Demolition of America's moral high ground

In an article smuggled out of the gulag, Alexei Navalny makes - more powerfully - a point I have shouted for decades... that corruption is the very soul of oligarchy and the only way to fight it is with light. And if that light sears out the cheating, most of our other problems will be fixable by both bright and average humans... citizens... negotiating, cooperating, competing based on facts and goodwill. With the devils of our nature held in check by the only thing that ever worked...

...accountability.

Don't listen to me? Fine. Heed a hero.

Alas, the opposite trend is the one with momentum, favoring rationalizing monsters. Take this piece of superficially good news -- "Murdoch empire's News Corp. pledges to support Zero Emissions by 2030!"

Those of you who see this as a miraculous turnaround, don't. They always do this. "We NEVER said cars don't cause smog! We NEVER said tobacco is good for you! We NEVER said burning rivers are okay! We NEVER said civil rights was a commie plot! We NEVER said Vietnam and Iraq and Afghanistan quagmires will turn out well! We NEVER said the Ozone Crisis was fake!..."

... plus two dozen more examples of convenient amnesia that I list in Polemical Judo.

Now this 'turnaround?' As fires and storms and droughts make Denialism untenable even for raving lunatics and the real masters with real estate holdings in Siberia? so now, cornered by facts, many neural deprived confeds swerve into End Times Doomerism? No, we will not forget.

== More about Adam Smith... the real genius, not the caricature ==

I've long held that we must rescue the fellow who might (along with Hume and Locke) be called the First Liberal, in that he wanted liberated markets for labor, products, services and capital so that all might prosper... and if all do not prosper, then something is wrong with the markets. 

Smith denounced the one, central failure mode that went gone wrong 99% of the time, in most cultures; that has been cheating by those with power and wealth, suppressing fair competition so their brats would inherit privileges they never earned.

6000 years show clearly that cheating oligarchs, kings, priests, lords, owners are far more devastating to flat-fair-creative markets than "socialism" ever was. (Especially if you recognize the USSR was just another standard Russian Czardom with commissar-boyars and a repainted theology.) Whereas Smith observes that “the freer and more general the competition,” the greater will be “the advantage to the public.”

Here in Religion and the Rise of Capitalism the rediscovery of Smith is taken further, by arguing his moral stance was also, in interesting ways, theological.

== Now about that Moral High Ground ==

The demolition of USA's moral high ground - now aided by the most indignantly self-righteous generation of youths since the Boomers - is THE top priority of our enemies.  

Let me be clear, this is pragmatically devastating! As I have pointed out six times in trips to speak at DC agencies, it's a calamity, not because we don't need to re-evaluate and re-examine faults and crimes - (we do!) - but because that moral high ground is a top strategic asset in our fight to champion a free and open future when moral matters will finally actually count.

In those agency talks, I point out one of the top things that helped us to survive the plots and schemes of the then-and-future KGB, whose superior spycraft and easy pickings in our open society left us at a huge disadvantage.  What was it that evened the playing field for us? 

Defectors. They'd come in yearly, monthly ... and once a decade, some defector would bring in a cornucopia of valuable intel. Beyond question, former KGB agent Vlad Putin made it his absolute top priority to ensure that will not happen during Round Two. He has done it by systematically eliminating the three things we offered would be defectors --

- Safety....

- Good prospects in the West... and...

- The Moral High Ground.

Safety was the first thing Putin openly and garishly attacked, with deliberately detectable/attributable thuggery, in order to terrify. The other two lures have been undermined with equal systematicity, by fifth columns inside the U.S. and the West, especially as Trumpism revealed what America can be like, when our dark, confederate side wins one of the phases of our 250 year ongoing civil war. It has enabled Putin and other rivals to sneer "Who are YOU to lecture us about anything?"...

... And fools on the left nod in agreement, yowling how awful we are, inherently... when a quarter of the world's people would drop everything to come here, if they could. 

(Dig it, dopes. You want the narrative to be "we're improvable and America's past, imperfect progress shows it can happen!" But the sanctimoniously destructive impulse is to yowl "We're horrible and irredeemable!")

But then, we win that high ground back with events like the Olympics, showing what an opportunity rainbow we are. And self-crit -- even when unfairly excessive -- is evidence of real moral strength.

== Evidence? ==

This article from The Atlantic, History will judge the complicit, by Anne Applebaum, discusses how such a Fifth Column develops in a nation, collaborators willing, even eager, to assist foreign enemies against democracy and the rule of law. (I addressed much of this in Polemical Judo.)

"...many of those who became ideological collaborators were landowners and aristocrats, “the cream of the top of the civil service, of the armed forces, of the business community,” people who perceived themselves as part of a natural ruling class that had been unfairly deprived of power under the left-wing governments of France in the 1930s. Equally motivated to collaborate were their polar opposites, the “social misfits and political deviants” who would, in the normal course of events, never have made successful careers of any kind. What brought these groups together was a common conclusion that, whatever they had thought about Germany before June 1940, their political and personal futures would now be improved by aligning themselves with the occupiers."

== And now… from crazy town … ==

Turkey’s leader met two E.U. presidents. The woman among them didn’t get a chair.

And here’s an interesting look at the early fifties, showing an amazing overlap between UFO stuff and the plague of McCarthyism. And it’s stunning how similar the meme plagues were, to today. “On any given night, viewers of the highest-rated show in the history of cable news, Fox News Channel’s Tucker Carlson Tonight, might find themselves treated to its namesake host discussing flying saucers and space aliens alongside election conspiracies and GOP talking points. Praise for former President Donald Trump, excuses for those involved in the Capitol assault, and criticism of racial and sexual minorities can sit seamlessly beside occasional interviews featuring UFO “experts” pleading conspiracy. Recent segments found Carlson speculating that an art installation in Utah was the work of space aliens and interviewing a reporter from the Washington Examiner about whether UFOs can also travel underwater like submarines.”

I do not like these Putin shills

I do not like indignant shrills

From Foxite liars aiming barbs

At every elite except thars.

Lecture us when mafia lords...

...casino moguls and commie hordes

Petro sheiks and inheritance brats

And despots and their apparats

Don't rule the GOP with help

From uncle toms who on-cue yelp!

Your all-out war on expert castes

has one goal, lordship that lasts!

And finally

...showing that we aren't the only ones... Dolphins chew on toxic puffer fish and pass them around, as stoners do with a joint.

Can cheating be combatted?

As I mentioned, earlier, liberals should start practicing judo. Start by accepting Trump’s demand for a commission to investigate electoral fraud. A call that is now echoed in this article from Salon. Watch, as they scurry to back away from the demand.

Indeed. Former Attorney General Eric Holder has signed on to lead the National Democratic Redistricting Committee, a newly formed political group aimed at untangling the creatively drawn districts that have helped cement the Republican Party in power, both in Washington and many state capitals. Mind you, Gerrymandering is a crime against the American people by the entire political caste and for years both parties practiced the foul art, as I dissected here. Along with ways that you personally and all by yourself can defeat it, here. And yes I mean you, all by yourself.

Recent years have seen citizen uprisings in many blue states, where ballot measures instituted nonpartisan commissions to draw the districts for Congress and state legislatures. This as happened only in blues like California, Washington, Oregon and so on, leading to much hand-rubbing glee, at first, among republicans, who saw this as “political suicide” by democratic voters. 

(Libertarians note: these are the same states that are decriminalizing marijuana and doing other things top get oppression off your back. They are also thriving vastly better than red states.)

Only lo and behold, a funny thing happened. With more neutral districting, Democrats did better at the polls. It seemed that voters trusted those legislators more, not less, when they had to work hard, each election, rather than taking their constituents for granted. 

Which led to my call for Democrats to abandon gerrymandering altogether, especially in DP dominated states that still use it, like Illinois and Maryland. All those exceptions have accomplished, overall, was to let Republicans cry “See? Everybody does it!”

I doubt that Holder or Obama actually listened to me. Still, it seems my advice is being carried out. Obama and Holder will jawbone Illinois, Maryland and others to abandon gerrymandering, so that it will become strictly a Republican crime. Instead of just mostly a Republican crime.

At which point we might see whether Justice Roberts and Justice Alito -- and Justice Gorsuch -- are still able to stomach the utterly intolerable. Or whether those three can rouse themselves to be citizens first, before and above being partisan hacks. (We will see a number of occasions, over the next few years, when those three might hold the fate of our Great Experiment in their hands.)

== The simplest solution to a cheat ==

As it happens, Roberts and Alito earlier held back from meddling in gerrymandering, because they saw no clear way to prescribe a redistricting process. Only here’s the thing: you don’t even have to demand impartial redistricting commissions! I have long reponded with a three sentence solution:

(1) Set some upper limit to all districts’ perimeter-to-area ratio. (You can be generous; just forbid the absurdly contorted.)

(2) The legislature – or some commission -- may establish the boundaries, but…

(3) There must be minimal overlap between the boundaries of districts for state assembly, state senate and Congress. They must be as different from each other as practically possible. Hence, if they gerry one house to benefit their own party, fine! They’ll mess themselves up in the other two. 

There you go.  No need for formulas or “commissions.” Problem solved. Do it. Just do it.

There is, of course, a way for we citizens, ourselves, to defeat gerrymandering cheats, at least a bit, even if the crooks manage to cling to their criminal practice. If politicians have contrived things so that only one party can ever win in your district, then register as a member of that party! That way, you can vote in the only election that matters in your district, the primary. 

Seriously, you betray nothing by registering as a Republican, if that’s the party that owns your district. You can then help moderates to win the local nominations and to withstand Tea Party/Breitbart bullying challenges. (And note, you conservatives who live in Santa Monica or some other liberal enclave, this can work both ways!) Think about it.

This proved unnecessary after California's brilliant reforms, with non-partisan primaries and top-two runoffs in the fall. It has led to amazing outcomes, with moderates winning in both parties and the minorities in each district gaining clout!

 == Our side: Reduced to essentials ==

Exaggerating a bit to make a powerful point, this essay by Yonatan Zunger asserts provocatively that Tolerance is a Peace Treaty, not a moral precept. A powerfully important treaty, yes, that allows us to create far more complex, effective, productive and happy societies. But ultimately one based on pragmatism, which is vastly stronger than any "value system." 

When tolerance, diversity and all those nice things are called moral-axiom absolutes, that weakens them! Because someone else can simply shrug and cancel your hifalutin Core Value by saying "I have different core values. Different axioms." (Like holy writ telling me that your kind are filth.)

Our tolerant, diverse, positive-sum society needs no such axiomatic crutches! Amid our complexity, we've prospered and achieved more, in a few generations, than all others combined, across all continents and 6000+ years. There are zero positive metrics - from art to fun to prosperity to happiness, to soulful contemplation - in which this approach has not been rewarded multiplicatively, not arithmetically. When it comes to science and knowledge - gathering the tools and powers of creation - we've been rewarded exponentially. That is one heap of validation for free speech, tolerance, flat class structures and the rule of law.

There are powers who see where this is going. If the Enlightenment thrives for just one more generation, we'll reach a critical mass of bright youths and citizens committed to their own blatant self interest, in this positive sum miracle. Those aiming to reinstate traditional humangovernance styles of oligarchy and feudal-inherited privilege know that they have just a narrow window of time in which to bring the experiment crashing down.

Their chief tool - fomenting frantic, anti-future populism among a fact-averse lumpenproletariat - worked somewhat in 1930s Europe. It took grit and courage - yes, militancy - to face down that last major oligarchic putsch. Indeed, our Great Experiment will only be rescued by determined will and goodwill, as it was from evil empires in the 1860s, the 1940s and across the Cold War.

It requires that we view Tolerance and Freedom of Speech and class-flatness not only as our core tenets but also as the greatest tools ever discovered for achieving positive sum outcomes. Tolerance is our oxygen, our practical need, not a catechism that can be used against us.

Read this piece. Then recall how I have been poking at audiences for decades with a deliberately aggressive call to arms, rousing appreciative, if nervous laughter: 

"We must go forth and crush every worldview that does not accept diversity and tolerance!"

If that does not wring from you a tense, ironic smile -- maybe a chuckle that is both nervous and determined -- then you just don't get it. How dissonant, contradictory, yet necessarily militant we are obliged to be, to save the fecund, wondrous peace our predecessors won. See my essay: The Dogma of Otherness (from my collection Otherness).

Oh but alas. Here’s your openness and transparency.  “Paul Ryan Proposes Ban on Live-Streaming From House Floor.”

== Let the comparisons begin! ==

I’ve recommended that the fact-centered half of our civil war use wagers!  I'll offer a major missive about that, soon. Meanwhile though, note that the maneuver can only work if you parse the bets so clearly that there’s no wriggle room and the facts are overwhelmingly clear. Like defying  your favorite confederate cultist to name fact-based professions that are not warred upon by Fox.

Or to name a major metric of U.S. national health that does not do vastly better, across the span of democratic presidencies.  

Case in point: U.S. consumer confidence has boomed to its highest level since 2001 -- yes, higher than at the peak of the housing boom.  Reinforcing the almost perfect correlation that every single large and attributable metric of U.S. national health does better across the span of democratic administrations than across their republican predecessors.  Usually “oppositely” better. (In other words, most such metrics plummeted across both Bush Administrations.)

More comparisons here.

Let’s gather these.  If the pattern persists, it will help us to pry some intelligent “ostrich” conservatives’ head out of holes-of-denial.  And all it will take is a few… million… of them to make the difference that saves us.

And it begins.

======

Addendum.  One of you in comments pointed out: "It's not only blue states that have created redistricting commissions: Arizona has one, too. But it took a citizens' initiative to create it and years in court to defend it from the GOP legislature and state-wide officers who wanted it dead, dead, dead." Yes, well, okay. Blue in spirit, somewhat.  Look, Arizona has a huge, independent, libertarian streak. And they draw half their electricity from coils arrayed around the spinning in Barry Goldwater's grave.

Gaming the election

It's not too soon to start building our nation's immune systems against electoral cheating. And yes, I will get around to poking at both parties.

Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders have each issued a list of reform priorities that would go a long way to making voting easier. Both include universal automatic registration at the DMV (already done on California), longer early voting periods, and a renewal of the Voting Rights Act. Sanders would also make Election Day a national holiday, so people who have to work would have more time to vote.  

There’s a simple difference of philosophy and goals at work, which is that Democrats want to make it easier to vote and Republicans want to make it as difficult as possible.  The interesting thing is that they are actually… actually… able to concoct incantation rationalizations for the latter position. Cheaters do that.

See elsewhere how to tell whether a state's Voter ID law is sincere, or just a tool to rob poor people of their rights. The telltale is not the requiring of gradual increases in ID at the polls! (You dems are wrong about that.) No, it is the hypocrisy of demanding an onerous new regulation without providing what's called compliance assistance.  In every case, there's been not one penny of CA, laying bare that these are monstrous traitors and thieves.

Oh, but watch as the Trump Effect alters the styles of cheating! Already, Super Pacs lavishly funded by the Koch-Saudi axis have learned from the failure of their anti-Trump blitz that TV ad-buys have lost effectiveness, this year. 

They are shifting tsunamis of cash over to "social media consulting firms" that hire agents provocateurs to rile up passions on Facebook, Twitter etc... 

...e.g. "Sanders supporters" who - against Bernie's clearly-state wishes, stir Limbaugh-style hatred of Hillary. (Hint: ask for their real ID.) See more on this, below.

But the ground is shifting. Some cheats, like gerrymandering - a foul, indefensible travesty - will go away if a democrat appoints three more Supreme justices. But one has become essential to the oligarchy... rigged voting machines.  If the Trump Debacle truly does hit the GOP hard, in November, then Republicans could lose many of the state legislatures and governorships that are the true locus of their power. At which point their only hope is to alter vote counts, something that cannot happen much in blue states, because their voting machines generally keep paper audit trails, allowing random precincts to be double checked -- a safeguard that is conveniently absent in most places where republicans control the process of selecting and purchasing voting apparatus. 

See: How Republicans are gaming the voting system to tip the 2016 election in their favor.

There is a way to stymie this almost-certain cheat.  Some rich person can and must offer a whistleblower prize for any employees at the companies or bureaucracies that engage in vote-rigging, rewarding any henchman who steps up with clear evidence of this foul and treasonous crime.

== What Hath Bernie Wrought ==

I have long maintained that – were he alive today – Adam Smith would be a vociferous democrat.  Smith knew what today’s most vociferous proclaimers of capitalism have forgotten – or strive to conceal – that flat-fair-open-creative enterprise is one of the chief victims of an incestuously conniving aristocratic class, which Smith deemed the great enemy of competitive capitalism, across 6000 years.

One way that special interests destroy flat-fair markets is through regulatory “capture. Professor George Stigler, the Nobel Laureate (1982), in “Theory of Economic Regulation” (1972), explained that regulation, which is presumably put in place to protect the public, will eventually be acquired, or “captured,” by the very companies, industries, or their trade unions that are supposed to be regulated.

It’s not hopeless. Our institutions and competitive arenas need perpetual refresh and re-tuning and – across the last couple of centuries – it has happened, often enough to keep us free and creative. “Captured” agencies like the Interstate Commerce Commission (ICC) and Civil Aeronautics Board (CAB) were dissolved and competition in rails and airlines restored. (Democratic Congresses did that, and deregulated telecom, GPS and the Internet, go figure.)

So where does Bernie Sanders fit in?  This article shows that he has pushed the argument to where we can clearly see how U.S. Capitalism is in trouble, threatened by a foe Adam Smith would recognize: 
“…over time, most capitalist democracies develop “distributional coalitions,” aka special interest groups, which organize to get the government to provide them with special subsidies, laws, and protection from competition. The dispersed public, be it taxpayers or consumers that are footing the bill, will fail to overcome the free rider problem and lose in the democratic battle with those coalitions.”  
The author then goes on to show how Sanders crystalizes this problem, in both his rhetoric and his actions. 

== Provocateurs, really? ==

Janell Ross, in the Washington Post’s “The Fix,” assails what she deems to be an undercurrent of “unprogressive” attitudes among some of the more shrill supporters of Bernie Sanders.  Alas, what she most clearly reveals is her own inability to see the obvious.  

Are some Berners getting carried away with over-wrought emotion? Sure. Do some of them too-readily imitate the hate-reflexes that volcanically typify the Republican side? You bet.  Will Bernie himself come down hard on those over-reactors, chiding them to grow-up?  He already has, many times, and he will.

No, what amazes me is that Ms. Ross and so many others look at vitriolic comment-section postings and interprets them as… real! 

OMG what decade are you living in, Ma’am? You call yourself a pundit, yet ignore the obvious? Let's return to our first topic.

In this U.S. election cycle, we’ve just seen a collapse of the power of well-funded PACs to affect electoral outcomes through traditional means such as television and other media buys. Jeb Bush spent $100 million for nothing. What’s an oligarch to do?

Why, emulate China, of course.  The Chinese government now pays up to half a million young web-junkies to spend all their working hours posting disinformation via social media, sabotaging non-compliant sites, denouncing flickers of dissent and praising patriotic tendencies. You can bet that right wing Political Action Committees are investing in social media operations, big-time, as we speak. And that their absolute top priority will be to demolish any chance of unity among democrats in the fall.

I would bet my house that we are already seeing this, in the vituperative shrillness of some Sanders “supporters” online.  Look up the term “agent provocateur.”  All your European friends will be happy to explain it to you.

And no, I do not dismiss all passionate Bernites as agents provocateurs, plotting to prevent another Clinton presidency!  Most, probably are simply devoted to a very smart and good candidate who’d make at-minimum a pretty good president and whom I’d support, if you guys earn him the nomination, fair and square. There are two ways to tell the difference between over-wrought sincerity and a spy-provocateur: 

First, true Bernites will listen, when Sanders himself chides them to remember the Supreme Court and Donald Trump… and work for the democrat in the fall. And if they can't stomach working for Hillary, they will find some local, state assmbly race where their passion could make a real difference.

Second, check for identity clues. Ask the loudest and most outraged to identify themselves. To email you from their home addresses.

Compile a list of the most vituperative comment postings and tuck them away, in case the Democratic Party hires a team to investigate collusive, PAC paid comments-sabotage. (And the DP should be hiring those investigators now.) The ravings that repeat endlessly under a variety of names are surely canned.

They have realized we're no longer passively glued to TV and manipulative ads no longer work well.  But they think we're still morons. Moreover, that billion dollars from Koch and Saudi and Macau manipulators will be spent, desperately clinging to the power they have used to harm America.  Ultimately, the immune system that will overcome this fever must be us.

Deep Cheating and the CEO Cartel

Time for my once-monthly political screed.

"So long as risk is effectively concealed from borrowers and lenders or actually shifted to others, risk-taking will be excessive. The initial phase of excessive risk-taking will manifest itself as an economic boom, but eventually, when actual losses begin to change the perceptions of borrowers and lenders and begin to impinge upon unsuspecting others, the boom will give way to a bust....[A] market system whose credit markets involve risks that are partially concealed from the lender and partially shifted to others will be biased in the direction of excessive risk-taking. And excessive risks are converted in time into excessive losses."  --Roger Garrison

“Neither the U.S. government nor anybody else is capable of estimating the ultimate cost of bailing out such corporate giants as Citigroup, AIG, General Motors, Fannie Mae, and Freddie Mac (and the list goes on). There are two reasons for this. First, on a stand-alone basis, these companies are opaque and indecipherable entities. Financial innovation left transparency in the dust. Wall Street devoted much of its intellectual and political capital to concealing the risks it was creating. This concealment was deliberate; products needed to be priced inefficiently to produce profits.”  - Michael Lewitt

Ironies abound.  Though I consider myself something of an open market libertarian, I have long warned that we've been slipping into a putsch-coup by a conspiratorial oligarchy.  There is, of course, no contradiction.  The patron deity of capitalism, Adam Smith, declared that the very worst enemies of markets (far worse than socialism), are conniving aristocrats and top lords of finance. 

 Smith made clear (as I'll reiterate) that capitalism and top capitalists are often NOT the same thing.  Indeed, the latter can often be lethal to the former.

 I nevertheless have never favored the notion that the government should set CEO compensation rates.  That populist response to justified public anger, simply answers one anti-market cheat with another, at a time when what we really need to do is restore markets to health.

Alas, I find myself hoping for a bit of a delay in the Big Obama Recovery, if only because America needs a taste of radicalization, at this moment of history.  Not enough to send tumbrels through the streets, or mobs waving red banners, or a tsunami of wretched, hypocritical Timothy McVeigh clones blowing up buildings.  But enough to not let the reforms stay superficial -- simply a matter of the government buying out the godawful horrid mistakes of a clade of business morons who styled themselves as geniuses. We cannot continue to ignore the cheat that brought us to this mess and provoked public wrath. This cheat goes deeper than any problem of excessive-leverage, or negligent mismanagement, or failures of regulation. Much deeper, since it caused all of those.


WHAT WAS THE DEEP CHEAT?

 It was the creation of an international cartel in top-level management, which acted monopolistically, in blatant restraint of trade, in order to corner the market in a single valuable commodity -- managerial positions atop major corporations -- especially international financial institutions.

Sure, these guys maintained a superficial appearance of competing... while appointing each other to each others' boards and desperately fostering the mythology of the indispensable, hyper-elite manager.

Along the way, the era of business leaders like Walter Wriston -- a bygone day when banks were led by bankers -- gave way to one of paper-magicians, engaged in smoke, mirrors, and incantations, siphoning commissions off of every churn as they created "wealth" based upon pure subjectivity and illusion.  These fellows justified their cycle of reciprocal compensation boosting -- a clear case of a "circle jerk" -- by claiming to be mutant-level geniuses... like pro basketball players... who were so far at the end of the gaussian curve that normal market laws of supply and demand simply did not apply to them.

That is a point worth careful pondering. (Yet no one speaks of it.) For if basic economic laws were to apply, then  high CEO salaries should have drawn in talent from other realms, from science, politics, law, the arts, until, by simple economics, the new, copious supply of managerial talent would bring pay levels down again. 

 In other words, the market forces that these fellows claimed to devoutly believe in should have brought CEO compensation rates back to sanity naturally, organically, through Amith's marvelous invisible hand! (See The Syndrome of the Essential Man.)

In fact, many of these guys did come into management and finance earlier, for precisely that reason, drawn by hope of rich compensation, elbowing aside the Wriston-types who still thought (the old-fashioned fools) that banks should tend the mortgages they sold.  Hence, the clade of super-manager golf buddies did once believe in supply and demand... back then.

Only, later, these supposed defenders of market capitalism (in theory) declared that supply and demand had no meaning at their stratospheric level of talent!

Talent that proved -- and let's emphasize PROVED -- to be utterly delusional, at all levels and in all ways.  Almost any sensible person would have done a better job with Citibank.  I would have.  So would you.


THE MIND BOGGLING GALL

What boggles me is that nobody seems at all interested in putting any of this into the context of human history, revealing the pattern for what it is.  Part of a tedious cycle that is - actually - quite typical.  Nearly all human eras saw markets spoilt and ruined by their real foe -- one that (let me repeat) Adam Smith himself decried as far worse than socialism (though socialism also sucks).  That enemy is collusional oligarchic cheating by cronies of the king.

Recall how Louis XIV said “l’etat c’est moi”?  (I am the state.)  In a similar manner, members of the financier cartel proclaim that any attack upon them is an attack on capitalism itself.  But that is the proclamation of all parasites.  And it just ain't true. Capitalism is not the same thing at all as fat, lazy, conniving and uselessly stupid capitalists.  Indeed, the purpose of actual competition is to Darwinnow out the fools and keep the others nervous!  No wonder they prefer a cartel!

In order to save free enterprise from a monopolizing cartel, the answer is simple.  Do not bother trying to set prices or limit CEO salaries.  That is simply acting like a cartel again!

No, the thing is to break up the cartel! There are already laws against interlocking directorates and conspiratorial restraint of trade.  Enforce them. See to it that boards represent a wide variety of stockholder and creditor viewpoints, including dissenters and skeptics.  Ensure that the CEO supervised by one board member does not sit on the board wherever that fellow is CEO!  Insist upon radical levels of transparency.  Seek objective metrics of managerial success that actually correspond to practical decisions.   But above all, break up a conspiratorial cabal of ripoff artistes that threatens our security far worse than OPEC ever did.


BRIN’S “SUGGESTIONS” REDUX

 One proposal that maybe I should not have included in my list of 100 unusual suggestions for the Obama Administration was that we consider a change from 20 years of failure in Somalia and try something else -- possibly supporting the orderly, organized and lawful northern tribes of Somaliland. (In a recent development, it appears that the Obama administration is doing something very similar to what I recommended, only instead quasi-adopting the neighboring Somali region known as Puntland.  Recently, US naval forces delivered several captured pirates ashore at Puntland, for trial, an implicit recognition of sovereignty... even though some pirate ships have always operated out of Puntland but never (apparently) out of Somaliland.) See: Jiu Jitsu in Afghanistan.

 Now I have something similar -- to not so much to suggest as to tickle the imagination.  First, consider the awful situation that the Obama Administration faces, in Afghanistan and Pakistan.  One is a failed state where “empires go, to die.”  Since Alexander, no imperial pax has ever intervened there without screaming in pain and leaving in ignominious defeat.  We’ve actually done very well, by comparison, but the prospects aren’t good.

Nor are they bright for Pakistan, a nuclear power, portions of whose population are smart and educated and modern oriented... but thrown into national instability by a northwestern region that is radical, violent and rife with lawless chaos.  See an article that describes how both Waziristan and Swat Province have been effectively handed over to a Taliban franchise, by a Pakistani government that has given up enforcing its own laws.

Deals that the Pakistani government makes with the Taliban are a comprehensive strategic victory for the Taliban and Al Qaeda. One, they ensure that the over hundred thousand Pakistani troops in the region are no more a threat to them or to their goals. By securing their eastern front through peace deals with Pakistan, the Taliban and Al Qaeda are free to focus their entire firepower on U.S. and NATO forces. Two, the deals give the Taliban and Al Qaeda safe havens where they can train, recruit, and fund raise. These provinces give them a strategic depth against western forces. Now they have safe homes in Pakistan to retreat to and resuscitate in, so they can return to fight another day in Afghanistan. Three, the frenetic burning of girls’ schools, destruction of non-Islamic texts or other books, and demolition of museums and libraries will guarantee this region remains  both backward and a hotbed of anti-western activity.

But the most dangerous consequence is the loss of land. Taliban now control vast territories in the South East of Afghanistan and North and West of Pakistan. They are steadily carving out a Talibanistan — a state perpetually at war — that will nestle between Afghanistan and Pakistan and prey on both of them for territory, fighters and resources.

It is a disturbing and worrisome diagnosis.  If imagination is to be applied - with the aim of offering solutions - then first we must start with a simple question.

Who is causing all the trouble in both Afghanistan and Pakistan? If you answer “radical Islamists,” then you have drunk the same koolaid that has been poisoning clear thinking since long before 9/11.  The same thing happens when you shrug and call the region “Talibanistan.”  By blaming all of Islam, you simply drive more good Muslims into thinking that we hate them all.

 In fact, the Taliban and its allies in Pakistan are driven, at least to a large extent, by the quirks of a particularly passionate and intensely determined tribe called the Pashtuns.  Long before it was called Talibanistan, the region on both sides of the border was known as Pashtunistan.

The Pashtuns are an unusual people by many measures. Realization of this fact goes back to when scholars cited remarkable linguistic and cultural features, suggesting that Pashtuns are direct descendants of the “Ten Lost Tribes of Israel.” If true, it would be profoundly ironic.  Today, their passion seems directed toward destabilizing both Afghanistan and Pakistan, with radical Islam as the superficial meme.  But if you look at how they treat their fellow Muslims, it is clear that fierce tribalism is a stronger undercurrent.

Of course, the obvious (if cynical) solution is also blatantly impossible -- though it still merits a passing thought -- or some due diligent appraisal at the highest levels, before it’s dismissed.  That solution is separation -- allowing both Pakistan and Afghanistan to cleave off, legally, territories that they have already lost, de facto.  Fashion Pashtunistan into its own entity and encourage those radical Pashtuns who reject modernity to choose life there.  This might allow the remainders of both Afghanistan and Pakistan to go about their business in peace... a result that could be precious beyond pearls.

Might this then leave us with a hostile and radical Pashtunistan that is wholly and directly controlled by the Taliban? A national entity, eager to promote terrorism, the way Afghanistan was, till 9/11??

Well, here is one of the beauties of statehood.  It forces some degree of realism - not always, but often. For one thing, once you have a formal government, a capital, a treasury, currency etc, you now have something tangible to lose.  If such a state began acting in hostile ways, the Pakistanis -- and the Tajiks and Uzbeks and Haziri etc of Afghanistan -- would be far better placed to retaliate against a state than against a murky guerilla force.  So would the US and NATO. International retribution would be far more feared by a Pashtun state than it is by tribes that have nothing to lose and can just scatter into the hills!

All right, back in 2001, the Taliban who ruled Afghanistan were in a similar situation, and they proved undeterred in their support of Al Qaeda, even knowing that America would have to come, after the 9/11 attacks.  Still, most observers say that Taliban were rudely shocked by the ease with which their nation was brought down.  It is doubtful that another radical (and non-petroleum producing) Islamist state will be quite so cavalier or careless.

 Well, it’s a thought.  Even though it certainly won’t happen.


AND THE WORLD’S ECONOMY TURNS

Microsoft’s Steve Balmer recently: “For the past 25 years, the world has certainly enjoyed incredible, incredible global growth. Average incomes around the world grew at unprecedented rates, millions of people moved from out of poverty into the middle class for the very first time.

“I think that expansion was built on three things: innovation, globalization, and debt, increasing debt. American technology was certainly at the heart of the innovation that played the central role in the process. The PC, the Internet, fiber optics: Those things were things that continue to keep America at the forefront of technology, and really at the lead of a growing global economy. But over time, over the last period of time, the balance has really shifted. Instead of innovation and productivity driving growth, it’s really been unsustainable levels, particularly of private debt, that have been a key driver of economic growth.

“In 1929, for example, just before the stock market crash, the private debt-to-GDP ratio was 160 percent. Last year, private sector debt as a percentage of the GDP: 300 percent; far more leverage. And you can see it’s been a steady increase basically since almost the end of World War II. In my view, what we now have will be a fundamental economic reset. The economy is going to have to reestablish itself at a level of spending that reflects the real value of underlying assets before we can all start growing again at a healthy rate.

“In our opinion, in order to reach the reset point, three things need to happen. First, the economy must be deleveraged. Private debt as a percentage of GDP has to be reduced. Restoring health to the nation’s financial system is a fundamental part of this. Second, confidence must be restored. The stimulus package, in my opinion, is vital. It will provide a cushion as we reach the reset point and it will help restart our economic engine.  Third, America really has to return to growth that’s built on innovation and productivity, rather than leverage and private debt.

“This is a once-in-a-lifetime economic crisis. There is a lot of history around that, and frankly if you stop and think about it, 1837, ‘73, ‘29, 2008, it’s almost exactly a whole lifetime between each of the major economic difficulties that we face. But I think it’s also a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to think about our priorities again and make the investments that put us on the right foot.”

In fact, Balmer should have included 1819, the nation’s first major depression.  In which case one notices that the gaps between each collapse and the next one are getting longer at a steady rate.  19, then 36, then 57, then 79 years.  Of course this selectively excludes smaller recessions and “panics” so one can be dubious.


OPEN CALL

Anybody who has contacts with companies either in DC or Phoenix (e.g. Motorola), I’ll be in those two cities and open to suggested folks who might want an inspirational and stimulating speech or consultation about “the future.”


AND FINALLY.....

This is perhaps the last installment of the Bush era in comedy. In fact, about half of them were unfair gotchas.  But I'm in no mood to cut him any slack.

See “Developmental and ethical considerations for biologically uplifting nonhuman animals,” by George Dvorsky... opining that we humans will soon attempt what I described 30 years ago, when I coined “uplift” in several novels that explored the concept from many angles.  George's fascinating paper, might have benefitted from more on the sfnal history of the idea.  Before me, HG Wells, Cordwainer Smith, and Pierre Boulle depicted humans endowing animals with powers of intelligence and speech - though always in a context of abuse and involuntary servitude.  Indeed, those cautionary tales may have helped ensure that it will be done openly and accountably, hence qualifying the tales as "self-preventing prophecies."  Allowing me to be the first to ponder "what if we tried to do uplift ethically and well?"