What is in a name?
I couldn't help but put that there; it's poetic.
I've been thinking today about names and our attachment to them. I mean names of ideologies, primarily, and also names of groups. I am an American, I am a capitalist. I call myself this and I belong to a group, ostensibly. This has nothing to do with my behavior.
This came up because I've been seeing some very prevalent anti-communist rhetoric recently, and it's just so strange to me that the previous generation is still so dreadfully caught up in the red scare. But here's the thing: they say "Communism" as though it is the boogie-man, but they really don't have any idea of what Communism entails. They don't know what Marxism is, or Leninism, or Stalinism. They don't seem to understand that Soviet Russia never actually achieved a Marxist Communism, because, of course, Marx's Communism entails a rather prevalent amount of democracy. But that was never seen in Russia, nor in any other countries which we generally think of as Communist.
To my mind, the fixture that made Soviet Communism so awful was its complete lack of democratic principles. It was a terrible tyranny in most every sense of the word. The people had no public or private freedoms, and they were made to feel terrified by their own government.
And yet today we are actually seeing some very odd opinions gaining ground in the US, for instance that all public institutions are basically communist. Public schooling, for instance, has come under fire by the new right--I might just capitalize that, the New Right. Seems apropos.
While I could rant again about how the New Right/Libertarians basically fall between favoring oligarchy and anarchy, that's not what I want to bring up.
What I want to bring up is how odd it is for us to attach ourselves so strongly to words rather than to reality. Despite the fact that Rick Perry does nothing in favor of a free market and is not fiscally responsible, people flock to his nomenclature, to his mythology. The mythology is more important than the facts, largely because he presents the myth as his public face and the facts are hidden. And when the facts are not hidden, it is easy enough to dispute them in favor of the myth, because of course 'you can't trust the left wing media.' (I'm not ranting about that either, really).
Now, this isn't at all limited to the right. The left is just as bad, and I catch myself doing it. I catch myself feeling like I don't want to read something I might disagree with because I am actually fearful, at some level, of being disabused of my beliefs. I imagine somebody might think me odd for saying that, but I think its just because I'm both more self-aware and more honest than most people. People hate to have their beliefs challenged. They would rather have actual physical harm done, preferably to somebody else, than to have their beliefs challenged. This is what is at the heart of religious persecution, of course, and at the heart of our very dangerous lack of public dilemmas today, I think.
It is the medias fault, but also our own, because we do not personally, most of us, go out and try to find truths. We just listen to the people on the television who we agree with. I think both Arendt and Chomsky point to this as being a result of lacking adequate political voice, and I don't know that I disagree with them. It certainly seems to create a vicious circle of ignorance.
I hope you can all find your way out of it. Send your facts to me; I want to know them.
Wednesday, July 13, 2011
Thursday, July 7, 2011
Holes in the Story
So another article about Perry's higher education reforms came out in the statesman this week. This article conveniently avoids, over the course of two pages, any meaningful analysis, preferring to quote back and forth between government reformers and the academics who are resistant to the particular reforms suggested. Absent in the article are any meaningful facts to help us decide whether the reforms are good or not, and also absent are the actual reforms. What is present is the somewhat unidentified conflict between 'market driven' and 'not market driven.' A cursory look at the comments section below the article verifies this; the discussion is not about what the suggestions are, they are about whether or not a it is appropriate for a university to treat its students as 'customers'.
[Always, always, always absent is any discussion of what an education is about. Granted, that is outside the scope of the article, but it is ignored as a rule...or rather, never even conceived of. One might suppose that the market-like university advocates would say that their 'customers' would decide what an education should consist of, but that just brings up more questions and I don't want to put words in their mouths]
So, I had to do some footwork, but I did manage to find the list of the "Seven Breakthrough Solutions" within the framework of UTs anti-7 solutions protest site. So far I have not found a source for the raw suggestions, so hopefully those wily UT professors and deans haven't stripped them of necessary detail.
I will maybe go into these suggestions myself later, but needless to say, the first article I posted up there (and most of the articles I have found are more or less the same) is a good example of bad journalism. It quotes people from 'both sides of the story' without actually going in any depth to explain both sides. It creates public interest but does little to promote anything beyond the ideological debate between market-fundamentalists and everybody else.
Certainly it got me to go out and seek the answers as to whats going on, but 1)I'm better than everybody else in that way, and 2) At the length of the article, it could have been much more concise and informative than it was. It basically rehashes the same thought over and over.
[Always, always, always absent is any discussion of what an education is about. Granted, that is outside the scope of the article, but it is ignored as a rule...or rather, never even conceived of. One might suppose that the market-like university advocates would say that their 'customers' would decide what an education should consist of, but that just brings up more questions and I don't want to put words in their mouths]
So, I had to do some footwork, but I did manage to find the list of the "Seven Breakthrough Solutions" within the framework of UTs anti-7 solutions protest site. So far I have not found a source for the raw suggestions, so hopefully those wily UT professors and deans haven't stripped them of necessary detail.
I will maybe go into these suggestions myself later, but needless to say, the first article I posted up there (and most of the articles I have found are more or less the same) is a good example of bad journalism. It quotes people from 'both sides of the story' without actually going in any depth to explain both sides. It creates public interest but does little to promote anything beyond the ideological debate between market-fundamentalists and everybody else.
Certainly it got me to go out and seek the answers as to whats going on, but 1)I'm better than everybody else in that way, and 2) At the length of the article, it could have been much more concise and informative than it was. It basically rehashes the same thought over and over.
Thursday, June 30, 2011
Mass Opiates
Marx and Rand both hate religion.
This is not a snide accusation on my part; this is something they proclaim themselves, as everybody ought to know.
By religion, I take them to mean primarily Theism, though any sort of belief in metaphysical truths will likely suffice.
Given their reasons for despising religion in this sense, I think they have misdiagnosed their own prejudice, particularly Rand. Curing humanity of theism, deism, or any other metaphysically based philosophy, does not cure humanity of -isms in general. After all, those two left us with both Marxism and Objectivism (I'd rather call it Randism) in turn. And irony of ironies, both these ideologies have been misconstrued and used expressly against their intended meanings since their very conception.
The mass of people (particularly Randists) tend to shudder in fear at the mere mention of Marxism, but aside from native cultures, a few hippy communes, and perhaps a few other isolated incidents, the world has never seen an actual Communism in place, at least not on a grand scale. This makes a sort of sense since Communism, contrary to popular understanding, was not thought of as a totalitarian state controlling all commerce, but rather as a stateless society of small 'soviets' (kinda like a polis) which would be independent and politically free, and at that small level, they would share the means of production and therefore share the wealth of that production.
Marx seemed at least partially aware that it was not Theism that was his enemy so much as the religious mind; after all, he speaks of commodity fetishism, which surely hints that he understood man could be religious about things aside from religion. Rand, however, does not seem nearly so developed, but this is to be expected since she had many such lingual problems evident in her writing. Atlas Shrugged gives us many suggestions regarding her confusion in her own beliefs. In that book, we learn to hate "progressives" and their selfless altruism, but in reading it, it should be obvious that the progressives in that book are not altruistic but completely greedy. It is not altruism she hates, on the contrary, she seems to think that altruism does not exist, and so believing that there really is only greed, she calls disgusting greed in the guise of altruism. But if we are to read her and take her at her fictional word, then it should be apparent that it is not altruism we should hate, but greed, and it is not religion we should hate, but the mind that embraces beliefs irrationally.
Its a shame her followers do not realize this, though I suppose for the poetic justice to work, it had to come out that way.
This is not a snide accusation on my part; this is something they proclaim themselves, as everybody ought to know.
By religion, I take them to mean primarily Theism, though any sort of belief in metaphysical truths will likely suffice.
Given their reasons for despising religion in this sense, I think they have misdiagnosed their own prejudice, particularly Rand. Curing humanity of theism, deism, or any other metaphysically based philosophy, does not cure humanity of -isms in general. After all, those two left us with both Marxism and Objectivism (I'd rather call it Randism) in turn. And irony of ironies, both these ideologies have been misconstrued and used expressly against their intended meanings since their very conception.
The mass of people (particularly Randists) tend to shudder in fear at the mere mention of Marxism, but aside from native cultures, a few hippy communes, and perhaps a few other isolated incidents, the world has never seen an actual Communism in place, at least not on a grand scale. This makes a sort of sense since Communism, contrary to popular understanding, was not thought of as a totalitarian state controlling all commerce, but rather as a stateless society of small 'soviets' (kinda like a polis) which would be independent and politically free, and at that small level, they would share the means of production and therefore share the wealth of that production.
Marx seemed at least partially aware that it was not Theism that was his enemy so much as the religious mind; after all, he speaks of commodity fetishism, which surely hints that he understood man could be religious about things aside from religion. Rand, however, does not seem nearly so developed, but this is to be expected since she had many such lingual problems evident in her writing. Atlas Shrugged gives us many suggestions regarding her confusion in her own beliefs. In that book, we learn to hate "progressives" and their selfless altruism, but in reading it, it should be obvious that the progressives in that book are not altruistic but completely greedy. It is not altruism she hates, on the contrary, she seems to think that altruism does not exist, and so believing that there really is only greed, she calls disgusting greed in the guise of altruism. But if we are to read her and take her at her fictional word, then it should be apparent that it is not altruism we should hate, but greed, and it is not religion we should hate, but the mind that embraces beliefs irrationally.
Its a shame her followers do not realize this, though I suppose for the poetic justice to work, it had to come out that way.
Sunday, May 22, 2011
Intentionalism
Any philosophy or ideology worth its salt should bring something new to the table, I suppose. But that's not what I'm going to do.
I'm going to create a sort of position, and I'm going to call it "Intentionalism". I almost hate to give it a name, because its nothing new, and I don't want more attached to it than what I mean. Its less a new position, than it is just a common sense, factual way to look at the world. But what I want to do is deflate some of the wrong headed ideologies which today guide our culture. You might call my position an anti-objectivist position, because that seems to be a major guiding ideology of our day, and people largely take its tenants as factual or common sensical when they are neither. Because I'm using my argument as a set of arguments against Objectivism and the Market-Fundamentalism that goes hand in hand with it, and I want it to carry a certain kind of weight, I am naming it. (Though I wish I had the rhetorical talents to Rand-like have it namelessly take over Western consciousness.)
Intentionalism has as its major premise the following: When we are talking about human activity, things happen primarily because of somebody's action, and the efficacy of the action largely has to do with the intent of the action.
Now, when I say 'intent', I am using it in a fairly specific way, and that should be clear from the outset. I know I'm going to have to repeat this over and over, because it is easy for people to abuse meanings of words to dispel beliefs or to put them in a light where they can be disregarded.
For instance, somebody could cheaply pick apart my position by using the word intent in a negative way. So for instance, I could say, "I intended to practice the piano yesterday, but I never got around to it." That's one way people use the word intend. However, we also use the word to blame somebody: "He broke my dolly intentionally!" Or we might use the word as a sort of emphasizer: "He practiced with great intent (or intention)."
Now, the way we used intent in the last two sentences above is really almost the opposite of the way we used it in the first. Its still a noun and has the same denotative meaning for the most part, but the connotation is completely different. So we could even say something like, "That law had good intentions, but no intent," and it might not be clear precisely what we mean, but we wouldn't immediately think that it is contradictory.
When I'm talking about things being done well, it is because somebody put their body and soul into the operation. They thought their actions through; they've put great effort and care into it. They've done what they've done with a great deal of intention. They have done it intentionally. This is the sort of thing I am talking about with Intentionalism. Good things are not achieved by accident. A person does not get good at golf because somebody else is. That person puts their mind to getting good, and by and large, how much they invest in the endeavor will determine their results. Yes, a person might put their whole selves into playing golf and never be as good as Tiger Woods, but they will certainly be a great deal better themselves than they would have if they had gone after it half-assed or not at all.
Now, I have not said anything new, or novel yet. And, in fact, I haven't gotten into why my position is anti-Objectivist. Really, what I have said, and what I will continue to say, is not really inconsistent with Objectivism, but I think that it is something that is not used evenly across the board, and thus we have people putting undue emphasis on things like competition; they say, with great conviction, that we cannot trust any human action to be good unless it has that element of competition with it. Even if people do not verbalize that argument, it has become socially ingrained in us. My hope is, with logic, historical evidence, and even some good myth making, to eventually lay the groundwork for removing that damaging mode of belief.
I'm going to create a sort of position, and I'm going to call it "Intentionalism". I almost hate to give it a name, because its nothing new, and I don't want more attached to it than what I mean. Its less a new position, than it is just a common sense, factual way to look at the world. But what I want to do is deflate some of the wrong headed ideologies which today guide our culture. You might call my position an anti-objectivist position, because that seems to be a major guiding ideology of our day, and people largely take its tenants as factual or common sensical when they are neither. Because I'm using my argument as a set of arguments against Objectivism and the Market-Fundamentalism that goes hand in hand with it, and I want it to carry a certain kind of weight, I am naming it. (Though I wish I had the rhetorical talents to Rand-like have it namelessly take over Western consciousness.)
Intentionalism has as its major premise the following: When we are talking about human activity, things happen primarily because of somebody's action, and the efficacy of the action largely has to do with the intent of the action.
Now, when I say 'intent', I am using it in a fairly specific way, and that should be clear from the outset. I know I'm going to have to repeat this over and over, because it is easy for people to abuse meanings of words to dispel beliefs or to put them in a light where they can be disregarded.
For instance, somebody could cheaply pick apart my position by using the word intent in a negative way. So for instance, I could say, "I intended to practice the piano yesterday, but I never got around to it." That's one way people use the word intend. However, we also use the word to blame somebody: "He broke my dolly intentionally!" Or we might use the word as a sort of emphasizer: "He practiced with great intent (or intention)."
Now, the way we used intent in the last two sentences above is really almost the opposite of the way we used it in the first. Its still a noun and has the same denotative meaning for the most part, but the connotation is completely different. So we could even say something like, "That law had good intentions, but no intent," and it might not be clear precisely what we mean, but we wouldn't immediately think that it is contradictory.
When I'm talking about things being done well, it is because somebody put their body and soul into the operation. They thought their actions through; they've put great effort and care into it. They've done what they've done with a great deal of intention. They have done it intentionally. This is the sort of thing I am talking about with Intentionalism. Good things are not achieved by accident. A person does not get good at golf because somebody else is. That person puts their mind to getting good, and by and large, how much they invest in the endeavor will determine their results. Yes, a person might put their whole selves into playing golf and never be as good as Tiger Woods, but they will certainly be a great deal better themselves than they would have if they had gone after it half-assed or not at all.
Now, I have not said anything new, or novel yet. And, in fact, I haven't gotten into why my position is anti-Objectivist. Really, what I have said, and what I will continue to say, is not really inconsistent with Objectivism, but I think that it is something that is not used evenly across the board, and thus we have people putting undue emphasis on things like competition; they say, with great conviction, that we cannot trust any human action to be good unless it has that element of competition with it. Even if people do not verbalize that argument, it has become socially ingrained in us. My hope is, with logic, historical evidence, and even some good myth making, to eventually lay the groundwork for removing that damaging mode of belief.
Sunday, May 8, 2011
Another Corporate Note
Yes, everybody rails against 'evil' corporations, and so do I. And here are some good reasons that you should, too, especially if you're a 'market fundamentalist', Tea Partier, or Libertarian.
Corporations are political entities. They are ultimately created by the state and given certain rights and privileges above and beyond normal citizens. If you think the government shouldn't be involved in the market, this should already be enough. How else does their special status effect the market? Well, by and large, mostly because they have limited liability. Shareholders and corporate managers cannot be held responsible for damages done by corporate activity. The most an investor could ever lose is his original investment; he or she is not liable for damages beyond that, regardless of how much money they have made in the intermediary. So much of what market fundamentalists argue about concerns moral hazard; well, even if you don't insulate the corporation from bankruptcy, fines, or whatever, if you don't also punish the management and the shareholders, you're maintaining that moral hazard.
Big corporations are big. This is bad. Why is it bad? Because they create faction. Because they have enough power to manipulate the government and bend it toward their own ends. This impacts both the marketplace and our control over our own government. So big corporations are not only dangerous to the market, but also to us.
Big business also skews what we mean by competition. Without actually being better, or more efficient, they can move into a local economy and dominate it simply based on the fact that they are big. They can undercut prices easily since they can absorb losses with their larger network; most people think this just makes their model superior, but this is like saying John is a better boxer than Peter, where Peter is a featherweight and John is ten heavyweights. It warps what we mean by fair competition.
Enough, this will get better over time.
Corporations are political entities. They are ultimately created by the state and given certain rights and privileges above and beyond normal citizens. If you think the government shouldn't be involved in the market, this should already be enough. How else does their special status effect the market? Well, by and large, mostly because they have limited liability. Shareholders and corporate managers cannot be held responsible for damages done by corporate activity. The most an investor could ever lose is his original investment; he or she is not liable for damages beyond that, regardless of how much money they have made in the intermediary. So much of what market fundamentalists argue about concerns moral hazard; well, even if you don't insulate the corporation from bankruptcy, fines, or whatever, if you don't also punish the management and the shareholders, you're maintaining that moral hazard.
Big corporations are big. This is bad. Why is it bad? Because they create faction. Because they have enough power to manipulate the government and bend it toward their own ends. This impacts both the marketplace and our control over our own government. So big corporations are not only dangerous to the market, but also to us.
Big business also skews what we mean by competition. Without actually being better, or more efficient, they can move into a local economy and dominate it simply based on the fact that they are big. They can undercut prices easily since they can absorb losses with their larger network; most people think this just makes their model superior, but this is like saying John is a better boxer than Peter, where Peter is a featherweight and John is ten heavyweights. It warps what we mean by fair competition.
Enough, this will get better over time.
Monday, April 25, 2011
California/Texas Exodus
There have been a lot of articles like this one recently. All this emphasis put on business growth while ignoring everything else.
We are importing workers with our jobs, therefore existing citizens don't necessarily have an advantage. We have been growing gang busters for decades, but our state is still broke. Income inequality gets worse. Air gets worse. Water gets worse. Traffic gets worse. Public schools get worse. The impoverished bear the brunt of growth because they must move further away from their jobs due to sprawl and pay more in gas or bus fare to get where they're going while their wages do not grow and cost of living rises.
Growth is not black and white; I don't see that its really a good thing just as a brute fact. Good growth is good, bad is bad, just as good policy is good and bad policy is bad. Maybe it's too hard to open a Carl's Jr. in Cali, or maybe there are too many Carl's Jr's there. Maybe it's too hard to build, or maybe there are too many buildings there. Maybe environmental policy is too harsh, or maybe the environment has already suffered enough.
If California's economy is weak, then perhaps it is because they have relied too much on constant growth in the past to fuel their economy. Perhaps what we will see developing out of their folly will be a more sustainable model; although considering they're looking at us Texans for ideas, I highly doubt that, since we're just going down the same path that they have already trodden.
We are importing workers with our jobs, therefore existing citizens don't necessarily have an advantage. We have been growing gang busters for decades, but our state is still broke. Income inequality gets worse. Air gets worse. Water gets worse. Traffic gets worse. Public schools get worse. The impoverished bear the brunt of growth because they must move further away from their jobs due to sprawl and pay more in gas or bus fare to get where they're going while their wages do not grow and cost of living rises.
Growth is not black and white; I don't see that its really a good thing just as a brute fact. Good growth is good, bad is bad, just as good policy is good and bad policy is bad. Maybe it's too hard to open a Carl's Jr. in Cali, or maybe there are too many Carl's Jr's there. Maybe it's too hard to build, or maybe there are too many buildings there. Maybe environmental policy is too harsh, or maybe the environment has already suffered enough.
If California's economy is weak, then perhaps it is because they have relied too much on constant growth in the past to fuel their economy. Perhaps what we will see developing out of their folly will be a more sustainable model; although considering they're looking at us Texans for ideas, I highly doubt that, since we're just going down the same path that they have already trodden.
Saturday, April 23, 2011
Trickle Up Economics
I haven't heard any talk anywhere from anybody on this, but that's not to say its not out there. Certainly we haven't brought it up in this forum, so I will now.
Why not raise minimum wage?
I can hear the shrill cry that this will kill business, but I don't see why that should be, particularly since during this economic hullabaloo, big business has been setting record profits. But this hasn't benefited your average American.
Your minimum wage earners are the folks who are going to spend more money if they have it. They'll buy more goods, they'll be able to potentially buy better goods and services than they do now, meaning, ideally, more locally produced, long lasting goods. They might even gain enough of a level of sustainable reprieve from the stress of constantly living paycheck to paycheck to improve themselves or, who knows, dabble in entrepreneurship.
I think we've largely agreed that there is too much money pooling at the top, and that the trickle down isn't really working. It was just a theory after all; no reason to give it the credence that a fact would have. Over 80% of the cash in this country is tied to the very top tier of income earners (top 2%), so there's plenty of cash to spread around. And politically (to sustain (or recreate) our Republic) and economically, its actually necessary that that capital see movement and dispersal.
And what is more, people never feel quite right about taking 'somebody else's money' and giving it away, because we have this unusual notion that you make what you earn and you earn what you make (in other words, whatever you make is whatever you deserve to make). This is one thing that nobody likes about welfare programs, and something that isn't even good for the people receiving welfare. After all, they will always have that feeling that they are being given something they haven't earned, but which they deserve. Or at least that's the line. So we can get around all the necessity of social welfare programs if we just make sure people are earning enough for the time they spend so they can actually get by in the world. You won't have any complaints about people being given money by our 'communist state' for free, they're just earning what their time is worth and what they need to get by, but they still must 'earn' it. (And yes, I do actually recognize that setting wages is closer to communism than income re-allocation, a fact lost on most Americans, but this is only the 'minimum' wage, not all wages)
If the average household has more money to spend then: more money will be spent in the market place, on better goods, making demand rise, encouraging job growth and the creation of new ways for people to spend their money. (Another aside, I'm not in support of an ever growing economy as it is not sustainable, but that can be treated on later)
Compared to the complications of figuring out who deserves to receive what amount of welfare, how much money you can get back from the government for tax exemptions, medical care, insurance, education cuts, the privatization or publicazation of 'everything', et al., doesn't just raising the minimum wage seem just a little more elegant?
Why not raise minimum wage?
I can hear the shrill cry that this will kill business, but I don't see why that should be, particularly since during this economic hullabaloo, big business has been setting record profits. But this hasn't benefited your average American.
Your minimum wage earners are the folks who are going to spend more money if they have it. They'll buy more goods, they'll be able to potentially buy better goods and services than they do now, meaning, ideally, more locally produced, long lasting goods. They might even gain enough of a level of sustainable reprieve from the stress of constantly living paycheck to paycheck to improve themselves or, who knows, dabble in entrepreneurship.
I think we've largely agreed that there is too much money pooling at the top, and that the trickle down isn't really working. It was just a theory after all; no reason to give it the credence that a fact would have. Over 80% of the cash in this country is tied to the very top tier of income earners (top 2%), so there's plenty of cash to spread around. And politically (to sustain (or recreate) our Republic) and economically, its actually necessary that that capital see movement and dispersal.
And what is more, people never feel quite right about taking 'somebody else's money' and giving it away, because we have this unusual notion that you make what you earn and you earn what you make (in other words, whatever you make is whatever you deserve to make). This is one thing that nobody likes about welfare programs, and something that isn't even good for the people receiving welfare. After all, they will always have that feeling that they are being given something they haven't earned, but which they deserve. Or at least that's the line. So we can get around all the necessity of social welfare programs if we just make sure people are earning enough for the time they spend so they can actually get by in the world. You won't have any complaints about people being given money by our 'communist state' for free, they're just earning what their time is worth and what they need to get by, but they still must 'earn' it. (And yes, I do actually recognize that setting wages is closer to communism than income re-allocation, a fact lost on most Americans, but this is only the 'minimum' wage, not all wages)
If the average household has more money to spend then: more money will be spent in the market place, on better goods, making demand rise, encouraging job growth and the creation of new ways for people to spend their money. (Another aside, I'm not in support of an ever growing economy as it is not sustainable, but that can be treated on later)
Compared to the complications of figuring out who deserves to receive what amount of welfare, how much money you can get back from the government for tax exemptions, medical care, insurance, education cuts, the privatization or publicazation of 'everything', et al., doesn't just raising the minimum wage seem just a little more elegant?
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