{"id":3800,"date":"2015-01-29T13:11:29","date_gmt":"2015-01-29T13:11:29","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dminlgp\/?p=3800"},"modified":"2015-01-29T13:11:29","modified_gmt":"2015-01-29T13:11:29","slug":"cant-we-just-fish","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/cant-we-just-fish\/","title":{"rendered":"Can’t We Just Fish?"},"content":{"rendered":"

Are self-regulated markets the real evil of the industrial revolution that have fundamentally flawed the core development of the \u201cWestern World\u201d? I believe Karl Polanyi in his book, \u201cThe Great Transformation: The Political and Economic Origins of our Time\u201d not only poses this ultimate question but answers it with a resounding yes. Joseph Stiglitz in his forward states that Polanyi\u2019s book describes \u201cthe great transformation of European civilization from the preindustrial world to the era of industrialization , and the shifts in ideas, ideologies, and social and economic policies accompanying it.\u201d[1]<\/a> I believe Polanyi goes much further to denounce the results of it . . . the results of a self-regulated markets.<\/p>\n

Polanyi\u2019s basic claim is that when the four institutional pillars that existed in the 19th<\/sup> century (balance of power, the gold standard, the free-market and the liberal state) were disrupted, that the introduction self-regulated markets created, ultimately due to the collapse of the gold standard, the world and shaping of Western thought was radically changed.[2]<\/a><\/p>\n

Joseph Stiglitz states, \u201cIt is hard, and probably wrong even to attempt to summarize a book of such complexity and subtlety in a few lines.\u201d[3]<\/a> While I totally agree, I do believe that this thread of the gold standard collapse being at the heart of the development of the self-regulated market because their was no long and external marker or determiner on the value and control of all things \u201cgoods and services\u201d. To me this is when the shift of the \u201cthose who have\u201d and the \u201cthose who have not\u201d became controlled by the \u201cthose who have\u201d at new, out of control, \u201cself (those who have) regulated world.<\/p>\n

Jerry Michalski, in his \u201c5-Minute University\u201d on \u201cThe Great Transformation\u201d had an interesting and succinct summary. Jerry summarized Polanyi\u2019s foundation of thought through the shift from the era of feudal serfdom to the era of the industrial revolution”.[4]<\/a><\/p>\n

Michalski summarizes the real shifts between the eras as the time when people where pulled off the land, moved into factories, mass production began and the need for a different kind of social welfare surfaced. Michalski spoke of the shift from the \u201ceconomy\u2019 of house-holding, reciprocity and redistribution. House-holding was how the majority of people, the masses, survived living off of their land as a primarily self contained food, shelter and clothing provider. Reciprocity was the simple interaction between house-holders who could help one another out with each others basic human needs. Redistribution, according to Michalski, was the occasional act of a king who would provide for the masses at times through feasts and celebrations, regularly and irregularly held.<\/p>\n

Michalski goes on to paint the picture that Polanyi primarily discusses in chapter six on the introduction and development of \u201cfictitious commodities of land, labor and money.\u201d With the industrial revolution the reality of society existing off of house-holding, reciprocity, and redistribution radically changed as suddenly land, labor, and money were fabricated into new \u201cneeds\u201d in the world. (new needs of the \u201cthose who have\u201d)<\/p>\n

Technically it would be through the fabrication of these new needs that the evolution of a free market began primarily because of power issues and dynamics that were being created by the new land, labor, and money demands entering the \u201cecosystem.\u201d In an over-simplified but real way the new need for labor for mass production affected how land was used, needed, and distributed; the kind of life this new kind of \u201claboring\u201d provided required another means of supplying basic human needs of food shelter and clothing; and the \u201cmoney\u201d that had to be \u201ccreated\u201d for the exchange of \u201cgoods and services\u201d necessary for life in the new world emerging became something that needed to be created. House-holding, reciprocity and redistribution where being replaced and while in the moment and amidst the change taking place there wasn\u2019t any immediate visibility of the real hollowing out or the eminent threat of hollowing out a \u201cmeaningful life\u201d that was taking place.<\/p>\n

Ultimately the creation of the power dynamics that were created from such a shift is what led to a free market being created, that Polanyi claims would have to be regulated if society was not going to be corrupted by a few, exploiting many to make the world run how it will need to under the fictitious commodities that were evolving. This whole cycle reminded me of the parable where an aspiring young businessman approached a woman who was fishing on a beach on a Saturday morning. He watched her for a while and noticed how much she enjoyed fishing on the beach on Saturday morning. So he approached and developed a great conversation with her about how if she got a couple more poles in the water and could catch a few more fish she could sell some of them in the market. He went on to tell her that if she did that, what would be great is she could possibly then get a boat. If she got a boat then she could go out into deeper waters and catch more. If she could catch more she could hire others to fish from the shore and then she could really catch a lot of fish and could sell so much more that eventually she could have several boats and a whole company where she could even hire someone to run the whole operation as it went \u201cglobal\u201d. Through out the conversation, or monologue of the young businessman, the only real part of the conversation the woman fishing on the beach on the Saturday morning contributed was to ask the young businessman \u201cwhy?\u201d In the end, when she finally asked \u201cwhy\u201d would she want to turn her Saturday morning fishing outing into a global fishing enterprise and hire someone else to come in and run it, he replied, \u201cBecause then you could spend your Saturday mornings relaxing fishing on the beach.\u201d She, in turn, replied, \u201cWhile that sounds like a great and amazing idea, I think I am all set.\u201d And she went on fishing on the beach on Saturday morning.<\/p>\n

While that is a poor attempt of a rewrite of that story I think fundamentally this is the point Polanyi is making about what the industrial revolution has done to the world and ultimately because of a free, self-regulated market developed by \u201cyoung businessman\u201d that maybe the \u201celites\u201d are doing well but the reality of the masses is poverty, exploitation and being a part of fishing enterprises when all they really want to do is fish.<\/p>\n

I am pretty sure that if we investigated the 2008 crash of the housing market (Land), the automotive collapse (Labor) and government bailout (money) and the financial crisis created by non-fictitious collapse of these fictitious commodities, much could be learned about the wall we continue to run at in the Western world. ???<\/p>\n

[1]<\/a> Polanyi, Karl. The Great Transformation: The Political and Economic Origins of Our Time. 2nd ed. Boston, MA: Beacon Press, 2001. p. vii<\/p>\n

[2]<\/a> Ibid., p.3<\/p>\n

[3]<\/a> Ibid., p.vii<\/p>\n

[4]<\/a> Michaliski, Jerry. 5minU: The Great Transformation. https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=rSuz01zvOjE<\/a>. August 8, 2013.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Are self-regulated markets the real evil of the industrial revolution that have fundamentally flawed the core development of the \u201cWestern World\u201d? I believe Karl Polanyi in his book, \u201cThe Great Transformation: The Political and Economic Origins of our Time\u201d not only poses this ultimate question but answers it with a resounding yes. Joseph Stiglitz in […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":37,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[4],"class_list":["post-3800","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-polanyi","cohort-lgp5"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3800","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/37"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3800"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3800\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3801,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3800\/revisions\/3801"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3800"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3800"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3800"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}