Amity Shlaes has a new book out called Coolidge. It came out this morning. I saw her interviewed on BookTV last night, and enjoyed the interview. The author of the sentence, "The business of America is business," has been a perennial fascination for me.
What would Obama put into that sentence? What does he think the business of America is? Certainly it isn't business. I have no idea what he would put in that blank.
Obama remains a blank for me. He's not even a Rohrschach inkblot.
Shlaes' book restores to us business as the test of a country. Not just work, but effective work. Not just immediate profits, but sustainable profits. I've always felt that businesspeople were the real warrior-poets and theologians of capitalism. Not community activists, who are just dung beetles. Coolidge always said no to special interests. He brought up the government out of debt, and for the first time in history there was a surplus.
Wall St. wrecked his reputation with reckless expenditures. But would it have self-corrected without FDR? That was the thesis of Shlaes' book The Forgotten Man. I haven't read the new book. But I've long suspected that it wasn't either Hoover or FDR who had the right picture. It was the laconic Vermonter. I've always been a Calvinist.
55 comments:
Maybe Obama would fill in the blank like this: "The business of government is empathy."
Sorry, that should have been, "The business of America is empathy."
Kirby,
Are you sure it's not "the business of blogging is idiocy?"
Let's stay focused, Stu.
Kirby,
Obama remains a blank for me.
It's a given that you've not been paying attention.
He's not even a Rohrschach inkblot.
More like a screen onto which you can project your anxieties, insecurities, and paranoia, as augmented and reinforced by the right-wing propaganda machine.
Not just work, but effective work.
I think there's general agreement there. You can't build a society around make-work or no-work. I think a difference here is that Obama can see the need for changes at time and economic scales where governmental leadership is crucial. We need to build the next energy economy, as the old one is passing away through the combined effect of resource exhaustion and climate change. We can't assume that leadership is tenured -- if we want to lead in the next economy, we need to be investing and doing research now.
Not just immediate profits, but sustainable profits.
Here we're definitely in agreement. I believe that the "shareholder value" movement has been enormously destructive of the fabric of our society. In the past, companies existed in their own interest, to be sure, but there was also a sense that they existed in their employees interest, as shared enterprises. A job meant a job for life. Businesses could afford to invest in research and development of products that wouldn't generate income for a decade or more -- consider Bell Labs, which under the new mantra of "time to market" has been reduced to a shadow of its prior influence, prestige, and productivity.
Shareholders profited when the companies profited, but the businesses weren't ruled by a volatile and fashion driven public market, and its thirst for "beating the estimates" in the next quarterly earnings report.
I've always felt that businesspeople were the real warrior-poets and theologians of capitalism.
Warriors, I'll give you. But poets? Name one. And theologians? Worshipping at the altar of manna does not a theologian make. For me and mine, we choose the Lord.
Not community activists, who are just dung beetles.
Actually, I think that people who try to build functioning communities, whether they're businessmen, politicans, or community activitists are the heros. Those who try to free-surf of the efforts of the community are the dung beetles, and this includes some of all the aforementioned classes. You're judging by categories here, not by individuals. I should not need to point out that this is a stupid way to proceed.
Wall St. wrecked his reputation with reckless expenditures. But would it have self-corrected without FDR? That was the thesis of Shlaes' book The Forgotten Man.
A widely disputed thesis, with much evidence against it. Financial booms and busts and panics were an endemic part of the US economy until FDRs financial regulations and supervisory infrastructure gave us a half-century of relative stability. Indeed, it's overall effectiveness is witnessed to by the consequences of its partial dismantling: the late, great, depression.
I find it difficult to reconcile all the Obama photographs into anything vaguely coherent. I realize the left thinks he's the cat's pyjamas, and all that, and he gives them the old thrill up the leg. I want him to deal with the national debt in a substantive way. If he can cut it by a trillion every year for the next four I will think he's not a communist torpedo.
Until then, I think he is.
obama wants to be your friend kirby he wants to build strong community with you he wants the kid on the street to have a chance he wants to make sure everyone has a chance to dance
i am cool on coolidge OK so america has to be this vast extension of stripmalls and warehouseboxes enterprise trumps everything that's why we can believe that such enterprising idioots like gwb and romn the bomb and macdonalds trump should have a say because they were born with silver spoons in every orifice and they look cute that way and they say stupid stuff but they are perfectly chiseled faces made to look like some dream face in another world it's the protestant work ethic's hunger for heavenly imagery heavenly innocuous imagery in the benevolent and wise leader just think where we'd be today if romney was playing hopscotch in washington i mean gosh it would be dreadful we must think obama has to regard the debt as fiction i mean there is really no tangible thing as a debt you can't touch it i can't touch it it is out there as a concept and some figures but it really does not exist it has no tangible parameters it's more like an amorphous virus or a looming redhen with a stick
obama is wrong about women
i'm sort of upset as to how the women have tweeaked him
but so what
and i'm waiting waiting waiting mr president im waiting OK time is almost up listen buddy you said railroads were coming back i see nothing in the improvement of the railraod infrastructure we need fast efficient beautiful trains that should be the legacy of the baby boomers set up the trains
cool coolidge cools the coals he's no coleridge but he's cool with that
o happy smiling enterprise bill gates is enterprise rockstar make eveyone happy talky talky talky on the computer skype your way to heaven talking with angels on skype
enterprise has meant some dreadful maltreatment of ordinary people
govt should get out of employment agency work but provide context for things to do we need more woodworkers and potters so more hardwood and clay and kilns
govt should take care of the roads the stragglers and the derilict businessmen forcing them into retreat several times a year forcing them to be about anything else but money
nothing works without honesty
dreams are built on lies
even the earth moans
jh
the pontiff has taken leave from the bridge sempre roma
I doubt if any of these alternative energies will ever amount to anything. We have to burn something: coal, oil, or nuclear.
I wish it wasn't so. We have a windmill on campus but it will apparently take fifteen years just to pay itself off. I think this means that just when it's ready to pay out, it will fall apart.
I really wish it wasn't so.
I wonder if any of the other alternatives are any better: sun they say can do not much more than light up a watch face.
I saw last night on some station that someone has figured out a way to harness the energy of soles pressing on pavement. This might work.
I just don't know: Solyndra et al, seem to go belly up.
You'd think someone would make up something that works. All we can do is keep trying. You'd think that storing all the energy spent in exercise gyms and so on would amount to more than a hill of beans.
I don't know if a job can still mean a job for life. Getting one is so hard now, and then the companies are dying off.
Obamacare is meant to help individuals but it is also speeding the exodus of American industry, and creating downsizing as companies rush to get under the size limit.
All these things are unfortunate side effects of the "justice" movements.
In France it's virtually impossible to get a permanent job. In Finland it's even harder. You have the right to go back to your job for twenty years or so. This means you're getting a few people with permanence while others adjunct for you forever.
There is a guy in French who's been doing someone else's job for thirty years in the university I was at. Quite fair for the Finn he's filling in for.
It seems that every kind of fairness: fairness to women, for instance, is unfair to men, or babies. Or fairness to babies, is unfair to women. Or fairness to men, is unfair to women.
Fairness to "minorities" is unfair to "majorities" and vice versa.
Every sort of government intervention just displaces the unfairness unfairly on to someone else.
Fairness to the disabled (the 7% rule for government contracts stipulates that you have to hire 7% idsabled if you want a government contract). This displaces the unfairness on to employers who have to find disabled people who then goof the project up or at least aren't necessarily the most qualified). This problem is then passed on to the consumer (unfairly).
The same thing goes in college admissions, etc.
I don't see capitalism as "worshipping at the altar of manna." I see it rather as providing a useful service to others at a fair price.
It could be home construction, it could be a coffee, it could be knowledge of algebra. I recognize there are perhaps abusive capitalists who sell nothing in the guise of something (Madoff) but I don't think this is the norm, and I don't see that as sustainable. Once your reputation is gone, you're gone.
Perhaps you're a basketball player. You have to pray for a liftoff from the top of the key that takes the ball down through the hoop for two points and you have to hope your wrist isn't broken by the impact.
I see the Invisible Hand as GOD.
Not everyone sees this. But what else could the invisible hand be except God? And those who are aligned with it are Christians, traditionally.
Even in Iraq it was the Christians who formed the middle class. Same thing goes throughout the Middle East. The Christians functioned, because we are the ones that God loves, and who love God.
It's those who hate God that are living in the margins of society with nothing to contribute. We need to pray for them to find God, first. Once they find Him, everything else will work out for them. They will have love, work, and a home.
Instead the communists preach against God, and against business, and against work itself. Then they wonder why they've killed the economy, and why the debt is growing like a mountain of skulls in Cambodia under the Khmer Rouge under their leadership.
I think the Keynes-Hayek debate is the central conversation of the twentieth century. While communism is just plain dead for most, the notion of intervention remains.
Unfortunately, I think it is too often a dead hand on the economy. What we need is a lively invisible hand, and to make people want to get into the market and sell, sell, sell. After all, it's tremendous fun if you're not too hassled by busybodies who think they're God, but are just bedeviling everyone with their peculiarities.
Even kids love selling lemonade. but now the government wants its cut even from kids.
I don't know if strip malls are all that bad. They don't look nice, but many churches don't look much nicer. Wherever God is, and wherever people are working with God, is people being beautiful and aligning themselves with God.
I do think the government should regulate drugs. Ron Paul doesn't believe in that or in borders. He's not completely Hayekian. Hayek would definitely rule out bad business practices like selling drugs that hurt people, or that hurt children in particular.
I know GM wants drugs to be legal because it's apparently wonderful in Portugal. I've been to Portugal and don't relish it as a model.
Drugs are illegal in Finland and Finland is better than Portugal from every possible perspective. I also think we should outlaw other services that hurt both parties, such as prostitution.
But the line between regulation and the free market is thin, and has to remain on the side of the free market so that incentive to get into business remains.
I do wonder if there shouldn't be one rule that Americans cannot do business with any government or its people if that government is not freely elected and doesn't maintain a free press. This seems to me to be an important regulation that if I were president I would immediately introduce.
So no work with North Korea, or Cuba, but also not with Zimbabwe, or Myanmar or what have you. The only countries that we should be allowed to do business with should be absolute democracies and should have a green light from all rating agencies as FREE.
This means no helping in the Palestinian strips, or what have you.
Not just the government but all citizens, including women, should be free, or we should not be allowed to have truck with them.
Does this seem sensible?
I'm just shocked that we do business with Red China. It's almost unbelievable to me that our companies can operate in such a cruel and disgusting country that the leaders are able to steal vital organs from political prisoners, and which has virtually destroyed the country of Tibet.
Christianity is the leaven of the lumpenproletariat.
Kirby,
We have to burn something: coal, oil, or nuclear.
1) We have many other energy sources: hydrodynamic power has been around for a long time, wind power is becoming important, geothermal power is important in some locales, etc.
2) We don't burn "nuclear." Nor do we burn uranium in anything but the metaphoric sense that uranium is consumed in a standard nuclear reaction.
It is important to realize that most of these energy sources (excluding nuclear and geothermal) are ultimately consequences of solar energy. It is perhaps more accurate to say that we rely largely on nuclear fusion, and a bit on nuclear fission. If anything, we must have reactors. But that said, there is no need for the reactors to be in our backyards -- there's a large fusion reactor located a relatively safe 93 million miles away. We just need to figure out how to best take advantage of it.
I wonder if any of the other alternatives are any better: sun they say can do not much more than light up a watch face.
Well then, they are idiots. The sun powers our entire ecology (deep-sea vent communities excepted). Coal and fossil fuels are products of solar energy. So is ethanol.
I just don't know: Solyndra et al, seem to go belly up.
Solar power is high risk, that's why there's government support for it. It's also potentially high reward. That's why there are lots of players. Of necessity, the government will back many horses, most of whom will ultimately be losers. Solyndra went belly-up, not because it was pursuing a bad idea, but because other producers of solar energy products were more efficient than they were.
This argument has the intellectual coherence of saying that cars are a stupid idea because of all the automobile manufacturers who have gone broke: you can't get a Nash or an AMC anymore, let alone a Duesenberg or Packard.
Obamacare is meant to help individuals but it is also speeding the exodus of American industry, and creating downsizing as companies rush to get under the size limit.
Right. In a world where universal healthcare is the norm in advanced economies, where are these hypothetical fleeing businesses going to go? Some, it is true, will try their luck in backwards economies, but this isn't an option for most. Moreover, the intent of ObamaCare isn't merely to help individuals (it is a Heritage Foundation idea, after all), but to stabilize the federal budget (which was coming under structural strain due to increased health costs) and to releave some of the pension stress on businesses.
I think it's amusing the way religion tries to take credit for capitalist prosperity, and the drudgery and dehumanization that results as being duties to god. People who ascend the ladder of success are regarded as saintly, as the chosen ones.
This puts most religious principles out to pasture. The church has always courted wealth and worldly privilege, while claiming devoutness for itself. What rubbish!
Now the Right has turned around and adopted religion, the way religion once did with business. So you have fraudulent bedfellows in a marriage made in hell.
There's nothing virtuous about making money per se. The quicker you get over this tired old saw, Kirby, the sooner you'll understand the true underlying principles of faith.
I'm not into faith myself, but you twist yours so much it's like a man wrestling with a snake. The python isn't really your friend, and has nothing to give you, but the struggle is very poetic and terrifying because he may strangle you and eat you. But if you're strong enough, and agile enough, you may get to keep struggling. Not much of a life.
Stu:
You underestimate the dangers--both "accidental" and long term, of nuclear power. I did a blog recently about this--The New Push for Nuclear.
You also underestimate the evils of off-shoring. American companies have gone "global" for a number of reasons, but primarily to reduce employment and regulatory expenses. But rather than paying the price back here for their greed, they're encouraged to do so. This is madness.
For every job lost here, our economy suffers five-fold. We lose the capital, the circulation of the capital, we lose the support of working people, we lost the tax base, we lose in trade, we lose in community infrastructure, the list goes on and on. Whole towns, whole states (!!), are being turned into wastelands by offshoring. This has to stop. American corporations need to be punished for doing it, and our trade policies have to be designed to frustrate the reverse exploitation that cheaply made products cause when siphoned back into the U.S. It's been said that Wal-Mart is run by China (or Chinese companies0, and that's an unfortunate truth.
The greatest challenge of the 21st Century will be to slow, and eventually stop, population growth. Some people think that "prosperity" will slow it down, but I don't believe it. I think you need restrictions, incentives will just lead to more people. People don't need much excuse to fornicate.
Kirby:
"I don't know if strip malls are all that bad."
I think they've been proven to be destructive to communities (and the idea of community) everywhere they've been set up. Part of the reason you live where you do is that there is some semblance of "community." Strip-malls, high rise and "tract" housing break down community, separating people. Corporate franchising exploits communities, driving small businesses out and consolidating shopping into sterile, remote, controlled spaces whose only purpose is selling. Strip malls aren't "places", they're dead spaces. And many of the biggest ones have gone vacant; there's nothing more depressing than a big mall that's beginning to empty out.
"Wherever God is, and wherever people are working with God, is people being beautiful and aligning themselves with God."
I think we could have serious disagreements about this, but it doesn't take a genius to understand how Islam and Hinduism are the scourges of their respective social milieus. Religion isn't any guarantee of freedom, or diligent application, or peace, or political integration. Quite the opposite.
"Drugs are illegal in Finland and Finland is better than Portugal from every possible perspective. I also think we should outlaw other services that hurt both parties, such as prostitution."
The banning of certain kinds of drugs is a poor measure of the respective cultures of different nations. In the Sixties and Seventies, the Scandinavian countries were often identified with pro-liberal positions regarding sex, drugs, family traditions, and socialistic governance. You don't get to have it both ways, Kirb.
"But the line between regulation and the free market is thin, and has to remain on the side of the free market so that incentive to get into business remains."
As Warren Buffett remarked, regulation and taxes have never prevented people from investing their money in the market. Most "small businesses" are run for the primary benefit of a single individual or family, which scrapes away the lion's share of profits, and bitch endlessly about having to hire an accountant to cheat on their taxes and fudge on environmental and workplace standards. But small businesses may grow into larger ones, which is where jobs used to be produced. Not any more. Those jobs get eliminated or off-shored.
"The only countries that we should be allowed to do business with should be absolute democracies and should have a green light from all rating agencies as FREE."
This is amusing. Many of the third world countries have at some point had a puppet government set up and/or run for the benefit of the major industrial European or American interests. Dictators around the globe have known the advantages of playing ball with the big boys. The U.S. supported Iraq (against Iran) when we needed them. Then, when he nationalized the oil and got a little big for HIS britches (taking Kuwait), he became our enemy, and we invented a pretext for conquering it and installing "regime change." What's worse--inventing excuses to "open markets" for our own benefit and pleasure, or inventing excuses for not opening them because they aren't lucrative enough (North Korea)? Any argument for invading Iraq could be better made with respect to Korea. I'm certainly not advocating an invasion or "liberation" of Korea, but I do like consistency. Freedom has never been a measure of our diplomatic policies abroad.
"I'm just shocked that we do business with Red China. It's almost unbelievable to me that our companies can operate in such a cruel and disgusting country that the leaders are able to steal vital organs from political prisoners, and which has virtually destroyed the country of Tibet. "
I'm shocked, SHOCKED to learn that there's gambling going on in this establishment!
The fact is, Kirby, that we do business with China because many American companies benefit by that trade. Now, Chinese companies are coming here to exploit us! Interesting turn-around. American trade, and America generally, is suffering as a result of this situation. How long it's allowed to continue is anyone's guess. Certainly, it's political corruption on both sides. We've become a debtor nation to a Communist state. Would anyone have predicted this 30 years ago
Curtis,
I think it's amusing the way religion tries to take credit for capitalist prosperity, and the drudgery and dehumanization that results as being duties to god. People who ascend the ladder of success are regarded as saintly, as the chosen ones.
Generalizing from "Kirby believes" to "religions believe" isn't sound.
Now the Right has turned around and adopted religion, the way religion once did with business. So you have fraudulent bedfellows in a marriage made in hell.
I think this is off in identifying a monolithic Right. In this, you're vying for the title of anti-Kirby, and his view of a monolithic Left. Both Left and Right are unstable alliances of groups with disperate and sometimes outright antithetical aims and world-views.
But I agree with you that the Republican establishment's whoring with the Evangelical movement is not a love match. All that holds the together is the shared realization of political powerlessness if they stand alone, Kirby's bizzare attempts at syncretism notwithstanding.
You underestimate the dangers--both "accidental" and long term, of nuclear power.
I don't believe I characterized the risks of nuclear power at all. I did refer obliquely to the large fusion reactor 93 million miles away—the sun—and its safety relative to our initial attempts to harness the same physics here on earth.
You also underestimate the evils of off-shoring. American companies have gone "global" for a number of reasons, but primarily to reduce employment and regulatory expenses.
I view these issues very differently than you do. Offshoring to backwards economies is only economical when the exploitation of untrained humans is the most efficient means of production. I believe that there are large forces working against this: automation, and increased economic mobility in third-world countries.
There are things we can do to improve American competitiveness, not all easy. The biggest single thing we could do is eliminate the corporate income tax, which would put business activities within the US on the same tax footing as in the countries we compete against. Of course, this cannot take place in isolation:
1) To make the elimination of corporate income taxes economically possible, we need to offset this with tax increases elsewhere. I'd start by eliminating the tax preference given to dividend and capital gains, after all, the argument for preferential treatment is that these incomes have already been taxed. Moreover, I see a great political good in eliminating an apparent inequity in the tax code, as well as a pragmatic one in simplifying it.
2) We need to dispense with the ill-conceived notion of "corporate personhood," and go back to the foundation of corporations based on contracts. Yes, corporations are legal entities, and like other legal entities they can own property, sue, and be sued. But they can't vote, they're not imprisonable, they can't be executed, they can't be drafted, they can't be called for jury duty. And once we get rid of "corporate personhood," we can get rid of the craptastic case law (Citizens United, I'm looking at you) that relies upon it.
3) We probably also need a financial transaction tax, which would essentially replace both the revenue and the purpose of the distinction between short- and long-term capital gains, curbing the worst abuses of high-frequency trading, and the sense of inequity in the market that flows from it.
4) We need solid and trustworthy regulatory oversight to make sure that corporations are not used as tax shelters by actual persons. Realized income that is expended for personal benefit (as opposed to corporate benefit) must be taxed as such, and the likelihood of getting caught must be high enough, and the severity of abuse severe enough to ensure compliance.
The business of America is drones.
The business of America is murder.
The business of America is you.
I think drugs should be not be illegal (boy, that's newspeak ain't it?) because I don't think the government should be in the business of regulating such things--we have too many laws as it is.
Portugal is simply an example of how drug deregulation can eliminate several problems.
Stu:
I don't think I said that "Kirby believes" anything, so your claim that I'm linking him to what "religions believe" is equally unsound. My statement was general from a cross-cultural historical perspective, and you're trying to defend Christianity by narrowing the application. I was attacking religion generally for playing along with secular power and economic influence--do you really want to object to that, irrespective of Kirby's notions? We could start with the history of the Papacy through the centuries.
I think the Right has quite monolithically embraced a religious identity over the last four decades, to the extent that all candidates for public office now feel it incumbent to invoke the Christian deity on every and any occasion. The church influence in public life is growing in America; this is antithetical to our Constitution.
"I don't believe I characterized the risks of nuclear power at all."
In your post of 8:09 Am EST you said "We just need to figure out how to best take advantage of it [nuclear power]."
I regard nuclear power in its present state of development as too problematic and risky over the short and long-term to proceed with. I'm not being chicken little here. It's quite possible that at some point in the future our technological grasp and management of nuclear power will permit us to use it safely, and without the nasty waste products. But until that day, we need to husband other sources of energy, and reduce our dependence upon them over time. The first priority in reducing demand is by reducing demand: i.e., reducing population and weaning ourselves off of profligate over-consumption. Until we do that, we're doomed to scarcity and vast pollutions and poisonings etc.
Unless we can come to terms with the enormous overhang of wealth concentrated in the 1% at the top, corporate taxation is going to have to continue. If you don't tax corporations, and you don't tax the unbelievable wealth they concentrate in the hands of a few administrators and stock-holders, you have no other choice. Corporations ARE people, but they shouldn't be able to "vote" and influence the vote the way the Supreme Court has decided they can. And because corporations are people, those people need to be taxed, and taxed in accordance with the value of their contribution to society. No single individual "deserves" to earn $100,000,000 a year. I don't care if they're Einstein or Tom Brady or the head of Ford. You can't have that kind of concentration of wealth, at the expense of everyone else, and have a thriving democracy. We can argue about how to rectify it, but we must rectify it.
"Offshoring to backwards economies is only economical when the exploitation of untrained humans is the most efficient means of production."
Come on, Stu, are you one of those who believes that people who work on a production line need to have college educations? Do you really believe that the manufacturing jobs that were sent to Asia depended upon some vast educational or infrastuctural advantage which India and China and Korea and Japan and Taiwan had over us? Are you kidding? The whole point about offshoring is cheap labor, few if any regulations to protect labor and the environment. Added to big tax breaks, they make offshoring almost too good to be true.
You make it sound like the offshoring of jobs is some myth someone dreamed up, but statistics prove otherwise.
Automation hasn't prevented globalism, it's just made the equation more dire.
Offshoring should be ok if it's a European country but not if it's an African or an Asian or South American country that doesn't have regular and free elections. The greatest workplace safety code is democracy. I am shocked, SHOCKED, that not everyone jumped to sign on with this!
I do think GM's proposal to free up drug abuse does get rid of some problems but causes others.
We have something of the problems of Prohibition in outlawing drugs.
Ok, we have all of those problems.
But, remember, I'm with Carrie Nations! Smash Demon Rum!
The real business of government is apathy.
At election time you will hear a lot about empathy.
But the other three years are constituted by apathy.
And why wouldn't there be? Obama just really had nothing at all to gain in Benghazi. So he went on watching reruns and smoking doobies. Why shouldn't he have? I mean, as Hillary said, "Who cares what happened?"
There will be a lot more urgency about what happened when there's another election coming. But Obama had only this one last one, and if he got over the finish line, he knew he'd never work again. So he hid out that night and smoked doobies, and watched reruns of Gunsmoke.
I do think the American people should listen to Nancy Reagan. Just say no to drugs! It's that simple.
Curtis,
... We could start with the history of the Papacy through the centuries.
That would be a strikingly ignorant thing to do. The history of Pope is not the history of the Church. The history of the bishops, and even the priests is not the history of the Church. You've read Zinn's book? His thesis generalizes.
In your post of 8:09 Am EST you said "We just need to figure out how to best take advantage of it [nuclear power]."
The parenthetical is yours, and it is misreading as I've already explained. "It" in my original context refers to solar power in all its myriad forms (hydrodynamic, wind, biosynthetic, photovoltaic, etc.), which is a consequence of a gravity driven fusion reaction.
As for the development of nuclear power, let me lay out my position, which I have not yet done. Nuclear (fission) power is our power-source of last resort. We know it works, we understand many of its dangers and tradeoffs, and we can drive an energy economy largely through nuclear power if other sources fail us, or are inadequate to our needs.
We know that fossil fuels are non-renewable and will fail us. The evangelical ignorance of the right notwithstanding, they are causing great damage to our environment. Their use cannot go on forever, nor indeed, at anything like the current scale much longer. Non-nuclear alternatives are nowhere close to being able to close the gap, absent serious technological development.
There is a high probability that nuclear power will be a significant component of our future fuel economy.
The question then becomes, do we work to develop nuclear power now, through an iterated process of design, trial, and re-design, so that when the crunch time comes, we have a mature fission system to meet it? Or do we let the dangers inherent in development disuade us from ongoing research, so that when the crunch time comes, we'll be compelled to build many plants to relatively unimproved current designs?
I certainly agree with strategies that buy time: conservation, development and deployment of alternatives. But I think it serves little purpose if we're buying time just to waste it.
Come on, Stu, are you one of those who believes that people who work on a production line need to have college educations?
No, I'm one of those persons who believes that the production lines of the near future will have little use for human labor, trained or untrained. Robots are increasingly replacing humans, and will continue to do so until there are no humans left to replace. A college education on the production line of the future has no value. But neither does protoplasm.
You make it sound like the offshoring of jobs is some myth someone dreamed up, but statistics prove otherwise.
No, I view offshoring as a short-term transitional stage in the search for cheap labor. And I see the limiting point of this process as the elimination of human labor altogether, at which point the dubious "advantages" of the low-wage nations are mooted. What they have to sell is cheap, but there will be few buyers.
I suspect that there will be buyers for those who have advanced education (which may include college degrees, but I'd include the skilled trades too) for much longer.
technocracies
robotocracies
ecclesiocracy
what's it going to be
platocracy
aristotlocracy
hayekocracy
it's all crazy
plutoniocracy
radocracy
radiocracy
(FM of course)
mediocracy
mediocrity
what's the difference
watts hot fidderence
zippyocracy
girlomania
vaginocracy for
the masses
no more sitting
on your asses
aesthetocracy
videocracy
trace the space in the
human race with a blurry face
where no man finds
the grace he needs
and the women
no longer bleed
indifferocracy
necrophilia culture wars
hypnosis reigns
blips on a fading digital screen
what does it mean
when the earth turns green
the cows look lean
bile and spleen
flatularchy
malarchy
bring back the arches
then we'll talk
zinnbiosis for the masses
clowns in the vestibule
A really beautiful last line:
"clowns in the vestibule"
That is the title of your book of poems.
Clowns in the vestibule
Jokers in the aisles
Here I am droned to oblivion with you.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JaF-fq2Zn7I
Bill Gates.
Curtis - what kinds of restrictions wrt population control do you advocate (and where?)
We don't have a high birth-rate problem here in America.
Much the opposite, actually. And very much the opposite in Europe...
The total fertility rate has dropped substantially since 1970...
From 6.5 to 2.5.
Educate the women, increase access to birth control, fine. Much beyond that is unnecessary and counter-productive.
Stu thinks that off-shoring is just a blip on the screen where the movie of automation is showing.
I've referenced Huxley's vision of a future in which there is no work to be done.
Stupid people here keep encouraging everyone to have a college degree so they can "compete in the new high-tech economy." But this vision is just as naive as believing we can go back to the old-fashioned human production lines. Not that the big old production line companies ever really cared for their workers--just the opposite.
My point is that if we have an economy where all the stuff we "make" comes from elsewhere, it won't matter how "smart" we are (or the "workers" are). Income and profits are generated through the production of goods. As automation proceeds, Marx's old dream of a humming economy driven by the welfare of the masses will be as outmoded as the entrepreneurial spirit.
The question remains: What will people "do" in an automated economy, and how will they earn money? Capitalism is based on the idea that people come up with ideas about how to make and sell something. But if the technology for producing things comes from a few skilled technocrats, and the highly technical means to achieve production can only be funded with big money, the people will be left outside the equation.
We may fast be approaching a point at which technology no longer serves humankind, a world in which machines are more important than people, which dominate our economy and our thinking.
Brett:
I don't know the answer.
I do know that mankind is heading over a cliff at 100 miles per hour.
Each year the ante is raised, and each year people keep saying it won't matter, that prosperity will bring everything back into line.
That's wishful thinking.
Each year the world population grows, and our resources don't.
The point about scarcity isn't that the resource bank isn't large, but that it's finite. Nothing finite can support INCREASING exploitation.
Think of a single resource which we're husbanding intelligently. Water, minerals, carbon, air, greenspace--everything is being consumed at unprecedented rates.
Believing that this train can be slowed down if you feed the passengers enough is folly. It isn't happening.
Prosperity is limited. The whole point about America's consumption rate is that we've know for a long time that that level of "prosperity" cannot be enjoyed by everyone on the planet, because there will never be enough to go around.
We're running out of clean water and air NOW. We'll run out of oil and gas within a century and a half. Yet we're increasing the rate of use. How will prosperity, which is the measure of our welfare as a species, bring us to a new static bargain with supply?
Answer: it won't.
Nature is a cruel mistress. Abuse and disobey her laws, and she will punish us mercilessly. Famines and wars over resource will be our legacy if we can't moderate our number.
Disincentivize reproduction. Three children is enough. More is stupid. Especially if the parents can't support them, or if their work takes them away from home.
To link to my argument to Stu--if parents can't find work, they'll sit at home and make babies. This isn't the equation we want to encourage.
If work is going away, we'll have to come up with other ways to frustrate increase.
The point is: we'll have to stop pretending and face the problem squarely, instead of talking about some fake future in which prosperity moderates population. It isn't happening now, and there are no signs that it will.
Curtis,
Stu thinks that off-shoring is just a blip on the screen where the movie of automation is showing.
A pretty damn big blip, with dislocating effects, but yeah. To the best of my understanding, off-shoring has already reached equilibrium, and may even be swinging back a bit.
I've referenced Huxley's vision of a future in which there is no work to be done.
I think this is a deep challenge to our social organizations. You worry about how people will earn money. The same is true, if you think about it for a moment, for those corporations and their owners. What makes capitalism work is not just the entrepreneurial spirit, it is also consumer demand. This is what the mega-capitalists in their desire to concentrate all wealth personally forget -- what makes us rich isn't numbers in a brokerage account, it's the economic activity of society as a whole.
Stupid people here keep encouraging everyone to have a college degree so they can "compete in the new high-tech economy."
Oh, I don't know. I think the stupid people are those who see college only in terms of career preparation. There's more to life than work, and indeed, increasingly much more. As work becomes a smaller piece of our lives, the problem of preparing ourselves to live the rest well becomes more important.
Income and profits are generated through the production of goods.
This is a pretty narrow view of economic activity. I take it then, from your point of view, you contribute no value to society? Be a bit more generous to yourself.
The question remains: What will people "do" in an automated economy, and how will they earn money?
Yup. The resource allocation questions are always tight. There is plenty to meet our needs, but never enough to meet our wants, especially if everyone's wants are ultimately defined by peeking order -- i.e., having more than one's neighbor.
Capitalism is based on the idea that people come up with ideas about how to make and sell something.
That's half of capitalism, as I said before. The other is that people want stuff and buy it. Both halves have to work.
But if the technology for producing things comes from a few skilled technocrats, and the highly technical means to achieve production can only be funded with big money, the people will be left outside the equation.
Not so clear. Technology can also produce tools that can magnify and support human creativity.
Curtis,
I do know that mankind is heading over a cliff at 100 miles per hour.
This seems unduly anxious. Yes, we have real challenges, but when hasn't that's been the case? Every generation seems to have an epistemological fight on it's hands. But don't give up hope. Did you hear that Mississippi finally adopted the 13th amendment outlawing slavery. 'Twas last month, true, but they still got it done. Progress.
Each year the world population grows, and our resources don't.
Brett's already made the point that population growth in the developed world is basically halted, and in some areas has even gone negative. Demographers have noticed a pattern in societies in which increasing wealth brings about a change in reproductive habits, from the big families of high death-rate societies to the small families of low death-rate societies. The transition in reproductive strategies seems to lag the transition in life expectancies by a generation or so, resulting in a one-time jump in population, followed by a new equilibrium. As for resources not growing -- you're not considering that economic development enables the exploitation of new resources. The last I heard, there were two new companies that are gearing up to mine asteroids. In another 50 years, we'll be exploiting extra-terrestrial resources. You and I probably won't see that day, but the generations that are immediately following ours will.
You're right that you can't extrapolate down exponentials indefinitely -- something gives out. But your vision of "hurling off a cliff" requires that you do exactly that. This isn't an argument for being sanguine, as the challenges we face are real. But so too are the challenges we have successfully overcome to get to this point.
To link to my argument to Stu--if parents can't find work, they'll sit at home and make babies. This isn't the equation we want to encourage.
I'm not sure that's true. Yeah, sex is always an outlet, but the strong coupling between sex and children isn't what it once was. Having sex, at least in a modern society under ordinary circumstances, is a different decision than having children.
The point is: we'll have to stop pretending and face the problem squarely, instead of talking about some fake future in which prosperity moderates population.
We do need to face our problems honestly. But talking about how prosperity moderates population isn't a fake future -- it's a well observed, well documented demographic phenomenon. The US faces unique challenges because of our lack of ethnic and economic homogeneity, and the demographic effects cited act at the level of communities (which tend to be more ethnically and economically homogeneous than the nation as a whole). In particular, the hispanic communities are "transitional," and as a result rapidly growing in size, while the anglo communities (for the most part) have reached reproductive equilibrium.
Curtis tends to panic and think in terms of worst-case scenarios. He seriously imagines I'm about to blow myself up in a public place, or unleash a torrent of lead at small children.
Quite funny.
It's true that I hate Obama, but it isn't personal. And I want to beat his party with ideas, and ballots, not bullets.
Bullets are unsporting.
Billets, and ballots, and balletic fancies, not mere lead.
Part of the fun if not all of it is in the conversation, and if we were to all agree, there would be none. We could be like the Amish, forging a formidable silence against the talkies.
Coming toward new conclusions and new language. I think we are all beginning to agree in principle that we shouldn't trade with China. I think we just need to invent the vocabulary for why not.
I think even Stu does not believe we should continue to trade with China.
This means our manufacturing should not be done there. We should buy nothing from them until they correct their human rights abuses. Such as harvesting organs from political prisoners.
I don't know. Perhaps Stu believes that Mississippi is more aberrant than China. Delaware didn't ratify until 1908.
In the Lincoln film they had two legislators from CT vote NO. CT is mad, since this isn't historically accurate. CT voted to pass, and then ratified right away.
(I think it was ratified in the fall of 1865). First you have to pass the bill, and then you have to ratify. There is so much I don't understand about Congress.
And about Hollywood.
And about Obama.
There's a marvelous bit of math in the Lincoln film where he forms a triangle and talks about equality using Euclid. "Two things that are equal are also equal to a third thing when the third thing is equal to one of them."
They needed to do more work on this passage in the film.
I also wondered about whether Seward was really in bed with his housekeeper or if this is just another Hollywood myth about Washington.
It's really hard to keep everything clear.
But I do think that most Americans including and perhaps especially within the business community are ethical people. Far more so than the people lying around smoking dope and projecting their inner nature on to the board rooms.
Hollywood projects evil into board rooms.
But Hollywood people don't strike me as terribly ethical people for the most part, although they all imagine that they are playing that part to the hilt.
I doubt if Alec Baldwin walks on water. The NY Post had him yelling stuff at a black photographer that clearly crossed over the line into hate speech earlier this week.
Ratify this.
Kirby,
I think even Stu does not believe we should continue to trade with China
It's not so clear. Our trade with China has resulted in changes in their economic system (which is much more capitalistic now than it was a decade ago), and changes in their society. It has not resulted in changes in their political system.
I am concerned that we weaken ourselves when we have the Chinese manufacture high-technology items -- there's a de facto tech transfer taking place, and it seems to be essentially unidirectional. The Chinese are neither devils nor saints, but they do have an acute sense of their self-interest, and a willingness to break the rules to advance it.
Perhaps Stu believes that Mississippi is more aberrant than China.
I think a case could be made.
In the Lincoln film they had two legislators from CT vote NO. CT is mad, since this isn't historically accurate. CT voted to pass, and then ratified right away.
The standard procedure for amending the constitution involves a 2/3 majority vote from both houses, followed by separate ratification by 3/4ths of the states.
But you're right -- the four Connecticut representatives (three Republican, one Democratic) all voted "Aye." The roll call is available here.
I also wondered about whether Seward was really in bed with his housekeeper or if this is just another Hollywood myth about Washington.
Not Seward, but Thaddeus Stevens. The answer, per wiki, is yes. He had a mixed-race common-law wife.
But Hollywood people don't strike me as terribly ethical people for the most part, although they all imagine that they are playing that part to the hilt.
I think it's foolish to generalize this way. Some are ethical, others not. Our Brett strikes me as a very ethical (and sensible) sort, for example. I don't think you can take Roman Polanski as a type specimen.
Brett is good. Even if you gave him a billion he'd remain good.
Kirby,
Brett is good. Even if you gave him a billion he'd remain good.
Exactly.
money has a way of corrupting people
Not Brett.
Finally caught up by opening Stu's roll call link. Very nice to see the roll. Not sure if all of you have seen the movie yet. It reappeared this week in Oneonta as a matinee. Riikka and I went to see it. We were five minutes late and almost every seat was taken. We had to sit in front and stare up at the screen at the gigantic images. I realized tophats were meant to add height. I've seen it now three times. I wish they'd gotten the final roll call down pat. The screeneriter said he didn't care about accuracy and aimed at drama. Where did I get Seward from? Was he in the film? Tommy Lee Jones plays Stevens and is good. Daniel Day Lewis and je will win awards I think. Academy Awards and Oscars - what is the difference? I think ZDT will lose awards due to the problem of torture. Both are war movies but we're clearly in the right w Lincoln even though he openly wonders where he got his war powers from and how far they go. He cobbles from the Constitution the Bible and Shakespeare throughout the film. ZDT doesn't present any higher power than self-defense. It won't suffice. The left thinks we're in the wrong in the Middle East and in Pakistan. Bigelow doesn't quite have her ducks in a row on philosophical terms. The whole ideal of universal human rights which is in Lincoln and is something for us all to consolidate around doesn't exist or is more prolematic in ZDT. Plus the acting in ZDT AIN't half so memorable. But ZDT is still important material.
Bush knew why we were in the Middle East and used UHR as his narrative guideline. The left willnsaybthat was his cover story. The left by adopting Marx has surrendered its right to the high road by adopting materialism and rgc as its "principles." But rgc are not principles. They're materialistic. You can't judge anyone by the color of their skin orbtheir gender bit by the content of their character. Brother Martin made this clear. The left chose Obama because he's black but his character is sneaky and inarticulate. Bush had a better grasp of principles. Journal of Democracy April 09 argues that it's only if our prez meets the dissidents of the fallen worlds around us and pushes for freedom that it will happoen. Bush met Charter 08 advocates from China andnpushed for the Soutj Sudan. Obama has no principles at all and is multicultural which meansbhe's all confused I'm sorru to report. Bush understood the women's rights problems in Islam and met with advocates of women's rights and set up pro democracy groups all through the Middle East. Obama knows nothing about this. He doesn't know what has happened in Tibet. He has the right skin color but no principles or brains. It's sad.
Obama may not even have any content to his character. This may be why we disagree about who he is. He may very well be just an opportunist who tries to say whatever the majority believes at any given point in time. He may be a weather vane.
i worry about brett living so close to hollywood
satan hangs out there
big time
Hollywood is Satan and vice versa. I am watching the Academy Awards tomorrow night. The only contender I haven't seen is Argo. I don't want to see Django. I can't stand Tarantino. I'm sick of his schtick. I am hoping for ZDT and Lincoln to win most categories. It's fun to see their get-ups along the red carpet.
the red carpet is satan's tail
Had a terrific e-mail exchange last night with my third cousin once removed in Tampa FL concerning our common Civil War ancestor and his effect on her grandmother who was born while Cal Coolidge was still in office. My cousin's grandmother's husband and her grandmother's father were both grandsons of Civil War captains in the Union army who were dismissed a year before their terms of service had elapsed. Her grandmother's mother-in-law was my great grandfather's niece. Her great grandmother's mother had the same first and middle names, Dorothea Marie, as our common Civil War ancestor's wife and mother-in-law. We came to the conclusion that the fault lies with the First Congregational Church of Kenosha and the Abolitionists who founded and ran it. They came to Wisconsin from Kirby's neighborhood for the sole purpose of stealing my great great grandmother's excellent Prussian name, spiriting it away from Wisconsin to Ohio and from there to Florida. The culprit was a Hubbard descended from the Mayflower. Did I mention that my great uncle owned the Mayflower franchise in Moses Lake? He financed it building the Grand Coulee Dam.
Correction: It was her GREAT grandmother's father and her GREAT grandmother's husband who were both grandsons of Civil War captains in the Union army. She was sixteen when she gave birth to my cousin's grandmother because Cool Cal was so laissez faire.
The red carpet is also somehow his tongue.
Aww, thanks guys:-)
I haven't made a billion dollars yet. Hopefully I'll stay good...or become better...if and when I make a good deal of money.
I am in Hollywood, the place, but not quite in Hollywood, the industry - Right after graduating, you have two basic options.
1) Get an assistant-type job in the industry, working lots of hours often doing the types of things I don't like and am not good at (scheduling, ordering food, keeping track of stuff, working the phones, etc.) And you have to be in an office. I did that all summer last year. I can't believe people live like that for their entire lives. ouch.
2) Work some other jobs that give you time to keep writing and 'getting your stuff out there.' So I'm currently an SAT tutor / afterschool science teacher.
Anyway, at this point in my experience out here, I've met a very high percentage of good people. Friendly, hardworking, smart folk who are passionate about what they do. But we'll see what happens when they attain success...
I don't think Hollywood is Satan. I think Hollywood has a pretty significant effect on things, since media impact everyone's lives directly... But it's not necessarily an industry that is itself filled with more immoral people than, say, the oil industry, or the fast food industry, or the car industry, or the banking industry, or the ocularist industry...
And there are plenty of 'good' t.v. shows (I put good in quotes to denote 'moral' as opposed to just 'quality.')
I think if Jason Katims is running your show, there's a good chance it'll be good. (friday night lights, Parenthood). Star Trek came from Hollywood, remember... And that's the bomb-diggidy when it comes to having a positive impact on the way folks view the world.
But, it is true that Hollywood's job is to create material - and the purpose of that material is to 'entertain,' aka 'to make money,' not to 'spread good messages.' So in terms of the messages or morality of the material, you get a wide array.
It's as moral as any other industry out there in capitalism - the purpose is to make money, and certain people within that industry will do anything to make that money within the confines of the law.
I guess my claim is twofold:
1) The people in the industry are often friendly and smart and good. At least, much more often than you think they are (funny that the stereotype of the arsehole director or the evil producer comes via Hollywood...... It's because it's more entertaining, not because it's always true).
2) The product of the industry is a mixed moral bag.
Making claims about something so large - 'people who make movies and TV' - is faulty.
Brett, who do you want to win the Oscars? I accept your defense of Hollywood, by the way. I think you're right!
I also think JH is right. You're right that Hollywood is no worse than most of America that is out selling a product. He's right that it is just as bad. I did enjoy the movies I saw ths year - Les Mis and ZDT and Lincoln were stupendous. I also liked Silver Playbook but the story is not as momentous. I wonderbif Amour is any good. It's playing in Woodstock which is about an hour away from here.
the camera facilitates satan's use of platonic categories
Was The Paperboy released too late in 2012 to get nominated for this year's Oscars? Is it in theaters yet or still making international festival rounds? Will it be eligible for next year's Oscars? McConnaughey, Kidman and Cusack looks like a quality cast. Read the book quite a few years ago. Seemed like something written with a screenplay in mind.
I haven't hoyd.
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