Author: Purple Library Guy

It’s been pointed out, like over at Far and Wide, that nobody else in Canadian politics says anything substantial, so why should Justin Trudeau have to be the only one? Something to that. But still, here he is with a reputation as a lightweight, and in announcing his candidacy he

It’s accepted in many circles that increased complexity is a necessary price of progress. The idea is that technological advance and improvements in productivity necessarily involve increases in complexity. Hence an advanced society is a complex one, one where for instance production is more globalized, with resource extraction happening in

Colour consultants. They have a conspiracy going to make us live in an ugly world. The way it works is, people instinctively like pretty colours. Nobody can make money selling us a decision to do what we instinctively like–we could have decided that all by ourselves. So the colour experts

At this time, the British should be thanking their lucky stars they still have a Queen. Sure, she’s a relic of a barbaric time, harking back to a completely bankrupt model of governance. But in concrete terms in the present day, the Queen’s Jubilee is doing the country far more

Every so often a new intervention by NATO and the usual suspects gets proposed, and there’s always an argument all over again about whether it’s a good idea. Generally, there is little real information available about just what’s really going on, but there’s plenty of propaganda, some of it nuanced

So apparently the Facebook IPO was a pump-and-dump, with insiders making out like gangbusters and small investors left holding the bag. For some reason lots of people seem to be upset about this. What? That’s the deal. What’s good for Morgan Stanley is bad for America. Americans swore renewed fealty

For decades now the right wing in Alberta, which has been in control of the province for that whole time, has made no bones about not giving a damn about the rest of the country. They’ve been very forthright about it–firewalls, letting the Eastern bastards (and incidentally any stray non-Albertan

So the good people at Dammit Janet! are having an argument with certain other bloggers who apparently also belong to “Progressive Bloggers”, and with the site administrators of “Progressive Bloggers”, and have left “Progressive Bloggers” as a result. OK, I don’t have anything to add to what has already been

First, that figure the auditor general has been talking about, that $25 billion. While it’s a useful number to know about as a demonstration the Cons were hiding things, we shouldn’t take it as a serious guide to how much the damn things would cost. Sure, it’s a figure for

So Mulcair has been elected leader of the NDP. His supporters are saying he is the greatest thing since sliced bread, that he is the only one who had a chance of rallying Quebec or of standing up to Harper, and that a centrist tilt such as they expect from

No, really. I support a negotiated settlement to the troubles in Syria, and a stop to the arming of rebels and mercenaries against the regime. It so happens that Al Quaeda, to the contrary, has publicly come out saying it wants the Syrian regime toppled violently. So at a simple

Centrist and leftist economists have been spending a lot of column inches wondering what has possessed the European central bank top brass lately. Even some mainstream to right-wing economists seem disturbed. The general consensus seems to be that the European crisis could have been avoided by the ECB acting as

The rise of finance may be the death knell of the system as we know it. I’d like to sketch out a notion of the difference between what you might call normal or traditional capitalism and the kind of finance-oriented capitalism we’re seeing right now. Traditionally, the idea was that you had production happening and it could be made, well, more productive. But, the story might go, ordinary joe shmoes, or feudal nobility, had little interest in making things more productive. That isn’t really true, but letting it go for the moment. Enter the capitalist. By taking a chunk of the value of production for himself (it was always himself) he was able to then invest it in things with an up-front cost which made up for it by increasing productivity–anything from new machinery to an accountant who could better keep track of inventory. Thus, while the capitalist took surplus from the workers, most of that was reinvested and resulted in productivity increases. Some was taken by the capitalist for big houses, clothes, carriages, servants and other conspicuous consumption, but typically not enough to slow the productivity growth much. That increased productivity would be capable in theory of either increasing…

The rise of finance may be the death knell of the system as we know it. I’d like to sketch out a notion of the difference between what you might call normal or traditional capitalism and the kind of finance-oriented capitalism we’re seeing right now. Traditionally, the idea was that you had production happening and it could be made, well, more productive. But, the story might go, ordinary joe shmoes, or feudal nobility, had little interest in making things more productive. That isn’t really true, but letting it go for the moment. Enter the capitalist. By taking a chunk of the value of production for himself (it was always himself) he was able to then invest it in things with an up-front cost which made up for it by increasing productivity–anything from new machinery to an accountant who could better keep track of inventory. Thus, while the capitalist took surplus from the workers, most of that was reinvested and resulted in productivity increases. Some was taken by the capitalist for big houses, clothes, carriages, servants and other conspicuous consumption, but typically not enough to slow the productivity growth much. That increased productivity would be capable in theory of either increasing…

These "occupy Wall street" protestors and the various satellite venues have been letting the side down in no uncertain terms. The media have rightly been very severe on this issue, and the pictures also make it clear. It is glaringly evident that not just a few, but many of the people who show up to these events, much less the one who camp there day in and day out, have been just strikingly poorly dressed. I understand that many of them are young. After all, unemployment is far higher among the young, the massive student debts and unaffordability of housing strike them far harder, and if the final reckoning for unsustainable practices both ecological and economical can be put off a few years they are the ones who will still be here come the deluge. But honestly, do they have to go around acting as if they were young? Dancing, and playing their infernal music like young people do?! And worst of all, dressing as if they were young? What is worse, many of them look like poor people. Imagine, poor people with the nerve to protest poverty! Clearly they should be leaving it to their betters, or at least…

I often complain, online and in person, about declining wages. Whether it’s a more formal talk about how median wages have flatlined or worse by the numbers, or just an airing of the sense that key things are way more expensive than they used to be and it takes two full-time wage earners to get by where in the sixties or seventies it took only one, it’s something a lot of people are worried or pissed off about. Sometimes an objection is raised: Our apparently lower standard of living is in part because we get things for our money that we never had to pay for before, extra add-ons that we now take for granted. It’s these extras costing more, people suggest, that gives us the feeling our dollars aren’t stretching as far. So for instance, we now pay for cable TV, internet access, cellular phone service, and various combinations of these things….

The story goes that after the Vietnam war a US officer, unable to understand or accept US defeat, pointed out to general Giap, "We won every battle", to which general Giap responded "That may well be true. It is also irrelevant." US foreign policy is over the medium term helping the US decline. While no individual occupation or war is the new Vietnam, the overall arc of their foreign policy is. Every new intervention is staged largely to benefit certain narrow US elites, while the cost comes from the country as a whole. The elites gain a net benefit, but the country generally loses more than it gains. Thus whether it’s vetoing the Palestinian effort for recognition of statehood at the UN, or getting involved militarily in places like Yemen or, I suspect, Libya, the costs of each battle won will cause historians to declare those victories irrelevant….

On the question of the mooted Liberal-NDP merger, I don’t have much interest in the question directly. The main thing it says to me is, you know the Liberals are in trouble when the only way they can get a headline is by talking about the NDP. Meanwhile, the media seem to be trying to rubbish the NDP through all this generation of controversy, talking about "will they merge", "will they fight over whether they will merge", "will the leadership race cause divisions in the party" yadda yadda. But I don’t mind. All I hear is "The NDP leadership race is important", "The policies the NDP chooses are important", "The NDP matters", which is a rather different message from the one they’ve been trying to send all these years….

I’ve seen a lot of people talk about hope dying, Jack being irreplaceable and so on. Not everyone by any means, which is good, but too dashed many. To those people I want to say, read the man’s letter. Jack is in a sense irreplaceable–there will never be an activist or leader quite like him again. But here’s what he said about that: "There will be those who will try to persuade you to give up our cause. But that cause is much bigger than any one leader. Answer them by recommitting with energy and determination to our work." And that’s what people will do. Jack Layton is like Obi Wan Kenobi now. In life, Mr. Layton was a politician–an heroic politician, ever more respected, but a politician nonetheless. He was subject to news and spin cycles, the slings and arrows of outrageous smearing. Maybe in two years people would have reverted for a while to seeing him as an annoying energizer-bunny salesman, and then in three he would have been on top again. People would be asking what he’s done for us lately. Maybe he would have won the next election and become the first NDP prime minister, maybe…

So I was in Madrid a few days ago. I’d have posted quicker, but had trouble with internet access. But here I am at an internet cafe in Toledo and can report on events in Madrid. I don’t know if anyone’s heard, but there have been big time protests in Madrid, mainly at a central plaza called the Puerta del Sol. The biggest crowds and highest energy I saw were Saturday night, but my camera was on the fritz at the time. However, these folks have settled in rather. There’s a tent city occupying most of the plaza, the walls are covered with text, everyone seems to be doing up posters, writing manifestos, and generally gettin’ revolutionary and stickin’ it to the man. There’s a police presence but it seems pretty dashed relaxed by, say, Toronto standards. The protesters themselves emphasize peaceful protest; there don’t seem to be anybody talking vandalism or black bloc or anything. Some of the slogans are pretty cool–they’re in Spanish of course, but I can glean bits hazily from my long-ago high school Spanish. A couple that stuck in my head are (roughly) "If we’re doing the voting, why are the bankers doing the governing?"…