Realism in Foreign Policy

Idealism or realism? This is not just a left-right issue, but a deeper issue of values in foreign policy.

Think tanks on both the right and the left tout foreign policy realism, impatient with the demands that the post-war era have placed on the US as the unique, exceptional (and rich) leader of the free and democratic world. Whether from a cost perspective or a peace perspective, backing off from our world-wide commitments and ideals is attractive to many. The current administration has dramatically taken up their banner, reversing US policy, dropping Ukraine, allying with Russia, and ending idealism, generosity and empathy as a elements of foreign policy. What was firmly planted after World War 2 and flowered under John F. Kennedy has now been buried. So, are we great yet?

Where idealism in foreign policy takes up moral crusades, like human rights, women's rights, and global equity, even climate change, realism sticks to power and assumes anarchy, not order, as the natural state of international affairs. Realists sell themselves as hard-headed, unsentimental, and into the bargain, less likely to get us mixed up in wars. The most recent US wars, after all, from Vietnam to Iraq, were all crusades to foster democracy, in one form or other. Better to wash our hands of it all, care less about saving the people of the world, and more about bullying our neighbors to get what we want.

These are not really exclusive approaches, but rather shades of emphasis. The raw power of military and economic kinds is central to both, even if soft power is more of a focus for the idealists. But if you think about it more deeply, even these distinctions fade away, and both approaches end up being idealistic, just differing in the ideals they vaunt. The current administration clearly has its ideals- of Putin, Victor Orban, and authoritarianism ascendant world-wide. Its lack of empathy is not realism, it is a crabbed idealism- that of the rich and powerful lording it over the masses, both domestically and internationally.  

International power is composed of many things. But mostly, it is made up of relationships multiplied by technological capabilities. Two people can always overpower one person, and the same is true internationally. Bigger countries can field bigger armies. Bigger countries can field more researchers and manufacturers to arm those people with better weapons. Alliances between countries can make even more menacing combinations. 

It is, at base, social relationships that create power, and this is where realism really falls down. If one's ideal is transactional and bullying, worshipping power and taking a small-minded and greedy approach to international affairs, (that is to say, a zero-sum approach), then one will find that the few friends one has are fair-weather friends of convenience. Alliances between such partners frequently fall apart and re-arrange, creating the extremely dangerous environment conducive to major wars. Relationships are fungible and disposable. Europe had a long balance-of-power phase in the 1800's after the Napoleonic wars, until it collapsed in the 1900's in cataclysmic world wars, thanks in both cases to unstable alliance structures, not to mention authoritarian manias. The post-World War 2 era, the one we are witnessing the collapse of right now, was founded on something much more stable- true friendship and shared ideals of democracy. 

One can reply that helping the weak defend themselves against the strong is a sure recipe for entanglement in a lot of wars. Our involvement (up to now) in Ukraine is a case in point. We encouraged Ukraine to pursue a democratic path, thwarting Russia's clear and stated interests. And then we got dragged into this cataclysmic war. Why not side with the strong against the weak, instead? Wouldn't that make for a more stable world? Well, at some point we may be the weak one, not the strong one. What then? In the ever-shifting constellation of international alliances in a transactional, "realistic" world, there is no telling what tomorrow may bring, since values are not anchored in natural friendship or sympathy, but in naked interests, which are subject to rapid adjustment and negotiation. The disastrous Ribbentrop-Molotov pact comes to mind, as an example of such "realistic" foreign policy.

That is not a good world to live in, even if it has represented most of history. Realists may be right that their view is the mafia-like baseline of international relations, devoid of any human values and run on a power basis. Well, we can do better, both morally and objectively. That is what the last eighty years of international relations were all about. They were about setting up an international system where big countries at least tried to cloak their leadership in common interests, progress, and values. Where there was order, of some basic sort, which led to prosperity and security. And the Soviets bought into it as well, trying desperately to sell their adventures as standing for some kind of progressive, pro-worker ideology. Which lasted all the way to the end of the cold war, till its contradictions had grown too glaring. The US-led system has had its contradictions and hypocrisies as well, but the latest leap into the authoritarian camp is hardly fore-ordained or natural to our traditions.

Now, it looks like Winter is Coming. If the US forcibly devolves the international system into a value-less scramble for power, no one can rely on, or be satisfied with, stable friendships, so the system will be in greater flux, as powers test each other. When friendships are devalued, what is left but competition, such as trade wars, causing general destruction, and eventually desperate measures to regain relative power. 

• The policy is plain.
• Social insecurity.
• Nothing strategic about it.
• Wells on the pandemic. For me, the remarkable memory is how little we collectively knew about the simplest things- masks, aerosols, surfaces. That was inexcusable.

Impeachment is Inevitable

Whether congress wants to or not, it will be forced to defend its role in government.

Looking out over the incredible destruction the new president has already wrought at home and abroad, it is hard to see this continuing for a full four-year term. There is a honeymoon now, and a shock campaign. There is delirium in hard-right circles that their fondest dreams of rampant chaos in the bureaucracy, with racism and fascism ascendant, are coming true. But there will come a time when the costs begin to appear, the appetite for dysfunction will wane, and the tide turns. Congress has small Republican margins, and it won't take many members to face up to our rapidly expanding constitutional crisis.

Maybe I am spinning a fantasy here, but one thing seems certain. The current president is constitutionally (pardon the expression) unable to follow directions. His oath of office was barely out of his mouth before he started violating the constitution and running roughshod over the explicit authorizations and appropriations of Congress. Not to mention direct assertions that the constitution doesn't mean what it plainly says, about birthright citizenship. This is not going to stop, and the only way our system of government is going to survive is that the other branches, specifically congress, use their powerful tools to reset the balance.

Article 2

Harder to judge are the attitudes of the congresspeople who are on the spot. The Republicans have largely rolled over in approving the first, abysmal slate of cabinet nominees. Again, there is a honeymoon of sorts. Party discipline is particularly strong on the conservative side, and the president has eagerly used his tools of intimidation and hatred to obtain obedience. So it is hard to say when they will crack. But as the functions of government degrade, the country is laughed at and reviled around the world, the economic damage accumulates, and constituents line up to complain, the equation will change. And anyhow, they would merely be elevating the vice president, who is hardly an opponent of their ideological aims, and is part of the Senate community (however disliked on both sides). So impeachment becomes a much less imposing action than it might otherwise be. 

As they say, the third time's the charm!

• Presidents day.
• Oh the irony. Science comes up with a vaccine that saves millions, who turn into idiots.

The Climate is Changing

Fires in LA, and a puff of smoke in DC.

An ill wind has blown into Washington, a government of whim and spite, eager to send out the winged monkeys to spread fear and kidnap the unfortunate. The order of the day is anything that dismays the little people. The wicked witch will probably have melted away by the time his most grievous actions come to their inevitable fruition, of besmirching and belittling our country, and impoverishing the world. Much may pass without too much harm, but the climate catastrophe is already here, burning many out of their homes, as though they were made of straw. Immoral and spiteful contrariness on this front will reap the judgement and hatred of future generations.

But hasn't the biosphere and the climate always been in flux? Such is the awful refrain from the right, in a heartless conservatism that parrots greedy, mindless propaganda. In truth, Earth has been blessed with slowness. The tectonic plates make glaciers look like race cars, and the slow dance of Earth's geology has ruled the evolution of life over the eons, allowing precious time for incredible biological diversification that covers the globe with its lush results.

A stretch of relatively unbroken rain forest, in the Amazon.

Past crises on earth have been instructive. Two of the worst were the end-Permian extinction event, about 252 million years ago (mya), and the end-Cretaceous extinction event, about 66 mya. The latter was caused by a meteor, so was a very sudden event- a shock to the whole biosphere. Following the initial impact and global fire, it is thought to have raised sun-shielding dust and sulfur, with possible acidification, lasting for years. However, it did not have very large effects on CO2, the main climate-influencing gas.

On the other hand, the end-Permian extinction event, which was significantly more severe than the end-Cretaceous event, was a more gradual affair, caused by intense volcanic eruptions in what is now Siberia. Recent findings show that this was a huge CO2 event, turning the climate of Earth upside down. CO2 went from about 400 ppm, roughly what we are at currently, to 2500 ppm. The only habitable regions were the poles, while the tropics were all desert. But the kicker is that this happened over the surprisingly short (geologically speaking) time of about 80,000 years. CO2 then stayed high for the next roughly 400,00 years, before returning slowly to its former equilibrium. This rate of rise was roughly 2.7 ppm per 100 years, yet that change killed off 90% of all life on Earth. 

The momentous analysis of the end-Permian extinction event, in terms of CO2, species, and other geological markers, including sea surface temperature (SST). This paper was when the geological brevity of the event was first revealed.

Compare this to our current trajectory, where atmospheric CO2 has risen from about 280 ppm at the dawn of the industrial age to 420 ppm now. That is rate of maybe 100 ppm per 100 years, and rising steeply. It is a rate far too high for many species, and certainly the process of evolution itself, to keep up with, tuned as it is to geologic time. As yet, this Anthropocene extinction event is not quite at the level of either the end-Permian or end-Cretaceous events. But we are getting there, going way faster than the former, and creating a more CO2-based long-term climate mess than the latter. While we may hope to forestall nuclear war and thus a closer approximation to the end-Cretaceous event, it is not looking good for the biosphere, purely from a CO2 and warming perspective, putting aside the many other plagues we have unleashed including invasive species, pervasive pollution by fertilizers, plastics and other forever chemicals, and the commandeering of all the best land for farming, urbanization, and other unnatural uses. 

CO2 concentrations, along with emissions, over recent time.

We are truly out of Eden now, and the only question is whether we have the social, spiritual, and political capacity to face up to it. For the moment, obviously not. Something disturbed about our media landscape, and perhaps our culture generally, has sent us for succor, not to the Wizard who makes things better, but to the Wicked Witch of the East, who delights in lies, cruelty and destruction.

• The oligarchy is upon us. Oh, and they will help the working class!
• The attention economy.
• Which distorts our public understandings.
• Good coverage will never win in the attention economy.
• Keep Greenland white!

A Housing Guarantee

A proposal for an updated poor house.

I agree with MMT economists who propose a job guarantee. That would put a floor on the labor market with an offer to anyone who wants to work for a low, but living wage, probably set below the minimum wage mandated for the private sector. State and local governments would run cleanups, environmental restoration, and care operations as needed, requiring basic discipline and effort, but no further skills. But they could use higher skilled workers as they come along for more beneficial, complex tasks.

Similarly, I think we could offer a housing guarantee, putting a floor on homelessness and misery. In the state of California, homelessness is out of control, and we have not found solutions, despite a great deal of money spent. Housing in the private market is extremely expensive, far out of reach of those with even median incomes. The next level down is housing vouchers and public housing, of which there are not enough to go around, and which is extremely expensive. And below that are shelters, which are heavily adverse settings. They are not private, chaotic, unpleasant, meant to be temporary, can be closed much of the time. And they also do not have enough space. 

A local encampment, temporarily approved during the pandemic under the freeway.

As uncompassionate as it sounds, it is unacceptable, and should be illegal, for public spaces to be commandeered by the homeless for their private needs. Public spaces have many purposes, specifically not including squatting and vagrancy. It is a problem in urban areas, because that is where people are, and where many services exist at the intersection of public and private spaces- food, bathrooms, opportunities to beg, get drugs, etc. Just because we have been, as governments and citizens, neglectful of our public spaces, does not mean we should give them over to anyone who wants to camp on them. I was recently at San Francisco city hall and the beautiful park surrounding it. But at lunch time, I realized that there was nowhere to sit. The plague of homelessness had rendered park benches untenable. We deserve to keep these public spaces functional, and that means outlawing the use of public spaces by the homeless. At the same time, provision must be made for the homeless, who by this policy would have nowhere to go in fully zoned areas. Putting them on busses to the next town, as some jurisdictions do, is also not a solution. As a rich country, we can do more for the homeless even while we preserve public spaces.

I think we need to rethink the whole lower end of housing / shelter to make it a more regular, accessible, and acceptable way to catch those who need housing at a very basic level. The model would be a sort of cross between a hostel, an SRO (single room occupancy hotels) and army barracks. It would be publicly funded, and provide a private room as well as food, all for free. It would not throw people out, or lock them in.

This poor house would not demand work, though it would offer centralized services for finding jobs and other places to live. It would be open to anyone, including runaway teens, battered women, tourists, etc. It would be a refuge for anyone for any reason, on an unlimited basis. The space and the food would be very basic, motivating clients to seek better accommodation. It would be well-policed and its clients would have to behave themselves. The next step down in the ladder of indigent care would not be homelessness, which would be outlawed in areas offering this kind of poorhouse, but would be institutionalization, in increasingly stringent settings for either criminal or mental issues. 

Such a poor house might become a community center, at least for the indigent. It would be quite expensive, but given the level of inequality and lack of care for people in various desperate straits, we need to furnish a humane level of existence between the market housing system and institutionalization. Why not give everyone a house? That is neither financially practical, nor would that co-exist well with the market housing system. Certainly, more housing needs to be built and everything done to bring prices down. But to address the current issues, stronger housing policy is needed.

Why not go back to a public housing model? It turned out that public housing was somewhat unrealistic, promising far more than it could deliver. It promised fully functional neighborhoods and housing, pretty much the equivalent of market housing, but without the ongoing discipline from the market via private financial responsibility by the residents or from the programs via their bureaucratic structures and funding, to follow through on the long term. The public authorities generally took a hands-off approach to residents and their environment, in line with the (respectful) illusion that this was the equivalent of market housing. And the long-term is what counts in housing, since it is ever in need of repair and renovation, not to mention careful use and protection by its residents. Building is one thing, but maintaining is something quite different, and requires carefully though-out incentives. 

With a public poorhouse model, the premises and residents are extensively policed. Individual rooms may descend to squalor, but the whole is built, run and maintained by the public authorities with intensive surveillance and intervention, keeping the institution as a whole functioning and growing as needed for its mission. There is going to be a sliding scale of freedom vs public involvement via financing and policing. The less functional a person is, the more control they will have to accept. We can not wash our hands of the homeless by granting them "freedom" to thrash about in squalor and make dumps of public spaces.

• Or you could join the squid game.
• Economic policy should not be about efficiency alone, let alone rewarding capital and management, but about long-term cultural and environmental sustainability.
• Could AI do biology?
• Carter was an evangelical. But that was a different time.

Money For Nothing: Two Views of Crypto

Is crypto more like gold or a simple scam?

I have to confess some perplexity over crypto. Billed as currencies, they are not currencies. Billed as securities, they are not securities, either. They excite a weird kind of enthusiasm in libertarian circles, in dreams of asocial (if not anti-social) finance. From a matter of fringe speculation, they are migrating into the culture at large, influencing our politics, and becoming significant economic actors, with a combined market cap now over three trillion dollars. For me, there are two basic frames for thinking about crypto. One is that they are like gold, an intrinsically worthless, but attractive object of fascination, wealth storage, and speculation. The other is that they are straight Ponzi schemes, rising by a greater-fool process that will end in tears.

Currencies are forms of money with particular characteristics. They are widely used among a region or population, stable in value, and easy to store and exchange. They are typically sponsored by a government to ensure that stability and acceptance. This is done in part by specifying that currency for incoming taxes and outgoing vendor and salary payments. They are also, in modern systems, managed elastically, (and intelligently!), with ongoing currency creation to match economic growth and keep the nominal value stable over time. Crypto entities would like to be currencies. However, they have far from stable value, are not easy to work with, and are not widely used. Securities, on the other hand, have a basis in some kind of collateral (i.e. the "security" part) like business ownership, a contract of bond interest payments, etc. Crypto does not have this either. Crypto has only its own scarcity to offer, a bit like cowrie shells, or gold. Crypto entities are not investments in productive activity. Indeed, they foster the opposite, as their only solid use case has been, at least to date, facilitating crime, as demonstrated by the ransomware industry, which asks to be paid in Bitcoin.

So how about gold? Keynes railed against gold as the most useless, barbaric form of wealth, inducing people to dig holes in the earth and cause environmental degradation. And for what? A shiny substance that looks good, and is useful in a few industrial applications, but mostly was, at the time, held by governments in huge vaults, notionally underpinning their currency values. Thankfully we are past that, but gold still holds fascination, and persists as a store of value. Gold can be held in electronic forms, making it just as easy to hold and transfer as crypto entities, if one is so-inclined. Critically, however, gold is also physical, and humanity's fascination with it is innate and enduring. Thus, after the apocalypse, when the electricity is off and the computers are not connected anymore, gold will still be there, ready to serve as money when crypto has evaporated away. 

Bitcoin barely recovered from an early crisis. 

How durable is the fascination with crypto, as a store of wealth, or for any other purpose, under modern, non-apocalyptic conditions? Bitcoin is the grand-daddy of the field, and seems to have achieved dominance, certainly the field of criminal money laundering and transfer, as well as libertarian speculation. It appears to have a special mystique, whether from the blockchain, its "mining" system, or its mysterious pseudonymous founder. The other forms of crypto range from respectible to passing memes. There is a fascinating competition in the attention space that constitutes the crypto markets. Since they do not have intrinsic value, nor governmental buy-in, they float entirely on buyer sentiment, in a greater-fool cycle of rises and falls. Crashes in the stock market are halted by fundamental value of the underlying asset. As the speculative fervor wanes, vultures step in to, at worst, liquidate the assets. But for crypto, there are no assets. No fundamental value. So crashes can and do go to zero.

There are also external factors, like the fact that many crypto entities have been outright scams, or the environmental costs of Bitcoin, or their facilitation of criminality, which may eventually draw popular and regulatory scrutiny. Boosters have been trying to get the Federal Reserve and other validating entities to buy into the crypto craze, and political contributions from newly crypto-riche holders and exchanges have transformed the landscape to one that seems increasingly sympathetic, especially on the Republican side. Thankfully, the smaller memecoins have market caps in the low millions, so do not present a threat as yet to the financial system, in the almost certain event of their evaporation once each meme passes. This blasé acceptance of "securities" that are pure schemes of speculation is a sad commentary on our current age. The sophisticated investor of today would not study corporate efficiency, market prospects, or finances. He or she would be conversant in current memes on social media, ready to jump on the newest one, and sensitive to the withering of older memes, in an endless conveyor belt of booms and busts. 

It is weird how people fail to learn the lessons of the past, from the tulip craze and other speculative booms. Where there is no value, there is likely to be a very deep crash. The libertarians among us, who may have been gold bugs in the past and now have flocked to the new world of crypto, may represent a psychological type that is ineradicable, so motivated to ditch the humdrum official currency for anything that offers a whiff of notional independence, (though being tethered to the new crypto infrastructure of exchanges and wallets is not for the faint of heart or independent-minded), that they can float these crypto entities indefinitely. But in the absence of deeper value, might their psychologies change to those of hawkers who get in at the ground floor and make out, while the schlubs who buy at the top are left holding the bag? It comes down to human psychology in the end- what is personally and socially valuable, who you think your counterparts are on the other ends of all these trades, and who (and what sort of motivation) is making up the institutions and communities of crypto.

• Star Trek was fighting the cold war.

Capitalism on the Spectrum

Prospects for the new administration.

Political economics can be seen as a spectrum from anarchic gangsterism (Haiti) to total top down control such as in communism (Cuba, North Korea). Neither works well. Each end of this spectrum ends up in a state of terror, because each is unworkable on its own terms. Capitalism, in its modern form, is a compromise between these extremes, where free initiative, competition, and hierarchical relations (such within corporations) are allowed, while regulation (via the state and unions) makes humane what would otherwise a cutthroat system of gangsterism and corruption. The organization and stability allowed by state-sponsored legal systems raises system productivity far above that of the primeval free-for-all, while the regulatory rules also make it bearable to its participants- principally the workers. The magic comes from a dynamic balance between competition and guardrails to keep that competition focused on productive ends (that is, economic/business competition), rather than unproductive ones (war, assassination, corruption, capture of the state, etc.)

The new Trump administration promises to tear up this compromise, slash regulations, and cut government. That means that the workers that voted for this administration, and who are the primary beneficiaries of the regulatory state, will be hurt in countless ways. The grifting nature of so many in this incoming administration is a blazing alarm to anyone who pays attention. Whether it is stiffing workers, bloviating on FOX, hawking gold sneakers, making a buck off of anti-vax gullibility, defrauding the government of taxes, promoting crypto, or frankly asking for money in return for political favors like petroleum deregulation, the stench of corruption and bad faith is overwhelming. Many of them, starting from the top, see capitalism as a string of scams and frauds, not exactly Milton Friedman's vision of capitalism. An administration of grifty billionaires is unlikely to rebuild US manufacturing, help workers afford housing, or fulfill any of the other dreams of their voters. Indeed, a massive economic collapse, on the heels of bad policy such as crypto deregulation, or a world-spanning trade war, is more likely, and degraded conditions for workers all but certain.

Freedom for capitalists means permission for companies to abuse workers, customers, the environment, the law, and whatever else stands in the way of profit. We have been through this many times, especially in the gilded age. It can spiral into anarchy and violence when business owners are sufficiently "free" from the fetters of norms and laws. When the most powerful entities in the economy have only one purpose- to make money- all other values are trampled. That is, unless a stronger entity makes some rules. That entity can only be the government. It has been the role of governments from time immemorial to look to the long term interests of the collective, and organize the inherent competition within society into benign and productive pursuits.

OK, more than a little ironic, but you get the idea.

On the other hand, there is a problem even at the golden mean of governmental rule-making over the capitalistic free-for-all, which is that the quality of the rule makers and their rules, their attention to real conditions, and their prompt decision making, all can decline into bureaucratic inertia. While this may not be a Stalinist system of top-down planning and terror, it still can sap the productive energies of the system. And that is what we have been facing over the last few decades. For instance, there is the housing crisis, where home construction has not kept up with demand, mostly due to zoning stasis in most desirable places in the US, in addition to lagging construction after the 2008 financial and real estate crisis. Another example is public infrastructure, which has become increasingly difficult to build due to ever-mounting bureaucratic complexity and numbers of stakeholders. The California high speed rail system faces mountainous costs and a bogged-down legal environment, and is on the edge of complete inviability.

Putting rich, corrupt, and occasionally criminal capitalists at the head of this system is not, one must say, the most obvious way to fix it. Ideally, the Democrats would have put forward more innovative candidates in better touch with the problems voters were evidently concerned with. Then we could have forged ahead with policies oriented to the public good, (such as planetary sustainability and worker rights), as has been the practice through the Biden administration. But the election came up with a different solution, one that we will be paying for for decades. And possibly far worse, since there are worse fates than being at a well-meaning, if sclerotic, golden mean of governmental regulation over a largely free capitalist system. Hungary and Russia show the way to "managed democracy" and eventual autocracy. Our own history, and that of Dickensian Britain, show the way of uncontrolled capitalism, which took decades of progressivism, and a great depression, to finally tame. It would be nice to not have to repeat that history.

• Daniel P. Moynihan was for the job guarantee.
• Housing in New Zealand.
• Nature's key scientists of 2024.
• A grumpy Krugman signs off.
• Notes on crypto and its grifting community.
• Who is for workers?
• MAGA to kill off the greatest public health advance, ever.

To the Stars!

Reviews of "Making it So", by Patrick Stewart, and "The Silent Star" from DEFA films.

When I think about religion, I usually think about how wrong it all is. But at the same time, it has provided a narrative structure for much of humanity and much of human history, for better or worse. It could be regarded as the original science fiction, with its miracles, and reports of supernatural beings and powers. Both testaments of the Bible read like wonder tales of strange happenings and hopeful portents. While theology might take the heavenly beings and weird powers seriously, it is obvious these were mere philosophical gropings after the true gears of the world, while the core of the stories are the human narratives of conflict, adversity, and morality.

In our epoch features a welter of storytelling, typically more commercially desperate than culturally binding. But one story has risen above the rest- the world of Star Trek. From its cold war beginnings, it has blossomed into a rich world of morality tales combined with hopeful adventure and mild drama. The delightful recent autobiography by Patrick Stewart brought this all back in a new way. Looking at the franchise from the inside out, from the perspective of a professional actor who was certainly dedicated to his craft, but hardly a fan of the franchise- someone for whom this was just another role, if one that made him an international, nay galactic, star- was deeply interesting. Even engaging(!)

As a Shakespearean actor, Stewart was used to dealing with beloved, culturally pivotal stories. And this one has become a touchstone in Western culture, supplying some of the models and glue that have gone missing with the increasing irrelevance of religion. It is fascinating how heavily people depend on stories for a sense of what it should, can, and does mean to be human, for models of leadership and community. Star Trek, at least for a certain segment of the population, has provided a hopeful, interesting vision of the future, with well-reasoned moral dramas and judgments. Stewart embodied the kind of leadership style that was influential far beyond the confines of Starfleet. And his deeply engaged acting helped carry the show, as that of Leonard Nimoy had taken the original series beyond its action/adventure roots.

Where the narrative of Christianity is obscurantist, blusteringly uncertain how seriously to take its own story, and focused on the occasional miracles of long-ago, Star Trek values the future, problem solving and science, while it makes little pretense of realism. On the other hand, it is fundamentally a workplace drama, eliding many important facets of humanity, like family and scarcity. Though in the Star Trek world money is worthless and abundance is the rule, posts on starships remain in short supply. There always will be shortages of something, given human greed and narcissism, so there is always going to be something subject to competition, economics, possibly warfare. Christianity hinges on preaching and conversion, based on rather mysterious, if supposedly self-serving, personal convictions. Its vision of the future is, frankly, quite frightening. Star Trek, on the other hand, shows openness to other cultures, diplomacy, and sharing in its eschatological version of the American empire, the Federation. (Even if they get into an inordinate number of fights with un-enlightened cultures.)

The Star Trek story is so strong that it keeps motivating people to make spaceships. Just look at Elon Musk, who, despite the glaringly defective logic of sending humans to Mars, persists in that dream, as does NASA itself. It is a classic case of archetypal yearnings overwhelming common sense, not to mention clear science. But that is a small price to pay for the many other benefits of the Star Trek-style world view- one where different cultures and races get along, where solving problems and seeking knowledge are the highest pursuits, where leadership is judicious and respectful, and humans know what they stand for.

In a similar vein, the Soviets, who led humanity into space, had their own fixations and narratives of space and the future. I recently watched the fascinating movie from the East German DEFA studios, The Silent Star, (1960), which portrays a voyage to Venus. It strikingly prefigures the entire Star Trek oeuvre. There are the scientists on board, the handsome captain, the black communications officer, the international crew from all corners of the earth, the shuttle craft, the talking computer, the communications that keep breaking up, and the space ship that rattles through asteroid fields, jostling the crew. While there are several pointed comments on the American bombing of Hiroshima to set the geopolitical contrast, there is, overall, the absolute optimism that all problems can be solved, and that adventuring to seek the truth is unquestionably the most exciting way to live. One gets the distinct sense that Star Trek was not so original after all.

It was time when technology had pried open the heavens for direct investigation, and what humanity found there was stunningly unlike what had been foretold in the scriptures. It was a vast and empty wasteland, dotted with dead planets and lacking any hint of deities. We had to create an alternative narrative, with warp drive and M-class planets, where humans could recover a sense of agency and engagement with a future that remains tantalizing, even if sober heads know it is as wishful as it is fictional. It is the story, however, that is significant, in its power to give us the fortitude to go forth, not out among the stars, but into a better, more decent community here on earth.

• The long Soviet fixation on Venus.
• The Star Trek that could have been.
• Some atheist cinema is, however, not so great.
• Biden's economic policies have been very good.
• Wrong. Vaccines did the work.
• We could have really stood with Ukraine.

Hubris, Terror, and Disaster in Afghanistan

Review of "The American War in Afghanistan", by Carter Malkasian.

This book is a nightmare to read. It records one bad decision after the next, through two decades of a slow-moving debacle. Should we have invaded at all? Should we have set up a puppet government? Should we have let the mission expand to incredible society-changing scope? Should we have built a sustainable Afghan military? Could any government have stood up to the Taliban? A million questions and pointed fingers follow such a comprehensive loss. Each of the four Presidents who presided over the war made grievous errors, and tried to muddle through the resulting quagmire, until Biden finally threw in the towel.

In the end, even Mullah Omar reportedly considered whether it had been wise to refuse the US demand to turn over or turn against Bin Laden and Al Qaeda. It is a poignant coda to a national tragedy. But what could we have done differently? I will divide this question into several areas, including mission creep, Islam and the Taliban, the Afghan army, and the Afghan government. At the very outset there was a sad narcissistic paradox, in the "war on terror". War is terrorism, pure and simple. The idea that others are terrorists, and that we are not when we drop bombs on them, is a curious, but typical bit of American exceptionalism. Our whole adventure in Afghanistan was colored by the vast gulf in how we saw ourselves (righteous, moral, good), and how Afghans saw us (depraved infidels who violated every norm of civilized behavior).

Mission Creep

It is startling to look back at the progression of our goals in Afghanistan. First, we asked them to give up Al Qaeda. Then we overthrew the Taliban government and installed a new one. Then we sought to establish a democracy. Then we sought to hunt down not just Al Qaeda, but also the Taliban- the former government and a significant cultural and Islamic movement. Then we sought to advance women's rights, fight corruption, and set up a competent government and army. All these things were desirable, but replicated what we could not accomplish in either Vietnam or in Iraq, working with similarly bad partners. Contrast this with our occupations of Germany and Japan, where we put a few of the former leaders on trial, policed with a pretty light touch, kept political development local at first, and concentrated on economic reconstruction. While the cultural alignments were obviously much closer, that should have moderated our ambitions in Afghanistan, not, as it happened, stimulated them progressively to "civilize" the Afghans. This is especially true when the national will and funding to deal with Afghanistan was so impaired by the Bush administration's adventure in Iraq, and later by the tortured path of Afghanistan itself. It is somewhat reminiscent of the defeat the Democrats experienced in the recent elections- a party that got a little overextended in its missions to affirm every virtue, identity and interest group, far beyond the core issues.

Islam

That Afghanistan is an Islamic country is and was no mystery, but that did not seem to get through to those setting up our progressively more invasive policies, or the new government. Poll after poll found that the Taliban had continuing support, and if not support, at least respect, because they were seen as truly Islamic, while the government we installed was not. Malkasian points out that as religious scholars, the Taliban tended to not be infected by the fissiparous tribal conflicts of Afghanistan, which Hamid Karzai, in contrast, tended to encourage. This also led the Taliban to nurture a very strong hierarchical structure, (patterned on madrassa practices), also unusual elsewhere in Afghan society. These three properties gave them incredible morale and sway with the population, even as they were terrorizing them with night letters, assassinations, suicide bombings, and other mayhem. As long as the government represented the infidel, and however well-intentioned that infidel was, the population, including the police and army, would be reluctant supporters.

The only way around all this would have been to allow one of the Northern Alliance leaders to take control of the country after they helped defeat the Taliban, and then get the hell out. But this would have invited another civil war, continuing the awful civil war Afghanistan suffered through before the Taliban rose to power. The deep conflict between the Pashtuns and the northern Tajiks, Uzbeks and other groups would never have allowed a stable government to be established under these fluid conditions, not under the Tajiks. So we came up with the magic solution, to appoint a Pashtun as president, over a nominally democratic system, but with US support that, instead of tapering off over time, rose and rose, until we got to the surge, a decade into our occupation, with over a 100,000 US soldiers.

That was never going to win any popularity contests, even if it did put the Taliban on the back foot militarily. Why was the government never seen as truly Islamic? Malkasian does not explain this in detail, but in Afghan eyes, more tuned to the US as foreign infidels than to the formal conditions of Islamic jurisprudence, the question answers itself. Democracy is not inherently un-Islamic. Consultative bodies that advise the leadership are explicitly provided. Whether they promote women's rights, or accept foreign soldiers, night raids, and legal immunity of foreigners is quite a different matter, however. Whatever the form of the government, its obvious dependence on the US, as painfully illustrated by Karzai's incessant and futile complaints about US military transgressions, was the only evidence needed that the Afghan government was, in popular terms, un-Islamic. It was the same conundrum we experienced in Vietnam- how to be a dominant military partner to a government that had at best a tenuous hold on the affections of the populace, which were in turn poisoned by that very dependence? It is an impossible dilemma, unless the occupying power is ruthless enough to terrorize everyone into submission- not our style, at least not after our dalliance in the Philippines.

The Armed Forces

Because the government never managed to get true popular support, its armed forces were hobbled by low morale and corruption. Armies and police forces are only expressions of the political landscape. Afghans are, as the Taliban shows, perfectly capable of fighting, of organizing themselves, and of knowing which way the wind blows. The army dissolved when faced with its true test. The most powerful solution would clearly have been to have a more effective and popular government that either included or sidelined the Taliban. But could there have technical solutions as well?

The air force was emblematic. The US experience in Afghanistan from start to finish showed the immense power of air attacks, when combined with ground forces. So we planned for an Afghan air force. But we seem to have planned for a force that could not maintain its own equipment, relying in perpetuity on Western contractors. Nor was the selection of assets well-organized. The Afghans mostly needed close air support craft, like attack helicopters and A10 gunships. They should have focused on a very few models that they could fully sustain, with financial and parts support from the US. But that assumes that the US, and the Afghan government, had more thoughtful long-range planning than actually existed.

Always a difficult relationship

The Government

Apart from being seen as a puppet and un-Islamic, the government was riven with tribal and regional conflicts. Karzai spent most of his time managing and trying to win tribal contests. Malkasian repeatedly shows how major decisions and mental energy went into these issues, to the exclusion of attention to the armed forces, or the resurgent Taliban, or resolving corruption, among much else. 

Overall, however, the main issue was that the US installed a top-down quasi-democracy without giving the people true power. Unlike the local political reconstruction in the post-WW2 occupations, let alone our own system, the new Afghan government was explicitly centralized, with provincial and district heads appointed by Karzai. Karzai was really the new king of Afghanistan, more or less foisted on the country, though he had a significant amount of national credibility. There was a great deal of effort to sell this to the people as democracy, and foster "communication" and collaboration, and buy-in, but the people were never allowed into a true federal system with full electoral control of their local districts. Perhaps this was done for good reason, both from the monarchical Afghan tradition, and in light of the strong tribal tensions frequently at work. But it sapped the mutual support / accountability between the people and their government.

Karzai himself broached the idea of bringing Taliban into the system early on, but was rebuffed by the US. We went on to lump the Taliban in with the other "terrorists", and they, like Ho Chi Minh, used their natural legitimacy (with enormous helpings of terror, suicide bombings, and other guerilla tactics .. yes, terrorism again!) to eventually get the upper hand. How much better it would have been to have drawn a relatively generous line against allowing the former Taliban top echelon into official capacities, suppress militias and all forms of political violence, and let the rest re-integrate and participate in a truly ground-up federal system? It was those excluded from the system who holed up in Pakistan, seethed with resentment, and organized the return to power that started in earnest in 2005/2006. The Taliban may have been a bad government and in bed with Al Qaeda and the rest of it. They were not particularly popular with people in many areas of the country. But they were also very nationalistic, highly Islamic, and made up a fair slice of Afghanistan's educated demographic. 

A common theme through all these issues is American hubris, and lack of listening / empathy / respect for / understanding of local conditions. We insisted on making the Taliban the enemy, then insisted on rooting them out through night raids, Guantanamo imprisonment, exile to Pakistan, and other degradations. And were frequently getting fraudulent intelligence to base it all on. We thought that more military power, and more money, would get what we wanted. But what we wanted was Afghans to want to work on behalf of their own country in a free, stable, and prosperous system. How could that system be built on our money and blood? It couldn't. I had to be built by the Afghans, in their own way.

• Global leadership is in play.
• Private jets are abominable. Gas taxes, anyone?
• The planet simply can not take it.
• Meritocracy... good or bad? I would offer that is a lot better than the alternative. But can it be improved?
• Drilling for the climate: geothermal power is coming along, at large scale.

Jews Demand Signs and Greeks Look for Wisdom, but We Preach Christ Crucified

Review of God of the Mind, by Rob Haskell

This blog had its start in a religious discussion, pitting a Christian perspective against an atheist one. That discussion never ended because these viewpoints inevitably talk past each other, based as they are on fundamentally different epistemologies and axioms. Is truth facts, or is it a person? Does it have a capital "T", or a little "t"? Does reality come first, or does faith? With this election, this conflict, usually politely ignorable at the cultural sidelines, has come front and center, as half the country has transferred a Christian style of reasoning to politics, with catastrophic consequences.

I very much wish I had had this book by Rob Haskell back in the day. It lays out in a concise and thorough way all (well, let's say many of) the philosophical and psychological deficiencies of god-belief. It is hands-down the best discussion I have ever read on the subject- well-written, with humor and incisive insight. For example, he provides the bible quote that I have used to title this post, in a discussion of Christianity's approach to reason and intellect. While reams of theology support Christianity with reasons, at the end of the day, any honest theologian and Christian thinker will say that reason doesn't get you there. Faith needs to come first. Only then does all else follow. And this "all" is laced with superstition, suspension of normal rules of evidence, submission to authority, and a need to convert the whole world to the same system of belief. It is, implicitly, a preference for unity and power over truth. No wonder they were marks for the charismatic authority of Donald Trump.

One of the most disturbing aspects of the whole debate is the moralism that creeps into what is ostensibly a reasoned discussion of viewpoints and philosophy. If one does not accept god, Christians have been taught to believe that there is a reason. Not a logical reason, but a moral reason. Depravity is a word that comes up. Lack of belief betrays a moral failure, because god is the foundation of all moral law (those twelve commandments!). Those outside the fold merely want their false freedom to enjoy debauchery and crime, without the nagging conscience, which is apparently implanted not by god at birth, (let alone by evolution, or by moral reasoning), but by regular sermons, loudly professed faith, and bible reading. A bible, we might note, that is full of militarism, sexual abuse, deceit, and political authoritarianism. The whole proposition is absurd, from the ground up, unless, of course, you are of the religious tribe, in which case it has an irresistible logic and allure.

No wonder Christians feel good, right, and justified. And feel a birthright to rule over all, to claim that the US is (or should be) a Christian nation. One where resistance to its moral imperatives would, at last, be futile.

But here we are, getting off track! Rob Haskell is a former protestant missionary and minister, graduate of Regent College, and came to his new positions through deep personal engagement and turmoil. He knows intimately of which he speaks. An interesting aspect of his book is that he is almost more focused on psychology than on philosophy. For it is psychology that drives religious conversion, drives people to prostrate themselves before the void, and drives a faith that calls itself truth. Without the indoctrination by families, for example, no religion would amount to much- certainly not Christianity. And indoctrination of the young is obviously a highly irrational process, combining the most powerful psychological forces known- peer pressure, parental pressure, authority, tradition, community, repetition, fancy costumes. Who could resist? And yet Christians have no problem claiming that the result of all this is belief in truth, with a capital T. 

Haskell recounts an educational experience he had inviting Mormon missionaries to an extended discussion of why he should take up Mormonism. They tout the book of Mormon, which Haskell knows very well is a absurd fabric of early nineteenth century prejudices and speculations. They tout the archeological work a few believers have undertaken to prove their scripture, which is highly dubious, to say the least. But at last, when reason fails and argument slackens, Haskell is urged to pray. Pray hard enough, and the light is sure to shine. And for Mormons, brought up with all the pressures and templates ready-made for their belief, such prayer is very likely to work, activating the archetypes and feelings conducive to agreement with their culture. Will the story or the prayer work for others? Rarely, but occasionally it does strike a nerve, especially in the psychologically vulnerable. Haskell recognizes, uncomfortably, that while the stories are different, the psychological methods used by the Mormons and by him as a missionary are eerily similar.

"This points back to what I've already described, namely that in evangelical thinking, and possibly in all religious thinking, the acceptance of certain crucial and non-negotiable ideas comes first. Then, after that acceptance comes the search for evidence that supports it. But that evidence always gets the short end of the stick. Evidence is great when it affirms the things that are accepted by faith. But here isn't a lot of interest in evangelical circles in evidence itself, or in thinking clearly about evidence. And when the evidence falls short, the believer goes back to where it all started: not evidence but faith. So, it's really a matter of wanting to have your cake and eat it too. There's a built-in permission to be sloppy. 'We like evidence!' says the evangelical, 'so long as it proves our point. but when the evidence brings up difficult questions, we reserve the right to toss it out and appeal to faith.' ... How can you have a serious conversation with someone who thinks like this? It's like talking with your teenager."

Rationalization and confirmation bias are fundamental aspects of human psychology. Science has developed an organized and reasonably effective way to address it, but other institutions have not, notably the echo chambers of current news and social media. We do it all the time, (I am certainly doing it here), and it is no wonder that Christians do it too. The problem is the lack of humility, where Christians revel in their fantastical story, impugn anyone so dense (if not evil) as to not get it, and twist the very vocabulary of epistemology in order to declare that "Truth" comes, not out of reality, but precisely out of unreality- a faith that is required to believe in things unseen and tales thrice-told.

• And he writes a blog, too.
• Example of typical religious condescension, by J D Vance's mentor, James Orr.
• The Discovery Institute will try anything...
• Then there is the no true Scotsman defense.
• The Supreme Court lowers itself still further.
• What makes a human brain?
• We continue speeding ever faster to disaster.
• Poisonous propaganda + AI = our future.

Jimmy Carter, on Work

Jimmy Carter's "An Hour Before Daylight".

One marked contrast between the recent political conventions was the presence of former presidents. The Republicans had none, (excepting the candidate), not even the very-much alive George W. Bush, or past candidates such as Mitt Romney. The Democrats had two, plus Hillary Clinton, not to mention the current president, Joe Biden. There was additionally a representative of a fourth, Jimmy Carter, to say that he will be happily voting for Kamala Harris in the fall. It speaks to the extremist journey the Republican party has been on, compared to much more conventional (sorry!) path of the Democrats, with recognizably consistent values and respect for character and institutions, both their own and those of the country at large.

None of these Democratic leaders grew up rich. Each was formed in modest circumstances, before joining the meritocracy and working their way up. The Democratic party is now generally viewed as the party of educated people, government workers, and minorities, against the Republican coalition of the very rich and the very poor. One might summarize it as strivers through the educational system, as opposed to strivers through the capitalist system. For one group, being kind, smart, and hard-working are the annointing signs of god, while for the other, it is being rich. Some (usually Republicans) may think these are equivalent, but the current candidates demonstrate the opposite.

This theme is exemplified by the career of Jimmy Carter, who worked his way through Annapolis and a naval career partly spent in the naval nuclear program under Hyman Rickover, then worked his way to the Georgia governorship, the Presidency, and then kept on working through retirement, churning out books and doing good works. The finest of his books, (which are, frankly, a mixed bag), is apparently his memoir of his early life and environment, "An Hour Before Daylight". The theme, for me, was work- hard work. Carter grew up on a large farm, and worked constantly. The book's title comes, naturally, from when the farm day starts. There are pigs to feed, eggs to collect, cows to milk. There are fields to plow, trees to chop down, fences to mend, products to sell, and supplies to buy. The work was evidently endless, as it is on any family farm, and while Carter tells of many swimming, hunting, amorous, and other expeditions, it is the cycle of chores and worries around the farm that was clearly formative.

Jimmy with family, in his Sunday best.

But he was not the hardest worker. His family owned a lot of land, and in this segregated time during the depression, had numerous sharecropping tenants and employees, all black. Carter comments gingerly about this system, balancing his worship of his father with clear descriptions of the hopelessness of the tenant's position. They worked without dreams of attending Annapolis, or inheriting a large estate. Rather, debt was the typical condition, as the Carters ran the supply store as well as owning the land. Carter looked up to many of these employees and tenants, and recounts very close and formative relations throughout his childhood, with both black children and adults. At least until he was drawn, as the system had designed it, into the segregated churches and schools.

Jimmy at his most intense, a naval graduate.

It is hard to grasp, in our heavily urbanized and regulated existence, where work is a 9-5 job and we dream of weekends, family leave, remote work, and retirement, how much work went into a normal existance like this on a farm. Success depended not only on unstinting work, but on an even temper, shrewd foresight, family support, good community relations (including church attendance), and a lot of luck. The wealth and power of the US was built on this kind of scrabbling for economic survival and advancement. The capitalist system continually applied the screws, lowering prices for cotton when too much was being produced, a particular crisis during the depression. Carter tells of the continual inventiveness that his family devoted to new ventures, like selling flavored milks, roasted pecans, sugar cane syrup, boiled peanuts, and tomato catsup, all from their own crops. Not everything was successful, but there was a continual need, even in this out-pf-the-way rural area, to meet the market and keep coming up with new ideas for making money.

Most of all, Carter speaks with pride of his and his family's work. It provided their sustenance, and their relationships, and was thus intrinsically and automatically meaningful. Headed by a benevolent regime, at least as he understood it under his parents, it was an ideal world- busy, endlessly challenging, stimulating, and productive. This is what we need to think about in these end times of the loneliness epidemic and the plague of homelessness and meaninglessness. Religion was a strong presence, but hearing Carter tell it, it weighed relatively lightly on him and his family, (other than sister Ruth, perhaps, who became a renowned evangelist), being more a solace to the poor than a spur to the well-to-do. Their meaning came more from their community and their many and varied occupations. So when people speak of basic income programs, one has to ask whether that really addresses the problem. Much better might be a guaranteed job program, where everyone is offered basic work if they can not find it in the private sector. Productive work that benefits the community, along the lines of the WPA projects of the depression. Work is critical to meaning and mental health, as well as to our communities and nation.

• Zoning and housing.
• Religious nutters lose their minds.
• Another great use of crypto- pig butchering.
• Unbutchering one candidate's garble.
• It smells like the mob.

Oh, to Be Normal

It is a greater accomplishment than commonly appreciated.

The popular media make a fetish of condemning normality. Chase your dream, dare to be different, don't settle for average. Well, that is laudable, and appropriate for the occasional genius, but militates against much larger forces toward uniformity. Just look at styles in clothing, cars, architecture. "Keeping up" with fashions and the times is a marker of, not just normality, but of being alive and part of the larger social community. Achieving normal means not being fossilized in wig and breeches, or bell bottoms. The period of middle school and high school is when these pressures are most acute, as children find places in the wider society, staking their claim with clothing and all the other markers of being "normal". Especially against parents, who have by this time fallen a little back in their ability or desire to keep up with current standards.

But the point I am more interested in is genetic. In genetic terms, normal is typically stated as "wild-type", which is the opposite of mutant. Any particular gene or trait can be construed as normal or defective, with the possibility of being improved in some way over the "wild-type" being exceptionally rare. But summed over an entire genome, one can appreciate that not every gene can be normal. We all have mutations, and thus deviate from normal. In this sense, normality is an impossible, unattainable standard, and as anyone can observe, we all labor under some kind of deficiency. The only question is how severe those deficiencies are, relative to others, and relative to the minimum level of competence we need to survive.

That is where these two threads come together. Young people are continually competing and testing each other for fitness, gauging each other's ability to keep up with the high standard that constitutes "normal" for a culture. It is the beauty queens, and the popular kids, who find themselves at the top of the heap, shining standards of normality in a sea of mediocrity and deficiency. At least until they find out that they might have other, less visible weaknesses, like, perhaps, alcoholism. 

So, not to be all conformist about it, but for all the praise showered on diversity and innovation, there is a lot to be said for standards of normality, which are rather higher than they seem. They actually set significant challenges for everyone to aspire to. They represent, for example, a wide gamut of competencies that undergird society- the ability of people to get along in professional and intimate settings, and the basic knowledge and judgement needed for a democratic political system. Making up for one's deficiencies turns out to be a life-long quest, just as significant as making use of extraordinary gifts or pursuing competitive excellence in some chosen field.

• Ruin here, ruin there.
• The ins and outs of negotiating a large credit bill.
• Notes on early Darwinism.
• "The vast amount of Taiwanese have nothing to fear."

The Lucky Country

The story of California, the story of the US, and optimism about free frontiers.

I am reading "California, the great exception". This classic from 1949 by Cary McWilliams is stoutly jingoistic and pro-California. But it also provides a deeper analysis of the many things that made California such an optimistic and happy place. Mainly, it boils down to free land and rapid settlement by ambitious working people. The Native Californians were so weak, and so ruthlessly extirpated, that they did not present the irritating conflict that happened elsewhere in the US. California's gold was so widely and thinly distributed (as placer in streams) that mining was a matter of small partnerships, not huge businesses, as it became elsewhere in the West, in the deep hard rock silver and later copper mines of Nevada (Carson city and the Comstock lode) and Montana (Butte). The immigrants were of working age and enthusiastic to work, dismissing slavery and corporatism in favor of a rapacious entrepreneurialism. 

California never had a paternal territorial government, but transitioned directly from self-rule to statehood, its riches speaking volumes to the national government in Washington. And the national government was anxious lest secessionist sentiment spread to the still far-distant west, so it funded the building of a transcontinental railway, during the civil war when money must have been extremely tight. That feared secession was not to join the South, but rather to found a new and prosperous nation on the West Coast. San Francisco went on to serve as the financial capital of the West, particularly of western mining, creating almost overnight a collusus to rival the centers of the East. In due time, gushers of oil also appeared on the California landscape. It is no wonder that Californians became fundamentally optimistic, ready to take on huge challenges such as water management, building a great education system, and the entertainment of the world.

California was also blessed by weak neighbors on all sides. There were no foreign policy predicaments or military threats. It could nurse its riches in peace. It was, in concentrated form, the story of America- of a new continent limited more by its ability to attract and grow its population than by its land and the riches that land held. An isolated continent that wrote its society almost on a blank slate- a new government and a melting pot of people from many places. 

Bound for California, around 1850.

How stark is the contrast to a country like Ukraine, neighbor of imperialist Russia and before that host to the Scythians, Goths, and Huns. A flat land exposed on all sides, that has been overrun countless times. A fertile land, but always contested. The idea that history would stop, that Ukraine could join the West, and enjoy its riches in peace and security- that turns out to have been a dream that bullies in the neighborhood have a different view on. Better to beat up on the little "brother" than to build up both nations and economies through beneficial exchange and prosperity. Better for both to go down in flames than that the little "brother" escapes the bully's clutches into a more humane world.

But the happy place of the US and Calfornia has hit some rough patches too. It turns out that our resource riches are not endless after all. The foundation of material wealth- the agricultural land, the mines, the lumber- underwrote social and technological innovation. No wonder the US was first in flight, and led the way in electricity, automobiles, the internet, the cell phone. Now we have an innovation economy, and get much of our materials and lower-grade goods from far-off places. The people we have attracted and continue to attract are the new wealth, but therein lies a conflict. Places like California have huge homeless populations because we have ceased to grow, ceased to embody the hope and optimism of our lucky past. Conflict has raised its head. There is no more free land, or gold in the streams. Now, with the land all parcelled up and the forests mowed down, everyone wants to hold on to what they have, and damn those who come after. Prop 13 was the perfect expression of this sour and conservative mood- let the newcomers pay for public services, not us.

California is transitioning from a visionary frontier into a cramped, normal, and not especially lucky place. The fabulous climate is suffering under fire and drought. The population is growing significantly older, while next generation is educated less well then their parents. The app innovation economy has fostered a nightmare of surveillance and social dysfunction. The pull of a new frontier is so strong, however, that some of our richest people now imagine it on other planets. The irony of sending rockets, fueled by vast amounts of fossil carbon and compressed oxygen, to other worlds where there isn't even air to breathe, let alone plants to cut down, begs belief. It is the final gasp of a dream that somewhere, out there, is another lucky country.

• We are a front in the authoritarian war for the world.
• Truth will out, eventually.
• Aging is in the crosshairs.
• The sad fate of Russia's Silicon Valley.
• Do we vote for merely corrupt, or fully bought and paid for politicians?
• New advances in low power, low cost, low fright MRI.

Ideologies of Work

Review of Elizabeth Anderson: "Hijacked: How neoliberalism turned the work ethic against workers, and how workers can take it back."

We live by the sweat of our brow, though work. At least that has been the story after we were thrown out of the garden of Eden, where we had previously foraged without effort. By the time of Puritans, work had been re-valued as being next to godliness, in what became known as the Puritan work ethic. Elizabeth Anderson takes this as her point of departure in a fascinating historical study of the winding (and mostly descending) road that attitudes toward work took down the centuries, in the perennial battle between workers and parasites who have found ways to avoid sweating, yet eat just the same ... or better.

Anderson trots through all the classical economists and philosophers, down to John Stuart Mill and Marx, showing two main threads of thought. First is the progressive thread, in which the Puritans can (curiously) be classed, as can Adam Smith. They value work as both a cultural and meaningful activity, not just a means of sustenance. They think everyone should work, and criticize anyone, high or low, who shirks this responsibility. Genteel landowners who spend their time hunting rather than improving their estates are just as culpable as drunkards and other able-bodied peasants who fail to do their share. Learning and innovation are highly valued, as not just ameliorating the lot of those making improvements, but at the same time raising the wealth of, and standard of living for, all.

In contrast is the conservative thread. Anderson herself describes it trenchantly:

"From the conservative perspective, however, poverty reflected an individual's failure to filfill the demands of the work ethic. Society is at fault solely in establishing institutions that violate natural law in promoting vice through provisions such as the Poor Law. Conservatives agreed that the Poor Law must therefore be abolished or radically reformed. If poverty is caused by the vice of the poor, the remedy for poverty must be to force the poor to practice virtue, to live up to the demands of the work ethic. Conservatives differed somewhat on which virtue was most necessary for the poor to practice. Priestly focused on frugality, Bentham on industry, Malthus on chastity, Paley on contentment (understood as the opposite of covetous envy of the rich). Thus, Priestly hoped to convert poor workers into virtuous bourgeios citizens through a legally mandated individual savings plan. Bentham favored a workfare system that turned the working poor into imprisoned debt peons of capitalist entrepreneurs. Malthus advocated leaving the poor to starvation, disease and destitution, but offered them the hope that they could rescue themselves by postponing marriage and children. Burke and Wately agreed with Malthus, but attempted to put a liberal-tory paternalist veneer on their view. ...

"The moral accounting that assigns responsibilities to individuals without regard- and even in inverse proportion- to the means they have to fulfill them remains a touchstone of conservative thought to the present day. ...

"The ideology of the conservative work ethic is distinguished by a harsh orientation toward ordinary workers and the poor, and an indulgent one toward the 'industrious' rich- those who occupy themselves with making money, either through work or investment of their assets, regardless of whether their activities actually contribute to social welfare. in practice, this orientation tends to slide into indulgence toward the rich, whether or not they are industrious even in this morally attenuated sense. ...

"Here lies a central contradiction of the conservative work ethic. All the conservatives claimed that the key to overcoming poverty was to make the poor bourgeois in attitude. All they needed to do was adopt the work ethic, or be forced to adopt it, along with the spirit of competitive emulation, the desire to better others in the race for riches and ensure that one's children not fall beneath the standard of living in which they were raised. Poverty was proof that they hadn't adopted bourgeois virtues and aspirations. This presupposed that the poor suffered from no deficit in opportunities. The path to prosperity was open; the poor were simply failing to take it. Yet we have seen that, Priestly partially excepted, conservative policies knowingly reduced the opportunities of the poor to acquire or retain property, work for themselves, or escape precarity."

My major critique of Anderson's analysis is that putting all this conflict and history into the frame of the work ethic is inappropriate and gives the work ethic far more weight than it merits. Firstly, everyone thinks of themselves as working. The most sedentary rentier doubtless thinks of his or her choosing among investments as of critical importance to the health and future of the nation. Even his or her shopping choices express taste and support a "better" sort of business, in that way performing work towards a better community. The English royals probably see themselves as doing essential cultural work, in their choice of hats and their preservation of cherished traditions. Parenting, community associations, and political agitation can all, to an expansive mind, be construed as "work". And indeed some of our greater artistic and other accomplisments come from the labors of wealthy people who were entirely self-directed rather than grubbily employed. All this implies that a work ethic can be accommodated in all sorts of ways if markets are not going to be the standard, as they hardly can be in any philosophical or moral system of a work ethic. This makes work ethics rather subjective and flexible, as Anderson implicitly demonstrates through the centuries.

However a more serious problem with Anderson's analysis is that it leaves out the ethic of power. Her presentation laments the sad misuse that the work ethic has been subjected to over the years, (by conservatives), without focusing on the reason why, which is that a whole other ethic was at work, in opposition to the work ethic. And that is the power ethic, which values domination of others and abhors work as commonly understood. Or, at best, it construes the organization of society for the benefit of a leisured upper crust as work of momentous, even civilizational, significance. Nietzsche had a field day calling us to recognize and embrace the power ethic, and not hide it under sweeter-smelling mores like the Christian or work ethics.

Anderson does helpfully discuss in passing the feudal background to the Puritan work ethic, where the Norman grandees and their progeny parcelled out the land among themselves, spent their time warring against each other (in England or in France), and lived high off the labors of their serfs/peasants. No thought was given to improvement, efficiency, or better ways to organize the system. Conservatism meant that nothing (god-willing) would change, ever. Even so, the work of politics, of war, and of religious ideology was never done, and the wealthy could easily see themselves as crucial to the maintenance of a finely-balanced cultural and economic system.

Anderson also notes that the original rationale of the gentry, if one must put it in an economic frame, was that they were responsible for military support of the king and country, and thus needed to have large estates with enough surplus in people, livestock, horses, and food to field small armies. When this rationale disappeared with the ascendence of parliament and general (at least internal) peace, they became pure rentiers, and uncomfortably subject to the critique of the Puritan work ethic, which they naturally countered with one of their own devising. And that was essentially a restatement of the power ethic, that the rich can do as they please and the poor should be driven as sheep to work for the rich. And particularly that wealth is a signifier of virtue, implying application of the work ethic, (maybe among one's forebears, and perhaps more by plunder than sweat, but ... ), or transcending it via some other virtues of nobility or class. 

But in Locke and Adam Smith's day, as today, the sharpest and most vexing point of the work ethic is not the role of the rich, but that of the poor. By this time, enclosure of lands was erasing the original version of the job guarantee- that is, access to common lands- and driving peasants to work for wages, either for landowners or industrialists. How to solve extreme poverty, which was an ever more severe corollary of capitalism and inequality? Is it acceptable to have homeless people sleeping on the streets? Should they be given work? money? social services? education? Do the poor need to be driven to work by desperation and starvation? Or is the lash of work not needed at all, and lack of wealth the only problem? Malthus was doggedly pessimistic, positing that population growth will always eat up any gains in efficiency or innovation. Thus it requires the predatory power of the gentry to enable society to accumulate anything in the way of capital or cultural goods, by squelching the poor in sufficient misery that they will not over-reproduce.

The progressive view of work and the poor took a much more sanguine view. And here one can note that much of this discussion revolves around "natural" laws. Is the population law of Malthus true? Or is the natural communitarian tendency of humans also a natural law, leading to mutual help, spontaneous community formation, and self-regulation? Are some people "naturally" superior to others? Is a hierarchical and domineering social system "natural" and necessary? Adam Smith, in Anderson's reading, took a consistently pro-worker attitude, inveighing against oppressive practices of employers, collusion of capital, and cruel goverment policies. Smith had faith that, given a fair deal and decent education, all workers would strive to the best of their abilities to better their own condition, work diligently, and thereby benefit the community as well as themselves.

For the story of Eden is fundamentally wrong. Humans have always worked, and indeed valued work. Looking outside the window at a squirrel trying to get into the bird feeder ... is to see someone working with enthusiasm and diligence. That is our natural state. The only problem was that, as human civilization progressed, power relations, and then even more- industrialization- generated work that was not only cruel and oppressive, but meaningless. The worker, forced to work for others instead of him- or herself, and routinized into a factory cog, became fully alienated from it. How to get workers to do it, nevertheless? Obviously, having a work ethic is not a full solution, unless it is of a particularly astringent and dogmatic (or tyrannical) sort. Thus the dilemma of capitalist economies. For all their trumpeting of the "natural laws" of competition and "freedom" for employers to exploit and workers to be fired, capitalism violates our true natures in fundamental ways.

So the question should be, as Anderson eventually alludes to, do we have a life ethic that includes work, rather than just a work ethic? She states plainly that the most important product of the whole economic system is ... people. Their reproduction, raising, education, and flourishing. It is not consumption products that should be the measure of economic policy, but human happiness. And a major form of human happiness is doing meaningful work, including the domestic work of the family. The world of Star Trek is even alluded to in Anderson's last chapter- one where no one works for subsistance, but rather, people work for fulfillment. And they do so with zeal.

Anderson sees great potential in the more progressive forms of the work ethic, and in the social democratic political systems that implemented them after World War 2. She argues that this is the true legacy of Marxism (and of Thomas Paine, interestingly enough) and expresses the most durable compromise between market and capital-driven corporate structures and a restored work ethic. Some amount of worker participation in corporate governance, for instance, is a fundamental reform that would, in the US, make corporations more responsive to their cultural stakeholders, and work more meaningful to workers. Tighter regulation is needed throughout the private economy to make work more humane for the very low-paid, giving workers better pay and more autonomy- real freedom. More public goods, such as free education to university levels, and better provision for the poor, especially in the form of a job guarantee, would make life bearable for many more people. For my part, inheritance seems a key area where the ethics of the dignified work and equal opportunity run up against completely unjust and artificial barriers. In America, no one should be born rich, and everyone should grow and express themselves by finding a place in the world of work.

• Annals of capitalist control.
• Corporations and the royal we.
• More equal societies are better societies.
• The Stepford wife.
• The Supreme Court is dangerously wrong.