(no subject)

[mbarrick]

I just had a great converstion with the senior V.P. that has the office next to mine. He's been with the company since day-one in 1946, when he was an F.O.B. WWII refugee and helped build it up with the current owners' father. He and I were just talking about my topic du jour, the service industry vs. genuine industry. He's old enough to remember the shipyards on the north shore, the foundries and rail-yards around False-Creek, the south shore and Coal Harbour. He saw it and lived it and has the experience of building an industrial company. He knows the difference between a healthy economy that generates real wealth and "smoke and mirrors" (his term). There is nothing like talking about something with someone who knows from doing. It's inspiring.

Comments

[mediavictim.livejournal.com]

Sure the Producers generate "things" - but frankly I wouldn't want to live in an industrial town.

I kinda like that I don't have to smell a pulp mill, I don't have to smell cow shit, see tons of smoke stacks polluting my view of the city or hear the clanking and powertools in a factory.

Yeah - we don't produce .. but we consume
and in a consumer society the disconnection from the substaintial - aren't we free of the trappings of survival to explore concepts and higher ideals.

The luxuries of having tools to hunt and create fire with gave cavemen time to play and make cave paintings

The luxuries of having an abacus gave early mathematicians
the freedom to explore more complex math ideas

The luxuries of textile mills freed up people from hand stiching

Factory assembly line processes increased production and cost of production and brough the cost of consumer goods down so that more people could have access to them .. wich ni turn would give them tools and free up their time to persue their higher ideal.

Perhaps its just the level of dissasociation that you feel
...and like our previous discusssion about what is fake vs real in art - its all fake....


so in this case - unless you stip naked and hand kill your food
you are part of the machine , no more "genuine" than the factory worker, no less genuine than the salesman.



so question the purity of being a consumer
then question the purity of the producer supplying the consumer
the question the purity of the supplier supplying the producer supplying the consumer...

[mbarrick.livejournal.com]

I'm not talking about the "purity" of production or consumption. I'm talking about the basis of wealth, i.e. the real value of money.

How does the conusmer pay the producer? If the "product" is a service, how where does the money to pay the supplier of that service come from? How does the consumer generate the wealth to purchase the service? Where does the value of money *really* come from? It's not just numbers printed on paper.

[mediavictim.livejournal.com]

When we were taken of the gold standard .. it did become
numbers printed on paper , and electrons in a bank computer...

isn't the end of 'material'ism a good thing ;)

Try again.

[mbarrick.livejournal.com]

Fine then. Come over to my apartment. I'll give you a peice of paper with $1,000,000 written on it to finish off the restorations. Think for a second before you answer this time. How and why did/does gold have value, particularly in a pre-electronic past where its value as a conductor didn't matter? How did the value get assigned to the gold? Why would an ounce of gold be worth $350, not $35 or $3.5 or $3,500? What's behind that valuation? What do (or rather, did) those numbers really quantify?

I love your little condescending thumbs down ...so kyooot!!!

[mediavictim.livejournal.com]

"ll give you a peice of paper with $1,000,000 written on it "

And I had a peice of paper with $10 in my wallet written on it - and when I handed it to the cashier at the grocery store - she accepted it as $10

and if you get many people to beleive that that peice of paper is really worth one meelyun dollatrs then it will be ....

Gold is only worth the value that people assign to it...(and belive its worth)

Those number quantify an imaginary value set by the commodities market - its just soft worthless pretty metal....

One more try.

[mbarrick.livejournal.com]

> Gold is only worth the value that people assign to it...

Yes, exactly. The question was how that number is assigned and what does it really represent. Repeating the question differently is not an answer.

> Those number quantify an imaginary value set by the commodities market

So the Aztecs and Incas has a commodities market? And the Imperial Chinese? And the Minoans? The ancient Egyptians? The Vikings? ...

> - its just soft worthless pretty metal....

Again, that's just the question - how is value assigned to the metal, or the peice of paper, or any other medium of trade? What do the values really represent? Even in the case of the price being set by a commodities market, why are people trading the stuff in the first place?

It may help to think about why some things are more expensive than others. Why is a 2 oz. tube of ultramarine blue paint $17 and a 2 oz. tube of cadmium yellow $5? Why is gold worth more than silver? Why is silver worth more than copper? Why is oak more expensive than pine? Why does a latté cost more than a "regular" coffee with the same amount of coffee and milk in it? Why is a 1968 Porsche 911 worth more than a 1968 Beetle? Why is a 1934 Beetle worth more than a brand new Porsche Boxer? How come rents downtown are around $1.3/sq' but less than $1/sq' in Richmond?

Re: One more try.

[seymour-glass.livejournal.com]

the last question could better be asked by "why do people want to live downtown more than in richmond"...makes more economic sense to live there, in the long run...the value in the last question is in the surroundings...at least for me it is, and therefore i shell out more...

in some cases value was assigned because of the scarcity or novelty of something...one could think of chocolate, though valued highly amongst the central american indians, it took on a much greater value when introduced to the old world...as with many exotic spices...and as distribution and accessibility grew they fell in value as compared to what it once was...but gold is more interesting because many divergent and exclusive cultures assigned it a special value, whether it be the chinese, japanes, egyptians, romans, or mayans/aztecs/incas, there was even a discovery of gold jewelry in india from 5000 years ago...there were many metals which were more scarce than gold...though perhaps it's accessibility and maleability led to some of it's valuation...after all most societies didn't have advanced mining and smelting techniques, save the incas...do you have any ideas on why gold was so valued??? i'd be interested to know you hypotheses...here's an interesting thought i came across, over 99% of all gold ever mined is still around and it would fit in a cube just over 60 ft per side...oil makes sense for now, as it's ubiquitous and getting harder to locate and exploit...therefore as long as people believe there are ever dwindling stocks and it is used in many facets of our lives it will retain and increase it's value...the amazing thing is they keep it's value high by getting people to buy into our "need" for it and therefore shunning alternatives...