capital-schizofrenia on Nostr: The Entropy of Capitalism (Robert Biel, 2011) In what ways is Capitalism best ...
The Entropy of Capitalism (Robert Biel, 2011)
In what ways is Capitalism best understood as a thermodynamic entity?
Leaving for a moment the precision of that which is entailed by thermodynamics from physics
where are there overlapping qualities?
A chronologically ordered but not directly successive sequence of quotes:
"The term implies that something (not just economic exploitation but ideological alienation, militarism etc.) has built up a momentum of its own and become a self-propagating force, severed from rational control and consuming the society which produced it."
this is a very Landian analysis of Capital
a self-propagating force
but then again, how apt it is in our modern societies
how apt it is to view the ways in which capital self-sustains itself
a business in its very essence, an abstraction which self-sustains itself
beyond the necessary intervention of the human
it can exist and live in a structure of rules
"neo-liberalism exploits the proposition (true in itself) that self-generated order is better than designed, as an excuse to outlaw social projects or any attempt to better the human condition."
"if we view capitalism as an adaptive system, how, might it adapt to the symptoms of its own decay (entropy)?"
this is a thought provoking question
is it also a legitimate question?
what does it mean, what decay is being referred to here
what is the decay of capitalism?
may we see a degradation of products, a successive worsening of quality as a decay? we certainly may, but is it equally a decay of capitalism? is it not in the very interest of capital to produce cheaper and cheaper goods, at the expense of external resources, such that capital can accumulate in the hands of those that have been able to harness the means of efficiency?
then perhaps the decay of capitalism should be its waste
all those things which pass through capitalism, all the goods and products, people even at times may be passing through capitalism, may end up on the other side of the equation as something which can no longer be put to use ...
a piece of plastic which can not be recycled
a man that is too old to be part of the work force
a plot of land who's nutrients are long extracted, and who's produce has been sold
"\[...\] in dealing with human systems, we must always remember how big a role consciousness plays: the self-organising faculty thus takes the specific form of human capacity, which can be considered a free kind of energy."
This free kind of energy. Do we really get the energy of our consciousness for free? An allusion to our free will. We can not but experience our will to act differently in some situations over others.
"The only safe way of organising productive systems and society is to insist that they be low-input/low-output. The point is not just to avoid importing into the social system finite stocks, but more profoundly to avoid the export of waste (another representation of entropy) in a way which undermines the balancing mechanisms which should enable us to access solar energy safely (destruction of the ozone layer, excessive CO etc.)."
"When consumed, resources turn into high entropy (waste)."
waste is the high entropy decay of capitalism
"If entropy can partly be represented as waste, then we could look towards some social representation of entropy as the human capacity which goes to waste, generation after generation. There is a sense in which human society is, under capitalism, depleting not just nature but itself."
"The systems perspective shows that the solution of ‘organised capitalism’ would fail not just because of residual competition, but more profoundly because it is top-down and does not allow for self-organisation."
"The point is that to make such a system work efficiently, it would be totally counter-productive to try and organise it too much. It is inherently a complex system which must make use of emergence and self-modifying structure."
thank you Robert Biel for your inspiring thoughts on capitalism
it remains an open question how we move forward
though I leave a final quote where you try to give a flavour of this too:
"[A] hypothesis, which will be central to our enquiry: on the basis of a given population, if you can discover a social system which unleashes capacity, you will have released a latent free resource; by expanding this, you can in parallel reduce ecological depletion without any overall loss of welfare."
thus an idea to meditate on:
what is capacity to social systems, and what are examples of social systems that unleash capacity?
In what ways is Capitalism best understood as a thermodynamic entity?
Leaving for a moment the precision of that which is entailed by thermodynamics from physics
where are there overlapping qualities?
A chronologically ordered but not directly successive sequence of quotes:
"The term implies that something (not just economic exploitation but ideological alienation, militarism etc.) has built up a momentum of its own and become a self-propagating force, severed from rational control and consuming the society which produced it."
this is a very Landian analysis of Capital
a self-propagating force
but then again, how apt it is in our modern societies
how apt it is to view the ways in which capital self-sustains itself
a business in its very essence, an abstraction which self-sustains itself
beyond the necessary intervention of the human
it can exist and live in a structure of rules
"neo-liberalism exploits the proposition (true in itself) that self-generated order is better than designed, as an excuse to outlaw social projects or any attempt to better the human condition."
"if we view capitalism as an adaptive system, how, might it adapt to the symptoms of its own decay (entropy)?"
this is a thought provoking question
is it also a legitimate question?
what does it mean, what decay is being referred to here
what is the decay of capitalism?
may we see a degradation of products, a successive worsening of quality as a decay? we certainly may, but is it equally a decay of capitalism? is it not in the very interest of capital to produce cheaper and cheaper goods, at the expense of external resources, such that capital can accumulate in the hands of those that have been able to harness the means of efficiency?
then perhaps the decay of capitalism should be its waste
all those things which pass through capitalism, all the goods and products, people even at times may be passing through capitalism, may end up on the other side of the equation as something which can no longer be put to use ...
a piece of plastic which can not be recycled
a man that is too old to be part of the work force
a plot of land who's nutrients are long extracted, and who's produce has been sold
"\[...\] in dealing with human systems, we must always remember how big a role consciousness plays: the self-organising faculty thus takes the specific form of human capacity, which can be considered a free kind of energy."
This free kind of energy. Do we really get the energy of our consciousness for free? An allusion to our free will. We can not but experience our will to act differently in some situations over others.
"The only safe way of organising productive systems and society is to insist that they be low-input/low-output. The point is not just to avoid importing into the social system finite stocks, but more profoundly to avoid the export of waste (another representation of entropy) in a way which undermines the balancing mechanisms which should enable us to access solar energy safely (destruction of the ozone layer, excessive CO etc.)."
"When consumed, resources turn into high entropy (waste)."
waste is the high entropy decay of capitalism
"If entropy can partly be represented as waste, then we could look towards some social representation of entropy as the human capacity which goes to waste, generation after generation. There is a sense in which human society is, under capitalism, depleting not just nature but itself."
"The systems perspective shows that the solution of ‘organised capitalism’ would fail not just because of residual competition, but more profoundly because it is top-down and does not allow for self-organisation."
"The point is that to make such a system work efficiently, it would be totally counter-productive to try and organise it too much. It is inherently a complex system which must make use of emergence and self-modifying structure."
thank you Robert Biel for your inspiring thoughts on capitalism
it remains an open question how we move forward
though I leave a final quote where you try to give a flavour of this too:
"[A] hypothesis, which will be central to our enquiry: on the basis of a given population, if you can discover a social system which unleashes capacity, you will have released a latent free resource; by expanding this, you can in parallel reduce ecological depletion without any overall loss of welfare."
thus an idea to meditate on:
what is capacity to social systems, and what are examples of social systems that unleash capacity?