Ian Welsh

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

Why Registering Drones with the Government Matters

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On October 23, 2015

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DroneSo, drones must now be registered with the Department of Transportation in the US.

Drones are a big part of the future of war. They are cheap, easy to make, and drones will be a chosen weapon of the weak and relatively poor. They are also going to become more and more effective. A drone whistling by at 45 miles an hour is very hard to hit by a person with a gun.

A lot of people focus on an “armed population,” but future wars will be fought more and more with robots: autonomous or guided (which is what a drone is).  These robots will eventually be more effective than human soldiers and can already do things humans can’t.

And they are cheap.

This is being done by the Department of Transport, presumably for safety reasons, but those who worry about the tracking and confiscation of guns, if they were really smart, would worry about the tracking and confiscation of drones.

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What Type of Electoral “Reform” Might Canada’s Liberal Party Enact?

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On October 22, 2015

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Liberal party logo

Liberal party logo

Simple enough. Preferential balloting, where you rank your choices.

The Liberal Party, occupying the center, is the second choice of a lot of Canadians.

For example, in the 1997 federal election, the Liberals won 38 percent of the vote but captured 51 percent of the seats. The phoniest majority government in Canadian history. A study of voter preferences in that election projected that the Liberals would have gained 57 percent of the seats with the same level of support had AV been used.

In addition, ranked ballots tend to exacerbate regional strongholds, leaving those who support other parties even more unrepresented.

Canadian elections are often very close, and come down to a few percentage points, magnified massively by first-past-the-post.  Ranked ballots would magnify that even more, but do so in a way that favors the Liberal party.

Trudeau promised electoral reform. This is the most likely “reform.” As usual, reform will mean “giving more to those who don’t need it.”

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What Is the Cost of NDP Losing Canada?

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On October 21, 2015

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Canadian Flag

The Maple Leaf

Many voters were in “Anyone but Harper” mode, but an NDP victory would have restructured Canadian politics for a generation, and very likely more. The NDP collapse to third place was a disaster for the majority of Canadians.

Canada has been ruled by either the Conservatives (in different incarnations) or the Liberals, since Confederation. The Liberals ran the lion’s share of that, but the Conservatives had their runs, as well.

The Liberal party would campaign left and “govern center,” which, since the 90s, meant embracing the neoliberal consensus.

In every election, the NDP would show worse numbers than those of its natural support base because of strategic voting; left-wingers would run to the Liberal Party to “Stop the Conservatives.” Often, this wasn’t even necessary. In many ridings, the competition was between a Liberal and a NDPer.

As a result of this dynamic, Canada has been run as a much more conservative-centrist country than is justified by the beliefs of the population.

Additionally, the First Past the Post electoral systems reward a geographic clustering of the vote, leading to parties being rewarded for serving regional interests and inflaming regional prejudices. A clustered body of support (as with the Conservatives in Alberta and the West in general, or the Bloc Quebecois) would reap a disproportionate number of MPs.

In this election, what was at stake was a chance to change this dynamic.

The “run to the party which can beat the Conservatives” dynamic could have been transferred to the NDP–and almost was (remember, they had the lead going in to the campaign). Once that had been the case for a few elections, it would be as natural to people as the old “run to the Liberals” dynamic.

But transferring that dynamic is not what the NDP wanted. What they wanted was electoral reform so that people didn’t need to vote strategically to stop the Conservatives.

Just one elected NDP government managing to implement electoral reform would change the entire nature of Canadian politics. These would make another Harper impossible for a generation or two. They would mean that most governments would be coalition governments, with the natural coalition being Liberal-NDP, and with Conservative coalitions being much milder because they must rule with a more left-wing party on their flank.

Canada’s population is center-left. Sixty percent of the voting population would never vote Conservative. Electoral change would help Canada’s governments to reflect that, rather than being about the committed plurality, leaving us with eight to ten years of Conservative rule every 25 years or so.

This is what was at stake in the last election. It was a Big Deal.

The worry now is that we’re back to status quo. The Liberals and Conservatives swap being in government, the Liberals run to the left and govern to the center and Canada continues its nasty rightward trend (of which the Liberal governments of the 90s and 00s were a part) with some jogs leftward, primarily on social issues (which are important, but don’t trump the damage of neoliberal economics).

This election mattered, and it should have been about much more than “Get Harper Out.” Conservatives were not destroyed by this election. They did fine, they just took a normal loss. The party that was devastated was the NDP.

The price of that is likely to be severe, and this is true even if Justin Trudeau keeps the majority of his promises.

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Consequences of the Canadian Liberal Majority

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On October 20, 2015

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Justin Trudeau

Justin Trudeau

Justin Trudeau’s Liberal Party won a majority government. Former Prime Minister Stephen Harper has stepped down as Conservative party leader. As of this writing, Thomas Mulcair has not stepped down as NDP leader.

The election started with the NDP in the lead, primarily due to the Liberal Party having voted for the police state bill C51. The NDP ran to the center, the Liberals ran (somewhat) to the left. NDP’s lead narrowed, then they were neck and neck until the Conservative party and Bloc Quebecois used the Niqab as a wedge issue. You can read a summary of the campaign here.

So what does this mean going forward?

A great deal will depend on how Trudeau rules. (A majority Canadian PM is essentially an elected dictator).

Trudeau has promised to repeal C51 and reintroduce a similar bill, minus the worst bits of C51. Note that Trudeau has repeatedly stated he voted for C51 as a matter of principle, so some of the nasty will remain.

Pipelines are a go. TPP is a go (though the NDP was not great on either of those issues, they were better than the Liberals).

National Pharmacare and Daycare will not happen.

Certain regressive tax changes, like income splitting, are gone. Expect another tax cut for the “middle class,” which it doesn’t particularly need.

Expect the muzzling of scientists to end, and the long-form census form to return. (Conservatives got rid of the longer census form and made the census non-mandatory, turning its data, essentially, to meaningless crap.)

Moving away from the First Past the Post-electoral system: The NDP and Liberals had both said they intended to do something along these lines. But with a Liberal majority government in power, this is very much in question. I will be pleasantly surprised if Trudeau doesn’t bury this in a committee.

The Economy

The brutal truth about the Canadian economy is that it is unlikely to recover significantly, though the recession will end.

I’ve written about the Canadian mixed economy in the past, but the bottom line is that Harper doubled down on resource extraction–especially oil. Manufacturing was gutted during the period of high oil prices and a strong Canadian dollar and will not recover naturally during a weak dollar period. This is because those who took advantage the last time were burned so badly most of them went out of business.

Canada’s housing bubble is significantly worse than the US housing bubble in 2007. This bubble is government guaranteed.

So, at this point, Canada is a resource extraction economy with artificially high asset prices. It is a petro-state.

Trudeau is onside with this. Mulcair repeatedly talked about the mixed economy and how to return to it, and was a staunch and principled environmentalist. Trudeau has pandered repeatedly to the oil sector.

Given this, there are only two questions about the Canadian economy that matter:

  • Will the housing bubble endure?
  • Will oil prices rise, preferably above about $80US a barrel, which is the break-even price for much of the oil sands?

If you think the housing bubble will burst, you expect a financial crisis. If you think the answer to number two is no, then you think that the Canadian economy will not significantly improve under Trudeau.

Trudeau’s economic performance, in other words, is linked almost entirely to how China’s economy performs and the world price of oil–things over which he has no control.

The Next Election

The economy may get a lot better, but that doesn’t mean it may not bumble along sufficiently well for the Liberals to be re-elected. Contrary to Democratic party talking points, Obama never fixed the US economy. The percentage of people employed in the US never recovered and wages stagnated, but Obama was re-elected (the Democrats didn’t do as well in the House, but the House in America is gerrymandered).

Still, the NDP and Conservatives will likely have an opening in the next election. Whether they will be able to capitalize on it is unclear and, again, much depends on Trudeau’s performance. Right now, he is a blank slate upon whom many hopes have been written. But in four years, he will have a track record.

I don’t know if Mulcair will stay on as NDP leader. He was a strong and effective opposition leader, but he was neither on the campaign trail, and must shoulder responsibility for turning a first place start into a third place finish. He has lost all the gains made by the previous NDP leader, Jack Layton. (I believe Layton would have won this election. The cost of his death rises and rises.)

As for the Conservatives, expect one of the Ford brothers to run, among others. It will be a zoo. But the Conservatives held their prairie base and a good chunk of Ontario and BC. They were not wiped out, they just lost. They will remain a viable threat–especially if the electoral system remains the same.

Justin Trudeau is going to feel good, for a while, compared to Harper. He will be better. He will repeal some of Harper’s worst policies. He will also not be an offensive creep, and that matters.

But he is, at the end of the day, a believer in the neo-liberal consensus. He will run a kinder neoliberalism, but it will still be neoliberalism. He is not particularly committed to civil liberties, he had no principled opposition to Harper’s worst excesses (that was Mulcair), and there is no particular reason to believe he will make any sort of radical break from Conservative policies; he voted for a great many of them.

The bottom line is this: Justin showed his character when he supported C51. Mulcair showed his character when he went hard against it, even as polls showed a majority of Canadians were in favor of it (they later changed their mind, but he did what he did when it was unpopular).

I cannot find any great confidence in Trudeau, either as an ethical man, or as an economic leader.

Finally, despite the spin in the global and domestic press, this election is no great repudiation of Harper, or a collapse of the Conservative party, which maintained most of its voters. There has been no collapse, like what happened to the Progressive Conservatives after Mulroney. After nine years in power, it is normal for a party to lose power, and majority governments are the historical norm in Canada. This is a status quo flip between Canada’s two ruling parties.

Harper changed the nature of Canada’s government and economy, and created a unified Conservative Party. Trudeau will not undo most of Harper’s fundamental changes. Harper will go down as an important Prime Minister.

Stay tuned.

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Canadian Election Today, Monday, October 19th

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On October 18, 2015

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At the beginning of the election, the left-wing New Democratic Party (NDP) was leading, Conservatives were in second, and the Liberal Party was in third.

Now that we’re going into the election, the Liberals are polling first, Conservatives second, and the NDP is third.

What happened? As I’ve been distracted this election, I asked one of the savviest Canadian observers I know for his thoughts.

For much of the election, the NDP and Liberals were polling even. Then Harper started demonizing Niqabs.

Unfortunately, this strategy played well in the province of Quebec and because the NDP was not on board with it, their numbers in that province crashed.

This dropped NDP’s numbers below the Liberal party.

Next, the “Anyone But Harper” dynamic kicked in. With dropping numbers in Quebec, the NDP’s national numbers began to look bad. At that point, those on the left who wanted Harper out more than they cared about who would replace him flocked to the Liberals as the party which could displace Harper.

We’ll see how the actual election runs. Polls have been unreliable in a number of elections lately. Still, it doesn’t look good for the NDP.

The Liberals, under Justin Trudeau, have voted for most of Harper’s signature bills, including C51 (which gutted civil liberties.) If the Liberals get into office, they will be 90 percent as neo-liberal as the Conservatives, but less obnoxious about it.

The best chance now for a decent government is if the Liberals get a minority and make a deal with the NDP for support.

This is disappointing, but at the end of the day, Canadians will get the government they deserve. Mulcair has spent years opposing Harper while Trudeau has supported him. Any Canadian paying one iota of attention should know this.

And if making it so Muslim women can’t wear the Niqab is more important to Quebec than voting for an actual left-wing government, well, yes, sorry, “deserve” is the right word.

Still, we’ll see. Fingers crossed.

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Some Interesting Things About the Russian Coalition’s Syrian Campaign

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On October 16, 2015

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Notice that one of their major initial objectives is to seal the border with Turkey.

This is because Turkey is the major supply route for the various factions in Syria (and Iraq). And that is Turkish policy.

Note, also, just how effective Russian air support, backed by coalition ground forces, has been. Air power without decent boots is great for destruction and not much else, but it really is a force multiplier if you have the troops to exploit it. This is Russia giving its ally an air force, in the same way the US has so often done.

Finally, note that Russia has just given itself a major presence in the Middle East by becoming a strong ally of Iran, Iraq, Syria, and (downstream) Hezbollah. Don’t think they’ll forget who bailed them out on this.

I’ll have a longer guest post up on Russian strategy in historical context posted soon, I hope.

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In France, There Is a Cost to Executives for Laying People Off

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On October 11, 2015

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This is mild compared to what happened to managers in the early twentieth century, mind you:

Union activists protesting nearly 3,000 proposed layoffs at Air France stormed the headquarters during a meeting Monday, zeroing in on two managers who had their shirts torn from their bodies, scaled a fence and fled under police protection.

There are two great problems with our attitude towards violence today. The first is that we condemn it as “bad,” but permit it for people who abuse it. What we really mean is that violence by the state is ok, but violence by anyone else isn’t. You can justify that when the state doesn’t abuse its monopoly on violence (much), but that’s hard to do for most states.

The second is that we fail to recognize non-violent actions that have horrid consequences as serious. Laying off thousands of people has serious consequences for those people–consequences that are much more serious than having some clothes shredded.

We lock up “violent criminals,” but we hardly even bother to lock up most white collar criminals and, when we do, they get off lightly, as a rule. No one went to jail for the financial crisis, despite the fact that the fallout from that is far worse than a hundred serial killers each killing ten people.

I don’t like violence. But neither do I like going hungry. I don’t like homelessness. I don’t like millions of people in refugee camps. I don’t like—well, add to the list as you please.

Corporations are given a very valuable set of privileges by the government, including protection of their owners and officers from a wide range of normal liability for financial losses, negligence, and, indeed, in effect, criminal actions. Effective immortality and a wide range of tax advantages allow corporations to do things no actual person can do.

These privileges are granted because it is presumed that corporations are in the interest of society.

When a corporation does not act in the interest of society, the law allows it for it to be dissolved. This is done routinely to small corporations, but almost never to large corporations.

Corporations have multiple responsibilities: to shareholders, to employees, to customers, and to society as a whole. Officers and managers in corporations receive extra compensation (a lot of extra compensation, though less in France than in the US) in exchange for, presumably, taking on extra responsibility and being more skilled (or something, I’m often unsure what) than line employees.

I don’t know the specifics of Air France’s situation. Perhaps the layoffs truly are required.

If so, whose responsibility is that?

Barring an Act of God it is hard to make the case that it isn’t the responsibility of management. No? They are paid to be responsible, after all, and they are supposed to be competent.

The buck stops somewhere. If it doesn’t stop with a company’s management and officers, it stops nowhere.

Equally important is the fact that we keep precisely, and only, the rights (which includes property and jobs) that we are able and willing to fight for. Any other rights we have in excess will eventually be taken away from, awaiting only someone with enough power to gain the opportunity and motive to do so.

This is the real law of the jungle. Nothing. You have no rights, no possessions. Nothing. Everything you “have” is because it was at one point in the interest of others that you have it. Once it is no longer in their interest, watch out.

Union negotiating, in whatever form, is about making sure that management, officers, and society understand that taking what union members have incurs a cost. Air France may continue with layoffs, but be sure that a message has been received, and will be taken into account.

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The Political Consequences of Mental Models

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On October 8, 2015

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Sense is sense, no matter who says it:

Asked by NBC’s Chuck Todd if the Middle East would be more stable with Gaddafi and Saddam in power, Trump replied, “Of course it would be.”’

There comes a point where one must ask—ok, well, this point has come again and again, but really: Are the West’s leaders destabilizing the Middle East deliberately?

Q. “Stupid or evil?”

A. “Both.”

I know someone who worked with Cheney and believes that Cheney honestly thought that removing Saddam would make the world a better place. Also (and the person I know is a smart, capable person) that Cheney was very smart.

But smart in IQ terms (which Cheney probably was) isn’t the same as having a sane mental map of the world. Being brilliant means being able to be brilliantly wrong and holding to it no matter what. Genius can rationalize anything.

Human thought is mostly an unconscious and uncontrolled process. What comes up is what went in, filtered through conditioning. We are so conditioned and the inputs are so out of our control during most of our lives (and certainly during our childhood) that our actual, operational margin of free will is far smaller than most believe.

We interpret what we know through the mental (and emotional) models we already have. Thoughts are weighted with emotion, recognized and unrecognized, connotations far more than denotations.

Machiavelli made the observation that people don’t change, they instead react to situations with the same character and tone of action even when a different action would work better.

This doesn’t mean one cannot undergo ideological changes, it means character changes only very slowly, and that we have virtually no conscious ability to change our thinking, actions, or characters on the fly.

This is true for both the brilliant and the stupid, though the tenor of challenges for both is different.

You see much of this in Hilary Clinton’s vast hatred and enmity towards Russia. She is a child of the Cold War.

You see it in the repeated use of force in situations where force has failed to work over and over again.

You see it in the inability to tolerate democratic governments of opposing ideologies despite the fact that destroying them, after a period of autocracy, generally leads to worse outcomes than simply working with them. (See Iran for a textbook case.)

And you see it in the belief that the US needs to run the world in tedious detail, that regular coups, invasions, garrisons, and so on are necessary—along with the endless, sovereignty-reducing treaties described in “free trade deals.”

These policies are insane, if one assumes a minimum of public spiritedness. They have not worked. They will not work.

But they do work in the social sense: They create successful lives for the people who devise and implement them. They are rewarded with money and social approval, they receive feedback which screams, “Continue!”

Over fifteen years ago Stirling Newberry told me, “Insiders understand possibility, outsiders understand consequences”.

Insiders are rewarded for acting in accordance with elite consensus, and very little else.

Outsiders, not being part of that personal risk/reward cycle are able to say, “Yeah, that’s not going to work”.

They are both right and wrong.

The science of conditioning, which was strong from the late 19th century through to the 60s, has faded out of the intellectual limelight. But viewed through the lens of conditioning, much that makes no sense makes perfect sense.

We are ruled by people who are what they have been conditioned to be, and we are what we have been conditioned to be: We are passive consumers who shut up and do what they are told by their teachers or bosses.

Conditioning extends well beyond observable behavior and into thought, and the structure of knowledge. Intellectual structures are felt, and each node and connection has emotional freight. This is true even in the purer sciences, and it is frighteningly true in anything related to how we interact with other humans and what our self-image is.

It is in this sense that the disinterested, the outsider, those who receive few rewards for acquiescence, are virtually always superior in understanding to those within the system. Outsiders may not understand what it “feels” like, but the outsider understands what the consequences are.

This is true far beyond politics, but it is in politics where the unexamined life, the unexamined belief structure, and the unexamined conditioning, are amplified by long levers to brutalize the world.

 

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