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!)
Science Fiction Research Association -
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122 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.
JV: “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.”
Well sure. Which is why the true oligarchs MUST eviscerate the recent revival of the IRS, to prevent the computer upgrades and investigative staff from penetrating offshore havens and triggering my Helvetian War. And they cannot allow my Universal Ownership Transparency. I’ve been pondering this problem a very long time.
Universal Ownership Transparency would not have to lead to ANY increased tax rates. My best guess is that abandoned property would cancel most world government debt. Any law abiding citizen should want it.
Der Oger sorry./ While I accept the moral imperative to do what no other civilization ever did… which is to own up to our own historical and current faults, that new wisdom can go WAY too far. As you did, with your guilt-trip cries of "MEA CULPA!"
Sorry, it is utter BS to put on us all the blame for murderous, rapacious local despots persecuting their own people. That is the story of most of humanity’s nations, for probably 12,000 years. And people have fled despots all that time, usually from one hell to another hell.
The biggest difference today is NOT that sometimes western leaders made deals with despots. That, too, has gone on forever. The difference is that Western nations themselves are HEAVENS to flee to, from hell.
THAT is the far bigger perspective than zeroing in on Moussadegh or Allende, as terrible and regrettable as those crimes were.
JV: “I binged watched Apple plus' production of Foundation, which I understand includes our host as a paid consultant”
Um… where’d you get that idea? Watched one season. Many of the add-ons were pretty good, like all the clone emperor stuff. I liked those adds. But making everything about crucial heroes messed up the whole meaning of the story.
But "paid consultant?" Show me the money! Or the credit.
But making everything about crucial heroes messed up the whole meaning of the story.
In that spirit, I've wondered why you and the other two "Killer B's" had your entire sequel trilogy revolve around Hari Seldon.
Oh, I liked those novels for what they were, but I did miss the far-reaching scope of the original trilogy. Asimov's three books--much shorter in length than your sequels--covered almost four centuries, making an ensemble cast inevitable sans immortality.
"usually from one hell to another hell"
The "homeless, tempest-tossed" seems like a distant dream. God bless and protect America.
LH: "In that spirit, I've wondered why you and the other two "Killer B's" had your entire sequel trilogy revolve around Hari Seldon."
1. to entice paying readers? Duh?
2. Because Seldonism is bullshit, of course. My book - Foundation's Triumph - addresses how many times Isaac argued with his former selves and re-interpreted the grand narrative. And I managed to weave together ALL of his threads and bring things full circle. Janet loved it.
But none of that should happen in the realm of the 1st book of the trilogy, let alone all the PSYCHIC crap that infests the otherwise pretty good TV show.
Hugh, one very good reason for having a corporate income tax, is that (real) investment is deducted from it, giving investment expenditure a discount in profitable companies. Another is the ability of very rich individuals to avoid personal income tax by using corporations (pay me via this company please). You may see alternative solutions.
"Seldonism is bullshit"
I agree (about the assertion and about Asimov's own evolution). But with names like Willow, Sycamore, Tangle Lake, Aspen, Ryzen (Horizon+zen), etc, I had to go with SELDON I for my psychohistory processor. Romanticism is a powerful stimulant.
Remember the price of eggs? Gasoline? Housing?
It looks like inflation is already starting to climb again (2.7% in November) as businesses anticipate Trump's tariffs.
I'm going to love watching MAGA being unable to buy groceries.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ubO93EKjXls
FAFO
MAGA minions? Don't be vindictive about the mistakes they've made.
Just play 'Heavy is the Crown' on repeat until it dawns on them.
I don't understand why Ukraine has not bought ships & arms beyond the Bosporun and set them hunting RF vessels. Cant they set long range mothership drones to drop small torpedoes that target the propellers of the 500 or so Dark Fleet tankers out there? Most would then drift into the clutches of wildcat salvage teams. No deaths and likely very few actual sinkings, but devastating to Putin's finances.
And any RF naval vessels going to-from Syria are fair game.
It will be interesting to see whether many of my customers actually continue to blame Biden for their financial woes, or just refer to the 'economy', because I'm willing to bet that a lot of them won't connect it with the rumpT kakistocracy*. It can't be the fault of the saviour they voted for.
*the word shows up in the original Dungeon Master's Guide. I wasn't ASKING for a demonstration...
Pappenheimer
Remember when people said they were voting for Trump because of inflation?
https://www.huffpost.com/entry/donald-trump-walks-back-prices-down_n_675af8f3e4b04606476ba6cd
Trump Backtracks On Campaign Pledge To Bring Down Grocery Prices
The president-elect walked back what was always a wildly unrealistic campaign promise.
“I’d like to bring them down. It’s hard to bring things down once they’re up. You know, it’s very hard. But I think that they will,” Trump said, according to the transcript.
Trump is right that it’s very hard to achieve across-the-board price reductions. Curbing inflation is only a matter of slowing the rate of price increases — actual economy-wide price drops typically don’t happen outside of a massive economic downturn.
You see what Trump voters actually wanted was deflation - a fall in prices - instead of a reduction in inflation to normal levels.
Deflation is NOT a good thing, is it?
It normally happens only during major economic downturns like the Great Depression.
But people are stupid, MAGA voters especially so - even when they are business owners who should know a little something about how trade and the economy work.
And between massive deportations of our workforce and tariffs already causing trade wars (China just banned the shipment of Rare Earth minerals to the US in retaliation for Trump's tariffs) we are about to see world wide trade wars and a renewed spike in inflation.
Whether its climate change disasters that make it impossible for them to find or afford insurance, spiking inflation that makes it impossible for them to buy gas and groceries, soaring housing prices pushed ever higher by shortage caused by mass deportations of our construction work force, gutting of their health care so Trump can afford more tax cuts for billionaires ...
I will enjoy watching these MAGA dummies suffer.
Concerning Donald Trump's Time Magazine interview:
https://www.electoral-vote.com/evp2024/Items/Dec13-3.html
Trump explained that when he promised to bring grocery prices down during the presidential campaign, what he meant was that he's probably not going to be able to bring grocery prices down. "It's hard to bring things down once they're up. You know, it's very hard." Gee, who knew?
Just before the 2022 midterms, the Chicago Tribune ran an editorial cartoon with a guy at a gas station saying, "Hey, I voted for authoritarianism over democracy and gas prices are still high!" Thankfully, that turned out not to be the case, but two years later it is. Not with gas prices in particular (which have come down quite nicely thanks to President Biden), but with everything else that Trump voters claim to be concerned about.
Maybe a good time to invest in those "I did that!" stickers, only with Cheetolini's face instead of Biden's?
I don't understand why Ukraine has not bought ships & arms beyond the Bosporun and set them hunting RF vessels.
Costs, Personnel, Time, Legitimacy, Propaganda and Hesitancy of the West.
Cost: The cheapest on the market I found by quick search was the swedish Visby class corvette, around $ 180 Million. The Baden Wurtemberg class corvette is around $ 2.2 Billion. That are 60 or 733 Leopard II class tanks.
Personnel: Does Ukraine have the necessary naval crews and training to conduct these operations?
Time: Building ships as well as training crews takes time. If commissioned in 2022, some ships would be ready to be fielded now.
Likewise, I assume that training those crews will also take a year or so.
Legitimacy: Well, technically, many of those ships are not Russian, but Gabonese ships. While Gabon is certainly not a match militarily for most European nations, they are officially not part of the war (unless Ukraine declares it), and so legally, that would be piracy.
Propaganda: "See what those imperialist NATO butchers and their blood-drinking Ukrainian Nazi henchmen did? They just sank some peaceful African trade ships."
Hesitancy: If you want buy military ships, you actually need a vendor. Both the US and Germany have been hesitant to provide more effective kit; and warships would be certainly not be sold.
I think this comes to pretty much the same thing as your 'privateering' suggestion. Are these warships going to be flying Ukrainian colors, will the crew and captain not be Ukrainian, and will they be attacking ships under colors other than Russian? 'Cause, that is piracy or privateering. Both illegal, let alone the possible guilt for large oil spills and bad PR.
Tagging RU warships in the Med would be acts of war, not piracy, and technically OK, but what nation is going to provide the ships or subs to start a naval conflict in one of the most well-traveled seas in the world? Pretty sure WE won't, and those RU ships beyond the Bosporus are no danger to Ukraine as long as Turkey keeps them out.
Pappenheimer
Re: the healthcare CEO killing, an incentive, get me rewrite:
Re: the healthcare CEO killing
I admit that I had mixed feelings about the Brian Thompson shooting. My heart immediately started singing like the Munchkins:
Ding, dong, the boss is dead!
Which old boss? The healthcare boss!
Ding, dong, the healthcare boss is dead!
But my head said, after a few moment's thought, "I don't condone, but I'm mostly not surprised."
What surprised me is the bipartisan nature of the internet fanhood for Luigi Mangione. Also that this internet folk hero and his target are both rich. Is that a "contradiction within the ruling class"?
Re: An incentive
Soon after the shooting, Anthem cancelled its anesthesia time-limit policy. In general, health insurance is "your money or your life", and that's criminal. But time-limited anesthesia is "your money or torture", which is evil. Anthem made a mistake by having such a policy; and they made a second mistake by taking it back so soon after an assassination. Is that how to influence them? They have created a precedent, and an incentive.
Re: get me rewrite!
This movie is badly written. It's cartoonish. I'd like to speak to the director. "Luigi Mangione"? Who writes this stuff? And while I'm on the subject, border czar "Homan"? Homan?! Can't the lizard people spell? Or is this like Clark Kent's glasses? Clark Kent is only fooling himself, and so is Homan.
I'll give Homan this: deporting whole families including citizens, compared to splitting those families up, is slightly less unhomanitarian. But the lesser of two evils is still evil.
Der Oger, you are not thinking like an underdog. Almost any fast freighter can be publicly registered as a warship and equipped with basic defense systems. There are plenty of Ukrainian merchant mariners and some remnant naval personnel... and plenty of foreign volunteers. The aim is to deploy long range drones along paths hinted-at by Western Intel agencies and just drop (at night) a tiny acoustic torpedo tuned to find a ship's propellor.
The disproportionate outcomes are vastly worth it. Especially if you solve the Gabon problem by naming them to be a deliberate co-belligerant of Russia's. In which case you send a tug to accept surrender and haul the oil for sale.
There is no way that the narrative would be as you describe. Especially if salvage rights are given to var. African nations.
see my answer to Oger.
Who writes this stuff?
In a way, that's what I mean by quoting, "How much longer can I go on being an atheist." Too much of real life makes more sense if one posits a writer.
I like the (inverted) religious language at the end. The “Beast” is traditionally associated with the world—the “Lord of this World” and what-not—so it’s not really defiance. It seems that loving the world rather than the creator is the basic metaphysical inversion or disagreement at the root of so many other disagreements.
Now personally I don’t love the world, but I don’t mind it, and I’m agnostic about creators. But I don’t suffer from such hubris that I think it’s my job to “save the world”, “become god” or “proselytize” that I know how to do it. As John Michael Greer likes to say, the opposite of a bad idea is usually another bad idea. I try to steer clear of both extremist cults and enjoy my time here despite them, but that can be difficult—particularly in a society as fundamentally deranged by this kind of messianism and bad metaphysics as the USA.
In other words you are a useless person. Useless to tribe, to posterity or to being remembered as a contributor. Whether you shrug off classic versions of afterlife, it sure guarantees that no future of infinite software modeling capabilities will be interested in model-resurrecting you.
Unless... that's exactly wht you currently are? But then, they'd be able to set up zillions of minor NPCs, including some -- many -- designed to snarl.
None of which is outside of your purview of choice, as choice has been gifted to you by all the do-ers and vigorous folks who made the recent enlightenment... especially post WWII ... so vastly better than all that came before. All of it, combined.
That change could not have happened -- giving you the luscious freedom to curl your lip in cynical nihilism -- if there weren't progressive positive sum effects and solutions to problems. And that is the fundamental and truly absolute rebutal to your nihilistic creed.
It's not that good choices and positive sums aren't possible. It's proved that they are. It's that YOU desperately need to discredit all that, so you can shrug aside those who are beckoning you, asking you to lend a hand.
From a history student's perspective, I posit a team of bickering chimpanzees high on rotten fruit instead of 'a' writer.
Pappenheimer
So I guess in your worldview, just about every human who ever lived is useless, since they didn’t save the world, become god, or contribute anything lasting to Progress. Sounds like religious or ideological fanaticism to me – more of a “you problem” more than a “me problem”.
Because that’s what I reject – the people selling me grand narratives of saving the world, defeating the Beast, winning the War on Whatever, “you’re either with us or against us”—stories, which, by some wild coincidence, they are the good-guy protagonists. No thanks, not interested. Good luck living out this fantasy story, but try not to wreck the world is your fanatical drive to save it.
Bah, Treebeard. YOU, personally, know your response right now is a callow whine. Can you hear it? No? You know darned well that's not what I meant, but it does retort as a teenage yowl of well-practiced resentful false interpretation.
Dig it fellah. *I* was responding to *your* declaration that you owe nothing. That nothing works. That there are no solutions. and (implicitly) that a positive sum set of outcomes is impossible. This from an ingrate who benefits daily, hourly, mintute-by-minute from efforts by generations of people who - believing otherwise - managed to either compete or cooperate (or both) their efforts into positive sums.
I tell my kids that growing up in LA it often hurt like hell to breathe. They stared at me, blinking: "How... can it HURT to breathe?" Unable even to imagine it.
The ozone hole is repairing now that we simply stopped doing what was destroying it. When I was a child, my parents idolized Jonas Salk, who allowed me to go to parks and swimming pools and saved my generation from parent-imposed, covidlike isolation during summers.
Despite mosters like Trump & Bolsonaro and others, the number of trees on Earth is rising. Sustainables are now cheaper that carbon power and that happened because of liberal subsidies. Hypocrite TEXAS is the sustainables powerhouse of the nation and Appalachian towns are beautiful and clean and healthy, thanks to LBJ... and rife with ingrates like you, for whom hatred of modernity trumps any thought of tallying what it has given them.
Thnat's a droplet sample of positive sums and the folks who delivered all that and 10,000 times more are only asking for permission to get us the rest of the way... instead of the SOYLENT GREEN nightmare that your cult would consign us to.
I did not demand you solve the problems of the world! But your own manifesto was a screed of justification for sullen passivity and (whenever possible) grumbling obstruction. We've all seen teens in that phase and most of us spent at least some time in that wallow.
How long have you been wallowing? There ARE chemical paths out of it, you know. And hence you can no longer even blame biology. It's a deliberate choice.
Brin:
George Carlin mocked the idea of saving the planet. He said, "The planet's fine. It's not going anywhere. We are."
That's true, on a planetary time-scale. On our scale, I think we have a long ways to go yet. I think 'saving the planet' is hubris. My own speculation is that we will muddle through, and hand off our partial failure and partial success to the next generation.
Treebeard:
I've met creative types, so I know of at least two kinds of creators: the Hack, who doesn't really care about the work, only the attention it draws; and the Genius, who is shy of publicity, but is devoted to the-art-for-the-art. It seems to me that a creator who desires to be loved personally is like the Hack, but one who desires to create a beloved world is like the Genius.
David, you seem to be proposing a revival of the German strategy of using freighters with heavy concealed armaments to attack unescorted merchantmen on distant trade routes. The difficulty with that nowadays is that with better communications and with computers handling tracking and data management it is much easier to locate the raiders. Once found they would easily be sunk by Russian warships.
FAFO
Pass the popcorn as we watch Trump's own policies destroy the rural rubes that voted for him:
https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2024/12/trump-gop-rural-supporters/680981/?utm_source=reddit&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=the-atlantic&utm_content=edit-promo
Trump Is About to Betray His Rural Supporters
Small-town America voted heavily in his favor—but the policies he’s pledged won’t reward that faith.
Agricultural producers could face worse losses than any other economic sector from Trump’s plans to impose sweeping tariffs on imports and to undertake what he frequently has called “the largest domestic deportation operation” of undocumented immigrants “in American history.” Hospitals and other health providers in rural areas could face the greatest strain from proposals Trump has embraced to slash spending on Medicaid, which provides coverage to a greater share of adults in smaller communities than in large metropolitan areas. And small-town public schools would likely be destabilized even more than urban school districts if Trump succeeds in his pledge to expand “school choice” by providing parents with vouchers to send their kids to private schools.
Resistance to such measures in deep-red rural areas could represent one of the few obstacles Trump would face from a GOP-controlled Congress over implementing his agenda. Still, the most likely scenario is that elected Republicans who represent rural areas will ultimately fall in line with Trump’s blueprint. If so, the effects will test whether anything can loosen the GOP’s grip on small-town America during the Trump era, or whether the fervor of his rural supporters provides Trump nearly unlimited leeway to work against their economic interests without paying any political price.
Pappenheimer 4:45 pm:
Or in other words, a typical Hollywood writing team.
"Tax the rich." Easier said than done. It is possible but you need to understand how they plan and avoid the taxes in the first place. This is my area of expertise and I am confident enough to entertain opposing points of view and realize that I can be wrong. I had an interesting discussion last weekend with a person who challenged some of my views. I enjoy good faith discussions here for the same reason.
As I wrote above, an income tax as currently structured is a good way to raise tax revenue from most of the population. Is it the best way to raise revenue from our economy? I don't know. I'd love to research that.
But there is a danger where the researchers may not be as confident as I am; they may have preferred outcomes and they may (intentionally or unintentionally) skew the results to get their preferred outcome. For that reason we need multiple, independent teams researching the problems.
We need one system for taxing most of the economy: maybe continue the income tax (my preference), maybe switch to a gross receipts tax (ugh...ugly, but possible), or maybe switch to a value added tax (I am ignorant so no opinion).
Then we need another system for the wealthiest 0.1%. Maybe put a 10% tax on charitable donations over a specific size. Enough of a tax so that it is inconvenient, but not enough to encourage outright avoidance (or criminal evasion). Definitely have David's proposed Transparent Ownership Treaty is a great idea. Many of the wealthy oligarchs avoid taxation of their accumulated wealth by donating it to charitable foundations...they avoided income tax during their lives and they avoid the gift/estate tax after their deaths. Two arguments here. One: most of us give money to the state so that it can spend it; all of us should give something. Two: if the money is being put to public benefit anyways, why bother worrying about whether the State makes the decision or the billionaire does? I say, split the difference. Let the billionaire decide which charitable cause gets most of their money; let the State decide how some of it is spent.
Another problem is that many of these "charitable" foundations/causes really are not charitable anymore. There has been too much political activity by so-called charities; many of them really don't even bother to hide it anymore. God/Gaia/C'thulu help them if the Sec. 501(c)(3) and Sec. (170(c)(2) are ever really applied to them...it will be ugly. People could end up going to jail.
There are (at least) two types of people who talk about "saving the planet". There are NorAChuGa types who really are more concerned about the planet itself, irrespective of humanity's survival. The extreme among them think humanity is a virus that needs to be contained or eliminated for the sake of the planet.
Then, there are those who actually mean "save the planet as an environment conducive to supporting human life." While I don't see many of us here actually using the "save the planet" phrase, the sentiment does seem to exist, espeically concerning the effects of climate change. To that extent, I think more of us hear mean "save" in the second sense above rather than the first sense.
GMT-5
It also appears to me that a lot of churches are abusing their tax free status by political advocation, though that's probably not come up in your job.
I have long had the modest proposal that any church who does not report sexual abuse of children by their clergy should lose their tax-free status for at least the number of years they kept quiet, and preferably more (triple? quintuple?).
Pappenheimer
Larry,
With an appropriate nod to the wisdom of George Carlin, we've already done a lot of damage to the biological diversity of our planet, and are likely to take even more species with us by the time we go. (I'm sure the rats will mourn us when they take over).
Pappenheimer
Big worry is war with Iran:
Trump says “anything” can
happen:
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=Od-P1zlPd_g
Anything? Sounds like Armageddon.
GMT, we need to look at fundamentals that are inarguable.
1. The uber-wealthy desperately defend the Supply Side ‘theory’ that slashed their tax rates, in expectation of vast investment in industrial production capacity or ‘supply.’ Adam Smith said this is generally not what aristocrats do with added wealth, preferring ‘rent-seeking’ = e.g. snapping up real estate in cash purchases, funded by stock buybacks that were illegal till Reagan.
In fact, not a single beneficial outcome prediction for SS ever came true. Not one, ever. After 40 years it is now just an incantatory cult. The current boom-resurrection of US manufacturing came directly from the Keynesian Pelosi bills of 2021.
The frenzy to protect SS would not be volcanic in the oligarchy if they thought rates weren’t meaningful to them
2. Likewise, 40 years of deliberate starving & crippling the IRS.
3. .I am ironically less hostile to charitable foundations, since that is a type of investment in the future that is aside from commercial, personal and governmental. But I’d love to see some way of ensuring they aren’t shams.I’d favor that the boards of all charitable foundations be required to include 1/3 members chosen at random from the public, like juries.
AB: The Ayatollahs now worry about their own asses. THEY might nuke Tehran themselves, to eliminate the college educated.
Hellerstein-Papa: “I know of at least two kinds of creators: the Hack, who doesn't really care about the work, only the attention it draws; and the Genius, who is shy of publicity, but is devoted to the-art-for-the-art. It seems to me that a creator who desires to be loved personally is like the Hack, but one who desires to create a beloved world is like the Genius.”
Um, I’ve known geniuses who didn’t mind pats on the head and “Good stuff!” Some people who know me say they know one of those. I keep asking for introductions… ;-)
I look at supply side economics as extrapolation run wild, it just doesn't scale. Another question, why can't the (Formerly) GOP figure out how to file the serial numbers off of the Biden-Harris economic plans and declare victory? A bit like what "Drumph!" did with NAFTA?
Larry Hart: Type two really says "save ourselves".
Brin: good point, every Genius needs a little bit of Hackishness to survive long enough to serve the Art.
It's like enlightened self-interest. It has to be enlightened to deserve to exist, and self-interested to be able to exist.
Tim,
I suspect the US economy is in the hands of true believers. Dogmatists of unleashed capitalism. The elite clay of the New Libertarian Confederacy.
You know...morons.
Pappenheimer
P.S. And yes, Dr. Brin, I know - # not all libertarians. These guys remind me of the shouty ones I met in college.
Supply Side uses the metaphor of water "trickling down" to suggest that if you add more water to the top of a waterfall, there's more of it to splash down to those on the bottom.
The metaphor itself is flawed. "Money goes to money," it is said, which implies a kind of gravitational attraction. Money naturally flows toward the center, or the bottom of the waterfall, and collects there. Supply side is not about adding more money to the top, but to the bottom, where the falls have already taken place.
In the metaphor, the waterfall itself is where the water does work. Say, driving a hydroelectric turbine. The waterfall is where the work of the economy is done--people spending money. Eventually, it all ends up in the coffers of the rich (at the bottom of the falls), but in order to get there, it does useful work. Supply Side is like trucking in extra water to the bottom. The wealthy get that water without it ever having done anything useful.
The smug rich disdain the concept of an economic safety net, asserting that if people are given money without having to earn it, they have no incentive to work. Isn't this also the case for the wealthy themselves. Investing in a factory or a rail line or some such is work, or at the very least, risk. The investor can get rich, but he does so by making his money useful. Supply Side give him money without his having to earn it. Why is the rich man considered likely to "work" for money that he gets for free while the poor man is not?
Dogmatists of unleashed capitalism.
Shouldn't that be DOGE-matists?
Re - DOGE - Anybody arguing that large Bureaucracies are "Efficient" is peeing into the wind!!
There is a lot of pressure on the idea of improving efficiencies
IMHO the main mistake that we make is to assume that "State Owned" Bureaucracies are inefficient and that large "Privately Owned" Bureaucracies are somehow more efficient
I tell my kids that growing up in LA it often hurt like hell to breathe. They stared at me, blinking: "How... can it HURT to breathe?" Unable even to imagine it.
Not to mention the burning of your eyes! And recess being cancelled, because it was too unhealthy to play. Stage 3 smog alerts--which had a lower standard than today. A Stage 3 today would only manage a Stage 2 back then.
But then I grew up in Pomona, which is about the level of the inversion layer. So we got Stage 3 alerts when the rest of L.A. was at Stage 2.
Yep, the good old days... :D
Yes, I am a bit younger I think but I got the tail end of the smog. It wasn't so bad in the west end of LA County where I grew up, but I remember going to Raging Waters once in Pomona for the day and coming home and it hurt to breathe.
I worry about what damage we might be in for going forward.
Or that state owned bureaucracies are arbitrary and cruel and private bureaucracies aren't.
I prefer the metaphor of a tree. You water the roots not the crown.
The only morons I know are the morons who support an administration that wants to get rid of the polio vaccine.
Maybe injecting bleach or shoving a UV lamp up your arse will cure polio.
And let's rename "iron lungs" as "MAGA lungs" and paint them a proper patriotic Red White and Blue.
That will show those smarty pants doctors in the Deep State who want to run our lives!
My Dad had a saying "God is merciful, but Mother Nature is a bitch."
Dad wasn't right about everything but he nailed this one.
As far as Nature is concerned stupidity is a capital crime worthy of a punishment that she carries out without hesitation, appeal or mercy.
Stupid people die.
As far as Mother Nature is concerned, stupid people deserve to die.
And there are few more stupid than MAGA Trump supporters who refuse to get vaccinations.
Since God is just as well as merciful, MAGA morons will do most of the dying.
And maybe we'll be a smarter, better people after Mother Nature weeds out the stupid.
In the meantime pass the popcorn.
It's not often you get to watch evolution work in real time.
And congratulations to all you Texans, you no longer have to worry about those pesky EPA rules, regulations and protections.
https://www.chron.com/politics/article/abbott-trump-oil-gas-19978341.php
Gov. Abbott: Trump told me he will 'get rid of EPA regulations' in Texas
The Texas leader recalled a phone call with the president-elect at a Dallas luncheon.
Huzzah! Texas gets to become an open toxic sewer.
Those pesky regulations are killing business, so who cares if cancer kills Texans?
Republicans cancel regulations.
Companies release food like peanut butter or deli meat that is completely contaminated because there are no regulations now.
Dozens of people die from listeria or e coli.
In the past, companies would have to do something about it because there would be lawsuits.
But now, we probably won't be able to sue because there will be no legal standing, And it's too expensive for the companies, And hurts the shareholders.
My guess is that the press will not be allowed to publicize these deaths.
It's just going to kill a bunch of kids.
So many children are going to die under the Trump Administration. This is what Republicans want. I don't understand it.
I look at this country and it fills me with despair.
My guess is that the press will not be allowed to publicize these deaths.
Or they just announce that the Jews or Gays or Communists have poisoned the wells.
Those people will find a scapegoat. They are good at it.
But according to the legends, God created both Mother Nature and Satan, so God's mercy is no better than theirs. Also, those same legends show God in non-mercy mode. Also, that god's competing fan clubs show plenty of non-mercy to each other.
A.F Rey:
But then I grew up in Pomona, which is about the level of the inversion layer. So we got Stage 3 alerts when the rest of L.A. was at Stage 2.
The midwest version is that when I was a kid in the 1960s, there was a lot more black in the snow than there has been in the decades since.
LH sorry but liberals who thought it clever to call Supply Side ‘trickle down’ were mistaken. While it’s okay as imagery, it simply does not represent Supply Side and hence gets shrugged off by better educated goppers.
SS was claimed to result in wealth investing in PRODUCTION and hence increasing the amount (supply) of goods to then compete and be affordable to the middle classes. And increase manufacturing jobs. That’s not quite the same thing as ‘trickle down’ which implies the rich buying products made by workers. NEITHER thing happened, exactly as Adam Smith predicted.
Al Gore reduced govt paperwork vastly more compared to ALL earlier or later GOP endeavors. Simply by asking civil servants which tasks bore the hell out of them because they were redundant.
DP among my wager demands that set MAGAs fleeing in utmost panic is comparison of simple DEATH RATES among the (un)vaccinated, which can’t be fudged.
DP the irony is that Texas wind and solar are taking off, despite their fierce resistance. Watch as they take credit.
Carumba… today folks fish for decent meals from docks in Pittsburgh that were singed when the river caught fire.
BTW, what is this Left-wing media the right keeps talking about?
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/us-politics/la-times-oped-trump-owner-b2664015.html
LA Times billionaire owner killed op-ed that was critical of Trump’s cabinet picks, report says
Patrick Soon-Shiong’s intervention comes after the billionaire owner blocked the editorial board’s endorsement of Kamala Harris
https://www.newsweek.com/trump-abc-news-lawsuit-settlement-reaction-2000995
ABC Faces Anger After $15M Trump Settlement: 'Democracy Dies'
Democratic attorney Marc Elias wrote: "Knee bent. Ring kissed. Another legacy news outlet chooses obedience."
Billionaires now own all of our media outlets. Whether its Elon's Twitter-X or the LA Times, the media now exists to promote right wing corporate oligarchic interests.
There is no Left-wing media.
It died years ago.
Along with the profession of journalism.
Dr Brin:
but liberals who thought it clever to call Supply Side ‘trickle down’ were mistaken. While it’s okay as imagery, it simply does not represent Supply Sid
Don't blame me for that one. I've been arguing for years here that if a waterfall represents money, then the rich occupy the bottom of the falls, the part where money settles after it has done its useful work. Using that model, Supply Side is an argument that if you add enough water down there, some will trickle up to the masses. Of course, that doesn't happen.
DP:
There is no Left-wing media.
It died years ago.
It dies during the Reagan years, when ownership rules and the fairness doctrine were overhauled. News used to be what a tv or radio station was for, while entertainment paid the bills. In the 80s, news divisions became just one more profit center. The mandate stopped being to inform the public and became selling soap.
In Walter Cronkite's day, news media was "liberal" to the extent that the idea of a press free to speak truth to power or about power without government retaliation is a liberal idea.
These days, there's more profit and less fear of retaliation in right-wing lies than in truth. The modern lugenpresse isn't the enemy of the fascists. They are the fascists.
Media savvy, polemics, erudition, critical thinking, etc. only kick in once a basic level of scientific literacy is achieved. It's not an insurmountably high level (look at me). This was my motivation for getting into citizen science many years ago. I think SF is very helpful too - TASAT is a valuable enterprise.
As Khan said in TOS, oh sure there have been technical advancements, but how little Man himself has changed. I think Donne was right about losing anyone is a tragedy. A.I. research has taught me that even a clod is worth more than a vast GPU farm.
I think a lot of Trump voters are going to have buyers remorse before he leaves office. My only hope is that his diet and exercise habits catch up to him sooner than later
There is no Left-wing media.
Media has become the Second Estate again.
Those Who Preach.
scidata
"how little MAN himself has changed"
I used to believe that was one of the big truths - that we were cavemen in suits
Then I read "The Better Angels of our Nature"
And found that we are much better than we were
That violence and murder have been steadily dropping for the last 4,000 years
Duncan,
You are correct about violence rates over time - and, interestingly, the amount of money spent on the military has been decreasing as well as a fraction of the global GDP. It's horrifying that this is true even given WW 1 and 2. There may even be a self-interested, economic reason - the cost of war keeps climbing, to the point where conquest isn't worth the effort expended*. There are guys like Putin who ignore this fact, but they tend to spend their countries into poverty instead of empire. It almost makes me hopeful that we can end war without establishing a world government. There's some speculation that we are breeding for peace - great warriors these days are more likely to die early from artillery shell fragments or machine gun bullets than to get the pick of captured women - but I don't know how fast evolution works at human scale. Either way, we may be domesticating ourselves. I'm sure the fact that there hasn't been a world war since 1945 would surprise a lot of our ancestors.
*recent developments in drones and AI may begin to reverse the equation for non-nuclear wars, but it's hard to imagine a nuclear war for profit.
Pappenheimer
onward
onward
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