Cuba, the drug war, and sick addictions that never work

This week’s political riff is about letting go of really bad obsessions and habits. We are Homo sapiens -- the animal who rationalizes, insisting that our favorite dogmas are immune to evidence. Delusion is our greatest talent, which explains most of our gruesomely awful human history. 

Remember the popular definition of insanity?

    “Doing the same thing over and over, while expecting different results.”

One choice example of repetitive-delusional craziness is the wretched-endless War on Drugs, a lunacy that should have been rejected by our parents and grandparents who recalled the great ‘success’ of Prohibition. Yet, for seventy years the U.S. – and every nation we could bully into going along – has spent trillions trying to cure chemical dependency and addiction with prisons.

This drives up the price and profitability of illicit substances, feeding vast, spectacularly-wealthy criminal cartels that enriched the very worst humans while spreading infection and violence, sucking life out of local economies.

Should we battle against addiction, a common human failure mode? Sure! I’d replace prohibition with strong diversion programs, with coerced-conservatorship rights for loving relatives. Ending one failed approach does not mean having to go full-monty libertarian. Some European nations have experimented with methods that work far better than our own absurd approach.

But what’s fascinating is how long it takes for millions of people to blink, stare at actual outcomes, and admit, at last: “Okay, that’s not working. Let’s stop listening to puritan demagogues. Does anyone have ideas to try next?” 

That's the pragmatic, problem solving attitude Americans were once famous-for. Alas.

Now, at long last, the Drug War’s spell is breaking. Marijuana is legal in Washington and Colorado. A dozen other states are liberal with medical-pot. All are wrestling with how to handle the inevitable problems, but with science, not a sledge hammer. Indeed, last week the Obama Administration pulled all federal enforcement dealing with small-time pot users, in states that request it. 

(Libertarians take note: this has only happened in “blue states.”  Not one red or confederate state has even sniffed at the trend. Given that Republicans are not supporters of "economic freedom," will a day come when libertarians draw the correct conclusion? Nope, that is one addictive mistake they'll cling to, forever.)

== The Cuban Insanity ==

Likewise, President Obama’s recent decision to restore diplomatic relations with the last purely communist dictatorship on Earth – Cuba – while retracting some (not all) of the sanctions against trade and commerce and travel: what does it mean?  

Fifty years, and not once have the Castros or their partisans showed the slightest inclination to knuckle under. Indeed, the U.S. trade embargo gave them an excuse for their economic and political management. Depriving them of that scapegoat is one of many reasons why this move is overdue. Let Cubans aim resentment at their own inept rulers. Also, increased flow of human contact will only undermine the Castros’ grip.

(Both the Castros and the American right are completely loony to claim the U.S. embargo ever mattered much. Not while the entire rest of the world was trading openly with Cuba. Only broad embargoes work. Seriously Marco Rubio? How stupid do you think your supporters… oh, never mind.)

Back to the topic at-hand. Addictions that never worked. We’ve looked at seventy years of an insane, counter-productive Drug War… plus fifty years of a stupid foreign policy that did no good. Are there other examples?

== Supply Side ==

How about Supply Side (Voodoo) Economics or SSVE. For a decade I’ve demanded that its supporters trot out ONE example of this blatant idiocy ever having predicted actual outcomes.

The theory's simple: lavish tax gifts to the rich will be invested in industrial productive capital or R&D that would boost the supply of new goods and services. Cuts in tax rates would be more than compensated by vastly increased taxable incomes, erasing all government red ink. Reduce income in order to increase it! What could possibly go wrong?

This dogma, clutched by the American Right, does a logical flip on what we do know to be true, from Keynsian Economics, that money in the pockets of the middle class (especially the working poor) is immediately spent, making it “high velocity cash” which stimulates via “Demand Side Economics” or DSE. 

For example, had Congress passed the Infrastructure Bill, setting 100,000 workers fixing our decaying bridges, most of that money would have come back as taxes in a quick-stimulated economy, building recovery momentum much quicker while giving us safe bridges and roads. GOP congressmen have been quite open over their reasons for blocking the bill. Precisely because (they admit) it would have worked.

(Note, while not all Keynsian trips are valid (!) it works most of the time. Yet more proof is seen in this month's apparent economic takeoff into rapid U.S. economic growth, which was inarguably stimulated by the spending power of the middle class, including the sudden cash infusion from low gas prices, aided by rising auto fuel efficiency. Not a scintilla of it came from "supply side.")

That works, so why not Supply Side? Ah, but just because SSVE is a flip of the proved DSE, that does not mean the incantation works.  In science we learn a habit.  If predictions fail, the theory has been “falsified.” 

Maybe not completely, but it loses credibility and its proponents should back off. Go back to the drawing board. SSVE has failed even once to predict outcomes successfully. Let me reiterate the dare: find one example.

Moreover, most economists – even Adam Smith – would quickly tell you why.  

Because the rich mostly do not invest added wealth in R&D or risky productive capital.

Oh, some do. We have Angel investors and Venture Capitalists and Warren Buffett and tech geniuses like Gates and Bezos and Musk etc… a majority of whom (by my rough poll) appear to be democrats.  But Adam Smith wrote 250 years ago about how most aristocrats who gain a bit more wealth plonk it swiftly into passive “rent-seeking” properties.  Real estate or equities bubbles – exactly what we saw happen after those giant Bush Tax Cuts.  Bubbles that do nothing to increase productive capacity or introduce new goods or services.

And yet, these folks keep expecting different results! Just recently, radical Tea Party Governor Sam Brownback rammed through the biggest tax cut for the rich in Kansas history, confidently forecasting that his state would soon lead the nation in growth, putting the state budget soundly in the black and allowing more to be spent on education. Instead, Kansas has plunged into a sea of red ink. Brownback is “borrowing” from pensions and schools and highway maintenance to fill chasms, and the state lags behind the nation in jobs and economic recovery.

Here, at least, we can see a reason for the persistence of an insane dogma. There are powerful people who benefited from SSVE. Yes, Warren Buffett and Bill Gates are saying “raise our taxes!  But many in the aristocracy want a return to feudal pyramids of privilege. They will pay apologists to keep pushing catechisms and incantations, knowing that – in some regions of the nation and the world – there are people who will believe anything, if you just repeat it enough times.

== Is the Left any better? ==

Does it seem I am picking on just one “side?” Dogmatism is a disease of the mind. It can take root wherever brains are fertile with passion, while low in logic. 

Take Marxism. Let me be clear that Old Karl was a pretty bright fellow, an incisive critic of his times and a generator of very interesting hypotheses about the processes of capital formation, some of which are proved standards in economics, today.  But his passion took charge at some point and he became… instead… a science fiction author, writing just-so stories about possible futures.  Even that would have been okay… if he had done what good SF authors do – admit that “it’s just a plausibility, not a prediction.”

Alas, he began taking his stories seriously, as forecasts and not warnings. And he became... a guru.

Across a hundred years, many of those Marxian auguries were tested. Time and again, they proved mistaken or off-target. But Lenin and Mao and others kept finding excuses! For example, it was not in the most developed proletariats (in England and Germany) but among the least developed (Russia and China) that socialist revolutions burgeoned.  And Marx never imagined that the west might reform itself to include and share power with a vast and empowered middle. He certainly never envisioned Franklin Delano Roosevelt.

We who recall the obstinate insanity of the Soviet Union can tell you, this syndrome – in science it is called confirmation bias, or else hallucinatory delusion -- exists in all directions, including the so-called “left.” Indeed, that side of the insipid spectrum contains some cargo cults, to this day. For example romantic-nostalgic attitudes of suspicion toward science and technology, which have been the average person’s greatest-ever friend. Certainly the hostility we see toward science fiction in almost every university literature department, the boldest and most useful form of narrative, is evidence of some kind of mental derangement.

As I’ve long held, it is not that one side has a monopoly on political craziness. All zealotries are infested with this sickness. It’s that one end of the American political spectrum is currently owned and operated by its lunatics. That is our current crisis, in this phase of the re-ignited American Civil War. The resurgent Confederacy’s insanity must be faced down, yet again…

… but never assume there is zero danger from other directions. Be capable of turning your head.

== Where the delusions truly fester ==

Alas, there is no comparison.  The Neo-Confederacy is where incantation after utterly disproved incantation still throttle minds into endless repetition of mistakes. 

Want one more? John Mauldin takes on the Mighty SVM. That’s Shareholder Value Maximization, for you newbies. “The world’s dumbest idea” Mauldin calls it, in which Milton Friedman — Saint Milton to the right — in 1970,wrote, “There is one and only one social responsibility of business – to use its resources and engage in activities designed to increase its profits...”

Ah, but then John M asks the question: “How to get corporate executives to focus on maximizing the wealth of shareholders? The solution: pay them a s***load of money (but not just cash – stock and options now constitute about two-thirds of total CEO compensation).”

Now note this. John Mauldin is an economist with very conservative political leanings… though sane, which causes him real dissonance on that Fox-lobotomized part of the spectrum. We argue over some of the rationalizations that he comes up with, for the way the right has veered into worship of oligarchy. Which is why this most recent missive of his — assailing one of the central premises of republican economics — left me gasping.

“But, alas, there is pretty good research to suggest that larger incentives actually translate to lower performance. To make matters worse, both the average tenure of a corporate CEO and the average lifetime of an S&P 500 company have plummeted since the 1970s. Bottom line: SVM has pretty well laid the kingdom to waste. Our newsletter focuses on three areas of damage: (1) declining and low rates of business investment, (2) rising inequality, and (3) a low labor share of GDP.”

One more theory that "ought to work!" And indeed, I do not blame Milton Friedman for posing it. It might even have been worth trying! The culpable idiots are those who can ignore 40 years of 100% negative outcomes and persist in what has become solely a method for vampires to suck the rest of us dry, and to demolish real, flat-fair-open market competition.  They are the parasites described by Adam Smith.  The truest enemies of enterprise capitalism.

But ignoring outcomes has become the utter reflex of members of the outright cult that has hijacked the once-intellectual movement of William F. Buckley and Barry Goldwater.

== The insipid axis ==

        
Do you doubt that I could go on and on, listing relentless, reflexive obstinacies? I go into a number of them here, where I show that a disparity of OUTCOMES -- with 100% negative results from the last two Republican administrations (find one counter-example, I dare you)  would make any thinking conservative wonder if - perhaps - he or she should be fighting to save the movement from monsters. Except for misplaced loyalty.  And habit.

But it goes far beyond that. Beyond mere politics.

You’ve heard me say it before.  Some of our vilest habits and addictions are the simplest. Metaphors like the hoary and lobotomizing so-called left-right political axis. Admit it. You could not give a simple and clear definition of that awful thing, if your life depended on it!  Certainly if you did, it would have little in common with the definition offered by the next person you meet, or the next.

Even worse than metaphorical addictions are those based on mental states, like the recurring allure of outrage. Sanctimony and self-righteous indignation are unbeatable, luscious highs that cannot be matched by any drug.  And they are catered to by pushers in mass media, who pound incessant drum-beats of cynicism, anger and fear.

So many actual metrics of national and world health getting better every year (with notable and worrisome exceptions), that humanity ought to feel confident in our ability to solve more problems, and yet more! 

Hence, what can we make of this plague of incited rage and despair? It deeply undermines our can-do conviction that we can take on challenges, overcome obstacles, and make continued progress.

In that respect, there is only one word for the merchants of anger and doom, whose incantatory sermons keep enticing us into simplistic insanities.  

They are traitors.

The real world is complicated. Yes, there are some elegant, underlying laws of physics and nature.  But we learned those – and how to grasp complexity – by paying attention to experimental results. By willingly letting go of beautiful theories that have proved –just-plain-wrong. 

Not by frantically clinging to comforting tenets and mantras fed to us by biased media and “think tanks” that answer to puppet-master elites.

Stop preaching to others about their addictions, when you haven’t looked in a mirror to deal with your own.

Post-Election Roundup: The Road Ahead

While I am relieved to have the U.S. election behind us, I'll be disengaging from politics in stages. As a contrarian gadfly, I'm expected to toss some unusual, off-angle suggestions at both winners and losers.

But first... a mere tad of gloating, plus some riffs about libertarians, marijuana, gay marriage, science and etcetera!

1) Yes yes, the real winner was Nate Silver -- our new national demigod. What I don't get is how he compensated for pollsters' obsolete definitions of "likely voter."  The Obama ground game changed the meaning of that term. They found ways to shame both former slackers and fresh first-timers to the polls. Expect those methods to be used with a vengeance in the 2014 by-elections.

This will be doubly effective if the democrats (and or their allies) first concentrate on early recruitment of fresh candidates. Hint: go after retired Army colonels and navy captains, vet them to pick the super-educated, level-headed kind - I know the type! - and hurl them into the 2014 primaries, all over the map. Primaries are now the navel of American politics, especially in red counties. This invites innovative thinking, especially in gerrymandered districts, finding ways to promote moderate, science-friendly pragmatists. Find fresh ways to contest them all!

2) Congratulations to all our LGBT friends. You've taken major strides and this time victory was helped by a calming decorum. Both the method and the outcome bode well for you. As inevitable as the final goal is, the road must still be taken step by step into a headwind.

Some of that wind will break in new directions! Expressing despair, a couple of my redder pals talk of emigrating! Alas, Canada ("bluer than New York") just won't do, so they're looking farther afield. Ah, but to quote an amusing tweet that's gone viral:

@RedRefugee: you say "if Obama wins I'm off to Australia" but our PM is a single atheist woman & we have universal health care & mandatory voting. 

3) Speaking of schadenfreude, pity poor Karl Rove. Not only was he trampled underfoot by his own people at Fox, but his Crossroads operation spent nearly $300 million against President Obama and other Democrats. Separately, Sheldon Adelson, the casino magnate, spent similar amounts all by himself, backing loser after loser. Astonishingly, somehow, the dems always drew enough small donations to keep up! Almost as if the oligarchic putsch was drawing a popular immune response, a reaction worthy of heirs of the original American Revolution.

Which raises the question: what good is unlimited money if you can't buy a country?

4) Science, the central enemy of Culture War, stood up for itself in several ways, during the election.  Shawn Otto's ScienceDebate.org forced both campaigns to answer piercing questionnaires and Scientific American scrupulously examined the answers.  Now see the post-election editorial at Popular Science handing a stiff set of firm requests for the re-elected president, above all that he stand up for the one trait most responsible for our flourishing across the last 70 years -- the innovation and constant re-evaluation that arises out of curiosity.

5) Mark Newman has resized the electoral map (top image on right) to adjust for population: popular votes (middle), electoral votes (bottom). Read the article in Science News.

6) Above all,  this election result means that Dick Cheney's gang - who surrounded Romney - won't get their hands on the US military again, any time soon. Cheney's crew did more harm to America, and our military, than anyone else in a human lifetime, including the Soviets and Viet Cong. Our brave men and women deserve to rest and rebuild -- while taking on occasional daring tasks with stunning courage and skill -- without being plunged into any more draining, multi-trillion dollar, futile quagmires. Perhaps, with another four years in exile, the GOP will finally purge itself of Cheney's loony "brain trust" and bring in adults to represent their side of the conversation.

== Maddow appeals to conservatives: use facts and we'll listen ==

Is Rachel Maddow gloating over the election results? Well, sure. But I still hope earnest conservatives will grit their teeth and watch this cogent appeal directed at them. Asking them to rejoin the conversation. To compete with liberals in the realm of reality, and not the fantasy land concocted by Fox delusion merchants. Those cynical hypnotists have had a long run, peddling narratives that -- though truth-free -- make the viewer nod and feel good, blissfully sure that their foes are orcs or trolls or commie-satanists or... democrats.  Only now it's time to put away childish things.

There will still be plenty to argue about, after all the birther-climate-denier-black-helicopter silliness is put aside -- really interesting competition over testable theories about governance and practical problem solving. Those reality tests will sometimes rule in favor of grownup conservatism! Maddow appeals for a restoration of fact-friendly, science-loving conservatism not because she will then agree with it, but because we'll all be better off if there are two sane sides bringing reasoned, testable ideas to the table.

Look, I don't agree with all Maddow rants. Sometimes she brings out my latent Buckley! But this time? She is spot-on.

Restoring conservatism to its roots won't be easy. Hannity and Limbaugh are more fun - in their indignant lie-extravaganzas - than nerdy Bill Buckley ever was, arguing calmly with every bright opponent he could find. But Hannity, Limbaugh and Murdoch are crazy men who avoid ever facing questions or accountability. They'll lead conservatism to rigidity, demographic irrelevance, hallucination and extinction. Take a hint from the election. We'll all be richer and better if bright conservatives pass this test of courage.

== Libertarians, Marijuana and Cheetos ==

 While my main goal was to avoid a calamitous Bush III return of Dick Cheney's gang of 1000 gremlins -- and thank heavens that doom was evaded -- I did divide my support a bit, by also sending money to Gary Johnson,then going online to urge that both Hawaiians and Alaskans turn out their votes for him!

I hoped Johnson would make his 5% goal and that real momentum would (1) give his moderate wing real clout in the libertarian movement, helping draw down the fevered infection of Rand-Rothbard cultism, and (2) that smart, sincere, socially relaxed fiscal conservatives who despair of the GOP's present madness would then have a place to which they might flee. A party to call their own. A new base from which to rejoin the conversation.

Well, there was bad news and good news.  Falling well short of 5%, Johnson did sharply better than any other LP candidate, with nearly 1.3 million votes nationwide, representing about 1.2 percent of the total popular presidential vote in the 48 states where he ran. Real incremental improvement...

... only now it seems that libertarianism is moving forward, not via candidates, but ballot initiatives!  The Drug War was dealt a heavy blow in Washington and Colorado, where citizens approved measures legalizing, regulating and taxing marijuana. Across America 50% poll ready for this change. And now President Obama has the cover he needs in order to take a step forward, nationwide.

Instead of pushing to legalize marijuana at a national level, he could declare an "experimental moratorium" on enforcement of federal pot possession laws in those two states, while still helping Colorado and Washington crack down on illegal importation.  This would seem a measured step, in keeping with the principle of states' rights that Republicans could hardly object-to! Well, we can hope.  He does owe the young people of those two states. Big time.

Next? Move to adjust the "schedules" of types of drugs and penalties to staunch the flow of mere-users into our overloaded and unfair prison systems. Talk about a place to seek savings! And to stop wasting lives.

Only now... let me take one of my patented contrarian veers! While I am hugely in favor of experiments to escape the infinity-damned Drug War and to emphaisize personal responsibility, I'm also aware of certain drawbacks.  For example:

1) THC remains detectable in your blood for days after all symptoms of use are gone. To establish DUI rules you can't simply adopt the alcohol standards. We'll need research, patience and innovation.

2) Those who call marijuana "completely harmless" are liars and they know it.  The thing every honest person admits? It is an ambition-wrecking drug. In many, though not all users, pot fosters torpidity and mellow harmlessness. Unless you include the "harm" of many users failing to get up off their giggling-cynical-mellow asses!  I predict we'll drift toward a new approach to such quasi addictive drugs, allowing personal choice... but with an expanded right of families to intervene and even impose guardianship, if the user can't hold a job or want more than the next bag of Cheetos. **

That will satisfy no one.  But it may soften opposition just enough to make this a national movement away from a prohibition insanity that spanned all of our lifetimes.

== Puerto Rican Statehood? ==

Wow, another sea change that I'll weigh in on, some time.  One member of my blogmunity said:

"My concerns about Puerto Rico: There is a large part of the population that does not want to be a U.S. State. Do you want to start with a Quebec-like situation? Also, their existing political parties are not associated with the mainstream parties, though they could align themselves quickly, I guess. There could be accusations of U.S. imperialism -- or other poor small countries across the world might decide to apply to join in turn..."

Yep. Plenty of parameters to consider. Such as how the Republicans can oppose this new state -- with its inevitable Democratic majority -- and not thereby offend U.S. hispanics even more. Then there's another matter far more important... how do you sort 51 stars on the flag? Let's see: 3 x 7 and 3 x 10... too rectangular!  3x8 + 3x9  same problem! I suppose 3x7 and 5x6... Um... Hey South Carolina.  Wanna secede again? Maybe this time we won't put up such a fuss.

As you might expect, my own worry about Puerto Rican Statehood is unique and original (though I just offered a hint.) Remind me in a few months and I'll explain. 

Interesting times. Onward for now... 

** Oh, and any letters about marijuana should be sent not to me but to Stephen Colbert.  He can use the material -- and samples.  Tell him David - friend of the show - Brin sent you.