Price, pjesme, intervjui...

Kulturna dešavanja, predstave, izložbe, festivali, obrazovanje i budućnost mladih...

Moderator: Chloe

Post Reply
User avatar
wewa
Posts: 14765
Joined: 27/05/2010 15:20
Location: djah na brdu, djah u ravnici

#1276 Re: Price, pjesme, intervjui...

Post by wewa »

Moj sin je autist. Kad sam si to napokon priznao, počeo sam ga čupati i sad, mimo svih izgleda, ide u školu
Dalibor Talajić, Marvelov crtač i sin dive Ljiljane Molnar Talajić, napisao je knjigu o životu tate koji nikad neće odustati od sina



Čitateljima se pod nogama otvara bezdan. Onaj u kojem otac govori kako je sin svakim danom bio sve dalji od njega, a pogled mu postaje sve prazniji. Onaj u kojem priznaje da je gledajući drugu djecu kako se igraju, osjećao i tugu i ljubomoru. U kojem otkriva da je silno želio da njegov sin bude poput druge djece. Onaj u kojem opisuje kako mu je sin u jednom trenutku biljka, u drugom divlja zvijer. Onaj u kojem priznaje da se bojao vlastitog djeteta. Snima Vjekoslav Skledar
09.04.2018 3637 PREPORUKA 12 KOMENTARA
Prije dvanaest godina u Zagrebu se rodio jedan dječak. Apgar mu je bio 10/10. Prvi put se nasmijao s dva mjeseca, sjediti je počeo s osam napunjenih mjeseci, prvu riječ sa značenjem izgovorio je s devet. S jedanaest je stajao na nogama. Oko prvog rođendan bivao je sve mirniji. Njegov se tata sjeća da mu je tada bilo malo žao što dječak više nije onaj glasni veseljak. Danas mu je žao jer misli da je već propustio primijetiti prvi znak. Ignorirao je osipe i prištiće koji su trajali duže od standardnog razdoblja čišćenja kože kroz koje prolaze djeca do drugog mjeseca života. Analiza krvi pokazala da je alergičan potencijalno na sve. Zamjera si što mu tada nije palo na pamet da sklonost alergijama upućuje da je metabolizam njegovog sina osjetljiv. Dječak je s četrnaest mjeseci prohodao. Onda je počeo trčati. I samo je trčao. I nije se obazirao. Nije se više smijao. Nije više ništa govorio. Nije gledao više u oči. Niti se više ikome u bilo kojoj situaciji odazivao… i sve je češće vrištao. I sve dulje.


Tako Dalibor Talajić ukratko opisuje prvu godinu i pol dana života svog sina. A zatim se na sljedećih gotovo 200 stranica knjige koju uskoro objavljuje, paragraf po paragraf, ispod nogu čitatelja otvara bezdan. Onaj u kojem otac govori kako je sin svakim danom bio sve dalji od njega, a pogled mu postaje sve prazniji. Onaj u kojem priznaje da je gledajući drugu djecu kako se igraju, osjećao i tugu i ljubomoru. U kojem otkriva da je silno želio da njegov sin bude poput druge djece. Onaj u kojem opisuje kako mu je sin u jednom trenutku biljka, u drugom divlja zvijer. Onaj u kojem se dijete izgubi u vrištanju, u kojem mu se pogled isprazni, kada se baca po podu ne mareći hoće li se ozlijediti… Onaj u kojem priznaje da se bojao vlastitog djeteta.

“Njegovih reakcija, njegove nepredvidljivosti, nezainteresiranosti. Jer ništa nisam mogao predvidjeti. Nije bilo nikakvog putokaza”, kaže Dalibor, priznajući da ga je u početku problem paralizirao. Prestravio. Jer taj poremećaj uništava obitelji, uništava normalnost. Mijenja sve. ”Meni je ta situacija potpuno razorila životnu koncepciju. To suočenje s vlastitom nemoći. To je roditeljstvo koje nitko ne želi, jer autizam je nezamisliv pakao. Ništa ne funkcionira, ne postoje putovi, ne postoje formule, ne zna se ishod, nema recepta. Istodobno, morate poput vrača tjerati zle duhove jer nema službenog uzroka, nema biološkog znaka, nema virusa, bakterije, infekcije, nema ničega, ničeg opipljivog što bi ugrožavalo razvoj moga sina.”


Talajić, snimljen u svom studiju dok radi na jednom od svojih crteža VJEKOSLAV SKLEDAR
MISLILA SAM DA RAZUMIJEM ŠTO NOSI TA DIJAGNOZA
Knjiga je naslovljena Most ponad burne rijeke… ili o velikoj borbi jednog malog tatinog borca. Ispričao je sve, skinuo se do kraja, vodeći čitatelja kroz autobiografsko putovanje izuzetno vještim stilom. Dalibor, akademskim zvanjem profesor klarineta, pozivom crtač stripova koji radi za Marvel, talentiran je pripovjedač, punokrvni storyteller. Intervju za Telegram smo dogovorili prije nego što sam pročitala isprint knjige u izdanju Beletre koja je ovih dana otišla u tisak, a u knjižarama je sredinom travnja. Nakon što sam pročitala Most ponad burne rijeke poželjela sam otkazati intervju.

Naime, mislila sam da sam dovoljno informirana, da znam kako izgleda autizam – ta, čitala sam članke, gledala dokumentarce, televizijske emisije; pratila sam i Daliborove statuse na Facebooku u kojima već dugo opisuje svakodnevnu borbu. Mislila sam da razumijem što nosi ta dijagnoza. Ma ništa ja nisam razumjela! Što znači imati dijete koje uči riječ po riječ, pojam po pojam, radnju po radnju. I to tek nakon upornog ponavljanja. Što znači podizati dijete koje je inertno i nema potrebu za komunikacijom. Kroz što sve mora proći otac koji odluči da će, ako dijete ne može naučiti njegov jezik, on naučiti njegov. Kad sam se susrela s Daliborom imala sam potrebu reći: Oprosti, nisam znala. Stvarno nisam znala.

‘MOJE JE IME DALIBOR. JA SAM OTAC. MOJ SIN IMA PROBLEM’
“Ovo je priča o meni. Ocu, o svome glavinjanju kroz probleme moga sina, o nijekanju očitoga, o panici, učenju, o duhovnoj potrazi, do čega sam sve uspio doći, ne bih li mu bio što bolji otac, otac dostojan njega, kad mi već nije dozvoljeno biti otac kakvog sam se želio igrati dok sam čekao sinovo rođenje”, piše Dalibor. Knjigu otvara rečenicom koju je bezbroj puta u posljednjih deset godina izgovarao u vrtićima i u školi, pred liječnicima, roditeljima, stručnim službama, raznim komisijama, u čekaonicama ordinacija logopeda i pedijatara, laboratorija i ambulanti, na grupnim terapijama, u rehabilitacijskim centrima. “Moje je ime Dalibor. Ja sam otac. Moj sin ima problem.”


‘Mogao sam garantirati jedno: činio sam, činim i činit ću sve što jest i nije u mojoj moći da ga spasim’ VJEKOSLAV SKLEDAR
“To je problem s kojim se djeca ne bi trebala nositi. Nije fer prema njima. Nije fer ni prema roditeljima, jer ni mi se ne znamo nositi s tim problemom. Ne znajući, često radimo i dodatnu štetu.” Upravo u tome, u deficitu informacija i ne postojanju solidnog sustava koji će pomoći roditeljima i djeci, leži Daliborov motiv objavljivanja knjige. Kada se roditelji suoče s dijagnozom poremećaja iz autističnog spektra (PAS) naići će na stručnjake, ali oni su samo sjajni pojedinci. Ne postoji organizirana mreža na koju se možete osloniti, kaže Dalibor. “Knjiga je pokušaj da dam što više informacija od sebe, ne bi li mi se pokoja nova vratila.”

JEZIVI SAVJETI O TOME DA SAMO NASTAVI SA SVOJIM ŽIVOTOM
U knjizi je protagonistima, sinu, i kasnije, njegovoj sestri, dao pseudonime budući da nisu konzultirani žele li da priča o njima bude javna. Jednog će dana sami o tome odlučiti. Sinu je u knjizi dao ime Radames, po glavnom muškom liku u Aidi, jednoj od velikih uloga njegove majke, slavne operne dive Ljiljane Molnar Talajić. Radames iz Verdijeve opere htio je postati vojskovođa. Radames iz knjige i njegov otac kreću u jednu od najvećih bitaka.

Na početku, u razdoblju kada je dijagnoza dobivala svoje ime, Dalibor se konzultirao s raznim stručnjacima. I nakon nekoliko godina zgrožen je savjetima nekih psihologa koji su mu savjetovali: vi imate svoj život, razmišljate što ćete sa svojim djetetom. Bilo mu je strašno slušati savjete kako ‘i mi, roditelji, imamo svoje živote i kako polako moramo razmišljati u koju ustanovu smjestiti svoje dijete jer uvijek će biti tako’.

“Ljudi, što vam je? To je moje dijete! Zar da ga vratim, jer nije ispravno?!”, odgovarao bi Dalibor. “Kolike sam samo ljude u dubini duše prokleo zbog takvih riječi? Kolike nisam ni pogledao, a kamo li pozdravio na odlasku iz njihovih ureda?” Ignorirajući s prezirom takve stručnjake čiji su savjeti u konačnici značili da bi njegovo dijete postao samo sedirani stanovnik neke ustanove i još jedna recka u statistici, Dalibor je okupio armiju drugih. Svakome od njih poimence i pažljivo u knjizi zahvaljuje na pomoći.

TRENUTAK KAD SE SUOČIO S PROBLEMOM I KAD SE SVE RASPALO
Rano je uočio da sin ne razvija govor, da teže komunicira i počeo lutati od ustanove do ustanove tražeći mišljenje. Kada je Radames imao 18 mjeseci pedijatrica ga je pitala koliko riječi upotrebljava. Nijednu, odgovorio je. U to vrijeme stvari nisu išle na bolje, šetnje s djetetom su postale sve napornije, on je bio u svom svijetu, iz kojeg se nije dao. “Samo je bezglavo trčao, uvijek vrlo blizu nekom zidu, promatrajući kako mu promiče tik uz oči. Ako bih ga držao za ruku, onda bi se otimao, uz vrištanje i neugodno kreveljenje. Sam sam sebi govorio kako je stvar u tome da je još mali i malo živ. Da će se to sve promijeniti kad progovori.”

U početku se nadao da će s terapijama već nekako proći, da će se brzo probuditi. Kada je prvi put čuo dijagnozu senzorno-motorna disfazija, pomislio je “nije strašno, riješit ćemo to, malo se oznojiti, odraditi terapije, ali riješit ćemo. Bit će dobro”. “Glavno da nije autizam, jer ta riječ upućuje na konačnosti. Poput kletve. I nema talismana, nema formule, nema djelovanja koje će rastvoriti taj okov u kojem je zarobljeno dijete tek tom riječju… autizam.”

U razdoblju kada se suočio s problemom, umrla mu je majka. Raspao mu se brak, ostao je bez psa, život mu se potpuno urušio, istodobno je bio sve svjesniji koliko su čvrsti okovi kaveza u kojem je zatočen njegov sin. “Sve ono što sam do tog trenutka bio, nestalo je. Autopilot, koji je dotada upravljao mojim životom, ničemu više nije služio. Bio sam sam. Bio sam odrastao. Bio sam otac djetetu koje ima ozbiljan problem s kojim se nisam znao nositi.” Smrt majke je onaj trenutak, kaže Dalibor, kada prvi put osjećamo strah od propuštenog. No taj je strah koristan, misli, jer nas nuka da se okrenemo svom roditeljstvu.

‘NAUČIO SAM IGNORIRATI POGLEDE, ALI ME I DALJE BOLJELO’
Govorili su mu tada da pretjeruje, da je paničar, da se pravi važan, da su muška djeca lijena, da se malo kasnije probude. Dalibor upozorava: gledajte u oči svom djetetu, prepoznat ćete. Ne slušajte druge, nego onaj grč u želucu koji će vam reći da je možda nešto krivo. “Zadatak roditelja je da bude budan. Da doista vidi što se zbiva u djetetovim očima, a ne da se uvjerava da vidimo ono što želi vidjeti. Upravo sam tu roditeljsku grešku ja ponavljao. Sve sam simptome znao, ali meni je bilo draže mišljenje da pretjerujem u brizi.” No konačno mu je postalo jasno da je pred njim dug put, da je cilj u magli, ako ga uopće ima. I da je on – otac – umoran na niti prvom koraku toga puta.

Problem je što u rehabilitaciji nema jasnog putokaza. Radames, kao i sva djeca sličnih dijagnoza, nije imao luksuz čekanja. Njegov je otac krenuo u rat s nevidljivim i potpuno nepredvidljivim neprijateljem. Vrijeme je radilo protiv njega, jer laički rečeno, ako sinapse nemaju podražaja, one se neće ni razviti. “U dobi od treće do pete godine on nije znao da se treba prepasti ako viknem na njega, nije znao kad je nešto smiješno.” Strašan protivnik neće biti samo vremenski limit i djetetovo stanje, nego i okolina.


Talajić je jedan od naših najcjenjenijih strip crtača. Između ostalog, crta za Marvel VJEKOSLAV SKLEDAR
Morao je naučiti ignorirati prijeke poglede, ljude koje ga zaobilaze dok uči dijete silaziti niz stepenice, one koji okreću glavu, one koji mu, dok mu je dijete u potpunom tantrumu, govore da ga je samo razmazio. “Naučio sam ignorirati poglede i reakcije drugih. Ali me je to i dalje boljelo. Nisam htio ovakav život, ni meni ni mome sinu.”

ŠTO JE DJEČAK BIO STARIJI, TO JE ZAOSTATAK BIO OČITIJI
Upoznao je i skup institucija i ustanova koje se arogantno nazivaju apstraktnim pojmom sustav, ali često ne pomažu nego još i podmeću nogu. Ponekad bi sve organizirao i posložio, a onda bi jedna administrativna odluka komisije u vrtiću srušila cijelu konstrukciju i zatvorila im svojim urudžbiranim rješenjem vrata svih gradskih vrtića.

U jednom takvom trenutku profesorica Ana Dembitz, ili kako je u knjizi naziva teta Ana, ispričala mu je anegdotu. “Bio tako jedan čovjek i imao sina. Nakanio ga je naučiti plivati. Vježbao on s njim tako, i odvažio se pustiti ga samog u duboku vodu. ‘Hajde, Vahide, vikao je, grabi rukom, lijevom, desnom, hajde… E, jebiga, moj Vahide’. Tako je i tebi. Sve si napravio, poduzeo, sve organizirao, ali okolnosti su htjele drugačije. Jebiga… “

Jebiga. Toliko je puta morao to izgovoriti, a onda krenuti ispočetka. Bilo je sitnih pobjeda, novih riječi koje je Radames usvojio, nešto nade, ali što je bio stariji, to je zaostatak za njegovom generacijom bio očitiji. Na tom je putu Dalibor plakao, molio, padao u paralizirajuće depresije, dizao se, pa opet padao. Opisuje trenutke u kojima je u svemu vidio samo besmisao. “I tada sam se prepao, jer vjere u sebe nisam imao. A polako više ni u sina.”

‘IZVOR MOJIH FRUSTRACIJA NIJE ON, NEGO MOJA OČEKIVANJA’
Onda se opet podigao. Okupio je vojsku stručnjaka, konzultirao se, plaćao terapije, učio kako da se nosi s problemom, ali i sa samim sobom. “Slutio sam u čemu sam griješio. Dijete ima objektivan problem. Ali, izvor mojih frustracija nije on. To su moja očekivanja od njega. Počeo sam ga upoznavati.” Osvještavao je svoje komplekse i inhibicije u procesu potpune dekonstrukcije i rekonstrukcije ličnosti. “Kad sam shvatio da ne mogu ništa, onda sam krenuo razgovarati. Na psihoterapiji sam naučio da teret mora biti toliki da te zdrobi. Jer dok god možeš vući, nećeš ništa u životu mijenjati. Prijatelji me sada pitaju kako mi je. Kažem, ‘isto kao prije, ali sad je OK’.”

Iz svog je privatnog arsenala izvlačio sve što mu je ikada bilo bitno, sve superheroje, Supermana i Conana, jer znao je da biti junak nije stvar moći koje heroj posjeduje, nego karaktera. “Oduvijek su me zanimale priče koje analiziraju odnos oca i sina. Kao mladić sam pamtio sve te priče i teme koje sam samo čekao predati dalje. Kao adolescent sam skupljao stvari koje ću jednog dana predati svom sinu, vrebao sam trenutak kad ću tu štafetu moći predati. A sada je dajem također na neki način, samo ne način na koji sam maštao.”

Izvlačio je Elvisa Presleya, bajke Walta Disneyja, glas Đimija Stanića i Evanđelje. Bio je tata, glumac, svirač, baletan, kamerman, terapeut. U toj je borbi morao ponovno obnoviti znanje iz kung fua koji doslovce znači težak rad, težak put. Sve što je kao dječak upijao od Brucea Leeja sada je koristio poput mantre. “Budi poput vode. Voda može teći, kapati, može pomalo puzati, a može i razvijati sve pred sobom. Reagiraj poput vode: ne opiri se, prilagodi se i napreduj dalje”, ponavljao je riječi majstora. “Jedino ograničenje koje si čovjek smije dozvoliti jest da ne smije imati nikakva ograničenja.”

‘IŠČUPAJ SI SRCE, BACI NA POD, ZGAZI GA I ONDA RADI’
Dalibor se ne usuđuje pomisliti da je jamac ičega, ni Radamesova oporavka. “Ali mogao sam garantirati jedno: činio sam, činim i činit ću sve što jest i nije u mojoj moći da ga spasim.” To što čini da ga spasi nije set kratkotrajnih terapija, nego svakodnevni višesatni rad s neizvjesnim ishodom. Svaki dan vježbaju puno sati, a rezultati će se vidjeti za par godina. Terapija kojom spašava svoje dijete znači da prema njemu mora biti strog i da mu umjesto igre mora nametati željeznu disciplinu. Postao je koterapeut svom sinu s kojim radi po metodi ABA. U Hrvatskoj za djecu sa sličnim poremećajima ne postoji adekvatna terapija, ali postoji u Beogradu. Tek odnedavno u Zagrebu se po tom pitanju stvari mijenjaju. Ali kad je njegovom sinu najpotrebnije bilo, ABA terapije nije bilo u Hrvatskoj.

ABA terapija je vrlo disciplinirana metoda, u početku gotovo vojnički dril, napor za dijete i još veći za roditelja, no daje rezultate. ABA metoda shvaća da dijete s tim poremećajem ne zna ništa i komunicira ništa te nameće logičku strukturu, verbalne procese. Profesorica Daniela Helc, koja vodi beogradski institut, tvrdi da uspijevaju roditelji, ali dodaje Dalibor, samo oni koji su fašisti. “Danju radite – noću plačite”, savjetuje roditelje profesorica Helc. “Kako to izgleda? Iščupaj si srce, baci na pod, zgazi ga i onda radi. To je roditeljstvo koje sam dobio, svakako ne ono koje sam sanjao”, provodi me kroz metodu po kojoj svakog dana mora skršiti otpor svog djeteta. Da bi ga spasio, naučio, rehabilitirao. Pokušava mi objasniti zašto je to toliko teško: “Zamislite da vaše dijete plače, zamislite kad dijete koje ne razumije ništa plače i moli očima da ga samo pustite na miru. A vi ne smijete odustati.”

RAD NA VJEŠTINAMA KOJE DJETETU NEDOSTAJU
U tom programu rehabilitacije kažu da će biti bolje, ali ne preciziraju koliko i kada. To nitko ne zna. Ali nije ni bitno. Bitno je da bude bolje od trenutnog stanja. Treba pobrojati sve vještine koje djetetu nedostaju u tome ga podučavati. Profesorica Helc, logoped i neuropsiholog, brutalna je u pristupu prema roditeljima. Na upoznavanju ih suočava: “Vi volite svoje dijete. OK. A kada vi umrete? Tko će ih onda voljeti?” Upozorava roditelje da moraju raditi dan za dan, a rezultati će se vidjeti samo ako ustraju.

Roditelji, primijetio je Dalibor, dođu po pomoć, ali onda, sasvim razumljivo, umanjuju razloge svog dolaska govoreći ‘pa dobro, pa ipak ide u školu’ ili ‘pa sad je sladak…’ “Profesorica Helc tada traži od roditelja da zamisle kako će slatko petogodišnje dijete izgledati kad postane odrasla i fizički snažna osoba koja neće razumjeti da nekoga može ozlijediti.”

Dalibor radi, ali ne dopušta sebi nagradu. Nikad nije zadovoljan, jer sve male znakove koji pokazuju napredak doživljava kao zamku. Ne da sam sebi da se opusti, da se samozavarava. Njegov je cilj odgojiti potpuno svjesno biće, a on svaki detalj života mora učiti. Od buđenja do odlaska na spavanje dan mora biti strukturiran, jer čim takvo dijete pustite ono se vraća besmislenim radnjama. “Biti grub prema svom djetetu, ne pokazivati osjećaje kad mu je teško? To je kazna, Božja kazna! Pred vama je dijete koje plače i traži milost dok ga doslovce mučim zahtijevajući od njega tek da mirno sjedi za stolom dok jede. Ne mogu zamjeriti roditeljima kada odustanu, ali ja sebi to nisam mogao dopustiti.”

DOK GA JE TJERAO NA ROMOBIL, IZGLEDAO JE POPUT ZLOSTAVLJAČA
“U očima drugih sam vjerojatno luđak, ali ionako sam već svašta čuo o sebi. Nisam sebi dao da se opustim, iako svaki mali osmijeh koji dobijem od njega za mene znači razvaljena vrata moćne tvrđave pod opsadom.” Rekli su mu da se od njegovog djeteta ne očekuje da veže cipele. Sada Radames veže uzice. “Žniranci koje veže, taj naš mali uspjeh, znače svaki dan po sat vremena rada. Cijelu godinu.” Bezbroj puta Radames nije uopće razumio što se od njega traži, niti ga je to najmanje zanimalo.

Od njegovog se sina nije očekivalo da naučiti voziti romobil. Dok je dijete nepostojeće motorike trenirao da nauči gurati romobil, izgledao je poput zlostavljača. “Guraj guraj… Čvrsto ruke, vikao sam inzistirajući da gura romobil. Čuto juke, ponavljao je on uplakano. Na uzbrdici, urlikao sam na njega: guraj, guraj! Ljudi su nas gledali, zaobilazili, potiho osuđivali, okretali se u smjeru iz kojeg su došli… Ali ja nemam volje opravdavati se niti objašnjavati. Imam ograničeno vrijeme. Ako želim da nešto napravi moram na njega vikati. I krenuo je, odgurnuo je romobil. U petoj godini.”

U istoj je godini svladao strah od WC školjke. Naučio verbalizirati neke nove situacije, počeo razlikovati djecu poimence, naučio plivati, svladao osnovnu higijenu. Dalibor je u utrci s vremenom, jer se mozak ne razvija zauvijek. “Uzak je vremenski okvir u kojem se može djelovati na popravak stanja. Nadam se da je na putu potpune rehabilitacije.” Prije deset godina prognoza je bila doživotni invaliditet. U ordinacijama su mu govorili da će se pokazati hoće li uopće biti funkcionalan. Danas dječak završava peti razred redovne škole. Radi po prilagođenom programu, ima asistenta, ali veseli se odlasku u školu, ocjene mu puno znače.

NJEGOVA KNJIGA JE PRIČA O VELIČANSTVENOJ LJUBAVI
Rekla sam Daliboru da izbjegavam raditi razgovore s roditeljima djece koji imaju zdravstvenih problema. Prati me neugodan osjećaj da je njihova priča jednokratno iskorištena i dugoročno uprljana. Kada bi mi nekad urednice na televiziji dale zadatak da scenaristički osmislim emisiju u kojoj roditelji dovode djecu i pričaju o svojim iskustvima, jer javnost treba senzibilizirati, ironično bih dodala kako mislim da nas – javnost – prije treba išibati, a ne senzibilizirati. Jer, kako je moguće da nam se dogodi da svako malo roditelji potrebite djece moraju izvoditi svoje malene na Trg svetog Marka moleći u mandatu lijeve Vlade povrat ionako mizerne pomoći, a u mandatu desne Vlade moraju prositi za asistente u nastavi?!

Kako je moguće da kroničnu nesposobnost našeg društva da ustanovimo bilo kakav ozbiljan sustav, kompenziramo humanitarnim akcijama? Koje, pokazuje dokumentarac Roberta Zubera u slučaju male Nore Šitum, opet uspijemo degradirati. I sve to dok javnim prostorom dominira politička vulgarnost. Dalibor se, doduše gorko, nasmijao i citirao Ramba Amadeusa koji je stanje našeg materijalne i duhovne mizerije opisao ovako: “Nacionalizam je tema do 300 eura prihoda mjesečno. Njima se servira ta priča. Kad plaća prijeđe 500 eura, onda počinje razgovor o garderobi i kafićima. Kad prijeđe tisuću, onda je top tema zdrava hrana, ljetovanja i zimovanja, a kad se popne na više od tri tisuće, onda prestaje svako palamuđenje. Ljudi onda pričaju o vremenskoj prognozi i ljubavi.” Ipak, Daliborova je knjiga zapravo priča o veličanstvenoj ljubavi.


‘Ovo je priča o meni. Ocu, o svome glavinjanju kroz probleme moga sina, o nijekanju očitoga, o panici, učenju…’ VJEKOSLAV SKLEDAR
Čitajući knjigu zadivit će vas njegova upornost i snaga, ali Dalibor si zamjera puno stvari, pa čak i neke rijetke dane koje nije proveo sa sinom u radu. “U proteklih sto dana, nisam s njim radio dva. Tih dva dana si ne mogu oprostiti. Izgubio sam beskrajno mnogo u početku dok nisam bio prihvaćao tu novu njegovu stvarnost, pa sam ga još više izgubio tražeći stvarnu pomoć, a najviše sam ga prosuo učeći sebe kako da adekvatno razmišljam. Kako da potpuno iznova osmislim sebe koji će se usmjeriti na njega onako kako mu doista treba.”

‘BOJIM SE NJEGOVA ZALJUBLJIVANJA JER ĆE BITI ODBIJAN’
Zamjera si i cijepljenje. “Postoji koincidencija, ali ne znam je li cjepivo krivo ili ne. Hrpa simptoma koje on ima koincidirala je s vremenom tog cijepljenja. No, ne mogu biti slijepi ratnik”, odgovara, vjerojatno procjenjujući da riskira da ga se na samu mogućnost propitivanja sigurnosti cjepiva diskreditira kao zatucanog primitivca. Zato na to pitanje ne odgovara. No, to je najmanji od njegovih strahova. Beznačajan prema onim s kojima se dalje suočava. “Bojim se da ću onemoćati prije nego što se on osamostali. Želim njegovoj mlađoj sestri ostaviti brata, a ne zakonsku obavezu. Bojim se njegovog zaljubljivanja jer će vjerojatno biti odbijan.

Strah me, svega me strah. Strah me i naše sredine, strah me činjenice da ne postoji mreža stručnjaka, postoje pojedinci, ali ne sustav. Strah me svake sekunde vlastitog samozavaravanja. Strah me kad čujem druge koji kažu da su ta djeca drugačija, da je to blagoslov. Odgojen sam u katoličkoj obitelji, ali ne podnosim kad se kaže da je Bog tako htio, da Bog daje križ onome tko ga može nositi. Mislim da su to floskule dizajnirane samo da tješe roditelje. Kad je čovjek suočen s problemima koje ne može sam riješiti, u opasnosti je da postane religiozan. U kontaktu s mnogim roditeljima, koji s djecom imaju slične ili veće probleme, primijetio sam uvijek isti moment.

Svi u jednom trenutku neizostavno dođu i do nadnaravne priče, do interpretacije kako im je to dijete s razlogom dano. Kako ih mora naučiti nečemu bitnome. Kako je s razlogom tako. Kako ima misiju. I malo pomalo, njihov fokus s djeteta pređe na njih same. A dijete? Oni se bave sobom, svojim duhovnim rastom, dubinama svoje duše, razinama svojeg postojanja. Najrazličitiji vjernici u životu se ne snalaze. I suočeni s nevoljom kažu da rastu, bave se sobom, promišljaju, dišu, meditiraju, mole, kleče, pjevaju, poste… Sve to samo da se ne bave problemima koji sami ne mogu riješiti, samo da se utješe. Užasno sam se bojao toga da svoju sudbinu ne prepustim u ruke drugoga.”

‘NIŠTA NE BI BILO MOGUĆE, DA MOJ SIN NIJE IMAO VOLJU’
“Ne želim čuti da će u sljedećem životu biti bolje. U sljedećem životu? Još jednom… U sljedećem životu? Ne znam postoji li sljedeći život, ne poznajem nikoga tko se javio odande. Ne mogu se pouzdati u to da netko Tamo-Gore jako dobro zna što je dobro za svakog od nas u svakom trenutku. Utjeha meni kao roditelju ne može prevagnuti nad potrebom da pomognem djetetu. Jer, kada postanete roditelj više se ne radi o vama.”

Ovako je sam sebi postavio problem: “Ako imate darovito dijete, morate ga gurati; ako imate dijete s posebnim potrebama vi ga morate vući. U čemu je zapravo razlika!?” Reći će da je njegov sin sada avion prema startnoj poziciji s koje su krenuli. Tko ga ne zna, zaključio bi tek da je stranac, jer hrvatski ne govori baš dobro. Ali nema opuštanja; oprezno ponavlja riječi profesorice Helc – gledamo samo jedan dan unaprijed. Ali, postoji u svemu tome jedan bitan faktor. “Ništa od toga ne bi bilo moguće da on nije imao volju. Da on sam nije shvatio da su sve silne terapije zapravo za njegovo dobro. Primjerice, on se opirao odlascima na program u Beograd, počeo bi vrištati kad bismo automobilom ušli u ulicu u kojoj je institut, prestravljen je bio tetom Danijelom. A sada kaže da voli ići u Beograd. Kad sam ga pitao zašto, odgovorio je: Zato što tamo učim pričati.’”

https://www.telegram.hr/price/moj-sin-j ... =NetWidget
User avatar
Gojeni H
Posts: 10228
Joined: 28/04/2012 09:54

#1277 Re: Price, pjesme, intervjui...

Post by Gojeni H »

wewa wrote:Moj sin je autist. ...

... JA SAM OTAC. MOJ SIN IMA PROBLEM’
...
Gorko ali pozitivno. :thumbup:
User avatar
Saian
Posts: 15317
Joined: 08/04/2004 21:50

#1278 Re: Price, pjesme, intervjui...

Post by Saian »

http://lithub.com/gay-muslim-refugee-on ... s-america/


Gay, Muslim, Refugee: On Making a Life in Trump’s America
Aleksandar Hemon Tells the Story of Kemalemir Frashto

The world is full of people who left the place where they were born just to stay alive, and then to die in a place where they never expected to live. The world is sown with human beings who did not make it here, wherever that may be, though they might be on their way. Many Bosnians, and I am one of them, made it here.

In my case, the here I call my own is Chicago, where I ended up in 1992, at the beginning of the war that would make Bosnia known for all the wrong and terrible reasons. I’ve written books featuring that experience, and they were published, so I followed them around the world, where I ran into other Bosnians: Miami, Tokyo, London, Stockholm, Toronto, Paris, You Name It. I also have family in Canada, the UK, France, Italy, Sweden, Australia, etc. Bosnians are one of the many refugee nations: roughly one quarter of the country’s pre-war population is now displaced, scattered all over the globe. There is no Bosnian without a family member living elsewhere, which is to say that displacement would be essential to the national character if such a thing actually existed.

Each time I meet a Bosnian, I ask: “How did you get here?” The stories they tell me are often long, fraught with elisions, edited by the presence of the many new-life-in-the-new-land modalities. People get overwhelmed while telling them, remember things they didn’t know they could or would want to remember, insist on details that are both extremely telling and irrelevant, soaked with not always apparent meanings. Entire histories are inscribed in each story, whole networks of human lives and destinies outlined. Migration generates narratives; each displacement is a tale; each tale unlike any other. The journeys are long and eventful, experiences accumulated, lives reevaluated and reconfigured, worlds torn down and recreated. Each getting here is a narrative entanglement of memory and history and emotions and pain and joy and guilt and ideas undone and reborn. Each story contains everything I’ve ever cared about in literature and life, mine or anyone else’s. Each story complements all the other ones—the world of refugees is a vast narrative landscape.

The recent upsurge in bigotry directed at migrants and refugees is predictably contingent upon their dehumanization and deindividualization—they are presented and thought of as a mass of nothings and nobodies, driven, much like zombies, by an incomprehensible, endless hunger for what “we” possess, for “our” life. In Trumpist America, they are not only denied, but also punished for that perceived desire. But each person, each family, has their own history, their own set of stories that define them and locate them in the world, their own networks of love and friendship and suffering, their own human potential. To reduce them to a faceless mass, to deprive them of their stories is a crime against humanity and history. What literature does, or at least can do, is allow for individual narrative enfranchisement. The very proposition of storytelling is that each life is a multitude of details, an irreplaceable combination of experiences, which can be contained in their totality only in narration. I take it to be my writerly duty to facilitate the telling of such stories.

Which is why I went to North Carolina in the spring of 2017 and talked to a man named Kemalemir Frashto. This is the much-shortened version of the story he told me.

When the war in Bosnia started in 1992, his name was Kemal Frašto, and he was 18 years old. He lived with his parents and brothers in Foča, a town in eastern Bosnia, best known for its prison, among the largest and the most notorious ones in the former Yugoslavia. Foča is on the river Drina, close to the border with Serbia and Montenegro, and was thus of strategic value.

On April 4, 1992, the Frašto family prayed at their mosque in celebration of Eid, unaware that the war was about to start. That day, all the prisoners were released from the prison, and an enormous murder of crows flew up into the blue sky.


On April 8, the Serb forces began an all-out attack and takeover of Foča, detaining the people of Muslim background. After establishing full control, the Serbs blew up all the mosques in town, including the 16th-century Aladža mosque. Two of Kemal’s older brothers managed to escape with their families to Sarajevo. But Kemal’s father refused to leave, because he “had no argument with anybody.” Kemal and his brother Emir, nine years older, remained with their parents, only to be placed under house arrest. Serb volunteers and paramilitaries frequently and randomly came by to threaten and abuse them, and would’ve likely killed them if it wasn’t for one of their Serb neighbors, who stayed with them day and night to make sure they were safe. But that arrangement couldn’t last, as their protector’s life was thus also endangered.

Eventually, a group of Serb paramilitaries caught them alone; one of them, Kemal’s schoolmate, raped his mother. For weeks the brothers bore witness to the killing in their neighborhood: one day Kemal watched helplessly as his neighbor was slaughtered on the spot, while his wife was repeatedly raped, whereupon her rapists cut her breasts off. Eventually, Kemal and his brother were arrested and taken to the old prison which now served as a concentration camp for Muslim men.

Foča was ethnically cleansed rapidly and with exceptional brutality. The Drina carried schools of corpses, rape camps were set up all over town. Kemal and Emir shared a small cell with other men, all of them beaten and humiliated regularly. The chief torturer was their neighbor Zelja. He told the men he tortured that they’d be spared if they crossed themselves and expressed their pride in being Serbs. Kemal and Emir refused—they had lived as Muslims, and they would die as Muslims. Besides, those who complied were killed anyway. One day, Zelja broke Emir’s teeth and Kemal’s cheek bone. Another day, a guard broke Kemal’s arm with a gun butt, the bone sticking out. When, in June 1992, Emir was “interrogated” again, alone this time, Kemal could hear his brother’s begging for mercy: “Don’t, Zelja! What did I ever do to you? What do we need this for?” “So that you can see what it’s like when Zelja beats you,” the tormentor responded. Emir never returned to the cell, and Kemal never saw him again.

Zelja would be tried and sentenced in The Hague for war crimes and rape. He served his sentence, and returned to Foča, as the Dayton Peace Accord awarded the town to the Serbs, thus effectively rewarding them for their atrocities. After the war, Kemal delegated a local friend to ask Zelja for information that could help him find his brother’s remains. Zelja demanded 20,000 KM (about $10,000) to tell him where Emir’s remains were, and Kemal neither thought that he should pay up nor had the money. “I’m not a killer. It’s not for me to punish him. God will do that,” Kemal says. “All I want is to find my brother.” (Not so long ago, he finally received a tip about the place where his brother’s remains were dumped, and managed to arrange a proper Muslim burial for him.)

Kemal remained in prison for 18 months, alternating between wanting to survive and hoping to die. While imprisoned, a Serb friend of Emir’s sent her boyfriend, Zoka, to find Kemal in the camp and bring him to their home for a shower and dinner. But Zoka ended up attracted to Kemal. Next time, he picked him up from the prison without telling his girlfriend and they ended up having sex. This happened more than once, and Zoka returned him to prison each time. Kemal was in closeted denial throughout his adolescence, so he lost his virginity with Zoka, the awkward intercourse with a girl forced upon him by his oldest brother notwithstanding. He now sees the sexual experience with Zoka as God-sent, something that helped him not lose his mind in the camp.

In November 1993, there was heavy fighting near Foča and the Serb forces used the prisoners as human shields. Kemal was one of the bodies the Serbs put up in front of their positions to shoot over their heads. The desperate Bosnians deployed a multiple rocket launcher to hit Serb trenches; an explosion lifted Kemal and threw him into a ditch, where he lay unconscious for a while. When he came to, he didn’t appear to be injured. It was dark, and there was no one around—not even dead and wounded—except for a beautiful, barefoot man in a white robe, emanating a kind of interior light. For a moment, Kemal thought he’d reached heaven and was facing Allah, but the man said to Kemal: “Let’s go.”

“Where am I going?” Kemal asked.

“To Sarajevo,” the man said.

Sarajevo was under siege at the time, and at least 50 miles away. Kemal walked for seven nights and six days; at night, the man in the white robe lit up the path for Kemal. He was a melek (an angel), Kemal realized, guiding him through a difficult mountainous terrain and away from combat zones. Kemal subsisted on what he foraged: wild garlic and tree leaves and carrots from abandoned gardens. At one point, he nearly stumbled upon a Serb convoy; hidden in the bushes and terrified, he watched tanks thunder by 60 yards away from him. The melek consoled him, assuring him it was not yet his time to die.

Taking a long roundabout way, Kemal reached the hills above Sarajevo, where he ran into an elderly četnik (a Serbian nationalist paramilitary group). By this time, Kemal had a long beard, which is part of the četnik appearance, so the old man assumed he was one of them. The četnik asked him where he was coming from. At that moment, what popped in Kemalemir’s head was Little Red Riding Hood (Crvenka-pica), perhaps because the old četnik’s beard gave him a wolf-like appearance. Kemalemir said he was taking food to his grandmother, which the old četnik commended. Below them, in the valley, Sarajevo was in flames. The četnik said to Kemal: “Sarajevo is burning. Fuck their Muslim mothers, we’re going to get them!”

Kemal walked on and reached the Bosnian defensive positions on the outskirts of the city. He had a četnik beard, no uniform or documents, nor could he read the Bosnian Army ranks (as it’d been founded while he’d been in prison), so the Bosnians had no way of knowing who he was, what army he might belong to. Before he passed out, he only managed to utter: “I’m exhausted. I’m Muslim. I come from Foča.”

The phrase Božja sudbina (God’s fate) is common in Bosnian, and it’s different from Božja volja (God’s will). I don’t know the theological underpinning of the difference, but I suspect that God’s fate implies a plan, a predestined trajectory laid down by God for each of us to move along without His having to do much else about it; in contrast, God’s will has an interventionist quality, and might be subject to His whims. Be that as it may, Kemal claims that it was God’s fate that his cousin was a soldier in the Bosnian unit that captured him so that he could vouch-safe for Kemal and stop the short-fused soldiers from killing him. Kemal therefore ended up attached to an infusion pouch in a hospital in Sarajevo. He weighed 88 pounds. The melek appeared to him only one more time, a few weeks later, in a dream, only to implore him not to talk about what happened to anybody.

In 1994, with the help of a CB radio operator, Kemal managed to get in touch with his parents, who subsequently found a way to besieged Sarajevo to be with their son. After witnessing terrible crimes and surviving, they’d crossed the border in Montenegro, Kemal’s father hiding under his wife’s skirt. In Montenegro, Kemal’s mother had discovered she was pregnant from the rape and underwent an abortion. When they reached Sarajevo, it was discovered that she had a tumor in her uterus. When it was taken out, it weighed 11 pounds.

Kemal spent the rest of the war in and around Sarajevo. He surreptitiously slept with men, including a fellow member of the mosque choir, with whom he’d meet to study the Quran. In 1995, he got a degree in Oriental studies and Arabic language at the University of Sarajevo. In 1996, desperate to leave Bosnia, he went to Ludwigsburg, near Stuttgart, where his oldest brother lived. At the time, the German government, having determined that the war in Bosnia was over and that it was safe to return, emptied all the refugee camps, sending the Bosnians back. Kemal entered Germany illegally and found a job as a stripper at a (straight) bar. He enjoyed working there, as did his German lady clients, who wallpapered his sweaty body with money. He discovered and explored the very active gay scene in Cologne. At a local swimming pool, for the first time ever, he saw two men holding hands and kissing, publicly in love.

But he felt he had to go back home, even if his pockets were lined with money. God’s people lived in Bosnia, he believed, while Germany was populated with sinners. Soon upon his return to Sarajevo, he met Belma; they got married ten days later. The marriage was supposed to counter his terrible desires; he never cheated on his wife, but kept imagining men while having sex with her. He considered himself to be sick and abnormal, and kept trying to do what was expected from a “normal” man. Belma even got pregnant, but then had a miscarriage; Kemal was relieved, because the drop in hormone levels meant she lost interest in sex.

He needed a job, but his Oriental Studies and Arabic Language degree wasn’t going to get him anywhere. One winter day, after Sarajevo was swamped with snow, he went to the unemployment office to look for work, and a woman there asked him if he’d be willing to shovel. He was, and he shoveled the streets with enough enthusiasm to be offered a full-time job at Sarajevo City Services. Come spring, he was given a bicycle and a broom and assigned to the former Olympic Village, where the international athletes had stayed during the 1984 Winter Olympics. It was a good job, until his boss called him into his office to express his shock at the fact that Kemal had a college degree. Then he promptly fired him for being overqualified.

This was a turning point for Kemal. He announced to Belma that he was determined to leave Bosnia. At first she wouldn’t even consider joining him, but then changed her mind. They applied for an American resettlement visa, went through a series of interviews, and waited anxiously for a response. After two years or so, they were invited for their final interview in Split, Croatia. Kemal’s English was not good, but he understood when the interviewer asked: “What would you do if I told you that you have failed this interview?” Kemal said: “If you open that window, I’ll jump out of it right now.”

In 2001, they resettled in Utica, New York, where Bosnian refugees were nearly a quarter of the population. Kemal worked at an enormous casino, and also as a cook at an Italian restaurant. He was often suicidal, and exhausted himself with work, sometimes clocking 20-hour days. But this is how life often works: in the middle of a mind-crushing depression, he and Belma went to Las Vegas, where he won $16,000 on a slot machine. He used that money to buy his first American house.

By 2003, he could no longer stand the pretense of “normal” life, and came out to his wife by way of deliberately leaving gay porn images on his computer. Belma was furious, and exacted revenge by telling every Bosnian she knew that her husband was gay, falsely claiming that he was HIV positive. The casino employed hundreds of Bosnians, and most of them now shunned him. Nonetheless, he worked out a divorce deal with Belma, from which she got enough money to move to Finland and take up with a man she had met on the internet. It turned out that the man was a human trafficker, who locked her up and forced her into sexual servitude. She went through hell, escaping and returning to the United States only with Kemal’s help.

Kemal went back to school, attained a diploma as a radiography technician. At the local mosque he met a Dr. Kahn, who told him that his desires were not sinful because God made him as he was. Kemal also met Tim, an American, and they became very close, well beyond being occasional lovers, eventually moving in together. On becoming a US citizen in 2005, Kemal merged his first name with his dead brother’s so they can always be together, his legal name now Kemalemir Preston Frashto.

When Kemalemir found a job in North Carolina, where he moved with Tim in 2007, it seemed that things were going well. But, as many refugees know, it’s exactly when things seem to be going well that post-traumatic stress disorder kicks in full force. Frequently suicidal, Kemal went from therapist to therapist—one told him that he was making stuff up, another came drunk to sessions—until he found a Muslim one, who helped him see that he was not abnormal, neither a sinner nor a monster. Kemal began reconciling his faith with his sense of himself, his innermost feelings with Islam. He understood that God created those feelings, as He created his body and its desires. Despite all that, in the summer of 2013 he attempted to “pass the final judgment upon himself” as the Bosnian idiom (sam sebi presuditi) would have it: While Tim was at work, Kemal strung a rope on the staircase and climbed the chair. As Kemalemir kicked off the chair, Tim walked in—God’s fate, again—just in time to cut the rope.

What would complete Kemal’s salvation was love. He’d been corresponding by way of Facebook with Dženan, a Sarajevo hairdresser in a sham marriage with a woman. Kemal traveled back to Bosnia to meet Dženan in person, not expecting much more than a good time, something that could get him out of his PTS doldrums. But when they met for the first time at a bus stop in Vogošća, a drab Sarajevo suburb, they embraced and didn’t let go of each other for a very long time. It felt as though they’d known each other for years, and their love grew fast. They had a great time together, and as soon as Kemalemir returned to North Carolina, he began thinking of his next visit to Sarajevo. Even so, they couldn’t quite imagine a life together; at the very least, it was logistically complicated.

When Kemalemir returned to Bosnia around Thanksgiving the same year, he devised a simple plan where Dženan, who got a US tourist visa in the meantime, would accompany him back to Charlotte, stay illegally if need be, so they could see how things between them would develop. But by this time, Dženan’s wife, became unwilling to let go of her husband and started creating problems, as did her family. Her father asked to be repaid the money he’d spent on the wedding; her sister remembered that Dženan owed her 50 KM ($25), and even she declared that if Dženan wanted a divorce it would cost him $1,000. Dismayed by the ugliness of the situation, they paid up and left earlier than planned.

Soon upon the arrival to North Carolina they decided to get married, which would not just confirm their mutual commitment, but also resolve Dženan’s immigration status. Gay marriage was not legal in North Carolina at the time, so they went to Maryland and got married on June 12, 2014.

Until he got married, Kemalemir stayed away from the Charlotte-area Bosnians. But with marriage, he felt a need to engage with the community. He started going to the Bosnian mosque, became active and involved in the community despite their homophobia, ranging from elbow-nudging and snickering to outright insults. Kemalemir and Dženan also wanted to become registered members of the Bosnian mosque, which would, among other things, guarantee them a proper religious burial. They believed they were a legitimate part of the Bosnian Muslim community, and that there could be no viable reason why they should not be members. Some reasonable people in the community suggested to the imam that the issue be passed upward; it was eventually referred all the way back to Bosnia to be considered by a council of muftis, who then referred it back to the imam, thus completing the vicious circle. The donation Dženan and Kemal gave to the mosque was refused, their membership application denied. The imam told them that the application might have been approved had they not been so open. Kemalemir separates faith and religion and believes that, while faith comes directly from God, religion comes from man. Dženan is the love of his life, and he cannot see how God could object to that.

In the meantime, Donald Trump got elected. “I’m Muslim, refugee, gay,” Kemalemir says. “A perfect target for Trump.” After their marriage, Dženan had a temporary green card, which made them worry about the possibility of deportation, until a permanent status was approved in the winter of 2017. Uncomfortable though they may be in Trump’s America, they think it was God’s fate that they ended up here, and together.

Kemalemir told me all this, and much more, at his small apartment in Charlotte. He sat on a comfortable leather sofa facing a huge TV with programs broadcasting live from Bosnia. Next to the TV, there were pictures of the Kemalemir and Dženan grinning, a black-and-white photo of Emir, and a plaque reading:

If Tears Could Build a Stairway
And Memories a Lane
I’d Walk Right up to Heaven
And Bring You Home Again

There was also a dark carved-wood corner shelf in the dining area which Kemalemir had bought from an Iranian who at first didn’t want to sell it at any price. A few hundred years old, the wooden corner shelf was populated with ibriks, pitchers with curved spouts, and other Bosnian-style mementos. On the round table next to it, there was an intricate beige tablecloth, crocheted by Kemalemir’s mother.

In 2000, Kemal visited Foča for the first time after the war and for the last time before going to America. His former neighbors, the mother and sister of the Serb neighbor who protected his family at the beginning of it all, insisted he stop by for lunch, as they might never see each other again. When he stepped into the house, he recognized much of his family furniture: cabinets, armoires, tables. The plates the lunch was served on also used to belong to the Fraštos. “How come you have all this?” he asked the mother, if rhetorically. He knew that, after his family fled, the neighbors took furniture and other household items, claiming that if they hadn’t, someone else would have taken them. During the lunch, Kemalemir had to swallow his hurt and anger, because, he says, his mother always taught him to be the better person. But on the way out the sister, no doubt feeling guilty, said to her mother: “Give him something that belonged to them, as a souvenir,” and the mother gave him the crocheted tablecloth.

In Charlotte, Kemalemir showed me the circular area where his mother had used white thread when she’d run out of the beige kind. The shift in the color was so subtle I would’ve never noticed if he hadn’t pointed it out it to me. “This thing, this small thing,” he said, “is what makes it unique.”
User avatar
Saian
Posts: 15317
Joined: 08/04/2004 21:50

#1279 Re: Price, pjesme, intervjui...

Post by Saian »



courtesy of pirmin :kakoste:
Zum großen Bösen kamen die Menschen nie mit einem Schritt, nie, sondern mit vielen kleinen. Von denen jeder zu klein schien für eine große Empörung. Erst wird gesagt, dann wird getan.
User avatar
hadzinicasa
Posts: 13620
Joined: 08/11/2005 16:08
Location: u tranziciji

#1280 Re: Price, pjesme, intervjui...

Post by hadzinicasa »

Kapital je u radniku našao najvrednijeg potrošača. To nije predvidio Karl Marx.


Dvije ključne ekonomske ideje “Komunističkog manifesta” i kasnije Marxova rada - načini proizvodnje su društvenog karaktera, prolazni i promjenjivi te povijest ljudske vrste je povijest klasne borbe, potisnute su i skrivene te nas mainstream ekonomija uvjerava u vječnu trajnost, neprolaznost i prirodni karakter kapitalizma


Komunistički manifest napisan je i objavljen u jeku dvadesetogodišnjih previranja u Europi koja su kulminirala prosvjedima 1848. godine. Pobune koje su se tih revolucionarnih godina rasplamsale diljem kontinenta u pravilu su sadržavale zahtjeve za većom demokratizacijom, boljim uvjetima rada i većim pravima radnika te slobodnijim izražavanjem novih nacionalnih identiteta. Grupe njemačkih emigranata koje su se u Londonu 1847. godine udružile u komunističku partiju odlučile su da im treba dokument koji će predstavljati njihove temeljne principe i ciljeve. Zadatak sastavljanja teksta povjerili su Karlu Marxu i Friedrichu Engelsu.

DVA STOLJEĆA MISLIOCA IZ TRIERA Karl Marx 'Sigurno je da ja nisam marksist'


Suprotno uzavrelim nacionalnim nabojima koji su bili jedan od nosioca tadašnjih promjena i kasnijeg nastanka novih država, komunisti naglasak stavljaju na internacionalizam te u skladu s tim objavljuju tekst na šest jezika. U duhu vremena, kao otpor brutalnim uvjetima rada i života u desetljećima nagle ekspanzije kapitalističke industrijske proizvodnje, centralno mjesto u manifestu zauzimaju radnici i njihova borba s kapitalom.

Dok se koncept klase naslanja na tadašnje radove političke ekonomije, postavljanje klasne borbe i eksploatacije radnika od strane kapitala u centar analize predstavlja novitet i trn u oku ekonomistima koji su podržavali kapitalističku proizvodnju. Manifest je odigrao ulogu jednog on najbitnijih tekstova radničkog pokreta u posljednjih dva stoljeća. Tekst se dosta naslanja na Engelsov rada Uvjeti radničke klase u Engleskoj iz 1844. u kojem se prvi put analizom uvjeta rada, života i dostupnih ekonomskih, socioloških i povijesnih studija razvija teza o kapitalističkom načinu proizvodnje i njegovim specifičnostima. Oblikovan kao poziv na internacionalno ujedinjenje radnika i djelovanje ka ostvarenju svojih interesa u sukobu s kapitalom, Manifest izlaže probleme kapitalističkog razvoja od kojih su mnogi, poput velike nejednakosti, raširene nezaposlenosti i cikličkih kriza, i dalje aktualni.

Fascinantna sposobnost

Kapitalističkoj proizvodnji priznaje se fascinantna sposobnost uništavanja starog feudalnog poretka i njegovih društvenih odnosa te da podižući produktivnost, razvijajući mašine i revolucionizirajući proizvodnju koja se konstantno širi i magnetski spaja svijet u jedno, “rapidnim poboljšanjima sredstava za proizvodnju, beskrajnom lakoćom komunikacije, buržoazija uvlači sve nacije, čak i najprimitivnije, u civilizaciju”. Međutim, buržoazija postaje uvučena u “konstantnu borbu, prvo protiv aristokracije, kasnije protiv drugih dijelova buržoazije, onih čiji se interesi protive razvoju industrije, te uvijek protiv buržoazije iz drugih zemalja.

U svim ovim borbama ona nalazi nužnim obraćati se proletarijatu kako bi dobila njegovu pomoć te ga tako uvlači u političku arenu”. Na taj način buržoazija “opskrbljuje proletarijat njegovim vlastitim materijalima za razvoj, tj. oružjima za korištenje protiv same buržoazije”. Gotovo stoljeće svjedočimo uvlačenju radničkih partija u političku arenu. U tridesetak godina nakon Drugog svjetskog rata one su se izborile za drastično povećanje državne proizvodnje u korist zadovoljenja osnovnih potreba, emancipirajući tako radnike donekle od strogog diktata tržišta kroz usluge, proizvodnju javnog sektora i transfere poput doplataka i mirovina.

Zahtjevi i rješenja izloženi su u vidu specifičnog razumijevanja ekonomskih i političkih procesa po kojima povijest možemo promatrati kroz dvije centralne karakteristike. Prvo, načini proizvodnje su društvenog karaktera, prolazni i promjenjivi. Od robovlasništva preko feudalizma pa sve do kapitalizma, novi dominantni način rađa se u srcu starog koji nadilazi, pobjeđuje i na kraju zamjenjuje. Drugo, povijest ljudske vrste povijest je klasnih borbi, potlačenih i tlačitelja, robova i robovlasnika, seljaka i feudalaca, radnika i buržoazije.

Klasni konflikt svaki put je dugoročno rezultirao revolucionarnim promjenama cijelog društva i kolapsom prijašnjih klasnih podjela u korist novih. Tako je i buržoazija odigrala revolucionarnu ulogu, brišući sve feudalne odnose i favorizirajući tržišta i kapitalističku proizvodnju gdje god je došla na vlast. Po Komunističkom manifestu, društvene promjene su trebale voditi komunističke partije, nudeći alternativni razvoj društva temeljen na načinu proizvodnje koji će zamijeniti kapitalistički te ukinuti eksploataciju, kako radnika od strane kapitala, tako i eksploataciju među nacijama.

Suvremena mainstream ekonomija povijesno se razvila negirajući obje karakteristike povijesnog razvoja društava iz komunističkog manifesta. U neoklasičnoj ekonomiji iz koje se razvila, potpuno suprotstavljeno klasičnom kanonu političke ekonomije na koji se postulati iz manifesta i Marxov kasniji rad nastavljaju, ne postoje ni klase niti klasni sukob.

Idiličan odnos

Kapital i radnici funkcioniraju u suradnji i harmoniji, uvijek nagrađeni adekvatno svojem doprinosu. Ovaj aksiom nadnica koje su uvijek sukladne doprinosu proizvodnji nastao je kao direktna i eksplicitna negacija Marxove ideje eksploatacije. John Bates Clark, autor tog aksioma i prvi američki neoklasični ekonomist, zapisao je u svojim ranim radovima da su komunisti i Marxove ideje najveći neprijatelji poretku. Kada bi radnici bili uvjereni u valjanost Marxove ideje o eksploataciji koja se raširila radničkim pokretom, s punim bi pravom postali socijalisti i revolucionari, rezonirao je Clark 1880-ih. Rješenje je pronašao u nasilnom gušenju radikalnih krila radničkih pokreta državnim aparatom te uvjeravanju radnika da su bez obzira na nivo nadnica plaćeni adekvatno doprinosu, baš kao i svi ostali faktori proizvodnje - kapital, zemlja i poduzetnik.

Kapitalistička je proizvodnja na taj način aksiomatski, dekretom, proglašena za pravednu i meritokratsku. Možda najpronicljivije Clarkovo rješenje bilo je u tretmanu profita kao viška proizvodnje, ključnom pojmu Marxova koncepta eksploatacije i komunističke i radničke ideje o raspodjeli viškova planski i po društveno određenim prioritetima i potrebama. Clark uvodi figuru poduzetnika kojem pripisuje sav profit i tvrdi da je, kao i ostali faktori proizvodnje, plaćen po doprinosu.

Stoga viška, tj. profita više nema: cijeli je prihod od proizvodnje pripisan faktorima proizvodnje. Ako nema viška, rasprave o eksploataciji i planiranju korištenja viškova prestaju imati ikakvu osnovu. Clark nikada nije ni na koji način svoje glavne ideje empirijski testirao. Inspiriran tadašnjim kancelarom Njemačkog Carstva Ottom von Bismarckom, Clark je zagovarao da se paralelno s nasilnim gušenjem radničkog pokreta radnicima daju oni ustupci koji neće prijetiti poretku i kapitalističkoj proizvodnji, poput naknada za vrijeme bolesti, mirovina ili osiguranja od ozljeda na radu.

Kontrirajući i drugoj ideji iz komunističkog manifesta o prolaznom i društvenom karakteru načina proizvodnje, Clark je kapitalističku proizvodnju, distribuciju imovine i akumulaciju bogatstva koja iz nje proizlazi proglasio prirodnom. Na taj je način efektivno neutralizirao još jedan od ključnih, ako ne i najbitniji zahtjev iz komunističkog manifesta: napad na privatno vlasništvo nad sredstvima za proizvodnju, odnosno u kapitalističkom društvu nad kapitalom. Marx i Engels su u Manifestu zapisali:

“Komunisti mogu sažeti svoju teoriju u jednoj frazi: transformacija privatnog vlasništva”, nastavljajući da se ne radi o osobnoj imovini koja služi za osobne slobode, aktivnosti i nezavisnost - za što ih se često pogrešno napada, naglašavaju autori - već o privatnom vlasništvu nad industrijom i nad alatima za proizvodnju. Clark u svojem radu ostavlja pitanje vlasništva potpuno izvan svojeg teorijskog aparata, nazivajući ga prirodnim, zadanim, ne nudeći pritom nikakvo utemeljeno objašnjenje za svoje tvrdnje.

Mainstream ekonomija

U grubim crtama, ovih nekoliko glavnih karakteristika Clarkova rada glavne su odlike mainstream ekonomije koja se danas predaje na većini fakulteta i gotovo potpuno dominira udžbenicima ekonomije. Na Clarkovim i sličnim osnovama drugih teoretičara ekonomije izgrađene su moderne teorije ekonomskog rasta bez kojih je mainstream makroekonomija teško zamisliva danas. Unatoč tome što je Clark eksplicitno i u svim fazama svojeg rada pisao o političkoj motivaciji i ciljevima svojeg rada, taj se aspekt nigdje i nikada ne spominje u udžbenicima.

Tako su dvije ključne ekonomske ideje komunističkog manifesta i kasnijeg Marxova rada potisnute i skrivene od studenata i kasnijih ekonomskih stručnjaka: umjesto društvenog i povijesno prolaznog karaktera načina proizvodnje studente i javnost uvjerava se u vječnu trajnost, neprolaznost i prirodni karakter kapitalističke proizvodnje. Postojanje klasa i antagonističkih klasnih interesa se negira, negirajući tako i samu potrebu političke borbe u ekonomskoj sferi. Na ovaj je način tehnički konstruiran set argumenata koji su kasnije našli svoj populistički izričaj u izjavi pripisanoj britanskoj premijerki Margaret Thatcher “There is no alternative” (TINA) - alternative nema.

Vratimo se Manifestu i aktualnostima njegovih uvida. Komunističke su partije diljem svijeta, na svoj način interpretirajući Manifest i njegove osnovne postulate te kasniji Marxov rad, vodile političko-ekonomske borbe prema nadilaženju kapitalizma. Nakon socijalističkih revolucija i više desetljeća pokušaja pronalaženja takvog puta, u najvećem broju država došlo je do prekida i odbacivanja praksi i ideja. U toku više od četvrt stoljeća, koliko je prošlo od povratka socijalističkih zemalja Europe obećanjima kapitalističkih ideala, integracija u Europsku uniju za mnoge je zemlje bila dodatni korak ka težnji za životnim standardom, ekonomskim rastom i individualnim slobodama razvijenijih zapadnih zemlja. Očekivanja su bila velika, no u stvarnosti je ispalo drugačije.

Velika većina zemalja doživjela je demografsko odumiranje te društveno i ekonomsko zaostajanje. Banke iz razvijenijih zemalja poplavile su mnoge istočne susjede, financirajući gotovo isključivo potrošnju stanovništva te pri tome ignorirajući potrebe razvoja lokalne proizvodnje, oportuno koristeći prihode i štednju lokalnog stanovništva kao osnovni kapital, izlažući se minimalnim rizicima. Uspješnije zemlje, poput Poljske, Češke i Slovačke, integrirane su u proizvodne lance bogatijih zemalja bez mnogo autonomije, na mjesta s nižom dodanom vrijednošću rada. Kada pogledamo istočnije, mnoge od bivših sovjetskih republika postale su ovisne o ruskoj ekonomskoj politici.

Siromašnije članice Europske unije, među kojima i Hrvatska, školuju visoko obrazovanu radnu snagu, no u nedostatku perspektivnih radnih mjesta i u situaciji niskih primanja ona često odlazi u emigraciju. Ideal tržišnih mehanizama u praksi europske integracije svodi se na to da trošak školovanja stručnjaka plaćaju siromašnije zemlje, a dobrobiti dodane vrijednosti rada i poreza ostaju u bogatijim zemljama koje privlače školovane radnike boljim primanjima i prilikama za osobni profesionalni razvoj.

Tako se umjesto izjednačavanja nivoa razvijenosti uvođenjem slobode kolanja kapitala i radnika proizvode dodatne razlike i na taj način efektivno ekonomski bogatije koloniziraju manje razvijene zemlje, usporavajući njihov napredak. Ovakav razvoj situacije ne bi iznenadio Marxa i Engelsa koji su već 1848. upozoravali na negativne efekte otvaranja tržišta i tendencija ka porastu kako ekonomske i političke centralizacije tako i nejednakosti. Gubljenjem autonomije vlastitih centralnih banaka zemlje zarobljene u eurozoni i one koje su vezale svoje valute za euro ostale su bez mogućnosti korekcije svoje kompetitivnosti smanjenjem cijene rada i ekspanzivnijim državnim investicijama i strategijom razvoja.

Ni ova situacija Marxu i Engelsu ne bi bila strana: jedan od zahtjeva komunističkog manifesta odnosio se na centralizaciju kredita u rukama države kroz nacionalnu banku s javnim kapitalom i garantiranim monopolom. No po logici apsolutnog povjerenja u tržišta takva je situacija nepoželjna jer dok se za političke organe koji bi diktirali pravac rada takvim institucijama u mainstream ekonomskim teorijama drži da sigurno vode u propast, tržišta se, slijedeći Clarkov postulat i kasnije razvijene matematičke modele, smatraju najpoželjnijim i najefikasnijim rješenjem alokacije svih faktora proizvodnje.

Društvena konvencija

Ukazujući na društveni i prolazni karakter svakog načina proizvodnje i na klasnu borbu suprotstavljenih strana, Komunistički manifest otvara prostor za promišljanje razvoja i promjena oblika proizvodnje. Privatno vlasništvo nad sredstvima za proizvodnju društvena je konvencija koja je, kao i ostali aspekti proizvodnje i alokacije bogatstva, podložna promjenama.

Mainstream ekonomske teorije u svojoj su srži u velikoj mjeri reakcija na ta dva osnovna postulata prisutna u Marxovu radu još iz Komunističkog manifesta, sve u funkciji zaštite postojećeg dominantnog oblika proizvodnje i društvenih odnosa koji iz njega proizlaze. Što su problemi postojećeg poretka veći, time je veća relevantnost Komunističkog manifesta u kojem je ne samo vizionarski zapaženo da će se kapitalistička proizvodnja kontinuirano težeći tehnološkim inovacijama globalno proširiti, nego je i s dva spomenuta centralna uvida ponuđena metoda razmišljanja i progovaranja o mogućim promjenama.

Vrijedi također zapamtiti i kako su upravo stoljetne radničke borbe dovele do uvođenja univerzalnog prava glasa na izborima te kako se, unatoč jednopartijskoj vladavini i sužavanju političkih izbora u zemljama koje su težile socijalizmu, upravo idejama iz Manifesta može dovesti u pitanje nedostatak demokratske deliberacije i uprave u ekonomskoj sferi u kapitalizmu. Takav gigantski demokratski deficit uporno i sistematski prešućuju razne struke koje se bave srodnim pitanjima, kao i javna sfera.

Problem nejednakosti

Jedna od točaka na kojoj Manifest inzistira jest da širenje kapitalističke proizvodnje nužno vodi ka velikom porastu nejednakosti. Zadnje desetljeće svjedočimo nizu studija koje se osvrću na današnje probleme nejednakosti. Studije Branka Milanovića pokazuju kako se zbog ekonomskog rasta Kine i Indije nejednakost među nacijama smanjuje, dok sama nejednakost unutar tih država raste kao i u razvijenim zemljama zapada. Thomas Piketty i njegovi suradnici pokazali su da se nejednakost individualnog bogatstva u Francuskoj održava najviše zahvaljujući nasljedstvu, a ne prije svega zbog razlika u prihodima, kako se često misli.

Tražeći potpuno ukidanje nasljedstva, Manifest je i za ovaj problem današnjeg društva ponudio rješenje, no ono zadire u svetost privatne imovine koju se stoljećima brani iz liberalnog ideološkog aparata, kao i iz samog srca mainstream ekonomskog kanona. Po Komunističkom manifestu, akumulacija bogatstva je u osnovi društveni i povijesni proces kolektivnog doprinosa generacija radnika i društva u cjelini te stoga viškovi (što nasljedstvo u osnovi jest) pripadaju društvu. Takvo je razumijevanje bogatstva i danas previše radikalno i neprihvatljivo. Međutim, osim moralnih načela, referiranja na prirodni karakter i dugo postojeću praksu, kritičari komunističkog pristupa ne nude uvjerljive argumente za individualno, a ne društveno nasljeđivanje imovine.

Prihvatimo li argument iz Manifesta o načinima proizvodnje kao društvenim, prolaznim i povijesno specifičnim, nema razloga da na nejednakosti koje kapitalistička proizvodnja i pripadajuće norme poput individualnog nasljedstva proizvode ne gledamo kao na prolazne i promjenjive te kao na predmete društvenih dogovora i političkih odluka. Drugim riječima, Manifest nam i 170 godina nakon objave govori o mogućoj alternativi kapitalističkoj proizvodnji i društvenom uređenju.

Ono što autori Manifesta nisu predvidjeli jest da će kapital u svojem radniku naći najpouzdanijeg potrošača. Porastom individualne potrošnje i pripadajućim manje-više kontinuiranim i tehnološkim inovacijama induciranim dizanjem materijalne kvalitete života se kupuje socijalni mir i odlažu rasprave o drugačijem obliku proizvodnje. Znamo da kapitalistička proizvodnja vodi ka cikličkim krizama, no one nam služe kao prozori u sistematski potisnuta pitanja o društvenom uređenju i mogućim alternativama.
https://www.jutarnji.hr/vijesti/svijet/ ... x/7320462/
User avatar
Saian
Posts: 15317
Joined: 08/04/2004 21:50

#1281 Re: Price, pjesme, intervjui...

Post by Saian »

Tekst Borisa Dežulovića u cjelosti prenosimo s internetskog portala N1 televizije ...

Najprije je na samom startu eliminacijske faze, u pedeset osmoj sekundi osmine finala protiv Danske, Mathias Jorgensen zabio za 1-0.

Za sve naše reprezentacije u mojih četrdeset pet godina staža, bilo jugoslavensku ili hrvatsku, tim bi antiklimatičkim šokom u prvim trenucima utakmice svečano završilo Svjetsko nogometno prvenstvo. Ostalih osamdeset devet minuta, vidjeli ste to stotinu puta, zbunjeno bi bauljali po ledini, do kraja povijesti svađajući se tko je kriv i tko je tamo u šesnaestercu trebao preuzeti Jorgensena.

Ne, međutim, i ova Hrvatska. Mandžukić je izjednačio već u sljedećem napadu i utakmica se rastvorila. I opet: sve dosadašnje naše reprezentacije nakon toga bi se povukle u opreznu formaciju i čekale da nekako padne nekakav gol, iako takav u cijeloj našoj povijesti nikad nije pao. Ne i ova Hrvatska: ovi su trčali i napadali svih devedeset minuta, i svih pola sata produžetaka.

Onda je potkraj drugog produžetka, u 116. minuti Luka Modrić promašio penal za pobjedu i utakmicu uveo u raspucavanje jedanaesteraca. Za sve naše reprezentacije u mojih četrdeset pet godina, bilo jugoslavensku ili hrvatsku, tim bi drugim antiklimatičkim šokom u posljednjim trenucima utakmice svečano završilo Svjetsko prvenstvo. Prestravljeni i oduzeti zapucavali bi penale i gađali tribine, do kraja povijesti svađajući se je li penal u raspucavanju trebao pucati šokirani Modrić. Ne i ova Hrvatska: Modrić je drugi put pogodio, Danijel Subašić hladno skinuo tri penala, a Rakitić svoga na kraju izveo rutinski kao na snimanju reklame za kekse, uvodeći Hrvatsku među osam najboljih.

Onda je u tridesetoj minuti četvrtfinalne utakmice protiv Rusije Denis Čerišev zabio za 1-0. Za sve naše reprezentacije u mojih četrdeset pet godina staža, bilo jugoslavensku ili hrvatsku, tim bi, već trećim antiklimatičkim šokom najzad završilo Svjetsko nogometno prvenstvo: ne pamtim da je ijedna od njih ikad dva puta put zaredom okrenula rezultatski minus. Ostalih sat vremena zbunjeno bi bauljali po ledini, do kraja povijesti svađajući se tko je kriv i tko je tamo na vrhu šesnaesterca trebao preuzeti Čeriševa. Ne, međutim, i ova Hrvatska. Kramarić je izjednačio niti desetak minuta kasnije i utakmica se rastvorila. I opet: sve naše dosadašnje reprezentacije nakon toga bi se povukle u opreznu formaciju i čekale da nekako padne onaj nikad dočekani nekakav gol. Ne i ova Hrvatska: ovi su trčali i napadali svih devedeset minuta, pa i u novih pola sata produžetaka, sve dok ga Domagoj Vida potkraj prvog produžetka nije zabio za 2-1.

Onda je potkraj drugog, u 116. minuti, Fernandes glavom pogodio za 2-2 i utakmicu uveo u raspucavanje jedanaesteraca. Za sve naše reprezentacije u mojih četrdeset pet godina, bilo jugoslavensku ili hrvatsku, tim bi, sad već četvrtim antiklimatičkim šokom u posljednjim trenucima utakmice konačno završilo Svjetsko prvenstvo. Prestravljeni i oduzeti zapucavali bi penale, protivnički vratar hvatao bi ih kao kruške, a mi bismo se do kraja povijesti svađali je li penal u raspucavanju trebao pucati nezagrijani Kovačić. Ne i ova Hrvatska: Subašić je opet hladno skinuo prvi penal, a Rakitić svoga na kraju izveo rutinski kao na snimanju reklame, uvodeći Hrvatsku među četiri najbolje.

Onda je već u petoj minuti polufinalne utakmice protiv Engleske Modrić pred šesnaestercem srušio Allija, a Kieran Trippier iz slobodnog udarca zabio za 1-0. Za sve naše reprezentacije u mojih pedesetak godina staža, bilo jugoslavensku ili hrvatsku, tim bi nevjerojatnim, petim antiklimatičkim šokom jednom za svagda završilo Svjetsko nogometno prvenstvo: tri puta zaredom rezultatski minus nije okrenula nijedna reprezentacija u povijesti Mundijala, a kamoli neka od naših. Naši bi ostalih sat vremena zbunjeno bauljali po ledini, do kraja povijesti svađajući se tko je kriv i tko je tamo na vrhu šesnaesterca trebao preuzeti Allija. Ne, međutim, i ova Hrvatska. Dvadesetak minuta prije završetka Ivan Perišić je izjednačio i utakmica se opet rastvorila. I opet: sve naše dosadašnje reprezentacije nakon toga bi se povukle u opreznu formaciju i čekale onaj sad već mitološki gol. Ne i ova Hrvatska - ovi su trčali i napadali svih devedeset minuta, pa i novih, trećih pola sata produžetaka, sve dok ga desetak minuta prije kraja Mandžukić nije zabio za 2-1, uvodeći Hrvatsku u finale, među dvije najbolje na svijetu.


U samo deset dana Hrvatska je odigrala nevjerojatno iscrpljujuće tri utakmice, u svakoj loveći rezultatski minus, i svaku s produžecima, tri puta po dva sata nogometa, od čega dvije s dramom jedanaesteraca, što znači da je odigrala čak devedeset minuta više, odnosno cijele četiri utakmice: nitko nikad, u svih osamdeset osam godina povijesti Mundijala, nije imao teži put do finala. A tamo Francuzi, koji ne samo da su igrali utakmicu manje, nego su imali i dan odmora više, svoje polufinale protiv Belgije odigravši dan prije hrvatskog.

Onda je nakon samo petnaestak minuta historijskog finala, usred fanatičnog pritiska Hrvatske, Brozović pred šesnaestercem srušio Griezmana, a loptu iz slobodnog udarca Mandžukić nespretno skrenuo u vlastitu mrežu za 0-1. Za sve naše reprezentacije u mojih četrdeset pet godina staža, bilo jugoslavensku ili hrvatsku, tim bi, šestim antiklimatičkim šokom u dva tjedna, završila i revijalna dobrotvorna utakmica protiv novinarske selekcije, a ne finale Svjetskog nogometnog prvenstva: četiri puta zaredom rezultatski minus nije okrenula nijedna momčad u nijednom sportu nikad u povijesti, a kamoli neka od naših, još kamolije nogometna. Naši bi do kraja utakmice zbunjeno bauljali po ledini, do kraja povijesti optužujući suce i zbog Griezmanovog očito odglumljenog faula, i zbog Pogbinog očitog aktivnog ofsajda kod autogola.

Ne, međutim, i ova Hrvatska: samo desetak minuta kasnije Perišić je izjednačio i utakmica se opet rastvorila. I opet, i opet: sve dosadašnje naše reprezentacije godina nakon toga bi se povukle u opreznu formaciju i čekale da konačno padne onaj već mitološki neki gol. Ne i ova Hrvatska: ovi su napadali, trčali i tražili gol svih devedeset minuta, trčali su i napadali i onda kad je Griezman iz sumnjivog penala zabio za 2-1. Pet puta zaredom sustići rezultat nije, međutim, mogla čak ni ova Hrvatska, u svojoj praktički petoj utakmici u samo dva tjedna.

Ja sam se, eto, umorio i pišući, pa se može izdaleka naslutiti kakvu su sportsku, fizičku i psihičku kalvariju prošli hrvatski reprezentativci na najtežem putu kojega sam ikad vidio na Mundijalima, a gledam sve utakmice još od Njemačke 1974. Svaka prepreka na tom putu, svaki rano primljeni gol ili kasno promašeni penal, bila je točka na kojoj se naš mentalitet nekad rezignirano predavao, i od koje je počinjala kićena mitologija poraženih. I tako svaki Mundijal, svako Europsko prvenstvo, svih ovih godina. Do danas.

Ova generacija, ovih mjesec dana u Rusiji, nije povijesna samo po rezultatu, koji je bez sumnje senzacionalan: ona je povijesna po pristupu igri, prva koja je raskrstila s luzerskim naslijeđem balkanskih nogometaša, jugoslavenskih pa hrvatskih, mentalitetom koji je sam sebi pjevao epove o europskim Brazilcima što okreću cijele obrane na petodinarci, umjetnicima kojima je vazda netko drugi bio kriv. Bilo je boljih i talentiranijih, ali nikad u historiji balkanskog nogometa nije bilo „desetke“ koja u 115. minuti sprinta kao bez duše da ukliže i spasi jebeni korner. Toga nije bilo.

Cijela je ova herojska sportska priča samo o tome. O generaciji koja je pokazala dokle se može skidajući sa sebe teret gubitničke prošlosti, i kako preuzimajući odgovornost, tu najtežu i najnerazumljiviju balkansku riječ, i mali mogu postati veliki i svjetski.

O generaciji koja je potom upravo takva, cijela pobjednička i upadljivo nebalkanska, ravno sa svjetskog pobjedničkog postolja spremno uskočila u reklamni spot upravo takve, upadljivo balkanske Hrvatske - cijele gubitničke i neodgovorne, lijene, ohole, samodopadne i male, sad već izvjesno nepopravljivo opterećene luzerskim naslijeđem apstraktne prošlosti, jeftinog domoljublja, strašnih banova, sokolskih budnica i gena kamenih, te blatnjave sadašnjosti sitnog kriminala, krupnog kapitala i srednjeg poduzetništva, Thompsona i Šukera, Sanadera i Horvatinčića, Kolinde Grabar-Kitarović i Ive Balent.

Stotinu puta da su pucali penale i s kreča hladnokrvno pogađali za četvrtfinala i polufinala, bilo bi džabe.

Džabe su krečili.


edit: uz'o odAvde https://lupiga.com/hiperlink/boris-dezu ... alkane-moj
User avatar
hadzinicasa
Posts: 13620
Joined: 08/11/2005 16:08
Location: u tranziciji

#1282 Re: Price, pjesme, intervjui...

Post by hadzinicasa »

Interesantno definiranje mentalnih procesa, po mom misljenju, ne samo pri donosenju odluka... pick your horse :)

Mental Models: The Best Way to Make Intelligent Decisions (113 Models Explained)

How do you think the most rational people in the world operate their minds? How do they make better decisions?

They do it by mentally filing away a massive, but finite amount of fundamental, unchanging knowledge that can be used in evaluating the infinite number of unique scenarios which show up in the real world.

That is how consistently rational and effective thinking is done, and if we want to learn how to think properly ourselves, we need to figure out how it’s done. Fortunately, there is a way, and it works.


The idea for building a “latticework” of mental models comes from Charlie Munger, Vice Chairman of Berkshire Hathaway and one of the finest thinkers in the world. Munger’s system is akin to “cross-training for the mind.” Instead of siloing ourselves in the small, limited areas we may have studied in school, we study a broadly useful set of knowledge about the world, which will serve us in all parts of life.

In a famous speech in the 1990s, Munger explained his novel approach to gaining practical wisdom:
Well, the first rule is that you can’t really know anything if you just remember isolated facts and try and bang ’em back. If the facts don’t hang together on a latticework of theory, you don’t have them in a usable form.

You’ve got to have models in your head. And you’ve got to array your experience both vicarious and direct on this latticework of models. You may have noticed students who just try to remember and pound back what is remembered. Well, they fail in school and in life. You’ve got to hang experience on a latticework of models in your head.

What are the models? Well, the first rule is that you’ve got to have multiple models because if you just have one or two that you’re using, the nature of human psychology is such that you’ll torture reality so that it fits your models, or at least you’ll think it does. …

And the models have to come from multiple disciplines because all the wisdom of the world is not to be found in one little academic department. That’s why poetry professors, by and large, are so unwise in a worldly sense. They don’t have enough models in their heads. So you’ve got to have models across a fair array of disciplines.

You may say, “My God, this is already getting way too tough.” But, fortunately, it isn’t that tough because 80 or 90 important models will carry about 90% of the freight in making you a worldly wise person. And, of those, only a mere handful really carry very heavy freight.(1)
Taking Munger’s concept as our starting point, we can figure out how to use our brains more effectively by building our own latticework of mental models.

Building the Latticework

The central principle of the mental-models approach is that you must have a large number of them, and they must be fundamentally lasting ideas.

As with physical tools, the lack of a mental tool at a crucial moment can lead to a bad result, and the use of a wrong mental tool is even worse.

If this seems self-evident, it’s actually a very unnatural way to think. Without the right training, most minds take the wrong approach. They prefer to solve problems by asking: Which ideas do I already love and know deeply, and how can I apply them to the situation at hand? Psychologists call this tendency the “Availability Heuristic” and its power is well documented.

You know the adage “To the man with only a hammer, everything starts looking like a nail.” Such narrow-minded thinking feels entirely natural to us, but it leads to far too many misjudgments. You probably do it every single day without knowing it.

It’s not that you don’t have some good ideas in your head. You probably do! No competent adult is a total klutz. It’s just that we tend to be very limited in our good ideas, and we overuse them. This combination makes our good ideas just as dangerous as bad ones!

The great investor and teacher Benjamin Graham explained it best:
You can get in way more trouble with a good idea than a bad idea, because you forget that the good idea has limits.
Smart people like Charlie Munger realize that the antidote to this sort of mental overreaching is to add more models to your mental palette — to expand your repertoire of ideas, making them vivid and available in the problem-solving process.

You’ll know you’re on to something when ideas start to compete with one another — you’ll find situations where Model 1 tells you X and Model 2 tells you Y. Believe it or not, this is a sign that you’re on the right track. Letting the models compete and fight for superiority and greater fundamental truth is what good thinking is all about! It’s hard work, but that’s the only way to get the right answers.

It’s a little like learning to walk or ride a bike; at first, you can’t believe how much you’re supposed to do all at once, but eventually, you wonder how you ever didn’t know how to do it.

As Charlie Munger likes to say, going back to any other method of thinking would feel like cutting off your hands. Our experience confirms the truth of Munger’s dictum.

More About Mental Models

What kinds of knowledge are we talking about adding to our repertoire?

It’s the big, basic ideas of all the truly fundamental academic disciplines. The stuff you should have learned in the “101” course of each major subject but probably didn’t. These are the true general principles that underlie most of what’s going on in the world.

Things like: The main laws of physics. The main ideas driving chemistry. The big, useful tools of mathematics. The guiding principles of biology. The hugely useful concepts from human psychology. The central principles of systems thinking. The working concepts behind business and markets.

These are the winning ideas. For all of the “bestselling” crap that is touted as the new thing each year, there is almost certainly a bigger, more fundamental, and more broadly applicable underlying idea that we already knew about! The “new idea” is thus an application of old ideas, packaged into a new format.

Yet we tend to spend the majority of time keeping up with the “new” at the expense of learning the “old”! This is truly nuts.

The mental-models approach inverts the process to the way it should be: learning the Big Stuff deeply and then using that powerful database every single day.

The overarching goal is to build a powerful “tree” of the mind with strong and deep roots, a massive trunk, and lots of sturdy branches. We use this tree to hang the “leaves” of experience we acquire, directly and vicariously, throughout our lifetimes: the scenarios, decisions, problems, and solutions arising in any human life.

Now, let’s start by summarizing the models we’ve found useful. To explore them in more depth, click the links provided below.

And remember: Building your latticework is a lifelong project. Stick with it, and you’ll find that your ability to understand reality, make consistently good decisions, and help those you love will always be improving.

The Farnam Street Latticework of Mental Models

Mental Models — How to Solve Problems

General Thinking Tools (9)

1. The Map is not the Territory
The map of reality is not reality. Even the best maps are imperfect. That’s because they are reductions of what they represent. If a map were to represent the territory with perfect fidelity, it would no longer be a reduction and thus would no longer be useful to us. A map can also be a snapshot of a point in time, representing something that no longer exists. This is important to keep in mind as we think through problems and make better decisions.

2. Circle of Competence
When ego and not competence drives what we undertake, we have blind spots. If you know what you understand, you know where you have an edge over others. When you are honest about where your knowledge is lacking you know where you are vulnerable and where you can improve. Understanding your circle of competence improves decision making and outcomes.

3. First Principles Thinking
First principles thinking is one of the best ways to reverse-engineer complicated situations and unleash creative possibility. Sometimes called reasoning from first principles, it’s a tool to help clarify complicated problems by separating the underlying ideas or facts from any assumptions based on them. What remains are the essentials. If you know the first principles of something, you can build the rest of your knowledge around them to produce something new.

4. Thought Experiment
Thought experiments can be defined as “devices of the imagination used to investigate the nature of things.” Many disciplines, such as philosophy and physics, make use of thought experiments to examine what can be known. In doing so, they can open up new avenues for inquiry and exploration. Thought experiments are powerful because they help us learn from our mistakes and avoid future ones. They let us take on the impossible, evaluate the potential consequences of our actions, and re-examine history to make better decisions. They can help us both figure out what we really want, and the best way to get there.

5. Second-Order Thinking
Almost everyone can anticipate the immediate results of their actions. This type of first-order thinking is easy and safe but it’s also a way to ensure you get the same results that everyone else gets. Second-order thinking is thinking farther ahead and thinking holistically. It requires us to not only consider our actions and their immediate consequences, but the subsequent effects of those actions as well. Failing to consider the second and third order effects can unleash disaster.

6. Probabilistic Thinking
Probabilistic thinking is essentially trying to estimate, using some tools of math and logic, the likelihood of any specific outcome coming to pass. It is one of the best tools we have to improve the accuracy of our decisions. In a world where each moment is determined by an infinitely complex set of factors, probabilistic thinking helps us identify the most likely outcomes. When we know these our decisions can be more precise and effective.

7. Inversion
Inversion is a powerful tool to improve your thinking because it helps you identify and remove obstacles to success. The root of inversion is “invert,” which means to upend or turn upside down. As a thinking tool it means approaching a situation from the opposite end of the natural starting point. Most of us tend to think one way about a problem: forward. Inversion allows us to flip the problem around and think backward. Sometimes it’s good to start at the beginning, but it can be more useful to start at the end.

8. Occam’s Razor
Simpler explanations are more likely to be true than complicated ones. This is the essence of Occam’s Razor, a classic principle of logic and problem-solving. Instead of wasting your time trying to disprove complex scenarios, you can make decisions more confidently by basing them on the explanation that has the fewest moving parts.
Read more on Occam’s Razor

9. Hanlon’s Razor
Hard to trace in its origin, Hanlon’s Razor states that we should not attribute to malice that which is more easily explained by stupidity. In a complex world, using this model helps us avoid paranoia and ideology. By not generally assuming that bad results are the fault of a bad actor, we look for options instead of missing opportunities. This model reminds us that people do make mistakes. It demands that we ask if there is another reasonable explanation for the events that have occurred. The explanation most likely to be right is the one that contains the least amount of intent.

Numeracy (14)

1. Permutations and Combinations

The mathematics of permutations and combinations leads us to understand the practical probabilities of the world around us, how things can be ordered, and how we should think about things.

2. Algebraic Equivalence

The introduction of algebra allowed us to demonstrate mathematically and abstractly that two seemingly different things could be the same. By manipulating symbols, we can demonstrate equivalence or inequivalence, the use of which led humanity to untold engineering and technical abilities. Knowing at least the basics of algebra can allow us to understand a variety of important results.

3. Randomness

Though the human brain has trouble comprehending it, much of the world is composed of random, non-sequential, non-ordered events. We are “fooled” by random effects when we attribute causality to things that are actually outside of our control. If we don’t course-correct for this fooled-by-randomness effect – our faulty sense of pattern-seeking – we will tend to see things as being more predictable than they are and act accordingly.

4. Stochastic Processes (Poisson, Markov, Random Walk)

A stochastic process is a random statistical process and encompasses a wide variety of processes in which the movement of an individual variable can be impossible to predict but can be thought through probabilistically. The wide variety of stochastic methods helps us describe systems of variables through probabilities without necessarily being able to determine the position of any individual variable over time. For example, it’s not possible to predict stock prices on a day-to-day basis, but we can describe the probability of various distributions of their movements over time. Obviously, it is much more likely that the stock market (a stochastic process) will be up or down 1% in a day than up or down 10%, even though we can’t predict what tomorrow will bring.

5. Compounding

It’s been said that Einstein called compounding a wonder of the world. He probably didn’t, but it is a wonder. Compounding is the process by which we add interest to a fixed sum, which then earns interest on the previous sum and the newly added interest, and then earns interest on that amount, and so on ad infinitum. It is an exponential effect, rather than a linear, or additive, effect. Money is not the only thing that compounds; ideas and relationships do as well. In tangible realms, compounding is always subject to physical limits and diminishing returns; intangibles can compound more freely. Compounding also leads to the time value of money, which underlies all of modern finance.

6. Multiplying by Zero

Any reasonably educated person knows that any number multiplied by zero, no matter how large the number, is still zero. This is true in human systems as well as mathematical ones. In some systems, a failure in one area can negate great effort in all other areas. As simple multiplication would show, fixing the “zero” often has a much greater effect than does trying to enlarge the other areas.

7. Churn

Insurance companies and subscription services are well aware of the concept of churn – every year, a certain number of customers are lost and must be replaced. Standing still is the equivalent of losing, as seen in the model called the “Red Queen Effect.” Churn is present in many business and human systems: A constant figure is periodically lost and must be replaced before any new figures are added over the top.

8. Law of Large Numbers

One of the fundamental underlying assumptions of probability is that as more instances of an event occur, the klix results will converge on the expected ones. For example, if I know that the average man is 5 feet 10 inches tall, I am far more likely to get an average of 5′10″ by selecting 500 men at random than 5 men at random. The opposite of this model is the law of small numbers, which states that small samples can and should be looked at with great skepticism.

9. Bell Curve/Normal Distribution

The normal distribution is a statistical process that leads to the well-known graphical representation of a bell curve, with a meaningful central “average” and increasingly rare standard deviations from that average when correctly sampled. (The so-called “central limit” theorem.) Well-known examples include human height and weight, but it’s just as important to note that many common processes, especially in non-tangible systems like social systems, do not follow the normal distribution.

10. Power Laws

One of the most common processes that does not fit the normal distribution is that of a power law, whereby one quantity varies with another’s exponent rather than linearly. For example, the Richter scale describes the power of earthquakes on a power-law distribution scale: an 8 is 10x more destructive than a 7, and a 9 is 10x more destructive than an 8. The central limit theorem does not apply and there is thus no “average” earthquake. This is true of all power-law distributions.

11. Fat-Tailed Processes (Extremistan)

A process can often look like a normal distribution but have a large “tail” – meaning that seemingly outlier events are far more likely than they are in an klix normal distribution. A strategy or process may be far more risky than a normal distribution is capable of describing if the fat tail is on the negative side, or far more profitable if the fat tail is on the positive side. Much of the human social world is said to be fat-tailed rather than normally distributed.

12. Bayesian Updating

The Bayesian method is a method of thought (named for Thomas Bayes) whereby one takes into account all prior relevant probabilities and then incrementally updates them as newer information arrives. This method is especially productive given the fundamentally non-deterministic world we experience: We must use prior odds and new information in combination to arrive at our best decisions. This is not necessarily our intuitive decision-making engine.

13. Regression to the Mean

In a normally distributed system, long deviations from the average will tend to return to that average with an increasing number of observations: the so-called Law of Large Numbers. We are often fooled by regression to the mean, as with a sick patient improving spontaneously around the same time they begin taking an herbal remedy, or a poorly performing sports team going on a winning streak. We must be careful not to confuse statistically likely events with causal ones.

14. Order of Magnitude

In many, perhaps most, systems, quantitative description down to a precise figure is either impossible or useless (or both). For example, estimating the distance between our galaxy and the next one over is a matter of knowing not the precise number of miles, but how many zeroes are after the 1. Is the distance about 1 million miles or about 1 billion? This thought habit can help us escape useless precision.

Systems (22)

1. Scale

One of the most important principles of systems is that they are sensitive to scale. Properties (or behaviors) tend to change when you scale them up or down. In studying complex systems, we must always be roughly quantifying – in orders of magnitude, at least – the scale at which we are observing, analyzing, or predicting the system.

2. Law of Diminishing Returns

Related to scale, most important real-world results are subject to an eventual decrease of incremental value. A good example would be a poor family: Give them enough money to thrive, and they are no longer poor. But after a certain point, additional money will not improve their lot; there is a clear diminishing return of additional dollars at some roughly quantifiable point. Often, the law of diminishing returns veers into negative territory – i.e., receiving too much money could destroy the poor family.

3. Pareto Principle

Named for Italian polymath Vilfredo Pareto, who noticed that 80% of Italy’s land was owned by about 20% of its population, the Pareto Principle states that a small amount of some phenomenon causes a disproportionately large effect. The Pareto Principle is an example of a power-law type of statistical distribution – as distinguished from a traditional bell curve – and is demonstrated in various phenomena ranging from wealth to city populations to important human habits.

4. Feedback Loops (and Homeostasis)

All complex systems are subject to positive and negative feedback loops whereby A causes B, which in turn influences A (and C), and so on – with higher-order effects frequently resulting from continual movement of the loop. In a homeostatic system, a change in A is often brought back into line by an opposite change in B to maintain the balance of the system, as with the temperature of the human body or the behavior of an organizational culture. Automatic feedback loops maintain a “static” environment unless and until an outside force changes the loop. A “runaway feedback loop” describes a situation in which the output of a reaction becomes its own catalyst (auto-catalysis).

5. Chaos Dynamics (Butterfly Effect)/ (Sensitivity to Initial Conditions)

In a world such as ours, governed by chaos dynamics, small changes (perturbations) in initial conditions have massive downstream effects as near-infinite feedback loops occur; this phenomenon is also called the butterfly effect. This means that some aspects of physical systems (like the weather more than a few days from now) as well as social systems (the behavior of a group of human beings over a long period) are fundamentally unpredictable.

6. Preferential Attachment (Cumulative Advantage)

A preferential attachment situation occurs when the current leader is given more of the reward than the laggards, thereby tending to preserve or enhance the status of the leader. A strong network effect is a good example of preferential attachment; a market with 10x more buyers and sellers than the next largest market will tend to have a preferential attachment dynamic.

7. Emergence

Higher-level behavior tends to emerge from the interaction of lower-order components. The result is frequently not linear – not a matter of simple addition – but rather non-linear, or exponential. An important resulting property of emergent behavior is that it cannot be predicted from simply studying the component parts.

8. Irreducibility

We find that in most systems there are irreducible quantitative properties, such as complexity, minimums, time, and length. Below the irreducible level, the desired result simply does not occur. One cannot get several women pregnant to reduce the amount of time needed to have one child, and one cannot reduce a successfully built automobile to a single part. These results are, to a defined point, irreducible.

9. Tragedy of the Commons

A concept introduced by the economist and ecologist Garrett Hardin, the Tragedy of the Commons states that in a system where a common resource is shared, with no individual responsible for the wellbeing of the resource, it will tend to be depleted over time. The Tragedy is reducible to incentives: Unless people collaborate, each individual derives more personal benefit than the cost that he or she incurs, and therefore depletes the resource for fear of missing out.

10. Gresham’s Law

Gresham’s Law, named for the financier Thomas Gresham, states that in a system of circulating currency, forged currency will tend to drive out real currency, as real currency is hoarded and forged currency is spent. We see a similar result in human systems, as with bad behavior driving out good behavior in a crumbling moral system, or bad practices driving out good practices in a crumbling economic system. Generally, regulation and oversight are required to prevent results that follow Gresham’s Law.

11. Algorithms

While hard to precisely define, an algorithm is generally an automated set of rules or a “blueprint” leading a series of steps or actions resulting in a desired outcome, and often stated in the form of a series of “If → Then” statements. Algorithms are best known for their use in modern computing, but are a feature of biological life as well. For example, human DNA contains an algorithm for building a human being.

12. Fragility – Robustness – Antifragility

Popularized by Nassim Taleb, the sliding scale of fragility, robustness, and antifragility refers to the responsiveness of a system to incremental negative variability. A fragile system or object is one in which additional negative variability has a disproportionately negative impact, as with a coffee cup shattering from a 6-foot fall, but receiving no damage at all (rather than 1/6th of the damage) from a 1-foot fall. A robust system or object tends to be neutral to the additional negativity variability, and of course, an antifragile system benefits: If there were a cup that got stronger when dropped from 6 feet than when dropped from 1 foot, it would be termed antifragile.

13. Backup Systems/Redundancy

A critical model of the engineering profession is that of backup systems. A good engineer never assumes the perfect reliability of the components of the system. He or she builds in redundancy to protect the integrity of the total system. Without the application of this robustness principle, tangible and intangible systems tend to fail over time.

14. Margin of Safety

Similarly, engineers have also developed the habit of adding a margin for error into all calculations. In an unknown world, driving a 9,500-pound bus over a bridge built to hold precisely 9,600 pounds is rarely seen as intelligent. Thus, on the whole, few modern bridges ever fail. In practical life outside of physical engineering, we can often profitably give ourselves margins as robust as the bridge system.

15. Criticality

A system becomes critical when it is about to jump discretely from one phase to another. The marginal utility of the last unit before the phase change is wildly higher than any unit before it. A frequently cited example is water turning from a liquid to a vapor when heated to a specific temperature. “Critical mass” refers to the mass needed to have the critical event occur, most commonly in a nuclear system.

16. Network Effects

A network tends to become more valuable as nodes are added to the network: this is known as the network effect. An easy example is contrasting the development of the electricity system and the telephone system. If only one house has electricity, its inhabitants have gained immense value, but if only one house has a telephone, its inhabitants have gained nothing of use. Only with additional telephones does the phone network gain value. This network effect is widespread in the modern world and creates immense value for organizations and customers alike.

17. Black Swan

Also popularized by Nassim Taleb, a Black Swan is a rare and highly consequential event that is invisible to a given observer ahead of time. It is a result of applied epistemology: If you have seen only white swans, you cannot categorically state that there are no black swans, but the inverse is not true: seeing one black swan is enough for you to state that there are black swans. Black Swan events are necessarily unpredictable to the observer (as Taleb likes to say, Thanksgiving is a Black Swan for the turkey, not the butcher) and thus must be dealt with by addressing the fragility-robustness-antifragility spectrum rather than through better methods of prediction.

18. Via Negativa – Omission/Removal/Avoidance of Harm

In many systems, improvement is at best, or at times only, a result of removing bad elements rather than of adding good elements. This is a credo built into the modern medical profession: First, do no harm. Similarly, if one has a group of children behaving badly, removal of the instigator is often much more effective than any form of punishment meted out to the whole group.

19. The Lindy Effect

The Lindy Effect refers to the life expectancy of a non-perishable object or idea being related to its current lifespan. If an idea or object has lasted for X number of years, it would be expected (on average) to last another X years. Although a human being who is 90 and lives to 95 does not add 5 years to his or her life expectancy, non-perishables lengthen their life expectancy as they continually survive. A classic text is a prime example: if humanity has been reading Shakespeare’s plays for 500 years, it will be expected to read them for another 500.

20. Renormalization Group

The renormalization group technique allows us to think about physical and social systems at different scales. An idea from physics, and a complicated one at that, the application of a renormalization group to social systems allows us to understand why a small number of stubborn individuals can have a disproportionate impact if those around them follow suit on increasingly large scales.

21. Spring-loading

A system is spring-loaded if it is coiled in a certain direction, positive or negative. Positively spring-loading systems and relationships is important in a fundamentally unpredictable world to help protect us against negative events. The reverse can be very destructive.

22. Complex Adaptive Systems

A complex adaptive system, as distinguished from a complex system in general, is one that can understand itself and change based on that understanding. Complex adaptive systems are social systems. The difference is best illustrated by thinking about weather prediction contrasted to stock market prediction. The weather will not change based on an important forecaster’s opinion, but the stock market might. Complex adaptive systems are thus fundamentally not predictable.

Physical World (9)

1. Laws of Thermodynamics

The laws of thermodynamics describe energy in a closed system. The laws cannot be escaped and underlie the physical world. They describe a world in which useful energy is constantly being lost, and energy cannot be created or destroyed. Applying their lessons to the social world can be a profitable enterprise.

2. Reciprocity

If I push on a wall, physics tells me that the wall pushes back with equivalent force. In a biological system, if one individual acts on another, the action will tend to be reciprocated in kind. And of course, human beings act with intense reciprocity demonstrated as well.

3. Velocity

Velocity is not equivalent to speed; the two are sometimes confused. Velocity is speed plus vector: how fast something gets somewhere. An object that moves two steps forward and then two steps back has moved at a certain speed but shows no velocity. The addition of the vector, that critical distinction, is what we should consider in practical life.

4. Relativity

Relativity has been used in several contexts in the world of physics, but the important aspect to study is the idea that an observer cannot truly understand a system of which he himself is a part. For example, a man inside an airplane does not feel like he is experiencing movement, but an outside observer can see that movement is occurring. This form of relativity tends to affect social systems in a similar way.

5. Activation Energy

A fire is not much more than a combination of carbon and oxygen, but the forests and coal mines of the world are not combusting at will because such a chemical reaction requires the input of a critical level of “activation energy” in order to get a reaction started. Two combustible elements alone are not enough.

6. Catalysts

A catalyst either kick-starts or maintains a chemical reaction, but isn’t itself a reactant. The reaction may slow or stop without the addition of catalysts. Social systems, of course, take on many similar traits, and we can view catalysts in a similar light.

7. Leverage

Most of the engineering marvels of the world have been accomplished with applied leverage. As famously stated by Archimedes, “Give me a lever long enough and I shall move the world.” With a small amount of input force, we can make a great output force through leverage. Understanding where we can apply this model to the human world can be a source of great success.

8. Inertia

An object in motion with a certain vector wants to continue moving in that direction unless acted upon. This is a fundamental physical principle of motion; however, individuals, systems, and organizations display the same effect. It allows them to minimize the use of energy, but can cause them to be destroyed or eroded.

9. Alloying

When we combine various elements, we create new substances. This is no great surprise, but what can be surprising in the alloying process is that 2+2 can equal not 4 but 6 – the alloy can be far stronger than the simple addition of the underlying elements would lead us to believe. This process leads us to engineering great physical objects, but we understand many intangibles in the same way; a combination of the right elements in social systems or even individuals can create a 2+2=6 effect similar to alloying.

The Biological World (15)

1. Incentives

All creatures respond to incentives to keep themselves alive. This is the basic insight of biology. Constant incentives will tend to cause a biological entity to have constant behavior, to an extent. Humans are included and are particularly great examples of the incentive-driven nature of biology; however, humans are complicated in that their incentives can be hidden or intangible. The rule of life is to repeat what works and has been rewarded.

2. Cooperation (Including Symbiosis)

Competition tends to describe most biological systems, but cooperation at various levels is just as important a dynamic. In fact, the cooperation of a bacterium and a simple cell probably created the first complex cell and all of the life we see around us. Without cooperation, no group survives, and the cooperation of groups gives rise to even more complex versions of organization. Cooperation and competition tend to coexist at multiple levels.

3. Tendency to Minimize Energy Output (Mental & Physical)

In a physical world governed by thermodynamics and competition for limited energy and resources, any biological organism that was wasteful with energy would be at a severe disadvantage for survival. Thus, we see in most instances that behavior is governed by a tendency to minimize energy usage when at all possible.

4. Adaptation

Species tend to adapt to their surroundings in order to survive, given the combination of their genetics and their environment – an always-unavoidable combination. However, adaptations made in an individual’s lifetime are not passed down genetically, as was once thought: Populations of species adapt through the process of evolution by natural selection, as the most-fit examples of the species replicate at an above-average rate.

5. Evolution by Natural Selection

Evolution by natural selection was once called “the greatest idea anyone ever had.” In the 19th century, Charles Darwin and Alfred Russel Wallace simultaneous realized that species evolve through random mutation and differential survival rates. If we call human intervention in animal-breeding an example of “artificial selection,” we can call Mother Nature deciding the success or failure of a particular mutation “natural selection.” Those best suited for survival tend to be preserved. But of course, conditions change.

6. The Red Queen Effect (Co-evolutionary Arms Race)

The evolution-by-natural-selection model leads to something of an arms race among species competing for limited resources. When one species evolves an advantageous adaptation, a competing species must respond in kind or fail as a species. Standing pat can mean falling behind. This arms race is called the Red Queen Effect for the character in Alice in Wonderland who said, “Now, here, you see, it takes all the running you can do, to keep in the same place.”

7. Replication

A fundamental building block of diverse biological life is high-fidelity replication. The fundamental unit of replication seems to be the DNA molecule, which provides a blueprint for the offspring to be built from physical building blocks. There are a variety of replication methods, but most can be lumped into sexual and asexual.

8. Hierarchical and Other Organizing Instincts

Most complex biological organisms have an innate feel for how they should organize. While not all of them end up in hierarchical structures, many do, especially in the animal kingdom. Human beings like to think they are outside of this, but they feel the hierarchical instinct as strongly as any other organism.

9. Self-Preservation Instincts

Without a strong self-preservation instinct in an organism’s DNA, it would tend to disappear over time, thus eliminating that DNA. While cooperation is another important model, the self-preservation instinct is strong in all organisms and can cause violent, erratic, and/or destructive behavior for those around them.

10. Simple Physiological Reward-Seeking

All organisms feel pleasure and pain from simple chemical processes in their bodies which respond predictably to the outside world. Reward-seeking is an effective survival-promoting technique on average. However, those same pleasure receptors can be co-opted to cause destructive behavior, as with drug abuse.

11. Exaptation

Introduced by the biologist Steven Jay Gould, an exaptation refers to a trait developed for one purpose that is later used for another purpose. This is one way to explain the development of complex biological features like an eyeball; in a more primitive form, it may have been used for something else. Once it was there, and once it developed further, 3D sight became possible.

12. Extinction

The inability to survive can cause an extinction event, whereby an entire species ceases to compete and replicate effectively. Once its numbers have dwindled to a critically low level, an extinction can be unavoidable (and predictable) given the inability to effectively replicate in large enough numbers.

13. Ecosystems

An ecosystem describes any group of organisms coexisting with the natural world. Most ecosystems show diverse forms of life taking on different approaches to survival, with such pressures leading to varying behavior. Social systems can be seen in the same light as the physical ecosystems and many of the same conclusions can be made.

14. Niches

Most organisms find a niche: a method of competing and behaving for survival. Usually, a species will select a niche for which it is best adapted. The danger arises when multiple species begin competing for the same niche, which can cause an extinction – there can be only so many species doing the same thing before limited resources give out.

15. Dunbar’s Number

The primatologist Robin Dunbar observed through study that the number of individuals a primate can get to know and trust closely is related to the size of its neocortex. Extrapolating from his study of primates, Dunbar theorized that the Dunbar number for a human being is somewhere in the 100–250 range, which is supported by certain studies of human behavior and social networks.

i ostatak (predug post) na linku https://fs.blog/mental-models/ :

Human Nature & Judgment (23)

Microeconomics & Strategy (14)

Military & War (5)
riverflow
Posts: 654
Joined: 05/12/2012 20:17

#1283 Re: Price, pjesme, intervjui...

Post by riverflow »

O GLUPOSTI (Ditrih Bonhefer)

Pitajući se kako je moguće da skoro čitava nacija podlegne suludim Hitlerovim idejama, Ditrih Bonhefer, nemački borac protiv nacizma, napisao je ovu sjajnu analizu fenomena ljudske gluposti.

* * *

Glupost je opasniji neprijatelj dobra nego što je zlo. Protiv zla možemo da se bunimo, ono se može razotkriti, u slučaju nužde i sprečiti silom; zlo uvek u sebi nosi i klicu sopstvenog uništenja zato što kod ljudi makar izaziva neprijatnost. Protiv gluposti smo nemoćni. Tu ne možemo ništa da postignemo protestima ili silom; argumenti ne vrede, u činjenice koje govore protiv prethodno oformljenih mišljenja jednostavno niko ne veruje – u takvim slučajevima je glupak čak i kritičan...

Osim toga glupak je, za razliku od zlikovca, u potpunosti zadovoljan samim sobom: da, on je čak i opasan zato što se lako razdraži i prelazi u napad. Stoga moramo biti obazriviji sa glupakom nego sa zlim čovekom. Nikada više ne treba da pokušavamo da glupaka ubedimo argumentima, to je besmisleno i opasno.

Da bismo znali kako da izađemo na kraj s glupošću, moramo da pokušamo da shvatimo njenu suštinu. Jedno je sigurno: ona u suštini nije defekt intelekta, nego ljudskosti. Ima ljudi intelektualno veoma dobro opremljenih, koji su glupi, i intelektualno usporenih koji su sve samo ne glupi. To, na vlastito iznenađenje, otkrivamo u određenim situacijama.

Utisak da je glupost urođena slabost nije tako jak kao onaj da ljude u određenim situacijama načine glupima, tj. da sami dopuštaju da budu zaglupljeni.

I možemo da vidimo da ljudi koji žive odvojeno od ostalih, usamljeni, tu manu ređe poseduju nego ljudi ili grupe ljudi koji imaju potrebu za druženjem ili su na to upućeni.

Čini se, dakle, da je glupost više sociološki nego psihološki problem. Ona je rezultat delovanja izvesnih istorijskih okolnosti na čoveka, psihološki fenomen koji prati određene spoljašnje prilike.

Ako to razmotrimo malo detaljnije, pokazuje se da svaki jak spoljašnji razvoj sile političkog ili verskog tipa pogađa veliki broj ljudi glupošću. Da, to gotovo zvuči kao neki socio-psihološki zakon. Moć jednih zavisi od gluposti drugih. Nikada, međutim, neke ljudske sposobnosti, na primer intelektualne, ne bivaju umanjene niti nestaju, već preovlađujući utisak koji razvoj moći ostavlja na određene ljude oduzima njihovu samostalnost – oni, manje ili više nesvesno, odustaju od samostalnosti u situaciji u kojoj se nalaze.

Činjenica da je glupak često i tvrdoglav, ne sme da nas zavede da poverujemo da je samostalan. Već u razgovoru s njim primećujemo da nemamo posla s njim lično, već sa sloganima, parolama itd. koji su ga poptuno zarobili. On je zaposednut, zaslepljen, zloupotrebljen i zlostavljan u čitavom svom biću. On je pretvoren u instrument bez volje i tako je u stanju da čini sve moguće zlo, a istovremeno nije u stanju da ga spozna kao zlo. Ovde leži opasnost od demonske zloupotrebe, koja čoveka može zauvek da uništi.

Ditrih Bonhefer
User avatar
hadzinicasa
Posts: 13620
Joined: 08/11/2005 16:08
Location: u tranziciji

#1284 Re: Price, pjesme, intervjui...

Post by hadzinicasa »

Dobar opis.
omar little
Posts: 16349
Joined: 14/03/2008 21:14

#1285 Re: Price, pjesme, intervjui...

Post by omar little »

ko s cime na ovoj temi, ja sa naumpadanjem. :D

The End of Identity Liberalism
By Mark Lilla
Nov. 18, 2016


It is a truism that America has become a more diverse country. It is also a beautiful thing to watch. Visitors from other countries, particularly those having trouble incorporating different ethnic groups and faiths, are amazed that we manage to pull it off. Not perfectly, of course, but certainly better than any European or Asian nation today. It’s an extraordinary success story.

But how should this diversity shape our politics? The standard liberal answer for nearly a generation now has been that we should become aware of and “celebrate” our differences. Which is a splendid principle of moral pedagogy — but disastrous as a foundation for democratic politics in our ideological age. In recent years American liberalism has slipped into a kind of moral panic about racial, gender and sexual identity that has distorted liberalism’s message and prevented it from becoming a unifying force capable of governing.

One of the many lessons of the recent presidential election campaign and its repugnant outcome is that the age of identity liberalism must be brought to an end. Hillary Clinton was at her best and most uplifting when she spoke about American interests in world affairs and how they relate to our understanding of democracy. But when it came to life at home, she tended on the campaign trail to lose that large vision and slip into the rhetoric of diversity, calling out explicitly to African-American, Latino, L.G.B.T. and women voters at every stop. This was a strategic mistake. If you are going to mention groups in America, you had better mention all of them. If you don’t, those left out will notice and feel excluded. Which, as the data show, was exactly what happened with the white working class and those with strong religious convictions. Fully two-thirds of white voters without college degrees voted for Donald Trump, as did over 80 percent of white evangelicals.


The moral energy surrounding identity has, of course, had many good effects. Affirmative action has reshaped and improved corporate life. Black Lives Matter has delivered a wake-up call to every American with a conscience. Hollywood’s efforts to normalize homosexuality in our popular culture helped to normalize it in American families and public life.


But the fixation on diversity in our schools and in the press has produced a generation of liberals and progressives narcissistically unaware of conditions outside their self-defined groups, and indifferent to the task of reaching out to Americans in every walk of life. At a very young age our children are being encouraged to talk about their individual identities, even before they have them. By the time they reach college many assume that diversity discourse exhausts political discourse, and have shockingly little to say about such perennial questions as class, war, the economy and the common good. In large part this is because of high school history curriculums, which anachronistically project the identity politics of today back onto the past, creating a distorted picture of the major forces and individuals that shaped our country. (The achievements of women’s rights movements, for instance, were real and important, but you cannot understand them if you do not first understand the founding fathers’ achievement in establishing a system of government based on the guarantee of rights.)

When young people arrive at college they are encouraged to keep this focus on themselves by student groups, faculty members and also administrators whose full-time job is to deal with — and heighten the significance of — “diversity issues.” Fox News and other conservative media outlets make great sport of mocking the “campus craziness” that surrounds such issues, and more often than not they are right to. Which only plays into the hands of populist demagogues who want to delegitimize learning in the eyes of those who have never set foot on a campus. How to explain to the average voter the supposed moral urgency of giving college students the right to choose the designated gender pronouns to be used when addressing them? How not to laugh along with those voters at the story of a University of Michigan prankster who wrote in “His Majesty”?

This campus-diversity consciousness has over the years filtered into the liberal media, and not subtly. Affirmative action for women and minorities at America’s newspapers and broadcasters has been an extraordinary social achievement — and has even changed, quite literally, the face of right-wing media, as journalists like Megyn Kelly and Laura Ingraham have gained prominence. But it also appears to have encouraged the assumption, especially among younger journalists and editors, that simply by focusing on identity they have done their jobs.

Recently I performed a little experiment during a sabbatical in France: For a full year I read only European publications, not American ones. My thought was to try seeing the world as European readers did. But it was far more instructive to return home and realize how the lens of identity has transformed American reporting in recent years. How often, for example, the laziest story in American journalism — about the “first X to do Y” — is told and retold. Fascination with the identity drama has even affected foreign reporting, which is in distressingly short supply. However interesting it may be to read, say, about the fate of transgender people in Egypt, it contributes nothing to educating Americans about the powerful political and religious currents that will determine Egypt’s future, and indirectly, our own. No major news outlet in Europe would think of adopting such a focus.

But it is at the level of electoral politics that identity liberalism has failed most spectacularly, as we have just seen. National politics in healthy periods is not about “difference,” it is about commonality. And it will be dominated by whoever best captures Americans’ imaginations about our shared klix. Ronald Reagan did that very skillfully, whatever one may think of his vision. So did Bill Clinton, who took a page from Reagan’s playbook. He seized the Democratic Party away from its identity-conscious wing, concentrated his energies on domestic programs that would benefit everyone (like national health insurance) and defined America’s role in the post-1989 world. By remaining in office for two terms, he was then able to accomplish much for different groups in the Democratic coalition. Identity politics, by contrast, is largely expressive, not persuasive. Which is why it never wins elections — but can lose them.

The media’s newfound, almost anthropological, interest in the angry white male reveals as much about the state of our liberalism as it does about this much maligned, and previously ignored, figure. A convenient liberal interpretation of the recent presidential election would have it that Mr. Trump won in large part because he managed to transform economic disadvantage into racial rage — the “whitelash” thesis. This is convenient because it sanctions a conviction of moral superiority and allows liberals to ignore what those voters said were their overriding concerns. It also encourages the fantasy that the Republican right is doomed to demographic extinction in the long run — which means liberals have only to wait for the country to fall into their laps. The surprisingly high percentage of the Latino vote that went to Mr. Trump should remind us that the longer ethnic groups are here in this country, the more politically diverse they become.

Finally, the whitelash thesis is convenient because it absolves liberals of not recognizing how their own obsession with diversity has encouraged white, rural, religious Americans to think of themselves as a disadvantaged group whose identity is being threatened or ignored. Such people are not actually reacting against the reality of our diverse America (they tend, after all, to live in homogeneous areas of the country). But they are reacting against the omnipresent rhetoric of identity, which is what they mean by “political correctness.” Liberals should bear in mind that the first identity movement in American politics was the Ku Klux Klan, which still exists. Those who play the identity game should be prepared to lose it.

We need a post-identity liberalism, and it should draw from the past successes of pre-identity liberalism. Such a liberalism would concentrate on widening its base by appealing to Americans as Americans and emphasizing the issues that affect a vast majority of them. It would speak to the nation as a nation of citizens who are in this together and must help one another. As for narrower issues that are highly charged symbolically and can drive potential allies away, especially those touching on sexuality and religion, such a liberalism would work quietly, sensitively and with a proper sense of scale. (To paraphrase Bernie Sanders, America is sick and tired of hearing about liberals’ damn bathrooms.)

Teachers committed to such a liberalism would refocus attention on their main political responsibility in a democracy: to form committed citizens aware of their system of government and the major forces and events in our history. A post-identity liberalism would also emphasize that democracy is not only about rights; it also confers duties on its citizens, such as the duties to keep informed and vote. A post-identity liberal press would begin educating itself about parts of the country that have been ignored, and about what matters there, especially religion. And it would take seriously its responsibility to educate Americans about the major forces shaping world politics, especially their historical dimension.

Some years ago I was invited to a union convention in Florida to speak on a panel about Franklin D. Roosevelt’s famous Four Freedoms speech of 1941. The hall was full of representatives from local chapters — men, women, blacks, whites, Latinos. We began by singing the national anthem, and then sat down to listen to a recording of Roosevelt’s speech. As I looked out into the crowd, and saw the array of different faces, I was struck by how focused they were on what they shared. And listening to Roosevelt’s stirring voice as he invoked the freedom of speech, the freedom of worship, the freedom from want and the freedom from fear — freedoms that Roosevelt demanded for “everyone in the world” — I was reminded of what the real foundations of modern American liberalism are.

User avatar
hadzinicasa
Posts: 13620
Joined: 08/11/2005 16:08
Location: u tranziciji

#1286 Re: Price, pjesme, intervjui...

Post by hadzinicasa »

omar little wrote:ko s cime na ovoj temi, ja sa naumpadanjem. :D

Samo ti. :) Interesting angle.
omar little
Posts: 16349
Joined: 14/03/2008 21:14

#1287 Re: Price, pjesme, intervjui...

Post by omar little »

Profits Without Prosperity
William Lazonick

Five years after the official end of the Great Recession, corporate profits are high, and the stock market is booming. Yet most Americans are not sharing in the recovery. While the top 0.1% of income recipients—which include most of the highest-ranking corporate executives—reap almost all the income gains, good jobs keep disappearing, and new employment opportunities tend to be insecure and underpaid. Corporate profitability is not translating into widespread economic prosperity.

The allocation of corporate profits to stock buybacks deserves much of the blame. Consider the 449 companies in the S&P 500 index that were publicly listed from 2003 through 2012. During that period those companies used 54% of their earnings—a total of $2.4 trillion—to buy back their own stock, almost all through purchases on the open market. Dividends absorbed an additional 37% of their earnings. That left very little for investments in productive capabilities or higher incomes for employees.

The buyback wave has gotten so big, in fact, that even shareholders—the presumed beneficiaries of all this corporate largesse—are getting worried. “It concerns us that, in the wake of the financial crisis, many companies have shied away from investing in the future growth of their companies,” Laurence Fink, the chairman and CEO of BlackRock, the world’s largest asset manager, wrote in an open letter to corporate America in March. “Too many companies have cut capital expenditure and even increased debt to boost dividends and increase share buybacks.”

Why are such massive resources being devoted to stock repurchases? Corporate executives give several reasons, which I will discuss later. But none of them has close to the explanatory power of this simple truth: Stock-based instruments make up the majority of their pay, and in the short term buybacks drive up stock prices. In 2012 the 500 highest-paid executives named in proxy statements of U.S. public companies received, on average, $30.3 million each; 42% of their compensation came from stock options and 41% from stock awards. By increasing the demand for a company’s shares, open-market buybacks automatically lift its stock price, even if only temporarily, and can enable the company to hit quarterly earnings per share (EPS) targets.

As a result, the very people we rely on to make investments in the productive capabilities that will increase our shared prosperity are instead devoting most of their companies’ profits to uses that will increase their own prosperity—with unsurprising results. Even when adjusted for inflation, the compensation of top U.S. executives has doubled or tripled since the first half of the 1990s, when it was already widely viewed as excessive. Meanwhile, overall U.S. economic performance has faltered.

If the U.S. is to achieve growth that distributes income equitably and provides stable employment, government and business leaders must take steps to bring both stock buybacks and executive pay under control. The nation’s economic health depends on it.

From Value Creation to Value Extraction
For three decades I’ve been studying how the resource allocation decisions of major U.S. corporations influence the relationship between value creation and value extraction, and how that relationship affects the U.S. economy. From the end of World War II until the late 1970s, a retain-and-reinvest approach to resource allocation prevailed at major U.S. corporations. They retained earnings and reinvested them in increasing their capabilities, first and foremost in the employees who helped make firms more competitive. They provided workers with higher incomes and greater job security, thus contributing to equitable, stable economic growth—what I call “sustainable prosperity.”

This pattern began to break down in the late 1970s, giving way to a downsize-and-distribute regime of reducing costs and then distributing the freed-up cash to financial interests, particularly shareholders. By favoring value extraction over value creation, this approach has contributed to employment instability and income inequality.
As documented by the economists Thomas Piketty and Emmanuel Saez, the richest 0.1% of U.S. households collected a record 12.3% of all U.S. income in 2007, surpassing their 11.5% share in 1928, on the eve of the Great Depression. In the financial crisis of 2008–2009, their share fell sharply, but it has since rebounded, hitting 11.3% in 2012.

Since the late 1980s, the largest component of the income of the top 0.1% has been compensation, driven by stock-based pay. Meanwhile, the growth of workers’ wages has been slow and sporadic, except during the internet boom of 1998–2000, the only time in the past 46 years when real wages rose by 2% or more for three years running. Since the late 1970s, average growth in real wages has increasingly lagged productivity growth. (See the exhibit “When Productivity and Wages Parted Ways.”)

Not coincidentally, U.S. employment relations have undergone a transformation in the past three decades. Mass plant closings eliminated millions of unionized blue-collar jobs. The norm of a white-collar worker’s spending his or her entire career with one company disappeared. And the seismic shift toward offshoring left all members of the U.S. labor force—even those with advanced education and substantial work experience—vulnerable to displacement.

To some extent these structural changes could be justified initially as necessary responses to changes in technology and competition. In the early 1980s permanent plant closings were triggered by the inroads superior Japanese manufacturers had made in consumer-durable and capital-goods industries. In the early 1990s one-company careers fell by the wayside in the IT sector because the open-systems architecture of the microelectronics revolution devalued the skills of older employees versed in proprietary technologies. And in the early 2000s the offshoring of more-routine tasks, such as writing unsophisticated software and manning customer call centers, sped up as a capable labor force emerged in low-wage developing economies and communications costs plunged, allowing U.S. companies to focus their domestic employees on higher-value-added work.

These practices chipped away at the loyalty and dampened the spending power of American workers, and often gave away key competitive capabilities of U.S. companies. Attracted by the quick financial gains they produced, many executives ignored the long-term effects and kept pursuing them well past the time they could be justified.

A turning point was the wave of hostile takeovers that swept the country in the 1980s. Corporate raiders often claimed that the complacent leaders of the targeted companies were failing to maximize returns to shareholders. That criticism prompted boards of directors to try to align the interests of management and shareholders by making stock-based pay a much bigger component of executive compensation.

Given incentives to maximize shareholder value and meet Wall Street’s expectations for ever higher quarterly EPS, top executives turned to massive stock repurchases, which helped them “manage” stock prices. The result: Trillions of dollars that could have been spent on innovation and job creation in the U.S. economy over the past three decades have instead been used to buy back shares for what is effectively stock-price manipulation.

Good Buybacks and Bad
Not all buybacks undermine shared prosperity. There are two major types: tender offers and open-market repurchases. With the former, a company contacts shareholders and offers to buy back their shares at a stipulated price by a certain near-term date, and then shareholders who find the price agreeable tender their shares to the company. Tender offers can be a way for executives who have substantial ownership stakes and care about a company’s long-term competitiveness to take advantage of a low stock price and concentrate ownership in their own hands. This can, among other things, free them from Wall Street’s pressure to maximize short-term profits and allow them to invest in the business. Henry Singleton was known for using tender offers in this way at Teledyne in the 1970s, and Warren Buffett for using them at GEICO in the 1980s. (GEICO became wholly owned by Buffett’s holding company, Berkshire Hathaway, in 1996.) As Buffett has noted, this kind of tender offer should be made when the share price is below the intrinsic value of the productive capabilities of the company and the company is profitable enough to repurchase the shares without impeding its real investment plans.
But tender offers constitute only a small portion of modern buybacks. Most are now done on the open market, and my research shows that they often come at the expense of investment in productive capabilities and, consequently, aren’t great for long-term shareholders.

Companies have been allowed to repurchase their shares on the open market with virtually no regulatory limits since 1982, when the SEC instituted Rule 10b-18 of the Securities Exchange Act. Under the rule, a corporation’s board of directors can authorize senior executives to repurchase up to a certain dollar amount of stock over a specified or open-ended period of time, and the company must publicly announce the buyback program. After that, management can buy a large number of the company’s shares on any given business day without fear that the SEC will charge it with stock-price manipulation—provided, among other things, that the amount does not exceed a “safe harbor” of 25% of the previous four weeks’ average daily trading volume. The SEC requires companies to report total quarterly repurchases but not daily ones, meaning that it cannot determine whether a company has breached the 25% limit without a special investigation.


Despite the escalation in buybacks over the past three decades, the SEC has only rarely launched proceedings against a company for using them to manipulate its stock price. And even within the 25% limit, companies can still make huge purchases: Exxon Mobil, by far the biggest stock repurchaser from 2003 to 2012, can buy back about $300 million worth of shares a day, and Apple up to $1.5 billion a day. In essence, Rule 10b-18 legalized stock market manipulation through open-market repurchases.

The rule was a major departure from the agency’s original mandate, laid out in the Securities Exchange Act in 1934. The act was a reaction to a host of unscrupulous activities that had fueled speculation in the Roaring ’20s, leading to the stock market crash of 1929 and the Great Depression. To prevent such shenanigans, the act gave the SEC broad powers to issue rules and regulations.

During the Reagan years, the SEC began to roll back those rules. The commission’s chairman from 1981 to 1987 was John Shad, a former vice chairman of E.F. Hutton and the first Wall Street insider to lead the commission in 50 years. He believed that the deregulation of securities markets would channel savings into economic investments more efficiently and that the isolated cases of fraud and manipulation that might go undetected did not justify onerous disclosure requirements for companies. The SEC’s adoption of Rule 10b-18 reflected that point of view.

Debunking the Justifications for Buybacks
Executives give three main justifications for open-market repurchases. Let’s examine them one by one:

1. Buybacks are investments in our undervalued shares that signal our confidence in the company’s future.
This makes some sense. But the reality is that over the past two decades major U.S. companies have tended to do buybacks in bull markets and cut back on them, often sharply, in bear markets. (See the exhibit “Where Did the Money from Productivity Increases Go?”) They buy high and, if they sell at all, sell low. Research by the Academic-Industry Research Network, a nonprofit I cofounded and lead, shows that companies that do buybacks never resell the shares at higher prices.

Once in a while a company that bought high in a boom has been forced to sell low in a bust to alleviate financial distress. GE, for example, spent $3.2 billion on buybacks in the first three quarters of 2008, paying an average price of $31.84 per share. Then, in the last quarter, as the financial crisis brought about losses at GE Capital, the company did a $12 billion stock issue at an average share price of $22.25, in a failed attempt to protect its triple-A credit rating.
In general, when a company buys back shares at what turn out to be high prices, it eventually reduces the value of the stock held by continuing shareholders. “The continuing shareholder is penalized by repurchases above intrinsic value,” Warren Buffett wrote in his 1999 letter to Berkshire Hathaway shareholders. “Buying dollar bills for $1.10 is not good business for those who stick around.”

2. Buybacks are necessary to offset the dilution of earnings per share when employees exercise stock options.
Calculations that I have done for high-tech companies with broad-based stock option programs reveal that the volume of open-market repurchases is generally a multiple of the volume of options that employees exercise. In any case, there’s no logical economic rationale for doing repurchases to offset dilution from the exercise of employee stock options. Options are meant to motivate employees to work harder now to produce higher future returns for the company. Therefore, rather than using corporate cash to boost EPS immediately, executives should be willing to wait for the incentive to work. If the company generates higher earnings, employees can exercise their options at higher stock prices, and the company can allocate the increased earnings to investment in the next round of innovation.

3. Our company is mature and has run out of profitable investment opportunities; therefore, we should return its unneeded cash to shareholders.
Some people used to argue that buybacks were a more tax-efficient means of distributing money to shareholders than dividends. But that has not been the case since 2003, when the tax rates on long-term capital gains and qualified dividends were made the same. Much more important issues remain, however: What is the CEO’s main role and his or her responsibility to shareholders?

Companies that have built up productive capabilities over long periods typically have huge organizational and financial advantages when they enter related markets. One of the chief functions of top executives is to discover new opportunities for those capabilities. When they opt to do large open-market repurchases instead, it raises the question of whether these executives are doing their jobs.

A related issue is the notion that the CEO’s main obligation is to shareholders. It’s based on a misconception of the shareholders’ role in the modern corporation. The philosophical justification for giving them all excess corporate profits is that they are best positioned to allocate resources because they have the most interest in ensuring that capital generates the highest returns. This proposition is central to the “maximizing shareholder value” (MSV) arguments espoused over the years, most notably by Michael C. Jensen. The MSV school also posits that companies’ so-called free cash flow should be distributed to shareholders because only they make investments without a guaranteed return—and hence bear risk.

But the MSV school ignores other participants in the economy who bear risk by investing without a guaranteed return. Taxpayers take on such risk through government agencies that invest in infrastructure and knowledge creation. And workers take it on by investing in the development of their capabilities at the firms that employ them. As risk bearers, taxpayers, whose dollars support business enterprises, and workers, whose efforts generate productivity improvements, have claims on profits that are at least as strong as the shareholders’.

The irony of MSV is that public-company shareholders typically never invest in the value-creating capabilities of the company at all. Rather, they invest in klix shares in the hope that the stock price will rise. And a prime way in which corporate executives fuel that hope is by doing buybacks to manipulate the market. The only money that Apple ever raised from public shareholders was $97 million at its IPO in 1980. Yet in recent years, hedge fund activists such as David Einhorn and Carl Icahn—who played absolutely no role in the company’s success over the decades—have purchased large amounts of Apple stock and then pressured the company to announce some of the largest buyback programs in history.

The past decade’s huge increase in repurchases, in addition to high levels of dividends, have come at a time when U.S. industrial companies face new competitive challenges. This raises questions about how much of corporate cash flow is really “free” to be distributed to shareholders. Many academics—for example, Gary P. Pisano and Willy C. Shih of Harvard Business School, in their 2009 HBR article “Restoring American Competitiveness” and their book Producing Prosperity—have warned that if U.S. companies don’t start investing much more in research and manufacturing capabilities, they cannot expect to remain competitive in a range of advanced technology industries.
Retained earnings have always been the foundation for investments in innovation. Executives who subscribe to MSV are thus copping out of their responsibility to invest broadly and deeply in the productive capabilities their organizations need to continually innovate. MSV as commonly understood is a theory of value extraction, not value creation.

Executives Are Serving Their Own Interests
As I noted earlier, there is a simple, much more plausible explanation for the increase in open-market repurchases: the rise of stock-based pay. Combined with pressure from Wall Street, stock-based incentives make senior executives extremely motivated to do buybacks on a colossal and systemic scale.

Consider the 10 largest repurchasers, which spent a combined $859 billion on buybacks, an amount equal to 68% of their combined net income, from 2003 through 2012. (See the exhibit “The Top 10 Stock Repurchasers.”) During the same decade, their CEOs received, on average, a total of $168 million each in compensation. On average, 34% of their compensation was in the form of stock options and 24% in stock awards. At these companies the next four highest-paid senior executives each received, on average, $77 million in compensation during the 10 years—27% of it in stock options and 29% in stock awards. Yet since 2003 only three of the 10 largest repurchasers—Exxon Mobil, IBM, and Procter & Gamble—have outperformed the S&P 500 Index.


Reforming the System
Buybacks have become an unhealthy corporate obsession. Shifting corporations back to a retain-and-reinvest regime that promotes stable and equitable growth will take bold action. Here are three proposals:

Put an end to open-market buybacks.
In a 2003 update to Rule 10b-18, the SEC explained: “It is not appropriate for the safe harbor to be available when the issuer has a heightened incentive to manipulate its share price.” In practice, though, the stock-based pay of the executives who decide to do repurchases provides just this “heightened incentive.” To correct this glaring problem, the SEC should rescind the safe harbor.

A good first step toward that goal would be an extensive SEC study of the possible damage that open-market repurchases have done to capital formation, industrial corporations, and the U.S. economy over the past three decades. For example, during that period the amount of stock taken out of the market has exceeded the amount issued in almost every year; from 2004 through 2013 this net withdrawal averaged $316 billion a year. In aggregate, the stock market is not functioning as a source of funds for corporate investment. As I’ve already noted, retained earnings have always provided the base for such investment. I believe that the practice of tying executive compensation to stock price is undermining the formation of physical and human capital.

Rein in stock-based pay.
Many studies have shown that large companies tend to use the same set of consultants to benchmark executive compensation, and that each consultant recommends that the client pay its CEO well above average. As a result, compensation inevitably ratchets up over time. The studies also show that even declines in stock price increase executive pay: When a company’s stock price falls, the board stuffs even more options and stock awards into top executives’ packages, claiming that it must ensure that they won’t jump ship and will do whatever is necessary to get the stock price back up.

In 1991 the SEC began allowing top executives to keep the gains from immediately selling stock acquired from options. Previously, they had to hold the stock for six months or give up any “short-swing” gains. That decision has only served to reinforce top executives’ overriding personal interest in boosting stock prices. And because corporations aren’t required to disclose daily buyback activity, it gives executives the opportunity to trade, undetected, on inside information about when buybacks are being done. At the very least, the SEC should stop allowing executives to sell stock immediately after options are exercised. Such a rule could help launch a much-needed discussion of meaningful reform that goes beyond the 2010 Dodd-Frank Act’s “Say on Pay”—an ineffectual law that gives shareholders the right to make nonbinding recommendations to the board on compensation issues.
But overall the use of stock-based pay should be severely limited. Incentive compensation should be subject to performance criteria that reflect investment in innovative capabilities, not stock performance.

Transform the boards that determine executive compensation.
Boards are currently dominated by other CEOs, who have a strong bias toward ratifying higher pay packages for their peers. When approving enormous distributions to shareholders and stock-based pay for top executives, these directors believe they’re acting in the interests of shareholders.

That’s a big part of the problem. The vast majority of shareholders are simply investors in klix shares who can easily sell their stock when they want to lock in gains or minimize losses. As I argued earlier, the people who truly invest in the productive capabilities of corporations are taxpayers and workers. Taxpayers have an interest in whether a corporation that uses government investments can generate profits that allow it to pay taxes, which constitute the taxpayers’ returns on those investments. Workers have an interest in whether the company will be able to generate profits with which it can provide pay increases and stable career opportunities.

It’s time for the U.S. corporate governance system to enter the 21st century: Taxpayers and workers should have seats on boards. Their representatives would have the insights and incentives to ensure that executives allocate resources to investments in capabilities most likely to generate innovations and value.

Courage in Washington
After the Harvard Law School dean Erwin Griswold published “Are Stock Options Getting out of Hand?” in this magazine in 1960, Senator Albert Gore launched a campaign that persuaded Congress to whittle away special tax advantages for executive stock options. After the Tax Reform Act of 1976, the compensation expert Graef Crystal declared that stock options that qualified for the capital-gains tax rate, “once the most popular of all executive compensation devices…have been given the last rites by Congress.” It also happens that during the 1970s the share of all U.S. income that the top 0.1% of households got was at its lowest point in the past century.

The members of the U.S. Congress should show the courage and independence of their predecessors and go beyond “Say on Pay” to do something about excessive executive compensation. In addition, Congress should fix a broken tax regime that frequently rewards value extractors as if they were value creators and ignores the critical role of government investment in the infrastructure and knowledge that are so crucial to the competitiveness of U.S. business.

Instead, what we have now are corporations that lobby—often successfully—for federal subsidies for research, development, and exploration, while devoting far greater resources to stock buybacks. Here are three examples of such hypocrisy:

Alternative energy.
Exxon Mobil, while receiving about $600 million a year in U.S. government subsidies for oil exploration (according to the Center for American Progress), spends about $21 billion a year on buybacks. It spends virtually no money on alternative energy research.

Meanwhile, through the American Energy Innovation Council, top executives of Microsoft, GE, and other companies have lobbied the U.S. government to triple its investment in alternative energy research and subsidies, to $16 billion a year. Yet these companies had plenty of funds they could have invested in alternative energy on their own. Over the past decade Microsoft and GE, combined, have spent about that amount annually on buybacks.

Nanotechnology.
Intel executives have long lobbied the U.S. government to increase spending on nanotechnology research. In 2005, Intel’s then-CEO, Craig R. Barrett, argued that “it will take a massive, coordinated U.S. research effort involving academia, industry, and state and federal governments to ensure that America continues to be the world leader in information technology.” Yet from 2001, when the U.S. government launched the National Nanotechnology Initiative (NNI), through 2013 Intel’s expenditures on buybacks were almost four times the total NNI budget.

Pharmaceutical drugs.
In response to complaints that U.S. drug prices are at least twice those in any other country, Pfizer and other U.S. pharmaceutical companies have argued that the profits from these high prices—enabled by a generous intellectual-property regime and lax price regulation—permit more R&D to be done in the United States than elsewhere. Yet from 2003 through 2012, Pfizer funneled an amount equal to 71% of its profits into buybacks, and an amount equal to 75% of its profits into dividends. In other words, it spent more on buybacks and dividends than it earned and tapped its capital reserves to help fund them. The reality is, Americans pay high drug prices so that major pharmaceutical companies can boost their stock prices and pad executive pay.Given the importance of the stock market and corporations to the economy and society, U.S. regulators must step in to check the behavior of those who are unable or unwilling to control themselves. “The mission of the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission,” the SEC’s website explains, “is to protect investors, maintain fair, orderly, and efficient markets, and facilitate capital formation.” Yet, as we have seen, in its rulings on and monitoring of stock buybacks and executive pay over three decades, the SEC has taken a course of action contrary to those objectives. It has enabled the wealthiest 0.1% of society, including top executives, to capture the lion’s share of the gains of U.S. productivity growth while the vast majority of Americans have been left behind. Rule 10b-18, in particular, has facilitated a rigged stock market that, by permitting the massive distribution of corporate cash to shareholders, has undermined capital formation, including human capital formation.

The corporate resource allocation process is America’s source of economic security or insecurity, as the case may be. If Americans want an economy in which corporate profits result in shared prosperity, the buyback and executive compensation binges will have to end. As with any addiction, there will be withdrawal pains. But the best executives may actually get satisfaction out of being paid a reasonable salary for allocating resources in ways that sustain the enterprise, provide higher standards of living to the workers who make it succeed, and generate tax revenues for the governments that provide it with crucial inputs.


https://hbr.org/2014/09/profits-without-prosperity
zijancer
Posts: 4749
Joined: 03/08/2004 20:52
Location: 39

#1288 Re: Price, pjesme, intervjui...

Post by zijancer »

bilješka o sizifu, jaranu iz komšiluka
http://stav.ba/biljeska-o-sizifu-jaranu-iz-komsiluka/
omar little
Posts: 16349
Joined: 14/03/2008 21:14

#1289 Re: Price, pjesme, intervjui...

Post by omar little »

as per usual - #naumpadanje

ARTICLE — From the February 2012 issue

Killing the Competition
How the new monopolies are destroying open markets

Fear, in any real market, is a natural emotion. There is the fear of not making a sale, not landing a job, not winning a client. Such fear is healthy, even constructive. It prods us to polish our wares, to refine our skills, and to conjure up—every so often—a wonder.

But these days, we see a different kind of fear in the eyes of America’s entrepreneurs and professionals. It’s a fear of the arbitrary edict, of the brute exercise of power. And the origins of this fear lie precisely in the fact that many if not most Americans can no longer count on open markets for their ideas and their work. Because of the overthrow of our antimonopoly laws a generation ago, we instead find ourselves subject to the ever more autocratic whims of the individuals who run our giant business corporations.

The equation is simple. In sector after sector of our political economy, there are still many sellers: many of us. But every day, there are fewer buyers: fewer of them. Hence, they enjoy more and more liberty to dictate terms—or simply to dictate.

Over the past four years of financial collapse, many of us have come to view markets as a fantastical scam: a giant mechanism geared to transfer our hard-earned dollars into the hands of a few select bankers. And when it comes to the Wall Street markets we rely on to trade our equities and debt and commodities, this sentiment is not all wrong.

But as every previous generation of Americans understood, a truly open market is one of our fundamental democratic institutions. We construct such markets to achieve some of our most basic rights: to deal with whom we choose, to work with whom we choose, to govern our communities and nation as we (along with our neighbors) choose.

And so, as every previous generation of Americans also understood, monopolization of our public markets is first and foremost a political crisis, amounting to nothing less than the reestablishment of private government. What is at stake is the survival of our democratic republic.

This rush back to the feudal past is nowhere more evident than in that region of California we have so long viewed as the incubator of our future.

Until recently, few places in the world could boast of markets as open as those of Silicon Valley. Yes, large corporations thrived here for decades. But true denizens of the Valley would rarely let themselves get caught inside those walls. Why should they? Their skills were portable, venture capital was abundant, and California refused to enforce the “non-compete” agreements that tech firms elsewhere often used to control their employees.

It was in Silicon Valley that America’s entrepreneurs seemed to rediscover their roots—or rather, their primal rootlessness. Serial founders staked out tech venture after tech venture, in much the way Daniel Boone once cleared homesteads as he wandered from Carolina to Kentucky to Missouri. And behind these pioneers swarmed freelance engineers and cowboy coders, hardly distinguishable from the first-generation entrepreneurs and soon in direct competition with them.

These days the Valley is once again abuzz. Headlines report bulging wallets and a smorgasbord of new perks. Venture capitalists hum down Route 101, and angel investors lurk and listen in the bars. But instead of a disruptive melee like that of the late 1990s, with its diversity of players and voices, the overwhelming tendency today is a further consolidation of power by the already powerful.

During the past decade, a few giants have managed to fence in market after market for hardware, software, and content. Some did so simply by buying up their competitors. Oracle CEO Larry Ellison once said that acquiring another company was “a confession that there’s a failure to innovate.” But Ellison himself decided to opt for the more reliable profits that come from buying one’s competitors, which in Oracle’s case included PeopleSoft, Siebel, BEA, Sun Microsystems, and more than sixty other firms. During the same period, Google—even while branding itself as the dreamiest of inventors—vacuumed up close to a hundred companies, including such core components as YouTube, DoubleClick, and ITA.

John D. Rockefeller, whose Standard Oil ruled the energy industry for decades, liked to present his predations as acts of altruism. “We will take your burdens,” he would tell his target. “We will unite together and build a substantial structure on the basis of cooperation.” But all understood perfectly the ultimatum hidden in the honeyed words: Join or be crushed.

So, too, today’s lords of the Valley, who enjoy the power to choreograph competition among the latest generation of upstarts and then buy whom they please, when they please. Yet this de facto license to govern a trillion-dollar industry—and with it, entire swaths of the American economy—appears to have left these high-tech headmen unfulfilled. Or so we learned when the Justice Department complained in 2010 that senior executives at Apple, Google, Intel, Pixar, and two other corporations had “formed and actively managed” an agreement that “deprived” the engineers and scientists who work for them of “access to better job opportunities.”

Even in those reaches of society long accustomed to the rule of the few, the fact that some of the biggest and the richest had agreed not to poach one another’s workers managed to shock. In an editorial, the New York Times wondered “What Century Are We In?” Yet in the Valley itself, from those most directly affected, we’ve heard only the rarest of whimpers. The anger is there. But it’s tamped down by fear.

To see how these employees react to their bosses getting busted for running a labor cartel, I recently toured Apple’s hometown of Cupertino, California. I strolled the Infinite Loop, the road encircling the six edifices at the heart of the empire. I wandered the side streets lined with low-slung buildings adorned with discreet Apple logos. I ambled down North De Anza Boulevard to the center of town. All around I saw Apple employees, easily identifiable by the white badges dangling from their necks or clipped to their pants pockets. And I approached many of them to ask what it felt like to work in the company’s town.

An older fellow named Steve, with scraggly white hair, told me he had read all about the settlement, and that the news had come as no surprise. “They treat us like dirt,” he said before unleashing a string of curses. “Market capitalism should be a two-way street, no? If they get to make us compete against one another, then they too should have to compete.” At this point Steve walked off. He’d like to talk more, he said. But his contract renewal was coming up, and someone might see him with me.

At a crossroads just south of Apple headquarters, in front of a Valero gas station, I caught up with John, who was speed-walking to the dentist. “Of course I don’t like it,” he told me, and proceeded to recount the facts of the settlement in detail. “But what can we do? It’s not like anyone ever dares to speak about it. I mean, they actively encourage us not to talk to one another. It’s all taboo.”

Outside the Bagel Street Café, in the lines for the shuttle buses that carry employees north to San Francisco, at BJ’s Restaurant and Brewhouse, I come upon the same urge to talk, followed by the same mumbled apologies as prudence takes hold. Sometimes the fear kicks in almost instantaneously. One employee actually spun on his heel, jumped back into his pickup truck, and sped away, though not before hissing that “even if I did know anything, I wouldn’t ever be able to talk about it.”

Eventually I did find one employee willing to speak up. Last spring, a San Francisco law firm announced plans to file a class-action lawsuit against Lucasfilm and the six corporations named in the DOJ settlement. Such lawsuits require at least one person to publicly represent the class, and finally a former Lucasfilm software engineer named Siddarth Hariharan stepped forward. After some back-and-forth with his lawyers, Hariharan (who also goes by the name Neil Haran) agreed to discuss how the masters of these estates treat their tenants.

Over lunch in San Francisco, Hariharan, dapper in a stylish sport coat, starts by telling me all the reasons he loved his job, especially the opportunity to take part in sprawling, complex projects. Sure, the pace was grinding, the hours crazy. One team, he recounts, worked for 110 hours per week for nine months straight. But “everyone believed they were making something important.”

Hariharan says his attitude began to sour after Lucasfilm completed a particularly ambitious project. The very next day, he says, shaking his head, executives came in and “fired almost everyone.” These were employees who hadn’t had a day off in months. “People were running around the office,” says Hariharan, whose own job was not affected. “They were running around crying. It was a bad sight.”

He pauses, and looks at me. “Then, on top of that, I hear they were conspiring to lock people in a box?” It was the allegations about the labor cartel, Hariharan says, that angered him sufficiently to join the lawsuit. “It’s simple,” he says. “If you do something bad, you should be punished.”

Many entrepreneurs and workers in Silicon Valley want to speak out, Hariharan believes. Many would love to restore the open job market of the early 1990s. But for most, “it would be career suicide.” Even Hariharan might have thought twice if he hadn’t already established himself as an independent entrepreneur. “I’m not rich,” he says, “but I never have to work for anyone else again. So I felt I had to do something. I had to stand up for those who couldn’t.”

No matter how adept Silicon Valley CEOs have become at corralling the men and women who actually make what they sell, they are still relative beginners when it comes to manipulating fear for profit. To get a sense of what the future may hold for America’s computer engineers—and, for that matter, our teachers, lawyers, and doctors—I recently drove through a notch in the Allegheny Mountains into West Virginia’s Sweedlin Valley. There I visited with poultry farmers who supply birds to a plant in Moorefield owned by the Brazilian food giant JBS. (The largest meat processor in the world, JBS operates the plant under the name Pilgrim’s.)

The broiler industry was one of the first in which the generation of monopolists unleashed by Ronald Reagan succeeded in replacing open markets with vertically integrated systems designed to be controlled by a single local buyer. The men who rule America’s chicken-processing plants have therefore had decades to master the art of setting individual farmers—who still own the land, equipment, and liabilities—against one another. And the goal of this competition is not merely to extract the most work from each individual, but also the most capital.

The concept of such competitions—or “tournaments,” as the industry calls them—is generally credited to the economist Edward Lazear, who served as one of George W. Bush’s top advisers and now teaches at the Stanford Graduate School of Business. The idea, first laid out in a 1981 paper titled “Rank-Order Tournaments as Optimum Labor Contracts,” is straightforward enough. Rather than pay all workers at the same rate for any particular task, Lazear wrote, why not set up a “labor market contest,” in which those who produce more also get paid more per task or per piece? Such a system of reward (and, for those at the bottom, punishment) would, he claimed, increase the incentive to work harder.

The problem with Lazear’s theory becomes clear when we recall some of the basic characteristics shared by all real markets. Most important is an equality between the seller and the buyer, achieved by ensuring that there are many buyers as well as many sellers. Second is transparency. Everyone sees the quantity and quality of the product on offer, and the price at which each deal is done. A third characteristic is a tendency to deliver egalitarian outcomes. On any given day, once the supply of a product has been hauled to market and appraised, all sellers receive roughly the same price per unit. Offer a seller less than the prevailing price, and you walk away empty-handed. Demand more from buyers, and your goods sit untouched.

Lazear repeatedly uses the term “market” to describe his tournaments. But his theory has almost nothing in common with how open markets actually function. For starters, he assumes that the sellers of goods and services must have, for all intents, nowhere else to go. A 2003 study of tournament theory by economists Tom Coupé, Valérie Smeets, and Frédéric Warzynski, which builds explicitly on Lazear’s work, makes this point painfully clear. “Tournaments take place,” the authors explain, “in the context of an internal labor market with no explicit role for outside options.”

The political aim of tournaments, in other words, is exactly opposed to that of real markets. Citizens structure markets, first and foremost, to protect individuals from massed capital. Lazear’s tournaments are designed to maximize return to capital. They do so precisely by setting individual citizens against each other, like cocks in a pit.

This sounds bad enough. But when I sit down with poultry grower Mike Weaver in his snug rambler to learn how such tournaments work in practice, he seems astonished at my naïveté. “That’s not even the half of it,” he begins.

Weaver, a former fish and game officer who can raise flocks as large as 94,000 birds on his farm, slides a “settlement sheet” across the table. It records the amounts JBS paid to seventeen farmers who delivered their flocks to the plant on one particular day. The company, he shows me, paid the top-ranked chicken grower 63 percent more per pound than it paid the bottom-ranked grower. “Naturally,” he says, “this sort of differential will tend to make a man work harder to stay ahead of the next fella.”

What makes the system truly insidious, Weaver adds, is that the whole competition takes place without any set standards. “There is no baseline,” he explains. For one thing, JBS requires the farmers to procure from the company itself all the chicks they raise and all the feed they blow into the houses. Yet the quality of the chicks and the feed can differ tremendously, from day to day and from farm to farm.

What’s more, the full-grown chickens are weighed after being trucked off the farm. The farmer is not allowed to see whether the figure on the scale is accurate—nor can he tell whether the chickens he’s being paid for even came from his farm. He is simply expected to take the money he is given and say thank you.

As much as he resents being forced into a gladiatorial relationship with his neighbors, Weaver says an klix tournament with a level playing field would be “far better than what we have now.” Under the current regimen, the processors “don’t just force us to compete against each other. They rig the competition any way they like. They can be as sloppy as they wish or as manipulative as they wish. We are entirely subject to the company.” After a moment, Weaver modifies his statement. “Really, we are entirely subject to the foreman at the plant, to the technician who keeps a watch on us. Those men can make us and they can break us, and they know it.”

His face reddens. “The market in this valley is very simple to understand. They give preferential treatment to those who kiss their ass.”

For the local community, the outcome of this arrangement can be devastating. Traditionally, farmers have tended to join politically with their neighbors. But Weaver, who heads the local poultry-growers association, says nowadays many farmers end up viewing their neighbors as rivals. Most of the 400 or so farmers who sell into the Moorefield plant “try to resist such feelings,” he says. But over time, the system wears them down.

It also makes them highly reluctant to speak out in public. “Most of the farmers are afraid to say boo for fear the companies will take away their chickens,” Weaver tells me. The processors “know we have our house and our land in hock to pay for the equipment. They know we are honorable people who won’t walk on a promise. And they exploit this.”

Weaver has learned this from bitter experience. In 2010, he spoke at two Department of Agriculture hearings on the consolidation of the packing and processing industries. Ever since, he tells me, the foremen have rated his chickens near or at the bottom, after years of ranking them near the top. This costs him thousands of dollars per flock.

“I can’t prove a thing,” Weaver says when I ask if there’s any way to verify that the company is retaliating against him for speaking out. “That’s the beauty of the system. They know everything and we know nothing. They get to decide what’s real.”

Like Hariharan, Weaver dares to talk openly only because he possesses a measure of financial independence. “I can speak because I don’t need the company,” he says. “They can cut me off tomorrow and I have enough saved up so I won’t go flat-out bankrupt.” But this is not true for many of the farmers who sell chickens to the Moorefield plant, he adds. “They have nowhere else to go. They have to take what they’re given.”

The revolutionary achievement of the American people two centuries ago was not merely to establish an independent republic. It was to prove that every citizen in that republic could be independent, economically as well as politically.

This vision was not atomistic. It was not based solely, as libertarians like to claim, on a realization of individual rights. Instead, the belief was that self-conscious, self-reliant citizens would come together as equals and use their collective power to protect their communities, their nation, and themselves.

The practical challenge was to enable citizens to exchange their goods, ideas, and labor with one another as freely as possible. And so Americans mastered the political art of making public markets, and used their new legislatures to closely restrict trading companies, industrial estates, and other forms of private corporate government.

These open markets swiftly proved to be as fundamental to our democracy as the ballot box. They buttressed our system of checks and balances, both by distributing power among many sellers and many buyers and by promoting a more equitable distribution of wealth. They helped to foster open debate and prodded citizens to speak out against competitors who bent or broke the rules.

Right from the beginning, however, these markets proved hard to keep.

George Washington’s administration was barely a year old when Alexander Hamilton, the nation’s first treasury secretary, attempted to use a government bailout of speculators to concentrate power in banking estates controlled by his friends and allies. (Hamilton later touched off the Whiskey Rebellion with a tax that steered the distilling business away from yeoman farmers to local landlords.) And for more than half a century after the Civil War, we lost many of our markets entirely, as a small clique of men seized control of the new railroad and telegraph systems, then consolidated their power over many other important sectors of the economy.

By 1913, the apex of the plutocratic era, President Woodrow Wilson was decrying the rule of fear that had been imposed on the American entrepreneur and worker. “Some of the biggest men in the United States, in the field of commerce and manufacture, are afraid of somebody, are afraid of something,” Wilson said. “They know that there is a power somewhere so organized, so subtle, so watchful, so interlocked, so complete, so pervasive, that they had better not speak above their breath when they speak in condemnation of it.”

Yet in two great pushes—during the early years of the Wilson Administration, and then during the Second New Deal in the 1930s—the American people succeeded in restoring many of the open markets we had lost. Even as the lords of industry and the prophets of socialism joined hands to defend the “scientific” rationalization of productive activities, the people forced their representatives to enact law after law designed to disperse power.

Adapting the principles of eighteenth-century republicanism to the industrial landscape of twentieth-century America proved to be remarkably easy. Where there was no compelling reason to concentrate power—as in retail, agriculture, services, and light manufacturing—the goal now was to promote a wide distribution of both property and opportunity.

In practice, this required not merely heading off further monopolization, but unwinding many existing powers. The legislation used to achieve these ends—including the Packers and Stockyards Act and the fair-trade laws of the 1930s, which allowed manufacturers to set minimum retail prices for their goods—are seldom recalled today. However, their long-term impact was profound. In the 1920s, the five largest beef packers controlled upward of 70 percent of the U.S. market; by 1975, that figure had dropped to roughly 25 percent. In 1933, the four largest grocery chains controlled 27 percent of the market; by 1982, that figure had dropped to 16 percent.

Where some concentration of capacity and control was viewed as necessary—as in heavy industry—the goal was not to break up the monopolies. Instead, markets were restructured to ensure that at least three or four companies competed to make any particular product. In 1945, for instance, the government forced Alcoa to share its aluminum monopoly with Kaiser and Reynolds. This also meant restraining the power of the capitalist over these quasi monopolies, mostly by reinforcing the rights of the worker, the engineer, the local community, and the small investor.

This bottom-up reconstruction of our economy was one of the great political achievements of the twentieth century. At a time when every other industrial nation of the world was engineering corporatist structures that tended toward authoritarianism, the United States went in the opposite direction. It was, arguably, a second American Revolution.

By the 1970s, however, our open markets were under siege once again. And this time, the assault was more subtle, and camouflaged by myth, euphemism, and outright falsehood. The generation of Rockefeller and Morgan had acknowledged its power openly and defended that power on its merits, such as they might be. Yes, they had centralized control over entire industries, and yes, they ruled their realms as despots. But they claimed to wield such power for one purpose only: to organize production and trade more efficiently. And wasn’t efficiency a great benefit to the commonweal? Such honest impudence, in turn, made it easier for citizens to identify and beat back the political threat.

Today, our overlords not only refuse to defend the power they hold—they deny that it is even possible for any American to accumulate such power. And to make such an absurd claim stick, they (or the more politically sophisticated of the academic economists in their employ) have undermined our language itself. Their most impressive act of lexical legerdemain was the coinage of various misnomers, some so audacious as to be worthy of Orwell’s Ministry of Truth. Corporate monopoly? Let’s just call that the “free market.” The political ravages of corporate power? Those could be recast as the essentially benign workings of “market forces.”

Even more dangerous was the transformation of efficiency into the highest economic good. For centuries, klix back to the British East India Company’s promise to manage our tea trade for us, Americans have used antimonopoly action and law to protect our liberties as producers. Along the way, we learned to distrust most talk of efficiency as a justification for reducing the number of buyers. It was this very sentiment that inspired Justice Louis Brandeis to celebrate the political and economic virtues of “friction” in a 1926 Supreme Court decision.

Little more than a generation ago, however, economists of the “Chicago School” began to publish studies claiming that the enforcement of our antimonopoly laws was harming the interests of that defenseless figure, the American consumer, by promoting “wasteful” competition. After Ronald Reagan took office in 1981, his new head of antitrust enforcement, William F. Baxter, swiftly abandoned efforts to promote competition and promised instead a policy “based on efficiency considerations.” The goal now was to promote the “welfare” of the consumer, theoretically by increasing his or her access to cheap goods.

No gun was ever fired, no protest ever mounted, no direct attack on our antimonopoly laws was ever unleashed. Yet the most fundamental purpose of these fundamental laws—to protect the liberty of the citizen and to ensure the safe distribution of power—was flipped on its head by the innocent-sounding substitution of a few key terms. And in the three decades since, the impact of this rhetorical sleight of hand has only grown. The “consumer welfare” framework has provided its creators with exactly the cover they need to write their efficiency argument straight into the mainstream of American law and to erect their private corporate governments right in the town square of the American political economy.

To understand the true architecture of power in our America of 2012, we must set down the hymnals of the economists and speak directly to those of us who strive every day to make, to grow, to build, to serve—but who find that some immense power blocks their way.

Take the craft-beer brewer I met recently in Chicago. Worshipped by his ever-thirsty fans, he grinned proudly for a photo shoot as I watched from the sidelines. But in the privacy of the hotel hallway, he whispered about how Anheuser-Busch InBev is slowly strangling his company. The multinational colossus controls much of the beer distribution in the United States and has a huge influence over who rides those rails. “When I want to get my beer on a store shelf, I don’t call the retailer,” he explains. “I have to beg ABI.”

The backstory in brewing is much the same as in Silicon Valley. In 1978, the production of beer in America was divided among forty-three firms, with the biggest controlling only a quarter of the market. Today, more than 1,750 companies make beer in this country. But ABI and MillerCoors have locked down more than 90 percent of the U.S. market. This gives them the power to jack up prices almost at will. More important, it gives this cadre of capitalists the ability to decide which American craft brewers thrive and which don’t.

Or take the advertising executive who recently told me about her decision to ditch her career and become a teacher. Over the course of a decade, this executive steadily accumulated responsibility as she moved from Wunderman to Omnicom to Young & Rubicam, confident she was destined for a corner office. Then, a couple of years ago, she hit a wall. “Every place I wanted to work was already owned by WPP,” she said, referring to the British giant that controls Y&R and many other firms. “And I realized that to move, I’d need the approval of some grand poobah.”

Again we encounter the familiar story. Well into the 1980s, power on Madison Avenue was dispersed among more than a dozen large agencies and scores of vibrant smaller firms. But over the past thirty years, four sprawling holding companies—WPP, Interpublic, Omnicom, and Publicis—swallowed up almost the entire industry. WPP alone controls more than 300 ad agencies, including such once iconic shops as the Grey Group, Ogilvy & Mather, and Hill & Knowlton. And the four giants vigorously shore up this power with strict non-compete employment contracts.

You’ll hear the same thing if you talk to the musicians who find themselves subject to the caprices of Live Nation. Or if you talk to the legions of doctors watching helplessly as hospital corporations begin to regulate medical services across entire regions. Where only a few short years ago these citizens controlled their own destinies, they wake today to find themselves the de facto chattel of some domestic (or increasingly, foreign) lord.

But perhaps the best way to understand the true structure of America’s political economy in the twenty-first century is to talk to some of the people who publish, edit, and write books in America.

These days, most articles on the book industry focus on technology. The recent death of the retailer Borders is depicted as a victory of Internet sales over brick-and-mortar stores, the e-book market as a battle between the Kindle e-reader and the iPad. But if we look behind the glib narrative of digitization, we find that a parallel revolution has taken place, one that has resulted in a dramatic concentration of power over the individuals who work in this essential, surprisingly fragile industry.

A generation ago, America’s book market was entirely open and very vibrant. According to some estimates, the five largest publishers in the mid-1970s controlled only about 30 percent of trade book sales, and the biggest fifty publishers controlled only 75 percent. The retail business was even more dispersed, with the top four chains accounting for little more than 10 percent of sales. Today, a single company—Amazon—accounts for more than 20 percent of the domestic book market. And even this statistic fails to convey the company’s enormous reach. In many key categories, it sells more than half the books purchased in the United States. And according to the company’s estimates, its share of the e-book market, the fastest-growing segment of the industry, was between 70 and 80 percent in 2010. (Its share of the online sale of physical books is roughly the same.)

Not surprisingly, then, we find the same sort of fear among our book publishers as we do among the chicken farmers of the Sweedlin Valley. I recently sat down with the CEO of one of the biggest publishing houses in America. In his corner office overlooking a busy Manhattan street, he explained that Amazon was once a “wonderful customer with whom to do business.” As Jeff Bezos’s company became more powerful, however, it changed. “The question is, do you wear your power lightly?” My host paused for a moment, searching for the right words. “Mr. Bezos has not. He is reckless. He is dangerous.”

Later that same day, I spoke with the head of one of the few remaining small publishers in America, in a tattered conference room in a squat Midtown office building. “Amazon is a bully. Jeff Bezos is a bully,” he said, his voice rising, his cheeks flushing. “Anyone who gets that powerful can push people around, and Amazon pushes people around. They do not exercise their power responsibly.”

Neither man allowed me to use his name. Amazon, they made clear, had long since accumulated sufficient influence over their business to ensure that even these most dedicated defenders of the book—and of the First Amendment—dare not speak openly of the company’s predations.

If a single event best illustrates our confusion as to what makes an open market—and the role such markets play in protecting our liberties—it was our failure to respond to Amazon’s decision in early 2010 to cut off one of our biggest publishers from its readers.

At the time, Amazon and Macmillan were scrapping over which firm would set the price for Macmillan’s e-books. Amazon wanted to price every Macmillan e-book, and indeed every e-book of every publisher, at $9.99 or less. This scorched-earth tactic, which guaranteed that Amazon lost money on many of the e-books it sold, was designed to cement the online retailer’s dominance in the nascent market. It also had the effect of persuading customers that this deeply discounted price, which publishers considered ruinously low, was the “natural” one for an e-book.

In January 2010, Macmillan at last claimed the right to set the price for each of its own products as it alone saw fit.[1] Amazon resisted this arrangement, known in publishing as the “agency model.” When the two companies deadlocked, Amazon simply turned off the buttons that allowed customers to order Macmillan titles, in both their print and their e-book versions. The reasoning was obvious: the sudden loss of sales, which could amount to a sizable fraction of Macmillan’s total revenue, would soon bring the publisher to heel.

This was not the first time Amazon had used this stratagem. The retailer’s executives had previously cut off small firms such as Ten Speed Press and Melville House Publishing for bucking their will. But the fight with Macmillan was by far the most public of these showdowns.

In the late 1970s, when a single book retailer first captured a 10 percent share of the U.S. market, Congress and the regulatory agencies were swift to react. As the head of the Federal Trade Commission put it: “The First Amendment protects us from the chilling shadow of government interference with the media. But are there comparable dangers if other powerful economic or political institutions assume control . . . ?”

In the intervening years, however, we have failed time and again to protect our open market for books. We did nothing as the super chains rolled up retail. We did nothing as six enormous conglomerates—four of them foreign-owned—absorbed many of our publishers. These failures are inexcusable. Yet always we could reassure ourselves that the absolute worst had not come to pass, that there was still some competition in our market for books, that no sovereign boss had emerged.

Today, by contrast, a single private company has captured the ability to dictate terms to the people who publish our books, and hence to the people who write and read our books. It does so by employing the most blatant forms of predatory pricing to destroy its retail competitors. It does so by gathering up massive amounts of information about the most private thoughts, interests, and habits of the American citizen. And all the while, this new sovereign justifies its exercise of raw power in the same way our economic autocrats always do: it claims that the resulting “efficiencies” will serve the interests of the consumer.

Meanwhile, all these manipulations—as audacious as any ever pursued by the antique bosses of steel or oil—have raised only the rarest murmurs of concern from Congress, the Obama Administration, and the FTC. (Antitrust enforcers in Washington and Brussels did launch investigations. Blinded, however, by the Orwellian framework of “consumer welfare,” they have mostly taken aim at the publishers, for daring to seek some control over the prices of their own products.)

Not that there have been no warnings at all. In his capacity as head of the Authors Guild, novelist Scott Turow has repeatedly condemned what he says is Amazon’s intent to, as he put it recently, “drive paper publishers out of business.” Oren Teicher, who heads the American Booksellers Association, told me that “Amazon is threatening the whole ecosystem of how ideas are created, how they are developed, how they are sold.”

In the event, Amazon did turn Macmillan’s buttons back on (but only after more than a week). And it did allow publishers to price their own e-books (though not their physical books). Still, there is little doubt the individuals who run Amazon got exactly what they wanted. They displayed the full extent of their dominance to the people most directly subject to it.[2] They proved to those same people that most of the American public no longer understands the nature—or the political danger—of that dominance.

In rare moments of disquiet, we like to assure ourselves that all shall turn out well. Surely some Schumpeterian upstart will emerge, as if by magic, to disrupt Amazon’s reign. Or Apple or Google will choose to intervene, in some fashion that avoids the political dangers posed by Amazon’s control, even though these firms wield powers at least as awesome as the online retailer’s.

Then we drift back into our private utopias, there to marvel at all the wonders of modern technology and the freedoms that await us if only we are patient and trust the great corporations to deliver what they promised. And truth be told, it is an amazing world we live in. I mean, who would ever have imagined that one day we’d be able to read Common Sense right on our Kindles?

For years, America’s upper-middle classes—of all political leanings—have tended to gaze on our political economy with a certain smug self-confidence. Even as our new masters imposed their rule over the markets once run by our farmers and small shopkeepers, and smashed the unions that empowered industrial workers and flight attendants to bargain as equals with their bosses, we turned away.

Servility, our political fabulists assured us, was for the little person. For our refined skills, competition was becoming every day only more intense. America, or at least our cozy enclave within it, was being transformed into a “free-agent nation.”

Well, it’s clear now that we never quite managed to slip the hold of the ancient truths. It was 150 years ago that Alexis de Tocqueville condemned top-down, long-distance control over any task that a community or individual could manage just as easily on its own. Observing the widespread sycophancy of French society under the July Monarchy, he noted how men routinely subjected to such power become accustomed “to set their own will habitually and completely aside; to submit, not only for once, or upon one point, but in every respect and at all times. Not only, therefore, does this union of power subdue them compulsorily, but it affects their ordinary habits; it isolates them, and then influences each separately.”

And so our new masters administer us in America today. They use their great nation-spanning and world-spanning corporations to isolate us as individuals, and then to pit us against our neighbors. They capture and hide away the information that until recently spilled from our open markets. And so they shatter our ability to speak coherently to one another from a base of common experience, to process even the most rudimentary of economic and political facts.

To step outside the open market is to step outside the rule of law and to come under the rule of whim. To step outside the open market is to step outside the rule of reason and to enter a realm of nonsense. We have a choice in America today. We must learn how to make real markets once again—or bend our knees, perhaps forever.

[1] For most of the twentieth century, manufacturers enjoyed the right to set minimum prices for their products. In 1975, however, Congress shifted this right to the retailer and the trading company, theoretically to enlist these powers in the fight against inflation. In 2007, the Supreme Court’s decision in Leegin Creative Leather Products v. PSKS, Inc. shifted at least some of the right to price back to the producer, in an act that surely heartened Macmillan’s legal team as it went head-to-head with Amazon. Many other nations, including France, Germany, Japan, and Switzerland, forbid discounting by publishers and booksellers.

[2] In December, the e-commerce giant continued its assault on brick-and-mortar merchants by offering promotional discounts of up to $5 to customers who scanned the prices of products in a store and then purchased them online at Amazon. This tactic, which Amazon defended in the name of “price transparency,” elicited loud protests from retailers as well as Senator Olympia Snowe (R., Maine), who called it “an attack on Main Street businesses.”


https://harpers.org/archive/2012/02/kil ... /?single=1
omar little
Posts: 16349
Joined: 14/03/2008 21:14

#1290 Re: Price, pjesme, intervjui...

Post by omar little »

January 12, 2017

Democrats can’t win until they recognize how bad Obama’s financial policies were

He had opportunities to help the working class, and he passed them up.


During his final news conference of 2016, in mid-December, President Obama criticized Democratic efforts during the election. “Where Democrats are characterized as coastal, liberal, latte-sipping, you know, politically correct, out-of-touch folks,” Obama said, “we have to be in those communities.” In fact, he went on, being in those communities — “going to fish-fries and sitting in VFW halls and talking to farmers” — is how, by his account, he became president. It’s true that Obama is skilled at projecting a populist image; he beat Hillary Clinton in Iowa in 2008, for instance, partly by attacking agriculture monopolies .

But Obama can’t place the blame for Clinton’s poor performance purely on her campaign. On the contrary, the past eight years of policymaking have damaged Democrats at all levels. Recovering Democratic strength will require the party’s leaders to come to terms with what it has become — and the role Obama played in bringing it to this point.

Two key elements characterized the kind of domestic political economy the administration pursued: The first was the foreclosure crisis and the subsequent bank bailouts. The resulting policy framework of Tim Geithner’s Treasury Department was, in effect, a wholesale attack on the American home (the main store of middle-class wealth) in favor of concentrated financial power. The second was the administration’s pro-monopoly policies, which crushed the rural areas that in 2016 lost voter turnout and swung to Donald Trump.

Obama didn’t cause the financial panic, and he is only partially responsible for the bailouts, as most of them were passed before he was elected. But financial collapses, while bad for the country, are opportunities for elected leaders to reorganize our culture. Franklin Roosevelt took a frozen banking system and created the New Deal. Ronald Reagan used the sharp recession of the early 1980s to seriously damage unions. In January 2009, Obama had overwhelming Democratic majorities in Congress, $350 billion of no-strings-attached bailout money and enormous legal latitude. What did he do to reshape a country on its back?

First, he saved the financial system. A financial system in collapse has to allocate losses. In this case, big banks and homeowners both experienced losses, and it was up to the Obama administration to decide who should bear those burdens. Typically, such losses would be shared between debtors and creditors, through a deal like the Home Owners Loan Corporation in the 1930s or bankruptcy reform. But the Obama administration took a different approach. Rather than forcing some burden-sharing between banks and homeowners through bankruptcy reform or debt relief, Obama prioritized creditor rights, placing most of the burden on borrowers. This kept big banks functional and ensured that financiers would maintain their positions in the recovery. At a 2010 hearing, Damon Silvers, vice chairman of the independent Congressional Oversight Panel, which was created to monitor the bailouts, told Obama’s Treasury Department: “We can either have a rational resolution to the foreclosure crisis, or we can preserve the capital structure of the banks. We can’t do both.”

Second, Obama’s administration let big-bank executives off the hook for their roles in the crisis. Sen. Carl Levin (D-Mich.) referred criminal cases to the Justice Department and was ignored. Whistleblowers from the government and from large banks noted a lack of appetite among prosecutors. In 2012, then-Attorney General Eric Holder ordered prosecutors not to go after mega-bank HSBC for money laundering. Using prosecutorial discretion to not take bank executives to task, while legal, was neither moral nor politically wise; in a 2013 poll, more than half of Americans still said they wanted the bankers behind the crisis punished. But the Obama administration failed to act, and this pattern seems to be continuing. No one, for instance, from Wells Fargo has been indicted for mass fraud in opening fake accounts.

Third, Obama enabled and encouraged roughly 9 million foreclosures. This was Geithner’s explicit policy at Treasury. The Obama administration put together a foreclosure program that it marketed as a way to help homeowners, but when Elizabeth Warren, then chairman of the Congressional Oversight Panel, grilled Geithner on why the program wasn’t stopping foreclosures, he said that really wasn’t the point. The program, in his view, was working. “We estimate that they can handle 10 million foreclosures, over time,” Geithner said — referring to the banks. “This program will help foam the runway for them.” For Geithner, the most productive economic policy was to get banks back to business as usual.
Nor did Obama do much about monopolies. While his administration engaged in a few mild challenges toward the end of his term, 2015 saw a record wave of mergers and acquisitions, and 2016 was another busy year. In nearly every sector of the economy, from pharmaceuticals to telecom to Internet platforms to airlines, power has concentrated. And this administration, like George W. Bush’s before it, did not prosecute a single significant monopoly under Section 2 of the Sherman Act. Instead, in the past few years, the Federal Trade Commission has gone after such villains as music teachers and ice skating instructors for ostensible anti-competitive behavior. This is very much a parallel of the financial crisis, as elites operate without legal constraints while the rest of us toil under an excess of bureaucracy.

With these policies in place, it’s no surprise that Thomas Piketty and others have detected skyrocketing inequality, that most jobs created in the past eight years have been temporary or part time, or that lifespans in white America are dropping . When Democratic leaders don’t protect the people, the people get poorer, they get angry, and more of them die.

Yes, Obama prevented an even greater collapse in 2009. But he also failed to prosecute the banking executives responsible for the housing crisis, then approved a foreclosure wave under the guise of helping homeowners. Though 58 percent of Americans were in favor of government action to halt foreclosures, Obama’s administration balked. And voters noticed. Fewer than four in 10 Americans were happy with his economic policies this time last year (though that was an all-time high for Obama). And by Election Day, 75 percent of voters were looking for someone who could take the country back “from the rich and powerful,” something unlikely to be done by members of the party that let the financiers behind the 2008 financial crisis walk free.

This isn’t to say voters are, on balance, any more thrilled with what Republicans have to offer, nor should they be. But that doesn’t guarantee Democrats easy wins. Throughout American history, when voters have felt abandoned by both parties, turnout has collapsed — and 2016, scraping along 20-year turnout lows, was no exception. Turnout in the Rust Belt , where Clinton’s path to victory dissolved, was especially low in comparison to 2012.

Trump, who is either tremendously lucky or worryingly perceptive, ran his campaign like a pre-1930s Republican. He did best in rural areas, uniting white farmers, white industrial workers and certain parts of big business behind tariffs and anti-immigration walls. While it’s impossible to know what he will really do for these voters, the coalition he summoned has a long, if not recent, history in America.

Democrats have long believed that theirs is the party of the people. Therefore, when Trump co-opts populist language, such as saying he represents the “forgotten” man, it seems absurd — and it is. After all, that’s what Democrats do, right? Thus, many Democrats have assumed that Trump’s appeal can only be explained by personal bigotry — and it’s also true that Trump trafficks in racist and nativist rhetoric. But the reality is that the Democratic Party has been slipping away from the working class for some time, and Obama’s presidency hastened rather than reversed that departure. Republicans, hardly worker-friendly themselves, simply capitalized on it.

There’s history here: In the 1970s, a wave of young liberals, Bill Clinton among them, destroyed the populist Democratic Party they had inherited from the New Dealers of the 1930s. The contours of this ideological fight were complex, but the gist was: Before the ’70s, Democrats were suspicious of big business. They used anti-monopoly policies to fight oligarchy and financial manipulation. Creating competition in open markets, breaking up concentrations of private power, and protecting labor and farmer rights were understood as the essence of ensuring that our commercial society was democratic and protected from big money.

Bill Clinton’s generation, however, believed that concentration of financial power could be virtuous, as long as that power was in the hands of experts. They largely dismissed the white working class as a bastion of reactionary racism. Fred Dutton, who served on the McGovern-Fraser Commission in 1970 , saw the white working class as “a major redoubt of traditional Americanism and of the antinegro, antiyouth vote.” This paved the way for the creation of the modern Democratic coalition. Obama is simply the latest in a long line of party leaders who have bought into the ideology of these “new” Democrats, and he has governed likewise, with commercial policies that ravaged the heartland.

As a result, while our culture has become more tolerant over the past 40 years, power in our society has once again been concentrated in the hands of a small group of billionaires. You can see this everywhere, if you look. Warren Buffett, who campaigned with Hillary Clinton, recently purchased chunks of the remaining consolidated airlines, which have the power not only to charge you to use the overhead bin but also to kill cities simply by choosing to fly elsewhere. Internet monopolies increasingly control the flow of news and media revenue. Meatpackers have re-created a brutal sharecropper-type system of commercial exploitation. And health insurers, drugstores and hospitals continue to consolidate, partially as a response to Obamacare and its lack of a public option for health coverage.

Many Democrats ascribe problems with Obama’s policies to Republican opposition. The president himself does not. “Our policies are so awesome,” he once told staffers. “Why can’t you guys do a better job selling them?” The problem, in other words, is ideological.

Many Democrats think that Trump supporters voted against their own economic interests. But voters don’t want concentrated financial power that deigns to redistribute some cash, along with weak consumer protection laws. They want jobs. They want to be free to govern themselves. Trump is not exactly pitching self-government. But he is offering a wall of sorts to protect voters against neo-liberals who consolidate financial power, ship jobs abroad and replace paychecks with food stamps. Democrats should have something better to offer working people. If they did, they could have won in November. In the wreckage of this last administration, they didn’t.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/postever ... 9a7fb0a73a
User avatar
hadzinicasa
Posts: 13620
Joined: 08/11/2005 16:08
Location: u tranziciji

#1291 Re: Price, pjesme, intervjui...

Post by hadzinicasa »

Tajni život pjesama: Odsijecanja uspavanih glava

http://zurnal.info/novost/22044/odsijec ... M3SUbKhfyI

Objavljeno: 21.04.2019. u 14:26h

„Treba ti neko zaklat ženu četnikušu i kčer kurvu buduču. Kera ti treba na kolac nabit“ – stigla mi je prijetnja u inbox. Nije to bila jedina, ali ova me iznervirala

Piše: Amer Tikveša


Majstore, ugasi svjeću


Majstore, ugasi svijeću, došla su ozbiljna vremena.
Radije noću broji zvijezde, uzdiši za mladošću.
Tvoje neposlušne riječi mogle bi pregristi uzice.


Sadi u vrtu luk, cijepaj drva, pospremaj tavan.
Bolje da nitko ne vidi tvoje oči pune čuđenja.
Takav je tvoj zanat: ništa ne smiješ prešutjeti.


Ne uzmogneš li izdržati i jedne noći opet uzmeš pero,
majstore, budi razuman, ne bavi se proročanstvima.
Pokušaj zapisati imena zvijezda.


Ozbiljna su vremena, nikome se ništa ne oprašta.
Samo klovnovi znadu kako se možeš izvući:
plaču kad im se smije i smiju se kad im plač razara lice.

Slavko Mihalić


„Treba ti neko zaklat ženu četnikušu i kčer kurvu buduču. Kera ti treba na kolac nabit“ – stigla mi je prijetnja u inbox. Nije to bila jedina, ali ova me iznervirala.

Sve do sada su bile pod lažnim imenima, međutim, ovaj autor nije se usudio, čak ni tako sakriven, biti direktan, nego zaziva „nekog“ da to uradi.

Nervirala me i njegova nepismenost. Ne smeta mi kad ljudi ne znaju razlikovati ć i č, ali me nervira kad se odluče koristiti samo č. Nerviralo bi me i da se odluče samo za ć, no takve nisam upoznao. Dragi su mi oni koji slobodno griješe. Koji slobodno naruče čevape i ćašu vode. Nerviraju me oni ujednačeni jer prave sistem na grešci da bi se u njemu osjećali sigurnije.

Eto, to me natjeralo da prvi i jedini put Facebook prijetnju prijavim policiji.

Otišao sam u policijsku stanicu. Na prijavnici me policajka pitala šta trebam. Rekao sam da želim prijaviti prijetnju smrću. Uputila me u sobu 33. Bilo mi je čudno što mi, ako ništa drugo, nije zatražila ličnu kartu.

SOBA 33

Pokucao sam na vrata sobe 33 i čekao odgovor. Kako ga nije bilo, uhvatio sam za šteku i polako odškrinuo vrata. Otvarao sam ih postepeno sve šire i šire, dok nisam dogurao do zida i u lijevom ćošku, uokvirenu registratorima, vidio glavu koja izviruje iznad monitora.

Zašto nije ništa pitao ili rekao slobodno, što me pustio da kao pljačkaš otvaram vrata?

Kad se susreo s mojim pogledom, samo je pokazao rukom gdje da sjednem.

- Šta trebaš – upitao me bez persiranja.

- Da prijavim prijetnju smrću.

- Ko ti prijeti?

- Prijetnja je došla putem Facebooka. Mislim da je u pitanju lažni profil. Pisalo je D. B. (Rekao sam ime i prezime profila, za priču puno ime, makar i lažno, nije relevantno.) Navodno živi u Banja Luci.

- Kako reče da se zove?

- Ne znam.

- Maloprije si reko neko ime.

- Rekao sam da mu je to ime na profilu, koji je možda lažni, piše D. B.

- Aha.

- A koji mu je pravi profil?

- Ne znam, možda i nema pravi. Da znam, prijavio bih pravo ime.

- Aha. A što ti je prijetio?

- Ne znam, ali prijetnja se desila poslije jednog medijskog napisa o meni na jednom radikalnom, islamističkom portalu.

- Ne čitam ja te portale.

- Pa dobro, pitali ste. Inače sam novinar. Generalno, prijetnje mi dolaze kad neko o meni napiše da sam izdajnik, negator genocida i agresije na BiH, i tako, slične stvari, koje se uglavnom odnose na patriotizam. Mislim da su ljudi koji nasjedaju na takve priče zaista sposobni da ubiju nekoga.

- A imo si i prije prijetnje?

- Jesam, nekoliko.

- Sve ti prijetio taj… Kako reče da se zove?

- D. B. Ne znam da li se tako zove. To mu je ime na Facebooku. Na Facebooku ne morate staviti pravo ime. Možda su i prethodne prijetnje bile od njega, ali pod drugim imenima. Ja to zaista ne mogu znati. Došao sam kod vas da pokušate otkriti njegov identitet.

- A jesi li prije te prijetnje prijavljivo.

- Nisam.

- Što baš ovu sad da prijaviš? – upita me pomalo zajedljivo.

- Prvi put su mi u u prijetnju uključeni žena, kćerka i pas. Spominje se silovanje, nabijanje na kolac i tako… Vidim da je neko upućen u moje porodično stanje, da zna gdje živim i da ima plan. Prethodne su bile direktno meni upućene i manje živopisne, sve stereotipne: Nikad ne znaš gdje te metak može nać; Progutat će te mrak, i tako, bezveze… Evo imam screen shoot i prijetnje i teksta, možete pogledati.

- Šta imaš? – upita me, sve škiljeći, naprežući se da odgonetne šta sam rekao prije nego mu još jednom ponovim.

- Fotografisao sam tu prijetnju i njegov profil, imam na sticku ako želite pogledati.

- Ne možemo to mi.

- Možete, eto imate na kompjuteru mogućnost da umetnete stick.

- Ovo su službeni kompjuteri, ne smiju na njih privatne stvari.

- Pa šta da radim?

- Isprintaj pa donesi.

Kad sam se vratio s isprintanom prijetnjom, unutra je sjedio još jedan čovjek i soba 33 bila je ispunjena mirisom bureka.

Punih usta, onaj moj, obraćao se kolegi.

- Eh, Samire, imamo fejsbuk prijetnju.

Samir sliježe ramenima.

- Kako se piše, Samire, Fejsbuka? Je l de da je Facebuka?

- Ja bih napisao Fejsbuka, kaže Samir.

Uplićem se i ja:

- Facebooka, s dva o.

On tipka jednom rukom, dok u drugoj drži burek, i speluje:

- F..a..c..e..b..o… Ma ja ću jedno “o” stavit.

- Dobro, kažem ja.

- Šta je pisalo u prijetnji?

Izvadim papir i počinjem da čitam.

- Ne moraš čitat, kaže Samir. - Spusti kolegi na sto, on će prekucat.

Uradim tako. Uslijedilo je nekih pet minuta sinhronizovanog Samirovog mljackanja bureka i tipkanja njegovog kolege.

- Evo, ja sam napravio zapisnik, to će biti poslano tužilaštvu, tužilac će riješiti šta će biti dalje. Mi ćemo te zvat ako bude potrebno. Dat ćeš mi još lične podatke.

Onda je uslijedilo zapisivanje adrese, broja telefona, imena i prezimena, sve bez uvida u ličnu.

UTISCI

Izišao sam pod jakim utiscima.

Prvi je da je bilo ko u moje ime mogao prijaviti prijetnju, jer nisu tražili nikakav identifikacijski dokument. To isto znači da sam se ja mogao predstaviti kao bilo ko i prijaviti prijetnju smrću od bilo koga upućenu, tačnije izmišljenu.

Drugi je ignorancija. Ako postoji ikakva teorijska šansa da budemo ubijeni i ja i moja porodica, kako policijski službenik može biti ravnodušan toliko da pokazuje veći interes prema tome kako se piše Facebook nego prema našim životima? I kad već pokazuje interes, zašto nije napisao Facebook s dva nego s jednim “o”? E da bi potvrdio svoju moć. U sobi 33 njegov nemušti jezik je vrhunaravni i nemam ja tu šta da znam. Ako nešto i znam, on je u moći da to proglasi neznanjem i da nametne svoja pravila.

Treći utisak je poniženje. Nepersiranje i tipkanje preko bureka, mljackanje i govor kroz puna usta rekli su mi da sam neko ko ne zaslužuje pristojnost.

Četvrti je razočarenje u policiju o kojoj i nisam imao bogzna kako visoko mišljenje. Ustvari razočaran sam bio što mi iskustvo nije demantovalo mišljenje.

Najgora pomisao bila je da je možda taj policajac ustvari D. B. To je ta ubitačna kombinacija nepismenosti i tvrdoglavosti u osjećaju da si uvijek u pravu. Nepoznavanje Facebooka možda je samo bilo hinjeno da zavara trag? U svakom slučaju to je taj tip čovjeka.

To mi je stvorilo i osjećaj krivice što sam se doveo u takvu situaciju. Ne znam ni sam koliko sam tekstova napisao o ideološkim zastranjivanjima i političkim anomalijama. Sigurno ne toliko koliko ih ima u BiH, ali znam da sam mnogostruko više imao upozorenja da s pisanjem uz vjetar prestanem. Prezirao sam takva upozorenja. Uglavnom ih nisam smatrao izrazom dobre namjere ljudi koji upozoravaju, već ljutnje zbog toga jer sam i u njima samim na trenutak uspio prodrmati savjest i želju za otporom. Umirujući mene, ponovo su uspavljivali sebe.

GLAS

Nakon izlaska iz policijske stanice dao sam im za pravo. Kraj tako manje boli. Napisao sam o tom pjesmu. Njome sam vodio dijalog s Mihalićevom pjesmom iz 1977, s početka ovog teksta. Davao sam joj odgovor četrdeset godina nakon njenog nastanka i nakon radikalne promjene sistema. Njemu je cenzura također bila izgovarana glasom dobre namjere. Ali glas je bio jedan, dolazio je odozgo, iz centra moći. Glas koji meni govori da prestanem je disperziran. Dolazi sa svih strana.

Pjesma živih mrtvaca

Šuti, nemoj, pusti kraju,
Boljeće te džaba glava.
Kerovi su tu da laju,
Tebi nek se samo spava.



Šta ti imaš kome reći?
Nije tvoje da se brineš.
Kako j' teklo sve će teći,
Što za ništa da pogineš?



Budi smirom, man se sranja,
Ne daj dane za megdane,
Manje bole odsijecanja,
Glava kad su uspavane.
User avatar
Banksy
Posts: 28557
Joined: 18/07/2008 09:33

#1292 Re: Price, pjesme, intervjui...

Post by Banksy »

hadzinicasa wrote:Tajni život pjesama: Odsijecanja uspavanih glava

http://zurnal.info/novost/22044/odsijec ... M3SUbKhfyI

Objavljeno: 21.04.2019.
Odličan.

A mjesto mu je na ovoj temi...
https://forum.klix.ba/sarajevo-crna-hro ... #p15546716
User avatar
wewa
Posts: 14765
Joined: 27/05/2010 15:20
Location: djah na brdu, djah u ravnici

#1293 Re: Price, pjesme, intervjui...

Post by wewa »

ŠKOLEGIJUM
DESKTOP MAGAZIN
www.skolegijum.ba
Godina I, Br. 1
Sarajevo, 3/2019.

Irhad Suljić
Osvajanje Poljina

Prije par dana sam zvanično biciklom popeo i posljednje brdo koje mi je ostalo oko Sarajeva neosvojeno. Prvi put, prije desetak godina, kada sam htio voziti Trebević, tata mi je rekao da se čuvam, da ne idem gore. Ne kontam zašto mi to sad govoriš, rat je davno prošao, rekao sam mu ispred kuće prije nego što sam se spustio niz Staru Breku. Ali sam od tada do danas shvatio da za njega nije. A to znači da nije baš ni za mene.
Sada, deset godina nakon mog prvog biciklističkog poduhvata, prvi se put penjem na Poljine, zadnje brdo koje mi je ostalo neosvojeno dugo nakon što sam sva ostala popeo i preko deset puta. Odluku sam prelomio nakon što sam slučajno dobio u ruke Nastavni materijal za izučavanje opsade Sarajeva i zločina genocida počinjenog u Bosni i Hercegovini u periodu od 1992. do 1995. godine.
Ali da premotam malo unazad.

Maidova kapa
Prvi put sam čuo za Poljine na samom početku rata. Bilo je to ujedno i prvo ratno upozorenje koje sam od svojih roditelja dobio:
Čuvaj se snajpera sa Poljina. Poljine direktno gledaju na veći dio moje ulice, a relativno su blizu, tako da je prilično lako bilo nekom hrabrom snajperisti tražiti svoju žrtvu baš tu. Uvijek se taj dio ulice pretrčavao. Sjećam se prvih vijesti o kobnom napadu 31. jula 1992. godine. Sjećam se rođaka Džeme koji je nakon tog napada došao kod nas kući, sav potresen, prepričavao mom ocu kako je jedva živu glavu izvukao. U povlačenju se provlačio kroz korito potoka, koje je ujedno služilo za odljev fekalija. Sjećam se dobro da je više puta ponovio Izgubiše život ljudi, Sejo, ko da je ništa. Umro je 1998. godine od posljedica snajperskog ranjavanja iz 1993. godine.

Oca sam prvi put vidio da plače u ratu kada je snajperista ubio njegovog dugogodišnjeg druga, našeg komšiju iz ulice. Maid je dobio
otpust iz armije zbog jakih i učestalih epileptičnih napada. Znao je u jednom danu po tri napada imati. Njegova posljednja noć na
straži je bila sa mojim ocem na prvoj liniji u Brekinom potoku. U trenutku kada je moj otac zamijenio Maida u kopanju, on se popeo iz tranšeje i u ležećem stavu naslonio leđa i glavu na zemljani nasip, da zapali cigaru i odahne. Dok su pričali, tatu je zasula zemlja po leđima, a onda je čuo nešto kao udarac. Okrenuo se i ugledao nepomičnog Maida sa prostrijelnom ranom na čelu. Snajper. Vojnici koji su bili u pripravnosti zamijenili su ih
na tom položaju, Maidovo tijelo odvukli su u mrtvačnicu, a mog tatu, koji je doživio šok, pustili kući da odmori. Sjećam se da je bilo tri ili četiri sata ujutro, kada je neko pokucao na vrata. Mama, sestra i ja smo se trznuli iz sna, nismo nikoga očekivali u ta doba. Tata se javio sa druge strane, mama mu je otključala vrata. Ušao je u hodnik sa vojnom kapom stisnutom u rukama, naslonio se leđima na zid, skliznuo do poda u sjedeći položaj i odvalio u jecav plač. Nakon što nam je plačući ispričao šta se desilo, mama mu je istrgnula kapu iz ruku i ostavila na sto ispred vrata, sestri i meni rekla da se vratimo u sobu spavati, a njega uvela u kupatilo da se sapere.
To jutro sam se prvi probudio i izašao ispred vrata, još uvijek zbunjen oko sinoćnjih dešavanja. Ugledao sam krvavu vojničku kapu na
stolu i iz znatiželje je razložio da vidim šta je. Komad lobanje je bio unutra. Sjećam se da su me trnci obuzeli od glave do pete i da mi
je dio dječije nevinosti zamijenila crna realnost rata. Maid se nikada nije pridružio ženi i djeci u inostranstvu, a moj otac se vratio na
prvu liniju.

Ratna rana
Na prvi pogled, čini se da nema ništa pogrešno u tome da djeca uče o ratu, jer je to dio historije njihove države. Uredu je da im
se ispriča priča o tome. Ali čija? Mog oca, mame, Maida, Džeme? Moja? Osam dana prije akcije na Poljine, bio sam ranjen. Otac
me poslao kod čika Mirka, našeg komšije koji je živio oko stotinjak metara uz ulicu iznad nas, po pritke za boraniju. U ratu nam
je bašta bila glavni izvor hrane. Imali smo vlastite zalihe povrća, koje smo mogli jesti, prodavati, pa čak i mijenjati. Sjećam se kad
su moji roditelji kod komšije ispekli rakiju od šljiva iz naše bašte. Pa je onda mama dva litra rakije zamijenila za dvije vreće brašna, a
druga dva litra sakrila da pričeka svoj red za najpotrebniju zamjenu. Kad sam se vraćao s pritkama, granata je udarila u čempres pored
raskršća. Nikad prije ni poslije nisam iskusio jači prasak. Oglušio sam i samo čuo pištanje u glavi. Osjetio sam toplinu na desnoj ruci,
vidio krv, otrčao u kuću i stavio neki hekleraj na ranu. Kad krv baš nije stala, jedan nabildani momak se ponudio da me odveze u
bolnicu. On je bio tjelohranitelj Alije Izetbegovića, a djevojka mu je bila dežurna u bolnici. Detonacija je zaglavila taster od sirene
na volanu i golf dvojka je trubio sve vrijeme do bolnice. Dok sam čekao da me pozovu pipao sam kvrgu na ruci ispod koje je u mesu
bio geler.

Oružje
Sjećam se kada je tata prvi put donio kući pušku koju je zadužio kao vojnik. Zvali su je Papovka, a bila je to M59 poluatomatska
puška, 7,62 mm. Pored njenog imena i kalibra, otac mi je rekao da se oružje nikad ne uperuje u drugu osobu, čak ni kada je zakočeno ili bez metaka. To je naznačio kao najvažnije pravilo rukovanja oružjem. Od tada nikad više nisam prišao ni jednom komadu
vatrenog oružja. Pamtim i jednu filmsku scenu, kao iz Sidrana. Javili su ocu iz štaba da su bačeni bojni otrovi na Zetru i da se u
onom ABHO odijelu javi u komandu. Mama mu je kao i obično pomagala da navuče sve to na sebe. Gumene čizme, gumene rukavice, gumene pantalone na tregere, kabanica i gas-maska. Meni i sestri su zabranili da izlazimo vani, pa smo gledali s prozora. Tata ide prvi u svoj toj opremi, mama za njim u običnoj majici, pantolama i papučama, krenula s kantom da skine veš sa štrika. I čujemo tatin glas, ispod maske, ko kroz neku cijev: Safo, osjetiš li šta?

Pony
Svoj pony bicikl posuđivao sam momku iz mahale da ode u posjetu svojoj djevojci koja je živjela na Baščaršiji. Tada se desio neki
konflikt između ratnih komandanata Cace i Ćele, a on je bio u Ćelinoj ekipi koja je držala stražu u mojoj ulici. Pošto je morao ići kod djevojke na Baščaršiju, koja je bila Cacin teren, raja ga je prozvala petokolonašem.
Zauzvrat što bih mu posudio bicikl, dobio sam od njega nekoliko friško odštampanih majica. Izvana je u ratu dobio mašinu koja
je na majice printala 3-4 modela crtanih čudovišta, i to je prodavao za deset maraka po komadu.

Neka bude struja
Mi u kući smo igrali igru Neka bude struja! Pravilo je bilo da to svako može izgovoriti pet puta tokom dana, a poenta izgovaranja je
bila da, ako tri sekunde nakon što bi to neko izgovorio, dođe struja, svi ostali bi uglas vrisnuli I bi struja! Međutim, to se samo mami
jednom desilo tokom čitavog rata, pa je ona do danas ostala neizazvana pobjednica u toj igri. Po vodu smo išli na izvor. Ljeti je mlaz
bio tanak i dugo se čekalo na red da se napune kanisteri. To je bila moja dužnost. Imao sam deset godina i nosio sam kanistere teške
25 litara. Jednom sam, od dosade, zviždanjem imitirao granatu koja dolijeće. Svi su se sa kanisterima pobacali po zemlji. Komšija
mi je poslije toga izvukao uši.
Čekao sam i u redovima za humanitarnu. Samo sam čuvao mjesto, jer su jedino mama ili tata mogli podići sljedovanje. Jednom se
mom drugu poderala kesa s brašnom. Dobio je kaznu neizlaska vani nekoliko dana. Ljudi iz ulice su dali po malo brašna teti Emini
da se nadoknadi prosuto. Kada je tata bio na liniji na Nišićima, ja sam cijepao drva, a sestra slagala. Ja sam išao po vodu, a ona
ložila peć. Mama je radila u socijalnom na obračunu penzija. Sestra i ja smo išli u školu u različitim smjenama.

Život ko da je ništa
Ovakve priče ima svako ko je proživio opsadu. Normalno je da ne mogu sve biti ispričane. Ali nije svejedno čije će biti. Možda ja kao dijete nisam bitan, ali mislim da rođak Džemo jeste. Ono njegovo Izgubiše život ljudi, Sejo, ko da je ništa. Zato sam pogledao šta u onom Nastavnom
materijalu piše o napadu na Poljine, 31. jula 1992. godine. Pominju se kratko, dva puta.
Prvi put pod naslovom Tok opsade grada Sarajeva od 1992. do 1993. i najvažnije bitke za grad, na str. 9: Tokom jula borbe su nastavljene, a najveći intenzitet dostigle su krajem mjeseca na Poljinama, i na spoljnoj strani prstena opsade prilikom oslobađanja Trnova.
Drugi put u podnaslovu Borbe i najvažniji vojno-politički događaji na području Sarajeva tokom opsade, gdje na 140. str. piše: Juli
je okončan neuspjelim pokušajima proboja iz okruženja preko Poljina i Vogošće ali i uspjehom snaga OpŠTO Trnovo, 7. brigade i jedinica ARBiH sa Igmana, koje su u borbama 31. jula i 1. augusta zauzele prevoj Rogoj i oslobodile Trnovo.
Pogledao sam i Monografiju o Prvom korpusu. Na str. 106. kratko: Tako su neuspjehom okončani pokušaji proboja iz okruženja i razbijanja opsade Sarajeva tokom mjeseca jula. U svim ovim borbenim dejstvima tokom jula 1992. godine u jedinicama RgŠO Sarajevo poginulo je 105 i ranjeno 416 boraca. Koliko je onih što su zadnjeg dana jula izgubili život ko da je ništa, ne zna se. Mislim da sam zato najzad odlučio da krenem na Poljine. Da dodam Džeminu priču Nastavnom materijalu.

Bitka na Poljinama, spomenik na Barama
Spomenik bici na Poljinama našao sam kod Gazprom benzinske pumpe u Barama. Posvećen je poginulim borcima 1. podrinjske brigade. Kockast je. Sa jedne strane uklesana su imena dvanaest vojnika, sa druge Armija BiH 1. Podrinjska brigada, sa treće piše da spomen-obilježje podižu Ministarstvo za boračka pitanja Kantona Sarajevo, Općina Centar i Udruženje građana jugoistočne Bosne, a sa četvrte je motiv čovjeka sa stećka
koji pozdravlja. Osim 1. podrinjske brigade ne pominje se nijedna druga, a ona nije bila jedina u bici. Na primjer, rođak Džemo bio
je 105. motorizovana brigada. Možda na Poljinama postoji još neko obilježje poginulim borcima?

Na neprijateljskim položajima
Preko Betanije se penjem na Slatinu, a odatle lošim i uskim asfaltnim putem na Poljine. Patrolna kola SIPA-e idu odozgo, druga me
prolaze i idu prema gore. Ukupno petnaestak vrlo uglancanih limuzina i džipova sa zatamnjenim staklima u samo kilometar. Imam
osjećaj, ako stanem i nekoga pitam ko sve živi ovdje, da će mi neki agent u crnom odijelu, sunčanim naočalama, sa onom jednom
slušalicom u uhu, iskočiti iz grmlja i reći da pođem sa njim.
Dolazim u selo, djeca se igraju, mame i tate nešto rade oko kuće, a dede i bake sjede po balkonima. Asfalt je ispucan, izrezan i iskopan, ali limuzine i džipovi preko njega prelaze smjelo i bez problema. Kako ono ide onaj vic, koje auto ide najbrže makadamom? Službeno. Ha, ha. Još uvijek nisam vidio neko drugo spomen-obilježje. Ali jesam prilično velike i luksuzne vile. Neke su ograđene zidinama, neke nisu pa se vide bazeni i naslućuje predivan pogled na grad. Neke imaju i čuvare.
Ok, vrijeme je da pitam ko sve danas drži prve linije na Poljinama. Za neke naravno znam, ali svejedno... Zaustavljam bicikl pored kuće ispred koje je na stubu potrgan predizborni plakat stranke SDA. Prvog čovjeka koji nailazi pitam ko su vlasnici. Odgovara mi ono što ću poslije potvrditi i na internetu: Bakir i Sebija Izetbegović, njihov komšija Zlatko Lagumdžija, Nedžad Branković, razni biznismeni i režiseri. Pitam ga da li postoji
ikakvo spomen-obilježje poginulim borcima na Poljinama ili u okolini. Ne zna ni za ono jedno u Barama. Vozim do raskrsnice. Lijevo
napucane kuće i u daljini neke vile, zidinama ograđene, sa pogledom na Sarajevo. Desno je put za vrh. Okrećem desno, jer se ne pika da sam popeo vrh, ako se nisam dovezao na njega. Na putu prolazim raskrsnicu s tri parkirane crne limuzine na sred ceste, tri vozača u crnim odijelima, od kojih se jedan popeo na drvo pored neke stare kuće, i ovoj dvojici baca kruške. Produžujem sam do vrha bez stajanja. Gore ništa spektakularno, polja
obradive zemlje na vrhu brda, zato se valjda i zove Poljine.
U spustu s vrha primjećujem neke ograđene betonske rezervoare, čini se, novoizgrađene. Na raskrsnici gdje su bila auta i kruškoberi,
više nema nikog; koga god su čekali, odvezli su dalje. Ispostavilo se da ono jesu novi rezervoari, koji se pune iz glavnog rezervoara
sa Bukovika. Što znači, vodovodna mreža na Poljinama nije vezana na gradsku. Heroji s Poljina imaju svoj vodovod, bez redukcija,
a ti se Muzafere briši vlažnim maramicama.
Tačno sam zbog ovog osjećaja odlagao osvajanje Poljina. S mučninom vozim nazad.

Alchajmer
Osvojio sam sva brda i planine oko Sarajeva biciklom. Sada, deset godina nakon što sam prvi put krenuo niz Breku na biciklu, razumijem šta je rat i koliko može koštati. Kako je jako teško od ratnih trauma pobjeći. Razumijem šta mog oca lomi jer sam godinama gledao kako mu dušu i um pedalj po pedalj osvaja. Kada sam vozio na Trebević on je mislio da će me neko gore napasti. Kada sam vozio na Igman trzao se iz sna obliven znojem od noćnih mora o ratu. Kada sam peo Bukovik krenuo je zaključavati vrata od sobe jer je mislio da će doći neko u sred noći da ga ubije. Dok sam došao do Poljina demencija ga je uzela sasvim. Zašto u Nastavnom materijalu za izučavanje opsade Sarajeva i zločina genocida počinjenog u Bosni i Hercegovini u periodu od 1992. do 1995. godine ne piše ništa o posljedicama rata, zašto ne piše o hiljadama boraca koji se bore sa traumama u
svojoj glavi toliko godina nakon rata? Zašto u tom materijalu ne piše koliko je boraca na Poljinama 31. jula 1992. godine izgubilo život ko da je ništa? Zašto učenici sarajevskih škola neće učiti da su Poljine, mjesto jedne od najvažnijih bitaka za grad, sada elitno naselje heroja privatizacije? Zašto priče boraca koji su pokušali osvojiti te iste Poljine, kao Džemina, padaju u zaborav, ili zaborav pada u njih, kao u mog oca? Od koga sam naučio
sve što dijete o ratu treba naučiti: ne okreći pušku prema čovjeku i kad je prazna.
Kada sam se vratio zatekao sam ga kako sjedi pognut na staroj drvenoj stolici ispred kuće, zagledan u ništa. Iz trećeg puta ga uspijevam
dozvati da obrati pažnju na mene. Pričam mu gdje sam bio i šta sam vidio. Ulazimo u kuću da večeramo. Dok jedemo priča o ratu. Još uvijek je ponosan što je branio svoju zemlju. Dok perem suđe, on se bori sa snom na kauču. U zadnje vrijeme sve češće ima potrebu da spava, bilo da je dan ili noć. Doktor kaže da je to jedan od simptoma Alchajmera. Prije nego što zakunja, pita me:
Gdje si bio danas?
mene raskucilo
User avatar
Lost_Found
Posts: 999
Joined: 31/08/2014 19:09
Location: Sarajevo

#1294 Re: Price, pjesme, intervjui...

Post by Lost_Found »

dobra vijest :thumbup: Semezdin se vratio

https://zurnal.info/novost/22668/povratak-kuci

Piše: Semezdin Mehmedinović
Mjesecima sam pokušavao otkriti naslov priče i ime njenoga autora.

U augustu, nije bila prošla ni sedmica od moga povratka u grad, sreo sam pjesnika Senu Musabegovića, pa smo otišli na kafu u jedan od onih restorana pored knjižare Buybook, i razgovarali. Valjda zbog toga što sam govorio o povratku kući, on se prisjetio jednog davnog razgovora iz djetinjstva, u kojem je njegov otac, Sado, nakon nedjeljnog ručka, okupljenima oko stola spomenuo tu priču o vojniku, kao idealan sinopsis za film koji bi obavezno trebalo snimiti. Seno je bio dječak, ali ga je priča dojmila, pa je pamti, evo, do danas. Nismo mogli pouzdano utvrditi kako se priča zove, i ko bi mogao biti njen pisac. Priča govori o vojniku koji se vratio iz rata, otkrio je da su mu roditelji ubijeni, a sve stvari iz kuće pokradene, pa je krenuo po selu skupljati ono što je bilo njegovo. U kućama seljaka nalazio je slike, stolove, gramofon, ubruse koje je vezla njegova majka… Sve je vratio. Na praznim zidovima su bili bijeli kvadrati, tako da je svaka slika pronašla svoje mjesto po mjeri svoga otiska u vremenu. I kad je sve bilo na svome mjestu, izišao je napolje, izvadio šibice iz džepa i zapalio kuću.



Uzalud sam, velim, pokušao otkriti ko je napisao priču. Ne znam zašto mi je taj podatak bio važan. Ponekad se sretnem sa svojim profesorom Markom Vešovićem, pa šetamo i razgovaramo o književnosti. On koji je, mislim, pročitao sve, nije se mogao sjetiti priče, niti pretpostaviti ko bi mogao biti njen pisac. I kad sam prestao misliti na tog vojnika koji je spalio kuću, u svojoj sobi sam među knjigama na polici pronašao “Crvenu konjicu” od Isaka Babelja (objavljenu u onoj kultnoj ediciji “Reč i misao”), i u njoj vrlo kratku priču koja se zove “Priščepa”. Priščepa, tako se zove taj Kozak, palikuća. Eto ga.

Danas sam se našao sa Senom u malom restoranu kod Filozofskog fakulteta, pa sam mu rekao da smo napokon otkrili porijeklo priče i ime autora. Padao je snijeg, bilo je lijepo kako samo u Sarajevu zna biti kad se pahuljice roje. Kroz prozor smo gledali kako se ulica ispred restorana postupno izbjeljuje i sjećali se davnih događaja. Jednom je on dolazio kod mene u Washington, bilo je to u oktobru 2002. godine, kad je u široj okolini grada snajperist ubijao slučajne prolaznike. Senin otac se javio iz vikendice u Glavatičevu, nadomak izvora Neretve, bio je uznemiren i brinuo je za sina. Rekao mi je tada, povjerljivo: “Čuvaj mi dijete.”

Iz restorana smo, kao iz davne prošlosti, izišli na snijeg, šetali uz rijeku, pa onda preko mosta prešli na Grbavicu. Želio je da mi pokaže neke slike u svome stanu (jednog Bracu Dimitrijevića, i jednog Kounellisa). Liftom smo se popeli do najgornjeg sprata solitera i ušli u lijep, prostran stan. Prije nego što ću obratiti pažnju na slike, želio sam da vidim kako izgleda pogled s njegovih prozora i prišao jednom s kojeg se vidi most što smo ga upravo prešli, drvored uz šetalište i niske zgrade iza krošnji, bijelih od snijega. I onda se sjetim da su tu u ratu bile napuštene radionice. I kažem: “Ovo je taj soliter!” Pokazujem rukom prema rijeci. U zimu između 1993. i 1994. godine svraćao sam tamo s Benjaminom Filipovićem. Rijeka je bila granica, a ova grbavička strana okupirani teritorij. Ujutro rano kad bi se iz zgrade Televizije nakon noćne smjene vraćali u grad, Benjamin je obavezno tražio da svratimo do napuštene radionice i da, skrivajući se od pogleda snajperiste, virimo u prozore zgrade u kojoj je stanovala “stara majka”, kako je on zvao svoju nenu. “Ovo je ta zgrada!” U njoj sada Seno stanuje. Starica je živjela na jednom od nižih spratova, s pogledom okrenutim prema rijeci. Benjamin i ja smo satima sjedjeli na mokrim ciglama i čekali da se iza stakla prozora pojavi njena silueta, da nam se ukaže stara majka.

Vratio sam se. Nakon mnogo godina vratio sam se i sada tražim svoje mjesto u gradu, onako kako slika iz Babeljeve priče nalazi kvadratni trag na zidu koji je u vremenu ostavila.

(zurnal.info)
User avatar
hadzinicasa
Posts: 13620
Joined: 08/11/2005 16:08
Location: u tranziciji

#1295 Re: Price, pjesme, intervjui...

Post by hadzinicasa »

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfr ... KlIERb_v1E
Without the BBC we could be facing a post-truth dystopia
Jonathan Freedland

The broadcaster, under renewed attack from the right, offers a rare space for all to agree on the facts. Don’t take it for granted


If you find yourself afflicted by a sudden urge to destroy the BBC, I have the ideal remedy: spend some time in the United States. A few hours flicking between Fox News and MSNBC should soon see you right. The more time you give it, the more effective it’ll be – and not necessarily for the reasons you’d expect.

The need arises because the BBC is under threat – yet again. That’s hardly a surprise, since this country is now ruled by a Conservative government with a hefty majority, and the Tories have had the BBC in their sights for the best part of 40 years. But the peril has come quickly.

People grumble about the NHS and BBC but one merely has to pose the alternative to see how strong the attachment remains
Tony Hall has resigned unexpectedly early as director general. Next week the BBC will announce major cuts – around £80m – to its news operation, of which the axing of the much-admired Victoria Derbyshire show is a mere foretaste. And this week the Guardian unearthed a 2004 call by a thinktank run by Dominic Cummings, now the prime minister’s most senior adviser, for the “end of the BBC in its current form”, branding the broadcaster the Tories’ “mortal enemy”.

In that spirit, Cummings’s boss has already imposed a ban on his ministers appearing on Radio 4’s Today programme and offered, as one of his rare departures from the words “Get Brexit done” during the election campaign, the suggestion that the BBC licence fee has had its day. Given that a review of the BBC charter gets under way in 2022, none of this bodes well.

It means defenders of the BBC will have to plunge once more into the familiar battle. (I put myself in that category and not only because – full disclosure – I present The Long View series for Radio 4.) The country needs and cherishes those few spaces, like common land, which are governed by something other than profit. It’s not a coincidence that two of the institutions that not only inspire public affection but are seen to define British identity are bodies created in the last century, and are equally available to the millionaire and the pauper – the NHS and the BBC.

People groan and grumble about both, as they always have, but one merely has to pose the alternative to see how strong the attachment remains. Just as voters recoil from the notion of a privatised healthcare system, in which the sick would have to present their credit card to a (possibly US-owned) company, so they would surely balk at a media landscape shorn of the BBC and dominated by the tech giants, in which Britons watch and listen to material overwhelmingly provided by the likes of Amazon, Netflix, Apple, Facebook and Google.

Freed of commercial pressure, thanks to the licence fee, the BBC has the weight to do big, expensive stuff (the Olympics, Attenborough, Strictly, a royal wedding or funeral); to provide financially thankless but socially necessary services (local radio, the Scottish Gaelic-language network); and to take a chance on something that might not have worked but did (Fleabag). Even if there will be individuals who never watch or listen to any of it – and two in three Britons listen to BBC radio every week – the country’s collective life would be undeniably impoverished without it.

Those on the right – who insist Brexit frees us to become Global Britain, punching above our weight – should think especially hard before taking an axe to the BBC. The broadcaster is one of a small group of British assets with a world-class reputation; it counts as part of the country’s soft power, a resource that may be both depleted and more necessary after next week’s exit from the European Union. The consistent Brexiter would be looking to expand the BBC’s muscle, not drain away its lifeblood.

But there’s a further argument for the BBC, newer than the rest but perhaps more vital. Which is where a stint in front of America’s cable TV news channels would prove so useful. For what quickly becomes clear is that in today’s US, there are Fox News facts and MSNBC facts; red-state facts and blue-state facts; facts from the right and facts from the left. All often with little overlap between them. A partisan epistemology rules, so that what you believe depends on what group you belong to. The result is a cacophony, two opposing teams shouting at each other, with no way of sorting truth from falsehood.

The ongoing impeachment trial of Donald Trump is a case in point. Fox viewers, who account for a big part of his base, are kept in the dark about the essential facts of that case because the network simply withholds information that would reflect badly on the president. Indeed, a 2015 study by a former Reagan and Bush official found that those who watched Fox News were less informed about current affairs than those who watched no news at all.

Of course, a contest will always rage between opinions from the right and from the left, but in the past those opinions would proceed from a shared basis in fact. No longer. Combine that with Facebook’s explicit policy of running political ads even when their central claims have been proven false, and you end up with a society in which there is no agreed body of facts. Without that, democratic decision-making becomes impossible.

We have seen that danger in Britain, not least in a Brexit referendum campaign in which contempt for the facts was a central feature, but we have not sunk as deep. Part of the explanation lies with the BBC. For all its flaws, it still serves to hold the ring, to demarcate a clearing in the forest of claim and counter-claim, where certain facts can be established. Once the BBC declares something to be a matter of fact, rather than partisan dispute, that itself becomes a fact, around which politicians and public figures have to negotiate.

You could see that in the MMR crisis, in which the BBC eventually made clear the scientific consensus had declared vaccines safe. Or its stance on the climate emergency, now the broadcaster has decided it need not pretend this is an issue to be debated between two equally respectable sides.

To be sure, the BBC took too long to get there, falling into the trap of both sides-ism, just as it gets other things wrong. One former BBC News executive witheringly describes a BBC worldview that is remainer-ish on Europe and status quo-ish on domestic policy, which “meant it never got Brexit in 2016 or Boris in 2019”. Things are likely to get worse with next week’s cuts, which will further reduce BBC News, says that ex-bigwig, while investment “goes into questionable extensions of the BBC brand”. Meanwhile, trust in BBC journalism is falling.

And yet trust remains higher for the BBC than it does for the rest of journalism, including the upmarket papers. It aspires for a neutrality and impartiality that, even when it falls short, stands as a bulwark against the steady slide towards post-truth. Sky News and ITV News share in that, which is to Britain’s benefit. But it’s the BBC that established the norm, setting the pursuit of factual objectivity as the broadcasting standard.

The BBC can be maddening, prompting both left and right to tear their hair out. But in a world of fake news, we need a broadcaster free of commercial pressure, one that aims to stand aside from the partisan din. It may not always get there. But without it, our grip on the truth would get even looser.

As 2020 begins…
… we’re asking readers, like you, to make a new year contribution in support of the Guardian’s open, independent journalism. This has been a turbulent decade across the world – protest, populism, mass migration and the escalating climate crisis. The Guardian has been in every corner of the globe, reporting with tenacity, rigour and authority on the most critical events of our lifetimes. At a time when factual information is both scarcer and more essential than ever, we believe that each of us deserves access to accurate reporting with integrity at its heart.

More people than ever before are reading and supporting our journalism, in more than 180 countries around the world. And this is only possible because we made a different choice: to keep our reporting open for all, regardless of where they live or what they can afford to pay.

We have upheld our editorial independence in the face of the disintegration of traditional media – with social platforms giving rise to misinformation, the seemingly unstoppable rise of big tech and independent voices being squashed by commercial ownership. The Guardian’s independence means we can set our own agenda and voice our own opinions. Our journalism is free from commercial and political bias – never influenced by billionaire owners or shareholders. This makes us different. It means we can challenge the powerful without fear and give a voice to those less heard.

None of this would have been attainable without our readers’ generosity – your financial support has meant we can keep investigating, disentangling and interrogating. It has protected our independence, which has never been so critical. We are so grateful.

As we enter a new decade, we need your support so we can keep delivering quality journalism that’s open and independent. And that is here for the long term. Every reader contribution, however big or small, is so valuable.
User avatar
GOT
Posts: 3344
Joined: 30/04/2016 12:10

#1296 Re: Price, pjesme, intervjui...

Post by GOT »

User avatar
dobar osjecaj
Posts: 3957
Joined: 01/08/2014 11:31

#1297 Re: Price, pjesme, intervjui...

Post by dobar osjecaj »

Ova tema je prava riznica.
User avatar
GOT
Posts: 3344
Joined: 30/04/2016 12:10

#1298 Re: Price, pjesme, intervjui...

Post by GOT »

User avatar
hadzinicasa
Posts: 13620
Joined: 08/11/2005 16:08
Location: u tranziciji

#1299 Re: Price, pjesme, intervjui...

Post by hadzinicasa »

https://www.theguardian.com/news/2017/a ... -the-world

de ne pisem carsaf od posta pa kopiram i jedno i drugo, iskopiracu prevod uz
"Ipak se okrece"
(linkovi na kraju takodjer nisu za odbaciti): https://pescanik.net/neoliberalizam-ide ... ala-svet/

Neoliberalizam: ideja koja je progutala svet
THE GUARDIAN18/08/2018


Prošlog leta istraživači Međunarodnog monetarnog fonda su okončali dugu i gorku debatu o „neoliberalizmu“: priznali su da postoji. Trojica visoko rangiranih ekonomista pri MMF-u, organizacije poznate po opreznosti, objavili su članak u kom dovode u pitanje koristi neoliberalizma. Time su okončali predstavu o ovoj reči kao običnoj političkoj izmišljotini ili terminu bez analitičkog potencijala. Članak je oprezno prozvao „neoliberalnu agendu“ za sprovođenje mera deregulacije u ekonomijama širom sveta, za nasilno otvaranje nacionalnih tržišta ka trgovini i kapitalu, kao i za zahtev vladama da se same smanje kroz mere štednje i privatizacije.

Termin „neoliberalizam“ se koristi od 1930-ih; oživljen je ponovo da bi opisao sadašnju politiku – tačnije, opseg ideja koje ova politika odobrava. U periodu posle finansijske krize 2008. godine, koristio se da ukaže na odgovornost za debakl – ne određene političke partije, već establišmenta koji je svoj autoritet prepustio tržištu. U slučaju demokrata u SAD i laburista u Ujedinjenom Kraljevstvu, ovo prepuštanje se opisuje kao groteskna izdaja principa. Kritika glasi da su Bil Klinton i Toni Bler napustili tradicionalne vrednosti levice, naročito obaveze prema radnicima, u korist globalne finansijske elite i javnih politika od kojih su i sami imali koristi. Posledica je poguban porast nejednakosti.

Tokom nekoliko prethodnih godina debata se zaoštravala, termin „neoliberalizam“ je postao retoričko oružije za one levo od centra da inkriminišu sve koji su desno u odnosu na njih na političkom spektru. (Nije ni čudo što centristi tvrde da je u pitanju besmislena uvreda: kritika se odnosi najviše na njih.) Međutim, „neoliberalizam“ je više od umesne opaske. Na određeni način on predstavlja i naočari kroz koje gledamo svet.

Pogledajte kroz naočari neoliberalizma i jasno ćete videti kako su politički mislioci koje su uvažavali Tačer i Regana doprineli oblikovanju društva kao univerzalne tržnice (a ne, na primer, polisa, javne sfere ili porodice) i ljudskih jedinki kao mašina za obračunavanje profita i gubitaka (a ne nosilaca božje milosti ili nosilaca neotuđivih prava i dužnosti). Naravno da su cilj bili slabljenje države blagostanja i privrženosti punoj zaposlenosti, smanjenje poreza i deregulacija. Međutim, „neoliberalizam“ označava nešto više od tipičnog desničarskog spiska lepih želja. To je bio način organizovanja socijalne realnosti i promišljanja našeg statusa kao individua.

Ako nastavite da gledate kroz ove naočari videćete da je tržište ljudski izum, ništa manje od države blagostanja. Videćete koliko temeljno smo podstaknuti da o sebi mislimo kao o vlasnicima sopstvenih talenata i inicijative, sa kojom lakoćom smo instruisani da se takmičimo i prilagodimo. Videćete u kojoj meri je jezik koji se ranije služio prostim izrazima da opiše robna tržišta (konkurencija, savršena informacija, racionalno ponašanje) sada primenjen na celo društvo u toj meri da je prodro u sve pore naših privatnih života, i kako se trgovački stav prepliće sa svim oblicima samoizražavanja.

Ukratko, „neoliberalizam“ nije samo ime za politike naklonjene tržištima, ili za kompromise koje je finansijski kapitalizam napravio sa propalim socijaldemokratskim strankama. To je ime za premisu koja je tiho postala glavni regulator naših praksi i uverenja: kompeticija je jedini legitimni princip organizovanja ljudske aktivnosti.

Malo pre nego što je neoliberalizam dobio sertifikat o postojanju, i malo pre nego što je licemerje tržišta postalo očigledno, populisti i autoritarijanci su došli na vlast. U SAD je Hilari Klinton, tipična neoliberalna zloća, izgubila od čoveka koji je bar znao da se pretvara da mrzi slobodnu trgovinu. Da li to znači da su naočari sada beskorisne? Mogu li nam na bilo koji način pomoći da shvatimo šta nije u redu sa britanskom i američkom politikom? Najgrublji mogući oblici nacionalnog identiteta su oživljeni u borbi protiv snaga globalne integracije. U kakvoj su vezi ti militantni parohijalizmi bregzita u Britaniji i trampizma u Americi, sa neoliberalnom racionalnošću? Postoji li ikakva veza između svojeglavog i tupavog predsednika i beskrvnog uzora efikasnosti znanog kao slobodno tržište?

Nije stvar samo u tome da slobodno tržište proizvodi mali broj pobednika i ogromnu armiju gubitnika koji se, tragajući za osvetom, okreću Bregzitu i Trampu. Od početka je postojala neizbežna veza između utopijskog ideala slobodnog tržišta i distopijske sadašnjice u kojoj smo se zatekli; između tržišta kao jedinstvenog stvaraoca vrednosti i čuvara sloboda, i našeg pada u svet postistine i iliberalizma.

Pokretanje debate o neoliberalizmu sa mrtve tačke počinje, po mom mišljenju, sa ozbiljnim razmatranjem kumulativnih efekata neoliberalizma na sve nas, nezavisno od naših ideoloških opredeljenja. Ovo podrazumeva povratak njegovim korenima, koji nemaju ništa sa Bilom ili Hilari Klinton. Jednom je postojala grupa ljudi koji su sebe ponosno nazivali neoliberalima. Oni su imali ambiciju da izvrše temeljnu revoluciju u mišljenju. Najistaknutiji među njima Fridrih Hajek nije smatrao da omeđava novu poziciju na političkom spektru, da opravdava bezobrazno bogate, niti da se vrzma na rubovima mikroekonomije.

Mislio je da rešava problem modernog doba: problem objektivnosti znanja. Za Hajeka, tržišta nisu samo omogućavala razmenu dobara i usluga – ona su otkrivala istinu. Kako je ova ambicija postala svoja suprotnost – glavolomna mogućnost da, zahvaljujući nepromišljenom veličanju slobodnog tržišta, istina u potpunosti nestane iz javnog života?

***

Hajek je 1936. godine opisao rađanje Velike ideje kao trenutak „iznenadnog prosvetljenja“ – bio je ubeđen da je otkrio nešto novo. Pisao je: „Kako je moguće da kombinacija fragmenata znanja koji postoje u različitim umovima proizvede rezultate koji bi, da su povezivani sa namerom, zahtevali um koji nijedna individualna osoba ne poseduje?“

Ovo nije bila tehnička beleška o kamatnim stopama ili deflacionim padovima. Ovo nije bila reakcionarna polemika protiv kolektivizma ili države blagostanja. Ovo je bio početak novog sveta. Hajek je razumeo da se tržište može opisati kao um.

„Nevidljiva ruka“ Adama Smita nam je već dala modernu koncepciju tržišta: autonomna sfera ljudske aktivnosti i stoga potencijalni objekt naučnog znanja. Međutim, Smit je bio i do kraja života ostao osamnaestovekovni moralista. Mislio je da se tržište može opravdati samo u svetlu individualne vrline i strepeo je da društvo vođeno isključivo trgovačkim i ličnim interesima više uopšte neće biti društvo. Neoliberalizam je učenje Adama Smita lišeno ove strepnje.

Pomalo je ironično što se Hajek smatra osnivačem neoliberalizma – stilom mišljenja koji sve svodi na ekonomiju – ako se uzme u obzir da je on bio sasvim osrednji ekonomista. Bio je tek mladi, malo poznati bečki tehnokrata u vreme kada je regrutovan na Londonsku školu ekonomiju (London School of Economics) kako bi zasenio tadašnju zvezdu u usponu – Džona Majnarda Kejnza sa Kembridža.

Plan je pošao po zlu i Kejnz je do nogu potukao Hajeka. Kejnzova Opšta teorija zaposlenosti, kamate i novca, objavljena 1936. godine, dočekana je kao remek-delo. Dominirala je javnom diskusijom, naročito među mladim engleskim ekonomistima na početku karijere. Za njih je briljantni, energični i dobro društveno pozicionirani Kejnz bio beau idéal. Do kraja Drugog svetskog rata mnogi poznati zastupnici slobodne trgovine su bili preobraćeni Kejnzovim načinom mišljenja, priznajući da država može da ima ulogu u organizaciji moderne trgovine. Početna oduševljenost Hajekom je opala. Njegova neobična ideja da nečinjenje može da izleči ekonomsku depresiju bila je diskreditovana u teoriji i praksi. Kasnije je priznao da želi da njegova kritika Kejnza bude naprosto zaboravljena.

Hajek je bio smešna pojava: visok, uspravan, sa teškim akcentom, u odelu od tvida, insistirao je da mu se formalno obraćaju „fon Hajek“, ali su ga zvali „gospodin Fluktuacija“ iza leđa. Godine 1936. bio je akademik bez portfolija i sa neizvesnom budućnošću. Ipak, mi danas živimo u Hajekovom svetu, kao što smo nekada živeli u Kejnzovom. Lorens Samers, Klintonov savetnik i bivši profesor Univerziteta u Harvardu, rekao je da je Hajekova koncepcija sistema cena kao uma „prodorna i originalna ideja poput ideje mikroekonomije u dvadesetom veku“ i da je to „najvažnija lekcija koju možemo da naučimo iz kurseva ekonomije danas“. Ovo je potcenjivanje. Kejnz nije izazvao ili predvideo hladni rat, ali su njegove ideje pronašle put u svaki segment hladnoratovskog doba. Na isti način su Hajekove ideje utkane u svaki segment sveta posle 1989. godine.

Hajekovski pogled na svet je totalan: to je način strukturiranja celokupne realnosti po modelu ekonomske konkurencije. Početna pretpostavka je da su gotovo sve (ako ne i sve) ljudske aktivnosti oblik ekonomskih kalkulacija, i da kao takve mogu da budu asimilovane u osnovne koncepte kao što su bogatstvo, vrednost, razmena, koštanje – a posebno cene. Cene su način za efikasno raspoređivanje oskudnih resursa, koje na osnovu potrebe i korisnosti, određuju ponuda i potražnja. Da bi sistem cena efikasno funkcionisao, tržišta moraju da budu slobodna i takmičarska. Od kako je Smit zamislio ekonomiju kao autonomnu sferu, postojala je mogućnost da tržište nije samo jedan deo društva, već društvo u celini. U takvom društvu, potrebno je samo da ljudi prate sopstvene interese i da se takmiče za ograničena dobra. Kroz takmičenje, pisao je sociolog Vil Dejvis, „postaje moguće razlučiti ko i šta ima neku vrednost“.

Vrednosti koje svaka osoba koja poznaje istoriju vidi kao neophodnu prepreku tiraniji i eksploataciji – prosperitetnu srednju klasu i javnu sferu, slobodne institucije, univerzalno pravo glasa, slobodu savesti, okupljanja, veroispovesti i štampe, priznavanje urođenog dostojanstva – ne nalaze se u Hajekovom učenju. Hajek je u neoliberalizam ugradio pretpostavku da tržište obezbeđuje sve neophodne zaštite protiv jedine prave političke opasnosti: totalitarizma. Da bi sprečila totalitarizam, jedino što bi država trebalo da uradi je da održava tržište slobodnim.

To je ono što neoliberalizam čini novim. U pitanju je ključna razlika u odnosu na starije poverenje u slobodno tržište i minimalnu državu, poznato pod imenom „klasični liberalizam“. U klasičnom liberalizmu trgovci jednostavno traže da ih „ostavimo na miru“ – laissez-nous faire. Neoliberalizam je prepoznao da država mora da bude aktivna u organizovanju tržišne ekonomije. Uslovi koji omogućavaju slobodno tržište moraju se izboriti političkom borbom, zbog čega država mora da se uspostavlja tako da stalno podržava slobodno tržište.

To nije sve: svi aspekti demokratske politike, od glasanja do odluke političara, moraju se podvrgnuti čistoj ekonomskoj analizi. Donosilac zakona je u obavezi da se ne meša u ono što je samo po sebi već dovoljno dobro, tj. da ne remeti prirodne tokove tržišta. Na taj način, pod idealnim uslovima, država obezbeđuje fiksni, neutralni i univerzalni pravni okvir za spontano funkcionisanje tržišta. Svesno usmeravanje od strane vlade nikada ne može biti tako dobro kao „automatski mehanizam prilagođavanja“, tj. sistem cena koji ne samo što je efikasan, već maksimalizuje slobode ili prilike za ljude da naprave slobodan izbor u vezi sa svojim životom.

Dok je Kejnz često putovao između Londona i Vašingtona, kreirajući posleratni poredak, Hajek je snuždeno sedeo u Kembridžu. Poslat je tamo za vreme ratnih evakuacija i žalio se da je okružen „strancima“, „svim vrstama istočnjaka“ i „Evropljanima skoro svih nacionalnosti, od kojih je samo šačica inteligentna“.

Zaglavljen u Engleskoj, bez uticaja i poštovanja, Hajek je za utehu imao samo svoju Ideju – grandioznu ideju koja će jednog dana izmaći tlo pod nogama Kejnzu i svim ostalim intelektualcima. Prepušten sam sebi, sistem cena funkcioniše poput uma: tržište procenjuje ono što individua ne može da pojmi. Obraćajući mu se kao intelektualnom saborcu, američki novinar Valter Lipman je pisao Hajeku: „Nijedan um nikada nije razumeo društvo u celini… U najboljem slučaju um može da razume sopstvenu predstavu o društvu, koja je nepotpuna, i koja ima veze sa realnošću koliko senka sa čovekom.“

Ovo je grandiozna epistemološka tvrdnja: da je tržište način spoznaje koji radikalno prevazilazi kapacitete individualnog uma. Takvo tržište nije poput drugih ljudskih izuma kojima se može upravljati, već sila koju bi trebalo proučavati i podmirivati. Ekonomija prestaje da bude tehnika – kao što je Kejnz verovao – za postizanje poželjnih društvenih ciljeva, kao što su rast i finansijska stabilnost. Jedini društveni cilj je održavanje tržišta. U svom sveznanju tržište predstavlja jedini legitimni oblik saznanja pored koga svi ostali vidovi refleksije izgledaju parcijalni, u oba smisla te reči: mogu da shvate samo delić celine i zastupaju samo posebne interese. Individualno, naše vrednosti su lične, ili su samo gledišta; kolektivno, tržište ih konvertuje u cene, ili u objektivne činjenice.

Posle neuspeha na LSE, Hajek više nikada nije imao stalno zaposlenje koje nije bilo plaćeno novcem korporativnih sponzora. Čak su ga i njegove konzervativne kolege sa Čikaškog univeziteta – svetskog epicentra libertarijanskog disidenstva 1950-ih – smatrale glasnikom reakcije, čovekom „desničarske provenijencije“ sa „desničarskim sponzorima“, kako je pisao jedan od njih. Sve do 1972. godine prijatelji su mogli da posećuju ostarelog Hajeka u Salcburgu, gde se utapao u samosažaljenju i uverenju da je sve radio uzalud. Niko nije mario za njegova dela.

Bilo je, međutim, i naznaka nade: Hajek je bio omiljeni politički filozof Berija Goldvotera, a kako se pričalo i Ronalda Regana. A tu je bila i Margaret Tačer. Svakome ko je hteo da je sluša, Tačer je na sva usta hvalila Hajeka, obećavši da će sprovesti njegovu filozofiju slobodnog tržišta zajedno sa oživljavanjem viktorijanskih vrednosti: porodice, zajednice, marljivosti.

Hajek se sastao sa Tačer 1975. godine, u momentu kada je ona imenovana za predvodnicu opozicije u Ujedinjenom Kraljevstvu i kada se pripremala da njegovu Veliku ideju izbavi iz zaborava istorije. Diskutovali su 30 minuta u Institutu za ekonomiju, u Ulici lorda Norta u Londonu. Posle sastanka osoblje Margaret Tačer je sa zebnjom upitalo Hajeka za mišljenje. Šta je mogao da kaže? Prvi put za 40 godina, Fridrik fon Hajek je u odsjaju moći video sliku o sebi koju je odavno gajio: sliku čoveka koji bi uskoro mogao da zbriše Kejnza i preobrazi svet.

Odgovorio je: „Ona je prelepa.“

***

Hajekova Velika ideja i nije neka ideja – dok je ne uveličate preko svake mere. Organski, spontani, elegantni procesi koji, poput milion prstiju na Ploči duhova,1 koordinirano kreiraju inače neplanirane ishode. Primenjena na tržište (bilo da je reč o tržištu svinjetine ili terminskom tržištu kukuruza), ova ideja je skoro pa truizam. Može se dalje razviti da opiše kako tržišta dobara, rada i novca formiraju onaj deo društva koji nazivamo „ekonomija“. Ovo već nije tako banalno, ali je i dalje bezopasno: kenzijanac će rado prihvatiti ovaj opis. Ali šta ako napravimo još jedan korak i zamislimo celokupno društvo kao tržište?

Što više proširujemo Hajekovu ideju, to ona postaje reakcionarnija i sve više sakrivena iza paravana naučne neutralnosti – i sve više omogućava ekonomistima da se povežu sa glavnim intelektualnim trendom koji je vladao u XVII veku. Uspon modernih nauka otvorio je pitanje šta znači biti čovek u svetu kojim rukovode zakoni prirode. Da li je čovek objekat u svetu, poput bilo kog drugog objekta? Izgleda da ne postoji način da se subjektivno i unutrašnje iskustvo priključi prirodi kakvom je vidi nauka – kao objektivnoj pojavi čije zakone otkrivamo posmatranjem.

Sve je u posleratnoj političkoj kulturi išlo u korist Džona Majnarda Kejnza i proširenja uloge države u vođenju ekonomije. Na isti način je sve u posleratnoj akademskoj kulturi išlo u korist Hajekove Velike ideje. Pre rata su čak i najokoreliji desničari među ekonomistima smatrali tržište sredstvom da se postignu ograničeni ciljevi, da se efikasno preraspodele oskudni resursi. Od vremena Adama Smita iz sredine osamnaestog veka, do posleratnog vremena osnivača Čikaške škole, bilo je uobičajeno uverenje da se konačni ciljevi društva i života uopšte određuju van ekonomske sfere.

Pitanja vrednosti se rešavaju politički i demokratski, a ne ekonomski – kroz moralnu refleskiju i argumentovanu javnu raspravu. Klasični moderni izraz ovog uverenja može se naći u eseju iz 1922. godine Etika i ekonomska interpretacija Frenka Najta, koji je stigao u Čikago dve decenije pre Hajeka. „Rezultati racionalne ekonomske kritike vrednosti odvratni su zdravom razumu“, pisao je Najt. „Čovek ekonomije je sebični, nemilosrdni predmet moralne osude.“

Punih dve stotine godina ekonomisti su se mučili da nađu mesto temeljnim vrednostima tržišnih društava van sfere sebičnih interesa i računica. Najt i njegove kolege Henri Simons i Džejkob Viner su se protivili Frenklinu D. Ruzveltu i njegovim njudilovskim tržišnim intervencijama. Osnovali su Univerzitet u Čikagu kao intelektualno rigorozan dom ekonomije slobodnog tržišta, kakav je ostao do današnjih dana. Međutim, Simons, Viner i Najt su započeli karijere pre nego što je neuporedivi prestiž atomskih fizičara privukao ogromne sume novca univerzitetima i podstakao posleratnu pomamu za „tvrdim“ naukama. Nisu se klanjali jednačinama i modelima, već su brinuli o nenaučnim pitanjima. Konkretno, brinuli su o pitanju vrednosti, koje je u potpunosti bilo odvojeno od pitanja cene.

Nije samo reč o tome da su Simons, Viner i Najt bili manje dogmatski nastrojeni od Hajeka, ili više voljni da državi oproste oporezivanje ili javne troškove. Takođe, Hajek nije bio intelektualno superiorniji od njih. Reč je o tome da su oni polazili od principa da društvo i tržište nisu ista stvar, kao što ni cena nije isto što i vrednost. To učenje im nije obezbedilo mesto u istoriji.

Hajek je bio taj koji nam je pokazao put iz beznadežnog stanja ljudske pristrasnosti do veličanstvene objektivnosti nauke. Hajekova Velika ideja je premostila jaz između naše subjektivne ljudske prirode i prirode uopšte. Iz toga je sledilo da bilo koja vrednost koja ne može da se izrazi kroz cenu, tj. ne predstavlja sud tržišta, postaje nesigurna – ništa više od pukog mišljenja, preferencije, narodnog verovanja ili sujeverja.

Veliki čikaški ekonomista Milton Fridman je više nego bilo ko drugi, uključujući i Hajeka, doprineo da se vlade i političari priklone Hajekovoj Velikoj ideji. Pre toga je raskinuo sa dve stotine godina starom tradicijom, proglasivši ekonomiju „u načelu slobodnom od bilo kog moralnog stanovišta ili vrednosnog suda“, kao i „objektivnom naukom, na način na koji je fizika objektivna“. Stare vrednosti uma i moralna pravila su nesavršeni i predstavljaju „razlike oko kojih ljudi mogu samo da se glože“. Drugim rečima: postoji tržište, i postoji relativizam.

***

Moguće je da su ljudska tržišta ljudske tvorevine najsličnije prirodi i da se, poput prirode, ne vode autoritetima i vrednostima. Međutim, primena Hajekove Velike ideje na svaki aspekt naših života negira ono što nas čini ljudima. Ono najljudskije kod ljudi, naš um i volju, prepušta algoritmima i tržištima, ostavljajući nas da poput zombija oponašamo svedene idealne ekonomske modele. Širenje Hajekove ideje i radikalno unapređenje sistema cena u neku vrstu društvenog sveznalaštva podrazumeva umanjivanje značaja naše individualne sposobnosti za razmenu dijaloga – sposobnosti da pružamo i procenjujemo opravdanja za svoje postupke i uverenja.

Iz toga sledi da javna sfera – prostor gde obrazlažemo svoje mišljenje i osporavamo mišljenja drugih – prestaje da bude prostor argumentovane rasprave i umesto toga postaje tržište klikova, lajkova i retvitova. Internet su lični izbori uvećani algoritmom; pseudojavni prostor u kome odjekuju glasovi usađeni u naše glave. Umesto prostora za debatu kroz koju kao društvo napredujemo ka dogovoru, sada imamo povratno potvrđujući aparat banalno nazvan „tržište ideja“. Ono što na prvi pogled izgleda kao javno i smisleno, u stvari je produžetak naših postojećih gledišta, predrasuda i uverenja, dok su autoritet institucija i eksperata zamenjeni agregativnom logikom velikih baza podataka. Kada pristupimo svetu kroz polje za pretragu, dobijemo rezultate koji su, po rečima osnivača Gugla, rangirani od strane beskrajnog broja individualnih korisnika interneta koji funkcionišu kao tržište, neprestano i u realnom vremenu.

Za razliku od fenomenalne korisnosti digitalnih tehnologija, ranija humanistička tradicija, koja je bila dominantna vekovima, uvek je pravila razliku između naših sklonosti i preferencija – želja koje se izražavaju na tržištu – i našeg kapaciteta da rasuđujemo o tim preferencijama, na osnovu kojeg formiramo i izražavamo svoje vrednosti.

„Sklonost je možda najbolje definisati kao preferenciju oko koje se ne raspravljamo“, pisao je filozof i ekonomista Albert O. Hiršman. „Sklonosti oko kojih postoji rasprava, bilo sa drugima ili sa sobom, ipso facto prestaju da budu sklonosti i postaju vrednosti.“

Hiršman je pravio razliku između konzumerskog i kritičkog dela ličnosti. Tržište odražava preferencije koje su „osvešćene od strane ljudi koji kupuju dobra i usluge“. Međutim, ljudi takođe „imaju sposobnost da naprave otklon od ’osvešćenih’ želja, volje i preferencija, da se zapitaju da li zaista žele te želje i preferiraju te preferencije“. Mi zasnivamo naše ličnosti i identitete na osnovu ovog kapaciteta za rasuđivanje. Korišćenje individualnih moći rasuđivanja nazivamo razumom; kolektivno korišćenje ovih moći nazivamo javnom raspravom; korišćenje javne rasprave u svrhu izrade zakona i javnih politika nazivamo demokratijom. Kada obrazlažemo svoje postupke i uverenja, mi bivstvujemo: individualno i kolektivno, odlučujemo ko smo i šta smo.

Sudeći prema logici Hajekove Velike ideje, ovi izrazi ljudskog subjektiviteta su beznačajni bez potvrde tržišta – kao što je Fridman rekao, oni nisu ništa drugo do relativizam, svaki izraz je dobar kao bilo koji drugi. Kada je jedina objektivna istina određena tržištem, sve druge vrednosti imaju status običnih gledišta i relativističkog praznoslovlja. Međutim, Fridmanov „relativizam“ je zamerka koja se može uputiti svakoj tvrdnji zasnovanoj na ljudskom razumu. To je besmislena opaska, jer su sve humanističke težnje „relativne“, za razliku od naučnih. Relativne su o odnosu na osobinu ličnosti da poseduje sposobnost za rasuđivanje i javnu potrebu za objašnjavanjem i razumevanjem čak i u slučajevima kada nemamo naučne dokaze. Kada prestanemo da rešavamo debate argumentovanom raspravom, njihove ishode rešavaju hirovi moćnika.

Na ovom mestu se susreću neoliberalizam i politička noćna mora u kojoj živimo. „Daš čoveku jedan posao da obavi…“, glasi stara šala, a Hajekov grandiozni projekat, začet 30-ih i 40-ih godina, bio je osmišljen sa namerom da spreči nazadovanje u politički haos i fašizam. Međutim, njegova Velika ideja je oduvek bila nesreća koja čeka da se dogodi. Od početka je u sebi sadržala klicu onoga što je trebalo da spreči. Zasnivanje društva kao ogromnog tržišta vodilo je gubitku javnog života u korist prepirki oko pukih mišljenja, da bi se frustrirana javnost na kraju okrenula čvrstorukašima kao poslednjem pribežištu: oni mogu da reše inače nerazrešive probleme.

***

Godine 1989. američki novinar je zakucao na vrata devedesetogodišnjeg Hajeka. Hajek je živeo u Frajburgu, u Zapadnoj Nemačkoj, u trospratnom apartmanu kuće građene u stucco stilu, u Uraštrase ulici. Seli su u osunčanu sobu čiji prozori su gledali na planine, a Hajek je, zbog upale pluća od koje se oporavljao, prebacio ćebe preko nogu.

To više nije bio čovek koji se utapao u samosažaljenju zbog poraza od Kejnza. Tačer mu je upravo poslala pismo sa porukama trijumfa. Ništa što su Regan i ona postigli „ne bi bilo moguće bez vrednosti i ubeđenja koja su nas postavili na put i usadili ispravan osećaj za smer“. Hajek je bio zadovoljan sobom i optimističan u vezi sa budućnošću kapitalizma. Novinar je zapisao: „Hajek uviđa da mlađe generacije sve više uvažavaju tržište. Nezaposleni mladi protestuju danas u Alžiru i Rangunu ne u ime centralistički planirane države blagostanja već u ime prilike: prilike da slobodno kupuju i prodaju – džins, automobile, šta god – po bilo kojoj ceni koja odgovara tržištu“.

Trideset godina kasnije možemo da kažemo da je Hajekova pobeda bez premca. Živimo u raju njegove Velike ideje. Što se više svet približava viziji idealnog tržišta sa savršenom konkurencijom, to se više uočavaju zakonitost i „naučnost“ u ponašanju ljudi kao gomile. Svakog dana, u svakom pogledu, sami težimo da sve više napredujemo kao raštrkani, tihi, anonimni kupci i prodavci – i niko više ne mora da nas podstiče na to! Svakog dana želju da budemo nešto više od običnih konzumenata gledamo sa nostalgijom ili je smatramo elitizmom.

Ono što je počelo kao novi oblik intelektualnog autoriteta ukorenjenog u dosledni apolitički pogled na svet, sa lakoćom je gurnuto u ultrareakcionarnu politiku. Ekonomisti tvrde da ono što ne može da se kvantifikuje ne može ni da postoji, ali kako onda izmeriti ključne doprinose prosvetiteljstva, naime: kritički um, ličnu autonomiju i demokratsko upravljanje? Kada smo napustili um zbog njegove sramne subjektivnosti, um kao oblik istine, i na njegovo mesto postavili nauku kao jedinog sudiju stvarnosti i istine, kreirali smo prazninu koju je pseudonauka spremno popunila.

Autoritet profesora, reformatora ili pravnika ne počiva na tržištu, već na humanističkim vrednostima kao što su odanost opštem dobru, savest ili težnja za pravdom. Puno pre nego što je Trampova administracija počela da ih ponižava, ove profesije su ostale bez značaja u eksplanatornim šemama koje nam ništa ne saopštavaju. Zasigurno postoji veza između njihove rastuće beznačajnosti i dolaska na vlast Trampa, oličenja kaprica, čoveka koji ne poseduje principe i uverenja koliko je potrebno da se načini koherentna ličnost. Čovek bez savesti, predstavnik potpunog odsustva uma, predvodi svet u pogrešnom pravcu. Kao svaki pametnjaković koji prodaje nekretnine na Menhetnu, Tramp zna znanje: njegove grehe tek treba da kazni tržište.
User avatar
GOT
Posts: 3344
Joined: 30/04/2016 12:10

#1300 Re: Price, pjesme, intervjui...

Post by GOT »

ZAPISANO U SREDU
U sredu smo se prvi put sreli,
a do tada se nismo znali.
U petak smo se zavoleli.
U ponedeljak posvađali.

Opet je sreda. Sad svima kažem
dok lutam po korzu sam:
ne, nije ona lepša ni draža
od drugih devojčica koje znam.

Pa kad je sretnem - oči krijem.
Zviždućem. Gledam u nešto drugo.
I mislim: zbilja, svejedno mi je...

Al' okrećem se dugo... dugo...
Miroslav Antić

Image
Post Reply