I've just returned to teaching after a yearlong sabbatical. I clearly need some practice to warm back up. My attempted class discussion on surplus value (based on the first chapter of David Harvey's The Limits to Capitaldid not go nearly as smoothly as I had hoped.
Fundamental to my struggle was my newfound understanding of Harvey's argument that "value" in the economic sense (and the sense that dominates our contemporary understanding) is bound up with the quantification embodied in the money commodity in the evolution of capitalism. The implication of this was tripping me up. It means that even use value entails a quantitative measure of value, even though people often treat it---as I did---as antithetical to quantifiable exchange value. That is, many of us talk about use value as being outside of capitalist exchange and therefore something to prioritize when pressing for social change. Though it is still something to prioritize, it is not outside of exchange. Marx and Harvey are clear that use value is inherently economic because a commodity without use value lacks demand and therefore value.
But I also wanted bring out the notion that some non-capitalist formations have no need to attribute value to the things in their world. If these "things", these products of labor, are not commodities, they do not have use value or exchange value as Marx presents them. Instead, they have value in a different sense, in the send that they are important to survival and social reproduction. Because this latter notion of value is so close to use value, differing primarily in their relation to exchange, I had trouble articulating the concept of surplus value.
If we overlook this complication, the explanation of surplus value becomes simpler. Surplus value is the value created by labor for which labor is not compensated. Value is the socially necessary labor time required to produce a commodity. Labor power is a commodity that has an exchange value. If laborers were compensated for all the value they create, then exchange value would equal value. Due to the unequal relations between the owners of capital and workers, however, workers are not compensated for all the value they create. Instead, their wages buy enough labor power to generate value sufficient not only to pay their wages but also to line the capitalists' pockets.
How this surplus value, this "accursed share", is dealt with is the fundamental problem of capitalism and the core driver of uneven geographical development.
Sabbatical retrospective
8 August 2025
My sabbatical is coming to an end. I leave the US in less than three weeks to jump back into classes and an apartment I haven't seen for over a year. And, as I often do, I feel compelled to review my year. Mainly, this is because I start with great ambitions and get distracted along the way by life's other demands. I think I will organize this by identifying those big projects, those I failed to engage or complete, and what I actually did. There is probably too much transparency here, but I believe there is little reason to hide aspects of a life lived in earnest.
What I planned to do
Revise my Intro to Development course and write it up as a self-published textbook. I've been planning to do this regularly over the four years I've been teaching the class.
Start researching and writing a book that lays out the economic history of capitalism's expansion through the focal point of my hometown and interweaving it with my own growth.
Write up my paper on smart cities as the diagram of the current systemic cycle of accumulation I call "fully automated capitalism".
Write up a paper on geographical notions in Arrighi's work.
Finally use LLMs to build my poverty survival game.
Read lots of new stuff.
Finish my grant from the USPC to evaluate the current state of the IATI database and its interface(s).
Develop and procure a new grant.
Spend some time with my mother.
Spend time with my family.
Ride my bicycle.
Complete some major yard work at my mother's house.
What I failed to do
The Intro to Development book went nowhere. However, I feel like a revitalization is due, which will entail thinking more clearly about the story I want to tell in my course and the book. Since I have to teach it again in the spring, perhaps that will be the time.
The intertwined biography and history never went beyond some imagination, casual poking around for historical examples, and identifying some possible sources of historical materials.
The papers went nowhere. Despite being outlined and more of less ready to write up (not that the writing itself wouldn't involve new challenges) and despite encouragement to submit, I have made no progress...yet. The looming dark lends its own encouragement to get at least one done.
The poverty survival game did not get beyond a short visit after learning some NLP techniques for the Campus Asia paper on skills mismatch in graduate international studies paper.
I brought a number of books and committed to reading them and so others before returning. Most of these, however, mock me from a shelf to my left. I dare not look there too long!
And I did not complete the major yard projects I had hoped to tackle. The shed still needs repainting. The well house is slipping past repainting into a state of disrepair. The brush pile continues to climb upwards aspiring to found a new Cahokia.
I failed to lose weight. Rather, the abundance of good beer and ice cream has added a few kilograms. Perhaps I will return to my healthier lifestyle in Korea.
I failed to follow through on connecting with some old college friends who have moved to the Hudson Valley. I always want to reconnect, but I believe that I am too scared to do so, since some relationship repair will be needed when it does happen.
What I did do
Get my sourdough game on, including cultivating my own starter. This may well be my greatest achievement of the year.
Cooked quite a bit for the family, since the missus started working. Additionally, did a lot of house cleaning, grocery shopping, child chauffeuring, and general family bureaucracy. (The bureaucracy of daily living demands an aggravating amount of time. Definitely a bane of contemporary living.)
Went to a periodontist for a deep cleaning at the recommendation of new local dentist. Several visits and extra brushing have helped my gums reattach and achieve that healthy grey glow.
Kept my mother's yard in order and looking good. Tried to save a dying birch tree (which now needs to be cut down and turned to firewood). Most other gardening involved pruning fruit trees, bushes, and vines.
At my wife's suggestion, I did volunteer a couple of times at a community garden during the late winter when volunteers are few and far between. I pruned some elderberry bushes and prepped hundreds of seedlings. I worked with my wife on the seedlings, which felt good. Relationship columnists regularly talk about sharing fun activities with your partner. While this is intuitive, it is easy to forget under life pressures and the drudgery of daily life. I realize now that we enjoy collaborating on cultivating plants and trees.
I built an experimental compost bin out of shipping pallets. Too bad it is no longer growing and being turned over frequently.
I have ridden my bicycle quite a bit. I was not terribly creative about exploring new cycling routes. Note, however, that my mother's house is right on what is perhaps the ideal 20-mile loop in the area. It is a loop taught to me by the area's 1960s Olympic cycling contender, Lance, who became a friend at the bike shop I first worked. I have more recently been compelled to explore and develop new routes, which still demand refinement, though they will probably never be as good as the original, which I have heard described as "The Stations of the Cross".
At my cousin's invitation and encouragement, I amped up the jogging component of my exercise regime and ran an under 30 minute 5K in Stratford. (Shout out to my cousin, who is awesome and whom I am warmed to have in my life.)
I am also warmed by reconnecting with one of my oldest and best friends from San Francisco. As a Christmas present, he flew me out to Chicago for the weekend. Though the weekend had many awkward moments as we tried to recalibrate our very different life trajectories and recover from a hangover, he inspired me to make some important changes. I will forever be grateful for our friendship, Pat.
I did spend a lot of time with my mother. There were the small engagements that arise in the course of the day. And I joined her for an hour or so of TV and ice cream every evening. So I caught up on many popular and acclaimed series. (The commitment to be there at a particular time grew burdensome ultimately, but it was still a net positive.)
I surely spent too much time on Reddit and reading the news. I'm going to blame it on the insane election year, but it was probably due to that dopamine addiction. I have made several attempts to at least eliminate phone use and web surfing in bed, but I was less successful than I was in Korea.
Read a fair number of books. They weren't the ones I originally intended to read and many were actually audio books, but I went through a fair number of good books.
To complement the books, I pulled my LP collection out of a decade in basement boxes and starting listening through it alphabetically on a quality phonograph (and other low end gear). I've made it to Marvin Gaye, about a third of the collection. Perhaps I'll get through the H's before I go and pick it up again in the winter.
I've discovered, created, and shared some common musical ground with my daughters, whose musical tastes are quite respectable. They are mainly informed by slightly alt but high quality pop, but they have an engaging spice consisting of beats they've come across serendipitously through my records, Spotify, and Youtube.
Those same daughters and I took a ten day trip to Paris and London, where we visited far more art museums that I expected to, where we had days of just wandering and talking, and where we designed new ways of being together.
I made a few items of simple furniture with my father's power tools.
I learned that transparency doesn't always work for others. I have to exercise some circumspection to keep social relations smooth. This is a new task.
I learned a little NLP and have just started a short introduction to machine learning. Though I only succeeded in familiarizing myself with elementary Python and in drawing a poor sketch of what goes on under the AI hood.
I designed two new courses for the fall semester. This is going to make me extremely busy, especially because I will attempt to convey what little I understand about NLP and ML to some graduate guinea pigs. But at least I won't have the Associate Dean work to deal with!
With the help of the amazing DFL team, I did manage to complete the first grant on time and present a report that was not only well received but also has shaped subsequent research (I believe). Our evaluation of the IATI schema and database argued that the linked project documents were an untapped data gold mine that could be used to better understand aid and development. And Open Data Systems (ODS) recently presented a preliminary exploration of what it would mean to access those documents. (Hint: it's not as easy as it seems due to internet security protocols and inaccessible documents.)
DFL was also successful in applying for and receiving a follow up grant to conduct research based on development data and tools that the USPC is developing. I am looking forward to working with the research residents that we will soon select.
And, of course, I bought a house, moved the family into it, got the house system running, and made some basic physical improvements. The process included shopping, the pain of applying for a loan, which was doubled by my overseas income and residence, and supplying the house basically from the bottom up. We had no furniture and very few of the accoutrements of daily life that people tend to accumulate over many years and had to start from scratch.
This effort has turned out to be much larger than anticipated. There may even be further editing and additions. In net, I have to accept that I sacrificed academic work to catch my breath and move my family into better circumstances. I guess it's been a good year after all. My friend Pat once shared a metaphor for life balance that he had heard from one of his mentors. Andrés compared life energy expenditure to an equalizer. You can't turn up all the frequencies at once. If you turn one up, you have to turn others down. And if that is how it is, it must be okay. Our job is to decide which frequencies to turn up and down based on the music life is playing. (And, yes! This a story from San Francisco!)
Abandoning Korean education
13 July 2025
When I was working on my Master's in International Affairs, I had the great fortune to work on a capstone project for the Ford Foundation and IADB exploring potential strategies for channeling remittances from immigrant hometown associations to their hometowns into quality development projects. (We concluded that the hometown associations were doing a pretty good job and didn't need to add a middle man.) As part of our study, I went to Haiti to conduct field research with a fantastic guy who nows works in education in Chicago. After arriving Port au Prince we initially stayed at a hostel run by Catholic nuns that you just now were involved in more than just running a hostel. It was cool, but when returned from our interviews in Jacmel, my buddy wanted to stay somewhere redolent with Western expat decadence. We stayed at the Oloffson, a gingerbread house with simple, expansive, and well-appointed rooms where Graham Green wrote a novel and the likes of Jagger, Jackie O, and Tennessee Williams visited. Sitting on the balcony in front of our room with a couple of beers looking out over the garden, I knew he'd made the right choice.
Unfortunately, however, the Oloffson was recently set afire and no longer exists. I shared the news with my buddy and we've been reconnecting a little. He asked why my wife and I left Korean schools for American. This is the essence of my answer.
We felt an underlying dissatisfaction with the Korean system. Basically, there is so much pressure and so much studying that learning becomes unhealthy and unpleasant for many. For most Koreans, especially lower middle class and up, studying is treated as the sole reason for a child's existence and organizes their entire existence. Education is the main route to success, as graduating from a top university has been the surest way to find employment in the upper tier of a dual labor market.
So the definition of success is getting into one of the top schools. Any less and a youth is treated as having failed. This turbocharges competition.
And competition has driven parents to push their children to study at school, to study after school at an institute, and to study at home before bed after studying after school. Life is reasonably chill during elementary school. The students are sent to institutes for a few hours each day and sometimes even to do fun activities like art or tae kwon do. But around the beginning of middle school the screws tighten. Activities earlier undertaken for pleasure are rejected in favor of studying a few core subjects. And the screws get tighter the closer senior year comes. It ends in a frenzy with the Korean SAT, which determines which college a student can attend. It's so stressful that the government even suspends flights to ensure maximum silence during the test.
It's all studying to the test. Much of it is rote memorization, a known method of engaging students and encouraging lifelong learning! And they study from rising to sleeping. I have seen dazed and exhausted elementary schools returning home on institute buses at 10pm, which is the latest institutes are allowed to be open. Many kids start sleeping only 6 or 7 hours a night in middle school, and this drops to 4 or 5 hours in many cases during high school. Instead the kids often allowed to sleep during their public school classes since they are so much further ahead anyway.
I didn't want that for my kids. I don't think they did either. They have both said they are much happier here. Mind you, we are in a good school system and my older daughter has decided not to study for the time being. But I am confident that the education they are getting now will help them be happier throughout their lives.
Dave
28 June 2025
Via Metafilter I just came across this post on The Luddite that may well prove useful for my class this fall. Dave and the Spectacle of Computation digs to the root of a media bias study to show that the seminal transformation of the unquantified world into the quantified world is achieved by some guy Dave. The post demonstrates that Dave's supposedly neutral representation of media bias is itself informed by uncritically accepted and socially generated ideological views. This ultimately demonstrates that supposedly objective science is informed by social power at the root.
New home
26 June 2025
I just discovered that it has been exactly three months
since my last post and exactly two months before my sabbatical
ends with a flight back to Korea. Perhaps that has some deeper
meaning, but basically it means that I have been quite busy and
am now beginning to get disappointed that the end is nigh.
Both the delay and the disappointment are surely directly
tied to the fact that my wife and I have purchased a new home.
My wife may have planned this all along, but over the winter I
realized that our living situation had to change in order for
my family to be relax enough to be happy. After a couple of
months shopping in an impossible market, we (literally)
mortgaged our lives away to buy a modest split-level in a
suburban neighborhood. One of the biggest challenges was that
we wanted and perhaps needed to stay in the same town so that
our kids wouldn't have to change schools.
The transition has been all-consuming. First, time was eaten
up in the hunt for a home in the most overheated segment of the
market in Stonington (and many other markets), the starter
home. Here the competition is between families seeking the
school system and retirees seeking a quaint, coastal New
England community. If you can spend a couple million, you have
options. If you're in the low end, like us, it's slim pickin's.
In the end, we probably overpaid a bit, but we surely managed
to purchase one of the better properties on the market this
season. I'm confident it will at least hold its value.
The second time suck was the loan application and purchase.
Since my income is generated overseas and I live overseas more
than six months of the year, the application required reams of
additional documentation and translation.
Third, there was the moving itself, but more surprisingly
was the amount of time it has taken to get things working.
During the brief shopping and inspections, everything looks so
lovely. It was only after arriving that we experienced the
details of the house. As nice as the place is, there are a ton
of minor improvements that have to be done to make the place
functional for us. Noisy ceiling fans that have to be replaced,
drains to be cleared, water spitting faucets that need to be
replaced, light switches that are broken or nonsensically
arranged, a pool pump that breaks down without warning. And
then there is all the shopping for basics. We started with very
little, just personal items collected while living with my
mother. We had to shop for furniture and a whole host of
elementary household items and supplies: spices, weed whackers,
couches, sheets, forks, pots and pans, desks, scissors,
crescent wrenches,...
Fourth, there is the plain day-to-day maintenance of a house
and yard. The grass is growing so fast right now, it needs
mowing every week or so. The pool needs to be turned on and
off, checked and the chemicals balanced. Life, man, life.
But I think it's all good. The family vibe has definitely
picked up, and our domestic world feels much more vibrant. And
that's huge.
Marvin Gaye and the DSA
26 March 2025
There has been so much good radio lately that I've made
little progress through the record collection. I finished
Funkadelic and touched a few alphabetically early G albums. Of
particular note was Red Garland's All Mornin' Long, a
beautiful rainy day album. Today I've started on Marvin Gaye,
which will take a while as well. But it's timely. At my
DSA new member orientation
meeting last night the pre-meeting music was Mercy, Mercy
Me.
Staple Singers
24 March 2025
This evening I have been listening to the Staple Singers.
They may very well be the perfect vibe for facing the US's
current problems.
LP update
3 March 2025
My LP listening has slowed down a bit. It's quite a project
to systematically clean each LP before playing it. That said, I
am back on it for the moment. I've spent a day with Aretha
Franklin and have wallowed through a couple of lackluster
albums. But today begins the Funkadelic section of the
collection. It's time to get funky. And the party won't stop
for a couple of days.
Meanwhile, my younger daughter has also purchased a
turntable and her first LP, Ziggy Stardust. So now
this house has---count them: one, two, three---three
turntables. Go figure.
DOGE and the Doge
26 February 2025
I know (not) Musk's DOGE (Department of Government
Efficiency) is supposedly based on the doge coin brand. But
oddly, I do not think I've seen anyone make the connection to
the Doge of Venice, which Wikipedia
describes as, "both the head of state and head of the Venetian
oligarchy". Is this not Musk's dream?
USAID "wasteful spending"
9 February 2025
The Trump administration has been in overdrive trying to
shutter USAID and fold it into the State Department. I'm not
sure that this itself is a bad idea. Situating ODA decisions
within the State Department would strip away the fiction that
USAID acts for the greater good of humanity rather than serving
US interests. My cynical ass believes that this is how it's
used, so the move might reap some bureaucratic efficiencies. On
the other hand, even greater institutional independence might
allow USAID to work for the genuinely idealistic goals of
improving people's lives for the simple reason that every life
matters. But we are in the era of "What's good for Trump is
good for America".
To achieve their goal, they have been disseminating cherry
picked and misleading "wasteful spending" out of its wider
context. $8.1m for pro-Democrat Politico. $47,000 for a
transgender opera in Colombia. $4.5m for an Iraqi Sesame
Street. And so forth. All ideological dog whistles. Pretty
much all of these facts are false or highly misleading. Several
of them refer to State Department funding. Figures are
distorted or brutally disfigured. All to build political
support for dismantling the agency.
This article in PolitiFact sets the record straight. Read
it yourself to understand what is actually happening. Most of
the spending is related to soft power diplomacy via promoting
shared values (that are perhaps no longer shared...) and
countering Russian disinformation.
As I wrote previously, I may have missed my calling. I
probably should have married some high income individual and
served as their house husband. Over the last couple of days
I've done everything from cleaning mouse traps and shovelling
snow to baking sourdough bread and grocery shopping to making a
minor floor repair and installing a new bathroom faucet
(including grinding the ceramic sink to fit the standard 4"
faucet sizing). Between my parents and the internet, I have
what I need to do it all. I really should be a trad wife.
In other news, after a long week of listening to some good
radio, I have returned to my LPs and finished Duke Ellington. A
few more songs and I'll move on from The English Beat to Eric B
and Rakim.
Elon's data grab
7 February 2025
Just want to get it down on record that I believe one of
Elon Musk's major goals in sending his goons into every federal
office and accessing their databases is to acquire as much data
as he can before he is stopped. The immense trove of detailed
data the government has must be viewed as the modern equivalent
of Potosi, the silver mine in Bolivia that fueled the Spanish
empire.
I would also assume that there is some ambition to create a
Government OS, probably based on blockchain, that can be ported
to other governments, probably as nodes within Musk's overall
system. Government as a service? After all, Yarvin's firm,
Tlön, is reported to be working
toward an app for organizing society and government according
to his Dark Enlightenment principles.
Freedom Cities
5 February 2025
Well, it's all a shit show now. But I'd like to take a
moment to flag an emerging idea about the breakdown.
I've started to absorb information about the Dark
Enlightenment. The central figure behind this influential
far-right paradigm is Curtis
Yarvin. His political philosophy of neo-cameralism
(basically, a monarchy of the most intelligent) was dubbed
"Dark Enlightenment" by Nick Land. Land's philosophical career
began with accelerationism, of which there is much in earlier
posts, and has purportedly evolved into monarchism. Though I
haven't read either of them in any depth yet, I believe the
fundamental notion is that accelerating the contradictions of
capital will lead to a sociopolitical breakdown that midwifes a
new monarchical age of small principalities. I imagine they
have Machiavelli's Italy in mind. These principalities are
ruled by a single monarch, like a company CEO, and compete for
residents by offering an attractive package of services at an
attractive price. Citizens are assumed to be capable of freely
entering or exiting the monarch's principality.
Why does this matter to use now? It appears that Yarvin is
the Silicon Valley whisperer, influencing the thinking of many
tech entrepreneurs, including powerful individuals like Elon
Musk, Peter Thiel, and JD Vance. There is little doubt that
Yarvin's thought informs many political views of these men. And
they are now in power.
I have written before about Trump's wrecking ball "shock and
awe" actions drive toward an accelerationist outcome, but there
appears to be a contemporary urban dimension to this model.
Yarvin has argued in Patchwork (I have heard) that the
ideal society would be a mosaic of small independent
principalities, presumably centered around one major city.
Basically, as Petersen argued for cities in his 1981 City
Limits, these principalities would compete as businesses
for customers. Creating cities independent of national controls
now has a long pedigree. In the contemporary period, we can
look to Paul Romer's "charter cities", special economic zones
(SEZs), Peter Thiel's seasteading movement, and the Silicon
Valley billionaire effort to build "California Forever" in
Solano County.
I want to suggest that this logic informs a number of
spatial strategies of Trump and the current administration.
Musk is clearly about building new cities, both
semi-fictionally on Mars and in real life in Texas. But on 3
March 2023 Trump suggested the building of "Freedom
Cities" that "will be built on federal land that is
undeveloped and not part of any of our country’s magnificent
national parks or other natural treasures." Always eyeing a
real estate opportunity, he is also pushing for a US takeover
of Greenland and the Panama Canal. And, the icing on the cake,
yesterday he said that the US would take over Gaza, eliminating
all Palestinians, razing existing structures, and building a
"Riviera in the Middle East" for international residents.
Sounds like the real estate deal of a lifetime! Even Jarrod
Kushner waxed eloquent about Gaza's real estate potential. For
Trump, I imagine, the only thing he sees is a gold-plated real
estate deal, but I am beginning to think that these
extra-national exceptions to national sovereignty work
hand-in-hand with the Dark Enlightenment vision. Freedom Cities
and the Middle Eastern Riviera are proto-principalities.
Who students think they're emailing...
1 February 2025
My daughter just put this little TikTok video together, so I
thought I should share.
According to
this article in The Guardian, Trump has paused all US aid
to developing countries except humanitarian. It seems the new
administration wants to reassess and reorient US aid to meet
his "America First" agenda.
I think this means ceasing all payments for ongoing projects
and programs, which is likely to damage local economies, local
lives, and the functioning of many communities.
And I presume the disruption is intentional. On one hand it
is a flex to show just how dependent some places are on the US.
On the other hand, it just shakes everything up and allows the
US to reset its priorities. (And I am increasingly convinced
that this reconstruction of the global world order is
intentional and guided by capital.)
But it is so disrespectful. It allows no time for adaptation
to foreseeable changes. The administration has no sympathy for
the people that depend on US support. The lack of humanity
contradicts the entire (idealistic) intent of aid.
Friends and Eek-a-Mouse
25 January 2025
It's been a busy week and a half. I visited an old and
eternal friend in Chicago, where he is working as production
designer for a Apple TV series. Connecting with him again was
amazing. I can't quite put my finger on it, but I think it has
further grounded me. Very healthy overall.
This week some friends dropped by on a celebratory trip from
Korea. Their son has been accepted to a prestigious
undergraduate program in Korea, achieving success as
classically defined in Korea. I got especial joy from seeing my
wife and her friend bonding.
All in all, it is amazing and wonderful to see friends doing
well.
And now it's back to the routine and the turntable. Now it
is Wa-do-dem by Eek-a-Mouse, who I saw at the Sugar
Shack in Boston probably in 1988.
Dolphy
14 January 2025
Well, after two days of intermittent listening to Dolphy
only, it turns out that I don't have Out to Lunch on
vinyl. It must be among the CDs, so I guess I'll have to do the
CDs after a few hundred more LPs. Out There, however,
was a delight. Now I have perhaps a day's worth of Earth, Wind,
and Fire. It's gonna be groovy.
Opera Mundi interview
11 January 2025
I finally won my Civilization VI game playing as Poundmaker.
Let's see if I start up a new world. I doubt it at the moment.
I'm feeling a bit refreshed finally.
Looks like my soundtrack today will be Eric Dolphy. I bought
quite a few of his LPs at one time. Looking forward to Out
to Lunch.
Now that the status updates are done, I am going to include
my draft answers to an email interview initiated by Rocio Paik,
a reporter from Brasil's Opera Mundi. It
was fun to answer her questions and condense my thoughts on
Korea's social situation.
Rocio Paik: Latin America views South
Korea's industrial model very positively, since this model has
enabled significant advances in the country's economic growth
in a short period of time. In 1996, South Korea even joined the
OECD (Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development).
Professor, can you explain how all this was possible and what
mechanisms and values South Korea followed to achieve these
advances after the Korean War (1950-53)?
Cuz: While there is no question that
Korea's economic development was phenomenally rapid, I believe
it is a mistake to hold it up as a model for Latin American and
other countries. Korea's rapid growth depended much more on
fortunate geopolitical circumstances and more complex policy
making than is typically discussed. First, since Korea was at
the front line of the Cold War after WWII and the Korean War,
the US had a strong interest in seeing Korea succeed and
invested aggressively to make that happen. For example, US aid
to Korea was very high for a long time and Korea enjoyed
privileged access to the US market. Second, though South Korean
development policy is typically characterized as
"export-oriented industrialization" (EOI), which implies that
growth was generated through the expansion of competitively
priced exports, this is only half of the picture. The other
half is its adoption of "import substitution industrialization"
(ISI), which is the model most of Latin America adopted during
this period. ISI strives to replace imported goods with
domestically produced goods typically through high import
tariffs, which sustains domestic capital accumulation. (You can
go back to Raúl Prebisch for the fundamental arguments
supporting this strategy.) Korea was so effective in
implementing this strategy that there were virtually no foreign
automobiles on the streets of Seoul until after the 1997 IMF
Crisis.
This is not to say that Korean policy makers did not make
intelligent and somewhat bold choices at times. When the US
wanted Korea to stay focused on textile manufacturing (just as
it wanted Latin America to stay focused on raw material
production), Korea resisted these pressures and moved into
heavy manufacturing, following the Japanese strategy of
government-guided industrialization known as the "developmental
state".
There is much more to the story, but that covers the major
points. Latin Americans should adopt a more cautious admiration
of the Korean model of development by maintaining awareness
that Korea employed many of the same development strategies
that Latin America did but enjoyed geopolitical support that
Latin America was actively denied.
Rocio Paik: Did these rapid advances leave
side effects in South Korea that we can see today? What are the
main ones?
Cuz: Of course. All growth and change has
long lasting side effects. Following Mannheim, I would suggest
that the central driver has been that economic change has been
more rapid than social and cultural change. Countries
undergoing late, compressed development experience incredibly
rapid economic transformation which demands corresponding
accommodations in the social and cultural spheres. However,
because social and cultural practices tend toward the
conservative maintenance of existing relations, they change
more slowly. This leaves countries like Korea
"underinstitutionalized". For example, industrial capitalism in
the West long incorporated extensive social welfare systems,
but in rapidly developing countries the economy industrializes,
but social welfare continues to depend upon kinship.
It is not simply rapid growth that is reflected in
contemporary conditions. We must also consider the slow down of
economic growth over the last two decades. Strategies of
accumulation developed when an economy is rapidly growing and
offering widespread opportunities may no longer function when
grows slows and opportunities narrow. This is evident in the
housing and employment markets today.
Rapid economic growth in Korea is often described as having
produced a dual labor market. The _chaebol_ oligopoly tends to
offer the highest paying jobs and social status for educated
workers, while smaller firms generally pay less and have lower
social status. This generates competition for the relatively
scarce _chaebol_ jobs. Combined with Korea's historical
admiration for learning, this has created an educational arms
race. Students have competed for employment in the _chaebol_
firms by attending after-school schools ( _hakwon_ ) at younger
and younger ages and for longer and longer hours. These demands
have eviscerated much of the joy of childhood and occupy a
large proportion of most families' budget.
The immense pressure to study and succeed combined with
sleep deprivation from a very young age has also produced a
mental health crisis, as evidenced by Korea's top ranking in
the OECD for suicide, most of whom are teenagers and young
adults.
The other major demographic group committing suicide are the
elderly. The elderly are perhaps the poorest demographic group
in Korea. In Korea, each generation has historically been
tasked with caring for the previous generation as it ages.
However, rapid economic growth outpaced social welfare
improvements and social atomization fragmented families,
leaving many seniors with insufficient support from either
their families or the government. Their families (and
increasingly the elderly themselves) have sacrificed all their
resources on educating their children and securing housing.
Rocio Paik: South Korea's rapid growth has
also generated a serious problem in the country, which is the
demographic issue: a country where women refuse to have
children, women report gender discrimination, and the society
is increasingly aging. Can we say that South Korean policies
have failed to serve the population in a democratic way? How
can this issue of low birth rates and, consequently, an aging
society impact social inequality in the future?
Cuz: Your article captures the fundamental
issues around the low birth rate. Like young people all over
the world, incomes are insufficient to pay for housing. In
Korea, child education also consumes an enormous proportion of
young families budget. Consequently, young Koreans, like most
young people today, simply do not have the money to marry and
have children.
The problem is magnified by gender discrimination. Women are
less likely to be promoted. And it is extremely difficult for
women to temporarily exit the labor market to raise children.
Well, it is easy to exit, but it is virtually impossible to
return afterward. Typically the only jobs available to women
who take time off to provide critical early childhood care are
those that only pay enough to hire someone to look after their
children! So, to maintain their independence and quality of
life, women are disinclined to have children so that they can
continue to work.
The question of how low fertility and aging will impact
social inequality in the future is a good one, and I certainly
cannot give a definitive answer. The problem is typically
framed as a future in which fewer young people have to pay
higher taxes to support more older people. Assuming current
trends continue, there will definitely be fewer young people
working and more older people requiring support. However, I
think framing these facts as a conflict between generations is
a false narrative. First, increasing automation will continue
to reduce the number of workers required, so a declining
workforce is not necessarily an issue. Second, workers are not
the only source of financial support for the elderly. Corporate
taxation is also a viable source. The dependency problem can be
addressed by reducing corporate profits through taxation. It
is, of course, no surprise that this possibility is not
discussed. Third, a shrinking population is likely to improve
living conditions for everyone, especially younger people.
Streets and subways would be less crowded. There will be less
competition for employment and therefore upward pressure on
wages. Due to lower demand for housing, there will be downward
pressure on housing prices.
The risk is that well paying jobs will also be automated and
the labor market will further bifurcate, leaving a small elite
workforce managing the economy and a large population
performing menial tasks robots cannot yet handle.
Immigration is another possible strategy for maintaining a
large working population, but I think lingering cultural biases
against non-Koreans will keep immigration for expanding enough
to address demographic issues.
Rocio Paik: Working hours are frequently
debated in Latin America, including Brazil, with countries
increasingly wanting to reduce working hours pressured by labor
movements. In South Korea, we know that the country officially
adopts a 52-hour work week, although we know that there have
already been considerations to increase working hours.
In July 2024, I spoke with the leader of the National
Samsung Electronics Union (NSEU) because the union was
organizing strikes against the Samsung company (chaebol) in
Gyeonggido, and he told me about how employers were violating
the labor rights of their employees.
I would like the professor to comment on current working
conditions and labor relations in the country, and what
relationship the South Korean government has established with
labor throughout its history.
Cuz: My (limited) understanding is that the
South Korean government has historically favored capital over
labor. It is important to recall that Korea's rapid economic
development began under the dictatorship of Park Chung-hee
whose regime aggressively suppressed wages and violated human
rights. The democratization movement of the 1980s was not just
about political democratization but also economic
democratization. And while progress has been made, I believe
that in general Korea favors the owners of capital over
labor.
I do think working conditions have improved on the whole.
When I first started working in Korea in the mid-1990s, many
workers were effectively home only on Sundays and had to use
that day to catch up on sleep. Today, it is less common to work
six days a week and workers have regained some of their
evenings. But again, lingering cultural practices of hierarchy
remain strong, leading to workplace abuse and gender
discrimination. And I am sure there are many violations of
labor law.
But this is an area in which I am not well versed.
Rocio Paik: Award-winning cinematographic
works such as Parasite (2019) and Squid Game (2021, 2024)
deviate from the standard production trends in South Korea and
portray social inequality in the country (poverty, hunger,
devastated labor relations). Has this crisis worsened over
time, or can we say that it has currently worsened more
clearly? What factors have led to the worsening of social
inequality in the country?
Cuz: I don't have statistics available, but
my understanding is that poverty and hunger have increased over
the last two decades. But note that historically, poverty
trends follow a U-shaped curve. Korea was one of the world's
poorest countries in 1960. Poverty was very high. With rapid
economic development, poverty also declined rapidly. But as the
economy has matured and growth has slowed, it is again
rising.
Rocio Paik: What are the speculations about
the future of society in South Korea? In your view, which
policies should the country readjust in the long term to avoid
worsening social inequality?
Cuz: The future is always open. But I think
things will get worse before they get better.
I think housing prices will stay high, since older
generations' retirement income depends on it. This, I think,
will lead to further concentration in the housing market. My
guess is that the government will eventually allow
institutional investors to purchase houses and rent them,
sustaining the housing burden of younger Koreans and keeping
home ownership out of their reach. Policies that constrain
speculative and institutional homeownership would help overall,
even though declining house prices would hurt some older
Koreans.
I think the labor force will continue to bifurcate into low
wage service and manual labor jobs and high wage technical and
managerial jobs, increasing social inequality. And I expect
capital to increase its power, as it is globally, further
amplifying social inequality. A massive expansion of social
welfare would help immensely here.
But I am optimistic that young people's negative experience
will lead to positive changes. Like many young people in high
income countries, young Koreans are questioning the competitive
struggle for unrewarding employment and are cultivating new
ideas about what constitutes the good life. It may be that
social development is finally catching up to economic
development.
Let's see how she turns this into an article. I'll link when
the article is published.
The Turner Diaries
5-9 January 2025
The others night I finished reading Pierce's The Turner
Diaries. I understand that this 1978 novel is widely read
on the far right. To the extent that this is true, the novel
represents a fantasy of desire fulfillment. It tells the story
of the White nationalist "Organization" that successfully
revolts against the "System", a global Jewish conspiracy that
establishes Jewish superiority and global control through a
campaign in support of supposed racial equality.
It was an oddly compelling read. Not because of its literary
merit. It has none. The plot is one-dimensional. The characters
have no personality. Their interactions are stated instead of
depicted. ("I impulsively held out my arms to Katherine.
Hesitantly, she stepped toward me. Nature took her course.")
Rather, it's interest lies in a combination of its
revolutionary strategizing, its parallels with left thought,
and its reflection of growing fascist thought.
The whole book imagines how a revolution against the
"System" would take place in America. It details concrete,
localized defensive strategies, like pressure sensitive pads
and escape tunnels and expands steadily into a campaign of
terror through targeted bombings and mortar attacks. But it
doesn't stop there. It culminates with mass, indiscriminate
slaughter of non-Whites and their sympathizers and a strategy
of nuclear deterrence that ultimately involves triggering a
Soviet nuclear attack on the US that clears the way for the
rise of a new order. This practical development of
revolutionary strategy is engaging. While I would love to see a
revolution in the way we administer our country and planet, I
have not thought much about what it might actually take. Though
there is no way I would ever endorse much of the tactical
choices presented in the book (not being a fascist and all), it
does prompt one to consider what forms of violence and
resistance may be necessary or acceptable.
For me, the most egregious "self-aware
wolves" passage is when the Organization's soldiers
systematically work their way through recently captured LA
neighborhoods shooting non-Whites, marching mixed race
individuals out of the city to their deaths in the countryside,
and summarily lynching anyone on a list of race sympathizers.
It's a macabre process that leaves tens of thousands of people
dangling from light poles with placards on their chests stating
their crimes. The author admits that mistakes were surely made,
but expediency and the terror generated were necessary to
cleanse their territory and initiate correct thinking and
citizen cooperation. The hypocrisy of this act is evident at
the end of the book where "the Jews and Blacks then went on a
wild rampage of mass murder, reminiscent of the worst excesses
of the Jew-instigated Bolshevik Revolution in Russia, 75 years
earlier." For the Whites, it is systematic and necessary. For
the Jews and Blacks, it is a "wild rampage of mass murder".
The book shares a common frustration with a state captured
by private interests and failing to meet the needs of the
population. To this extent, there is common ground between the
left and the right.The major difference, of course, is that the
book presents one of the offenses of the state as being the
pursuit of racial equality and, well, the left is okay with
that.
This accusation of the state and sympathizers of promoting
racial equality at the expense of the glory of the pure White
race is a direct precursor to contemporary "woke" politics. It
is also no surprise that the book circulates actively among
preppers. It embraces a far right accelerationism, an
apocalyptic catharsis, that clears the ground for the renewed
glory of White nationalism. I find this concerting, as the book
is almost fifty years old now, demonstrating that this current
of fascism has survived on the fringes, much like far left
social movements. Unfortunately, the left seems to have lost
its sway over the center today.
Anyway, having completed this trashy White nationalist
revolutionary war fantasy, I have decided to read a book on war
that literary critics have assured me will be much more
rewarding: Tolstoy's War and Peace.
Coltrane and Miles
8 January 2025
I continue to get a feel for my record collection. I
basically transitioned from a full day of John Coltrane to two
days of Miles Davis. The Miles in particular has been
inspirational.
C's in 2025
1 January 2025
2025 begins with listening to artists beginning with "C".
Right now it's the Jimmy Castor Bunch's It's Just
Begun with important bites for The Jungle Brothers and the
classic Troglodyte.
Yesterday's highlight was one of my all time favorite
albums, Donald Byrd's A New Perspective. It's bluesy,
orchestral, and a complete suite. Just incredible.
James Brown, sourdough, and trad wives
31 December 2024
The title sounds more enticing than this post will be. The
gist of it (and the whole post itself!) is simple. Yesterday
was spent listening to James Brown. I have enough albums to
fill hours. I have also been making sourdough baked goods for
the last few weeks, since I've finally got my starter up and
active. And I'm getting ready to build a compost pile from
shipping pallets. So, putting the last two together, I'm
starting to think I should start my own trad wife video
channel.
Wealth, health, and housing
30 December 2024
A post on Slashdot reports on a recent article by
Himmelstein et al. entitled "Wealth Redistribution to Extend
Longevity in the US". The basic point is that money allows
people to live healthier and therefore longer lives and that
therefore wealth redistribution would improve health
outcomes.
Not surprising, really, but the (also unsurprising) bit I
want to emphasize is that the gains diminish. This means that
the greatest gains accrue at the lowest incomes and that gains
from becoming richer approach zero. This finding justifies the
redistribution of wealth for health from the richest who gain
little to the poorest who gain much.
This finding aligns with my own research with Robert Rudolf on Housing and Happiness (alt)
shows something similar for housing. While Koreans generally
express greater life satisfaction as their homes grow larger,
these gains are largest at the low end and diminish as homes
increase in size.
Both studies justify redistributing wealth toward the poor
to increase overall well being.
Bootsy, Bobby "Blue" Bland, and BDP
30 December 2024
The joy continues.
Christmas, turntables, and Civilization
29 December 2024
I chose my Christmas gift this year. I got a reasonably good
turntable to replace the one I got for my birthday that my
daughter acquired. In preparation, I cut the packing tape on
boxes of records, CDs, and tapes that have been sitting in the
basement for a decade and a half. This sizeable collection
(maybe 400 LPs, 200 CDs, and 100 tapes) was amassed mainly
during college and my pre-Internet years in San Francisco. They
went into boxes for the five years I was first in Korea,
reemerged during my grad school studies, and then returned to
the darkness when I moved back to Korea. And now they adorn my
little corner of my parents' house.
I also set up a slightly better audio system. I dug up an
old JVC amp, CD player, and tape deck from the basement. As the
new turntable (AT-LP120) has the option of using a phono
pre-amp, which I happen to have from more musically indulgent
days, I also connected that up. Though the pre-amp and
turntable outclass the rest of the system, there is still a
glorious warmth when listening to the LPs that I have
missed.
To celebrate, I have embarked on the project of listening to
my entire collection in alphabetical order. I've already passed
through Cannonball Adderley, Kind Sunny Ade, Audio Two's
Top
Billin' (one of my most prized possessions), The Beach
Boys, The Blackbyrds, and many others to Chill Out
with Black Uhuru now. Still less than 20 albums in, so this
will take a while!
Listening is also part of my first full vacation in maybe
four or five years. My position as Associate Dean over the last
few years demanded almost constant attention, even when the
workload wasn't heavy. The combination of demands from work,
family, and academic performance overloaded my ability to do
any of them particularly well. The pressure of always being
behind and always failing to meet my perceived obligations has
ground me down and burnt me out, leaving me unmotivated and
inefficient. For Christmas, I gave myself the present of giving
myself permission to ignore work and obligations for a week and
a half. Some of this time I have spent baking with my new
sourdough starter. But I have also turned to my old
decompression mechanism: Civilization. When I was taking
classes, I inevitably checked out for a few days at the end of
each semester playing a game of Civilization. The complete
immersion allowed by brain to slow down and disengage from the
intensity of each semester's study. I am trying it again.
The hardest thing about all this is allowing myself to do
things that have no productive value. The sourdough bread,
pancakes, crumpets, etc. are still productive, but playing
Civilization serves no purpose other than play. And play, I am
confident, restores.
Frankl, Bataille, and the Future
13 December 2024
I have been reading Viktor Frankl's The meaning of
life, which mixes psychiatry with his personal experience
in concentration camps during WWII. For a person who has not
read personal accounts of the camps previously, it is indeed
informative.
But the most engaging aspect is his psychological evaluation
of the experience of (mostly) men who have been pushed to the
absolute limit of existence as human beings. The
objectification, the abuse, the starvation, the labor, all were
designed to ultimately nudge prisoners over the edge of life.
Frankl's commentary on the littoral space between living and
not simply cannot be ignored.
One notion in particular caught my attention the other day.
Frankl is discussing the heartbreaking reality that prisoners
died soon after losing hope for a future. He describes how an
individual who who gives up hope ceases to respond to any
provocation, be they beatings, yelling, entreaties, and soon
leaves only an inanimate corpse. "It is a peculiarity of man
that he can only live by looking to the future—sub specie
aeternitatis. And this is his salvation in the most
difficult moments of his existence, although he sometimes has
to force his mind to the task."
This observation immediately called to mind my course's
reading of Bataille last semester. Bataille argues that
awareness of a future self separates the human from the
non-human. Roughly, to be human is to do work and to do work
one must have the idea of a future. And to have an idea of a
future one must possess human sovereignty through work. For
Bataille the opposite is to live in the instant, unaware of
self. And he seemed to desire both (as a true Hegelian). "If I
succeed in living within the instant, I break free of all
difficulty, but I am no longer a man (to be a man means living
in view of the future); and there is no recourse to animality
in this situation, which requires a considerable energy
available to few."
The parallel is apparent. Frankl witnessed one version of
the moment a man (sic) abandons the future to live in
the instant, leaving humanity behind. We must have a notion of
future to survive.
The Claims Adjuster, the Left, and the Right
11 December 2024
I have joined the exodus to BlueSky as an experiment. I will
probably stop using it as I stopped using Twitter and Facebook
long ago. But in the meantime...
If the Claims Adjuster's ( #Mangione) social
media suggests a far right mindset and the left has been
praising his anti-capitalist action, this should move
Americans toward unity in opposition to an inhumane social
order rather than divide us further. It calls us to look
beyond pundits to the ideas.
The following is a short opinion piece I just submitted to
Korea on Point.
“History has accelerated. The world is going to change,
and change in a quicker way than before,” Hungarian Prime
Minister Viktor Orbán recently exclaimed about Donald Trump’s
reelection at an informal summit of EU leaders in
Budapest.1 If Orbán is correct, we
have moved beyond the “end of history” (Fukuyama 1989) to the
acceleration of history.
Given the ideological exchange between Orbán’s Fidesz and
Trump’s MAGA movement and their mutual opposition to
immigrants and people of color, we can assume that this
statement is at least loosely drawn from right-wing
“accelerationism”. Far right-wing accelerationists (R/acc)
like James Mason, William Pierce, and the Order of Nine
Angles (ONA) argue that societal fragmentation and conflict,
especially racial conflict, should be actively fostered to
hasten the emergence of a white Christian ethno-state from
the wreckage.
The far right is not alone in seeking disruption. In fact,
they have adopted the term from the left. The term
“accelerationism” was coined by Noys (2022) in 2010 to characterize
ideas developed by Nick Land and CCRU (e.g., Land 2024) and later
repackaged by Srnicek and Williams (2016), among
others. Drawing on the work of Deleuze and Guattari, left
accelerationists (L/acc) argue that reforms cannot overcome
the contradictions of capitalism (like capitalism’s
destruction of the environment on which it depends) and that
the only choice is to accelerate capitalism’s development in
order to usher in a new order.
More recently Silicon Valley venture capitalists have also
adopted the concept. Though Silicon Valley has long embraced
disruption, Marc Andreessen of the venture capital firm a16z
recently published The Techno-Optimist Manifesto(Andreessen 2023), which calls for
unhindered and ever more rapid technological development,
since the positive long run benefits will outweigh the short
term costs of creative destruction. This “effective
accelerationism” (E/acc) has faith that the only ethical
action is to push forward the development of artificial
intelligence (and other technologies) to the point that it
exceeds human intelligence and is capable of making better
choices for humanity, an achievement known as the
Singularity.
What all these approaches to accelerationism have in
common is the anticipation of a period of disruption, chaos,
disorder, confusion, and uncertainty before a new order
establishes itself. For Giovanni Arrighi this transition
would be the fourth such period in the long history of
capitalism’s evolution. In The Long Twentieth
Century(Arrighi 1994) and other works,
Arrighi argues that capitalism has experienced four “long
centuries” since roughly 1350: the Spanish-Genoese, the
Dutch, the British, and the American. Each long century
reflects a particular hegemonic socio-political economic
order in which power, production, distribution, and
consumption are organized into a new stable arrangement. Each
order experiences a material expansion of commodity markets
that eventually fails to provide returns to capital as
profitable as investing in an emerging socio-political model,
leading to financialization of the economy and a turbulent
transition to the new model under a new hegemon, as was the
case when Dutch financiers invested in English
industrialization.
Arrighi refers to these disruptive transformations as
periods of “systemic chaos”. His description is worth quoting
at length.
[Systemic chaos] is a situation that arises because
conflict escalates beyond the threshold within which it
calls forth powerful countervailing tendencies, or because
a new set of rules and norms of behavior is imposed on, or
grows from within, an older set of rules and norms without
displacing it, or because of a combination of these two
circumstances. As systemic chaos increases, the demand for
‘order’—the old order, a new order, any order!—tends to
become more and more general among rulers, or among
subjects, or both. (Arrighi 1994: 30)
Indications that the global economy is entering a period
of systemic chaos abound. The result of centuries of
environmental exploitation are undermining the viability of
the contemporary economy, as extreme weather events threaten
long established settlement patterns, as livelihoods are
destroyed by climate change, as conflicts over dwindling
resources ratchet upward. Economically, the US is
increasingly financialized (Krippner 2005), and has spent
several decades actively investing in an emerging challenger.
Arrighi himself and affiliated thinkers (e.g., Frank 2008)
hypothesized that China will emerge as the new global
hegemon. However, technological advance, especially the rise
of automation (including both roboticization and artificial
intelligence) and platform capitalism (like Google and Apple)
(Srnicek
2019), suggests the emergence of a different
deterritorialized hegemony of global firms (Bratton 2015;
Durand 2024; Varoufakis 2024).
In many ways the details do not matter. If the
accelerationists and Arrighi are correct that the planet is
entering a period of system chaos, then we must anticipate
growing disorder, regardless of who is in power. As Orbán’s
excitement conveys, Trump’s reelection will contribute to the
disorder of our period of systemic chaos and the fracturing
of global governance. As the transition is structurally
driven by the superhuman force of capitalist and
technological development (or God’s will for some), if it
were not Trump working to dismantle contemporary governance
arrangements, it would be someone else. The rise of other
populist iconoclasts like Bolsanaro, Milei, DeSantis, and
Orbán suffices to show that global restructuring is not
driven by singular personalities.
While the broad contours of the breakdown of global
governance are systemic rather than individual, we can
identify specific ways in which President-elect Trump will
accelerate the process.
R/acc adherents will be heartened by Trump’s past
performance, his public announcements about policy, and the
promise of his Cabinet nominations. His actions will amplify
racial conflict. His campaign demonized all
immigrants with an implicit racial bias, as the false
accusations that documented Haitian immigrants were
eating people’s pets demonstrates. He has vowed to employ the
military to carry out mass deportations of undocumented
immigrants from his first day in office.2 Presumably viewing his first
election as an endorsement of racial bias, racist
perpetrators committed more hate crimes (Rushin and Edwards
2018). His pro-Israeli Cabinet selections and
pronouncements that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin
Netanyahu, who was recently indicted by the International
Criminal Court for war crimes, should “finish the job” also
promise to inflame conflict between the Arab world and the
West.3 So humanity can anticipate a
rise in global racial tension as white supremacists push for
modern Crusades and ethnic cleansing that will reestablish
the old order.
E/acc aficionados will be enthusiastic about the promised
removal of guardrails for digital technologies in particular.
Trump’s campaign was generously funded by Silicon Valley
interests.4 The most prominent of
these was, of course, Elon Musk, who is already pushing for
less regulation and more privatization in his role as head of
the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE). However,
cryptocurrency and artificial intelligence interests also
funded the campaign and expect less regulation of crypto
markets and AI development, hastening a shift from a managed
sovereign currency to unregulated private currencies on the
one hand and from ethical and property rights concerns that
slow the development of AI toward a free-for-all rush toward
the Singularity on the other. If the E/acc dream of a new
social order run by artificial intelligence is realized,
democratic governance will be undermined as decision-making
is delegated to a black box algorithm that is unlikely to
have humanity’s best interests in mind, were it even capable
of understanding them (cf. Bostrom’s paperclip
maximizer).
L/acc adherents will recognize Trump’s acceleration of
capitalism’s expansion. Through initiatives like DOGE and a
Cabinet arguably deliberately designed to dismantle and
weaken existing governance arrangements, capitalist markets
will be given a freer hand over a wider scope of activities,
amplifying systemic contradictions. For example,
privatization of education, social welfare, and environmental
regulation will undermine workforce quality, inflame
political tensions, and poison our bodies. For L/acc thinkers
the chaos wrought as Trump’s administration turns our lives
over to the inhuman demands of capitalism will only bring us
closer to another form of order.
“The old order, a new order, any order!” Arrighi’s quote
is echoed in the calls of the accelerationists. From their
perspective, the incoming Trump administration will
accelerate history by damaging global governance and
amplifying systemic chaos. “Après moi, le déluge!”
Arrighi, Giovanni. 1994. The Long Twentieth Century:
Money, Power, and the Origins of Our Times. New
York: Verso.
Bratton, Benjamin H. 2015. The Stack: On Software and
Sovereignty. Software Studies. Cambridge,
Massachusetts: MIT Press.
Durand, Cédric. 2024. How Silicon Valley Unleashed
Techno-Feudalism: The Making of the Digital Economy.
Edited by David Broder. London: Verso.
Frank, André Gunder. 2008. ReOrient: Global Economy
in the Asian Age. [Nachdr.]. Berkeley, Calif.
[u.a.]: Univ. of California Press.
Fukuyama, Francis. 1989. “The End of
History?”The National Interest, no. 16,
Summer 1989: 3–18.
Krippner, G. R. 2005. “The Financialization of the
American Economy.”Socio-Economic Review
3 (2): 173–208. https://doi.org/10.1093/ser/mwi008.
Land, Nick. 2024. Fanged Noumena: Collected Writings
1987-2007. Edited by Robin Mackay and Ray Brassier.
Twelfth edition. New York: Sequence Press.
Noys, Benjamin. 2022. The Persistence of the
Negative: A Critique of Contemporary Continental
Theory. Edited by Benjamin Noys. Edinburgh:
Edinburgh University Press.
Rushin, Stephen, and Griffin Sims Edwards. 2018.
“The Effect of President Trump’s Election on Hate
Crimes.”SSRN Electronic Journal.
https://doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.3102652.
Srnicek, Nick. 2019. Platform Capitalism.
Reprinted. Theory Redux. Cambridge: Polity.
History repeats itself, first as tragedy, second as farce. --
Karl Marx
Rambling, rambling, and rambling some more
25 August 2024
I've been getting some nudges to write to the blog. And
since I've been meaning to...for months, I'm going to just put
some random bits up in random order.
In theory I am now on sabbatical. In practice, it may start
at the end of next month. In my mind, sabbatical should mean
that I am free to clear my head a bit, work on independent
research, and perhaps even develop a hobby, or at least do some
things just because they are interesting. Instead, I am still
occupied with addressing others' needs.
I am still Associate Dean of GSIS for another six days. And
that has entailed a bit of work this summer. I've also got two
research projects eating up my energies. In theory, these
should be exciting and interesting in their own right. But in
practice, they are driving me forward without opportunity for
real engagement. This is not the fault of the projects. It is
the fault of the larger complex of obligations I am caught up
in.
I have returned to my childhood home to be with my family
and care for my mother in a semi-rural area near Mystic, CT.
And this summer it has me living through a farmer's lens. Five
or six weeks ago my wife and kids left to visit Korea (more
below). This means that all of the household responsibilities
fell upon me. In addition to the basic cooking, cleaning, and
shopping involved, my wife left behind a fertile garden and
plots of decorative plants. It's all wonderful, but now I have
to tend to them on a daily basis. Just as the farmer is obliged
to milk their cows every day. I have to pick tomatoes, kale,
cucumbers, eggplant, and tomatoes almost daily. I have to make
sure these and the watermelons, asparagus, cauliflower,
carrots, pumpkins, swiss chard, jalapeños, and cabbage are well
watered. The basil has to be stopped from flowering. The
coriander had to be harvested for its seeds. Potatoes and red
onions had to be dug up. And then I have to figure out how to
cook and consume them! They taste great. And there is something
special about eating food that you have grown yourself. But it
is a relentless responsibility.
Also relentless is the lawn, which grows abundantly during
the summer and all the more quickly with the amount of rain
we've been having.
The truth is that most of these activities are rewarding in
and of themselves and I typically enjoy them, but it is so much
more the case when you have the time to relax in your pursuits.
However, that is not the case when one must work for school,
for research, and for others as well. Still, it is not terrible
and I enjoy many aspects of the work. In fact, I am convinced
that more people should experiment with such activities as the
hard labor of yard work. I believe there is something
inherently rewarding in maintaining one's environment, nay, in
improving one's environment.
The load has gotten worse recently, just to really push me.
My kids came back to the US to start school, and my wife will
stay in Korea for another month. So now I have to cater to the
needs of an increasingly childlike mother and two
teenagers.
But I am so happy my kids are here with me and my wife is
finally getting a real break. And I'm even more proud of my
kids for flying back from Korea to New York on their own. They
only had to go from security to customs, but that meant going
through passport control, boarding, flying for 14 hours,
passport control again, baggage claim, and customs. And my kids
rocked it! I'm really proud of both of them for handling things
effectively. And I'm thrilled that they have exercised so much
independence. And now that they are teenagers (well, almost in
one case), it is time for them to cultivate their own
independence. And I may now be ready to help them do that.
And, and, and...
Truth be told, the summer has not been bad for me as an
individual either. I spent a month (with more to come) learning
python and NLP strategies. It didn't go as hoped, but learning
is never a clean, flawless process. I've also been able to stay
fit. In fact, at my cousin's invitation, I changed up my
cycling-dominated exercise regime to incorporate running so
that I could participate in the Shore 2 the Pour race with her
in Stratford, CT. My mother grew up in Stratford, but I only
ever saw the relatives' houses. This event allowed me to see
the more attractive shoreline of the city. More
surprising---and I guess rewarding---was that my running
performance was much better than I had expected, and I placed
in the top quarter for men and higher than that overall. I
don't really care about rankings, but it is reassuring to know
that my fitness level must be pretty decent. I mean, if I'm
honest, it's also nice to beat people.
In a few weeks, when my wife returns and my administrative
responsibilities end, my sabbatical will really start. And I am
looking forward to reading books and (hopefully) writing
one.
GSIS, Serbia, and me
01 June 2024
One of KU GSIS's Korean Government Scholarship students is
from Serbia. They just aired this short piece on this program's
students at KU. And I make a few brief appearances.
You can view it here. Too bad my voice isn't as rich as the
dubbed voice!
Cows, devastation, and glimmers of hope
20 April 2024
In my Advanced Seminar class this semester, we read James
Ferguson's The Anti-politics Machine, which employs a
Foucauldian approach to evaluating development discourse and
how it interacts with other institutions to generate unintended
effects. Basically, the books argues that the development
discourse has to objectify a national economy in order to
legitimize more or less pre-determined programmatic
interventions. To do so, the discourse ignores the role of
politics and sociocultural practice, which typically leads to
little to no genuine developmental progress but has the effect
of extending state power. The book is a superb examination of
how development functions on the ground when it interacts with
concrete practices.
Some of the people in the class---and perhaps myself---fell
into the easy trap of the questioning what the point of being
involved in development is at all. Should one support the aid
programs of nations or international organizations if they will
only distort and perhaps damage people's lives? It can be
devastating when one's optimism and passion to make the work a
better place are smashed against the walls of reality. What can
one person do inside a monumental, implacable organization like
the UNDP, the World Bank, or USAID? If one works in the
development industry or hopes to, one must either close one's
eyes, reject truth, or question one's moral compass.
Ferguson's own answer is that people interested in
development should do one of two things. You could work with
the people of developing countries to promote particular,
concrete political interests. That is, you can contribute to
the efforts of a political interest in a given country. But
this doesn't really contribute much, since you would be an
individual in a context where you are comparatively ignorant
and from which you are somewhat disconnected. Alternatively,
you could work domestically to shape your own country's
policies.
He doesn't elaborate on the latter, but the book itself
offers some clues that Ferguson himself does not appear to
recognize. Though he makes the following argument throughout
the book, it is clearest in the chapter on the Bovine
Mystique. In that chapter, Ferguson demonstrates how
cultural practices and social relations are constantly
contested and either altered or reinforced. He shows, for
example, that women and men in Thaba Tseka, Lesotho regularly
conflict over whether to invest the wages earned by the husband
in South African mining on more cows or other productive
assets. The man advocates for buying cows, since this places
the resources in an asset he primarily controls (among other
cultural reasons), while the woman might push for purchasing
more immediately productive assets like pigs or for depositing
it in a saving account, which are both assets she can access
(and may genuinely generate more capital long term). He depicts
this tension as an ongoing negotiation of sociocultural
organization, representing the possible slow transition of
social organization. And indirectly, Ferguson seems to suggest
that a development practitioner might take action to support
one or the other position.
I see no reason why this same anthropological argument over
the slow transformation of social practice through the
continuing negotiation of social disagreement can't be applied
to working within the development industry itself. Development
practices are constantly questioned and debated. It does appear
that particular interests, especially economic interests,
generally dominate the outcome of these negotiations. But these
outcomes are always negotiated and this leaves open the
possibility of slowly shifting the social practices of the
organization for which one works. The book itself suggests that
one can take a political position within one's organization,
even if this comes with some risks that one must take into
consideration. One can act as a guerrilla in the bureaucracy
(as Needleman and Needleman argue).
Toddlers, leaps, and victories
4 March 2024
Arriving home from work on my bicycle yesterday, I came upon
a toddler walking next to her mother. She saw the crack,the
gaping abyss, in the sidewalk, stopped, lined herself up, and
made a majestic, two-legged leap that carried her far past the
danger.
That's who I want to be.
Winter months, woodworking, and wisdom
3 March 2024
I will start again with, "I can't believe it's been months
since I last wrote anything on this blog." It's all too
requisite and all too true. I guess I have lacked
motivation.
In fact, I feel like I lack motivation more generally. I am
not quite enthusiastic about cycling and hiking, though I
continue to do them. I am not excited to try cooking new
things, though I am curious enough to do so. And I am not
passionate about teaching, writing, and researching, though I
must do them.
It may well be the "must" that is my libido killer. Over the
last two years I have blamed my family situation and my
enervating administrative position for throttling my passion in
its crib, as Blake might have had it. And I think this is to a
great extent true. At the beginning of the fall semester, my
family situation was significantly improved (though still
challenging), and I was invested in making a new start on
research and writing. Teaching was more engaging than it had
been. But then I lost all my freedom as I was pulled back into
administration in October. So I believe my whining was right.
But I fear the frustration and limitation has now sunk in
deeper, superseding its own limits. In short, I fear I have
been infected by futility and depression.
More likely than not, it is not so bad and is more of an
issue of transitioning through jet lag from family life in the
US to solo living here in Korea. I have not yet rested up
sufficiently, and I have not yet gone to campus or class to
interact with others. And winter had its ups and downs, but
opened some new horizons.
I learned the rudiments of most of the woodworking equipment
my father left behind. I used the drill press, planer, jointer,
router, and a drill countersink to make a simple monitor stand.
I used the jointer, planer, and router to make railings for the
high school theater production for which my daughter is running
props, slightly damaging the planer along the way. Learning
always involves mistakes, I guess. But though my daughter was
perhaps not overjoyed that I volunteered to help build the set,
I genuinely appreciated the opportunity to do so. First and
foremost, it was a chance to contribute to the community,
something I do not think I do enough of. Second, it provided a
chance to connect with people who live in my other home. I grew
up in Mystic, CT, but I don't know anyone other than family
there now...I don't think. This kind of bonding---as transient
and superficial as it may be---is essential to reconnecting to
a place. It also offered a safe space of overlapping activities
that reconnected meme with my daughter, who is actively trying
to disconnect and establish her own independence.
Reconnecting with my wife went through its own winter.
Though initially upbeat, trapped in the house by cold weather,
our sharing took a primarily anxious and depressive form
through our worry over a family issue. There was bonding, but
not of a particularly generative form. Once that issue more or
less resolved itself and the temperature started to warm up, we
were able to reconnect as individuals and as stewards of the
property that I increasingly think of as ours. We spent a
couple of weeks pruning bushes and trees to create conditions
for a healthier and more robust growing season. Blueberries,
laurels, rhododendrons, birch, crab apple, grapes, Rose of
Sharon, choke cherries, burning bush, wisteria, butterfly bush.
And we purchased a fire pit to begin the process of reducing
our unsustainably tall mounds of brush. We worked together to
prepare the future.
I feel compelled to mention my other daughter and my mother,
but there was less dynamism there. Ice cream and The
Bear punctuated by UCONN basketball with my mother.
Preparing for creative endeavors by setting up a computer
drawing pad and an acoustic guitar that sandwiched many
entertaining good night greetings for my daughter.
These were the important things over the winter. A barely
net positive winter break that has me questioning the utility
of the work I am paid to do and have been passionate about.
Over the winter I produced tangible outcomes: a monitor stand,
a stage set, a mound of brush. I began to bond more deeply with
my hometown. And I worked to prepare a more robust future. But
now I am disconnected, isolated, and cold in Uijeongbu, trying
to catch up with externally driven commitments that I find
irritating for the most part. And they are irritating precisely
for having been externally imposed.
Perhaps the more robust future I should be preparing for
lies after this semester with the beginning of my second
sabbatical.
Surplus value, profit, and risk
9 November 2023
I love it when students push back with questions. I'm no
genius, so it often leads to fruitful investigations. Like
today.
I was teaching Marx's circulation of capital model and
simply introduced the labor theory of value. "Under capitalism,
the worker must first create enough value through labor to pay
for his or her own reproduction. Then they must work extra time
to create surplus value for the capitalist, the owner of the
means of production." A student afterward raised two issues
about owners' profits. The first was about the role of
machines, which are purchased by the capitalist. This is fairly
easily addressed. Machines embody dead labor, which means that
their value was created by labor in the first place. Following
from this (and something I failed to mention) is that the
machines do pass on some of their value to the commodities they
produce through wear and tear. So the capitalist contributes no
value here.
It's important to note capitalists who do labor---for
instance, by organizing production or making deals---do
contribute value to the final commodity. But it's not nearly as
much as they believe and claim it is. [Insert relevant meme
here.] These claims ignore the social nature of work (we all
contribute to the final product as a collective), which
obscures the relative contributions of all workers and
undermines the distinction between manual and intellectual
labor. Instead, these claims conflate domination with labor by
implying that holding power is in and of itself a form of
labor.
But the student also asked about the bourgeois economic
claim that the owner of the means of production deserves
profits because they take such a huge risk with capital. He
also accurately cited standard legal arrangements that provide
for higher rates of return for investors who choose to accept
the risk of being lower of the list of creditors receiving
compensation in the event of a bankruptcy. (If that student is
reading this, he should know that I inaccurately replied to
this observation.) And this has always been one of the
arguments that I have found persuasive. There is something
about the entrepreneur's courage to test their mettle in the
market that I do admire.
I offered the simple response I have come up with over the
years. "Who is taking the bigger risk: Jeff Bezos or the person
who works in one of his warehouses? The mine owner or the
miner?" One could also add that workers take a risk by working
for two weeks or a month before getting paid, effectively
investing in or extending credit to the capitalist. One could
go even deeper by claiming that any capital was expropriated
from the common person at one time or another and therefore
there is no moral justification for it. Though this claim is a
bit harder to defend for individual capitalists who may have
invested their life's savings from working in a business
venture, for the capitalist class as a whole I think it
basically holds up. As do the other arguments.
But these argument have never quite satisfied me. So I did a
bit of reading on my subway ride home. And it seems that Marx
himself provided a better explanation: risk is
reflected in profit. But it's not the only thing reflected in
profits and may not be a large component.
I will do a disservice to Marx with my poor explanation, but
I must try nonetheless. The first thing to consider is that the
value of a commodity is distinct from its price. For Marx, the
value of a commodity is determined by the "socially necessary
labor time" employed in producing a commodity. In essence, this
is the average amount of labor required to produce a commodity
across all enterprises with their wide variety of production
processes. Marx claims that market prices fluctuate around this
value (as measured by the average wage). (This is why surplus
value in not exactly the same as profit.) Those firms that are
efficient enough to use less than the socially necessary labor
time make a profit. Those firms that are less efficient lose
money and eventually go out of business. This pushes the
socially necessary labor time (the average labor time)
downward, which pushes profits downward.
Once we have distinguished profits from surplus value, it is
easy to see that profits can be influenced by a number of other
factors as well. Scarcity can push up prices. Artificial
scarcity through monopoly power can push up prices. Borrowing
can push up prices. And higher risk can push up prices. In the
Grundrisse (p. 722), he suggests that the risk lies in
realizing the surplus value created by labor at the
point of sale. Thus, if the capitalist is obligated to pay
interest on money borrowed, then risk is perceived by that
capitalist as a cost of production, even though it is distinct
from value.
I think this has two interesting implications that I gleaned
from some internet surfing. First, risk factors into prices and
thus profits, adding to the surplus value. Such risks are
typical of innovative ventures that reduce the amount of
socially necessary labor time and thus a component of the
super-profits of innovation. As an innovation becomes more
commonplace and reflected in a lower socially necessary labor
time, the risk decreases along with profits and indeed accounts
for some of that decline. The second observation is that the
distinction between surplus value and profit opens up the
strategic terrain for deflecting risk. All actors involved in
commodity production will work to shift the risk onto other
actors. The capitalist will push some risk onto employees by
paying them only after they have worked. The capitalist will
try to establish property rental and labor contracts that allow
the capitalist to avoid the risk of downturns by allowing them
to cancel the contract at short notice. Or the capitalist might
push market risk on the government, so called social risk, as
so many of the large financial firms have done. Too big to fail
is, after all, equivalent to privatizing gains and socializing
losses. The landlord, the banker, and the worker will, of
course, try to push risk onto the others as well, but I leave
that to your imagination. It is too late for me to
continue.
So, thanks to a student provocation, I am now up well past
my bedtime but with a renewed appreciation and understanding of
the relationship between surplus value, risk, and profits.