THE PATTERNS OF TRADE

I am coming close to the end of my History of Man, with only two more posts to go after this one. So maybe, at this point, I should look at one of the most important patterns within world history.
In the last three posts we’ve seen a modern expression of this pattern in the clash between capitalism and communism. For one of the major things these two systems shared was an inherent idea of trade.

A BRIEF HISTORY OF MAN

At the dawn of history events happened in apparent isolation. This ended when empires began to dominate as powerful men built powerful nations that attacked and subdued their neighbours, culminating in the might of the Roman Empire.
Monotheism - the belief in the One God - then siezed the psyche of man. From the initial idea in the Jews, it spread to create Christianity and Islam. From Arabia an Islamic Empire grew and then declined, but in growing the Christians came together in the Crusades.
This gave Europe its first taste of colonisation, and also turned Christianity into a mighty administrative force. In Europe, learning became the preserve of the Christians. Then secular man began questioning his authority.
It was the time of the Renaissance and the birth of Humanism. The spirit led to a split in the Christian Church and then moved from the arena of the scholar to the soldier. This culminated in the Age of Enlightenment and French and American Revolution, people power triumphant over religious dogma and the rights of kings. But people power was an ominous thing, inevitably turning into further repression.
Napoleon rose through people power and change the face of Europe, bringing politics close to the national interests of today, whilst overseas the European empire builder forged the world into a global society where things could no longer happen in isolation.
The Industrial Revolution brought another surge of people power as the affluent middleclass thrived and the majority led impoverished lives. Marx grasped the essence of the times and the communist revolt stood just around the corner.
Meanwhile a new power - Germany - rose in Europe, thrusting the continent into a bloody civil war based on an ideological clash of left and right, encompassing two world wars and ripping Europe apart.
The wars over, and Europe a sick man, it lost its grip on empire, and people power imbued the oppressed Third World. Seeing communism as the opposite of this imperial dread, they grasped it, turned it into nationalism and grasped independence.
Further, the decline of Europe left a power vacuum soon to be filled by Superpowers and a new left/right ideological clash, the eventual fall of Soviet communism leaving a single Superpower in America, with a wave of Islamic fundamentalism beginning to break out in the Middle East, suggesting a new ideological clash of the secularist and religionist.

GLOBAL VILLAGE

Now, nothing can happen in isolation. The human race is a family on a small planet, becoming increasingly claustrophobic and unsure where the future lies. Troubles seem that much greater nowadays, turning man against thinking at all lest he surfaces a feeling of doom, intellectualism scoffed at, fearful of the political dangers it caused.
But is he correct in this pessimism? Is man close to some great reckoning, or has he just risen from adolescence with a new, exciting future ahead of him in, not doom, but peace and togetherness?
It is easy to see the history of man as a continual process of invasion and warfare, but it should be remembered that there is an underlying trend to such activity.

TRADING MAN

The first expansionist policy in global terms was that of Alexander the Great. And once his empire had come into being the Hellenistic world flourished as a trading society.
The empire which followed this - Rome - forged the whole of Eurasia through trade, providing the first technologically based infrastructure to aid the process with a network of roads.
Similarly, with the unification of the Arabic world through Islam, the Arab trader organised himself and from that time on the famous caravans have continually padded the Sahara.
In line with the Renaissance, northern Italy rose to be the first large scale urban connurbation and trading centre. Venetian merchants created the world’s largest maritime merchant fleet, cementing ties with the whole Mediterranean world and reaching as far as England.
With the beginnings of European expansion worldwide, Venice lost importance as the New World of America was discovered, rich in gold and silver. Indeed, it should be remembered that the initial reason for Spanish and Portuguese seafaring was to find a western route to Asia for trade.
Industrialisation soon came to this New World and the US had their civil war, shooting them forward to lead the economic, capitalist world, the final problem to unlimited trade being overcome by the development of transcontinental railways and rise in tonnage of merchant vessels, together with the transfer from sail to steam.
The Depression of the 1930s, seen after the fact, had benefits in that it made the world economists take a breather and contemplate. The nature of trade had become so complex that it was, by the 20th century, an integral factor in civilised life.
Just as agriculture had regulated civilisation before 1500, trade and technology regulate us now, with multi-nationals competing with governments for power.
The crippling of Europe following the world wars was only alleviated by the US Marshal Plan, flooding European trade with money, and the creation of the European Economic Community following the Treaty of Rome, leading to European Union and ideas of European integration.
Arab oil and US/Japan-led high technology, being the main elements of present life, must be seen, not as a new element of man’s civilisation, but perhaps the latest expression of a major factor in our story of advancement - a story that, although scarred by war and oppression, has been changed fundamentally by only four major events; the agricultural revolution, the development of the city-state, the Industrial Revolution and the present Hi-tech Revolution.
I don’t think, for a minute, that we have this trading impulse right, even now. Multi-nationals are clearly more a process of empire-building in a new world, but it is, nonetheless, trade. And the answer to our present problems will also come from trade.
Trade is, it seems, what we do.

(c) Anthony North, March 2008

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THE INEFFICIENCY OF EFFICIENCY

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THE INEFFICIENCY OF EFFICIENCY

Now there’s a title to get you confused. If something is efficient it cannot be inefficient, surely? But in the crazy world we have created nowadays the two do not always follow. For instance, a PR message can appear efficient, but is full of spin.
Underneath so much of the modern world this factor rings true. A politician can appear efficient, but increasingly they are proving to be totally inefficient.

Such an argument goes to the heart of Big Biz.

The beauty of today’s corporate world is said to be that it runs with the perfection of a machine. Maximising everything to its utmost potential, nothing is wasted, and the end result is profit for all, and a service next to none.
In many ways, this is quite true. But there are problems in such an approach. First of all, it ends up being an unbending machine indeed. Everything is down to procedure, and any deviation from the norm becomes impossible.

And we’ve all been on the receiving end of this inflexibility.

But the major problem goes even deeper. Because this type of inflexibility may be essential to the running of a machine, but it is counter to good order.
Essential to any non-machine is the idea of surplus. Things happen in life that cause disruptions to the system, or even create sudden higher demand. But have you noticed that whenever our corporate world is faced with such a blip, it fails to provide?
Machines are machines, and societies are societies, and sadly the two cannot possibly meet. But too many who think they know seem to think they can. And as long as this is the case, the efficient will always be ultimately inefficient.

© Anthony North, February 2008

WEB DIAGNOSIS

Feeling a little under the weather? Is something paining you? Is your body refusing to do as it’s told? Do you have some incredibly dangerous virus or bug? Have you seen your doctor …
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BIG POINTY MISSILES

Poland has agreed ‘in principle’ to allow the US to install their missile defence system. In return Poland will get help in bolstering their air defences. The missiles are needed, it is claimed, to protect against possible attack from Iran or North Korea …
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THE WEST OUT OF CONTROL

Since the fall of the Berlin Wall, western culture is said to have gone from strength to strength. Capitalism is king, with affluence breaking out all over. However, the reality may not be quite what it seems.
On the down side, multi-nationals are becoming more powerful than countries, and in commanding the economy, they also command governments. And you can add many other problems to this.

Where do we start?

We could start with individuality rising above community, leaving so many people alone. We could start with the environmental damage being done to the planet. We could start with wars due to other cultures fearing for their existence.
And this is before mentioning rising crime, psychological problems out of control, and the average person having debts many times his annual income. Indeed, the drawbacks seem far in excess of the advantages.

But why has it all gone so wrong?

One answer is to go back to a conference at Mont Pelerin, Switzerland, in 1947. At the time, collectivism was rampant, and a number of intellectuals, headed by FA Hayek, met to devise an economic strategy to destroy it.
Including the likes of Popper and Friedman, think tanks were formed throughout the west, their influence leading to Reaganomics and Thatcherism, and the eventual economic victory over Communism.
It worked well, and went on to create today’s super-Capitalism. But the reality is, it was a weapon. It was a weapon that won. But it was a weapon that was never turned off. And when a weapon goes out of control, it ends up turning on the user.

© Anthony North, October 2007

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Fiction Xtra - GRATITUDE FROM THE TOP - A tale of conspiracy

‘I really cannot thank you enough,’ said the Prime Minister as the Cleaner stood before him. The Cleaner – tall, dark haired, dark suited, bespectacled – remained silent. He hardly ever spoke. Hardly ever asked for thanks. He was the machine who cleaned …
… read more …

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TOTAL ISN’T TOTAL

I’ve often pointed out that modern western governments are leaving democracy behind and heading towards totalitarianism. Most people dismiss this as nonsense – after all, we have never had so many freedoms as we have today.
In one sense, this is true. Today you can be gay, an ethnic minority, or have any lifestyle you choose and be satisfied that, whilst prejudice still exists, the law is more or less on your side.

But this is to misunderstand what totalitarianism is.

We think of it in Nazi or Stalinist terms, with everything regulated and no freedom to be had. But the reality is, as long as you stick to certain ‘values’, dictators leave you alone.
This has to be the case or society will simply stop. Hence, even in a totalitarian state, much of ordinary life goes on without the authorities sticking their nose in and carting you off to the nearest Gulag.
Hence, to understand why we’re heading for totalitarianism today, you have to look, not at the freedoms that do not get in the way of the system, but the ‘values’ you have to hold to be ‘within’ the system.

When you do this, a different understanding arises.

Today’s ‘system’ is what I would call fundamentalist capitalism. Hence, you can be whatever you want, as long as you have a hefty mortgage, fat pension, new car, designer clothes, plenty of holidays, and indulge in every fad that’s offered.
And anything that disagrees with this ‘system’ is marginalized, water-down, or ignored. And in that sense, good reader, we are heading towards a single system, which, by nature, is totalitarian.

© Anthony North, September 2007

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TONY ON E-MAIL AND OTHER NEWS

THOUGHTS FROM A COMMON MAN
News and comment LATEST: Do e-mails drive you mad? … PLUS … China Toys, they’re so toxic; but at least they don’t complain – like students!
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SWAMPED BY THE E-MAIL

Workers have now realized the one truth of technology, which is: that which is designed to make work easier makes it harder. And as they are swamped by constant e-mails, it is getting out of hand.
The survey comes from Paisley University, and concerns mainly academics and creative types. But even the majority here claim to check their e-mails at least every hour. So what must it be like for commerce?
The sad truth is that, unless we employ commonsense, technology always makes life harder rather than easier. The day we finally realize this, technology may be of great benefit to mankind. But until then, it is our jailer as much as a friend.

© Anthony North, August 2007

CHINA TOYS

There’s been another scare over China’s exports. In the UK toys by their million are being withdrawn because they contain toxic materials. The latest in a long line of inferior quality goods, blame is being placed squarely on Chinese practices …
… read more …

COMPLAINING STUDENTS

Since the introduction of student top-up fees in UK universities, student’s complaints have shot up 44%. This is being put down to ‘consumer culture.’ Which is hardly surprising - after all, if you pay, you want service, don’t you? …
… read more …

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NATURE PROVIDES

According to market researchers, Mintel, alternative remedy sales are hitting the roof in the UK. Rising by a third since 2002, Brits will spend £191million on treatments this year alone, rising to £250million by 2011.
Alternative is, it seems, big business. Of course, it had to come. Once a market is found, big business will fill it. And the problem is, such remedies seem to work. Okay, it may only be the placebo effect, but what the hell.

Damn! I hate it when big business gets something right.

Or have they? Well, of course not. It’s just a side line to the good old pharmaceuticals. Don’t worry, they’ll keep pumping out all the artificial stuff to keep as many of us as possible as legalized junkies just to keep the heart pumping, or that killer gene at bay.
The problem is, whenever I look towards nature, I get the impression it knows what it is doing, and I’d bet you it has provided a natural remedy for all the conditions we currently pump the chemicals for.

But that wouldn’t be as profitable for big business, would it?

Yes, I accept the advice that we should never REPLACE conventional medicine for an alternative remedy. That is just stupid. But the reason this is so is because big business isn’t really looking for the real natural remedies that would make them redundant.
Maybe we should get out of our drugged up stupor and demand they do.

© Anthony North, August 2007

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TONY ON FLOODS AND OTHER NEWS

THOUGHTS FROM A COMMON MAN
News and comment LATEST: UK floods – natural or unnatural disaster? … PLUS … What happened to aircraft carriers? Cameron! Get your act together.
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FLOODS, BIGNESS AND EFFICIENCY

The Great Flood is well under way in the UK. Many counties, cities and towns in the south west, and other areas, have been deluged as rivers break their banks. A natural disaster …
No, hang on a minute. It MAY be a natural disaster in part. Unless man-made climate change is behind it - and we accept that flood plains will revert to flood plains. But now there are some 300,000 people without water supplies, whilst sewage infested water swirls around them.

Is this a natural disaster?

I find it amazing that the deluging of such a small part of the infra-structure was responsible for this termination of supplies. But then again, maybe not.
Over recent decades, the term ‘efficiency’ has been used to explain the marvelous services we get today. This has been achieved by two simple business ideals. The first is that a few bigger facilities are far more efficient than many smaller ones.
Yes, this is absolutely true, if your main motive for efficiency is profit. But when the slightest problem affects just a few – or even one – of these bigger facilities, the implications are enormous – and hundreds of thousands of people will be without water for maybe two weeks.
Bigger is very rarely better, or more efficient. For as soon as pressure enters the system, it fails. We should wake up to the simple fact that smaller, and more, is the only option to survive such problems – and demand that business allows a touch of inefficiency into the system, so that it can be efficient.

© Anthony North, July 2007

DAVID’S HONEYMOON IS OVER

When David Cameron was first picked to lead the Tory Party, I thought, great! Just what was needed. It had nothing to do with him being a good politician – more with the importance of PR …
… read more …

THE MYTHICAL AIRCRAFT CARRIERS

The building of two new Royal Navy aircraft carriers is about to be announced – perhaps. These super-duper ships were first authorized ten years ago, and should have been in service by 2015 …
… read more …

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TONY ON NIGHTMARE TECH AND OTHER NEWS

THOUGHTS FROM A COMMON MAN
News and comment LATEST: What our mania for gadgets is doing to us … PLUS … Solar effects on Global Warming? The reality of big business take-overs …
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NIGHTMARE TECH

The MSN Tech and Gadgets website has undergone a survey regarding what we think of modern gadgets. Whilst most people seem to love them, they have identified a ‘dark side of technology.’
They didn’t need a survey to realize that. All technology has a flip side of irritation. Sometimes the irritation is worthwhile, but as we now live in a gadget obsessed society, we will fight the irritation regardless, even if it is far greater than the benefit.

Extensions of Man

From speed cameras to novelty doorbells, from car alarms to security lights, tech is taking over our lives. One major factor in this is marketing. After all, if you’re told often enough that something is good, you’ll believe it – and ignore the pain.
But maybe the problem is more fundamental than this. From the birth of history, technology has been our saviour, making life better and protecting us from danger. Over millennia, tech has been the right thing to do.
Now that we live in a society where tech can be cheap and easy, history demands that we use it. But what has really happened is that tech has increasingly become the purpose for life, rather than being simply a form of assistance.

Machine Society

In effect, technology is increasingly taking over the human, and this can be seen in many areas of life. On any street, cameras have replaced the policeman; in any office, computers do the work of the clerk.
The gadgets we produce today are simply the trivial part of a much deeper problem – the mechanization of society. And as society becomes more and more mechanized, the more society will ape the machine.
This is because a machine can only do what it is designed to do. It allows no variation, no alternative. And as society becomes more automated, society, too, will allow no variation and no alternative.
Enjoy your gadgets while you can, for soon they may be enjoying you.

© Anthony North, July 2007

IS THE SUN IN THE CLEAR?

A report by the Rutherford Appleton Laboratory in Oxfordshire seems to put the sun in the clear regarding global warming. Solar trends since the 1980s, they say, should have left to a cooling, not a warming …
… read more …

THE TAKE-OVER TAKE OVER

At last, even some people in business are beginning to understand that big-business stinks. Richard Lambert, DG of the CBI, has warned that UK businesses are being taken over by an elite band of financiers …
… read more …

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TONY ON ARTISTIC UK AND OTHER NEWS

THOUGHTS FROM A COMMON MAN
News and comment LATEST: Brownski moves towards totalitarianism … PLUS … what’s wrong with UK cultural exports? Climate change? They don’t believe it.
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ARTISTIC BRITAIN

A report from the Work Foundation has advised that British creativity is fuelling an industry as valuable to the economy as the financial services sector. Britain, it seems, is exporting its culture like never before.
In advertising, architecture, publishing, TV, film, music, software and fashion, the UK generates more money than any other country in the world from culture, employing 1.8 million people and having exports worth £4billion.

A World Culture

In economic terms, this is a marvelous success story, but is it a success in other areas, such as culture, for instance. It certainly seems to suggest so, but the question must be asked: why are UK cultural products being sold so well abroad?
Flagship projects include Glastonbury, Doctor Who and Harry Potter. These are cultural projects which have a distinct sense of the quintessential British. But many do not. Think of The X Factor and similar cultural projects that form the bulk of success.
The essential element of such projects is that they cater not for a specific British culture, but the global. The vast majority of UK exports succeed because people throughout the world can identify with them.

What About Identity?

This is all very well, but the inevitable consequence is that British cultural products are watering down identity and culture in the search for export profit. And as these cultural forms are first aired in the UK itself, what is this doing to British culture?
In the relentless pursuit for profit, and a leading place in the world, the UK is sacrificing its own identity, filling culture with a global image. And throughout the UK, the young are losing a sense of who they are.
Many would class this as a good thing, but such people forget that essential for anything to thrive is diversity – nature and evolution would fail without it. Hence, filling UK culture with a global sameness can only be counter-productive, regardless of profit.

© Anthony North, July 2007

TOTAL BROWNSKI

I would have thought Gordon Brownski would have waited a while before consolidating his dictatorship in the UK, but even I underestimated him. And I have to admit, he is doing it with panache …
… read more …

CLIMATE CHANGE SCEPTICS

Is climate change a great big conspiracy? According to an Ipsos Mori poll between 14-20 June, it definitely is. Of 2,032 people asked, 56% believed scientists were still questioning the idea of humans being to blame …
… read more …

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INDUSTRIAL REVOLUTION

Today cities spread out in huge industrial connurbations. But this is a recent development. At the beginning of the 18th century a city was simply a cultural or political centre twinned with market place or port. Industry, as we know it today, did not exist. Manufacturing DID take place, but on a small scale and close to fast-flowing streams or near forests for wood. Man-made power was still in the future.
Britain led the way, beginning with the textile cottage industry. But the major stumbling block to advancement was the lack of a suitable transport network to get goods to market. So the turn-pike came into being - its income used to pay navvies to improve the roads. But this was inefficient. Hence, Britain - ideally placed, being an island nation with a strong navy and empire, and built upon a treasure trove of coal - looked to her navigable internal waterways, improving them with a network of canals.
Man-made power was advancing in kind. With Darby producing high quality metal by switching to coke, Newcomen had, by 1712, designed the first pumping-engine, enhancing steam, to assist in controlling flooding in ever-deepening coal mines. Industrialisation was beginning to take shape, aided further by the cessation of the Seven Yearns War in 1763, releasing government from a great financial burden and causing them to drop the rate of interest to such a degree that money-lenders proliferated, making London the banking capital of the world by 1770.
By 1775 a canal system connected cornfields to ports, with embryo urban connurbations beginning to form around the expanding iron and textile industries now established in the towns. Availability of cotton from India caused a further explosion in the textile industry, with innovation meeting demand with the loom shuttle, spinning jenny, water-frame and mule. Mass production was born, soon to be followed by the pottery and steel industries of Wedgwood and Wilkinson.
Power was still a problem, but eventually the modern ‘fire-engine’, utilising steam, was devised by Black. In 1765 Watt improved this design with the separate condenser and the first steam engine propelled machinery. The later sun and planets wheel mechanism, and its resulting rotary motion, revolutionised industry.
The result of all this was that soon the canals were swamped so coal, steam and iron came together to build the railways, the principal innovators being Trevithick,
Stephenson and Brunel.
Industrialisation expanded from the shores of Britain, first to the Ruhr in Germany, and transport networks shrunk the world. Electricity brought the night shift, as well as the telegraph and telephone. Then came the radio, internal combustion engine, car and aeroplane. Extraction of oil, as well as aiding transport, brought about man-made dyes and plastics, leading on to the hi-tech, microchip and computerised world of today, with technologies such as the car, television and computer changing the nature of society in a way once only achieved by religions or wars.
A revolution as great as when man first turned to agriculture had taken place, bringing together the financier, entrepreneur and innovator. However, the Industrial Revolution was more than a revolution in terms of society. It also revolutionised society.
At the heart of it was the ideal of linear advancement, so recently re-defined by the new Protestant non-conformist religious sects. Industry was, quite simply, advancement, and correct to the society created by God. Almost to a man, the great innovators of the revolution were themselves Protestant non-conformists, eager to find a place for themselves in a changing world. And this place was to be found in the ascendency and empowerment of a new, educated and strong middleclass.
Involving huge demographic change, this involved re-locating the poor to the cities. Into this chaos, the new industries required a new form of institutionalisation of the poor, redefining the role of serf beholden to the aristocrat, to worker beholden to the capitalist. And at first the result was deplorable.
Boys went down mines. Adults worked until they dropped. Back to back housing appeared with no thought for planning or the people who lived in them. Slums developed with no thought of lighting or sewage. Latrines were open, excrement carried to rivers in open carts. Smog clung to the cities - cities that rose in population eight-fold in two decades.
Cholera swept through Europe, along with typhus, scarlet fever and smallpox. A mass of humanity crowded in dark streets brought crime and prostitution. Damp added pneumonia. Lack of factory filtration brought bronchitis.
Eventually - when the Thames stank so bad that Parliament had to be suspended - things began to change, bringing a revolution of science leading to social benefit. Scientists began to look at sewage, town planning, medical services and industrial legislation. But it was a two-edged development.
The institutionalisation of industry passed into society with the introduction of social institutions such as the hospital prison and workhouse. Funded by charitable giving by non-conformist industrialists, it was just enough to allow the worker to put up with his deplorable lot, thus putting off the worker’s revolutions until the 20th century. The 18th and 19th centuries were to be the revolutionary period of the middleclass.
Principle to this was a redefined social standard which required an empowerment of the family to guarantee inheritance, and a re-emphasis of childhood to allow a long period of education to provide the brainpower for the on-going revolution. For the first time a whole class of people extended family ties and did not allow its children to work from an early age.
Into this system came a new emphasis in government, with the House of Commons in Britain taking precedence over the Lords, and civic centres arising in provincial cities to take hold of local government from the aristocracy. Jury service came to the courts to reduce the power of the aristocratic judge. In the legislation and judiciary the middleclass did what they had already done with the Church through Presbyterianism. And to rejuvenate their social standing, the civic event entered the social calendar, the impressive middleclass terraced houses coming into being, city parks were built for recreation, spa towns for relaxation, and the seaside resort for annual breaks. Throughout Europe the middleclass rose to supremacy.

(c) Anthony North, January 2003

This is a post from Anthony North’s ‘alternative network.’ Current affairs posts almost daily on North’s Review and Eye on the World (this includes politics and links). North’s Review also has fiction, writers’ resources and TV reviews. For deeper issues, including paranormal, crime, environment and much more, Beyond the Blog is for you.