No one wants to be an innocent victim of human violence. The recent attacks in Paris, Mali, Lebanon and elsewhere show that if nothing else is prospering in the world, hate is. But, if you can gain the perspective, these all represent small scale violence by weak players in the world's political and religious arena.
I just received a reminder from Doctors Without Borders about the tragedy at Kunduz. You may recall that Kunduz is a city of about 300,000 people in Afghanistan to the northeast of Kabul, not very far from the Tajikistan border. The Taliban briefly occupied the city in September. The "central" government took it back fifteen days later in October, with help from American troops and warplanes.
The hospital operated by Doctors Without Borders was struck by a U.S. Air Force AC-130 gunship, an awesome weapon of war and successor to the AC-47 used to mass murder peasants during the Vietnam War.
Hospitals, as long as they function as hospitals, are never fair targets in war, the same as trucks and tents marked with Red Cross identification. For details on why the Kunduz massacre was a war crime, see Protection of Medical Services Under International Law.
This is not the sort of incident that happens by accident, nor do the circumstances around the massacre look accidental in any way. This is not a case of stray bullets from the AC-130 missing a legitimate target and then hitting some doctors, nurses, and patients. The Hospital Was the Target.
And that is the kind of thing that is controlled from the White House Situation Room. Whether President Barack Obama was actually in the situation room and made the call will probably become publicly available in about 60 years.
I have no sympathy for anyone who kills civilians, whether Presidents of the United States (or other nations) or freelance Islamists or any other political/social/religious group. So I have sympathy with the victims in Paris, and no sympathy for the perps, including the chain of command above them, right up to the Caliph.
The difference I have with most Americans [Trigger alert: prepare to be shocked by an opinion] is that I don't think the victims of American President Barack Obama (and the many war criminal President predecessors) are in any essential way different than the victims of Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, or Osama Bin Laden, or for that matter Pol Pot, Trotsky, General Franco or anyone else. The government of the United States was established by violence; almost all governments are. It does not matter to me whether violence is used to establish a republic or an Islamic State, it is wrong because it is violence, and particularly wrong when it is violence against civilians.
In particular, I am not a fan of the French government. To me the French monarchs starting with Charlemagne, Napoleon, the French imperialists who conquered Vietnam and other colonies, Philippe Petain, and the leaders who recently bombed Raqqa are just slight variations on the Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi theme.
The American people have no learning curve. They are not told the facts, and if a few people learn a few facts, they are swiftly swept aside by a torrent of daily woes. We could have learned a lot from the Somalia disaster, but most Americans don't even know there was a Somalia disaster, much less how American foreign policy and military stupidity drove that nation to disaster, step by step. Somalians can now choose between a corrupt and inept U.S. puppet government and an al-Qaeda aligned opposition.
Which is not much different than choosing between the Democratic Party and the Republican Party. There was a time when I thought the people of Mendocino County, California, would find their way out of that trap, but with the Bernie Sanders phenomena, I see that too much marijuana and too-little fact checking, and thinking things through, makes escape impossible. Bernie has vowed to destroy the Islamic State. And how does that differ from every other power-hungry American politician?
It can be tempting to say that the victims in Paris were is some sense fair targets because they allowed their government to bomb Syria in the preceding weeks. This is the type of argument used by the British Empire and the American Empire during World War II to justify carpet bombing Japanese and German civilians during World War II. This argument leads to the excusing (by the perpetrators, anyway) of all killings of civilians.
Every nation should police its own government to prevent war crimes. George Bush, Dick Cheney, Barack Obama and all their gang should be tried for war crimes and, instead of being hung by their necks like the Nuremburg criminals, spend the rest of their lives in prison. To some extent the American people are to blame for allowing the crimes. But our lack of power to change the system is really no different than the situation of those living under the Islamic State. Hopefully the governments of Syria and Iraq will be able to defeat the Islamic State, but will respect the lives of civilians. And spare the lives of any soldiers that surrender, as per international law of prisoners of war.
Showing posts with label government. Show all posts
Showing posts with label government. Show all posts
Sunday, November 22, 2015
Sunday, April 12, 2015
Economic Systems: Mixed Beats Pure
Economics pretends to be a science, but more than most sciences it tends to be driven by ideology.
In ideologies the answers are given. Facts are fit into theoretical frameworks. Facts that don't fit in are denied or even falsified, and at best are explained away. Just as with religions.
In the United States and much of the globe there are two major economic ideologies to choose from: free market capitalism, and socialism. Both camps look back at the 20th century and pull facts (or pseudo facts) from the economic trajectories of various nations to justify their current policy prescriptions.
I believe they are both wrong, to the extent they demand pure systems. I believe the historical record shows that they are both wrong. I believe that in the United States and elsewhere we need to build up a popular culture, science of economics, and political system that understands that mixed systems (involving both free and regulated markets, and the control of capital at times by capitalists, and at times by government) can work better than pure systems.
Ideologists are people who insist on using the same tool set for every job, even when a better (often just bigger) tool set is available.
To keep this essay short, I will focus on one ideology, free-market capitalism. This ideology is being pushed heavily in the United States by capitalists, their media voices, their academic establishment, their religious establishment, and their politicians. However, let me make it clear that I am not in favor of a centrally-planned socialist system where the government owns everything (though its claim would be that it holds everything in common for the people). I am in favor of a mixed system. I am just coming at it from the free-market side.
If you think free markets are sacred, then of course whatever comes out of them is wonderful. The Great Depression was created by free markets, so it must have been wonderful.
I don't believe the Great Depression was wonderful.
So assuming I can demonstrate that mixed systems can be superior to pure free market capitalist systems, what would be the goal? I am willing to go with the classic: the greatest good for the greatest number. It should be clear that by choosing different goals you can skew the debate towards pure systems, or even within the range of mixed systems.
If you make either Socialism or Capitalism the goal, then you have self-proving economics. Some more reasonable goals might be: maximizing GDP (gross domestic product) over the long run; minimizing unemployment, crime and hunger; sustainability (environmental and human); profit maximization for business owners; stability; political consequences like democracy (or control of it by an elite); and so on. The ideal economic system would depend on the goals you choose.
I would say a knowledgeable human being would want a mixture of weighted goals, and the flexibility to change the goals themselves, if the experience of reality warrants that.
Some goals many Americans share are: minimizing bubble/bust cycles; maximizing GDP growth over time; distributing GDP adequately so that every American has a good chance of having a good economic life, or minimizing poverty. Minimizing poverty would include protection for children, seniors, and disabled persons.
Many free market ideologists would not like that list of goals, since it almost implies some elements of socialism need to be applied. Some free-marketers would argue that their system is so wonderful that it actually does maximize GDP growth without cycles of busts or creating masses of poor people and criminals.
I would argue that you can't achieve those goals without a Federal Reserve trying to keep a rein on the money supply; mandatory Social Security; mandatory unemployment insurance; and programs for children.
That said, economies are complicated, and they change. Our data-driven economy of today is as different from the factory-led U.S. economy of the late 1940s (when every other nation's factories were still in splinters from World War II bombing campaigns) was from the mainly agricultural economy of the U.S. in the first half of the 1800's.
Long ago the world learned that free markets don't work in certain situations; the ideologists want us to forget the lessons of history. Industrial monopolies (as during the 1800's after the Civil War) tend to concentrate wealth in a few hands, but stifle growth of the economy as a whole. They stifle competition, which is supposed to be the engine of free-market economies. The monopolies were created naturally through competition, but once created they had a word for competition: "Ruinous." In the process of enriching a few capitalists they drain the resources of smaller businesses and consumers, leading to economic stagnation and recessions.
But suppose that you want long-term GDP growth, and don't care if a few people starve or die young from lack of medical care. Would that not then favor a pure free enterprise system, with government relegated to military matter and punishing anyone who dared to steal a loaf of bread?
Yes, according the the free market ideologists. But they ignore history. In the U.S. we mainly had free-market capitalism until 1933. The results should be examined in detail. There was GDP progress, but it came mostly in booms and busts. By 1933 most of the centuries' earlier gains were gone, down the drain because because there was nothing in place to put breaks on the downward plunge that started in 1929.
The New Deal did not work out all that well at first, either. It was war (selling to nations already at war until Pearl Harbor, then vast levels of deficit spending on our own war machine until we emerged as the leading world superpower) that got us out of the Depression. After that, however, some of the New Deal, let's call them what they are, Socialist, programs did dampen the boom and bust cycle. There were cycles, but on the whole I would argue that having a mixed system worked better than either pure free-market capitalism or pure socialism would have.
The question should not be whether we should have a capitalist or a socialist economic system. The question should be: which elements of each, working together, create the overall strongest economy?
But for voters, judging politicians, that would demand something that has often proven beyond their ken. It requires understanding complexity. It requires something more than regurgitating campaign ads. It requires independent thinking.
The same for economists. When an American economist reveals himself (or herself) as a pure free-market exponent, know you are dealing with a priest, not a scientist.
In ideologies the answers are given. Facts are fit into theoretical frameworks. Facts that don't fit in are denied or even falsified, and at best are explained away. Just as with religions.
In the United States and much of the globe there are two major economic ideologies to choose from: free market capitalism, and socialism. Both camps look back at the 20th century and pull facts (or pseudo facts) from the economic trajectories of various nations to justify their current policy prescriptions.
I believe they are both wrong, to the extent they demand pure systems. I believe the historical record shows that they are both wrong. I believe that in the United States and elsewhere we need to build up a popular culture, science of economics, and political system that understands that mixed systems (involving both free and regulated markets, and the control of capital at times by capitalists, and at times by government) can work better than pure systems.
Ideologists are people who insist on using the same tool set for every job, even when a better (often just bigger) tool set is available.
To keep this essay short, I will focus on one ideology, free-market capitalism. This ideology is being pushed heavily in the United States by capitalists, their media voices, their academic establishment, their religious establishment, and their politicians. However, let me make it clear that I am not in favor of a centrally-planned socialist system where the government owns everything (though its claim would be that it holds everything in common for the people). I am in favor of a mixed system. I am just coming at it from the free-market side.
If you think free markets are sacred, then of course whatever comes out of them is wonderful. The Great Depression was created by free markets, so it must have been wonderful.
I don't believe the Great Depression was wonderful.
So assuming I can demonstrate that mixed systems can be superior to pure free market capitalist systems, what would be the goal? I am willing to go with the classic: the greatest good for the greatest number. It should be clear that by choosing different goals you can skew the debate towards pure systems, or even within the range of mixed systems.
If you make either Socialism or Capitalism the goal, then you have self-proving economics. Some more reasonable goals might be: maximizing GDP (gross domestic product) over the long run; minimizing unemployment, crime and hunger; sustainability (environmental and human); profit maximization for business owners; stability; political consequences like democracy (or control of it by an elite); and so on. The ideal economic system would depend on the goals you choose.
I would say a knowledgeable human being would want a mixture of weighted goals, and the flexibility to change the goals themselves, if the experience of reality warrants that.
Some goals many Americans share are: minimizing bubble/bust cycles; maximizing GDP growth over time; distributing GDP adequately so that every American has a good chance of having a good economic life, or minimizing poverty. Minimizing poverty would include protection for children, seniors, and disabled persons.
Many free market ideologists would not like that list of goals, since it almost implies some elements of socialism need to be applied. Some free-marketers would argue that their system is so wonderful that it actually does maximize GDP growth without cycles of busts or creating masses of poor people and criminals.
I would argue that you can't achieve those goals without a Federal Reserve trying to keep a rein on the money supply; mandatory Social Security; mandatory unemployment insurance; and programs for children.
That said, economies are complicated, and they change. Our data-driven economy of today is as different from the factory-led U.S. economy of the late 1940s (when every other nation's factories were still in splinters from World War II bombing campaigns) was from the mainly agricultural economy of the U.S. in the first half of the 1800's.
Long ago the world learned that free markets don't work in certain situations; the ideologists want us to forget the lessons of history. Industrial monopolies (as during the 1800's after the Civil War) tend to concentrate wealth in a few hands, but stifle growth of the economy as a whole. They stifle competition, which is supposed to be the engine of free-market economies. The monopolies were created naturally through competition, but once created they had a word for competition: "Ruinous." In the process of enriching a few capitalists they drain the resources of smaller businesses and consumers, leading to economic stagnation and recessions.
But suppose that you want long-term GDP growth, and don't care if a few people starve or die young from lack of medical care. Would that not then favor a pure free enterprise system, with government relegated to military matter and punishing anyone who dared to steal a loaf of bread?
Yes, according the the free market ideologists. But they ignore history. In the U.S. we mainly had free-market capitalism until 1933. The results should be examined in detail. There was GDP progress, but it came mostly in booms and busts. By 1933 most of the centuries' earlier gains were gone, down the drain because because there was nothing in place to put breaks on the downward plunge that started in 1929.
The New Deal did not work out all that well at first, either. It was war (selling to nations already at war until Pearl Harbor, then vast levels of deficit spending on our own war machine until we emerged as the leading world superpower) that got us out of the Depression. After that, however, some of the New Deal, let's call them what they are, Socialist, programs did dampen the boom and bust cycle. There were cycles, but on the whole I would argue that having a mixed system worked better than either pure free-market capitalism or pure socialism would have.
The question should not be whether we should have a capitalist or a socialist economic system. The question should be: which elements of each, working together, create the overall strongest economy?
But for voters, judging politicians, that would demand something that has often proven beyond their ken. It requires understanding complexity. It requires something more than regurgitating campaign ads. It requires independent thinking.
The same for economists. When an American economist reveals himself (or herself) as a pure free-market exponent, know you are dealing with a priest, not a scientist.
Monday, November 10, 2014
Gone Girl Politics and Politicians
Last night I did my usual volunteer stint at the community-operated Arena Theater and then watched Gone Girl, starring Ben Affleck and Rosamund Pike. Because my wife Jan had read the novel by Gillian Flynn, I knew the gist, which only detracted a little from empathizing alternately with the main characters, Nick Dunne and Amazing Amy.
Naturally it reminded me of the current state of political affairs in the United States. Nick Dunne could represent the Democratic Party, and Amazing Amy could represent the Republican Party. Or maybe a better fit is Nick Dunne represents the Republican Party, and Amy represents the Democratic Party.
The citizens and voters of the United States are represented by the people of the smallish town in Missouri where the happy married couple has moved after losing their respective high-powered writing jobs in New York City. At times they sympathize with Nick, when they think his wife Amy was kidnapped. At times they hate Nick, when they think he killed Amy.
This is a story of multiple levels of deception. That is pretty much politics in a nutshell. Many Democrats believe their party has been hijacked. They voted for Nick (not Hillary), peace and prosperity in 2006, got a Democratic Party controlled Congress starting in 2007 and had full control of Congress and the Executive Branch after Barack Obama won the election of 2008. But instead of peace and prosperity, by then the nation was in the Great Recession, and Obama kept finding reasons to keep killing people in the Middle East and even extended the war to much of Africa.
Obama and Democratic politicians may have made a vow of marriage to Democratic voters, but marriage is not so easy. With the Pentagon waving its tits about, no wonder the boys (and the girls too, Pelosi and Feinstein et al) got distracted. No money! Just run up the credit cards and hope that sooner or later something will come up to keep the nation's head above water. And if a few million, well tens of millions, of Americans lose their jobs and life savings before things get straightened out, that is not because Nick was not trying to be a good husband.
Amy could also represent the Democrats, waving her Ivy League degrees around and refusing to get pregnant, but she is from a rich, cunning family that reminds me of the Bush clan. She was all sex and laughter and wit when her money was mostly inherited, but she turns vicious when she has little to do but play MacHousewife in a MacMansion in the kind of boring small city that breeds your typical Republican voter.
Amy and the Republican leaders, are all about deception. Many Republicans believe their party has been hijacked. The Tea Party types feel the Grand Old Party was hijacked by crony capitalists (it was formed in the late 1850s by a coalition that included crony capitalists). The mainstream Republicans feel the wackos in the Tea Party cause them to lose elections. Worse, if elected, Tea Party Republicans won't vote to spend the money so important to a wide variety of business men who have learned that the government market is much more profitable than the ruinous competition one sometimes encounters in the free market. In American politics everyone liked building roads until the Tea Party came along.
And who needs Al-Qaeda to cripple the economy by blowing up a bridge (in America) or two when Amazing Amy will just deny funds for its repair, until it eventually collapses?
You can't trust any politician. Or the media, or the police. Yet you have to some trust people. That is called society. Choosing who to trust, or how much to trust, is the most important skill you can develop.
"Therefore since the world has still,
Much good, but much less good than ill ...
I'd face it as a wise man would,
And train for ill and not for good"
— A. E. Housman, A Shropshire Lad
Naturally it reminded me of the current state of political affairs in the United States. Nick Dunne could represent the Democratic Party, and Amazing Amy could represent the Republican Party. Or maybe a better fit is Nick Dunne represents the Republican Party, and Amy represents the Democratic Party.
The citizens and voters of the United States are represented by the people of the smallish town in Missouri where the happy married couple has moved after losing their respective high-powered writing jobs in New York City. At times they sympathize with Nick, when they think his wife Amy was kidnapped. At times they hate Nick, when they think he killed Amy.
This is a story of multiple levels of deception. That is pretty much politics in a nutshell. Many Democrats believe their party has been hijacked. They voted for Nick (not Hillary), peace and prosperity in 2006, got a Democratic Party controlled Congress starting in 2007 and had full control of Congress and the Executive Branch after Barack Obama won the election of 2008. But instead of peace and prosperity, by then the nation was in the Great Recession, and Obama kept finding reasons to keep killing people in the Middle East and even extended the war to much of Africa.
Obama and Democratic politicians may have made a vow of marriage to Democratic voters, but marriage is not so easy. With the Pentagon waving its tits about, no wonder the boys (and the girls too, Pelosi and Feinstein et al) got distracted. No money! Just run up the credit cards and hope that sooner or later something will come up to keep the nation's head above water. And if a few million, well tens of millions, of Americans lose their jobs and life savings before things get straightened out, that is not because Nick was not trying to be a good husband.
Amy could also represent the Democrats, waving her Ivy League degrees around and refusing to get pregnant, but she is from a rich, cunning family that reminds me of the Bush clan. She was all sex and laughter and wit when her money was mostly inherited, but she turns vicious when she has little to do but play MacHousewife in a MacMansion in the kind of boring small city that breeds your typical Republican voter.
Amy and the Republican leaders, are all about deception. Many Republicans believe their party has been hijacked. The Tea Party types feel the Grand Old Party was hijacked by crony capitalists (it was formed in the late 1850s by a coalition that included crony capitalists). The mainstream Republicans feel the wackos in the Tea Party cause them to lose elections. Worse, if elected, Tea Party Republicans won't vote to spend the money so important to a wide variety of business men who have learned that the government market is much more profitable than the ruinous competition one sometimes encounters in the free market. In American politics everyone liked building roads until the Tea Party came along.
And who needs Al-Qaeda to cripple the economy by blowing up a bridge (in America) or two when Amazing Amy will just deny funds for its repair, until it eventually collapses?
You can't trust any politician. Or the media, or the police. Yet you have to some trust people. That is called society. Choosing who to trust, or how much to trust, is the most important skill you can develop.
"Therefore since the world has still,
Much good, but much less good than ill ...
I'd face it as a wise man would,
And train for ill and not for good"
— A. E. Housman, A Shropshire Lad
Monday, July 9, 2012
Long, Hot Summer Apps
Right now, some of the smartest people on the planet are hunkered down in Silicon Valley and a dozen other entrepreneurial hotspots trying to figure out how to improve smartphone hardware and software. "Improve" here means getting it, The Cloud, and its swarm of Devices, to become more efficient at parting everyone else from their e-money. They have been inspired by the new Robber Barons, sometimes called by name but more often simply associated with corporations: Zynga and Facebook and Square and LinkedIn and a hundreds of others, whose fans all act surprised when you have not heard of them, much less have used them.
Given the way the world is headed, here are some Apps you can expect to see soon:
WaterUp will tell you where you can find potable water once the electricity grid goes down for the last time. It will guide you to the nearest pond or stream, based on GPS, which should keep working because the GPS satellite system works on solar energy. You can even agree with groups of friends in advance where to meet up!
TeaPartyIn provides an endless loop of helpful reminders that weather fluctuates naturally and all societal problems, including your being unemployed, hot, hungry, and thirsty is the fault of Communists in the government. Show a little enterprise! If you got corpses, open a hamburger stand.
BadaBingo turns your iFad tablet or phone into a three-card monte table. Whatever the chumps have left to bet with can be yours. Use WaterUp to find a good location early.
MyTurret allows your device to control the aim of the armament of your choice, whether mounted to the roof of your car or at the entrance to your home. Be sure to stock up on ammo, they won't be making more once the music stops.
OpenSourceUniversalApp will monitor the Cloud to determine when the government and multinational corporations are no longer functioning well enough to enforce their laws or property rights. It will then download every book ever written, song ever recorded, movie ever distributed (including porn), and App ever made be greedy geeks to you device. You can have all that entertainment at your fingertips. Until your battery needs recharging.
Given the way the world is headed, here are some Apps you can expect to see soon:
WaterUp will tell you where you can find potable water once the electricity grid goes down for the last time. It will guide you to the nearest pond or stream, based on GPS, which should keep working because the GPS satellite system works on solar energy. You can even agree with groups of friends in advance where to meet up!
TeaPartyIn provides an endless loop of helpful reminders that weather fluctuates naturally and all societal problems, including your being unemployed, hot, hungry, and thirsty is the fault of Communists in the government. Show a little enterprise! If you got corpses, open a hamburger stand.
BadaBingo turns your iFad tablet or phone into a three-card monte table. Whatever the chumps have left to bet with can be yours. Use WaterUp to find a good location early.
MyTurret allows your device to control the aim of the armament of your choice, whether mounted to the roof of your car or at the entrance to your home. Be sure to stock up on ammo, they won't be making more once the music stops.
OpenSourceUniversalApp will monitor the Cloud to determine when the government and multinational corporations are no longer functioning well enough to enforce their laws or property rights. It will then download every book ever written, song ever recorded, movie ever distributed (including porn), and App ever made be greedy geeks to you device. You can have all that entertainment at your fingertips. Until your battery needs recharging.
Friday, July 15, 2011
Capitalism Death Watch
The Republican Party Faithful are doing their best to stop the government of the United States of America from functioning. They believe the government deducts from their prosperity by taxing, spending, and borrowing. The problem is they have a simplistic view of capitalist economics that is out of touch with the real world.
Already in the 19th century a number of economists noted free-market capitalism's self-destructive tendencies. Their theories were based on observations of capitalist accumulation (of money and property in the hands of ever fewer people) and cycles of boom and bust. There are other factors in business cycles, but it was apparent to anyone looking objectively at the data that letting capitalism run wild created booms followed by depressions, of which there were a number of between 1850 and 1940.
Let me repeat: experimental evidence showed that unregulated capitalism tended to destroy national and global economies. The reason we have only had one Great Depression is one was enough for most people: government intervention is required.
Of course, you can also have too much government in specific cases, and counter-productive programs, but I've noted that Republicans are just as resistant to killing their pet government subsidies as Democrats are, maybe more so.
What happens if the Congress, a combination of Republicans and Democrats, fails to raise the debt limit? Capitalism dies. The U.S. will go down, and we will take the whole world with us, even China.
A little sense would go a long way here. Congress could wait to cut spending until, say, U.S. unemployment drops to 7%. That would reassure just about everyone, and save our regulated system of capitalism.
If the U.S. government stops paying its debts, in August, the economy will start falling. There will be nothing and no one capable of breaking the fall. We are in a slow upward cycle, but will be thrust into a rapid downward plunge. Tax revenues will decrease, making it even more difficult to achieve a balanced federal budget. More layoffs will mean less consumpition, meaning evern more layoffs. Bonds will become worthless unless taxes are greatly increased or the whole government (except of course, homeland security and the military) is shut down to make the escalating interest payments.
If the debt limit is raised (substantially) but with no tax increases, no cuts in military spending, and major cuts in future payments to seniors and other low-income persons, the outlook is grim, but the economy might muddle through.
Here's the deal: truly free-market capitalism concentrates all wealth in the hands of a few people (in a nation of over 300 million, that might be about 3 million). No one else has money to spend, so demand drops, the economy collapses, and people realize how dumb they have been and elect a government that resistributes wealth. Then we rebuild, and ideologs eventually forget the facts of life.
I hope the Congress is really just bluffing. I hope the debt limit is raised, but that federal spending is gradually reduced until we can repay some of the national debt. But I fear a lot of stupidity has been concentrated in Congress right now. The death of capitalism might offer the hope of a new social order, but it could be a very, very unpleasant transition.
Already in the 19th century a number of economists noted free-market capitalism's self-destructive tendencies. Their theories were based on observations of capitalist accumulation (of money and property in the hands of ever fewer people) and cycles of boom and bust. There are other factors in business cycles, but it was apparent to anyone looking objectively at the data that letting capitalism run wild created booms followed by depressions, of which there were a number of between 1850 and 1940.
Let me repeat: experimental evidence showed that unregulated capitalism tended to destroy national and global economies. The reason we have only had one Great Depression is one was enough for most people: government intervention is required.
Of course, you can also have too much government in specific cases, and counter-productive programs, but I've noted that Republicans are just as resistant to killing their pet government subsidies as Democrats are, maybe more so.
What happens if the Congress, a combination of Republicans and Democrats, fails to raise the debt limit? Capitalism dies. The U.S. will go down, and we will take the whole world with us, even China.
A little sense would go a long way here. Congress could wait to cut spending until, say, U.S. unemployment drops to 7%. That would reassure just about everyone, and save our regulated system of capitalism.
If the U.S. government stops paying its debts, in August, the economy will start falling. There will be nothing and no one capable of breaking the fall. We are in a slow upward cycle, but will be thrust into a rapid downward plunge. Tax revenues will decrease, making it even more difficult to achieve a balanced federal budget. More layoffs will mean less consumpition, meaning evern more layoffs. Bonds will become worthless unless taxes are greatly increased or the whole government (except of course, homeland security and the military) is shut down to make the escalating interest payments.
If the debt limit is raised (substantially) but with no tax increases, no cuts in military spending, and major cuts in future payments to seniors and other low-income persons, the outlook is grim, but the economy might muddle through.
Here's the deal: truly free-market capitalism concentrates all wealth in the hands of a few people (in a nation of over 300 million, that might be about 3 million). No one else has money to spend, so demand drops, the economy collapses, and people realize how dumb they have been and elect a government that resistributes wealth. Then we rebuild, and ideologs eventually forget the facts of life.
I hope the Congress is really just bluffing. I hope the debt limit is raised, but that federal spending is gradually reduced until we can repay some of the national debt. But I fear a lot of stupidity has been concentrated in Congress right now. The death of capitalism might offer the hope of a new social order, but it could be a very, very unpleasant transition.
Monday, February 14, 2011
Ruinous Competition: Doctors and Healthcare
According the free-market theorists, the best of all possible economic worlds is one in which there is no government regulation. First developed coherently in Adam Smith's Wealth of Nations, this theory was based on practical observations of a society, England, that had been high regulated by a monarchical government working with feudal institutions that tried to determine most people's occupation by their status at birth.
Business men and trade-guilds that had done quite well for themselves in the past found it hard to make a profit, or even a living, once anyone could compete with them. In a free market, if a profit can be made in a certain occupation, new people will enter that occupation until competition for customers results in profit levels becoming unattractive. We call that ruinous competition.
Certain industries require quite a bit of capital to enter, so even back at the dawn of this new era, around the time of the American Revolution, profits could be made in those industries without the help of government restrictions on entering the business. Just as a beggar cannot enter the farming business without the price of at least a down-payment on a piece of land, so a laborer or small merchant would not have the capital to set up an iron-mill or buy a coal mine. So even under the growing free market system, larger enterprises had some shelter from ruinous competition.
The United States of America began as a sort of natural free-market area, and people generally benefited from that (neglecting here the use of slave labor and violent capture of Native American Indian real estate) for some time.
In the course of the 1800's, however, mainly at the level of individual states, those who did not want to be exposed to ruinous competition developed a strategy. Aside from the practice of the law, which was always limited by the government, it was argued that professions having a direct impact on the health and safety of the public needed to be vetted by the government. For instance, it was argued that not anyone could simply declare themselves to be a medical doctor. And again, there was some truth to it, although in the 1800's it appears that trained medical doctors were so ignorant of basic biology that many were just as dangerous to the public as the so called fake doctors, or charlatan (originally, sellers of Roman Catholic indulgences, but a term that came to be applied to untrained healers).
Allowing only doctors licensed under the authority of the government, and making sure there was always a shortage of such licensed doctors, would allow the group to charge more than the free market value of their medical services. In short, to overcharge the sick. This was the purpose of the American Medical Association, formed in 1847. The AMA did some good things, which don't concern us here. What they did on the economic front was require that medical practitioners be licensed (and they set up boards of their own members to decide who would qualify for a license) and they also licensed medical schools. In licensing such schools they carefully studied the demand for doctors and made sure that not enough doctors were graduated to meet the demand.
Now of course practically every profession, from cutters of hair to real estate agents to accountants and carpenters, requires a license. Some professions have not been as successful at keeping their numbers small and profits high as the doctors have done, but the general idea is there. Barriers to entry, no free market, no ruinous competition. Those who work without license are sucked dry by the fees of those who are licensed to work.
Those doctors who scream for free markets and against "socialist" government health care plans should take a good look at themselves and their ill-got millions. Because of the government preventing the operation of free markets in doctoring, in the 1950's and 1960's the term millionaire-doctor was synonymous with doctor.
If doctors don't want socialized medicine, we should open up doctoring to anyone who feels they can heal. Pharmacists should be able to make diagnoses and sell basic drugs without a doctor's prescription. For that matter doctors should be able to sell drugs in their offices, rather than having to write a prescription. People should be able to self-diagnose, if they wish to take that risk, and get any legal drug without a prescription.
If someone puts out a shingle and causes harm, they could be sued for malpractice. If they claim to have graduated from a medical school, but did not, they could be charged with fraud. If the government wants to certify people, or the AMA wants to identify their members, that is fine, but there should be no rule that you have to go to the AMA men or government men.
What do you say, Republicans and Tea-Party people? Are you really ready to give free markets a chance? I'm certainly ready to hang out a shingle, if the Republican run government is willing to let me. I'll start a medical insurance company too, a coop that benefits the members. That should put some pressure on Anthem et. al.
Business men and trade-guilds that had done quite well for themselves in the past found it hard to make a profit, or even a living, once anyone could compete with them. In a free market, if a profit can be made in a certain occupation, new people will enter that occupation until competition for customers results in profit levels becoming unattractive. We call that ruinous competition.
Certain industries require quite a bit of capital to enter, so even back at the dawn of this new era, around the time of the American Revolution, profits could be made in those industries without the help of government restrictions on entering the business. Just as a beggar cannot enter the farming business without the price of at least a down-payment on a piece of land, so a laborer or small merchant would not have the capital to set up an iron-mill or buy a coal mine. So even under the growing free market system, larger enterprises had some shelter from ruinous competition.
The United States of America began as a sort of natural free-market area, and people generally benefited from that (neglecting here the use of slave labor and violent capture of Native American Indian real estate) for some time.
In the course of the 1800's, however, mainly at the level of individual states, those who did not want to be exposed to ruinous competition developed a strategy. Aside from the practice of the law, which was always limited by the government, it was argued that professions having a direct impact on the health and safety of the public needed to be vetted by the government. For instance, it was argued that not anyone could simply declare themselves to be a medical doctor. And again, there was some truth to it, although in the 1800's it appears that trained medical doctors were so ignorant of basic biology that many were just as dangerous to the public as the so called fake doctors, or charlatan (originally, sellers of Roman Catholic indulgences, but a term that came to be applied to untrained healers).
Allowing only doctors licensed under the authority of the government, and making sure there was always a shortage of such licensed doctors, would allow the group to charge more than the free market value of their medical services. In short, to overcharge the sick. This was the purpose of the American Medical Association, formed in 1847. The AMA did some good things, which don't concern us here. What they did on the economic front was require that medical practitioners be licensed (and they set up boards of their own members to decide who would qualify for a license) and they also licensed medical schools. In licensing such schools they carefully studied the demand for doctors and made sure that not enough doctors were graduated to meet the demand.
Now of course practically every profession, from cutters of hair to real estate agents to accountants and carpenters, requires a license. Some professions have not been as successful at keeping their numbers small and profits high as the doctors have done, but the general idea is there. Barriers to entry, no free market, no ruinous competition. Those who work without license are sucked dry by the fees of those who are licensed to work.
Those doctors who scream for free markets and against "socialist" government health care plans should take a good look at themselves and their ill-got millions. Because of the government preventing the operation of free markets in doctoring, in the 1950's and 1960's the term millionaire-doctor was synonymous with doctor.
If doctors don't want socialized medicine, we should open up doctoring to anyone who feels they can heal. Pharmacists should be able to make diagnoses and sell basic drugs without a doctor's prescription. For that matter doctors should be able to sell drugs in their offices, rather than having to write a prescription. People should be able to self-diagnose, if they wish to take that risk, and get any legal drug without a prescription.
If someone puts out a shingle and causes harm, they could be sued for malpractice. If they claim to have graduated from a medical school, but did not, they could be charged with fraud. If the government wants to certify people, or the AMA wants to identify their members, that is fine, but there should be no rule that you have to go to the AMA men or government men.
What do you say, Republicans and Tea-Party people? Are you really ready to give free markets a chance? I'm certainly ready to hang out a shingle, if the Republican run government is willing to let me. I'll start a medical insurance company too, a coop that benefits the members. That should put some pressure on Anthem et. al.
Note: many doctors have come out for Universal Health Care. For instance see Physicians for a National Health Care Program.
Friday, November 12, 2010
Somali Puppet Government Shrinking
The American-created "government of Somalia," today announced that it is shrinking the cabinet from 39 to just 18 ministers. That is about right, because this group headed by Prime Minister Mohamed Abdullahi Mohamed has has very few Somali supporters. It takes money from the United States and uses it to pay soldiers, at least in theory. In reality reports are that the money is ripped off by the upper ranks, so the soldiers, many of whom are children, desert at the first opportunity.
This government is sanctioned by the United Nations and African Union as well. It controls, in the vast territory of Somalia, a few square blocks of the city of Mogadishu, in concert with Ugandan troops. By some standards, it is not a bad lot of people. But almost no one in Somalia wants to support a puppet government set up by the United States and other foreigners. Most of the nation's territory is now controlled by fundamentalist militant Islamic groups, notably Al-Shabaab.
There is no better example on earth on why the United States, or any other nation for that matter, should not try to interfere in the internal affairs of other nations. Both under President George W. Bush and President Barack Obama, American interference has consistently made the situation in Somalia worse (if by worse you mean more radically Islamic. If you like fundamentalist Islam, I guess you could say the U.S. has really helped the people of Somalia).
The United States has assassinated politicians, dropped in bundles of money for bribes, and paid Ethiopia and Uganda to invade Somalia. U.S. policy has only served to discredit moderates, like the old Islamic Courts Union that restored some semblance of order to Somalia in 2006. The U.S. has made Somalia an Al Qaeda poster child. The U.S. comes off as brutal and stupid ideological thugs. Which is about right, if you look at our history.
I have to wonder if this is really just an extremely stupid CIA and "Defense" cadre, or if it was done on purpose. By destabilizing Somalia the CIA has created a permanent threat to the U.S. that did not exist in 2006. That guarantees nice fat budgets for the CIA, Pentagon, and Homeland Security apparatcniks.
One could argue, I guess I am starting to argue, that Somalia is a textbook case of creating an enemy where none previously existed. A reasonable conclusion is that someone was following a textbook in this operation. So it was done on purpose. I can't prove it, but I sure would like to get my hands on the archives.
Here's a sound policy: seal the borders of Somalia, withdraw all foreign troops and operatives including aid groups, and let the Somalis work things out among themselves. Recognize any government that seems to have the support or control over, say 50% of the population. Then restore normal trade and diplomatic ties. My guess is that culturally Somalis are moderate people and won't support puritan versions of Islam for long.
Meanwhile, hold tribunals to try George W. Bush and Barack Obama for war crimes and crimes against humanity in Somalia. With those two guys in jail, the rest of the people of the world might feel safer and act friendlier towards Americans.
More Somalia articles by William P. Meyers
This government is sanctioned by the United Nations and African Union as well. It controls, in the vast territory of Somalia, a few square blocks of the city of Mogadishu, in concert with Ugandan troops. By some standards, it is not a bad lot of people. But almost no one in Somalia wants to support a puppet government set up by the United States and other foreigners. Most of the nation's territory is now controlled by fundamentalist militant Islamic groups, notably Al-Shabaab.
There is no better example on earth on why the United States, or any other nation for that matter, should not try to interfere in the internal affairs of other nations. Both under President George W. Bush and President Barack Obama, American interference has consistently made the situation in Somalia worse (if by worse you mean more radically Islamic. If you like fundamentalist Islam, I guess you could say the U.S. has really helped the people of Somalia).
The United States has assassinated politicians, dropped in bundles of money for bribes, and paid Ethiopia and Uganda to invade Somalia. U.S. policy has only served to discredit moderates, like the old Islamic Courts Union that restored some semblance of order to Somalia in 2006. The U.S. has made Somalia an Al Qaeda poster child. The U.S. comes off as brutal and stupid ideological thugs. Which is about right, if you look at our history.
I have to wonder if this is really just an extremely stupid CIA and "Defense" cadre, or if it was done on purpose. By destabilizing Somalia the CIA has created a permanent threat to the U.S. that did not exist in 2006. That guarantees nice fat budgets for the CIA, Pentagon, and Homeland Security apparatcniks.
One could argue, I guess I am starting to argue, that Somalia is a textbook case of creating an enemy where none previously existed. A reasonable conclusion is that someone was following a textbook in this operation. So it was done on purpose. I can't prove it, but I sure would like to get my hands on the archives.
Here's a sound policy: seal the borders of Somalia, withdraw all foreign troops and operatives including aid groups, and let the Somalis work things out among themselves. Recognize any government that seems to have the support or control over, say 50% of the population. Then restore normal trade and diplomatic ties. My guess is that culturally Somalis are moderate people and won't support puritan versions of Islam for long.
Meanwhile, hold tribunals to try George W. Bush and Barack Obama for war crimes and crimes against humanity in Somalia. With those two guys in jail, the rest of the people of the world might feel safer and act friendlier towards Americans.
More Somalia articles by William P. Meyers
Wednesday, May 6, 2009
Larceny of the Heart and Government
I noticed that my dog Hugo had taken a stick from my wood pile to play with. Since I was walking to the garden to dump the kitchen compost, with nothing else on my mind, this launched a train of thought about the nature of theft. I thought about how I hate being stolen from, but have not led a pure life in that regard myself. I thought about how society and government work, and how they could work better. Only then did I go back to thinking about how Hugo seems to be able to distinguish between what belongs to him and what belongs to others. There seems to be a mammalian basis for the concept of private property.
The phrase "larceny of the heart" kept popping back into my head. I believe almost every human being experiences larceny of the heart from time to time. I would put define this as a step building on mere desire. It involves knowing that something does not belong to you, and thinking of grabbing it anyway. Theft is actually acting on that feeling. Sometimes we humans rationalize our thefts. After all, if something has been stolen from us, do we not have the right to steal it back?
Like most people I was brought up on the straight and narrow regarding theft. It is hard to imagine either of my parents, poor as they might have been as children, ever stealing anything as adults. My childhood thefts were extremely petty.
The socialist ideas that were circulating in that era (late 1960's) only gradually had an affect on me. They can be summed up: capitalism is theft. By paying workers poorly, or overcharging consumers, or both, capital is accumulated. To that, I learned when I started studying political science, add an overlay of imperialism. It is possible to pay workers well in an imperialist country, and keep the capitalists and politicians happy too, by overcharging consumers and underpaying workers in economic colonies.
Many theories of government have been proposed, but they boil down to two scenarios: government to steal, and government to prevent stealing. Once a government has been around for a while, it usually does some of both, and it is usually biased to the status quo. This is that there are rich people, and they won't tolerate the idea that their wealth was created by some form of theft. No one is supposed to steal, but sharp business practices of the past, and even past violence, is to be forgotten about in all equations of justice.
Looking at our current government, we can argue endlessly about what part of taxation is for communal projects we all benefit from, and what is some form of legitimized theft. The rich don't like the idea of progressive taxation. The middle class may not like being taxed to subsidize both wealthy corporations (largely owned by rich people) and the needy. The people who do most of the actual work, but whose pay makes it fair to describe them as working class or even working poor, don't like paying taxes any more than anyone else. And the poor, well, they are a real mixed lot. Except they all want one thing in common: they want more. They share that trait with all of us.
When someone, or an institution, asks for a government subsidy or tax break, do they ever say to themselves, from whom will these tax dollars be stolen? I don't think so. Not the person faking a disability to draw $200 a week, not the defense contractor corporation grabbing $2 million a day.
I believe the core function of government should be the establishment of justice. You should get that for your tax dollar, even before you get roads or public schools or other things I think governments are the best institutions for providing. In America justice is scarce; mostly you have to hire lawyers to even have a chance of getting it. That is fundamentally wrong.
I think that very little of the "crime" that is actually punished in the United States involves serious theft or violence. It has nothing to do with justice. It is almost all about black markets. If the government would stop creating black markets, most ordinary (non-business) crime would go away. Prisons could be closed, saving the taxpayers a great deal of money.
The other place where we could clearly cut back on government is military spending. America is safe from foreign invasion. Unfortunately, other nations are not safe from the U.S.
I'd like a little justice for my tax dollars. I believe that by setting examples at the top, there would be less trouble at the bottom. The ideal examples would be Presidents and Congresses that did not commit crimes. But since that is rare in U.S. history, lets start with this: a war crimes tribunal. Let's try and punish every president from George Washington to Barack Obama who has committed crimes against humanity and war crimes.
Then we can, with clear consciences, address the trickier issue of what is fair taxation, and what is legalized theft.
The phrase "larceny of the heart" kept popping back into my head. I believe almost every human being experiences larceny of the heart from time to time. I would put define this as a step building on mere desire. It involves knowing that something does not belong to you, and thinking of grabbing it anyway. Theft is actually acting on that feeling. Sometimes we humans rationalize our thefts. After all, if something has been stolen from us, do we not have the right to steal it back?
Like most people I was brought up on the straight and narrow regarding theft. It is hard to imagine either of my parents, poor as they might have been as children, ever stealing anything as adults. My childhood thefts were extremely petty.
The socialist ideas that were circulating in that era (late 1960's) only gradually had an affect on me. They can be summed up: capitalism is theft. By paying workers poorly, or overcharging consumers, or both, capital is accumulated. To that, I learned when I started studying political science, add an overlay of imperialism. It is possible to pay workers well in an imperialist country, and keep the capitalists and politicians happy too, by overcharging consumers and underpaying workers in economic colonies.
Many theories of government have been proposed, but they boil down to two scenarios: government to steal, and government to prevent stealing. Once a government has been around for a while, it usually does some of both, and it is usually biased to the status quo. This is that there are rich people, and they won't tolerate the idea that their wealth was created by some form of theft. No one is supposed to steal, but sharp business practices of the past, and even past violence, is to be forgotten about in all equations of justice.
Looking at our current government, we can argue endlessly about what part of taxation is for communal projects we all benefit from, and what is some form of legitimized theft. The rich don't like the idea of progressive taxation. The middle class may not like being taxed to subsidize both wealthy corporations (largely owned by rich people) and the needy. The people who do most of the actual work, but whose pay makes it fair to describe them as working class or even working poor, don't like paying taxes any more than anyone else. And the poor, well, they are a real mixed lot. Except they all want one thing in common: they want more. They share that trait with all of us.
When someone, or an institution, asks for a government subsidy or tax break, do they ever say to themselves, from whom will these tax dollars be stolen? I don't think so. Not the person faking a disability to draw $200 a week, not the defense contractor corporation grabbing $2 million a day.
I believe the core function of government should be the establishment of justice. You should get that for your tax dollar, even before you get roads or public schools or other things I think governments are the best institutions for providing. In America justice is scarce; mostly you have to hire lawyers to even have a chance of getting it. That is fundamentally wrong.
I think that very little of the "crime" that is actually punished in the United States involves serious theft or violence. It has nothing to do with justice. It is almost all about black markets. If the government would stop creating black markets, most ordinary (non-business) crime would go away. Prisons could be closed, saving the taxpayers a great deal of money.
The other place where we could clearly cut back on government is military spending. America is safe from foreign invasion. Unfortunately, other nations are not safe from the U.S.
I'd like a little justice for my tax dollars. I believe that by setting examples at the top, there would be less trouble at the bottom. The ideal examples would be Presidents and Congresses that did not commit crimes. But since that is rare in U.S. history, lets start with this: a war crimes tribunal. Let's try and punish every president from George Washington to Barack Obama who has committed crimes against humanity and war crimes.
Then we can, with clear consciences, address the trickier issue of what is fair taxation, and what is legalized theft.
Sunday, August 3, 2008
U.S. Government of Somalia Collapsing
The U.S. government of Somalia installed against the will of the vast majority of the people of Somalia appears to be falling apart. Aside from an actual invasion by U.S. or allied troops (beyond the current occupation forces from Ethiopia and Uganda), there seems to be little the U.S. government can do to impose its will on Somalia. While no actual U.S. invasion is likely until after Barack Obama is elected President of the United States, it would not be surprising if the U.S. resumed bombing Somalia before the end of the Bush adminstration.
The tiny group of men styling themselves the government of Somalia (not long ago known as the Provisional Government of Somalia, and probably soon to be know as the former warlords financed by the CIA who briefly got the world press to call them a government) just split up. According to the Associated Press, a majority of the cabinet ministers resigned on Saturday, August 2nd, 2008. They were led by President Abdullahi Yusuf Ahmed, who had a dispute with Prime Minister Nur Hassan Hussein over who should be the warlord, I mean mayor, of Mogadishu.
This follows the collapse of peace talks with the democratic opposition. The opposition had restored a semblance of good government in Somalia in 2006, but called itself the Islamic Justice Courts. Fearful that the establishment of justice in the Horn of Africa would endanger U.S. military and economic interests, the U.S. CIA (directed, of course, by President George W. Bush) picked a favored warlord told him and his friends to call themselves the Provisional Government. Detested by the people of Somalia, this provisional Government was later propped up by an invasion of marauders from Ethiopia and Uganda, financed by the U.S.
Somalians are used to foreigners. As I wrote in Portuguese Catholics Destroyed East African Islamic Societies in 1500's, the role of "civilized Europe" in the Horn of Africa has always been one of piracy. Colonial rule only ended in 1960.
The only civilized approach to the Somalia mess (this is a mess that means millions of people are starving, without housing or medical care) is to withdraw all foreign troops and let the people decide the issue for themselves. That may mean anarchy. It may mean a patchwork of warlord-dominated regions. It might mean an Islamic state. It might even mean a peaceful democracy. Left to themselves, the people of Somalia will find a solution to their problems. Short-term solutions will evolve into long-term solutions. Short term, the issue will be settled partly with guns. But who the people point their guns at will depend on the popular consensus. Elections might make sense, but no outside government can be trusted to run fair elections. When the people themselves organize elections, they may be ready to rely upon the results of those elections.
For more insight into the history of what has been happening in Somalia since 2006 see my main Somalia page.
For New York Times (registration required) archives (mostly Associated Press articles) see NYT Somalia archives (but note these are highly biased in their descriptions of factions in Somalia).
The tiny group of men styling themselves the government of Somalia (not long ago known as the Provisional Government of Somalia, and probably soon to be know as the former warlords financed by the CIA who briefly got the world press to call them a government) just split up. According to the Associated Press, a majority of the cabinet ministers resigned on Saturday, August 2nd, 2008. They were led by President Abdullahi Yusuf Ahmed, who had a dispute with Prime Minister Nur Hassan Hussein over who should be the warlord, I mean mayor, of Mogadishu.
This follows the collapse of peace talks with the democratic opposition. The opposition had restored a semblance of good government in Somalia in 2006, but called itself the Islamic Justice Courts. Fearful that the establishment of justice in the Horn of Africa would endanger U.S. military and economic interests, the U.S. CIA (directed, of course, by President George W. Bush) picked a favored warlord told him and his friends to call themselves the Provisional Government. Detested by the people of Somalia, this provisional Government was later propped up by an invasion of marauders from Ethiopia and Uganda, financed by the U.S.
Somalians are used to foreigners. As I wrote in Portuguese Catholics Destroyed East African Islamic Societies in 1500's, the role of "civilized Europe" in the Horn of Africa has always been one of piracy. Colonial rule only ended in 1960.
The only civilized approach to the Somalia mess (this is a mess that means millions of people are starving, without housing or medical care) is to withdraw all foreign troops and let the people decide the issue for themselves. That may mean anarchy. It may mean a patchwork of warlord-dominated regions. It might mean an Islamic state. It might even mean a peaceful democracy. Left to themselves, the people of Somalia will find a solution to their problems. Short-term solutions will evolve into long-term solutions. Short term, the issue will be settled partly with guns. But who the people point their guns at will depend on the popular consensus. Elections might make sense, but no outside government can be trusted to run fair elections. When the people themselves organize elections, they may be ready to rely upon the results of those elections.
For more insight into the history of what has been happening in Somalia since 2006 see my main Somalia page.
For New York Times (registration required) archives (mostly Associated Press articles) see NYT Somalia archives (but note these are highly biased in their descriptions of factions in Somalia).
Tuesday, December 4, 2007
Somalia Spinning
In an article titled "Somali President Hospitalized," published December 4, 2007 in the New York Times, attributed to Associated Press writer Tom Maliti, by way of background readers are informed:
"Yusuf's government, with help from neighboring Ethiopia, has been battling a ferocious Islamic insurgency that has killed thousands of people this year in what U.N. officials call a major humanitarian crisis."
Talk about turning black into white. Abdullahi Yusuf's "government" is a creation of the United States Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), established in a tradition going back to the CIA-engineered coup that brought the Shah to power in Iran in August 1953.
Somalia entered the 21st century with clan-based or warlord rule. U.S. policy makers installed Abdullahi Yusuf in 2004 and nearly everyone else in Somalia went about their businesses as if the new government did not exist. It was a mere fiction. But in 2005 a democracy and justice movement started sweeping the country. It has started because people were tired of the fighting, corruption, and theft of the warlords and clan leaders. It was called Islamic Justice Courts. In areas controlled by the people themselves, through the Islamic Justice Courts, peace and even a bit of prosperity prevailed. Other Somalis looked at the situation and joined the Islamic Justice Courts in droves. Only a few CIA-backed thugs like Abdullahi Yusuf stayed with what the U.N., U.S., and global media conglomerates called the "provisional government."
The U.S.'s pro-Christian, pro-economic injustice, anti-Islam, policy is exceptionally clear in Somalia. The U.S. paid the Ethiopian government to invade Somalia and sent CIA agents and special forces troops to aid in the effort. The result was a slaughter; no one could even count the bodies of the good citizens of Somalia who were slain by the U.S. Government and its puppets.
At first it looked, from the U.S. imperial point of view, that all was well. Many of the warlords and clan leaders who had lost power to the Islamic Justice Courts gave tentative backing to the new regime. The roadblocks and thefts started back up. And so those who backed the Islamic Justice Courts saw they had no choice but to fight the new, U.S. backed tyranny.
Read Maliti's statement again: "Yusuf's government, with help from neighboring Ethiopia, has been battling a ferocious Islamic insurgency that has killed thousands of people this year in what U.N. officials call a major humanitarian crisis." The CIA itself could not have written a finer piece of propaganda. The major humanitarian crisis was caused by the U.S., U.N., and Ethiopia.
And while George W. Bush haters will simply add this to the list of reasons for impeachment, please notice that this all happened with a Democratic Party majority in the U.S. House and Senate. The Democratic Party leadership wants the Peace vote, but they aren't against taking any anti-Islamic or pro-war votes they can get, and certainly intend to dip into the rich gravy of Pentagon contracts now that they control key Congressional committees.
Note the phrase: "ferocious Islamic insurgency." After a peaceful, democratic, justice oriented movement is crushed, radicals and those who like war tend to come to the forefront of any resistance movement. But given the history here, I'll take the insurgent side over the CIA side.
We really need a Green Party president and Congress if we are ever to have peace and justice in the world.
See also my Somalia page.
"Yusuf's government, with help from neighboring Ethiopia, has been battling a ferocious Islamic insurgency that has killed thousands of people this year in what U.N. officials call a major humanitarian crisis."
Talk about turning black into white. Abdullahi Yusuf's "government" is a creation of the United States Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), established in a tradition going back to the CIA-engineered coup that brought the Shah to power in Iran in August 1953.
Somalia entered the 21st century with clan-based or warlord rule. U.S. policy makers installed Abdullahi Yusuf in 2004 and nearly everyone else in Somalia went about their businesses as if the new government did not exist. It was a mere fiction. But in 2005 a democracy and justice movement started sweeping the country. It has started because people were tired of the fighting, corruption, and theft of the warlords and clan leaders. It was called Islamic Justice Courts. In areas controlled by the people themselves, through the Islamic Justice Courts, peace and even a bit of prosperity prevailed. Other Somalis looked at the situation and joined the Islamic Justice Courts in droves. Only a few CIA-backed thugs like Abdullahi Yusuf stayed with what the U.N., U.S., and global media conglomerates called the "provisional government."
The U.S.'s pro-Christian, pro-economic injustice, anti-Islam, policy is exceptionally clear in Somalia. The U.S. paid the Ethiopian government to invade Somalia and sent CIA agents and special forces troops to aid in the effort. The result was a slaughter; no one could even count the bodies of the good citizens of Somalia who were slain by the U.S. Government and its puppets.
At first it looked, from the U.S. imperial point of view, that all was well. Many of the warlords and clan leaders who had lost power to the Islamic Justice Courts gave tentative backing to the new regime. The roadblocks and thefts started back up. And so those who backed the Islamic Justice Courts saw they had no choice but to fight the new, U.S. backed tyranny.
Read Maliti's statement again: "Yusuf's government, with help from neighboring Ethiopia, has been battling a ferocious Islamic insurgency that has killed thousands of people this year in what U.N. officials call a major humanitarian crisis." The CIA itself could not have written a finer piece of propaganda. The major humanitarian crisis was caused by the U.S., U.N., and Ethiopia.
And while George W. Bush haters will simply add this to the list of reasons for impeachment, please notice that this all happened with a Democratic Party majority in the U.S. House and Senate. The Democratic Party leadership wants the Peace vote, but they aren't against taking any anti-Islamic or pro-war votes they can get, and certainly intend to dip into the rich gravy of Pentagon contracts now that they control key Congressional committees.
Note the phrase: "ferocious Islamic insurgency." After a peaceful, democratic, justice oriented movement is crushed, radicals and those who like war tend to come to the forefront of any resistance movement. But given the history here, I'll take the insurgent side over the CIA side.
We really need a Green Party president and Congress if we are ever to have peace and justice in the world.
See also my Somalia page.
Tuesday, May 22, 2007
Accountability Tales I
I am thinking about writing an essay titled, "Holding Teachers Accountable." Some times I hash over such ideas in my mind for some time before writing. Some times the article never gets written. I've been on my local public school board for eight years now. I have written very little about it despite good intentions. At least I know that if I had written much before being on the board, or say after only a year or two on the board, I'd have to be retracting quite a bit in the current round of essays.
When one writes an article of this sort it is tempting to think that everyone has been in school, so everyone will agree with you if you just make a good case. But while accountability sounds good (to most people), it is a tricky topic.
Teachers like to think they are holding kids accountable, and not just on accademics. There are rules for classroom behavior. Perpetrators get punished, just like on a police TV show. Except that the kid acting out is sometimes being provoked by another kid who has learned to maintain the appearance of innocence. But what is a teacher to do? Not have rules of behavior?
My first "real" job, one that actually required a college degree to get, was in the retirement bureau of the Civil Service Commission in Washington, D.C. The Social Security system that most folk in the United States have to depend on is not good enough for federal government workers. They have their own far more generous pension system, not unlike what corporations used to provide for their favored workers. The office I was in helped administer that government pension system. I was, briefly, that most-hated of all things, a bureaucrat. I got my feet wet immediately because I missed the 6 week training course given to new hires. Instead I began to help with the task of approving pensions for former government workers. This was in 1977. They called the rank of beggining admistrators GS-5.
Everyone in the cavernous, flourescent-light bathed, New-Deal era furnished office I was in did the same thing. There really was an in box on one side of each desk. Thick personnel file folders went there. On the other side of the desk was an out box. You processed the folder, then put it in the out box. There was a huge wall of filing cabinets on one side of the room, but they did not seem to be part of the ordinary flow of folders.
Someone, probably at a higher level of management, at some point, whether in Abraham Lincoln's reign or just a couple of years before I was hired, decided to make my fellow-administrators more accountable. It seems that not enough work was getting done. It took too long from the day a federal bureaucrat (all of whom are in the Civil Service) retired to the day that first fat, taxpayers' blood pension check arrived. Probably someone wanted to save some money as well, this being when the debt from the Vietnam War and the Great Society programs and a spike in gasoline prices was worrying economists.
How had the administrators been made more accountable? Their promotions, in effect their pay, were now based on how many pensions they successfully processed. So that meant you could still take two-hour coffee breaks at tax payer expense; they could not fire you; but no more promotions just for putting in (sort of) time.
The results were the usual mixture of good and bad. Most of the workers decided they needed the salary-enhancing promotions rather more than they wanted to goof-off. But even they found that the files of certain retirees presented a problem. Some files took much longer to process than others. If a file came in complete, with all the necessary information for appoving a pension, the administrator could be done with it in about an hour. Eight such completed files a day meant regular promotions and the good life.
But some files were missing information or had other complexities in them. Such a file might mean an extra five minutes, an extra hour or two, or even entire days to get complete. If one such file was dumped in your in-box each day and you worked on it until it was complete, it was the same as if you had been goofing off. You might only average six completed pensions a day, instead of the required eight. No promotion, no good life.
There were a lot of these "bad" files because a lot of records had been lost. A bunch had disappeared in fires; others had been shuffled to warehouses without insufficient tracking. [Note to young people: paper records were the rule then; computers existed, but did not yet store all information].
So what the now-accountable administrators did, when they got a bad file, was make a list of the things that were missing from it (usually, it turned out, a partial list), put a paper to that effect on the outside, and send a form letter asking for the required records. Then the file went into the wall of file cabinets. On to the next file, hoping to make your eight per day, hoping to become a GS-7, then a GS-9 with a house in the suburbs.
Maybe someone somewhere got one of those form letters, found the information, sent it back. This could happen if the last department the employee worked in had a competent personnel department, especially if it had made a simple admission. Then the records needed came to Washington, the file was pulled from the wall, the admistrator finished processing it and got credit for that, the former employee's pension checks started arriving, and the administrator was still in line for promotion.
On the other hand maybe the records had been destroyed in a fire or misplaced. Or at the other end an unaccountable bureaucrat could not be bothered with finding the information. Then ... into the valley of death. Pension checks did not arrive. Rental and mortgage payments could not be made. There was nashing of teeth and eventually a call to my bureau.
No one wanted to answer those calls. We had more important calls to answer. The ones from the staff members of Congressmen whose constituent had worked for 30 years for the good old U.S. of A and what the hell was going on down there?
Fortunately, there was me. I was not trained. I was not being held accountable. I had nothing to do all day but try to hunt down the information and talk to sad and mad former bureaucrats. After three days I was bored. After four weeks, two pay checks, I was in the money (because I was broke when I arrived in Washington I ended up, of necessity, with very low rent in a slum building.) After five weeks I began to have nightmares. I lasted six weeks before resigning.
I have many more accountability tales to tell, which will have to be shortened somehow to fit into a narrative about holding teachers accountable.
When one writes an article of this sort it is tempting to think that everyone has been in school, so everyone will agree with you if you just make a good case. But while accountability sounds good (to most people), it is a tricky topic.
Teachers like to think they are holding kids accountable, and not just on accademics. There are rules for classroom behavior. Perpetrators get punished, just like on a police TV show. Except that the kid acting out is sometimes being provoked by another kid who has learned to maintain the appearance of innocence. But what is a teacher to do? Not have rules of behavior?
My first "real" job, one that actually required a college degree to get, was in the retirement bureau of the Civil Service Commission in Washington, D.C. The Social Security system that most folk in the United States have to depend on is not good enough for federal government workers. They have their own far more generous pension system, not unlike what corporations used to provide for their favored workers. The office I was in helped administer that government pension system. I was, briefly, that most-hated of all things, a bureaucrat. I got my feet wet immediately because I missed the 6 week training course given to new hires. Instead I began to help with the task of approving pensions for former government workers. This was in 1977. They called the rank of beggining admistrators GS-5.
Everyone in the cavernous, flourescent-light bathed, New-Deal era furnished office I was in did the same thing. There really was an in box on one side of each desk. Thick personnel file folders went there. On the other side of the desk was an out box. You processed the folder, then put it in the out box. There was a huge wall of filing cabinets on one side of the room, but they did not seem to be part of the ordinary flow of folders.
Someone, probably at a higher level of management, at some point, whether in Abraham Lincoln's reign or just a couple of years before I was hired, decided to make my fellow-administrators more accountable. It seems that not enough work was getting done. It took too long from the day a federal bureaucrat (all of whom are in the Civil Service) retired to the day that first fat, taxpayers' blood pension check arrived. Probably someone wanted to save some money as well, this being when the debt from the Vietnam War and the Great Society programs and a spike in gasoline prices was worrying economists.
How had the administrators been made more accountable? Their promotions, in effect their pay, were now based on how many pensions they successfully processed. So that meant you could still take two-hour coffee breaks at tax payer expense; they could not fire you; but no more promotions just for putting in (sort of) time.
The results were the usual mixture of good and bad. Most of the workers decided they needed the salary-enhancing promotions rather more than they wanted to goof-off. But even they found that the files of certain retirees presented a problem. Some files took much longer to process than others. If a file came in complete, with all the necessary information for appoving a pension, the administrator could be done with it in about an hour. Eight such completed files a day meant regular promotions and the good life.
But some files were missing information or had other complexities in them. Such a file might mean an extra five minutes, an extra hour or two, or even entire days to get complete. If one such file was dumped in your in-box each day and you worked on it until it was complete, it was the same as if you had been goofing off. You might only average six completed pensions a day, instead of the required eight. No promotion, no good life.
There were a lot of these "bad" files because a lot of records had been lost. A bunch had disappeared in fires; others had been shuffled to warehouses without insufficient tracking. [Note to young people: paper records were the rule then; computers existed, but did not yet store all information].
So what the now-accountable administrators did, when they got a bad file, was make a list of the things that were missing from it (usually, it turned out, a partial list), put a paper to that effect on the outside, and send a form letter asking for the required records. Then the file went into the wall of file cabinets. On to the next file, hoping to make your eight per day, hoping to become a GS-7, then a GS-9 with a house in the suburbs.
Maybe someone somewhere got one of those form letters, found the information, sent it back. This could happen if the last department the employee worked in had a competent personnel department, especially if it had made a simple admission. Then the records needed came to Washington, the file was pulled from the wall, the admistrator finished processing it and got credit for that, the former employee's pension checks started arriving, and the administrator was still in line for promotion.
On the other hand maybe the records had been destroyed in a fire or misplaced. Or at the other end an unaccountable bureaucrat could not be bothered with finding the information. Then ... into the valley of death. Pension checks did not arrive. Rental and mortgage payments could not be made. There was nashing of teeth and eventually a call to my bureau.
No one wanted to answer those calls. We had more important calls to answer. The ones from the staff members of Congressmen whose constituent had worked for 30 years for the good old U.S. of A and what the hell was going on down there?
Fortunately, there was me. I was not trained. I was not being held accountable. I had nothing to do all day but try to hunt down the information and talk to sad and mad former bureaucrats. After three days I was bored. After four weeks, two pay checks, I was in the money (because I was broke when I arrived in Washington I ended up, of necessity, with very low rent in a slum building.) After five weeks I began to have nightmares. I lasted six weeks before resigning.
I have many more accountability tales to tell, which will have to be shortened somehow to fit into a narrative about holding teachers accountable.
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