The horizon is not so far as we can see, but as far as we can imagine

Month: March 2016 Page 2 of 4

Trump Hysteria

So, yeah, I oppose Trump. (I oppose Clinton, too.)

But let’s get real, here.

America is already ruled by monsters. Bill Clinton killed 500k Iraqi children for no particularly good reason (is there a good reason to kill half a million children?). George Bush invaded Iraq. Obama green-lit the destruction of Libya. Hillary Clinton voted for the war on Iraq and pushed hard for the destruction of Libya.

These people have crippled the economy for ordinary people, immunized bankers, destroyed safeguards put in to protect us from another Depression, and so on. They have deliberately made sure the rich get richer, the poor get poorer, and the middle class becomes the poor.

They have been completely inadequate on climate change. They have gutted civil liberties (remember, Obama is worse than Bush on civil liberties). They all torture. Obama deported more Hispanics than Bush, by a significant margin.

Clinton has been there for all of it and demurred for very little of it.

They are all monsters.

Every time you are offered someone better, you refuse. If someone truly decent runs, like, say, Kucinich you think that’s hilarious and would never consider voting for him because he’s not viable. Of course he wasn’t viable, because you wouldn’t consider voting for someone who’s not a monster.

So, yeah, Trump may turn out to be worse. But he’s just a greater evil, and Americans are used to voting for evil.

Heck, if Trump means what he says about foreign affairs, he may turn out to be the lesser evil. Oh sure, he’ll be horrible for people with melanin inside the US, but if he doesn’t attack any countries while President, the net math will be in his favor.

So calm down. All that’s happening is that more of the violence America has so casually exported to the rest of the world might be coming home. If you didn’t mind it for other people, on what ethical grounds do you now object to it in your own country?

Trump will probably be bad, if he’s President. But net worse than your other Presidents? That’s yet to be seen.


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Trump and Clinton Win

Sigh.

It’s not over until it’s over, but something needs to change fast if it isn’t to be Trump v. Clinton.

I know polls show Clinton beating Trump, and demographics are a powerful thing, but I think Trump’s campaign is almost tailor-made to defeat an elitist associated with practically every economic and political failure of the past 30 years.

We shall see.

Book Reviews in My 2016 Series

The $6,000 tier for this year’s fundraiser was a series of book reviews. I haven’t decided which of all the books I will review yet, but I have chosen some. For those who wish to read them before the review and discussion in comments, they follow.

Justice, by Michael J. Sandel

Sandel divides the world’s ethical traditions into three. Maximizing welfare, freedom, and virtue. Utilitarianism, “the most good for the most people” is a welfare tradition. Both anarchism and libertarianism (and classic liberalism) are freedom traditions. Aristotlean ethics are virtue ethics, as are classic biblical ethics “don’t be greedy, prideful, or gluttunous,” do be kind, charitable, and brave. Victorian society was also big on virtue ethics, and schools and society were expected to make students and citizens virtuous.

This isn’t a book which creates a new system, it is a book which delineates and explains traditions which already exist and shows where they break down and conflict. It is the clearest book I have ever read on ethics.

The Economy of Cities; Cities and the Wealth of Nations, Jane Jacobs

I consider these two works to be one book split in two. Jacobs offers a theory of how new work; new economic activity is created; places the creation of new work in cities; and offers a theory of how economically vital cities (not all cities are) are created, sustained, and affect the rest of the world, including non-economically active cities and non-city areas.

This is a compelling view of the world, and includes an essentially complete view of how trade should work. It also says something about how the world should be divided up into political and economic units and what areas should have their own currencies. It has not been properly appreciated and Jacobean principles offer a pretty complete set of rules for how the world should be set up to maximize economic activity. Combined with her other works, it adds principles for how to make this world work ethically and in the details of every day life, so that human welfare is maximized.

For all that Jacobs is a well-known writer, her work has still not been properly understood for what it is: A complete world view which could organize a global society. I read her as a far greater thinker than many who have had far more impact thus far (like Friedman), and as someone whose principles, added to a properly ecological view of the world, could be the basis for a new world.

Sociological Insight, an Introduction to Non-Obvious Sociology

Max Weber, a Skeleton Key, Randall Collins

I will most likely review these two books together. Collins emphasizes a different Weber than most are familiar with. He does not consider “The Protestant Ethic” to be the most important of Weber’s works.

As for non-Obvious sociology, it includes a sociological understanding of the difference between natural and man-made law; a theory of religious belief and a sociology of power and control.

These two books together, along with Collins’s much longer “Credential Society” and “Conflict Sociology” were probably the most important books I read in the early nineties when I was at York University.

Society, contra-Thatcher, does exist, and while it doesn’t bat last, it controls most of our lives.

Confucius

I am tending towards H. G. Creel’s Confucius and the Chinese Way. It is old, published in 1948, and it may be difficult to find, but of the rather large number of English books on Confucius I have read, it is by far the best at untangling what Confucius was actually trying to accomplish, how much worked and how it was later perverted.

That it was published in ’48 is not surprising, Confucius was still taken very seriously then; his star has fallen since the Communist Party’s victory in China. But Confucius was one of the most important social philosophers in history, and the most important cultural area and empire, for most of history, ran, in large part, based on his ideas.

How he did it, how it succeed, how it went wrong; this all matters. The same pattern is repeated in many other great social philosophers, most of whom were far less successful than Confucius. Or, as Marx said, “I am not a Marxist.” I doubt Confucius would think much of most Confucians past about the fifth Emperor, and would have loathed the neo-Confucians.

Power and Prosperity, Mancur Olson

I’ve written of this book a few times, most particularly in my article on the fall of Communism. Olson looks very practically at the strengths and limits of centralized power; on how feedback works and is perverted; on how faction saps central strength, and so on.

This work is applicable both to Communism and Capitalism. It is also key to understanding the elites’ hopes for the surveillance state. The surveillance state, which includes such things as micro-monitoring of employees by enterprises such as Amazon, is about overcoming the limitations on central power and Taylorism identified by Olson.

If it succeeds, it will usher in a world of such minute control of everyday life as the world has never seen; a technological dystopia of terrifying scope and one which may be nearly impossible to overthrow.

This is an important book.

Descartes’ Error, by Antonio Damasio

We do not make rational decisions. We make emotional decisions. Many people have written a book saying so, but, of these, Descartes’ Error is my favorite. The point is vastly important if we are to understand how and why humans act. Without a model of human nature, nothing we do in the social sphere will truly stick. Every great social philosopher, including the great religious figures, has had a model of human nature, even if they didn’t call it such.

Rational animal is a fine thing to call humans as long as you write it “rational ANIMAL.” We will discuss that.

Further Reading

As I choose further books, I’ll let you know. Likely candidates include The Sovereign Individual by Rees-Mog and Davidson; something on industrialization (probably Polanyi’s Great Transformation); something on the transition from hunter-gathering to agriculture (Pandora’s Seed is the current front-runner) and something on European Imperialism (possibly Wolf’s Europe and the People Without History).

A proper discussion of early money and markets is needed, including Mesopotamia, because an understanding of money is seriously lacking (and no, MMT does not cut it, it is too particular). I may use Graeber’s Debt, if I can’t find anything shorter and better, or I may put together a few papers for people to read.

Kuhn’s scientific revolutions is likely, and I may review Beauvoir’s The Second Sex. Something on ecological industrialization is also needed, and I will likely use Natural Capitalism, mostly because it shows that even by the late 1990s we had most of the technology necessary to do what was needed.

Read Along

Your enjoyment of the reviews will be enhanced by actually reading the books. Of course, you may wish to read them after the reviews, using the reviews to help you decide if they are worth your time.

I am not touching here on all the vastly influential books you should have already read. You know you should read the Bible, even if you don’t believe, right? Shakespeare even if you don’t like him, and so on. Instead, these are books which have massively influenced myself and which I think are important to others. In some cases, I will use more recent books than the ones which first introduced me to important ideas (for example, Pandora’s Seed is not where I first read about the effects of going from hunter-gatherer societies to agriculture, but it is shorter, clearer, and more available than the alternatives.)

The world is kludge. It is an accretion of ideas and stories and oughts which we have made real by instantiating them through our physical culture or the roles we choose to play. We have made this world by our collective choices, and we can neither understand the world nor change it consciously for the better if we do not understand this process and its unintended side-effects.

How that has happened will be sketched out in my booklet “The Construction of Reality,” but the book reviews are also related to this project. All donors will receive a free copy of the Construction of Reality, but it will also be available for purchase (and there will be a free excerpt).


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The UK Referendum on Leaving the European Union

If Britain had adopted the Euro and the referendum was about leaving that, I’d be for it.

As it stands, I’m still for leaving, but only slightly.

The EU is brakes. It has significantly slowed down and limited the abominable policies of the Conservative party. As such, it has been good for the British.

But it is also brakes on a lot of what a real left-winger would want to do–especially in the arenas of trade, state ownership, and so on.

Corbyn wants to stay and argue for a more socially progressive Europe. But if he actually becomes Prime Minister, he will find Europe will act as a shackle on any power he has to implement his plans.

I’m generally in favor of sovereignty for nations under the current world regime.

However, and in short, the EU makes Conservatives better than they would be otherwise, and will make a real left-wing government worse than it would be otherwise.

Of course, what Corbyn or any other real left-winger will be really crippled by are all the so-called trade deals.

In general, institutions which were created or have evolved to serve neo-liberalism, even neo-liberalism with a social democratic face, like the EU, are not suited to actual left-wingism, even of the updated 60s variety favored by Corbyn.


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You Think Trump Is a Fascist, BUT…

…you don’t want his rallies interrupted?

I know there are those who think Trump is no fascist, just a nativist blowhard. Fine.

But many really do think he is a fascist. Those same people are saying, “Don’t interrupt his rallies”?

Now you understand. Now you understand all the people asking, “Why didn’t anyone stop the fascists?”

This is why.

The conditions for fascism have been created by our masters. They impoverished a huge chunk of Americans. White working class males had their wages peak in 1968. They gutted the social safety net. They sold their jobs overseas (don’t even pretend otherwise, it was deliberate policy).

I warned and warned that these people would eventually explode. I said, explicitly: “Last time America got FDR, but you may not be so lucky this time.”

The conditions for this are rising throughout the western world. See LaPen in France, the rise of the far right in England, and so on.

Trump may or may not be a fascist. But he is using the conditions that allow for the rise of either the “radical” right or left.

This is the result of deliberate government and elite policy.

This era is ending. We are moving in a pre-war and pre-revolutionary world, as I have repeatedly stated.

(Meanwhile, in Germany, AfD, the right wing nationalist, anti-immigrant party has had its best electoral result yet.  Numbers are still low and not at crisis-levels, but…)


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If You Want to Beat the Right, Call the Left

So, the protestors who stopped Trump’s Chicago rally were mostly Bernie supporters.

The wishy-right like Mitt Romney, and the neo-Liberal right (Clinton) are worthless against someone like Trump because they represent the status quo, which has been discredited.

And because they won’t actually fight.

I don’t know if Trump will win the election, but I do know that if he doesn’t, he’s only the first to try. As the US economy gets worse and worse for ordinary people, which it will under Hillary Clinton (she is neo-liberal to the core), the followers available will soar and those available to status quo pols will dwindle.

But they will keep increasing–for candidates like Bernie as well.

Only someone who has a platform and personae which is a radical break from politics as usual can compete for these clusters of supporters. And yes, there is some overlap, but it is not complete (are unhappy Latinos going to vote for Trump?).

When I was a boy, in 1970s Vancouver, I told my father “I don’t see much racism.”

My father, a child of the Great Depression said, “Wait till times get bad. You’ll see plenty.”

I see plenty. Most countries are going to have to choose between someone like Trump or someone like Bernie; and that choice will keep being presented till they make the fateful choice.

Once it is made, in many cases, there will be no going back.

You can have your hate and change; or you can have your change with someone like Sanders or Corbyn, who at least makes a real try to help most people.

So far Britain is failing this test. Let’s see how the US goes.

And, again, if you get Clinton, all you’ve done is push back the day of reckoning, and made it worse.

This WILL happen. It is close to inevitable now, because our elites cannot and will not either create a fair economy which works for enough people; nor can they manage climate change.

This only a hair from social physics at this point.

You were warned. And warned. And warned. You were offered people like Dean and Edwards and so on. You refused to take the road away from hell.

Now reap what was sowed.


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A Kinder Logan’s Run?

Should older people have their vote weighted less than younger people?

The case is simple enough. The older you are, the less time you have, the less stake you have in the future and the more you are likely to make short-sighted decisions which favor yourself.

As I’ve discussed before, this is the death bet: “I’ll be dead before the bad shit happens.” It makes total sense not to care about Climate Change in 1980 when you’re 40: You aren’t going to be around to experience it. Voting for policies which increase house prices faster than wages is great for older people who own homes, and so on.

I’ve heard the suggestion that parents should have more say, because they have kids and a stake in the future world. But the way global warming and university tuition and loans have been handled teaches us that parents don’t actually give a shit what happens to their kids, or, at least, not enough to matter. Not in America, probably not in the West.

It’s worth thinking about this. I wouldn’t actually do it, but it cuts to important questions about who should be allowed to have power in general. People who don’t have a stake in a good future, or who don’t have a stake in other people having good lives, probably aren’t going to make good decisions.

To the extent businessmen think that high wages overall are to their advantage, for example, you have a good economy. Bear in mind that the entire New Deal apparatus was designed to do two main things: Increase wages and increase prices. This was the world we lived in for forty years, and twenty-five or so of them were the best economy the US and the Western world ever had.

When you start believing that your prosperity is opposed to other people’s prosperity, or you start believing, “There is no such thing as society,” well, then you get what has happened to us.


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Matching Donations Up to $600 to Get Us to the Construction of Reality – REACHED

A patron has generously offered to match donations up to a total of $600. That would be sufficient to push the fundraising drive over nine thousand, meaning I would write the Construction of Reality booklet.

If you can afford to give without hardship, please consider doing so.

DONATE OR SUBSCRIBE

I will update this post with running totals so people know how much of the matching offer remains, and kick it back to the top when the matching offer has been exhausted.

Update: And we have a $250 match, so $350 of matching funds remain.

Update 2: Another $220 received, so $130 of matching funds remain.

Update 3: Matching funds have been reached. Thank you all. The booklet will be written.

 

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