Guest Thinkers Contemplate Culture War and the Hijacking of Capitalism

Continuing in a political vein... I'll hand over the floor to a few Large Minds - some of them pals - offering them a chance to lay some politically redolent thoughts on you.

== Two Successful Capitalists Decry The Hijacking of Capitalism ==

Let’s hear from two fellows who are unabashed capitalists and acolytes of Adam Smith... just like Warren Buffett and Bill Gates (and me!)... starting with one of the world’s top/respected pundits on technology industry, Mark Anderson, CEO of the Strategic News Service:

“For me, there is no more poignant example of the Bush 9.11 era, and the need to get beyond it now. Like two slides, I picture, first: an army of soldiers surrounding bin Laden in the mountains of Tora Bora, and then being ordered by Team Bush to wait until the locals can get there and participate, at which point the enemy has escaped.

 “I compare that slide to the story of this year: after a year in secret investigation and preparation, Team Obama finds a likely target compound in Pakistan, orders in Seal Team Six via stealth choppers, uses overwhelming force, and shoots to kill. DNA samples are taken to confirm ID, and the body is dumped ignominiously in the ocean, with no propaganda pics for the enemy, and no burial process or site to rally round.” What a difference.  And yet, which man is called a “wimp”?”

(I will soon put up an essay appraising the different ways that democrats and republicans use military might and wage war.  You’ll be astonished by how stark it is, like night and day. Almost like two different species.)

Another guest voice is venture capitalist Nick Hanauer, a solid member of the 1%, explains the problem of wealth disparity:

"There can never be enough superrich Americans to power a great economy. The annual earnings of people like me are hundreds, if not thousands, of times greater than those of the average American, but we don’t buy hundreds or thousands of times more stuff. My family owns three cars, not 3,000. I buy a few pairs of pants and a few shirts a year, just like most American men. ....I can’t buy enough of anything to make up for the fact that millions of unemployed and underemployed Americans can’t buy any new clothes or enjoy any meals out. Or to make up for the decreasing consumption of the tens of millions of middle-class families that are barely squeaking by, buried by spiraling costs and trapped by stagnant or declining wages. ... Rich businesspeople like me don’t create jobs. Middle-class consumers do, and when they thrive, U.S. businesses grow and profit. That’s why taxing the rich to pay for investments that benefit all is a great deal for both the middle class and the rich."

Now, this one-percenter is a hero.  I like him and agree with what he says.  But still, just among us chickens, the point he's trying to make is a bit more complicated than it appears.  Supply Siders do not expect 1%ers to help the economy by buying stuff (which is high velocity stimulation), but rather by investing in new “supply” systems like plants and equipment and factories and inventions.

The irony?  This is exactly what Hanauer and other venture capitalists are doing!  Indeed, I believe that what they do - (starting new companies that create new goods and services) - should be rewarded with very low capital gains taxes.  It is risky and does a lot of good. And does that make me a supply-sider?

The problem is that the Supply Side cult as a whole is wedged. It envisions ALL one-percenters to be risk-taking primary investors in new enterprises and new employment and new productivity, like Hanauer. Instead most are passive recipients of dividends and capital gains from established stocks, and beneficiaries of immense tax-breaks. They do not use increased income to create new productive enterprises, or jobs. They use it to get richer. Period.

This is catastrophic during a depression, when you want money to be high velocity, not clutched tight or sitting in a vast scrooge portfolio, but passed from dockworker to barber to dentist to grocery chain to janitor to gas station. Supply siders tout the he lowest-velocity use of money, rewarding the least economically useful activity, which has never ever ever done what the supply siders claim it would do.

== Why Culture War? ==

Yes, Phase Three of the American Civil War has been foisted on us by powerful, cynical men for their own political and economic gain.  But there have to be deeper things going on.  Psychological drives that those men cleverly exploit.

Our next guest, researcher and science fiction author Dr. Charles Gannon, has offered his own diagnosis of Culture War and why so many millions of our neighbors nod along with Glenn Beck, marching willingly to enlist in the Great Big War on Science... and on teachers, doctors, journalists, civil servants, and so on, biliously hating every American knowledge profession.

(Go ahead and ask your crazy uncle to name ONE major center of American intellect and knowledge that isn’t under attack by Fox and co. Make it a wager!)

Chuck Gannon suggests that in this modern, dizzying age, people respond to that most primal of all fears: fundamental loss of control.

"In short, people are realizing more and more that they know less and less about almost everything in their lives. How many people understand what is going on with the euro and how that's part of a much bigger picture? How many understand ANYthing about how their smartphone works--not what it does, but how it WORKS?  What are the ethics of cloning? Of copyright? Of no child left behind versus the death of rigor and excellence?

"Head in hand, they feel the grey matter between their hands threatening to explode. And they want relief. And  they have their eureka moment. "I know! I will adopt a stance! And so what if I can't figure out my own stance? I can BORROW one! 

"I will shop amongst the bazaar (bizarre) of demagogues and choose the one that says the things I like best. And the details--well, they're only details. Someone else will think about those--and besides, I'm fed up with details. (Secretly, where they can't even hear it: "all those details I don't understand make me feel stupid....")

"I suppose, at some level, it has ever been thus. However, I think the Tofflerian Waves and Culture Shocks geometrically amplify the discomfort. The distance between the haves and have nots is growing, yes--but I think the separation between the knows and know-nots is growing just as fast. It is not that they ARE stupid, but they feel that way. 

"And in a culture which panders to couch-potato passive consumption of media and goods, dumbs down the critical reasoning component of schools (and life), and in which an integrated view of "reality" moves further and further beyond the reach of even the most cognitively proactive folks, they hardly have the role-models or encouragement, or preparation to FIGHT through the tides of uncertainty in their lives and set sail upon the high seas of perpetual indefinitude that is the modern world."

Worth pondering.  Thoughts anyone?

== Call the GolgaFrincham B-Ark! ==

Our next guest, my cousin Jonathan Baskin, has some pretty cool insights into the pathetic world of Public Relations spin-doctoring.

“The public relations industry's trade association is running a campaign to come up with a new definition for PR. I can see the problem, since social media technologies have democratized the tweaking, spinning, and obfuscating of the truth that used to be the exclusive purview of PR professionals. In an age when anyone can be an expert on anything, every opinion is as valid as the next and no fact need go unchallenged, contradicted, or ignored. The mediascape has become a truth free zone. You’d think the PR people would have died and gone to heaven, but there’s no money to be made when nobody needs an intermediary to peddle access through those Pearly Gates.

"We’re all PR people now.”

== Good News? ==

In 2010 there were 34.3 births among every thousand girls between the ages of 15 and 19. That’s down 9 percent from 2009. And it’s the lowest number in nearly seven decades of reporting. The figure comes from a new report from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention called Births: Preliminary Data for 2010. [Brady E. Hamilton, Joyce A. Martin and Stephanie J. Ventura] And it’s filled with interesting stats. For one, teen births have hit that record low. And that statistic includes more good news – birth rates are at record lows for all ethnic and racial groups, and even for younger teenagers.

The number of births to unmarried moms also declined. And pre-term births declined. The trend towards lower numbers is general - the birth rate fell overall by 3 percent. It’s also down for women in their twenties and thirties, according to a recent article in Scientific American.

So...let's see. In addition to all this good news... crime has plummeted. So has illegal immigration. (See below for details.)

The Soviets are gone and the terrifying muslim world is democratizing. Osama's dead.

Federal taxes consume less of the national income than at any time since 1950.

Tax rates are the lowest in 80 years.

So why are these the areas people scream about?  Instead of all the ways things have genuinely gone worse? Oops.  The long list of ways things went worse during the first part of this century.

== A Prediction I wish Never Came True.... Has ==

Shock! As retreat of Arctic sea ice releases deadly greenhouse gas.  There are truly vast amounts of hydrated methane ices on the ocean floors.  As temperatures rise, these will be released. And methane is far more powerful a greenhouse gas that CO2. Predicted in my novel EARTH.

== And finally... some political potpourri ==

* Said it before and I will keep saying it: I want a second “clock” set up next to the National Debt Clock, showing what our debt would have been by now, if the US government had been allowed to collect royalties, like a business, on its own inventions. Like the Internet, communications satellites, weather satellites, pharmaceuticals, microchips, weather forecasting, aeronautics and jet engines, and so on.... All were given to businesses and the world for free!

And that’s not a subsidy? Not socialism? Or better -- is it proof of the value of a mixed social contract, in which vigorous entrepreneuialism and competitive creativity have been fostered by a generally benign and responsive government? Do you doubt that the Alternative Debt Clock would be in the black and running backward?

If nothing else, it would graphically repudiate those now proclaiming that neither science nor government have any value.

* It's 1999. America rides high, making so much $$ off innovation we use WalMart to uplift a world middle class. Our Pax is unchallenged. A rich, scientific people. What mistakes would an enemy lure us into making, to change all that? Repeat Vietnam? Repeat our Civil War? Wreck our science and expert classes? How about all three? Read The True Cost of 9/11, by Joseph E. Stiglitz.

* See a vastly detailed and deeply disturbing article in Bloomberg about the Koch brothers -- getting richer with secret Iran sales. Seriously, read at least the first ten paragraphs or so.

* Think Adam Smith would have approved? Goldman-Sachs manipulates the world's aluminum supply AND makes money renting the storage space.

* Evidence for influence of the Saudi Royal House in American affairs has piled high, such as the way President George W. Bush openly spoke of having been “partly raised by” Prince Bandar bin Sultan and walks with him holding hands - a friendliness that showed whenAmericans were forbidden to fly for two days after 9/11, but every well-connected Saudi was rushed out of the U.S. and away from the reach of FBI interviewers, on luxury charters at taxpayer expense.

Lately, we’ve seen how Rupert Murdoch’s top partner at News Corp. and Fox is Prince Al-Waleed bin Talal, whose direct sway at Fox is not related in a recent article by Accuracy in Media.  But connect the dots.  The same media empire that is drumming up Culture War and spite toward all American scientific or intellectual castes... and the same one that pushed for the US to get mired in a decade of draining land wars in Asia. Hm.

* Wow, this was more interesting than I expected it to be. "On Debt, Democracy, and all that..." by Michael Hudson
 * “Mitt Romney and Newt Gingrich have promised to complete a nearly 1,950-mile fence to secure the U.S. border. Michele Bachmann wants a double fence. Ron Paul pledges to secure the nation's southern border by any means necessary, and Rick Perry says he can secure it without a fence — and do so within a year of taking office as president.”

Meanwhile, the actual rate of illegal immigration is plummeting.   Many sources, including the Pew Hispanic Center, agree that the number of illegal immigrants in the United States peaked at 12 million in 2007, but then dropped by almost 1 million through 2009, and has largely held steady since then at about 11.1 million. Border Patrol apprehensions of illegal immigrants have also fallen sharply. In fiscal year 2011, which ended Sept. 30, the Border Patrol captured 327,577 illegal immigrants on the southwestern border — the lowest total in four decades.

* President Obama recently gave a speech in Osawatomie, Kansas, the same place where, back in 1910, Theodore Roosevelt said: "We grudge no man a fortune in civil life if it is honorably obtained and well-used," Roosevelt said, but added: "We should permit it to be gained only so long as the gaining represents benefit to the community."

Describing what he called a "new Nationalism," Roosevelt said it "regards the executive power as the steward of public welfare. ...It demands of the judiciary that it shall be interested primarily in human welfare rather than in property, just as it demands that the representative body shall represent all the people rather than any one class or section of the people."

* And finally, from Scientific American: “The Horn of Africa is in the midst of its worst drought in 60 years: Crop failures have left up to 10 million at risk of famine; social order has broken down in Somalia, with thousands of refugees streaming into Kenya; British Aid alone is feeding 2.4 million people across the region. That's a taste of what's to come, say scientists mapping the impact of a warming planet on agriculture and civilization.”

Skynet and the "Flash" Computer-Trading Monster!

== Why a Transaction Fee Might Save Us From The Terminator! ==

Here’s a vital issue under discussion (at last) on both sides of the Atlantic.  Governments, both rich and poor, urgently need two things: a way to calm speculation in the financial markets and also new ways to raise revenue. In late September 2011, the European Commission proposed a tax or fee on financial transactions. This appears to be part of the newly announced European Union plan, with Britain the sole dissenter.

"A levy of just 0.1 percent -- or even just 0.05 percent -- levied on each stock, bond, derivative or currency transaction would be aimed at financial institutions’ casino-style trading, which helped precipitate the economic crisis. Because these markets are so vast, the fee could raise hundreds of billions of dollars a year - from the sector of the economy that made towering profits while being directly responsible for our present depression, " writes Philippe Doust-Blazey in the New York Times.

Read the article.  But note that it does not mention the top reason for such a tax!  That it might benefit real human investors by slowing finance and equity trading back down to the speed of human thought.

Would that necessarily be a good thing? The concocted rationalization you will hear, in opposition to this proposal, is called “market efficiency.” According to what’s become a bona fide cult, any process or innovation that allows ever-smaller increments of trade to happen ever-faster is “efficiency,” and that will automatically lead to better allocation of society’s capital, and thus a skyrocketing economy.

This is wrong in many ways, starting with the pure fact that the flourishing of fast-cybernetic trading has directly correlated with the steepest decline in the health of capital markets in a century. Indeed, the increase in market volatility that we have seen lately, with sudden spikes in apparently random directions, can be generally attributed to this trend.**

== The Core Advantage of Having a Seat ==

Then there is the small matter of "seating." Historically, stock markets (and bourses for commodities and credit instruments) began with some fellows gathering at an inn or under a tree to regularly sell or trade share certificates to each other, or on behalf of other folks. When this became big business and moved into dedicated buildings, these Members held "seats" and practiced the standard methods of guilds everywhere, limiting who could come to the table and buy or sell. All outsiders had to hire seated members to trade for them, while paying commission.  Collusive club practices that have been banned (as recommended by Adam Smith) in most other parts of the economy!

Yes, a little market competition arrived recently, as E-Trade and other online member-brokers slashed commission prices for retail folks like you and me. New electronic methods made that possible. But also, the sheer volume of retail trading increased greatly, making up the difference.

What the seated members don't want us to notice is that flash-computerized trading gives them a new, incredible insider advantage over the rest of us. Even if you or I had a computer and program as good as the systems owned by Goldman-Sachs, we could never do what they do, because they are on the inside, making millions of flash trades for free!

You, on the other hand, would pay commission on every flash trade and - no matter how advanced or clever or wise your program - you would lose.  In other words the transaction tax already exists. It is levied by members of an elite cabal who use it to prevent anybody else from doing what they can do with new technology.

This is not "market efficiency." It is the kind of market warping influence manipulation that Adam Smith despised.

But absolute refutation of the "efficiency" argument comes from a different direction. From Physics, biology and thermodynamics.

== Computers and markets emulate life ==

Living creatures thrive by finding a steep gradient of usable energy. Green plants utilize the fact that incoming sunlight is thermodynamically clean and much less entropic than the surrounding environment.  (Greenhouse retention of Earth’s infrared radiation is thus intrinsically entropic.)

Some of this gradient is used by the plant to grow and reproduce, or else gets stored away, while some is lost as transaction cost.
Animals in turn consume plants for that stored useful energy, investing the time and effort to bite and chew and digest in order to benefit from some of the remaining gradient. Predators then pounce and bite and digest in the next stage. There are always losses with each transaction, hence the number of predators who can be supported at each scale gets smaller and smaller.

Along the way, each plant, herbivore and carnivore has parasites, intestinal worms and bacteria, etc., that grab some of that stored energy along the way. If they grab too much, the animal can’t get a steep enough or plentiful enough energy gradient and it dies.

Can you see it yet?  Beyond a certain level, increasing the total number of transactions does not make living systems more efficient.  It flattens all energy gradients and makes life unhealthy... even dead.

Oh, I can hear the objections! "Biology has no relevance to economics and finance."  Well, we could argue about that endlessly, but it doesn't matter. Because entropy - indeed, all of the things I described above, like energy gradients - are vital factors in modern information theory. And information theory is the exact basis that fast-traders claim to have underlying everything they do.

== Returning to capitalism ==

Yes, the existence of a stock market does create a habitat-ecology for living companies to compete, to form alliances, to prey on each other, to seek out the capital they need in order to grow.  Stock markets are vastly over-rated in the latter category, since the companies themselves benefit very little from wild swings in share price, except when offering NEW shares. (There should be substantial difference in the capital gains tax for new shares than for gains in the simple trading of old shares, an activity that only helps capitalism at very low efficiency.)

Still, you get synergies.  When a human investor looks at a company’s new product and bets “this new gizmo or service is gonna go big!” and orders 1000 shares on E-Trade, at low commission, then there’s a good chance that capital will flow to a place that can benefit and utilize it, all motivated by the hope of a nice profit “meal.”  Buyers always believe that the "true" value of the share is higher than the seller thinks, and yes, one of them will be proved wrong. That is the darwinistic aspect of equities markets. And under certain conditions - when all the players are getting fair access to all the information that they need and nobody's doing insider deals - it is good.

Defenders of computerized flash programs that dive in and pounce on any detected market trend, making millions of automatic trades, detecting or anticipating the decisions of human traders... these folks tout that they provide a service -  “efficiency.” But which efficiency?  For whom?

(Indeed, a whole new transatlantic fiber cable is being laid, just to enable a few brokerage firms to gain a couple milliseconds advantage; they’ll make billions. Do you see how that helps our market economy? I can’t.)

Here is the core article of faith among those pushing flash trading, as expressed to me in a note from a senior Wall Street partner . "There is a gap between the perceived value of the stock as desired by the buyer and perceived by the seller. That means the true and correct value isn't being accurately pegged. By jumping in between buyer and seller, we help eliminate this gap, causing the inefficient disparity to go away, helping the market settle on the true price."

Yee-god. Did you grasp that? He admits that he makes his living by leaping between buyer and seller, snapping up the value gradient that motivated the buyer to make an offer in the first place. And he manages to rationalize that he is doing a gooood thing. Good for buyer and seller. Good for markets. Good for capitalism. Good for himself.  Well... one  of the above.

Some have likened the ruthless voracity of these trading systems to the "tragedy of the commons," a very important concept you should be familiar with. Others suspiciously see the blizzard of computer-trading as a way to create a vast fog, behind which a few thousand oligarch golf-buddies can hide insider deals. Both views have some merit. But there is another that goes deeper to the heart-essence of the matter.

Want the exact parallel in nature? It is those gut parasites or e-coli or salmonella, or Typhus, who nibble away the gradient of potential profit that the human trader perceives, between the current asking price and what he or she feels the stock may soon be worth.  It is the core logic of parasitism. If you ever read Douglas Adams's The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, these are the perfect passengers aboard the Golgafrincham B-Ark.

We need a small Transaction Fee not only because it will bring in revenue from the sector of the economy that made huge bonuses while wrecking our economy, restoring an emphasis on those providing new, competitively innovative goods and services.

The bigger reason is that human investors won’t care about - or even be aware of - a 0.1% trade fee.

But those computerized parasitical systems will howl in agony!  Thus, it will give you  a better chance to gain from your own savvy and insight, when you log into your E-Trade account.

Read: A Transaction Fee Might Save Capital Markets…and Protect Us From the Terminator!

== The Past and the Future ==

This kind of tax or fee is well-precedented.  Enacted to help pay for the first world war, the  "Securities Turnover Excise Tax" or STET worked just fine in the United States from 1914 to 1966. From 1960 to 1966, stocks were taxed at the rate of 0.1 percent at issuance and 0.04 percent on transfer. Bonds were taxed at the rate of 0.11 percent at issuance and 0.05 percent at transfer.

Indeed, there is a way that conservatives might find a way to rationalize a "fee" instead of a "tax," if all of the funds generated went first into paying the expenses of the SEC, the various insurance programs and other regulatory apparatus that they rely upon for the smooth functioning of their markets. (Thus removing these entities from the burdens shouldered by the public treasury.) Insurance funds could be greatly expanded to provide a cushion vs the next market contortion.  Especially, funds could be spent on balancing and fairness on the international scene.

In fact, there are some even in the Belly of the Beast who have come around to supporting a return to this sensible measure.  For example, David Harding, CEO of Winton Capital, $26B hedge fund, the world's largest quant-based fund, was  quoted in the Financial Times: "I would be in favor of a low [financial transaction tax] if part of it was used to finance more supra-national regulation of markets."

Moreover, it is already the norm in most advanced countries. The EU is apparently instituting a STET across the board in the Eurozone and Britain, whose "city" bankers rule the roost, nevertheless has a STET. For comparison, the UK's STET is  about .25 percent, and Taiwan just dropped theirs from .60 to .30 percent.

Nobel Prize winning economist Paul Krugman makes the case for reinstating the STET in more conventional terms than I do here:  "But wouldn’t such a tax hurt economic growth? As I said, the evidence suggests not — if anything, it suggests that to the extent that taxing financial transactions reduces the volume of wheeling and dealing, that would be a good thing.
 
"And it’s instructive, too, to note that some countries already have financial transactions taxes — and that among those who do are Hong Kong and Singapore. If some conservative starts claiming that such taxes are an unwarranted government intrusion, you might want to ask him why such taxes are imposed by the two countries that score highest on the Heritage Foundation’s Index of Economic Freedom."

Sen. Tom Harkin (D-Iowa) and Rep. Peter DeFazio (D-Ore.) recently introduced The Wall Street Trading and Speculators Tax Act that would impose a minuscule tax of 0.03 percent on financial transactions, meaning that longterm investors would barely notice it. Even so, it could raise more than $350 billion to reduce the budget deficit over the next nine years, according to an analysis by the Joint Tax Committee, a nonpartisan congressional scorekeeping panel.

== The Real Reason to Worry ==

So, what does all of this have to do with The Terminator? (Okay, I saved the sci fi perspective till last. But it has a terrifying kind of plausibility.)

You'll recall the by-now cliched premise of that film - it supposes that (sometime in the future) the U.S. military would develop a super computer/program/system called "Skynet" that gradually becomes self-aware through a process that theoreticians call "emergence from complexity." This is actually taken very seriously by deep thinkers about artificial Intelligence. Indeed, our first encounter with AI may come exactly that way... by surprise.

Only... supposing that this malevolent AI comes from a military source? That's pure Hollywood.  Such systems are built with high priority to systematic reporting, accountability, multiple redundancies, fail-safes and obedience to chain of command.  No, there are other complex computer systems that seem far more likely to suddenly become self-aware in powerfully dangerous ways.

Take those high-speed trading systems we've been discussing. They are growing incredibly sophisticated, at a very rapid rate, absorbing and incorporating models of human psychology, with one goal in mind. To appraise and predict behavior patterns in order for the program to track and to pounce on opportunities for predatory trading.  Competitive ferocity is the only criterion for success. Indeed, if you were to even propose inserting balancing factors like ethics or morality or accountability into such a project, you'd at-minimum be laughed down and probably fired.

A bizarre-sci-fi notion?  MIT researcher Alexander Wissner-Gross suggested that the first true AI could emerge on a planetary scale from the developing system of interlocked exchanges for high-frequency financial trading, which could be seen as a developing global “brain” already operating at relativistic speeds.

Moreover, these systems are receiving billions in funding (including their own new transatlantic fiber cable) entirely in secret.  There are no public agencies involved. No third party observers. No Congressional oversight committees.  No supervision whatsoever. Laboratories developing new genetic strains of wheat are under closer accountability than cryptic Wall Street think tanks that may unleash the first fully autonomous AI... programmed deliberately to have only the behavior patterns, goals, attitudes and morality of parasites.

And so we see the ultimate reason to demand the Transaction Fee. At a low level - say 0.1% - it would never bother a private citizen who is optimizing his portfolio on E-Trade, especially if each trader gets a hundred or so "freebies" that come exempt from the tax. But it would remove the  incentives that Wall Street "geniuses" now feel compelled by, to invest in these monstrous, hyper-fast trading programs that swamp the market in a blizzard of uncountable mosquito bites.

The fee (which could also help balance our budget) can be tuned to give that human a fighting chance and to discourage the very worst kind of artificial intelligence from leaping upon our necks out of the dark.

==Side Note: Gingrich and Asimov==

Both Republican former House Speaker Newt Gingrich and Nobel prize  winning Keynsian economist Paul Krugman have a trait in common.  They grew up fervent science fiction fans, especially transfixed by the future-historical speculations of Isaac Asimov.  Gingrich wrote about this influence that helped to shape his life.

“While Toynbee was impressing me with the history of civilizations, Isaac Asimov was shaping my view of the future in equally profound ways….For a high school student who loved history, Asimov’s most exhilarating invention was the ‘psychohistorian’ Hari Seldon.  The term does not refer to Freudian analysis but to a kind of probabilistic forecasting of the future of whole civilizations.  The premise was that, while you cannot predict individual behavior, you can develop a pretty accurate sense of mass behavior.  Pollsters and advertisers now make a good living off the same theory.”

Here’s an interesting essay comparing Gingrich’s obsession with Isaac’s Asimov’s compelling sci fi memes. Writes Ray Smock: "Edward Gibbon saw the decline of Rome, Hari Seldon saw the decline of the galactic empire, and Newt Gingrich saw the decline of America." Further, Newt was attracted to the idea of one man shaping the destiny of an entire civilization. Smock adds, "History and fiction seem more exciting when there is decline.  This gives heroes, visionaries, demagogues, and politicians something to fix."

As the similarly obsessed author of Foundation’s Triumph, who tied many of Isaac's loose ends, I'd have a thing or two to say to Newt! Could be an interesting intellectual tussle.

Still, this aspect to his background speaks well for him. Ten points.  Out of....

====== Notes on HFT ======

* In fairness, here is a report written by a finance industry think tank attempting to rebut the notion of transaction tax.  It appears to make precisely the "efficiency" arguments I predicted.  It appears, in any event, that the experiment will be run, if the new EU arrangements do include (as I've heard) a transaction fee.  One reason that the British government (largely swayed by the "City" banks and trading firms) opted out. Go ahead and hear the other side out.  Only remember, it all boils down to "supply side" mysticism that has never, ever seen any of its large scale predictions come true.    

**For example, when asked to appraise why markets experience a sudden crash on May 6, 2011, without any  apparent reason, Wall Street analyst Peter Cohan explained why such things are happening more often, and in wilder swings.

"... 70 percent of the volume of trading on the stock exchanges these days is done by something called flash traders, and that's basically computers that buy and sell stocks and hold them for about 11 seconds on average. So all of the discussions that we have the economy, politics, regulations, company earnings -- all that stuff -- there's just no way that a computer holding and selling a stock in 11 seconds is going to be able to do all of that analysis. So it's really all out the window. And there's really no clear-cut explanation for why stocks move up and down every day."

*** One expert wrote in, supporting the STET  with a series of sample portfolio experiments, showing that any human trader will see almost no inconvenience of "friction" but that flash predatory programs would lose their advantage: "Now compare this to the cost of the transaction taxes. In my own case, my most frequently traded portfolio is once a month. A .05% tax would amount to a 1.0005^12 or ~ .6% drag on my CAGR. For my quarterly and annual portfolios, the numbers are ~.2% and .05% respectively. I would point out that this is small compared to the reduction in drag that came from decimalization that happened after I started running this portfolio. 

"The useful thing is that this drag increases exponentially with trading frequency. Trade 1000 times and the drag is ~64%, 10,000 times and it is ~ 14,800%, a million times and my calculator overflowed. This means that even if you deem .6% too onerous for the monthly trader, you could go to .005% and the 64% bite occurs at the 10,000 trade level and 14,800% at 100,000 trades and now you can calculate that a million trades will give you a drag of ~5*10^23% all while costing me 0.06% a year on my monthly.
 

"You could even feed this money into the SIPC so that this provides additional counterpart protection as compensation for the minor sums being charged to the low frequency trader. I would argue that any putative efficiency gain from high-frequency fully automated trading is more than outweighed by the systemic risks of putting the financial system largely in the care of systems whose behavior cannot be comprehensively understood, much less predicted. That this can be limited while imposing essentially zero net cost on retail investors strongly argues for doing so."

Taking on Ambitious Projects

== Ambitious Projects: Compatible? Or Conflicting? ==

Our silly, insipid “culture war” crams people along an absurd “left-right axis” while ignoring the real fault line... It’s the chasm between those working for an ambitiously better future and those dragging us down into bitter nostalgia, yearning for a golden past that never was.  The latter dwell on both ends of the political axis. (Though the infestation is far worse on one side.)

Here are several projects that share the former goal - an eagerness to transform tomorrow! Can we look past the surface politics to see a way forward for some of them?

--The Entrepreneur Access to Capital Act. If passed, this act would allow entrepreneurs to crowdfund. That means they could raise money over the Internet through relatively small donations from people they don't know. (This model has been pioneered - for the arts - by Kickstarter, but only for "donations" not for the crowd-sourced buying of actual investment shares.) The bill removes barriers to doing business – but this time for the little guy.  

NewYorkerJuly12, 2004

--The Prevail Project is still kind of amorphous - one of many efforts to get people thinking about problem-solving and solution-generating in general, rather than obsessing over which tool to use - (e.g. market vs state). “In the Prevail Scenario, what really matters – as always – is not how many transistors we get to talk to each other, but how many ornery, imaginative, unpredictable human beings we can bring together to arrive at surprising ways to co-evolve with our challenges. Because only in this bottom-up way will humans really control their destinies, rather than have them controlled by our creations.” 

The site is worth visiting, if for no other reason, than to read the quotation from William Faulkner’s Nobel speech: "I believe that man will not merely endure: he will prevail...."

--Not incompatible! Recall the “seasteading” proposals I discussed here, a couple of months back? Pointing out many aspects that no other pundits seem to have mentioned - a few of them critical, but mostly fascinating and several quite supportive! (I portray seasteading in my next novel.)

Well, things appear to be picking up. “Blueseed” is creating a high-tech visa-free entrepreneurship and technology incubator on an ocean vessel in international waters. “Our facilities will be a short ferry ride away from Silicon Valley so that great ideas and talent from around the world can live, work, and play while having convenient access to the San Francisco Bay Area.”

Of course, this is not quite creating a new national sovereignty. A vessel at sea is still subject to many external rules. It will be within the US 200 mile economic and environmental zone, but outside the 12 mile visa/passport/commercial law reach of the US or California.  Those entities could make things hard, though, if Blueseed isn’t careful.  Blueseed will also be answerable to Panama or Liberia or wherever they register their ship.  This might help provoke a long-overdue fresh look at those flags of convenience.

In any event, I wish them luck!  It sounds like a fun experiment.  It might even make some money while stimulating productive activity. (Still I wonder. Won’t most visitors still have to transit through Bay Area airports? Who would use s ship to visit them, avoiding US customs? A pretty long voyage... to accomplish what?  Hey, just askin’.)

--Thinking Big: io9 offers a list of Ten mega construction projects that could save the environment -- and the economy.

These large-scale concepts (not all practical!!) include
- The 'Lunar Ring' of solar panels placed on the moon
- A space elevator to lift cargo into orbit
- The world's first carbon-neutral city
- Geothermal power plants that can extract lithium, zinc and manganese
- One far-out idea: coral-like chemically-engineered structures that would grow, self-repair and respond to the environment.

--Darpa’s Sci-Fi Ambitions:

A few of Darpa's long-range projects include
- Cognitive Computing ( a computer chip that mimics a brain)
- The 100-Year Starship Study
- Synthetic blood
- A Battery-powered human exoskeleton
- Insect cyborgs
- A flying submarine
- Mind-controlled prosthetic limbs.

Some of these grand-scale projects have the potential to revolutionize our world. ...

As does great science fiction! See my list of bold, future-oriented fiction -- which challenges us to cast our eyes forward toward ambitious solutions.

Add to that Joe Haldeman’s new novel  EARTHBOUND is the final volume in the trilogy that started with MARSBOUND, followed by STARBOUND. Visit Joe's website to learn more about this imaginative series.

We need an ambitious, future-oriented, scientific, problem-solving civilization filled with both creative competition and lots of heart. Believers in the positive sum game know we can have all of the above.  We had better! And fie on those zero-summers who claim we have to choose!

== Post-Modernist Hilarity ==

Finally, lest anyone imagine that I think imbecilic anti-science fanaticism exists only on the radical right, let's go back two decades and dig this hilariously apropos 1st paragraph of a book review -- by the philosopher Matthew Cartmill -- of Donna Haraway's book, Primate Visions: Gender, Race and Nature in the World of Modern Science.

This review appeared in the International Journal of Primatology (Vol. 12, No. 1, 1991):

”This is a book that contradicts itself a hundred times; but that is not a criticism of it, because its author thinks contradictions are a sign of intellectual ferment and vitality. This is a book that systematically distorts and selects historical evidence; but that is not a criticism, because its author thinks that all interpretations are biased, and she regards it as her duty to pick and choose her facts to favor her own brand of politics. This is a book full of vaporous, French-intellectual prose that makes Teilhard de Chardin sound like Ernest Hemingway by comparison; but that is not a criticism, because the author likes that sort of prose and has taken lessons in how to write it, and she thinks that plain, homely speech is part of a conspiracy to oppress the poor. This is a book that clatters around in a dark closet of irrelevancies for 450 pages before it bumps accidentally into its index and stops; but that is not a criticism, either, because its author finds it gratifying and refreshing to bang unrelated facts together as a rebuke to stuffy minds. This book infuriated me; but that is not a defect in it, because it is supposed to infuriate people like me, and the author would have been happier still if I had blown out an artery. In short, this book is flawless, because all its deficiencies are deliberate products of art. Given its assumptions, there is nothing here to criticize. The only course open to a reviewer who dislikes this book as much as I do is to question its author's fundamental assumptions-which are big-ticket items involving the nature and relationships of language, knowledge, and science.”

Is Ignorance Bliss? Or is it Red?

Now for a glimpse at three disturbing scientific studies that have bearing on America’s silly, fratricidal, lobotomizing and treasonous “culture war.”

== Ignorance is Blissful Certainty? ==

The less people know about important complex issues such as the economy, energy consumption and the environment, the more they want to avoid becoming well-informed, according to new research published by the American Psychological Association.

And the more urgent the issue, the more people want to remain unaware, according to a paper published online in APA's Journal of Personality and Social Psychology: Ignorance is bliss when nit comes to challenging social issues.

"These studies were designed to help understand the so-called 'ignorance is bliss' approach to social issues," said author Steven Shepherd, a graduate student with the University of Waterloo in Ontario. "The findings can assist educators in addressing significant barriers to getting people involved and engaged in social issues."'

Sigh... Sometimes I feel we're in Stapledon's Last and First Men. Barely comprehending the range of curses, embedded in human nature that wage war against enlightenment.

Next: Read this Rolling Stone article: "How Ignorance, Greed and Ideology Are Warping Science and Hurting Democracy" by Julian Brooks.  It reviews a book we all should buy and then quote extensively to our friends."

As science writer Shawn Lawrence Otto points out, in his tough-minded Fool Me Twice: Fighting the Assault on Science in America, too many Americans are either plain ignorant of science or actively hostile to it, or both. The very thing responsible for half of U.S. economic growth in our lifetimes, putting food on their very tables. And that's as true of political leaders and journalists as it is of ordinary citizens.

After those two downers, Let's Talk About the Future We Want - a UN-related effort to "launch a global conversation to learn what people want their communities to be like in 2030. “We want everyone -- all ages, cultures, religions, genders and countries - in the conversation. If we finally confront head-on the economic, social and environmental challenges we face, and if we get busy building more just, peaceful, and sustainable communities, what would ours look like?"

It's aimed at the UN's Rio+20 international conference next June on sustainable development. Seems like people reading Contrary Brin would have thoughts to contribute to this effort.

== TEDx Brin? ==

TED style public talks are short but punchy and usually fizzing with possibilities! Watch them all!  Here are two of my 2011 performances -- idea-packed splashes in the deep end of the pool.

"The World of 2061 Re-inventing Civilization"  - from the recent TEDx Brussels conference, and

"Making Gods: Will That Bother Anyone?" a fun romp showing how scripture can - and must -be interpreted in science-friendly ways!  Amaze your friends, especially the believers! Performed for the great big Singularity Summit in New York City.

Oh, any folks following the new TV series “Prophets of Science Fiction”? I seem to be on every week. But don’t let that keep you from tuning in to shows on Asimov and Dick and Clarke and Bradbury and Heinlein!

I’ve been content to leave up-top my big, controversial posting about Ayn Rand and her novel/film Atlas Shrugged,  in part because the ferment was cool and fun.  And also because I am neck-deep in copy-editing my big new novel EXISTENCE. (Appearing in June!)

== Miscellania ==

Here’s a potpourri of science snippets and other cool stuff. Starting with…
 -- the poetry and Symphony of Science, as well as
 --  The Case for Mars.

Armed police drones? Jeez, let’s dig in our heels over this one. Surveillance is one thing. But anyone shot by a cop should at least get to see the badge, look a human in the eye, and get a chance to yell “I give up, copper!”

Breaking the Deep Space Barrier: A reusable, electrically propelled spacecraft would open up vast realms of deep space to human exploration.

Scientists have outlined which moons and planets are most likely to harbour extra-terrestrial life, via the Earth Similarity Index and Planet Habitability Index. (A big topic in Existence!)

Dolphin whistles help solve mysteries of cosmos, from black holes to supernovae. A dolphin’s variable frequency sonar helps un-muddle signals reflecting off many objects (multipath interference). Scientists are using this same technique to better design neutron detectors.

How Star Trek imagined the iPad 23 years ago. In Star Trek: The Next Generation, crewmates had widespread use of smooth, flat, touch-based control panels throughout the Enterprise. These were known as , or Personal Access Display Devices.

Eeek!  It’s the 'Brinicle' ice finger of death! Filmed in Antarctica. You've now been warned: don’t cross Brin the Eskimo!

Some are hoping to pin down the last universal common ancestor (LUCA)—not the first life, but the most recent organism from which all life on earth descended.  3 billion years ago, did there live a single mega-organism, filling the planet's oceans before splitting off into three groups: single celled bacteria & archaea and complex eukaryotes? Eerily like Chris Moore's lovely, gonzo science novel FLUKE.

Frank Herbert, in an old interview, agreeing with some things I’ve said... before I ever said them! ;-)

Worth six minutes of your time: Six Thought Experiments humorously explained in a minute apiece by David Mitchell: Zeno’s Paradox, The Grandfather’s Paradox, The Chinese Room test of Strong Artificial Intelligence, Hilbert’s Infinite Hotel, The Twin Paradox, Schrodinger’s Cat.  Way fun!

Remember this from a year or so ago? A "time traveler" tries to disrupt the Large Hadron Collider?  "Countries do not exist where I am from. The discovery of the led to limitless power, the elimination of poverty and Kit-Kats for everyone. It is a communist chocolate hellhole and I'm here to stop it ever happening."  The story sounded lovel-quasiy-plausible (with the presumption that the fellow was mental) till the very last line, when it seems sure to be a "gotcha!" practical joke. If it were true with the last line? Brrrr!  Can someone report back to us that this was definitively (instead of 99% sure) a hoax story? A sunday-afternoon investigation for our proto-smart mob.

== Of practical Use to Parents and Teachers! ==

The curse of the gifted child? This study suggests that when students are praised for their intellect (You must be really smart!) rather than their effort (You must have worked very hard!), they come to believe that such abilities are innate, unchangeable. The ‘hard-working’ kids may be more likely to persist, believing if they try hard enough, they will succeed.

See? That's a piece of wisdom you can't cram onto the stupid left-right axis. It just is.

Atlas Shrugged: The Hidden Context of the Book and Film

Now and then we had a hope that if we lived and were good, God would permit us to be pirates. - Mark Twain

There was nothing else even remotely interesting in our queue -- so we rented ATLAS SHRUGGED.

Well, after all,  I often talk about Ayn Rand and her passionate followers, who have effectively taken over the U.S. Libertarian movement, influencing much of the rhetoric we hear from the American Right... (even though no libertarian policies have ever been actually enacted during Republican rule). I've published both scholarly papers and popular articles about Rand's fiction and philosophy.

So, I thought, why not give her acolytes one more shot at selling me on her biggest, most-central tale? An honest person does that. Whereupon, with a sigh, but opening my ears and mind, I slid the disk into the player....

== For the record ==

First a couple of honest disclaimers:  (1) It may seem that I am aiming most of my critical attention, lately, at "right-wing authors." (Recently, I dissected Frank Miller's travesty "300," showing how it tells outright historical lies in service of a deeply anti-American theme. ) But I do notice foibles of the left, as well.  For example, I promise soon to offer up that long-awaited piece about James Cameron's beautiful but misguided film, AVATAR.

(2) As one of the few sci fi authors who delivered a keynote at a political party convention - indeed it was the Libertarian Party - I may seem somewhat of a "heretic" to the Rand-followers who now dominate the LP. But no one can deny my ongoing campaign to get folks to read Adam Smith, the founding sage of both libertarianism and liberalism.

Like Smith, I believe in fair and open and vigorously creative competition - the greatest innovative force in the universe and the process that made us.  Encouraging vibrant, positive-sum rivalry - in markets, democracy, science, etc - is one reason to promote universal transparency (see The Transparent Society ), so that all participants may base their individual decisions on full knowledge. That positive aim - also preached by Friedrich Hayek - should be the goal of any sane libertarian movement... instead of fetishistically hating all government, all the time, which is like a poor workman blaming the tools. Anyway, a movement based on hopeful joy beats one anchored in rancorous scapegoating, any day.

(Adam Smith favored feeding and educating all children, for the pragmatic reason that this maximizes the number of skilled, adult competitors, a root motive of liberalism and a role for government that is wholly justifiable in libertarian terms.)

For my full, cantankerously different take on the plusses and minuses of contemporary libertarianism -- and other oversimplifying dogmas -- have a look at this essay: Models, Maps and Visions of Tomorrow.

Only now, with due diligence done, let's get back to ATLAS SHRUGGED: THE MOTION PICTURE.

== Rand's Books... and the Movie ==

Despite my low esteem of Ayn Rand's simplistic dogma, I do rate THE FOUNTAINHEAD as by far her best book. In its smaller and more personal scope, that novel offered a pretty effective (if melodramatic) portrayal of  uncompromising genius having to overcome the boneheaded doorkeepers of art and architecture -- two realms that are always beset by bullies and villainy.  In that tale, the hero's adversaries came across as multi-dimensional and even somewhat plausible, if also a bit cartoonish. Indeed, the 1950s Gary Cooper movie was pretty good, for a Rand story.

Alas, in contrast, ATLAS SHRUGGED takes on civilization as a whole -- all of its institutions and enlightenment processes, top to bottom -- calling every last one of them corrupt, devoid of hope, intelligence or honor. Moreover it proclaims that the vast majority of our fellow citizens are braying, silly sheep.

(Consider this irony; a movement propounding that all people can and should think for themselves also teaches its adherents to openly despise their neighbors as thinking beings. A party that proclaims fealty to market forces also holds that the number of deciders and allocators can and should be very small. In other words, you can have Hayek or Rand. Not both.)

But pause a moment. How does the book hold up, strictly from the perspective of writing and art? Well... I won't mince words. ATLAS SHRUGGED royally sucks as a novel, with cardboard characters, rivers of contrived coincidence and dialogue made of macaroni. (Can you dig a 70 page SPEECH?) Of course, none of those things matter if your taste runs to an endless smorgasbord of indignant resentment. (A scientifically-verified drug high!)  In which case the speechifying is mother's milk.

Heck, the left produces plenty of polemics just as turgidly tendentious. In fact, the previous paragraph pretty much described Margaret Atwood's The Handmaid's Tale.

Am I letting politics bias my judgment of Rand's literary qualities? The intellectual maven of conservatism, William F. Buckley, a founding light of modern libertarianism and also a noted novelist, called Atlas Shrugged "One thousand pages of ideological fabulism; I had to flog myself to read it."

Given such source material -- and universal boos from both critics and the viewing public -- was I surprised to find that the movie version of Atlas Shrugged bites, at the level of basic film 101 storytelling?  For example, it is only in the last five minutes that the director deigns to clarify a core villain. As for the "heroes"... well, their famously emotionless "I don't give a crap" mien may work for campus geeks. But not in cinema, where passion propels.

(A deeply ironic and smirk-worthy "oops" appeared on the cover of the DVD version, blurbing ATLAS SHRUGGED as a saga of "courage and self-sacrifice" -- which would be the ultimate Randian sin!)

== A High Point ==

One sequence of this film does stand out.  I'm a sucker for lyrical cinematography, especially when it involves beautiful scenery, or else a love-ode to fine technology.  And there's about ten minutes in ATLAS SHRUGGED when we get both, as the male and female leads ride their new super-train along shimmering rails made of miraculous metal, speeding across gorgeous Rockies and over a gasp-worthy bridge.

The emotional payoff -- two innovators triumphing over troglodyte naysayers by delivering an awesome product -- portrayed Rand's polemical point in its best conceivable light.  I am all for that aspect of the libertarian dream. Indeed, it is the core theme that makes THE FOUNTAINHEAD sympathetic and persuasive.  So, for ten minutes, we actually liked the characters and rooted for them.  Significantly, it is the portion when nobody speaks.

Alas, though. The film then resumed a level of simplistic lapel-grabbing that many of us recall from our Rand-obsessed college friends -- underachievers who kept grumbling from their sheltered, coddled lives, utterly convinced that they'd do much better in a world of dog-eat-dog.  (Using my sf'nal powers, I have checked-out all the nearby parallel worlds where that happened; in those realms, every Randian I know was quickly turned into a slave or dog food. Sorry fellows.)

Ah well. Let's  set aside the pathetic storytelling, crappy direction and limp drama to appraise the film on its own, intended merits. On what it tried to be. A work of polemical persuasion.

== The Core Polemical Purpose ==

ATLAS SHRUGGED is, after all, an indictment of modernist, enlightenment, Smithian-liberal civilization. To Rand, this "great experiment" has all been one big mistake, doomed to expire from its own internal contradictions.

I use that Marxian expression deliberately. For, in significant dialectical ways, Ayn Rand was deeply influenced by Karl Marx -- virtually an acolyte, in fact. She kept essentially intact Marx's scenario of bourgeois decadence, guild protection, capital formation, conspiratorial competition-suppression, class-narrowing business cycles and teleologically inevitable divergence between the worker and owner castes.*

The chief difference is that Rand - a Russian emigre - stops short at the penultimate phase of Karl's projection - the moment of pinnacle capitalist consolidation - freezes it and calls it good. Tearing out and throwing away all hints of the next and final stage prophesied by Marx.

That's it, actually. Rand, in a nutshell. You might grasp the stunning parallels at once... if anyone my age or younger had ever bothered to actually read and understand both Rand and Marx. Well enough to draw obvious conclusions. Alas, our grandparents were far, far better-read than we hyper-opinionated moderns. (See what happens - in an ingenious interpretation - when Rand and Marx recombine.)

Hence, Ayn Rand shows us society making one dismal choice after another -- an endless chain of socialist or bourgeois-oligarchic or meddlesome-statist outrages against individual initiative. Endearingly, Ayn Rand despised all three of those centers of villainy equally, portraying them uniting to pass laws that punish or seize companies who "compete too well."

Indeed, if I ever witnessed our nation enacting the kind of insane bills that are reported in this film (piled one-after-another, every five minutes), heck, I'd be looking for John Galt myself!

Yes, I'm enough of a libertarian to know that foolish things do happen! Witness Europe, mired in nanny-state entitlements, eight week vacations and a "right to retire" as young as 55.  Self-defeating regulations prevent companies from firing workers, with the consequence that they seldom hire new ones. As for the movie's heroine, Ayn Rand chose a railroad heiress for good reasons. The old Interstate Commerce Commission (dissolved by the democrats in the late 1970s, but still a horror when she wrote) was the classic exemplar of a government bureaucracy "captured" by lordly oligarchs and used as a tool to squelch competition.

In other words, the endless litany of "leveling" crimes against creative enterprise that roll across the page/screen in ATLAS SHRUGGED aren't entirely without real-world analogues. Her fictional betrayals of creative enterprise are based on a genuine complaint... that Randites regularly exaggerate more than 100-fold, alas, into caricatures and absurd over-generalizations.

To see this danger expressed far better - and more succinctly - than Rand ever managed, read the terrific Kurt Vonnegut story: Harrison Bergeron. Other expressions of legitimate libertarian worry can be seen in the fiction of Ray Bradbury and Robert Heinlein. They have a point.

Okay, the core concern is a valid one and somebody in society should keep warning us! Though ideally, someone with common sense and proportion, alas.

I mean, gee whiz. Ayn Rand railed against the ICC... and it was eliminated. Canceled, rubbed out, utterly erased - along with the grotesque Civil Aeronautics Board - by the very same democratic processes that she and her followers despised. Competition among railroads was restored and it was done by a mix of pressure from a savvy public and resolution by genuinely reform-minded politicians. If Ayn Rand were writing the book today, a railroad would not have been her chosen archetype.

I wonder: did anyone making the film ever ponder this? Did any Randians notice at all?

== A Remarkable Chain of Ironies ==

I guess I sound pretty harsh. Only now, let me do one of my famous contrary swerves and openly avow something that Ayn Rand gets right. Despite gross exaggeration, she pretty much nails the basic problem!

Almost every time the book or film depict some betrayal of human competitive ingenuity, it happens like this:

A conspiracy of "old money" oligarchs gathers in conniving secrecy, exerts undue political influence and misuses government power for their own, in-group self-aggrandizement. Except for a few, pathetic union stewards, the ruination of market forces is stage managed from the top. The squelching of entrepreneurial enterprise and the corruption of trade is always executed by villainous old-guard capitalists. Moguls who don't want any rivalry from rambunctious newcomers.

Now think about that. Socialists do come under derision from Rand, but mostly as ninnie, do-gooder tools of the scrooge-oligarchs!  In fact, this is where her followers get things right.  Anyone who considers the long, lamentable epic of human history will recognize this as the ancient pattern, pervasive across 99% of cultures -- with the most prevalent sub-version being feudalism.

What Randians never explain is how getting rid of constitutional-enlightenment government will prevent this ancient curse from recurring. (Were the oligarchs stymied in ancient China, Babylon or Rome, where liberal constitutions were absent?) Indeed, enlightenment governments are the only force that ever kept the feudal sickness partially in check. Exactly as prescribed by Adam Smith.

(Name another society that ever made more libertarians, hm?)

In other words, by her very own premise, the answer isn't for creative people to "go on strike." It is to fix the tool (government) by yanking it out of the hands of conspiratorial criminals who have improperly seized it.  You do that with transparency, with light (as Hayek prescribed). Not by blaming the tool and throwing it away.

== You Are Getting Very Sleeeeepy... ==

Oh, but more ironies abound! Here you have a polemic about individualism, that portrays one accomplished CEO after another "gone missing"... dropping out of sight after each one listens to a solitary pitchman from a utopian community, who croons "Come. Follow me and joiiiin usssss."

Um, let's see. When have we heard that before? Drop everything. All your past loyalties and the companies you've built. Stop fighting for your family or country. Listen to this incantation and follow our charismatic leader to the special society he has built, just for the exclusive elect, like you.

Good lord, does she have to make the hypnotism-cult thing quite so explicit? So very much like Jim Jones and David Koresh? Did you know that Rand-followers who recite her catechisms light up exactly the same parts of the brain as other true-believers pronouncing passages from the Bible or Koran or Hindu Sutras? And these are not the corners of cortex used by scientists while performing analytical or "objective" reasoning.

But you don't need any of that to conclude we're dealing with a cult. Just follow the recruitment process used by John Galt. Who surreptitiously sabotages successful companies in order to drive their owners into his arms! Who then deliberately vandalizes and cripples the nation's ability to feed itself or engage in commerce that he doesn't control, in order to wreck any possible competition with his elite enclave. Oh, criminy.

Yes, I'll admit that Ayn Rand at least portrays technology as good. That gives her points over the dismal Tea Partiers, or Fox, or the equally dismal (though less-numerous) science haters of a ditzy-fringe far left.  Alas though, she treats technology like something magical. Lone inventors weave a spell and suddenly there's a new metal or new motor. The vast intricacy of collaboration, development, supplier networks, and infrastructure is both a topic to Rand and an excuse for incantatory over-simplification.

But it is science that truly gets short shrift. Ayn Rand's lack of any reference to scientific research that might support or falsify her assertions about human nature should send alarm bells clanging. Her ignorance of Darwin or human biology, for example, is almost identical to Marx, but much less excusable, given when she lived.

Nowhere, either in Atlas Shrugged or subsequent libertarian cant, is there acknowledgment of the immense stimulative role of U.S. government financed R&D, especially in fields of pure science that would never have attracted investments from anyone looking to a "return horizon."  Indeed, I have long yearned for a second national debt clock to be set up, this one showing what the public debt would be now, if only the taxpayer had received normal levels of royalties from rockets, satellites, communications, fiber optics, computers, pharmaceuticals, and the internet. Well? Wouldn't that be fair and businesslike? Tellingly, while many scientists have a fiercely competitive libertarian streak, almost none who are in the top ranks ever hold any truck with Ayn Rand.

The analog to Rand is not the scientist Darwin, but the rhetorician Plato. Sure, she claims to prefer Aristotle. But in both verbal process and incantatory reasoning style, she is Plato's truest heir.

==Ayn Rand on Privacy==

All right, veering briefly aside from Atlas Shrugged, let's see what Rand says about privacy, a topic I happen to know a lot about:

"Civilization is the progress toward a society of privacy. The savage's whole existence is public, ruled by the laws of his tribe. Civilization is the process of setting man free from men." 

Of course, there is a level at which Rand is simply stating the obvious. That autonomy and long lives arose as our technology and civilized complexity improved. When food surpluses were meager, only a tiny aristocracy could be subsidized and unchained from the land. But a mixture of science and continental peace mixed with our ability to trade goods and services till even science fiction authors can now pretend we are producers of a primary product, worthy of being fed by farmers.

As for the quote itself: as usual, Ayn Rand mixes some core truths of the Enlightenment with mystical teleology.  The rise of the individual - never steady or even - has been a core theme of the West, ever since the Renaissance, and especially the Enlightenment. But this progression isn't fated, ordained or even natural.

Rand looks at a couple of hundred years and one quarter of the planet, and assumes the trend is unstoppable. But Huxley and Orwell - backed up by Malthus and Darwin - showed us what's "natural."  The diamond-shaped social structure that we take for granted can all-too easily slump back into the oligarch-dominated pyramid.

Only Enlightenment methods ever offered an alternative hope. Rand followers take it for granted. Indeed, they assume that we can dismantle the processes and structures that Adam Smith prescribed, that made the Enlightenment work in the first place.

They bear a burden of proof that we would not just slump back into the condition that prevailed, for thousands of years, before Smith and his colleagues came along.  In America, that slump is already well underway.

== The Posterity Problem ==

I saved the best for last, hoping that at least a few libertarians - those most-favored with our greatest human trait - curiosity - have hung with us to this point.

(Are any of you still present?)

Elsewhere, I've revealed the biggest and most telling red flag about Ayn Rand - one that I've not seen mentioned elsewhere. It is that none of her uber role-model characters, at any level or in any way, ever indulge in the most basic human project --

--  bearing and raising and loving and teaching children.

Out of 1000 pages, just one of them glances briefly at a mother - a baker, an enlightened and awakened proletarian who is not a member of the elite caste. She gives a short riff about preferring Randite education methods in Galt's Gulch over public schools. That is it for procreation. As for the New Lords - several dozen of them, all dynamic Rand-heroes of the future - not even one of them bothers to pass his or her genes forward in time. Nor do any of them take responsibility for, or even mention, this essential investment in time. And this from the "life-centered" philosophy.

There is a reason that Rand consistently avoided any mention of procreation among her new-lord caste -- because writing-in even one member of a next-generation would shine searing light upon the biggest flaw of her hypnotic spell, revealing that her "fresh" tale is actually the oldest one in the human saga.

Let me explain.  It is glaringly simple.

We all know this about aristocracy -- that it seldom breeds true. In the past, royal or aristocratic houses would grow fat, lazy and decadent. England's Plantagenets managed to stay virile for 400 years but most lines devolved much quicker. Oligarchs had to make inheritance-of-privilege state policy. They gave top priority to quashing open markets, science, democracy or equal justice - because any of these liberal processes might engender new competitors to rise, afresh, from below, exposing the spoiled grandkids to dangerous rivals.

Yet, even so, there was some churn! A violent form of social mobility.  Inevitably those decadent houses got toppled by new, fresh blood. By vibrant competitors who grew lean and tough in exile. Who trained and gathered their forces in the woods, then swooped in to storm the castle.  And thereupon established a new lordly line.


Deep below her superficial adherence to Marxist teleology lies this ancient cycle, far older than the enlightenment, or even writing. It is the very essence of what Ayn Rand stands for.  Her characters are the brash, virile, sturdy, innovative barbarians, born free and ready to seize destiny in their own two hands, ripping fortune out of the clutches of pathetic old-fart lords who are spent and bereft of cleverness or might. It's the oldest story, writ-new and draped with modernist garments. Even in her portrayals of sex, the closest parallel is a godlike Viking who kicks down the door and takes what he desires. Because he is the grandest thing in all directions. And because he can.

It is an ancient mythos that resonates deeply in our bones and especially within pasty-skinned, pencil-necked nerds, who picture themselves as Achilles, as John Wayne, as Ender Wiggin, as Harry Potter or some other demigod. An old, old formula that was mined by A. E. Van Vogt and L. Ron Hubbard and Orson Scott Card and so many others.

But therein lies a problem!  It's the romantic Phase One of this old cycle that Rand admires - the rise of a self-made buccaneer who seizes lordship from decadent, inbred fools.

Phase Two - what happens next - she never talks about. She averts her eyes and the reader's attention.

Why do none of Rand's characters ever have kids? Because theose kids'll inherit the olympian status wrested by Howard Roark or by Dagny Taggart and Hank Rearden. Sons and daughters of demigods, they will assume privileges and power that they never earned through fair competition. They will take lordship for granted as a right of blood, and use it to squelch new competitors from rising to face them on a level playing field. Until their own decadent line has to be toppled, amid war and waste and pain.

It's what happened in 99% of human societies. Ayn Rand faces a steep burden of proof that "this time it'll be different." A burden she never picks up. Rather, she shrugs it off.

If there are offspring, then the reader might become consciously aware of this inevitable outcome. and realize: "Hey, I've seen this before. It's the same old boring-human pattern, and nothing new, after all."

== The Problem Is People... ==

Oh, but maybe I am reading too much into this aversion toward kids. After all, as the recent film reminds us, Ayn Rand was pretty much an equal opportunity hater of people, in general. (As evidenced by her passionately-admiring defense of the horrific murderer William Edward Hickman.)

Just look at how brothers are portrayed in ATLAS SHRUGGED.  Always treacherous, small-minded, parasitical and craven. Clearly, Rand is no Nazi, no believer in the paramountcy of blood. Sons, daughters, brothers and sisters? Neighbors? Strangers? Spouses? Co-workers? Civilization? Bah, who needs em. Who needs anybody?

Well? I said she ignores Darwin and this is consistent! Reproductive success? Fie and feh!

Her ubermensch demigods are less like "lords" - obsessed with establishing an inherited clan of privilege - than they are pirates - superior in boldness and in mind, going wherever they like, taking what they deserve by the very essence of what they are.

And hey, doesn't everybody love a pirate?

Yoho. That's the life for me.

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*Followup notes:

1) Someone pointed out a more powerful example of de-regulatory goodwill on the part of the US government, which was, till around 1990, the principal owner, developer and subsidizer of the Internet. Picture the moment when a few dozen government guys - and advisor/consultant outsiders - sat down and decided to BACK OFF... to simply give the Internet to the world, instead of clutching-close this potential source of vast power. It was one of the greatest episodes of voluntary de-regulation in the history of the world. (I was living in France, using the French "minitel" alternative to the Internet, so I know how that might have gone.)

And yes, re-coalescence of top-down control over the Internet remains constantly a danger, from malignant efforts like SOPA. But the key lesson of the Internet - plus the dissolving of the ICC & CAB and Barack Obama's recent commercialization of the US space launch system - is that freedom-oriented policies can be negotiated within the institutions of a vast and overwhelmingly successful continental democracy. (And generally, the ones most willing to negotiate are democrats.) The demonization of those institutions, first by Rand and now by Culture War, portraying them as inherently incapable of reason or pro-freedom redesign, is illogical and a churlish example of flat-out ingratitude. 

Worse, from a Randian perspective, it is refusal to pay legitimate debts.

2) Hold the presses! I just thought of another major deviance that Rand took, separating her from Marx in a quirky ironic way...beyond her belief in Nietzschian ubermenscen and her denial of Marx's final teleological phase. There's also her approach to the Labor Theory of Value (LTV). Oh, she bought into LTV, hook, line and sinker! But in ways the Master would find utterly heretical. 

Now, here I am going to give Ayn Rand some cred, because clearly, she recognized what Marx did not, that LTV is complete crap when it comes to all labor hours being equally valuable. That's baloney and one of Marx's most glaring mistakes. Only then, like many converted heretics, she plunged to the opposite extreme, while staying on the same axis! Positing that some peoples' time and labor must be deemed almost infinitely more valuable, not just in a market scarcity sense but in pure, platonic essence. It is a third major departure from Marx... 

...but let's not get carried away. Because her scenario is still entirely based on LTV! Think about it. The great crime of the dire-enemies who are called "looters" is to steal labor value from the good guys in order to maintain society's capital base - precisely the same situation described by Marx! Only in her story, the theft is not from proletariat workers but from geniuses, necessitating their own revolution to reclaim that value! Sure, she turned 180 degrees the cast of characters who are the heroes. But the underlying principle and scenario - LTV theft from the productive caste, followed by revolution against the thieves and their recovery of stolen capital - is utterly the same. That is utterly pure Karl Marx.

It is the master's tale... with an M. Night Shamalayan twist! Oh, my.

3) Yes I gave short shrift to one aspect of Atlas Shrugged that Rand probably considered paramount, That is the book's keynote role as a philosophical and psychological polemic. She blames wrong action on wrong thinking, attributing to all of Galt's enemies an addiction to "death-loving" drives. All those who disagree with Galt (and Rand) are, in effect, dismissed as psychopaths who are fixated on achieving death. Note how this makes them inherently evil and unworthy of negotiation, by virtue of of their core platonic essence. (There's Plato again!) There's nothing human about such people.

What's fascinating is where this take us in regards Ayn Rand the Marxist. I describe how her chief departure from her mentor is where she excises what comes next. After portraying Marx's ultimate capitalist consolidation and finalization of capital formation with great fidelity, she omits entirely his final step - revolution of the skilled proletariat.  But how? Now vastly outnumbering the owners, with no middle class left to sap dissent, and with both state and church neutered, what's to stop them?

Well, replace the old church with a new one! Rand posits that the New Lords will not only be brilliant inventors and terrific managers, but also vastly enlightening priests. They will correct wrong thinking and replace it with right-thinking. With a philosophy that encourages life (even though there are no kids.) At which point the prols will not rebel, because their faith is now pure. Yes, it is a Randian faith - in themselves and in a system that challenges them to 'strive for life!' Nevertheless, it truly is awesome to see that her rejection of her mentor, Karl Marx, consists entirely of thwarting his final stage by enthralling the masses with a stunningly-persuasive incantation... or opiate... of uniform thought. A catechism of pure, unchanging and permanent Truth. 

Wow.

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