and now France.

However on TOP, neoliberalism still rulz.
dkos_0.png

up
0 users have voted.

@gjohnsit

up
0 users have voted.

"The justness of individual land right is not justifiable to those to whom the land by right of first claim collectively belonged"

@gjohnsit waste my time trying to talk to them any more.

up
0 users have voted.
thanatokephaloides's picture

@LaFeminista

They are lost in a bubble of neo-liberal kool-aid, I don't waste my time trying to talk to them any more.

Don't I know just that!! I'm dealing with a friend who's emitting rant after rant via email about how we who questioned Her Heinous are to blame for Hair Drumpf and all he is doing. No consideration about the fact that Her Heinous and Her supporters are the actual owners of all that blame!

As usual, methinks your method of dealing is the best one. Unless and until "The Stark Fist Of Removal" smacks such as these up side of their heads, I fear nothing will get through the layers of adamantine bone. They are, veritably, floating in a bubble of neo-liberal kruel-aid!

Bad

up
0 users have voted.

"US govt/military = bad. Russian govt/military = bad. Any politician wanting power = bad. Anyone wielding power = bad." --Shahryar

"All power corrupts absolutely!" -- thanatokephaloides

thanatokephaloides's picture

@gjohnsit Effective 1800 MST 1/30/2017, the opening sentence of the WikiPedia article "Daily Kos" reads:

Daily Kos /ˈkoʊs/ is an outlet for American political blogging.[2][3][4][5] It functions as a discussion forum and group blog for a variety of netroots activists whose efforts are primarily directed toward influencing and strengthening progressive policies and candidates.

It appears that Monsieur Bonaparte le Petit has his sycophants watching that article like hawks, ever ready to remove any edit which would disclose the truth (and cut his ad income into the process).

Bad

up
0 users have voted.

"US govt/military = bad. Russian govt/military = bad. Any politician wanting power = bad. Anyone wielding power = bad." --Shahryar

"All power corrupts absolutely!" -- thanatokephaloides

CB's picture

had been distributed to the workers instead of usurped by the rentier capitalists, the world would now be in a better place. The main cause of the violence and strife we see in the world today has been fueled by gross socioeconomic disparity.

There is something definitely wrong when a mere eight people can amass as much wealth as 3,750,000,000 citizens of the world.

Unless unfettered capitalism is chained, the world will not escape destruction - either by war and pestilence or Mother Gaia herself.

up
0 users have voted.

@CB just given away free of charge.

up
0 users have voted.
Roy Blakeley's picture

and much appreciated. The current capitalist economic system is not only unjust, but when one begins to scrape the veneer away it becomes apparent that it is also absurd. What sense does it make to work our asses off, raping the planet, creating useless garbage while millions are hungry and wars are being fought over resources?

up
0 users have voted.

@Roy Blakeley

up
0 users have voted.
mhagle's picture

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/06/08/opinion/08friedman.html

The often maligned Thomas Friedman wrote an article in the NYT six years ago titled, "The Earth is Full." I liked it then and still do. He is discussing a book by

Paul Gilding, the veteran Australian environmentalist-entrepreneur, who described this moment in a new book called “The Great Disruption: Why the Climate Crisis Will Bring On the End of Shopping and the Birth of a New World.”

In conclusion . . .

We will realize, he predicts, that the consumer-driven growth model is broken and we have to move to a more happiness-driven growth model, based on people working less and owning less. “How many people,” Gilding asks, “lie on their death bed and say, ‘I wish I had worked harder or built more shareholder value,’ and how many say, ‘I wish I had gone to more ballgames, read more books to my kids, taken more walks?’ To do that, you need a growth model based on giving people more time to enjoy life, but with less stuff.”
up
0 users have voted.

Marilyn

"Make dirt, not war." eyo

@mhagle of which is just piled up and forgotten in a basement somewhere.

up
0 users have voted.
riverlover's picture

@LaFeminista but still no room for cars. I am acquisitive right now, windfall $$. I buy stuff like lamps because I need the extra illumination. And I have no garage. Considering a container for one.

up
0 users have voted.

Hey! my dear friends or soon-to-be's, JtC could use the donations to keep this site functioning for those of us who can still see the life preserver or flotsam in the water.

CB's picture

@LaFeminista
One in ten families now have to rent storage for their stuff. Many times the value of their stuff is less than the cost of rental.
Wacko
One good sign is that buying stuff has been slowing down. Maybe it's because the kids are living in the basement and paying for two storage units to hold stuff they will never use has gone beyond the pale?

In any event, the millennials appear have taken to buying experiences. It's awfully boring sitting in your parents basement.

up
0 users have voted.
SnappleBC's picture

@mhagle ... when my wife and I lived on a tiny, tiny island. There was no garbage service. There was (literally) a world class recycling centre but you had to hand-sort all your stuff into 1 of 8000 different bins. All of this was inconvenient enough that it made it clear that every single thing I brought onto that tiny island was one more thing on that island. Suddenly I looked at 2nd hand stores in an entirely different way. Instead of seeing it as "shopping for the poor" (yeah, I was and am privileged), I saw it as, "Someone else already brought these glasses onto the island. If I buy them at this 2nd store then it's net neutral to the island. When I'm done with them I'll bring them back so someone else can do the same."

We got it to the point where our entire garbage for 2 weeks fit into one, maybe two of those plastic grocery sacks. We just took them back with us when we took the ferry to the grocery store, stuffed them in their dumpster, then shopped for more food.

I've often thought the problem isn't so much capitalism as it is hidden and external costs. For instance, what if we said, "You want to cut down that 200 year old tree? Sure... as soon as you commit the funds necessary to care and maintain a new tree over 200 years." That way, the actual cost of that old-growth lumber would be shown in the price and people could decide how badly they wanted it. Ditto with fossil fuels. "You want to burn carbon? Sure. Let's see your atmospheric scrubbers to remove it again. Oh, and I also want to see your plans for generating new oil." Suddenly oil wouldn't look so cheap.

up
0 users have voted.

A lot of wanderers in the U.S. political desert recognize that all the duopoly has to offer is a choice of mirages. Come, let us trudge towards empty expanse of sand #1, littered with the bleached bones of Deaniacs and Hope and Changers.
-- lotlizard

@mhagle @mhagle

Agree with a lot of the material, but the difference in perspective in one area is going to annoy the heck out of some.

... We will realize, he predicts, that the consumer-driven growth model is broken and we have to move to a more happiness-driven growth model, based on people working less and owning less. ...

A lot of people are unhappy/unhealthy because they can't afford basic necessities, (or time off to smell the roses) never mind the once-taken-for-granted little comforts even minimum wage used to stretch to. So the idea of owning less being paired with happiness won't appeal to the 99% with bootprints engraved on their heads from those who are unhappy at the idea that anything at all remains to those they're trampling to squeeze out unsustainable profits we can no longer provide them.

Personally, I'd like to be consuming some nice organic groceries right now, wearing a decent pair of jeans, and with some new books I've never read before for fine dining entertainment and I think I'd be much happier, lol.

And I'm wondering what kind of actual consumer growth is still occurring in most places/areas of the world, except when the previously absolutely destitute in impoverished countries get some crappy corporate sweat-shop job off-shored to pay peanuts to the desperate and sometimes eventually manage to save for something, thereby 'opening new markets' based on a lot of people having just a little more than they did before?

Going by what I'm seeing/reading, at least in North America, the additional corporate profits still being termed, apparently, 'growth' are now predominately drained from the already-drained people working for/fired by them 'to cut payroll costs' into year-end profit columns, (with the rest doing extra and often unpaid work to make up for it and corners cut to have everything pile up there, unseen by distant CEOs counting golden parachutes awaiting them when the whole mess collapses to be somehow re-sold at a profit to be 'restructured' further into immediate CEO profitability,); from the public purse typically by corporate lackeys in the public service cutting essential public services the funding existed to provide in order to redirect it; from the 'cost-effective' industrial pollution of the environment and, of course, lower-quality goods and services (provided by starvation-wage workers) for the 99%; by the elimination of business competition creating monopolies and concentrating profit into fewer greedy little paws.

That and weapons/military sales. Especially bombs, I expect, since they are single-use and there are a lot of journalists, women and children to kill off out there To Keep American Business Interests Safely In Control.

They're draining reserves and have been cannibalizing the very businesses CEOs too-often run into the ground through seeking at least the appearance of ever-increasing quarterly profits and CEO bonuses over maintaining healthy businesses and retaining experienced staff and repeat customers, albeit often left now with little choice of options with the spread of chains thereafter often cutting back on store locations as well as jobs, for that 'lookin' good' quarterly report.

Giant corporations have to provide some of the most inefficient actual business scenarios ever, because they are not run by business people and often not locally controlled by anyone who knows anything about the circumstances or cares about sustainability or reputation.

At a time when many people are barely scraping by or not quite making it, or worse, telling them to be happy with less when they may effectively have nothing and can see worse coming already is going to adversely affect the message without improving anything for probably the bulk of the population in many countries. And if he's talking to the relative few who can afford to buy things beyond toilet paper on a mere whim, that's not going to cover a very high percentage.

I wish more people would make the point that it's the take-over by corporate interests that's unsustainable; that polluting industry - not the public - creates most of the worst and most toxic pollution and that democracy in countries (edit: with) government locally in the public interest and a return to smaller, locally based business would be sustainable, rather than accepting the claim that industry cannot be regulated, that billionaires cannot be pried out of public policy and that only sacrifices made by the overburdened public can be expected.

Ok, OT rant done, but I feel better now.

up
0 users have voted.

Psychopathy is not a political position, whether labeled 'conservatism', 'centrism' or 'left'.

A tin labeled 'coffee' may be a can of worms or pathology identified by a lack of empathy/willingness to harm others to achieve personal desires.

sojourns's picture

Jacques Fresco. No, it is not a fruity umbrella drink available at your local outdoor canteen.

This guy has touched on and conceptually developed so many of the things the we in here seem to instinctively understand their importance. Yeah-- there are a few flaws in his plans but overall, this is the direction.

https://www.thevenusproject.com/the-venus-project/jacque-fresco/

up
0 users have voted.

"I can't understand why people are frightened of new ideas. I'm frightened of the old ones."
John Cage

thanatokephaloides's picture

the extreme left are still mired in the Russian revolution.

And in Russia itself!

Leninism was the creation/result of many oppressive factors which were unique to the World War I-era Russian Empire. And the "solutions" Lenin devised were also unique to that place and time. Josef Stalin's attempt to force all other socialism on Earth to conform to them set the socialist movement back a full century. Moreover, an excessive degree of miring in theory books has always been a problem with Marxism -- a problem so bad that Karl Marx himself actually stated in several letters that "I am not a Marxist" (Je ne suis pas un Marxiste). Friedrich Engels cites Marx thus:

Just as Marx used to say, commenting on the French "Marxists" of the late [18]70s: "All I know is that I am not a Marxist."

source

Post-Leninist Socialism is manifesting in the world by the likes of Benoit in France, Corbyn in the UK, and to a lesser extent Sanders in the US. (The US is always the last to adopt Socialism when Socialism makes the best sense, which is nearly all the time....)

IMHO, we need to resurrect the anarcho-socialist movements of the late 19th and early 20th centuries. The Spanish anarquistas of the 1920s and 1930s would agree most strongly with you with regards to the wealth-production of the future, and they would insist on equal distribution of that wealth for everyone.

Thank you for this Essay, LaFem!

Smile

up
0 users have voted.

"US govt/military = bad. Russian govt/military = bad. Any politician wanting power = bad. Anyone wielding power = bad." --Shahryar

"All power corrupts absolutely!" -- thanatokephaloides

SparkyGump's picture

rather than what they have to do.

up
0 users have voted.

The real SparkyGump has passed. It was an honor being your human.

WaterLily's picture

@SparkyGump There was a good article in the Atlantic about just that (and the inherent complexities of increased automation, decreased work opportunities, etc). Long-form, good read.

A World Without Work

up
0 users have voted.

Le Pen vs. a real socialist?

French presidential candidate Francois Fillon employed two of his children as legislative aides, Le Canard Enchaine newspaper said, adding to the scandal that is starting to surround his election bid.

The paper will report tomorrow that two of his children earned 84,000 euros ($91,000) from 2005 to 2007 while working for him when he was a Senator. It will also say that his wife, Penelope Fillon, allegedly earned more than 900,000 euros as a parliamentary assistant for more than a decade and as a contributor to a magazine. That’s higher than the 600,000 euros that the Canard previously reported.

The initial revelations about Penelope’s work for her husband last week prompted prosecutors to open a probe into the family’s income, throwing Fillon’s bid for the presidency off course.

Fillon has been the establishment’s leading candidate in the battle to stop Marine Le Pen’s populist campaign to seize the presidency and lead France out of the euro. Fillon won the Republicans’ primary boasting that he had the irreproachable integrity required to lead the country. While polls show Le Pen leading in the first round of voting, they also suggest that she would lose heavily to any of the main candidates in a run-off.

up
0 users have voted.