Feel free to use the comments to discuss topics unrelated to recent posts.
So, David Graber’s dead. Author of “Debt” and “Bullshit Jobs.” An anthropologist, anarchist and fierce activist. The link to his obituary is to the Guardian because it amuses me: he stopped writing for them after they helped smear Corbyn for anti-semitism (a charge Graeber fiercely refuted). Somehow they don’t mention that in the obituary.
Debt was and is an important book. Graeber goes into how money was actually created, as debt, and in effect a way to force people to work for money, even though they didn’t want to. (This is a vast over-simplification and you should read it.) Bullshit Jobs posited that about 40% of jobs don’t need to be done or are actively harmful, and went into some details. I don’t own either of them (read them in bookstores), so I can’t refresh my memory, but Debt in particular struck me at the time as important.
Graeber got some historical details wrong, but none of them were sufficient to undo his overall thesis, and he was roundly hated by historical economists for the book.
He has one more book coming out, “he Dawn of Everything: a New History of Humanity,” written with David Wengrow.
When I heard the news of Graeber’s death I was shocked. I didn’t know him, we weren’t friends. But he was doing actual important work, he was fiercely willing to stand up for what he believed right, and the work he was going to do won’t be done now. At age 59, he had probably another 10 years and two or three books, possibly important, in him.
De Gaulle quipped that “the graveyards are full of indispensable (people)” and mostly he’s right, most people’s deaths don’t matter much to anyone who didn’t know them. Someone will replace them who will do about as good a job.
But an intellectual or artist worthy of the name is, in some sense, indispensable. There are works they will not do, and if they don’t do them no one will.
I didn’t know Graeber, and I can’t claim to be personally sad. But he had important work still to be done, and no one will do it now. And without him to defend Debt from its attackers, it will lose luster and importance (because it’s the sort of book which must be destroyed by status-quo defenders, as it suggests capitalism is not what it claims to be.)
May he rest well, and if there is an afterlife, may it be kind to him. He will be missed by people who never knew him.
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Sometimes the comments on an article, like my recent post on reforming the justice system, reveal a deep misunderstanding of how the world works.
People with money and power run our societies. The Princeton/Northwestern oligarchy study found that what they want is what matters, and that the opinions of the rest of us don’t matter.
If they are not subject to how a part of society operates, they don’t care if it runs well, and it will run badly (or, in a way that profits them, which is generally the same thing).
The justice system, for the rich and powerful, works well. They have good counsel, because they can afford it. They can afford bail. They generally go to minimum security prison if they happen to be indicted, and they are never actually charged with most of their crimes — as was the case in widespread fraud leading up to the financial crisis or the robo-signing fraud used to steal people’s houses afterwards. (At most, they pay fines, which are less than the value of what they stole.)
The security systems in airports are hell. But rich people don’t go through it, they fly in private jets.
The medical system in the US is bad and overpriced for most people. But it’s very very good if you’re rich or powerful.
The US has been at war for almost 20 years now, but US elites don’t care, because they and their children don’t fight in it.
The US education system is bad, and worse in places which are poorer. US elites don’t care, because they either go to private schools or cluster in rich neighbourhoods where the schools are good, because they are funded through property taxes.
Covid-19 is not a problem, because it mostly kills poor people and minorities, and it’s making the rich much much richer, getting rid of their competition among small business-owners.
If you want something to work well, powerful and rich people must be forced to use it. They must have the same experience as ordinary people.
It takes an especially bad dose of capitalist ideology (or aristocratic or oligarchic ideology) to not perceive this point. If the powerful aren’t affected by how they run society (except to get richer and more powerful), if they don’t experience how the society runs for ordinary people, then society will be shit, AND, if you want society to be good, you can’t allow rich and powerful people to opt out of ordinary experiences.
They must have the same health care as everyone else, including the same odds of not receiving care, being bankrupted by it or getting bad care. They must go through the security lines at airports and be groped. Their kids must have the same odds of having shitty schools. They must have the same odds of dying of Covid-19. They must be given rifles after voting for a war in the Senate and sent to the front lines (or at the least their kids must be, though I see no reason why they shouldn’t be, and if they’re too physically weak to fight, they shouldn’t be allowed to vote on a war they won’t be involved in).
All of this is the most basic of common sense, a level of reasoning that a ten year old would be able to follow easily.
If you cannot follow this reasoning you are suffering from a very bad case of ideological poisoning or you identify with the rich and powerful class. Perhaps you belong to it, or perhaps you’ve just lost a sense of your own position.
I can hear many people now, “rich and powerful people deserve to be treated better, and everyone else deserves shit.”
You can have a good society when you are willing to do what it takes, and the most important rule of a good society is that important people don’t get to opt out of the world their class creates for everyone else.
9/3-20: article edited to reflect oligarchy study authors being at Princeton/Northwestern, not Harvard.
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As with most problems, the solution is simple.
- Everyone has to use a public defender for all cases, civil and criminal.
- The public defender is chosen by lot, using simple mechanical dice, which citizens can inspect and which are inspected by the equivalent of the Las Vegas Gaming Commission.
- Any case of tampering is an automatic life sentence without parole.
- Everyone has the right to a jury trial if they choose and juries are told about jury nullification.
- No pleading, all cases get a trial.
- End cash bail and all monetary penalties for criminal cases, since they make some crimes not crimes for the rich.
The US system currently gives justice only to the rich because only they can afford proper representation. The US has the highest incarceration rate in the world, because most crimes are never tried, they are plead out. As a result, US prisons are full of people who are probably innocent, because it’s not worth going to trial and risking far harsher sentences.
A system which requires assembly line trials is putting too many people in prison. Most crimes are victimless, and no one should be in jail for them. If you can’t run the system fairly, with actual trials, the system needs to be changed.
BUT the most important part is simple: It is a specific case of the general rule that no one should be able to use power or money to buy a better version of anything which matters — health care, education, security theater, justice, etc.
The second elites have to use the same lawyers as you do, pay the same, and are subject to the same rules, and can’t game it, the system starts working.
Elites must never be allowed to avoid any part of the common experience that matters. They can fly first class, but not on their own jets. They must go through the same security lines as everyone else. They can buy a private room at the hospital, but not jump the queue for care or get better care in any way that matters medically. They cannot send their children to private schools or over-funded local schools (because of local property taxes).
When elites are subject to the same roulette as ordinary people, things become both fair and good by default. When they can opt out, everything they’ve opted out of goes to hell.
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We’re seeing a rise in right-wing militia violence, condoned by police. Police themselves are already using facial recognition to identify protesters.
American authoritarianism is likely to follow the Latin American model, which Americans taught in the School of the Americas, and which they have backed for over a century in many countries. It will be combined with elements of how Israelis treat Palestinians, because Israelis train American police departments.
In this model, most of the beatings, “punishment” rapes, torture, and murder are done by militias. The police never catch them (and some are members, as they are already), and, of course, co-operate with them.
This is similar to what’s already going on; various law enforcement seizing people off the street without showing ID, into unmarked vans and cars, except that it’ll be private citizens doing it.
Then, they’ll do to you as they please, and no one will help.
Don’t think that if you’re a squishy liberal rather than a left-winger that’ll stop them. They hate feminists and so on just as much as the left, and all my life I’ve read their screeds about how they want to rape them or hang them from lamp-posts.
They’re increasingly being given the nod, and at some point, this is likely to start happening in earnest.
Don’t think Biden will save you. He might slow this down slightly, but he and Harris are extremely harsh on public disorder, and their administration will only make economic and political conditions worse, creating the grounds for the next authoritarian right-winger, who will learn from Trump but be far more disciplined.
The US’s only real chance of avoiding this future is a “Hail, Mary” — something like AOC winning the presidency in ’24 or ’28.
Might happen, but don’t bet on it.
So, some simple guidelines:
- Wear a mask when protesting, always.
- Don’t bring your phone with you.
- Don’t take pictures of protesters without masks, so they can’t be identified and doxxed. The ability to do both doesn’t just belong to cops — private individuals can do it just fine, and in any case, cops will pass on information to their buddies in the militias.
- Use a pseudonym online if you’re seriously left-wing or liberal. This is especially important for women.
- Make some efforts to manage your digital footprint, so you’re harder to dox.
- Take some precautions in your physical life to secure yourself, possibly including living with people who will fight for you (and you for them).
- Prepare to leave where you are and go somewhere else. Somewhere else in the US, perhaps, or somewhere outside the US. Remember that what is actually mostly untraceable is cash.
Perhaps I’m overly concerned or even alarmist. I hope so. But I’d rather give this warning, have some people take extra precautions and not need them, than not give the warning, and see people hurt or killed who might have avoided the fate.
I don’t like what I’m seeing. The right has been itching to really punish the left and liberals for a long time, and all it really requires is that authorities give them the nod and step aside.
That process has begun. It may be walked back, it may not.
Beware.
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by Tony Wikrent
Strategic Political Economy
Articles of impeachment drawn up against Gov. Mike DeWine over coronavirus orders
[Cleveland.com, via Naked Capitalism 8-26-20]
A key principle of republicanism is public virtue: if your self-interests conflicts with the general welfare, you have a duty to not oppose the general welfare. Clearly, the principle of republicanism is dead in this country, hence, it is no longer a republic. Some of the most discomfiting passages from the speeches and writings of the foundering era of USA dealt with the issue of a people becoming unfit to govern themselves.
Another key principle of republicanism is that citizens must not be dependent on anyone else if they are to be able to judge public affairs with sufficient disinterestedness to make the general welfare their major concern. This principle created major problems, however, as it was used to justify restricting the vote on “men of means” only. This created an opening for ruling elites to establish oligarchy, especially in the South. In practice, it meant white supremacy. As Dayen writes below: “The way you control labor is that you don’t pay enough to ever have workers be comfortable.”
The Logic of the Boss
David Dayen, August 27, 2020 [American Prospect]
The absolute last person you should ever ask about a labor action connected to racial justice is Jared Kushner. So of course CNBC did just that this morning. Kushner told Andrew Ross Sorkin: “The NBA players are very fortunate that they have the financial position where they’re able to take a night off from work without having to have the consequences to themselves financially.”
There’s an implicit logic of the boss embedded in here. The way you control labor is that you don’t pay enough to ever have workers be comfortable. You keep people reliant on the boss so they never get crazy ideas in their head like using their power for positive change, for themselves or the society at large.
In the 1960s, cheap college tuition and a lower cost of living gave space to young antiwar radicals to devote themselves to sustained protest. The diminishing of higher-education support and the rise of student loans weren’t exactly responses, but it was a nice side benefit. The cleaving away of labor from productivity, the skyrocketing of inequality, the breaking of the labor movement, a federal minimum wage that hasn’t increased since the second Bush administration—this all snuffs out personal agency and the ability to speak out. Keep someone dependent on their paycheck, and their health insurance too, and you’ve put a lid on mass action.
The NBA is leading the way together, and Jared Kushner wants to keep people afraid and alone.
[Twitter, via Naked Capitalism 8-24-20]
Aisha Ahmad
@aishaismad
Aug 23
Culture
2009: 1st Black President
2010: 3 women in SCOTUS
2015: Same-sex marriage legal
2020: 1st WoC nom for VP
Federal Minimum Wage
2009: $7.25
2010: $7.25
2011: $7.25
2012: $7.25
2013: $7.25
2014: $7.25
2015: $7.25
2016: $7.25
2017: $7.25
2018: $7.25
2019: $7.25
2020: $7.25
Terminating payroll tax could end Social Security benefits in 2023, chief actuary warns
[NBC, via Naked Capitalism 8-26-20]
The Election
As usual, feel free to use comments for discussion of topics unrelated to recent posts.
So, Covid-19 has led to over 180K deaths so far. The economy is trash, something like a third of renters can’t make their rent, unemployment levels are at Great Depression levels, and so on.
Not all of this is entirely Trump’s fault, but he has been vastly incompetent at handling all of it, and he’s the man in charge.
Back in June, Biden had a commanding lead. Even in battleground states, his worst showing was six points ahead. On average, he was over eight points ahead.
Presumptive Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden is leading President Trump in five of six battleground states…
…Biden leads Trump by six points in Florida, 50 to 44 percent, and the former vice president leads by five points in Michigan, 48 to 43 percent…
…
Biden is also up by four points in Pennsylvania and Wisconsin, 48 to 44 percent and 47 to 43 percent, respectively.
The former vice president’s lead is slimmer in Arizona, where he is ahead of Trump, 45 to 44 percent.
Trump, meanwhile, holds a narrow lead over Biden in North Carolina, 48 to 47 percent.
The same survey showed Biden holding a six-point advantage over Trump at the national level, 50 to 44 percent.
Biden’s average lead in battleground states is down to about 3.2 percent from over eight percent. Back in 2016, Hillary had similar or larger leads.
Biden’s play is basically the same as Hillary’s was: left-wingers have nowhere else to go, they’ll vote for us no matter what, let’s get the suburban white centrists and Republicans who are repulsed by Trump.
Didn’t work for Clinton. I had assumed it would work for Biden, simply because Trump has reigned over absolute catastrophe, but Biden seems to have what it takes to lose.
I’m bad at predicting elections: I don’t know who’s going to win this. But so far, it’s looking a lot like a replay of 2016. Trump is definitely not out of the running.
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