"The coining and circulation of money on a large scale produced new problems, including inaccuracy in striking coins and coins losing weight through usage. Thee problems were the object of repeated investigation, including a Royal Commission of 1849, and of an innovative statistical study by Jevons, who organised a survey of the age and weight of coins held by banking houses from which he calculated the average rate of wear."
In this chapter, the author makes an explosive claim (IMO) that historically, oil companies conspired to delay oil production while masquerading their intent as discovering and developing it. And by consequence, our understanding of the history of oil is completely backwards.
The funny thing is that there's already an existing collection of "Related Readings" to reference—the bibliography! I decided to investigate one purported example:
"After obtaining the oil concession in July 1904, the Germans stalled on building the railway and on drilling for oil. The ‘dilatory handling of the whole affair’, Deutsche Bank acknowledged twenty years later, ‘was carried out for tactical reasons’."
which is confusingly attributed to both "Eichholtz, Die Bagdadbahn: 32" and "Oil and Empire: 24" by Marian Kent. I found the first text, performed OCR and translated from German (plus a French excerpt) to English with the help of Google Translate, only to find dry recollections of various, oil-related transactions (the French turned out to be some contract nullification clause?). Page 24 of Oil and Empire refers to Deutsche Bank's "extreme dilatoriness" in oil production but attributes it to having weak legal claims, which is what Mitchell takes issue with in the citation I referenced!
I may be missing something, but as far as I'm concerned, Mitchell's quotation regarding "tactical reasons" is uncited.
"Die dilatorische Behandlung der Angelegenheit durch die Anatolie erfolgte aus taktischen Gründen, im Einvernehmen mit der Deutschen Bank" from the footnotes on "Die Bagdadbahn", which translates to the quoted phrase. The primary source attribution is hard to make out, it looks like "Petroleumgerechtsame in Mesopotamien" of which I can't find a copy on the web.
"the Marshall Plan, sought to engineer a political order in Europe built on a new relationship between organised labour and large industrial enterprises, similar to the order America was pioneering at home."
This entire section of the chapter is maybe the most surprising, as it claims the Marshall Plan *aimed to weaken coal miners*, particularly by funding a switch to oil.
I'm able to find some articles about the US-backed switch, but I'd prefer more disinterested sources. While Wikipedia notes that the Plan did seek "for Europe to use oil in place of coal", it also observes that "In Washington, the Joint Chiefs declared that the 'complete revival of German industry, particularly coal mining' was now of 'primary importance' to American security."!
Back to the text - it looks like much of Timothy Mitchell's argumentation about the *aims of policymakers, business leaders, etc* is original. Would love to engage with critiques of his work later.
"The Rockefeller Plan, widely copied in the interwar period, created company unions that allowed workers to negotiate over pay and working conditions while preventing them from joining independent unions. ...Labour movements in the US and other countries...managed to have company-controlled unions made illegal"
Never heard about this before! Some quick reading:
"In contrast, fossil fuels are forms of energy in which great quantities of space and time, as it were, have been compressed into a concentrated form...organic matter equivalent to all of the plant and animal life produced over the entire earth for four hundred years was required to produce the fossil fuels we burn today in a single year"
I know peak oil estimation has always been a bit... spotty (to put it mildly). But what are our current forecasts for fossil fuel reserves anyways?
To be clear, it certainly focuses on one angle to the story there is much to be said positively about life post-Saddam; but it counterbalances the American narrative that toppling Saddam was an unmitigated force for good
Interesting video on the minimum wage but specifically william’s reference to his book on South Africa. He talks about how white mining unions in South Africa campaigned for minimum wages in order to “civilise” the black people, when actually they just wanted to force their labor out of the market and collect rent. Part of the same imperial mandate logic and ‘self determination’ of only whites as covered in Carbon Democracy.
The minimum wage has the same racist effects today. Race correlates with poverty, education levels, and productivity. Policy makers since the early 20th century have used this to target certain races while remaining veiled behind economic policy. The minimum wage shuts out low productivity workers from the labor market and raises the wages of rent seeking incumbents. When your racist society predisposes certain races to be low productivity you can target that with economic policy and perpetuate unemployment and poverty.
CHAPTER 5: FUEL ECONOMY
"The coining and circulation of money on a large scale produced new problems, including inaccuracy in striking coins and coins losing weight through usage. Thee problems were the object of repeated investigation, including a Royal Commission of 1849, and of an innovative statistical study by Jevons, who organised a survey of the age and weight of coins held by banking houses from which he calculated the average rate of wear."
From what I've read about him, Jevons was one of the key proponents of applying statistics to economics, and is considered a pioneer within the field more generally. His report on his findings are available here! https://www.econlib.org/library/YPDBooks/Jevons/jvnMME.html?chapter_num=14#book-reader
And there's even a dataset containing his coin measurements within an R library: https://rdrr.io/rforge/alr3/man/jevons.html#heading-4
I'd like to analyze it myself sometime
CHAPTER 2: THE PRIZE FROM FAIRYLAND
In this chapter, the author makes an explosive claim (IMO) that historically, oil companies conspired to delay oil production while masquerading their intent as discovering and developing it. And by consequence, our understanding of the history of oil is completely backwards.
The funny thing is that there's already an existing collection of "Related Readings" to reference—the bibliography! I decided to investigate one purported example:
"After obtaining the oil concession in July 1904, the Germans stalled on building the railway and on drilling for oil. The ‘dilatory handling of the whole affair’, Deutsche Bank acknowledged twenty years later, ‘was carried out for tactical reasons’."
which is confusingly attributed to both "Eichholtz, Die Bagdadbahn: 32" and "Oil and Empire: 24" by Marian Kent. I found the first text, performed OCR and translated from German (plus a French excerpt) to English with the help of Google Translate, only to find dry recollections of various, oil-related transactions (the French turned out to be some contract nullification clause?). Page 24 of Oil and Empire refers to Deutsche Bank's "extreme dilatoriness" in oil production but attributes it to having weak legal claims, which is what Mitchell takes issue with in the citation I referenced!
I may be missing something, but as far as I'm concerned, Mitchell's quotation regarding "tactical reasons" is uncited.
Update!
I found it:
"Die dilatorische Behandlung der Angelegenheit durch die Anatolie erfolgte aus taktischen Gründen, im Einvernehmen mit der Deutschen Bank" from the footnotes on "Die Bagdadbahn", which translates to the quoted phrase. The primary source attribution is hard to make out, it looks like "Petroleumgerechtsame in Mesopotamien" of which I can't find a copy on the web.
CHAPTER 1: MACHINES OF DEMOCRACY
"the Marshall Plan, sought to engineer a political order in Europe built on a new relationship between organised labour and large industrial enterprises, similar to the order America was pioneering at home."
This entire section of the chapter is maybe the most surprising, as it claims the Marshall Plan *aimed to weaken coal miners*, particularly by funding a switch to oil.
I'm able to find some articles about the US-backed switch, but I'd prefer more disinterested sources. While Wikipedia notes that the Plan did seek "for Europe to use oil in place of coal", it also observes that "In Washington, the Joint Chiefs declared that the 'complete revival of German industry, particularly coal mining' was now of 'primary importance' to American security."!
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marshall_Plan
Back to the text - it looks like much of Timothy Mitchell's argumentation about the *aims of policymakers, business leaders, etc* is original. Would love to engage with critiques of his work later.
"The Rockefeller Plan, widely copied in the interwar period, created company unions that allowed workers to negotiate over pay and working conditions while preventing them from joining independent unions. ...Labour movements in the US and other countries...managed to have company-controlled unions made illegal"
Never heard about this before! Some quick reading:
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Company_union
Dang, there was international labor law in the 40s?
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Labor_Relations_Act_of_1935
Looks like the company union issue was "central" to the major labor rights law of the 20th century. Huh, who knew?
"In contrast, fossil fuels are forms of energy in which great quantities of space and time, as it were, have been compressed into a concentrated form...organic matter equivalent to all of the plant and animal life produced over the entire earth for four hundred years was required to produce the fossil fuels we burn today in a single year"
I know peak oil estimation has always been a bit... spotty (to put it mildly). But what are our current forecasts for fossil fuel reserves anyways?
https://ourworldindata.org/how-long-before-we-run-out-of-fossil-fuels
Interestingly, the answer turns out to be a little irrelevant..
INTRODUCTION
"The problem of democracy becomes a question of how to manufacture a new model of the citizen, one whose mind is committed to the idea of democracy."
The Introduction so far has me curious how Iraqis feel about the US-backed democratic project in their country. I'm not able to find hard data, but this NPR segment is illuminating: https://www.npr.org/sections/parallels/2018/04/30/605240844/15-years-after-u-s-invasion-some-iraqis-are-nostalgic-for-saddam-hussein-era
To be clear, it certainly focuses on one angle to the story there is much to be said positively about life post-Saddam; but it counterbalances the American narrative that toppling Saddam was an unmitigated force for good
CHAPTER 3: CONSENT OF THE GOVERNED
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2jv1Zae0sgo
Interesting video on the minimum wage but specifically william’s reference to his book on South Africa. He talks about how white mining unions in South Africa campaigned for minimum wages in order to “civilise” the black people, when actually they just wanted to force their labor out of the market and collect rent. Part of the same imperial mandate logic and ‘self determination’ of only whites as covered in Carbon Democracy.
The minimum wage has the same racist effects today. Race correlates with poverty, education levels, and productivity. Policy makers since the early 20th century have used this to target certain races while remaining veiled behind economic policy. The minimum wage shuts out low productivity workers from the labor market and raises the wages of rent seeking incumbents. When your racist society predisposes certain races to be low productivity you can target that with economic policy and perpetuate unemployment and poverty.