[p2p-research] cutting cultural budgets

Mon Jun 21 17:59:58 CEST 2010

Hi Michel:

A couple of points.

1. No one knows or even has a good clue about what is coming in terms of
national finances.  Markets do not predict anything now but increasing
Chinese dominance.  The markets would know best...more money is spent there
predicting than anywhere else.

2. The best predictive information is almost certainly demographic.  We have
discussed this before.  Europe and Japan are aging.  The US,
China, Brazil and India are staying the same or getting younger.  The
outcomes from this seem more obvious than other predictors.

3. Military spending is often just consumption of stocks--like oil and
steel.  These are both good and bad for economies.  School costs are
overwhelmingly wages.  Wages from a government are probably not ideal
economic outputs in almost anyone's book.  There is also a policing value to
military spending (i.e. prevention of bad things).  One may disagree with
the politics, but it is clear most countries of the world use the US
military to freeride--it has funded European growth for several decades at a
pittance cost to the Europeans--especially the Germans and low countries who
have benefited hugely with minimal costs.

In exchange for the freeride (in my opinion) the dollar stays a carrying
currency in crises.  This is a fair trade as it allows the US Government to
manipulate the world's primary currency to its own short-term advantages
mostly by printing money and inflating the world economy to minimize US
transfers of corporate and consumer debt to the government--a trick the rest
of the world recently learned.  The Euro was meant to compete and to allow
Germany to force other nations to be reliable consumers of quality goods.
It won't compete in the long run because it is inherently unstable.  Neither
will the Yuan.  Ask yourself, will you trust the Chinese to run the world
economy no matter how much one despises Americans and their way of life?
The US has held the world's hand for 50 years quite effectively for the most
part.  Any practical person knows this and will hope it continues.  For all
its flaws, no nation has been as selfless and as giving as the US.  It isn't
close.  But there has been compensation for that "selflessness" so maybe it
is as much selfish as selfless.

4. Local governments in the US and elsewhere almost exclusively focus on
education along with keeping peace (police, fire and ambulance).  The
largest employer in any small county in the US is the school system, but
that doesn't mean the economy of those places thrives.  Quite the opposite.
In fact, there is no way to correlate school spending with economic
gain--i've tried.  What you can say is that educational achievement
correlates very well with most good things.  Whether that is causal is far
from obvious.

5. It is true that those who live through gifts from the state or
philanthropists will not have an easy go in the future.  All the more reason
why P2P can and should thrive.  That said, world philanthropy remains at all
time highs and Bill Gates has just started a programme to ask all US
billionaires to give away at least half of their wealth while alive or at
death.  Apparently the response is strong.  Foundations are large and
wealthy right now...community foundations in particular.

6. Government deficits will fall and must do.  How fast this can and will
happen is anyone's guess.  I agree that 40% cuts in anything less than a
decade would be draconian.  I predict 3-5% annual cuts in spending.  Low
interest rates will continue OR inflation will explode.  It is a binary
system with no intermediate equilibrium.  If interest rates rise, inflation
will follow or vice versa depending on your views on macro economics.

7. If I were young and smart, I'd go to the US because you can have any skin
tone and any attitude and still succeed.  If I were Chinese, I'd stay in
China and if Indian, in India.  Brazil is another excellent option for those
with an odd passport because B. is growing at 9% and more open minded about
extranationals than most places.

If forced to live in a world of nation states, I'd ask the following
questions:

1. Who do you trust to a) protect liberties, b) stay solvent while still
offering safety nets c) not go into world ending war d) protect people of
varied backgrounds and views f) offer economic and social opportunities g)
stay demographically sound?

2. Who do you trust to avoid the problems of racial and nationalistic
tensions most?

3. Who will accept people for talent's sake and not for reasons of blood,
family, culture or religion?

4. Who uses a language that is common, technically useful and economically
meaningful?

5. Who offers people a chance to start over?

There are many small options that meet these criteria...Barbados for
instance.  In Europe, there are few options....probably Germany, France
Sweden, Holland, Iceland or Norway are most realistic or, possibly
Switzerland or the UK--especially for the rich.  But we all know these visas
are hard and problematic.  The best way to get them is to have an
engineering degree and to be young.

Overall, the US, Mexico, Brazil, Colombia and Argentina are good
options...as are Singapore, parts of Africa and limited parts of Asia.  NZ
and Australia are also fairly open and fair...especially NZ.  No one takes
more migrants and immigrants legal and illegal than the US--by a wide
margin.

Ryan
On Mon, Jun 21, 2010 at 1:22 AM, Michel Bauwens <michelsub2004 at gmail.com>wrote:

> from john thackara:
> http://www.doorsofperception.com/archives/2010/03/culture_cuts.php
>
>
> I found a chart in Aviation Week<http://www.aviationweek.com/aw/blogs/defense/index.jsp?plckController=Blog&plckBlogPage=BlogViewPost&newspaperUserId=27ec4a53-dcc8-42d0-bd3a-01329aef79a7&plckPostId=Blog%3a27ec4a53-dcc8-42d0-bd3a-01329aef79a7Post%3a9be69494-f142-4438-857c-7fb4e3fb4af8&plckScript=blogScript&plckElementId=blogDest>,
> which is almost a trade magazine of the military industrial complex, that
> included these numbers for per capita military spending:
> U.S.: $545.3 billion, that's roughly $45,500 per head of the population.
> U.K.: $63.2 billion, or $34,800 per head.
> France: $60.3 billion, or $32,100 per head.
> Germany: $41.8 billion, or $33,800 per head.
>
> Then I found a study<http://www.oclc.org/reports/escan/economic/educationlibraryspending.htm>that concludes that the United States spent $1,780 per head on education in
> 2001 (France, The Netherlands and Canada each spent more than $1,200 per
> capita). Hmmm.
>
> Turning to culture and the arts, the best I could find is a perplexing web
> database <http://www.culturalpolicies.net/web/belgium.php?aid=62> that
> appears to show that cultural expenditure per capita in Spain is euro 135,
> compared to Germany which, in 2007, spent 99 euros per capita.
>
> In round numbers, then, Germany appears to spend 25,000 euros per person on
> defence, versus about 100 euros per head on culture. I have to assume that
> the gap in the US and UK, were the numbers to be available, would be a good
> deal wider.
>
> As I said: insane numbers.
>
> I distract you (and myself) with these numbers mainly because, in the years
> ahead, spending on the things that we do care about - education, culture,
> sustainability - looks certain to plummet.
>
> In the UK, for example, commentators are talking gravely about public
> spending cuts of 10, 15, or 20 percent. Insiders tell me that cuts will be
> 40 percent or more, in real terms, over the coming few years.
> Large cultural and educational institutions will suck in what little public
> funding is available. Government funding for small, grassroots activities
> will dry up almost completely.
>
>
> --
> P2P Foundation: http://p2pfoundation.net  - http://blog.p2pfoundation.net
>
> Connect: http://p2pfoundation.ning.com; Discuss:
> http://listcultures.org/mailman/listinfo/p2presearch_listcultures.org
>
> Updates: http://del.icio.us/mbauwens; http://friendfeed.com/mbauwens;
> http://twitter.com/mbauwens; http://www.facebook.com/mbauwens
>
> Think tank: http://www.asianforesightinstitute.org/index.php/eng/The-AFI
>
>
>
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> p2presearch mailing list
> p2presearch at listcultures.org
> http://listcultures.org/mailman/listinfo/p2presearch_listcultures.org
>
>

-- 
Ryan Lanham
rlanham1963 at gmail.com
Facebook: Ryan_Lanham
P.O. Box 633
Grand Cayman, KY1-1303
Cayman Islands
(345) 916-1712
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://listcultures.org/pipermail/p2presearch_listcultures.org/attachments/20100621/b5853750/attachment.html>