For your weekend pleasure, I've posted the third installment of THE ANCIENT ONES - my SF comedy novel... that also delivers some unexpected twists on hoary sci-fi tropes. I don't see any comments under the prior postings, so I assume they were... fun? That some of the puns knocked you unconscious?
Your wit is welcome.
Okay, back to the world and varied ways to save it!
Far more important than any of the news below, is my annual suggestion for Seasonal Giving -- how your philanthropy dollars can be targeted in ways that help to achieve the world you want. If you have a dozen things you feel should be done, there’s an NGO trying for each of them. Please read.
Save the world, your way.
== And now something for you... ==
...Well, for the prosperous sci fi aficionado. After 44 years, there is a hardcover of my first novel Sundiver. It's a lovely, collectible edition (numbered and signed) with a gorgeous new cover and interiors by Jim Burns. From Phantasia Press. (Not cheap. But wow does Phantasia do good work!)
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60 comments:
I'd like to address the whole phenomenon of the "expert class." BTW, i posted this in the last thread before seeing the "Onward" call. So I reposted it here.
The biggest flaw with "rule by experts" or even "defer to experts" is that experts are as self-interested and human as the rest of us. Trust them too far and insulate them from accountability, and the pieces of crap among them will rob u blind. And yes, any large group of people will contain a certain amount of worthless exploitative jerks.
Within proper constraints, experts are incredibly valuable can can deliver a disproportionate amount of benefits relative to their numbers. Allow them to break those constraints and they can cause an immense amount of social harm..
So, how do we hold experts accountable when "the rest of us" don't understand the mystical incantations of their field? (With a polite nod to our gracious host who likes this metaphor). There are ALWAYS experts from related fields who don't have the same insular self interest but know enough about a related field to spot the scam.
When an expert class obtains the aura of a "profession," they will usually make some attempt at self-policing, but those attempts always fall short due to internal politics and self-favoring bias created by a trade's common culture and POV.
The key to getting good results from an expert class is a reliable system of accountability, which requires constant tweaking as people find ways to subvert the accountability provisions.
I know this all sounds like a bit of a "duh" analysis, but laying this all out helps u put "expert class" arguments in context. Anti-expert rants will typical paint a group as fundamentally evil such that no one in the field deserves trust, or assume that it's impossible to hold said expert class accountable.
Extreme instances of this rant will demand a decimation or virtual genocide of said experts. Maybe not a 'gas chamber' solution like the Khmer Rouge in Cambodia, but at least mass firings like what Trump wants.
More rational MAGA types will insist Trump is trying to just THREATEN mass firings to impose revised accountability standards, but Trump is such a blunt instrument its hard to fathom him capable of such a reasoned strategy.
OTOH, expert class apologists will diefy an expert group as moral paragons incapable of wrongdoing. These sort of "trust the system" types tend to be beloved by experts.
10:06 PM
Hi John
The best way to avoid the "expert class" issue is to understand enough to have at least a chance of understanding their logic
I'm a retired engineer - when I was being trained we would be taught in a few hours about something that a really smart guy had developed over 20 years
Following is hugely easier than leading
If somebody says something then its not too difficult to apply some "engineering" numbers - which will show its possible - or its bollocks
I'm NOT an expert in multiple fields - but I do know enough to FOLLOW the experts as they break the trails in a lot of fields
Assad is gone, toppled by a islamist militia. Possibly dead, If rumors are true that his plane crashed.
Sednaya Prison (which will be named along the Lubjanka and Plötzensee in history for it's infamy) is empty (for now).
Putin has lost an ally, or better servant, and maybe will loose the military bases in Tartus and Latakia.
Again, Great Man Theory has been defeated, and the major weakness of strongman rule has been exposed: the state becomes an hollowed-out thing that only few will be willing to defend.
Assad is gone, toppled by a islamist militia.
I don't know who to root for. Not that it matters at this point.
Re: be willing to defend
R.R. Wilson was right when in 1969 he said before Congress that art, science, and literature have "nothing to do directly with defending our country except to help make it worth defending". Enlightenment is not about power and force, or even about laws and institutions. It's about the call of the horizon.
https://history.fnal.gov/historical/people/wilson_testimony.html
Apologies for being AWOL for the tail end of the last thread. Some time in the world of grandchildren - where there is no spare time - and some in pursuit of eccentric hobbies - and even Elon can't get internet access through 100 feet of rock!
If the issue of wagers is still relevant I'd like to see it become less contentious. And thereby more useful. David, we've on rare occasions communicated off forum. Drop me a line. I'm not all that hard to find. Most of the time.
Did appreciate the various internet links to classic sci fi. This is what the internet promised in its early days.
Tacitus
Tacitus:
This is what the internet promised in its early days.
My daughter was visiting colleges in 2019, and Wisconsin at Madison was one of her top choices*. Our second visit there was her last before everything shut down for COVID.
One of the grad students who was showing the parents and students around campus introduced herself as majoring in "The history of the internet." My wife and I gave each other a bemused look, roughly translated as, "The internet is old enough to have a history?"
* Though she ultimately went with Illinois instead.
Science does a good job of utterly disproving this statement from JV, "but those attempts always fall short due to internal politics and self-favoring bias created by a trade's common culture and POV." Science sets up Young Turks to overthrow the Old Guard on a regular basis. Reality and reproducible result grind away dogma.
As I remember, JV is a lawyer so that makes him a member of a trade that does a much poorer job of self-regulating, as the existence of the Federalist Society and the overall health of conservative jurisprudence neatly proves.
John Viril. Appreciation for your sincerity and one can hardly argue with the sentence-by-sentence content… until one notices the net effect is simply to join the lynch mob. You portray dichotomies in which we must either kowtow or denigrate the ‘expert castes’. And hence…
…as people raised on the American/Hollywood meme of resistance to bullying authority, our response is foregone. It’s “fuck you!” to the bullying authority figures.
I describe this meme in VIVID TOMORROWS. It is a vital one to our enlightenment experiment. Suspicion of Authority – SoA – is one of our great strengths… that is now being metastasized and turned against us. So that it serves to advance the vary same authorities who dominated – and ruined – every other human society for 6000 years.
John at every level, top to bottom, your exegesis ignores the one fundamental trait that makes the ‘expert castes’ far less worrisome as capricious dominators.
Is that trait their access to facts and truth? Other elites claimed Truth, with great assurance. It happens that they were wrong and that science is mostly right. But one can’t make that point to romantic anti-modernists, convinced that their liturgical Book is ultimate Truth.
Is that distinguishing trait institutional checks, like you prescribe? No. Those can be gamed.
The trait is Reciprocal Competition, in massive numbers.
‘Experts’ are not monolithic but widely-dispersed and intensely competitive. In the case of science, they are the MOST competitive entities ever produced by nature. They are happy to denounce each other ‘s faults. And incentivizing continued rivalry is in our best interests. Not only to forestall expert tyranny, but also to spur very rapid progress.
It is exactly the realm where the prescrition of Adam Smith has been most successful...
…and I despair over how many times I have to repeat this, without it ever, ever – apparently - sinking in. (Except to Alfred and maybe Duncan.) Even though it is THE answer.
It shoots down those who deem ‘experts’ to be a worse threat to freedom (name ONE example across history?) than the exact clade that destroyed freedom & progress, in 99% of all cultures, and who now finance the riling up of anti-modernity among those whom Heinlein described here. http://davidbrin.blogspot.com/2017/03/looking-back-at-heinleins-future.html
JV. You can look at ethics ratings of professions (even sorted by political affiliation) at gallop.
This made me wonder about suicide rates. Some assholes are going to thrive in a career that facilitates their douchebaggery. But what about ethical people in careers that collide with personal belief systems? Scanning suicide statistics by profession…this one made me go, huh. Agricultural and Food Scientists commit suicide at rate more than 5 times the average of all professions / occupations. But if you think about it, it makes sense. And, I’m afraid with unregulated billionaires pulling the strings of your quasi oxymoronic “more rational MAGA types” who I guess will be management?—agricultural and food scientists won’t be alone as experts in feeling like their work is destroying people’s lives.
What'd turn the Syria news happy is if it turns out to be - as volubly promised - an actual revival of the Arab Spring, on steroids... and it'd make me very happy if tales of Tulsi Gabbard & others as Assad agents get validated in captured documents with a flashing powder trail leading to the KGB.
The coastal Alawite zones have not been touched and I am sure that Assad considered holing up there, making a mini 'republic' that would be Russia-backed.
Those 'shocked' by the rapid fall of the regime's forces are as foolish as those similarly suprised by the Taliban surge in Afgh. It's called near-East deal-making. When the US started to leave, many Afghan Army officers swiftly put on turbans and grew beards. Likewise in Syria. Geez. Um, duh?
Tacitus there are categories to wager challenges:
1- Assertions that are drool-blather that cannot be straightforwardly falsified or proved by verifiable facts. I'll pass on those, thanks.
2- Assertions that the challenged can shrug off as stipulated. "That's wholly or partly true, but so what?" In the words of Inigo Montoya "I don't think that means what you think it means."
3 - related to that... argument by anecdote: e.g. whether Hunter Biden was a black sheep who likely committed tax fraud and may have promised some furriners to try to sway his dad with zilch actual outcomes... and maybe he shoulda gone to prison... as should ANY of the Trump boys, for corruptions a ZILLION times worse, repeatedly, all their adult lives?
4- assertions that are falsifiable or provable, and that IF TRUE demonstrate that one 'side' in this culture war is stark, jibbering insane and/or treasonous.
There are some other categories. But I am interested most in #4. Because the person I am challenging faces a stark choice. Disprove all of the assertions on my list, or else be forced to admit they are supporting vona fide monsters.
If you have some like that to pose to me, e.g comparable to the FORTY FOLD greater rates of conviction for child molestation and aggravated sex crimes among high Republicans than for Democrats...
... or the spectacular factuality of climate change, especially the crisply proved phenomenon of Ocean Acidification that is killing the planet that our children need...
... well then sure, I'll be happy to consider wagering them. And if they are THAT decisive between good and ebil... like today's 'conservatism' waging all-out war vs ALL fact using professions, from science and teaching, medicine and law and civil service to the heroes of the FBI/Intel/Military officer corps who won the Cold War and the War on terror.... then I'll consider changing sides! THAT is category #4.
In contrast, most of the other categories are little more than yammering sessions and not worth my time.
Pappenheimer,
The nasty weather does get mentioned in later novels in the Ring of Fire series. Depends on the co-authors how MUCH it gets mentioned, but the folks who focused on the impacts in Russia and points east of there mention it quite a bit.
The Maunder Minimum shows up in several stories too... for the obvious impact this would have had if shortwave and medium wave radios had been available back then. VHF and UHF don't rely much on the ionosphere, but the stories mentioning those radios mostly focused on the immediate inability to make vacuum tubes. Microwave tech was right out. (The first tubes were supposed to appear in y.1638 stories I think.)
Climate also gets mentioned in some of the Gazette stories, but you have to be a geek fan to have read all those.
Dr Brin
The Scientists as "competitors" works beautifully in the "Hard Science" world and where the effects are large - like vaccinations
Unfortunately for a lot of "Sciences" like economics and some medicine - the waters are a bit too muddy - the effects are too small or the whole experiments are too chaotic
This is why the report that "Fat is bad" (so we replaced it with sugar and salt) is still killing people over 70 years later
We can rely on competition - but I personally prefer to ALSO apply my own "expertise" to the subjects - If its a subject I can apply some rough numbers to then I can filter out the worse offenders
Dr. Brin, my intent wasn't to encourage people to join the lynch mob, but I can see where my post might give such an impression.
My "take" on the expert issue might be summarized as: They're incredibly useful, but it's important to have robust accountability mechanisms that are faithfully maintained.
The last paragraphs of my post was "to my mind" about showing the errors flawed arguments on both sides tend to make. This helps quickly identify them and also implies how to refute them.
As Matthew correctly recalls, I am legally trained, which means understanding how to make arguments is always on my mind when I analyze a situation. I make this point not to argue with u, but instead to explain why my post ended with those opposite poles.
As for your contention that internal competition makes the expert class more reliable, it seems to me you're assuming all "real experts" belong to fields built around the scientific method.
I'm not sure about that idea. I submit to you that "fuzzy subjects" such as art, literature, music, ect., produce a copious amount of experts that may not be so effectively constrained by severe internal competition.
The reason being is these subjects are difficult to quantify by objective standards. Thus competition between experts in these fuzzy fields (pretty much anything related to the humanities) is likely to come down to external factors like social standing, political influence, or wealth.
Let's look at some concrete examples to illustrate this point.
Suppose I insist that your ideas about Astrophysics are pure nonsense and that my courtroom experience has given me the insight to develop a better model than you possess to explain the expanding universe.
After the whole world laughs at my stupidity for thinking my ability to shape legal arguments gives me any capacity to debate astrophysics with someone with a Ph.D in the subject, this dispute will come down to both of us proferring a mathematical model and using experimental data to see whose equations better explains real world observations. Thus, competition provides an effective check on nonsense.
OK, but what happens if I were to insist that jumping between POVs and tenses within a paragraph is actually superior writing craft than your bland practice of consistency in tenses and character POV?
You could point to your multiple bestsellers, your Hugo and Nebula awards ,and my lack of any published novels. But those, in actual fact, are external factors to writing craft. How, exactly, could this debate be resolved?
What if I were to shove Travis Kelce aside and manage to seduce Taylor Swift, who then recommends my artistry to her army of Swifties, who then buy so many of my books that sales of my first novel exceeds your total sales for your entire publication list? Have I now proved the superior artistry of heterogenous POV and tenses in prose?
Seems to me that fuzzy subject competition isn't nearly as effective at weeding out nonsense.
Assad isn't that brave ... https://apnews.com/article/syria-assad-israel-hamas-war-gaza-lebanon-82ceb102928e842154d91201b16cf2ab
So far, statements from Alawites seem to be suggesting reconciliation (i.e. main message is "syrian patriotism" and primary demand currently seems to be amnesty for two-legged beings that worked for the regime, rather than focusing in autonomy ) but I'm sure that is fragile.
"and it'd make me very happy if tales of Tulsi Gabbard & others as Assad agents get validated in captured documents with a flashing powder trail leading to the KGB."
So regarding a paper trail to treason turning up - four steps there:
(a) The treason has to actually have been real
(b) A paper train has to have been created in the first place ... and the plutocrats have had decades learning the folly in that. https://assets.gocomics.com/doonesbury/1990/07/08
(c) The documentation has to be protected from chaos/looting ... so far, that seems to be the case,
(d) The rebels would have to actually release the incriminating paper trail rather than, say, turning it over to Erdoğan.
The rebel leader seems to be VERY savvy, and very much wanting to normalize relations with the US. (evidence for that includes the emphasis he's putting on freedom, normalization, conciliation both internally and externally, not using "death to Israel" or "death to America" as a transition word in his speeches, giving his first interview to CNN instead of Al Jazeerah). The fact that he launched the liberation now, rather than when Trump is in office, I think isn't just a coincidence. He wants the US to establish a policy towards him before Putin's man is in the oval office. But at the same time, he'll have to keep Trump from paying attention to him for the next 4 years ... so if I were him, and found a bunch of incriminating stuff vs Trump allies, I'd either hand it over to by big brother, or hold onto it myself as leverage. Last thing I'd do is publish it.
Duncan, good point that the softer sciences are less effective at rapid cancellation of 'expert' mythologies. And yet, they DO remain competitive and the disputes take place out in the open.
Unlike the error discovery/denunciation/elimination processes in finance and high monied elites, where all the tricks of 6000 feudal - and futile - years are still rife.
Note that courts of law try very, very hard to take an inherently murky process - human testimony - and seek outcomes that deliver justice as crisply and meticulously and error free as possible. And they are deeply devoted to adversarial, reciprocal accountability methods, like science.
Are there social sci myths that do harm? Plenty. I'd eliminate the MBA and the Education PhD except for when the student has had 10 years either in the classroom or delivering a clear good or service. And the very notion that CEOs should be compensated like sports stars should only happen when theare under outcomes metrics as clear as those sports stars.
None of which is pertinent to the topic at hand! Which is whether the nerdy fact professions are DANGEOUS TO FREEDOM! Which they are not. Compared to the devastators of freedom and progress across 60+ centuries? Cheaters, owner lords, inheritance brats, murderous dictators, kings.... Seriously? Only note that ALL of them are now financing the all-out campaign to turn American SoA reflexes against the one group staning in their way...
...those fact nerds.
At present, 'A.I.s' such as ChatGPT are far better at creating weeds than removing them. That may not always be the case, however. Proper A.I.s (neurology and theory of mind based 'soulful' ones) may indeed become very useful BS detectors. This may be an early example of the kind of reward system that Dr. Brin describes for competitive A.I. The world will gravitate to the best BS detectors. Propaganda will be squelched. The internet will no longer be a safe haven for scoundrels, micreants, and Republicans.
Or, we could try this https://www.wired.com/story/donald-trump-ai-safety-regulation/
Of course, I meant to say 'miscreants'. Micreants sounds like some evil form of midi-chlorians; perhaps apt.
JV please see my answer to Duncan, just above, which directly addresses your missive about murky fields. Though alas, you keep on missing the key point. That reciprocal adversarial competition prevents the declaration - ex cathedra - of capital "T" ex-cathedra "Truth" and itsuse to repress those seeking to interrogate it.
Which is exactly the sin that anti-facvt fanatics today accuse fact professionals of doing, a crime under SoA. And which is exactly what the fact professions DO NOT DO but that all previous elites DID do.
And yes, a small fringe of lefties tries the "Of course you may not question this" thing, rooted in human nature and the thing Bill Maher attacks, regularly, in his own version of SoA.
Alas, I truly see little hope that this core point about modern fact professions will ever be well-enough conveyed to make the difference that it should.
"competition between experts in these fuzzy fields (pretty much anything related to the humanities) is likely to come down to external factors like social standing, political influence, or wealth."
Oh, come on.
Having been a bystander to some of the vicious intramural battles in the arts and humanities, I'd say the only thing social standing or wealth has to do with it is to allow one the leisure time to become educated and publish a lot. It ain't nothing, but if you are too much of a flake you'll be ignored by your target audience no matter who your daddy was or how much he gave you. See: the 'controversy' over who REALLY wrote Shakespeare's stuff*
Now if a сумасшедший with a degree in a 'hard' science caters his theories to fluff a ruler like Stalin, they can go a long way. Three guesses who I'm talking about here. There's a whole book, 'Merchants of Doubt', about US scientists and engineers who denied everything from tobacco-related carcinoma to the dangers of acid rain and anthropogenic climate change, but they generally have to fight a rear-guard action (very well funded by corporations) against emerging scientific consensus.
*Shakespeare
Pappenheimer
Larry,
re: Assad,
"I don't know who to root for. Not that it matters at this point"
Root for peace. Doesn't matter if it's good for Israel or not, it's better than what Syria has been going through for over a decade.
Pappenheimer.
Thanks, I'm glad to know that this wasn't ignored. Most people just assume the past was like the present with different outfits. How many novels set before the late 1800's mention a flight of passenger pigeons? (Seriously asking here - I know one shows up in the 'Dies the Fire' 'verse by Stirling.)
Pappenheimer
That reciprocal adversarial competition prevents the declaration - ex cathedra - of capital "T" ex-cathedra "Truth" and its use to repress those seeking to interrogate it.
If the above declarative is true -- and I believe that it is -- then it follows that truth-testing by "reciprocal adversarial competition" is logically incompatible with the largely untested beliefs arrived at by 'scientific consensus', as any consensus is an AGREEMENT of the non-reciprocal & non-adversarial variety which, by definition, is unrelated to competition.
That's a huge capital 'T' of a blindspot right there, the belief that a uniformly agreeable & largely political expert consensus can serve the same truth-testing ends as 'reciprocal adversarial competition'.
History shows us that it is the 'scientific consensus' which is most often wrong, as any assertion of consensus amounts to little more than an argumentum ad populum (a logical fallacy) and that alone should provide sufficient grounds for extreme skepticism & SoA.
For it is not our experts that we must trust, but an overtly antagonistic process that our fine host identifies as 'reciprocal adversarial competition', although some mistake this rather confrontational truth-testing process as a 'War on Smart People & Science', as both smart people & science cannot rest on their laurels but must prove themselves ceaselessly, over & over, or they will be rudely dethroned & replaced by those who can.
It's to our professional, managerial & expert castes (or, more specifically, a consensus thereof) that I'm referring, as they have declared themselves the sole possessors of capital "T" ex-cathedra "Truth", as to how our society should function & evolve, and they use this capital 'T' truth to repress those seeking to reform or interrogate it, and so they risk elimination by root, stem & branch, unless they concede to the inevitability of reciprocal adversarial competition.
Best
Pappenheimer:
"I don't know who to root for. Not that it matters at this point"
Root for peace. Doesn't matter if it's good for Israel or not, ...
My comment wasn't about Israel. It was about the revolutionaries' connection to ISIS. My thought was that a bad guy might be being replaced by a worse guy, but so far so good, I suppose.
From Trump's interview last Sunday on Meet the Press
https://www.axios.com/2024/12/08/trump-immigration-deportation-us-citizens
President-elect Trump proposed in an interview aired Sunday that families with mixed immigration status should be deported together, echoing his selected "border czar" Tom Homan.
The big picture: An estimated 4.7 million households in the U.S. are defined as "mixed-status," meaning they house at least one undocumented resident and at least one citizen or legal noncitizen resident, per the Center for Migration Studies.
Forty-eight percent of 2.8 million households with at least one undocumented resident are the home of at least one U.S.-born child, the center reports.
Driving the news: "I don't want to be breaking up families, so the only way you don't break up the family is you keep them together and you have to send them all back," Trump said in an interview aired Sunday on NBC's "Meet the Press" with Kristen Welker.
Pressed by Welker on what that approach could mean for children who are in the country legally despite their parents being undocumented, Trump said, "Well, what you've got to do if they want to stay with their father — look, we have to have rules and regulations."
So is it OK now to derisively laugh at and cruelly mock the pain and suffering of Hispanics who were stupid enough to vote for Trump?
What we all need to remember are the differences between the two parties, both a difference in degree and a difference in kind.
Let's start with the difference in degree. As I have stated before, equating both parties' levels of corruption would be the same as not being able to tell the difference between a mouse and a whale. Granted, they are both mammals but one is much, much bigger than the other. You worried about Hunter and Pelosi? Oh please. They are insignificant compared the the billions raked in by Trump himself. And how many billions did the Saudis give Trump's son-in-law Jared?
Then there is the difference in kind.
One party may be merely corrupt.
The other is an existential threat to our well being, the planet and to our democracy.
Only one party...
values profits over human lives
wants to make ordinary Americans pay higher tariff prices in order to afford tax cuts for billionaires
wants to kill Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid
wants the elite top 1% to get all the money leaving the rest of us with stagnant standards of living if not outright poverty
loves the for profit health insurance system that leads to most bankruptcies in this country
established a new form of slavery with the for profit prison system
wants to deport even legal American citizens because they are Hispanic
wants to gut health care, especially in rural areas where most of their own voters live
hates blacks, Hispanics, and uppity women
wants to rescind the 19th amendment
wants to do away with all reproductive rights
wants to ban birth control
doesn't care if a woman dies of sepsis in a clinic parking lot because the life saving treatment is now illegal
loathes LGBTQ, especially helpless trans kids who are usually driven to suicide by hatemongering persecution
would overturn Obergefell v. Hodges like they did Roe v. Wade - and nullify my sister's marriage
wants women back in the Donna Reed 50s as subservient trad wives
wants Blacks in the pre-civil rights back of the bus
wants to drive gays and lesbians back into the closet
create a nutrition and health system that is obscenely expensive and actually makes us sicker
wants to parboil the planet (and billions of people) for the sake of this quarter's P&Ls
wants to poison or bodies and our environment with microplastics and forever chemicals for the sake of petrochemical company profits
wants to decimate wilderness areas for the sake of mining and forestry profits
would poison rivers and valleys in Appalachia with unregulated acid mine spoil run-off
neglects basic safety provisions (like train brakes) and poison a town by exploding a wrecked trains full of toxins in order to clear the tracks faster (East Palestine, OH)
would do away with worker safety rules
would do away with environmental protections
wants to start wars for the sake of oil company profits (like W invading Iraq, an invasion that killed 10s millions of Iraqis, using the lie of WMDs as an excuse)
wants to destroy biodiversity for the sake of never ending development and cancerous economic growth
wants to replace democracy with oligarchy
wants to crush workers unions and make us effectively serfs
would love to establish a Christian Nationalist fascist theocracy
that has abandoned any and all basic levels of morality and decency as can be seen in Trump's private life and his cabinet nominees
etc. etc. etc.
End of an era.
https://www.nytimes.com/2024/12/09/opinion/elites-euro-social-media.html
Paul Krugman:
This is my final column for The New York Times, where I began publishing my opinions in January 2000. I’m retiring from The Times, not the world, so I’ll still be expressing my views in other places. But this does seem like a good occasion to reflect on what has changed over these past 25 years.
...
Krugman knows that the NYT is a corrupt tool of the oligarchs.
“Christian Nationalist fascist theocracy”
•Some do not care what happens after they themselves are deceased—which is linked to Envy of the Future. Trump has made it clear he doesn’t care what happens after he is “gone”—dead or gone from the political scene.
•Many wish for end-time prophecies to be fulfilled, based on eschatologies from diverse faiths.
•Sheer viscerality.
Before his stint at the NYT, Krugman frequently sparred with George Will on ABC This Week. I watched it every week (my wife's eye-roll can verify that). Both of them are fond of Isaac Asimov (Krugman from his desire to become a psychohistorian and Will once mentioned such to me in an email - no, we're not acquaintances). Alas, I don't ever recall a debate between them on FOUNDATION, although the word psychohistory may have been mentioned in passing.
I am an expert in my field and I am working in the exact right agency to use my expertise. I've seen how my field has been poorly represented in the last 4 decades. The last time there was a serious, useful debate about taxation was in 1985-86 during the debates over the Tax Reform Act of 1986.
We all have partisan biases and we need to be alert that our opinions may be affected by them. I think that having friends you love with whom you disagree is the best gift the universe can give you; it makes you seriously question your opinions and to be gentle on those whom you disagree with.
I had a talk a few weeks ago with another IRS appeals officer about how politically aligned charities are abusing the exempt organization rules. These charities aren't even attempting to hide their noncompliance with the rules...they have been doing these things for 20-30 years and gotten away with it. What is the IRS to do? If we start enforcing the laws appropriately there will be a lot of damage to these organizations.
The last time I saw something comparable was in the late 90s and early 00s when major corporations were doing "corporate inversions" by re-incorporating in Bermuda or the Bahamas in order to avoid the US corporate income tax on their world-wide income. I had letters to the editor published in the NY Times and the Financial Times on this issue:
https://www.nytimes.com/2002/05/15/opinion/l-dear-irs-forward-to-bermuda-054178.html
The abuse was obvious. But the cost of actually enforcing the law and imposing the appropriate tax, penalties, and interest would have bankrupted these companies. I was at a weekly lobbyist meeting in 2002 and a Deputy Treasury Secretary was a guest. I asked her a question about why the Treasury Department and the IRS were not going after these corporations. For that, I was called a "Paul Wellstone" wannabe.
I suppose the answer is to have an offer and compromise. Make the offenders admit their misdeeds. Impose serious taxes and penalties that won't drive them out of business or into bankruptcy, but will make them hurt for their misdeeds. Then make certain that they follow the law going forward.
In the spirit of the times, I've been re-watching the Hunger Games series. Just came across an eerie unintentional foreshadowing even more disquieting than the line in the pre-COVID 2019 Watchmen miniseries about "Masks save lives."
In Mockingjay Part I, which came out before Phillip Seymour Hoffman's untimely death, his character is trying to get a reluctant Eppie Trinket on board. He says he'll get someone else to be Katniss's mentor, and when she is skeptical, he intones, "Anyone can be replaced." This from an actor who departs this mortal coil before all of his scenes are filmed for the sequel.
"How much longer can I go on being an atheist?"
And now on a completely irrelevant topic, here is a link to a news story about one of the most interesting days in my legal career.
https://www.virginislandsdailynews.com/news/court-order-in-yob-gop-delegate-case-expected-monday/article_a2e6e5ba-124c-5805-88c4-6ed97217ae9b.html
The reporters covering the story talked with me after the hearing was over and said I looked like "a deer in the headlights." I was the tax attorney; why am I representing the government in an election law case.
The lawyers were all arguing and things were getting out of control. I was the lawyer sitting closest to Judge Mackay. She turned to me and said, "You see Attorney G-----, this is what I have to deal with." I wonder if that remark made it into the transcript.
The most fun part happened while I was at the podium making my remarks that the AG's office had to recuse itself. My good friend Arturo Watlington, Jr. came into the courtroom (late and wearing a jacket and tie that had obviously been loaned to him by a courthouse deputy). He heard one of the lawyers make a comment about Election Supervisor Fawkes (a hypothetical situation, not a statement of facts) and Watlington started yelling at the lawyer. The judge was banging her gavel and ordering Watlington to quiet down. He wouldn't. So the judge ordered a break for lunch. We all pulled Watlington into the Men's Room and tried to quiet him down. Absolutely hilarious.
LH. re Syria: Al Golani appears to be trying for a George Washington motif. Mixed with some Nelson Mandella. We’ll see if it’s real… and if he lives.
GMT-5: interesting stories!
“What is the IRS to do?” Hunker down and survive! THE reform in the wonderful 2021 Pelosi bills that mattered most and that most terrified the oligarchy was the full-funding of the IRS, after 40 years of starvation, allowing the agency to buy new hardware/software and hire more auditors aimed at rich tax cheaters. Reversing this will be utter top priority, now. And I’d like to know your inside view of all that.
And this: Have you seen my ruminations about tax code reform? https://www.davidbrin.com/nonfiction/taxsimplification.html
As for poor Locum: Quick scan. Not a single sentence of his bears any remote overlap with actual reality. Masturbation incantations and little more. Lock the bathroom door, willya?
One thought David, the more complicated the tax, the harder it is to enforce and the harder it is to collect. Also, the more taxes we have, the harder it is to have expertise to enforce and collect them.
We need to think about what we want our tax system to do. Collect money so the government can pay for its work. Perhaps we should decide what percentage of the GDP should be collected, then design a system to collect it.
I had an interesting talk with a person who works with C-suite people in major corporations. They are going to try to avoid taxes whenever they can. They are not necessarily immoral. Most people who start small businesses fail. They lose their investment. The government does not compensate them for that. But if they succeed, the government takes a portion. I don't agree with him. But I see his point and we are going to have to deal with that.
Who actually pays the corporate income tax (for those companies that actually pay any)? The executives running the company? The shareholders? The employees? The customers? What are we really trying to do with the corporate income tax? Get money from the rich owners. I agree 100% with this sentiment. Is the corporate income tax the best way to do this? Probably not.
Same with the estate and gift taxes. There is a whole industry of very wealthy tax professionals who specialize in advising wealthy clients how to avoid paying the tax. It is infuriating to me. Those people should be paying.
I dread major changes to our tax law. I love the current structure. I can't say that keeping 26 US Code Section 61(a) is a hill I will die on, but it is close.
I took a quick look at your proposal and I like a lot of it. If I were in the room devising the new tax law, I'd like to have you there, if just to bounce ideas off of. I believe in finding honest people with a different point of view so we can genuinely discuss issues. I don't propose abolishing the corporate income tax or estate and gift taxes because I want to benefit the rich...just the opposite. But a lot of people will assume that intent.
One more thought...if the cost to the mega-wealthy of paying a tax is less than the cost of paying expensive advisors to avoid the tax, many of them will choose to pay it. This is not some Laffer curve nonsense; it's just economic good sense. The problem with most advanced tax avoidance plans is that the money received is diverted into entities and plans with serious limitations on how the money can be used in the future. Early in my career I studied the effects of these limitations. There are a lot of entities and businesses out there that only exist because of the tax savings. These are parasitic on our economy. We would be better off if that money was invested purely for business reasons, not for tax savings.
The effective tax rate that the top 1% pays, after all of their tax avoidance planning, is about 19% to 20%. In order to get their tax that low, they pay for a lot of planning. And the money is locked into a less-than-ideal entity or institution. If the top federal tax rate was 34% or lower, the cost of paying the tax for most of these people would be less than the tax of paying to avoid it.
Could we try to do what Congress did in 1986 and lower the top rate to 28% and cut out most of the tax avoidance mechanisms? Maybe pick a higher rate...30%. Have a really narrow range of appreciation.
Maybe index gain from sales of property to take inflation and the time value of money locked into an investment. Indexing would be difficult at the front end, but it means that we no longer need to have special tax treatment for capital gains. Get rid of capital gains and you probably eliminate 1/3rd of the internal revenue code. Maybe this is a horrible idea. Maybe it is a hill that people will die on. But it's an idea worth talking about. Once you cut out LTCG benefits, you can never bring it back.
Want to read about ultra-wealthy trying to avoid (or illegally evade) taxes? Read the bankruptcy magistrate opinion here:
https://www.bankruptcylitigation.blog/wp-content/uploads/sites/427/archives/anna%20district%20court%20order.pdf
This is from the Anna Nicole Smith bankruptcy. The history of her husband's quest to avoid taxes is fascinating.
GMT:
If the top federal tax rate was 34% or lower, the cost of paying the tax for most of these people would be less than the tax of paying to avoid it.
This is pure speculation, though I have neither your experience nor your fascinating life stories. As an observer from afar, I always got the idea that tax avoidance is kind of a game, and that they willingly pay more than the tax they're avoiding just out of a kind of spite, or perhaps more accurately, just an expectation that that's what one is supposed to do.
If your hands-on experience tells you no, they'd really just pay the tax if doing so cost less than avoidance does, well that's good then.
Good observation Larry. Your point is valid. Read the Marshall v. Marshall opinion and that definitely seems the case with that old geezer. Also, there is a difference between what will work with the top 1% and the top 0.01%. Out of a population of 100 million taxpayers, we are talking about the top 10,000 filers.
One problem with an income tax is that the wealthiest 0.01% don't care about income; they just want cash flow so they can pay for their lifestyle. I could tell you stories about what I have seen in my short year with the IRS as an appeals officer, but that is all privileged information. Suffice to say, they want to bend the rules in crazy ways and my job is to try and find a settlement so that they will pay...or send the case to a trial lawyer to defend the government in court.
With 100 million taxpayers, we can't make our policies based on the top 10,000 filers. We need special rules for them. But those special rules need to be constitutional. Our host makes an excellent observation that property owners must identify their property; that we should not let property hide behind nameless LLCs. I remember driving to work in the Virgin Islands and seeing a dark blue Gulfstream III parked in the general aviation area. I looked up its tail number and it was owned by an LLC. Turns out, that jet was owned by Jeffery Epstein...it was the Lolita Express Junior.
https://www.miamiherald.com/news/politics-government/article290986070.html
https://www.businessinsider.com/jeffrey-epstein-gulfstream-g550-private-jet-for-sale-photos-2020-7
Odd, I remember that its registry number was painted in gold letters on the side of the engine nacelles. But maybe my memory is bad. Too bad I never took a photo of it.
Yes there are a zillion complexities to taxes. There are many rich folks who will gladly pay 3 or 4+ x as much to accountants in order to keep the tax man's (JV's) mitts off it. They are most terrified of wealth tracking and wealth taxation.
Indeed, my proposed Transparent Ownership Treaty would not entail ANY tax rate increases, but just demanding that beneficial owners openly say "I own that" would likely result in so much abandoned property that it could erase most or all national debts, in a single stroke, and thus lower every honest person's taxes.
Another cheat is using un-realized gains as collateral for "loans." Simple. Any property used as collateral is 'realized." Period.
But my other proposal re Tax Law Simplification is what I am.asking JV to study and comment-on. I've run it past others and it should work because the Tax Code *is* its own model. Hence you could run simulations based on two rules:
- Seek the simplest possible tax code by iterating in steps from the present one... based on the following boundary condition, which is...
- NO LOSERS. With 100 representative taxpayer types... and none of them will see their tax go up by more than 5%.
So some code provisions are canceled for simplification... but others that remain get beefed up to compensate. Will it work? It ought to, under processes of optimization. But you read the proposal and tell us.
Dr Brin:
Another cheat is using un-realized gains as collateral for "loans." Simple. Any property used as collateral is 'realized." Period.
This is jogging a memory that we talked about this here a long time ago.
My variation is that the loan amount--any loan, not dependent on the collateral--is taxable income, but any principal paid back on a loan counts as negative income. It gets subtracted from your taxable income before the tax is computed. That way, an actual loan ends up essentially not being taxed at all, but a fake "loan" that is never intended to be repaid does get taxed.
This seems to be to be eminently fair, and not biased toward harming or helping rich people any differently than anyone else.
Except that many people take out loans when they need cash most. Urgencies. Hardly the time to slam them with a tax bill.
I wasn't suggesting a point-of-service tax. The loan and the principal repaid would be included in your net income. A loan paid back in the same tax year would have no effect, and the size of the bite between years would depend on one's tax bracket.
Anybody keeping track of what's happening in Florida as a result of DeSantis's racist anti-immigrant law SB 1718 and what it has done to Florida's agriculture, hospitality and construction industries? And how MAGA Republican legislators and business owners are losing their sh*t now that the law is working as intended and the businesses can't find workers? Produce is being left to rot in the fields and construction sites have been idled.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oEHEQecK3SI
But the hypocritical MAGA's want to keep THEIR cheap illegals. And the prices of produce and housing re climbing. Who could have seen that coming?
Florida shows what will happen to the USA, especially rural red states like Texas when Trump's mass deportations.
And I will love watching every minute of it.
I especially loved the video of republican state politicians assuring their republican business owners that this MAGA law is not to be taken seriously and won't be enforced against THEIR illegals.
Too bad the workers have already fled the state, making his assurances moot.
Illegal immigration is obviously OK when its done by republicans, don't you know.
Not that MAGAs care about hypocrisy.
Pass the popcorn, I will enjoy watching MAGA business owners, MAGA farmers and MAGA voters suffer economic devastation as a result of Trump's MAGA policies.
The ripple effects will be even worse as poor and working class white MAGA voters find that they can no longer afford groceries or a home.
Eff 'em.
They did this to themselves because these racists loathed the idea of a black woman as president, no matter what they told pollsters about the price of eggs.
This will be karmic justice on a grand scale.
Only that blue voters, the immigrants and the rest of the world will be effected as well.
It is what we would call "Extended Suicide" in German.
(Not that our right-wingers did not have the same ideas. Especially now, since Assad is gone. But there are about 500K tax-paying Syrian immigrants now, among them 6K or 5% of our current physicians. Erdogan will see that Problem probably much earlier and harder.)
I have long pointed out that until Trump v.1.0, Democrats ALWAYS boosted the Border Patrol and Republicans always sabotaged it. The logic was simple. Democrats wanted LEGAL immigration since such immigrants can become union members and voters, while illegals undermine both. Hence Dems support some policies I dislike, like chain immigration by relatives, superficially a nice-policy and actually deeply immoral.
The stunning immorality of the Republican stance – fostering illegal immigration – was something liberals might have attacked… were they not utter saps and fools, as evidenced by their inability to perceive how enemies of the west have fostered rightward and even fascist politics over here by herding refugees across borders.
What DP points out is that the fascist swings resulted in such anti-immigrant fury that it is now undermining the longtime Republican conniving for illegal-and-docile slave-workers.
What to expect? An effort to restore “bracero’ worker programs in which workers come for 6 months without families and checked to make sure they aren’t pregnant.
Combine a liberal bracero ("guest worker") program with stricter border controls might be a compromise acceptable to both sides.
BTW, Dr. Brin, I agree that ANY serious attempt at tax reform MUST hit the LLCs and Limited Partnerships.
Hell, even taxing inheritance is more about hitting the affluent rather than the truly wealthy. Thus, when political parties make noises about how they will "tax the rich" and their plan involves increases in income and estate taxes, we know theyre full of crap. Instead, they are just taxing the affluent and are again protecting their party's favored faction of oligarchs.
BTW, a lot of FDR admirers cite the wrong things when they try to recreate his results today.
Many will cite his 90% income tax top rate, as AOC immortalized as the "tippy top." Instead, his real achievements involved curbing the mega wealthy by nixing the biggest tax shelters used by tycoons: perpetual trusts and stock buybacks.
Then, as now, the mega wealthy used tax law provisions to pay less taxes than everyone else. In 3rd world countries like the Philippines, the rich people directly bribe tax officials.
Here, the scam is much more attenuated. Justice Scalia's "freedom" embedded into law by Citizen's United has simply become a vehicle for oligarchs to bribe politicuans and political parties. Corporations often bribe regulators using "revolving door" tactics, among other tricks.
In return for these political donations, the oligarchs get non-enforcement of antitrust law, full protection for equity tricks like stock buybacks, and protection for big wealth transfer vehicles like LLC and Limited Partnerships.
Though my preference would be to tax the formation, dissolution, and operation of LLCs and Limited Partnerships rather than through property identification (which I presume would lead to property and other forms of wealth taxes).
Since the GOP are now pushing hard to gut "birthright citizenship" out of the 14th Amendment, it is clear that the immigration problem is based on racism, not economic anxiety. Bracero programs are just watered down indentured servitude, particularly when the employers get to define who stays and who goes.
Keep your eye on the growth of the "legal slavery" approach of using convicts as unpaid or underpaid labor. California did the rest of the US a grievous injury in the most recent election by refusing to end the practice.
Trump does not want to deport illegals; he want to make them "legal slaves." The push to end birthright citizenship is just a way for racists to reclassify US citizens as criminals based on their parents' ethnicity. Once citizenship is stripped, the brand-new minted illegals will be used as slave labor, sold to agricultural and construction owners. The extreme growth in private prison and citizen surveillance company stocks in the last few months is a symptom of our ruling oligarchs hunger for "legal slavery."
There have been cases of countries going to war against a neighbour in part because that neighbour's oppression led to a flood of refugees.
One example that comes to mind is the 1971 India-Pakistan War. Oppression in what was then East Pakistan led to Inda being saddled with refugees. The result of the war was East Pakistan gaining independence as Bangladesh.
Another example is the 1978-79 Tanzania-Uganda war. Again the oppression of Idi Amin led to Tanzania being saddled with refugees. The war led to his deposition.
The behaviour of the Assad regime and of ISIS are responsible for much of the refugee flow to Europe. War against them would have been justified. Whether it would have been prudent is a different question. But appropriate military action against states creating a refugee problem is justified.
In 1st world countries like the USA, the rich people directly bribe legislators.
BTW, Hugh is going to know A LOT more about this than me since he's a tax attorney.
Republican FBI chief Wray to resign to clear pathway for Kash Patel to take over.
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2024/dec/11/fbi-director-christopher-wray-resign
Another in the "loyal protector" caste shows his willingness to preemptively obey our new authoritarian POTUS.
Trump himself appointed Wray, who has a non-expired10-year term, but Wray is now resigning rather than forcing Trump to fire him.
Yet another "moderate" Republican shows his lack of spine.
Yet another "centrist" at the FBI showing his partisan interest in keeping the most extreme right-wing in charge of law enforcement in the US.
Just a reminder, there has *never* been anything other than a Republican in charge of the FBI.
The stunning immorality of the Republican stance – fostering illegal immigration – was something liberals might have attacked… were they not utter saps and fools, as evidenced by their inability to perceive how enemies of the west have fostered rightward and even fascist politics over here by herding refugees across borders.
As usual, you forget that immigration does not come out of thin air - and all to often, the US and it's allies are the cause for it. And will be for at least the next four years. Arms Dealing. Corruption. Unfair Trade practices. Climate change. Leftovers from Colonialism.
Unless we acknowledge that the problem lies with us and stop making excuses like the wife of a drinker, we will end up with refugee wave after refugee wave.
You want that our enemies are unable to herd immigrants towards you? Then let's stop creating them.
And that would start by recognizing them as living human beings with own minds, souls and aspirations.
And their own dignity that must be protected.
And then, only then, we can start talking about reducing the problems associated with migration.
On another topic, I binged watched Apple plus' production of Foundation, which I understand includes our host as a paid consultant.
Pretty interesting take on Asimov's work. Changed a lot, but a faithful adaptation would have been pretty boring on the screen.
Overall, I thought it was entertaining Sci fi and fairly faithful to the spirit of Asimov's work even though the plot isn't at all like the books.
Oh, Florida worker issues can be solved by 'tough on crime' policies, and reintroducing chain gangs of a certain... demographic.
Am I right? Hope not.
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