"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

Copies of my comedy rejection letters

Hello all,

I thought it would be fun to post the rejection letters for my recent fiction submissions on my blog. I really enjoyed getting these comments, so hopefully no one is offended. However I also found humour in the the overly serious dissection of Wizardo and Doctor Magnificant not being thematically appropriate. I have blanked out peoples names so as not to reveal private information

Hope you enjoy....

Hey Luke,

Thanks for sending this. It generated some positive editorial response, but not quite enough for acceptance, so we're going to pass.

Here are the relevant comments...

Tyler Sm*th:<<>>

M*ll*e W*lson O'R**lly:<<>>

M*ke Richards**n-Bry*n:<<>

Punctuation: "…by years end…" needs a possessive apostrophe.
Punctuation: "…subject to managers approval…" needs a possessive apostrophe.
Punctuation generally needs improvement, especially use of commas.

Consistency: first it's "Personnel Defence Laser", then it's "Personnel Defense Laser".Also, "Personal Defence Laser" would make more sense than "Personnel Defence Laser".

Unless it's some peculiar usage, "neither world" should be "netherworld".

Thematically, it's a little fuzzy. He's clearly going for a G.I. Joe vibe, but both Wizardo with his dimensional vortex and a character with a name like Doctor Magnificent seem more suitable for a superheroic setting. Never quite captures the disconnect between the exciting and exotic world of super soldiering and the banality of bureaucracy. I would expect much of the humour in a piece like this to come from the villains, the outlandishness of the villains' evil schemes, and the extravagant deaths of both heroes and villains, but none of those areas is explored. It's a no for me. >>

Hopefully these comments may be of some use if you think of sending this piece elsewhere. If nothing else they will tell you how we think and respond to material. Better luck next time.

Best,
K*rt L*chs
Editor - TheBigJewel.com


Also stay tuned from some David Harvey inspired ramblings about rent/real-esate in Vancouver! (Half -done)

Seven Small Changes Required to make the World a Better Place

The David Harvey love fest continues...this link is very exciting if a tad long. I really like the concept of a "co-revolution" and the comparison of the shift from capitalism to "something else" to that of feudalism to capitalism.

http://davidharvey.org/2009/12/organizing-for-the-anti-capitalist-transition/

In short, creating a society designed to meet human need would invole significant changes to all of the following items:

a) technological and organizational forms of production, exchange, and consumption
b) relations to nature
c) social relations between people
d) mental conceptions of the world
e) labor processes and production of specific goods, geographies, services or affects
f ) institutional, legal and governmental arrangements
g) the conduct of daily life that underpins social reproduction.

If one thinks of the transition from feudalism to capitalism, or even the changes that have taken place in the last thirty years one can easily see that all of the above items have changed significantly.

They key remains to change these in a way that promotes meeting real human need and not in a way that only serves to maintain a dynamic status quo. More on this later....

Awesome Harvey Quote

here is a great quote from David Harvey's "Limits to Capital".

"...the theory of crisis formation under capitalism is a mixture of acute incite, muddled exposition and intuitive judgment, all spiced with a dash of that millennial vision to which Marx was prone. But the account, though incomplete, is of compelling power, at least in terms of the social consequences of the devaluation of capital that it depicts. We can begin to see how, why ,and according to what rules capitalists fall out with each other at times of crisis. How each faction seeks political power as a means to shove off the damage on to others. And we can begin to see the very human tragedy of the working class consequent upon the devaluation of variable capital.

The inner logic that governs the laws of motion of capitalism is cold, ruthless and inexorable, responsive only to the law of value. Yet value is a social relation, a product of a particular historical process. Human beings were organizers, creators and participants in that history. We have, Marx asserts, built a vast social enterprise which dominates us, delimits our freedoms and ultimately visits upon us the worst forms of degradation."

Two Cents on Prorogation

The debate about the prorogation of the Canadian Parliament, the second in a year and a half, represents a new low in Canadian political discourse.

While, state relations are beholden to corporate interests, and the state operates as much as a facilitator of capitalist accumulation as it does a representative of any real democratic interest the state and functional liberal democratic institutions remain important. With appropriate pressure the modern state can create material improvements in people's lives and the programs it maintains (health care, welfare, unemployment insurance) are important and need to be maintained and protected.

However, the recent move by Steven Harper regarding prorogation and the backlash/discourse surrounding it shows how far the discourse concerning liberal democracy in Canada has fallen. It has become a near radical position to assert that the Government of Canada should function according to the rules it sets for itself. The fact that we must protest and demand of Steven Harper the minute level of accountability afforded by a 19Th century elite focused institution is absurd.

While I do not support the prorogation of Parliament, and the avoidance of any measure of responsibility by Steven Harper and the Government of Canada, the proper functioning of Parliament is as much an absence of politics as it is a democratic expression of people.

While banal, the benefit of the debate over prorogation is that through its very absurdity (thank you prorogation for being such a foolish and esoteric word) it exposes the inadequacy of liberal democratic institutions more generally.

So as you protest against Steven Harper and the prorogation of Parliament keep in mind what you are supporting:

• the continuation of ineffective committees. Committees that legitimate torture through its very discussion, and continue to deflect against the daily violence in Afghanistan.
• A "question period" that is largely ignored and does nothing to hold the government to account and much to inflate the egos of politicians
• A weekly meeting of 73 "businessmen", 51 lawyers, 46 "managers", 34 "consultants" and a host of other occupations meant to represent Canadian society at large
• A list of Conservative Legislation that aims to among other things substantially increase prison sentences, remove Canada Posts exclusive privilege on foreign mail (that's for you Aaron), institute free trade agreements with Jordon, Columbia, Peru, and a number of other nasty things I'm to lazy to research at this time.

Now join that facebook group!