Train lines though the mind

New papers about gross brain anatomy find a few interesting things.

A pair of recent articles gave new insights into the organization of the white and gray matter of the brain, respectively. They represent the forefront of trying to learn in a holistic way how the brain naturally develops and organizes, and provide a few intriguing results.

First off, the grey matter. A large research group sought to define how much different people's brains vary genetically, and how this variation maps on the brain surface. That is, do whole areas like the frontal cortex co-vary between people as a coherently expanding or contracting surface, or do smaller sub-regions have more independence to grow and shrink, depending on genetic background? Does brain anatomy vary at all depending on genetics?

They did this using that warhorse of human genetics- identical vs faternal twins, in this case drawn from a registry of Vietnam-era twins registered for the US military draft, who were all male and now middle-aged. They put pairs into MRI scanners and used some sophisticated math to abstract the shapes of everyone's brain, after which they could measure how they all compared in some detail.

One would think that, since the brain remains functionally quite plastic in adulthood, volume-based differences between people might be influenced by experience as much as genetics. Or more. But in most of the gray matter (outside the hippocampus and a few other areas), there is no cell division in adulthood, so while those neurons can re-wire and re-purpose themselves to new tasks, (itself quite a mysterious process), the overall morphology is set by early adulthood, changing only by way of decline and senility. Speaking of which ... where are my reading glasses?

The researchers find that genetic relationship corresponds to broad volume concordance in a jig-saw like map that divides the brain surface into twelve large regions. These regions mostly match regions that have already been recognized by other anatomical and functional maps, like for instance, area six, the superior temporal cortex, important for speech and hearing.

The interesting findings are that there are genetic variations in brain construction that are consistent and can be detected at all, and also that they conveniently resolve down to large-scale anatomical structures that have for the most part been long recognized for their functional differentiation from neighboring areas, for instance when tested with electrode probes in live patients. This of course leads to the question of just how different consciousness and other mental capabilities are between people, (though the differences here are tiny- on the border of detectability). And whether perhaps genetic structural variations correlate with genetically-driven variations in temperament, personality, and other mental characteristics / abilities. Phrenology might be making a high-tech, if minor, comeback!

The other paper dealt with deeper issues, which is to say, the white matter wiring pattern beneath the gray matter surfaces of the brain- how this pattern compares between different species, and how simple rules of development might result in the complex resulting pattern.

This novel method of MRI that isolates myelinated nerve pathways is truly remarkable (although fiber tracts have been studied in other ways for a long time). I only wish we had some analogous chemical/mathematical/technical magic to see live cancers in similar isolation. Anyhow, they visualize the long-range myelinated nerve bundles in the brains of humans, rhesus and owl monkeys, marmosets (a new world monkey), and galagos (a relatively primitive old-world primate). Importantly, they also group the pathways by an algorithm depending on extended proximity, which allows them to automatically color-code them into sheets of nerves that are structurally and developmentally coherent. You can see that this leads to a striking map of major internal brain pathways.

Aside from the artificially colored beauty of all these pathways, one can note a few things. Unfortunately, the colors of homologous pathways are not kept the same across species, but there are clear homologies, like of the sagital stratum which conducts visual signals to the visual cortex at the back of the brain. To the untrained eye, the tangles seem almost chaotic, but the researchers put them into a developmental context where the brain is the developmentally deformed result of what originates as a sheet of cells, expanded into three dimensions. Unfortunately they don't detail graphically quite exactly what they are talking about in this respect.

Secondly, there seem to be coherent sheets of nerves, supporting, as does the paper above, a natural structural division of white matter into wiring with plainly differentiated functions., One might presume also the possibility of natural genetic variation in these structures as well, incidentally.

Thirdly, the most interesting observation is that each sheet of nerve fibers meets others at roughly right angles. You can see this theme of 3-D criss-crossing immediately in the images, and as the researchers note, "geometrically, this configuration is highly exceptional". From a statistical standpoint, if the only rule were that each nerve had to find its target, winding pell-mell through the volume of the brain, you would see spaghetti.

What this means is that these observations are consistent with models by which the brain develops by relatively simple rules where bundles/sheets of related nerve fibers travel in tight groups as they migrate through the brain in development, and make rather simple cardinal coordinate decisions whenever they meet other such bundles, typically growing right through them. There is a substantial history, in the molecular biology of neural pathfinding, of nerves making such simple directional decisions during development, so this study shows the same procedure writ large, as the rule more or less throughout the brain.

The researchers summarize: "We have found that the fiber pathways of the forebrain are organized as a highly curved 3D grid derived from the principal axes of development. This structure has a natural interpretation. By the Frobenius theorem, any three families of curves in 3d mutually cross in sheets if and only if they represent the gradients of three corresponding scalar functions. Accordingly, we hypothesize that the pathways of the brain follow a base-plan established by the three chemotactic gradients of early embryogenesis. Thus, the pathways of the mature brain presents an image of these three primordial gradients, plastically deformed by development."

So, sort of like the grids of wire bundles you see in server racks and similar computer installations, or schematic train line maps, neurological development generates grids of myelinated (fast) fiber pathways to efficiently conduct data all over the brain.

• Wealth doesn't happen in a vacuum.
• What it's like to be alive.. Tilson Thomas on music.
• The end of Ecotopia.
• Profiles of cults... scientology edition.
• One party is unworthy to participate in a national election. Or serve in the Senate.
• We'll never get there on a credit binge.
• Where is China headed, economically?
• Where are we headed, employment-wise?
• Economics quotes of the week, first from Standard and Poors, April 2008, rating Lehman as A+:
  "Lehman maintains an excellent risk culture, which results in the firm’s comparatively lower risk appetite than that of peers, and its strong liquidity and funding profile." 
• Second from J. Galbraith: "Instead, we became a credit-driven economy. What the evidence in the U.S. shows is that the rise in inequality is associated with credit booms, which are often periods of sometimes great prosperity."

Hume and morals

David Hume's "An inquiry concerning the principles of morals".

Well, those were the days, before abstruse language and academic pedantry shot the practice of philosophy all to heck! Hume writes a practically stream-of-consciousness consideration of where morals come from, and arrives at a very simple answer: utility.  [Hume was not the first with this idea- in 1690, Locke offered a book heading: "Virtue generally approved, not because innate, but because profitable."]

To back up, I should say that I greatly admire Hume, from what I have read secondarily. He was an atheist, (which only became crystal clear posthumusly), a wonderful writer, and one of the greatest philosophers ever. So I looked forward to reading what little my public library had to offer from his work, which is this book.

The question is simple enough- why do we have morals? Are they legislated from above objectively and forever by some divine command that we need professional divines to discern? Are they, in contrast, completely relative, unobjective and amenable to the taste of whatever society we happen to be in, indeed to whatever person we happen to be?

Societies have in practice not had much problem knowing their morals and setting moral rules. It is always at the top of the list of child-raising and political discussion. But unfortunately, religious ideas got mixed up in the matter, to the point that by Hume's time, morals had become thoroughly theologicalized, claimed for the eternal wisdom of god and his representatives. Yet somehow, these eternal rules kept changing, whether in defiance of the original intention, as the many purifiers of religion (Luther, Wesley, our current fundamentalists, Christian and Islamic) would have it, or by the natural course of social evolution, as one can see with one's own eyes.

As Hume puts it:

"And here there occurs the fourth reflection which I purposed to make, in suggesting the reason why modern philosophers have often followed a course in their moral inquiries so different from that of the ancients. In later times, philosophy of all kinds, especially ethics, have been more closely united with theology than ever they were observed to be among the heathens; and as this latter science admits of no terms of composition, but bends every branch of knowledge to its own purpose without much regard to the phenomena of nature, or to the unbiased sentiments of the mind, hence reasoning, and even language, have been warped from their natural course, and distinctions have been endeavored to be established where the difference of the objects was, in a manner, imperceptable. Philosophers, or rather divines under that disguise, treating all morals as on a like footing with civil laws guarded by the sanctions of reward and punishment, were necessarily led to render this circumstance of voluntary or involuntary the foundation of their whole theory. Everyone may employ terms in what sense he pleases; but this, in the meantime, must be allowed, that sentiments are every day experenced of blame and praise which have objects beyond the dominion of the will or choice, and of which it behooves us, if not as moralists, as speculative philosophers at least, to give some satisfactory theory and explication.
...
That we owe a duty to ourselves is confessed even in the most vulgar system of morals; and it must be of consequence to examine that duty in order to see whether it bears any affinity to that which we owe to society. It is probable that the approbation attending the observance of both is of a similar nature and arises from similar principles, whaever appellation we may give to either of these excellences." 

[I'll note that theologians have an obvious out here, that god made our feelings (conscience) just so, so that we would know what is right, even if we seccumb to temptation, etc. Of course this looks a bit weaker today if one takes Darwin seriously, which leads to several other issues ...]

Not only were morals eternal and divine, but they just happened to support patriarchy, hierarchy, and monarchy. It is the oldest story in the book. Hume sets out to demolish this conception, and put morality back on a simple, sensible foundation. He asks why we have morals, and in every instance, the path leads back to the same conclusion.. because they reflect what is useful to us, either immediately, or in the long run; either individually, or, more commonly, in the communities that are so essential to our existence.

In a particularly interesting excursion, he considers our position vs animals. He has already demolished the scenario of Hobbes- the war of all against all [see quotes at bottom]. We are brought up in society from the very first moment. Fairness, justice, empathy, sociability, are all instinctive, as are greed and the dark emotions. So society is our involuntary habitat, and structures like justice, rules, morals, etc. exist to negotiate optimal ways of getting along, indeed to train ourselves in social existence.

But what if we have complete power over some other being, like an animal? What morals apply? What does justice mean?

"Whatever we covet, they must instantly resign. Our permission is the only tenure by which they hold their possessions, our compassion and kindness the only check by which they curb our lawless will; and as no inconvenience ever results from the exercise of power so firmly established in nature, the restraints of justice and property, being totally useless, would never have place in so unequal a confederacy. 

This is plainly the situation with regard to animals; and how far these may be said to possess reason I leave it to others to determine. The great superiority of civilized Europeans above barbarous Indians tempted us to imagine ourselves on the same footing with regard to them and make us throw off all restraints of justice, and even of humanity, in our treatment of them. In many nations, the female sex are reduced to like slavery and are indeed rendered incapable of all property, in opposition to their lordly masters."

He then traces out the build-up of societies from family to a larger compass of more or less equal units, and shows how concepts of justice and morals become essential to regulate their relations.

But why is all this not completely instinctive? Why do we need cultural rules and structures, if evolution furnished us with all the necessary sentiments? (Hume of course knows nothing of evolution, but takes our natures as innate / given.)

"Had every man sufficient sagacity to perceive, at all times, the strong interest which binds him to the observance of justice and equity, and strength of mind sufficient to persevere in a steady adherence to a general and a distant interest, in opposition to the allurements of present pleasure and advantage, there had never, in that case, been any such thing as government or political society; but each man, following his natural liberty, had lived in entire peace and harmony with all others.
...
It is evident that, if government were totally useless, it could never have place, and that the sole foundation of the duty of allegiance is the advantage which it procures to society by preserving peace and order among mankind."
...
"If usefulness, therefore, be a source of moral sentiment, and if this usefulness be not always considered with a reference to self, it follows that everything which contributes to the happiness of society recommends itself directly to our approbation and good will. Here is a principle which accounts, in great part, for the origin of morality: and what need we seek fro absgtruse and remote systems when thre occurs one so obvious and natural?"

That is just a taste, of the argument whereby morals and rules are placed in a utilitarian perspective as being ways to promote our long-term good over our various individual stupidities, temptations, egoism, and other failings.

• Morality is natural. A lot of humor, plus a few observations on philosophers.
• What is (or was) social responsibility? "Again and again, capitalism reached points where, if the state did not intervene in such ways as to induce more competitiveness, it would collapse under its own weight. In other words, what Braudel saw was this continuing evolutionary balance between the state and capitalism, in which the state needed to support capitalism but at the same time needed to guard against its excesses."
• The story of Higgs.
• Hmmm- maybe fruitless peace talks with the Taliban are an effective offensive strategy after all.
• Pity the billionaire.
• Problems with using intuition .. in economics.
• A little history on one of the classic religious cults- the People's Temple. It's all about power.
• One state goes after the MERS monster.
• We are all banks, in a manner of speaking.. more on Minsky and banking.
• Whom do corporations serve, and whom should they serve? "They say that shareholders are the only ones who bear risk in the corporate economy, and so they should also get the rewards."
• Economics quote(s) of the week, as a special bonus, also come from Hume, who is under-appreciated as an early economist, indeed a Keynesian MMT economist.

"It is easy to trace the money in its progress through the whole commonwealth; where we shall find, that it must first quicken the diligence of every individual, before it encrease the price of labour."
...
"From the whole of this reasoning we may conclude, that it is of no manner of consequence, with regard to the domestic happiness of a state, whether money be in a greater or less quantity. The good policy of the magistrate consists only in keeping it, if possible, still encreasing; because, by that means, he keeps alive a spirit of industry in the nation, and encreases the stock of labour, in which consists all real power and riches."
...
"If the coin be locked up in chests, it is the same thing with regard to prices, as if it were annihilated; if the commodities be hoarded in magazines and granaries, a like effect follows. As the money and commodities, in these cases, never meet, they cannot affect each other." 

---

"Fanatics may suppose that dominion is founded on grace, and that saints alone inherit the earth; but the civil magistrate very justly puts these sublime theorists on the same footing with common robbers and teaches them, by the serverest discipline, that a rule which in speculation may seem the most advantageous to society may yet be found in practice totally pernicious and destructive. 

That there are religious fanatics of this kind in England during the civil wars, we learn from history; though it is probable that the obvious tendency of these principles excited such horror in mankind, as soon obliged the dangerous enthusiasts to renounce, or at least conceal, their tenets. Perhaps the levelers, who claimed an equal distribution of property, were a kind of political fanatics which arise from the religious species, and more openly avowed their pretensions; as carrying a more plausible appearance, of being practicable in themselves as well as useful to human society.
...
It must also be confessed that wherever we  depart from this equality we rob the poor of more satisfaction than we add to the rich, and that the slight gratification of a frivolous vanity in one individual frequently costs more than bread to many families, even provinces.
...
But historians, and even common sense,  may inform us that, however specious these ideas of perfect equality may seem, they are really at bottom impracticable; and were they not so, would be extremely pernicious to human society. Render posession ever so equal, men's different degrees of art, care, and industry will immediately break that equality. Or if you check these virtues, you reduce society to the most extreme indigence and, instead of preventing want and beggary in a few, render it unavoidable to the whole community. The most rigorous inquisition, too, is requisite to watch every inequality on its first appearance; and the most severe jurisdiction to punish and redress it. But besides, that so much authority must soon degenerate into tyranny, and be exerted with great partialities; who can possibly be possessed of it, in such a situation as is here supposed?"

---

"There is another principle, somewhat resembling the former, which has been much insisted on by philosophers, and has been the foundation of many a system- that, whatever the affection one may feel, or imagine one feels for others, no passion is, or can be, disinterested; that the most generous friendship, however sincere, is a modification of self-love; and that, even inknown to ourselves, we seek only our own gratification while we appear the most deeply engaged in schemes for the liberty and happiness of mankind.
...
An Epicurean or Hobbist readily allows that there is such a thing as friendship in the world without hypocrisy or disguise, though he may attempt, by philosophical chemistry, to resolve the elements of this passion, if I may so speak, into those of another and explain every affection to be self-love twisted and molded by a particular turn of imagination into a variety of appearances.
...
What a malignant philosophy must it be that will not allow to humanity and friendship the same privileges which are indisputably granded to the darker passions of enmity and resentment? Such a philosophy is more like a satire than a true delineation or description of human nature, and may be a good foundation for paradoxical wit and raillery, but is a very bad one for any serious argument or reasoning."

A gene at your fingertips

A gene involved in vibration sensing in the skin.

There has been something of a quiet revolution in the biology of human perception. The sense of self now seems far more complicated and constructed than we previously realized. The five senses are only the beginning of a much more complex system of senses plus cognition that situates us in the world, seeing, tasting, and hearing- yes, but also, gyroscoping, sensing muscle and tendon tone, empath-ing, and, generally, feeling what is going on at many levels.

In the skin, we have numerous sensor and nerve systems, including, hot, cold, heavy pressure, light pressure, sustained pressure, and pain (damage and inflammation), involving over seven different sensory cells or structures, some of which overlap in function, creating quite a menagerie for the physiologist.

A recent paper told a remarkable story of one of these mechanoreceptor structures, a gene that is essential for its development, and the discovery of people missing this gene, with a defect in vibration sensation.

One Pacinian corpuscle, abnormally enlarged.

The Pacinian corpuscle is a 1mm onion-like blob in the skin composed of layers of cells and gels surrounding a nerve ending. It responds to rapid vibration, (40 Hz to 500 Hz), as might come from rubbing a rough surface, potentiated by the ridges of our fingerprints. The researchers were studying genes turned on in the developing mouse nervous system when they saw a gene called c-Maf expressed in the neurons that extend from the spinal cord to several skin sensory structures. They were interested in this gene because it is a member of a family of regulatory genes (which turn other genes on/off) known to have roles in sensory structure and peripheral nervous system development.

This particular gene, however, was only known to participate in eye development, so seeing it expressed in early embryonic sensory nerves was a surprise. I'll note here that this is a reason I would never say that this or any other gene is the gene "for" vibration sensing, or Pacinian corpuscle development, etc. Any biological structure of any complexity is built by many many cooperating genes, and most genes conversely collaborate in several or many biological processes, this being how a small genome of 24,000 genes gives rise to the unimaginable complexity that is us.

Indeed, this gene has other roles in development that are currently unknown, since its complete deletion is lethal in mice. So the researchers created a special genome mutation where the c-Maf gene would be destroyed at a pre-determined stage of development in only a few places, by hooking up a killing gene (cre recombinase) to a promoter from another embryonic-specific gene. The resulting mice were viable into adulthood, though with a few coordination problems. They achieved their point of eliminating expression in sensory nerves, with dramatic alterations in the nerves that feed the Pacinian as well as some other corpuscles

Sensory function in these mice was also impaired, as they found by eavesdropping on nerve firing in response to physical stimulation of the mouse's skin. And finally for the mice, they saw dramatic defects in the Pacinian corpuscles themselves.

Defects in vibration-sensing Pacinian corpuscles in mice lacking the c-Maf gene. Note both fewer corpuscles and the rough shape of those remaining.

Other touch sensory structures, like the Meisnerian corpuscles, where affected, with altered function as well, but the most dramatic effects appeared to be in the Pacinian system.

Turning to humans, the researchers knew that c-Maf mutations exist as a rare genetic disease in humans, (with the gene partially defective; not completely dead), causing cataracts and other eye problems. (Not to mention being an oncogene as well.) They figured on the basis of their mouse results that a subtle defect in touch sensation might also be present, though never reported. The last figure shows that this is the case, as the threshold for the sensation of high-frequency vibration, to which the Pacinian corpuscles are particularly sensitive, is quite blunted, with almost ten-fold less sentitivity in the optimal range of ~250Hz.

Humans with a cMaf mutation and associated genetic syndrome also show defects in touch sensation of high-frequency vibration dependent on the Pacinian corpuscles.

The complexity of our sensory apparatus is remarkable. Slowly elaborated over eons of evolution, we are covered with high-tech instrumentation by which we know and enjoy the world. This paper is one of those small bricks in the edifice of knowing just how that experience comes to pass.

• Suburbs are dying ... and good riddance.
• Social security is very simple- raise the cap.
• Sheila Bair, on bailouts for everyone.
• On the other hand, what if inequality continues as normal?
• Problems with primate change.
• Ignorance is bliss...
• Bernanke is not going to win the debate about the Bernanke conundrum.
• Economics quote of the week, Dean Baker via Paul Krugman:

"Economic theory also predicts that for a large enough sum of money there will be economists who will say that the stimulus did not work regardless of what they actually believe to be true."

I sing, you sing, we all sing, with feeling

On the broad biological origins of music.

Why do we love music?  Is it uniquely human? Where did it develop from, and why do magical chords strike us with such immediate emotion? Why is there such a wide and evocative palette available in music?

"As neither the enjoyment nor the capacity of producing musical notes are faculties of the least direct use to man in reference to his ordinary habits of life, they must be ranked amongst the most mysterious with which he is endowed. They are present, though in a very rude and as it appears almost latent condition, in men of all races, even the most savage ... Whether or not the half-human progenitors of man possessed, like the before-mentioned gibbon, the capacity of producing, and no doubt of appreciating, musical notes, we have every reason to believe that man possessed these faculties at a very remote period, for singing and music are extremely ancient arts."
—Charles Darwin, The Descent of Man, and Selection in Relation to Sex (1871), from Wallin, Merker, and Brown.

I think the current theories on the origin of music are a little weak, whether for sexual selection among humans showing off, mother-infant bonding, or cultural coordination, etc. They certainly address parts of the story, but fail to put humans into a properly deep evolutionary relationship with other animals.

"There are at least three possible interactive theories for the evolution of music and speech: that music evolved from speech, that speech evolved from music, or that both evolved from a common ancestor. As Erich von Hornbostel wrote in 1905: “The close correlation between language, music, and dance has already occupied the attention of earlier theoreticians. Spencer (1857) considered singing to be emotionally intensified speaking; for Darwin (1871), it was the inherited and mellowed remnant of the courting periods of our animal ancestors, from which language derived at a later stage; Richard Wagner (1852) believed that language and music issued from a common source, that of speech- music” (p. 270). Unfortunately, despite the age of this issue, it is still too early to predict its resolution."  ...  "Second, several authors link music’s adaptive role to its ability to promote coordination, cohesion, and cooperation at the level of the social group." from Wallin, Merker, and Brown.

The fact is that all animals above a certain low level live in a world of sound, especially including amphibians, reptiles, birds and mammals. Music touches our emotions most immediately and forcefully, and since emotion is the motive force for life, it stands to reason that there is something about music and its relatives that is not just ornamental, but evolutionarily important not just for humans, but through a very long evolutionary history.

So first off, to ask about the origin of music in humans is like asking about the origin of vision in humans. It is the wrong question, because music, and especially its emotional appreciation, far predates human evolution. Whales sing, birds sing, wolves sing, frogs sing. Even crickets and many other insects sing. We all sing.

Walking through a forest, there can be a cacophany of animal sounds, each expressing some feeling or idea, each meant to be heard by someone else, whether friend or enemy. And I think it is fair to posit that each of these sounds carries emotional power. This is not just anthropomorphism, but simple recognition that animals have fully functional emotions that they express in ways that we might not readily appreciate, but which function much the same way they do for us- as the connecting rod between cognition and action.

When a cow moos, it is expressing a feeling, and its point is not entertainment, but to induce a sympathetic feeling, and appropriate response, in other cows. Likewise for all the calls and songs of other animals. The calls within a species can be richly communicative, (chickadees differentiate their warning calls among serveral predators), while the calls meant for other species (cries of attack, or defense) are more broadly dissonant, sure to be understood instinctively by most targets.

Human language is a highly stylized form of singing/calling that has been abstracted to a symbolic communication stream, though heavily supplemented by movement, facial expression, gestures, and complex tonal and rhythmic inflections. I favor theories that human language developed out of a more general musical form of interaction that is common among animals, and which continues to affect us far more immediately than abstract language does.

In sum, music appreciation seems to be a natural capacity common to most animals, evolved out of the clay of sonic math to communicate and evoke emotions both within and across species. The texture of possible sound varies with a species' size, where elephants use infrasound at super-long wavelengths and birds tend to be very high-pitched.

So, why is the communication of emotion so important? Wouldn't it be typically better to keep personal issues to oneself? The suffering of prey animals is often silent for that reason. But generally, any social species needs some way to share feelings, which leads to social connection and support. Ants don't use sound, as far as I am aware, but have about twelve pheromones they use for communication, plus a lot of touchy-feely behaviors. Only with these kinds of  interactions can some know that others are hungry, or danger alarms spread, or food sources get found.

Likewise with musical sounds for other animals, who don't have the infinitely varied symbolic streams humans have via language, but a more limited, though evolutionarily deeper and more directly evocative palette that is musical tones. Social interactions rely on "mirroring"- the empathic experience of what the other is feeling, so that we can come in aid, flee in fear, or collaborate in sex, among many other important activities. And that is what music is about- mirroring in the most powerful way.

As Steven Pinker states, we have made of music, like our other art forms, confected "ice creams" of cognitive overload, which can make it hard to figure out their core appeal and origin. It is more the appreciation of art that needs to be explained than their methods of creation. Visual animals have strong search images and preferences- seeing certain types of landscapes and faces of familiar or high-status individuals. In touch, we love certain textures and warmth. In foods, we love variety, certain textures and tastes. And in music, we enjoy the cycle of warning tension and release, the pathos of deeply felt tragedy, and the reflected jaunty happiness of the composer, all as ways of connecting with others and with our deepest history.

• Krugman lays out the links between inequality, corruption, and dysfunction. Corruption in its political, economic, and intellectual senses, with added dollops of institutional sclerosis, viciously circular feedback, and the religion of business "confidence".
• GOP continues its campaign of deregulatory corruption.
• Report on BP oil spill- things are getting worse, and the dispersants were not such a good idea.
• Becoming a religion by accident ... scientology.
• Cringely returns to IBM, as the hollowed-out corporation.
• Shariah and Islam.. not so bad after all, as long as you ignore central tenets and practices.
• “This is what heaven would be like if God were real.”
• "First they came for “hopefully” and we said nothing."
• Peak oil, going mainstream.

Global epidemic of bullying

... by Islamists and other fundamentalists.

Just when I thought I had mellowed on the religion front, taking a more anthropological, psychological view of the matter as an involuntary and evolutionarily successful form of delusion, an article in The New Republic reminded me all over again why I got into this topic in the first place - rampant, ignorant bullying.

That the US should be undergoing a consciousness-raising about bullying among children in schools is intriguing, when, under the guise of politics and religion, bullying is an enormous international issue as well. Perhaps, like in late colonial times when consciousness of liberty and freedom was honed on the abject slavery in our midst, our raised awareness of Islamism since 9/11 has made us more sensitive to similar phenomena closer to home.

And what is that phenomenon? The use of intimidation to win arguments that could never be won by reason. Apparently, it is simply one of the "deep" beliefs of Islam that Muslims who leave the faith should be killed. Nothing personal! Apparently, it is part of the "deep" beliefs of Islam that women must make themselves into posterboards of patriarchy by veiling, or better yet, burka-ing themselves into oblivion. Apparently, the existence of infidels so enrages the omnipotent Allah that good Muslims can not help but help him out by going on jihad and killing them. Apparently, free speech about the shortcomings of Islam, its founder, gods, etc. are so impolite that Salman Rushdie should be killed. That does turn out to be personal.

What makes people both so righteous and so insecure in their beliefs? What makes them so group-ish? Tribalism is hardly the sole posession of religion, but religion has a peculiarly common and powerful way of combining propositions of cosmic and transformative importance with intellectual foundations empty of any facts or evidence while full of assertions of complete authoritativeness and certainty. Surely you have heard that the Koran has anticipated all the discoveries of modern science?

It is a very special kind of con job, that doesn't on the short term make any difference. Unlike false beliefs about gravity or what is good to eat, false beliefs about the origins of morals or the universe have no terrible immediate impact. And they have the beneficial effect of bonding people who share a harmless story- a narrative of origins and meaning. No problem, right?

Oh, god, what a question! What happens when people are righteously certain about the most important aspects of the universe, but can't really support what they think (if it is conceptualized at all) against the simplest skeptical question? What happens when one's scriptural / religious system is particularly confused and contradictory? What happens when the morals reputed to be so pristinely perfect look, in detail, appalling in their source material and persistently incapable of sponsoring humane societies in the real world?

Well ... there are two common answers. One (typical of liberal temperaments) is to accept the ambiguity of the situation, retain some faith in one's position, and ignore the skeptics & questions or drown them in some sophistry. The other approach, more typical of conservatives and fundamentalists, is to- psychologically speaking- lose it: to shut down questions, lash out at skeptics, and at least close ranks if one can not, perchance, purify the entire society of the contagion of doubt.

Unfortunately, we live in a global society, so this purification process is a rather arduous affair, requiring the terrorism of vast populations outside one's own immediate culture. So the forces of Islam are busy branching out into anti-blasphemy resolutions at the UN, warning killings like 9/11, intimidation of writers and cartoonists far and wide, and ritually broadcast protests inspired by Friday "prayers." Aren't there better things to be angry about?

Not that Christianity should be let off the hook, either. Western societies have proven to be better able to deal with modernity, mostly in spite of Christianity, but certainly with some of its influences echoing still. Yet the conservative, patriarchial, anti-progress, pro-guns and pro-capital punishment party in the US also happens to be the home of hyper-religious Christians, whose top priority seems to be re-establishing a lost patriarchy over the reproductive lives of women. Which party issues threats to secede from the union? Which party threatened to blow up US credit-worthiness? Which party favors bullying other countries over mostly imagined dangers? Which party seeks opportunities to use the coercive powers of the state to push religious projects like ten-commandments monuments, contraception and abortion restrictions, and creationism?

You know the one. Communities have many virtues for us as humans, aside from being essential, and require some amount of discipline and even coercion to perpetuate themselves. One can not live with complete freedom from everything and everyone. Yet the practice of founding communities in bizarre narratives and otherworldly theologies, for all its strengths and occasional virtues, has awful defects as well- ones we need to keep in mind as we fight bullying on all fronts.

---

P.S. One may ask, from the Islamic perspective, isn't the US the one doing the bullying? Invading countries, killing innocent people from the air, carrying on some kind of weird socio-political crusade to make us all atheist and/or Christian evangelical junk food-eating, TV-watching drones? Fair enough. But is terror really the instrument of US policy, or does it only seem that way when we torture people, bomb civilians, and mess up whole countries? It should be evident that we don't use terror as a matter of policy, but target bullies directly as best we can. It isn't easy. How does one draw the line between defeating bullies and being a bully oneself? Hitler thought that other countries were forcing him into war, since they didn't want to give him the land that he deserved, like Poland, etc. The power of victimization narratives to justify bullying is as common as it is ironic.

I am sure it is self-evident to Muslims that no one should speak ill of them or their religion. But empirically speaking, that has not exactly been the golden road to human prosperity and fulfillment, either in the Islamic world or elsewhere. The West (and Islam too, in its golden age) has found a truly universal political principle, which is that of proportionality and tolerance- that social and especially state coercion must be avoided as far as possible, and employed as minimally as possible, for identifiable, civil / secular ends. That is to say that people should be afforded extensive rights of conscience and self-expression. Whether Afghanistan, say, wants this kind of social tolerance is an internal decision, but serving as a springboard for international terrorist bullies trying to eliminate such rights in other cultures is another matter. Target countries such as the US can't stand idly by, however reluctant to interfere with anyone's self-expression and governance.

The record is pretty clear. After a dismal period in the cold war where the US deposed several democratic governments and suported many authoritarian ones, much to our everlasting shame, the last few decades have witnessed the US typically deposing unquestionable bullies with execrable domestic as well as international records, from Manuel Noriega to Slobodan Milosevic, Saddam Hussein and Muammar Gaddafi. Being the most powerful nation in the world, we hardly get any thanks, of course. This is hardly a war on Islam, but a policing of the international scene, as far as we are able, for our own benefit but also that of others, including the oppressed countries themselves, now possibly with the exception of Iraq whose occupation was so catastrophic, and that of Afghanistan, whose "reconstruction" is heading who-knows-whither.

• Theocratic Christianity still going strong.
• It would be one thing if Catholics were actually consistent...
• Yes, conservatives & authoritarians are closed-minded and easily led. But they have high theological intelligence!
• Becoming one with the archetypes.
• Monarch butterflies hang out in California.
• The European crisis stutters on towards long-term decline. Roubini: no growth.
• Corporatocracy, Gresham's law, and accounting fraud. "... for a looter, the highest return on assets was always a political contribution."
• More on Minsky- the importance of expectations and psychology.
• Economics quote of the week, from Bill Mitchell:

"Governments should not worry about deficits."

• Economics bonus graphic, of economic models and their uniform failure to predict reality (black line).

Invisible man, in a hoodie

Review of Ralph Ellison's Invisible Man.

I happened to be reading Invisible Man as the Trayvon Martin story erupted, so I will totally give into temptation and draw some parallels, as a completely unexpert reader and onlooker. The book is wonderful. I think Ellison's greatest accomplishment is in his tone- one of bemusement and evident reasonableness and likeability, even while grappling with the harshest questions of American race relations.

It partakes of magical realism, telling a highly archetypal story in memoir form, filled with episodic drama and occasional actual dreams that heighten the drama still further. The stories range from an idealistic Southern youth forced to box fellow blacks for the obscene entertainment of the local white oligarchy, expulsion from Tuskeegee Institute for inadvertantly opening a trustee's eyes to the underside of black culture, to work in Harlem as a Communist organizer (an archetypally white organization) and a closing affair with a white woman comically drenched with stereotypes about her black "buck." Looking it up online, I was surprised to conclude that it has never been made into a movie. It would make a fantastic movie- deep, dark, humorous, and action-packed. For its time, (1952), it was both stylistically advanced, and politically prophetic, with race riots and themes of black power, foreshadowing events of the 60's.

Why invisible? Ellison's core observation is the universal one of psychological projection- that we deal typically with our images of the other, rather than with the real, actual other person. Lovers are notoriously in love with their idealized object, not with an actual person, and the test of marriage is then whether affection can survive the fleshing out and occasional shocks of reality as the real person gradually elbows his or her way out of the image. Incidentally, self-images are likewise hopelessly stylized and rose-tinted.

But darker projections are just as common, especially of minority groups that have been ritually subjugated, denigrated, and segregated. Blacks in America are so heavily projected upon that they hardly exist in real terms- they are invisible. And for a black person, navigating this treacherous terrain is undoubtedly extremely exhausting in the best of times. The landscape can be played with, but can never be ignored. Barack Obama performed quite the feat of racial jujitsu by inverting the projection in its key points, presenting high intelligence, extreme discipline, and a Cleaver-esque family to disarm marginally sympathetic white onlookers. Yet, even now, roughly one-third of Americans refuse to be disarmed, and entertain the most vitriolic hatred, and dismissal of his legitimacy, despite Obama's diligent impersonation, in office, of a milquetoast Dwight Eisenhower.

All this was acted out in tragic fashion in Florida, with George Zimmerman apparently in the grips of a racist and overly-armed animus towards blacks. Projection meets invisible man, and the invisible man ends up dead. Little of Zimmerman's story holds up. Nor does the "Stand your ground" law provide any legal cover. Zimmerman was not on his own ground, either on his home property or approached where he sat. He stalked the "intruder" on a public street, after being explicitly and officially told not to do so, started a fight, then killed him. The only person standing his ground was Trayvon Martin, not very successfully.

To top it all off, the police and/or the district attorney appear to share these strong projections, regarding Trayvon Martin as invisible, hardly due the benefit of their doubt after their quasi-deputized vigilante was attended to first, emerging as the only survivor telling tales. Obviously, I am shamelessly rushing to judgement based on little evidence. But the story has belatedly erupted because the pattern is so maddeningly typical of the psychological hazards facing, not just those paying the ultimate price for our stereotypes, but all those who drive, walk, drink, and exist ... while black, in the US.

Here are a few choice quotes from the book:

The black doctor / prophet / insane asylum inmate is treating the old white trustee, and speaks of the naive college student driver & narrator:
"'You see,' he said turning to Mr. Norton, 'he has eyes and ears and a good distended African nose, but he fails to understand the simple facts of life. *Understand. Understand? It's worse than that. He registers with his senses but short-circuits his brain. Nothing has meaning. He takes it in but he doesn't digest it. Already he is- well, bless my soul! Behold! a walking zombie! Already he's learned to repress not only his emotions but his humanity. He's invisible, a walking personification of the Negative, the most perfect achievement of your dreams, sir! The mechanical man!' "
...
"' Poor stumblers, neither of you can see the other. To you he is a mark on the scorecard of your achievement, a thing and not a man; a child or even less- a black amorphous thing. And you, for all your power are not a man to him, but a God, a force-'"

The paint company engine room mechanic, who is black, tells the narrator to keep an eye on the dials:
"You caint forgit down here, 'cause if you do, you liable to blow up something. They got all this machinery, but that ain't everything; we the machines inside the machine."

The narrator has finally had it with his communist organization that cares little about black issues:
"Oh, I'd yes them, but wouldn't I yes them! I'd yes them till they puked and rolled in it. All they wanted of me was one belch of affirmation and I'd bellow it out loud. Yes! Yes!, YES! That was all anyone wanted of us, that we should be heard and not seen, and then heard only in one big optimistic chorus of yassuh, yassuh, yassuh! All right, I's Yea, yea, oui, oui, and si, si and see, see them too; and I'd walk around in their guts with hobnailed boots. Even those super-big shots whom I'd never seen at committee meetings. They wanted a machine? Very well, I'd become a supersensitive confirmer of their misconceptions ..."

"I was never more hated than when I tried to be honest. Or when, even as just now I've tried to articulate exactly what I felt to be the truth. No one was satisfied- not even I. On the other hand, I've never been more loved and appreciated then when I tried to 'justify' and affirm someone's mistaken beliefs; or when I 've tried to give my friends the incorrect, absurd answers they wished to hear. ... But here was the rub: Too often, in order to justify them, I had to take myself by the throat and choke myself until my eyes bulged and my tongue hung out and wagged like the door of an empty house in a high wind. Oh, yes, it made them happy and it made me sick. So I became ill of affirmation ..."

"I'm invisible, not blind."

• Summary of the Martin case.
• The stranger we might be married to.
• Didactic pirate finally breaks it out, and shows how hard it is to know even ourselves.
• Color can make invisible within the black community too.
• More despair in Afghanistan, and a bit of humor.
• Not just peak oil, but peak gold as well.. we have to get our heads around limits.
• Early warning on climate change and the jet stream.
• Belief is addiction.
• Frontiers in corporate erosion of political rights- ag gag laws, general despotism, warped ideology, corruption.
• Outstanding article on the evolutionary possibilities of China.

"Wen Jiabao, meanwhile, who plays the role of a learned, emphatic, and upright Confucian prime minister, has been challenging the other half of Deng consensus -- absolute political control -- from the liberal right. He has continuously articulated the need to limit government power through rule of law, justice, and democratization. To do this, he has drawn on the symbolic legacies of the purged reformist leaders he served in the 1980s, particularly Hu Yaobang, whose name he recently helped to 'rehabilitate' in official discourse. As every Communist Party leader knows, those who want a stake in the country's future must first fight for control of its past."

• Bonus video- a little virtuoso piano by Errol Garner. A lot, actually.

Axis of Bastards

What is the next cold war?

The US has benefitted in the past from simplified foreign policy frameworks. The Monroe doctrine, Containment, "Making the world safe for Democracy". However crude, they helped define and communicate our basic intentions. In the last decade, we have labored under a welter of much less clearly thought out or coherent policies, from the Axis of evil to "hearts and minds" and the global war against terror. It has not been a good period, either rhetorically or substantively.

Worst of all was the "Axis of evil", George Bush II's lumping together of his motley foes (Iran, North Korea, Iraq) whose only shared characteristic was their imperviousness to US influence. The rhetoric had nothing to do with either Iran or North Korea, it turned out, as Iraq was the target (in January, 2002) for reasons better given over to personal psychology than foreign policy.

We head into an interesting world from here, as Bush's wars die down. The relative influence of the US declines as other countries grow economically. The influence of our European allies is fading even faster as they stumble through the current crisis to ever-deeper economic retrenchment.

On the other hand, we face no mortal enemy of diametrically opposed philosophy or globe-straddling totalitarian ambition. All countries of any consequence are more or less market-based in their economics, and geopolitically stable within the confines of the Pax Americana we have managed since World War II. The jihadis are a nuisance, but hardly a state threat.

What we face on the long term is a third way of quasi-repressive government and "controlled democracy": authoritarianism exemplified by China and Russia, but shared with many other countries, from Pakistan, Belarus, Kazakhstan, Saudi Arabia, Syria (most notoriously ), with new members Hungary and perhaps also Turkey, depending on how things go, and on to old friends Iran and Vietnam, among many others.

The old model of Stalinism is out, aside for the very few holdouts like North Korea. Even Cuba is tiptoeing into market-based reforms. However attractive to the power-mad, Stalinism tends toward complete implosion on the medium term. So the way I see the world developing is as a contest between the truly free world, exemplified by the US, Europe, India, Japan, South Korea, et al., and this other class of repressive countries, which one could call an Axis of Bastards. In truth, the spectrum is very broad. We in the US have an impaired democracy with open political corruption and a legal system that is applied in highly selective, not to say prejudicial, fashion; overly complex, and much mocked and evaded. On the other hand, the state does not routinely kill journalists, rig elections, or own all the major media, either.

I'll note in passing that a third class of country is the failed states, like Somalia and Congo, and perhaps Afghanistan again within a few years, (given that we are standing up a government with little legitimacy and doubful capacity), which pose entirely different problems of humanitarian disaster, extremist infestation, and Hobbesian politics. An Axis of Hobbes, if you will. As uncoordinated an "axis" as the others, one would have to confess, quite unlike the original Axis of World War II.

Just as Stalinist systems break down in the span of a few decades, authoritarian systems are also untenable on longer time scales. Their economics are clearly more productive, as China, Singapore, and post-war South Korea have shown. But there remain economic and social soft-power limits to systems whose closed nature (at least at the top of policy-making) makes them prone to corruption and determinedly unresponsive to wider currents of technological and social change. As long as completely free states / systems show superior levels of economic prosperity along with all their other attractions, the authoritarian system will clearly be second-best. A way to stave off chaos- yes- which post-communist Russia and China are understandably sensitive to, but no way to fully enjoy the fruits of their own economic potential.

What does the future hold? With some apologies to Jean Kirkpatrick, who advanced the idea that authoritarian governments were inherently more likely to open up and evolve into open democracies, (towards the Reaganite policy of befriending all and sundry bastards of her day), the tide does seem to be heading in that direction, following where South Korea and Argentina, among many others, have gone before. Burma is perhaps the latest intriguing example.

China is on a vaguely positive track, experimenting with local democracy and slowly instituting rule of law as ways of combatting the disease of corruption. It seems unlikely that China would face down another Tiananmen square crisis in the same way today, though with the sincere jingo-ism it has stoked in its young, the prospect of needing to do so also seems far off. But the debates within the ruling structure may also become increasingly divisive after the simplest goals of economic development are attained, and break out into the open, forming parties that seek legitimacy from their ultimate source, the people.

Rumblings of freedom have erupted into the open in Russia, Syria, and Iran, with crackdowns of varying brutality. Russia has rushed to Syria's aid, just as Saudi Arabia rushed to Bahrain's aid during the Arab Spring protests. Syria and Iran are close allies, with healthy ties to China and Pakistan. So these repressive countries tend to help each other, knowing that the weight of world opinion is against them, and that cracks in the facade of happy Orwelliansm are damaging to all of them together.

Perhaps the key question is technological. Stalinism was a creature of its technological moment, with the advent of crude mass media and industrial mass-production somewhat amenable to brutal top-down command-and-control. Today, no one would dream of running a command-and-control economy, but command-and-control media are quite a different matter. Russia and China are each, in their own ways, highly sophisticated in controlling their media environments. We have our own FOX news- organ of the plutocracy, for heaven's sake.

So a global arms race is afoot in the new media environment, between freedom, connectedness, transparent openness, and repressive forces (both corporate and state-sponsored) that divert, dilute, drown out, or if needed, destroy dissenting voices and movements. Information is power, as the old saying goes. And along with the repression comes corruption, its natural corollary in abuse of power. Free information is the prerequisite of all other freedoms, as our founders knew very well- the killer app of democracy, if you will.

• More on moral breakdown.
• Supreme court political circus reaches damaging new lows.
• It turns out we don't have to (and don't want to) drive all the time after all.
• Corzine's pilfering.
• A bit of pedagogy in math.
• Medicine- run, don't walk away from your doctor!
• Fed: big banks still clogged with toxic waste. And too big.
• Economics quote, from Randall Wray, on Marvin Minsky:

"Minsky criticized the Kennedy-Johnson War on Poverty, warning that without a significant job creation component it would fail to reduce poverty even as it created a welfare-dependent and marginalized class. He showed that offering one full-time job per low income household instead– even at the minimum wage- would raise two-thirds of all poor families above the poverty line. Further, he estimated that the output created by putting people to work would more than provide for the extra consumption by increasing GDP by a multiple of the extra wages. 

Minsky argued a legislated minimum wage is “effective” only with an “employer of last resort”, for otherwise the true minimum wage is zero for all those who cannot find a job.
...
 The government as employer of last resort serves as a bookend to the central bank as lender of last resort– just as the lender of last resort sets a floor to asset prices (by lending so that banks do not have to engage in firesales), the employer of last resort sets a floor to wages (anyone willing to work can get the minimum wage) and thus also to aggregate demand and consumption."

• Bonus- economics figure. It is the private debt that leads to bubbles and collapses:

The Amish, Apple, and modern community

On the religion of objects, their morals and connection with community.

PBS offered a beautiful documentary of the Amish, asking how and why they have resisted the modernity the rest of us worship. To me, the most interesting observation is that community is the core purpose of Amish life. Anything that tends to weaken community, like cars, phones, women's rights, and domestic conveniences, is negotiated in a way that either is excluded completely, or kept at arm's length such that it doesn't invade the home. Work per se is valued as good, so doing more of it via traditional technologies isn't such a bad thing. Just look what the "English" do with all their free time!

One can call this conservative. The Amish certainly embody true conservatism. But it is conservatism with a point, recognizing that humans must live in community, and are happiest in community. Thus the quality of that community deserves special care. Which sometimes requires renunciation of those temptations the rest of the culture regards as the birthright of individualism, free enterprise, and the American way. Particularly, the ideology of progress is something the Amish apparently deny categorically, content to sweat and toil in this way-station to a better world.

The diametric opposite attitude comes from Apple, perhaps the leading purveyor of the narrative of progress and modernity, succeeding on our many previous infatuations with railroads, electrification, atomic power, television, et al. Steve Jobs distilled this ethos into an extremly powerful drug, indeed a "reality distortion field". Each new product is the best ever, the most chic, the most free-ing of creative professionals to destroy the reigning paradigms of dead "past" values and designs in favor of a "think different" future.

Both the Amish and Apple take a moral attitude towards objects and the material environment. One asks that its technologies serve its community and is willing to forego labor-saving and consciousness-extending devices in that service. The other claims that all its technologies make everything better, freeing each individual from historical limitations and collective tyranny, while simultaneously uniting us in new "distributed" social networks with increased artistic, cultural, and political powers. The Amish sincerely doubt the latter proposition, or at least the quality of these new "communities".

A recent review of Steve Jobs and Apple focused interestingly on their deep debt to the Bauhaus design school, and evaluated Apple's position as purveyor of a sort of prophetic design sense. It doesn't so much fulfill its customers needs as show them needs they didn't know they had, wrapped up in designs they hardly deserve. It is a somewhat imperious relationship, breathlessly marketed with revolutionary slogans and peans to creativity, mostly redounding to house of Apple rather than its customers.

Compared to its main competitor, Microsoft, which offers militantly un-designed products of utilitarian, even anti-user ethics, yes, Apple morality does successfully inject a modicum of taste and ease into an otherwise daunting concept- that of advanced computer operation and maintenance. But that just begs the question of whether sitting on our couches staring into ever-more refined screens is what we truly, deeply, want to be doing. (However, thank you for reading this blog in electronic form!)

Here, the morality is of perfection in an aesthetic and functional sense, expressing faith that if we get just what we individually want, it will enhance our human-ness, at least until the next model comes out. Is this free-market individualist conception of human fulfillment working properly? Are our politics, for example, enhanced by the new powers of computers and communication? Have our media become deeper and more informative, or rather shallower? Does the endless procession of newer and better objects through our lives make them better, our thoughts deeper? Is it good for the human and indeed larger biological communities we exist within?

I think it is fair to say that people need to be nudged into community consciousness. We have always had hermits, mountain men, and other loners, but primitive conditions generally force people into communities for subsistance in addition to other needs. This is part of what Marx disparaged as the "idiocy of rural life", and is of course what he tried to replace through his vanguard of worker solidarity. It is the bread and butter of religion, which as the rabbi says, is about love and doing, more than it is about belief. It seems that the US is leading the way, via its prosperity and its absolute dedication to personal emancipation through personal choice and free markets, towards de-community-ization: the shallowing-out and hollowing-out of all forms of non-monetary connection. Not only are corporations people, they are also our reigning community, both in the guise of the workplace as well as the media, the social network, the local coffehouse.

It isn't easy to propose a solution that doesn't go back on some of our cherished freedoms, rights, and usages, while restoring a deeper sense of connectedness. If we need large common tasks, the fight against climate change is certainly one, as are the perennial searches for social and economic justice in the US, and around the world. Our civic religion desperately needs refurbishing, with policies like publicly funded campaigns and media, holidays for voting, and mandatory public service. For me, the community of scholarship has always been the deepest form of communion, expressing faith in progress, human potential, and openness. But knowledge alone doesn't make communities, for all its other virtues. Indeed, it can be rather frosty and exclusive.

Millions of people visit the Amish country each year. One can imagine they feel some unease on the treadmill of modernity and see something attractive in a culture that is sure enough of itself to forego that greatest of American myths- that we can successfully make virtues of avarice and covetousness, towards a future that is always better, where the grass is always greener, if you adjust the screen just right.

• Michael Sandel on the moral and political distortions of market values.
• Public sector job creation- Obama/Bush comparison.
• Official honorifics are for office-holders only, please.
• Absolutely appalling climate denialist series on CBC.
• Matt Taibbi does his best to drive BofA out of business. All I can say is ... Citi is even worse. "By the end of last year, the government reported, more than half of all the crappy loans that Fannie wanted to return came from a single bad bank – Bank of America."
• Lessons in extractive economics.
• Interesting set of graphs on possible post-crisis trajectories.

Ode to Monarchs

Review of "Wings in the meadow", by Jo Brewer.

A friend sent us the classic 1967 book about Monarch butterflies "Wings in the meadow", by Jo Brewer. It is beautifully written, with shameless advocacy for her subject and equally shameless anthropomorphism. As I have noted before, anthropomorphism in biology has more going for it than scientists traditionally allow, since feelings and intuition are the fundamental currency that animals use to guide their lives.

"During these three days, Danaeus the son had doubled in size. In his first twenty-four hours he had chewed four small holes in his leaf and consumed an amount of milkweed equal to his own weight. Parts of his skin had darkened until his body was encircled by nine chocolate-colored bands. Now his skin was stretched so tightly about him that he could eat no more and his black face mask, which had once covered his whole head, had become a tight black glass button pinching his mouth. The time had come to shed his first skin. With his two anal prolegs, he grasped a bit of the silk which he had spun, and summoning all his little stength, pushed his head forwrad until, splitting his skin at the thorax, he was able to wriggle his way out of it. This herculean task, which taxed his every muscle, required nearly three hours of his life."

I found it completely captivating, and ask- why is this book not in print, and read in every school in the land? It would be such a positive answer to Catcher in the rye and other cynical staples of middle school.

"He was free of the earth at last. The long desperate struggle was over, and the long night past. Red of the firebrand and gold of the sun were fused in the fiery wings he presented to the noonday sun, and a delicious fragrance- sweet and spicy and erotic- was diffused across his back. His wings and his body were filled with power and he was free. He leapt high in the air and encircled the field, fliding, dipping, soaring, surveying from his place in the sky a world of leaves which he had already forgotten."

Brewer combines a detailed and dramatic description of the life cycle of Monarchs with copious scenes of other animals around the meadow. Even a human shows up, in the form of Mr. Stevens, whose heart is in the right place, preserving the peace of this meadow that he owns, but only seeing its true magic late in the book as the Monarch life cycle comes back to roost, ever so briefly, in his trees.

"He found the flashlight he kept in his jeep and walked slowly toward the tree. In the beam of light which he cast upon it there was again that same sudden motion- an evanescent flash of golden-bronze: a warning flash that come and went in the fraction of a second, leaving nothing in its wake but the surprise of the beholder- and the congregation of Monarchs which had gathered there for the night become once more invisible. But this time Mr. Stevens had seem them open and close their wings, and he could make them out, hidden and small in the shadows. There were perhaps three or four hundred of them. It was a sight so unexpected and unusual that he looked upon it with a kind of awe. The butterflies were just out of his reach, but he would not have touched them anyway. For the moment, the tree was theirs not his, and he was filled with a sensation of very great pleasure. He did not know that scarcely one person in a thousand ever sees a little butterfly tree like the one in his meadow."

---

"It is in the nature of living creatures to cling to life with the greatest tenacity when the promise life holds is least. When the cup is full, the precious liquid is spilled with reckless joy- when nearly drained, the last few drops become a priceless treasure."

• Wings today... at the Xerces society.
• Haidt on spirituality, religious experience, modernity, and group selection.
• What moral decay do we suffer from especially?
• Pay for failure.. brought to you by the free enterprise, private market!
• What is banking like today- I?
• What is banking like today- II? The management/agency model is deeply flawed.
• Some men seem to suffer from hysteria.
• Programming is ... not so easy.
• Medieval economics- more bleeding, please.
• The Augean stable of MERS ... requires total reworking of property title in the US.
• Economics quote of the week: Bill Mitchell provides the most concise summary of the financial crisis I know of, with a little editing help from me.

"In the past, the dilemma of capitalism was that the firms had to keep real wages growing in line with productivity to ensure that the consumptions goods produced were sold. But in the recent period, capital found a new way to accomplish this which allowed for the suppression of real wages and increasing shares of the national income produced to emerge as profits.
...
The trick was found in the rise of “financial engineering” which pushed ever increasing debt onto the household sector. The capitalists found that they could sustain purchasing power and receive a bonus along the way in the form of interest payments. This seemed to be a much better strategy than paying higher real wages.
...
The combination of a hollowing out of the state, an out of control deregulated financial sector, and the rising fragility of non-government balance sheets thus set up the world economy for the crisis.
...
The crisis represents a fundamental rejection of the neo-liberal vision that self-regulating markets will operate to advance the best interests of all of us. The neo-liberal paradigm fails on every dimension."

• Bonus quote, also from Bill Mitchell:

"Most people do not consider the irretrievable nature of these losses. Every day that unemployment remains above the full employment level (allowing for a small unemployment rate arising from frictions – people moving in-between jobs) the economy is foregoing billions in lost output and national income that is never recovered.

The magnitude of these losses and the fact that most commentators and policy makers prefer unemployment to direct job creation, shows the powerful hold that neo-liberal thinking has had on policy makers. How is it rational to tolerate these massive losses which span generations?

As noted, to some extent these losses are a mystery to society in general. While the unemployed and their families are certainly aware of them, the remainder of the society are less aware. For example, we might notice rising crime rates in our neighbourhoods but do not associate it with unemployment."

Notes on savings and wealth

What happens when grasshoppers turn into ants?

One theme that seems underemphasized in our economic debate is the importance of desires for saving in structuring the economy and generating the swings of economic activity. It sounds so nebulous, even touchy-feely, but has very real effects.

As the fable goes, the ant diligently stores up its little grains and other food for the winter, while the prodigal grasshopper fiddles and sings its summer away, then has nothing to eat come winter. The grasshopper asks the ant for a morsel, but the ant says no, and that is the bitter end of the tale. (Though a biologist adds that in reality, grasshoppers lay eggs that hibernate just fine, so not to worry!)

But in macroeconomics, a better metaphor might be that of a river as the normal course of economic activity, and a dam, which stores a reservoir of money saved in arbitrary amounts. To complete the analogy, the river would feature a prepetual motion system where outflows magically return as inflows to the system, completing the cycle. While the savings of ants are limited to their own insurance needs over relatively short periods of time, (however long those seeds keep), and are to that degree an unquestioned virtue, the advent of money allows unlimited stores of wealth to be accumulated, with dangerous consequences.

If everyone suddenly decides to save all their money, the stream down from the dam runs dry, no money is spent / returned, everyone is fired from their jobs, and the economy grinds to a halt. This is of course an extreme thought experiment. Most people have necessities that require ongoing spending, whether they like it or not. And there are always people being born and getting old, evening out the demographic savings cycle.

Additionally, the financial industry mediates the transformation of savings into new spending, via loans, stocks, bonds, and other investments. But when investors / gamblers head for safety, like in our current downturn, making fewer loans, fewer investments, and bidding down yields on the safest bonds, then a similar effect takes place- lots of inert money storage, and economic seizure.

There are also distributional issues. Is the stored money used to insure everyone's prosperity in lean times in equitable fashion? Or is it, by other rules, captured and used by a minority with military, political, or ideological power? Is it inherited by people with no claim to such wealth other than being born lucky? Or is it recognized as the patrimony of our forebears in common who painstakingly built our current wealth over generations in forms large and small? Should wealth and power be transmutable into each other? Who decides when to turn the spigot when times are lean and more flow down the river is needed? Is it the few with great wealth, or the many who have built it up, drop by drop?

Savings by different sectors of the economy have very different characteristics. I will discuss four sectors- individuals, businesses, banks, and the federal government. My discussion will mirror MMT viewpoints, as recapped recently by Bill Mitchell. One could also mention a fifth sector, of ecological savings, which has the biggest, baddest impact of all, but that is quite another topic!

Savings by individuals are removed from their consumption and may go to consumption by others depending on how they are invested. They could go to a personal loan to a relative, who founds a business and promises to make more money to repay in the future. Net spending hasn't been affected, and future economic growth may have been increased. If the money goes to the stock market, it increases that liquid store of wealth, with unclear future ramifications, but no immediate spending is implied.

If the savings are deposited at a bank, they may or may not be put to further use and spent as loans, depending on the mood of the bankers and the demand of their clients. Lastly, if the money buys government bonds, government spending is not affected in the least, as will be explained below. So individual saving definitely reduces the saver's own consumption, which may be replaced by other consumption or not, depending on how the saving is done.

Businesses save much like individuals. After Apple's near-death experience sixteen years ago, they were clearly eager to maintain a cushion to fall back on in their dotage, and by now have $80 billion lying around, which investors are eager to see as dividends. Other companies in the US are also sitting on very large piles of cash, adding their measure of pro-cyclical non-investment to our problems of economic growth.

Banks, on the other hand, are an entirely different beast. To them, loans are assets and savings, liabilities. All they need is capital, not savings from individuals. If a bank has $100 of capital, and no depositors at all, it can make $1000 of loans, which then instantly become deposits when the loan is "funded" (for retail banks, funding typically comes from borrowing in turn from other institutions, [the interbank market], whose rate is ultimately based on government bond rates, and which ultimately involves someone up the line creating money by leverage). This power of literally making money means that individual savings play an optional role for a bank, despite its historical importance from when money was not so easily conjured. In the dam analogy, banks might require a foray into science fiction, being able to produce water by the magical means of writing some words on paper, which matches each conjured drop of water with an anti-water debt certificate, the two of which mutually anihilate when brought together again.

But banks don't have to make loans, and can get by in today's environment where the Fed pays them to take a couple trillion in reserves, and where the spread between government bond rates and deposit rates remains positive. They can make do during a downturn with little loan activity.

As other businesses do, however, banks would like to have savings for one thing- to insure themselves against calamity. But since their business is leverage and their loans are always in the hands of others, it is impossible to do so significantly. Their safety revolves around their capital ratio. It is their appetite for risk, and their regulators, which decide whether 1:1, 10:1, 30:1, or 50:1 leverage is a prudent cushion of capital. Fluctuating opinions about this risk insure that banks will create the least amount of water just when it is needed most.

Last is the government, which is typically supposed to go into debt by deficit spending and to save by accumulating surpluses. When looked at from the perspective of the larger economy, however, the exact opposite is the case. The currency-issuing government can't run out of money, so to it, saving money has no meaning. It could just as well burn whatever comes in as tax receipts and print anew whatever it spends.

To the rest of us, federal deficit spending adds to the flow of income. (The associated bond sales have little net effect, transferring private savings from one to another form). Conversely, federal surpluses directly subtract money from the economy, reducing incomes and wealth. In the dam analogy, government is the sky which either rains down water or takes it back from the parched earth, limited by nothing other than its wisdom.

Putting all this together, economic conditions (or less tangible "mood", when considering future prospects) dictate whether individuals and businesses increase their savings, or whether they invest and demand loans. Our recent "little depression", where loss of wealth and unwise lending & borrowing created an enormous "debt overhang", requires excess saving for long periods of time, can depress this mood for years, even decades, as in the case of Japan. A population may be very savings-minded, again as in the case of Japan.

All this means that, even without economic bubbles, bank fraud, and complete regulatory breakdown as we saw over the last decade, swings in the economic system can result from changes in savings behavior. The government is in the position to address those swings, accommodating higher savings desires with higher deficit spending, allowing the inert pool of savings to grow while maintaining stable economic activity.

It is also worth noting that the government's capacity for deficit spending expresses implicit wealth, since such a practice can only avoid causing inflation when other balances are positive, such as population growth, people producing more than they consume, or other countries saving our dollars and giving us goods in return.

The bigger the reservoir of money gets, the better managed it needs to be, protecting us in common both from inflationary excess (dam breaks, monsoons of rain), and from deflationary evaporation. Nor is saving always a virtue. We eat bread, not money, so tending the systems of real production is what will sustain us in the long term. By this time in developed countries, we have far more money than we know what to do with. Yet it is so unevenly distributed that those with money can hardly find enough ways to spend it, let alone invest it, and those without flirt with insurrection and contemplate changes to the rules of acquisition.

• Too much savings .. a crushing setback to the wealthy.
• Are we a totally lawless society when it comes to finance?
• Capitalism and masculinity. Corp for president?
• On the joys, and the veracity, of lucid dreaming.
• "Down where I come from, they think you’re the best president since Jefferson Davis."
• Our housing and deflation trajectory.
• Job programs of the past, vs business neo-feudalism.
• Just who is the NSA protecting?
• Another failure in Afghanistan.
• Economics quote of the week, from Bill Mitchell:

"But fiscal flows – spending and taxation – are accounted for but once they exit the economy – as a surplus (spending less than taxation) then they are gone for good. There is no storage shed in Canberra or Washington or anywhere else where the surpluses are saved up and available for the government to drive a truck down and pick up some dollars to spend.
Surpluses destroy financial assets that were previously in the hands of the non-government sector and these assets are gone forever."

• Bonus economics quote, from Nouriel Roubini:

"The reality is that most of the gains in good times – and until the PSI ['private secotr involvement' in Greece's slow motion default] were privatised while most of the losses have been now socialised. Taxpayers of Greece’s official creditors, not private bondholders, will end up paying for most of the losses deriving from Greece’s past, current and future insolvency."