The Pecker solution. Plus debt, growth, and the top excuse offered by Wall Street parasites.

Lots of brief topics on debt and society and politics, this time, and if you make it to the end I promise something deeply thought-provoking for you economics wonks...but first a comment on the Bezos-Pecker imbroglio.

Jeff Bezos brought to life my decadal proposal that someone torch the foundation of all mafia empires - blackmail. I've long held that today's world is only explicable if hundreds, maybe thousands of powerful people are being blackmailed, each thinking he or she is all alone. (It's a top Kremlin tactic, going back to the czars.) I portrayed a gutsy politician shattering the dam (in a started novel) unleashing a flood of confession-revelations that save civilization. But sure, a rocket-building, SF-loving, unafraid zillionaire makes sense.
(The classic line: "You say you have negatives? Great! Print me some glossies please?)

Jeff should follow this fantastic essay with another, urging more of the blackmailed to come forth. As I describe here.

In fact, my old idea of a "Henchman's Prize" might lure out even more. Notice how this path doesn't just mean escape from the blackmailer's clutches. In Jeff's case, it leads to a kind of elevation and redemption. As I point out in an open letter to every new Latin American president who claims to want to end the cycles of graft, one speech - one declaration - could lift the monstrous cloud. Indeed, just a few weeks after I published my appeal to the new president of Mexico, Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador hinted at something similar, without providing (alas) details.

Ah well, if no one will listen to me, well then perhaps the world will listen to the richest man in the planet. And yes, we do have (and desperately need) friends in Cloud City.

== Saving civilization from high debt and slow growth? ==

I confess an ulterior motive for praising this cogent article by Tim Morgan. It begins with daunting news -- it's not only in the developed world that prosperity growth has stalled. The fast-rising upper half of the developing world has been the engine of the world economy for 20+ years, but that boiler is apparently cooling. And when you lack growth, then the fast-rising rate of debt - fueling rentier asset bubbles and braking money velocity - becomes more than just a problem. It becomes a poison.

  

(To be clear, the Republican Party raved that Supply Side ("voodoo") tax gifts to the rich would both stimulate growth and reduce public debt. How many times must you prove 100% diametrically wrong before you lose credibility?)

Morgan is not without hope. There are ways to fix this, and they are rooted in what's worked ever-better for 200 years... entrepreneurial enterprise that is kept truly competitive by thoughtful-adaptive regulation that limits inevitable oligarchic cheating, of the sort that Adam Smith denounced and that our parents in the Greatest Generation wisely outlawed. And so we get to my favorite paragraph:

"The good news is that we’re not going into this new era wholly lacking in knowledge. The trick is to understand what that knowledge really is. Keynes teaches us how to manage demand – or can teach us this, so long as we don’t turn him into a cheerleader for ever bigger public spending. Likewise – if we can refrain from caricaturing him as a rabid advocate of unregulated and unscrupulous greed – Adam Smith tells us that competition, freely, fairly and transparently conducted, is the great engine of innovation. More humbly, or perhaps less theoretically, but surely more pertinently, experience tells us that the “mixed economy” of optimised private and public provision works far better than any extreme."

Several members of my blog community have linked to this, asking if I wrote it originally, so consistent is it with my own drums -- the study of Adam Smith and fiscally responsible Keynsianism, along with the spectacular success story of public investment in research, education, health and infrastructure, which can only be denied by the hysterically delusional.

No I didn't ghost write that -- (I lived in Britain for a couple of years, but would never spell "optimised" that way; shudder.) But I do recommend having a look. Tim Morgan continues:

"Going forward, we should anticipate the collapse of the “everything bubble” in asset prices, and should hope that we don’t, this time, go so far into economic denial as to think we can cure this with a purely financial “fix”. I’m fond of saying that “trying to fix an energy-based economy with financial fixes is like trying to cure an ailing pot-plant with a spanner”. We should understand popular concerns, which seem to point unequivocally towards a mixed economy, extensive redistribution and an economic nationalism that needs to be channelled, not simply vilified."

None of this will happen unless the last remaining Knowledge Castes who cling to the mad right finally acknowledge what the scientists, teachers, journalists, civil servants, skilled workers, and almost every fact-using profession - including the maligned "deep state" protectors - all know. That the worldwide mafia-commie-oligarchy axis is no friend of anything we value. They are the Olde Feudal Enemy of every type of freedom and progress. And it will take all of us to achieve what the Greatest Generation did, a whole human lifetime ago.

 Save civilization.

== Again, the greatest judo move Pelosi could pull... ==

While the reform package that will be passed by Democrats in the U.S. House of Representatives consists of all good things that will help improve ethics, efficiency and fairness, it's still fairly minor stuff. Democrats should pass rules that really change the dynamic, like permanently giving some power to the minority! 

Why do this, when that minority party is Republican? Because Democrats will be out again, sooner or later, silenced and impotent... unless they set precedents now!

 My top proposal? Give every member of the House one subpoena per term, that can compel anyone to testify for 2 hours before a committee.

Sure, some GOPpers will use such a power to irritate and pursue grudges (virtually the only use to which they put subpoenas and hearings, when they were majority!) So? That means they'll be approving this minority right, institutionalizing it. (Maybe make that vow a necessary part of using their subpoenas.) But other Republican legislators will wait, hoping to use their one subpoena to benefit the home district. And why not? Pulling them away from their caucus is bad?

We've seen how the lack of such a minority power kept Congress from meaningfully exercising any meaningful oversight, when the only grownups (Democrats) had zero power to investigate anything at all. Envision how just 200 hours of such testimony, this last term, would have empowered Dems to apply accountability, even from a minority.

The crux: letting goppers vent blowhard-steam when they are in minority is a small price for letting demmies apply real accountability, when they have their minority turn.

It would also vest individual members with a measure of autonomy that might possibly lift their gaze from pure partisanship. 

It's one of several proposals in my FACT Act.

== The most fundamental lie of Wall Street Parasitism ==

Among the dumbest but most effective religious dogmas is the rationalization that Wall Street parasites provide a ‘valuable service’ in the “creation of liquidity, raising capital for growing businesses and determining proper price levels.” 

These are utter and diametrically-opposite-to-true lies, as shown in this article on the Evonomics site (where Adam Smith would be publishing, today.) But the essay doesn’t go far enough. The whole justification for Wall Street's “proper price arbitrage” excuse is actually insane on a basis of physics and biology… thermodynamics, in particular.

Dig it. All living things exist by creating pools of reduced entropy (their living bodies) by tapping a high quality energy flow to create order inside the body and export more entropy into the environment. Eventually that entropy departs as infrared that flows into space. (Idiotically blocking that outward drainage with greenhouse gas is a related-but-separate topic.) 

Now focus: it is energy GRADIENTS or downhill FLOWS of energy — the steeper the better — that living creatures use, the way differences in height power a water mill, or differences in heat propel a steam engine.

Plants turn the steep gradient of high quality sunlight into carbohydrates. Herbivores take the high concentrations in plant carbs and turn them into more herbivores. That packs-in concentrations carnivores can then access. Health comes when there are only a few such gradients, letting each one be steep enough for the plants-herbivores-carnivores to each thrive.

Oh, but sometimes parasites wedge in and tap these gradients, by sucking sap or blood, in effect making the flow more shallow. Look at a plant or animal afflicted by parasites and tell me it is healthy!  And yes, you are having the "aha!" moment right now. Because that's exactly what “proper-price-seeking” arbitrage or micro-trading of equities does to the “value” of a stock or commodity, making a million nibbles or cuts in order to flatten the slopes! While the parasite (trader/broker/HFT-program) sucks a little value each trade, the company or pension fund loses the gradient or value difference that its life depends upon.

Oh, but the parasites croon “see how the price differences (energy gradients) are flattening? It’s a gooood thing! A goood thing!” 

Surely you've seen how some wasps implant parasite eggs that make the cricket ignore its victimization? These are parasitic wasps. You are the cricket.

Maybe some of you have heard or seen this argument elsewhere… I never have, even though it utterly disproves the “proper price discovery” rationalization of Wall Street parasites. What I’ve described is a “contradiction of capitalism” far more deadly than any described by Marx. It’s why - in the words of Douglas Adams - these guys will be “first against the wall” when the revolution comes.

Oh, do you want to prevent a violent, French-Russian style Revolution? Want an American style generational reform instead? One that re-invigorates a flat-fair-competitive market economy? 

Well then these guys should be First Against The Wall.

== Finally... the China Dilemma ==

This is BY FAR the most important article you can read about China's leadership caste, by an Australian diplomat/journalist of immense insight. Join the site (free) in order to read it.

Follow this with my own insights, which dovetail with Garnaut's, but bring in Chinese PRC mythologies about central planning and AI.

What's missing from both analyses is the context of Xi's uneasy alliance with the other major, anti-western player... the Putinist-Mafia front, the arc that Vladimir Putin has built for a new Warsaw Pact, stretching from Moscow to Crimea, Ankara, Lataika, Beirut, Damascus, Baghdad to Tehran. It is a despotic swathe whose connecting tissue is not ideology -- the Russians are embryonic-czarist, Erdogan is Sunni, Assad is Alawite, and the Muktadists+Ayatollahs are Shiite. What's the connective tissue then?

The Saudis -- did you see Putin's gleeful high-five with Mohammed bin Salman, a few months ago? -- may be genuinely terrified of Iran... though I am starting to doubt it. They have every reason to join Putin. Why?

Because the common thread is an affiliation of mafia clans with wholly-owned national sovereignties. Ideology is not as important as snuffing out the rule of law. And especially a unified-shared loathing of one particular western innovation -- the non-governmental NGO.

In this context, the position of the Chinese clarifies. They share an allied goal of demolishing constitutionalism and rule of law and western confident individualism. 

At the same time, the Chinese do have an ideology and a Confucian sense of order. Moreover, they know that eventually they will have to confront these mafias. Moreover, the West is the source of all good things. It must be bled at a careful rate that keeps us too weak to interfere, but still laying golden eggs.

The Chinese also feel time is on their side. It is not on the side of the Mafias, who know they have this one decade to wreck us, or else all (for them) will be lost.

Want to Investigate Electoral Fraud? Start with whistle blowers and judo!

== Calling all henchmen! ==

I’ve called for this since way back in the last century, illustrating it in The Transparent Society and in novels like Earth. We must unleash whistleblowers on the world. Envision Edward Snowden and the Panama Papers revealer, only far more extensively, with protections and rewards that lure secrets out of shadows. 


Basics are already in place – Whistleblower Laws that offer big commissions to tattlers in certain circumstances, for example, but these are far too limited. Expanding such protections and lures could be more important to our planet and civilization than any other matter.

Remember, our kind of society is almost never seriously damaged by revelations or leaks. Spills can be irritating or irksome and even tactically harmful in the short term. But we generally find the light bracing and adapt quickly, as our services did, after Snowden. 

Our deadly enemies, in contrast are all – every last one of them – lethally allergic to light.  


Sure our Protector Caste needs some tactical secrets. Still, there is one and only one long range victory condition. In a world that moves progressively toward light, we win. “We” – enlightenment civilization – just win. In part because none of our enemies can endure light.

As illustrated by most of the wildly diverse stories by brilliant authors in Chasing Shadows, illustrating all sorts of ways that people and societies will have to cope with an increasingly transparent world. And yet, for all its irritations and disruptions, such a world will be more just. Less rife with evil.

And this applies to... the Trump Era? Especially and spectacularly so. 

Like Bushites, he and his team will lay the hammer onto whistleblowers. But some billionaire might solve this.  By offering incentives outside of government for the kind of revelations that cleanse and invigorate our kind of society, unlike any other.

See how far back  I’ve been making this call.  Especially, asking that rewards be offered to bring out information about electoral fraud.

== A little Judo ==

Take President Trump's call for a major investigation of voter fraud. By reflexively opposing this, foolish liberals play their game - which is sumo... grunting against each other, chest to chest... when democrats should instead be practicing judo.

By opposing an investigation, liberals look like they are opposed to getting to the truth! And thus they fall for a trap. Instead they should say:

"At last you are offering something that's not about delusion, but about getting to truth! Fine! Let's agree to form a top level, blue ribbon commission, drawing from the finest statesmen and stateswomen! Start with retired US Supreme Court Justice (and Republican nominee) Sandra Day O'Conner.

"Only the commissioners will look into more than just the voting-dead. They will also examine rigged voting machines. And states that deliberately make it hard for women and poor people to get ID. And gerrymandering.

"Let's go! Let this be our first joint project with the new president. Meet our reasonable offer and let's get started!"

And yes, the heart and soul of any such investigation should be whistleblower prizes.

In the long term… this matters far more than just the results of one election. Out of a dozen major “suggestions” I have offered, over the years, none is more important than making it harder – ever-harder – for conspirators, would-be lords and other elites to trust their own henchmen.  Think on that.

Then ponder how this is not a uniform effect. The Koch brothers offered lavish rewards for scientists who would sell-out, regarding climate change. The tactic worked a bit in the pharmaceuticals and tobacco industries, biasing some reports. But almost never do top researchers accept the bribes. As I said, the forces of enlightenment can withstand light, but not their enemies.


So what I really want - what's needed - is some non-governmental Henchman's Prize. A big reward for whoever reveals "the worst thing" in any given year. Prize competitions are all the thing, right? This one could cost some real money.  But nothing else I can think of would more efficiently and effectively tip the balance in favor of a true... civilization.

== Siberian candidates ==

Hillary Clinton blames  Russian President Vladimir Putin for meddling in our election, as confirmed by the FBI, CIA and other agencies who will soon feel the heel of Putin’s revenge.  But Clinton attributes Putin’s grudge to have been due to her own past criticism of Russian elections. 

Really lady? You don’t think he might hate you for something more tangible?  Like the huge coup that you and President Obama are credited for, in the Russian Press and by Putin’s own words?  They accuse HRC and BHO of cleverly and aggressively “stealing the Ukraine” by stage managing the Velvet Revolution that ousted Russian puppet Viktor Yanukovych, in 2014.  I give far more credit to the Ukrainians, frankly. But it helps to put Putin’s later, “brilliant” moves in Crimea etc in perspective as very small nibble-backs from a geopolitical catastrophe. That is what he hates you and Obama for, Hillary.  Learn to take some credit. 

No wonder DT  would refuse even to look at evidence collected by our professionals, that a foreign power has waged acts of war against us - or even accept standard security briefings.

But seriously, what do you need? Could the Kremlin have picked a more favorable U.S. cabinet than Donald Trump has, including Exxon head Rex Tillerson for Secretary of State, who has received lavish honors - and billions in favored contracts - directly from the Putin Administration and who hangs with Russian klepto-oligarchs? When the U.S. imposed sanctions against Russia in 2014 pursuant to the invasion of Crimea, one of the items put on indefinite hold was a contract between the Russian government and Exxon to exploit a wide variety of off shore drilling zones off Russia's Arctic coast. Estimates made the contracts worth up to half a trillion dollars to Exxon, and even more for the Russian government.

So? All is symbolism on the right.  And hence, President Putin has ordered officials to start planning a celebration of next year’s centennial of the Russian Revolution. It will be awkward, since Putin has simultaneously encouraged restored adulation of Joseph Stalin and the toppled Romanov Czars… both the lamented Soviet Union and the Russian Orthodox Church. 

Sound a bit like Putin’s biggest western fans – Republicans? Who simultaneously declare adoration of the Greatest Generation of the 1950s while pouring hate upon every aspect of the nation that generation built -- from strong unions and high taxes on the rich to the living person those folks adored, above all others, Franklin... Delano... Roosevelt? 

As in Russia, it seems the central goal is to use emotion to drive out logic.  And hence, the outright war – in both nations – against the scientists and other fact-professions.

Oh, while we’re peering east. An interesting revelation about a Russian weapon that purportedly could sneak bombs underwater into American seaports. I would be wary of this article, though, as there are some telltales of exaggeration. Example.  There has never been a 100 megaton bomb.  One was planned but that method is probably long lost. The tsunami thing and the Cobalt thing are likely lurid arm-wavings. Their aim would be to cripple us, not to poison all our children, triggering a spasm to kill all of theirs. A ten Kt drone-mine in each harbor would leave us impotent at sea while leaving the main California cities still available to hold hostage.

== Political miscellany == 

More perspectives on how China feels about Trump. And why DT has so many fans in China.

The New York Times notes that, “As recently as last year, Breitbart published an op-ed article urging that “every tree, every rooftop, every picket fence, every telegraph pole in the South should be festooned with the Confederate battle flag.”  

Alt.right “hit lists” against professors and intellectuals of all kinds. 

One of the leaders of a recent alt-right convention quoted Nazi propaganda in the original German. America, he said, belonged to white people, whom he called the “children of the sun,” a race of conquerors and creators who had been marginalized but now, in the era of President-elect Donald J. Trump, were “awakening to their own identity.”  As he finished, several audience members had their arms outstretched in a Nazi salute.

Someone at the podium shouted, “Heil the people! Heil victory,” the room shouted it back. Later: “Mr. Spencer suggested that the news media had been critical of Mr. Trump throughout the campaign in order to protect Jewish interests. Mr. Trump’s election, Mr. Spencer said, was “the victory of will,” a phrase that echoed the title of the most famous Nazi-era propaganda film.” These are exultant times for the alt-right movement.

And finally some ironic quotations:

“Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall!”  -- Ronald Reagan

“We’re going to build a beautiful, huge wall.”  -- Donald Trump

“Moscow’s evil empire…” –Ronald Reagan

“"I looked the man (Putin) in the eye. I found him to be very straightforward and trustworthy.”  -- George W. Bush

"Will he become my new best friend?" Donald Trump asked of Putin in a tweet before bringing the Miss Universe pageant Trump to Moscow.

Consistency? Confederates despise consistency.  The only thing that matters is whom do you hate? If you hate the same folks they hate, then you must be okay.

Science, transparency and some hope

We'll try to look at the bright side, this time, with a look at some hopeful trends. Starting with...

Wikileaks appears to be implementing a system that I have pushed for since 1989 - a way for whistle-blowers to safely alert citizens of corrupt or oppressive actions. “Wikileaks is an uncensorable system for safe mass document leaking and public analysis. Our primary interests are in Asia, the former Soviet bloc, Latin America, Sub-Saharan Africa and the Middle East, but we expect to be of assistance to peoples of all countries who wish to reveal unethical behavior in their governments and corporations.” A summary on wired-blog mentions a couple of others.

In fact, I have long believed that one billionaire could transform the world, by not only funding the expansion of a service like this, but enhancing it with the ”Henchman’s Prize.”

What's a Henchman's Prize? An annual award of a million dollars -- plus a new identity, if needed -- for whoever on the planet blows the whistle on ‘the worst thing.’ Crossing all cliched lines of left or right. Runner-up prizes would descend to a free Groucho nose and mask for all entrants. Yes, there’d be issues of liability. But they could be overcome. And if pursued in a balanced way, it could re-make the world.

And it continues. Watch a new startup called HelpHookup taking shape before your eyes. “The inspiration of Help Hookup is actually a comic book called Global Frequency by Warren Ellis. It was also made into a TV show that never aired. I understand that it is available on BitTorrent. Global Frequency was a network of 1,001 people that handled the jobs that the governments did not have the will to handle. I thought that it was a great idea and it would be more powerful with 1,000,001 people or 100,000,001 people. We would have to leave out the killing that was in the comic.”

Nice of them to add that last part.

Fascinated by the effects of birth order? As one of three kids... and the father of three... I find the whole topic fascinating. Now see a report that ran in THE INDEPENDENT. “The difficult middle child, the spoilt only child, the wayward baby; few of us escape being labelled according to some sort of sibling stereotype. But what, really, are we to believe about the role our position in the family plays in determining our personality? Are the stereotypes true – or is the psychology of birth order just a load of hokum?”

Now here’s some fresh meat for you guys: An Introduction to Planetary Defense: A Study of Modern Warfare Applied to Extra-Terrestrial Invasion by Travis S. Taylor et al. (Anyone care to review it for us?)

And something along similar lines. Any of you speak or read German? See:

FROM THE TRANSPARENCY FRONT: "...Naïve as I was, I found myself astonished at the level of detail that drug companies were able to acquire about doctors’ prescribing habits. I asked my reps about it; they told me that they received printouts tracking local doctors’ prescriptions. every week. The process is called “prescription data-mining,” in which specialized pharmacy-information companies (like IMS Health and Verispan) buy prescription data from local pharmacies, repackage it, then sell it to pharmaceutical companies. This information is then passed on to the drug reps, who use it to tailor their drug-detailing strategies. This may include deciding which physicians to aim for, as my Wyeth reps did, but it can help sales in other ways. For example, Shahram Ahari, a former drug rep for (the maker of Prozac) who is now a researcher at the University of California at San Francisco’s School of Pharmacy, said in an article in The Washington Post that as a drug rep he would use this data to find out which doctors were prescribing Prozac’s competitors, like Effexor. Then he would play up specific features of Prozac that contrasted favorably with the other drug, like the ease with which patients can get off Prozac, as compared with the hard time they can have withdrawing from Effexor.

“The AMA is also a key player in prescription data-mining. Pharmacies typically will not release doctors’ names to the data-mining companies, but they will release their Drug Enforcement Agency numbers. The A.M.A. licenses its file of U.S. physicians, allowing the data-mining companies to match up numbers to specific physicians. The A.M.A. makes millions in information-leasing money..."

Yipes.

You’ll recall that I reported working as a civil defense - CERT volunteer, during our recent San Diego fires. Light duty, actually The first-ever activation for San Diego's Community Emergency Response Teams is getting high marks for its work during last month's wildfires.

CERT members are volunteers trained to help fire agencies in first aid, basic search and rescue, logistical support, evacuee assistance and other essential duties during disasters. “Their training and commitment really paid off,” San Diego Fire Chief Tracy Jarman said of CERT volunteers' efforts. “The dedication to the job was beyond comparison and really made a positive difference.”

Or volunteer most modestly at Free Rice. Play a word game. For every word you get right, ten grains of rice go to the poor.

And re: the Age of Empowered Citizenship? “One resident of a Malibu neighborhood, a builder, had bought a fire truck and tanker truck at auction, for a total of $6000. He and his neighbors saved millions of dollars worth of property before the professional firefighters could get there.” Um, yes, though of course these are rich people in Malibu. Still, they have the spirit.

Speaking of citizen action, it seems that there are still places where the courts “get” the difference between the spirit and the letter of the law. Zechariah sent this one in. ”In France the Untergunther, a group of covert guerilla anti-vandals, snuck into the Panthéon and repaired the old, rusting, broken clock. Authorities were clueless until they got were informed they should go wind it up. For pics of the clock before and after: For a reputable news source.

In contrast, see the hard life of a congress person, explained!

Finally, a brief re-lighting of the political lamp. Some of you may have seen a lovely, truthful-while-satirical “Job Resume of George W. Bush.” It is biting... and rather lengthy, so I have posted it under comments in an older blog entry. With some of my own, unique addenda.