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?
Tuesday, April 19, 2011
Taxes
Its really looking like if we want to take care of our debt, we need to raise taxes. Our tax burden isn't that bad compared to our taxes historically. One problem is that the super rich are super richer than ever before, but are paying much lower taxes (this is both a tax problem and points to a problem in the market). Another problem, as the first story below points out, is that a lot of people who should be paying taxes don't have to, thanks to a plethora of exemptions and loopholes.
Audio: Tax exemptions and loopholes
A history of tax burden
I sometimes wonder if our problems with taxes have less to do with the loss of money itself, and more to do with A) the stress of filling out paperwork (there are studies on this out there) and/or B) our increasing lack of a feeling of solidarity for the national welfare. After all, we are encouraged by objectivism, very prevalent both in the fore and background today, only to watch out for number one, and for years our presidents have been saying "The business of America is business!" instead of something more idealistic, for instance, "The business of America is Justice" or perhaps even "Think not what your country can do for you, but what you can do for your country." Perhaps if we stressed public spiritedness, we'd be more apt to take direct part in our government and wouldn't feel like it was this alien entity robbing us or hindering our "real" business.
Audio: Tax exemptions and loopholes
A history of tax burden
I sometimes wonder if our problems with taxes have less to do with the loss of money itself, and more to do with A) the stress of filling out paperwork (there are studies on this out there) and/or B) our increasing lack of a feeling of solidarity for the national welfare. After all, we are encouraged by objectivism, very prevalent both in the fore and background today, only to watch out for number one, and for years our presidents have been saying "The business of America is business!" instead of something more idealistic, for instance, "The business of America is Justice" or perhaps even "Think not what your country can do for you, but what you can do for your country." Perhaps if we stressed public spiritedness, we'd be more apt to take direct part in our government and wouldn't feel like it was this alien entity robbing us or hindering our "real" business.
Friday, December 10, 2010
Atheism as Religion
It seems we basically have one sort of atheism alive and well today. That secular humanism which is, for all intents and purposes, basically identical to most popular religions with the exceptions of its cosmology. Perhaps theres less crisis regarding homosexuality, but the trope 'i'm okay, you're okay' morality is still there.
But this is not a discussion on ethics, its aabout atheism...with a capital A. At the core of modern popular atheism is that materialistic belief, if I cannot sense it (or scientifically" intereact with it, it does not exist. Now, an atheist need not subscribe to scientific realism, nor even materialism entirely, but certainly they must (or do, rather) believe that to believe in anything which cannot be demonstrated is stupid. Now, we do have a sort of weak religious belief here, because inhrent in all this is the unspoken rule that if God confronted an atheist, the atheist would be forced to acknowledge God's existence (ignoring the fac tthat the atheist may deem himself insane first.
But that is not the atheism that that interests me. I want a truly religious atheism, one that is not merely cosmologically bound, but morally bound, to ignore God's existence, nay, to deny it, even if that God presents himself. If I knew for certain that God exists, I would still adopt my Atheism in pure defiance; and note that this is not a sort of lazy defiance, or absured refusal to acknowledge that I was wrong about God's existence. No, its a moral imperative which states that i will not be encumbered by moral norms set upon me by another power, no matter how infinite or powerful it might be. In this way, it is a sort of reverse humanism; it shockingly denies an objective or obviously human good in favor of the heroic morality of the individual.
More later
But this is not a discussion on ethics, its aabout atheism...with a capital A. At the core of modern popular atheism is that materialistic belief, if I cannot sense it (or scientifically" intereact with it, it does not exist. Now, an atheist need not subscribe to scientific realism, nor even materialism entirely, but certainly they must (or do, rather) believe that to believe in anything which cannot be demonstrated is stupid. Now, we do have a sort of weak religious belief here, because inhrent in all this is the unspoken rule that if God confronted an atheist, the atheist would be forced to acknowledge God's existence (ignoring the fac tthat the atheist may deem himself insane first.
But that is not the atheism that that interests me. I want a truly religious atheism, one that is not merely cosmologically bound, but morally bound, to ignore God's existence, nay, to deny it, even if that God presents himself. If I knew for certain that God exists, I would still adopt my Atheism in pure defiance; and note that this is not a sort of lazy defiance, or absured refusal to acknowledge that I was wrong about God's existence. No, its a moral imperative which states that i will not be encumbered by moral norms set upon me by another power, no matter how infinite or powerful it might be. In this way, it is a sort of reverse humanism; it shockingly denies an objective or obviously human good in favor of the heroic morality of the individual.
More later
Friday, December 3, 2010
There is no Main Street
We've heard it. We have to keep an eye on Wall Street and Main Street. If you have no local economy, and by that I mean locally owned and operated businesses, then you have no Main Street. Your "Main Street" is tied to Wall Street if it consists only of large, national and/or international business; you cannot hope for it to act like Main Street, cannot expect it to act for the best local interests when it is fettered externally. The masters of your local economy--which means your masters--do not live near you.
They do not care about you.
They care about Wall Street.
There is no Main Street.
Not if there is no locally owned and operated business.
They do not care about you.
They care about Wall Street.
There is no Main Street.
Not if there is no locally owned and operated business.
Sunday, November 28, 2010
The Creature that Tells Stories
Language has made our species strange. So long as you accept as fact that mankind is somehow divinely created (and we all know atheists who think as much), our ability to tell stories doesn't seem so strange. When you think about evolution though; holy cow that's weird. Here we've managed to become capable of creating a complex language; not just body signals or the ability to emote, but a way to convey abstract ideas. Now, why would we really need those? Well, I don't know; you can't exactly explain everything away with evolution, ya know, and who'd want to anyway?
The stories we tell aren't just communications..."I found food over by that river, but watch out for the piranha"...we convey more than just facts, we convey value.
A pack of wolves, a group of chimps, what's important to them? Who's the boss. Who has the power. That's what. Now, if I'm a bottom rung chimp, and I find that I don't get the food that's coming to me, because the head chimp is a bully, hardly a leader at all, maybe I will get so pissed off that I'll go ape shit on him. But probably not; probably I'll just yield because that's the way we're built. He's at the top; he calls the shots.
Really, that's not so different than a lot of people, I think. They seem to relish in giving more and more to people who already have power over them. Don't ask me why, because it seems to fly in the face of story telling, because the root of every good story is an appeal to justice. And don't we spend an inordinate amount of time discussing justice? Everything we talk about has to do with whether I got what is coming to me or whether some undeserving jackass is causing me grief. No matter how banal it might be, that's the story we tell.
How about this. Those chimps and wolves relationships are all about power relations. Well, our stories allow us to lie about power relations...to ourselves. Why be racist? What does that do for us? Its a lie, for power. Even if my life is crap, I can lie to myself; I'm not inferior (even if I am) because I belong to a superior race. Why do you think the Nazis were successful?
The stories we tell aren't just communications..."I found food over by that river, but watch out for the piranha"...we convey more than just facts, we convey value.
A pack of wolves, a group of chimps, what's important to them? Who's the boss. Who has the power. That's what. Now, if I'm a bottom rung chimp, and I find that I don't get the food that's coming to me, because the head chimp is a bully, hardly a leader at all, maybe I will get so pissed off that I'll go ape shit on him. But probably not; probably I'll just yield because that's the way we're built. He's at the top; he calls the shots.
Really, that's not so different than a lot of people, I think. They seem to relish in giving more and more to people who already have power over them. Don't ask me why, because it seems to fly in the face of story telling, because the root of every good story is an appeal to justice. And don't we spend an inordinate amount of time discussing justice? Everything we talk about has to do with whether I got what is coming to me or whether some undeserving jackass is causing me grief. No matter how banal it might be, that's the story we tell.
How about this. Those chimps and wolves relationships are all about power relations. Well, our stories allow us to lie about power relations...to ourselves. Why be racist? What does that do for us? Its a lie, for power. Even if my life is crap, I can lie to myself; I'm not inferior (even if I am) because I belong to a superior race. Why do you think the Nazis were successful?
Thursday, October 21, 2010
Earning
This is as yet an incomplete thought.
I've heard a few times, both in person and on various media outlets, some person, or persons reciting, as a sort of rallying cry, "I earned what I have." This is a sort of response that comes up from the right when confronted with the threat of redistributive taxation, etc.
Earning is a funny word. It has multiple meanings; the meanings can basically be divided into two groups and then a third which would seem (perhaps deceptively) to be in the middle. On the one hand we have the monetary sense, in which earning simply means an increase in money, for instance, an account earns interest. On the other, we have 'earn' as being used as meriting or deserving reward.
Now, when somebody is said to have earned a wage, or to have earned a living, there is some odd juxtaposing between these two broader meanings of the word earned. This came to mind awhile back when a friend of my family vehemently denounced Obama and his redistributive policies, stating that he had earned what he had. So here is a funny thing; on the one hand, there is no denying that he 'earned' it, in the fully monetary sense. He rendered a service and was given compensation for it. On the other hand, he is saying, basically, that what he has received (purportedly, all of it) he deserves.
The frightening conclusion (to my mind) is that the economy, apparently, decides on its own what people deserve. Given the recent rise in 'market fundamentalism' as a general philosophy, it is no more surprising than it is disturbing. Taken to its extreme, it basically says that a free market economy will always decide what people deserve. Given this belief, it is no wonder why all taxation would be decried as an injustice.
Also falling out of this belief of 'earning' is the oddity of what we might call uneven markets. So, for instance, if 'earning/deserving' is based upon how hard you have worked, one might ask why it is that you have more than, say, your ancestors. Do you work so much harder than your forefathers that you deserve all the amenities of modern society while they did not? The truth is, if any earning has been done, then it was done for us, in the past, by our predecessors. God knows that I do not do enough work today to have built this house, with its air conditioning, its television set, a modern oven, indoor plumbing, etc., and I dare to say that no man living today can in good conscience say that he has (though I'd wager that many would say just that).
Here is the third way in which the phrase, "I earned it," is odd to me. It requires others. If you go into the woods, hunt for your own food, build your own shelter, do everything for yourself through the good will of Nature, then there is not really a proper way in which you can say you 'earned' what you have. On the contrary, you did not earn your hovel, or your dinner, or anything else that you have, you created it yourself from whatever the land has provided for you. In this sense, where you did not 'earn' your house, because you actually built your house, we are actually precisely closest to seeing what a person, by his own work, by his own two hands, merits.
And yet since we are social creatures, capable of sharing work, of sharing burdens, we can have a much easier existence than we can have on our own. Thus it is only in a social context, where you actually receive more than you possibly could have created on your own, that we can speak of earning, deserving a certain place in that society based upon how much we have put into it. Considering the chaos of a free market, the fact that much of what we have today is thanks to the hard work of others from the past, and still from others today who work very hard for very little pay, thanks to quirks in our monetary system or simple exploitation of workers, we really cannot say we have 'earned' what we have when others who work as hard, or harder than we do, have much less.
To recap, if somebody says "I earned this," we cannot immediately jump to "I deserve this." If there is to be a social or moral dimension to the word earn, which is implied by the use of the phrase, then social merit, as opposed to cold market science, must be considered, and therefore, redistribution must be considered as a possible correction to the injustice of uneven earnings.
I've heard a few times, both in person and on various media outlets, some person, or persons reciting, as a sort of rallying cry, "I earned what I have." This is a sort of response that comes up from the right when confronted with the threat of redistributive taxation, etc.
Earning is a funny word. It has multiple meanings; the meanings can basically be divided into two groups and then a third which would seem (perhaps deceptively) to be in the middle. On the one hand we have the monetary sense, in which earning simply means an increase in money, for instance, an account earns interest. On the other, we have 'earn' as being used as meriting or deserving reward.
Now, when somebody is said to have earned a wage, or to have earned a living, there is some odd juxtaposing between these two broader meanings of the word earned. This came to mind awhile back when a friend of my family vehemently denounced Obama and his redistributive policies, stating that he had earned what he had. So here is a funny thing; on the one hand, there is no denying that he 'earned' it, in the fully monetary sense. He rendered a service and was given compensation for it. On the other hand, he is saying, basically, that what he has received (purportedly, all of it) he deserves.
The frightening conclusion (to my mind) is that the economy, apparently, decides on its own what people deserve. Given the recent rise in 'market fundamentalism' as a general philosophy, it is no more surprising than it is disturbing. Taken to its extreme, it basically says that a free market economy will always decide what people deserve. Given this belief, it is no wonder why all taxation would be decried as an injustice.
Also falling out of this belief of 'earning' is the oddity of what we might call uneven markets. So, for instance, if 'earning/deserving' is based upon how hard you have worked, one might ask why it is that you have more than, say, your ancestors. Do you work so much harder than your forefathers that you deserve all the amenities of modern society while they did not? The truth is, if any earning has been done, then it was done for us, in the past, by our predecessors. God knows that I do not do enough work today to have built this house, with its air conditioning, its television set, a modern oven, indoor plumbing, etc., and I dare to say that no man living today can in good conscience say that he has (though I'd wager that many would say just that).
Here is the third way in which the phrase, "I earned it," is odd to me. It requires others. If you go into the woods, hunt for your own food, build your own shelter, do everything for yourself through the good will of Nature, then there is not really a proper way in which you can say you 'earned' what you have. On the contrary, you did not earn your hovel, or your dinner, or anything else that you have, you created it yourself from whatever the land has provided for you. In this sense, where you did not 'earn' your house, because you actually built your house, we are actually precisely closest to seeing what a person, by his own work, by his own two hands, merits.
And yet since we are social creatures, capable of sharing work, of sharing burdens, we can have a much easier existence than we can have on our own. Thus it is only in a social context, where you actually receive more than you possibly could have created on your own, that we can speak of earning, deserving a certain place in that society based upon how much we have put into it. Considering the chaos of a free market, the fact that much of what we have today is thanks to the hard work of others from the past, and still from others today who work very hard for very little pay, thanks to quirks in our monetary system or simple exploitation of workers, we really cannot say we have 'earned' what we have when others who work as hard, or harder than we do, have much less.
To recap, if somebody says "I earned this," we cannot immediately jump to "I deserve this." If there is to be a social or moral dimension to the word earn, which is implied by the use of the phrase, then social merit, as opposed to cold market science, must be considered, and therefore, redistribution must be considered as a possible correction to the injustice of uneven earnings.
Wednesday, September 22, 2010
Capitalism dies, says Iran
Ahmadinejad Say Capitalism Dying
So, I thought to say that you really can't blame an ideology, but if you have an ideology which at its core is based upon the dominance of a few with money, which is an ideal I think a lot of proponents of capitalism would endorse today, then you're going to get out exactly what you would expect to get out. Of course, capitalism is a tricky term. A lot of people use it interchangeably with 'free market' economics, but that's not necessarily how you have to think about it. I could imagine a free market economy without capitalism; the most obvious example is an economy that has no monetary system. I suppose it all comes down to how you want to define things, but since you can have a free market without money, but not capitalism without money, I really don't think you can in any way use the terms interchangeably.
I think capitalism must die, because it has become...well, it is perhaps the one thing in the world which has actually become 'more and more like itself.' Modern capitalism is less an economic system than it is a religion, and I think the echoes of Marx's 'commodity fetishism' are obvious here. People actually believe that if you just have this 'capitalistic system' whatever that entails, then things will judiciously work themselves out. There's just no reason to believe that; its a faith statement. You might as well suggest we not have laws because ethics will work itself out naturally (if people start killing each other, the ethics market will immediately and naturally punish them).
I'll comment on this some more later maybe.
So, I thought to say that you really can't blame an ideology, but if you have an ideology which at its core is based upon the dominance of a few with money, which is an ideal I think a lot of proponents of capitalism would endorse today, then you're going to get out exactly what you would expect to get out. Of course, capitalism is a tricky term. A lot of people use it interchangeably with 'free market' economics, but that's not necessarily how you have to think about it. I could imagine a free market economy without capitalism; the most obvious example is an economy that has no monetary system. I suppose it all comes down to how you want to define things, but since you can have a free market without money, but not capitalism without money, I really don't think you can in any way use the terms interchangeably.
I think capitalism must die, because it has become...well, it is perhaps the one thing in the world which has actually become 'more and more like itself.' Modern capitalism is less an economic system than it is a religion, and I think the echoes of Marx's 'commodity fetishism' are obvious here. People actually believe that if you just have this 'capitalistic system' whatever that entails, then things will judiciously work themselves out. There's just no reason to believe that; its a faith statement. You might as well suggest we not have laws because ethics will work itself out naturally (if people start killing each other, the ethics market will immediately and naturally punish them).
I'll comment on this some more later maybe.
Monday, August 30, 2010
The Awful Power of Belief
Don't laugh (Mando).
Because yesterday I looked at a Yahoo article (a particularly lame one) and then even scrolled down far enough to see the first comment.
The comment basically was a long, single sentence rant of epic racism, telling 'ethnics' to wake up and start behaving like the good part of the world. It pointed out how in Africa and the Middle East its just kill, kill, kill, but here in the white west, we are peaceful, and our 'oppressiveness' is nothing compared to the oppression that 'ethnics' heap upon one another.
I don't want to talk about the comment itself. But it got me thinking. Why would a person go to the trouble of leaving such an unconvincing rant? Why do people have such strong beliefs about the superiority of their race that they actually write such things and even act upon them?
I thought for a moment, and the answer came to me that it is like Nietzsche said. We aren't in it to be happy; a search for happiness does not motivate us. We just want power. When I 'oppress' you for your color, or at the least, extol my own race, it is my own petty way of giving myself a power.
I pursued this train of thought, and I remembered how the night before a friend of mine, cornered by the majority opinion of my other friends, actually began to exhibit a 'fight or flight' response. I think we have all felt it. When our beliefs are attacked, we get a tightness in our chests, our breathing increases, our minds close. Sometimes we even react violently to hear our strong beliefs challenged.
It may be as simple as that we interpret such attacks somehow as physical attacks; certainly, having several people around you telling you you are wrong about something is not unlike being attacked or provoked; one can imagine monkeys in a forest hooting at each other before violence ensues.
When somebody challenges your beliefs, they are also challenging your identity. When we are talking about racial groups, and our place in them, we are also talking about identity. What is this thing about identity which is so touchy that merely questioning it can send us into a rage? From a behavioral anthropological point of view, I would guess it has something to do with group dynamics. You gain power through your associations, so naturally you wish to empower those same associations.
But we're talking about belief here, right?
Serendipitously, I stumbled upon this interesting RSA animation on empathy. According to this we are 'soft wired' not for selfish survival, but for empathic responses, for being sociable, friendly. We desire to preserve and support the group; when our beliefs are challenged, the belief in our group is therefore challenged, albeit indirectly. Could it be that through sub-conscious intellection we make that connection, and that this is what leads to such a visceral response?
As I was watching the video, I also could not help but think of flaws in his position. If we all have empathic responses, then how come we can joyously watch an execution? But, of course, we have learned not to, at least in some parts of the world. There is also the objectification of the person who has committed crimes; it is as though we remove them from our social group, and therefore feel no more empathy toward them. Thus, whatever we do to them, it is not as though we are doing it to a 'person'.
There is also the obvious divisiveness of religion and other broader social groups. Suddenly, though before I would have empathized with my family and neighbor, now I see those with the same religion as my kin at the exclusion of my blood relations and neighbors.
This is no doubt why politicians spend so much time talking about who they are, and what they purportedly represent rather than about real issues or the actual changes they intend to make. We trust them because they have the same beliefs as us, and therefore we see them as being in the same group as we are; so we give them unearned trust. What is this awful belief that is so mingled with the primitive parts of our brain that makes us act so irrationally? Why would we trust a stranger based, not on how he acts, but on what he believes? Why is belief and not the proper application of belief the measure by which we judge others? Its not enough to just say it is wrong, or that people who do so are dumb, we 'all' do it! It seems to be something deeply wired into us, and yet our intellect creates the beliefs, supposedly understands us, so what is the tie between the intellect and our bestial minds?
Even Jesus excoriated us for this sort of behavior and told us that we would be judged based on what we do. Remember the sheep and the goats? Remember the Samaritan? Its supposed to be all about how we act, how we empathize, not what we believe. But why does the other come so naturally, when it seems like the less natural thing to do?
Because yesterday I looked at a Yahoo article (a particularly lame one) and then even scrolled down far enough to see the first comment.
The comment basically was a long, single sentence rant of epic racism, telling 'ethnics' to wake up and start behaving like the good part of the world. It pointed out how in Africa and the Middle East its just kill, kill, kill, but here in the white west, we are peaceful, and our 'oppressiveness' is nothing compared to the oppression that 'ethnics' heap upon one another.
I don't want to talk about the comment itself. But it got me thinking. Why would a person go to the trouble of leaving such an unconvincing rant? Why do people have such strong beliefs about the superiority of their race that they actually write such things and even act upon them?
I thought for a moment, and the answer came to me that it is like Nietzsche said. We aren't in it to be happy; a search for happiness does not motivate us. We just want power. When I 'oppress' you for your color, or at the least, extol my own race, it is my own petty way of giving myself a power.
I pursued this train of thought, and I remembered how the night before a friend of mine, cornered by the majority opinion of my other friends, actually began to exhibit a 'fight or flight' response. I think we have all felt it. When our beliefs are attacked, we get a tightness in our chests, our breathing increases, our minds close. Sometimes we even react violently to hear our strong beliefs challenged.
It may be as simple as that we interpret such attacks somehow as physical attacks; certainly, having several people around you telling you you are wrong about something is not unlike being attacked or provoked; one can imagine monkeys in a forest hooting at each other before violence ensues.
When somebody challenges your beliefs, they are also challenging your identity. When we are talking about racial groups, and our place in them, we are also talking about identity. What is this thing about identity which is so touchy that merely questioning it can send us into a rage? From a behavioral anthropological point of view, I would guess it has something to do with group dynamics. You gain power through your associations, so naturally you wish to empower those same associations.
But we're talking about belief here, right?
Serendipitously, I stumbled upon this interesting RSA animation on empathy. According to this we are 'soft wired' not for selfish survival, but for empathic responses, for being sociable, friendly. We desire to preserve and support the group; when our beliefs are challenged, the belief in our group is therefore challenged, albeit indirectly. Could it be that through sub-conscious intellection we make that connection, and that this is what leads to such a visceral response?
As I was watching the video, I also could not help but think of flaws in his position. If we all have empathic responses, then how come we can joyously watch an execution? But, of course, we have learned not to, at least in some parts of the world. There is also the objectification of the person who has committed crimes; it is as though we remove them from our social group, and therefore feel no more empathy toward them. Thus, whatever we do to them, it is not as though we are doing it to a 'person'.
There is also the obvious divisiveness of religion and other broader social groups. Suddenly, though before I would have empathized with my family and neighbor, now I see those with the same religion as my kin at the exclusion of my blood relations and neighbors.
This is no doubt why politicians spend so much time talking about who they are, and what they purportedly represent rather than about real issues or the actual changes they intend to make. We trust them because they have the same beliefs as us, and therefore we see them as being in the same group as we are; so we give them unearned trust. What is this awful belief that is so mingled with the primitive parts of our brain that makes us act so irrationally? Why would we trust a stranger based, not on how he acts, but on what he believes? Why is belief and not the proper application of belief the measure by which we judge others? Its not enough to just say it is wrong, or that people who do so are dumb, we 'all' do it! It seems to be something deeply wired into us, and yet our intellect creates the beliefs, supposedly understands us, so what is the tie between the intellect and our bestial minds?
Even Jesus excoriated us for this sort of behavior and told us that we would be judged based on what we do. Remember the sheep and the goats? Remember the Samaritan? Its supposed to be all about how we act, how we empathize, not what we believe. But why does the other come so naturally, when it seems like the less natural thing to do?
Tuesday, August 17, 2010
8/17/10
I spent some time in the Travis County Commissioner's court this morning.
Of greatest import was a justified complaint from a woman who owns and operates a farm in West Travis County along with several other families. At present, plans are in the works to surround their property on three sides with privately owned solar farms.
The immediate, primary material concern is the rising of ambient temperatures surrounding the solar farm by around 20 degrees. The deleterious effects of this temperature change on farming and on general livability cannot be overstated.
Of yet more pressing import is the fact that the County Commissioners, the proper representative body of these unincorporated citizens, have no rights over land use. Thus, the primary political right, the right over the lands within your political community, is withheld from citizens in unincorporated sections of Texas.
Of greatest import was a justified complaint from a woman who owns and operates a farm in West Travis County along with several other families. At present, plans are in the works to surround their property on three sides with privately owned solar farms.
The immediate, primary material concern is the rising of ambient temperatures surrounding the solar farm by around 20 degrees. The deleterious effects of this temperature change on farming and on general livability cannot be overstated.
Of yet more pressing import is the fact that the County Commissioners, the proper representative body of these unincorporated citizens, have no rights over land use. Thus, the primary political right, the right over the lands within your political community, is withheld from citizens in unincorporated sections of Texas.
Monday, August 16, 2010
The End of the Economic Age
Ladies and gentlemen, we have hope that finally we might be nearing the end of the 'economic age', that era in which the masses and the intellectuals had hope that by describing all things in economic terms, world peace and prosperity would at last be in reach. To accomplish this, we gave up our citizenship and embraced our roles as mere 'consumers.'
Nearly all the conversation effecting the citizenry is expressed in this way. We think not of 'what is good for citizens', but what is good for the economy, what is good for the consumer, the two being (supposedly) connected at the hip.
It was Coolidge who first said, "The business of the United States is business," and Reagan, Bush, Clinton, and Bush Jr. in recent years have said the same. Teddy Roosevelt would not approve. But not only the politicians but the people have jumped on that band wagon, nearly to the destruction of us all, as our dollar declines, our ecology is faltering, and a possible 'double dip' recession threatening just on the other side of the horizon. Let us hope it comes soon, before the damage it will do becomes worse, just as the larger floods remind us not to build on the floodplains.
Marx pointed to the strangeness of commodity fetishism in capitalism, capital itself which has become the fetish, the economic forecasters who have become the priests, the schools of economy the doctrine. Dogmatists abound; when we started to worry about the costs of war in Iraq, what did President G. W. Bush tell us to do? Spend more money; keep the economy going. Instead of addressing problems directly, we try to do everything the same way. Spend more! Buy more! Consume! The way out of this hole is to keep digging! The economists decided we could have our cake and eat it too, provided we ate it fast enough, deciding that modern economic principles could also overturn the axiom "You reap what you sow."
Nearly all the conversation effecting the citizenry is expressed in this way. We think not of 'what is good for citizens', but what is good for the economy, what is good for the consumer, the two being (supposedly) connected at the hip.
It was Coolidge who first said, "The business of the United States is business," and Reagan, Bush, Clinton, and Bush Jr. in recent years have said the same. Teddy Roosevelt would not approve. But not only the politicians but the people have jumped on that band wagon, nearly to the destruction of us all, as our dollar declines, our ecology is faltering, and a possible 'double dip' recession threatening just on the other side of the horizon. Let us hope it comes soon, before the damage it will do becomes worse, just as the larger floods remind us not to build on the floodplains.
Marx pointed to the strangeness of commodity fetishism in capitalism, capital itself which has become the fetish, the economic forecasters who have become the priests, the schools of economy the doctrine. Dogmatists abound; when we started to worry about the costs of war in Iraq, what did President G. W. Bush tell us to do? Spend more money; keep the economy going. Instead of addressing problems directly, we try to do everything the same way. Spend more! Buy more! Consume! The way out of this hole is to keep digging! The economists decided we could have our cake and eat it too, provided we ate it fast enough, deciding that modern economic principles could also overturn the axiom "You reap what you sow."
Friday, August 6, 2010
Violence
I wonder, what would it take for people to resort to violence, and for the others not to think they have reacted somehow beyond reason.
By our standards today, the uprising of the American colonists against England would have been thought petulant, brutish, and almost certainly as rank terrorism with a blatant disregard for life. Now, the colonial people were not of immediate threat to their lives, nor to their property; they revolted for remarkably little as far as material reasons are concerned, much less than what we put up with from both out government and our corporations.
I saw a video the other day disputing claims that we are the most violent peoples on earth ever, that older societies had much more of a balance, their warfare being more for show than intending actual slaughter. Rather, says the video, as time has passed, war and cruelty have decreased steadily and significantly. It wears the assumption on its sleeve that this is a good thing.
What are you suggesting, Mr. Jacob? Blasphemy. Heresy. Am I suggesting violence is a good thing?
No. Not hardly. Though one must wonder about our propensity to sell ourselves for peace; to avoid confrontation not out of love, but out of fear. And most of all, to claim to be a self governed people, and yet vilify any and everyone who acts violently outside of the law, while at the same time upholding the rights of the state to not only use violence, but to provoke violence against it, that the victims might be called murderers themselves.
Nonsense. How it rules us. We are ruled by the letter of the law, not the intent, but we are afraid of ourselves and each other to such a great extent, that we dare not trust interpretation of the law, of its intentions, to the public at large. An FDA official attacks a small business, something so small as a child's lemonade stand, and we uphold the law? If we react the only way we can, with violence, we will be vilified. But what other way is there, besides a slow, strangling death of freedom, which leaves the body fully alive, to witness morosely its lacking of a soul. To have strangled that official, even to have ridden her out of town on a railroad tie, would have been considered a punishment in excess of her crime, for of course, she did not commit one, because it is not written.
Perhaps it is our fiction, the popular myths of the theater, of modern literature, which says we must wait...wait until it is in fact too late to sue for justice through violence? All too often, the hero is the one who waits, sees the 'foolish hotheads' do something stupid, which inevitably causes the death of the hero's own wife...then, and only then, when something personal has been taken away from you, is it reasonable to strike out. Strike for an ideal, for freedom, for others, and you are evil, forever tainted, branded a sinner, a traitor. Unless, of course, you wear the badge of the state, for we have given all the authority for justice up, not wishing it for ourselves.
By our standards today, the uprising of the American colonists against England would have been thought petulant, brutish, and almost certainly as rank terrorism with a blatant disregard for life. Now, the colonial people were not of immediate threat to their lives, nor to their property; they revolted for remarkably little as far as material reasons are concerned, much less than what we put up with from both out government and our corporations.
I saw a video the other day disputing claims that we are the most violent peoples on earth ever, that older societies had much more of a balance, their warfare being more for show than intending actual slaughter. Rather, says the video, as time has passed, war and cruelty have decreased steadily and significantly. It wears the assumption on its sleeve that this is a good thing.
What are you suggesting, Mr. Jacob? Blasphemy. Heresy. Am I suggesting violence is a good thing?
No. Not hardly. Though one must wonder about our propensity to sell ourselves for peace; to avoid confrontation not out of love, but out of fear. And most of all, to claim to be a self governed people, and yet vilify any and everyone who acts violently outside of the law, while at the same time upholding the rights of the state to not only use violence, but to provoke violence against it, that the victims might be called murderers themselves.
Nonsense. How it rules us. We are ruled by the letter of the law, not the intent, but we are afraid of ourselves and each other to such a great extent, that we dare not trust interpretation of the law, of its intentions, to the public at large. An FDA official attacks a small business, something so small as a child's lemonade stand, and we uphold the law? If we react the only way we can, with violence, we will be vilified. But what other way is there, besides a slow, strangling death of freedom, which leaves the body fully alive, to witness morosely its lacking of a soul. To have strangled that official, even to have ridden her out of town on a railroad tie, would have been considered a punishment in excess of her crime, for of course, she did not commit one, because it is not written.
Perhaps it is our fiction, the popular myths of the theater, of modern literature, which says we must wait...wait until it is in fact too late to sue for justice through violence? All too often, the hero is the one who waits, sees the 'foolish hotheads' do something stupid, which inevitably causes the death of the hero's own wife...then, and only then, when something personal has been taken away from you, is it reasonable to strike out. Strike for an ideal, for freedom, for others, and you are evil, forever tainted, branded a sinner, a traitor. Unless, of course, you wear the badge of the state, for we have given all the authority for justice up, not wishing it for ourselves.
Wednesday, July 21, 2010
A Problem of Mobiilty
Our ability to travel easily and freely about the country has created significant economic and ethical problems and will continue to do so. When a person or people are not attached to a place, either physically, economically or emotionally, they are less likely to consider the long term effects of their behavior on that place.
The most obvious modern example of this is California. Southern California, with its sprawling metroplexes, became a sucking vortex for tax money. Referenda after referenda to create more and more social programs while decreasing taxes put the government in a black hole of debt.
Once there, the government has few real options other than cutting the social programs and shrinking the size of government via layoffs and wage cuts. If they attempt to tax business or the wealthier citizens more, those groups will simply move away. Relocation is easily done for these groups, from this state, for while the working class is the root of the state's wealth (no wealth would accrue without them, despite what apologists for big business and our particular brand of capitalism would boast), the well to do and big business hold all the capital which has been created. Since they have made a temporary powerhouse out of their economy, their money is significantly inflated compared to other parts of the country. Thus, they can freely uproot themselves and move to greener pastures cheaply, ready to repeat the cycle once again, siphoning money from state and lower and middle class while engorging themselves like ticks.
Given our societal lack of ideals which decry this sort of behavior, we condone, if not promote it.
Suffice it to say, given California's seemingly unsolvable problems, the best option is the least likely to happen: Revolution. The state, as a whole, will do better without the elitist classes; taxes should be raised to inordinate levels, forcing the rich from their homes and businesses. Once this is done, it leaves a necessary political hole for the middle and lower class to fill, for while these classes have, in recent history, been very willing to work long hours for relatively meager pay, they have not been willing to truly take responsibility for the well being of their state. This must change; they must see their state as an extension of themselves and their business and cease to hide behind the dual, destructive aphoristic premises of our modern culture which say man has absolute right over his "property" while also saying everybody must be taken care of.
Another way, even less likely to happen, is for the rich to actually take the reigns of government directly, rather than indirectly, as now, and force us into a true, rather than de facto, oligarchy. If this were the case, then the wealthy would become directly attached to the place in which they lived, for all responsibility for debt accrued would legally rest with them. Thus, they could not simply pack their bags and leave the failing state; they would be forced to take a vested interest in the goings on of their state, for better or worse, because the state's fortunes would be their own, thus limiting even tyrannical rule to a generation or two. Since our working classes are already rather pathetically peasantish in their mind sets, this could work fairly seamlessly.
Considering oligarchy is closer to what we already have, one might wonder why it is even less likely than a sort of 'worker's revolution'. The reason is because, in our de facto oligarchy, the elite have the best of both worlds: complete control of the economy and government without being tied to the fortunes of said economy or government.
Of course, we know neither of these revolutions will take place, for the US still has land to exploit, and therefore no incentive toward revolution, particularly since our culture has become so weak in these regards, unwilling to sacrifice our own flesh, or even time and effort, since we have professionals to do this for us. What will happen is our somewhat workable system will end up chugging on, making worse and worse the inevitable decline and fall.
The most obvious modern example of this is California. Southern California, with its sprawling metroplexes, became a sucking vortex for tax money. Referenda after referenda to create more and more social programs while decreasing taxes put the government in a black hole of debt.
Once there, the government has few real options other than cutting the social programs and shrinking the size of government via layoffs and wage cuts. If they attempt to tax business or the wealthier citizens more, those groups will simply move away. Relocation is easily done for these groups, from this state, for while the working class is the root of the state's wealth (no wealth would accrue without them, despite what apologists for big business and our particular brand of capitalism would boast), the well to do and big business hold all the capital which has been created. Since they have made a temporary powerhouse out of their economy, their money is significantly inflated compared to other parts of the country. Thus, they can freely uproot themselves and move to greener pastures cheaply, ready to repeat the cycle once again, siphoning money from state and lower and middle class while engorging themselves like ticks.
Given our societal lack of ideals which decry this sort of behavior, we condone, if not promote it.
Suffice it to say, given California's seemingly unsolvable problems, the best option is the least likely to happen: Revolution. The state, as a whole, will do better without the elitist classes; taxes should be raised to inordinate levels, forcing the rich from their homes and businesses. Once this is done, it leaves a necessary political hole for the middle and lower class to fill, for while these classes have, in recent history, been very willing to work long hours for relatively meager pay, they have not been willing to truly take responsibility for the well being of their state. This must change; they must see their state as an extension of themselves and their business and cease to hide behind the dual, destructive aphoristic premises of our modern culture which say man has absolute right over his "property" while also saying everybody must be taken care of.
Another way, even less likely to happen, is for the rich to actually take the reigns of government directly, rather than indirectly, as now, and force us into a true, rather than de facto, oligarchy. If this were the case, then the wealthy would become directly attached to the place in which they lived, for all responsibility for debt accrued would legally rest with them. Thus, they could not simply pack their bags and leave the failing state; they would be forced to take a vested interest in the goings on of their state, for better or worse, because the state's fortunes would be their own, thus limiting even tyrannical rule to a generation or two. Since our working classes are already rather pathetically peasantish in their mind sets, this could work fairly seamlessly.
Considering oligarchy is closer to what we already have, one might wonder why it is even less likely than a sort of 'worker's revolution'. The reason is because, in our de facto oligarchy, the elite have the best of both worlds: complete control of the economy and government without being tied to the fortunes of said economy or government.
Of course, we know neither of these revolutions will take place, for the US still has land to exploit, and therefore no incentive toward revolution, particularly since our culture has become so weak in these regards, unwilling to sacrifice our own flesh, or even time and effort, since we have professionals to do this for us. What will happen is our somewhat workable system will end up chugging on, making worse and worse the inevitable decline and fall.
Thursday, July 15, 2010
Rampant Communism, part 1
Let us understand that there is a difference between a "welfare state" and a "communist" or "socialist state."
Communism and socialism are systems in which there is little or no free market exchange, meaning the government (or community) controls prices and production, redistributing wealth as it sees fit. It is a "post-monetary" system of economics, in which a person gains wealth determined by their merit or simply by their labor/time output.
A welfare state, or welfare society, is one in which money is redistributed by the government (community) or in which services (like healthcare and education) are shared in kind, publicly. In a welfare state, the economy is not necessarily controlled by the government/community, unless it is also a communist state.
In this manner, any state with a public education system shares in a sort of welfare state. Likewise, the existence of libraries and public swimming pools, etc. can be considered as such. The important thing to realize is that making certain useful things publicly owned and run does not necessarily mean that the economy is moving toward socialism or communism, as there are still large portions of the economy which operate on free market principals.
In my next blog, I will speak more rhetorically of our propensity to label things communist or socialist and why we should narrow our definition while broadening our field for inclusion.
Communism and socialism are systems in which there is little or no free market exchange, meaning the government (or community) controls prices and production, redistributing wealth as it sees fit. It is a "post-monetary" system of economics, in which a person gains wealth determined by their merit or simply by their labor/time output.
A welfare state, or welfare society, is one in which money is redistributed by the government (community) or in which services (like healthcare and education) are shared in kind, publicly. In a welfare state, the economy is not necessarily controlled by the government/community, unless it is also a communist state.
In this manner, any state with a public education system shares in a sort of welfare state. Likewise, the existence of libraries and public swimming pools, etc. can be considered as such. The important thing to realize is that making certain useful things publicly owned and run does not necessarily mean that the economy is moving toward socialism or communism, as there are still large portions of the economy which operate on free market principals.
In my next blog, I will speak more rhetorically of our propensity to label things communist or socialist and why we should narrow our definition while broadening our field for inclusion.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)