Shailaja Paik on her own 'outstanding' contributions

Scroll.in has an article titled 

‘A celebration of Dalit women’s ideas’:

Mayawati is a Dalit woman. Her ideas made her Chief Minister of India's biggest state. Padmashree awardee, Kalpana Saroj is a Dalit woman. Her ideas made her a very wealthy entrepreneur.  These are the sort of ideas which are worth celebrating for Indian people. However, in America, where there is a danger that a woman of Brahmin ancestry might become President, only the ideas of a very stupid and ignorant Dalit woman are worth celebrating. 

Shailaja Paik, first Dalit winner of a MacArthur Fellowship
‘The sexual and gendered arrangements of the caste system to oppress Dalit Tamasha women remained unexamined,’ said Paik who has written a book on the subject.

If such women were 'oppressed' there would be either no'Tamasha' or Dalit females would be facubg increasing exclusion from this lucrative profession. 

Historian Shailaja Paik has become the first Dalit person to be awarded the prestigious MacArthur Fellowship. Known as the “genius grant”,

It was. They now say it is no such thing. Also they embrace 'Diversity and Inclusivity' and hence give money to diverse shitheads. Not a single one of their 2024 awardees are smart. Apparently, Americans think 'diversity' means stupidity.  

the fellowship comes with a “no-strings-attached” award of $800,000 – a little over Rs 6.5 crore. To put the achievement and the term “genius” in perspective, since its inception in 1981, the fellowship has been given to only 1153 people.

It used to be given to smart people. That's why it gained some prestige. It has none now. To be fair, smart people get tens of millions in funding from the private sector. MacArthur money is peanuts in comparison.

Among its recipients are literary critic Henry Louis Gates Jr, Nobel laureate Derek Walcott, poets AK Ramanujan, Adrienne Rich, John Ashberry and Claudia Rankine, novelist Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, jazz violinist Regina Carter, and paleontologist Stephen Jay Gould. It is a list of the best minds at work in the United States.

It had to start off by giving money to smart people. Now, it can focus on idiots. 

From growing up in a one-room tenement in Pune, Paik won major academic accolades

in shit subjects.  

and is now a professor of history and women’s, gender, and sexuality studies at the University of Cincinnati, US.

that's a shit subject. How come men don't have to sit down to pee? That's totes unfair. 

She works at the intersections of caste, gender and sexuality,

i.e. low-caste female lesbians 

building on the existing groundwork of Dalit feminism to broaden the scope of the questions that can be asked

e.g. why do low-caste female lesbians have to sit down to pee? That's totes unfair.  

and finding new sources that can lead us to fresh answers.

Modi has a penis. So does Joe Biden. That's why women have to sit down to pee. If penises were banned everybody could pee standing up without soaking themselves in urine.  

Paik’s first book Dalit Women’s Education in Modern India: Double Discrimination, is the story of the struggles Dalit women underwent to secure educational rights in India.

They didn't struggle at all. There are no 'educational rights'. Sadly, you actually have to study STEM subjects to become educated. Doing non-STEM subjects makes you stupid and useless.  

Her second work, The Vulgarity of Caste: Dalits, Sexuality, and Humanity in Modern India,

did you know that upper castes don't like kissing? They are trying to get Dalits to give up this practice.  

traces the history and present of Maharashtra’s tamasha dancers, women invariably from marginalised castes sexualised for their performances, at once considered objects of desire and shame.

They are good entertainers. That is why they get paid.  

Paik has been charting the story of Dalit women’s resistance

in which case she would be studying Mayawati's political strategies not writing nonsense about burlesque dancers- some of whom are now upper-caste men.  

and the meanings and possibilities these offer up to emancipatory thought.

What fucking emancipation has this cretin achieved?  

In this conversation, Paik reflects on the significance of her achievement and what it means for her work.

She is a token hire from a shithole country. She is getting some prominence now because it will be useful for White men to denounce Kamala as a Brahmin. Trump already denies she is Black or has African heritage. His people say she is faking her accent. 

Congratulations Shailaja – it’s an honour to be your publisher.

So this is a puff piece, not an objective journalistic interview.  

What does this grant mean to you, and to the world of Dalit women?

It means this cretin is being put in a position where she can be used to attack Kamala.  

To be a Dalit, is to be born Dalit, into a caste system that brands Dalits as impure, polluted, and hence Untouchables.

To emigrate to the US is to choose to join a society which practiced slavery and genocide against darker skinned people. Shailaja's function is to show that Indian-Americans, no matter how smart or successful, are 'slum-dog millionaires'.  

Historically,

under British rule 

even the shadow of Dalits, was deemed to be polluting and dominant castes did not allow Dalits to access knowledge or any form of learning, access public places, carry an umbrella, wear clean and new clothes, stand upright, build two-story houses, build taller doors in their house, or even wear footwear.

the Brits decided to ban Mahars from employment in the Army. Then they saw they could use Dalits, like Ambedkar, against the Indian freedom struggle. Churchill was incessantly gassing on about the injustices done to them... under British rule.

To be a Dalit woman is to be doubly oppressed,

who was oppressing Mayawati when she was Chief Minister? 

that is both by the politics of caste and gender.

Mayawati knows politics. This silly bint does not.  

To be a Dalit woman is to be the “Dalit of the Dalit, slave of the slave.”

because Dalit men are the true oppressors of Dalit women.  

I am ecstatic, exhilarated by this highest honour, to be named a MacArthur fellow.

But the other awardees are equally stupid and useless if not more so.  

The foundation has recognised my hard work over many years and the impact of my work – educational, social, and legislative.

She had not impact on India. Perhaps, she thinks the Americans have passed laws reserving seats for Dalits, women etc.  

This fellowship is a celebration of the enormous contributions of Dalits, especially Dalit women’s ideas, actions, history, and fight for human rights.

Some Dalit women do 'tamasha'. What an enormous contribution that is! 

It is a reminder of the contributions of Dalit studies,

which is zero. These nutters are pissing off everybody. I bet Dalits will lose reservations in Jan. 2030.  

which includes my own labour as a Dalit woman scholar,

If that is 'labour', idleness is better.  

to different fields of knowledge.

She means paranoia.  

After experiencing caste-, gender- and race-based discrimination,

she could only have experienced that last in England or America.  

I have worked my way up and out with grit, determination, and hard work.

Which is why she is now a millionaire like Kalpana Saroj or, like Mayawati, is the head of the biggest state in the US.  

Dalit women shared their lives with me and I am indebted to them as well as to my advisors, mentors, colleagues, and friends who were a part of this journey.

But Dalit women in India aren't indebted to you at all. You have done nothing for them.  

I hope this achievement will strengthen the fight of Dalits and non-Dalits against caste discrimination in and beyond South Asia.

e.g. in Pakistan?  

At a time when the Indian establishment shies from caste

It doesn't. Caste is used to catch votes. Paranoid Ambedkarites are pissing off everybody. In 2030, there may be no Modi capable of renewing reservations for another ten years. 

and clamps down on researchers

i.e. India won't give money to Dalits to go abroad to research Dalits in India.  

looking at issues like caste and discrimination, how will the MacArthur grant alter perceptions?

It won't. All the other awardees are shit. It would look odd if they didn't have at least one Indian-American who was shit.  

I hope the MacArthur fellowship’s recognition of the impact of history, humanities, and Dalit studies will help deepen conversations on caste social inequities, strengthening anti-caste, anti-race, and anti-patriarchal work.

Sadly, people in India who hear about this will look at this silly woman's books and realize she is as stupid as shit.  

The caste system pervades Indian society, politics, and economy.

The shitty parts of Indian society maybe. But there are plenty of fields where Ambedkarite nutters are absent.  

Nobody can shy away from this fact.

Nor can they shy away from the fact that this woman is stupid and ignorant.  

High-caste elites love to pretend that caste does not exist,

because it doesn't- for them. There may be people who eat their own shit but we are welcome to pretend they don't exist while at a dinner party. It is not the case that the hostess is obliged to inquire if her guests would prefer to squeeze out a turd and to dine upon it.  

but they are oblivious to the casteist horrors of contemporary reality.

just as they are to the plight of those who eat only their own shit but are currently suffering from constipation.  

The fellowship’s recognition of my work underlines the need to focus on the monster of caste,

The guys running the MacArthur foundation are welcome to focus on monsters or vampires or ghouls of various descriptions. The plain fact is, all the 2024 awardees are shit.  

how it has operated over centuries,

Kamala's maternal grandparents were Brahmins. They must have been oppressing the fuck out of Dalits- right? Shailaja could come in useful to attack Kamala who currently looks as though she may be a two term President.  

and continues to manifest itself in different forms to privilege those who are positively advantaged

e.g. Kamala. Her mother was a 'Scientist'! Science is very evil. Did you know that scientific advances can create lots of wealth in the 'Knowledge Economy'? Brahmins go in for 'Science'. Look at Vivek Ramaswamy!  

and disempower the oppressed, marginalised, and vulnerable.

not to mention those who eat only their own shit.  Did you know Kamala refuses to feast upon her own turds? She even refuses to force Biden to eat her faeces. I tell you, Trump is right! She isn't 'Black'. She is Indian and 'high caste' to boot!

The foundation says the grant is given to a select few American citizens who “show exceptional merit and promise for continued and enhanced creative work”.

At one time, this may have been true. It isn't any longer.  

So, what are you going to do now? Does the grant free you from teaching work and help focus on writing?

If it frees her from teaching, maybe it isn't wasted money.  

The grant is given to American residents and citizens. I am currently working on my third monograph and two co-edited volumes. The fellowship will help me focus on my research and writing and continue my contribution to anti-caste, anti-patriarchy, and anti-race work.

Sadly, even she won't write about anti-eating-your-own-shit bigotry.  

What is your next book going to be about?
My next book will explore the “sex-gender-caste” complex, as I call it, in 20th-century India.

Rahul should become a 'tamasha' dancer. He should marry a nice Dalit homosexual. Then he can travel back in time to the 20th century and become Prime Minister.  

I have discussed some aspects of this work in my book The Vulgarity of Caste. I am also working on two co-edited books – one is on caste and race and the other is a Dalit reader.

Both will be shit. 

Will you consider writing a book for a wider general readership?
I hope to do so!

I hope she gets a good editor or better yet a ghost-writer. Surely a book about her parents would be popular and serve a good purpose. 

The last decade has seen the strengthening of new solidarities between Blacks and Dalits.

let them unite against Kamala. 

How much do academic books, which are not widely read, impact this?
I agree that academic books have a narrow circulation, though they can be very impactful, if carefully and strategically advertised beyond academic fora. Alongside academic explorations, non-academic workshops, conferences, and public discussions will help strengthen new solidarities.

Sujatha Gidla's 'ants among elephants' did have an impact. But she was a STEM savant- a literal rocket scientist- before she went into FinTech.  

Tell us a bit about what drew you to Tamasha artists.
Tamasha is a popular form of public theatre practised predominantly by Dalits.

Talented ones. But it did not originate amongst them.  

It is considered traditional Dalit cultural performance art

in so far as they excel in it. But gay dudes have gotten into it and are making good money.  

– a secular travelling public theatre that involves music and dance. It is often branded ashlil (vulgar) by the larger society. I grew up watching Tamasha, and even danced to and sang some of its songs. However, as a child, I had no idea about the inherent politics of caste, gender, and sexuality.

Because her parents were smart and hoped their kids would learn something useful in skool. Her dad saved up money and graduated in Agricultural Science.  

It was in 2003 while I was conducting interviews with a range of Dalit women, that I first encountered Tamasha artists. I was always intrigued about them because I had always watched them on local TV but I hadn’t talked to them in real life. After I finished my first book, I decided to devote my attention to understanding the lives of Tamasha women and how they were tied to male leaders, poets, and state patronage and regulation, which disproportionately affected them.

You have to have talent to do well in the entertainment industry. Highlight the discipline, dedication, and ability to innovate of such entertainers by all means. Explain how and why 'tamasha' was able to cross-over into Bollywood. Unlike the Madras cinema industry, Bombay cinema was dominated by people from Peshawar or Calcutta. 'Tamasha' was one of the routes by which it acquired a more earthy flavour.  

Scholarly and popular treatments of Tamasha have rarely commented on the conditions of disempowerment, poverty, and caste violence under which women performed.

Because everybody in all industries operated under the same conditions. Why not write a book on the injustice done to women workers in the FinTech industry by the fact that they have to sit down to pee?  

These studies have perpetuated Tamasha’s reputation for sexual innuendo and moral depravity, displacing Tamasha women from the centre of their commentaries and reducing Tamasha women to objects of pleasure that serve only to corrupt men and shape Touchable men’s subjectivity.

Did you know that Dalit men think their women are very ugly and thus refuse to have sex with them?  

Tamasha is thus looked at as a commodity through which men’s emotions and masculine fantasies are created, circulated, and regulated.

But nothing of the sort actually happens. Lots of men refuse to spend money watching burlesque shows. They are no different from other men. It isn't the case that the Taliban has given up sex because Afghanistan lacks 'tamasha' dancers.  If this cretin is right about High Caste men's heterosexual desires being 'created' by Dalit tamasha dancers, surely the best thing to do- if you are against male heterosexuality- would be to ban that type of industry? 

Everybody praises high-caste poets, writers,

if they are good- sure. But only good tamasha dancers are well paid.  

and details abound of the music and musical instruments. The sexual and gendered arrangements of the caste system as they operated to oppress Dalit Tamasha women remained unexamined.

Did you know that many female, Dalit, tamasha dancers don't have a penis? Why has this not been studied properly by learned Professors?  

These are the reasons I chose to study Tamasha as a microcosm of how caste domination operates.

Though it is the one field where there may be 'reverse discrimination'. Women get paid more than male female-impersonators. High caste men don't object to low-caste women being entertainers though they may kill a high-caste woman who takes up that profession and 'brings shame to the community'.  

I have written in detail about my focus on Tamasha and my new methods in my book The Vulgarity of Caste.

It is foolish. Dalits are a hardworking, pious, community. They don't approve of vulgarity. However, there always have been 'vulgar' spectacles which are linked to the fertility of the soil or the marriage season. It is merely an appearance not the thing in itself just as an action film which displays lots of fighting and killing does not actually involve anybody getting hurt.  

Your work breaks new ground compared to the work of researchers, both Savarna feminists and Dalit men, in framing how the freedoms of Dalit women, especially Tamasha artists, have been contained and limited.

It hasn't. Talented artistes make money and invest in property and education for family members. Some 'cross-over' into the mainstream and get State level or National awards.  

You’ve also been critical of Dr Ambedkar’s thinking in this regard.

He married a Brahmin.  

What do you hope the impact of your intervention is in how we think of gender and sexuality in its intersection with caste in our daily lives?

She hopes people will think she is smart. But she isn't at all. Still, some Dalits studying worthless shite will start writing worthless PhD theses even more illiterate than hers. But will America reward them with tenure? That is the question.  

I have made critical interventions in how we think about caste oppression as it intersects with gender and sexuality in our daily lives.

No. She says she will do so, but never does so because she is too stupid. 

For example, I have theorized about the “sex-gender-caste” complex, by which I mean the sexual and gendered arrangements of the caste system as they oppress Dalit Tamasha women.

Her theorization consists of saying 'I have theorized 'sex-gender-caste'' but she has never actually done so.  

The control of sex and female sexuality leads to the social reproduction of caste.

Nope. Lack of such control may 'reproduce' a class of low-born people who will inherit nothing from unknown fathers. But drug addiction would have the same result as would military conquest and enslavement.  

Women are to be regulated in terms of sexuality because any transgression would threaten caste hierarchy.

Nonsense! If some chick fucks a whole bunch of dudes and ends up with a baby, there is no threat to anybody. She is welcome to earn her bread as a prostitute or a beggar or a low paid drudge. On the other hand, if she has talent and rises economically by her own efforts, she can employ muscle-men to beat the fuck out of anybody who taunts her. At that point, everybody becomes very fucking polite to her.  

The sex-gender-caste complex cunningly amalgamated a range of dancers, singers, and Tamasha women into the category of “prostitute”.

No. Some such women made money by doing sex work. But so did some men. Currently, on Netflix there is a drama series about a Chartered Accountant who has to become a male escort for financial reasons. I may mention, the film 'Pretty Woman' was based on my own experiences as an articled clerk. Julia Roberts had hired me for the night but I burst out crying and told her my tale of woe. She returned to Hollywood and made a high grossing film about it. Sadly, she didn't buy me a nice outfit before decamping.  

The caste-based feudal agrarian slavery limited Dalit freedom to act, speak, think, dress, and have honour, virtue, education, and wealth – dominant and high castes forced them to follow prescribed occupations not of their own choice. By studying these arrangements, I hope to show how such inequality continues into the present.

It doesn't.  Still, if High Caste 'post colonial theorists' can pretend Whitey is still running things, why not let this stupid darky pretend that Brahmins are filling her head with shit because they don't want Dalit savants to say anything useful or sensible? Also, Kamala could be a two-term POTUS. Just as Obama was actually born in Kenya, so too Kamala isn't 'Black' at all. She is a Brahmin just like Vivek Ramaswamy. Her claim to be 'middle class' is completely bogus. -

From the Round Table Conferences in the 1930s

which failed- 

to the World Conference Against Racism in Durban in 2001

which was hijacked by the anti-Israel lobby 

to you being awarded the MacArthur Fellowship, marginalised communities in India have often found themselves gaining recognition abroad that is seldom available in India.

Because Indians actually know about India.  

How do you reflect on this pattern, and what does it say about Indian society?

It says that Indians know Indian society. Americans don't.  

I am happy the MacArthur Fellowship has recognised my unique contributions and the impact of history, humanities, and Dalit studies.

She is happy that they are recognizing the unique contributions of diverse shitheads.  

Over the last 25 years, I have also received many fellowships to support my research and writing, including the Frederick Burkhardt fellowship from the American Council of Learned Societies, the Stanford Humanities Center fellowship, the National Endowment for the Humanities – American Institute of Indian Studies senior long-term fellowship, the Ford Foundation fellowship, the Charles Phelps Taft Research Center fellowship, the Luce Foundation fellowship, among others.

All of which may have started well but now are shit.  

My research and writing have made deeper impacts – educational, social, and legislative – and my books and articles are read by academics and non-academics in different parts of the world.

They are laughed at.  

Activists have used my scholarly writings to initiate change.

This is true. The State legislature of Wisconsin is planning to reserve seats for Lesbian Dalit tamasha artistes.  

The MacArthur fellowship celebrates my outstanding contributions to the global conversation on anti-race, anti-patriarchal, and anti-caste movements and transnational feminism as well as has provided me an opportunity to strengthen this even further.

And yet, the first female POTUS will be of Brahmin, not Dalit, descent. The US Constitution must be amended so only disabled Dalit Lesbians, provided they are married to a goat, can hold high office.  

The answer to this last question you raised, lies in the statement you made earlier that the Indian establishment “shies away from caste

There is a massive caste based affirmative action program.  

and clamps down on researchers looking at issues like caste and discrimination.”

Nonsense! GoI won't pay for people to go abroad to research stuff about India because the relevant information is available only in India.  

I hope reviewers (and the Indian society at large) recognise the value of excellent scholarly contributions and the significance of new perspectives, unique methods, and the creation of new knowledge that is important to bring about change.

She got a scholarship to go abroad just about the time Mayawati became CM of UP for the first time. Mayawati changed things in India. This cretin has achieved nothing. Still, if she gained affirmative action so as to teach nonsense to other victims of affirmative action- why should we grudge her some modest financial success?  

Foucault on the Chicago school

In 1979, Foucault wrote in 'birth of biopolitics'. 

The American neo-liberals

he means 'neo-Classical' economists

say this: It is strange that classical political economy has always solemnly declared that the production of goods depends on three factors—land, capital, and labor—while leaving the third unexplored. It has remained, in a way, a blank sheet on which the economists have written nothing.

No. They believed there was a forth factor, 'Entrepreneurship', whose reward was profit, which combined the other three. Labor Economics was and is a flourishing field.  It has nothing to do with Marxian stupidity.

Of course, we can say that Adam Smith’s economics does begin with a reflection on labor, inasmuch as for Smith the division of labor and its specification is the key which enabled him to construct his economic analysis.

Why bother saying any such thing? Smith died long ago. Back then, fossil fuel was hardly used in industry. Industrial Capitalism was in its infancy. It made sense to have a 'labor theory of value' because the size of the population determined how much rent could be extracted.

Nobody actually reads Smith.  Guys who do 'Labor Econ' are using computers and sophisticated econometric techniques.  

But apart from this sort of first step, this first opening, and since that moment, classical political economy has never analyzed labor itself, or rather it has constantly striven to neutralize it, and to do this by reducing it exclusively to the factor of time.

There were no full-time classical economists. There were just some guys who wrote on economic matters from time to time. Their 'analysis' was rough and ready.  

This is what Ricardo did when, wishing to analyze the nature of the increase of labor,

which was an increase in the number of laborers  

the labor factor, he only ever defined this increase in a quantitative way according to the temporal variable.

Why did he not include ghosts and angels and imps and elves in the labour force? Was it because he was a rich businessman who wanted to get richer by getting rid of the Corn Law which helped only the landed gentry. 

That is to say, he thought that the increase or change of labor, the growth of the labor factor, could be nothing other than the presence of an additional number of workers on the market,

as opposed to the ghosts of Roman legionaries getting jobs as waiters.  

that is to say, the possibility of employing more hours of labor thus made available to capital.

Ricardo understood that productivity could rise through specialization and trade on the basis of comparative advantage.  His rough and ready approach assumed that market forces would cause increases in productivity to spread rapidly. 

Consequently there is a neutralization of the nature itself of labor, to the advantage of this single quantitative variable of hours of work and time,

No. Smith and Ricardo and so forth had a notion of productivity. They firmly believed that lazy or stupid people had very low productivity.  

and basically classical economics never got out of this Ricardian reduction of the problem of labor to the simple analysis of the quantitative variable of time.

Nobody wants to get out of that quantitative variable because to do so is to die.  Still, it is true that Napoleon would not have been defeated if only he had been able to escape the tyranny of the calendar. Basically, he should have said in 1813 that he wanted to skip the years 1814 and 1815 to avoid military defeat. 

And then we find an analysis, or rather non-analysis of labor in Keynes which is not so different or any more developed than Ricardo’s analysis.

Keynes relied on Pigou's work. But by then it was people like Sir Arnold Plant (Coase was his student) who were doing the most useful work. Labor econ and scientific management were taking off. The Great War had shown the vital need for higher productivity. In the USSR, Taylorism (i.e. 'time-motion' studies) was a cult. Interestingly, the Soviets- who knew Marx had said 'to each according to his contribution' till scarcity disappears- put a lot of effort into work-measurement. 

What is labor according to Keynes? It is a factor of production, a productive factor, but which in itself is passive and only finds employment, activity, and actuality thanks to a certain rate of investment, and on condition clearly that this is sufficiently high.

Nonsense! Keynes knew there were plenty of self-employed people. They too were badly affected by the Depression. The problem was the 'downward stickiness' of wages which prevented a frictionless fall in real wages followed by a 'real balance effect' such that those holding money would be richer and thus more inclined to spend. This was because Expectations and 'Animal Spirits' had taken a hit. 

Starting from this criticism of classical economics and its analysis of labor, the problem for the neo-liberals is basically that of trying to introduce labor into the field of economic analysis.

This was successfully done long ago. In the Sixties, one innovation was the use of game theory to model job-search, hiring etc. A good example is the solution to the 'Secretary Problem'.  

A number of them attempted this, the first being Theodore Schultz, who published a number of articles in the years 1950–1960 the result of which was a book published in 1971 with the title Investment in Human Capital.

He won the Nobel in 1979. 

More or less at the same time, Gary Becker published a book with the same title,

they had worked together 

and then there is a third text by Mincer,

who gave an equation relating earnings to experience and schooling. 

which is quite fundamental and more concrete and precise than the others, on the school and wages, which appeared in 1975. In truth, the charge made by neo-liberalism that classical economics forgets labor and has never subjected it to economic analysis may seem strange when we think that, even if it is true that Ricardo entirely reduced the analysis of labor to the analysis of the quantitative variable of time, on the other hand there was someone called Marx who ... and so on.

Ricardo and Marx weren't doing econometrics using large data sets. Both were wrong. There is no fucking 'iron law of wages'.  

Fine. The neo-liberals practically never argue with Marx for reasons that we may think are to do with economic snobbery,

back during the Depression, people thought he might be on to something. Indeed, there were economists like Samuelson who thought Soviet living standards might overtake those of America. By the Seventies, nobody believed this because even crazy people like the guy who shot Kennedy showed no great inclination to linger in the worker's paradise.  

it’s not important. But if they took the trouble to argue with Marx

Samuelson did. He thought the 'transformation problem' was a special case from which nothing could be gleaned about the nature of production. The fact is, many different types of enterprise can 'internalize externalities'. Some may do smart things. But all can also do stupid shit. What is helpful is if stupidity is weeded out quickly. We may prefer this happens through bankruptcy rather than a Commissar getting shot in the head. 

I think it is quite easy to see what they could say [about] his analysis.

Samuelson said something stupid. He was an economist and thus could do nothing else. 

They would say: It is quite true that Marx makes labor the linchpin, one of the essential linchpins, of his analysis. But what does he do when he analyzes labor? What is it that he shows the worker sells? Not his labor, but his labor power.

He sells his time. He may do no work and have no labor power. It is up to his employer to detect this and sack the fellow.  

He sells his labor power for a certain time against a wage established on the basis of a given situation of the market corresponding to the balance between the supply and demand of labor power.

This may or may not be the case. At the margin, an enterprise may go bust and thus its employees get nothing.  

And the work performed by the worker is work that creates a value, part of which is extorted from him.

No. Extortion is what happens when a guy takes money from you in return for not sticking a knife in you.  

Marx clearly sees in this process the very mechanics or logic of capitalism. And in what does this logic consist? Well, it consists in the fact that the labor in all this is “abstract,” that is to say, the concrete labor transformed into labor power, measured by time, put on the market and paid by wages, is not concrete labor; it is labor that has been cut off from its human reality, from all its qualitative variables, and precisely—this is indeed, in fact, what Marx shows—the logic of capital reduces labor to labor power and time.

If so, one cold equally say that the logic of Communism reduces leisure to leisure power and time. Did you know that Stalin refused to abolish death? Had he done so, Soviet retirees could have enjoyed an eternity of leisure.  

It makes it a commodity and reduces it to the effects of value produced.

Labor is a service. Marx said his theory did not apply to services. Thus, a guy who runs a Manpower Agency- e.g. sending cleaners to different establishments as the need arises- is not engaged in the slave trade. He is merely acting as a commission agent.  

Now, say the neo-liberals—and this is precisely where their criticism departs from the criticism made by Marx—what is responsible for this “abstraction.”

Abstract thinking is responsible for abstraction. Thus if I say, penises cause Rape and Rape causes the trauma that is Neo-Liberalism then I am speaking of penises in the abstract not my own penis which is why you should not cut it off.  

For Marx, capitalism itself is responsible;

But penises cause rape which causes the trauma which is Neo-Liberalism which is the only thing which enables Capitalism to survive.  

it is the fault of the logic of capital and of its historical reality.

People who spend a lot of money to escape from Socialist shitholes to Capitalist America find no fault with its logic or historical reality. Still, they should definitely cut off their own dicks because dicks cause RAPE! 

Whereas the neo-liberals say: The abstraction of labor, which actually only appears through the variable of time,

Nope. It appears in one period economies described in textbooks. 

is not the product of real capitalism,

nothing abstract is produced by anything real- save by the intervention of, in the case of Econ, the really stupid.  

[but] of the economic theory that has been constructed of capitalist production. Abstraction is not the result of the real mechanics of economic processes;

unless people think they might get paid for doing it.  

it derives from the way in which these processes have been reflected in classical economics.

Lots of top economists have never read any 'Classical' economist. They did a Math PhD and then got hired to work in some remunerative Econ/Fintech field. They don't derive shit from anything which does already have a mathematical representation. Kantorovich was supposed to have provided some such thing for Marxism. But the computational cost was too high. 

And it is precisely because classical economics was not able to take on this analysis of labor in its concrete specification

i.e. some fairy story about how Capitalists were sodomizing and extorting money from horny handed proles 

and qualitative modulations,

Proles were screaming shrilly. Then Capitalists added insult to injury by shitting on their tits. Proles cried and cried.  

it is because it left this blank page, gap or vacuum in its theory, that a whole philosophy, anthropology, and politics, of which Marx is precisely the representative, rushed in.

He was a guy with a PhD in Law who did some okay journalism. Maybe if the 1848 Revolution had succeeded, he and Engels would have been as influential as Lasalle. 

Consequently, we should not continue with this, in a way, realist criticism made by Marx, accusing real capitalism of having made real labor abstract; we should undertake a theoretical criticism of the way in which labor itself became abstract in economic discourse.

Why bother? Economic- as opposed to Management- discourse is abstract. If I say 'your Labor Supply function is mis-specified' I don't mean that there is anything wrong with the labor you yourself supply to the enterprise.  

And, the neoliberals say, if economists see labor in such an abstract way,

rather than see it as suffering incessant rape and extortion at the hands of Capitalists 

if they fail to grasp its specification,

viz the vast quantities of jizz dripping from its anus 

its qualitative modulations,

e.g shrieks of pain 

and the economic effects of these modulations,

e.g. rich peeps driving nice cars 

it is basically because classical economists only ever envisaged the object of economics as processes of capital, of investment, of the machine, of the product, and so on.

they should have focused on the sodomization of the proletariat and the fact that Capitalists took a  vast and stinky shit upon its tits.  

Derrida's gormless Grammatology

In, 'Of Grammatology' Derrida writes- 

By a slow movement whose necessity is hardly perceptible, everything that for at least some twenty centuries tended toward and finally succeeded in being gathered under the name of language is beginning to let itself be transferred to, or at least summarized under, the name of writing.

This movement was neither slow nor was its necessity not obvious rather than 'hardly perceptible'. The explosion in literacy- even amongst languages which previously had no written form- was driven by religious, economic and military considerations. Nationalism or sub-nationalism was often driven by a literacy program in a mother tongue. A new science of phonetics involving a scientific notation was developed to allow accurate transcription of ideolects. Bernard Shaw's 'Pygmalion' demonstrated this. Upper class actresses were now able to speak in the accent of a costermonger. There was a fashion for 'dialect novels' in the mid-nineteenth century. Rising affluence meant that new types of consumers for reading matter were entering the market.

By the way, many things never succeeded in being gathered under the name of language. This is why my farts haven't won me the Nobel prize for literature. Also, though we can 'say it with flowers' or gifts of jewelry, neither flowers nor jewelry have ever been part of language. 

By a hardly perceptible necessity, it seems as though the concept of writing no longer indicating a particular, derivative, auxiliary form of language in general (whether understood as communication, relation, expression, signification, constitution of meaning or thought, etc.),

There were plenty of hieroglyphs and other symbols which had not derived from spoken language.  We now use emojis when texting. Are they part of language? Yes, but they may be a passing fad. 

no longer designating the exterior surface, the insubstantial double of a major signifier, the signifier of the signifier—is beginning to go beyond the extension of language.

Writing does not go beyond the 'extension' of language even if, as in Derrida's case, it is gibberish.  

In all senses of the word, writing thus comprehends language.

Nope. I can write in a language I don't comprehend- Ο Πίνδαρος ρουφάει πολύ- while some of my own poetry is incompehensible even to me. 

Not that the word “writing” has ceased to designate the signifier of the signifier,

It has never done so. The signifier of the signifier is just the signifier unless there is a double entendre or some sort of encryption. That has to do with intention or reception. It has nothing to do with writing.  

but it appears, strange as it may seem, that “signifier of the signifier” no longer defines accidental doubling and fallen secondarity.

It never did so. Suppose I say 'Silence!' This signifies the need for silence but it may be I have some other intention- e.g. the wish to humiliate the speaker. There is no 'doubling' or 'secondarity' here even if someone is transcribing my words as I speak.  

“Signifier of the signifier” describes

the fart of the fart? 

on the contrary the movement of language:

e.g. its moving to California to become a movie star 

in its origin, to be sure, but one can already suspect that an origin whose structure can be expressed as “signifier of the signifier” conceals and erases itself in its own production.

Which is why it is the fart of the fart which conceals and erases itself even at the moment of its first release from the anus.  

There the signified always already functions as a signifier. The secondarity that it seemed possible to ascribe to writing alone

could also be ascribed to speaking rather than doing 

affects all signifieds in general, affects them always already, the moment they enter the game.

but only in the manner of a fart of a fart which erases its own concealment by being very fucking smelly.  

There is not a single signified that escapes, even if recaptured, the play of signifying references that constitute language.

Only in the sense that no fart is not the summation of all that can be said or thought.  

The advent of writing is the advent of this play;

No it isn't. The advent of writing had to do with a more complex type of commerce and administration. Writing is costly. It has to pay for itself though, no doubt, some may make of it a leisure activity. But that still produces utility. 

today such a play is coming into its own, effacing the limit starting from which one had thought to regulate the circulation of signs,

This cunt couldn't regulate shit.  

drawing along with it all the reassuring signifieds, reducing all the strongholds, all the out-of-bounds shelters that watched over the field of language.

There were no such 'shelters'. Nobody is watching over 'the field of language' when we say things like 'you iz my cute and cuddly itty baby! Yes, you iz!'  

This, strictly speaking, amounts to destroying the concept of “sign” and its entire logic.

No. Strictly speaking this is nonsense.  

Undoubtedly it is not by chance that this overwhelming supervenes at the moment when the extension of the concept of language effaces all its limits.

That would only happen when saying 'X exists' causes an X to actually come into existence.  At that point language would cease to represent aspects of reality. It would create reality. But, even so, only if any user of language can say 'Let there be Light' and cause a universe to come into existence, would it be the case that language has effaced its limits. Otherwise it is some supernatural power which is doing the heavy lifting.

We shall see that this overwhelming and this effacement have the same meaning, are one and the same phenomenon.

No we won't. The thing is silly and utterly false.  

It is as if the Western concept of language

which, for Saussure, owed a lot to Sanskrit 

(in terms of what, beyond its plurivocity and beyond the strict and problematic opposition of speech [parole] and language [langue],

there is nothing problematic here. Speech is particular and predicated of a speaker. Language is general. It may be a universal which can be predicated of a particular set of agents. We say 'Eliot speaks English'. We don't say 'English speaks Eliot'.  

attaches it in general to phonematic or glossematic production, to language, to voice, to hearing, to sound and breadth, to speech) were revealed today as the guise or disguise of a primary writing:

The notion of the Logos is ancient. 'In the beginning was the word'. The Bible, like the Quran and the Veda is held by the orthodox to be uncreated and eternal.  

1 more fundamental than that which, before this conversion, passed for the simple “supplement to the spoken word” (Rousseau).

It was no such thing in Rousseau's time. Saying 'lock up that Swiss cunt' would achieve nothing. You actually need to procure a lettre de cachet signed by the King and one of his Ministers. 

Either writing was never a simple “supplement,”

It wasn't. However, there were certain esoteric traditions which held that the highest truths should not be written down. One does not put a naked sword into the hands of a child.  

or it is urgently necessary to construct a new logic of the “supplement.”

Otherwise the sky will fall on our heads.  

It is this urgency which will guide us further in reading Rousseau.

Why read the cunt save for the pleasure of his prose style? He died long ago and was a crazy as a coot.  

These disguises are not historical contingencies

they don't exist. Rousseau was mad. Get over it.  

that one might admire or regret. Their movement was absolutely necessary, with a necessity which cannot be judged by any other tribunal.

The whole world judged Rousseau to be as stupid as shit. Nobody emulates his practice of handing over his infants to the local orphanage. Also they don't give themselves a hernia jerking off. 

The privilege of the phone does not depend upon a choice that could have been avoided.

It has no privilege. It is just a sound. Either people listen to you or what you say doesn't matter.  

It responds to a moment of economy (let us say of the “life” of “history” or of “being as self-relationship”).

Why say anything so foolish? Even animals can produce sounds. If this get them fed, well and good. Otherwise they should move on.  

The system of “hearing (understanding) -oneself-speak” through the phonic substance—which presents itself as the nonexterior, ((8)) nonmundane, therefore nonempirical or noncontingent signifier—has necessarily dominated the history of the world

Deeds matter. Hearing or saying things don't matter unless they result in deeds.  

during an entire epoch, and has even produced the idea of the world, the idea of world-origin, that arises from the difference between the worldly and the nonworldly, the outside and the inside, ideality and nonideality, universal and nonuniversal, transcendental and empirical, etc .

Useless shite. Metaphysics was cool when it was part of theology and Bishops and Cardinals lived large. Now that shite is taught only to retards.  

With an irregular and essentially precarious success, this movement would apparently have tended, as toward its telos, to confine writing to a secondary and instrumental function:

No. Writing would prevail because letters could be sent over vast distances. Books could 'speak' to people millennium after millennium.  

translator of a full speech that was fully present (present to itself, to its signified, to the other, the very condition of the theme of presence in general),

Presence doesn't matter unless you want others to smell your farts. Derrida may have heard of the telephone.  

technics in the service of language, spokes-man, interpreter of an originary speech itself shielded from interpretation.

Nothing is shielded from interpretation. I am welcome to interpret all hermeneutics as the fart of a fart which is offering beejays to hobos.   

Technics in the service of language: I am not invoking a general essence of technics

which is unknowable 

which would be already familiar to us and would help us in understanding the narrow and historically determined concept of writing as an example.

There is no need. Writing is both a substitute and a complement to speech. Two businessmen have a face to face meeting and then one sends the other a draft contract. The other guy suggests some alterations. There is a second meeting and a final draft is agreed. It may come into operation even before anything is signed (indeed, the businessmen may decide not to put anything down in writing) but verbal assent is enough to create a contract.  

I believe on the contrary that a certain sort of question about the meaning and origin of writing

different scripts have different origins and functions.  

precedes, or at least merges with, a certain type of question about the meaning and origin of technics.

That question is easily answered. Do smart stuff otherwise other peeps will do that smart stuff and grow stronger than you and thus will be able to take over your territory.  

That is why the notion of technique can never simply clarify the notion of writing.

This cunt can't clarify shit.  

It is therefore as if what we call language could have been in its origin and in its end only a moment, an essential but determined mode, a phenomenon, an aspect, a species of writing.

By the time this cunt was writing this, natural language was distinguished from computer and logical languages. Grammatology was useless. Montague grammar was useful. Lots of money could be made in finding a way to get machines to use 'natural language'. 

And as if it had succeeded in making us forget this, and in wilfully misleading us,

not to mention mischievously shitting on our tits 

only in the course of an adventure: as that adventure itself. All in all a short enough adventure.

Tintin would refuse to go on any such adventure. It would be too fucking boring.  

It merges with the history that has associated technics and logocentric metaphysics for nearly three millennia.

Fuck off! Metaphysics was shit. Science and Technology weren't.  

And it now seems to be approach-ing what is really its own exhaustion; under the circumstances—and this is no more than one example among others—of this death of the civilization of the book, of which so much is said and which manifests itself particularly through a convulsive proliferation of libraries.

Books get better if the market for good books increases. But books were increasingly having to compete with TV and Cinema and internet porn.  There are now students at Ivy League Colleges who have never read an entire book.

All appearances to the contrary, this death of the book undoubtedly announces (and in a certain sense always has announced) nothing but a death of speech (of a so-called full speech) and a new mutation in the history of writing, in history as writing.

Not really. Books might change as the market changes. They may become 'multi-media' or focus more on gay vampires and sexy werewolves. 

Announces it at a distance of a few centuries. It is on that scale that we must reckon it here, being careful not to neglect the quality of a very heterogeneous historical duration: the acceleration is such, and such its qualitative meaning, that one would be equally wrong in making a careful evaluation according to past rhythms. “Death of speech” is of course a metaphor here: before we speak of disappearance, we must think of a new situation for speech, of its subordination within a structure of which it will no longer be the archon.

That happened long ago to most vernaculars. An English or French peasant was at the mercy of those who knew Latin.  

To affirm in this way that the concept of writing exceeds and comprehends that of language, presupposes of course a certain definition of Ianguage and of writing.

No. Both are welcome to be Tarskian primitives. We may say such and such text 'exceeds' the language of its own day. It is only now that we can understand its true import.  

If we do not attempt to justify it, we shall be giving in to the movement of inflation that we have just mentioned, which has also taken over the word “writing,” and that not fortuitously. For some time now, as a matter of fact, here and there, by a gesture and for motives that are profoundly necessary, whose degradation is easier to denounce than it is to disclose their origin, one says “language” for action, movement, thought, reflection, consciousness, unconsciousness, experience, affectivity, etc. Now we tend to say “writing” for all that and more: to designate not only the physical gestures of literal pictographic or ideographic inscription, but also the totality of what makes it possible; and also, beyond the signifying face, the signified face itself.

This is false. We speak of 'body language' not 'body writing'.  

And thus we say “writing” for all that gives rise to an inscription in general, whether it is literal or not and even if what it distributes in space is alien to the order of the voice: cinematography, choreography, of course, but also pictorial, musical, sculptural “writing.”

This is not the case in English.  

One might also speak of athletic writing,

One doesn't because one isn't a French twat.

and with even greater certainty of military or political writing in view of the techniques that govern those domains today.

That just means writing about politics or the military.  

All this to describe not only the system of notation secondarily connected with these activities but the essence and the content of these activities themselves.

It is also in this sense that the contemporary biologist speaks of writing and pro-gram in relation to the most elementary processes of information within the living cell.

They are not speaking of natural language but a code which it is difficult to decipher or to elements describable by chemical formulae.  

And, finally, whether it has essential limits or not, the entire field covered by the cybernetic program will be the field of writing.

No. Speech recognition, Large Language Models and Natural language programming are a small part of the field.  

If the theory of cybernetics is by itself to oust all metaphysical concepts—including the concepts of soul, of life, of value, of choice, of memory—which until recently served to separate the machine from man, it must conserve the notion of writing, trace, grammè [written mark], or grapheme, until its own historico-metaphysical character is also exposed.

No. Everybody already knew about the 'Turing Test'. Cybernetics is expensive. It can't focus on talking nonsense. Either it pays for itself or it will wither on the vine attracting only retards.  

Even before being determined as human (with all the distinctive characteristics that have always been attributed to man and the entire system of significations that they imply) or nonhuman, the grammè—or the grapheme—would thus name the element.

To whom? Either this is a word people find it useful to have in their vocabulary or it isn't worth a tinker's fart.  

An element without simplicity.

The thing is useless.  

An element, whether it is understood as the medium or as the irreducible atom, of the arche-synthesis in general, of what one must forbid oneself to define within the system of oppositions of metaphysics, of what consequently one should not even call experience in general, that is to say the origin of meaning in general. 

but which is useless in every particular and utter nonsense in general. 

This situation has always already been announced.

What had been announced and universally accepted was that metaphysics was shit. Theology died when the Vatican decided that Faith is founded on a Mystery.  

Why is it today in the process of making itself known as such and after the fact?

Nothing of the sort was happening. Husserl's phenomenology depended on a transcendental ego- which the French, speaking generally, rejected. But he himself had come to see his shite was shit.  By the late Thirties he was writing- “Philosophy as science, as serious, rigorous, indeed apodictically rigorous science -- the dream is over'. On the other hand the 'Philosophy of Science'- i.e. Popper, Lakatos, Kuhn etc.' had taken off in a big way though it too turned out to be useless. 

This question would call forth an interminable analysis. Let us simply choose some points of departure in order to introduce the limited remarks to which I shall confine myself. I have already alluded to theoretical mathematics; its writing—whether understood as a sensible graphie [manner of writing] (and that already presupposes an identity, therefore an ideality, of its form, which in principle renders absurd the so easily admitted notion of the “sensible signifier”), or understood as the ideal synthesis of signifieds or a trace operative on another level, or whether it is understood, more profoundly, as the passage of the one to the other—has never been absolutely linked with a phonetic production.

Nor have road signs. So what?  

Within cultures practicing so-called phonetic writ-ing, mathematics is not just an enclave.

It is a separate discipline. But this is also true of cultures which don't have phonetic writing.  

That is mentioned by all historians of writing; they recall at the same time the imperfections of alphabetic writing, which passed for so long as the most convenient and “the most intelligent” writing.

It still is.  

This enclave is also the place where the practice of scientific language

Science may use mathematical representations. But Science is separate from Mathematics.  

challenges intrinsically and with increasing profundity the ideal of phonetic writing

No Scientist or Mathematician ever did so. What was remarkable was that there would be 'good enough' computer speech recognition by the mid Seventies. By the early Nineties this was commercially available. Still, because of my thick Indian accent, I had difficulty getting it to work. This is no longer a problem- presumably because lots of Indians are using such devices and thus the software has been trained to understand me. I suppose you could say 'i-language' as 'ideal language' was a failed research program. But no mathematician showed this must be the case.  

and all its implicit metaphysics (metaphysics itself ),

Godel was so metaphysical he revived Anselm's ontological argument. Different mathematicians subscribe to different philosophies. Some are Platonists, others are Intuitionists but, as a whole, the subject is pragmatic enough. 

particularly, that is, the philosophical idea of the epistémè; also of istoria, a concept profoundly related to it in spite of the dissociation or opposition which has distinguished one from the other during one phase of their common progress

Sadly, even an utter cretin like Foucalt could gas on about such things. Did you know that Newton had a penis? So did Einstein. This proves physics is trying to rape me.  

History and knowledge, istoria and epistémè have always been determined (and not only etymologically or philosophically) as detours for the purpose of the reappropriaton of presence.

This has never been the case. People gas on about History and Epistemology because they are getting paid a little money as glorified child-minders. It is true we like 'reappropriating' and cuddling with the presence of our sweetheart or our baby. But that is about Eros or Oikeiosis.  I suppose one or two people really want to be in the presence of God or Satan or the Great Spaghetti Monster but most of us are in no hurry to do so. 

But beyond theoretical mathematics, the development of the practical methods of information retrieval

which may be based on theoretical mathematics 

extends the possibilities of the “message” vastly, to the point where it is no longer the “written” translation of a language, the transporting of a signified which could remain spoken in its integrity.

No. That is all that can be usefully done.  

It goes hand in hand with an extension of phonography and of all the means of conserving the spoken language, of making it function without the presence of the speaking subject.

Programming machines to talk can be very useful. Utility is all that matters. 

This development, coupled with that of anthropology and of the history of writing, teaches us that phonetic writing, the medium of the great metaphysical, scientific, technical, and economic adventure of the West,

phonetic writing originated in the Middle East. China, at one time, was ahead of the West in science, technology, administration, commerce and political philosophy. 

is limited in space and time and limits itself even as it is in the process of imposing its laws upon the cultural areas that had escaped it.

Nope. The Japanese could translate and learn from the most diverse languages with such speed and efficiency that they were soon making first rate contributions to STEM subjects.  Indeed, by about 1905, a Japanese author had written a best-seller in English viz. 'the Book of Tea'.

But this nonfortuitous conjunction of cybernetics and the “human sciences” of writing leads to a more profound reversal.

We  now know that Computer Science was useful to human beings. 'Human sciences' were shit.  

This raises the question- why, at a time when Information Technology was taking off, did anyone bother with the nutter Derrida? I suppose the answer is that stupid people could easily write like him and thus form their own citation cartel and thus push for academic advancements. Universities too found it useful to cheat students by getting them to pay for credentials in nonsense. They could cross-subsidize the laboratories and sports teams. Still, one might say that Derrida's shite could fit into the Chomsky type 'i-language' approach. But that approach was utterly useless. Only 'e-language' exists. 

The other point about Derrida, Lacan, Foucault, Deleuze etc. is that it might be worth backing them to split the French Left and to undermine nutters like Althusser. But, after Mitterand came to power and pumped and dumped the Commies, there was no point in keeping up the charade that these nutters weren't as stupid as shit.  

Social Choice has no base case

What is the base case for a Social Choice function?

Robinson Crusoe. An individual can be a Society if he chooses to think of himself as composing a Society- in other words, Crusoe sees himself as part of something bigger than himself. But, precisely because a Society's preferences are different from a Class or Clan or a Family's preferences, Crusoe's preferences as an individual must be different from his Society's preferences. Also, any local goats or trees or possible future Crusoes, or possible personalities of Crusoe, have different preferences from their own Social preferences. In other words, even in the base case, Social Choice 

1) is not a function of individual preferences which are themselves so impredicative as to have no unique or natural (non arbitrary) representation. Indeed, neither individual preferences, nor their Social preferences, nor Social preferences are 'intensions' with a knowable, well defined 'extension'. The intensional fallacy arises when we stipulate otherwise. To do so is to act arbitrarily. 

2) There is no 'categoricity' or unique model and there is no 'naturality'. No sets or functions (i.e. sets of ordered pairs) or graphs of functions exist save by arbitrary stipulation. One may as well speak of unicorns or mermaids and how they interact with Crusoe. Forget about imprimitivity, there is no primitivity because there can be singletons which only exist if they don't exist. Nothing here is 'decomposable'. Nothing of interest to economists in this field has any mathematical representation whatsoever save by arbitrary stipulation. 

Under what circumstances, in the base case, can there be a functional relationship between the individual's preferences and the Society's preferences? The answer is, this would be the case if for any and every Choice there was 'common knowledge' of all objective determinants and there was an inerrant, ubiquitous, and costless mechanism to ensure actual Choice was based wholly on those objective determinants. But if this were the case, any sentient being would also magically know the 'Muth rational' or canonical answer to any subjective or 'inter-subjective' question. Thus waking up in the morning, I'd know I should walk into McDonalds where the staff would already know what food to give me. No words or money need change hands. I'd then walk down a strange road and enter the house of a stranger and go fix his toilet and leave. The houseowner would already know that I would do this and would have left the door open for me. Again, no words or money need change hand. As I walk towards the house of my next client, an Alien space-ship lands. They show me the Mochizuki proof of the abc theorem. Though I am a mere plumber and received no education of any kind, I silently indicate the place where the proof goes wrong (assuming it is wrong) before keeping my next appointment. 

For 'revealed preference' to be the same as 'preference', it is this extreme type of common knowledge which must be fulfilled. But, to our present knowledge it can't be. There is no non-arbitrary way of solving concurrency problems or, by the ugly duckling theorem, removing bias or 'uncorrelated asymmetries' such that 'naturality' and categoricity prevails. 

 Consider Crusoe. The fact is, he sometimes ignores his own feelings or needs to do what is best for his Society- at least, this is how he would himself see it- at other times it is obvious that he is doing something reckless which, no doubt, is Crusoe's own free choice, but which we feel could be disastrous for the 'Social' Robinson. We can imagine David Niven playing Crusoe, taking the trouble to dress for dinner. The moment he neglects this custom of the fastidious English gentleman, we know he is likely to come to a sticky end. 

 If Crusoe chooses to admit another- e.g. Man Friday- we could say there is a 'dokimasiai' type eligibility criterion. This is a 'Social Choice Rule'. We may equally say that Man Friday has a set of criteria determining whether he stays, flees, or tries to eat Crusoe. There could be a lot of negotiation and then a contract or constitution established between Crusoe and Friday. But, this would be an 'incomplete' contract or a defeasible constitution. Once again there is no functional relationship between individual preferences and Social Choice. 

Can there ever be a functional relationship between individual preferences and Social Choices? No. Don't be silly. It has never happened and it will never happen. This does not mean some people can't make a little money doing market research of various sorts or that political scientists can't study how Legislatures and Judiciaries actually work. In doing so, some assumptions may be made about what individuals, or 'representative agents' would consider to be in their interest. But, these imputed preferences may have no relation to actual views or behavior.

Social Choices are likely to be driven by Tardean 'mimetic' effects- i.e. trying to imitate what other, supposedly better, Societies are doing. But this is equally true of individual behavior. This means there is massive 'impredicativity' and thus the problem of computing the 'equilibrium' is in any exponential time class- i.e. even if it could be done, the Universe will have ended before it is done. 

True, we have preferences and can make reasoned choices- except we change our minds when we see other, smarter, people are doing the opposite. It is safer to go with the crowd. This is rational because of the Condorcet Jury theorem and is also the reason Condorcet's voting paradox does not matter in the slightest. However, Condorcet and many of his fellow liberals were killed because the Parisian crowd went too far in one direction before going too far in another direction. There may be both danger and safety in numbers. We need to damp down 'cobweb effects' such that there are widening swings of the political pendulum. Hence the Anglo-Saxons went in for 'checks and balances' rather than trusting to a plebiscitary type of despotism. It appears the Muth Rational solution- i.e. the one everybody would pick if they had the right information and the right economic theory- for Social Choice is to limit Social Choice in a protocol bound manner. This does mean there will be hysteresis. But it also means that ergodicity too can prevail provided there is competition between polities or sub-units of a polity. 

Apart from mimetic effects, what other features will characterize Social or individual choice?

1) Society will choose to do things which no individual wants for the same reason that individuals do things aren't beneficial to themselves but which they may regret not doing. This means 'Pareto' or 'Unanimity' is out of the window even in a Society composed of only one. Knightian Uncertainty- i.e. the fact that some future states of the world are unknown- means that there are no unique expected utility functions. All you can have is arbitrary stipulations. 

2) Coordination mechanisms (e.g. voting) will be associated with 'discoordination' mechanisms such that there is hedging, arbitrage, transferable utility, and other 'income effects'. This means that ex poste outcomes change qualitatively as a result of the process whereby they are 'achieved' ex ante.  Thus a guy who does what needs to be done to get re-elected President may be either much more powerful or much less powerful than previously if this is known to be the case. It's as though, the can of tomatoes you buy can suddenly shrink or expand because of 'irrelevant alternatives' which certainly did not feature in the 'mechanism' by which the outcome was realized. It is a different matter that under Knightian Uncertainty- i.e. where possible states of the world are not known (indeed, we don't really know that much about past states of the world either )- decision making will be highly non-linear in the manner of other 'co-evolved processes'. But this also means it will be relatively insulated from the fitness landscape even though, in the final analysis, changes in the fitness landscape are the 'determinants' of any evolving entity. 

3) There is bound to be a disjunction between Policy implementation and the Principles which that Policy wishes to uphold. Policy will display economia- a suave, discretionary, accommodative type of management which is context dependent. Principles display akreibia- i.e. rigidity & universality. Aristotle says it is a mistake to seek for greater precision (akreibia) than the subject-matter will allow. Arrow's theorem and the vast literature it has given rise to, is precisely such a mistake.

In Law, the difference between akreibia and economia gives rise to a defensive de jure/ de facti disjunction. Judges decide the former on the basis of a rigid deontic logic. Juries decide the latter on the basis of an empirical 'reasonable man' test. In the Anglo Saxon tradition- which after World War 2 also prevailed on the Continent- the Judiciary can at times seem more powerful than the Executive though, no doubt, the Legislature can permit the latter to prevail. 

As a result, the type of Social Choice mechanism we have actually chosen has spent a lot of time is  restricting Social Choice by creating Hohfeldian incidents- e.g. immunities for individuals to act dictatorially- but this is a justiciable- i.e. defeasible- matter. 

Dasgupta & Maskin write- 

We shall assume that the objectives of a society are embodied in a certain social choice rule. A social choice rule (SCR) selects a set of feasible social states for each possible configuration of individual preferences and other characteristics.

Why not assume there is Command of God (CoG) which determines which State of Society will replace, at time t +1, what ever it is that obtains at time t? At least, that way you avoid the problem of impredicativity and infinite regress. As it is, the SCR must also be governing the way it is itself applied and the way the way it is itself applied etc. 

It is a different matter to say, in rough and ready fashion, Societies change over time because people start wanting different things or start behaving differently or there are exogenous factors.  But it simply isn't true that there is a 'Social Choice Rule' unless decisions really are made by a Giant Computer which decides every detail of everybody's life because that's the way everybody wants things to operate.

One interprets the choice set as the set of welfare optima.

So, they assume perfect information, no Knightian Uncertainty etc. But, in that case, why should there be a Society? Why should there be Language? Why is any coordinating device required? The Arrow Debreu price vector encodes all information including who will 'defect' or be shit at their job. On the basis of this information, which is available for free to everybody, Society would consist of 'windowless monads' synchronized in 'pre-established harmony'. This is Liebniz's Occasionalist Universe. 

For example, given an Arrow social welfare function which embodies individual preferences in a social ordering,

this can only happen if individual preferences are completely independent of each other and there are no preferences for anything specifically 'Social'. But in that case, why would there be a Society? Alternatively, a bunch of people living far from each other but whose actions are coordinated by markets would be called a Society. But their kids and Moms and neighbors would be excluded from it.  True, if they are aware of each other, they may form a 'community' or 'Society' but this is merely a manner of speaking. 

then a natural social choice rule is derived by maximizing this social ordering over the feasible set.

this assumes that the 'maximizing' won't alter the feasible set. Yet, this could only be the case if the situation was knowingly and deliberately made sub-optimal in the previous time period. In other words, the Rule is only applied when it hasn't been applied. But Rules of that sort aint Rules at all. They are crazy shit you make up as you go along. There is no 'naturality' here. We don't know any individual or social ordering or what is or isn't the feasible set. This entire subject is about locating the unicorn of the mermaid who can maximize our sexual pleasure as a Society. Crusoe may have been interested in such things. Sadly, he had to settle for goats. Debasing such critturs is the base case for Social Choice Theory.                                                                                                                                                            

Alternatively, the Pareto rule

which can never be implemented because we don't know if someone else will pay more for something we have than we ourselves value it. But we also don't know whether we could get more value from it in some novel way.  

is the social choice rule which selects all Pareto efficient states,

which are unknowable. I think it a good idea to take a job in a Bank. Unknown to me, this will cause my death at the hands of a Bank robber. The transaction wasn't actually Pareto efficient.  

given individual preferences and the feasible set. These are two particular social choice rules which have received much attention, but our discussion will cover social choice rules in general. If the relevant characteristics of individual agents, such as preferences, happen to be publicly known,

even I don't know what my preferences ought to be. I shouldn't have bought that hotdog instead of a burger. I now have diarrhea.  

then the social choice rule can be implemented trivially because the choice set itself is known. The problem of incentive compatibility arises precisely because these characteristics are not known by the planner a priori.

In which case, neither is the feasible set. In any case, incentive incompatibility only arises when at least some individuals produce goods and services in response to expected incentives or penalties.  That's why, during a war, they may not matter at all. The penalty for not doing all you can for the War effort is defeat and enslavement. 

The planner may attempt to learn characteristics directly by asking agents to reveal them. In general, however, if the agents realize how the information they reveal is to be used, they will have an incentive to misrepresent. Then the task of the planner in implementing the social choice rule is more difficult.

Planners can say they are implementing anything they like. Who the fuck will implement their plan once the money to do so runs out? Plans don't matter. Budgets do.  

Obviously, he must use a planning mechanism of some kind, whose outcomes are possible social states. We shall assume that, when he devises the mechanism, the planner knows what social states are feasible,

in which case he knows the relevant preferences for incentive compatibility to obtain. But this means he is an omniscient god. By acting as an oracle or allocating resources in the private sector, he can gain a reputation for sagacity or else become as rich as fuck. Then, as in a Newcombe problem, his utterances will be heeded. People will do as he says even if he isn't a 'planner' and holds no official post. 

so that he can ensure that the final outcome is feasible. The planner, however, relies on signals from the individual agents to help him implement the social choice rule.

Those signals are that individual agents will pay him money or kick his head in unless it turns out that the Social Choice rule results in their unjust enrichment.  

It is assumed that each individual agent sends his own signal.

However such signals are not univocal. They are 'multiply realizable'. There is no functional relationship though there may be correlation and Granger causality. Noise has to be separated from Signal. But this is an arbitrary process.  

The planner's mechanism is then a rule which specifies a social state for each list of signals sent by the individual agents.

Possible states of the world are not known. We don't even know all the details of our current state of the world.  

It is assumed that each agent knows the precise form of the mechanism the planner is using. Then each agent realizes that he is involved in a game, because the outcome of the mechanism depends on the signals which he and all the other  agents send to the planner. More precisely, this is a " game form ", in which there is a fixed set of strategies, consisting of signals to the planner, and in which the outcomes of these strategies are known to all "players ".

This isn't a 'game form'. It is stupid arbitrary shite.  

This is a " game form " rather than a "game ",however, because the players' preferences over outcomes have not been specified.

The players won't play this stupid game. I can say 'there are two possible states of the world. One where you give me a beejay. In the other you give me a beejay and do the washing up.' The outcome of this game form is that I get kicked in the crotch.  

It is then assumed that the players in this game form, who are the individuals in the society, reach some kind of equilibrium which depends on their true characteristics-in particular, their preferences.

Which nobody knows. I thought picking the hotdog over the burger was a good idea. It so wasn't.  

The mechanism generates a particular social state given these equilibrium signals. Presumably, one wants this social state to be in the social choice set given the agents' true characteristics-i.e. to be something the planner might have chosen had he known these characteristics right from the start. The basic problem of the planner, then, is to devise a game form which always has at least one equilibrium, and whose possible outcomes in equilibrium all belong to the appropriate social choice set for the individuals' true characteristics.

Yet life and the economy are disequilibrium phenomena. Ex post ought not to equate with ex ante otherwise no 'discovery' is being done.  

A mechanism (or game form) with this property is said to implement the social choice rule.

Neither is there a rule, nor is there a mechanism. On the other hand, there is a flying unicorn which implements the rainbow farting rule.  

This task of implementing social choice rules is what has come to be called the problem of " incentive compatibility ", a term due to Hurwicz (1972) (and hinted at in Hurwicz (1960, p. 28)).

It is useful enough but what isn't 'incentive compatible' is Social Choice theory because it is a waste of fucking time. Auction theory is fine. Incomplete contract theory may be okay. Anything which ties in with Hohfeldian incidents can pay for itself in 'Law & Econ'. But this shite is shite because it is induction based on an incompossible base case.