Meter readings

[P. G. Tipps]

Indeed - but it matters not to the consumer in the long run whether it's the large size state or the large size private corporation; the customer all too often finds him/herself at the mercy of either or both..

Precisely ...

Large corporate capitalism and state socialism are almost identical in practice as far as both employees and customers are concerned. In both cases the bosses turn out to be a privileged elite far removed from the great bulk of the population.

Tweedledee & Tweedledum ...

[ahinton]

The threat (to jobs security or career prospects I presume you mean) from nationalisation always existed to the extent that the nationalised sector always operated subject to terms of operation being subordinated to the same "laws" of competitiveness as applied in the private sector, so until privatisation came along employees saw little difference between the two modes of production in how each affected their livelihoods. Then, with the gloves of mixed economics which had to some extent mitigated the effects of bare knuckle competition removed, the real meaning of rationalisation, namely export of capital and transfer of operations to sources of cheaper ununionised labour in dictatorship-ruled countries, was brought home in one salutary lesson about limiting trade unionism to wages and conditions that had come too late to resist. Now we have the spectacle of Jeremy Corbyn being excoriated by the Right for daring to raise even the idea of a discussion - a discussion only, mind, about the way forward - because he no longer has a base from which to throw even theoretical challenges at the system, and they can kick him while he is down.

Well now you're talking, but motivation can't come out of thin air.

No, it can't - and still less can it come out of hot air, the purpose of much of which (whether blown by state or private enterprise) is invariably and inevitably to obfuscate, to blind, to deafen and to dissemble.

Trade Unionism - at least in my experience - is not all about "the Left" in any case. I happened to join the Musicians' Union at the tender age of 13 while still at school and almost got expelled from said school for so doing when the headmaster found out (I talked him out of such expulsion on the grounds that I had not joined some kind of "political activist" organisation long before reaching voting age as he had suggested that I had done and that I had elected at the outset to have the "political fund" contribution from my subscription allocated to the Union's Benevolent Fund); the local branch secretary, however, was arguably somewhere to the right of Enoch Powell politically yet was as stauch a defender of the rights of musicians as anyone and I remember him telling me that anyone who thinks that Trade Unionism is only for Socialists understands neither the principles and purposes of Trade Unionism nor Socialism and Socialists and should learn lessons about these before joining a Trade Union.

State businesses are no longer exonerated from the risk of the kind of "bare-knuckle competition" to which you refer because services and supplies no are longer guaranteed to be procurable only from within the nation that the particular state is charged to run; states now have to compete with states as well as the private sectors of its own and many other countries for supplies, services and the rest just as private industry does. The market and competition has invaded state operations to the extent that they are as much subject to them as are private corporations. The rise of intgrnational corporations is perhaps a symptomatic illustration of this; real "borders" behind which any state, private corporation or individual might once have expected to be able to hide from the global market-place have almost all broken down.

[ahinton]

Precisely ...

Large corporate capitalism and state socialism are almost identical in practice as far as both employees and customers are concerned. In both cases the bosses turn out to be a privileged elite far removed from the great bulk of the population.

Tweedledee & Tweedledum ...

Well, that's a slight exaggeration but your point is nevertheless well made; the market place dominates state and inter-state business deals as much as it does non-state-owned/operated business deals and it would accordingly be hard to see how it could become otherwise in the global no-holds-barred internet-connected world in which we all now function.

[Serial_Apologist]

No, it can't - and still less can it come out of hot air, the purpose of much of which (whether blown by state or private enterprise) is invariably and inevitably to obfuscate, to blind, to deafen and to dissemble.

Trade Unionism - at least in my experience - is not all about "the Left" in any case. I happened to join the Musicians' Union at the tender age of 13 while still at school and almost got expelled from said school for so doing when the headmaster found out (I talked him out of such expulsion on the grounds that I had not joined some kind of "political activist" organisation long before reaching voting age as he had suggested that I had done and that I had elected at the outset to have the "political fund" contribution from my subscription allocated to the Union's Benevolent Fund); the local branch secretary, however, was arguably somewhere to the right of Enoch Powell politically yet was as stauch a defender of the rights of musicians as anyone and I remember him telling me that anyone who thinks that Trade Unionism is only for Socialists understands neither the principles and purposes of Trade Unionism nor Socialism and Socialists and should learn lesons about this before joining a Trade Union.

State businesses are no longer exonerated from the risk of the kind of "bare-knuckle competition" to which you refer because services and supplies no are longer guaranteed to be procurable only from within the nation that the particular state is charged to run; states now have to compete with states as well as the private sectors of its own and many other countries for supplies, services and the rest just as private industry does. The market and competition has invaded state operations to the extent that they are as much subject to them as are private corporations. The rise of intgrnational corporations is perhaps a symptomatic illustration of this; real "borders" behind which any state, private corporation or individual might once have expected to be able to hide from the global market-place have almost all broken down.

All that is absolutely true.

[Serial_Apologist]

Well, that's a slight exaggeration but your point is nevertheless well made; the market place dominaes state and inter-state business deals as much as it does non-state-owned/operated business deals and it would accordingly be hard to see how it could become otherwise in the global no-holds-barred internet-connected world in which we all now function.

Yes, it's not often that I find myself in complete concurrence with Tippster.

[P. G. Tipps]

Yes, it's not often that I find myself in complete concurrence with Tippster.

Of course, though not wishing to suddenly wreck this quite remarkable accord between ahinton, S_A and P. G. Tipps, I'm not suggesting for one moment that large state or private outfits are automatically "a bad thing', merely that the customer is often at the mercy of both as ahinton so succinctly pointed out..

I couldn't begin to imagine what life would be like without the availability of the NHS (despite its much-publicised shortcomings). Also, to return to a life which meant many weary and often fruitless shopping-trips instead of the home availability of a super-efficient and consumer-orientated internet company like Amazon (despite the much-publicised tax issue) would seem like reverting to the Dark Ages to me.

Some things the state is best-placed to handle though my own feeling is that generally speaking state control should only be introduced as a very last resort.

The trouble, imv, is that many state and private bosses tend to look after their own careers first (quite natural, I suppose) and the customer and employees come a very poor second or third. Shareholders who invest in private-sector companies can also lose out heavily as I know to my own cost.

How the system/management culture is suddenly changed for the greater benefit of others I haven't the faintest idea. It is a natural human instinct that one makes one's own and family's interests the prime priority. In all honesty, if I were a high-flying member of senior management I'd be almost certain to behave in much the same way.

Identifying the problem is relatively easy. Coming up with a genuine solution and not simply trotting out the demonstrably failed old policies of the past is the really hard part!

[ahinton]

Yes, it's not often that I find myself in complete concurrence with Tippster.

That makes at least two of us, then!

Fundamentally pessimistic though such admission might seem to be, it ought also to be mentioned that none of this has so far prevented small and medium-sized independent businesses from setting up and operating successfully and profitably. What would be so good to witness (and it is not impossible of achivement, even if only an a relatively small scale) is the gradual ebbing away of the overbearing dependence upon oil, which arguably exerts the largest single stranglehold over the world's populace and is accordingly the most powerful and significant factor in ensuring the continued ensnarement of the majority of that populace by large global businesses, private and "nationalised", a fact made worse still by its negative environmental impact. Only recently I heard of the 40 years of North Sea oil as though there was nothing to say about it that did not praise its achievement; yes, there's little point in denying its short-term positive economic impact, but at what ultimate cost did it come?

Had the well-heeled oil companies allocated at least some significant part of their immense profits to research into sustainable alternative energy sources years ago, they might well have been able eventually to continue to pull in massive profits from the marketing and distribution of something far less environmentally damaging but, even so, the best aspect of such exploration would have been (and might yet become) the lessening of corporate grip on the energy consumer because some of the alternatives can be (and indeed are) operated on a small scale by individuals and SMEs, one example of the latter in practice being a fruit farm local to me that sells berries picked the same day by the farm gate and whcich, despite operating on a relatively small number of hectares, has its buildings all covered in solar panels (there must be well over 100 of them) and is accordingly self-sufficient in its energy production - not having to worry about the vagaries of Npower, E-on and EDF or power cuts that might affect part of their opeartion must be quite a boon, I imagine.

This kind of thing couldn't happen with water, admittedly; even the average person or SME who happens to have a working well would be unable to afford the plant required to produce potable, safe water and so its distribution is by nature network dependent; the single most important substance for the continuation of human life, it does presume large business input in order to ensure its distribution to all but, even then, the grave shotcomings of both state and private businesses have been all too sadly and indeed shamefully notable. Whoever runs it needs to bring in colossal profits merely to be able to finance the replacement of so many hundreds of thousands of kilometres of old and deterioriating water pipework on which successful distribution of water depends; rather like those by nature non-profit generating sectors of healthcare, this mind-bogglingly enormous project is unlikely immeditely to attract private companies unless they can make sufficient profits from that distribution to finance what is a very expensive long-term reparation project, so it would be difficult to imagine water sourcing and distribution functioning successfully on private enterprise alone. PFIs have often been notorious experiments, so what's presumably needed here instead would be something far more like private/state partnerships if such could be created and operate successfully for the ultimate long-term benefit of society.

[ahinton]

I couldn't begin to imagine what life would be like without the availability of the NHS (despite its much-publicised shortcomings).

I could imainge it but, like you and so many others, would really rather not have to do so! What many do not agree about, however, is that NHS must run as a profit-making enterprise as well as a social care service otherwise it won't make the squillions that it needs even to keep afloat, let alone improve and develop the serviceds that it provides and keep well abreast of constantly ongoing discoveries in the healthcare industry. Indeed, what worries me most about state-owned and managed businesses on the massive scale of NHS is their undue dependency upon taxpayer funding. Why? Because, like the weather, taxpayer funding is a fickle thing that's far harder to obtain during bad ecomonic times when less tax falls due yet the demands do not fall away in proportion.

Also, to return to a life which meant many weary and often fruitless shopping-trips instead of the home availability of a super-efficient and consumer-orientated internet company like Amazon (despite the much-publicised tax issue) would seem like reverting to the Dark Ages to me.

I'm not convinced that it's quite so flawless a thing as you appear to portray it, but there's certainly no denying that it provides an important service.

Some things the state is best-placed to handle though my own feeling is that generally speaking state control should only be introduced as a very last resort.

One of the most dismayingly damaging aspects of far too many of the arguments for and against capitalism and its practice seems to me to be the fundamentally ingrained "four-legs-good-two-legs-bad" kind of misapprehension that the state is firmly on one side of them and private enterprise equally firmly on the other and never the twain shall meet; this does neither "side" any favours and the rest of society less still.

The trouble, imv, is that many state and private bosses tend to look after their own careers first (quite natural, I suppose) and the customer and employees come a very poor second or third. Shareholders who invest in private-sector companies can also lose out heavily as I know to my own cost.

Self-interest will indeed be found everywhere and certainly knows and respects no state/private boundaries. "Shareholders" in state enterprises can also lose out heavily when their investment, for example, in woefully flawed defence procurement and failed billion-pound NHS/DWP/HMRC computer systems, goes to the wall.

How the system/management culture is suddenly changed for the greater benefit of others I haven't the faintest idea. It is a natural human instinct that one makes one's own and family's interests the prime priority. In all honesty, if I were a high-flying member of senior management I'd be almost certain to behave in much the same way.

The first thing to think about and then aim to explore is those areas in which such personal self-interest and the properly avowed aims of enterprises and their system/management cultures are NOT necessarily fundamentally incompatible and irreconcilable, rather as I put forward above about those things in which state and private enterprises are not always by definition on opposite sides of the fence.

Identifying the problem is relatively easy. Coming up with a genuine solution and not simply trotting out the demonstrably failed old policies of the past is the really hard part!

Sadly true, although the most important factor in finding a way through such a maze of minefields is initial constructive impetus and will and their sustainability over time; there will, after all, have been little ultimate point in those "demonstrably failed old policies" unless they're analysed in depth after the event in order that lessons may be learned from their failures (and NOT in the way that is usually meant when "the learning of lessons" is trotted out at every opportunity and none like the well-worn and broadly meaningless cliché that it has long since become!).

We seem to have come rather a long way from the gentle (if now far less often practised) gentle art of meter reading!...

[antongould]

I refuse to agree with PGT until he returns to his previous title - but on the point of self interest of managers in state and private industry - I was in both as a senior manager and hope that self interest wasn't my main "driver". What I will say is that I was a hell of a lot better paid, for doing more or less the same job, in the private sector. Those at the very top had an even more massive increase in remuneration. Does this have to happen to give ahinton the choice of tariff he craves??

[ahinton]

I refuse to agree with PGT until he returns to his previous title

Even assuming that he had one, are the grounds of your refusal based solely upon his chose forum ID(/s)?...

but on the point of self interest of managers in state and private industry - I was in both as a senior manager and hope that self interest wasn't my main "driver". What I will say is that I was a hell of a lot better paid, for doing more or less the same job, in the private sector. Those at the very top had an even more massive increase in remuneration. Does this have to happen to give ahinton the choice of tariff he craves??

I'm afraid that I don't understand the question. In what specific ways and for what particular resasons might you perceive remuneration packages for senior management in state or private energy suppliers as impacting directly upon those providers' decisions as the the nature, level, variety and complexity of the tariffs that they offer to their consumers?

Also, whilst I would not presume to challenge your statement about personal self-interest, might it not reasonably be argued that, in your willingness to be paid far more for doing more of less the same job in the private sector than you had been in the public sector, you were not entirely averse to it? (and that question is not meant as any kind of accusation)...

[antongould]

............

Also, whilst I would not presume to challenge your statement about personal self-interest, might it not reasonably be argued that, in your willingness to be paid far more for doing more of less the same job in the private sector than you had been in the public sector, you were not entirely averse to it? (and that question is not meant as any kind of accusation)...

Well five kids and a large mortgage at a scary rate of interest may have influenced my decision making .......

[ahinton]

Well five kids and a large mortgage at a scary rate of interest may have influenced my decision making .......

Hardly surprising - and would could blame you?! - but you haven't answerd my question about how the pay of executive staff of energy providers, state or otherwise, impacts directly upon the kinds of tariff that they offer to their customers...

[Serial_Apologist]

Some things the state is best-placed to handle though my own feeling is that generally speaking state control should only be introduced as a very last resort.

It all depends on what one means by "state control" - which, in turn, depends on who is in control of the state. If, as at present, it is the boss class, the problem, as I wrote earlier, consists in letting them run nationalised industries in just the same way as most of them do their own businesses.

How the system/management culture is suddenly changed for the greater benefit of others I haven't the faintest idea. It is a natural human instinct that one makes one's own and family's interests the prime priority. In all honesty, if I were a high-flying member of senior management I'd be almost certain to behave in much the same way.

The usual remedy is some kind of enquiry which ends with the existing boss brought to brooks, another usually bloke being brought in, one huge publicity-led schimozzle being conducted to convince the public that "lessons have been learned" - someone's detested phrase - before everything returns to being run as before, with all the attendant problems, until the next blow-up, whereupon another similar taxpayer-funded enquiry under a famous judge is initiated, destined to last several years. This way the public is ensured that something is being done, and nothing fundamental changes.

Identifying the problem is relatively easy. Coming up with a genuine solution and not simply trotting out the demonstrably failed old policies of the past is the really hard part!

QED!

[Serial_Apologist]

That makes at least two of us, then!

Fundamentally pessimistic though such admission might seem to be, it ought also to be mentioned that none of this has so far prevented small and medium-sized independent businesses from setting up and operating successfully and profitably. What would be so good to witness (and it is not impossible of achivement, even if only an a relatively small scale) is the gradual ebbing away of the overbearing dependence upon oil, which arguably exerts the largest single stranglehold over the world's populace and is accordingly the most powerful and significant factor in ensuring the continued ensnarement of the majority of that populace by large global businesses, private and "nationalised", a fact made worse still by its negative environmental impact. Only recently I heard of the 40 years of North Sea oil as though there was nothing to say about it that did not praise its achievement; yes, there's little point in denying its short-term positive economic impact, but at what ultimate cost did it come?

Had the well-heeled oil companies allocated at least some significant part of their immense profits to research into sustainable alternative energy sources years ago, they might well have been able eventually to continue to pull in massive profits from the marketing and distribution of something far less environmentally damaging but, even so, the best aspect of such exploration would have been (and might yet become) the lessening of corporate grip on the energy consumer because some of the alternatives can be (and indeed are) operated on a small scale by individuals and SMEs, one example of the latter in practice being a fruit farm local to me that sells berries picked the same day by the farm gate and whcich, despite operating on a relatively small number of hectares, has its buildings all covered in solar panels (there must be well over 100 of them) and is accordingly self-sufficient in its energy production - not having to worry about the vagaries of Npower, E-on and EDF or power cuts that might affect part of their opeartion must be quite a boon, I imagine.

This kind of thing couldn't happen with water, admittedly; even the average person or SME who happens to have a working well would be unable to afford the plant required to produce potable, safe water and so its distribution is by nature network dependent; the single most important substance for the continuation of human life, it does presume large business input in order to ensure its distribution to all but, even then, the grave shotcomings of both state and private businesses have been all too sadly and indeed shamefully notable. Whoever runs it needs to bring in colossal profits merely to be able to finance the replacement of so many hundreds of thousands of kilometres of old and deterioriating water pipework on which successful distribution of water depends; rather like those by nature non-profit generating sectors of healthcare, this mind-bogglingly enormous project is unlikely immeditely to attract private companies unless they can make sufficient profits from that distribution to finance what is a very expensive long-term reparation project, so it would be difficult to imagine water sourcing and distribution functioning successfully on private enterprise alone. PFIs have often been notorious experiments, so what's presumably needed here instead would be something far more like private/state partnerships if such could be created and operate successfully for the ultimate long-term benefit of society.

All this is of course true - backed up, as I have previously argued, by "funny money" which is the product of speculation on the world's stock markets - a system whereby the speculators (i.e.gamblers) gain either way, either by inflating economies or by draining them. While much of the money in circulation to maintain this state of affairs has just been quantitatively eased in - which is happening all the time, not just when banks go dry - the thus far (as far as I know) not disproven axiom that real wealth (as in when The Economist truthfully talks about The Real Economy) consists in the monetarisation of the value, ie number of averaged out hours, put into transmogrifying raw materials into products, is all there to be seen in the fact of the oil industry's capacity and ability, with its technological advancedness over other sectors dependent on it like pharmaceuticals, to procure more value per human unit of production, than any other sector, thereby dominating capitalist world economics.

It is therefore hard to envisage how it could be possible for capitalism, without so much oil and funny money necessarily involved in its own maintenance, to continue. Thr relationship of oil to capitalism is analogous of that of crack to the crack addict; and it's killing off the baby (the human productive unit that in the end keeps it going, simply because no human labour = no value which = no surplus value) that keeps it going. It's killing him and her off physically (productively, as in new tech replacing jobs, and concomitant unemployment-causing recessions); spiritually (Christianity, whose other values of generosity, selflessness etc are as much its backbone as its unintended consequences are its destruction); and environmentally (because to maintain its own brand of dynamism it has to go on using up earth's resources).

Were the axiom about the nature of money not true, increasing the money supply (other than in the artificial conditions of surplus resulting to capltalism's unplanned nature causing falling prices) would not lead to inflation, the result of money with no productive value behind it being intrinsically devalued. For anyone wishing to remind us that capitalism wasn't originally built on oil but on coal, that's worth pondering for a moment, maybe, because so much is now tied up in the money that oil production generates that were the industry to self-destruct (through eg ISOL usurping control of the major oilfields, maybe even blowing them up) without returning to the fundamental principle of wealth being once again the expression of collective labour time, the capitalists will be deprived of their money as presently constituted, which is to say, bluntly, their wealth... and therefore of their power, without so much as a pipsqueak from any kind of Leftist, fundamentalist or extremist.

No power = no capitalists = no capitalism. Which is NOT (to set aside a commonplace misconception) the same thing as no capital-based surplus, as defined as profit in the inter- and intra-sectoral competition set-up we now have, but a surplus for investment within a democratically and socially planned approach to resources allocation and commodity development and production. So, with the capitalists reduced to being just human, who then takes over? And this question would be far better resolved by rationally discussing it and coming up with some sort of differentiation between institutions that have stood the tests of time and loyalty over corrupt post occupyers within them, and seeking to democratise them further, rather than waiting for the demise of civilisation even as we have known it to continue along its presently accelerating path to nowhere.

Contrary to the cynical view of human nature that says that leadership qualities demand going market rates of salary, the new leaders will probably be scientists, people working across disciplines, or others like the fellow who invented the Internet with no incentive to make himself rich, or even those unobtrusive people the media occasionally dig out of retirement who never made any personal money out of garage inventions of their own they never patented or felt they had to, yet gained sufficient fulfilment from what they gave to the world.

Mostly they are people who have quietly resisted the image of themselves capitalism foists upon most of its consumers through the usual combination of family background, upbringing and schooling, and peer group pressure to conform, by finding some form of fulfilment in creativity as its own reward, which is often artistic, though it need not necessarily be. That's the kind of transferable skill we should be inculcating.

[ahinton]

All this is of course true - backed up, as I have previously argued, by "funny money" which is the product of speculation on the world's stock markets - a system whereby the speculators (i.e.gamblers) gain either way, either by inflating economies or by draining them. While much of the money in circulation to maintain this state of affairs has just been quantitatively eased in - which is happening all the time, not just when banks go dry - the thus far (as far as I know) not disproven axiom that real wealth (as in when The Economist truthfully talks about The Real Economy) consists in the monetarisation of the value, ie number of averaged out hours, put into transmogrifying raw materials into products, is all there to be seen in the fact of the oil industry's capacity and ability, with its technological advancedness over other sectors dependent on it like pharmaceuticals, able to procure more value per human unit than any other sector, thereby dominating capitalist world economics.

It is therefore hard to envisage how it could be possible for capitalism, without so much oil and funny money necessarily involved in its own maintenance, to continue. Thr relationship of oil to capitalism is analogous of that of crack to the crack addict; and it's killing off the baby (the human productive unit that in the end keeps it going, simply because no human labour = no value which = no surplus value) that keeps it going. It's killing him and her off physically (productively, as in new tech replacing jobs, and concomitant unemployment-causing recessions); spiritually (Christianity, whose other values of generosity, selflessness etc are as much its backbone as its unintended consequences are its destruction); and environmentally (because to maintain its own brand of dynamism it has to go on using up earth's resources).

Were the axiom about the nature of money not true, increasing the money supply (other than in the artificial conditions of surplus resulting to capltalism's unplanned nature causing falling prices) would not lead to inflation, the result of money with no productive value behind it being intrinsically devalued. For anyone wishing to remind us that capitalism wasn't originally built on oil but on coal, that's worth pondering for a moment, maybe, because so much is now tied up in the money that oil production generates that were the industry to self-destruct (through eg ISOL usurping control of the major oilfields, maybe even blowing them up) without returning to the fundamental principle of wealth being once again the expression of collective labour time, the capitalists will be deprived of their money as presently constituted, which is to say, bluntly, their wealth... and therefore of their power, without so much as a pipsqueak from any kind of Leftist, fundamentalist or extremist.

No power = no capitalists = no capitalism. Which is NOT (to set aside a commonplace misconception) the same thing as no surplus, as defined as profit in the inter- and intra-sectoral competition set-up we now have, but a surplus for investment within a democratically and socially planned approach to resources allocation and commodity development and production. So, with the capitalists reduced to being just human, who then takes over? And this question would be far better resolved by rationally discussing it and coming up with some sort of differentiation between institutions that have stood the tests of time and loyalty over corrupt post occupyers within them, and seeking to democratise them further, rather than waiting for the demise of civilisation even as we have known it to continue along its presently accelerating path to nowhere.

Contrary to the cynical view of human nature that says that leadership qualities demand going market rates of salary, the new leaders will probably be scientists, people working across disciplines, or others like the fellow who invented the Internet with no incentive to make himself rich, or even those unobtrusive people the media occasionally dig out of retirement who never made any personal money out of garage inventions of their own they never patented or felt they had to, yet gained sufficient fulfilment from what they gave to the world.

Mostly they are people who have quietly resisted the image of themselves capitalism foists upon most of its consumers through the usual combination of family background, upbringing and schooling, and peer group pressure to conform, by finding some form of fulfilment in creativity as its own reward, which is often artistic, though it need not necessarily be. That's the kind of transferable skill we should be inculcating.

As usual, much of intertest here and very well thought out, too.

Whilst I agree with you about the rôle of the increasingly ubioquitous "funny money", I do not believe that capitalist practice has necessarily to be so dependent upon it is certain capitalists have engineered it to be and would accordingly try to persuade the rest of us to believe tht it is indeed the only way. There are some who believe that the only hope for human society is for capitalism in all its guises to be overthrown (although they never usually come up with with how that might be made to happen or, more importantly, what should replace it); to me, however, what's needed is sufficient reform to ensure that capitalist practice benefits human society rather than wilfully works against the majority of it while benefitting the minority of its wealthiest citizens and corporations.

Should sustainable alternative energy ever come to replace oil (which is not in any case an infinite resource) or at least make a significant dent in people's dependency upon it, I do not imagine that this will of itself signal the impending death of capitalism.

Destructive as is the dreaded IS (or whatever one should call them, given that they're neither Islamic nor a state but a terrorist organisation determined to rout all connections with history in ways and to such an extent as to make the most trenchant avowed desires of Boulez in the aftermath of WWII to seem remarkably tame!), its future is dependent upon money and I doubt that even the most hot-headed and thoughtless of its members and advocates would blow up oilfields because they're well aware of the current economic significance of oil wealth (and, in any case, were they to blow up Middle Eastern oilfields, they'd be playing into the hands of oil-rich nations elsewhere, which would presumably be cutting off their noses to spite their faces).

The notion of wealth as "the expression of collective labour time", whilst an important historical precedent, no longer petains as once it did, given that it's possible for people to make fortunes without being employed, especially (though not exclusively) from the creation and distribution of intangibles; that notion belongs largely in the past, I believe and the only reason that it's not quite dead yet is that there remains swaetshops of one kind and another in many countries even today.

Whilst the inventor/s or the internet did not do what they did to make themselves rich - very much the opposite, indeed - and let's not forget the input of Severo Ornstein - son of composer Leo Ornstein (1893-2002) in this, especially now that he has put all of his father's music in the public domain since 2002 and therefore stands to make not a penny from that, either; however, the internet has enable many to make themselves very rich indeed, although one could hardly blame its inventors for having insufficient prescience to recognise this as one possible by-product!

Having said that, the other problem with common capitalist practice (as distinct from capitalism per se) is that is is insufficiently widely recognised either by capitalism's advocates or its detractors that making loadsamoney doesn't actually HAVE to result in bleeding others dry financially; I don't say that this has not happened (for to do so would be as stupid a head-in-sand claim as I could imainge), but that it does not of necessity HAVE to happen. As it happens, I run my own business, at least to the extent that HMRC treats me as though I do by virtue of my having always been self-employed but, funnily enough, I netiher make fortunes out of it nor have I ever set out or expected to do so - and, for the record, I haven't done so! As Elliott Carter once said (quite late in life, I think), "you don't come into this game to make money!" (although I've never quite managed to view composition as a "game")...

I recognise that this post does little to address all of the issues that you've put forward in your latest one (and does even less to add thoughts about meter reading!), but many thanks in any case for what you write; as I have suggested previously, we may disagree fundamentally on certain aspects of this subject, but I always relish reading what you have to write on it and, in some ways, we're probably by no means as far apart on it as might initially be assumed.