We've Only Just Begun (Or no more Lacan)

Oh the joys of Friday afternoon blogging. I was once again hoping to prepare another political tirade, but it is amazing how fast simple things can pull me into a world of self-distraction, delusion, and worry.

This has prevented me from pulling together enough rational thoughts/analysis on a given topic to prep a good blog entry. The shield of rationality and intellect remain thin ever eager to be replaced by the banal repetition of the passions.

With this said, I'll leave you all with this great quote from the movie Synecdoche. While this quote may seem depressing, I find it quite inspiring. We are all in this(life) together, even if we remain forever trapped in our own heads.

"Everything is more complicated than you think. You only see a tenth of what is true. There are a million little strings attached to every choice you make; you can destroy your life every time you choose. But maybe you won't know for twenty years. And you may never ever trace it to its source. And you only get one chance to play it out. Just try and figure out your own divorce. And they say there is no fate, but there is: it's what you create. And even though the world goes on for eons and eons, you are only here for a fraction of a fraction of a second. Most of your time is spent being dead or not yet born. But while alive, you wait in vain, wasting years, for a phone call or a letter or a look from someone or something to make it all right. And it never comes or it seems to but it doesn't really. And so you spend your time in vague regret or vaguer hope that something good will come along. Something to make you feel connected, something to make you feel whole, something to make you feel loved. And the truth is I feel so angry, and the truth is I feel so fucking sad, and the truth is I've felt so fucking hurt for so fucking long and for just as long I've been pretending I'm OK, just to get along, just for, I don't know why, maybe because no one wants to hear about my misery, because they have their own."

Back to analysis and/or humour next week ! Feeling better already

What would Quachi do?

On Friday I attended the Anti-Olympic rally at BC place. Although I got their late and missed a good portion of it I enjoyed myself and thought it was a worth while. It is good to know that not everyone in the city is excited about the Olympics. Even if it is a minority position.

Now that the protests have turned violent I am torn, part of me feels that a violent system must be met with violence, and that property destruction is not a big deal . However, I also feel this delegitimates the other protests. In a city filled with "Olympic Fever", reckless violence only further marginalizes an already marginal position. In short, where does informed political action end and smashing stuff because you mad at your parents begin.

There are definite problems with the way the protests have been organized and a complete lack of any firm message/goals. Hopefully this will improve as the weeks go on, but I remain skeptical.

As for the Olympics themselves, it is truly remarkable to see their effect on the City. Everything is light up, busy, and I can't leave the house without providing directions to some happy Russian tourist. I understand the excitement that the Olympics brings and the fun in getting swept up in an event of this magnitude. I like sports and parties and will likely watch a number of Hockey games(on TV of course), attend the free concerts, and enjoy a city full of happy people.

I compare the experience to eating at McDonald's. One can disagree with McDonald's believing they have horrible labour practices, corporate policies, and promote unhealthy food/lifestyles, but the food still tastes good, at least until the digestion process takes over.

This is a big part of the problem. In the same way, that McDonald's uses human evolutionary cues (fat & sugar taste good) in order to sell unhealthy food at a profit, the Olympics takes great human qualities (athletic prowess, desire for community, social interaction etc) and turns them into tools for capitalist accumulation and corporate greed.

I'd like to leave on the following thought; spending 6 billion dollars on a party in a world filled with social need is unconscionable. The economic benefits that the games provides serve the needs of the rich at the direct expense of regular working class people. When the provincial budget is passed next month, how many people will loose their jobs and how many important programs will be further decimated, primarily to service debt incurred on behalf of the Olympics. And this is just a tiny, easy to idenitify, fraction of the negative impacts the Olympics will have on this city and the (nonrich) people in it.

Unfortunately digesting those chicken mcnuggets is never as good as that first bite.

"Print This" - Back in "Print"

In order to celebrate its 5 year anniversary my good friend, and fellow blogger, Andrew Harvey will be posting a limited run of the comic "Print This" on his blog. For some background here is Andrew's description of the comics origin story:

"In the summer of 2004, I stated “The comics are so bad in the Xaverian Weekly, I could draw a picture of a guy pointing at a sausage, and get it published.

Sure enough, I was half right. I never had to draw the comic, as I commissioned young up-and-comer/illustrator Luke Hillan to draw the comics for me. We did get Print This published several months after I had the idea. The brilliance of my own comic writing abilities, tied with the sheer artistic ability of Luke Hillan was a perfect storm of art, from which, Print This came. "

If that excites you be sure to check out Andrew's blog in the coming days for ongoing reprints of the long lost comic, "Print This."

http://www.voteandrewharvey.com/

hope you enjoy

The almost-lost cause of honesty

I love The Economist, if only for thier intelectual honesty. Only in The Economist can one read lines like the one below....

"One reason why liberals (economic) have been so muted since Brazil became a democracy again is that voting in elections is compulsory. This means that a large number of poor voters, who pay little tax but benefit from government welfare spending, help to push the parties in the direction of a bigger state. If the same system were to be applied to America, the Democrats might well enjoy a permanent majority."

The subtitle to this article is "The almost-lost cause of freedom". Because in my world freedom means wishing poor people would go away so that we can better promote buisness interests and economic liberalism.

Right to the City

As the three or four "dedicated" followers of this blog will know, I have recently been reading David Harvey's book Limits to Capital. This book is a remarkable exposition of capitalist economics and frighteningly relevant nearly 28 years after it was written.

So far the greatest personal benefit I have received from reading this book are a greater understanding of two extremely confusing issues that are particularly relevant given the time/place in which I live. (Vancouver - 2010)

These are;

1. Rising real estate prices in Vancouver
2. The nature and cause of the "Financial Crisis"

The price of real estate in Vancouver, both rental stock and for purchase, is absurd. A point frustrating demonstrated by this article talking about the glorious new 270 square feet condo's. Estimated monthly rent $750 dollars.

To put it another way, the average assessed value for a single family detached home in Metro Vancouver is approximately $600,000. Based on CMHC standard metrics of affordability, servicing a mortgage of this size would require an annual income of approximately $104,400 dollars a year. With median family income in Vancouver hovering around $60,000, it seems clear, no matter how you slice it there is a real estate affordability crisis in Vancouver.

This problem is not unique to Vancouver and has been replicated across the globe in most major cities, with real estate, and particularly urban real estate becoming increasingly unaffordable to the vast majority of people.

The question of course is why is this happening?

The short answer to this question is that the price of real estate in Vancouver is unrealistically high, due to the investment of surplus capital into real estate through the full incorporation of the use value of land into the financial system as a form of fictitious capital.

The next question is of course, what does this mean?

Capitalism, operates on the principle of growth. Throughout the history of capitalism economic growth has averaged around 3% a year (war/recessions aside). The importance of maintaining economic growth can be clearly seen in the global reaction to the current economic crisis/recession. Low or zero growth in the economy is clearly a problem for capitalism. However, this eternal, everexpanding growth creates a problem. As the economy becomes ever larger it is increasingly difficult to find profitable outlays or methods to achieve continued; growth, profit, and surplus generation.

When capitalism was a relatively new phenomenon, this problem was easily remedied by expansion into new markets. Growth and returns on investment could easily be achieved through expansion into new untapped markets where capitalism did not previously exist. However, with the almost complete permeation of capitalist production processes over the entire globe this solution is no longer readily available.

While new markets, are created all the time though; need generation, privatization of previously publicly held goods, and expansion of internal markets this does not have the same effect that the collonization of North America, or recent expansion of capitalism into China has had. In this sense, capital must at all times find new forms of investments that promise a reliable return, and continued economic growth.

This is where real-estate comes back into the picture. Real estate provides a solution (temporary) to this problem, especially when it is incorporated into the financial system through expanded credit.

Easy access to credit allows new houses to to be built, interest payments to flow to banks, and when combined with other factors, the expansion of demand for real-estate. With this expanded demand, constructing houses continues to be a profitable venture, even if the price is unfordable to the average person under "normal" credit relationships.

The second aspect of this, is the treatment of real-estate as a purely financial asset. People invest in real-estate as an investment to achieve a return. This furthers demand for new houses, as rich people, banks (through mortgages), and even the City of Vancouver will purchase multiple houses as a seemingly safe and lucrative investment.

The problem with this, is the self-perpetuating ponzzi like character of real-estate markets. As more people invest in real-estate, prices go up, this leads to more people investing, and ever increasing prices until the whole thing comes crashing down. Through this process, real-estate prices move away from their actual value. With prices no longer reflecting their overall usefulness to society, and instead representing what is needed for the continued generation of economic growth/profits. A large part of the current financial crisis is a correction taking place in previously inflated real-estate markets.

This has disastrous social consequences. Ever rising prices, push poor people out of the urban environment, and the city becomes a domain for the rich. Public space is increasingly cannibalized, sacrificed to condo developers eager to make a return on real-estate development.

This problem is a remarkably transparent, especially in Vancouver, I hope to expand on this later, but last night I spent some time in Gastown. The new Woodwards building has recently been completed and it is truly a remarkable development. However, despite this and "social" housing contained in the development, the long and short of it is that around 60 million dollars of profit was made from the direct, and violent, dispossession of homes from the previous residents (squatters), the poorest of the poor.

So in conclusion, real-estate prices in Vancouver are increasingly detached from their real societal value, with a ponzzi like investment market, and expanded credit facilitating expanded demand and increasingly higher prices, with horrible social results.

Inevitably there will be a correction. Personally, I think this correction is a fair way off for Vancouver, the desirability/livability of our region, the recent enormous improvements in fixed capital being invested by the provincial government (Canada Line, Gateway Project, Sea to Sky Upgrades), and yes the Olympics (although that is primarily related to the previous point) would seen to place Vancouver as an ideal place for continued surplus investment. However, significant changes to the world economic climate could change this quite quickly.

Thanks for reading this. Writing it was remarkably difficult and there are so many issues that I would need to expand further in order to truly do this issue justice. Hopefully I can expand on it in the future. Here are a few of the ideas I should have discussed.

1. How the credit system operates, and the role it plays in capital circulation
2. Real-estate as a form of fictitious capital
3. The Ideology of home ownership and the pressure it creates on individuals
4. Expanded social consequences of rising real-estate prices.

If you want to know more, read this article which I borrowed heavily from and is better than mine.

http://www.reclaiming-spaces.org/crisis/archives/245