tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-84242671572035644462024-03-05T22:09:54.057+00:00Modern Debt JubileeDeregulation, debt, corruption, recession, and the Second Great Depression. Something must be done!Jayaravahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13783922534271559030noreply@blogger.comBlogger237125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8424267157203564446.post-31380947578815777012021-11-14T13:00:00.004+00:002021-11-14T13:00:31.500+00:00Poverty<p>Poverty is largely a consequence of European modes of living, especially their approach to private property. Perhaps the best account of this now is the new book <i>The Dawn of Everything </i>by David Graeber and David Wengrow. Certainly it is the best account I have ever come across and the best history/philosophy book I’ve ever read without exception.</p><p>As the Europeans spread out and exported their worldview, they spread poverty around the world by expropriating all the land and resources that once made every human rich and they concentrated them in the hands of a few sociopaths with delusions of grandeur. Any resistance was met with brutal violence, resulting in numerous genocides and the enslavement of millions of people. </p><p>Another useful resource is David Spencer’s book on work. There is a fantastic little summary of the main point re poverty in this short article: </p><a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20170108123038/http://www.pieria.co.uk/articles/mercantilism_six_centuries_of_vilifying_the_poor">https://web.archive.org/web/20170108123038/http://www.pieria.co.uk/articles/mercantilism_six_centuries_of_vilifying_the_poor</a>Jayaravahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13783922534271559030noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8424267157203564446.post-58863229403942723432021-06-27T13:32:00.003+01:002021-06-27T13:32:26.226+01:00How do the rich keep being rich and the poor keep being poor?<p>Well, thanks for asking this, it turns out to be a fascinating story. It seems that the rich <b><i>own</i></b><i> and regulate the means of becoming rich</i>. And they have done so for about 10,000 - 12,000 years or so.</p><p>About 600 years or so ago, the rich decided that it was important for the poor to have to work very hard indeed for a subsistence living and that they have little if any leisure time. </p><a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20170108123038/http://www.pieria.co.uk/articles/mercantilism_six_centuries_of_vilifying_the_poor">https://web.archive.org/web/20170108123038/http://www.pieria.co.uk/articles/mercantilism_six_centuries_of_vilifying_the_poor</a><p>Because the rich own the means of getting rich, very few new people can break into richness without the prior approval of the rich and they tend to reserve richness for family and friends. </p><p>For example, during a short period in the late 20th Century, software development emerged as a path to new richness, but now the rich buy out newcomers well before they get rich. The path that made Elon Musk rich is now more or less closed now. The rich are busy closing loopholes that allow non-rich to become rich and opening loopholes to allow the rich to stay rich. </p><p>The poor can work as hard as they like, or as hard as the rich <i>force</i> them to work, and they will <i>never be rich</i>. Because not only do the rich own the means of getting rich, it turns out that they also <b><i>own</i></b><i> the products of the labour of the poor</i>. The poor never get to keep the products of their labour. They have to give all of it to the rich, who then return as little as they can get away with, often considerably less than it takes to stay alive. <br /></p><p>Even a small business person is extremely unlikely to become rich—most self-employed people are either already bankrupt or well on their way to becoming bankrupt. They are crushed by the rich. </p><p>In the middle, but much closer to the poor than the rich, we have the people who oversee the day to day business of ensuring that the poor remain poor. The poor can aspire to be overseers, but competition is fierce to be an overseer, and mostly the poor don’t get access to the education needed for that, and the educational requirements only go up over time. </p><p>The <i>coup de grace</i> is that, nowadays, the rich have convinced the poor that this is the best of all possible worlds. The poor are convinced that if <i>they</i> were in charge it would be chaos, mayhem, disaster, catastrophe, madness. So they conscientiously <i>vote </i>for the rich to be in control. </p>Jayaravahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13783922534271559030noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8424267157203564446.post-30405882024246061622020-09-05T11:31:00.001+01:002020-09-05T11:31:41.348+01:00The Problem With PoliticsI just had to post this tweet storm by <a href="https://twitter.com/CharlotteAlter/status/1301710651690299392" target="_blank">Charlotte Alter @CharlotteAlter</a> because it is about the most astute political commentary I've seen lately.<br />
<br />
<span style="color: yellow;">I have spent the last three days speaking to almost every person I've seen on the streets in Kenosha and Racine and folks... I hate to break it to you... but nobody gives a shit about any of the scandals you're tweeting about<br />
</span><span style="color: yellow;">It is IMPOSSIBLE for me to describe how much they don't give a shit. It's like they give NEGATIVE shits.</span><br />
<div>
<span style="color: yellow;"><br />
</span></div>
<div>
<span style="color: yellow;">There's this mentality on Twitter that's like "THIS one huge scandal will sink Trump with THIS group of voters" and I can conclusively report that this is bullshit</span></div>
<div>
<span style="color: yellow;"><br />
</span></div>
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<span style="color: yellow;">Here's why:</span></div>
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<span style="color: yellow;"><br />
</span></div>
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<span style="color: yellow;">Many of the people who ~tweet about politics~ assume that voters behave according to a particular logic </span></div>
<div>
<span style="color: yellow;"><br />
</span></div>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<span style="color: yellow;">Like: Trump insults women, therefore women will dislike Trump</span><br />
<span style="color: yellow;">or</span><br />
<span style="color: yellow;">Trump breaks the law, therefore "law and order" R[epublican]s will break from him</span></blockquote>
</div>
<span style="color: yellow;"><br />
</span> <span style="color: yellow;">YOU THINK voter logic is like: </span><br />
<div>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<span style="color: yellow;">A > B > C >D </span></blockquote>
</div>
<div>
<span style="color: yellow;"><br />
</span></div>
<div>
<span style="color: yellow;">IN ACTUALITY, voter logic is more like: </span><br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<span style="color: yellow;">A > Purple > Banana > 18</span></blockquote>
<div>
<span style="color: yellow;">(this is true on both sides by the way, not just MAGA folks)</span><br />
<span style="color: yellow;"><br />
</span> <span style="color: yellow;">Also: the most pervasive bias in political coverage is not left vs. right it's "follows politics" vs. "doesn't follow politics"</span><br />
<span style="color: yellow;"><br />
</span> <span style="color: yellow;">By default, nearly everyone who covers politics falls into the "follows politics" category, which makes it really hard to understand people who don't</span><br />
<span style="color: yellow;"><br />
</span> <span style="color: yellow;">Also: the most pervasive bias in political coverage is not left vs. right it's "follows politics" vs. "doesn't follow politics"</span><br />
<span style="color: yellow;"><br />
</span> <span style="color: yellow;">By default, nearly everyone who covers politics falls into the "follows politics" category, which makes it really hard to understand people who don't</span><br />
<span style="color: yellow;"><br />
</span> <span style="color: yellow;">Or politics people will be like "according to polls and modeling, if X% swing in Y direction then Z will happen" and normal people are like... whut</span><br />
<span style="color: yellow;"><br />
</span> <span style="color: yellow;">It's worth noting that man-on-the-street reporting is highly anecdotal! This is by no means a comprehensive analysis because it totally depends on who decides to talk to me.</span><br />
<span style="color: yellow;"><br />
</span> <span style="color: yellow;">But taken alongside polls and other data, it can be a helpful way to learn what's landing and what's not</span><br />
<span style="color: yellow;"><br />
</span> <span style="color: yellow;">One more point, re: EQ</span><br />
<span style="color: yellow;"><br />
</span> <span style="color: yellow;">A side effect of the data-fication of political expertise is that the people who can read polls are perceived to be smarter than the people who can read people.</span><br />
<span style="color: yellow;"><br />
</span> <span style="color: yellow;">So you have all these guys crunching numbers who aren't actually LISTENING to normal ppl</span><br />
<span style="color: yellow;"><br />
</span> <span style="color: yellow;">LISTENING means hearing what people are not saying as well as what they're saying.</span><br />
<span style="color: yellow;"><br />
</span> <span style="color: yellow;">LISTENING also means not ambushing voters like "but aren't you upset about X or Y?" or bullying them</span><br />
<span style="color: yellow;"><br />
</span> <span style="color: yellow;">LISTENING means making sure they feel like they're being heard and not judged</span><br />
<span style="color: yellow;"><br />
</span> <span style="color: yellow;">just saying there are a lot of politics dudes who love to talk and hate to listen</span></div>
</div>
Jayaravahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13783922534271559030noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8424267157203564446.post-33269399670675663552020-08-24T10:21:00.001+01:002020-08-24T10:52:11.660+01:00Post-CapitalismStock markets are going up in the UK and US. But we are in a recession. <a href="https://www.yanisvaroufakis.eu/2020/08/21/something-remarkable-just-happened-this-august-how-the-pandemic-has-sped-up-the-passage-to-postcapitalism-lannan-institute-virtual-talk/">Yanis Varoufakis</a> says that this means that the value of companies is no longer correlated with profits and that this is unprecedented. <br />
<br />
The price of shares is now being driven by speculators more than by results. We used to think of stocks as an investment. You put your money into a company to help capitalise it and that company pays you an annual dividend based on profits. This is how capitalism works (in this view labour is simply an overhead and does not have anything to do with making a profit). <br />
<br />
Speculators are not investors. They are gamblers. They think in the short term. Aided by computers, the short-term can mean milliseconds as algorithms buy and sell shares 1000 times a second accumulating thousands of tiny short term gains to make huge profits over the long term. <br />
<br />
This is not investment because the profit is not in the dividends, it is in the second to second fluctuations in price. Speculators can bet that the price with go up, which is a straight profit, but they can also bet that the price will go down (called "shorting") and still make a profit when the price of shares falls. <br />
<br />
This speculation is now the dominant force in our stock markets and most of the money involved is, in fact, not doing any work at all in our economy. Rather it sits outside the economy not contributing anything except when the super-rich buy yachts and such.<br />
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
And the speculators are mainly <i>banks</i>. Banks using the money that governments have been giving them ostensibly to invest in commerce. Here's how it works:<br />
<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<span style="color: yellow;">Every time the Fed or the European Central Bank or the Bank of England pumped more money into the commercial banks, in the hope that these monies would be lent to companies which would in turn create new jobs and product lines, the birth of the strange world we now live in came a little closer. How? As an example, consider the following chain reaction: The European Central Bank extended new liquidity to Deutsche Bank. Deutsche Bank could only profit from it if it found someone to borrow this money. Dedicated to the banker’s mantra “never lend to someone who needs the money”, Deutsche Bank would never lend it to the “little people”, whose circumstances were increasingly diminished (along with their ability to repay any substantial loans), it preferred to lend it to, say, Volkswagen. But, in turn, Volkswagen executives looked at the “little people” out there and thought to themselves: “Their circumstances are diminishing, they won’t be able to afford new, high quality electric cars.” And so Volkswagen postponed crucial investments in new technologies and in new high quality jobs. But, Volkswagen executives would have been remiss not to take the dirt-cheap loans offered by Deutsche Bank. So, they took it. And what did they do with the freshly minted ECB-monies? They used it to buy Volkswagen shares in the stock exchange. The more of those shares they bought the higher Volkswagen’s share value. And since the Volkswagen executives’ salary bonuses were linked to the company’s share value, they profited personally – while, at once, the ECB’s firepower was well and truly wasted from society’s, and indeed from industrial capitalism’s, point of view.</span></blockquote>
<br />
Thus post-capitalism is <i>not a good thing.</i><br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<span style="color: yellow;">"My difference with fellow lefties is that I do not believe there is any guarantee that what follows capitalism – let’s call it, for want of a better term, postcapitalism – will be better. It may well be utterly dystopic, judging by present phenomena."</span> <a href="https://www.yanisvaroufakis.eu/2020/08/21/something-remarkable-just-happened-this-august-how-the-pandemic-has-sped-up-the-passage-to-postcapitalism-lannan-institute-virtual-talk/">Yanis Varoufakis</a></blockquote>
</div>
Jayaravahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13783922534271559030noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8424267157203564446.post-84013272756410508652020-08-03T17:59:00.000+01:002020-08-03T17:59:04.152+01:00Conservatives, Neoliberals, Liberals, and Trump.This question appeared on Quora<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<span style="color: yellow;">Why don't conservatives do more to reach out and support the cities like zoning reform (housing), transit projects (transportation), economic revitalization (jobs) like urban conservatism? Why serve suburbs and rural areas but leave cities behind?</span></blockquote>
Here is my response.<br />
<br />
It’s not so much to do with conservatism as with liberalism. Liberalism <i>proper </i>is the philosophy of the liberty of the individuals. Liberalism argues that individuals are radically free and thus the circumstances of their lives are the result of their own choices, regardless of the start they got. <br />
We are currently on liberalism 3.0. <br />
<br />
<b>Liberalism 1.0</b> was classical or economic liberalism which emphasised individualism and the private sector. <b>Liberalism 2.0 </b>arose as a response to the failures of 1.0. The distinction is nicely summed up in Isaiah Berlin’s ideas of <i>negative liberty </i>and <i>positive liberty</i>. Liberalism 1.0 emphasised what Berlin called negative liberty, that is the removal of constraints on liberty. In particular the first liberals (an offshoot of Whiggism) argued the government should not interfere in commerce. <br />
<br />
This led to poverty, corruption, and instability (aka <b>The Great Depression</b>) so social liberals (2.0) began to argue that positive liberty was also required. They wanted to removed barriers to economic participation such as lack of access to education, health care, or job opportunities. They argued that if the private sector was unable to or unwilling to undertake the kinds of activities you highlight, then government should step in. <br />
<br />
<b>Liberalism 3.0</b> or <b>Neo-liberalism </b>arose as a reaction against Liberalism 2.0. Neoliberalism argues that all commercial activities—such as house building, infrastructure, and investment—<i>must </i>be carried out by the private sector in response to demand. Their ideology is that only the pure logic of supply and demand will ensure a fair distribution of wealth in society. <br />
<br />
Unfortunately Liberalism 3.0 still has Liberalism 1.0 as part of it’s kernel and so we are once again seeing poverty, corruption, and economic instability (e.g. the global financial crisis). Worse, Neoliberals openly attack and smear Liberalism 2.0 as the source of all our problems, conflating it with “communism” and extremism. In this view there is no role for positive liberty or for government in society. <br />
<br />
The reason we associate these ideas with conservatism is an historical accident. Because these economic ideas are quite unpopular with the majority, the right-wing parties that first adopted them and opted for the more ideologically pure implementation struggled to win power. They were mainly socially conservative but had not connected with other conservative groups. In order to get Reagan elected in the US, Republicans made common cause with the previously politically inactive conservative Christians. They began to emphasise social conservative ideas like “family values” and frame their extreme right-wing economics in terms of “tax relief”. <br />
<br />
On the other side Liberalism 2.0 became conflated with socially progressive approaches. Liberalism 1.0 had also been progressive in its time. Then it became mainstream and the norm. Liberalism 2.0 adopted a progressive attitude because their goal of equal economic participation lay in the future. But 2.0 liberals are not left-wing. Especially in the US they are centre-right, i.e. liberals interested in positive liberty. <br />
<br />
Weirdly the most extreme right-wing economic policies come from the Republicans nowadays (and their counterparts abroad). <br />
<br />
But here’s the thing. Most people vote on social issues rather than economic issues. So they vote conservative even though they don’t like neoliberal economic policies. And neoliberalism, liberalism 3.0, has become entrenched. At the same time a deliberate coup d’etat in universities in the 1970s ensured that only right-wing economics are taught to most students. Left-wing economists were elbowed out and struggled to get published or promoted. So now two generations of economists, think tanks and lobbyists, politicians and journalists have all been indoctrinate with the view that the only valid economics are right-wing. Even Democrat Presidents pursue right-wing economics while trying to implement socially responsible (and extremely popular) policies like universal healthcare. <br />
<br />
And here’s the other weird thing. The neoliberals have developed an economic narrative that has social overtones, which is that the 2.0 Liberals cannot be trusted with the nations finances; they don’t understand economic realities (that is to say the ideology of neoliberalism); and any deviation from neoliberal orthodoxy is communism (re-activating the long held fear of the left). This makes economics a social issue. <br />
<br />
And so even though neoliberalism the world over is bad for workers, bad for all but the growing number of billionaires, people keep voting for conservatives with a neoliberal agenda that they disagree with. <br />
<br />
And the fact that a <i>progressive </i><b><i>black </i></b><i>man</i> got elected was too much for conservatives <i>and </i>neoliberals. Their fears all seemed to come true at once and created the backlash that Trump rode to power. The Trump-led republican party has zero interest in public works. And we see this in their response to the coronavirus. Govt’s role in their view is to facilitate businessmen making money. Mitch McConnell has become a multimillion since entering the Senate. Trump sees the Presidency as a personal business opportunity and is too busy trying to enrich himself to do anything for Americans. And the extreme conservatives and the extreme neoliberals are only too happy to go along with Trump.Jayaravahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13783922534271559030noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8424267157203564446.post-46843184065972519092020-07-17T13:55:00.000+01:002020-07-17T13:55:10.293+01:00Why Do a Left Leaning Populace Vote Right? My original title for this was <i>Why Americans Don't Understand Politics</i>. It covers both areas and I wanted to include some ideas about UK. I will be using the Political Compass two-dimensional analysis in this post: economic left = socialism and economic right = liberalism. This is contrasted with authoritarian (maximal) governance and libertarian (minimal) governance. But I will add to this a third dimension of social conservatism and social progressivism. Hence we have three pairs of terms representing extremes of a spectrum.<br />
<br />
<div style="text-align: center;">
left ↔ right</div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
authoritarian ↔ libertarian </div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
conservative ↔ progressive </div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
In my view it is possible to select a position on the spectrum independently from economic, governance, and social attitudes. And it is a mistake to conflate terms such as left and progressive. Or right and authoritarian. Fascists have little in common with laissez faire libertarians but both are referred to "right wing". If we could sought out these distinctions we might have a more intelligent political discourse. Most importantly the philosophy of liberalism was coincident with the formation of right wing economic policies. The socially progressive New Liberals grew out of the devastation— inequality, corruption, and instability—that classical liberal caused. So we now often take "liberal" to mean left wing because socially progressive right wing people have a social conscience that is mistaken for socialism.</div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
I suspect that the confusion is deliberate and aimed that making public discourse on politics ineffective, but I don't want to give in to conspiracy theories. </div>
<br />
That America politics are almost entirely fought on the right of centre is amply depicted by the <a href="https://www.politicalcompass.org/uselection2020" target="_blank">Political Compass analysis</a> of the candidates in the US 2020 election.<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEheSTuWOXdnEqmLRPBm7SiCQg3knj-Uux-aT2a0jbh45kt2-L35qgsNm3eLE4NBvhGdOBC8GioxZHr1ysdakUOH5fjfEzCt6mtIDyOpSx4q0zZ46LDrB2xrqdkKegEwzhE_DoV0OB_3fM4/s1600/US2020.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="682" data-original-width="678" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEheSTuWOXdnEqmLRPBm7SiCQg3knj-Uux-aT2a0jbh45kt2-L35qgsNm3eLE4NBvhGdOBC8GioxZHr1ysdakUOH5fjfEzCt6mtIDyOpSx4q0zZ46LDrB2xrqdkKegEwzhE_DoV0OB_3fM4/s400/US2020.jpg" width="397" /></a></div>
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Note that Biden is well over the centre lined of the right side. </div>
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That something entirely different is going on in the UK is reflected in this graph from <a href="https://flipchartfairytales.wordpress.com/2020/07/01/why-conservatives-love-the-culture-war" target="_blank">Flip Chart Fairy Tales</a>. Though note here that this graph mistakes authoritarian and liberal as social values. <i>Authoritarian </i>is paired with <i>libertarianism </i>(or anarchism) as a mode of governance. They are trying to conflate conservatives and authoritarians, and progressives and libertarians. Thus the confusion of terminology is perpetuated. In any case we can get some kind of insight from this. In fact this next graph exists at right angles to the Political Compass models.</div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEijth5HtzqRwDNtv9HdkUQwycXNygRmyzboWMtKy_bEMmd8gfAifZfjAaLDRaNEeJpB_62IC61WYw3zY7ccol0qU1gAX7W4SJ0gLJU6LfoXSYk3Ac3x5UIeKyfHsRB5Oo-BksxdgjIpLuc/s1600/eboshjrxkauersx.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="649" data-original-width="640" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEijth5HtzqRwDNtv9HdkUQwycXNygRmyzboWMtKy_bEMmd8gfAifZfjAaLDRaNEeJpB_62IC61WYw3zY7ccol0qU1gAX7W4SJ0gLJU6LfoXSYk3Ac3x5UIeKyfHsRB5Oo-BksxdgjIpLuc/s400/eboshjrxkauersx.png" width="393" /></a></div>
<br /><br />In Britain, and I think in American too, the voters are in favour of more left wing economic policies, though by "left wing" in America they really mean centrist. Liberals are concerned with helping people to help themselves and thus welfare in a liberal regime like the US is aimed at helping each individual to be an economically productive member of society. These days this primarily means being a consumer rather than a worker. In fact the laissez faire economics of Neoconservative and Neoliberal elected officials are <i>unpopular </i>amongst voters even those who vote for the Tories and the Republicans.<br /><br />And in Britain and America voters are in favour of conservative social values. And in this case the attitudes are reversed. Voters are far more conservative than politicians of either the left or the right.<br /><br /> One of the reasons we're seeing a culture war at the moment is because those on the right (Republicans and Tories) know that their economic policies are relatively unpopular with voters compared with the opposition (Democrats and Labour). But their social policies are more popular. Hence by using the culture war to draw attention to social policies they win votes. Of course the right also keep up a barrage of lies about the catastrophic impact of left policies in order to try to capitalise.<br /><br />So the success of the culture war strategy combined with the economic propaganda sees voters leaning right.<br />
<br />
At the moment many young Americans seem to believe that there is an imminent communist revolution in the USA. They believe the media, the multi-billion dollar enterprise run by only about six companies—including Rupert Murdoch's <i>21st Century Fox </i>(previously News Corp)—has been taken over by "the Left". They believe that Black Lives Matters was organised by Marxists. They believe that Academic is overrun with Marxists. Resentment against so-called "liberals" (i.e. people who are socially progressive is at an all time high.<br />
<br />
Part of the problem is that America had a progressive black president for eight years at the same time as a Republican Senate that could block almost all of his initiatives. Obama achieved a fraction of what he might have. But in a nation mainly white, mainly socially conservative people this was too much to bear. And a campaign began that did not end with the election of Trump though it seems to have peaked for now. Key republicans who were vehemently against Trump have now switched their allegiance. There is an ongoing a wave of grievance and resentment amongst socially conservative people.<br />
<br />
Fortunately the staggering incompetence of Trump in dealing with Covid19 will probably be the end of him. But expect him to stoke up the culture war, stoke up fear and hatred of people of colour, of experts and scientists, and of progressives. And expect this strategy to be ongoing amongst Republicans because it works. The next republican president will have even more extreme views than Trump, but he'll probably be competent.<br /><br />Fortunately for America Biden is a right wing, conservative, authoritarian - a good choice for republicans who want to flip. We had the opposite here with Johnson vs Corbyn. No one who thought about flipping from Tory to Labour was ever going to vote for Corbyn, the relentless campaign of lies and slurs notwithstanding. I suspect many Labour voters voted against Corbyn.<br /><br />Unfortunately for the world, the case for tackling the environment is being made as a socially progressive message, not an economic message, so most people are opposed to the scale of change required. To many even something like the Green New Deal looks too authoritarian, it hands governments sweeping powers to change course in pursuit of a progressive and even radical social agenda.Jayaravahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13783922534271559030noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8424267157203564446.post-41095378168261296892020-01-23T10:03:00.001+00:002020-01-23T10:03:16.847+00:00The Problem with the Right-WingIf you want to identify some classic right-wing policies, then look no further than the EU's triad of <span style="color: yellow;">the free movement of capital, goods, and people</span>. Removing barriers to economic activity was the fundamental idea behind Adam Smith's economic philosophy and is the one idea that drives many right-wing politicians. This is liberalism applied to economics - one should be free to pursue business opportunities with minimal interference from government. Let markets set prices and act like karma in linking consequences to actions. <br />
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Of the three, the free movement of capital has been the most damaging - causing a number of continent spanning economic crises in Africa, South America, South East Asia, and lastly a global crisis in 2008. It's why billionaires pay no tax and why young people cannot afford to buy houses any more. <br />
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Economic liberalism is a disaster because markets never operate in the abstract/free way that karma is supposed to. People and governments always interfere. Always. The wealthy always tip the scales in their favour, it's how they get and sustain wealth. <br />
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Removing barriers to monopoly power has led to a sharp uptick in wealth inequality. Someone once asked me what I thought a socialist version of the board game Monopoly would would like. I said, "Dude, Monopoly is essentially <i>a socialist game</i>." It is set up to mimic the unlimited power that accrues to the wealthy under classical liberalism. At the end of the game one player owns all the property and has all the wealth and the other players have <i>nothing</i>. That is precisely the socialist view of what unfettered capitalism does to a society.<br />
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And notably this is the situation we increasingly see in the world. A few billionaires who own everything and the rest of us who have next to nothing. Bernie Sanders make this point repeatedly.<br />
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The top 1% own more than twice as much wealth as the rest of humanity combined.<br /><br />We live in a world where a handful of billionaires have extraordinary control over the economic and political life of the global community.<br /><br />I don't think that's the world we should be living in.</div>
— Bernie Sanders (@BernieSanders) <a href="https://twitter.com/BernieSanders/status/1219726611462807552?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">January 21, 2020</a></blockquote>
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Ironically, Adam Smith's argument against protectionism and nationalism was that it turned trade into a zero sum game. In the early modern world, the era of massive European Empires spanning the globe, commerce was carried out on a winner take all basis. Colonised countries were mercilessly asset stripped. Piracy was not only rife, but state sanctioned. Smith argued that by dropping barriers to trade, commerce would become a win-win situation - the exchange of goods and services between countries benefits both sides. And to some extent he was right. Trade does tend to raise the standard of living for everyone. <br />
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People often cite Singapore as a shining example of unfettered capitalism. But 85% of housing is owned by the government - which is the only reason most Singaporeans are not all homeless right now. Also 22% of GDP comes from state-owned enterprises. Yes, Singapore dropped most barriers to commerce, but they did not throw the baby out with the bath water the way many Western countries did. They carried out the principle role of government in liberal political theory and protected their people from exploitation - ensuring that the cost of housing remains in a sane relation to wages. <br />
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Government's role, in liberal political philosophy is to protect citizens from exploitation. This does mean fewer millionaires and no billionaires in order to both ensure competition and to ensure that wealth is distributed fairly amongst citizens. And it does involve some government interventions. Providing free education is universally acknowledged as a public good although this does not stop governments skimping on it and exacerbating inequality. Healthcare is widely acknowledged to be a societal benefit as well (except in the USA).<br /><br />Capitalism is really the only viable way to run a national economy. But laissez faire capitalism doesn't create a fair or equitable division of wealth. It concentrates wealth, it transfers wealth to the wealthy. It creates a torrent of wealth upwards, not a trickle down effect. Govt has to prevent monopolies. And having just four companies dominating the globe in any given sector is effectively a monopoly. Allowing the largest companies to merge and swallow up competitors reduces competition and removes the incentives that make capitalism work.<br /><br />The trillion dollar companies used their monopoly positions to squash competitors and prevent new players from entering the market. Having companies like Apple, Google, and Facebook dominate the world is killing innovation and siphoning wealth out of the real economy.<br /><br />I don't see any future for communism or socialism as systems. However, more worker ownership of businesses would be a good thing. And some state-owned enterprises clearly provide benefits: housing, healthcare, infrastructure such as roads, bridges.<br /><br />The other clear role for government is in dealing with systemic problems. Acute problems like the coronavirus outbreak in China can only be dealt with by national and international agencies with real power to enforce measures. And chronic problems like climate change require governments to nudge and shove business to change their behaviour. Government is the only check on industries that appear to behave as a psychotic person with no concern for consequences, no empathy for victims, and a single-minded exploitation and manipulation of everyone and everything for their own benefit.<br /><br />I think the anti-capitalist movement is silly. And I've had to cut my ties with organisations like Extinction Rebellion because it is largely populated with people who have utopian ideas replacing capitalism. I agree that we have to pressure governments to address climate change, but government led capitalism is the only chance we have of bringing about the necessary change at the necessary speed. Socialist utopias are a fantasy and we need to abandon the fantasy that humanity is all going to get along and have their needs provided for free.<br /><br />
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<br />Jayaravahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13783922534271559030noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8424267157203564446.post-61157096798719048182019-11-26T12:10:00.000+00:002019-11-26T12:10:05.907+00:00The KGB Model of State Subversion<div style="text-align: left;">
Someone tweeted this part of an interview with an ex-KGB agent, Yuri Bezmenov, from 1984. Bezmenov defected to Canada in 1970.</div>
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Back then the Soviet Union was committed to spreading the ideology of Marxism-Leninism throughout the world using these techniques called <i>Ideological Subversion</i> or <i>Active Measures</i>, <i>Psychological Warfare </i>has four stages. Espionage forms only a minor part of this process.<br />
The goal is to "change the perception of reality to such an extent that despite the abundance of information, no one is able to come to sensible conclusions [in their own interests]".<br /><br />This occurs in four stages.<br />
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<ol>
<li><b><span style="color: yellow;">Demoralization</span></b>. 15-20 years. A propaganda and disinformation campaign aimed at students that contravenes the values of the country. The result is that "exposure to true information does not matter anymore. A person who is demoralised is unable to assess true information." Even if the demoralised person is presented with clear documentary evidence that their view is wrong, they will not refuse to believe. </li>
<li><b><span style="color: yellow;">Destabilization</span></b>. 2-5 years. The focus shifts from individuals to subverting state essentials: economy, foreign relations, defence. Politicians make extravagant promises. </li>
<li><b><span style="color: yellow;">Crisis</span></b>. 6 weeks. A violent change of structure. </li>
<li><b><span style="color: yellow;">Normalization</span></b>. Indefinite. The new "Big Brother" regime exerts itself, crushing the demoralised citizens. </li>
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Note that Bezmenov says that the demoralisation phase of the KGB program in the USA is already complete. "Most of it is done by Americans to Americans, thanks to lack of moral standards."<br />
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Bezmenov suggests that aim of Soviet operations was to destabilise the free enterprise system. But we need to look at the history of the collapse of economic liberalism the first time around. Economic liberalism is inherently unstable because it creates a super-rich class who misuse the excessive wealth and power they have to subvert democracy. The Soviets cannot take responsibility for the 1929 stock market crash or the Great Depression.<br />
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Bezmenov implicates socially liberal educators. Educated people score higher on the openness trait of the Big Five psychometric test and all people who have high scores on this trait tend to be more socially liberal. Bezmenov also implicates civil rights defenders in destabilisation.<br />
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One needs to emphasise in response to Bezmenov that the Marxism-Leninism take over of the USA <i>never happened</i>. Indeed, by the time he was giving this interview, in 1984, the USA was moving decisively to the right economically and it continued to do so until Trump. Bezmenov is in fact quite off-beam in his assessment of US politics and social attitudes.<br />
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The methodology he describes however is interesting because what we see in 2019 is Americans refusing to believe authentic, documentary evidence of Trump's misuse of power and his subversion of the economy, foreign relations, and defence for his own ends - sometimes in ways that seem consistent with him furthering his own interests and sometimes seemingly at random (though in ways that play to his base).<br /><br />Last week it emerged that the combined intelligence community is unanimous about the fact that Russia interfered in the 2016 election to help Trump. And that they have presented a classified briefing to the Senate, including authentic documentary evidence, that this was so and that the Ukraine meddling story was a Russian disinformation campaign being promoted by the Russia intelligence community.<br />
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Despite the unanimous voice of the FBI, CIA, NSA, and a dozen other intelligence agencies, Republican senators, at the urging of Trump, launched an investigation into the subject of the Russian disinformation campaign. The President and key members of the Republican Party are dismissing the unified voice of the US intelligence community despite the evidence. They seem "unable to assess true information."<br /><br />At the same time, despite clear and overwhelming evidence of Trump's repeated and ongoing misuse of power for personal gain, half of America and all of the Republican Party are denying that anything untoward happened. The testimony of career foreign service officials made no difference at all.<br />
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Although Bezmenov was clearly over-estimating the impact of Soviet Marxist-Leninist propaganda, we are in fact in just the same state of demoralisation as he describes, but with respect to President Trump's agenda and his support amongst the alt-right.<br />
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What happened in the USA was not what Bezmenov predicted. Rather it was a replay of the collapse of classical liberalism because of the chaos caused by the super-rich and their irresistible desire to manipulate things for their own ends. The 2019 version of economic liberalism sees billionaires battling it out for control of the government in the open, with the ability to outspend all their rivals combined. Bloomberg, a former Republican, entered the democratic primary by spending $30 million on advertising. The other candidates have raised considerably less than this in total, let alone for advertising.<br /><br />It's also clear that Russia has also been at work in the UK, especially in the process of the UK leaving the EU (aka Brexit). They seem to have part funded the Leave campaign and to have facilitated a process of demoralisation including <a href="https://tompride.wordpress.com/2017/12/05/see-20-years-of-fake-news-about-eu-by-uk-press-vote-for-your-favourite-here/" target="_blank">20 years of fake news about the EU</a>.<br /><br />The <i>Institute for Global Affairs, </i>London School of Economics, released a report in 2017: <a href="http://www.lse.ac.uk/iga/assets/documents/arena/2018/Jigsaw-Soviet-Subversion-Disinformation-and-Propaganda-Final-Report.pdf" target="_blank"><i>Soviet Subversion, Disinformation and Propaganda: How the West Fought Against It. An Analytic History, with Lessons for the Present</i></a>. This provides more details as well as counter-measures that the US Govt developed to combat <i>active measures</i>. They point out that modern Russian propaganda is no longer ideological; it is distributed between state actors and various other interests and it is opportunistic. And there is no concerted effort to combat it.<br />
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<a href="https://youtu.be/y3qkf3bajd4" target="_blank">The full, hour long interview is here</a>.Jayaravahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13783922534271559030noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8424267157203564446.post-19472348466336332532019-11-17T13:49:00.003+00:002019-11-23T17:44:49.320+00:00The Impeachment of Trump in a NutshellI've been following the impeachment hearings in the USA with interest. They are not only inherently interesting and political drama of the highest calibre, but they are a welcome distraction from the sewer of British politics and electioneering.<br />
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The information coming out is complex and in order to organise it I started a diagram of how the players are connected.<br />
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<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://www.jayarava.org/images/Ukraine.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;" target="_blank"><img border="0" data-original-height="1038" data-original-width="1600" height="258" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhMNdOnnVV1PJoDHUKF8pF9ocXc21_lTkd7o85qTCMHNmEGI5cY6SWx-XvXe7n1YiMZW_dPZ_rnrunT6l1npiVQYuXvmCF3bqQKmKp-ZX9Sgf3Wdhti_sI4KfhXcFFBxRIEeqYRHMTmh2A/s400/Ukraine.jpg" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
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This diagram is still a bit messy, but it does help me to see certain things. I say "in a nutshell" but it's a big nut. I'll keep working on the diagram and update it as and when I can.<br />
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Here is the story as I understand it.<br />
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Joe Biden was instrumental in removing corrupt Prosecutor General Shokin from office. Shokin wanted revenge and so floated the story that he had just been about to open an investigation into Burisma and Biden's son Hunter who was a fig-leaf on the board. His replacement Lutsenko did investigate Burisma, but found nothing. He supported Shokin's allegations and helped to spread them to the US via various channels: a journalist named John Solomon, Paul Manafort, and the President's personal lawyer, Rudy Giuliani, who met with both Shokin and Lutsenko.<br />
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Manafort was Trump's campaign manager. He formerly worked on Ukraine President Yanukovych's campaign and when this came out he was forced to resign (because of corruption) and fled to Russia. Later he was convicted of financial crimes and is still in jail and facing further indictments.<br />
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As well as his connections to corrupt government officials, Giuliani has been cultivating business interests in Ukraine via Lev Parnas and Igor Fruman. These two were involved in a number of business deals including the ironically named Fraud Guarantee which has no customers and provides no actual services, and thus has no <i>bone fide</i> income, yet paid Giuliani $500,000 to provide legal services. Parnas and Fruman are charged with campaign finance violations after they channeled Russian money to Trump's campaign via fake intermediaries. Foreign political donations are illegal in the USA. Parnas has agreed to testify to Congress although I don't think he is scheduled yet.<br />
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Another story, possibly originating from Putin (who spoke about it in a 2017 press conference) was circulating that it was Ukraine who hacked the DNC server and meddled in the election. Though this story is confused because they are supposed to have intervened on Clinton's side but all the leaks were damaging to Clinton. The hacking was interference in favour of Trump, who subsequently won the election (although he lost the popular vote). Also the US intelligence community conclusively proved that is was Russia that had hacked the server. The idea is that a physical DNC server was somehow smuggled out of the US and is being hidden in Ukraine.<br />
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The Biden story made its way to Trump. He put two and two together and made five. Trump saw two opportunities. Firstly he could hurt his main political rival, Joe Biden. Secondly, he could cast doubt on the work of the US intelligence community (who he felt were working against him) and exculpate his friend and ally Vladimir Putin. He decided to use his the weight of the office of president and the apparatus of state to force the new and inexperienced Ukraine president Volodimir Zelensky to publicly open investigations into the Bidens and the server. This would achieve both aims.<br />
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It's possible that Trump believed the stories to be true, but even so, he was clearly abusing his power in choosing to take this action, whether or not it succeeded.<br />
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Trump's first problem was the Ambassador to Ukraine, Marie Yovanovich. She was competent, intelligent, and actively fighting corruption. She had implicated the head of the anti-corruption unit of the Prosecutor General's office, Nazar Kholonitsky, in witness tampering (they bugged his fish tank). Yovanovich was publically calling for his removal and prosecution.<br />
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Rather than simply recally Yovanovich, as he could have done, Trump allowed Giuliani to cook up a smear campaign against her. Her exemplary record and character notwithstanding, Yovanovich, who had served in active war zones and been shot at in the course of her duties, was smeared by Lutsenko, which was repeated by Giuliani, lawyers for the President DiGenova and Toensing (picked up by Fox News), and by Trump Jr. Finally she was smeared by Trump just before he removed her from her role and again while she was giving testimony to Congress (thus committing the federal crime of witness tampering).<br />
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Yovanovich was replaced by William Taylor a <i>man</i> of impeccable record and character. Although he was named <i>Chargé d'affaires</i> rather than Ambassador (the post remains unfilled). Taylor's appointment was a smoke screen as he soon came to realise. He took up the regular role of representing the US's interests in the Ukraine. However, there was another White House team at work in Ukraine, seemingly managed by Giuliani.<br />
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Three WH officials operated an alternative mission to Ukraine. Ambassador to the EU, Gordon Sondland bought his post with a $1 million donation to the Trump campaign. The hotelier has no political experience. He was teamed the Secretary of Energy, Rick Perry, and the Special Envoy to Ukraine, Kurt Volker. They affectionately referred to themselves as the "three amigos". The trio were charged by Donald Trump to put pressure on Zelensky to publicly support Trump by announcing investigations into Biden and the mythical server. Giuliani was their line manager, but SOndland at least spoke directly with Trump about this project.<br />
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In a series of meetings they conveyed Trump's message that US support was contingent on support for Trump's witch hunt to Zelensky and his top officials. On offer in payment for this compliance was a public meeting in the White House for Zelensky (which would help bolster his support and legitimise his presidency). Trump has often publicly supported his allies such as Kim, Putin, and Erdogan in this way.<br />
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Mike Pence was also roped into delivering the ultimatum. He claims ignorance of the machinations, but this hardly seems credible. If he did not know then he is incompetent. Zelensky, faced with multiple White House Officials bullying him had to play along. But he could not easily capitulate to the US without a backlash from Russia and from his own people. He was in a serious bind and stalled for time.<br />
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Seemingly Trump did not feel enough pressure was being brought to bear on Zelensky so he had his Chief of Staff, Mick Mulvaney, intervene in the Office of Budget Management to hold up financial aide to Ukraine. Zelensky did not know about this during the infamous phone call, but he was already under considerable pressure from Trump's goons. The hold on the aide was made known to Ukraine, who were agreeing to do what was asked, but not actually doing anything. Zelensky was trapped and agreed to make the required announcement, but still stalled.<br />
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Finally a whistleblower who heard about the call and some of the machinations going on, reported this to their boss. The complaint was illegally withheld from Congress, but eventually released and impeachment inquiry announced within days. At this point, the aide to Ukraine was released and Zelensky escaped from the trap Trump had set for him. However, he was still compelled to support Trump publicly, he is still under Trump's thumb and having serious problems at home. At the same time the call was moved to a high security server set up for matters of national security in a rather inept attempt at a cover up.<br />
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As pressure mounted on the President in the form of openly leaked excerpts of secret depositions in the impeachment hearings, Mulvaney went on national television and confessed that they had been trying to bribe Ukraine (by demanding investigations into Biden and the mythical server) and asserted that this was simply the norm in foreign policy. "Get over it". This has caused an ongoing rift with top White House lawyer, Pat Cipollone. There has been no coherent message from the White House.<br />
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The impeachment hearings continue and the Congress are still taking depositions in private. <br />
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Sondland is the weak link of the White House goons. His testimony to date could well leave him open to perjury charges as its apparent he knew much more than he is saying - he was fully involved and fully informed, even he is was not experienced enough to know he was breaking the law. Ignorance is not a legal defence. If you watch no other public hearing, watch Sondland's testimony on Wed 20th. He had personal phone calls with President Trump about his clandestine mission in Ukraine. Weirdly he had them on an unsecured line in a country where Russia routinely monitors communications, and with Trump speaking so loudly that others could hear the whole conversation. <br />
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<b>Sondland is going to have to betray Trump or face jail time. And this may weaken Trump enough open the floodgates. </b><br />
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The way I read it, Trump is guilty of abusing his power in the form of bribery to seek foreign interference in the 2020 election. Of course the call notes so far released are clear evidence of this, but the weight of it is in the actions of his goons in Ukraine. He is also guilty of obstruction of Congress for refusing to comply with lawful subpoenas and for blocking others from complying with lawful subpoenas. And he is guilty of obstruction of justice in the form of witness tampering. All are impeachable offenses. However, as we know, he is also guilty of obstruction of justice in the Mueller Inquiry.<br />
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It seems to me that many of the people involved have criminal liability including Giuliani. Interesting just a few days he "joked" that he had insurance in case Trump did not remain loyal to him. I do not believe for a second that this was a joke. It was a threat.<br />
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It seems clear to me that Pence, Pompeo, and Barr all knew was was going on. Mulvaney was probably involved in the strategy. They are all complicit. And it's no wonder that the GOP are fighting so hard to undermine the credibility of the impeachment inquiry. Knowingly supporting a corrupt President is hard to sell to voters. If they fail to dismiss the charges they are all going down with Trump. Indeed it seems likely that, if they fail, Trump would consider them his enemies and make a point of taking them down with him.<br />
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Many more Trump aides are looking at criminal indictment (joining the long list of criminals that Trump has associated with over the years).<br />
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Last week Trump was found guilty of misappropriating and misusing funds from his charity for personal gain. It is now a matter of public record that he is corrupt. Trump is presently being investigated by the Southern District of New York for fraud and is likely to spend the rest of his life in court if not in prison once he leaves office. He has been fighting very hard to prevent his tax returns from being released and we can only assume that this is because they are incriminating in some way. His business empire is crumbling now that his father is no longer able to bail him out. The transparent attempt to subvert the emoluments clause in holding the G7 at this own resort failed, which leaves Doral losing vast sums of money for Trump.<br />
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The institution of democracy and the validity of the Constitution of the USA hang in the balance. But the Founders anticipated this moment. They gave the three branches of government equal status and power. It will all turn on whether Republican senators back Trump and corruption or back the Constitution and take their bitter medicine.Jayaravahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13783922534271559030noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8424267157203564446.post-15457850266901614042019-11-10T13:39:00.001+00:002019-11-10T13:39:44.523+00:00The British Elite Are Terrified of CorbynThis comparison of two stories from the Express says it all.<br />
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One party want to raise the minimum wage to £10.50. The other party wants to raise the minimum wage to £10.00. One is hailed as a boon for workers while the other is derides as destroying jobs. Logic suggests that the higher amount ought to draw fire for hurting jobs, since the argument is that higher wages suppresses job creation.<br /><br />But the paper does not follow logic. In Sept 2019 it rails against £10.00 proposed by Labour, but in Nov 2019 it hails the Tory proposed increase to £10.50.<br /><br />This is nonsense. This is fake news. This is misinformation. The "free press" may be free, but they are liars. What the hell do we do about this? </div>
<br />Jayaravahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13783922534271559030noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8424267157203564446.post-5516816731932811822019-10-25T09:03:00.000+01:002019-10-25T09:03:04.879+01:00The Debt Clock and the Generational Disaster in the USA.Check out this amazing <a href="https://www.usdebtclock.org/">Debt Clock for the USA</a>.<br />
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It's scary in several ways. Look particularly at the bottom left under "Unfunded Liabilities".<br />
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Unfunded Liability - (n) liability is a debt or obligation one party owes to other(s) some future date in time. Debt gets commonly settled by payment or performance of a service. An Unfunded Liability describes any liability, debt, mortgage, or obligation that one either does not have savings set aside for it. </blockquote>
At present the US Government has unfunded liabilities of <b><span style="color: yellow;">$126 trillion</span></b>. Just to be clear the US government has promised to $126 trillion but has no budget for paying any of it. This is medicare, pensions, social security, government debt, and so on.<br />
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And the GDP of the USA is $19 trillion. So the unfunded liabilities are <b><span style="color: yellow;">679% of GDP</span></b>.<br />
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What happens when the US government defaults on its obligations? The constraints on debts to banks and other nations mean they will get priority. A major power defaulting on debts would threaten global chaos on a scale that would make the global financial crisis look like a day in the park. So what will happen is defaulting on domestic obligations: medicare, pensions, social security.<br />
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The other thing to notice is the differential between rise in wages and the rise in health care and education. Comparing 2000 and now.<br />
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<span style="font-family: "courier new" , "courier" , monospace;">mean income: $30,872 → $33,445 (+ 8.3%)</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "courier new" , "courier" , monospace;">healthcare costs: $5,508 → $11,516 (+109.1%)</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "courier new" , "courier" , monospace;">college tuition: $11,897 → $24,568 (+106.5%)</span></blockquote>
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This trend is only continuing. It goes with <a href="https://sdbullion.com/blog/what-are-unfunded-liabilities-for-the-us-government">another fact</a>: successive generations have saved less, and fewer have saved at all, for retirement. Saving for retirement requires that we earn enough to put some aside. In my life time the developed world has moved from the wages of one man supporting the entire family with some put aside for a pension, to the wages of both parents being insufficient for live on.<br />
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This has been great for corporate profit margins. It has been great for shareholder dividends in this generation. But in another 50 years not only will the population be aging and longer lived, but it won't have saved for retirement. Just at the time when the government's own financial crisis is forcing them to stop spending on domestic obligations.<br />
<br />Jayaravahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13783922534271559030noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8424267157203564446.post-15723904014066071972019-10-23T08:30:00.000+01:002019-10-23T08:31:23.349+01:00Some Thoughts on the Politics of the Bottom. <table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhgmnTL8c0XlG6s_hYck3laiXjlKBk2kUJauML43FePWZ8JNqYgEcps2WnE_749yq0f41rxm4-gWpKYJxU_srT_t0_HO1Nt_qYYHx0rpIRGKkcCaHn-iwgsupc2FrFOZTwqhUaI_Y14QL4/s1600/EHQps7VXkAAEU3M.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="752" data-original-width="1080" height="222" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhgmnTL8c0XlG6s_hYck3laiXjlKBk2kUJauML43FePWZ8JNqYgEcps2WnE_749yq0f41rxm4-gWpKYJxU_srT_t0_HO1Nt_qYYHx0rpIRGKkcCaHn-iwgsupc2FrFOZTwqhUaI_Y14QL4/s320/EHQps7VXkAAEU3M.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">From the protests in Chile:<br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: 12.8px;">“We are not from the Right <br />
nor from the Left. <br />
We are from the Bottom <br />
and we are coming for the ones at the Top”</span></td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<br />
In the politics of the <b><span style="color: #00cc00;">Bottom</span></b> we have to acknowledge that the <b><span style="color: #00cc00;">Bottom </span></b>have a uniformly terrible experience of government bureaucracy. They especially have a terrible experience of the legal system and the welfare system. Less money is spent on the <b><span style="color: #00cc00;">Bottom</span></b>. They get a worse education. They work harder. They don't live as long. They are bullied by the state and management. They are despised.<br />
<br />
So the <b><span style="color: #00cc00;">Bottom </span></b>might not see socialism (the state running things) as a great idea. Handing power to the people who torment, torture, and kill the <b><span style="color: #00cc00;">Bottom </span></b>may seem like a bad idea to folk at the <b><span style="color: #00cc00;">Bottom</span></b>. Hence, many vote on the right to the consternation of the left. And they would not be wrong. You cannot empower the disempowered, by handing power to the state. The social liberal aims to give the <b><span style="color: #00cc00;">Bottom </span></b>a step up through education, healthcare, etc. But the bias in the system constantly sabotages this.<br />
<br />
Unfortunately, contra the Liberal myth, the <b><span style="color: #00cc00;">Bottom </span></b>want to be empowered without taking responsibility. Who appears to offer this? Fascists. The Mafia. Gangs...<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<span style="color: yellow;">"Join us! No one will push you around (except us), we'll look after you and your family, you'll make good money, and there is a career path if you want it."</span></blockquote>
Fascists understand the bottom better than Socialists or Social Liberals. <b>This is not a good thing... </b>Economic Liberals (NeoLiberals) see the <b><span style="color: #00cc00;">Bottom </span></b>as an obstacle to prosperity.<br />
<br />
The is a problem of Essentialism: the idea that being at the <b><span style="color: #00cc00;">Bottom </span></b>is not a matter of circumstances or chance; that is is somehow meaningful. If you trace back, people at the <b><span style="color: #00cc00;">Bottom </span></b>usually had everything taken away by the <b><span style="color: #cc0000;">Top</span></b> at some point and never recovered.<br />
<br />
We have to somehow find a new dynamic. The court cases in the USA which aim to hold the oil companies to account for their deceptions on climate change is one good sign. Similarly the holding of big pharma to account for the opioid crisis.<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />Jayaravahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13783922534271559030noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8424267157203564446.post-91455144037458996402019-10-22T10:28:00.003+01:002019-10-22T10:28:40.458+01:00DoublespeakOrwellian doublespeak has become the norm for politicians and big business. The tools of <b>semantics </b>leave us scratching our heads when someone says something and then claims not to have said it, or to have said something different, or to have meant something different. <b>Pragmatics </b>takes the nonsense in it's stride and asks the same question: what is the author of the speech act trying to do.<br />
<br />
Sowing confusion amongst your enemies using disinformation is a classic military tactic. It undermines the ability of the enemy to understand your true intent and leaves them expending time, energy, and resources sifting through your utterances looking for the truth.<br />
<br />
The use of disinformation and propaganda in warfare is not new. The routine overt use of them in domestic politics is. This tells us that the elite are on a war footing. And we, the people, are their enemy.Jayaravahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13783922534271559030noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8424267157203564446.post-15676386399486612072019-10-11T12:56:00.000+01:002019-10-11T12:56:21.131+01:00Google vs Republicans: The big headline in the Guardian today is <b><a href="https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2019/oct/11/google-contributions-climate-change-deniers">Google made large contributions to climate change deniers</a></b>.<br />
<br />
I don't think Google was targeting climate change, denial, but rather the reasoning is found in another article: <b><a href="https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2019/oct/11/obscure-law-google-climate-deniers-section-230">The obscure law that explains why Google backs climate deniers</a></b>.<br />
<br />
Google and other large internet companies rely on <i>section 230 of the Communications Decency Act</i> to avoid liability for what people like me publish on my Google-owned blogs. This part of the CDA offers the internet giant legal immunity for content I create using their platform "in effect treating them as distributors of content and not publishers". And this seems fair enough. Google owns Blogger. There are millions of blogs on this platform and Google cannot reasonably moderate them expect retroactively if people complain. Google merely distribute my words. And I should be the one who has the liability.<br />
<br />
Still, this doesn't explain why Google are giving a lot of money to quite so many right-wing think tanks. Nor why Google have been so defensive about being caught out.<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<span style="color: yellow;">“We’re hardly alone among companies that contribute to organisations while strongly disagreeing with them on climate policy,” the spokesperson said.</span></blockquote>
<br />
<div style="text-align: left;">
The reason they have been making contributions is that Republican senators, particular Ted Cruz have been calling for repeal of §320. And in particular Cruz argues that Google <i>is biased in favour of the Democrats</i>. That is that Google <i>search results</i> are biased. Here is Cruz grilling a Google representative on 16 July 2019:</div>
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<iframe allow="accelerometer; autoplay; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture" allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="252" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/CX6LlEcJ4nw" width="448"></iframe><br /></div>
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Make no mistake, this is a disaster for Google! Because senators have power to <i>change laws</i>. If Google were deemed to be a publisher then they would be open to vast number of lawsuits from Republican supporters.</div>
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In Aug 2019 <i><a href="https://slate.com/technology/2019/08/robert-epstein-google-bias-conservative-bogus-trump.html">Slate </a></i>ran an article with a bit more information on this. </div>
<blockquote class="tr_bq" style="text-align: left;">
<span style="color: yellow;">"Fox News’ sister network Fox Business had discussed the July Senate testimony of a psychologist named Robert Epstein, who said that “Google’s search algorithm likely impacted undecided voters in a way that gave at least 2.6 million votes to Hillary Clinton.” </span></blockquote>
<div style="text-align: left;">
And President translated this into a Tweet that said in part "Google manipulated from 2.6 million to 16 million votes for Hillary Clinton in 2016 Election!" Now this is an obvious distortion of the facts and one of tens of thousands of lies that Trump has told.<br /><br />Epstein works at the American Institute for Behavioral Research. But Epstein was already in a long standing conflict with Google: <span style="color: yellow;">"In 2012, Epstein publicly disputed with Google Search over a security warning placed on links to his website"</span> (<a href="https://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/01/05/one-mans-fight-with-google-over-a-security-warning/">NYTimes</a>). He subsequently made a career of criticizing Google and other big internet companies. And of course in the increasingly divided and paranoid politics of the US, Republicans latched onto this idea that Google had manipulated search results. </div>
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Of course Google has responded through the usual channels - the mainstream media. They have testified in But the parts of the media controlled by Republicans of the extreme views we associate with Cruz and Trump are not bound to give Google a fair hearing. The comments under that Ted Cruz video are disturbing in their partisan credulity and paranoia. </div>
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The original liberal country, the home of liberal democracy, the nation that has inscribed liberalism into the very fabric of their constitution has produced a generation, of mainly younger white men, who hate liberalism. I saw yesterday that young white men have issued death threats to Greta Thunberg who they see as representing a vast conspiracy against them. Angry older white men like Jordan Peterson have only stoked the fire higher by confirming their fears of a liberal conspiracy. It's not quite clear what this liberal conspiracy will achieve apart from free healthcare and green energy, but the paranoiacs associate it with gun control and with progressive social values.<br /><br />We often see negative comments about Google bowing to political pressure to censor results in China. We seldom see analysis of the kind of political pressure that Google has to deal with in the USA where society was always economically right wing, but has become increasingly socially conservative and authoritarian. And make no mistake, Epstein has put Google firmly in the cross hairs. </div>
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Google should be scrutinised. It enjoys a monopoly on the market and it is not always a friend to the individual citizen. Issues about privacy, data, metadata, and censorship are important and Google should be seen to be conforming to social norms on these issues, or at the very least complying with relevant law. </div>
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But the pressure Google face from paranoid Republicans and the rednecks who support Trump is something else. We can perhaps understand why they have resorted to giving large (but undisclosed sums) to right-wing think tanks. Google is fighting for survival and needs allies in the Republican Party to help thwart the insane clown posse that is Trump and his supporters. They cannot simply make a rational argument and present evidence because the other side don't operate on facts and reason. They operate on emotions and prejudice.<br /><br />Still there is something fundamentally immoral about supporting these organisations that are contributing to climate change denial. Sure, other big companies are doing it, but since when has that been a valid moral argument? Two wrongs don't make a right. Climate change is the issue of our time. And even if we are wrong about everything and we clean up the environment only to realise that we needn't have, we still have clean air, clean water, lower deaths from pollution, and so on. We have to make the transition to a Green Economy anyway. Climate change just makes it urgent. </div>
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<a href="http://moderndebtjubilee.blogspot.com/p/lewis-powell-memo.html">Lewis Powell argued in 1971</a> that the American free enterprise system was under attack by progressive social attitudes (by which he specifically meant the environmental movement, but at that time presumably also the civil rights movement as well). </div>
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The freedom of economic liberals has always been about the freedom to exploit the people and world for profit. The so-called free enterprise system only ever worked well for large multinationals that pursued and gained monopoly power. It wasn't free for anyone else. The free market ideology that combined classical economic liberalism and the new economic theory of monetarism never really addressed the complete lack of freedom of markets. Google is fighting to survive and against a pernicious trend led by a corrupt politician who is misusing his office, but they are using their wealth to buy political influence. This is the flaw in the free market system: those who could, always have manipulated markets for their own benefit. </div>
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Capitalism always ends up being about the elites fighting for power over the workers. If that means drafting our workers to kill your workers, then so be it. The various factions get involved in the deluded idea that by backing the right tyrant they will get special treatment in the new dispensation. So suddenly the young right-wing white men of the USA are against Google, even though Google's contribution to their lives far exceeds that of senator Cruz and this cronies. It's all part of a sinister plot. </div>
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All this is frankly terrifying. Trump, Cruz, the Republican Party, are corrupt and disinterested in dealing with climate change because it shifts profit making to other industries. Google, in a shameless attempt to buy political influence with the allies of these corrupt politicians in order to stave off a disadvantageous change i the law, are making large contributions to the very think tanks that fuel the Republican climate change denial. The only winner here is <i><b>climate change denial</b></i>. </div>
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The UK where I live is scarcely any better. Venal millionaire politicians are destroying democracy for money.<br /><br /><br /><br /></div>
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Jayaravahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13783922534271559030noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8424267157203564446.post-12282588150258778892019-10-04T12:00:00.002+01:002019-10-04T12:00:45.751+01:00Problems of market economiesFrom <i><a href="https://www.britannica.com/topic/liberalism/Liberalism-in-the-19th-century">Encyclopedia Britannica</a></i>:<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
"By the end of the 19th century, some unforeseen but serious consequences of the Industrial Revolution in Europe and North America had produced a deepening disenchantment with the principal economic basis of classical liberalism—the ideal of a market economy. The main problem was that the profit system had concentrated vast wealth in the hands of a relatively small number of industrialists and financiers, with several adverse consequences. First, great masses of people failed to benefit from the wealth flowing from factories and lived in poverty in vast slums. Second, because the greatly expanded system of production created many goods and services that people often could not afford to buy, markets became glutted and the system periodically came to a near halt in periods of stagnation that came to be called depressions. Finally, those who owned or managed the means of production had acquired enormous economic power that they used to influence and control government, to manipulate an inchoate electorate, to limit competition, and to obstruct substantive social reform. In short, some of the same forces that had once released the productive energies of Western society now restrained them; some of the very energies that had demolished the power of despots now nourished a new despotism."</blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
"As modern liberals struggled to meet the challenge of stagnating living standards in mature industrial economies, others saw an opportunity for a revival of classical liberalism. The intellectual foundations of this revival were primarily the work of the Austrian-born British economist Friedrich von Hayek and the American economist Milton Friedman. One of Hayek’s greatest achievements was to demonstrate, on purely logical grounds, that a centrally planned economy is impossible. He also famously argued, in <i>The Road to Serfdom</i> (1944), that interventionist measures aimed at the redistribution of wealth lead inevitably to totalitarianism. Friedman, as one of the founders of the modern monetarist school of economics, held that the business cycle is determined mainly by the supply of money and by interest rates, rather than by government fiscal policy—contrary to the long-prevailing view of Keynes and his followers. These arguments were enthusiastically embraced by the major conservative political parties in Britain and the United States, which had never abandoned the classical liberal conviction that the market, for all its faults, guides economic policy better than governments do." </blockquote>
Jayaravahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13783922534271559030noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8424267157203564446.post-88108860557750976032019-10-03T08:56:00.002+01:002019-10-03T08:56:31.923+01:00My Response to George Monbiot on DemagoguesMonbiot writes in the Guardian: <i><a href="https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2019/oct/03/demagogues-fury-violence-outrage-discourse">Demagogues thrive by whipping up our fury. Here’s how to thwart them</a></i>.<br />
<br />
I believe the present wave of authoritarian, nationalistic, and violent politics is the direct result of 40 years of neoliberalism undercutting workers pay and conditions, undermining job security, and generally telling the citizen that they <i>don't matter</i>. 40 years of neoliberal politicians and corporate CEOs corrupting public office and subverting democracy. <br />
<br />
There is no govt money for the people because it's all going to subsidise multinational corporations. We have pogroms against "benefit cheats" but<i> tax cheats</i> who steal 100x more are routinely ignored. <br />
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This is a mirror of what we saw during the decline of <i>classical </i>liberalism. It "concentrated vast wealth in the hands of a relatively small number of industrialists and financiers," and the masses did not benefit; it caused cycles of boom and bust; and lastly those who had great wealthy used it to buy influence in and control of government, and to manipulate the electorate. (Adapted from <a href="https://www.britannica.com/topic/liberalism/Liberalism-in-the-19th-century">Encyclopedia Britannica</a>). <br />
<br />
While authoritarian, nationalistic, and violent politics did not take hold everywhere as a result, it did take hold in enough places that we had to fight WWII to stop it. And after that we saw a brief period of humanistic, society-oriented politics until the early 1970s when the economic liberals merged their ideas with the new monetarism to create the new classical liberalism or neoliberalism. The neoliberals launched a "counterattack" against what <a href="http://moderndebtjubilee.blogspot.com/p/lewis-powell-memo.html">Lewis Powell</a> called the attack on the free enterprise system. They bought up the media. They bought up business schools. They founded think tanks to employ the business school graduates to keep the message in the media. They built power base that is more or less impervious to governance and democracy. <br />
<br />
We did not learn the lessons of history. And now the farce is playing out as tragedy. The difference this time is that 40 years of neoliberalism have ignited climate change, which may well already be irreversible. <br />
<br />
In response to this, Monbiot really does have much to offer beyond some simple common sense. I agree that insulting the opposition is a mistake. Insults raise the tension and make resolution less likely. Of course appeasement is not going to work in this case either. This also has historical precedent. <br /><br />I think we have to take to the streets in large numbers and demand change. But the UK is a deeply divided country at present, and this favours the <strike>Romans</strike> Tories, while the <strike>Judeans</strike> Left cannot stop their infighting even for a second. So a political solution seems a long way off, because the party that creates discord is not going to be stopped by the party embodying discord. In the USA the impeachment of Trump looks encouraging, but remember that Pence will be his replacement. Elsewhere things seem to hang in the balance. And every day the earth is heating up...Jayaravahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13783922534271559030noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8424267157203564446.post-41797711852554688492019-05-12T13:16:00.000+01:002019-05-12T13:16:37.615+01:00Political TerminologyStill trying to unravel political terminology. My latest attempt:<br />
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<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<div style="text-align: center;">
<span style="color: yellow;"><b>The opposite of liberal is socialist</b></span></div>
<span style="color: yellow;"><b><div style="text-align: center;">
The opposite of conservative is progressive</div>
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The opposite of libertarian is authoritarian </div>
</b></span></blockquote>
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These three axes are theoretically independent of each other.<br />
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I think some will find this counter-intuitive because these terms are typically mixed up. We call authoritarian groups "far-right" and we think of liberals as of "the left". But I've always found this confusing and the more I study the history of liberalism, the less it makes sense.<br />
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<b>Liberal/Socialist</b><br />
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These are primarily economic terms. Liberals are for small government, free markets, and laterly for monetarism (using monetary policy to control inflation). Socialists are for state ownership on behalf of the people, regulated markets, and usually take full employment as their economic goal. The original liberals were against democracy because it threatened a tyranny of the majority (which we have in the case of Brexit).<br />
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Many people will be confused by the association of liberalism with the right-wing. But all the key right-wing economic policies came from the classical liberals (Hobbes, Locke, Smith, Mills, etc).<br /><br />To be far-right in this view is to advocate for allowing markets to decide everything without interference. In this sense, neoliberals who see a role for state in the markets are less right wing than the classical liberals. Mind you the role of the state is strictly limited to managing the money supply to control inflation (monetarism) and preventing monopolies. The latter has not prevented most industries seeing a massive contraction in the number of players. Virtual any class of goods and services you might purchase is not controlled by 3 or 4 companies globally. 4 oil companies, 3 food manufacturers, and so on. And though they are not monopolies these very large and dominant conglomerates have the same effect of suppressing competition. They simply swallow up any competition.<br />
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Socialists mainly advocate state ownership of the provision of basic services such as housing, utilities, education, and healthcare. In the past this led to full employment but also to inefficiency.<br /><br />There are two distinct approaches to welfare. One of the classical liberal arguments for how the state should help citizens is "give a man a fish and you feed him for a day, teach him to fish and he can feed himself for the rest of his life." Liberals want to help a person to help themselves. What welfare liberals imagined is everyone with a fishing rod catching fish to feed themselves. Socialists take the approach that if the strongest members of the society go fishing with a net, they can catch enough fish to feed everyone.<br />
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But actually happens under liberalism is that a businessman captures the market on nets, boats, and fish and sells fish to people at the highest price they can extract from the people. In the name of freedom they make everyone slaves to this system.<br /><br />Now socialism sometimes works well as it did in Scandinavia where everyone paid very high levels of tax (60-90%), but the govt ensured everyone had a job, everyone received an excellent education, very good healthcare, and they had the highest standards of living anywhere in the world. In other places, socialism led to stagnation as the state control was bureaucratic and apathetic. In Scandinavia government was highly motivated to look after citizens, whereas in Britain, with it's much greater population and history of rigid class distinctions, the system bogged down and worked against the citizenry.<br />
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As far as the environment goes, liberals treat corporations as legal persons who have the right to engage in economic activity unhindered by excessive regulation. Laissez faire attitudes meant that pollution, greenhouse effects, and habitat loss were acceptable consequences of economic activity, even if they negatively impacted on the health and well-being of citizens. This reminds us that liberalism has always talked expansively, but acted to preserve the privileges and profits of the elite.<br />
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<b>Conservative/Progressive</b><br />
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Conservatives are for the status quo. The aging members of the Soviet Politburo were conservatives of the left. Americans who oppose changes to gun laws on the basis of individual liberty are conservatives of the right.<br />
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Progressives want to change things. One of the most striking changes of our time was the transition from Hick's interpretations of Keynesian economic policies to those of Friedman and Hayek interpreted by Alan Greenspan. I call this "progressive", not because it led to progress or was a good change, but because it moved decisively away from the status quo.<br />
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The problem here is that the term "progressive" is usually associated with progress towards some ideal. With liberals the goal is always individual liberty (though of course companies have the rights of individuals in law). Indeed liberals argue that liberty is not something the government can grant, because liberty is our inalienable natural<i> right</i>. Government can only limit or deny liberty. Most liberals accept, following arguments first made by John Locke, that there are a narrow range of situations in which the government may limit the liberty of an individual and that is where an action or activity harms another citizen.<br />
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Just as there are few if any socialists in the USA, there are few if any conservatives in the UK. The Conservative Party of the UK was historically a party which resisted change being proposed by liberals (free markets) and radicals (democracy). But they were taken over by neoclassical liberalism in the 1970s and began a series of massive social and economic reforms, completely changing how the UK economy worked, negating the power of labour unions, and privatising government assets and enterprises (crippling the ability of the state to help citizens).<br />
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<b>Libertarian/Authoritarian</b><br />
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I think these terms are fairly clear. Although the UK follows liberal (right-wing) economic policies, these have been adopted by governments who insisted we have no choice. They also happen to resist evidence based policies in favour of the moral commitments of the leaders - typically a "we know best" approach. And this is authoritarian. At the extreme are leaders who dominate (or attempt to dominate) the process of governing, like Trump.<br />
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Beyond this are absolutist forms of government such as what we see in North Korea or Saudi Arabia. Libertarians of the right or left (anarchists) are resistant to anyone telling the what to do.<br /><br />And at the other extreme are the people who don't think the government should tell anyone what to do. These are often people who are already in a position of privilege who see the liberty of other people as a threat to their own power. This has been a feature of the history of liberalism - classical liberals resisted democracy for example, working against the extension of voting rights at every step.<br /><br />Many libertarians turn out to be socially conservative. They don't want anyone to tell them what to do but they're against the expansion of rights for other groups. So we see US libertarians against the extension of civil rights to transexuals for example. Fundamentalist Christians are anxious to assert their absolute rights to freedom of assembled, worship, and expression, but some of them will murder a doctor who performs an abortion because they insist their worldview is the only valid one. Any libertarian who is against pluralism should face some hard questions, though they seldom do.<br /><br /><br /><b>Conclusion</b><br />
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This is where I've got to in trying to understand political terminology and the dynamics that it applies to. I'll be continuing to think about for a long time to come I suspect.<br /><br />It does seem helpful to understand where these terms come from and how the usage has changed over time. It seems helpful to disentangle some of the terms that have begun to merge: like liberal and socialist or liberal and progressive, and all of these with "left-wing"; or conservative and right-wing.<br /><br />If we can call things by the proper name then it will help us to understand our differences and similarities. For example, although I see many of the liberal attitudes as pernicious in practice (if not always in theory) I can appreciate that the concept of liberty is one that they championed. Liberty is certainly something to celebrate, but it would be nice to spread it around a little more in my view.<br /><br />But also I think it will be essential in the fight against the climate and biodiversity crisis to frame it in the values of the people we are trying to persuade to help us. Where liberalism is the dominant ideology, as it is in most of Europe and America, it makes sense to frame the discussion in terms of liberty. <br /><br />If someone poisons the air I breath and thereby shortens my life or causes me to suffer, then this can be frame in many ways. But one important way to talk about, given the values of the ruling elites, is as an infringement of my liberty. It is fundamental to liberalism that if the government has any role at all, it is to prevent other citizens from infringing on my liberty, especially in the form of harming me.<br />
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<span style="color: yellow;"><br /></span></div>
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<span style="color: yellow;"><b>The opposite of socialist is liberal</b></span></div>
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<span style="color: yellow;"><b>The opposite of progressive is conservative</b></span></div>
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<span style="color: yellow;"><b>The opposite of authoritarian is libertarian</b></span></div>
Jayaravahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13783922534271559030noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8424267157203564446.post-40483749851221370582019-05-09T18:22:00.000+01:002019-05-09T18:22:06.005+01:00Neoliberalism articles<a href="https://www.theguardian.com/news/2017/aug/18/neoliberalism-the-idea-that-changed-the-world">Neoliberalism: the idea that swallowed the world.</a> <i>The word has become a rhetorical weapon, but it properly names the reigning ideology of our era – one that venerates the logic of the market and strips away the things that make us human</i>. By Stephen Metcalf. <b>Guardian</b>. Fri 18 Aug 2017.<br />
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<a href="https://www.imf.org/external/pubs/ft/fandd/2016/06/ostry.htm">Neoliberalism: Oversold?</a> <b>Finance & Development</b> (IMF Journal), June 2016, Vol. 53, No. 2. Jonathan D. Ostry, Prakash Loungani, and Davide Furceri. <i>Inside the stock exchange in Santiago, Chile, one of the first countries to adopt a form of neoliberal policies. Instead of delivering growth, some neoliberal policies have increased inequality, in turn jeopardizing durable expansion</i>.<br />
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<a href="https://www.theguardian.com/books/2016/apr/15/neoliberalism-ideology-problem-george-monbiot">Neoliberalism – the ideology at the root of all our problems</a>. George Monbiot. <b>Guardian</b>. 15 Apr 2016. <i>Financial meltdown, environmental disaster and even the rise of Donald Trump – neoliberalism has played its part in them all. Why has the left failed to come up with an alternative?</i><br />
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<br />Jayaravahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13783922534271559030noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8424267157203564446.post-92137098376779541822019-05-06T12:41:00.002+01:002019-05-06T12:41:25.180+01:00Degrowth & DeflationI keep seeing naive arguments for degrowth that don't account for the disastrous impact of deflation on an economy, especially in the light of very high levels of private sector debt (across the first world). It would not be so bad if the advocates of degrowth had any sense of how deflation works, but they seem not to.<br />
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<b>Deflation</b></div>
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Deflation has similar risks to inflation and can get out of hand just as easily. Deliberately pursuing a course of deflation is dangerous. In deflation, prices fall and consumers assume that if they delay a purchase the price will be lower. So it makes sense to delay it if possible. Demand for products tends to drop, putting further downward pressure on prices (there is a positive feedback loop). But as demand falls off, production has to fall off as well. Supply chains slow down and sometimes dry up. Wages start to fall, and businesses start to lay off workers, usually starting with the low paid, unskilled workers.<br />
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Normally we would hope that the fall in wages and rise in unemployment would counteract the deflationary spiral. But if we are actively pursuing degrowth then the deflationary spiral will keep going, we might see the first examples of hyper-deflation. <br />
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We don't live in the kind of world that accepts equality of economic outcome as a goal. Thus the poor are going be worse off. The middle classes will cling on, while they have job. The ruling elite are now excessively insulated against declines by the ability to short stocks and buy credit default swaps in advance of the change of economic policy. They will actually grab an even larger share of a shrinking pie. And this will exacerbate the effects of degrowth. Businesses will downsize and force workers to work harder to preserve investors capital.<br />
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<b>Debt Deflation</b></div>
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A problem that almost no one talks about is the fate of debt under deflation. While it is true that buying power increases in the short-term the subsequent fall in wages will cancel that out in time. The trouble comes when your debt stays the same in numerical terms, but your income is shrinking in real terms. In effect deflation multiplies debt. And we need to be clear that the first world is highly indebted. Politicians bang on about govt debt, but private sector debt is much larger. In the UK private sector debt is about 350% of GDP. Household debt alone is slightly over 100% of GDP. But debt is currently rising. Households have spent more than they earned for 9 straight quarters in the UK. <br /><br />The interest on these debts must be a significant figure, though I have never found anyone who could tell me what that figure might be. If the average interest rate is 10% then the interest payments on debts to the value 350% of GDP are 35% of GDP per annum! As I say, no one seems to be able to tell me what that figure might be, not even the heterodox economists who bang on about private sector debt.<br />
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<b>Consuming Less & Kill the Third World</b></div>
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There are powerful arguments for consuming a great deal less in the West in order for us all to survive the climate emergency and to turn around the mass extinction. But this will have massive consequences.<br />
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However, this is going to be happening on a global scale. Those countries most at risk from the climate emergency are also most at risk from degrowth.<br />
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If Europe stops consuming, say, jute and cheap clothing from Bangladesh, then vast numbers of Bangladeshis lose their livelihood and have no welfare to rely on. And just as we wipe out their economy to save ourselves, their whole country is inundated with floods and because we are following degrowth we have much less to offer them in terms aid.<br />
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If Western Europe rapidly stops using gas from Russia and Ukraine for cooking and heating then 190 million people are affected. Gas is by far the largest export from Russia and it mainly goes to the EU. We could expect mass unemployment, again without a welfare safety net. And at the same time their wheat crops are failing from the persistent drought that is already beginning to affect them. But of course we have to stop using fossil fuels and soon.<br />
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We desperately need to stop consuming plastic and a lot of the plastic tat we buy is made in China. If China suffers a downturn then we could be looking at 100s of millions of people losing their jobs.<br /><br />If we suddenly stop going to Greece, or Bali, or Fiji, any of a 1000 places that rely on tourism then again, there will be job losses that create a drag on the local economy, exacerbating the deflationary trend. Factor in the effects of the climate emergency and we can see that a lot of places are going to cease to exist.<br /><br />
There are many of these strong dependencies in a globalised world and the poorer nations are always more vulnerable than the rich.<br />
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<b>Surviving the Climate Emergency/Mass Extinction </b></div>
<br />Degrowth has the potential to make things a lot worse and the worst impact will be on the poor. Which is not to say that we should not consume less. The catch 22 is that if we do not consume less we will probably <i>all die</i>.<br />
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I would say that our priorities would be consuming less locally produced <i>energy</i>. Cutting down the amount of coal and oil burned to power our lifestyles. Next would be transport. It's not enough that we all switch to electric cars. We have to be thinking in terms of using a fraction of the energy resources that we currently do. We need to switch from cars to bicycles, shared vehicles, and public transport. <br /><br />Switching to plant/fungi/bacteria based foods so that animal farming is reduced will make an important contribution. We need to stop exporting animal products as well. But we need to be cautious about cutting back drastically on goods from poor and services countries, especially where their economic base is narrow. They need time to work out how they will survive the coming economic crash on top of the climate emergency/mass extinction.<br />
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Some single products such as palm oil might be good to target. Making and transporting the stuff involves cutting down vast swathes of rain forest and consumes vast amounts of energy. And yet it is not so central to any nation's economy that stopping it would bankrupt them. There must be many similar such products. Coffee and chocolate are probably both in this category and we'll probably discover how committed we are when we consider them.<br />Jayaravahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13783922534271559030noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8424267157203564446.post-65505285135743999912019-04-26T09:23:00.000+01:002019-04-26T09:23:07.425+01:00Zero Carbon BritainI follow the local Extinction Rebellion (XR) Chapter on Facebook and someone legitimately raised some doubts about the goal of getting to zero carbon (i.e. long term net zero carbon emissions) by 2025, the second demand of XR. This is what I wrote in response:<br />
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Thanks for speaking your mind. I think we have to welcome doubts and questions as much as certainty and zealousness. Doubt and the ability to speak of doubts is essential to a free society. I certainly welcome you speaking up - though clearly you were worried about the reception you would get. And that last gives me a bit of concern.<br />
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And here's my answer to your conundrum. I don't know how we'll do it. I don't think anyone does know at the moment. Extinction Rebellion is not proposing a program which gets us there. It is proposing that we hold citizen's assemblies to figure it out.<br />
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In terms of optimism, I would like the offer a story from Delhi, one of the most polluted cities in the world. In 1998 the Indian Supreme Court order that all public transport and all taxis (small auto-rickshaws make up a huge proportion of the traffic in Delhi) must be converted to CNG within two years.<br />
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CNG - compressed natural gas - is not a zero emission fuel, but it produces substantially fewer emissions. And being India, of course, it took longer than 2 years to get every vehicle converted. But most vehicles were converted and it made a substantial difference to air quality. When I visited in 2009 Delhi was still polluted, but the air was much cleaner than it had been.<br />
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As far as I can see we simple lack the will. If I were to attend a citizen's assembly, here is what I would suggest to get us on target:<br />
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<span style="color: yellow;">* All new government vehicles zero emissions immediately .</span><br />
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<span style="color: yellow;">* All new buses and taxis zero emissions within 2 years.</span><br />
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<span style="color: yellow;">* Implement congestion charging in all major cities combined with extended ultra low emission zones. </span><br />
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<span style="color: yellow;">* Deregulate micro generation and reinstitute buying surplus for the national grid.</span><br />
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<span style="color: yellow;">* Additional taxes on all international flights - incoming and outgoing - to be sure that the cost of flying reflects the cost to the planet. </span><br />
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<span style="color: yellow;">* Renationalise railways and rationalise fare structure to make trains competitive with air travel.</span><br />
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<span style="color: yellow;">* Immediately ban fracking and seek damages from those who pursued it. </span><br />
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<span style="color: yellow;">* Prioritise and expedite the building of two (or more) new thorium-based nuclear power stations (thorium almost as efficient and waste is less of a problem). All new reactors to use the same design and have interchangeable parts.</span><br />
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<span style="color: yellow;">* Commission Tesla to make us several whacking-great batteries (as in South Australia) to store solar and wind based power for non-generating periods. </span><br />
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<span style="color: yellow;">* Step up programs to insulate houses that have not been upgraded. Raise standards on new builds.</span><br />
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<span style="color: yellow;">* I would begin lawsuits to hold oil companies to account for their role in climate change denial with a view to recovering substantial amounts of wealth to reinvest in green tech.</span><br />
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<span style="color: yellow;">* I would seek to reforest where possible and to reflood wetlands (which are even better carbon sinks). </span><br />
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If elected I would also institute a Robin Hood Tax on all capital transactions - money cannot simply flee the country anymore. I would tax land so that rates of income and corporation taxes could be lowered - wealth is concentrated in land and mostly escapes taxation. I would introduce a tax on polluters and again lower income and corporation taxes. I would ban non-UK residents from owning residential property (which is the root of the housing crisis). I would also hold a modern debt jubilee: i.e. every person in the UK to be given between £5,000 and 10,000 with the understanding that any debts must be paid down before it can be spent (paid for by a government bond issue). And make personal credit harder to get from banks. We need household spending to drop below household income.<br />
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Just personally, I'd revoke Article 50 and begin aggressively arguing for reform of the EU away from Neoliberal ideology towards something more pragmatic. I would insist that the IMF and World Banks be similarly reformed away from Neoliberalism. Economic liberalism was a failure the first time around and it's a failure this time too.<br />
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This is based on many years of thinking about how to better run the UK/World economy and what I see as the best advice from heterodox economists. This is my version of the Green New Deal.<br />
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I believe it would create an economic stimulus to help us fund the transition to zero carbon. And I think that if we were to do all this, along with the ideas that other people come up with, we could get close to the target in the time required. The UK could easily become the world's first zero carbon nation and that would give us meaning and purpose. And we could export our success and help other nations achieve what we have.<br />
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After that we will need to look at zero growth or perhaps even shrinking the economy to lessen the load on Gaia. But one battle at a time.Jayaravahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13783922534271559030noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8424267157203564446.post-49720945275390806132019-04-24T08:12:00.002+01:002019-04-24T08:12:42.737+01:00Why Did We Abandon Classical Liberalism?From the <i>Encyclopedia Britannica</i> (16th Ed. Vo. 27, p.425):<br />
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By the end of the 19th century, some unforeseen but serious consequences of the Industrial Revolution in Europe and North America had produced a deepening disenchantment with the principal economic basis of classical liberalism—the ideal of a market economy. The main problem was that the profit system had concentrated vast wealth in the hands of a relatively small number of industrialists and financiers, with several adverse consequences. First, great masses of people failed to benefit from the wealth flowing from factories and lived in poverty in vast slums. Second, because the greatly expanded system of production created many goods and services that people often could not afford to buy, markets became glutted and the system periodically came to a near halt in periods of stagnation that came to be called depressions. Finally, those who owned or managed the means of production had acquired enormous economic power that they used to influence and control government, to manipulate an inchoate electorate, to limit competition, and to obstruct substantive social reform. In short, some of the same forces that had once released the productive energies of Western society now restrained them; some of the very energies that had demolished the power of despots now nourished a new despotism.</blockquote>
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So the problems with classical liberalism was that it concentrated wealth in the hands of an elite and this elite misused the power this gave them. Let me put this in own words.<br />
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<li>Most people did not benefit. Poverty was widespread and many people lived in slums, with all the accompanying social problems such as diseases and substance abuse. There was child labour and many people died in the factories.</li>
<li>The system of free trade lead to cycles of boom and bust. Left to itself the market is subject to extreme fluctuations. Some decades later, John Maynard Keynes showed that government investment during these periods reduced the severity and length of these periods. </li>
<li>Finally the government was captured by the wealthy interests, partly through lobbying, but mainly through rich people gaining party nominations and becoming representatives. Wealthy men also formed a series of exclusive networks based on such commonalities as where they went to school through which they promoted each others and excluded others. </li>
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These problems helped to give birth to the new liberalism in which the state took a role in helping the poor to help themselves. Liberalism itself abandoned the free market ideology because it was destructive to society and created a form of government that was not concerned with liberty, but which rather tended towards a tyranny of the minority.<br /><br />And when Milton Friedman and Friedrich von Hayek revived classical liberalism, creating neoclassical liberalism or neoliberalism, they ignored this history. Indeed, quite against the facts of history Hayek argued in 1944 that redistribution of wealth lead inevitably to totalitarianism. And subsequent history has shown that this is not true.<br /><br />Neoliberalism became the dominant political ideology of the world. Poverty decreased in the third world but increased in the first. Economic recessions came thick and fast, with the global financial crisis being the worst since the Great Depression. And government has been captured by a wealthy elite. <br /><br />But worse, this time around, is the existential threat from the destruction that large corporations and governments have wrecked on the environment. Pollution, extreme weather, sea-level rise, and mass extinction threaten our very survival. </div>
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We abandoned classical liberalism because it didn't work. It still doesn't work in it's neoclassical form. And it's because Adam Smith and John Stuart Mill and others were fundamentally wrong about how human beings make decisions and about the fact of being a social primate. We need a new politics which takes into account what we now know about people.<br /><br /><div style="text-align: center;">
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"Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it."</div>
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– George Santayana</div>
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Jayaravahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13783922534271559030noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8424267157203564446.post-56367358100006779322019-04-22T11:09:00.001+01:002019-04-22T11:09:46.909+01:00Why Am I Not Anti-CapitalismAn old friend posted a video clip of George Monbiot on Frankie Boyle's TV show <i>New World Order</i> talking about the impending climate catastrophe.<div style="text-align: center;">
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<iframe allow="accelerometer; autoplay; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture" allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/7wGscFxs6RY" width="560"></iframe><br /></div>
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But my friend, like me, finds anti-capitalist rhetoric unconvincing. He thought I might do a better job of explaining it, so here goes. <br />
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I think we have a problem in that people of George Monbiot's age and younger have never known a form of capitalism that is not Neoliberal. They have internalised this identification. The only prominent alternative to Neoliberalism is Chinese authoritarian socialism. And no one in their right might wants that for the UK. I agree that the system needs to change, but I don't think we should frame this as an attack on capitalism, I think we have to talk about Neoliberalism which goes deeper than economics.<br />
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What does this mean?<br /><br /><br />
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<b>Classical and Social Liberalism</b></div>
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Liberalism is all about liberty. This is great, it has won us freedom of religion, and of speech, and to some extent freedom of economic opportunity. Liberty is clearly a good thing.<br />
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Classical Liberalism, the origin of the political right-wing, argued that government should not get in the way of any individual's economic activity. Let manufacturers manufacture, let traders trade. Which in principle is OK.<br />
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However, in practice this led to the widespread untrammeled exploitation of workers, to the general degradation of humanity, and very significantly to the French Revolution. Because in practice, without any checks and balances, the new industrialists treated people appallingly badly. Child labour, no equal pay, loads of deaths at work, squalid living conditions. <br /><br />But of course they weren't all like that. The Cadbury Brothers in particular were not. They moved their factory to the edge of town where there was clean air and water, created a lovely little village for their workforce, and treated everyone with respect. Other Quaker businesses were also good employers. But on the whole the industrialists were monstrous. And the degradation is vividly portrayed in the novels of Charles Dickens.<br />
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Social liberalism aimed to level the playing field. Where socialists (the left-wing) would take care of people's needs, liberals want to help them to help themselves. You do this by giving them enough and no more. They argue that there is dignity in work. Except that economic liberal happily removes the dignity from work.<br />
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Liberalism was directly tied to the British Empire. John Stuart Mill, a key Liberal thinker worked for the East India Company. Imperialism required some intellectual justification. And there was already a nasty churning mess. Firstly Christianity saw all humanity as fundamentally flawed. People are sinners. People are bad. Workers, in particular are lazy. (See <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20170108123038/http://www.pieria.co.uk/articles/mercantilism_six_centuries_of_vilifying_the_poor"><i>Mercantilism: Six Centuries of Vilifying the Poor</i></a>). But this also became mixed with a version of Darwinism in which instead of apply to species evolution applied to individuals. The individual took centre stage in intellectual life after the Enlightenment. Romanticism reinforced this, and Mill also loved Wordsworth and Coleridge. Survival of the fittest started to look like a justification of Empire, or exploitation of workers and indigenous peoples. It seemed natural that the new ruling class of industrialists, the <i>bourgeoisie </i>as Marx called them, should be free to rule over others and exploit their labour, even to the point of owning slaves.<br /><br />But Social Liberalism tempered the worst aspects of Classical Liberalism and was soon joined by a workable form of Socialism (at least in Europe - there are no real socialists in the USA). And this is how Classical Liberalism, what we would term the economic right (small government, free enterprise etc) came to be associated with the political left (looking after people in need). I think this clouds the picture. Certainly I have felt confused because I seemed to be a social liberal and yet I kept finding myself on the wrong side of debates, because actually I'm not a social liberal, I'm a libertarian socialist. The difference is brought out by the <i><a href="https://politicalcompass.org/">Political Compass</a> </i>website.<br />
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<b>Neoliberalism</b></div>
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Neoliberalism arose as a response to a perceived attack on the American system of free enterprise. It involved a reassertion of the values of Classical Liberalism combined with some new twists, hence Neoclassical Liberalism or Neoliberalism. Read the <i><a href="http://moderndebtjubilee.blogspot.com/p/lewis-powell-memo.html">Lewis Powell Memo</a></i> to the American Chamber of Commerce in 1971 for and outline of this kind of thinking. Everything Powell suggested came to pass. For example, conservative businessmen bought up the media and used their wealth to leverage a take over the teaching of economics in universities. They bought chairs and founded schools. They employed the graduates in think tanks and as lobbyists. They imposed a monoculture on business studies in the USA and his caught on around the world. So now, all the journalists and critics have studied the same kind of economics as the politicians and have no effective critique of Neoliberalism. There are critiques, but they are ignored. And note that despite causing the global financial crisis, the curriculum in economics departments around the world has not changed.<br />
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In Neoliberalism the liberty of the individual is extended to the corporation which now has the same rights as a person. In this view the corporation should be free to engage in economic activity without interference from government. No environmental controls are desirable since they inhibit economic activity (this was a specific concern of Powell). <br /><br />Also this is now linked to the idea of the economic market that embodies the micro-economic principle of supply and demand. However, Professor Steve Keen has pointed out that from around the time of the <i>Lewis Powell Memo</i>, the economics profession has known that the so-called law of supply and demand is bunk, but <a href="https://moderndebtjubilee.blogspot.com/2012/08/debunking-economics-iv-aggregate-demand.html">that's another story</a>.<br />
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In this view if pollution is undesirable then the market will punish the polluter by reducing demand for their product. Alan Greenspan, long time Secretary of the US Treasury under successive presidents both Republican and Democrat (and personal disciple of the extremist philosopher Ayn Rand) refused to prosecute corrupt banks because he believed that the market would punish them. It did not and eventually we had the global financial crisis. And that crisis was not solved by the market. It was resolved by government. In the UK the government spent the equivalent of one year's GDP to prop up failing banks. The alternative was to watch the world's financial systems collapse leaving society in chaos.<br />
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Market forces depend on knowledge. If a polluter can hide their pollution or lie about the impact—as oil and tobacco companies have done for decades—then supply and demand breaks down as an effective mechanism. If the corrupt practices don't come to light or are defended as legitimate forms of economic activity—as happens in the housing and finance industry—then the market does nothing at all. <i>Any </i>imperfection in knowledge or human rationality causes the markets to <i>malfunction</i>. And the ignorance of consumers is a vast abyss because the same corporations who pollute and lie about it also control the media.<br /><br />Oh, by the way, we've known that humans don't use reason to make decisions and choices <i>for at least 50 years</i>. Which is why adverts are now all about imagery and emotions rather than facts and information. All decisions involve emotional weighting of which information is salient to the decision. We have free will, but not as classically envisage, not countracausal free will that only relies on reason. We create reasons for our actions on the fly and only after the fact. (See Mercier and Sperber, <i>The Enigma of Reason</i>)<br />
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Neoliberalism, like all forms of liberalism is based on the idea of liberty. But proponents of liberty have always made exceptions. And those exceptions have often defined where liberals feel comfortable with violence. Citizens are free but immigrants are not. Soldiers can shoot foreigners but not citizens. Men can vote, but not women. Some of the men who wrote that "all men are created equal" owned slaves. Police target black people. A car may emit deadly toxins and carcinogens but a citizen may not smoke a little weed (for their own good). And so on.<br />
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The Liberals have always emphasised the aspects of liberty that most benefit the ruling elite, while occasionally mitigating for the disasters that this causes in society. So austerity increased poverty and homelessness in the UK from 2010 onwards, but hey, two men and now get married and rich people have a choice of which school their kids go to. Liberty, but within limits and almost always to benefit the elite - or at least not to discomfort them. Indeed one might argue that by allowing same-sex marriage secularists were really just thumbing their noses at the Church which has often been the enemy of liberty (especially in the days of Classical Liberalism).<br /><br />
Neoliberalism prioritised the liberty of corporation over the liberty of citizens. So if a corporation decides to cut down the Amazon rainforest, do fracking in Blackpool, or pour toxic waste into a river, then Neoliberalism says that impeding them is only justified if it does not affect the corporation's ability to make a profit. Our rights to clean air, water, and food are curtailed in favour of the rights of corporations to make a profit. <br /><br />For example, at present as many as 38,000 people die each year in the UK from air pollution according to Public Health England, the government's own advisory board. Now of course every one deplores this loss of life. And some steps are been taken but on the other hand most large UK cities have illegal levels of pollution under EU law. And there is a good chance we'll lose that protection after Brexit. Air pollution is an accepted part of life. Just 272 stabbings in London in 2018 cause a huge public outcry, with the authoritarian arm of the media constantly feigning outrage. 90-100 people die every day (on average) from air pollution and there is extreme reluctance to curtail the main culprit: motor vehicles.<br /><br />The rights of corporations override human rights, although not always. Still, corporations are always pushing the boundaries of how they can exploit workers and the environment. Many corporations behave in ways that if we encountered them in a person would constitute a mental illness. <br /><br />Corporation that apparently lack empathy for example and exploit people for profit are like psychopaths. Indeed research shows that executives are more likely to have the mental characteristics of psychopaths. They lack empathy which would stop them from exploiting people through feeling their pain. Many high level politicians literally seem impervious to the emotions that we would normally expect to see in response to suffering. <br /><br />This is why the picture of Jacinda Ardern, current PM of New Zealand, openly emoting caused a stir. We never see that in the UK. We have curiously unemotional people in power. In fact most of them give me the creeps.<br />
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<b>Conclusion</b></div>
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This is what we have to fight against, but it's not capitalism per se. Capitalism is just the investment of surplus wealth in projects. By using their labour workers create further wealth that is shared between all parties: workers earn wages, investor earn profits, and landowners (resource owners) earn rent. And any surplus is reinvested. This is a Marxist definition, but it's as good as any.<br />
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There's nothing inherently bad about this. And framing what we want as an attack on Capitalism is counterproductive. We are not against investments and profits per se, I think, we are against corporations being able to override our human rights in pursuit of profit.<br /><br />If we frame our fight as being with capitalism then we imply, for example that we want to end the concept of private property - this is a key Marxist policy. And how do we do this? Because people are not going to give up their property without a fight. We can nationalise some stuff, but not everything.<br />
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The problem is with how we are defining liberty and the exceptions we apply. The extension of rights to corporations which override human rights the first thing I would rescind. My first law would be no one is allowed to pollute. I can't just go next door and take a shit on my neighbour's lawn. There are no exceptions to this. And given that we mostly live in cities now, then some cooperative form of dealing with waste is necessary - sewers and treatment plants, yadda yadda.<br />
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But the output of treatment is a vast resource of nutrients we need for growing food. In medieval China, night soil collectors became very wealthy transporting the shit of Changan to the farmers outside the city. The population density inside the walls was greater than modern day Manhattan. Intensive farming was made possible be recycling human waste. Which is also why traditional Chinese cuisine does not involve raw food or salads. Cooking killed the fecal bacteria that were everywhere.<br /><br />I agree with George Monbiot and Extinction Rebellion that the system is broken and that climate change is urgent. But we have to frame our response in ways that will help rather than hinder. And we have to be clear about the nature of the problem and the possible solutions.<br /><br />We won't solve any problems through adopting authoritarian forms of government. Indeed one the problems we face is that governments cannot hear the people because they have industry lobbyists shouting in both ears. In my view, liberty has to apply to getting change. We cannot use force to achieve our aims. But we do need to be telling the truth, fighting the lies, and getting the government to take the problem seriously. We do need rapid change and to move our investments away from fossil fuels.<br /><br />I'll end with this observation. One of the suggestions is that the UK rapidly stops using gas for cooking and heating. Presumably we'd extend to this to Western Europe if possible. However, if we rapidly degassed our economy then Russia and Ukraine would be bankrupt overnight. At the same time the repeated droughts are already affecting wheat crops, their other main export. 190 million people suddenly lose their main source of income at the same time their food supplies start to run out. Can anyone predict what they will do? <br /><br />Every course we chose will have serious consequences at this point. And yet we must choose quickly and act quickly, because inaction will be the worst. American literary critic, Harold Bloom, dubbed this kind of dilemma the Hamlet Complex. We appear to be in the feigning madness part of the story.Jayaravahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13783922534271559030noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8424267157203564446.post-54335509876192840472019-04-15T12:03:00.000+01:002019-04-15T12:03:03.177+01:00Rethinking National Debt. A short post on the <i><a href="https://rwer.wordpress.com/2019/04/09/the-real-debt-problem/#comment-150997">Real-World Economics Review Blog</a></i> has given me a new image for thinking about national debt. We have been taught by politicians who are either ignorant or mendacious to see the nations finances as like a household budget. We must live within our means. This is bullshit.<br />
<br />
The <i>Nation = Household</i> analogy is bullshit because the household cannot issue its own currency or interest bearing bonds. A nation can borrow from its own citizens. And when it does, a nation guarantees the interest rate. It is typically low, but the risk of losing your investment for a wealthy country is almost nil - even if the economy is not doing well. This is important.<br />
<br />
So let's consider a fictional household.<br />
<br />
Rob worked hard and retired with a nice pension. But he and is wife Sue were used to being busy and after a couple of trips abroads started thinking about starting a business. Sue could make nifty widgets and Rob had all the skills necessary to turn widget-making into a business. But they needed seed money and didn't want to risk all of their own capital because they wanted their three kids, Jack, Sally, and Eve to inherit. So they decided they would borrow some money to finance their start up.<br />
<br />
<br />
SCENARIO ONE<br />
<br />
Rob borrowed money from The Bank. He borrowed $100,000 at 10% interest, payable monthly and based on the amount owed at the beginning of the year (real banks use more complex formulas).<br />
<br />
In this scenario the business breaks even after 5 years and pays back the original loan in 10. The bank gets its $100,000 back and another $100,000 in interest. So not counting the profits from the business, the family have paid $100,000 to a bank in rent for the money they used. That money did not cost the bank anything to create and most of the admin is done automatically by computers. A staff member spent an hour on it at the start, but the rest was all handed by automated payments. So The Bank makes a healthy profit and pays out high salaries to executives and dividends to investors.<br />
<br />
There is a net loss to the family of $100,000. This is what concerns people about national debt.<br />
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<br />
SCENARIO TWO<br />
<br />
<br />
Same family except this time Rob borrows the money from his grown up kids. Jack has a high paying job and $25,000 in savings. Sally has $5,000, and Eve has $15,000. They get the balance of $55,000 from The Bank.<br />
<br />
Rob and Sue agree to pay out the same interest rates to their kids so the over all sums are the same. In total $100,000 of interest is paid. But now some of it goes back to the kids - their capital is increased. As they are now investors, the kids also get a share of the profits as they go so again their capital increases as a result of the investment. And they all still stand to inherit the original nest egg.<br />
<br />
However, they realise that the kids who invest least will benefit least. They know they need an employee so they offer Sally the job. Now Sally gets a little interest, some dividend, but she also gets wages paid for out of profits. So her share, boasted by investing her labour, goes up considerably compared to just a small investment of capital.<br />
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<br />
<div style="text-align: center;">
<b>Discussion</b></div>
<br />
<br />
<b>Scenario One is Bullshit spread by Neoliberal psychopaths. </b><br />
<br />
Scenario One has been extraordinary influential in public debate. This is what people think happens. The trouble is that it isn't. Politicians have sold this image because it justifies their <a href="http://moderndebtjubilee.blogspot.com/2019/04/political-dichotomies.html">economic liberalism</a> agenda. This is the kind of libertarianism that aims to liberate business from the constraints of the state; to allow them to make unfettered profits with no concern over the broader consequences (such as environmental degradation or climate change).<br />
<br />
One problem is that such businesses routinely resort to oppression and violence to achieve their profits. Unfettered such businesses would resort to using slave labour or sweatshops. They would not pay a wage on which anyone could live. Workers would have no protections. This is part of what is driving the right-wing Brexit project - the EU is protectionist and requires the UK to treat its workers better than Tories think they should be.<br />
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The other problem that we have seen is that businesses are like children. Without clear boundaries they will routinely operate in ways that are immoral. And even with clear boundaries they will constantly be testing them and pushing the envelope. Amazon are perhaps the best known example of this. They monitor productivity on a minute scale so that they get the maximum work from a worker, with no consideration for the impact this has on workers. They'd obviously much prefer to employ robots or slaves but the technology is not yet flexible enough to make it cost effective.<br />
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The prosecution of corruption in the finance industry has been devilishly complex and slow. Sometimes immoral practices, such as betting that tranches of high risk mortgages (wrongly been approved as safe investments) would fail to be repaid enmasse, turned out not to be illegal. But there was plenty of knowing illegal behaviour as well, such as manipulating interest international rates.<br />
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How can businesses that are run by adults behave with childlike immorality? This is a complex question but it does seem that people who do well in business tend to score highly on measures of psychopathy. In other words they lack interest in the lives of other people. It's not that they lack the ability to experience empathy. They do know how other people feel, but they just don't care. That thousands of people lost their life savings and their homes in the global financial crash does not illicit compassion or sympathy. <br />
<br />
More recently we have seen how Big Oil use their vast wealth to lie about climate change and inhibit our ability to respond to it on a national level. Like Big Tobacco, the oil companies knew about the harm being caused by their product but continued to deny it. But more than this they spend billions each year lobbying politicians and trying to impede any attempt to prevent climate change.<br />
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The "childlike" analogy is quite generous. Business is a <i>Lord of the Flies</i> situation (although I rather think that the children involved were modelled on English public schoolboys and that is hardly universal). Indeed it might be better to see businesses as predatory psychopaths who have to be regulated, surveilled, and policed or they run amok. Not all of them, but enough that it could result in the enslavement or death of much of the population if we did not intervene.<br />
<br />
So libertarianism when it comes to business is a very bad idea indeed. And these are the people who are telling us that the nation's finances are like our household finances.<br />
<br />
<br />
<b>Scenario Two is simplistic, but a better reflection of reality.</b><br />
<br />
The second scenario, while still an over-simplification and probably a bit Pollyanna-ish, gives a better idea of what government borrowing is like. Japan, for example, has very high government debt, but it is almost entirely owed to Japanese citizens rather than to banks or foreign governments. In the blog post mentioned above, Lars Syll makes the point that in this case the Japanese people pay their taxes to pay off the debt to the Japanese people. What is the net effect for Japan? Syll argues that it is zero. I.e. that when Japanese pay tax it is going to the Japanese state which benefits Japanese people.<br />
<br />
I don't think it is quite zero however, because there is some inequity built into this model. All citizens pay tax. With the prevalence of indirect taxes such as sales tax (VAT, GST, etc) everyone pays tax, even those who do not pay income tax. But not everyone has the surplus wealth required to buy government bonds. Those who invest more of their wealth in the government and get a greater share of the taxes than others. By this I mean that everyone benefits from things like roads and other national infrastructure that tax pays for. But bond holders get a personal share of the tax revenue as interest. There is a net transfer of wealth from the poor to the wealthy.<br />
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This is why the government needs to create jobs. In the scenario I made the parents employ their daughter to illustrate how to make things a bit fairer. By employing people the government helps to redistribute the benefits of national wealth to people who would not otherwise get it.<br />
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Some opponents of this model argue that government is inefficient. But in highly privatised Britain we've seen any number of cases of private sector inefficiency or outright incompetence. Our train system is a case in point. Fare structures are incomprehensible, train stock is deteriorating, and in some areas the service is appallingly bad. Delayed maintenance in order to make a profit after having underbid to get the contract has become a serious problem in many sectors. For example, the roads where I live are a mess and as a cyclist I really notice this!<br />
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One of the reasons that governments do things poorly is that they are chronically underfunded in regimes with low taxation. But that is a whole other story.<br />
<br />
<br />
<b>Conclusion</b><br />
<br />
National debt is certainly not unimportant. But it is very far from being as important as Neoliberals make out. Their ideology calls for zero government interference in business. Government investing in the nation, financed by borrowing from the nation, is seen as interference. But it is moronic to think we can do without this.<br />
<br />
In fact Keynes showed, and it is still true, that for best results the government and the private sector have to work in tandem. When there is a slump in the private sector, the government takes up the slack. And when the private sector is booming then the government can focus on paying down debt.<br />
<br />
The major problem we have in the world today is private debt, both the private business sector and households. Earlier this month it was announced that household spending outstripped household income for the 9th quarter in a row.<br />
<br />
The levels of private debt are leading to chronically slow demand which leads to low growth. Growth is becoming a controversial topic these days, but GDP growth can be drive by increased efficiency which might lead to lower emissions. And any transition to a zero or negative growth system will have to be funded somehow.<br />
<br />
Attempts by government to reduce spending at this time are only making the problem worse. An example close to my heart is that cuts to welfare have a negative overall impact. People who rely on welfare tend to live hand to mouth. We spend all that we get in local shops. If you cut what we spend then that means less is spent in local shops. Local shops spend less at wholesalers. Wholesalers buy less from suppliers. Over all less tax is collected and it has a negative impact on the deficit.<br />
<br />
Contrarily if you increase welfare spending it is all spent locally. The local shops do more business and pay more tax. They buy more from the wholesaler who also does better and pays more tax. And so on. Much of the welfare spend makes its way back to the government in taxes. But it also stimulates the economy by increasing demand. While the poor people on welfare might spend on small items, the shopkeepers and wholesalers buy bigger ticket items. It also creates jobs because the retail, wholesale, supplier chain is busier. More jobs means more tax revenue.<br />
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The big problem with high levels of private debt is that it leads to what Richard Koo calls a balance sheet recession. At some point the interest bill on the debt becomes intolerable. At that point, instead of using surplus income to buy luxuries, people start paying down debt instead. If they all do that around the same time then it sends demand plummeting and causes a recession - overall economic activity shrinks, workers are made redundant, tax revenues fall, and so on.<br />
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One of the dangers for the private sector is deflation - when wages and prices start to fall. When this happens the value of debt goes up. That is to say, if there is deflation when you are in debt, it is the same as taking on more debt.<br />
<br />
In any case we need to change the tune on national debt. We need to banish the chequebook metaphor or the household budget metaphor. Although people easily understand this the analogy is false, the reasoning is false, and the outcome is confusion about what is needed.<br />
<br />
National debt is like borrowing from your family when you know that you have plenty of cash coming in to pay them back. It's a good investment. The interest stays in the family. And the principle stays in the family.<br />
<br />Jayaravahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13783922534271559030noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8424267157203564446.post-1143071286334569292019-04-13T11:00:00.000+01:002019-04-13T11:00:44.440+01:00Political DichotomiesI've been a conscientious objector against Neoliberalism for a while now. More especially since coming across Simon Springer's article <i><a href="https://www.acme-journal.org/index.php/acme/article/view/1342/1172">Fuck Neoliberalism</a></i> a few years ago. But I confess I have been a bit puzzled by term liberal this whole time. Some of my attitudes seem to coincide with the word "liberal", while some of them are clearly not aligned. A well-known psychology professor and self-appointed lifestyle guru describes himself as a "traditional liberal" but he and I disagree on almost everything. But then I am not a conservative either. Somehow these labels didn't make sense of my views.<br />
<br />
I recently took the <i><a href="https://www.politicalcompass.org/">political compass</a></i> test again and once again came out strongly on both the left and libertarian ends of the scale - close to where they place Noam Chomsky.<br />
<br />
PC use a double axis: left-right with an entirely state planned economy on the left and an entirely free-market economy with no government regulation on the right. Their other access is authoritarian-libertarian. The extreme libertarian end any collectivism is voluntary and there is no state. The other end is where the state controls everything. They mark the four corners with exemplars: Stalin in the top left (authoritarian communism), Pinochet in the top right (authoritarian free-market), Anarchists in the bottom left (libertarian socialism), and Milton Friedman on the bottom right<br />
<br />
But I have no interest in a command economy and nor, I suspect, does Chomsky. Neither of us is under an illusion about the disasters of Stalinism or Maoism. What Chomsky and I favour is the state taking a role in preventing psychopathic corporations (and government departments) from killing people, enslaving them, oppressing them in any way; or polluting air, water, or land, and from causing irreparable harm to the environment. To me this is the minimum needed for long term survival. I don't shit where I eat. I don't see the state telling corporations what to produce or how much. I'm not particularly in favour of protectionism or trade barriers. I think free trade encourages peace. I don't think the free movement of capital is quite so benign.<br />
<br />
On the other hand I prefer that same state leave people to live their private lives pretty much as they like. While some social rules are best encoded as laws and policed (prohibitions on murder, assault, rape, and so on) other decisions are best left to adults (who I love, marry, etc, how I spend my leisure time). I think we have many laws to prevent us winning Darwin Awards although all too often stupid people take others with them.<br />
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I would say that I favour regulated Capitalism that retained rewards and incentives for innovation and entrepreneurial activities. Where Capitalism is used in the generic sense of people investing their surplus wealth in projects that create jobs. Just that any progress cannot come at a cost to workers lives, health, or well being.<br />
<br />
Of course we have some very serious problems right now. We have to think about the possibility that runaway climate change might disrupt our ability to feed ourselves and thus tear apart the fabric of society. Even if we manage to avoid the worst case scenario (though we're not doing nearly enough for that) then we still have problems. The idea of constant economic growth is predicated on some false assumptions. However, I still think we need Capitalism (i.e. the investment of surplus wealth) to get us out of the mess we're in. And if the worst does happen then none of this will matter and no one will read it in 20 years time anyway.<br />
<br />
What I want to try to deal with it how terms like <i>liberal</i>, <i>progressive</i>, or <i>conservative </i>fit into this scheme. What about <i>nationalist</i> or <i>populist</i>?<br />
<br />
Around the time I retook the Political Compass test, I was drawn into the silly argument about Hitler being a "socialist". Other people countered by saying he was obviously right-wing. Political compass make Hitler a centrist in economic terms. He was big on privatisation but also the Nazi state was huge, especially the military, and controlling. Hitler was not an extremist on the left-right axis. He was an extreme authoritarian. He's a 10 on that axis. Indeed what he called "socialism" was in fact the idea that all Germans should think only of the needs of, and sacrifice everything for, the German state. One of the great models for Fascism was the Romantic philosophy of Johann Gottlieb Fichte (1762-1814) who said "the individual does not exist...the group alone exists". The Nazi's were socialist the way that North Korea are democratic. But they weren't as right wing as most people seem to think. Far less so than most modern Prime Ministers of the UK or Presidents of the USA (including most Democrats).<br />
<br />
One thing to say to Americans is that all your mainstream politicians are on the economic right. To call anyone who has been in power there a communist is just laughable. Even someone AOC with her Green New Deal is barely even a socialist from where I sit on the political spectrum. The Green New Deal is Capitalism which does fuck the people or planet. We've just forgotten that Capitalism doesn't need to be the kind of scorched-earth approach of Neoliberalism.<br />
<br />
I got to thinking about all these labels and this is what I came up with.<br />
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<br />
<b>Liberalism: economic vs social</b><br />
<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
Under the economic liberalism, liberals seek to enslave workers; under the social liberalism, to emancipate them. </blockquote>
It's a question of who is free to do what. Orwellian doublespeak has only confused the situation.<br />
<br />
Economic liberalism is all about freeing Capitalists to make a profit with no regulation or oversight. It resists protection for workers in terms of wages and conditions. It sees labour as an <i>overhead</i>. It is linked to the rhetoric of "free enterprise" in which everyone is technically free to participate in the marketplace. In reality there is no level playing field. Some people inherit huge wealth while others inherit none. Some are members of social classes that give each other a helping hand into power: the classic case of boys who go to Eton and Oxford, through an unpaid internship in Parliament, to a safe parliamentary seat, to the cabinet, and then high office. They may be talented but they get pushed to the front of the queue because they are part of the incrowd. The vast majority of talented people are shut out because they are not connected. Another term for economic liberalism is <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20170108123038/http://www.pieria.co.uk/articles/mercantilism_six_centuries_of_vilifying_the_poor">mercantilism</a>.<br />
<br />
In practice economic liberalism leads to the oppression of workers and at worse to their enslavement. For example since Tories took power the security of work has declined through zero hours contracts and the gig economy, while in-work poverty has grown year on year. In doublespeak this is trumpeted as record low levels of unemployment.<br />
<br />
Social liberalism is virtually unrelated to economic liberalism. Social liberalism is focussed on freeing citizens from oppressive regulation by the state and is thus related to libertarianism. A good example if the liberalisation of laws against homosexuality leading up to the institution of marriage being opened to same-sex couples. Same-sex marriage was achieved under the same government in the UK that squeezed workers and made swinging cuts to welfare and health (both presented in double-speak as record levels of investment in welfare and health).<br />
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In terms of the Political Compass diagram economic liberalism is on the right-hand edge, while social liberalism is at the bottom. They are orthogonal to each other. That's why the discussion about liberalism is so confusing.<br />
<br />
<br />
<b>Progressive vs Conservative</b><br />
<br />
Liberalism is sometimes confused with being progressive. In fact the axis of progressivism and conservatism seems to me to be completely separate.<br />
<br />
Progressives want to pursue change, while conservatives are comfortable with the status quo. Although we often associate these poles with economic left/right distinctions this is deceptive. <br /><br />For example, the old guard soviet communists were social and economic conservatives resisting change while Gorbachev was a social and economic progressive who instituted change. None of them were particularly socially or economically liberal. The change was a further step away from the Totalitarianism of Stalin's era towards more personal freedom. However, it was also a march towards the right as markets opened up. And of course this process was ultimately corrupted so that most of the state assets ended up in the hands of a cabal of oligarchs who run mafia-like entities with help from the ex-KGB President.<br />
<br />
On the other hand right-wing politicians do often pursue change. Thatcher and Reagan for example were socially conservative, but both were radically progressive economically. The two leaders instituted wide ranging transformation of their respective economies. <br /><br />Of course there were social in both cases there were consequent social changes, but they were not part of a deliberate policy in most cases. Indeed one of the flagship policies of social conservatism in the USA was mandatory minimum sentences and three strike rules which saw the prison population triple in the space of a couple of decades. The USA now imprisons a higher proportion of its citizens than any other developed nation. Mostly for minor non-violent drug offences. But once a convict always a ex-con and many doors are closed to them.<br />
<br />
Contrary to the popular narrative much of the left-wing is socially conservative and want to, for example, preserve and strengthen protections for workers. And much of the right-wing are currently progressive in seeking small government and further privatisation. It is many decades since the Conservative Party of the UK (aka the Tories) was aptly named. Every time they get into power they usher in sweeping changes. The radical element of the Tories have driven the UK's exit from the EU.<br />
<br />
<br />
<b>Markets</b><br />
<br />
As I said, Political Compass, put me way over on the left. This implies that I would be in favour of massive state intervention, but this is deceptive. It doesn't capture the nuances of my politics.<br />
<br />
This morning someone called Diane Abbott (Labour MP) a "Stalinist" on the news. Apart from the fact that this kind of smeer is just a cheap political stunt what's notable about this is that she has the largest parliamentary majority in the house. She is incredibly popular in her own constituency which has a high proportion of "black" families, partly because she is herself "black" (I remain deeply uncomfortable with the whole black/white language of ethnicity but it is what is current here in the UK). Ms Abbott is a lightning rod for racism and sexism - she gets more online abuse than all the other women in parliament put together. She was called a "Stalinist" because she did not publicly denounce Julian Assange. But publicly denouncing political prisoners in lieu of a criminal trial is exactly what happened in Stalin's Russia, so this is the pot calling the kettle black (no racial reference intended here).<br />
<br />
The tired old cliche is that we have just two choices: extreme free market economics which turns people into Soylent Green, or Stalinism. That is the far top-left and the far bottom-right of the Political Compass grid. Except that our UK and US governments for decades occupied the top-right, i.e. authoritarian right-wing, quadrant. Which is not one of the choices in the false dichotomy.<br />
<br />
Stalin and Mao ran command economies which were centrally controlled and often disastrous as a result of poor information and communication. At worst both leaders caused huge famines which killed millions. On the other hand Pinochet ran Chile as an extreme free market experiment and killed anyone that got in the way.<br />
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But not all left-wing people favour a command economy. I don't for example. Indeed most nominally socialist countries (prior to the virus of Neoliberalism) have never employed command economies. They limited the damage that any company could do but largely let them get on with it.<br />
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The Scandinavians for example have never taken the Stalinist approach. What they did was centralise public services such as the provision of infrastructure, health, and education and provide a very high standard across the board. The cost of this was high taxation. This produced the highest overall standards of living in the world and provided a genuinely level social playing field. By any measure the Scandinavian countries were prosperous and well. Their industries were vigorous and successful. Brands like Volvo, Ikea, and Absolute are famous the world over for good reasons.<br />
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There are plenty of other options. Had we adopted some of them in place of Neoliberalism in the 1970s we might not be facing the end of civilisation right now. Deregulation of business along with the failure of oversight and internal and external governance is one of the main reasons we now face runaway climate change. Neoliberalism has fucked us.<br />
<br />
<br />
<b>Neoliberalism</b><br />
<br />
This reflection was partly sparked by a comment after I tweeted the slogan: "Under the economic liberalism, liberals seek to enslave workers; under the social liberalism, to emancipate them." Neoliberalism is literally the new liberalism. But it has always struck me as completely illiberal. This is because Neoliberalism is a form of economic liberalism, not a form of social liberalism.<br />
<br />
Neoliberalism started out as a form of progressive economic liberalism. It emerged as a violent reaction to social liberalism, especially in the USA, on the part of socially conservative businessmen (as outlined in the <i><a href="http://moderndebtjubilee.blogspot.com/p/lewis-powell-memo.html">Lewis Powell Memo</a></i>). Now it is the status quo so arguments in favour of it come from conservatives.<br />
<br />
Interestingly the Republicans managed to co-opt socially conservative fundamentalist Christians to their economically liberal program in the 1980s. This despite the fact that most fundamentalists are poor working people who have done poorly Neoliberalis. President Trump continues to pander to this constituency through his policies toward Israel, though as I say I believe he has taken a leap to the left with his trade wars and protectionism.<br />
<br />
Neoliberalism is able to simulate social liberalism in the form of choices. Choice of suppliers not only stimulates competition (survival of the fittest) but it also creates the illusion of freedom. People in prison are given the choice of 100 TV channels and convinced that this represents real freedom despite being behind bars. Such choices are merely ersatz freedom.<br />
<br />
Also notable Neoliberalism has seen the emancipation of homosexuals. While the is lingering ill-will for homosexuals in some sections of society (misnamed "homophobia") they cannot be legally discriminated against, they can hold high public office, and of high symbolic value they can marry. This more genuinely socially liberal. But it cost the Neoliberals nothing in terms of their economics. It wasn't a <i>quid pro quo</i>.<br /><br />Some Neoliberals make a big deal about the reduction in world poverty. As far as I can see this program of uplift is not motivated by compassion. It is motivated by the desire to create new consumers. it is only by raising poor people up that they can begin to participate in consumerism. If you go to India what you see is poor people drowning in cheap plastic shit. Any gains in prosperity are offset by choking air pollution, the illness from lack of clean water and sewerage, and the lasting poverty that followed colonisation by the British. Ironically, though they are hated more, the Muslim Mughals were often better overlords than the British East India Company.<br />
<br />
Make no mistake the introduction of Neoliberalism was a deliberate revolution. It was backed by intellectuals, funded by business men, and enacted by politicians. I'm not a Feminist, but we can say that this was the last throw of the dice for the patriarchy because Neoliberalism was as much as anything about stupid fucking white men clinging to power.<br /><br />Unfortunately it looks like the end of Neoliberalism will probably coincide with the end of civilisation. There's a good chance that we are past the point of no return and that climate change is now going to snow ball. Although it will mostly involve melting of snow and ice. The ability of a few rich men to manipulate the world has existed in many empires. The current empires are modeled on the East India Company - one does not send and army to conquer another country, one sends lawyers, salesmen, public-relations people, and above all financiers. But introducing Africa to debt, for example, financiers took control of the entire continent. In the 1980s the entire continent when bankrupt. This was repeated in South America, in South East Asia, in Japan, and finally in 2008 in Europe and America. <br /><br />And still we have not realised that we have been conquered by a foreign power. Just because Goldman-Sachs <i>et al</i> don't have a national flag we should not be fooled into thinking that they are not a vicious and rapacious imperial power. <br /><br />Together such powers are killing us all. The rich hope to survive the collapse of civilisation in closed communities. But can you imagine a new civilisation made up entirely of psychopaths who destroyed the world for more wealth than they could spend in 100 lifetimes? What happens to a social species when the only members left lack the capacity for empathy?<br />
<br />Jayaravahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13783922534271559030noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8424267157203564446.post-45733281679563942502018-09-10T11:37:00.000+01:002018-09-10T11:37:11.696+01:00Amazon’s Antitrust Paradox | Lina M. KhanThere is a new article in the <a href="https://www.yalelawjournal.org/note/amazons-antitrust-paradox">Yale Law Journal</a> that many media outlets are talking about. The original is fairly long but quite readable, so there is no need to read someone else's digested version of it.<br />
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The author argues that Amazon has pursued a strategy of massive expansion and consistent losses or very small profits to attain a dominance not just of the retail sector, but beyond into the very infrastructure of online commerce. The result is a monopoly that Amazon ruthlessly exploits to prevent competition without seeming to trigger traditional antitrust laws. The author suggests two different approaches to the problem.<br />
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The consensus seems to be that the author has redefined how we look at online companies like Amazon and that it might redefine how we regulate online commerce to either prevent these kinds of monopolies or leverage them to the greater good.<br />
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<span style="color: yellow;">ABSTRACT. Amazon is the titan of twenty-first century commerce. In addition to being a retailer, it is now a marketing platform, a delivery and logistics network, a payment service, a credit lender, an auction house, a major book publisher, a producer of television and films, a fashion designer, a hardware manufacturer, and a leading host of cloud server space. Although Amazon has clocked staggering growth, it generates meager profits, choosing to price below-cost and expand widely instead. Through this strategy, the company has positioned itself at the center of e-commerce and now serves as essential infrastructure for a host of other businesses that depend upon it. Elements of the firm’s structure and conduct pose anticompetitive concerns—yet it has escaped antitrust scrutiny.</span></blockquote>
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<span style="color: yellow;">This Note argues that the current framework in antitrust—specifically its pegging competition to “consumer welfare,” defined as short-term price effects—is unequipped to capture the architecture of market power in the modern economy. We cannot cognize the potential harms to competition posed by Amazon’s dominance if we measure competition primarily through price and output. Specifically, current doctrine underappreciates the risk of predatory pricing and how integration across distinct business lines may prove anticompetitive. These concerns are heightened in the context of online platforms for two reasons. First, the economics of platform markets create incentives for a company to pursue growth over profits, a strategy that investors have rewarded. Under these conditions, predatory pricing becomes highly rational—even as existing doctrine treats it as irrational and therefore implausible. Second, because online platforms serve as critical intermediaries, integrating across business lines positions these platforms to control the essential infrastructure on which their rivals depend. This dual role also enables a platform to exploit information collected on companies using its services to undermine them as competitors.</span></blockquote>
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<span style="color: yellow;">This Note maps out facets of Amazon’s dominance. Doing so enables us to make sense of its business strategy, illuminates anticompetitive aspects of Amazon’s structure and conduct, and underscores deficiencies in current doctrine. The Note closes by considering two potential regimes for addressing Amazon’s power: restoring traditional antitrust and competition policy principles or applying common carrier obligations and duties.</span></blockquote>
Jayaravahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13783922534271559030noreply@blogger.com0