Tyranny is also bad process

When one attends classes at the Project Management Institute (PMI) one sees process diagrams for project management everywhere. The principles of governing a project, it turns out, are pretty much the same whether the project is a government project, a household project, or any short term endeavor with a start date and an end date. Similarly a program office has more complex processes, and these process interface with project management, but the basic processes of program management are the same whether one is looking at a small program or a large one.  The reality is that the same thing is true with governing bodies of sentient beings.  The processes of democracy either embody principles of good government, which means good governing processes, or they don’t. 

Unfortunately, the optimization of governing processes depends on who the nominal and real stakeholders are, and so many governing institutions are optimized for a small subset of their stakeholders – and this is not only almost a definition and source of corruption but is also bad process.  Bad process fails because it drives system failure.  Systems not optimized for the well-being of the system – which implies the well-being of all the stakeholders are dysfunctional by design.  They also are tyranny as defined by John Locke:

199. “As usurpation is the exercise of power which another hath a right to, so tyranny is the exercise of power beyond right, which nobody can have a right to; and this is making use of the power any one has in his hands, not for the good of those who are under it, but for his own private, separate advantage. When the governor, however entitled, makes not the law, but his will, the rule, and his commands and actions are not directed to the preservation of the properties of his people, but the satisfaction of his own ambition, revenge, covetousness, or any other irregular passion."[1]

Maximizing the general welfare and preventing “private, separate advantage” and the resulting reign of “ambition, revenge, covetousness…” is about tyranny, but it also is about bad process.  The virtues of good process outweigh the expediency of tyranny, and this will become readily apparent to anyone who thinks about it a while. So let us architect governmental processes that will allow us to recognize and fix systemic tyranny and generally improve the function of our government.

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[1] http://holtesthoughts.blogspot.com/2012/08/definitions-related-to-democratic.html
Note: source is John Locke's Two Treatises on Government.

Legislative Advisory

In the old series "Lucy", she goes into a small town hotel where the owner is the doorman, mayor, and ultimately cop, judge and sheriff. The results are funny on TV but disastrous in real life, when folks are allowed to go outside their swimlanes.

We've made our executive way too powerful. On this score the far right is almost right -- though they have no problem with such power when they are in power. The once powerful Congress has delegated much of it's power to the executive in such a way that it is more an obstacle and nuisance sometimes than a constructive part of the legislative process. Our legislators, especially but not exclusively the Senate, are both too powerful and too disconnected from their constituencies to be effective legislator. Our powerful interests like this because it makes it easier to buy influence through campaign bribes, but it not only is bad and corrupt government but bad process. Our general legislators depend on staffers who often work for the companies they plan to go too after doing their time in government, and they write legislation that always is highly influenced by, and sometimes directly comes from, the corporations and interests they are supposed to regulate.

The root of corruption doesn't come from the mere fact of corporate interest in government. That is natural. A system or commons develop when folks divide up property so that people can specialize and do what they do best. Corruption comes from folks trying to "swim" outside their proper swimlane. Just because someone is good at one thing doesn't automatically mean they are competent at another. Worse the resulting conflict of interest can mean they are automatically going to be incompetent at the things that are outside the swimlane where their natural ability lies.

Too de-conflict these functions we would be best off if we setup institutions that involve the citizenry. What do AARP, NRA and other modern membership corporations have in common? The members have very little legislative power and very little say in the government of the organization that "represents" them. Thus the NRA is famous for being more about the companies that manufacture arms than about gun owners, and the AARP is sometimes accused of being in cahoots with insurance companies and others doing business with or through them. What we need are formal "Legislative Advisory" organizations that represent their members, are organized as "advisory" legislatures, and can do the work presently done by staffers --but would do it in a nationally integrated fashion from bottom up (Village, Town, City and County level on up). Their leaders would be elected, their memberships would meet in Assembly at the local level and as representatives at top levels. Groups like the AARP, Medical Associations, Unions etc.... organized this way would be powerful. And their recommendations for law and regulation would become law easier.

And we need a juridical function in most of our executive functions. But that is for another post.

Discussion:

The Japanese used to have layers of administration. They had an Emperor, who often was a front-man for an older "retired Emperor" who held more power than he did. And then they had a Shogun who was out-front and supposed to defend the country from invaders, but who in many cases had a front man himself and operated from behind a screen (often literally). In practice all these people would be conspiring to put the power completely in their own hands in many cases. But looking at it from a process point of view, there are good reasons to separate the roles. No man can safely (to the system) be both judge jury and executioner. This is the principle behind separation of powers. The Emperor was acting as Judge, or magistrate over the country as a whole. In the case of the imperial court he was both President and Supreme Court justice equivalent. The Younger person was usually given some part of that, often the judicial function. The Shogun had the executive function; and often the elder Shogun would act as executive judge, while the younger was the actual executive. This may seem byzantine, but the purpose was integral. It had integrity. As usual people in charge are the first ones to subvert their own roles so I'm not suggesting in any way we imitate the Bakufu or the Imperial Court. But what I suggesting is that separating the government into Executive, legislature and judiciary is not enough to enforce good government. On the contrary, we've given way too much power to the President.

The only trickle down I see, are them marking my feet

A few thoughts and observations about Trickle down

When we hear folks talking about economic ideas, we have to understand that there are two kinds of misleading ideas out there. There are narrowly defined policy ideas that make economic sense in those narrow scenarios that they describe. And there are broad assertion about economics that are just put out to try to sell folks invisible cloth. Some areas of thought; Friedman's monetary ideas, other economists core ideas, even some of Marx's ideas, belong to the former category. Even if you disagree entirely with the general philosophy, some of the ideas are intriguing and true. And studying them is worth doing, especially if you disagree, because we all should learn to think critically. Being able to see both sides of every issue is important not only to lawyers and sophists, but also to those seeking genuine wisdom. I can't battle the abstract of "dogmaticism" if I myself hold dogmas and never challenge them. Ideas have to be examined and compared. Most good ideas make sense in their context, and understanding that context helps one to discard the nonsense. Can't get caught off guard by truth if one agrees.

But the other kind of stuff, is just invisible cloth. Trickle down is in that pile of steaming excretia. It is the notion that if tax and policy policies favor the rich somehow we'll all be better off. This sale goes back to the early 20'th century when many blue collar workers, or more often salesmen, who had no chance of "rising" were convinced by Horatio Alger stories to believe that they would one day be rich if they supported laissez faire policies and invested in the stock market. The grifters in the stock market stole their money and many of them were forced to ride the rails looking for a place where they could make their riches; but this "temporarily embarrassed millionaire" notion has never vanished among us Americans. It is why folks who ought to know better support such policies, even when the other folks are sharing nonsense arguments for why they should.

Again, at the core of trickle down is a truth. The King, because he has concentrated power has a vastly (geometrically in respect to his wealth or power alone) power to do good or evil, over an ordinary person. So loan your money to a rich person and, in theory, you'll get a better return than you'd get loaning it to someone poor. Except that history, and experience shows that that is not usually, actually in fact, the case.

Reality: Investors risk "Other People's Money", Not their own.

In actually, officers of any enterprise prefer to risk other people's money rather then their own. Kings held the crown jewels as a trust, and when they bankrupted themselves, they bankrupted their people. The only difference between some Wall Street investors and Bernie Maddoff is that Bernie guaranteed his investors a rate of return and that blocked him from being able to invest in actual risky ventures and reduced him to paying back his investors out of new investment and creating a ponzi scheme as a result.

Examine dozens of investors, companies, etc.... and their whole purpose is not reducing risk it is transfering risk. They will risk your money, pocket your fees, pocket any profits, and deduct any losses from your balance sheet. The results of investing in some stock funds or other Wall Street Instruments may be the same as with a Ponzi Scheme, but the Ponzi scheme was illegal, and the folks investing lost money on Wall Street are still working out in the open. A case can be made that it might be better to go back to keeping our money in mattresses, but then it would never do any work. At the core of the economic system we have has to be trust. Investors should not be risking other people's money while running "heads I win, tails you lose" games. There are a lot of folks who should be cooling their heels with Bernie. The idea of trickle down is related to the idea that if we invest in risky stocks we'll wind up with a giant retirement nest egg. Maybe, if the game isn't rigged as it was in 2000, or 2006 (and periodically since 1790). Sure, it trickles down, what is left.

And the investors will tell you while they are selling things to you that they are mavens who know so much more than you do. And when your money goes south and disappears, they'll say "you should have known better." The risk is on you.

Trickle Down Tax Policy is really transfering risks and costs.

Similarly, trickle down tax policy is part of a whole series of effects of naked aggression, legal bribery, extortion, and corrupt influence; that reflect more the power of sophistry and rhetoric, than credible policy.

If everyone is a temporarly embarrassed millionaire than I guess it might make sense to let the wealthy not pay their fair share of taxes, and to acquire more and more wealth. After all, a fair society floats all boats, and if the factory owner (nowadays usually industry owner) has immense wealth, that ought to trickle down to workers, traders, salesmen, and the guy at the corner store. No, that doesn't happen. On the contrary, wealth beyond a certain point is simply power. Power to buy influence, to buy followers, to buy allegience. It becomes a get out of jail card. And as with investors, it becomes about transfering risk. Think they can't afford to make their factories safe at Wallmart? It would cost them pennies on the dollars of their profits. Risk transfered to you and me means a sense of security and power for those in the offices.

It would be fairly easy to graph this using Maslowe's hierarchy of needs. The rest of us spend money fairly efficiently. It goes from us to banks, creditors, energy providers, stores, restaurants, and each other. The wealthy spend more than we do, but their entertainment needs to up arithmetically with their income, but their income goes up geometrically. A person making a million dollars might spend 10's of thousands of dollars on entertainment, but a person making tens of millions dollars will probably not be spending much more. On food, the curve will top out at even a lower rate. My income is close to the rate at which it makes no difference in how I spend for food at my current income level over a higher level. I might eat fewer meals at expensive restaurants, but I probably wouldn't eat many even if I were incredibly wealthy. The wealthy don't have a life-style difference that grows more costly at the same rate their wealth increases. That is why they insist on capping Social Security.

No, after that living wage, and then wealthy life-style premium, everything else becomes power and security oriented. It may be invested, but it won't be spent, on average. For every generous person giving away millions you find billionares giving away maybe a million; and mostly for quid pro quo.

No it doesn't Trickle Down, Joe

And finally it is worse than them simply not spending money when you let them keep more. They still spend money, but that money becomes more and more aimed at increasing their wealth and power. They invest investor money to corner the Silver Market (The Hunt brothers), or setup schemes to protect their nest eggs by creating derivative bets and making their own investors take the risk for those going bad. In this last swindle bubble, they actually set it up so that the risk fell on the taxpayer. In past times the wealthy tended to gamble their money away.

In the 1700's, Scottish Nobles, for instance, would gamble away land, that ideally shouldn't have been their personal property anyway, as the tenants on that property had been their for centuries and the nobles had essentially converted their trust as rulers into simple property thanks to the holes in "enlightenment" thinking. In order to make their gambling debts back, (or simply monetize their holdings) they'd wind up evicting their tenants and converting the property to raising sheep or industry. The wealthy come to own property simply because they have money, and with time, they come to own more and more property (as is happening here) until they own everything. Then people start getting evicted from property because they tend to be irresponsibility with those trusts.

Trickle Down or Oligarchy?

Our current generation of super-wealth is following that time worn track. Ceasar's triumvirate included people who got their wealth and power through the revolving door of business and government. Crassus for instance acquired huge holdings of lands by running the Roman fire-department. Caesar inherited the political machine of the Marius family. Crassus of the Sulla faction. And Pompeii represented the "new men" trying to horn their way into "old wealth." They initially were representatives of rival plutocrats, but eventually there were only three, and after that only one. Wealth comes to buy power, and power to buy wealth. Eventually these three came. And then there was one.

Anyway, it doesn't trickle down, but it can destroy our Republic.

Note, I've been so busy with a deadline my imagination hasn't been able to track to blogging, and a lot of ideas I was planning to blog on got side-tracked.

The Market is not a person

A market is a place. Talking about the market one might as well be talking about the streets, the parks, a waste dump. It's not "the market" that sets the prices for things, or the market that moves up and down. It is human policy and human behavior. It may be legitimate to use the phrase as a short cut to saying that "the majority of investors bid up prices today," or employers calculate that they will make a certain amount of money if they pay such and such a price. Theorists like to say that economic formulas indicate that marginal supply = marginal demand at the equilibrium price. But that is abstraction. It is a logical error to confuse abstractions with persons. In the real world equilibrium are at best transitory and the only time a system is at rest is when the system is dead. Markets are a place. The players in a market are playing in a system of human relations, in which markets are one abstract element. The market doesn't decide anything. The people in that market, acting as members, in context of power and possession, do. Essentially they are collective entities

Thus Market government can be oligarchy, monarchy, republican or it can even be almost democratic. Governments are power constrained. Those who claim that "the market" is a being that determines prices is either a liar, a shill, or expressing his theology about who God is for him/her.

Neither Hope too much, nor despair too much

The title of this post is, according to an ex-girlfriend from years ago, comes from a Polish proverb. They are intimately familiar with both hope and despair, so they should understand what it means. What it means is in the title of a British Comedy; 'curb your enthusiasm.' And actually i think that the concept goes back to Epictetus and the Stoics. I seem to remember reading this same concept when I read Marcus Aurelius' book in "Harvard Classics." Both my dad and granddad owned partial full sets. Back in their day if you were trying to have a self taught education; the Harvard Classics could give you a real start. They were kind of a Reader's digest edition of the Western World's (Mainly 'Anglo Saxon') major works. Anyway, as happy as I am with Obama's win, i had a lot to blog about that I didn't have time to blog about before the election, and I have the same concerns after the election; aside from the certain doom that was intended for integral commonwealth were he to have won. So I curb my enthusiasm.

Anyway, what reminded me to write this blog was that Paul Krugman was surprised by the insane response of our righty frenemies. He writes about John Hinderaker of Bush is a genius fame who declared:

"To me, the most telling incident of the campaign season was a poll that found that among young Americans, socialism enjoys a higher favorability rating than free enterprise. How can this possibly be, given the catastrophic failure of socialism, and the corresponding success of free enterprise, throughout history? The answer is that conservatives have entirely lost control over the culture."

Concept versus Dogma

No the problem is that conservatives have so got caught up in their own sloganeering that they confuse their own concept rustling and no longer see the common sense in pragmatism, or not being too attached to slogans. What they think are principles are often nothing more than slogans with badly reasoned arguments offered for them. Obama's victory doesn't mean that Romney's complaint that the rest of us are lazy users, dependent on "Gubbernment" for a life. It just means that we believe we have a right to be part of the commonwealth and that, indeed "hairdressers" [famous comment from Edmund Burke that has defined aristocratic cons over democratic republicans since] have a right to a say in who runs the country. And you see that attitude in the current attitudes. Conservatives at heart are afraid of their own employees, neighbors and customers. And as we see from recent behavior they should be, somehow they forgot the "conserve" and prefer to practice cons. I don't mind them conserving stuff they earned, but they forget that what they are trying to conserve is often the result of raw exercise of power coupled with expertise at conning folks out of stuff that isn't entirely theirs.

But Paul "gets it" he next writes:

"Oddly, he doesn’t even seem to consider the more obvious possibility: after decades in which right-wingers have attacked long-established institutions — Social Security, progressive taxation, unemployment insurance — as “socialism”, a lot of young people now believe them, and think that this “socialism” thing really isn’t so bad. A case in point: Sheldon Adelson’s Israeli newspaper just ran the headline “America chooses socialism”, referring to the reelection of a president who enacted a health care reform originally proposed by the Heritage Foundation."

The idea that "socialism" is simply a pragmatic response to aristocracy, doesn't phase them. The "we" versus "I" built it debate clearly illustrates that some of what they call 'socialism' is just making sure that at least some things are run for the common good and not only the property/rule of local or national tyrants.

But the best part of Krugman's piece is the part referring to Monty Python:

http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/11/08/socialism/

The Con versus the reality

Like I said, (last post) I love Paul Krugman, he's fighting valiently to expose the con that masks itself as conservative. I hope people will start listening to him, because he knows what he's talking about. Krugman continues that thread in his latest post Krugman notes:

"..... Romney’s “plan” is a sham. It’s a list of things he claims will happen, with no description of the policies he would follow to make those things happen. “We will cut the deficit and put America on track to a balanced budget,” he declares, but he refuses to specify which tax loopholes he would close to offset his $5 trillion in tax cuts.

And his private speeches talk to his real base, the folks he compares to the 47% who depend on Government(s) [such as their private ones] to function. He says government can't create jobs, private enterprise does. He reaffirms the trope that letting himself and his fellow monied-aristocrats have the money will somehow put people back to work. And he does it in the same voice and using the same deceptive methods he uses when selling workers at factories he's acquiring on his buyouts and how he'd never send their jobs to China -- before he promptly does so. People shouldn't be fooled. Krugman isn't. He offers an alternative plan that is as simplistic as the other. Krugman is tongue in cheek but there is a serious point underneath.

"Here it is: Every American will have a good job with good wages. Also, a blissfully happy marriage. And a pony."

Romney is full of stuff

"Romney is faking it. His real plan seems to be to foster economic recovery through magic, inspiring business confidence through his personal awesomeness."

Romney says as much "Government doesn't create jobs;" Only the magic of oligarchy does. Sure, right, in China.

"Where Mr. Romney says he’ll achieve energy independence, never mind how, Mr. Obama calls for concrete steps like raising fuel efficiency standards. Mr. Romney says, “We will give our fellow citizens the skills they need,” but says nothing about how he’ll make that happen, pivoting instead to a veiled endorsement of school vouchers; Mr. Obama calls for specific things like a program to recruit math and science teachers and partnerships between businesses and community colleges."

And this represents traditional Democratic Republican policies. It's kind of "Field of Dreams" for politicians. "If you build it, they will come. Romney's dreams all involve dumping the business of the commons on aristocrats. It's an old vision. It was the kind of capitalism you saw in France before Louis the 16th lost his head. When the business of government, the commons, public systems, are put in the hands of private citizens you get dysfunction, usury, and corruption; because such folks are usually after rent, not achieving a mission of the public good. Naturally. This is a lesson of history.

"So, is Mr. Obama offering an inspiring vision for economic recovery? No, he isn’t. His economic agenda is relatively small-bore — a bunch of modest if sensible proposals rather than a big push. More important, it’s aimed at the medium term, the economy of 2020, rather than at the clear and pressing problems of the present."

But Obama's vision is better than Romney's. It's just not "left" enough to push back much against all the ground we've lost. The Center usually is a mid point between aristocrats and commoners. Our current system is a mid point between aristocrats with a conscience and commoners with no conscience; and trying to hold onto what few gains the rest of us commoners have made. When the right pushes back it is usually pushing for elitism and aristocracy. That is what they are trying to conserve; their own wealth and privilege. Not general common rights, etc...

...."If you didn’t know what was actually going on in the U.S. economy, you’d think from reading the Obama plan that America was a place where workers with the right skills were in high demand, so that our big problem was that not enough people have those skills. And five or 10 years from now, America might actually look like that. Right now, however, we’re still living in a depressed economy offering poor prospects for almost everyone, including the highly educated.

... And nobody is willing to call a spade a spade, not democrats not republicans, not most of our comfortable well fed pseudo reporters sitting in chairs in the corporate media. We are in a depression.

Indeed, these have been really bad years for recent college graduates, who all too often can’t find anyone willing to make use of their hard-won skills that were expensive to attain. Unemployment and underemployment among recent graduates surged between 2007 and 2010, while far too many highly trained young people found themselves working in low-skill jobs. The job market for skilled workers, like that for Americans in general, is now gradually improving. But it’s still far from normal.

And here is where I disagree with Krugman. He writes:

"In a better world, the president would be proposing bold short-term moves to move us rapidly back to full employment. But he isn’t."

Underlying that is power and ownership, not just short term ameliorating proposals. The fact is that we are suffering a financial and debt driven depression, and behind that is the raw power of elites. For things to move forward the common folks; folks like you and me have to have some savings and income, and we have to be relieved of unfair debts. And that is a power issue not just something that can be fixed with short term Keynesian fixes. But we are facing a steady diet of lies and propaganda. Krugman writes:

O.K., we all understand why. Voters have been told over and over again that the 2009 stimulus didn’t work (actually it did, but it wasn’t big enough), and a few days before a national election is no time to try to change that big a false belief. So all that the administration feels able to offer are measures that would, one hopes, modestly accelerate the recovery already under way.

Obama's efforts will work some, but not because they put people back to work until the economy fixes itself, but because the processes and income transfers involved in putting people back to work shift resources back to where the 30% at the bottom are a little less dispossessed and while the top 1% will continue to own all the improvements in our financial positions at least we won't be dispossessed by them as much as before. Money makes money, and money and power multiply; maybe even multiply by factors of 10 or 100. That was Vilfredo Pareto. Krugman knows that, but what is he going to do? The right knows that, but they think there is nothing wrong with the rich morphing into nobility and they are practicing the big lie. So Krugman is also right when he says:

It’s disappointing, to be sure. But a slow job is better than a snow job. Mr. Obama may not be as bold as we’d like, but he isn’t actively misleading voters the way Mr. Romney is. Furthermore, if we ask what Mr. Romney would probably do in practice, including sharp cuts in programs that aid the less well-off and the imposition of hard-money orthodoxy on the Federal Reserve, it looks like a program that might well derail the recovery and send us back into recession.

So it's a choice between survival, and protecting the current system, and radical change for the worse. For now we have to accept survival.

And you should never forget the broader policy context. Mr. Obama may not have an exciting economic plan, but, if he is re-elected, he will get to implement a health reform that is the biggest improvement in America’s safety net since Medicare. Mr. Romney doesn’t have an economic plan at all, but he is determined not just to repeal Obamacare but to impose savage cuts in Medicaid. So never mind all those bullet points. Think instead about the 45 million Americans who either will or won’t receive essential health care, depending on who wins on Nov. 6.

I'm just an amateur, but I've been following this subject since High School and practically minored in it in college.

http://holtesthoughts.blogspot.com/2012/10/money-isnt-bubble-or-ponzi-schemes.html

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/10/26/opinion/krugman-pointing-toward-prosperity.html?_r=1&partner=rssnyt&emc=rss

Money isn't a Bubble or a Ponzi Schemes

Paul Krugman is my favorite economist. I've been arguing this same subject for a while, and it's nice to see professor Krugman encapsulate the same arguments I've been making for years without the same gravitas.

Paul Krugman: "Noah Smith, who is a better human being than I am, wades through an anti-Krugman rant to find an interesting nugget: the claim that money is a bubble. It isn’t, of course; but my explanation of why it isn’t is a bit different from his, and has wider implications."
We've got these idiots who want "real money" -- which means money with intrinsic value that someone can stick in a mattress and hide. But Paul notes the distinction, what a Bubble is:
"I’d start by asking, what do we mean when we talk about bubbles? Basically, I’d argue, we mean that people are basing their decisions on beliefs about the future that are based on recent experience but can’t be fulfilled. E.g., people buy houses because they expect home prices to keep rising at a pace that would eventually leave nobody able to buy a first home."
Professor Krugman knows how to explain things so even a drop out can understand:
"Bubbles don’t have to involve prices. You can have a local construction boom driven by rapid growth in an area’s population and employment, when the main thing driving that rapid growth is … the local construction boom, which will eventually collapse when enough houses are completed. The point, whether prices are involved or not, is that the expectations of individuals add up to an aggregate impossibility."
Yes a bubble is similar to a Ponzi scheme except that usually a lot of folks are in on the risk and self-deception. Paul notes:
"This sounds a lot like what happens in a Ponzi scheme, where people are relying on an ever-growing number of new subscribers, and are doomed to disaster when the pool of potential suckers runs dry. And as Robert Schiller taught us long ago, bubbles are in fact “natural Ponzi schemes”, in which Bernie Madoff’s place is taken by the invisible hand of confusion."
The invisible hand of confusion is supplemented by people who do understand what is happening and plan to get their fill and get out before the whole thing collapses. Paul shows that fiat money is not a bubble:
"Is fiat money a bubble in this sense? Not at all. It’s true that green pieces of paper have no intrinsic value (except that they can be used to pay taxes, which is actually important), so that my willingness to accept green paper from you is based only on my belief that I can in turn hand that green paper over to someone else. But there’s nothing to prevent that process of monetary circulation from going on forever."
Except of course human herd behavior and human self destruction (the hurd running off a cliff):
"So what is fiat money? It is, as Paul Samuelson put it in his original overlapping-generations model (pdf), a “social contrivance”. It’s a convention, which works as long as the future is like the past. Obviously, such conventions can break down — but then so can things like property rights. In fact, you could argue that almost every asset in a modern economy owes its value to social convention; green pieces of paper could become worthless, but then so could any paper claim, which is, after all, worth something only because laws say it is — and laws can be repealed."
I downloaded the Real Economists article.
"And once you realize that a social convention is not at all the same thing as a bubble, several related fallacies fall into place."
A lot of our prices, and the wages we pay people are based on social convention. Which is a fancy word for generally accepted habits. It may make no sense that teachers are paid less than stock market cons, but the stock market cons pay themselves and someone pays the teachers and society might claim they are worth more, but refuses to pay them more.

"Take the common claim on the right that Social Security is a Ponzi scheme because the system has few real assets. It’s true that Social Security is mainly a system in which each generation pays for the previous generation’s retirement, in the expectation that it will receive the same treatment from the next generation. But like monetary circulation, this process can go on forever; there’s nothing unsustainable about it (yes, demography, but that’s about the levels of taxes and benefits, not the fundamental nature of the scheme). So there’s nothing Ponziesque at all."
But it makes a good argument for those who would prefer most of us rout around in garbage dumps for our meals.
Paul: "A final thought: the notion that there must be a “fundamental” source for money’s value, although it’s a right-wing trope, bears a strong family resemblance to the Marxist labor theory of value. In each case what people are missing is that value is an emergent property, not an essence: money, and actually everything, has a market value based on the role it plays in our economy — full stop."
The ponzi scheme is the idea that any of the thefts committed by right wing ideologues will ever trickle down to the people ripped off.

http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/10/22/things-that-arent-bubbles/