On Government, Morality and Competition

== The age-old enemies of competition ==

As part of my eclectic and contrarian approach to life, I subscribe to a number of conservative and libertarian newsletters and sites... and some rather lefty ones, too. While I am skeptical of all prescriptive-simplistic dogmas, I do keep searching for that germ or core concept or variation that might be worthwhile. As a result, and despite my well-known views about the noxious New Confederacy, I nurse some concepts and notions that shock my left-leaning friends.  Indeed, what follows is sure not to please dogmatists of any stripe. Still, you might learn something.

One of the more hard-hitting, Rothbardian-Libertarian sites is Casey Research, headed the brash but smart and sorry-but-I-can’t-help-liking-him master-provocatuer Doug Casey. One of Doug’s Fellows, Mr. Paul Rosenberg, just issued a manifesto assailing the core morality of “government”… a central catechism of the Rand-Rothbard-Cato wing that has taken over libertarianism, for more than a generation. You should read this missive; it will give you a better understanding of the incantations that transfix many of your neighbors. (Hey, you have your own glib and oversimplifying incantations – are you honest enough to admit it?)

I generally shrug off the polemics while sifting for pearls in manure. In this case, however, I felt I simply had to respond. Go have a look… then come back here.

== Hatred of all government - enabling an older enemy of freedom ==

Alas, amid his blanket denunciations of “government” as inimical to liberty, Mr. Rosenberg ignores the elephant in the room -- the failure mode that destroyed freedom and competitive markets and enterprise in 99% of human cultures, across the last 6000 years.  Feudal lordships in which owner-oligarchs crushed the hopes of the great masses of peasants below, while quashing any advances that might destabilize their family grip on power.  Steep pyramids of power, in which a few bullies with swords owned everything and used hired priesthoods to declare "it is GOOD that our sons will own your sons!"

Compare the horrific "morality" of any feudal oligarchy to the flawed but often progressively positive morality of a modern, western state.  This is not a comparison that Mr. Rosenberg's jeremiad can survive... so he evades the contrast, altogether.

Mr. Rosenberg knows darned well that owner-oligarchy is the great failure mode.  The one denounced by Adam Smith as the relentless market destroyer.  The calamity against which our American founders rebelled.  Yet, he is part of the campaign to yell "squirrel!" and point our attention elsewhere.

To be clear, competition is the greatest creative force in the cosmos.  Adam Smith focused on the positive outcomes when competition can be engendered in the best ways.  Competition made us! But in nature it is vicious and inefficient, working slowly, atop mountains of corpses.

It is seldom much better in human affairs. Look across the centuries; we see almost every renaissance of competitive creativity (e.g. in markets) is almost always quickly suborned and ruined by cheaters.  By conniving men with swords or deeds of ownership over everything.  The rentier caste that Adam Smith denounced.(Indeed, even Ayn Rand denounced Olde Money cheaters... though her New Lords would quickly become more or the same; that's why she never showed her Galtian characters having kids!)

Competition that is open, fair and productive has only survived more than one generation  - anywhere - when it was regulated to minimize cheating. Exactly as Smith recommended.

In fact, that success, getting the good, positive outcomes from creative competition, while excluding the nearly automatic cheating modes that always ruined it in the past, has truly only happened for more than two generations in a row once in all of the history of Homo sapiens... during this marvelous western renaissance we are living in.

You'll notice that my portrayal of the situation fits into neither the simplistic model of the Left nor that of the Right!  

One side's lunacy is to ignore the fantastic fecundity of competition at generating such vast amounts of wealth that we can then afford to do progressive things. 

The contrasting insanity of the right is to ignore those 6000 years and pretend that competition's fecundity and productivity can happen amid the usual, festering swarm of opportunist-cheaters!

= Prevention of cheating requires...regulation! =

I can prove all of this with one spectacular example. 

The exact parallel is professional sports, one of the tightest-regulated realms of human experience.  Yes, most of the regulations are decided by cabals of team owners. But I never said regulation has to be "governmental"! It simply has to prevent the failure modes (cheating that Adam Smith said always ruin markets.

  What is key is that most of the regulations in a sporting league are intended to level the playing field and eliminate cheating.  Because if cheating reigns, then the system fails to deliver the desired product... excited fans, eager to buy tickets.  (Do you deny that individual players and teams would cheat, if they could get away with it? Or that the sports franchises become valueless, when the customers notice rampant cheating?)

Adam Smith knew all of this and recommended state endeavors to balance out the inevitable rise of cheaters and to do what F. Hayek later demanded... to maximize the number of skilled competitors!

You liberals, forget your cliches about Smith!  Actually read and rediscover the founder of your movement.

Smith wanted free public education, state financed infrastructure and health measures, the breaking up of monopolies and other reforms that would ease the way for bright sons of the peasantry to compete with the sons of owner-lords.  The very first acts of the American Founders, after the Revolution, included seizure of half the land in the former colonies from a few lordly families and redistribution, in order to create a (somewhat more) level playing field.

Indeed, many of the reform movements since then have revolved around spreading that circle of fairness.  Not just because it's nice, but because it is stupid to waste talent and let cheaters stifle competition by the maximum number. In other words, it takes some socialism to deliver the world that Hayek recommended!

None of which is part of today's libertarian doctrine!  All talk of level-flat-fair-open competition and Smithian libertarianism is quashed, replaced by the New Dogma -- idolatry of unlimited, lordly accumulations of private ownership... which (let me reiterate) was THE failure mode for 6000 years.

Property is now the libertarian god! Competition is shrugged off and never appraised for what it is, an explosively creative force that must be maintained, like an engine, lest the grit of cheating destroy it.

== To be clear... ==

While I hold many liberal or progressive views, I also proudly and unabashedly proclaim others that are Smithian-Heinleinian Libertarian, in that I deem healthy suspicion of government over-reach to be fit and proper! But I can turn my head and see such dangers - abuse of power - looming from all directions. 

(Can you?)

Yes, "government" can be captured by crony oligarchs!  That is why the democrats (and never republicans) de-regulated away and erased captured agencies like the ICC and CAB and broke up AT&T and gave an unregulated Internet to the world. 

Worth-noting: all of those deregulatory measures were opposed by the GOP at the time. The only industry that the GOP has ever de-regulated (despite all the rhetoric) is finance and Wall Street.  And you know how that went.

Keeping a close eye on government, skeptical to all over-reach, is a fine role for a sane libertarianism, and it inspired my book: "The Transparent Society: Will Technology Make Us Choose Between Privacy and Freedom?"

But assuming we do keep the bureaucrats leashed, then it is proper to recall that they... and the scientists too... are "elites" we can use to counterbalance the inevitable cheaters-from-oligarchy who betrayed freedom and competition in every other era.  Indeed, the war on science and all other castes of "smartypants" expertise is being funded precisely by those who want feudal oligarchy to come roaring back.

== But is capitalism a good thing? ==

Guardedly, you bet! In that market competition is the engine of our cornucopia and the wealth that enabled us to then take on progressive causes!

  Indeed, healthy market capitalism should be viewed as a top victim of crony-oligarchy. Indeed, You liberals need to admit that the issue of "globalization" is not settled and your reflexes were dead wrong.  Aside from the two billion people rising rapidly in China and India...

...read about potential real progress in three more countries that together contain 1.5 billion people.  Nor are these the only such examples.

Have investments in infrastructure, education, science RandD and public health paid off? According to one of the top (still-sane) conservative economics research houses, that “social capital” of shared investment in the future is responsible for most of our current standard of living.

“The United States and the rest of the post-industrial, developed world owe their epic rise in living standards to the underlying “social capital” that properly incentivized innovation, entrepreneurship, and thus technological transformation over the last two centuries.” - says Worth Wray of Mauldin Economics, a noted conservative investment newsletter:

“MIT Professor Robert Solow would agree with us on this front. Solow’s work on the US economy – which has become a textbook economics lesson – explains that innovation has accounted for more than 80% of the long-term growth in US per capita income, with capital investments accounting for only 20% of per capita income growth.” 

So much for supply side (voodoo) economics (SSVE), which proclaims that the only way to engender growth and development is huge tax cuts for the uber-wealthy… even at the cost of cutting back on infrastructure, education, science R&D and public health… exactly opposite to the prescription cited by Adam Smith.

Funny thing. Not one prediction ever made by SSVE has ever, ever, ever come true.

Liberals, this is your fault too.  Again... until I am blue in the face -- instead of bad-mouthing capitalism, you must embrace Adam Smith and declare true, healthy, flat-open-fair capitalism to be a top victim of the campaign of crony-cabal grabbing by the New Lords.  Investments in infrastructure, education, science R&D and public health are what feed and engender a thriving market economy.

Government Shutdown or Showdown? - Will things go as I predicted?

Hello, did I call this or what?  "Is the GOP dropping Obamacare in shutdown debate?" That's the notion Republican Rep. Paul Ryan of Wisconsin, the House Budget Committee chairman, and the party's vice presidential nominee last year, argued in a Wall Street Journal op-ed, Here's How We can End the worst part of this Stalemate - the threat of a default on American debt for the first time since the Republic was founded. Ryan's suggestion: that Democrats and Republicans should pass a raising of the borrowing limit in exchange for the Democrats' agreement to immediate negotiations that focus on "modest reforms to entitlement programs and the tax code."  

Above all, Ryan's column never mentioned Obamacare, focusing instead on  spending cuts to domestic and military programs, as well as Medicare reforms, and implicitly accepting the deal that has been on the table for most of a year -- to include some of the "revenue-side elimination of fat-cat tax breaks that the democratic side has sought. In other words, precisely the deal I predicted almost a week ago.

Of course this elicited rage from the dogmatic wing. Amanda Carpenter, a communications adviser to Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, tweeted: "There is one big word missing from this op-ed. It's start(s) with an O and ends with BAMACARE ..." Those who want to keep up the game of chicken, despite all reason or sense, will threaten any House GOP member who drifts toward Ryan's position with a challenge in his or her district's Republican primary, next spring.  This is no small cudgel, because of the radicalism engendered by gerrymandering. A national disaster that has a surprisingly simple solution that I'll post about soon.  


But first, back to the frantic search by Republican leaders for a way out. With the Ryan proposal savaged by Tea Partiers, Speaker Boehner stepped up on Thursday, reiterating Ryan's position, suddenly dropping all mention of Obamacare... while making all the requisite aggressive noises as if this retreat were instead a manly ultimatum.

As I predicted, saner elements of the GOP are now desperately seeking a face-saving way out. Especially now that the Koch brothers and others in the Republican money establishment see a gaping gulf gulf between the neo-confederate radicalism they themselves engendered with billions in political meddling vs the looming devastation to their own self-interest that will happen if this Frankenstein mania takes our economy over a cliff.

So let me repeat my forecast, spelling it out explicitly. Under orders from above (the Kochs, Murdoch, Fox etc), just enough House GOP members will threaten to break with the House Republican Caucus, forcing the Tea Party militants to free up Boehner. He, in turn, will accept the offer the Senate has made twenty times since March, to hold the constitutionally mandated House-Senate Budget Conference Committee, where these things have been worked out for 230 years, to discuss the deal that was already mostly worked out last year. A deal for moderate efficiency reforms in entitlements plus elimination of some fat cat tax write-offs.  Boehner and his co-leaders will accept the invitation at last…

…but declare it as a great victory!  That Obama and Sen. Reid had "caved" under pressure from Speaker Boehner's tactics, playing extortion-chicken with the shut-down and default cliffs.  "This is all we wanted, all along!"

And the President will let them crow.  His only real concession, after the dust settles, will be letting them have a week of face-saving "we won!" chanting.  Then the Budget Reconciliation Conference Committee will strike a deal that the dems have offered for a year.  And Boehner will need democrats in the House, in order to pass it. At which point the real Tea Party insurrection may begin.

The problem with such a budget deal, from the GOP perspective, is that - like Obamacare - it might actually work.  With the right mix of reforms in entitlements and taxes, the budget deficit -- already vastly improving -- might swing back toward Clintonian balance. If Obamacare also works, then where will the GOP stand in the 2014 elections?

I could not care less.  As we'll see below, the asymptote for all of their orbital momenta leads to insanity.

== But the Shut-down goes on -- its real aim ==

Mind you, all of this only has to do with raising the debt borrowing limit and avoiding default. The Republicans have vowed to maintain the other half of their game-of-chicken... the Government Shut-down.

They see a winning hand, here. So far, every time an important constituency - or one that is symbolically powerful, like military death benefits - has howled loudly enough, the House has scurried to pass a special bill and demand quickie Senate action to grant continued funding to that special interest group. "Why didn't we think of this sooner!" cried one Tea Party radical, envisioning this as a way to -- without the onerous task of legislation -- simply eliminate most of the Federal Government, which today's incantations of the right depict as evil at a fundamentally inherent level, while eliminating any political blowback by funding islands of vocal constituency.

Never mind that during the Bush years, these same fellows were just fine with skyrocketing federal power, spending and calamity. Or that they thus declare that Abraham Lincoln's "Government of the people, by the people" shall perish from the Earth. Or that it's simply crazy.  Just look at some of the things they have succeeded in shuting down, and see the consistent logic, at least.

The National Radio Astronomy Observatory has gone out of business for the duration.  Already hampered by the sequester, it is now closed by the government shut down. So have all research activities for the entire season in Antarctica.  NASA says 97% of its personnel are furloughed. Certainly my colleagues at NASA NIAC have been. Perhaps that's why no one answered George Clooney's calls in GRAVITY?

Having sabotaged atmospheric and climate science for twenty years, the GOP can now shut it all down completely, while continuing to cry: "we need more data!" before doing anything about climate change.

In fact, the shut down has also hammered most research contracted by the National Science Foundation, the National Institutes of Health, The National Academy, research divisions of the Centers for Disease Control, the Energy Department, the EPA and the Weather Service. Moreover these interruptions do far more harm than at first appears, as some experiments and observations are completely ruined. Just one example: the government shutdown is likely to mean an early death for thousands of mice used in research on diseases such as diabetes, cancer and Alzheimer's.

If the shut downs continue, they'll divert graduate students and research fellows who must eat to survive -- which will undercut science even more. .

Now the kicker… this is not something that the currently dominant brand of conservatism (as opposed to the older, and deeply-missed, intellectual brand of Goldwater and Buckley) deems regrettable at all.  It is not a "flaw" in the GOP tactics. To the madmen now running the asylum -- who for two decades actively have waged the War on Science --  this latest hampering is a silver lining. This is not a flaw but a Feature.

Think that's a one-off? Take this additional example from a decade ago, still doing outrageous harm:   "In 1996, Congress passed a law requiring the U.S. government to sell off our entire helium stockpile by 2015. This has forced the price of the gas way, way lower than it should be, considering how little of the stuff is actually left in the world. (Some estimate that a balloon's worth would cost $100 if the market were allowed to set the price.)"  The US currently owns 80% of the world's supply and given the ever-widening range of uses for Helium -- (ask any physicist, chemist or biologist or electronics maker) - it might offer leverage against - say - the Chinese near monopoly on rare earth minerals. At minimum, every scientist alive cringes at what the GOP has done on just this one (of countless many ) area of deliberate destruction.

Indeed, if anyone out there can think of a non-criminal reason why the GOP commanded this fire sale and non-economic selloff such a high priority strategic asset, I'd love to hear your theory.

== And finally… ==

This harsh rumination by Josh Eidelson on SALON ponders why the Republican elites of Wall Street and the Chamber of Commerce, who have so much to lose if a U.S. default trashes the American credit and economy, have not laid down the law upon the unruly House GOP, the way they have in every past crisis.  After all, they were the ones - not average Red Americans - who gained the benefits from every past Republican legislative and/or executive action, from the Bush tax breaks to middle east wars.  But this time, it appears that the Tea Party -- a genuine populist movement -- has metastacized completely out of control of the party's traditional masters.

This is evidenced by the behavior of the shills at Fox News, who are riding a brahma bull. They keep hinting that the Obamacare fixation may be over-wrought and may have to be set aside… (as we describe Congressman Ryan saying, above)... this is the message commanded from up-top.  But Roger Ailes and his Fox "News" team must also look to the bottom line! The average Fox viewer is by now so riled up -- ironically by Fox itself -- that any calm-down message might alienate them and hurt the advertisers who pay the network's bills.

Above all, do not let the counter-meme spread... that Obamacare was actually almost completely  cloned from the Republicans own 1994 health care plan that they put forward as an alternative to Hillary's plan. Copied almost verbatim. Republicans ignore this fact because it collapses their tirades.  (Oppose it? Fine. Say "we changed our minds?" Fine! Express volcanic fury? Hypocrisy!)

Although the deep-right coined the term "culture war" I have been the one suggesting that things have come to a dramatic pass. That we are now in Phase Three of the American Civil War.  

Now have a look at an incisive appraisal by a writer who is (admittedly) from the left-end. And you all know that I am caustic toward the fartghest-maddest-left, which, though currently far-smaller than the far-mad-right, was once -- and may someday again be -- a locus of dogmatic danger in the world.

Nevertheless, and despite that bias, an educated person knows that Marxists at least have thought a lot more about this whole "class" thing that most of us blithely ignored, during the anomalously flat era from 1945 to 2000.  So, while retaining a wary awareness that Marxists truly are crazy at another level (e.g. they believe in social teleology), I nevertheless think there is plenty here worth pondering.  Take this from Josh Eidelson's article, Tea Party's Shutdown Lunacy: Avenging the Surrender of the South:

"A couple things. I do think that we have this broad kind of rot at the top end of our society: It’s devolved from a real ruling class, with some distance from day-to-day moneymaking, into something more just like a pure plutocracy, interested in maximizing its cash in as short a time as possible, and really not capable of thinking about policy in a serious sense. The Financial Times has been writing about how groups like the Chamber of Commerce, who normally would put pressure on the difficult Republicans, don’t seem to be willing or able to do that — and one of the reasons is that they’re so enamored of the tax-cutting side of the Republican Party that they don’t really want to stop things like the government shutdown, or they don’t have the capacity to stop things. It does seem like there’s a breakdown at the elite level of society."

Josh Eidelson continues: "But also, Michael Lind had an interesting piece about how the roots of Tea Party are in a Confederate, almost kind of a neo-Confederate structure of people who want to preserve their class privileges ...and they are a very sizable portion of the Republican Party. And what they see — and this is also confirmed by the focus groups that David Greenberg et al. did — the core of this is a group of people that feel like the country is being taken away from them by a new minority-majority country. And all of their familiar touchstones are being smashed. They feel like they’re fighting a heroic kind of lost cause, and they’re willing to do a  lot of damage to try to get their way."

"To some degree the Big Business interests are paying a price for having relied on these characters in the first place. The last thing that Big Business wants to see is something that threatens the status of Treasury bonds. They don’t want to threaten the status of the dollar as reserve currency. They don’t want to rock the image of the United States as the most stable capitalist power in the world. Even though the financial crisis essentially originated here, money still flowed to the United States then because it seemed safer than everywhere else. The big boys don’t want to endanger that status."

Okay that was at least thought provoking. Still. At risk of agreeing with a quasi Marxist… I will one-up that appraisal, taking it even farther.

After the almost perfect record of calamitous rule by the Bushites -- with every large decision directly resulting in extreme harm or decline in the American Republic, its small businesses and entrepreneurial verve, its science, its economic and its Pax power -- one has to wonder about the author's core assumption, that all of the right wing's oligarchs want the United States to thrive.  

Don't forget that the Republican Party's top bankrollers now include quite a number of foreign princes, aristocrats, moguls and sovereign wealth funds, many of them rooted in cultures that express open contempt for North American civilization in principle and who have openly wished for an end to the American Pax. I include one of the top foreign co-owners of Fox News in that clade.  

As Goldfinger said: "Once, Mr. Bond, may be happenstance. Twice is coincidence. Three … or many many times… that's enemy action."

More on the War Against Professionalism in Government

TODAY'S TOPIC: I have long held that the Democrats should focus strong attention upon one of the most outrageous campaigns waged by this administration and the neocons -- a concerted effort (openly planned by the Heritage Foundation) to intimidate, cow, repress and subdue the thousands of dedicated and skilled men and women who make up both the Civil Service and the United States Officer Corps.

Indeed, it is a travesty that liberals have reflexively turned their backs on this tragic betrayal, in some cases because civil servants and officers tend to be "crew-cut" types. This is just dumb. Not only are these fellow Americans who are now in great pain -- in fact, they are the main victims of this administration -- but they would also be terrific allies in helping to solve the problem!

Drop in to see a New Yorker article: “Knowing The Enemy: Can social scientists redefine the “war on terror”?” which details something I have long maintained... that our memic “wars” are much less about superficialities like ideology, Islam, Communism or even nationalism, and much more about deeper psychological drivers. Something that I wrote about way back in the 1980s when I was among the few predicting the imminent fall of the Berlin Wall.

I want to share with you a particularly telling passage: ”Just before the 2004 American elections, Kilcullen was doing intelligence work for the Australian government, sifting through Osama bin Laden’s public statements, including transcripts of a video that offered a list of grievances against America: Palestine, Saudi Arabia, Afghanistan, global warming.

The last item brought Kilcullen up short. “I thought, Hang on! What kind of jihadist are you?” he recalled. The odd inclusion of environmentalist rhetoric, he said, made clear that “this wasn’t a list of genuine grievances. This was an Al Qaeda information strategy.” Ron Suskind, in his book “The One Percent Doctrine,” claims that analysts at the C.I.A. watched a similar video, released in 2004, and concluded that “bin Laden’s message was clearly designed to assist the President’s reelection.” Bin Laden shrewdly created an implicit association between Al Qaeda and the Democratic Party, for he had come to feel that Bush’s strategy in the war on terror was sustaining his own global importance.”

There’s more. Paul Krugman is at the top of his game, riffing on something that I have attacked since day one. (Indeed, before almost anybody else) -- this administration’s war against not only the US Officer Corps, but also the Civil Service and professional competence, in general.

”The blueprint for Bush-era governance was laid out in a January 2001 manifesto from the Heritage Foundation, titled "Taking Charge of Federal Personnel." The manifesto's message, in brief, was that the professional civil service should be regarded as the enemy of the new administration's conservative agenda. And there's no question that Heritage's thinking reflected that of many people on the Bush team.

“How should the civil service be defeated? First and foremost, Heritage demanded that politics take precedence over know-how: the new administration "must make appointment decisions based on loyalty first and expertise second."

Second, Heritage called for a big increase in outsourcing—"contracting out as a management strategy." This would supposedly reduce costs, but it would also have the desirable effect of reducing the total number of civil servants. “The Bush administration energetically put these recommendations into effect. Political loyalists were installed throughout the government, regardless of qualifications. And the administration outsourced many government functions previously considered too sensitive to privatize: yesterday's Times article begins with the case of CACI International, a private contractor hired, in spite of the obvious conflict of interest, to process cases of incompetence and fraud by private contractors. A few years earlier, CACI provided interrogators at Abu Ghraib.

The ostensible reason for politicizing and privatizing was to promote the conservative ideal of smaller, more efficient government. But the small government rhetoric was never sincere: from Day 1, the administration set out to create a vast new patronage machine.”

Indeed, the Times reports that "fewer than half of all 'contract actions' — new contracts and payments against existing contracts — are now subject to full and open competition," down from 79 percent in 2001. And many contractors are paid far more than it would cost to do the job with government employees: those CACI workers processing claims against other contractors cost the government $104 an hour.

Krugman adds ”What's truly amazing is how far back we've slid in such a short time. The modern civil service system dates back more than a century; in just six years the Bush administration has managed to undo many of that system's achievements.”

No Paul. What’s amazing is the capacity of otherwise decent conservatives in America to rationalize away such monstrous trends, never asking themselves, “How would I have reacted, if Bill Clinton had done one-ten thousandth of these things.”

Take this to your ostrich. Be tenacious and do not let go! When an administration commits more graft during any given five minute period, than the previous administration did in its ENTIRE span, and our decent conservative neighbors merely squirm uncomfortably and cover their ears... then we know the locus of the problem.

It is not in the monstrous neocons, the kleptocrats and the dogmatists. It is in those neighbors. The “decent conservatives” who have the power to stand up and help America clean out this nest of parasites and thieves.

 They have the power, but somehow convince themselves that this is not the time to rise up, to do their duty and save American Conservatism ... indeed, America itself... from a cancer at its very heart.


And Finally…

Recently hot on YouTube! A 10-year old speech that I gave at Planetfest '97 - celebrating one of the Mars landings. Sci-fi author David Brin speaks.

The Strategic/Tactical Use of Openness

Andrew said...This thread isn't political enough.

All right then… the political lamp is lit!

He also said: "The government has abruptly ended an inquiry into the warrantless eavesdropping program because the National Security Agency refused to grant Justice Department lawyers the necessary security clearance to probe the matter."

Rob further said: “Still and all, two things come to mind: it still freaks me out, unless something like David's contrarian idea of making all the records completely public were to take hold, and even then it still changes the landscape of privacy quite a lot.”

Actually, that oversimplifies. I do not call for all personal records to be public. Even in the radically open society after the Helvetian War, portrayed by my novel EARTH, secrecy is still possible... though you must cache your secrets in some legal way that BOTH protects them and still allows them to be subject to due process. Moreover, the government – too – can do this.

Indeed, in the case of government, considerable latitude should be given to those public protectors who claim to have a need to operate in cryptic ways. I have consulted for the CIA and believe me, I do NOT want them to instantly drop their pants and go naked before enemies of the West! I want them to win tactical battles, and it is the tactical battles that require secrecy most.

Still, the situation is very different over the span of strategic time... years and decades. Over those spans, it is important to recognize the big picture. That our CIVILIZATION prospers - and its opponents tend to shrivel - the more open the world and its varied competitive battlefields become. The more open is the competition, the more it becomes a matter for the accountability arenas - markets, science, democracy... that create beneficial synergies out of competition, instead of reciprocal destruction. Further, the more open the playing field, the more standing individuals have, contributing their billions of eyes to a network that can detect errors and criminality, helping the professionals to do their jobs.

All through the Cold War, the Soviet Union operated under a “logical-sounding” premise. ”If we keep a 99% CLOSED society, and the Americans keep a 99% OPEN society, then we will know 199 points of information and the Americans will know 101 points… and we’ll win!" Throughout all that time, they got more information about our defense from issues of AVIATION WEEK than we got about theirs, through all of our spies in the USSR. And yet, did they win? (Indeed, this is a prime example of the human tendency for self-hypnosis and delusion, based on repeating logical-sounding mantras over and over again… today part of the insanity of the right.)

WHY did we win – (and overwhelmingly) – this competition, despite the purported advantages of closed-control? Of course we credit open markets, for their creative fecundity, producing so many innovations that our rivals were overwhelmed. They simply could not copy them fast enough. But worth noting: it is not the corporations that make these markets. Nor the CEO aristocracy. Rather, it is openness itself. If you have it, something like creative markets will happen, no matter how the structure is set up.

Evidence? In 1945, at the end of WWII, the United States was ten years ahead of the Soviet Union in atomic technology and maybe just a couple in electronics. Spies helped the USSR close that ten year nuclear weapons gap, so we clamped down, classifying that entire field under tight wraps of security. Meanwhile, the field of electronics was left open. Forty years later? Our lead in electronics and cybernetics had grown spectacularly, into a gap of many generations that could never be crossed. Meanwhile, in the area of bombs, everybody agreed that the Soviets were essentially even with us. Conclusion? Any field in which we foster creativity through openness is one that will utilize our civilization’s strengths. Fields that we shut down, by short-term thinking and reflex, will play to the strengths of our opponents.

(And mind you, it was cold warrior Edward Teller who pushed this point, demanding utter opennes NOT as a good-goody stance, but in order to crush communism, decisively!)

Getting back to my core point: a SECULAR TREND toward a more generally open world should be our grand goal, even if it has irksome effects in the short term.

Indeed, it is no paradox to envision the CIA using cryptic tactical methodologies toward the aim of fostering secular openness trends! It is no paradox… but it does require agile, nonlinear thinking. It takes the intelligence to realize that our civilization is not about the convenience of its leaders.

No, I’ll go farther. That secular openness trend is the very thing that such officers should realize they are loyal to! It is more fundamentally a trait of “freedom” and “America” than any word or flag, or even any particular land mass.

Sticking my neck out, it is just this secular trend that has (I believe) driven most of the anti-modernist forces crazy. They are frantic, right now, across all standard borders of ideology. It is why the Iranian president recently sent a letter to President Bush, pleading that Bush take in the “big picture” and see a wider perspective. Asking him to realize that they are both allies, inherently the same. Co-belligerents against a secular-scientific and “liberal democratic” (his very words) civilization.

It would be a mistake to shrug off this letter (the way the press has) as a bit of other-culture looniness to scratch our heads over and then dismiss with a chuckle. I am deeply impressed with the Iranian’s ability to step back and see things from a wider angle than mere Shiite Islam, but rather, as a matter of deep social and psychological agendas. He does represent the same fundamental personality, the same fear of an open future, that has dominated American power in the 21st Century.

This is important because a crisis is coming. The forces of traditional authority span every spectrum of religion and culture and politics (e.g. left-to-right). What they all share is a reflex, a 4,000 year habit of preferring unidirectional vision and evasion of accountability. They will not go gently into the coming good light.

Is it truly coming? In EARTH (1989) I forecast a worldwide "Secrecy War" in the 2010s, almost an visceral and spontaneous uprising (like those fed-up Union soldiers who stood up, against orders, during the Battle of Missionary Ridge). Retaliation by an increasingly well-educated and outraged world population. A drive to cleanse the shadows wherein parasites have always prevailed.

At one level or another, this will have to happen. Not only to end corruption and make markets truly (at last) the cornucopian problem solving machines we are told they ought to be... but also, above all, so that errors in fields like nanotech and biotech et. al. are detected and discussed, openly, before they can become world-killers.

But again, let me reiterate. I am not a “nakedness radical”. What is scary about the NSA stonewalling of Justice Dept investigators is NOT that the NSA acted to preserve operational secrecy. It is that they did so in a way that in effect rejects the very notion of accountability ever applying to them and their secrets.

There is a potential middle ground. A compromise position, that could preserve their operational secrets while ensuring accountability. It is inherent in my longstanding proposal to create the office of Inspector General of the United States (IGUS) who could bridge the two worlds, by creating a corps of trusted observers who can watch the watchers for us.

But it is in the nature of human beings that we rationalize. And it is in the nature of the paid professional protective caste that they will tell themselves that they are trustworthy. That they do not require watching.

Alas, though they are our beloved protectors, they WILL forget (if we let them) that they are also our servants.

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Anonymous said...More political fuel. There is an excellent post over on Professor Balkin's blog about the risk profile of the Bush presidency going forward. The conclusion is that Bush has every incentive to make bigger gambles irregardless of who controls Congress after this coming election. I hold out hope, though, that the average person is smart enough for such a policy to backfire.

One more reason I have said repeatedly - THE top priority for all modernists (e.g. liberals, democrats, libertarians and Goldwater Conservatives) MUST be to reach out to the abused members of the Officer Corps and the Intelligence Community and the Protector Caste. Only they are positioned to detect and thwart such ploys.

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Erik, the child labor stats are amazing to me, yet credible. The people of Latin America have decided to awaken. According to my 1987 meme war theory, they had to choose whether to spiral down into macho frenzy, or rise up and become modern people, shrugging off the chains of dogma and class interest. The BIG emphasis on providing free education down there is evidence of the latter...

...But I’ll only really believe it when Spanish language SCIENCE FICTION takes off in a big way!

(BTW Steve, that’s simply wrong. Yes, in the past child labor sometimes was the 1st step up the ladder, especially seasonal farm labor. Still, that transition is all-too easy for aristocratic elites to stymie, as they have repeatedly in every culture OTHER than the most recent ones, consigning the children of child-laborers to be child-laborers, as well. A decent modern state must break such cycles! It must ensure that these children leap over that phase and devour education. There is no better role for a state. (And it is perfectly compatible with free-market capitalism.) We cannot afford to wait. Nor is waiting prudent, in an era when angry young men can become technologically super-empowered. This is a leap that must be accomplished in one more generation, or we all may die for having failed.)

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Other political matters:

More from Russ Daggatt: “Read about the latest Christian right war on contraception. You really MUST read it. The logic seems pretty simple. Contraception results in fewer unwanted pregnancies and fewer abortions. This should be something that brings together all parties -- pro-life and right-to-choose. But a growing contingent among the moralists who increasingly are dictating the affairs of our country oppose contraception because, they believe, it makes pre-marital sex "consequence-free." Even within marriage, it diverts sex from its holy objective to the mere pursuit of pleasure. No sex before marriage, and thereafter only for procreation.

“The Bush administration is spending $200 million a year for "abstinence only" programs in our schools. The little hard data available suggests these programs are not only ineffective, they are counterproductive. The don't prevent sex. They just prevent acknowledging the possibility of sex and preparing for it ahead of time. Internationally, the Bush administration is diverting money allocated to HIV/AIDS prevention into abstinence only programs -- away from other priorities that actually save lives.“
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/05/07/magazine/07contraception.html

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Re possible democratic strategies... like many, I find it clear that the Dems are having trouble formulating a response to Iraq that does not sound like a plaint that Saddam should have been left in power.

Effective points being made:
* incompetence
* civilian meddling/ignoring professional advice
* corruption (!)
* WMD lies

Potentially effective points NOT being made:

1. We were not greeted with "kisses and flowers" (Rummy's words). Why? We WOULD have been so greeted if we had liberated the Shiites when we promised to... in 1991! But instead of continuing 12 more hours to Basra, THESE SAME MORONS consigned the Iraqi people to 12 more years of hell. At Bush Sr's call, those people rose up against Saddam, having been promised that "We're on our way!" That betrayal - one of the worst stains on American honor in a century - was one reason why I WANTED to go get Saddam.

1a. But I wanted it done competently, surgically, honestly.

1b. THESE morons are the very last people who should lecture to ANYBODY about Saddam! Having coddled him in the 80s, then having let him take them by surprise in Kuwait… and thereupon having decided to lift him back up, brushing him off and propping him back up in 91, committing the heinous Shame of Ninety-One… they have no right. And we should all say so.

2. I just said " competently, surgically, honestly..." You mean like in Afghanistan? Exactly! Only these morons don't deserve any credit for Afgh. Bush and Rummy only had time (after 9/11) to say "go!" to a war plan that was already on the books! A war plan devised and okay'd by... wait for it.. Welsley Clark, Gen. Shinseki and Bill Clinton.

Proof of this is that the Taliban assassinated Massoud, head of the Northern Alliance, days before 9/11. They knew all about the War Plan in place and that it would rely upon the Uzbeks, Tajiks etc led by Massoud.

Indeed, there is reason to believe that THE main goal of 9/11 was not simply to harm us but to draw us into a "land war of attrition in Asia." Remember this is EXACTLY how bin Laden achieved his greatest glory, bringing down a Soviet Behemoth Empire, humbling it in Afghanistan...

...only to his shock, our agile war plan and stunning professionalism and diplomatic skill with allies resulted in him and his friends having their asses kicked! Not since Alexander has an imperium entered the Kush without regretting it, amid howls of pain. Yet, Pax Americana surprised OBL, and did it well.

Only then... out of the blue... WE DECIDE TO GIVE HIM EXACTLY WHAT HE WANTED... an utterly incompetent "land war of attrition in Asia." What were the odds? How likely is it, that a great nation would reverse every military doctrine that had just won miraculous victories, in the Balkans and Afghanistan, and suddenly turn around to repeat every error of Vietnam? If a sci fi author had written it, the readers would have snorted in disdain! It could never happen!

But it did. And, even more amazingly, the administration’s critics won’t even point this out.

Yes, this is a little complicated to express to voters. But impossible? I doubt it.

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Oh! The Buffet is served! Yes, the April edition of Armageddon Buffet is online and ready for your consumption. Not ENTIRELY the same as my take on things, but entertaining as all get out.