Andreas Daniel Fogg - Deferred Pay, Mergers and Acquisitions and Sectoral Deflation, Frame Deconstructions: Emails from 2011 Through 2013

Deferred Pay, Mergers and Acquisitions and Sectoral Deflation;
FRAME DECONSTRUCTIONS

EMAILS FROM 2011 THROUGH 2013

ANDREAS DANIEL FOGG

Copyright 2014 by Andreas Daniel Fogg.

Library of Congress Control Number: 2014902575

ISBN: Hardcover 978-1-4931-6568-1

Softcover 978-1-4931-6567-4

eBook 978-1-4931-6569-8

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Rev. date: 02/11/2014

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CONTENTS

for Lucille

I went down to the sacred store, where Id heard the music played years before, but the man there said the music wouldnt play! Don Mclean

The music still wont play because we have taped ourselves inside a box sealed shut with inadequate definitions, which we are afraid to challenge

January 2, 2014

A few corrections to these pieces have been made. For the most part I have left them as they were sent out. Some or many of them, it has been suggested to me, have been posted on a bulletin board at the Harvard Law School. Whether or not anyone pays them any attention, I cannot say. Most have been sent to various members of the Harvard, Yale and other university faculty. There has been little or no direct feedback from these recipients, as to even whether the emails were opened. Occasionally, perhaps twice, I was asked to stop sending the emails. Once I argued successfully with Robert Reich to send them to his assistant, for screening. My methodology has been to follow the news and news analysis of various journalists and social scientists; to build my analyses upon those of others, hopefully leading to a set of prescriptions which, if taken seriously, might better the overall conditions of the United States as well as that of the world at large.

On the subject of mergers and acquisitions, I have started reading a book called A Giant Cow Tipping by Savages by John Weir Close, which starts at least focussing on the merger mania of the 1980s, and seems to suggest that much of that activity was fueled by avaricious outsiders at least some of whom were Jews. I am not expert on the subject of mergers and acquisitions, neither as they occurred in the 1980s nor as at present. What I am urging is a shift in the SECs and DOJ criteria for approving M and As away from intra sectoral approvals, justified apparently if not always nominally, by economies of scale and abilities to control the markets and pricing, toward cross sectoral actions justified by the increased ability to lower prices and raise wages.

Other parts of the book deal with the subject of deferred or not fully distributed corporate or other forms of institutional pay on the grounds that initial recipients might not be mature enough for immediate receipt, or now, in hindsight, that the potential recipient would find herself or himself in some crucial senses compromised or otherwise hampered by full receipt of accurately earned rewards. This deferred pay mechanism, however, then would seem to allow for some indirect control of those assets by the deferred (non) recipient. Various other pieces were either presented at various sociological conferences, or in a few cases proffered for but not accepted by such conferences. There is also some material elicited by my having viewed the film Years a Slave.

Sociology, it seems to me, tends to be characterized at present by foci on the meticulous often emprical study of what is, what can be readily measured, and what was. It appears to me that questions about what will be and what should be, what might be, tend to be too often shunned by the field too often as too controversial (and as a result likely unfundable). Perhaps that is one reason why I have not received too much direct encouragement. Or perhaps a decision was taken to simply let me write at will. I suppose I should be grateful for such a decision, if it was indeed taken.

The data I most need, for example, at this point is a chart comparing the numbers of M and As in the last 3 or 4 decades which were intra versus cross sectoral, I have been unable to find. My thinking that I at least see the need for such data allows me to fancy myself a social scientist, rather than a mere philosopher or more likely philosopher.

For instance, while reading Ezra Vogels recent book Deng Xiaoping, the question arose, how and who ended Lenins NEP (New Economic Plan?) Was it Lenin himself or Stalin? Preliminary research suggests that Stalin ended the NEP. Clearly (to me) Schumpeter was if only implicitly assuming a crtical stance specifically toward this move. And probably Schumpeter would have approved of the retroactive moves that Deng Xioping made to resuscitate Chinas market based economic characteristics! However the NEP reforms along with Deng Xiaopings reforms would seem to have been also predicated upon the widespread liquidation (dispossession and state justified collective murders) of all or those capitalists who refused to go along with the initial collectivization moves. So that what we see in hindsight under the NEP policies in the 1920s and in Dengs post Maoist China, represents a sort of version of liberal capitalism without the old capitalist class of entrepreneurs. Given a choice between total state collectivization a la post Bukharin, post Leninist NEP (that is Stalinism), and Dengs socialist market reforms, Schumpeter would likely have opted for the NEP and Deng like reforms. That apparently is the current bias of US and Western foreign policies. Meanwhile the interests of post globalization American workers seem to have been sold down the river in the interests of securing mega scale returns on Western capital corporate investments in China, India and the Asian tigers. The media diverts the publics attention with the promise that things will get better and better gadgets, coupled with sports all season diversionary circuses which help us forget about what actually is happening. A small group of corporate cowboys seem to be economically disenfranchising the American electorate.

Also, it should be noted that the current trend toward ever increasing unequal distributions of income, far from retarding entry onto the much feared slippery slope leading to socialism (with its liquidations of capitalists, which we tend to forget about lately (perhaps like Gerald Ford did during his debate with Jimmy Carter) given our collaborations with the market oriented Chinese), actually is more likely to lead to a murderously vindictive revolution, when and if the American people wake up to the con games that the system masters have been playing with them. This than would a more liberal, less individualistic distribution of rewards with production more calibrated to the fullfillment of social use needs than is the present manipulation of production in order to maximize profits the need for which is meticulously crafted by media productions; profits which are then disproportionately shared, in ultimate practice, only with a small group of elite about whom most Americans actually know little. Deferred seemingly forgiven credit card charges tend to eventually come due and fail to block the wolf from the door, unfortunately.

That prejudice against persons and groups considered to be subaltern or lower status, tends to be combined with the fear that actually the discriminated against group is or should be actually not subordinate but dominant or super ordinate. Evidence, any evidence of such superiorities, in this context needs to be deprecated, minimized and/or denied by the dominant group or groups. When far right authoritarian groups come to power these denials in the past and likely in the future have taken the forms of liquidations of these groups when they threaten the legitimacy of the dominant groups privileges. Thus the liquidation of the Jews by the Nazis. Thus the liquidation of opposing political parties by Leninists after the Bolshevik Revolution and the realization that the Leninist Bolshevik party had not won the first strictly democratic election after the Revolution. And of course the liquidation of Trotsky and Trotskyites by Stalin, followed by (his) expropriation of Trotskys ideas of collectivization and the rejection of the NEP. It is apparently easier to manipulate and institute unpopular ideas by consensus (under the fear of a secret police) than it is to do so by democratic ballot. We see the rule by consensus in modern Western corporations, wherein culture tends to diffuse the potential power of disparate shareholders at once a year annual stockholders meetings. These meetings also tend to crucially approve the wage compensation policies which send the huge disproportionate rewards to the corporate movers and shakers.