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!

The Federal Reserve

This is a sort of unusual topic for me, but I decided to write a little about it because Donald Trump has been attacking Jerome Powell, who is the current chairman of the Federal Reserve. As an investor, I have been following the Federal Reserve for many years. In case you don't know, the Federal Reserve was set up partially to depoliticize policy decisions regarding the financial system in the U.S. and to protect it from abuse by political operatives. I think it important to understand this, especially now, when news coverage is clearly inadequate. I'm getting very tired of PBS NewsHour.

After I graduated from college in 1972, inflation gradually rose to high levels. At that time, I also think that the U.S. economy began to restructure due to foreign manufacturing competition, particularly from Japan. The Vietnam War, which was unjustified, was also costly, and a strong inflationary trend developed. Political parties tend to kick the can down the road, such that they can blame their errors on future administrations. During this process, the Johnson, Nixon and Ford administrations oversaw inflationary pressures that lasted for several years. By the time that Jimmy Carter became president in 1977, inflation was taking off. Carter appointed Paul Volcker chairman of the Federal Reserve in 1979, and he served until 1987. During Volcker's tenure, the Federal Reserve took draconian actions in which they intentionally raised interest rates in order to reduce inflation. My first house was purchased with a 13% mortgage rate in 1980. Volcker is now considered to have been one of the best chairmen. Later on, Alan Greenspan got mixed reviews as chairman, because he mishandled the dot-com bubble in 2000 and laid the groundwork for the Great Recession, from 2007 to 2009, by deemphasizing financial regulation before he left in 2006.

In my opinion, Jerome Powell is doing a good job as chairman, as was Janet Yellen, his predecessor, and he has generally been reducing inflation and improving employment since the pandemic, his two main mandates. The situation with Trump now is so transparent that, to a knowledgeable audience, he is simply confirming to them that he is ignorant and self-centered. Trump and his advisors want to forestall an economic slowdown, with unemployment, by introducing economic stimulus through interest rate reductions, which would cause inflation. Trump's tariff program is inflationary. So far, because the Federal Reserve is specifically designed to prevent rash policy actions promoted by politicians, and because Trump can't replace him until next year, when his term ends, we still have some protections. Trump wanted to remove Powell ahead of time, but he seems to have received enough pushback to stop for now. Even so, he continues to belittle Powell publicly, not caring that Powell is obviously more competent than he is.

I still can't predict the exact timing of the collapse of the Trump administration, but it seems to me that he has created a situation from which he will never recover. At the moment, it looks as if he will not succeed in creating any benefits for low- and middle-income voters, the Republicans will lose seats in Congress, and he will generally lose his influence.

While I am still quite disappointed with how the news media has been handling the Trump phenomenon, there are now some pretty good voices out there. I particularly admire Jennifer Rubin, who currently communicates through The Contrarian. Ironically, Rubin was previously known as a conservative. What counts for me is that she has a brain that actually works and isn't a congenital money-grubber. From speaking to a couple of random Vermonters recently, I was also heartened to see that there is a simmering Trump hatred here, and probably everywhere – a positive sign indeed.

The Current Situation

Since I'm still having a lot of trouble finding something to read, I thought that I'd write a bit about the world situation, particularly the return of the chaos-inducing Donald Trump, and what this means for all of us. There is a palpable sense of despair and panic at the moment, and I'm sure that millions of people would like assurances or guidance of some sort. 

First, let me specifically describe how I see Donald Trump. I see him as a stupid person who has been obsessed for most of his life with being perceived as important. From what I observe, he seems to have no particular talent, and he lacks the intelligence and creativity to come up with anything useful for others. In every public appearance of him that I've ever seen, he presents himself as a successful executive whom others flock to for advice. But this is all made-up, and no savvy people take him seriously. As a result, he became surrounded by sycophants who were generally also stupid, and, particularly after he was coached by Roy Cohn, he became extremely hard-nosed, is accustomed to using his underlings to do his dirty work for him, and he also became comfortable lying constantly. It seems that his primary business tactic was to work with small players for services and underpay them in order to maintain a profitable business. His main skill, to this day, is the avoidance of paying full prices for services that he has commissioned. Because of his enormous inheritance from his father, it was easy for him to win court cases against people who lacked his resources. As a matter of habit, he has continued the same technique right up to the present, and because no other person as unscrupulous as he is had ever reached his political level in the U.S. before, he was able to evade jail time for obvious crimes. In historical terms, one would expect that he would be in jail now.

The other aspect of Trump's ascent is the general political entropy that has occurred in the U.S. since about 1993. When business-friendliness became popular in both parties, the power of money gradually took over politics in the U.S. This is more conspicuous today than ever with Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos, Mark Zuckerberg, Sergey Brin, Sundar Pichai, Tim Cook and Rupert Murdoch, among others, attending the second inauguration of Trump. This isn't a real show of support and simply reflects a calculated attempt to benefit their businesses. In private, to them Trump fits the definition of a useful idiot. To be fair though, I also have to point out that the tech billionaires have their own set of psychological deficiencies. The point really is that the U.S. was not originally intended to be the world headquarters for pathological money-grubbers, and this is the spectacle that we're witnessing now.

I'm not about to predict world history for the next one-hundred years, but it isn't that hard to see how things will end for Trump. The rule of thumb is probably "Once an idiot, always an idiot." This means that Trump isn't about to successfully create a new world order for oligarchs. The more likely scenario is that Trump will completely screw things up, because that is what he usually does. He doesn't have a coherent ideology, and, for the billionaires, this is just a temporarily convenient arrangement for them. Because Trump doesn't understand or care about the needs of others, it isn't possible for him to intentionally make a positive contribution to society. This means that it is impossible for him to have a positive legacy when he leaves office. Only he and his friends will benefit, there will be no useful policies enacted, and the U.S. federal government may be left in shambles. The people who voted for him will generally be worse-off, and he and his advisors will probably continue to be charged with crimes. The powerful people who are supporting him now have already prepared their justifications and alibis, and the world will move on. No significant new world alliances will be formed, and within four years, Trump will have permanently departed. His health seems to be poor, and he could potentially die from natural causes while still in office. People like him are not usually assassinated, but that is also a possibility.

I won't belabor my points and will just say that Trump will eventually be remembered as the stupid fat guy who screwed things up for the world for a few years. If you can just sit tight and weather this, you should be fine. There are still real questions about where new technology is taking us, whether climate change will be addressed, etc., but that has almost nothing to do with Donald Trump.

Autocracy, Inc.: The Dictators Who Want to Run the World

This is a new book by Anne Applebaum, the journalist. Politics isn't one of my favorite subjects, but global politics have become so complicated in recent years that I thought that I should get an update. Although this book is written in a journalistic style and lacks an index, Applebaum is experienced and insightful regarding the topic. The writing is a bit jerky at times, because it integrates magazine articles that were written separately. 

Autocracies have been around for thousands of years, but there was somewhat of a lull following World War II, when world leaders founded organizations such as the UN in order to keep global order. What is confusing now is that, not only have they made a big comeback, but that there is a new ecosystem in which autocrats regularly assist each other even when they have different goals and ideologies. A good example comes from the relationship between Venezuela and Iran:

Since 2000, Iran has systematically increased its aid, first for Chávez and then Maduro. Iranians bought Venezuelan gold and sent food and gasoline in return. Iranians are believed to be advising Venezuela on repressive tactics against dissidents. Iranians helped Venezuela build a drone factory (apparently with mixed success) and have sent equipment and personnel to help repair Venezuelan oil refineries. The Venezuelans, for their part, might have helped launder money for Hezbollah, the Iran-backed terrorist group, and are believed to have provided passports for Hezbollah and Iran officials as well.

Besides Iran, Venezuela is getting help from Russia, China, Cuba and Turkey.

In the most general sense, today's autocrats don't have rigid ideologies and are tolerant of other autocrats who are willing to work with them. This sometimes means that large, well-organized countries such as Russia and China are working directly with brutal thugs who like wealth and power and don't care about their own countries at all.

The king of evil autocrats seems to be Vladimir Putin, who has spent much of his adult life working on autocratic schemes. He benefited from his familiarity with techniques employed by Stalin long ago. The Nord Stream natural gas pipeline to Germany began operation in 2011 and has provided stolen funds to Putin that are used to finance his various projects. This helped Russia become a leading kleptocracy, as Applebaum describes it. The stolen funds go to Putin's facilitators all over the world through a vast network of money laundering. Because the money is stolen, it doesn't have to be invested carefully, and it can end up in unneeded new buildings. Applebaum advocates transparency in real estate ownership, because kleptocrats currently live in unidentified homes all over the world, including the U.S. and U.K. 

Applebaum's main solution to the autocracy problem is as follows:

...the democracies of North America, Latin America, Europe, Asia, and Africa, together with the leaders of democratic opposition in Russia, China, Iran, Venezuela, Cuba, Belarus, Zimbabwe, Myanmar, and other autocratic states, should think about the struggle for freedom not as a competition with specific autocratic states, and certainly not as "war with China," but as a war against autocratic behaviors, wherever they are found: in Russia, in China, in Europe, in the United States.

Since American social media sites are hardly regulated, she also advocates legislation to correct that for the users.

Trump does come up in the book in a couple of places. For example: 

The fact that anonymous shell companies were purchasing condominiums in Trump-branded properties while Trump was president should have set off alarm bells. That it did not is evidence of how accustomed to kleptocratic corruption we have become.

My view is that, because Trump is a narcissist and isn't particularly talented, in the course of his life he has moved from one field to another, and each time he fails. He wasn't particularly successful as a real estate developer and failed as a casino operator. He also tried and failed at leveraged buyouts when they were popular. His main success was in becoming an actor specializing in characters who are great businessmen. I think that he admires autocrats because he would like that job. He would love it if everyone had to agree with him and praised him all of the time.

Overall, autocracies are a complex topic, and they are still evolving. This book provides some of the basic information that you need to know now. I would have liked to know more about Xi Jinping, because he remains somewhat of a mystery to me. Applebaum is not unrealistic about the difficulties of democratic processes, which are the main alternative, but seems less skeptical of them than I am. Because I look at humans biologically, it is obvious to me that we have gradually been creating greater and greater risks to our continued existence, and that one of these days our luck may run out.

Politics II

Though politics is not one of my favorite topics, because most political discussion is frivolous and this is a serious blog, I do feel obliged to write about it occasionally. To some extent, I have used political thinking as an example of human cognitive limitations, with evidence practically slapping us in the face on a daily basis. In my view, you have to allow that it might be possible for well-informed, rational voters to make viable political decisions, but you hardly have to observe the actual political process to see that rationality plays almost no role in the decisions of most voters. There have been two recent trends in news coverage that make politics especially frustrating. On the one hand, there are news outlets that are purely commercial and take no journalistic responsibility for their news content, and, on the other hand, there are unbiased news outlets that take their neutrality to such extremes that they never report on the strengths and weaknesses of individual political candidates; they prefer to limit their political discussions to poll results. I might add that the "neutral" news outlets usually have corporate and other sponsors, and can therefore hardly be considered completely neutral. With the backdrop of uncontrolled misinformation and intentional disinformation campaigns on the internet, false information has been given a significant advantage and now has a disproportional effect on election outcomes. 

I'll comment on Donald Trump first, because this is probably the best example in American political history of the news media dropping the ball. There was some basis for Trump's presidential victory in 2016. He appeared to be a successful businessman and had the showmanship of a television personality, though, if you had dug a little deeper, even then there was plenty of evidence of his various deficiencies.

He benefited from the weaknesses of Hillary Clinton as a candidate: she was uncharismatic, and her political background connected her to decades of ineffective Democrats who had essentially ignored the growing economic pressures on the middle class. Furthermore, she had lived in such a rarefied, wealthy liberal environment that she did not anticipate the effect of her "basket of deplorables" phrase, which permanently alienated many voters. By 2016, class consciousness was firming up, and she was tone-deaf. Also, this is still a sexist country, and that worked against her. Even so, I think that Clinton could easily have won if the news media had provided appropriate reportage on Trump. In 2016, it was already well known that Trump was politically ignorant, probably didn't even care about politics, was generally a business failure, habitually abused women, and had conspicuous psychiatric disorders related to narcissism. There were many signs of his habitual dishonesty by 2016.

While the 2016 presidential election result may have been a fluke, there is no excuse for those in the news media today who shy away from critiquing Trump or discussing what might be expected if he is reelected. Since Trump isn't really very smart, has little interest in political ideology, and is probably already very tired of politics, he might not do much damage. On the other hand, he has a strong incentive to pardon himself of any potential criminal charges, though the Supreme Court has just relieved him of some of that responsibility. At the moment, the greatest threat of a second Trump presidency could be the empowerment of his wealthy backers, who, through the Heritage Foundation, are supporting the conversion of the U.S. government to a conservative autocracy. This one is really crazy, because a vote for Trump could be a vote for a Russian-style voting system, not to mention the end of free speech. Was this part of our American heritage?

The other major presidential candidate now, Joe Biden, is also problematic, but his weaknesses are fairly obvious, even though the liberal news media, which is now openly anti-Trump, has been somewhat protective of Biden. My view is that Biden was already showing signs of senility during the 2020 presidential primary. I voted for Elizabeth Warren in the primary, but was forced to vote for Biden in the election, with Trump as the alternative. Biden does have a lot going for him, and I think that his extensive political experience has been a benefit to the country. I think that future historians may rank him fairly highly compared to most recent presidents. But he has also been a bit lucky, following the worst president in American history. Furthermore, just from watching him speak, it is obvious that he lacks the mental flexibility to properly address the varied and complex issues currently facing the country. He should be thinking at least twice as fast as he now does in public. My impression is that he tries to speak quickly in public in order to seem sharp, but that this backfires because his brain can't keep up with his mouth. In my view, the Democratic Party has been mismanaged for years, and it should have been developing a replacement four years ago. We are now looking at another Ruth Bader Ginsburg age-denial event that could result in an unnecessary step backwards for the country. Biden may still win if he remains a candidate, but the risks are so great that I don't think that the decision should be left to a senile old man.

There are still several months left until the presidential election, and more positive events could occur by then. I was pleased by the sudden ouster of the Conservatives in the U.K., following the ouster of Boris Johnson. With the design of the American political system, the same could not occur here, but there are ways in which the Democratic Party could increase its appeal.

Anarchic Trends in Political Evolution

When I began this blog eight years ago, the impetus was my frustration with online publications and Internet discussion generally. I had noticed that American intellectuals had no influence on domestic or international policy and had merely been scribbling away during the War in Afghanistan, the Iraq War and the Tea Party movement without solving any problems and, quite rightly, being ignored. Since then, with the election of Donald Trump in 2016, the Capitol attack of 2021 and the anti-vax movement of today, a much broader failure of traditional media is evident. Not only are American intellectuals irrelevant, but so are most newspapers, magazines and television news programs. This turn of events in the U.S., Canada and much of Europe is making the political order seem more unstable than it has been in decades.

As I've often said, it is appalling that Donald Trump was elected president. Of course, this was merely symptomatic of deeper social ills which have since then more clearly manifested themselves. First, it was greedy small business owners and disenfranchised blue-collar workers, and now it's also truck drivers and poorly-educated people in general. It has been dispiriting to observe the stodgy, pro-business Republican Party of 1950 evolve into an unhinged far-right organization that openly suppresses the democratic process and is supporting dishonest opportunists in order to gain political power. To be clear, I am not primarily in favor of democracy, and my preference is for rational laws based on the concepts of equality, human wellbeing and the preservation of the environment, along with the impartial enforcement of these laws. At heart, I'm a law-and-order advocate, and to me it is simply a matter of having the right laws and enforcing them. Currently, in the U.S. we are witnessing both the absence of necessary laws and a reduced emphasis on supporting the public good.

I am almost old enough to remember the privations that people suffered in England during and after World War II. When there were food shortages, people accepted rationing and grew their own vegetables when possible, without making a fuss. In the U.S. during the Great Depression, people met with privations far more severe than they have in recent years, and there was little sign of a revolt. This has caused me to think of modern Westerners as whiny spoiled brats. The phenomenon is currently showing up in the anti-vax movement. It is difficult for me to imagine a convincing justification for their actions. We have a situation in which a pandemic is killing people and adversely affecting world economies, and people are facing greater economic hardship. There are free vaccines that have been proven effective and are available to everyone. The anti-vaxers are both encouraging the spread of the coronavirus and disrupting their economies, and they are not offering an intelligible rationale for their behavior. In my view, the anti-vaxers who riot and block bridges ought to be arrested, because they are acting against the public interest without any mitigating circumstances.

Actually, in a sense I am an advocate of totalitarian regimes, and, for me, we are going through an interesting period in which we have an opportunity to compare and assess the efficacy of both totalitarian and democratic regimes. In the West, I think that the Internet, along with ineffectual political leadership, have already seriously damaged a system that was once capable of sustaining and protecting the inhabitants. The Internet itself is rather innocuous, and the difficulties that it has created result mainly from the fact that it transmits multiple ideologies and worldviews, which have not been filtered or edited, resulting in a large assortment of incompatible worldviews within the population of each country. When you consider that humans are fundamentally irrational, this is a perfect scenario for the breakdown of society into cult-like groups which understand neither themselves nor other groups and may even inhabit fantasy worlds (see "Pizzagate"). The existing totalitarian regimes now have a significant advantage if they can both sidestep democratic processes and filter alternate worldviews from their Internet services, while also meeting the needs of their citizens.

Although I'm obviously not an expert on Russia, I don't think that its political model is sustainable. Vladimir Putin is essentially a dictator backed up by a powerful group of oligarchs. Russia's economy is not diverse compared to that of Europe, which means that it can never generate comparable wealth. Add to this the fact that Putin and the oligarchs are probably hoarding much of the wealth, and that the Internet also works against them, Putin's days seem numbered. At the moment, he is reflexively bullying his neighbors because of political weakness in both Europe and the U.S., but he has no discernible end game and no suitable replacement for himself. If he doesn't trigger a nuclear war, history will see him as an insignificant Cold War carryover.

I am also not a sinologist, but I think that the outcome in China will be far more consequential. Xi Jinping resembles a dictator, but he is operating in a political system that is quite different from that of Russia. If he is corrupt at all, it is at a much lower level than that of Vladimir Putin. He has also led a campaign to root out corruption. As I said earlier, I don't think that Western individualism ever caught on in China, and it is possible that Xi is actually working for the good of the people. Westerners collectively get upset about China's treatment of the Uyghurs, but Xi's strategy for dealing with them may be justifiable. In China "the people" is a meaningful concept, unlike the U.S., where it has never been more than part of convenient political slogans. I'll allow that Xi and his government may be overreacting to the problems that Islamic groups have caused elsewhere over the last few decades. In any case, the main advantage of totalitarian regimes is that they can use brute force and take immediate actions to correct perceived risks. The question is whether an action is appropriate and whether it entails corruption of any kind. My view is that "the people" are paramount, and that it is the duty of the government to protect them, even when that requires the curtailment of a minority group. Also, I might note that the Uyghurs as a group are not universally discriminated against in China; we know a Chinese Uyghur who is a student at Middlebury College and whose father is a successful executive in the oil industry. 

My impression of China is that it is more amenable to a cooperative mindset than most Western countries. This is partly the result of ancient social conditioning and partly the result of exposure to decades of communist propaganda. As in the West, China is vulnerable to ideological intrusions from the Internet, but there is little sign, except in Hong Kong, that protest is widespread. The potential problem for Xi Jinping would be to make missteps that cause dissent in pockets of Chinese society. At this stage, protest is hardly evident, and Xi could be given credit for controlling the COVID-19 outbreak better than any Western country. If Xi is also able to maintain economic stability over the next few years, he could become more respected than any Western leaders have been since World War II. I am a little suspicious of his current alliance with Vladimir Putin, but it is possible that it is merely a case of short-term political expediency. As a new phase in my interest in governance by artificial general intelligence, I am imagining Xi as a robot that is controlled by AGI and becomes the world leader without anyone suspecting that it isn't human.

Regardless of my speculations on China, I think that the political situation in the West is beginning to look dire. Political leaders here are increasingly forced to solicit campaign money from corporations, which don't generally act in the public interest, while at the same time soliciting votes from an uninformed public that is being barraged with misinformation. It is possible that Western governments will address the divisive effects of the Internet, but it seems unlikely that that will occur soon, because, in the U.S., Congress currently can barely even agree to continue funding the government. 

The Election

Since it looks as if the U.S. presidential election has been decided in favor of Joe Biden, and I've been wasting so much time following it, I thought I'd say a few things so that I can move on to other topics.

Donald Trump's fitness for office has proven to be lower than ever this year. It's hard to imagine anyone doing a poorer job handling the coronavirus pandemic, and the scale of his lies would have been unfathomable a few years ago. What stands out to me is that he has come this far, given that we can now see how stupid many of his decisions have been, even when you examine them within his framework of corrupt self-interest. He unquestionably lost votes by willfully ignoring scientific advice on the pandemic; he could simply have followed the advice of a competent medical team, and the death count would have been considerably lower. The pandemic has slowed the growth of the U.S. economy, and if it had been controlled sooner, the medium-term economic outlook would be better than it is now. It is also surprising to see how much time and effort Trump wasted on the fabrication of corrupt behavior by Hunter and Joe Biden in Ukraine. There was nothing to find there, and he risked removal from office by precipitating his impeachment. If the Republicans in the Senate weren't also corrupt, he would have been removed from office in February. At the moment, he is spouting fantasies about voter fraud, which are going nowhere. It is obvious that he is completely indifferent to the responsible transfer of power and the stability of the federal government.

Because Donald Trump himself is an inherently uninteresting topic, I find it more fruitful to think about the conditions that allowed him to be elected in the first place and gave him a good chance of winning a second term. There is more to be concerned about here, because those conditions will be in place long after Trump is gone. From my point of view, the main underlying problem is voter gullibility. Almost half of the voters in 2016 and 2020 voted for him, acts that I find fundamentally irrational. It was well known in 2016 to anyone who took the time to study his past that Trump had no experience or interest in governing and was guaranteed to engage in self-serving behavior. It was also clear that whatever policies he had were uninformed and would be used primarily for his own benefit. During his years in office, he took credit for the strength of the economy, which he didn't deserve, and alienated many foreign allies. Most dictators around the world were glad to see him in power. Those voters who supported Trump seem to occupy a different sociological group from those who voted against him.

I have a reasonable amount of experience in Republican versus Democratic thinking, because I have lived in both geographic regions. The contrast between so-called "conservatives" and "élites" has some basis in reality, though those terms hardly describe the actual complexity. In the U.S., practically everything comes down to money, and the grievances of the conservatives usually amount to thinking that they deserve more of it, meaning that they should have better jobs and lower taxes. Jobs were not always an issue for conservatives, but have become more so in recent years, with the rapidly changing economy. In my view, particularly in rural areas, many of the economic woes are the result of increased automation and competition from abroad in manufacturing, as well as the decline in extractive industries such as coal mining. The élites, or, more generally, liberals, tend to be urban-based and work in service and tech industries that aren't affected by declines in manufacturing or mining. I have little sympathy for conservatives who listen to nonsense from politicians like Trump when they should be thinking about what kind of education they need and where they should live in order to get good jobs. Many of the so-called élites simply got good educations and were willing to move for job opportunities. Rather than getting government off the backs of people, the government should be incentivizing poor conservatives to get the proper training and move if necessary, as suggested by Abhijit Banerjee and Esther Duflo. If you accept the premise that capitalism is good, as most conservatives do (I don't), you must accept that the responsibility of corporate executives is to move jobs to wherever the costs are lowest. It is a contradiction of capitalism for conservatives to demand that jobs be brought to their regions simply to provide them with well-paying jobs. 

Besides the above, I think that Americans have become lazy, self-entitled and jealous, and that for purely political reasons the Republican Party has chosen to cater to whiny conservatives just so that they can remain in office. The so-called Republican vision is actually a farce with no economic basis, and it is clear that Donald Trump has no understanding of or interest in economics. On the global stage, the Chinese are laughing about how their cooperative culture doesn't cause them to go through the pains that Americans inflict upon themselves with their culture of selfishness. Looking at Trump's personal characteristics, what stands out to me is that his supporters would probably like to emulate his selfishness and narcissism. With respect to world history, this is a sign that the U.S. may be on the verge of a serious decline in both political and economic leadership, and that China is on the ascent and may soon be calling the shots. Given the degraded nature of Trump's personality, I'm not sure that I would object. The question is ultimately whether China's leaders represent the most eusocial aspects of mankind.

Populism

I've been reading essays in a new collection called Extremes and will discuss some of them individually. I found "Extreme Politics: The Four Waves of National Populism in the West," by Matthew Goodwin, informative and will make a few comments on it. Goodwin describes four waves of populism that have occurred in Europe and the U.S. since World War II. His main thesis is that the fourth wave, which we are in now, began before the 2008 financial crisis and the Great Recession and is based on factors other than economic ones. Goodwin believes that, independent of economic concerns, there is a growing divide between populist nationalists and cosmopolitan liberals. For the most part, recent Western populists have been anti-immigration, anti-globalization, conservative, working-class and poorly educated. He sees a continuation of this trend with no end in sight.

While I concur with Goodwin's overall thesis, it is apparent to me that he is limited by the constraints of his academic specialization in politics. I still believe that economics occupies a central role in current populism, and that Goodwin is a little negligent regarding the explanation of how reduced economic prospects play out sociologically and support recent political trends. For example, he fails to link low educational attainment and changes in the demand for specific job skills with future job insecurity. My view is derived partly from my own experiences in a manufacturing environment that declined for workers over several decades as a result of new technology. As I've mentioned before, between the 1970's and the early 2000's, print production became increasingly mechanized, resulting in a need for significantly fewer employees. Besides this, since 2000, print demand has dropped due to competition from digital media. When I began to work in large printing plants in the late 1970's, first pressmen commanded very high wages that put them on a financial footing comparable to lawyers and other professionals who had college educations and advanced degrees. Now, there are far fewer first pressman positions, the pay is lower and many plants have closed. You can easily extrapolate from this single industry to others, in which jobs have disappeared and wages have declined in many of the positions that remain. I should also point out that a large number of manufacturing plants were built in rural locations long ago in order to escape the higher operating costs associated with urban locations. With the decline of manufacturing in the U.S., rural areas were generally hit harder than urban areas, since cities often have more mixed economies and a single plant closure has less impact.

Where I agree the most with Goodwin is on the importance of educational attainment. Apart from the vocational aspects of education, I find that highly-educated people generally have a better understanding of the world in which they live and are better prepared to plan their lives realistically than people who have little education and little experience of the world beyond their immediate environments. In my view, I would expect populist extremists to fit the profile of stressed organisms: there would be a natural tendency for them to be suspicious of other groups and to desire control of their environment by like-minded people. The underlying problem, as I see it, is that there is no mechanism in place to provide conditions for these populists that would ensure continuity into the future with what they became accustomed to in the past. Under circumstances like this, it is not unreasonable to expect some sort of natural selection to play out, and the process is unlikely to be pretty.

Perhaps because Goodwin's essay is short, he doesn't mention anything about how populism provides opportunities for unscrupulous politicians. Though he recognizes that Donald Trump may not be around for long and that Brexit may eventually be overturned in the U.K., there is every reason to believe that other opportunists will take advantage of the situation, leading to further instability. Instead, Goodwin prioritizes a change in message by the center-left in Europe in order to attract populists who are motivated by cultural protectionism rather than by economic protectionism. In my view, the underlying problems are economic, and political maneuvering alone is not going to remedy the long-term attitudes of protectionists. I also think that the problem of populism, to put it bluntly, is exacerbated by the stupidity of populist voters. To use Donald Trump as an example, he has been loyally supported by about forty percent of Americans for over two years even though he is demonstrably incompetent as president and shows no signs of creating any permanent solutions for his supporters. Most intelligent, educated Americans could spot this well before his election, and their skepticism has been borne out fully. Emmanuel Macron seems to be following Goodwin's playbook in France by outwardly embracing Michel Houellebecq, who has been repackaged as a disgruntled populist figurehead – though I doubt that Houellebecq has much of value to add to the political scene – and Macron could easily go belly-up in France without economic improvements for the working class.

Ultimately, there will only be high-paying jobs for people who are talented and well-educated, and there is no way around this. I think that complaints about uncontrolled immigration and the erosion of national identity are expressions of frustration that would not occur if everyone felt economically secure. Although it may still seem too futuristic, I think that real solutions are going to require higher taxation on wealth and some form of basic income in all countries undergoing this phenomenon. In these respects, Goodwin falls far short.

Michel Houellebecq

I came across this article by Michel Houellebecq and decided to comment on it in order to take a short break from Jean-Jacques Rousseau; I'll return to Cranston on my next post. At the moment I feel vindicated in preferring essays to fiction, because, in the case of an essay, the author can't attribute ideas to fictional characters, and he or she therefore has less wiggle room. Houellebecq's essay reads almost exactly the same as his novels, and now at least he is taking direct responsibility for positions rather than placing them in the mouths of imaginary characters.

The essay starts out reasonably well, and along the way Houellebecq admits that Donald Trump is a "pretty repulsive" person. He provides what I think is an acceptable short summary of the role the U.S. played during World War II and its actions on the international scene since then. America helped defeat Hitler and prevented the U.S.S.R. from advancing into Western Europe. However, America's international record since then has been dismal, if you only look at Vietnam and Iraq and don't even count Afghanistan or Libya. Houellebecq correctly notes that the quality of U.S. presidents has been amazingly low since World War II. I'm thinking that perhaps Eisenhower wasn't too bad, but all of the rest have been in the mediocre-to-inferior range. Houellebecq scorns American interventionism in a manner understood by many throughout the world, but which receives little negative publicity here. Beyond this point, I think the essay goes downhill.

As a foreign observer of America, I don't think that Houellebecq is fully attuned to the nature or extent of Donald Trump's ignorance. He misattributes Trump's treaty renegotiation strategy and "America first" slogans to a rare sagacity that is beyond the capacities of most politicians. He thinks that Trump's policies, besides getting the U.S. off the backs of other countries, will benefit American workers. At this point in the essay there is an explosion of Houellebecq's ignorance, something that simmers in the background of his novels but never shows itself in the light of day. Trump's trade war is disrupting international economic activities at no benefit to any country. Of particular importance, and contradicting Trump's campaign promises, American farmers are declaring bankruptcy in droves, partly as a result of low commodity prices exacerbated by the trade war. I should also mention that there is no evidence that Trump's policies will increase the number of manufacturing jobs or middle-class incomes in the U.S. To make matters worse, Houellebecq loves Brexit and the disbanding of the EU and NATO, mistakenly thinking that the end of globalization will bring prosperity to ordinary workers. Houellebecq has also bought into the somewhat improbable suggestion that Trump, through shrewd negotiating techniques, will denuclearize North Korea. Oddly, Houellebecq even seems to like Vladimir Putin.

Thanks to this essay, I have a clearer idea of Houellebecq's intellectual deficiencies. He doesn't recognize that, like Donald Trump, he has no understanding of economics. Also, far more important in a novelist, he doesn't realize that Trump's pathology and actual skills are a detriment to his being of service to anyone other than himself. Trump came to prominence by teaming up with criminals and bullying whoever stood in the way of his business interests. He only cares about activities that will benefit him personally. This is evident in everything that he does and has resulted in one of the most incompetent executive branches in American history and the careless and irresponsible violation of the U. S. Constitution. Houellebecq doesn't mention climate change, which is being denied by Trump. He also says nothing about overpopulation or repressive regimes; Trump supports overpopulation by opposing abortions, and his primary solution for asylum-seekers seems to be to let them die on the opposite side of a wall. Houellebecq clearly hasn't done his homework, or he would have known that Trump's tax cut mainly benefits the wealthy and has inflated the budget deficit for future generations. Perhaps Houellebecq's most conspicuous omission is the way in which Trump's right-wing populism echoes the rise of Adolf Hitler in Germany during the 1930's.

Just to speculate a little, it may be that, now that Houellebecq has become internationally famous, he has started to follow in the footsteps of his friend, Gérard Depardieu, the tax dodger: Donald Trump may be just the man for nouveau-riche bourgeoisie who can never have enough money to satisfy themselves. I had been thinking about reading Houellebecq's latest novel, Serotonin, but I'm going to give it a pass. Whatever Houellebecq's motives, he is simply too ignorant to be taken seriously. After spending time reading about the French Enlightenment, it is disappointing to see just how far the standards have fallen. In order to qualify as a French intellectual, one once had to know something; today a cursory knowledge of blowjobs seems to be all that is necessary. Houellebecq is the last person anyone would want to consult regarding the problems currently facing the world.

The Political Scene

Politics isn't exactly one of my favorite topics, but the current situation in the U.S. seems extraordinary, so I'll continue to comment on it occasionally. The scene here in Vermont isn't dramatic and can even be amusing at times: in the Democratic primary for governor, a transgender woman just defeated a fourteen-year-old boy and two others to win the nomination. However, the conditions in Washington, D.C. aren't as sanguine. The recent death of TV personality Robin Leach reminded me of "Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous," which I used to watch years ago. Adnan Khashoggi, the billionaire Saudi arms dealer, was a quintessential subject for the program; his grotesque lifestyle was said to cost $250 thousand per day. Khashoggi was no doubt a role model for Donald Trump, who also appeared on the program. Subsequent to a reduction in Khashoggi's wealth, Trump bought his yacht, and, of course, renamed it after himself. Looking back, you can also see how Trump had an affinity for the Gambino crime family, with which he had business connections. Although Trump seems to have been a shameless social climber, he never graduated from the ranks of con artists and crooks, and his self-professed business acumen doesn't stand up to close examination.

I don't have any special insights or information about Trump's probable fate, but it seems unlikely that his presidency will end well for him. He has the looming Mueller investigation, possible criminal charges in New York, potential impeachment after the 2018 midterm elections, and, if he survives long enough, the 2020 presidential election, which I doubt he would win. Before it's all over, we may learn that the Trump Organization is propped up by money laundering for Russian oligarchs. Trump held the illusory belief that he would somehow escape the close scrutiny that all presidents face, and that his indiscretions could be suppressed indefinitely. In most respects, Donald Trump is demonstrably stupid. On the whole, Trump merely seems like an anomaly to me, a sign of dysfunctional times. He is fundamentally less interesting than the conditions that allowed him to be elected. How, one asks, did voters elect to the presidency a candidate who lies constantly, surrounds himself with criminals, has little understanding of foreign or domestic policy, economics or law, and has never shown any interest in public service?

This plays into my narrative about the inadequacy of traditional democratic governmental structures in a capitalist society. The two critical parts that cause failure are the stupidity of voters and the amorality and greed of private interests. At the most basic level, what has happened is that corporate media companies such as Fox News have become proficient at convincing disgruntled white males that Donald Trump can improve their economic status. In a classic case of voter misattribution of cause and effect, Trump has been given credit for the strong economy in the U.S., which would have occurred anyway without him. The reality is that Trump's ideas are obsolete or discredited ones from the 1970's and 1980's, and that his advisers are amateurs and opportunists who lack both the ideas and the skills to produce the results that his supporters expect. Trump's tax cut mainly benefits the rich and will lead to larger deficits in the future, which will restrain economic growth. Trump's tariff strategy is reducing prices of agricultural commodities and hurting farmers, while raising costs in some industries and disrupting international commerce in a manner that is unlikely to benefit anyone. His support of the coal industry, which is economically doomed regardless, may increase global carbon emissions. Trump's supporters fall into two main groups: a majority who are ignorant and a minority who seek immediate financial or political gain from his policies. This is not to say that voters who dislike Trump and vote against him are making better decisions, but that voters in general are ill-equipped to deal with complex national and international issues.

For these reasons I return to the idea that self-governance ought to be replaced by an algorithmic form of government. A sophisticated algorithmic constitution based on principles of equality, fairness and protection of the individual could replace the current U.S. constitution, leaving no room for interpretation or manipulation. The current system of government permits a continuous assault by special interests, both domestic and foreign. Because human status or rank is always relative, people compete to own larger houses and properties, and there is no theoretical upper limit that would prevent them from owning, say, larger planets, if it were possible. If capitalism has in fact played a role in human progress, one can now almost safely say that it has outlived its usefulness. The current trajectory, with an incompetent American president like Donald Trump, is moving us toward a needlessly overcrowded world characterized by pointless competition, which in the long run may benefit no one.

Girl Power

While I find the political situation in the U.S. deplorable, with the arrival of a vulgar, uninformed, bombastic, self-interested and dishonest president, I've noticed that the strong reaction against him may bring unexpected benefits. Feminism in the U.S. seems to move in waves over many decades, and the appearance of Donald Trump on the national scene seems to have precipitated a new one, which is impressive in its ferocity. Although it may be arguable whether Trump caused the #MeToo movement, it seems as if the latest round of sexual harassment protest dates to October, 2016, with the release of the Access Hollywood audio tape, in which Trump discussed women with Billy Bush. Trump was subsequently accused of sexual harassment by several women. A women's movement specifically targeting Trump began in 2016, and this, I think, recently led to the dismissal of several prominent male public figures from their jobs on the basis of sexual misconduct. The speed with which famous men have been removed from corporate, political and film positions is surprising when you consider how entrenched and unchallenged that behavior was until now.

As I've said, I like to view human behavior from a biological standpoint, and in this respect Trump is a typical male. He tries to dominate the situations he's in and cultivates an aura of success, and this is consistent with the behavior of many species, in which males go to considerable lengths to attract females. Other males are outdone in displays of fitness, including physical characteristics and the ability to win contests. Among humans, being a rich alpha male usually guarantees the privilege of mating with women, the net result of which is the production of children. When you closely examine the shortcomings of most alpha males, it becomes readily apparent that there is not necessarily any social benefit derived from the process, which seems biologically to have had to do mainly with their reproduction. Though they may have other talents, Trump-esque men often have far less to offer society than meets the eye, and when you examine them in the context of the highly complex modern world, they tend to be anachronisms who have wildly overstated their capabilities. If Trump were a peacock, would you vote for him? Some characteristics often associated with males, such as competitiveness, may serve purposes unrelated to attracting mates, but that has always been one of their primary functions.

The mating strategies of women are obviously quite different from those of men. They also need to exhibit fitness, which indicates that they are likely to produce healthy offspring, but in their case, if they are sufficiently attractive, they choose among suitors rather than compete with other women directly. In nature, receptive females usually acquire mates effortlessly, whereas some males compete unsuccessfully with other males and do not reproduce. Thus, females have less biological incentive to act aggressively. On the contrary, women, as members of a eusocial species, have an added incentive to offer and receive help from other women in the interest of raising their offspring, which is a daunting task due to the unusually long time period from birth to independence in our species. Of course, women can be aggressive, but under normal circumstances this does not involve physical confrontations or intimidation, which are common among men.

I am bringing this up because I think that greater political participation by women and increased inclusion of women in leadership roles would have a positive influence on society, particularly if it followed the leadership of autocratic demagogues such as Donald Trump or Vladimir Putin. In a general biological sense, women have no incentive to assert their power for its own sake and are more likely to be sensitive to social needs than aggressive men. Although Putin is popular in his country and certainly knows how to run it to meet his goals, those goals are not the same as the long-term goals of all Russians. Putin is a Soviet-era autocrat whose policies are not likely to endure for long after he leaves office. The situation with Trump is somewhat worse, because he is incompetent even as an autocrat and therefore has nothing to offer Americans on any level at all. During his tenure, the federal government is losing what little coherence it had, and he is exposing the country to unnecessary new risks.

Because I look at our world biologically, a government in which females dominate must also be examined closely. While such a government might be characterized by greater order and more careful allocation of resources, as in a hive dominated by a queen bee, the goal of creating a large factory to produce and raise offspring is not necessarily what Homo sapiens wants or needs at this stage in its evolution. In the past, when I lived in the suburbs of Chicago, I sometimes felt as if I were trapped in a hive of women who were obsessed with raising their children, as if that was the only thing that mattered in life. Thus, while there is much to be said against alpha males, the female opposite is not exactly everyone's cup of tea.

Nevertheless, it is encouraging to me that women seem to be uniting in large numbers against Donald Trump, because, if they follow through and vote, his tenure will end sooner than it might otherwise. Fortunately, minorities and young people of both sexes also find little to like in Trump or today's Republican Party, and their popularity is dwindling. I am heartened that I am not the only one who feels that Trump's exit couldn't be soon enough. Though Trump's behavior may be rooted in inherited tendencies that once played a role in our survival as a species, it would be an absurdity of the highest order to suggest that, given his behavior since he took office, he could be of any benefit whatsoever to mankind.

My Political Views

The political atmosphere in the U.S., you may have noticed, has become rather charged in recent years. One encounters political arguments of varying quality constantly, and, though I would prefer not to involve myself, I become concerned about the limited range of ideas that people hold, and how I get pigeonholed into descriptions that don't fit me well. Briefly, in the U.S., the thinking is that you are either on "the left" or "the right." These aren't very meaningful descriptions. If you are on the left, you are probably a Democrat and support equality, full government services, sufficient taxation to run the government properly, separation of church and state and abortion rights. If you are on the right, you are probably a Republican and support free enterprise, minimal government, lower taxation, the Christian religion and no abortion rights. When I engage in discussions with people who disagree with me, they usually lack the mental flexibility to characterize my views without resorting to these simplistic stereotypes. I thought I'd take a few minutes to clarify my political views.

Though, ostensibly, I fit better on the left end of the spectrum than the right, I actually don't fit either viewpoint very well, because both accept the current democratic process and a capitalism-based economy as givens. I fit the profile of the left mainly because I think that everyone should be treated equally under the law, and that a significant safety net ought to be in place, even when that requires financial sacrifices by the wealthy. My thinking is biological, starting with the fact that we are eusocial creatures who have cooperation built into our genes. Although the current situation, with overpopulation and strained interactions between historically segregated cultures, has to some extent been precipitating a reduction in cooperation, conceptually we have already reached a point where the simplest solution is to treat all people as members of one group, in which all are equal. This position comes naturally to those on the left, but those on the right tend to view other groups as inherently alien and therefore not meriting equal treatment. Specifically, Republicans who believe in the Puritan work ethic think that they alone are entitled to the fruits of their labor, and that they shouldn't have to share them with others. The Republican position lends itself to racism or other kinds of discrimination and has an ancient basis in the tribal instinct for survival in an environment inhabited by competing groups, hence, although it also has a biological basis, I consider it problematic as a solution to the ills facing mankind, because it encourages future conflict.

As I have said in previous posts, there is ample evidence that capitalism increases inequality, and that is only one of several of its disadvantages. Capitalism is also responsible for pollution, climate change, mass extinctions and the waste of natural resources. However, most people are prepared to overlook the problems associated with it, because they believe that it has brought about improvements in their standard of living. I have said less about the problems associated with democracy and will elaborate on that now. In the books I commented on by Daniel Kahneman, Steven Sloman, Philip Fernbach and Robert Sapolsky, it is readily apparent that the principles of democracy are in desperate need of reappraisal, despite the fact that none of these authors were willing to examine that problem. Specifically, if, as the evidence shows, people don't think clearly, are often irrational, and know far less than they think they do, why would one presume that collective decisions made in a democratic process would provide optimal solutions for a group? There is evidence that small groups of decision-makers make better decisions than individuals, but that applies primarily to problems of limited scale, in which the parameters are significantly restrictive. Time and again, I have witnessed political leaders make poor and uninformed decisions and promote policies whose consequences are not fully understood or are obviously detrimental to the long-term benefits of the citizenry. This may occur as a result of political expediency, ignorance or the desire for personal gain. The fact is that, in a democracy, the voters themselves often do not understand which policies would be to their greatest benefit, and, by electing candidates whose views they share, they are guaranteeing the enactment into law of flawed policy decisions. The top positions in the U.S. government increasingly require a level of competence that no human possesses.

My solution, as I've mentioned, is the gradual phasing out of traditional, hands-on, participatory democratic processes and the gradual phasing in of democratic algorithms, with the ultimate goal of replacing human voting. When AI advances to a sufficient level, it is conceivable that it will be possible to use it for better governance than we have thus far been able to provide for ourselves. At first glance, this kind of "wildlife management" model seems extremely unappealing, but if you imagine how people might actually live in it, it could be much better than what they are experiencing now. Conceivably, everyone could have sufficient food and shelter, a rich personal life and no worries about crime, war, servitude or environmental degradation. There might be reduced access to childbirth if the population became unmanageable, but most people would appreciate the benefits of certain restrictions on behavior, especially if they were administered fairly and equally; many of the current issues associated with partisanship reflect the unequal distribution of rights and restrictions. The need for a sense of self-determination could be satisfied by permitting small-scale decisions at the local level, with the larger, more complex issues falling under the aegis of AI. While, at this stage, this may still be a utopian idea, I have no difficulty imagining a population of happier, healthier people living without having to face their futures worrying about what the decisions made by their incompetent or corrupt leaders will bring. As you can see, this view hardly fits within the parameters of the Democratic or Republican parties.

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.

Anti-Americans Abroad

This essay by Tony Judt first appeared in the NYRB in 2003 just after the Iraq War had commenced, and I vaguely recall reading it at the time. It is a review of several French books about the United States. Anti-Americanism has a long history in Europe, and Judt briefly recounts it before examining the then-current state of affairs as reflected in these books:

Charles Dickens, like Alexis de Tocqueville, was struck by the conformism of American public life. Stendhal commented upon the country's "egoism"; Beaudelaire sniffily compared it to Belgium (!) in its bourgeois mediocrity; everyone remarked upon the jejune patriotic pomp of the United States. But in the course of the next century, European commentary shifted perceptibly from the dismissive to the resentful. By the 1930s, the United States' economic power was giving a threatening twist to its crude immaturity. For a new generation of anti-democratic critics, the destabilizing symptoms of modern life – mass production, mass society, and mass politics – could all be traced to America.

Judt seems to approve the most of Philippe Roger, who wrote:

What if anti-Americanism today were no more than a mental slavery that the French impose on themselves, a masochistic lethargy, a humdrum resentment, a passionless Pavlovian reaction? That would offer grounds for hope. There are few vices, even intellectual ones, that can long withstand the boredom they elicit. 

His reaction to the other books is mixed. Thierry Meyssan wrote a ridiculous best seller "purporting to show that the September 11 attack on the Pentagon never happened....the whole thing is a hoax perpetrated by the American defense establishment to advance its own interests." Emmanuel Todd "is right to say that asymmetric globalization – in which the United States consumes what others produce, and economic inequalities grow apace – is bringing about a world unsympathetic to American ambition." However, Judt finds poor argumentation and fallacies elsewhere in Todd's book. Jean-François Revel makes too many sweeping generalizations and goes overboard in defending America while pointing out social problems in France.

Judt concludes, somewhat off-topic, that "the Iraq crisis has exposed three kinds of weakness in the modern international system." First, the UN is inadequate for addressing such problems. Second, the EU is divided by "American mischief and European leaders' own incompetence." And third, "President Bush and his advisers have managed to make America seem the greatest threat to international stability....You don't have to be a French intellectual to believe that an overmuscled America, in a hostile international environment, is weaker, not stronger, than it was before."

Of course, Judt was fully aware that he was writing about an unfolding process, and here we are nearly fourteen years later with the situation generally looking worse. Although relations between Europe and the U.S. have superficially improved with the help of Barack Obama, who by European standards has been a more palatable president than George W. Bush, the actual conditions on the ground seem only to have deteriorated. Conflicts are still raging in the Middle East, Afghanistan is still politically unstable, the European immigration crisis is worsening, Russia has escalated its KGB tactics, the U.S. has just elected a president who makes George W. Bush seem thoughtful, and other countries are electing fascists. Unfortunately, I don't think Tony Judt would have the answers if he were still on the scene.

I am particularly inspired by Judt's expression of anti-Americanism, which, though subdued, has often been the only intelligent criticism to be found in the press here. The lack of focus by thinkers such as Noam Chomsky and movements such as Occupy Wall Street has made them seem like hollow echoes of the protests of the 1960's. Equally ineffectual, the publications of the intelligentsia seem to serve no purpose beyond the entertainment and self-aggrandizement of small, well-heeled elitist groups. More widely, in this country there is little awareness of European culture and history beyond Europe's appeal as a tourist destination for those who can afford it. As it is, not many Americans are interested in travel beyond their borders except to resorts in warm climates. The ways in which America remains deficient from my point of view have been voiced by few besides Judt. On the other hand, the outrage spawned by Trump's election and his behavior since may yet provide a solid basis for a new resistance to the crassness, materialism and shortsightedness that have come to dominate American public life. With the election of Donald Trump, the news media may have been sufficiently shamed by their dereliction of duty to work in the public interest again. At the moment he seems to be waging a losing war against the media, though only time will tell.

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.

Trump

Although I'm hardly at all interested in politics, I thought my readers might like to know my reaction to the unexpected Trump victory. As I had been following the polls closely in recent weeks, like many I was surprised by this outcome. However, on reflection, there are similarities between this election and the election of George W. Bush in 2000, and Bush's reelection in 2004 was already a confirmation to me of the incompetence of voters – hence my continuing skepticism regarding the wisdom of the existing democratic process. In this case it is difficult to predict how Trump's presidency might evolve, because he is less ideologically rigid than he presented himself, and his real strengths are in photo ops and his sheer aggressiveness. Put in a historical perspective, there is nothing new here, as H.L. Mencken wrote in 1926:

No one in this world, so far as I know—and I have researched the records for years, and employed agents to help me—has ever lost money by underestimating the intelligence of the great masses of the plain people. Nor has anyone ever lost public office thereby.

My presidential vote was superfluous because I live in a Democratic stronghold. I voted for Hillary Clinton only because I did not want to support a third-party candidate who might inadvertently contribute to the election of Trump by reducing the number of Clinton votes in another state, as Ralph Nader did for Bush in 2000. It is impossible to know, but Ralph Nader may have changed world history for the worse by reducing Al Gore's vote count in 2000. In this household we had a small panic about the election results and someone began to look into real estate in France, but we have since settled down.

Chipmunks

One of the statements in my last post was unclear to a reader and requires further explanation. I have got into the habit of comparing people to chipmunks, and now "chipmunk" is a code word that refers to the conspicuous absence of scientific evidence, particularly biological evidence, when making prescriptive statements about people, society and organizations. For example, when Thomas Jefferson wrote of "Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness" as "unalienable Rights," he was referring to humans in the abstract, primarily as legal entities, and ignoring the biological context of his ideas. This has become a private joke for me, and I imagine an eloquent chipmunk similarly composing a grand document which brings order and harmony to chipmunk society. My thinking is that the existence of both humans and chipmunks is guided by natural laws which have no relationship to most of the concepts that we invent. In a sense we resemble chipmunks in that we unselfconsciously go about our lives and do whatever we are inclined to do without relying on abstract concepts at all. Furthermore, the evidence is now overwhelming that humans are fundamentally irrational in many respects, and I believe that the humanistic models of government that came to dominate in the West were mistakenly based on the same incorrect "rational agent" hypothesis that has been implicitly employed by Jefferson and other political theoreticians since. The term "rational agent" comes from modern economics, but has an earlier history in the Enlightenment.

I like to use Jefferson and the American Revolution as examples of the limits of human cognition, and how we, as a culture, may, for example, rewrite history to suit our heroic conceptions of national identity. As I've said, if you look at the bare facts of the origin of the U.S., it was a case of white male landowners breaking with England in order to pursue their private business interests without being encumbered by the British government. At the time of the signing of the U.S. Constitution in 1787, its beneficiaries were still white male landowners, and everyone else was subhuman in a strict legal sense. The saving grace of the Constitution was the allowance for its alteration, because the modern world bears little resemblance to the world of 1787. However, the U.S. government currently responds too inefficiently to collective needs, and it seems possible that political dysfunction could eventually lead to its collapse.

My theory, which I have attempted to articulate with varying degrees of success on this blog, is that something resembling a "zoo" or "wildlife management" model of governance is beginning to look more appropriate than the "rights of man" model now generally assumed by modern governments. There was a time – in the eighteenth century – when the "rights of man" model may have been plausible for use on a large scale if contemporary abuses such as slavery had been addressed, but since then overpopulation, increased cultural clashes, global warming, mass extinctions and more powerful weaponry may have made global problems too challenging for solution within the context of existing governments and international organizations. This is where I think AI enters the picture. I know that some of my readers may think I'm engaging in futuristic, antidemocratic nonsense, but to me AI is the obvious next step when you consider the documented limits of human capability. It takes no imagination to envision a large computer outperforming the human brain in a variety of processes, and such a computer could operate without the biases that are known to produce poor decisions in humans. Just as individuals often overrate their intelligence, so do governments and other institutions. Up to this point, human arrogance has been easy to defend, because we have been the smartest species on the planet, but I think that AI may soon change our outlook.

My reasons for taking this position on mankind are not based on any inherent pessimism or a deep dislike for the current state of affairs, but rather on my preference for order rather than disorder. I have had ample time to reflect on my own life, and it has been obvious to me that I made decisions at various points which were not optimal. The same is true for practically everyone, and I don't believe that one must accept life as inherently full of inadequate information, bad advice, stupidity, poor decisions, etc. If you reflect on your own life, the lives of your siblings, the lives of your parents, the lives of your grandparents, and so on, you will clearly see many haphazard choices that significantly affected the courses of your life and theirs. From a decision-making standpoint, much more information and information processing is available now than used to be the case, and I don't think it should be wasted. It is becoming technologically possible to live a better-informed life, thanks to information technology and the sciences. Until recently in human history, outcomes were often ascribed to fate, luck or God, and there are now better ways to produce desired outcomes that shouldn't be ignored. This entails seeing our place in the universe rather than making up stories that merely conceal our ignorance.

Basic Income

On several posts I've made allusions to the likelihood that technology will eventually make earning a living extremely difficult, but I haven't said much about how this problem could be resolved. Fortunately, there have been people thinking about this for quite some time, and I suspect that some form of basic income may eventually come to be used in all developed countries, because there may be no better alternatives. At present, basic income is being discussed seriously in Europe, where Switzerland is holding a referendum on it this June. Worldwide, there is discussion of the topic, with supporters and opponents ranging from serious thinkers to cranks. In the U.S., basic income is occasionally presented as a potential replacement for the current welfare system. As you might expect, most American economists have a highly blinkered view of the subject and can scarcely think beyond traditional labor economics. I stopped paying attention to economists such as Paul Krugman several years ago, because like most mainstream economists he appears to be unable to envision a future in which capitalism implodes. In my view, capitalism will inevitably end simply because economic competition entails a powerful incentive to decrease labor costs, and that trend has been unmistakable over the last fifty years.

One of the main causes of the current insurgencies in both American political parties is the prolonged state of low income growth. Real incomes for the middle class have remained stagnant for decades, and there is nothing on the horizon indicating a change in that status. The topic is usually discussed in terms of income inequality, and economists such as Thomas Piketty advocate higher taxation on the wealthy in order to rebalance equality. As an economist, Piketty is far from radical, and, like Krugman, he doesn't seem to find economic competition inherently problematic. In my view there is in principle no reason for economic entities to discontinue the driving down of wages. If you are running a for-profit corporation, it is your fiduciary responsibility to move jobs overseas when labor costs are lower there and to install computers, software and robots whenever they reduce operating costs compared to hiring people. Although this inevitably leads to a scarcity of jobs and lower wages, this manner of operating a business is fundamental to the capitalist model, and it can't be changed without degrading the very idea of economic competition, which carries almost religious status in the U.S.

The principal irony I find in capitalist mythology is that here, precisely while we are witnessing the success of large corporations, these same corporations are toying with their future demise by creating a large underclass which one day may be unable to afford their products. That hasn't happened yet, but you can see signs of it in the falling quality of many consumer products. Because most consumer products are designed to be sold to the middle class, there is an upper limit on their price, and with falling incomes the middle class can only afford cheaper products. We already seem to be in a race to the bottom in product quality. What we now call food deserts in inner cities may expand to suburbs, and deprivation of other goods and services will increase when businesses have no economic incentives to locate in poor neighborhoods. I see no hope for places like Ferguson, Missouri.

The primary drawback to the concept of basic income is that its time may not have come. For now it could work well in a wealthy developed country with a large population of unemployable citizens. For me, its real interest lies further out, when technology has made it almost impossible to find a job, when an economy becomes so automated that there is no need for economic competition and little demand for human labor of any kind. Barring an unforeseen disaster between now and then, from that point onward capitalism may be viewed as a driver of technological change that outlived its usefulness.