- Feelings of Power Trigger a Lack of Compassion
- Power Gives You a False Belief in Your Abilities
- Experiments Show Power and Hypocrisy Are Linked in the Brain
- Feeling Powerful Makes It Easier to Lie
- Power and Self-Absorption Go Hand in Hand
Thursday, October 07, 2010
5 Scientific Reasons Powerful People Will Always Suck
5 Scientific Reasons Powerful People Will Always Suck:
The Stupid! It Burns! (autistic edition)
Poking Fun at Militant Atheists Ridiculing the less intellectually endowed is rather small-minded and cruel, not to mention a sign of insecurity. Skewering those who routinely dismiss those with whom they disagree as stupid is fair game.Yet another irony meter bites the dust.
[The remainder of the post consists of quotations from commenters on this thread; I've omitted the attributions.]
[Richard Dawkins is] "the intellectual equivalent of the college freshman who ended up getting a C in his philosophy class because he kept being a smart ass." ...
"I find atheism to be a perfectly acceptable religion for the average adolescent male. No responsibility, no inconvenient connection between one’s observations of reality and metaphysics, no attempt at a large connection between ethics and origins. But, unless one has an arrested intellectual, emotional, or spiritual development, one must eventually grow up." ...
"Folks who have illogical hate for religion latch on to any moron that has the gumption to 'take on' organized religion... Since most folks have decided not to bother to learn how to think, some ignoramus who can use big words and pseudo-science becomes their idol."
"Whoever wants to know what the serious objections to Christianity are should ask us. The unbeliever makes only stupid objections."
The best description of these so called New Atheists has been to call them 'social autisitics.' They simply have no clue that what they are saying is laughable, has been said much better a thousand times before, and that it is all demonstrably false."
Wednesday, October 06, 2010
Money: a weird idea
In Promise Merchants, Noni Mausa writes:
Mausa notes that "An economy built on promises -- a capitalist economy -- only functions when these promises are enforced, and enforced multilaterally on all participants." I have no objection if she's using capitalism here as an example of an economy built on promises, but I would definitely object if she were defining capitalism as an economy built on promises. Every economy is built on promises, even a pure direct barter economy: there has to be some promise that I can physically enter the marketplace without my goods being forcibly expropriated.
Her fundamental point is still sound: however the promises are structured, they have to be enforced and they have to be enforced on everyone. I would add that there are as well constraints on the structure of promises, i.e. what kinds of promises are enforceable and under what circumstances. A structure of promises can be enforced, and — in theory — multilaterally enforced, and still be just as exploitative and oppressive as a society where promises are differentially enforced. As Anatole France famously quipped, "The law, in its majestic equality, forbids the rich as well as the poor to sleep under bridges, to beg in the streets, and to steal bread." The notion of universal enforcement is a perfect example of a partial "bourgeois right", a right that is necessary but not sufficient to create an equitable society.
This point is the crux of Lenin's observation in The State and Revolution that no government can stand "outside" society to enforce promises on everyone or structure the promises to be equitable. Government is part of society; one more arena in which individuals and classes struggle for advantage. The notion that a government can do the right thing just because it is in some abstract sense the "right" thing to do is just as inept as the notion that a corporation, responsible to its stockholders, can do so. Every government acts according to its own interests: the interests of its members and the interests of those who control its membership. I would add too that it is equally impossible for the press to stand "outside" society: Like any other group the members of the press act in their own interests and the interests of those who control its membership.
Liberal economists complain: why isn't the government doing what we know they "ought" to be doing? Why is the press generally failing — egregiously — to accurately and truthfully report our true economic and political situation? Their questions were answered 150 years ago by Marx and amplified a century ago by Lenin: The government and the press are part of the material dialectic of history; they cannot in any sense stand "outside" it and act without regard to their own material interests. It is of course equally true that a Communist Party cannot stand outside society; a Communist Party is just as much as any government guided by its own interests. Nobody gets to stand outside society; nobody gets to escape dialectical materialism; nobody will ever do the right thing just because it's the right thing to do.
What is to be done then? No one cannot stand outside society, so we always have to work within society. Hence the original communist ideal that the workers act as a class within society for their own interests against the interests of the capitalist class. A communist party, a communist intelligentsia, cannot therefore not substitute for the working class, or try to act directly in the interests of the working class. A communist intelligentsia must subordinate itself to the working class, in much the same sense that the present-day academic intelligentsia subordinates itself to the capitalist ruling class (or the upper levels of the professional-managerial class, which periodically struggles — sometimes successfully — directly with the capitalist class).
The problem — as yet unsolved, and perhaps unsolvable — is how to get the working class and the masses of humanity to want to take power.
Let me remind you what a very weird idea money is.Almost theological, but not quite. Money is basically a debt against everyone, a promise made by the whole society to each other as individuals, i.e. as they individually hold money. That individuals actually do physically own commodities, and can physically provide them on demand. Money doesn't have intrinsic or objective value, but we do have sophisticated social institutions (governments, banks, the Fed etc.) to ensure that we can have reasonable and consistent expectations about how many loaves of bread or hours of babysitting a dollar will buy, now and in the future.
The IOU is a simple idea. Money is like an IOU, but carried beyond the boundary of reason into an entirely different and peculiar territory.
If I write an IOU, it has my name on it, your name, perhaps a date, and some indication of the future services which are owed between us. It's a minimalist contract, easy for anyone to understand.
But money is an IOU, a promise, with no names. The future benefit is merely an abstract number whose value is not defined. A dollar does not equal a loaf of bread, or an hour of babysitting, but is determined by the usage of all the people who accept it.
This is almost theological in its weirdness.
Mausa notes that "An economy built on promises -- a capitalist economy -- only functions when these promises are enforced, and enforced multilaterally on all participants." I have no objection if she's using capitalism here as an example of an economy built on promises, but I would definitely object if she were defining capitalism as an economy built on promises. Every economy is built on promises, even a pure direct barter economy: there has to be some promise that I can physically enter the marketplace without my goods being forcibly expropriated.
Her fundamental point is still sound: however the promises are structured, they have to be enforced and they have to be enforced on everyone. I would add that there are as well constraints on the structure of promises, i.e. what kinds of promises are enforceable and under what circumstances. A structure of promises can be enforced, and — in theory — multilaterally enforced, and still be just as exploitative and oppressive as a society where promises are differentially enforced. As Anatole France famously quipped, "The law, in its majestic equality, forbids the rich as well as the poor to sleep under bridges, to beg in the streets, and to steal bread." The notion of universal enforcement is a perfect example of a partial "bourgeois right", a right that is necessary but not sufficient to create an equitable society.
This point is the crux of Lenin's observation in The State and Revolution that no government can stand "outside" society to enforce promises on everyone or structure the promises to be equitable. Government is part of society; one more arena in which individuals and classes struggle for advantage. The notion that a government can do the right thing just because it is in some abstract sense the "right" thing to do is just as inept as the notion that a corporation, responsible to its stockholders, can do so. Every government acts according to its own interests: the interests of its members and the interests of those who control its membership. I would add too that it is equally impossible for the press to stand "outside" society: Like any other group the members of the press act in their own interests and the interests of those who control its membership.
Liberal economists complain: why isn't the government doing what we know they "ought" to be doing? Why is the press generally failing — egregiously — to accurately and truthfully report our true economic and political situation? Their questions were answered 150 years ago by Marx and amplified a century ago by Lenin: The government and the press are part of the material dialectic of history; they cannot in any sense stand "outside" it and act without regard to their own material interests. It is of course equally true that a Communist Party cannot stand outside society; a Communist Party is just as much as any government guided by its own interests. Nobody gets to stand outside society; nobody gets to escape dialectical materialism; nobody will ever do the right thing just because it's the right thing to do.
What is to be done then? No one cannot stand outside society, so we always have to work within society. Hence the original communist ideal that the workers act as a class within society for their own interests against the interests of the capitalist class. A communist party, a communist intelligentsia, cannot therefore not substitute for the working class, or try to act directly in the interests of the working class. A communist intelligentsia must subordinate itself to the working class, in much the same sense that the present-day academic intelligentsia subordinates itself to the capitalist ruling class (or the upper levels of the professional-managerial class, which periodically struggles — sometimes successfully — directly with the capitalist class).
The problem — as yet unsolved, and perhaps unsolvable — is how to get the working class and the masses of humanity to want to take power.
Abandoning religion
Peter Wall continues the conversation. Money quote: "Many atheists go wrong, I think, by construing most of the world in terms of belief: If your belief in God is defective, as I have shown, then your religion must be abandoned."
But really, who says this? Even a glance at the mainstream atheist literature reveals a more robust criticism of religion than Wall suggests here. Consider Christopher Hitchens' contribution to the New Atheist canon, God is Not Great. Hitchens most emphatically does not say that religion should be abandoned just because it rests on a false belief, regardless of the other characteristics of religion. Rather, the religious are doing so many egregiously bad things: the oppression of women and gays, abuse of children and protecting those abusers, undermining science, waging unnecessary and unnecessarily violent wars. Yes, we're all very pleased that most religious people do a lot of good things (although we're skeptical of many of the claims; see especially The Missionary Position, Hitchens' devastating condemnation of Mother Teresa), but that's not really the point: all the good works in the world do not excuse or permit even the smallest evil... and the evils attributed to religion are hardly small. We attribute these evils and especially their persistence directly to the supernaturalism of religion: we probably won't remove evil from the world, but we remove one of the most compelling and prevalent justifications for evil: that a supernatural god (or His priestly spokesmodels) demands we do evil.
The criticism of the religious "moderates" and "liberals" is likewise more nuanced than Wall would suggest. A lot of religious people are entirely good (more-or-less; it cannot be the case that the support for denying ordinary civil rights to homosexuals is limited entirely to Christian "fundamentalists"). The New Atheists might look askance at the supernatural justification of those beliefs, but beyond a few mutterings and quotations from Diderot, it is not the supernaturalism per se that earns our criticism. We criticize, rather, the accommodationist and religious "moderate" demand that we not criticize the supernatural justification of the fundamentalists precisely because that criticism equally undermines the moderates' own supernatural justification. We criticize the moderates because in defending the pillar of their own good, they must defend the pillar of the fundamentalists' evils: necessarily so, for it is, in our judgment, the same pillar.
Our criticism and condemnation might, of course, be mistaken. The New Atheists have no more than the religious any direct line to Cosmic Truths. But we are making the subtle and nuanced arguments in considerable depth and breadth. If you're going to criticize us, criticize us for the content we actually offer. It's just dishonest to ignore 90% of the content and then accuse us of being facile and thin.
But really, who says this? Even a glance at the mainstream atheist literature reveals a more robust criticism of religion than Wall suggests here. Consider Christopher Hitchens' contribution to the New Atheist canon, God is Not Great. Hitchens most emphatically does not say that religion should be abandoned just because it rests on a false belief, regardless of the other characteristics of religion. Rather, the religious are doing so many egregiously bad things: the oppression of women and gays, abuse of children and protecting those abusers, undermining science, waging unnecessary and unnecessarily violent wars. Yes, we're all very pleased that most religious people do a lot of good things (although we're skeptical of many of the claims; see especially The Missionary Position, Hitchens' devastating condemnation of Mother Teresa), but that's not really the point: all the good works in the world do not excuse or permit even the smallest evil... and the evils attributed to religion are hardly small. We attribute these evils and especially their persistence directly to the supernaturalism of religion: we probably won't remove evil from the world, but we remove one of the most compelling and prevalent justifications for evil: that a supernatural god (or His priestly spokesmodels) demands we do evil.
The criticism of the religious "moderates" and "liberals" is likewise more nuanced than Wall would suggest. A lot of religious people are entirely good (more-or-less; it cannot be the case that the support for denying ordinary civil rights to homosexuals is limited entirely to Christian "fundamentalists"). The New Atheists might look askance at the supernatural justification of those beliefs, but beyond a few mutterings and quotations from Diderot, it is not the supernaturalism per se that earns our criticism. We criticize, rather, the accommodationist and religious "moderate" demand that we not criticize the supernatural justification of the fundamentalists precisely because that criticism equally undermines the moderates' own supernatural justification. We criticize the moderates because in defending the pillar of their own good, they must defend the pillar of the fundamentalists' evils: necessarily so, for it is, in our judgment, the same pillar.
Our criticism and condemnation might, of course, be mistaken. The New Atheists have no more than the religious any direct line to Cosmic Truths. But we are making the subtle and nuanced arguments in considerable depth and breadth. If you're going to criticize us, criticize us for the content we actually offer. It's just dishonest to ignore 90% of the content and then accuse us of being facile and thin.
Tuesday, October 05, 2010
The Stupid! It Burns! (don't argue with me edition)
Why You Should Not Argue With Atheists In fact, let me go a step further and suggest you avoid arguing atheists altogether, in any forum.
I’ll tell you why: atheism is an indefensible superstition.
It is a flamboyantly false belief clung to desperately by only the least imaginative and the most emotionally partitioned of people. ...
Atheism is only, and ever was, an emotional argument.
Monday, October 04, 2010
The Stupid! It Burns! (A. F. Christian edition)
Absurdities Which [sic] Only Rationalists Believe Mary Eberstadt, a research fellow at Stanford University's Hoover Institution, has written a wickedly devastating critique of the New Atheism. ... [E]ach chapter is a "letter" written by a recent convert to atheism ("A.F. Christian"= A Former Christian) to leading New Atheists such as Richard Dawkins and Sam Harris... By the end of the book it becomes clear that the New Atheism can succeed only by avoiding all significant areas of human life: Because of its embrace of materialism, reductionist evolutionism, pragmatism and moral relativism, it is incapable of actually sustaining a genuinely human form of life and must, in effect, live off a residual cultural Christianity.(I have my suspicions, but I haven't read her book, so I can't really tell if Eberstadt is just as burningly stupid as her admirer.)
The New Atheists contend that society will be a lot better off when all of Christianity's sexual restraints are thrown off and we are finally able to enjoy complete sexual freedom. ...
Since the New Atheists embrace Darwinism as a metaphysical principal, they have difficulty justifying what Christianity has excelled at: caring for the sick, the weak and the old. ...
One of the best letters focuses on the problem of aesthetics and the inconvenient fact that the world's most beautiful music, art, poetry and architecture have all be [sic] motivated by religion. ...
If atheism is so sophisticated and the view to which the brightest of minds eventually arrive at, why are so many recent converts from atheism to Christianity people of such great abilities (G.K. Chesterton, C.S. Lewis, Evelyn Waugh, Francis Collins, Alistair McGrath, etc)? ...
[Eberstadt] offers not so much a point by point refutation of New Atheist positions but a cosmic argument against it, an argument aimed at showing that if its premises are put into action we will find ourselves spiritually, morally, socially and aesthetically impoverished.
Sunday, October 03, 2010
The Stupid! It Burns! (knee-jerk edition)
The New Atheism: ConclusionThe new atheists come at their topic being unfamiliar with the arguments hoping to prey on a people who are unsuspecting and do not know why they believe what they believe well. It is banking on the ignorance of man. ...At times?
The problem with the new atheists is not only that they do not know theism. I also do not think they know atheism. An atheist like Nietzsche if he were around today would be tough as nails on the new atheists. He would tell them to get rid of this silly idea they have of morality being a reality apart from God. ...
The new atheists pull ideas of morality and truth out in the air without anything to support them. In this, they make the same error Christians can make. They do not argue at the level of presuppositions. They argue at the level of application. They take as a given morality and objective truth and the knowability of the world through rational means. They do not give a framework for these. ...
I see [atheism] more as a knee-jerk reaction to a theism that is not satisfying, and that is the fault of those of us who are Christians at times as well.
Defending religious viewpoints
One has to read quite a ways through Peter Wall's wall of text to get to an actual point, but there really is one. (Trust me.) I was so thrilled to have found one that I stopped reading with a sigh of relief.
Basically, John Shook asserts that "Many kinds of theology have emerged, replacing a handful of traditional arguments for God with robust methods of defending religious viewpoints." Larry Moran responds, "Too bad he doesn’t mention even one of those supposedly robust new arguments for the existence of supernatural beings." Wall notes that Moran demands something different — "new arguments for the existence of supernatural beings" — from what Shook offers — "robust methods of defending religious viewpoints." To a certain extent, it's a fair cop: Larry Moran should have been a little more clear about why and how he went from "religious viewpoints" to "supernatural beings".
But the connection is not all that hard to make; I suspect Wall is guilty of some degree of obtusity (and certainly turgid prolixity in the first degree).
There are only four ways to interpret Shook's demand.
A "religious viewpoint" is a viewpoint that relies in some substantive sense on the existence of a supernatural being. At least this is the definition you have to use if you're going to talk specifically about atheists' stance towards religious viewpoints. If, for example, you want to label Einstein's viewpoint as "religious" — if you want to label the underlying order and simplicity of physical law as "the mind of God," — you're using "God" and "religious" as literary metaphors, a use that the vast majority of atheists have no (social) objection to. If Shook were as diligent about understanding atheism as he demands atheists be about understanding theology, he would see that we object to "religious viewpoints" only insofar as they rely on a supernatural being. Take the supernaturalism out of "religion", and you will find atheists* entirely uninterested in what's left.
So Shook might mean that the vast majority of theology really has taken the supernaturalism out of religion; theology is, by and large, indistinguishable from literary metaphor and/or naturalistic ethics. That might well be true, but if Shook really believes it, it seems perverse to censure atheists for ignoring theology exactly as billions of religious people would have to be ignoring it.
Shook might also be saying that one can legitimately "robustly defend" a religious viewpoint by saying that it doesn't matter whether if the supernatural being the viewpoint rests on does not actually exist: it's OK to have a viewpoint that rests on a false position, or it's OK not to care about truth at all. Shook expresses himself with all the precision and candor of, well, a theologian, so it's hard to get what he really does mean. But unless he were to take one of these positions explicitly, I think we must exclude both on the basis of simple charity.
Which leaves only one option: "Robust methods of defending religious viewpoints" really must rely on "new arguments for the existence of supernatural beings." Hence Larry Moran's demand.
Basically, John Shook asserts that "Many kinds of theology have emerged, replacing a handful of traditional arguments for God with robust methods of defending religious viewpoints." Larry Moran responds, "Too bad he doesn’t mention even one of those supposedly robust new arguments for the existence of supernatural beings." Wall notes that Moran demands something different — "new arguments for the existence of supernatural beings" — from what Shook offers — "robust methods of defending religious viewpoints." To a certain extent, it's a fair cop: Larry Moran should have been a little more clear about why and how he went from "religious viewpoints" to "supernatural beings".
But the connection is not all that hard to make; I suspect Wall is guilty of some degree of obtusity (and certainly turgid prolixity in the first degree).
There are only four ways to interpret Shook's demand.
A "religious viewpoint" is a viewpoint that relies in some substantive sense on the existence of a supernatural being. At least this is the definition you have to use if you're going to talk specifically about atheists' stance towards religious viewpoints. If, for example, you want to label Einstein's viewpoint as "religious" — if you want to label the underlying order and simplicity of physical law as "the mind of God," — you're using "God" and "religious" as literary metaphors, a use that the vast majority of atheists have no (social) objection to. If Shook were as diligent about understanding atheism as he demands atheists be about understanding theology, he would see that we object to "religious viewpoints" only insofar as they rely on a supernatural being. Take the supernaturalism out of "religion", and you will find atheists* entirely uninterested in what's left.
*They would uninterested as atheists; they might be interested as scientists or literary critics.
So Shook might mean that the vast majority of theology really has taken the supernaturalism out of religion; theology is, by and large, indistinguishable from literary metaphor and/or naturalistic ethics. That might well be true, but if Shook really believes it, it seems perverse to censure atheists for ignoring theology exactly as billions of religious people would have to be ignoring it.
Shook might also be saying that one can legitimately "robustly defend" a religious viewpoint by saying that it doesn't matter whether if the supernatural being the viewpoint rests on does not actually exist: it's OK to have a viewpoint that rests on a false position, or it's OK not to care about truth at all. Shook expresses himself with all the precision and candor of, well, a theologian, so it's hard to get what he really does mean. But unless he were to take one of these positions explicitly, I think we must exclude both on the basis of simple charity.
Which leaves only one option: "Robust methods of defending religious viewpoints" really must rely on "new arguments for the existence of supernatural beings." Hence Larry Moran's demand.
Saturday, October 02, 2010
Intelligent cups of yogurt
Put down your coffee (if you don't want it coming out your nose) and then read What I Think About Atlas Shrugged. Some choice quotations:
"Rand is an efficient storyteller that way: You know early on what the rules of her world are, she sticks with those rules, and you as the reader are on a rail all the way through the story. ...[I]f you’re in the mood not to work too much, it’s fine to have an author who points dramatically at the things she wants you to look at, and keeps the lights off the things she doesn’t."
"[Atlas Shrugged is] a totally ridiculous book which can be summed up as Sociopathic idealized nerds collapse society because they don’t get enough hugs."
"[T]he idealized world Ayn Rand has created to facilitate her wishful theorizing has no more logical connection to our real one than a world in which an author has imagined humanity ruled by intelligent cups of yogurt. This is most obviously revealed by the fact that in Ayn Rand’s world, a man who self-righteously instigates the collapse of society, thereby inevitably killing millions if not billions of people, is portrayed as a messiah figure rather than as a genocidal prick, which is what he’d be anywhere else... Indeed, if John Galt were portrayed as an intelligent cup of yogurt rather than poured into human form, this would be obvious. Oh my god, that cup of yogurt wants to kill most of humanity to make a philosophical point! Somebody eat him quick! And that would be that."
"[Rand's] claque of enthusiastic nerds certainly seems to be the most energetic, which doesn’t really please me. I wish they could be more like Heinlein nerds, who keep to their own freeholds."
Read the rest. It's fucking hysterical.
(via Brad DeLong)
"Rand is an efficient storyteller that way: You know early on what the rules of her world are, she sticks with those rules, and you as the reader are on a rail all the way through the story. ...[I]f you’re in the mood not to work too much, it’s fine to have an author who points dramatically at the things she wants you to look at, and keeps the lights off the things she doesn’t."
"[Atlas Shrugged is] a totally ridiculous book which can be summed up as Sociopathic idealized nerds collapse society because they don’t get enough hugs."
"[T]he idealized world Ayn Rand has created to facilitate her wishful theorizing has no more logical connection to our real one than a world in which an author has imagined humanity ruled by intelligent cups of yogurt. This is most obviously revealed by the fact that in Ayn Rand’s world, a man who self-righteously instigates the collapse of society, thereby inevitably killing millions if not billions of people, is portrayed as a messiah figure rather than as a genocidal prick, which is what he’d be anywhere else... Indeed, if John Galt were portrayed as an intelligent cup of yogurt rather than poured into human form, this would be obvious. Oh my god, that cup of yogurt wants to kill most of humanity to make a philosophical point! Somebody eat him quick! And that would be that."
"[Rand's] claque of enthusiastic nerds certainly seems to be the most energetic, which doesn’t really please me. I wish they could be more like Heinlein nerds, who keep to their own freeholds."
Read the rest. It's fucking hysterical.
(via Brad DeLong)
The great depression and the great recession
Our current economic situation invites comparisons to the Great Depression. Supposedly, the Great Depression was supposedly cured by Keynesian stimuli, not the least of which was building a metric assload of bombs and dropping them on the Germans and Japanese. But while stimulus was a necessary tool in ending the Great Depression, it was not the only tool.
The New Deal fundamentally changed the existing laissez faire capitalist system. Important steps were taken to change the social and economic relations between workers and capitalists: the minimum wage, unemployment insurance, social security, high marginal income tax rates, strong labor unions, strict financial regulation, etc. In contrast, the First Imperialist War had a considerable stimulative effect on the U.S. economy, leading to the Roaring Twenties. But without fundamental changes to capitalism, the boom lasted only a little more than a decade before collapsing in the Great Depression. If we did as Krugman et al. suggest and pumped a massive ($2 trillion or more) stimulus into the economy, we'd likely see considerable improvement that might last a decade. But about 10-15 years is as long as we could expect: without fundamental changes to the system, we should expect nothing but for history to repeat itself, and another equally catastrophic crash to occur in the mid 2020's if not sooner.
The important lesson is not just that stimulus can cure even a massive cyclical downturn (and can do wonders, I think, for even structural unemployment) but that capitalism, especially laissez faire capitalism, has structural flaws which cause massive cyclical downturns, flaws that must be corrected at the structural level. And FDR's New Deal did in fact at least begin to correct those flaws. Even the most cursory study of economic history shows that the economy in the 19th and early 20th centuries behaved substantively differently than the economy in the latter half of the 20th century. Cyclical downturns decreased in number and severity; our biggest problem in the 20th century was managing inflation, which was in our case a side effect of having money coming out of our ass: not the worst problem to have.
So the question has to be: what the fuck happened? We fixed the Great Depression, we made many important structural changes to our economic system, and here we are in another catastrophic failure of the capitalist system (which will get worse after the Republicans take the House of Representatives in November). Our first house collapsed in an earthquake, we rebuilt it better and stronger... and then it collapses when someone sneezes. What. The. Fuck!? Seriously!
What happened was that we removed the structural changes in our economic relations we added during the New Deal. Financial regulation is a joke. Labor unions where not entirely absent are owned by the capitalists. The minimum wage has been below the equilibrium wage for a decade or more (and now that it's slightly above the equilibrium wage, it's routinely and easily circumvented). The top marginal income tax rate is not really 35%, it's 15%, i.e. the long-term capital gains tax rate; ultra-wealthy make most of their real money with capital gains. (It's no surprise that hedge fund managers dominate the top earners: their "income" is taxed as long-term capital gains.) Only unemployment insurance and social security remain. Unemployment is running out (and applies to only of the fraction of the unemployed) and our "Democratic" president is at least not resisting (and may be enabling) the dismantling of social security.
Look back at the history. Social security is the foundation of the New Deal structural changes to the economy, and there's been a faction of the capitalist ruling class (and the upper levels of the professional-managerial class) that has not just disliked the idea of social security, but hated it with the burning fury of a thousand white-hot suns. But why? Come on: social security is nothing but the idea that none of our old people — people who have worked all their lives — should actually starve to death. Not only that, but social security is largely paid for by the same people it benefits: the working class and lower professional-managerial class. Why should anyone even mildly dislike, much less hate social security? Does this faction just hate old people with the same intensity that they hate blacks, women and gays? I think not: there's something deeper going on.
The fundamental issue, I think, is that the Randian faction of the capitalist ruling class has the idea that they are in charge, or ought to be in charge. They are, after all, the capitalist ruling class. The government, such as it is, should do nothing else but protect their interests, their status. They will take care of the middle and lower classes directly, thank you very much, and see to their moral and economic development as they see fit. Social security deeply subverts this idea: it says we ourselves (i.e. the working and professional classes) will take care of ourselves, and we will use the government directly to provide for our own interests, without the mediation of the capitalist ruling class. The subordinate classes vastly outnumber the ruling class; once we start using the government directly for our own purposes, however benign, it's only a matter of time before we use the government to eliminate the capitalist ruling class completely. The capitalist ruling class, surprisingly enough, is not about to let this happen.
I'm very pessimistic about the current situation. In 1932, the capitalist ruling class, having ruled unopposed for generations, was complacent and unused to serious struggle: all they did — all they needed to do — to respond to the populism, anarchism, socialism and communism of the late 19th and early 20th centuries was to throw money and police at the problems, or stage a great big war (a war won by the capitalist ruling classes in all countries, including Germany). Today, however, the Randian faction of the capitalist ruling class is disciplined and hardened by two generations of a largely successful struggle to regain power. They will not make the same strategic mistakes they made in the 1930's. They will take power: They will make substantial gains in November, and their victory will be complete or nearly so in 2012. (Even if Obama were to win re-election (I predict he won't), he will be rendered impotent or actively co-opted.)
I'm a communist, but I'm not stupid: I can see that the political organization of the Soviet and early* Chinese Communist Parties and their governments was... er... suboptimal. The problem is that the political organization of capitalist ruling class in the United States shares the worst features of the Soviet and early Chinese Communists: lack of transparency, severe barriers to entry, lack of popular accountability, and rigid and unreasoning ideological dogmatism**. And they have proven time and again they are ready, willing and able to use the most severe police powers without compunction to enforce their rule, Constitution or no. The capitalist ruling class and their government is doing and justifying everything we supposedly complained about the commies: torture, indefinite detention without trial, mass arrests and violence against peaceful*** protesters, counterfactual propaganda, wars of aggression and naked imperialism.
*Say what you will about them, but the modern Chinese "communist" party and government are forces to be reckoned with.
**Just look at any "freshwater" graduate school of economics, which not only reject socialism, but dismiss and demonize even "saltwater" capitalist economics. These guys (and yes, they're mostly men) hate Roosevelt and Krugman a thousand times more than they hate Lenin or Castro. Hating small ideological variations more than completely opposing ideologies is a sure sign of unreasoning dogmatism.
**Well, mostly peaceful, and the police responses (cough WTO) have been completely out of proportion to the relatively trivial offenses.
The capitalist ruling class has made a lot of mistakes: they're hardly omnipotent. They might well have grabbed absolute power under Bush and Cheney: I suspect that Bush flinched: his sentimentality and weakness was the only thing that prevented complete despotism. They were obviously not counting on the collapse of the housing bubble and the subsequent recession (without which McCain might have actually won in 2008). But they are growing ever stronger, toughening their will, and improving their discipline and ideological cohesion. They will not repeat their mistakes.
We're in for a long, tough slog over the next century.
The New Deal fundamentally changed the existing laissez faire capitalist system. Important steps were taken to change the social and economic relations between workers and capitalists: the minimum wage, unemployment insurance, social security, high marginal income tax rates, strong labor unions, strict financial regulation, etc. In contrast, the First Imperialist War had a considerable stimulative effect on the U.S. economy, leading to the Roaring Twenties. But without fundamental changes to capitalism, the boom lasted only a little more than a decade before collapsing in the Great Depression. If we did as Krugman et al. suggest and pumped a massive ($2 trillion or more) stimulus into the economy, we'd likely see considerable improvement that might last a decade. But about 10-15 years is as long as we could expect: without fundamental changes to the system, we should expect nothing but for history to repeat itself, and another equally catastrophic crash to occur in the mid 2020's if not sooner.
The important lesson is not just that stimulus can cure even a massive cyclical downturn (and can do wonders, I think, for even structural unemployment) but that capitalism, especially laissez faire capitalism, has structural flaws which cause massive cyclical downturns, flaws that must be corrected at the structural level. And FDR's New Deal did in fact at least begin to correct those flaws. Even the most cursory study of economic history shows that the economy in the 19th and early 20th centuries behaved substantively differently than the economy in the latter half of the 20th century. Cyclical downturns decreased in number and severity; our biggest problem in the 20th century was managing inflation, which was in our case a side effect of having money coming out of our ass: not the worst problem to have.
So the question has to be: what the fuck happened? We fixed the Great Depression, we made many important structural changes to our economic system, and here we are in another catastrophic failure of the capitalist system (which will get worse after the Republicans take the House of Representatives in November). Our first house collapsed in an earthquake, we rebuilt it better and stronger... and then it collapses when someone sneezes. What. The. Fuck!? Seriously!
What happened was that we removed the structural changes in our economic relations we added during the New Deal. Financial regulation is a joke. Labor unions where not entirely absent are owned by the capitalists. The minimum wage has been below the equilibrium wage for a decade or more (and now that it's slightly above the equilibrium wage, it's routinely and easily circumvented). The top marginal income tax rate is not really 35%, it's 15%, i.e. the long-term capital gains tax rate; ultra-wealthy make most of their real money with capital gains. (It's no surprise that hedge fund managers dominate the top earners: their "income" is taxed as long-term capital gains.) Only unemployment insurance and social security remain. Unemployment is running out (and applies to only of the fraction of the unemployed) and our "Democratic" president is at least not resisting (and may be enabling) the dismantling of social security.
Look back at the history. Social security is the foundation of the New Deal structural changes to the economy, and there's been a faction of the capitalist ruling class (and the upper levels of the professional-managerial class) that has not just disliked the idea of social security, but hated it with the burning fury of a thousand white-hot suns. But why? Come on: social security is nothing but the idea that none of our old people — people who have worked all their lives — should actually starve to death. Not only that, but social security is largely paid for by the same people it benefits: the working class and lower professional-managerial class. Why should anyone even mildly dislike, much less hate social security? Does this faction just hate old people with the same intensity that they hate blacks, women and gays? I think not: there's something deeper going on.
The fundamental issue, I think, is that the Randian faction of the capitalist ruling class has the idea that they are in charge, or ought to be in charge. They are, after all, the capitalist ruling class. The government, such as it is, should do nothing else but protect their interests, their status. They will take care of the middle and lower classes directly, thank you very much, and see to their moral and economic development as they see fit. Social security deeply subverts this idea: it says we ourselves (i.e. the working and professional classes) will take care of ourselves, and we will use the government directly to provide for our own interests, without the mediation of the capitalist ruling class. The subordinate classes vastly outnumber the ruling class; once we start using the government directly for our own purposes, however benign, it's only a matter of time before we use the government to eliminate the capitalist ruling class completely. The capitalist ruling class, surprisingly enough, is not about to let this happen.
I'm very pessimistic about the current situation. In 1932, the capitalist ruling class, having ruled unopposed for generations, was complacent and unused to serious struggle: all they did — all they needed to do — to respond to the populism, anarchism, socialism and communism of the late 19th and early 20th centuries was to throw money and police at the problems, or stage a great big war (a war won by the capitalist ruling classes in all countries, including Germany). Today, however, the Randian faction of the capitalist ruling class is disciplined and hardened by two generations of a largely successful struggle to regain power. They will not make the same strategic mistakes they made in the 1930's. They will take power: They will make substantial gains in November, and their victory will be complete or nearly so in 2012. (Even if Obama were to win re-election (I predict he won't), he will be rendered impotent or actively co-opted.)
I'm a communist, but I'm not stupid: I can see that the political organization of the Soviet and early* Chinese Communist Parties and their governments was... er... suboptimal. The problem is that the political organization of capitalist ruling class in the United States shares the worst features of the Soviet and early Chinese Communists: lack of transparency, severe barriers to entry, lack of popular accountability, and rigid and unreasoning ideological dogmatism**. And they have proven time and again they are ready, willing and able to use the most severe police powers without compunction to enforce their rule, Constitution or no. The capitalist ruling class and their government is doing and justifying everything we supposedly complained about the commies: torture, indefinite detention without trial, mass arrests and violence against peaceful*** protesters, counterfactual propaganda, wars of aggression and naked imperialism.
*Say what you will about them, but the modern Chinese "communist" party and government are forces to be reckoned with.
**Just look at any "freshwater" graduate school of economics, which not only reject socialism, but dismiss and demonize even "saltwater" capitalist economics. These guys (and yes, they're mostly men) hate Roosevelt and Krugman a thousand times more than they hate Lenin or Castro. Hating small ideological variations more than completely opposing ideologies is a sure sign of unreasoning dogmatism.
**Well, mostly peaceful, and the police responses (cough WTO) have been completely out of proportion to the relatively trivial offenses.
The capitalist ruling class has made a lot of mistakes: they're hardly omnipotent. They might well have grabbed absolute power under Bush and Cheney: I suspect that Bush flinched: his sentimentality and weakness was the only thing that prevented complete despotism. They were obviously not counting on the collapse of the housing bubble and the subsequent recession (without which McCain might have actually won in 2008). But they are growing ever stronger, toughening their will, and improving their discipline and ideological cohesion. They will not repeat their mistakes.
We're in for a long, tough slog over the next century.
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