Thursday, February 25, 2010

Barack Obama - The 21st Century's FDR, Now In Color!

In the slightly over a year that Obama has been president, most of the world has probably heard every popular opinion of why he is either the best or the worst thing to ever happen to the United States and the modern world. These opinions range from kooky racist allegations on both sides - white supremacists claiming he is inept simply due to his skin color and various minority power groups accusing anyone who criticizes him of racism by the same logic, - to slightly more commonplace but equally irrelevant criticisms of him being a socialist, a Marxist, a Muslim, a globalist puppet, etc. and praise for being a reformer, a visionary, a fighter for civil rights and economic justice and compassion, and so on. What sickens me about these political debates and the myriad of other related ones is that every one of them dwindles down to very skindeep ideological rhetoric on both sides that completely overlook the realities of Obama's presidency. Of course this trend isn't uncommon in western politics, particularly in the United States, but I get the impression that the abundance of irrelevant "novelties" in Obama's presidency has created an almost unprecedented ignorance of his actual policies, at least a level this country hasn't seen in several decades.

So, as always, let's examine Obama's actual policies in historic and political context, without paying heed to any actual or purported ideological affiliations.
Obama was elected by a landslide (the first landslide in almost 30 years) to replace an extremely unpopular administration held responsible for a catastrophic economic crisis that was in actuality only partially its fault. G.W. Bush's policies perpetuated the economic irresponsibility of the decades preceding his presidency, and his policies aimed at recovery, such as the bank and AIG bailouts, compounded the crisis. But these policies did not single-handedly CREATE the meltdown, and let's not forget that democratic legislators were behind them more or less every step of the way. Upon taking office, Obama embarked on a campaign of economic recovery policies that were inches different from those of his predecessor, and that continuously fail to achieve the recovery or, according to some measures at least, even contain the continuing economic collapse. Obama's economic approach may be regarded by both his ignorant supporters and equally ignorant critics as opposite of Bush Jr.'s, but this is exactly the false dichotomy trap citizens fall into. Bush took federal taxpayer money (YOUR MONEY!) and handed it in droves to megacorporations that had driven themselves broke through irresponsible business practices - among these banks, automobile manufacturers, and insurance companies. Obama continues to take THE SAME MONEY and fork it out to homebuyers, college students, renewable energy businesses, and a variety of others in the from of "tax credits" and various subsidies, in most cases as rewarding of irresponsible behavior as Bush's bailouts, only in the middle and working classes rather than the super-rich. Firstly, make no mistake that tax credits and subsidies are no different from bailouts in terms of giving someone else YOUR tax money. The people who receive these credits are entitled to the same government services that your and their taxes pay for, yet they get a chunk of that money back and you don't, meaning your money gets to make up the difference. As far as rewarding irresponsibility, this may not be the case 100% of the time, but the responsible people who benefit from economic stimulus are at best those who need it to be on equal ground with the irresponsible whom it "bails out," and would have not needed it and been better off if it hadn't been issued to anyone. To make an example, let's consider Obama's homebuying stimulus projects - his tax credit for first-time homebuyers and his variety of federal loan subsidies. The credit, as he himself has admitted, is intended to stimulate people to buy homes and stall the continuing decline of prices in the housing market. Sounds great? Except for the fact that said "continuing decline" would mean that prices would keep dropping and those who had been responsible for the 5-6 years preceding the crisis (saved their money if they had jobs with high earnings but low security, made responsible investments, chosen jobs which pay less but are more likely not to fall victim to the recession, etc.) would be able to afford to buy homes without the credit, while those who had made irresponsible choices would not. Ditto for the loan assistance programs, which are meant to make loans available to people with bad credit at an affordable interest rate, subsidized to the bank by the federal government, by Obama's own admission to keep the banking market from declining because so few people are able to afford loans. In this case, people with above-average credit can't benefit from the subsidies period, as the interest rates their credit qualifies them for are actually BETTER than those in the subsidy programs. Hence, if interest rates were left at their unsubsidized market value, fewer people would be able to borrow money and in order to stay in business, banks would have to offer even BETTER rates to those who CAN afford to borrow by the basic standard of competition. This principle applies to economic stimulus across the board, regardless of who it aims to bail out or stimulate, with very few exceptions. In essence, it prevents the purging of inefficient investments and business practices (bankruptcies of banks and large corporations, foreclosures of overpriced housing, etc.) by virtue of natural competitive attrition, ensuring that the people who made these poor investments are enabled to so again, EN MASSE, and bring about another crisis in a few years. This is sometimes referred to as "blowing another bubble." And of course, besides ensuring another recession a few years down the line, stimulus of any sector of the economy stagnates the recovery and can in some cases even perpetuate the downward spiral, by the simple principle that prices are not allowed to drop enough (or quickly enough) for investors who endured the crisis (from smart homebuyers and working/middle class families to large corporations and banks) to use their gains from the collapse to buy up new investments at the record low prices, providing a kind of stimulus the federal government cannot dream of. Recessions, crises, economic collapses - all of these are a sad reality of any economic system, - but what is not natural is for them to last up to a decade, a la the Great Depression. This stagnation of recovery is a principle introduced by state intervention.

To return to our analysis of Obama, let's leave the economy for a moment and examine foreign policy. Obama's strategy, across the board, has been to avoid confontation with states that are openly hostile to the US and its allies in favor of multilateral diplomacy that seeks to neutralize their threat through sanctions and transparency. The Islamist Theocracy of Iran, the nutball Communist Dictators of Venezuela and North Korea, and a number of organizations and alliances within the Saudi Government that, while not hegemonic within it at this point, the pro-US monarchy cannot readily control, have all openly announced on multiple occasions that their mission is to create a violent global revolution to remake the world in their image - a humanity that serves the ideals of muslim theocracy or the "liberation" of the working class from the "oppression" of imperialism. Mind you, neither Saddam Hussein in Iraq nor the Taliban when in control of Afghanistan ever made any such "charming" claims; the best accusation that could be mustered against them was supporting insurgent groups, morally and financially, that are enemies of the US. And, let's not forget that Iran and Syria were part of Bush's coalition to invade and neutralize these regimes, despite their open hostility to the US. I don't know why anyone ever thought the Bush administration would pursue military campaigns against these openly hostile states - these would offer no economic benefit to his constituency, and in the case of Saudi Arabia would be quite contrary to said interests. But, the fact that Bush's military campaigns were economically motivated, as has been suggested over and over again, and that in a foreign policy sense they've only served to destabilize the countries invaded, in no way excuses Obama's neglect of his responsibility to keep the American people safe from foreign threat. The Bush wars left two countries with little geographic and demographic capacity for rule of law and monopoly on force in the absence of iron tyranny in states of colossal disarray, and the resulting power vacuum has allowed hostile governments to use these as breeding grounds for their supporters. Saddam was a tyrant and a murderer, but he was widely disliked by the Islamist elite and kept the Islamists within Iraq on a short leash, preventing them from forming an alliance with Iran or the Islamist elements in Saudi Arabia. Now, in the aftermath of 8 years of Bush Jr., Obama continues to engage in an unwinnable bughunt for the various insurgent elements in Iraq and Afghanistan while pandering to the governments that supply them. Insurgents are not dangerous by virtue of the fact that they are radically hostile and willing to kill and die. There are thousands of extremists within the US, from Christian fundamentalists to liberal revolutionaries to just plain unstable psychiatric cases, that nevertheless don't pose any significant danger to our political system. This is because they have no real chance of usurping power from the US Government, even if they own a few firearms. The Islamist sociopaths hiding in the sands of Afghanistan and Iraq would be no different from these examples, even in the face of the shakiness of their governments' hold on power, if states like Iran and Saudi Arabia were not pumping massive amounts of their taxpayers' money into funding their campaigns. No matter how corrupt or immoral the rogue Russian or Pakistani military official with his hands on unaccounted for weapons may be, he will not sell them to a Jihadi if the Jihadi cannot afford to PAY for them.

The truly frightening part about these Obama policies is that, despite the rhetoric, there is absolutely nothing "novel" about them. The economic situation and policies, although arguably not to the same intensity, very closely resemble that of the Great Depression. The corporate-aligned Herbert Hoover was that era's George W. Bush, with his landslide-elected successor, the infamous FDR, seen as a messiah of change and reformist progressive thinking and implementing a decade of economic stimulus policies that make Obama's look tame that did not, by any statistical measure, facilitate any form of economic recovery until the re-gearing of the industrial machine for WWII in the 1940s. Speaking of war and foreign policies, let's not forget that Stalin's USSR and Hitler's Germany saw their infancy in the early years of FDR, and that both of these countries announced open hostility toward the west and a mission of global domination, with Imperial Japan having done the same a decade prior and by 1933 having began conquering military campaigns in East Asia. (The USSR originated in the 1920s, of course, but did not truly emerge as a totalitarian regime with the capacity for a global domination bid until Stalin's rise to power in the late 1920s and his draconian agricultural and industrial reforms that transformed it into a starving but powerful war machine.) What was the policy of FDR and his allies for dealing with these sociopathic dictators who openly announced the desire to take over the world? The support of weak, unstable governments in a variety of countries in a struggle against insurgencies supported by one or both! (Italy, Spain, Portugal, Bulgaria, to name a few.) When every single one of these countries fell into the control of a regime sympathetic and similar to the USSR and Nazi Germany, even if not allied with it (a la Franco's Spain), they had accumulated the power to begin their own global domination campaigns, and arguably failed largely because they eventually ended up at war with each other.

Even Obama's apparent novelty is comparable to that of FDR. FDR was a severely physically disabled man, having spent the majority of his life paralyzed from the neck down and even during his presidency requiring a lot of physical assistance with his basic self-care. Disabled people are to this day arguably a very underpriviledged minority, but 80 years ago the idea of a man so severely crippled being elected president was seen as revolutionarily progressive, and a variety of the opposition's rhetoric focused on his disability just as Obama's opposition focuses on his race. Similarly, supporters cheered FDR fervently as somehow being one of them because of this minority status, forgetting conveniently for him that just like Obama, he descended from a long ancestral line of very rich entrepreneurs and politicians. I don't mean to paint a doomsday scenario of 7 more years of economic failure followed by the inevitability of WWIII with this comparison, as the world is very different now from 80 years ago, and changes quickly enough that these similarities to the 1930s may very well not last long enough to have the same disastrous outcome. However, the purpose is to point out that Obama is nothing more than just another mainstream politician, with neither some hidden subversive agenda for a New World Order nor some revelation of innovative political thought, and that the clouding of his actual policies by these assumptions by both critics and supporters is dangerous as it leaves the real plausible effects of his administration out of the spotlight.

To those who say "give Obama a chance," I fervently respond "I will be glad to do so, when I see him doing something that hasn't already been tried by the US government for the last 100 years."

Sunday, February 21, 2010

Public Education: If We Can't Beat Rampant Ignorance, Let's Standardize It!

There is nothing original about ranting on the government's inefficiency and the fallacy of expecting any kind of quality service from a bureaucracy of any kind. Most of us have probably heard countless jokes and allusions to how the government can't deliver the mail on time, register our cars (a la the DMV), and fix the roads in our cities. However, in the minds of many, public education is placed on some kind of untouchable pedestal as a necessity that delivers some precious service without which we'd be stuck in the middle ages, and at best critics agree to very small reforms that boil down to flushing more and more resources down this insatiable toilet of inefficiency. How anyone can think that an entity that can't be trusted to deliver a letter or properly manage information regarding vehicle ownership is even remotely qualified to handle the education of our children, which most of these same people value very highly, is beyond me; but rather than make an ideological judgment based on a loose analogy, let's examine how public education really works.

As usual, I will not waste my time with moral discussions of whether or not education is a "right" and if so, what the morally correct means of ensuring equal access to it are, because as the premises mention, "rights" and "morality" are completely arbitrary concepts that vary from person to person, and have no place in any kind of scientific discussion. However, I will lay out my theory for why public education is perhaps the #1 roadblock in the US to anyone not employed by it achieving any modicum of maximum efficiency, as discussed in Premise 3. As you will remember from that premise, opportunity for material advancement and access to education as a part of this made it on the list that the grand majority of ideologies and people seem to agree they want, so from that perspective, this is an issue society is obligated to address to achieve compliance and efficiency. However, there are 2 colossal fallacies to the idea that public education addresses this issue in any sense in the US.

The first fallacy, one more recent and more destructive to our education system than the second, is our neoliberal obsession that access and opportunity are synonymous with compulsion to participate. It is true that most countries that can be remotely compared to the US in the sense of economic size have some sort of public education system in place, but the majority of their systems do not share this fallacy with ours to nearly the same intensity. For those of you who don't understand what I'm trying to say: education in the US is not only available to everyone, it is COMPULSORY. Children are required legally to complete at least 8 grades, and this is accomplished by severe legal penalties for parents who don't make every possible effort to comply with this, even with children who are difficult, rebellious, or incapable, up to and including abuse charges that can get the child taken away. I'm not suggesting that 6-y-os be offered the choice of whether or not they should go to school, as the grand majority of them would clearly opt out, not realizing the amount of damage to their own future. But, by the same token, is forcing a 13-y-o who refuses to go to school and/or has parents who don't care to force him or can't manage him really going to accomplish a quality education for said child? I can see punishing parents who prevent him if he wants to, but lack of capacity or desire to force a teenager does not equal outright standing in the way. Other countries may nominally have similar laws, but in actuality the considerable fraction of the population that does not receive any kind of primary education is quietly allowed to hold the kinds of jobs they are fit for without this being named a social catastrophy.

The second fallacy of public education has grown rampantly as a result of the first, but is actually far older in its nature. This fallacy is standardization. History has proven to us time and time again, from the USSR's Central Planning to multiple examples of failure in private economic entities that central planning is the trademark of inefficiency. Large corporations such as oil companies, fast food joints, grocery stores, and a variety of others trust their distributors, franchisees and local managers with respect to setting prices and stocking requirements suitable for their region based on a variety of demographics because they understand that the amount of red tape required for such things to be decided top-down, even if based on consumer reports and real market information, would complicate and slow things so terribly that anyone who trusts local subordinates with the autonomy to make the decisions will out-compete them instantly. For example, if Shell Oil allows distributors and corporate gas station managers to set prices, and Chevron does not, then Shell Oil can immediately drop prices by 15c/gallon when the market allows this, and attract a lot of customers who may have otherwise chosen the Chevron station across the street that must wait 2-3 days for the CEO's consent. Similarly, when the prices of oil increase, if Chevron does not raise its prices in a timely fashion, they may attract more customers but also take a loss because the price does not reflect the cost at which the oil is bought. This model isn't any sort of ideological capitalistic rhetoric, it is a simple evolutionary response to market conditions of supply and demand that predates the word "capitalism" by 1000s of years, that entrepreneurs engage in to stay in business. However, the public education system claims to somehow be immune to these basic laws of economics, as if the skills and knowledge it gives our children are meant for some sort of spiritual fulfillment rather than to make them competitive in the job market and self-reliant adults. G.W. Bush's "No Child Left Behind" was only the latest example of the Federal Government meddling in decisions it cannot possibly make in an efficient manner, but the trend is as old as public education itself. Even if nominally controlled by the state and local governments, almost all public education relies largely on federal money to function, which opens the door to federal politicians and bureaucrats setting conditions for how to run the operation to receive this funding. Moreover, state governments in large states like CA, and even local governments in large cities with diverse demographics, have a very difficult time efficiently setting global standards. The results of this inherent inefficiency surround us. How many skills did YOU personally learn in school that you have NEVER used in your job? If you are some sort of educated professional who does use quite a few of your skills, think of all the various professions that many people have and MUST have in response to economic demand that do not require 80% of what is required to graduate high school, or even middle school. Moreover, standards do not end with what is taught in schools, as in an infinite race to the bottom of trying to get everyone to participate, the government is notorious for mandating HOW it is taught as well. This refers to teaching methods, classroom arrangements, scheduling, and every possible application that can be thought of, under the pretense of it being optional (for government schools that can somehow operate without government money). And if that's not enough, schools are coerced with funding to enforce federally mandated codes of conduct, attendance, dress, and so on by the same method. This standardization, at least in the eyes of voters who support it, is usually well-intentioned. But the result is that what is useful for the largest group of students, which can be as little as 30-40% if multiple options are concerned, being applied in compulsory fashion to every student. The problem isn't so much the restriction of student liberties, but simply that this process is wasteful. All students are taught the same skills and basics, although most of them will not use even close to half of them in their professional lives, are subjected to the same teaching methods which often aren't effective for a majority of them, and are subjected to an increasingly authoritarian disciplinary system that schools are forced to implement to receive funding under the excuse that this teaches them social and workplace skills necessary in the adult world, although in reality only a small fraction of said skills are necessary for most jobs, and they vary greatly from job to job. No market entity operates in this way. No private company trains its employees to be able to do the job of every position they have. No distributor or other business that deals with consumers directly limits their stock to one or two products that are the most bought and eliminates everything else. They don't do this for the same reason that they allow local managers to make these decisions - they are decisions that are very sensitive to intricate and rapidly changing local conditions and it is impossible to stay in business unless they are made by people who respond to said conditions directly and instantly. The last defense of standardized education, and a very laughable one, that people often come up with is that even if kids learn skills they will not use in their work, they have a right to learn if they want to and the knowledge benefits them and their having it benefits society as a whole. To these people I say - look around and tell me if its working? Despite this neoliberal fantasy, we are the most illiterate and politically ignorant developed nation in the world by every statistical measure available, and the right to learn is not synonymous with compulsion, especially when that compulsion is made at someone else's expense. The first fallacy plays into standardization with respect to this last concession, as compulsory education and specific standards for it have become an experiment in recent decades in a drive to give troubled children an alternative to self-destructive and criminal behavior. To some extent and according to some statistics, this HAS had some of the desired effect. But, in political science, the emotional appeal of "if it changes one life, its worthwhile" has very little weight, because no policy impacts only one life, or only the lives of those it BENEFITS. To understand the profound failure of the public education experiment as a whole, its effects must be examined in their entirety, not just in terms of loose correlations with crime and teen angst.

Seeing as the job market does not require everyone HAVING an education to start with, and most certainly does not require everyone to have the same skills or all the skills taught to them in school, and seeing as taking the decisions of how to instill the skills and knowledge out of the hands of educators who interact with students directly is often contrary to them learning the skills they do need efficiently, forcing everyone to learn everything the federal government wants them to, by the method they dictate and under conditions they set is a COLOSSAL waste of resources. Even if a few people do benefit from this system, as they undoubtedly do, the endlessly growing amount of resources being flushed down this pipe could be more beneficial to society as a whole in immeasurable ways if subjected to market regulations. Think about it - every kid that refuses to go to school, that is unable to learn because of standardized teaching methods, that has an obstacle to a quality education in ridiculous disciplinary codes, and finally that is forced to learn a plethora of skills he does not need and may not even want - costs the taxpayer the same amount of money for basic education operation as the kid that goes to school, benefits from the methods, and wants/needs the skills learned; BUT THERE IS NO RETURN ON THIS INVESTMENT, EVER. When the amount of such down-the-drain investments is tallied up, the net benefit is negligible in comparison. An efficient education system allows kids to learn what they want, how they want, and as much as they want - with guidance from their parents and local educators, of course, but NOT from central planners who have never met them. The "options" of homeschooling or private schools are in no way a solution to this issue either, as those who choose them are still required to make the same investment on top of any additional price they pay for a quality alternative, and many such options are riddled with regulations that force them into significant inefficient operation, even if it is not comparable to that of the public sector. Things like school vouchers - under which a parent would be allowed to use the amount of money used for their child's public education toward a private education - are a TINY step in the right direction, seeing as this leaves the poorest and most disadvantaged who cannot afford private education even with this option (vouchers usually don't cover the entire cost of a private school) with no choice but the public education system, a choice which, contrary to popular belief, the majority of them WOULD likely have if the resources freed-up by the elimination of this establishment as a whole were used in a more efficient manner.

It is wishful thinking to believe that government, at least in its current form, can be trusted to instill significant reform to reverse this trend of compulsion and standardization to an efficient degree. It has not been known to do so in any other domain, and moreover, the people issuing money usually end up with the means of control of how that money is used. In a private business, this power is held by consumers seeing as ultimately they buy the product or don't at their whim, and executives are forced to accommodate them with efficiency or end up in the red. Central Planning bureaucrats, on the other hand, have a budget that is extracted from their very consumers by force, and are allowed FAR greater leeway in terms of inefficiency before the dissatisfaction of these consumers can affect their jobs. Even when it does, the best we can usually hope for is to have them replaced with someone equally favorable rather than turn to a competitor.

Public education is a hand-out that we have become so dependent on that we cannot fathom a society without it, and the instant eradication of it would admittedly likely lead to disastrous results, although these would probably be very short-lived. However, we must remember that the modern economy is incomparable to that of the late 1800s in which this bureaucracy has its roots, and the demand for educated minds to our daily living is SO intense that a vacuum in supply would result in an almost instant reply by the market to correct it, in a much more efficient way than the public education system addresses it. To put it simply, various entrepreneurs who employ educated people would face skyrocketing costs as so few of them are available, and be prompted to use the money they save from paying immense education taxes to provide themselves a supply, which can be done in the forms of grants, opening up of profession-specific schools, and so on. Sure, this education option would be done on the entrepreneurs' terms and hence the average student would not learn much more than is necessary for the job the entrepreneur wants to offer. However, the trade-off is FAR reduced education costs to society by elimination of waste, a competitive model in which a sought-after mind CAN acquire unlimited amounts of education because different entrepreneurs want to promote the student or he finds that their education option does not suit him and seeks out the competition, and so on. As always, this option is NOT perfect and riddled with potential for inequality and oligarchic abuse, but anyone who believes the public option has any LESS potential for these, or that the costs associated with them come even close to the costs of public education wastefulness, is simply not looking at it from a scientific perspective.

One final thing to keep in mind is that various oligarchs who are often blamed for opposing public education in a greedy quest to avoid paying for it often benefit from it more than anyone else. Megacorporations, military contractors, scientific and academia magnates - large private and quasi-public job providers who employ many of the most educated people in the country - are notorious for what most people consider unfair tax exemptions, loopholes, downright fraud, and in some cases a variety of funding by taxes. This is on top of the fact that the sheer volume of educated people employed by them would not make it efficient for them to pay for their educations. Hence, these people SAVE colossal amounts of money because they do not pay their legally prescribed share of the costs of public education, but get to employ people who have received it to enhance their revenue. Them having to pay for the colossal amounts of education necessary for their exploits in true proportion would horrendously erode their profits. This is a very common, but not well-known, trend by which large businesses SUPPORT socialism as it drives their middle class competition out of business. Again, it is wishful thinking that these oligarchs, with the resources at their disposal with which to bribe the government and manipulate public opinion, can be legally forced to pay their fair share of public education costs. History does not show a single example of this occurring.

To paraphrase an old cliche in a different context - standardize quantitative measurements, NOT children.

Thursday, February 18, 2010

Another Average Joe Clueless joins the "Stack"

At the writing of this post, few people who don't know me personally are familiar with my blog, I'm just hoping to get off the ground, so it wouldn't be fair to guess what people might expect ME to think regarding the actions of the disgruntled freelance engineer who flew his small private plane into the Austin, TX IRS building this morning, having posted a rant to his domain prior explaining it as a desperate exclamation point on 3 decades of a fruitless battle against the federal tax system and other large-government antics. But, I can say with relative certainty that people would expect those with strong anti-governmental sentiment to think Joseph Andrew Stack was some kind of hero or martyr for their cause, or at best a victim deserving sympathy; and from what little research I've had time to do, a wave of statements applauding his actions has already swept the internet. However, as usual, with commitment to scientific analysis as opposed to moral judgment, my opinion is that Joseph Andrew Stack was an idiot and a deeply psychiatrically disturbed man, and no educated opponent of excessive government should take him seriously.

Having read his diatribe as soon as I learned of it being available on the internet, I saw in him exactly the kind of disgruntled and partially informed (but unable to process the information) sentiment that tends to fuel overregulation, this man simply turned out emotionally unstable enough to take things to this ridiculous extreme. To make things very clear, his action does not qualify as "rebellion of the hungry," not by a long shot. The details of his financial situation have not been released, and it will probably be months before we learn them completely. But looking at the information available; a guy who owns a house that he is able to set on fire, a domain to post his suicide note to for the world to see, and a private plane to fly into the side of a building does NOT qualify as "hungry" in this sense. Sure, his retirement accounts had apparently fallen victim to economic uncertainty, and sure he'd fought a losing battle with the IRS for decades and now it appears they were about to strike a critical blow. But a simple look at the US Department of Labor website reveals that 100,000s of American families are suffering from similar situations and many of them blame the government or other status quo institutions, yet even the most hysteria-peddling media outlets agreed today that we need not worry about 2 dozen similar kamikaze attacks occurring in the next 2 weeks. Why is this the case? Because foreclosures, bankruptcies, depleted IRA accounts, unemployment lines, and the proverbial cheese sandwich replacing your daily steak and lobster dinners, while certainly anger-inspiring, are NOT motivation enough for people to take whatever weapon is available and go bludgeon the government with it in any kind of mass revolution. The temptation might be there for some fraction of them, but they love their families, they love the small things in life they still have left to enjoy, and going out in a blaze of glory a la Joe Stack cannot outweigh these reasons for living. There is an historical reason that is often overlooked for the trend of real challenges to government monopolies on force being very low-tech, but it is self-explanatory that for large enough groups of people to take to militant, violent opposition that honestly threatens the government, things have to be bad enough in an economic sense that they are lucky to have outdated and illegally acquired firearms rather than their pots and farm machinery for weapons. The fact that the guy who took this route had a private plane in his possession to do it with shows that while the economy is no doubt in the toilet and the government is responsible, things are still not REMOTELY bad enough for the angry upheaval and chaos many have predicted. All of you advocating violent revolution or at the very least saying that if A, B or C don't happen it is a likely scenario are simply ignorant of history. What we consider poverty in the US is looked upon as wealth in 2/3 of the world, and while the Joe Stacks of the US buy into our sense of entitlement to the point of seeing their lives as not worth living without our idea of wealth, most of us are still in touch with our animal nature and will not take on this kill-or-be-killed mindset until we are LITERALLY being killed.

Now then, onto analysis of specific claims made by the late Mr. Stack, and why they hardly represent scientific anti-governmentalism. First of all, 2/3 of his diatribe focuses on the federal government and its corrupt, inefficient, self-serving nature. While I have a hard time believing this is all some well-planned organized conspiracy, Joe would get no argument from me regarding any of those accusations. However, again, judging from things included in the suicide note, Joe has been engaged in legal battles against this system since the early 1980s. So, you'd think that by his mid-50s, a seemingly educated man already familiar with how the system works would be mature enough to accept it. No one says he had to like it, most of us don't for one reason or another. But the impression he gives in the note was that he felt the government repeatedly robbed him of everything he earned. If you were familiar with the tax code and the impossibility of changing it by the time you were 30, Joe, why didn't you adjust your personal business practices to avoid being bankrupted by the age of 53? You were obviously no poor man living paycheck-to-paycheck if you claim your work depended so heavily on travel that 9/11 put a huge dent in your income, most freelancers cannot afford regular airline flights for work. So, if your operation was large enough, why didn't you take the necessary precautions for the possibility of such changes? His laundry-list of victimizing events goes on and on: the .COM bomb in the 1990s, the recent housing crisis, the bank bailout. As a man choosing to work as a freelancer in this economic system which is admittedly not very freelancer-friendly, you would think that in 30+ years Joe would have gotten it through his head that instability and uncertainty are givens and need to be prepared for, even if you feel this is unfair. Rebelling against these things by refusing to take them into consideration and then blaming the world when it catches up with you is a bit like rebelling against gravity by jumping off a skycraper and then claiming the Earth was responsible for your death. Joe was nothing but a professional victim, a rebel without a clue on par with teenage college kids who are pretty well-endowed at identifying the problem, but think that living as if it does not apply to them will somehow fix it and then blaming it when this comes back to bite them in the ass.

And for those of you who believe the Joe Stacks of the world accomplish anything, take a long look around. Do you see dozens of Sessnas flying into government office buildings? Do you see armed revolution marches in the streets that the police are afraid to take on? Do you even see the government over-reacting to his sacrifice in such an intense way that the attack on civil liberties would precipitate further rebellion? These were all things Joe Stack claimed to want to accomplish with his suicide, and he has been dead for 12 hours and the world is already starting to forget about him.

This kind of emotional but misinformed knee-jerk reaction is exactly what precipitates the problems of over-government in the Western world. The 1/100000000 Joe Stack is emotionally unstable enough to give his own life for his ignorance, but most people react to what they perceive as unfair and oppressive with semi-active political behavior that often backfires without them even knowing. This would include voting for a candidate from the opposition party they know NOTHING about simply because they don't like the incumbent, or funding large PACs and lobby organizations convinced that these special interest moguls somehow represent a cause of "freedom" or "fairness." Well-intentioned but undirected political activity is far more dangerous than non-participative apathy, but people are unhappy with the government most of the time, and it is impossible for science with its boring complexity of probabilities to compete with the emotionally charged (and laughably unattainable) promises of utopia peddled by special interests to promote their agendas. And the problem with these isn't that they're unfair or somehow morally questionable - science is not concerned with such attributes, - it is that they destroy economic and political efficiency and make society as a whole poorer, more miserable, and having to work harder for the same amount, often even for the people who first pushed them through in the long run.

One more thing I must mention is that, while it was amusing to see Fox News take a moderate stance and approach Joe Stack from a variety of perspectives in the wake of 8 years of blatant and unapologetic fearmongering hypocrisy that spun every event into an excuse for G.W. Bush's policies, while the liberal networks packaged Joe Stack into wholesale boxes of hysteria and handed him out to people free of charge, calling him a "terrorist" and pointing out the danger of today's economic situation and the need for "swift government solutions" lest more of this happen: everyone saying that this is an indication that anything about the media has changed is another example of dangerous ignorance. Incumbent parties (not just for presidency but the legislature) and their mainstream media pets, particularly in times when the incumbents' popularity is steadily declining, have a noted tendency to spread fear in hopes of garnering at least some short-term support, while major coalitions holding a minority tend to reach out to swing voters and those who may see them as the current "lesser evil," only to betray them for their hardline policies once they've regained the majority. While law enforcement officials are typically not among my most respected professions, the Austin Police Chief earned quite a bit of respect from me when he admonished the mainstream media for "irresponsible journalism" in regard to spreading a sea of speculations about Joe Stack before he was even confirmed as the pilot. For once, John Q. Public can learn from a bureaucrat that is the target of most its criticism the importance of checking facts before they BECOME facts through mind-numbing repetition.

Wednesday, February 17, 2010

FYG Premise 3: Theory of Optimal Society

****I STRONGLY encourage you to read the Premise 1 and Premise 2 posts before you read this one. If you choose to start with it, be my guest, but be prepared to look VERY stupid if you make dissenting comments that fail to consider the historical evidence presented there that leads to the concluding argument here.*******

So, having established the basis of rejection of ideologies as a guide to morality and social structure by virtue of their proneness to contradiction and ease of abuse (as well as other problems I will point out in this post), and the hypothesis that the existence of government is a market response to the needs for stability and monopoly on force and that it must hence continue to provide some semblance of these in order to keep from being eliminated by simple natural selection, what does this mean for determining appropriate roles for government, its nature, and when it can be said to overstep its bounds?

Most people with even a remote interest in politics, regardless of level of education, have some idea of what their perfect society would look like, in some cases these ideas can be very intricate and well thought-out. For simplicity's sake, even most societies proposed by ideologies in their original form - thousands of editions and convenient co-opting by oppressive regimes for their purposes notwithstanding - can be said to paint a well thought-out picture of utopia that, while not perfect, addresses many of the problems facing society at the time of their inception. Political ideologies based in judeo-christian religions, for example, propose monogamy or at least limitations on polygamy and sexual promiscuity, limitations on indulgence and resources invested in vice, and general communal cooperation in various forms. Similarly, political ideologies associated with the increased role of the state, such as socialism, propose to limit competition by leveling the playing field for those who are not born into more priviledged conditions, and historically have sided with oppressed race and religious minorities in an attempt to promote their equal access to economic resources. Ideologies with roots in Eastern religions and sometimes those associated with communal solutions, such as the various forms of communism, seek to instill cooperation rather than competition as a means toward greater efficiency. The problems the majority of ideologies, as well as people's individual ideas of utopia, seek to solve are usually very relevant and real, especially with consideration for the time of their inception. Monogamy and the concept of family seek to promote parental responsibility and reduction in the number of homeless children, limits on vice seek to ensure direction of resources toward necessities, ideologies intended to level the playing field or eliminate competition altogether lay at their base the goal of equality before the law and the economy that cannot be taken away by thugs and those with access to more resources and thus of greater interest to thugs, as described in Premise 1.

The problem with ideologies and personal utopias, however, is that they tend to be blunt instruments - excellent in theory, but upon implementation not only achieving the opposite of the desired result, but causing colossal collateral damage in the process. My personal theory for why this occurs is that, upon implementation and conversion from moral theory to policy, the majority of ideologies lose sight of their goals almost entirely. Proponents of religion-based ideologies completely forget that the purposes of their ideologies were to promote tolerance and cooperation and rather focus on unhealthy fascination with supernatural life after death or the fear of fire and stone raining from the sky as punishment for ideological non-compliance. Proponents of socialist and communist solutions forget that the goal was to ELIMINATE oppression, and wholeheartedly hand their liberties over to government or communal authorities along with any capacity for recourse, to alleviate the threat of unchecked power in private hands, such as corporations. Limited government and free-market ideologies are no strangers to these fallacies either, as they immediately equate any power or function of government to oppression of their liberties, without thinking of how they might preserve said liberties against other aggressors in its absence. This list could go on and on, but the point is that ideological utopias are nothing short of fairy tales: people's ideological ideas of morality and rights always differ from one another, and attempts to acquire ideological rights by one group will always result in the oppression in terms of ideological rights of another.

Despite these seemingly irreconcilable differences among people, however, my proposed answer is heavily based in Premise 1, which advises a rejection of all faith-based axioms and a scientific approach to collective action. To create a model for a scientifically optimal society, it is necessary to first understand what exactly the goals of such a society are. Ideological rhetoric and superstition aside, however, various peoples' personal ideas of utopia offer significant clues to what just about every human's idea of societal perfection has in common. For example, just about everyone wants a society in which there is significant guarantee for the physical safety of themselves and their children. Similarly, most people seem to want reasonable access to living necessities such as food, potable water, protection from the elements (clothing, homes, etc.), health including the prevention of the spread of poison or pandemics and reasonable access to health care, and in most cases some form of security in the event they should become incapacitated in some way. Another want most people agree on is access to some form of opportunity for progress - whether its reasonable access to a quality education for their children, the capacity for materilistic or spiritual upward mobility, and so forth. Finally, liberties are a very touchy subject and just about every possible idea of liberty tends to be someone else's idea of oppression of others; however, people tend to agree on wanting the freedom to fulfill their sexual desires and reproduce, the freedom to speak their minds without fear of repression, and the freedom to engage in some reasonable forms of leisure or entertainment. Notice that none of this is an ideological implication that people have "rights" to any of the things listed. It is merely a crude list of common demands that people have to which the political and social market naturally responds. Ideologies, for the most part, are attempts to respond to these demands at their core, but their pre-occupation with faith and supernatural axioms - motivations for these notwithstanding - tends to make people lose sight of this purpose.

So, if human nature, as animals, is the pursuit of safety, reproduction and fulfilment as defined by their predominantly common demands above, then it makes sense that an optimal society is one that provides these to all its members at its most efficient capacity possible. Most people agree with the preceding statement for the most part, but their fundamental differences lie in their methodologies for achieving it. THIS is where science comes in. Unlike ideologies which rely on often outdated faith-based stereotypes and generalizations of what is good and bad, a plethora of statistically accurate observational and scientific measurements are available to truly determine whether the social machine is achieving its maximum potential in this regard. Of course, for every legitimate scientific measure, there are about 100 ways to abuse it with the purpose of either promoting an ideology or, far more frequently, misinform the public into compliance with inefficient policy that somehow benefits whoever abuses the measure. This, however, does not destroy the credibility of statistics or science, as the abuses clearly defy the rules it itself sets for their legitimate use.

It is important to note that an optimally efficient society is NOT synonymous with a perfect society or utopia. Just as in any scientific or industrial venture, the goal is always to maximize efficiency and minimize the chance of any form of failure or catastrophy, the social science model accepts that maximization is not perfection and minimization is not elimination, so in this optimal society some lack of access to the demands described above still exists, everyone cannot be happy all the time. This turns many people away from this line of thinking as they see giving up the pursuit of perfection promised by their utopian ideology as defeatist. In essence, however, this model simply does away with Santa Claus by admitting that perfection is not possible, and poses the scientific hypothesis that a system that attempts to implement any faith-based ideology without mindfulness of scientific measurements, even if the INTENT is perfection, will in actuality be far less efficient than itself.

The implication of this model for modern society, and my focus will be predominantly on societies with liberal democracies, is that public policy must be measured scientifically in a cost-benefit analysis to determine whether or not it is really worthwhile. The government is not a given, there is no scientific backing for any faith-based claim that anything is right or wrong just because of the source, even if that source is the government or any majority. The government operates on compliance, and its function is to provide a maximally efficient social model as described above. The posts in this blog following these three Premises outlining basic theory will focus on my hypothesis that, in the United States and many similar Western democracies, government has long since reached the point of diminishing returns in this regard. This is not to say that these societies are perfect or don't face serious social challenges. However, the continued attempts by government to alleviate every social plight to appease competing fairy-tale models a perfect society only serve to shift the costs from one group to another, often increasing them in the process, all while simple rollbacks in regulation altogether would minimize the costs in the sense of efficiency. Ideas for how and why this happens, who it benefits and how people are motivated to comply with it and even promote it, and what can be done to reverse the trend, will all be topics of further discussion. I thank you for your attention, and invite your comments and thoughts on my ideas.

FYG Premise 2: Compliance, NOT Coercion

"It is delusional to think that any government, no matter how tyrannical, repressive, and unchallenged, has the resources to stand up to even a significant fraction of its own constituency in crazed, famine-driven rebellion."

The second premise of my approach to politics is simply that every government without any kind of exception operates on a principle of compliance rather than PURE coercion. Fearmongering using videos and vivid descriptions of malnourished people dressed in rags being used for various forms of slavery by tyrants is very common among various political movements to attract followers, with the false dichotomy implication that this scenario, in which they are unable to resist, is their future if they do not join the cause. However, REAL inability to resist is almost impossible in human society, and if you think you have an historical example of one, I really encourage to post a comment citing it. The premise is that in every situation, the members of society HAVE the power to overthrow their government and do not do so by CHOICE.

It is easy to understand, despite what some conspiracy theorist detractors claim, the concept of government relying on compliance in liberal democratic models such as the United States and most of Western Europe. Electoral fraud, corruption, and various other gimmicks used by incumbents to hold onto their power are no doubt present in these societies, but nevertheless elected politicians and the bureaucrats they manage are answerable to the voters by means of the electoral process, and often have knee-jerk reactions to perceived changes in the political climate that indicate the electoral process no longer favors their incumbency, such as issues of focus in the media. This is not to say that these systems are perfect models of democracy or lack corruption and government overstepping its bounds - in fact a huge purpose of this blog is to point out the opposite - but it does illustrate that public opinion heavily influences policy in the western world, and constituents can choose non-compliance through avenues that are legal and minimally unsafe, such as voting against the incumbent, participating in campaigns, leafletting to distribute information, and so on, and in great enough numbers this changes the direction of government policy.

However, the principle of rule by compliance applies to even the most totalitarian regimes in history, in which freedom of speech meant only the freedom to praise the incumbents and any attempts at subversion resulted in violent repression. In Stalin's USSR, in Mao's China, in Hitler's Germany, in modern North Korea, the oppressed masses STILL had and have the option to bring down the government through non-compliance. In the cases of these regimes, however, the option is pretty much limited to picking up whatever blunt objects are available for use as weapons and storming the government strongholds with them in hand EN MASSE - when a significant percentage of the population chooses this option simultaneously, no military or law-enforcement agency has the capacity to stop them (provided the people enlisted in said agencies are satisfied enough with the government to even risk their lives protecting it and not join the ranks of the rebellion). Seeing as this option is extreme both in terms of risk and inability to organize, history shows us that it requires extreme conditions. Totalitarian regimes often use control of media and access to information to instill a belief in their righteousness and limit subversion, and it is important to note that THIS in itself is meant to instill compliance, even if through misinformation. However, even under controlled information conditions, historical records indicate that in every such state, a large enough proportion of the population is displeased with the government to have the capacity to throw it out by force if only they could organize and act simultaneously. They don't do so because, simply put, the risks outweigh the incentives. Sure, they are disillusioned, but their cramped communal apartments are still a home to keep their families from the elements, and the food and other necessities they acquire through intense and thankless hardship is enough to avoid starvation, and so on. Despite these conditions, people tend to want to live, and even would-be martyrs for freedom are stopped by the thought of what may happen to their families and loved ones if they were to act on their rebellious impulses and not succeed. Hence, rebellion of the hungry, as I shall refer to it from this point on, requires a political situation in which a large enough proportion of the population has significant incentive by means of nothing to lose. Historically, such conditions have included widespread starvation, lethal pandemics with lack of access to treatment, and mass-displacement of people due to war or other conditions that caused them to be exposed to the elements in ways that are deadly or close to it. Knowing that death for oneself and his children is certain is the ultimate requirement for this form of rebellion, and historical examples of it include the Russian, German, and French revolutions. Nothing in this paragraph is meant to excuse the actions of totalitarian autocrats or paint their constituents as slaves or cowards - I am merely pointing out through historical and social trend observations that every government must provide SOME minimum living necessity to its constituency to stay in power, and that this necessity is inversely proportional to the government's access to force and coercion, but with limitations. Even the walls of Auschwitz are said to have had "Work will set you free" scrawled on them. Sure, this was untrue and partially a propaganda necessity, but it still demonstrates a need to give the oppressed SOME TINY HOPE of survival and improvement to limit their incentives to rebel, even in the most extreme of extreme oppressive conditions.

Tuesday, February 16, 2010

FYG Premise 1: Science Over Ideology

"Anarchy is only possible until the first thug with a club. In modern society, the government IS that thug."

To begin to understand my perspective on political science, one must first learn to look at political discourse on an as-is basis, without trying to categorize and qualify it as subscribing to or promoting any movement, party, ideology, faith, or other organized way of thinking. Simple as that sounds, the majority of people I come in contact with are significantly incapable of it - usually not entirely incapable, but incapable enough not to be able to see or hear JUST what is being said, without dismissing it as adhering to some form of label, or in some cases even accusing me of unknowingly spreading some hidden conspiracy agenda. This closed-mindedness, for lack of a better term, is in my opinion the #1 unintentional support column of any form of tyranny. People get trapped in a web of conflicting and competing ideologies and often mistake their choice of political and social behavior as choosing an ideology, sometimes with some personal modifications to suit their needs. An entire unrelated philosophy blog can be created on the rejection of ideologies as a whole; but suffice it to say, for political purposes, that my perspective on politics does not derive from anything faith-based - be it religion, moral code, or any other ideological model of social behavior.

You will notice, reading further through the blog, that my ideas are heavily sympathetic to political movements promoting limited government (libertarians, anarcho-capitalists, anarcho-humanists, etc.). However, the crucial difference between myself and the majority of people who subscribe to these movements (and I know quite a few personally) is that to a large extent, their ideas and motivations for promotion of them are still based in some form of faith and ideology. For example, libertarians and constitutionalists often quote and refer to various documents written by the Founding Fathers to support their theories of limited government, such as the Declaration of Independence and The Federalist Papers. I am not disclosing my views on these documents at this point, but we must remember that even these seemingly freedom-loving, liberty-inspiring writings are very ideological in their nature. The concepts of "all men being created equal," "inalienable rights," or "truths" that are held to be "self-evident" are nothing more than philosophical opinions of social morality with absolutely no factual evidence to back them up. To use an extreme example: logically speaking and without going back to any faith-based code of ethics, where is the proof that it is "wrong" to kill or enslave another human being if no harm can come from it to the oppressor in any form? (I'm not promoting murder or slavery, just pointing out that all morality is ideological in the end). When confronted with this, historical records often show the likes of James Madison and Alexander Hamilton referring to The Bible, and their Enlightenment Era interpretations of it to mean the opinions of social morality mentioned. However, The Bible represents a religious ideology that, regardless of anyone's personal opinion on it, the same Founding Fathers claimed every human being had the freedom NOT to abide by. The proneness of ideology-based political movements to such contradictions, however, is often the least of their problems. Truely tyrannical regimes of every type, from the theocracy-laden feaudal kingships of Medieval Europe, to class-struggle-ideology based dictatorships such as the USSR, the PDR of China, North Korea, and Hitler's Germany and Robert Mugabe's Zimbabwe that add to these an ethnic-struggle element, to more modern theocracies like Iran, have a tendency to simply interpret their base ideology as NOT tolerant of those who choose not to abide by it, often to the point that it can be used as a rhetorical excuse for repression and extermination of opponents. There are a number of other issues with ideological approaches that I will delve into later, but this has hopefully been illustration enough of why I promote their rejection.

So, with the abandonment of faith-based moral and ethical principles in every shape or form, what is left to guide human behavior? Wouldn't we just degenerate to our animal instincts of territorial violence and boundless competition? Although I doubt anyone posed the question in these terms, this precise dilemma was what faced humanity at the dawn of civilization, and led to the various forms of government and other collective action models that currently keep us from the "animal" behavior described above. Before thinking that I've gone full circle, however, it is important to realize that the first such institutions were nothing more than the thugs and bullies in that "animal" world that were strong enough to accumulate enough power in that competition model to submit others to their will without exterminating them, and THEN had to give back to their subjects JUST ENOUGH to keep at bay their motivations for chaotic mutiny OR backing a competing power accumulator. Government, then, is nothing more than a glorified protection racket - a thug or group of thugs who collect tribute from their protectorates by force, in exchange for monopolizing force and keeping other thugs at bay to ensure that the protectorate can hold onto to some portion of what they claim rather than having to pay EVERYONE that comes by with a club.

This model may be slightly oversimplified in application to modern forms of government, but the purpose of it is simply to shine light on the historical origins of government and collective action in general, and pose the hypothesis that, based on this observation, chaotic power vacuums in human society will in the grand majority of cases eventually evolve into this submission to monopoly on force scenario as a simple market response to the need for some stability and security. Once in place, the monopoly may then in turn employ ideologies and force to both justify itself or promote other behavioral guidelines and additional roles it plays in human lives. This leads right into the second, very short but very important premise of FYG.