Use for topics unrelated to recent posts. No vax/anti-vax in this thread.
Month: August 2021 Page 3 of 4
The level of stupid in what passes for “discourse” in the Western world never ceases to amaze. Employers are shocked that they are having trouble filling low wage jobs and blame enhanced unemployment benefits, but even when half the states stop the unemployment benefits, still have trouble filling those jobs.
Supposedly a little over 600K people have died in the US from Covid (the actual toll is higher). The largest group is old people, driven by psychopaths like Cuomo killing them either deliberately or through vast criminal negligence.
But Covid has also hit the poor disproportionately, and it hit kitchen workers hard. If you’ve ever even seen a restaurant kitchen, let alone worked in one, you know why: they’re cramped, generally hotter than hell, and people have to be in each other’s faces.
While modern economics in its macro form is essentially astrology (but let’s not insult astrology), the core insight of marginal economics, that it’s the next customer, or widget, or worker that matter: the marginal cost, is important. If you go from having 2 people apply for every job to one person for every 2 jobs, the price point changes massively.
So there less people willing to work shit jobs at minimum wage (or below, for waiters, etc…)
It has been so long since the bottom end of the economy was hot in most places that few employers even remember it. The Massachussets Miracle of the 90s, for example. Local resource booms, etc… But for the majority of people there haven’t been tight markets for low-end workers since the 70s. In such markets you have to compete for workers; they set the prices, you don’t.
Probably should have cared about poor people dying, if you wanted to keep your wages down. Hard to have much sympathy for employers, who seem to have mostly not given a damn.
But most employers don’t realize that excess labor is something that was very carefully engineered, over two generations now, so that they would have low wages. It isn’t “natural” (or unnatural, to be fair) it’s a social choice. Cheap labor isn’t God-given, and it varies by place and time.
Meanwhile we have two other interesting events.
1) The decriminalization of marijuana, which is going to lead to a lot less people in prison.
2) The criminalization of homelessness, which is going to lead to a lot more people in prison.
The prison industry is a good gig for a lot of firms and people and even still provides a lot of jobs to towns that would otherwise have very few. You charge people huge rates to make calls, for anything in the commissary, even for books these days. Meanwhile you pay them a couple bucks a day to work, and on the back end, if you’re a private prison, you charge the government.
Any slowdown in the flow of prisoners is a slowdown in profits (and prisoners died in large numbers to Covid, too.)
America, fuck’yeah!
(My writing helps pay my rent and buys me food. So please consider subscribing or donating if you like my writing.)
If you want to understand how we got where we are, it’s simple: our strongest feedback systems to our decision making people are telling them “everything’s great, stay on course!”
For over 40 years now the rich have gotten richer. Politicians have gotten richer. Corporate officers, CEOs and executives have gotten richer.
Money is reward, and the reward centers for our elites are going off like a slot machine that constantly pays millions. BLING! BLING! BLING!
Whenever someone says “you should do less of this thing that makes you more money and power”, which is essentially everything that needs to be changed from Covid (making them richer) to climate change (still more oil to pump, baby) to ending pharma patents (Bill Gates says NO) to fixing inequality or feeding hungry people or housing the homeless, well, their fortunes (or bribes) come from making these things worse.
Capitalism is supposed to provide a feedback system. It isn’t the best feedback system, but if forced or allowed to work (and only government can enforce it, which is why rich people can’t be allowed, as they always purchase the government) it makes individuals and corporations who can’t even make a real profit go bankrupt.
But in 2008, Bernanke, whose entire intellectual opus was “how do we make sure another FDR doesn’t happen by making sure the rich never lose their money and power again” started the process of shoveling money down the gullets of the rich. (Greenspan had been piping it in too, but maintained some pretense he wasn’t and tried not to actually print money obviously.)
Every major central bank in the world followed course and all the economic feedback systems broke. No matter what rich idiots did, they would never as a class be allowed to go bankrupt, or even not keep getting richer. Vast money funneled to the rich and inflation showed up exactly where one would expect it, in things the rich were bidding up (yachts, art, luxury apartments) and in whatever they were buying up to get a new revenue stream (housing, most recently, so rent will soon /really/ go thru the roof.)
Now, as I pointed out at the time, the problem with all of this is that the real world exists, and so does a real economy in which items must be manufactured, food grown and products delivered. All of that has to be done in a world with weather, climate, animals, plants and an atmosphere.
Since all the feedback systems put in place by humans had broken (no one in power cared or cares about UN climate reports), we then had to wait for the world to start smacking us around.
That has started, with wildfires and northern hurricanes and so on (and Covid, to some extent), and the logistics system has proven itself to be fragile and easily disrupted exactly as many of us pointed out, while power and water systems and so on show their fragility as well.
But it’s not enough yet, this is all stuff the rich can ignore: have more than one home, have them off the grid, travel by private jet, etc, etc…
So the feedback will continue until it becomes so severe either the Proles do a Versailles on unresponsive elites or the elites feel more endangered than their bank accounts can make up for. (A hundred million+ dollars can buy a LOT of immunity. You may be dead before they feel it.)
This story isn’t new to regular readers, though, but I want to splice it with another thread.
Incentives.
I hate incentives. Loathe them. Every place I ever worked, the incentives did more harm than good. But it’s the mantra, the mindless ideology of our age that incentives work and you should align incentives.
Since we re-engineered our entire society to appear to do that, our societies have gone to shit for everyone but the one to three percent or so, but since feedback to anybody but them doesn’t matter, we continue.
I recently read John Ralston Saul’s “The Unconscious Civilization.” Or, rather, re-read it, but last time I looked at it was in the nineties.
Saul wrote a bunch of non-fiction books and they’re all bad except “The Unconscious Civilization”, which is brilliant. (They’re bad because Saul is of the old humanist tradition that insists on putting in as many references to the greats of the past as possible.)
But Unconscious Civilization is the publication of a series of five lectures by Saul and the limited time forced him to get to the fucking point. So, read it. (It’s scarily right about almost everything.)
One point Saul makes over and over again is the “value of disinterest”. Social decisions cannot be made properly by people who have an interest in them. Cannot be. We have run a 40 year (arguably 200 to 500 year) experiment on this, and it has failed and failed and failed. Elites need moderate negative feedback and to be insulated from the effects of their decisions which benefit groups.
Our society, as Saul points out, is all organized into interest groups, which half the audience is probably thinking is insane, because they think of interests group as things like environmentalist and people who want food aid, and not as corporations. (Though NGOs are definitely corporatist by Saul’s definition.)
People who have a strong interest can’t make good decisions for anyone but themselves about anything they have a strong positive interest in. It’s that simple.
If we want out of this mess, we have to break strong positive incentives. No stock options, for example. No surgeons flying around in private jets.
When someone’s interest is so strong it makes sense for them to burn the world down (and be clear, it did, because most wouldn’t still be here, and many figure their wealth will protect them), interest has failed. Incentives have failed.
Elites must be subject to the effects of their decisions, yes, but primarily on the downside.
It’s hard to see a way out of this now, because there isn’t one.
Instead the way out will be forced. When fear rises to the necessary level, those who betray society as a whole for their own interest will be dealt with. If they’re lucky it will be thru democratic norms, if they aren’t lucky, it will be the justice of the mob. In either case it will be too late to stop the worst of climate change and ecological collapse.
For you, a reader, the point is to internalize what went wrong and why, so you understand the conditions in which it will change and do not waste time on actions which won’t help. Moral ‘suasion will not work. The elites will respond to power and fear and nothing else.
If you can’t apply enough of that, or any movement asking for your help indicates their strategy doesn’t involve power and fear, then you need to prepare in other ways. In fact, as an ordinary person, you just need to prepare, because while you can do your bit you do not have enough power to be determinative.
Politics is unlikely to save you and what you do will not determine if it does. So you must, with others, save yourselves.
(My writing helps pay my rent and buys me food. So please consider subscribing or donating if you like my writing.)
When I was very young, conglomerates which controlled the entire chain of production were still somewhat popular. Companies didn’t like outsourcing or offshoring; if a widget went into their product, they wanted to own the factory, or eat least effectively control the supplier. Toyota had lots of suppliers, sure, but they were close the factories and they were under Toyota’s thumb: subsidiaries in all but name.
But business fashion changes, and the mantra of the day became “concentrate only on core business, get an expert to do everything else.” It often did reduce costs, but at the price of losing control. It didn’t work for everyone, General Electric under the over-praised but actually incompetent Jack Welch gutted itself. Following GE’s lead, other companies like the Big 3 auto producers started thinking they were financial companies and in the business of making money, not products.
Didn’t work out well for those who followed the fad whose business model didn’t actually support it.
But it did work well for many, at least in terms of increasing CEO and executive stock compensation. Growth actually slowed in the economy overall, but the economy in neoliberalism exists for companies, not companies for the economy, let alone society.
This era is now ending. Climate change is here, and infrastructure in foolish countries like America is failing repeatedly. China and the US are gearing up for a Cold War, Covid revealed that world shipping is fragile and not always cheap, and that no one can actually understand modern supply chains.
Supply officers panicked and started stockpiling goods, putting further pressure on supply chains and driving up prices for both shipping and materials, BUT if we didn’t have an era where trade and shipping and even production will become more and more subject to shocks, it would just be a passing fad.
But smart CEOS will now be reeling in their supply chains: rationalizing them so they know exactly where all the parts are made; the parts are made close to where they are assembled (if not in the same plant complex) and insulating them from problems with 3rd party shippers. The smart ones will pursue both vertical integration AND will have some geographic distribution (but not too much) so that geographical problems (wildfires, marine inundations, hurricanes, food riots) don’t shut them down entirely.
Those who don’t stand to lose their business entirely if a shock takes out a key part of their supply chain they don’t control or understand, or which supplies generally and is not bound to them.
We’ve been thru a very stupid era, and it’s not over yet, but it’s ending. Central banks can print money, but they can’t print machines parts, oil or food, and the limits of their power to deal with actual, real, non-financial shocks to the system are about to become evident.
Indeed, central banks, by funneling money to rich people and corporations which would have otherwise gone bankrupt have done almost everything within their power to make the system more fragile and worse run.l
When the food riots hit your country, remember to pay a visit to the central bank officers, past and present, to see how they are doing and to express your appreciation for their service. Perhaps you could also see the welfare of neoliberal politicians.
(Accurate job feedback has been removed from our elites, and they need it badly. When you have the chance, remember to help them out by providing it.)
Midas was a fool, but electronic bits are even more worthless than gold when the real world comes knocking.
(My writing helps pay my rent and buys me food. So please consider subscribing or donating if you like my writing.)
Week-end Wrap – Political Economy – August 8, 2021
by Tony Wikrent
This is the best time all year to see the ringed magnificence of Saturn
[Syfy Wire, via The Big Picture 8-5-2021]
Saturn takes 29 years to orbit the Sun once. Earth is closer to the Sun and moves much more rapidly, completing an orbit in one year. If Saturn didn’t move then opposition would occur once every Earth year. But Saturn does orbit around the Sun, in the same direction as Earth does, so we have to spend a little bit of extra time catching up to it.
The pandemic
Vaccine Mandates Are as American as Apple Pie
[Portside, via Naked Capitalism 8-1-2021]
Opinion: Require the vaccine. It’s time to stop coddling the reckless.
Ruth Marcus, WaPo, via Naked Capitalism 8-2-2021]
“The C.D.C. Needs to Stop Confusing the Public”
Zeynep Tufecki [New York Times, via Naked Capitalism Water Cooler 8-4-2021]
For topics unrelated to recent threads. (No Covid, in particular.) Do not bring your fights from other threads here, either.
Play nicer folks. This is just a comments section, what you say in it changes nothing large, but how you act to other commenters matters because they are people.
I’d rather not bring back pre-approval comments moderation; among other things often you’ll have to wait 12+ hours for comment approval or dismissal. Sometimes longer.
This is from the province of Ontario, in Canada where I live.
Wednesday, August 4th : . (Ontario Covid-19 Rt)
GLOBAL and ONTARIO REGIONAL R VALUES (Below)
CANADA – PROVINCES
R Values (p. 2)
Vaccination Tracker (p. 2)ONTARIO REGIONAL BREAKDOWN
Risk Assessment (p. 3)
Age Breakdown (p. 4)…1/4 pic.twitter.com/AeWVXL6T8S
— Ryan Imgrund (@imgrund) August 4, 2021
I’m going to enlarge and show the first graph properly:
Now what you’re going to notice is that Rt never went below about 80—that is 80 new cases per 100 Covid cases. Also, the general trend is UP. So you have a situation through stage one where case counts are gong down, but R is stubbornly high, even if not over 1. Then in stage 2 it actually burps over 1 and Ontario goes to stage 3 anyway.
Now, I know of a guy who lives in a rooming house (not me) who got Covid. He did the right thing: got tested, obeyed quarantine. Health authorities knew and followed up with him.
Great, but the problem is he lived in a rooming house. Not just him but everyone in the house should have been quarantined, and both is and there contacts needed to be traced (and ideally quarantined.) Nobody else in the house was even contacted. Ideally he should have been quarantined somewhere else than the house, probably everyone in the house (all exposed) should have been, since any rooming house is a great place for Covid to spread.
There is no effective track and trace or quarantine in Ontario. There just isn’t. So you don’t get below .8, and you don’t control spread, so every time Ontario reopens it is just a matter of time before the next wave.
Lockdowns and partial closures do not work without proper track and trace and quarantine. When a new outbreak is seen it has to be jumped on.
Of course, if you want poor people (like those who live in rooming houses) to obey the quarantine, you’re going to have to make up their wages while they’re stuck in quarantine, and you have to deliver food and other necessities. This is what effective quarantine regimes in other countries do: they make sure the quarantined are taken care of. It may be boring to be stuck at home, but they aren’t going to fall behind on the rent, or not be able to eat. (These poor people also tend to be the “essential workers” everyone praises then let’s die.)
This half-assing of dealing with Covid has been typical of most of the western world. There’s a refusal among elites to actually deal with Covid as a serious threat, and mobilize government and private resources (seize them, if necessary, yes it’s legal) to ensure that Covid is properly dealt with.
I’ve suggested and believe it’s because Covid has made rich people much richer in the West, but whatever it is, it’s killing and crippling a lot of people. About 15 to 25% of people who get even a mild case of Covid get long Covid, with a variety of nasty symptoms and we’re now seeing indications of some mental damage from Covid separate from long Covid.
You really, really don’t want to catch this shit.
Failure to do things right is mass murder by those with the authority to do things right. Premier Doug Ford, in Ontario, is an active danger to everyone in Ontario because he refuses to run the play that will actually get Covid (mostly) under control. Everyone who dies now or in the past almost year is his fault. He is a mass murderer because the consequences of his decisions are obvious. He’s also crippling a hell of a lot of people.
Ontario isn’t unique, obviously, this is the typical play in almost all Western countries.
It is compounded by the point-blank refusal to do everything possible to ramp up vaccine production as fast as possible and help other countries in every way. Every country where Covid isn’t under control is a place where it can mutate into a worse strain. Delta is WAY worse than original Covid and Delta is unlikely to be the last bad variant.
For decades the fact that our “masters” were incompetent psychopaths didn’t seem to matter all that much; sure some people were getting hurt, but it wasn’t you, right? And if it was, well you lost your power and money so you didn’t matter and couldn’t do anything.
Now it’s you or grandmother or you kid getting a protentially life-long disability.
You replace your elites, by whatever method will work, or they will keep killing and crippling you.
Doug Ford, by any rational calculus is an ongoing threat to everyone in Ontario, including me. His actions and lack of actions stand a damn good chance of killing or crippling me and anyone I know in Ontario.
This is probably true of whoever the leaders are where you live.
(My writing helps pay my rent and buys me food. So please consider subscribing or donating if you like my writing.)
So, Xi Xingping, has, recently:
- Made all tutoring companies become non-profits as part of an attempt to reduce burdens on the middle class students and their parents: they had to spend vast time and money hiring tutors for competitive exams;
- Forced food delivery companies to pay couriers a living wage;
- Taken actions to reduce housing prices, so ordinary Chinese can afford them;
- Has stated that ride-sharing firms (stupid name for them) are stifling competition, suggesting action is coming
- (Shut down bitcoin mining.)
Xi’s priorities, “ahead of growth”, are apparently:
- National security, which includes control of data and greater self-reliance in technology
- Common prosperity, which aims to curb inequalities that have soared in recent decades
- Stability, which means tamping down discontent among China’s middle class
A lot of international investors have been burned by this, including property investors and those invested in the tech sector (which Xi has been after in particular.)
What passes for a lot of tech “innovation” these days are things like centralized apps for rides, which in countries with labor laws actually just suppress wages and ignore laws or bottleneck companies, as when someone gets a bottleneck position in an app store (Apple is having a big court fight over their 30% rates and approval process) or a market with strong network affects like social networks or Search (Google)
Such “innovations” aren’t really, they’re ways for a few people to take a larger percentage of profits or pass thru funds and leave less for everyone else. Facebook does great; news sites die. Google does great, but strangles internet content creators (who did far better in the early to mid 00s before Google got a stranglehold.)
Xi’s basically right to clamp down on this stuff, and to stop people from making excess profits on actions, like tutoring, that don’t add social value. Tutoring is Red Queen’s Race stuff, and people who can afford more or better tutoring win: that creates social discontent, while providing no actual value to society as a whole. In fact, by creating all the anger and resentment it is damaging society.
A lot of this is also happening because Xi and the Communist Party have given up on being friends with America. They now regard a cold war / clash-of-civilizations as inevitable, and are no willing to play by neoliberal rules and make sure that a chunk of Western elites can also get rich from China’s economy.
In geopolitical terms this may be a mistake, the fewer American and Western elites who are making money off the Chinese economy, the more likely even worse trade war and the sooner Cold War 2.0 happens.
But it’s also understandable. The actions against Huawei, when it took the global lead in 5th gen wireless, then the export ban on microchips made it clear to Beijing that the US was their enemy and was going to use its power to make sure China didn’t take dominance in any hi-tech fields. Since not becoming a leading tech power (remember, internet companies that simply intermediate and chips/phones are very different) means never breaking out of the middle income trap or truly being a first rank great power, that’s unacceptable to Xi.
Overall I think Xi’s been a bad leader for China. He’s fumbled foreign affairs. As a friend pointed out to me, America doesn’t treat its allies and third parties well at all. They should be falling over themselves to align with China, but they aren’t, because China has often been very aggressive and bullying to smaller nations.
This is part of Chinese geopolitical think: small nations should know their place; so should weak ones. When China was weak, it kept quiet and built up, now that it isn’t, it expects deference.
But less bullying would have led to a lot more friends. Few nations actually like America, but a lot are scared of China too.
We’ll talk more about China and the US. This cleavage is probably the most important geopolitical event necessary to understand what’s going to happen over the next twenty years. It’s not as important as climate change and environmental collapse, but almost nothing else is more important.
In a sense it’s almost comforting: the rising great power challenging the old great power and their alliance. Traditional.
But it can still destroy a lot of lives, or, if handled skillfully, leave a lot of people better off. For many, how they maneuver around the giants and the midgets who are their allies will be one of the most important decisions they make; for others simply understanding how the world will change as a result will let them make better choices.
(My writing helps pay my rent and buys me food. So please consider subscribing or donating if you like my writing.)