Category Archives: Politics

Locust Capitalism- The Frass Machine.

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Here is a great catch phrase- Locust Capitalism. The article by David Waldman, describing the past business practices of one of our corporate persons, Bain Capital, uses this catchy phrase to characterize said corporate person. Of course, the irony of it all is plastered on the face of biological person Willard “Mitt” Romney who makes a show of being a job creator.

There is something that locusts do create- it is called frass.

I do not doubt Romney’s sincerity when he speaks. Like other candidates, he seems to live in the “eternal now” much like a dog. He wags his tail at the public hoping to curry favor for the treat of being president. If wagging his tail doesn’t work, he rolls over and puts up a paw hoping to win over the public. It is in the nature of these creatures to do this and while we cannot hold them blameless for their transgressions, we can at least understand them.

People who are able to think about business in an abstract way, that is, unencumbered by sloppy sentimentality for the fate of individuals, are well suited to become the captains and oligarchs of business. Romney seems to have been a captain. If the practices described by Waldman did in fact happen, then the locust analogy is very suitable and it says a lot about the character of the persons involved.

Waldman writes that Romney and cohorts bought companies holding ample commercial credit, charged them substantial management fees, and tapped out the credit lines while pocketing operating cash, driving the company into bankruptcy. They walk away from the remaining husk of what was a functioning organization with their neatly stacked pile of lucre.

If a real person did this, he/she might be described as a kind of sociopath. But somehow in the context of business there is no descriptor for such antisocial behavior.

Since we are now in the habit of referring to corporate personhood, perhaps we need to be a bit more analytical about it and characterize pathological behavior such as this.

Euphemisms and similes to avoid in 2012

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I propose a 20 year ban on the following overused and often mangled euphemisms and similes-

Rocket scientist–  “it doesn’t take rocket scientist to …”.  This one is really tiresome. I propose that it be banned indefinitely and that repeat offenders be tatooed with some humiliating symbol on their noses.

Holy Grail–  “… It’s like the Holy Grail of …”.  This was overused centuries ago and abusers should be called down on the carpet forcefully and publically. A good swatting with a rolled newspaper may be called for.

American taxpayers–  “… The American taxpayers are tired of …”.  You mean, American citizens. To play to the taxpayer’s emotional conflicts over taxes is a ham fisted rhetorical manipulation that bypasses the greater good of citizenship and responsible stewardship over our civilization. I am a citizen who pays taxes and I insist on being addressed as a citizen.

Perhaps the dear readers have even better examples of rhetorical ditties that should be retired.

 

The Chinese dig in.

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Here is a choice tidbit from the Washington Post. The Chinese, it seems, have been constructing a tunnels which some believe are meant to contain (possibly) strategic nuclear weapons and large numbers of people.

What China is actually up to and what it means for the control of nuclear proliferation is unclear. Generally, when a country builds fortifications like this alleged underground capacity, it is for a reason. They wish to be perceived as an irresistable force or an immovable object.

It is also worth considering that a massive, opaque, underground fortification with ICBM capacity is a step change away from the 20th century-style logic of Mutual Assured Destruction. MAD, as it was called, relied on opponents coming to the conclusion that there would be no winners in a nuclear exchange. If this structure is a fact, then it could mean that China means to survive nuclear war. The logic of MAD was based on holding the respective civilian populations hostage.  As crazy as that sounds, it worked.

One of the criticisms of Reagan’s Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI or Star Wars) of the 1980’s was that it undercut the balance imposed by MAD. In the end, the USSR collapsed at a time and circumstance that not even the CIA was able to forecast. The biggest threat that SDI posed to the Soviets was the inevitability of yet another crippling arms buildup.

A hardened and opaque Chinese missile capability will not go unnoticed by hawks in western governments. This development, real or not, may kick the mania for weaponization of space up a notch or two and tip the guns-or-butter equilibrium even further from butter.

To we Americans, like others throughout history, the impulse to devise new weapons is irresistable. We’ll throw hundreds of billions of dollars of national treasure at the arms and aerospace complex to come up with zesty new engines of war and call it just.  Yet we are unable to justify upgrading infrastructure or a plan to sustain an egalitarian society.

What the US needs to do at this point is to begin intense high level talks with the Chinese to bring strategic armament issues onto the table, if they have not already begun to do so.  China has built a friendly and industrious looking store front. But inside is a tightly wound and ambitious party-controlled military apparatus that is anxious to test its mettle against the US.

If Americans continue to parade around spouting this directionless free market blather instead of devising a more coherent national plan for thriving in the century of China, we will become the next fallen empire. Privatization is decentralization. Even businesses know that market share is not gained by fragmenting command and control. If the Chinese whip us, it will be for this reason.

War Bonds? Doh!!

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So, when we invaded Afganistan and Iraq, why didn’t we finance it with a bond drive à la WWII?  Civilian citizens could’ve invested in some real sense in the action and much of the US debt might have been owed to … well … us.  Instead, national treasure is owed to foreign states and anyone else who buys treasury notes.

Am I wrong here? If we’re going to send young men and women off to fight and die on foreign soil for some shared benefit, why wouldn’t we want to invest in it ourselves? Isn’t that the right thing to do?

Instead, we allowed China and others to invest in our foreign adventures and earn some interest in doing so. Citizens get to pay off the cost plus interest. I guess that the interest would’ve been owed anyway, but the money would be in US circulation.

Instead of paying for our own wars, we borrowed the money and had a real estate mortgage calamity bubble instead.

I recall that someone asked President Bush II about this early on and his recommendation was to “go shopping”. The subtext was that they had it all under control.

I have to be missing some key concept, right?

How can reasonably smart people be- collectively anyway- so wrong? Clearly, their ideas and policies are corrupt or faulty.  Parties and their members adopt policies and platforms that are either unsustainable or willfully apply an imbalance of favor.

The party system is corrupt to it’s core and must be taken down. Social networking may be the lightning bolt to do the job.

Mr. Thiel Speaks

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When you look for science news at news aggegation sites like Google News or popular publications like, well, any given magazine or newspaper, or (yawn) any given non-fiction television program, what you are likely to find are fluff pieces on topics related to medicine, automobiles, and telecommunications. To people in the news business, scientific progress means new kinds of medicines, better cars, and the latest (n+1)G cell phone or iPad.

It is possible for even successful people to apply pop-culture metrics to economic theory. For instance, the founder of PayPal, Peter Thiel, has written an essay for The National Review in which he questions the motives of scientists as well as their ability to maintain the growth of scientific progress.

The state of true science is the key to knowing whether something is truly rotten in the United States. But any such assessment encounters an immediate and almost insuperable challenge. Who can speak about the true health of the ever-expanding universe of human knowledge, given how complex, esoteric, and specialized the many scientific and technological fields have become? When any given field takes half a lifetime of study to master, who can compare and contrast and properly weight the rate of progress in nanotechnology and cryptography and superstring theory and 610 other disciplines? Indeed, how do we even know whether the so-called scientists are not just lawmakers and politicians in disguise (italics mine), as some conservatives suspect in fields as disparate as climate change, evolutionary biology, and embryonic-stem-cell research, and as I have come to suspect in almost all fields?

The article goes on to paint a picture of failure on the part of the scientific community for not coming up with a Moore’s law style of continuous bounty for the consumer.

Here is where I greatly disagree with Thiel. He cites the stagnation of wages as an indicator of economic progress which, in turn, is an indicator of tepid technological progress.

Let us now try to tackle this very thorny measurement problem from a very different angle. If meaningful scientific and technological progress occurs, then we reasonably would expect greater economic prosperity (though this may be offset by other factors). And also in reverse: If economic gains, as measured by certain key indicators, have been limited or nonexistent, then perhaps so has scientific and technological progress. Therefore, to the extent that economic growth is easier to quantify than scientific or technological progress, economic numbers will contain indirect but important clues to our larger investigation.

… Taken at face value, the economic numbers suggest that the notion of breathtaking and across-the-board progress is far from the mark. If one believes the economic data, then one must reject the optimism of the scientific establishment (italics mine).  Peter Thiel, National Review.

This is where Thiel drives into the weeds. He conflates stagnant wages in the post Viet Nam era with a failure of science and technology to produce the kinds of advances he would recognize as worthy.

What is lost on Thiel is the fact that stagnant wages are a kind of benefit to employers and investors as the result of technology. Over this so-called period of stagnation in wages is a complementary increase in productivity. If anything the improvements in technology unseen by Thiel and his ilk have been applied to render human labor obsolete, thereby sustaining profits. China hasn’t gotten all American jobs. Machines have taken over much ot it.

The fact that Thiel scans the horizon from his perch and fails to see this is indicative of a kind of blindness of prosperity. In his world, technology is the internet. Apparently, people like Thiel only register scientific progress as a stream of shiny new consumer electronics, supersonic transport, or brain transplants. The advances in science and technology from the last 20 years are everywhere, not necessarily just in internet technology, cell phones, and Viagra.

Semiconductor technology is now well below the micron scale and heading to the tens of nanometers.  Bits of data are heading toward tens to hundreds of electrons per bit.  Lithographic fabrication at this scale allows for rules of thumb like Moore’s Law.  Growth in component density can multiply parabolically or more as greater  acreage of chip surface is consumed in 3 dimensions. Many doublings are possible in this domain.

But parabolic growth in aircraft or land vehicle speed is limited by other physics. A dynamic range of only a few factors of ten in vehicle speed are economically feasible.  Fossil fuels are fantastically well suited for use in transportation owing to their high energy density, low cost per kiloJoule, and ability to flow through pipes. Fundamentally new forms of energy storage are hard to find and are expensive.  All energy usage is consumption.  Science can only go so far in facilitating better forms of consumption for the profligate.  Doing work against gravity also consumes lots of energy, so the world of George Jetson never became feasible.

Ordinary automobiles that comprise a part of the stagnancy that Thiel bemoans are coated in highly advanced polymer coatings made from specialty monomers, catalysts, and initiators. The polymeric mechanical assemblies are highly engineered as well as is the robotic assembly of the vehicle. The implementation of automation in the manufacture of plain old cars is just a part of the overall issue of low job growth. In this case, technological advancement => stagnant growth in wages and employment.

Business and Government

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There is a common conceit out there that business people are in possession of some kind of skill set that makes them uniquely suited to occupy congressional and executive seats in government.  While business folk have organizational experience in general, it is hard to reconcile why the citizens of the USA would want the autocratic style of business lorded over them. Business serves the interest of shareholders primarily and stakeholders a distant second. Government serves at the interest and pleasure of citizens.

The imperative of business is to grow for the profit of the shareholders. Given this basic reality, I fail to see why a businesslike template should be applied to governance. We do not want government to grow for it’s own sake. 

Business, in principle at least, has better command and control feedback. Or so goes the thinking.  Have you ever tried to get an answer or some kind of satisfactory resolution to a problem from a very large company? As an individual with average cash resources, your singular pull is usually not very large.  If we are going to let market forces have control of national and state governance in the manner conceived by hard-right political candidates, what of the individual?

The marketplace is a kind of 24/7 professional wrestling match. It is a Darwinistic contest of the strong vs the weak. Do we really want to be governed by this kind of system? Do we really want every single aspect of our lives to be a dog-eat-dog competition? I thought the purpose of civilization was to buffer some the harshness out of our lives.  Do the proponents of 100 % laissez-faire really want the system to snuff out the weak and those of lesser means?  That would be those who occupy the opposite side of the bell curve from those of means.

The notion that we should let market forces freely influence governance is popular among those of means.  The privatization of government services will immediately benefit those who are already flush with resources. Because only those with current resources will be able to step into such a position.  It would represent a transfer of power to those who already hold commercial power. Power is in the ability to allocate resources.

Why low and medium income republicans favor privatization of government services is a complete mystery. The loss of control over the influences in their lives to unrestrained market forces is contrary to the common self-perception of rugged individualism.  Money and power tend to accumulate into the hands of a few. Examples are all over the place.  This is the lesson from the age of monarchy and of robber barons. 

Privatization in and of itself is not the answer. It is just another type of concentration of power that favors corporations and individuals who already have the resources to buy a seat at the table. Why would citizens of ordinary means want this? 

Well, they wouldn’t want this ordinarily. But if you create a stampede of frightened citizens, it is possible for a small group of highly motivated demagogues to steer a frightened herd in whatever direction they want. This is precisely what is happening today.  The overthrow of the prevalent system by such means has many examples on history.  Just look around.  The manufacture of consent is a thriving business.

Play it forward. Science as an extended subsidy.

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I search chemical abstracts nearly every day. What occurs to me is that this vast treasure of knowledge is substantially the result of tax revenue channeled into scientific research by numerous technologically advanced societies. While at the time of any given publication, the value might seem minimal. But over time people like me, people in applied industrial science, consume this treasure for the purpose of generating new goods and services. Rather than reinvent the wheel, we consult the subsidized results of other workers in the field. Subsidies of the past play forward to subsidies of the future. If we can’t lift an exact procedure from the scientific literature, then often we can apply new substrates to known transformation. 

In a very real sense, a resource like Chemical Abstracts is an engine of ingenuity. It’s content provides the means to innovation by outright disclosure or by sparking the imagination.  This work is enabled by government organizations funding people and institutions for the purpose of placing technology into the public domain.

While industrial or private organizations have the ability to generate a knowledge base as substantial and as in-depth, the fact is that the imperatives of private business are not in the direction of public disclosure. The imperative of the private sector is to channel wealth to the ownership. The free exchange of knowledge, in the context of business, is discouraged in that it amounts to the free distribution of cash. 

I hear people saying or implying that all things government are bad and that the private sector is inherently “more efficient” and therefore more meritorious.  What we have gotten from government subsidized science is an everlasting fountain of knowledge available to all to put into practice for whatever lawful purpose they can envision. 

An efficient life seems like a puritanical and regimented life.  And the application of efficiency will always fall under the control of the dominant social order. Is this really so desirable?  

Intellectual property has two sides. On one side, the generators of intellectual property can have the right to a timed monopoly on their art via patents. On the opposite side, the public treasury releases national treasure in order to educate the citizens who then generate proprietary art that is withheld from public use.  This amounts to a subsidy of the private sector.  It is a subsidy that sees little acknowledgement in the politics of today.  But such a thing has actually worked well for generations.  

What we are seeing in contemporary politics is the attempt to vilify and deconstruct government. But government has been central to the technological and consequently the economic expansion in the post WWII era.  The mechanism of collecting resources and focusing them on the solution of certain kinds of problems cannot be matched by the private sector. How would you operate the Centers for Disease Control on a greed based system like capitalism? 

Libertarians are always acknowledging the fundamental nature of greed and how it can be channeled into the efficient use of goods and services. I don’t disagree. What I take issue with is that greed must then be acknowledged as the dominant and true influencing force in society. We cannot allow this to be true. We must make provisions for tight control of greed. It is a useful but savage animal. 

In my view, the generation of knowledge and expertise is time and resource consuming. In order to have a particular amount of practical expertise on any given thing, you have to turn over a great many stones and learn an amount of art that is in large excess of the problem of the day. This actually applies to a definition of expertise- the ability to deal with problems that at first seem to be bigger than you can get your arms around. Expertise brings knowledge in the form of facts and problem solving skills. In order to attain expertise you have to absorb to information that at the moment seems superfluous.  In the end, the expert has a grasp of the length and breadth of a topic in excess to any given problem.

Our national system of scientific discovery and information abstracting serves to provide the reservoir of information that serves users into the future.  This information forms the basis of economic growth well into the future. As we go forward with the seemingly inevitable deconstruction of government, let us not forget what government has given us.

Challenging the paradigm

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Increasingly I am a fan of LinkTV. It is one of the very few alternative content networks around. I try to catch Deutche Wella  and Al Jazeera on Link a few times per week for a different perspective of world events. 

News programming in the US evolved decades ago into a business model which delivers manufactured consent to those who’ll pay for it.   News programmers in the US for the most part seem to have a notion that only they know what we really want to see. So they roll their tape for us.  Who really decides where the beady eye of scrutiny is pointed?

Really now. Why do we have the same tedious group of talking heads making the rounds on the news programs? In a country of 300 million, we can’t find a few others who will say something new or at least unexpected?  It’s just like the stars who appear on Leno.  In exchange for a free “performance”on the show, they get to promote their latest gig. It’s about low cost content.

In the case of news, the network gets “compelling commentary” for free by a guest who is calculated to cause eyeballs to linger a few moments.  News content has the shelflife of squid. It is no good tomorrow.

If you’re not alarmed by this kind of thing then you’re not paying attention.  Knock knock!! I’m talking to the 2/3 of the bell curve who may suspect that Fox, for instance, occasionally makes things up to suit the needs of its backers.  The 1/3 who watch Fox assiduously are perhaps not recoverable from their trance.

Numerous coworkers claim to be independent thinkers, but to a man or woman, will spout the same vocabulary and pre-framed concepts. They get their talking points from Fox, as directed.  I love these people, but their view of the world is a cartoon drawn by a couple of guys in a sound booth. It is sad.

A Modest Proposal for the Eurozone

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Here is what I propose as a solution for the European debt crisis.  Spain, Italy, Greece, Portugal, and Ireland should be given the option of swapping land in exchange for their debt. What land? Take a line of latitude from the southernmost tip northward until an area of land redeemed is equal to (debt (Euro) / 5000 Euro/hectare) which covers the debt. 

It should be pointed out that Napoleon voluntarily swapped the Louisiana territory for cash to raise operating funds for his adventures. After all, he was coming into new property in Europe.

As my consulting fee, I’ll take the Dingle Peninsula in Ireland. It’s a charming spit of land and will be more than suitable.

Texas Justice. Fishing Crimes.

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You know, I really do like Texans. I lived there for a few years and I think I have an accurate sense of the place.  But Texans are Texans. It really is “like a whole ‘nother country” sometimes.

The Texas legislature recently passed the Fish Fraud law which specifically addresses the problem of fraud at fishing tournaments. The bill passed the house 142 to 4 and the senate 30 to 1 and awaits signing by the governor.  The bill provides penalties for fraud starting at a Class A Misdemeanor for the first offense to a third degree Felony for fishing crimes involving greater than $10,000 in prize money.  

According to the article, game wardens and prosecutors approached Representative Dan Flynn about  a fish fraud incident at Lake Ray Hubbard east of Dallas in October of 2009. Rep Flynn jumped on this outrage and brought the beady eye of scrutiny to bear on those dark hearted anglers who dare to flim-flam fishing tournaments. Case in point:  A semi-pro angler forced a 1 pound weight into a 9.5 lb bass, misrepresenting the weight of the fish and thus defrauding the tournament organizers. 

Without the benefit of a Fish Fraud law, the crooked angler got 15 days in jail, 5 years of probation, and loss of his fishing license for the duration of his probation.

It certainly seems to me like Texas Justice was swift and unblinking in this case without a special law on the books. The miscreant who perpetrated this act was nabbed by the local constable and thrown behind bars.

Ever wonder why there are so many laws on the books? This is an example of how it happens. Somebody games the system and legislators rush in to pack legislative caulking into a perceived hole in the wall. The Texas legislature has felonized yet somethng else. 

Are we really better off with an ever expanding definition of felonious acts?  The fisherman’s wickedness is plain for all to see. But does this one case merit the enactment of yet one more piece of legislation?  If you are a hammer, everything looks like a nail. Maybe it’s best if we take some time off from inventing new laws and look at what we’ve wrought?