EconoSpeak

In the introduction to One-Dimensional Man, Herbert Marcuse listed four authors -- Vance Packard, C. Wright Mills, William H. White, and Fred J. Cooks -- whose works were of "vital importance" to his analysis. In the text, he mentioned "the affluent society" several times, which, of course, was the title of a famous book by John Kenneth Galbraith. Galbraith, Mills, and White all cited Thorstein Veblen in their books. Packard cited the influence of Stuart Chase's The Tragedy of Waste on his...

I’ve had dreams of all sorts from time to time, but I don’t remember them too well. There was one dream that had a sort of philosophical content.I dreamt I was in a place that had a cat. I came into the room where this cat was talking to another cat, making a date to meet at a certain time. I said, “There’s something wrong here. What could it be? I know what it is: Cats can’t tell time!”I went up to this cat and said, “What do you mean by making this date? You know you can’t tell time. ”The...

 The original sin of the current catastrophe in Ukraine was the failure of the US and UK to defend the sovereignty and territorial integrity of Ukraine when Putin's Russia seized control of Crimea as they promised to do in the Budapest Accord of 1994 when Ukraine gave up the third largest stock of nuclear weapons in the world.  They are also now in violation of that Accord now by their weak effort to save Ukraine. They can and should enforce a no fly zone over Ukraine, which I believe they...

 There are reports that many Russian soldiers are lacking in morale for the invasion of Ukraine. They were told repeatedly like the rest of us that there would be no invasion. The Ukrainians are very similar, and most of them know Putin has exaggerated the things they have supposedly done or not done wrong.  And rather than welcoming them as liberators and throwing down their arms to surrender, the Ukrainians have been fighting back hard. But they have a lot more armor and weapons.What may...

In Herbert Marcuse and Planned Obsolescence I undertook to develop a theoretical foundation for 'planned obsolescence' from Georg Simmel's analysis of the "preponderance of objective culture over subjective culture that developed during the nineteenth century." My intuition has proved to be uncannily prescient. Besides the indirect influence of Thorstein Veblen -- by way of Vance Packard and Stuart Chase -- Marcuse's argument was indirectly influenced by Simmel, through the mediation of...

Russian President Vladimir V. Putin has just announced a "special military operation" to "de-Nazify the Ukrainian government" so as to halt the supposed "genocide" being committed against Russian speakers in Ukraine.  There is not a shred of justification for any of this.  The extreme nationalist fascist groups in Ukraine do not support and are not part of the current Ukrainian government, whose leader is half Jewish.  There has been a low level war between the Ukrainian government and the...

 Oh, I cannot resist taking that phrase from a recent Economist article about the separatist Donbass republics, the Luhansk Peoples' Republic (LPR) and the Donetsk Peoples' Republic (DPR). The official recognition by V.V. Putin of their independence brings about the end of the Minsk II Accord negotiations that have been going on since 2015. These accords were supposed to bring peace to eastern Ukraine, but they failed to do so. This recognition brings them to an end, the Minsky Moment, as it...

"Our whole economy is based on planned obsolescence, and everybody who can read without moving his lips should know it by now. We make good products, we induce people to buy them, and then next year we deliberately introduce something that will make those products old fashioned, out of date, obsolete. Planned obsolescence is the desire to own something a little newer and a little better a little sooner than is necessary. It isn't organized waste. It's a sound contribution to the American...

 On the one hand Russian media is telling Russians that Russian troops will leave Belarus when exercises there end on Feb., 20, coinciding with the end of the Winter Olympics, and also sends out videos of troops supposedly being pulled back. OTOH, US officials declared based on reported satellite evidence that 7,000 more troops have gone to "the Ukrainian border" with a chance of Russia invading Ukraine very high, as US personnel are removed, and the US embassy is moved from Kyiv to L'viv in...

 Yes, signs regarding a possible Russian invasion of Ukraine have gotten much worse in the last few days. I am hearing from my wife that Russian media are now claiming there are lots of US troops in Ukraine. Such a claim, not even backed up by some fake video, would clearly serve as an excuse for an invasion. There are also reports out of the Russian media that Putin feels that he was not treated well in Beijing. Apparently he was shunted off to some side airport when he landed, with only...