A Cautionary Note on Democracy

As I've been saying, I think that The Contrarian has been doing an excellent job reporting on the abuses of the Trump administration, and I appreciate their initiation of legal actions against it. However, because my primary view of anything that has to do with human behavior has been affected by my knowledge of evolutionary biology, I occasionally have to question their faith in democracy, while I recognize that they are lawyers and that this is their particular area of expertise. The question that comes up for me is: how important is democracy in the greater scheme of things?

In my understanding of world history, democracy has not been all that important. Some of my ideas were affected when I read Upheaval, by Jared Diamond. While Diamond is certainly not omniscient, I think that he made a strong case that the general success of the U.S. was largely the result of geography. The advantages included more high-quality soil than anywhere else due to glaciation, physical isolation from other world powers, a highly navigable river system, and a huge influx of people who wanted to make money. In fact, the American Revolution was primarily about financial independence, and George Washington was sworn in as president at the intersection of Broad Street and Wall Street in New York City in 1789: Wall Street was literally the capital of the country then. I think that, to some extent, the success of the country has more to do with free enterprise than anything else. Broadly speaking, the country became extremely wealthy by removing economic constraints for most of its history; additionally, no monarchs or religious leaders had influence over the political system. These factors alone probably had more significance than democracy per se. It seems to me that the primary structure of American society has always been capitalistic, and equality and democracy were almost afterthoughts that arose when wealth imbalances and racism became conspicuous during the nineteenth century. As late as 1857, the Dred Scott decision by the Supreme Court stated that slaves were not citizens and therefore had no federal or legal protections.

Comparatively, there has been far less unity of purpose and stability in Europe than the U.S. since the seventeenth century. Wars between the U.K., Germany and France have been common, and now Russia is acting up. Furthermore, unlike today, the Roman Catholic Church was often politically engaged and interfered with governments. These were rarely American problems. Additionally, it is more difficult to control immigration in Europe than it is in the U.S., and, whereas the U.S. often benefits from immigrants who take unwanted jobs, in Europe, the waves of immigrants may actually contribute to political instability. 

The obvious problem with democracy for me, which I've brought up repeatedly, is that people don't necessarily vote rationally. No matter how many articles you write, rallies you hold, petitions you sign, etc., there are still going to be lots of irrational voters out there. I think that in many cases, to convince irrational voters to vote rationally in their own best interest, you may have to rely on different arguments that are also irrational. 

To put this in the context of how I make voting decisions, let me describe my actual process of thinking about Donald Trump as a politician. By 2015, I already knew that he was pretty stupid and had an enormous ego. I didn't like Hillary Clinton much in 2016, but, with Trump running, voting for her was a no-brainer. I tried to give Trump the benefit of the doubt when he won, but it immediately became apparent that he was completely incompetent, and, rather than learning from his mistakes, he tended to double down on them. Over the years it has become increasingly apparent that he only has one model – the same one that he has been using for decades. This is not a complete list, but covers what I think are the basic ideas:

1. Recruit only people who have a major handicap and are willing to declare full allegiance to you.

2. Groom your hires for corrupt activities.

3. If hires don't deliver, fire them.

4. When negotiating, always exaggerate whatever assets you have.

5. Favor negotiation with those who are unable to match your legal resources in the event of a conflict.

6. If you enter a political position, keep opponents under constant attack.

7. Leverage your political position to extract the maximum possible financial benefits for yourself.

8. Never waste time thinking about benefiting your constituency and delegate those tasks to subordinates.

9. Arrange situations in a manner such that your subordinates will be blamed for failures rather than you.

I think that Trump has always been highly predictable, but that the evidence wasn't quite as clear during his first term. That was largely because he resorted to experienced people in that term and found that they were not only an encumbrance but a threat to him. That is why he has assembled an outlaw gang for his second term. The sheer volume of lies being generated by his administration now is astounding in historical terms.

From the above, you can see that I don't think legalistically. I prefer to analyze the personalities of politicians in order to predict their behavior. Since Trump's behavior indicates that he usually only attempts to benefit himself, that is sufficient to reject him as a candidate or an incumbent. For this reason I have suggested several times that a solution to the current plague of corrupt and incompetent politicians might be something as simple as vote-assisting software. That would be easier than engaging in years of lawsuits, impeaching Supreme Court justices, amending the Constitution, etc. In this vein, since Trump is such an incompetent president – he may be costing taxpayers trillions of dollars – why not just replace him with an app? A few Nvidia chips could probably do the job!

Stupidity

As I've mentioned before, the time lag between the announcement of new scientific findings and their assimilation by the public is often astoundingly long. In the extreme case, you have the works of Charles Darwin. His main ideas have been confirmed repeatedly, and they have been widely accepted by educated people for over a century. Yet, here in the U.S., about a third of the population still supports Creationism, depending on how the questions are asked. Creationism is dying out here, but it may end up taking a total of two hundred years, despite the mountains of evidence against it. As I've also mentioned previously, there seems to be a time lag between the announcements of the recent findings of Daniel Kahneman, Steven Sloman, Philip Fernbach and Robert Sapolsky and their acceptance within the public sphere. They don't even seem to be percolating within the intellectual community at the moment. Tangentially, the works of Robert Plomin and David Reich, which provide insights into the genetic nature of human aptitudes and their unequal distribution within the overall population, seem buried in the media, perhaps because they conflict with some of the central tenets of political correctness. The picture that has emerged from recent research is that people don't think clearly most of the time or know as much as they think they do. There is nothing that can be done about it because this is how their brains work.

A related topic that isn't exactly a discrete field is groupthink within academic disciplines. The phenomenon demonstrates that even groups of people don't necessarily think clearly. Groupthink has been studied for many years in business settings, but it occurs everywhere, including in academia. Thomas Piketty touches on this in Capital, and may have been the first to criticize the overemphasis on mathematical models in economics. Sabine Hossenfelder has a similar message in Lost in Math, which accuses physicists of wasting time on untestable mathematical models when the real problem may be a lack of new data. From an institutional point of view, mathematically-oriented physics researchers offer the major benefit of not having to purchase expensive research equipment. This strategy may work in the short-term, but more fundamentally it may be a misallocation of resources. Then there is the closed culture of MFA programs and their stranglehold on what counts as literary writing. I have seen some criticism of that system, but it remains intact. My point here is that even highly-educated groups make collective cognitive errors – these are the most likely to escape scrutiny, yet Piketty and Hossenfelder have had the courage to call out the leaders of their fields.

The basic insight one gets from surveying the research is that no groups are immune to a variety of cognitive failures, thus, whatever principles a group claims to uphold, and no matter how competent they may seem to outsiders, behind the scenes, the prejudices and cognitive limitations of individuals are what actually drive practices and policies. In economics and physics, the accumulation of new data became secondary to mathematical modeling. In MFA programs, departments became vulnerable to the preferences of their faculties: the criteria for good literary writing can easily be distorted by the faculty. As I've said ad nauseum, the result has been that MFA writing is now at best forgettable, to put it politely. Nevertheless, MFA writers do well as a cult through their strategic use of self-congratulatory propaganda. It is customary to compare individuals to assess their competence, but comparable variation can be found between groups, and it is a mistake to think that the best-credentialed groups are the most competent.

Of course, these problems in academia are not really that important in the greater scheme of things. I remain astounded by the resilience of Donald Trump as a public figure. In a recent review of a biography of P.T. Barnum, Elizabeth Kolbert writes:

Barnum became one of the most celebrated men in America not despite his bigotry and duplicity, his flimflamming and self-dealing, but because of them. He didn't so much fool the public as indulge it....he turned P.T. Barnum into yet another relentlessly promoted exhibit—the Greatest Showman on Earth. Americans, he knew, were drawn to such humbug. Why they are still being drawn to it is a puzzle that, now more than ever, demands our attention.

The problems of the Trump presidency are as obvious as one could hope. My only criticism of Kolbert's innuendo is that the information needed to answer her question is already available: people are stupid. It seems as if the last hurdle before order can be brought to civilization is the recognition that, although we're smarter than chimpanzees, we're often quite stupid. The research I've alluded to unequivocally supports this position. The stupidity applies to all level of society, though people who are perceived to be successful usually get a free pass. It may be that, at an instinctive level, Trump supporters recognize a fellow ignoramus who has been successful and can dominate and humiliate smarter people if he likes. Trump supporters get a perverse satisfaction from seeing him thumb his nose at the establishment, which they feel has neglected them and reduced their social rank. Trump is uplifting for them because he normalizes inarticulateness and ignorance. Actually, this is a very old problem, one that thinkers have pondered for hundreds of years. Jean-Jacques Rousseau recognized that most people are unqualified to vote. He preferred a more patrician model in which only a few educated people without private ambitions or agendas would be permitted to vote. The Founding Fathers attempted to put in safeguards to prevent mob rule, but the gradual elimination of restrictions on voting and the expansion of the electorate have rendered it more difficult than ever to screen out incompetent politicians from public elections.

Kolbert, like many journalists, recognizes that Trump appeals to the worst instincts of the public. Fortunately, he can never be a popular president, and only about forty percent of voters will continue to support him. The underlying problem, which Kolbert and most journalists avoid discussing at all costs, is that at some point the public must be implicated as part of the problem. The fact that such suggestions would be labeled as elitist doesn't subtract from their truth. Thus, Kolbert, a science writer, whom one would assume is familiar with the research I've cited, is not exactly taking a heroic stance. This brings me back to my criticism of Michiko Kakutani, who, I said, was constrained by the requirements of her publisher, a corporation. There is an implicit "never bite the hand that feeds you" rule in journalism. From a journalistic standpoint, the conflict between free speech and corporate interests is almost always resolved in favor of corporations. There is no marketplace of ideas when so many of them are repressed from the start. Criticism of the public, even when it is deserved, rarely makes it into the media. When it does occur, it is usually only part of Donald Trump's ugly, worn-out business and political strategy.

If one were serious about preventing a recurrence of the Trump phenomenon, one would have to look at changing the democratic process. Trump was elected with the twenty-first century equivalent of the nineteenth-century practice of handing out free beer at rallies. Democracy, though it is preferable to autocracy in most cases, is not a good system for promoting competent political leaders. We are stuck with the worst president in American history only because a minority of the population was willing to set aside reason for a few feel-good moments. It is an unsubstantiated myth that "the voice of the people" will always correct political errors. Moreover, the freedom of individuals, as understood by most Americans, is not a sustainable idea. The U.S. is like a casino in which everyone feels entitled to a piece of the action. The American acceptance of capitalism is so deeply ingrained that alternatives are unthinkingly seen as heretical.

Much as I try to avoid it, I always circle back to the same conclusion: that the best hope lies in removing the public from a decision-making role in many if not most instances. The important problems facing Americans (and the world) are so complex that they may be beyond the comprehension of even the most experienced politicians. If anything, a mechanism is needed to prevent the public from guaranteeing a dysfunctional government in the future. In my view, the competent elite of the future will be AI, and it is already apparent that this needs looking into. I would be surprised if people in the distant future were not amazed that we were able to survive this long stretch of political turmoil with nothing more to help us than our chaotic little animal brains.

Collapse VI

The last section of the book, "Practical Lessons" covers a mishmash of ideas. Chapter 14 lists some of the psychological failings of the people in the collapsed societies discussed earlier, including failure to anticipate, failure to perceive, rational bad behavior (of a subset of the population) and disastrous values. This chapter had a lot of potential, but I found it disappointing, because it stuck to the obvious. Chapter 15 describes in detail how some businesses have been able to behave like responsible citizens, though that usually occurs only when actual events have shown that the cost of irresponsible exploitation of resources outweighs the cost of additional safety measures and precautions, for instance, when a large oil spill occurs. In the case of hardrock mining, there is usually so little profit in the business to begin with that it is cheaper for businesses to lobby for lax regulations than it is to operate in an environmentally responsible fashion, in which case they would simply lose money. Diamond emphasizes how consumers play a role in this, because, even though they may not understand the economics of the oil or mining industries, they are more cognizant of oil because they buy it at the retail level, whereas the end use of most mining products remains a mystery to them. They are willing to pay for oil because they are aware of how they use it, whereas mining products often become invisible components of consumer products. Responsible stewardship of the environment comes at a cost, and ultimately it is consumers who decide by buying or not buying certain products; they usually aren't willing to pay any premium for consumer products, because, according to Diamond, they don't often understand the environmental costs. Where hardrock mining is concerned, the costs of environmental responsibility are considerably higher than those of most other natural resources. Diamond also notes that self-regulation within some industries, such as forest products, has been comparatively successful.

The final chapter, 16, includes a somewhat redundant list of what Diamond thinks are the twelve most serious trouble spots related to sustaining the environment. Here are the first sentences or so that he has written for each item on the list:

1. At an accelerating rate, we are destroying the natural habitats or else converting them to human-made habitats, such as cities and villages, farmlands and pastures, roads and golf courses.

2. Wild foods, especially fish and to a lesser extent shellfish, contribute a large fraction of the protein consumed by humans.... [T]he great majority of valuable fisheries either have collapsed or are in steep decline. 

3. A significant fraction of wild species, populations, and genetic diversity has already been lost, and at present rates a large fraction of what remains will be lost within the next half-century.

4. Soils and farmland used for growing crops are being carried away by water and wind erosion at rates between 10 and 40 times the rates of soil formation, and between 500 and 10,000 times soil erosion rates on forested land.

5. The world's major energy sources, especially for industrial societies, are fossil fuels: oil, natural gas, and coal. While there has been much discussion about how many big oil and gas fields remain to be discovered, and while coal reserves are believed to be large, the prevalent view is that known and likely reserves of readily accessible oil and gas will last for a few more decades.

6. Most of the world's freshwater in rivers and lakes is already being utilized for irrigation, domestic and industrial water, and in situ uses such as boat transportation corridors, fisheries, and recreation.

7. It might at first seem that the supply of sunlight is infinite, so one might reason that the Earth's capacity to grow crops and wild plants is also infinite. Within the last 20 years, it has been appreciated that this is not the case....

8. The chemical industry and many other industries manufacture or release into the air, soil, oceans, lakes and rivers many toxic chemicals....

9. The term "alien species" refers to species that we transfer, intentionally or inadvertently, from a place where they are native to a place where they are not native. Some alien species are obviously valuable to us as crops, domestic animals, and landscaping. But others devastate populations of native species with which they come into contact....

10. Human activities produce gases that escape into the atmosphere, where they either damage the protective ozone layer (as do formerly widespread refrigerator coolants) or else act as greenhouse gases that absorb sunlight and thereby lead to global warming.

11. The world's human population is growing. More people require more food, space, water, energy and other resources. 

12. What really counts is not the number of people alone, but their impact on the environment.... [O]ur numbers pose problems insofar as we consume resources and generate wastes.... But low-impact people are becoming high-impact people....

Following this list, Diamond refutes, effectively I think, some of the common criticisms that have been brought against the arguments that he makes. He then attempts to finish on a positive note by mentioning that some societies of the past, such as the success stories described in the book, were able to overcome similar problems when they confronted them, and that we may be able to as well.

Because of its scope and completeness, this is by far the best book I've read on environmental issues. In books by E.O. Wilson, such as The Diversity of Life and Half-Earth, the perspective is that of a naturalist more than that of one specifically concerned with the future of mankind. Similarly, in The Sixth Extinction Elizabeth Kolbert looks at the environmental consequences of human activities without paying as much attention to the specific causes. Al Gore's popular documentary, An Inconvenient Truth, which came out the year following Collapse, covers only one aspect of the twelve mentioned by Diamond. Global warming is an important issue, but in itself is probably survivable, and though the film played an important role in raising environmental awareness, compared to Collapse it barely scratches the surface. Diamond makes it clear that if we don't deal effectively with the issues that he raises we may all die, as did those in some of his historical examples.

Although it seems that somewhere in Collapse one is likely to find at least a passing comment on every issue relevant to human survival vis-à-vis environmental damage, Diamond, disappointingly to me, does not present specific strategies for solving the problems, and he more or less leaves it up to mankind to solve them on their own. For example, he recognizes that corporations may or may not behave responsibly but are driven primarily by financial motives, and that the public can pressure them in the right direction, but he also notes that some of the environmental issues are not understood by the public: how could corporate malfeasance be corrected in those instances? As I have argued in previous posts, many of the problems that we are currently facing are the result of the combination of economic competition under capitalism with inferior governance under existing democratic political models. It would be difficult to deal with environmental problems at that level, but, since that is where the problems actually originate, it may be the appropriate place to look.

I think that economic competition tends to cause a vicious cycle from which it becomes increasingly difficult to escape. For example, for someone like me, who prefers a rural environment with a low population density and doesn't care about money, how can I realistically expect to live that way in the current world? If you live in an unspoiled environment with its natural resources more or less intact, in order to retain those resources you need defense measures of one kind or another. Under current global conditions, in the absence of a suitable defense, sooner or later corporations, other nations or perhaps refugees would arrive on the scene and alter the environment for the worse. In other words, in order to protect my sustainable environment, I would need an economic base large enough to support an army or some other deterrent, which contradicts the very idea of the society that I envision. Similarly, economically weak countries may be forced by external economic pressures to modernize their economies, if only for their own protection. Even developed countries with declining populations face pressure to increase their fertility rates in order to ensure that they have sufficient workers to keep their economies strong in the future. Capitalism in the absence of an effective world government forces regions of the world into defensive postures, with economic forces driving events in a way that roughly mimics warfare.

The other problematic component underlying environmental risk, incompetent governance, has hardly diminished since Diamond wrote the book. The collapse in Syria is flooding Europe with refugees, conditions in South Sudan have deteriorated and ISIL is at large. These kinds of situations are predictable within Diamond's framework, because political instability is often associated with environmental destruction. However, one may also question how well the developed nations are dealing with increasing environmental pressures. It may be a little too early to assess the populist movements in Europe and the U.S., but at first glance they may be related to the sustainability of economic growth, which is at least partly related to environmental health. The high standard of living in the developed world comes at a high environmental cost, and the lower end of the income spectrum has been experiencing a reduced standard of living in recent years. Although a collapse does not seem imminent in the developed world, some of the early patterns of political instability may be falling into place. Recently, the two most striking examples have been the victories of Brexit and Donald Trump, which, to me, are clear indications of the inherent incompetence of democratic electorates. Both votes were for isolationism and protection from foreigners and demonstrate a poor understanding of global economics.

The election of Donald Trump is a good example of the incompetence of a democratic electorate. From his few weeks in office it has become apparent that, not only does he not understand any of the serious issues facing the U.S., including those raised by Diamond, but he isn't even interested in them and is unlikely to do anything about them. This encourages me to withdraw into my futuristic mode of thinking, in which complex issues such as those raised in Collapse become the province of AI or AI-assisted humans rather than the poor decision-making process of the voting public or the incompetent people whom they elect.

Diamond is correct that all of the problems brought up in his book can be solved, but he isn't exactly creating a new paradigm. I am a much stronger proponent of population control than he is, but that may be because I am not affected by the pressures of political correctness. Looking into the future, I wonder whether there is any advantage to a world population of seven billion people, in which the majority lead imperiled lives, compared to a world population of one billion or fewer people, in which all lead unimperiled lives. There are painless ways to make that transition without producing inequality or diminishing the richness of human experience. This obvious option is not receiving any public discussion.

The Wrecking Ball of Innovation

I have a copy of When Facts Change, a collection of Tony Judt's essays assembled by his widow and published in 2015. I'm not reading it straight through and will probably read only a few of them. I've just finished an essay that first appeared in the New York Review of Books in 2007. It is a review of Robert Reich's book, Supercapitalism of that year. This essay, besides serving as a reminder of how powerful a writer Judt was, is still relevant to the current political situation in the U.S., as it specifically examines the economic myopia of Reich, who was the first secretary of labor under Bill Clinton, and, by association, represents the prevailing Democratic economic viewpoint that continues up to the present in the policies of Barack Obama.

Judt isn't critical of Reich's description of the wealth gap, which has since then received far greater publicity, thanks to Thomas Piketty, but finds his complacent acquiescence to economic forces unacceptable. Reich takes it as given that we live in an economically competitive world, that the super-rich are not at fault and that the primary national goal is productivity growth. In Judt's view, the sweeping economic model adopted by Clinton distorted an earlier model in which the state was seen as responsible for all of its citizens regardless of economic factors. Under Clinton, privatization picked up steam and the existing welfare system was replaced with one that treated the poor as economic entities and accordingly made their benefits contingent upon their attempt to become gainfully employed. On these changes, Judt says:

The real impact of privatization, like welfare reform, deregulation, the technological revolution, and indeed globalization itself, has been to reduce the role of the state in the affairs of its citizens: to get the state "off our backs" and "out of our lives" – a common objective of economic "reformers" everywhere – and make public policy, in Robert Reich's approving words, "business friendly." 

He goes on to say:

If modern democracies are to survive the shock of Reich's "supercapitalism," they need to be bound by something more than the pursuit of private economic advantage, particularly when the latter accrues to ever fewer beneficiaries: the idea of a society held together by pecuniary interests alone is, in Mill's words, "essentially repugnant." A civilized society requires more than self-interest, whether deluded or enlightened, for its shared narrative of purpose....

In the early years of the French Revolution the Marquis de Condorcet was dismayed at the prospect of commercial society that was opening before him (as it is opening before us): the idea that "liberty will be no more, in the eyes of an avid nation, than a necessary condition for the security of financial operations." We ought to share his revulsion.

Judt describes the negative consequences of Reich's policy views that were already evident in 2007, before the Great Recession, before Brexit and before the election of Donald Trump:

Fear is reemerging as an active ingredient of political life in Western democracies. Fear of terrorism, of course; but also, and perhaps more insidiously, fear of the uncontrollable speed of change, fear of the loss of employment, fear of losing ground to others in an increasingly unequal distribution of resources, fear of losing control of the circumstances and routines of one's daily life. And, perhaps above all, fear that it is not just we who can no longer shape our lives but that those in authority have lost control as well, to forces beyond their reach.

The essay concludes as follows:

We may find that a healthy democracy, far from being threatened by the regulatory state, actually depends upon it: that in a world increasingly polarized between insecure individuals and unregulated global forces, the legitimate authority of the democratic state may be the best kind of intermediate institution we can devise. What, after all, is the alternative? Our contemporary cult of untrammeled economic freedom, combined with a heightened sense of fear and insecurity, is leading to reduced social provision and minimal economic regulation; but these are accompanied by ever-extending governmental oversight of communication, movement and opinion. "Chinese" capitalism, as it were, Western-style. Is this what we want?

Because the essay predates Obama's election in 2008, it is easy to see that not much has changed under eight years of a Democratic administration; thus my criticisms of Obama hold. As an observer, I am not aware of any significant move that Obama may have made to distance himself from Reich's policy views, which currently seem embedded in the party and would have continued under Hillary Clinton had she been elected. Judt's views are far closer to those of Bernie Sanders, whom I supported in the Democratic primary.

While I completely agree with Judt that the modification of political thought to accommodate economic thought over the last few decades has set the world on a dangerous path, he has hardly provided a blueprint for change. He writes of democracy in the abstract when it ultimately depends on the votes, not only of educated, informed voters, but of the less-educated and uninformed who have recently brought us Brexit and Donald Trump. In a way it is unfortunate that Judt chose history over economics, because there is no one that I know of who might have made a better economic case, had he the appropriate credentials. The economists with whom I'm familiar, including Thomas Piketty, do not seem to grasp the urgent conditions described by Judt, perhaps because their training has been narrow and they have too much faith in their profession.

If calling for greater regulation, etc., isn't feasible and even then doesn't fully encapsulate the issues at hand, the limiting factor may be human cognition. Thus, I am skeptical of the ability of a Tony Judt or a Bernie Sanders to work out an actual detailed solution to the problems caused by global economic competition. Although Judt's heart was in the right place, his view of social democracy seems outdated and sentimental to me. The best hope is that we will end up with a highly regulated society wherein AI plays a larger role than it does at present, at the exclusion of mere mortals, who tend to be incompetent, corrupt or both when faced with such daunting tasks. That is hardly what Tony Judt or Bernie Sanders had in mind, but I find it a little more realistic and perhaps less ominous than they would have you believe.

Equality

It occurred to me that the word "equality," which I occasionally use on this blog, is far more ambiguous than it may seem at first, so I thought that I'd take a brief look at what it means in the context in which I generally apply it. In common usage, when it refers to people, it carries the political connotation that, particularly in a democratic form of government, all citizens are to be treated the same with respect to the law. This means that if one type of adult is generally allowed to do something, every other type of adult should generally be allowed to do it too, and the same applies regarding various government protections and benefits. Since the concept has been phased in through steps in a legal context, the emphasis has shifted over many years from racial equality to women's rights to gay rights, in each instance legally guaranteeing certain rights to a specific group that had previously been treated unfairly. Under the Constitution, the general concept needs to be spelled out specifically for each group covered, which confuses the question by perpetuating the segmentation of society and never producing a blanket law that would, in one fell swoop, cover all citizens in all groups. In a way this legal process encourages people to continue thinking in the unacceptable terms that previously divided society, and it is certainly not the most efficient method for addressing the perceived ills. "Equality" is also used in the sense of economic equality, which focuses more on financial status than on legal status, and since that is more straightforward I won't specifically address it here. Economic inequality, for my purposes, is a special case of inequality that stems directly from capitalism and could theoretically cease to exist in an ideal post-capitalist society.

Perhaps the greatest confusion over "equality" has to do with its misinterpretation as "sameness." This may be because in ordinary usage "equality" means that people are entitled to the same treatment under law, but it does not mean that they are the same in any sense independent of this. Probably some of the thinking underlying the extreme political correctness that I find absurd is a result of this fallacy. I get the impression that on some college campuses, if a Maa-speaking Masai tribesman entered a room accompanied by a mute Inuit who communicated in Greenlandic Sign Language, the American students would make every effort to see them as identical and avoid all references to their obvious differences. The problem here may be the taking of the concept "person" and inappropriately applying it so rigidly and abstractly to all humans that any differences between people noted may be construed as a form of discrimination, since all people are the same according to their definition. Thus, if the Masai and the Inuit were asked "Do either of you speak English?'' there might be someone in the room who would interpret that as an unacceptable racial slur or as an insult to handicapped people, since the statement might give priority to spoken English over other languages and suggest that those who are unable to speak it are inferior, or that spoken language is superior to sign language. A pathological politically correct person such as this would be attempting to see people as equal in a sense that makes any public recognition of differences unacceptable.

When I write about equality, I am thinking of it mainly in a legal sense. I believe that all people should be treated equally under the law and base this not on legal theory or democratic principles, but on my acceptance of the idea that we are a eusocial species and, as such, we unconsciously tend to favor a legal framework that supports equality. It is a little tricky to pursue this argument from a biological standpoint, because biologically there is also evidence supporting the idea of the inevitability of war, genocide, murder, etc., but in this case I simply call upon science to adjudicate whether we as a species are essentially altruistic, cooperative and eusocial. I am willing to leave it at that, because in the long run I believe that humans do, by both reason and instinct, favor cooperation over conflict. Conflict has often been a last resort when cooperation hasn't worked, and there is no reason in principle why the rule of law could not one day eliminate any need for it. Thus, for me, equality is part of a legal superstructure that is necessary to impart order and cooperation on mankind by reducing the need for any subgroup or individual to do harm to or take advantage of others.

Where I depart from liberalism is in my skepticism about leaving the responsibility for reaching and maintaining a state of equality up to a democratic political system. In my view, the political system in the U.S. barely works and is still permissive regarding inequality. Here I think some history may be relevant. Democracies, rather than promoting the kind of universal equality that Western liberalism now seems to favor, have tended to promote equality only within elite groups. The authors of the Declaration of Independence and Constitution included slave owners, for example. An altered but similar system exists today which only disguises the actual control by what might be construed as a ruling class. Today the U.S. cannot honestly be called a democracy, in which each voter has equal say, because moneyed interests manipulate government policies by controlling who gets elected. There may be some elements of a true populist democracy in the mix, but it would be more accurate to describe the current U.S. government as a plutocracy, with little sign of an emerging increase in equality.

One of the central confusions of liberalism today is that is has adopted the market thinking, hence the capitalistic theology, of previous conservative governments. For example, the rhetoric that emanates from Barack Obama's mouth is a reworking of the rhetoric that emanated from Bill Clinton's mouth, which was a reworking of the rhetoric that emanated from Ronald Reagan's mouth. In all three instances, the gist is that free-market capitalism is a panacea; as Obama likes to say, if poor, unemployed people could just get better educations, everything would be fine. It won't be fine, because as, Thomas Piketty has shown, the current economic system promotes inequality. I oppose free-market capitalism because, among other reasons, it is unlikely to solve the problem of inequality on its own, and there is currently little to prevent its adherents from continuing to manipulate democratic governments in the pursuit of plutocratic interests.

Politics I

Politics is a topic that I'd rather not think about, but we're entering the in-your-face phase of the 2016 U.S. elections and I would like to summarize some of my ideas in order to help clear them from my brain. The way the media handles this is something like nonstop Super Bowl coverage, and I may soon have to refrain from following the news.

In my view, the American political system is a hopeless attempt to simulate democratic participation that could only work on a much smaller scale with culturally homogeneous people and no class distinctions, including wealth differentiation. Not only does the U.S. encompass a large, culturally varied population, but corporations have long played a role in elections and are now de facto people themselves, with significantly greater political influence than any individuals. During my life I've lived in a variety of states, and the influence of businesses on the state governments has been obvious. Wealthy, industrialized states such as New York and Illinois tend to have business-dominated legislatures and high levels of corruption, whereas smaller, non-industrialized states such as Vermont and Oregon have legislatures that more closely represent the population and are generally less corrupt. On the whole, I find the Vermont government satisfactory, and I attribute this to the state's unindustrialized status and its well-educated population. There is no basis for thinking that the political environment in Vermont could easily be replicated in most other states.

As it is, I find the American presidential elections embarrassingly stupid. No matter who wins, the next president will be indebted to corporate contributors and other special interests. Whatever ideas any candidate may have, all presidents are constricted by the explicit or implicit commitments that they made to contributors. This partially explains why Barack Obama has not been much different from George W. Bush and why even the likable Bill Clinton was pro-business and anti-populist. There is little reason to expect that Hillary Clinton would represent any change in thinking from what has been going on in politics here for the last fifty years.

Although I don't think this is a popular opinion among my readers, the goal ought to be to automate government as much as possible, and this would be much easier to do if the capitalist economy were either modified or eliminated. An example of my thesis that humans are ignorant animals is that it is currently difficult for Americans to imagine a life in which they are not chasing paychecks, even when humans throughout most of their existence were not chasing paychecks. There were no employers or currencies before the last ice age, and about ninety percent of our time as a species was spent during that period. If you took business interests out of the equation, I think it would be relatively simple to organize society according to rational rules that could be made into algorithms. We may not yet be at a technological level where capitalism could be drawn to a close, but that may be closer than you think.

What I find annoying about political debate is that technology as I am describing it never seems to be considered. In the U.S., you are supposed to be either a Democrat, implying acceptance of capitalism but with attention paid to the less fortunate, or a Republican, implying acceptance of capitalism with no attention paid to the less fortunate. The only other positions Americans seem to recognize are communism, which they think results in collapsed economies and autocratic leaders, or theocracies, in which the women have no rights and are, for example, required to wear burkas. When you leave technology out of the discussion, you neglect the important fact that human labor is gradually becoming obsolete, with inexpensive technology permanently replacing people at an accelerating pace. I certainly have no difficulty imagining machines doing a better job at governing than the elected officials I've observed throughout my life.

There are too many variables in play to predict exactly how humanity will evolve over the next fifty to one hundred years. Among those are political instability, war, global warming, economic shocks and unmanaged population growth. A fairly probable scenario is that, at least among the developed countries, the need for human labor will decline significantly, even without radical changes such as the development of super-intelligence. Super-intelligence is in a class by itself, because it could result in technological change far in excess of what we currently anticipate. But even short of that, it is clear that social changes will have to occur if people no longer work or corporations as we know them cease to exist. It is quite possible that, as paid human labor declines, taxation will have to be increased sufficiently to prevent social collapse. If people can't find a living wage and the government doesn't support them, how else will they survive? The main alternative is the two-class system that you see in dystopian futuristic films, with a cruel ruling elite and impoverished masses at their mercy. It is plausible that the governments of developed countries will be forced to raise taxes on the wealthy and corporations to such a high level that the incentive to work primarily for money will evaporate. If that occurs, all of the economic competition and exploitation that we currently see as normal could end.

From my point of view, the national politics that we witness in the U.S. is primarily about wealth redistribution, and the wealthy are winning. To be sure, many other issues are addressed in Washington, but that is barely audible chatter and is drowned out by the roaring torrents of money awash there.

News as Entertainment

One of the most noticeable cultural changes during my lifetime has been in the area of news consumption. When I was growing up people tended to read The Daily News, The New York Times or The Wall Street Journal when commuting to or from work. Some subscribed to the local newspaper, The Standard-Star, for which I had a paper route, and most people watched the evening news on weekdays. Today some people still read physical newspapers and watch the evening news, but in reduced numbers. I haven't seen any recent statistics, but I suspect that most people now get their news somewhat haphazardly in various digital formats.

I was never a big newspaper reader and got into the habit of watching the CBS Evening News with Walter Cronkite until he retired in 1981. When Eric Sevareid appeared on the program, he added incisive commentary of a kind that has completely vanished today. Occasionally I would read the Sunday New York Times. Journalists like Cronkite and Sevareid got their start during World War II and gave serious presentations in which they attempted to bring up all the hard news. The contrast between Cronkite and, say, Diane Sawyer, who recently retired from ABC World News, is astounding. Network news now consists of a series of feel-good moments designed to hold the attention of a geriatric audience just long enough to brainwash them with pharmaceutical ads. I doubt that many people under the age of sixty regularly watch the evening news anymore.

The purveyors of news and the media in general are now obsessed with content, and the role of news in the important sense of keeping the public informed enough to make sound voting choices within the democratic system is largely nonexistent. Part of the decline in interest in real news can be ascribed to commercial competition from businessmen like Rupert Murdoch who have long catered to the lowest common denominator in order to attract more readers and viewers. However, there are other reasons for the public to be less interested in the news now than they were in the 1960's. First there was the Cuban Missile Crisis in 1962, then there was the assassination of John F. Kennedy in 1963. Racial unrest hasn't gone away, but there is currently nothing like the Watts riots of 1965 or those following the assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr. in 1968. The protests against the Vietnam War, which claimed the lives of 58,000 Americans, were far more significant than any in recent years. In those days large numbers of people watched the news, and the CBS Evening News had a correspondingly enormous budget. Without any immediate excitement, competition for viewers and readers has devolved to providing light entertainment for the largest audience possible.

In recent years I have stepped up my reading and have become aghast even about the quality in higher levels of journalism in the U.S. After following editorials at The New York Times for several years, I finally decided that they rarely are insightful or thoughtful, and it is difficult not to see them as page filler for an uncritical and gullible readership. The same goes for The New Yorker, which isn't really of much interest beyond fashion, whether it's fashionable plays, movies, fiction or ideas: this is the last place to look for interesting perspectives. Most recently I had a complete falling out with The New York Review of Books, which markets itself to quasi-intellectuals and bon vivants. The editor, Robert Silvers, seems to have developed his own formula: recruit writers such as Joyce Carol Oates, Charles Simic, Martin Filler, Pico Ayer and Lorrie Moore after they have already made names for themselves, milk them for a few years to perpetuate the myth of high quality at the publication, and then, as they sail off into obscurity, replace them with people from the ranks of the latest falling stars. Editorially, the NYRB is a niche player that concentrates on pabulum for intellectual poseurs.

As bleak as this may sound, there are bright spots now because of Internet publishing. On any given day there are bound to be several new and interesting articles to be found there, and the problem is mainly in finding them. In this frontier, I think 3 Quarks Daily is doing a reasonably good job, and it seems likely that there will eventually be competitors in the field of gathering interesting articles from across the web.

My news and journalism consumption habits have changed a lot over the past few years. For the most part I don't pay much attention to the news anymore. In the morning I look at the headlines on The Wall Street Journal and check up on the investing scene. I then scan 3 Quarks Daily to see if there is anything that I would want to read. In the evening we usually watch PBS NewsHour, which is mainly a ritual associated with our cocktail hour. The reporting is better than what you find on the networks, but the reporters rarely ask hard questions, and, like most journalists, aren't that bright. We like Mark Shields as a foil to David Brooks, but I'm sick of both of them and wish they'd retire. David Brooks is the kind of professional journalist who knows exactly how to enhance his career but whose opinions are essentially worthless. In any case, I don't care about domestic politics, and that is usually their main topic. Often it is too painful to watch the entire program, and we prefer the shorter version on the weekends with Hari Sreenivasan. Lately I have become interested in local news and very much enjoy reading the Addison County Independent, which I think is an amazing publication for a county with a population of only 36,000.

Despite my general indifference to the news, technically its low quality and limited influence on public life are problematic for a country whose existence is predicated on the presence of an informed public. However, in keeping with my views on capitalism and democracy, I do not expect this situation to improve. Rather, as I have said, the capitalism plus democracy formula is unsustainable and will end one way or another at some point in the future. Capitalism, democracy or both will sooner or later change from their current forms.

Economic Development in Vermont

One of the very few people who have responded to my poll requested that I write about a topic that often comes up in local discussion: the shortage of well-paying jobs in Vermont. It is difficult to find them here because the state has relatively little industry compared to the surrounding states. There is a large IBM plant in Essex Junction, but the primary state industry is tourism. Some counties are agricultural; Addison County, where I live, has significant dairy and beef farming, and apples and maple syrup are produced in several counties. Wood and mining industries still flourish, and in recent years craft breweries and whiskey distilleries have been growing, but none of these employ many workers. Most of the jobs are tourism-related and don't pay well.

There are historical reasons for the current state of economic affairs in Vermont. Few came early on compared to other states, as the remote, landlocked location was not optimal for industrialization. Many of the early settlers were farmers from nearby states; they soon found out that the soil and climate are not optimal for most crops and joined the migration to the Midwest. Not many industries thrived here, and the rate of population growth significantly lagged behind that of the surrounding states. The population here has multiplied 4.1 times since 1800, compared to 33.1 times for New York, 15.5 times for Massachusetts and 7.2 times for New Hampshire.  As the economy boomed along the coast, Vermont became a vacation retreat. In the 1960's, Vermont gained a counterculture image, and wealthy people from other states began to move here, shifting state politics from conservative to liberal. As in other parts of the country, liberals emphasize protection of the environment and quality-of-life issues, while conservatives emphasize economic growth and wealth creation. To be sure, few Vermont political conservatives resemble Tea Partiers, and they don't correspond closely to the contemporary Republicans in Washington, D.C. A liberal political environment makes it harder to attract new businesses here than to pro-business states.

As a retiree transplant, I oppose wholesale economic development in Vermont. First, speaking as an individual, I came here for the low population density, the pleasant physical environment and the like-mindedness of the people. Having seen firsthand what happened when economic development hit areas such as Indianapolis, Indiana and Schaumburg, Illinois, I would definitely move somewhere else if that were to happen here. I would vote against strong economic growth purely out of self-interest. As far as the status of the unemployed or underemployed is concerned, it has been a fact of life for centuries that people go to where there are jobs, not vice versa. The breadwinners in my family, including me, have done that for generations, so I don't think of it as a punishment to impose it on others. Those who insist on living in a place without jobs are behaving like narcissists if they think they have a right to both a good job and the living situation of their choice. That privilege has been a rarity for most of recorded history.

Second, on a more fundamental level, this topic touches on what I perceive to be serious flaws in our economic and political systems. Neither democracy nor capitalism deals with the consequences of economic development on a long-term basis. Because of economic growth and population increases, the U.S. is not the same country that it was in 1776. Economic growth has historically damaged the environment and contributed to overpopulation across the globe, and the warnings of Thomas Malthus have generally been ignored only because the human race has thus far managed to survive in spite of them. Few seem willing to admit that the country and the world might be better places if they more closely resembled Vermont than New Jersey. It is certainly no coincidence that many of the retirees here moved from that state.

Most of my childhood was spent in a suburb of New York City, and though I didn't understand it at the time, I felt that I was not getting enough exposure to the outdoors. After leaving for college, I developed a sense of relief at being able to live in uncongested places with woods and fields, which, it now seems to me, more closely approximate the kind of environment to which we are adapted. I think the same is true for most people, whether they realize it or not. This takes on significance when you consider that it is a fact that has been almost ignored since the country's inception. Most of the population now lives in or near cities.

Policymakers and economists chuckle to themselves whenever someone suggests that less economic growth would be beneficial. However, economic growth is usually accompanied by population growth. Currently, the world population is projected to reach about 9 billion by 2050, almost ten times the estimated world population of 1800. Ten thousand years ago, a blink of an eye in geological terms, it is estimated that our ancestors inhabited a world with a population of only 4 million. The fact that we have survived this growth does not imply that it is desirable. Rather it has contributed to an illusion of normalcy where none should exist.

I view the world as our deteriorating habitat, with diminishing pockets of habitability. Though I feel fortunate to be able to live in a desirable state within a major economic and military power, I see no reason to support American ideology, which I have never believed. Directly or indirectly, many of the world's woes are connected to conflicting groups that have been forced into contact with each other by overcrowding. Small groups can't wage wars with people whom they don't know exist, neither can they seriously deplete world resources or create global warming. When people aren't forced to live and work in cramped quarters, they can have environments in which they feel comfortable and never encounter conflicting ideologies.

Finally, I am not opposed to all economic development. Here in Middlebury a process is in place to create a small number of jobs that do not impinge upon the existing nature of the town, which still operates much as it did in 1800.

The Obama Persona

I haven't written much about politics or news events, because I don't pay much attention to them other than reading headlines and watching the PBS NewsHour. However, I did see Barack Obama's speech on ISIS last night and will take this opportunity to make a few comments.

I had high hopes for Obama based on his 2004 convention speech for John Kerry. In 2008 he was obviously a better choice than John McCain. But over time I have come to find him unbearable. It seems impossible to know, and it is therefore essentially irrelevant, what his true worldview may be. His speeches lack authenticity to the extent that they are carefully scripted, and are off-putting to the extent that they may accurately convey his thoughts.

Obama's speeches are always laced with words, phrases and thoughts that I find offensive. He is fond of invoking evil and American values and using religious language to make his points, and I find it jarring. His job isn't to combat evil, which, in my opinion, is primarily a social construct. American values are not something that the U.S. has a right to impose on others. And religion should be removed from all political speeches, because this is a secular country.

Even if you accept the premise that the U.S. has a responsibility to maintain world order, I don't think that Obama frames issues such as ISIS appropriately. There is always an allusion to potential attacks on U.S. soil and a suggestion that this must be prevented at all costs. I don't think, for example, that each American life potentially saved is worth, say, one billion dollars. Obama, as far as I know, never discusses estimates of potential American casualties that might result from inaction. Furthermore, he, and politicians generally, do not mention that prolonged attempts to stabilize parts of the Middle East may never succeed regardless of any actions we take. It always seems to come down to good guys versus bad guys and killing or destroying the bad guys. In this respect, Barack Obama isn't much different from George W. Bush.

In my view, the assassination of Osama bin Laden, while technically justifiable, was primarily a publicity stunt. As a strategic matter, it was irrelevant that bin Laden died, because he had no operative function at the time. It immediately became an Obama talking point used to highlight his leadership skills and effectiveness in bringing bin Laden to justice, despite the fact that there was no trial and that it violated Pakistani sovereignty. As in the case of countless drone strikes, Obama was the judge, jury and de facto executioner. Should he be applauded for actions like these?

One aspect of Obama's new initiative that disturbs me is that it may have been precipitated in part by public opinion. Apparently it isn't that big a deal if thousands of Syrians and Iraqis are dying, but the entire U.S. policy in the Middle East must change instantly when Americans become upset about the beheadings of two American journalists. It is true that Obama may merely be using this as an opportunity to present his plan, but I find the linking of major foreign policy initiatives to small-scale events that happen to have had an emotional impact on the American public inappropriate.

Whenever I see Obama speak, I sense that everything he says has been concocted. Is he religious? I don't know. Does he think that the American model of capitalism is good for the world? If so, I disagree with him. Does he think that America's unemployment problem will be fixed by providing people with better educations? If so, he is probably incorrect.

The overall impression I have is that Obama is a mask. He acts as if he is attempting to channel the beliefs of the American public and to speak for them, but is that his role? I don't think so. In the process he often seems to suspend critical judgment, which might show just how irrational the public is and how public opinion can be wrong. Obama almost seems to have an identity disorder that prevents him from voicing his own views, and this signifies to me a lack of responsibility, or at a minimum brings into question his suitability for the job. The president is supposed to make decisions, not seek consensus. He seems to search for the view least likely to receive strong public criticism and then promote it, rather than make his own analysis and convince others of its merits, and as a consequence many justifiably see him as a feckless president. He exhibits the kind of behavior that could be simulated by an algorithm that rates ideas based on their popularity - or the number of "likes" they get on Facebook. Such predictability indicates a weakness in originality, and, more seriously, a deficiency in understanding.

Automated Government

On several occasions I've mentioned that I think in the long run some sort of automated government should replace existing governments. This requires further explanation. The immediate goal in terms of the current geopolitical state of affairs would be to eliminate government domination by special interests and to minimize the detrimental effects of poor choices made by the voters in democracies. The idea would be to reduce government actions or inactions that increase inequality, waste or misdirect resources and damage the environment. What I have in mind would be something resembling communism, but far better managed than has historically been the case. Obviously there would be enormous obstacles in transitioning to such a system.

One difficulty would be convincing people that it would be in their best interest to switch to such a system. As long as capitalism exists in its current form, people are likely to believe that they must control their own destinies by competing in free markets. For this reason, capitalism might have to go first. Another problem would be gaining public acceptance of automating major processes with artificial intelligence. In order to gain that confidence, technology that is superior to what we have at present would be necessary, and the standard of living would probably have to be relatively high for nearly everyone in order to assuage their skepticism.

Extrapolating from the present to the future, which is guesswork at best, conditions could arise that would allow this to come about. Let's say capitalism continues to grow and becomes the universal ideology worldwide. Corporations continue to increase efficiency and provide goods and services that are in demand. Under this scenario, which corresponds with Thomas Piketty's views, the rich will get richer and the majority will tread water indefinitely. Over a long period, good jobs will not be available to most people. Sharing capitalist ideologies, nations may cooperate more than they did in the past and wars could become a rarity. If you take the positive view, it is possible that existing governments will gradually evolve towards more socialistic models in order to limit social unrest. Assuming that the technology exists, there may literally be no reason for most people to work, and governments may become their default source of support. It is certainly possible that at some point, barring major setbacks, computers and robots will be able to do everything.

On a cautionary note, it is also perfectly conceivable that a different sequence of events could occur. In a worst case scenario, the ultra-rich might abandon their fellow humans and use proprietary technology to dominate them unfairly. They might enhance themselves genetically and physically, essentially turning themselves into a superior species that takes no responsibility for us.

I began thinking about this topic when it became obvious to me that the U.S. government does not function in a manner that produces outcomes that are desirable for Americans, humanity in general or the planet as a whole. Because of the fundamental imbalances of power that are created by rampant capitalism, sooner or later most of us may be at the mercy of the ultra-rich, and we don't know for certain what course of action they might choose. My thinking is that some sort of hedge is needed against the possibility of world domination by a minority that is indifferent to the welfare of mankind. In this light, capitalism and democracy can be seen as dangerous, uncontrolled processes. On the one hand, capitalism provides a wealth advantage to a minority, and, on the other hand, democratic processes are diverted from their original intent through the influence of money. Who, if anyone, is addressing this problem?

Thomas Piketty IV

In conclusion, Capital in the Twenty-First Century is an important and impressive book. Chief among its virtues is Piketty's commitment to a broad cross-disciplinary approach to his subject, economics, which he sees as a sub-discipline of the social sciences, along with history, sociology, anthropology and political science. Most people are fully justified in their lack of interest in economics, because it is usually presented as a narrow, technical field that doesn't relate directly to other subjects. In contrast, Piketty writes like an Enlightenment thinker who is concerned about important issues such as the future of mankind, not just little things such as U.S. GDP growth next year. In short, he is a big thinker, whereas Paul Krugman, Joseph Stiglitz and probably even Milton Friedman, comparatively speaking, are not.

Even so, I don't necessarily recommend that you read Capital unless you are particularly interested in policy discussions related to economics. It is a long, thorough and detailed book that touches on many topics, but the central message is quite simple. It is that the current state of the world is such that the wealthy are likely to become wealthier and the poor are likely to become poorer. As a believer in social justice and the responsibility of governments to maintain an acceptable level of equality, Piketty recommends that permanent new taxes on wealth be instituted globally. He also suggests that one-time taxes on wealth could be used to eliminate or reduce national debts. The latter would be preferable to decades of austerity, which has little effect on the wealthy but places a heavy burden on the poor.

Much of the book is devoted to showing how wealth inequality grew up until 1914, when it collapsed, and how it took off again during the recovery after 1945. His thesis, which he amply documents, is that the 1914-1945 period was a historical aberration. The wars and the Great Depression wiped out most of the prior wealth inequality, and the surge in economic growth after 1945 temporarily allowed the less-wealthy to advance economically. Now, Piketty argues, we have resumed the long-term trend in which the return on capital exceeds the return on labor. People who are wealthy now will become wealthier from their investments while the rest of society will languish indefinitely with little chance of making economic progress. Enormous wealth is accumulating in the top .1% of the population. The number of billionaires and multi-billionaires is growing, and even large private university endowments are growing faster than those of smaller universities. The largest endowments grow at the highest rates because the universities have the resources necessary for the best investment research. For example, Harvard, with an endowment of about $30 billion, spends about $100 million per year to manage its assets and gets a real return of about 10.2%, higher than that of all other universities except Yale and Princeton. In this environment, ordinary workers will never catch up with the wealthy and small, private universities will never catch up with Harvard, Yale and Princeton.

The parts of the book that I found most refreshing involved Piketty's critiques of the U.S. He debunks the idea of American exceptionalism, saying that current information suggests that social mobility is lower in the U.S. than in Europe. He attributes much of the wealth inequality in the U.S. to overpaid executives. He speculates that low top income tax rates have encouraged U.S. executives to bargain harder for higher compensation, since they can keep more of their earnings than they would otherwise. If higher top-level income tax rates were reinstituted, executives would have less incentive to demand higher pay and American wealth inequality would be reduced. Courageously, he goes on to say:
...no hypocrisy is too great when economic and financial elites are obliged to defend their interests-and that includes economists, who currently occupy an enviable place in the US income hierarchy. Some economists have an unfortunate tendency to defend their private interest while implausibly claiming to champion the general interest. Although data on this are sparse, it also seems that US politicians of both parties are much wealthier than their European counterparts and in a totally different category from the average American, which might explain why they tend to confuse their own private interest with the general interest. Without a radical shock, it seems fairly likely that the current equilibrium will persist for some time. The egalitarian pioneer ideal has faded into oblivion, and the New World may be on the verge of becoming the Old Europe of the twenty-first century's globalized economy.

In full disclosure, I must say that I have some sympathies with wealth inequality. Historically, extreme wealth has often led to good art as a result of attempts by the wealthy to differentiate themselves. When the Italians were wealthy we got Botticelli, Michelangelo and Titian. When the Dutch were wealthy we got Bruegel, Vermeer and Rembrandt. When the French were wealthy we got Flaubert, the Impressionists, the Post-Impressionists, Debussy and Proust. The arts tend to flourish when there are rich people throwing money around. On the other hand, I can't say that wealthy Americans have much to show for their artistic interests unless you include bad taste (The Queen of Versailles comes to mind). Secondarily, also on the positive side, although I'm not rich, I'm wealthy enough that the book affirms that if I manage my investments properly, not only am I unlikely to experience financial difficulties, but my wealth will probably increase during the remainder of my life, thanks to the backward political process here and the absence in the U.S. of useful public intellectuals like Piketty.

At the conceptual level, I consider Piketty to be the responsible adult that few Americans seem able to be. Why didn't an American economist write this book? As Piketty politely refrains from saying, this is a narrow-minded, materialistic culture all the way up through the intellectual ranks. The policies he recommends should already be under consideration, but whatever headway they make will meet tremendous opposition at each step. It is possible that by following Piketty's guide and publicly debating the issues discussed in his book the state of society could be improved significantly. To me, this is a more serious approach than what has been brought up by either liberals or conservatives in recent decades. I wish Piketty's ideas the best of luck, but still hold fast to the view that humans ultimately are not sufficiently rational to organize themselves in an equitable and sustainable fashion. As I have said earlier, I don't believe that either capitalism or democracy is essential to human life, and this book does not look that far into the future.

Noam Chomsky

When I was growing up, I had little cause to be political about anything. I was a white Anglo-Saxon male living in prosperous suburbs, and my parents and grandparents had never been persecuted. Though my great-grandparents on my mother's side were more or less forced out of Turkey because they were Armenian, that was never discussed at home. My mother spent her life pretending not to be Armenian and identified herself as Greek. We had never seen a black person in England, and when we moved to the U.S. in 1957 my mother explained to us that if we saw one we shouldn't call him a "nigger," which was the first time I heard that word.

During the 1960's, the antiwar and civil rights movements seemed legitimate to me. I agreed with them in principle, but thought that since they were obviously right there wasn't much to say about them. I did not feel any of the "white guilt" that many well-off white American liberals felt, because I wasn't well-off or American. The absurdity of guilt-stricken American liberals became apparent to me when I arrived at college in 1968.

I recently saw an amateur documentary made by a college acquaintance in 1969. It features several other college acquaintances as they plan and execute a confrontation with the college president about the small number of black students on campus. It is painful to watch. They are naive and ideological, the black students want nothing to do with them, and the president squirms under pressure to take actions that he probably can't. Later on, when the U.S. invaded Cambodia in 1970, two students burned down the R.O.T.C. building and were caught because they burnt themselves in the process and went to the local hospital for treatment. In this sort of environment it was hard for me to take campus activism seriously. Even so, by the time I was a senior I had begun to see the college as a corporate entity that stayed afloat by preying on students who aren't substantively different from ordinary consumers. This led me to small acts of terrorism, but I wouldn't call them political.

Over the years my political awareness has increased somewhat, but I still have difficulty voting, because politics, politicians and political activists seem stupid to me. However, along the lines of insidious corporate activity, I began to think more about political brainwashing during the Gulf War (1990-1991). I was then living in Dixon, Illinois, Ronald Reagan's hometown. Up to that point I had thought of the Dixon natives as relaxed, likable and slightly agrarian; they were poorly-educated and unimaginative, but reasonable and pacifistic. I was surprised to learn, through their enthusiastic support of the war, that underneath they were conservative Republican war hawks. Further investigation showed that pretty much the entire state of Illinois is like that once you get outside of Chicago and college towns.

I have never read any of Noam Chomsky's books, but because he is widely considered to be one of the leading public intellectuals in the world, I've watched documentaries about him and seen him on TV. What interests me at the moment is that even though I'm not political and don't follow this stuff closely, I've generally come to the exact same conclusions that Chomsky reached decades ago on my own: governments and corporations manipulate the public in order for private entities to enrich themselves or secure their positions, and democracy is ignored in the process. Frequently, as a result, populations at home and abroad are criminally abused. In particular, Chomsky is highly critical of the actions of American presidents: "If the Nuremberg laws were applied, then every post-war American president would have been hanged." The funny thing is that he is not a fanatic and has ample facts and examples to back up everything he says.

One of the reasons why I'm discussing this is that it highlights points I've made earlier about conventional wisdom and conformity. Many important issues are swept under the rug by the media, and as a consequence few people think about them or react. Chomsky also makes criticisms of intellectuals similar to ones I've made. I am intrigued by the fact that he used to appear in the NYRB but no longer does. I wouldn't be surprised if he has been banned there because he calls out intellectual charlatans when he sees them: that is what they are at the NYRB. I might add that Chomsky is another classic "smart Jewish guy from Brooklyn," though he actually grew up in Philadelphia.

With the limited exposure I've had to Chomsky, there are only a couple of criticisms that I can think of. First, he is not an effective communicator. He is not concise, and therefore has little chance of winning over most people. He writes book after book and can talk for hour after hour on whatever topic he chooses, always in a low, unmodulated voice. Second, he identifies himself as a libertarian socialist or anarchist, neither of which I consider to be an adequate substitute for the current system of capitalism and nominal democracy. What kind of government can be against authority?

I'm not interested enough to explore Chomsky's political goals in detail, but from what I know they do not seem plausible. I suspect that he is an idealist regarding human nature, which is where I part company with him. The impression I have is that he thinks free speech and public awareness can create an environment in which authorities will be forced to work for the public good rather than for special interests. If you have read my earlier posts, you will know that I am far less sanguine about human nature. That is why I advocate an authoritarian system of governance that is immune to attempts at manipulation by individuals or special interests. I don't think that, given the nature of our species, a functional democracy is possible. Individual freedoms must be impartially curtailed according to a rational program. My ideal political party might be called the Zookeepers. How popular do you think that would be?

Conventional Wisdom

The painting at the masthead of the blog, in case you're unfamiliar with it, is The Parable of the Blind, by Pieter Bruegel the Elder, which references the Bible. As the title of the blog also suggests, I am skeptical of the beliefs that many people hold. This may have originated with a slightly contrarian attitude that I've had ever since childhood, but it is also related to facts such as my parents' different ethnic backgrounds and nationalities and my history of living in the U.K. and culturally diverse parts of the U.S. Because of these experiences I did not develop an identity in conjunction with the norms of any one place, and I tend to be an outside observer wherever I go.

Seeing the world in this way has both disadvantages and advantages. On the negative side, I don't fit in well anywhere, people can be suspicious of me without cause, and it is difficult for locals to understand me. Internally, I often experience a certain cognitive dissonance because of differences in the ways other people process information in relation to the way I do. On the positive side, I am unimpeded by local prejudices and habits, and, with a broader range of experience than many, I am rarely surprised or upset by turns of events. Above all, I am free to theorize about the world without the constraints of received wisdom.

Living my life this way, and now retired and facing no obligation to please employers or anyone, I increasingly find what might be called "consensus reality" quite odd. As I mentioned in an earlier post, everyone is essentially winging it. I think the way human society is organized is somewhat arbitrary now and could be quite different if people only thought differently. Something like this occurred to me after I graduated from college. For about a year I lived with my dysfunctional family - all five of us under one roof for the last time. My father was then making little money and consuming vast quantities of alcohol, but everyone else was working and our household income was more than adequate. We lived in a large Victorian rental house in a tree-filled neighborhood in Connecticut overlooking a river and not far from Long Island Sound. Although there were several forces in play that caused this state of affairs to end, with a slightly different model the situation could have become stable and pleasant. As a family we could have saved money, made daily living more desirable, dried out my father, etc. Of course, that never happened, and before long I moved away and my father was dead.

I mention this because it is often the case that people are trapped by the paradigms under which they operate. This has been examined by Thomas Kuhn, the author of The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, in which he coined the now famous phrase "paradigm shift." The change from a geocentric to a heliocentric view of the solar system is a prime example. I find that paradigms are adopted by all people, and they are usually defended and clung to even when there is evidence that better paradigms exist.

It is possible that we are in the very early stages of a broad paradigm shift now. Whatever anyone thinks of Piketty's book, Capital, it has triggered a great deal of discussion. There was already a lot of rumbling and discontent before Piketty came along, but he seems to some extent to have become a lightning rod. The financial crisis of 2008, the weak U.S. recovery, America's failure in world leadership, etc., along with Piketty's book, have helped elevate inequality as a major issue at the U.S. policy level. Of course, I am delighted, because people, though currently only a minority, are also beginning to raise the question of whether capitalism and democracy are suitable models for mankind. I don't think they are, as will also be evident from previous posts.

Often, when people think of democracy, they conjure images of Thomas Jefferson, the visionary who freed Americans from British tyranny. In fact, Jefferson's vision is now obsolete. He sought to free America from commercial oppression by England and religious oppression by churches. But he also relished living the life of a country squire supported by slaves, who, along with women, had no voting rights. While for his time he may have accurately assessed the dangers of extended voting privileges, he apparently believed that equality pertained only to white male landowners. The Founding Fathers cannot have thought deeply about inequality. Contemporary Americans, other than bigoted conservatives with a pro-slavery mentality, are deluding themselves if they think of the Constitution as a document that reflects timeless wisdom.

I consider capitalism even more insidious than democracy, because it has a greater effect on how people think about their lives and how in fact they end up living their lives. Especially in the U.S., personal worth is closely tied to both the status level of one's job and the associated level of pay. This is a hard road to travel for hunter-gatherers, myself included. It channels people's behavior according to the requirements of commercial ventures, often making liars out of them. These days, even what passes for art has become a lie. As Mary McCarthy once said of Lillian Hellman, "Every word she writes is a lie, including and and the."

Voting

Partly because I did not become a U.S. citizen until age 27, voting has always been a problematic experience for me. You get indoctrinated with the idea that all responsible citizens must vote, yet I am rarely able to muster much enthusiasm for any candidates, and, more significantly, I have little idea what, if anything, they would do in office or whether it would in fact be good for society.

There are exceptions, though, such as Bernie Sanders, and he presents a different set of problems. As a socialist, he comes closer to my political beliefs than most, but in reality he seems to be an ineffectual political leader in Washington, because he is so far out of the mainstream that he has no power base there. Thus, if you only want to hear pointed speeches that you agree with, he's fine, but don't expect any positive changes to come out of it.

Part of my cognitive dissonance is related to the fact that I have moved around quite a bit over my life and have never had a sense that I belong to any particular community. I don't feel very English, nor do I have an American identity after living here for 57 years. I didn't say the pledge of allegiance in high school, and I have always found phrases like "the American dream" slightly repugnant. Besides this, I am an ideas person, and politics is a messy process where emotion plays a greater part than reason.. Politics doesn't attract people who interest me.

The only political candidates that I've ever spent much time assessing have been the presidential ones. In hindsight, that was a waste of time. I voted for John Anderson in 1980, Ronald Reagan in 1984, skipped in 1988 because I disliked both George H.W. Bush and Michael Dukakis, Bill Clinton in 1992 and 1996, Al Gore in 2000, John Kerry in 2004, Barack Obama in 2008 and Jill Stein in 2012. In any case, I don't think that any of the presidents elected in my lifetime were good presidents. That isn't entirely their fault, though, since the political system itself has many shortcomings.

What I am trying to decide now is whether to continue voting. There is a lot weighing against it. Unless a much stronger candidate than any who has emerged since Franklin D. Roosevelt runs, I may skip voting for president. On the other hand, I may make a token vote for Bernie Sanders if he runs for president, though he could never win and would probably be a disaster if he did win. I will continue to vote in Vermont elections, because they are more palpable, and I tend to agree with Vermont politicians more than the politicians elsewhere.

I will definitely vote in all Middlebury elections, because there is a real community here with which I'm vaguely connected. We recently had a classic town and gown tussle over the ceding of land to Middlebury College in exchange for funding for a new town hall. The local anti-intellectual farmers had signs up on our street encouraging people to vote against it, but we voted for it, and it passed, though it is still being challenged. When the deciding vote is 955 to 731, you can make a difference as a voter. And the results will be visible.

As noted in earlier posts, I don't think that democracy in the U.S. works. That has a lot to do with the fact that it was designed as an alternative to monarchies and despotic systems in which people are oppressed. In the developed world, democracy has evolved into a problematic system because of its incorporation of capitalistic principles that have taken on the characteristics of a virus. Try as they might, the Founding Fathers were unable to write a constitution assuring a permanent balance between democratic governance and economic gain. The virus has mutated and now seems to have a stranglehold on the political body. In this regard, Vermont is faring better than most states.

Inequality

Last night we watched Robert Reich's film Inequality for All. Inequality has recently become a buzzword in Washington, and I'll discuss this today.

Reich is probably the most effective communicator in the liberal camp, and he makes a convincing case, comparing the Great Recession to the Great Depression. When taxes on the rich go down, they become excessively wealthy and create financial bubbles, while the income of ordinary workers stagnates or falls. Since 70% of economic activity is consumer spending, when the middle class stops spending, economic growth slows. The rich perpetuate this cycle by manipulating the political system in order to maintain their wealth. The explanation isn't causal, but it does show the elements of a repeating pattern. The presentation is simple, like An Inconvenient Truth, in order to give it broad appeal.

There were two things in the film that I particularly liked. Reich recruited liberal billionaire Nick Hanauer to bolster some of his points. To counter the popular Republican myth that the rich should not be taxed heavily because they are "wealth creators," and taxing them more would entail "class warfare," Hanauer says that it is impossible for him to simulate consumer spending proportionately to his income because he could never spend that much on personal consumption. He has more money than he knows what to do with and lets hedge funds handle it with investments all over the world. He advocates higher taxes on the rich so that their money can be put to better use in the economy. The other thing I liked was Reich's appearance at an anti-union meeting. There is nothing special about it, but I think it shows an example of how American workers vote against their own best interests by supporting Republican policies that hurt them. Many low income pro-Republican voters appear to be victims of brainwashing.

In the context of my earlier posts, I have issues with some of Reich's views. At heart he is a traditional liberal who accepts the economic system we have and only wants to restore balance to it. I think at some point this system will have to be abandoned. I believe that the key concept is equality, and this takes precedence over capitalism and democracy, because of the three it is the one most deeply rooted in our evolutionary past as eusocial creatures. We are not essentially capitalistic or democratic creatures, and these are relatively new inventions in our history. Reich comes from a traditional background and does not question its assumptions.

Almost all economists, including Reich, think that the current model, with economic growth through consumer spending, can continue indefinitely. That seems unlikely to me. The model doesn't work unless a country is continuously infused with young, energetic workers who are seeking to advance financially. Countries with older populations face a disadvantage because they can't generate enough economic activity. Furthermore, it seems that equilibrium can never be reached if there must always be more poor people seeking to become wealthier. The model ignores the possibility of overpopulation and environmental damage. There is no consideration of the scenario in which all of society is wealthy and economic growth is unnecessary. As a practical matter, perhaps the greatest threat to this model is corporate efficiency. Technology and outsourcing to other countries have been eliminating jobs for decades and will continue to do so. This model cannot possibly work if there are no jobs, and it looks as if at some point even the best educated won't be able to find them. Robotics and artificial intelligence are in their infancy.

I am also critical of democracy because in practice it doesn't work. You can blame it on campaign finance, talk radio, Citizens United, a poorly educated electorate, or anything you like, but the fact is that people vote irrationally all the time. This ties in with what I wrote earlier about an automated system of government that would remove politics as a factor and eliminate poor voting choices.

Notwithstanding these criticisms, I think Reich is one of the best things going in American public awareness, and my favorite senator, Bernie Sanders, is sponsoring a free public showing of the film throughout Vermont.

Optimism is the Opium of the People

One of the reasons why I favor European writers over American writers is that, because of Europe's complex history, a simple ideological viewpoint is less likely to be taken seriously. Although I don't think Milan Kundera is a great writer, I enjoyed the concept of The Joke, in which the protagonist says in jest "Optimism is the opium of the people" in Communist Czechoslovakia and gets himself into big trouble. Of course, Kundera became popular in the U.S. not because of that book but because of The Unbearable Lightness of Being, which had a lot of sex in it and was also made into a movie. Optimism is one of the characteristics of Americans, and I don't think The Joke could be popular here, especially without sex scenes.

Even so, many Europeans and others across the globe look naively at the U.S. and are still taken in by its allure. I think they are attracted by the prosperity, the apparent social equality and the Hollywood illusion that it's a fun place to be. Many don't see that beneath the exuberant veneer lies an unpleasant capitalist oligopoly run by people like the Koch brothers, Sheldon Adelson, the Walton Family and Rupert Murdoch. Less conservative capitalists such as Bill Gates and Warren Buffett are ideologically similar with the exception that they leave room for higher taxation on the wealthy in order to support economic equality sufficient for the maintenance of social stability. Between these groups, pro-business political candidates are assured of election in most cases. The majority of Democratic candidates are backed by business interests too, thus you end up with presidents like Bill Clinton and Barack Obama, who may as well be Republicans.

For most of its history the U.S. has been physically and culturally isolated from outside influences. Thus, with only a skimpy conceptual framework pieced together from Enlightenment thinkers such as John Locke and Adam Smith, religious settlers infused with the Protestant work ethic gradually transformed an agrarian society into a major industrial power. They were aided by religious fervor, however ridiculous, and an abundance of natural resources. The basic idea here has always been to work hard and get ahead financially. Liberals in the U.S. are deluding themselves if they think that sharing the wealth was ever popular. Tycoons have been viewed favorably most of the time and are still admired as long as they don't commit crimes or willfully abuse workers. Many successful businessmen reflect the same simple optimism as poorer Americans, and the assumption is that those who succeed simply worked harder. This naive optimism is exemplified not only by vacuous, intellectually bankrupt politicians such as George W. Bush and Mitt Romney, but also by better-rounded politicians such as Bill Clinton and Barack Obama, who, externally at least, are just as pro-American, pro-business and optimistic about the future as anyone else.

Kundera's phrase is an apt description of the U.S. We are living in a period where capitalism is the dominant ideology, and it is running its victory lap. From my vantage point, this is only a transitional phase, and there is a serious shortage of thinkers who publicly define how to proceed from here in light of the fact that the present system is ephemeral. Almost everything in the media reads like a pep rally for capitalism, because it is funded by capitalism.

For the optimists among you, I am not saying that there are no grounds for optimism. I am only saying that the branded optimism in the U.S. looks ominous and sinister. I encourage you not to start your own business. As a Darwinian thinker, I am neither optimistic nor pessimistic, and only know that change will occur. However, the less thought it is given, the less desirable the future is likely to be.

Democracy

A brief exchange on an article posted on 3 Quarks Daily started me thinking about democracy again. It is an interesting phenomenon how people cling to the idea that democracy is an essential element of government when that is not necessarily the case. As Winston Churchill sensibly said, "Many forms of Government have been tried and will be tried in this world of sin and woe. No one pretends that democracy is perfect or all-wise. Indeed, it has been said that democracy is the worst form of Government except all those other forms that have been tried from time to time."

I find faith in the democratic system followed in the U.S. somewhat irrational. Not to sound cynical, but people will support any system that seems to support their best interests, and like every government the system here does not serve everyone's interests equally.  A case can be made that the system of government in the U.S. is at odds with equality, which leads me to believe that if you value equality more than democracy, you ought to support changes to the current democratic system.

One of the problems that has developed in every system of government is the acquisition of power by an individual or group that does not serve the best interests of other groups or the whole population. The founding fathers in the U.S. were well aware of this and went to great pains to spread power around in the hope that it would be more difficult to abuse. Thus we have two houses of Congress, an executive branch and a judicial branch at the federal level. I am confident that if they were still around, they would be advancing broad legal changes to limit the encroachment on government by corporations and other special interest groups, which obviously have tilted the balance of power.

Furthermore, the founding fathers did not believe in full democracy, and George Washington was elected the first president with voting rights extended to only 6% of the adult population, consisting of white male landowners. It was widely recognized at that time, correctly I think, that every adult is not capable of voting competently. Since then, with the gradual extension of voting rights to other constituencies, the problems associated with voter competency have been largely overlooked because the extension of voting rights has been associated with greater equality.  In theory that is correct, but, while the founding fathers could be fairly confident in the overall competency of voters then, there is little doubt that they would not feel the same today. They would see modern campaigns as corporate-controlled spectacles in which the latest marketing techniques are skillfully applied to lull a gullible public into voting for their agents.

The idea of democracy is especially appealing to those who have lived under oppressive regimes, but not many seem to recognize that human nature is present in both dictatorships and democracies. There is already enough evidence to say that the pursuit of personal gain infiltrates and corrupts democracies just as much as totalitarian regimes, only more slowly and less obviously. For this reason, I am an advocate of an option that was not available when Churchill made his statement in 1947. Democratic principles could be encoded into a set of algorithms and placed beyond the reach of pernicious influences. Artificial intelligence is nearing a point when it will be possible to replace politicians with computers and software. It may make sense to retain some traditional politics at the local level, but I don't see a need for it at higher levels of government if the technology is available. Frankly it would be fine with me if there were no national politics: then I would never have to worry about government shutdowns, unnecessary wars, corruption, incompetent leadership, etc. Although this may sound far-fetched, it may soon be technologically feasible and is certainly worth some thought.