Assange claimed that various institutions and corporations had hit the site with a financial blockage.
Claimed? It’s not a claim, it’s a fact. How much it cost Wikileaks might be a claim, but that’s not what Ms. Fantz wrote.
This is one reason why we can’t have good democracies, because reporters mislead the public
Roberts voted how he did because health insurance companies are absolutely desperate for the money they will get from the mandate. All of the legitimacy arguments are bullshit, about 70% of Americans opposed the mandate.(pdf) This is more similar to TARP than anything else: it is a massive corporate giveaway, opposed by the majority of the population, and passed over their dissent.
Watching so-called progressives shilling for forcing people to buy shitty insurance to subsidize health insurance companies has been another example of why I don’t call myself a progressive. Yes, a few people’s lives will be saved. The cost will be many lives destroyed.
Update: to make the other obvious point, that government can force people to buy largely unregulated corporate products is an important precedent for the oligarchy.
Update 2: to point out more obvious which apparently isn’t:
- Roberts struck down Medicaid expansion, which means he closed the hole to creeping single payer
- the ACA is a subsidy from the young and healthy to the old and unhealthy.
- The subsidies to help buy insurance (which are insufficient to begin with) will nonetheless quickly become one of the biggest budget items, and will be taken away in the future.
Change: Changed from 70% oppose Obamacare to 70% oppose the mandate, link added. The mandate is what progressives wanted upheld. Note the deafening silence on the fact that medicaid has been screwed—the part that helps the poor most.
will be more years of austerity, people winding up on the street, suicides and outright starvation. In this fertile ground, the neo-nazi right will rise. The left will most likely not compete, because they will refuse to create an enforcer class to protect their own people. The police in Greece voted about 50% for the Golden Dawn, they will not protect the left, either, but will enable the rise of the Golden Dawn.
Under these circumstances a coup of some variety, whether military or otherwise (remember, Hitler never won a majority) is very likely to occur. By blocking the rise of the left so that Greece can be looted, the oligarchs have created their own doom.
In general terms, we are in a pre-revolutionary period. The supreme court coup in Egypt, the outright refusal to obey even the letter of the law let alone the spirit in the case of Wikileaks and Assange, the reign of Obama, are teaching an entire generation that you cannot fix the system from within, through the mechanisms of the old system or through even semi-peaceful protest. The Pacific free trade deal will enshrine even more draconian IP laws and will extend NAFTA style takings regulations which give multinational companies sovereignty over governments.
This will not stand. There will be global war, and there will be global revolution. We are on track for it. The question is when and how. I would guess in less than 20 years the world will fully convulse. Many of the current generation of oligarchs will be dead by then and will win the death bet, but their heirs will reap the whirlwind. As for the population, I expect a billion deaths or so over the next 25 years from famine, disease, war and environmental issues.
Both populations and the oligarchs have refused, over and over again, to do what is necessary to peacefully restructure the world economy, but instead have opted to kick the can down the road. Each kicking of the can has led to more corrupt and sclerotic economics and politics.
In the period between now and the revolution, some nations will take control of their own destinies. Offered a choice between austerity in the international system and nationalism, they will choose nationalism. It will not be as comfortable as being a member of the old international order from before the financial collapse, but that is not being offered. A few nations will be able to work wedges to stay in the system and not suffer too much (Germany, France). But most developed world nations will continue to suffer real declines in their standard of living, driven by inequality and the resource trap which we refuse to restructure out of. The electrical economy wants to happen, but it will not happen on a wide scale until after war and revolution. Such is the choice both our elites and the regular population continue to make.
The correct thing to do is to force them to take their losses, making the shareholders and bondholders eat it. Kick out the management, cut the banks up into smaller entities then refloat. It is cheaper, avoids moral hazard and leaves you with banks which are actually solvent and can lend.
The lengths to which we will go to avoid doing the right, smart, obvious thing are astonishing.
Ordinary people hate other ordinary people who are doing better than them. The politics of envy isn’t about the rich, whom ordinary people almost never see, but about their neighbours. And Americans want a mean economy, one where everyone has to suffer like they do. As long as the union movement is about a few people keeping higher wages, it will continue to fail. A union movement which is centered around public service unions cannot stand.
Quick note, given I think that the economy is going to roll off a cliff in the new year, and soften between now and then, that means I think that oil prices are going to drop further. I won’t be surprised to see them go under $50/barrel, unless something stupid like war with Iran happens.
Bernanke’s going to have to do quantitative easing again (aka. give money to banks) and may have to bail out Europe, since Europe probably won’t bail themselves out. If Romney wins, Bernanke stands a good chance of losing his job, and he really doesn’t want that. The conservative inflationist who replaces him won’t be noticeably different for the rest of the world, but if Bernanke is fired it’ll be the end of his legacy. Yes, his legacy is depression no matter what, but he doesn’t see it that way, he thinks he can move to a stable Japanification scenario. He can’t, but eh.
Oil prices dropping further will cause widespread unrest in the oilarchies, so expect more uprisings. Also expect more slaughters. The lesson of Mubarak is that if you give up power, you’re going away for life, so you might as well fight. Lower oil prices will push Canada’s economy into the dirt, as well, but Harper has years to go on his mandate, so whatever. A lot of oil sands projects will go bankrupt or into hiatus.
How long will the downturn last? I don’t know. Dropping oil prices means that there is room for growth, but the oligarchs want austerity so they can buy up more public goods and services on the cheap. Privatization is the order of the day, and bankrupt states are what they want.
China has lost patience with the West. If the West won’t stimulate, then China doesn’t see why it should be required to carry the rest of the world’s economy on its back.
Things are going to get FAR worse before they get better. That doesn’t mean there won’t be recoveries, there may even be a bit of one this year, but none of them will last, and none of them will do much good for anyone earning less than 6 figures.
Or at least, the Bank of Canada thinks so, though they’ll never call it by that name:
Nonetheless, Canada’s current account was in surplus for many years before the crisis, and is now expected to remain in deficit indefinitely.
The main reason? A currency at parity with the U.S. dollar means Canadian exports are at a disadvantage and will be for some time. Indeed, until companies do more to improve their efficiency to offset the effects of the higher loonie, they’ll remain at a competitive disadvantage. Bank of Canada Governor Mark Carney has highlighted this point for more than a year.
No, really, the oil sector is killing non-oil jobs. And the Conservatives are bringing in foreign guest-workers to do oil jobs.
This is how the prosperity of a country can be destroyed.
If the Irish vote in a referendum for austerity, then they deserve what they get. Current polls are showing Greeks will probably vote for pro-austerity parties as well, if so, again, my sympathy will be out. Democracy is about getting what you vote for, if countries vote for austerity, then they deserve it.
in the beginning of next year. China is heading for a hard landing, Europe is a basket case and once the election is over no one will be propping up the US economy for a while.
Make as much money as you can now, work as much overtime, unless you’re sure your revenue stream is secure.
(This is discarded text from the non-fic book I’m working on, and should be treated as such. I offer it because I think my regulars might find it interesting.)
When we say humans are weak, what we mean is that they tend to do what they’re told to do, and tend to follow the roles and norms of their society and peer group. We’ll explore this by touching on two famous experiments: the Milgram electroshock experiment and the Stanford prison experiment.
In the Milgram experiment subjects were told to administer painful electrical shocks to another person when that person answered a question wrong. Each time an answer was wrong, the amount of the shock was increased. Sixty-three percent went all the way up to a 450 volt shock, continuing after the person being shocked started screaming, begged them to stop and told them they had a heart condition. With variations, the number who would go all the way could be increased to 91% or go as low as 28%. This result has been replicated time and again since the original experiment in 1963, and has been found to be true in multiple cultures
The sixty-three percent compliance rate was a surprise to psychologists when the result was first published, despite the world having recently seen the Nazi death camps. Perhaps this is because death camp guards were under military discipline and could expect harsh punishment for refusing orders. Or perhaps it is because Americans assumed it was a cultural thing: Germans would do it, Soviets would do it, but Americans wouldn’t.
The students in the Milgram experiment were American and faced no consequences for refusing to shock a screaming man. Most of them shocked the man anyway.
Americans would. People of every culture would.
Milgram’s subjects almost all felt that shocking the subject was wrong. They did it anyway.
Most people will do something they believe is wrong if told to by a figure in authority.
If you read the results of the variations on the Milgram experiment three things stand out. First, that you can get the compliance rate very high, to the point where about nine out of ten people will torture. The second is that no matter what you do, you can’t get everyone to continue shocking victims. The third is that even if you do everything you can to make rebellion more likely, some people will still shock the subject as often as they can.
People will do things they know are wrong if told to do so by an authority figure. After the financial crisis, firms hired hourly wage employees and had them sign documents stating that homeowners were in default of their mortgage, that the bank owned the mortgage, and that the person signing had reviewed the necessary documents to know this well enough to swear to it. The people signing had not reviewed the documents and thus could not swear. They signed anyway, at a rate of about 30 seconds per signature.
As a result, people lost their homes. It was wrong, the people doing it had to know it was wrong. They did it anyway, and for very little money.
Let’s move on to our second experiment. In 1971 Phillip Zimbardo set up a mock prison and divided eighteen college students into nine prisoners and nine guards. The guards had never been prison guards, the prisoners were guilty of nothing.
The experiment was due to run two weeks. It had to be stopped in six days. As Zimbardo himself says, “our guards became sadistic and our prisoners became depressed and showed signs of extreme stress.”
Why, specifically, did it end after 6 days?
First, we had learned through videotapes that the guards were escalating their abuse of prisoners in the middle of the night when they thought no researchers were watching and the experiment was “off.” Their boredom had driven them to ever more pornographic and degrading abuse of the prisoners.
Second, Christina Maslach, a recent Stanford Ph.D. brought in to conduct interviews with the guards and prisoners, strongly objected when she saw our prisoners being marched on a toilet run, bags over their heads, legs chained together, hands on each other’s shoulders. Filled with outrage, she said, “It’s terrible what you are doing to these boys!” Out of 50 or more outsiders who had seen our prison, she was the only one who ever questioned its morality.
Guilty of nothing. Put in solitary confinement, held in prison even when they begged and wept to be let go, made to push ups while someone sat on them, deprived of food, sexually humiliated, a boy sobbing unconrollably while other prisoners chant he is a bad prisoners.
And only one outsider finds anything wrong?
Something else: when the experiment ended most of the guards wished it hadn’t. Zimbardo felt the guards fell into three groups: the ones who seemed to enjoy using their authority, the ones who went by the rules the guards had agreed on, and the guards who tried to treat the prisoners well, especially when other guards weren’t around.
People don’t just do what they’re told to do, they do what they’re expected to do. We all know various roles: we know how to act like a brother, a sister, a student, a teacher, a father, a mother. We know how to act like a prisoner, a prison guard, a husband, a wife. We know how to act while on a plane, while going through pre-flight screening, while being questioned by a cop. We know how to be an employee and we know how to be a boss. We know how to do many of these things even if we’ve never done them before, because we’ve seen other people doing them, or we’ve seen it on TV or read of it or know people who have done it. And if we don’t know, then we follow the cues of the people around us, and we do what we’re told to by those in authority over us.
The findings of social psychology about compliance, rebellion and role-playing take up many books, and those books are worth reading, but let’s go back to our initial comment on human nature, that people are weak.
Weak doesn’t mean bad. If you were to take those same 9 boys who played prison guards in Zimbardo’s prison experiment, and you were to put them down in the middle of a disaster where people needed help and they could choose to help or they could choose to loot, most of them would help. If you were to give them medicine and medical training and put them amongst injured people, they would heal. We know this, too, because studies of great disasters show that people spontaneously come together and help those in trouble (which, as an aside, is why forbidding civilians from helping disaster victims is a bad idea).
Told to be prison guards, they acted like most prison guards and became brutal. Told instead to be a nurse, most would act much more kindly (though a few would abuse the power nurse’s have.)
Some people are bad. Some people are rotten. Some people will do the wrong thing whenever given the least chance. And some people are good. Some people won’t shock another person, no matter who tells them to. Some people will risk their lives to create an underground railroad for slaves or will hide Jews and Gypsies so they can’t be killed by Nazis, even at great risk to themselves. Some people will see boys being treated horribly, and will speak up even though they’re only a recent Ph.D. and the person they’re telling off is a professor.
But both the truly good, who will do the right thing if at all possible and sometimes even if not, and the truly bad, who enjoy hurting other people, are fairly rare. From reading the psychological literature I’d put each group at somewhere between five to fifteen percent of the population.
The rest of the population is weak. They do what they think they’re expected to do. They can be good, and do good, if that’s what is expected, and they can be bad, and do evil, if that’s what is expected of them. If there is a bias, I think it is slightly to the good. Most people think of themselves as good, and would rather do good. But this bias is slight, and people will do the wrong thing if it is encouraged.
And, generally speaking, when it comes to economic activity, we encourage bad behaviour.
This starts with our every-day economic ideology. Economic activity is primarily carried out by two types of organizations: governments and corporations. Our explicit ideology for corporations, which is codified in law, is that a corporations only responsibility is to maximize profit. Greed is good. We could go into a long discussion of the rise of this ideology and talk about Calvinist predestination (if God loves you he’ll make you rich) and misunderstandings of Adam Smith, as if the man who wrote an entire book on morality thought that greed was a good thing except under very limited and accidental circumstances, but the point is, this is our ruling economic ideology in the West: maximize profits.
It isn’t even, any longer, “maximize profits so long as you stay within the law.” The run up to the financial crisis saw widespread fraud, including the use of what were, at the time, called liar loans. After the crisis we saw companies hiring people to sign affidavits which would cause homeowners to lose their homes, and systematically lying on those affidavits (the so-called robosigning scandal.) Companies attested they had properly transfered ownership of mortgages when they hadn’t. Companies sold financial instruments to clients whom they had a fiduciary responsibility to while betting those instruments would fail, and in their private emails called those clients idiots.
The rule today is that you break the law if breaking the law maximizes profits and you won’t go to jail as a result. Fines are considered a cost of doing business, the legality or illegality is irrelevant.
This flows from the very top of our society. It is how our CEOs and executives think, and as our politicans and prosecutors refuse to investigate or charge those who are guilty of widespread fraud, it is clearly how our political and legal class thinks.
Authority, in other words, says that it’s all right to do illegal and immoral things in pursuit of profit.
Well, so long as you’re told to do so by someone important.
Humans are weak. They do what authority figures tell them to do, they do what their peer group values, they do what the incentives reward.
