350 or bust (part II)

After the failure of the Copenhagen talks, the 350.org organizers sent out a call for suggestions on the next step we should take. Here is what I wrote to them.

Hello all,
Thank you for your hard work on our behalf. It is essential to keep reminding the public and the politicians that climate change is driven by chemistry, which is non-negotiable.

What is the way forward from here? We must certainly keep pushing for an international accord--a patchwork of non-binding national strategies could conceivably lower CO2 to 350 ppm, but there is no way to be sure, and we only have one shot at this. So to rephrase the question, what would need to have been different for Copenhagen to have succeeded? In my view, the answer is to have Greens at the negotiating table not on the streets.

As a Canadian, I am deeply ashamed that my government spearheaded the "climate change skeptic" camp. If we had a more green government, our delegation could have been a force for progress instead. Several powerful governments also have an industrialist ideology, and their negotiators tried and failed to reconcile that ideology with CO2 reduction. Environmentalists traditionally avoid partisan politics--it is a demeaning, frustrating, and time-consuming sphere to work in--which has left political power in the hands of "business liberals" or "business conservatives". They will do the minimum they can get away with when it comes to decarbonizing the economy. So what I propose is that the 350.org coalition lend support to the Green Parties around the world to move their governments in a more green direction. It takes time to organize election campaigns and win seats, but at this junction I see it as the best way forward.

all the best,
Andrew Carkner
Montreal, Canada

'Fourteen days to seal history's judgment on this generation'

I can't say it any better than this...


Copenhagen climate change conference: 'Fourteen days to seal history's judgment on this generation'

This editorial calling for action from world leaders on climate change is published today by 56 newspapers around the world in 20 languages
The Guardian, Monday 7 December 2009

Today 56 newspapers in 45 countries take the unprecedented step of speaking with one voice through a common editorial. We do so because humanity faces a profound emergency.

Unless we combine to take decisive action, climate change will ravage our planet, and with it our prosperity and security. The dangers have been becoming apparent for a generation. Now the facts have started to speak: 11 of the past 14 years have been the warmest on record, the Arctic ice-cap is melting and last year's inflamed oil and food prices provide a foretaste of future havoc. In scientific journals the question is no longer whether humans are to blame, but how little time we have got left to limit the damage. Yet so far the world's response has been feeble and half-hearted.

Climate change has been caused over centuries, has consequences that will endure for all time and our prospects of taming it will be determined in the next 14 days. We call on the representatives of the 192 countries gathered in Copenhagen not to hesitate, not to fall into dispute, not to blame each other but to seize opportunity from the greatest modern failure of politics. This should not be a fight between the rich world and the poor world, or between east and west. Climate change affects everyone, and must be solved by everyone.

The science is complex but the facts are clear. The world needs to take steps to limit temperature rises to 2C, an aim that will require global emissions to peak and begin falling within the next 5-10 years. A bigger rise of 3-4C — the smallest increase we can prudently expect to follow inaction — would parch continents, turning farmland into desert. Half of all species could become extinct, untold millions of people would be displaced, whole nations drowned by the sea. The controversy over emails by British researchers that suggest they tried to suppress inconvenient data has muddied the waters but failed to dent the mass of evidence on which these predictions are based.

Few believe that Copenhagen can any longer produce a fully polished treaty; real progress towards one could only begin with the arrival of President Obama in the White House and the reversal of years of US obstructionism. Even now the world finds itself at the mercy of American domestic politics, for the president cannot fully commit to the action required until the US Congress has done so.

But the politicians in Copenhagen can and must agree the essential elements of a fair and effective deal and, crucially, a firm timetable for turning it into a treaty. Next June's UN climate meeting in Bonn should be their deadline. As one negotiator put it: "We can go into extra time but we can't afford a replay."

At the deal's heart must be a settlement between the rich world and the developing world covering how the burden of fighting climate change will be divided — and how we will share a newly precious resource: the trillion or so tonnes of carbon that we can emit before the mercury rises to dangerous levels.

Rich nations like to point to the arithmetic truth that there can be no solution until developing giants such as China take more radical steps than they have so far. But the rich world is responsible for most of the accumulated carbon in the atmosphere – three-quarters of all carbon dioxide emitted since 1850. It must now take a lead, and every developed country must commit to deep cuts which will reduce their emissions within a decade to very substantially less than their 1990 level.

Developing countries can point out they did not cause the bulk of the problem, and also that the poorest regions of the world will be hardest hit. But they will increasingly contribute to warming, and must thus pledge meaningful and quantifiable action of their own. Though both fell short of what some had hoped for, the recent commitments to emissions targets by the world's biggest polluters, the United States and China, were important steps in the right direction.

Social justice demands that the industrialised world digs deep into its pockets and pledges cash to help poorer countries adapt to climate change, and clean technologies to enable them to grow economically without growing their emissions. The architecture of a future treaty must also be pinned down – with rigorous multilateral monitoring, fair rewards for protecting forests, and the credible assessment of "exported emissions" so that the burden can eventually be more equitably shared between those who produce polluting products and those who consume them. And fairness requires that the burden placed on individual developed countries should take into account their ability to bear it; for instance newer EU members, often much poorer than "old Europe", must not suffer more than their richer partners.

The transformation will be costly, but many times less than the bill for bailing out global finance — and far less costly than the consequences of doing nothing.

Many of us, particularly in the developed world, will have to change our lifestyles. The era of flights that cost less than the taxi ride to the airport is drawing to a close. We will have to shop, eat and travel more intelligently. We will have to pay more for our energy, and use less of it.

But the shift to a low-carbon society holds out the prospect of more opportunity than sacrifice. Already some countries have recognized that embracing the transformation can bring growth, jobs and better quality lives. The flow of capital tells its own story: last year for the first time more was invested in renewable forms of energy than producing electricity from fossil fuels.

Kicking our carbon habit within a few short decades will require a feat of engineering and innovation to match anything in our history. But whereas putting a man on the moon or splitting the atom were born of conflict and competition, the coming carbon race must be driven by a collaborative effort to achieve collective salvation.

Overcoming climate change will take a triumph of optimism over pessimism, of vision over short-sightedness, of what Abraham Lincoln called "the better angels of our nature".

It is in that spirit that 56 newspapers from around the world have united behind this editorial. If we, with such different national and political perspectives, can agree on what must be done then surely our leaders can too.

The politicians in Copenhagen have the power to shape history's judgment on this generation: one that saw a challenge and rose to it, or one so stupid that we saw calamity coming but did nothing to avert it. We implore them to make the right choice.

This editorial will be published tomorrow by 56 newspapers around the world in 20 languages including Chinese, Arabic and Russian. The text was drafted by a Guardian team during more than a month of consultations with editors from more than 20 of the papers involved. Like the Guardian most of the newspapers have taken the unusual step of featuring the editorial on their front page.

This editorial is free to reproduce under Creative Commons

Woven and stratified delite

One of the things I love about the English language is how adaptable it is. Despite the stern prescriptions of high school English teachers, its punctuation, spelling, and syntax can be stretched and spun to convey a broad array of moods and meanings. English also absorbs foreign words (ie, foreign concepts) freely. In this post, I’ll present for your reading pleasure a few samples.

Menace
West of Arkham the hills rise wild, and there are valleys with deep woods that no axe has ever cut. There are dark narrow glens where the trees slope fantastically, and where thin brooklets trickle without ever having caught the glint of sunlight. On the gentle slopes there are farms, ancient and rocky, with squat, moss-coated cottages brooding eternally over old New England secrets in the lee of great ledges; but these are all vacant now, the wide chimneys crumbling and the shingled sides bulging perilously beneath low gambrel roofs. The old folk have gone away, and foreigners do not like to live there. French-Canadians have tried it, Italians have tried it, and the Poles have come and departed. It is not because of anything that can be seen or heard or handled, but because of something that is imagined. The place is not good for imagination, and does not bring restful dreams at night.
-20th-century horror novel (from The Color out of Space by H.P. Lovecraft)

Saga
“In the begynnyng of Arthure, aftir he was chosyn Kynge by adventure and by grace—for the moste party of the barowns knew nat he was Uther Pendragon son but as Merlyon made hit openly knowyn, but yet many kyngis and lordis hylde hym grete werre for that cause—
But well Arthur overcom hem all. The moste party dayes of hys lyff he was ruled by the counceile of Merlyon; so hit felle on a tyme Kyng Arthur seyde unto Merlion, “My barownes woll let me have no reste but nedis I must take a wyff—and I wolde none take but by thy counceile and advice.”
-start of a 16th-century tale (from Le Morte Darthur by Sir Thomas Malory)

Dogfaces
“I tol’im iffie tried to fuck me over, I was gonna kick ‘is fuckin’ ass, iddnot right?”
“Fuckin’ A.”
“Soey kep’on fuckin’ me over and I kicked ‘is fuckin’ ass in fo’im, iddnot right?”
“Fuckin’ A.”
“An so now they tellin’ me they gon’ th’ow my fuckin’ ass inna fuckin’ stoc-kade! You know what? They some kind fuckin’ me over!”
“Fuckin’ A well tol’, Bubba.”
-World War II “army creole” (from Wartime by Paul Fussell)

Piety
“O Untouchable, and forever blessed, singular and incomparable virgin Mary Mother of God, most grateful temple of God, the sacristy of the Holy Ghost, the gate of the kingdom of heaven, by whom next unto God the whole world liveth, incline O Mother of Mercy the ears of thy pity unto my unworthy supplications, and be pitiful to me a most wretched sinner, and be unto me a merciful helper in all things.”
-medieval prayer (from The Book of Hours, 1559 edition)

Description
Our civilization, pace Chesterton, is founded on coal, more completely than one realizes until one stops to think about it. The machines that keep us alive, and the machines that make machines, are all directly or indirectly dependent upon coal. In the metabolism of the Western world the coal-miner is second in importance only to the man who ploughs the soil. He is a sort of caryatid upon whose shoulders nearly everything that is not grimy is supported. For this reason the actual process by which coal is extracted is well worth watching, if you get the chance and are willing to take the trouble.

When you go down a coal-mine it is important to try and get to the coal face when the 'fillers' are at work. This is not easy, because when the mine is working visitors are a nuisance and are not encouraged, but if you go at any other time, it is possible to come away with a totally wrong impression. On a Sunday, for instance, a mine seems almost peaceful. The time to go there is when the machines are roaring and the air is black with coal dust, and when you can actually see what the miners have to do. At those times the place is like hell, or at any rate like my own mental picture of hell. Most of the things one imagines in hell are if there--heat, noise, confusion, darkness, foul air, and, above all, unbearably cramped space. Everything except the fire, for there is no fire down there except the feeble beams of Davy lamps and electric torches which scarcely penetrate the clouds of coal dust.
-20th-century journalism (from The Road to Wigan Pier by George Orwell)

Rant
Fuck the South. Fuck 'em. We should have let them go when they wanted to leave. But no, we had to kill half a million people so they'd stay part of our special Union. Fighting for the right to keep slaves - yeah, those are states we want to keep.

And now what do we get? We're the fucking Arrogant Northeast Liberal Elite? How about this for arrogant: the South is the Real America? The Authentic America. Really?

Cause we fucking founded this country, assholes. Those Founding Fathers you keep going on and on about? All that bullshit about what you think they meant by the Second Amendment giving you the right to keep your assault weapons in the glove compartment because you didn't bother to read the first half of the fucking sentence? Who do you think those wig-wearing lacy-shirt sporting revolutionaries were? They were fucking blue-staters, dickhead. Boston? Philadelphia? New York? Hello? Think there might be a reason all the fucking monuments are up here in our backyard?
No, No. Get the fuck out. We're not letting you visit the Liberty Bell and fucking Plymouth Rock anymore until you get over your real American selves and start respecting those other nine amendments. Who do you think those fucking stripes on the flag are for? Nine are for fucking blue states. And it would be 10 if those Vermonters had gotten their fucking Subarus together and broken off from New York a little earlier. Get it? We started this shit, so don't get all uppity about how real you are you Johnny-come-lately "Oooooh I've been a state for almost a hundred years" dickheads. Fuck off.
-21st-century anonymous website (from "Fuck the South" by Annotated Rant)

Emotion
i go to this window

just as day dissolves
when it is twilight(and
looking up in fear

i see the new moon
thinner than a hair)

making me feel
how myself has been coarse and dull
compared with you, silently who are
and cling
to my mind always

But now she sharpens and becomes crisper
until i smile with knowing
-and all about
herself

the sprouting largest final air

plunges
inward with hurled
downward thousands of enormous dreams
-20th-century poem (“i go to this window” by e. e. cummings)

Correspondence

-20th-century letter (from The Father Christmas Letters by J.R.R. Tolkien)

Decadence
“I'm Catherine, Myrtle's sister.”
“Oh.”
“People say we look like twins, but I don't think so.”
“I'm Nick. Won't you sit down? I told that boy about the ice.”
“These servants! You really have to keep after them all the time. You live down on Long Island, too?”
“Yes, in West Egg.”
“Really? I was down at a party in West Egg about a month ago, at a man named Gatsby's. Do you know him?”
“I live next door to him. He's German.
“Really?”
“Really. The cousin or nephew or something of Kaiser Wilhelm. That's where all his money comes from.”
“I'm scared of him.”
“Why?”
“I'd hate him to get anything on me.”
“Oh.”
-20th-century aristocrats (from The Great Gatsby by F.Scott Fitzgerald)

Uptight
"You know, I don't think I could take a mellow evening because I - I don't respond well to mellow. You know what I mean? I have a tendency to - if I get too mellow, I - I ripen and then rot, you know."
-20th-century Woody Allen (from Annie Hall)

350 or bust

Today was the “international day of climate action” organized by the 350.org coalition. It was a united signal to world leaders that urgent action is needed in the Copenhagen summit starting Dec 7. My particular group brought homemade noise-makers to Place des Spectacles (in Montreal) and made 350 seconds of cacophony aimed straight at Stephen Harper.

I’m very pleased to learn about 350.org. It is the most inclusive, focused, and well-organized anti-climate-change group thus far. National initiatives haven’t worked so far, and I hope this kind of internationalist approach will be more effective.

Alas, my government is actively sabotaging efforts to reach a workable, effective agreement to limit climate change. First, by taking no action to satisfy our Kyoto protocol obligations—Canada is already 34% above our 2012 CO2-emission targets. Second, by obstructing efforts to expand and improve Kyoto—our negotiators are calling for an entirely new framework, which would take several years to negotiate.

We should not only blame the Conservative Party or their voters for this shortsightedness. No one should be surprised that a party built on Alberta’s petrodollars is opposed to restrictions on fossil fuels; and there will always be fearful and ignorant voters who support an impossible return to “the good old days” (although I am disturbed that they are so numerous at this critical junction). No, the other half of the Canadian establishment is equally responsible. The Liberals were in power for the first decade of our Kyoto obligations, and they took no significant action. Even now, after yet another year of shrinking glaciers, spreading pests and diseases, droughts, wildfires, freak weather, and rising sea levels, Liberal inaction is blocking the way forward. After all, the Conservatives are a minority in Parliament, and by uniting with the environment-friendly NDP and BQ, the Liberals could implement controls on emissions. A case in point is Bill C-311, the Climate Change Accountability Act, an NDP private member’s bill currently in its third reading in the House of Commons. It would set emission targets for 2020 and 2050 (25% and 80% below 1990 levels) and give regulators the power to punish polluters. This version of the Act was introduced in February, and there has been a push to pass it before the Copenhagen summit to give Canadian negotiators a strong negotiating position. However, last week the Liberals delayed the reading by another 30 days, which likely means it won’t be passed in time for Copenhagen. Ignatieff is just as bad as Harper (of which more later).

Fingers crossed for Copenhagen…

"Nobel prize winner Barack Obama..."

I'm sure everyone knows by now that Obama won the Nobel peace prize. The rationale is that unlike his predecessors, he is talking about disarmament, multilateralism, and global peace, and as a US president that has a strong impact. Many believe that the Nobel committee also hopes to encourage Obama to take a more peaceful path. I strongly disagree with both premises.

First, talking peace is standard practice for world leaders. It's called diplomacy. That is especially true for the US, which needs to keep a steady stream of propaganda to distract from the fact that they produce 70% of the world's weaponry and frequently violate international law. Dubya dropped that pretense of benevolence, but Obama's return to "presidential protocol" is not a reason to give him a Nobel prize. Thousands around the world have worked their whole lives for peace, risking imprisonment, torture, and death. What risk has Obama taken?

Second, it is significant that the first public response to Obama's prize was not approval or thoughtful consideration but incredulity. If I were Obama, I would feel humiliated not heartened by this prize. Everyone knows that at best, Obama's legacy will be to leave less broken bodies in Baghdad and Bagram than John McCain would have. It is a cruel joke to praise him for spreading peace when peace is an impossible goal for him. In the 21st century, a US president is first and foremost a commander-in-chief: more than half of US government expenditures are for war, and "national security" occupies most of a president's time. Obama can save lives by passively resisting the war machine nominally under his command, through budget cuts or procedural obstruction, but he has no prospect to dismantle it.

Personally, I still doubt his peaceful motives--he increased the basic Pentagon budget by 4%, approved every "emergency" funding request, approved the continued use of Predator drones, and is now considering sending 40 000 more soldiers to Afghanistan/Pakistan with a corresponding increase in drones, mercenaries, and permanent bases. True, he hasn't yet invaded Iran, as John McCain would have--in some ways a cautious commander-in-chief is better than a hasty one--but that is a difference in management style and shouldn't been confounded with a commitment to peace.

During his election campaign, Obama was often compared to JFK. That comparison may be more apt then the commentators intended. Despite Kennedy's public (and in my opinion, private) commitment to a more peaceful world, his foreshortened term saw the start of the Secret War in Cambodia and the creation of the first US-trained death squads in South America. Even with this kind of public encouragement, does anyone think Obama will achieve more than JFK?

Fractal granola disarray

I mentioned something a few weeks ago which I’d like to explore more fully. I said that it’s impossible to solve ecological problems on an individual basis because they are fundamentally macroscopic or collective. I say this for two reasons: first, an individual doesn’t have access to the information needed to act wisely, and second, an individual has no way to convince or coerce enough others to act wisely.

I don’t deny that an individual can contribute to a sustainable society. Any one of us could live off-the-grid, travel only by foot or bicycle, eat local organic food, etc. However, there is no way for even a well-informed individual to know which action is most beneficial and whether their lifestyle is sufficient, insufficient, or excessive. He or she would likely spend a lot of energy on negligible causes and neglect important but non-obvious actions.

The clearest illustration of this is climate change, where damage depends mainly on the rate of fossil fuel use. At first glance, the course of action of a concerned individual is obvious, but given the complexity and ambiguity of the modern world, an “informed decision” quickly becomes an impossible task. We all know that vehicles are a major culprit, so let’s suppose our brave citizen forgoes a car. Yet no-one wants to spend their life within a 5 km radius of home. Should one rent a car once a month to get out of the city? visit The Big City by train? fly to a sun-soaked beach every few years? hitchhike or rideshare across the country? There is no practical way to judge what is the most ecological choice, or even whether the choice is meaningful at all, so instead we rely on hearsay and half-remembered factoids.

This complexity increases exponentially when you start to consider greenhouse gas emissions “embedded” in our food, household goods, and built environment. Who among us knows how much fuel was burned to bring us our cute new shoes, our latest cell phone, a show at our favorite movie theatre? Is it better to buy fresh apples from New Zealand or local ones which have been refrigerated for 6 months? Electricity use is a significant but invisible pollutant—should I piss off my roommates by unplugging the TV and sound system when they’re not in use? My office has an inefficient and overpowered air conditioner—if I can convince them to turn it off more often, how much impact would that have? We greens drive ourselves crazy trying to “live green.” A friend of mine was sorely malnourished one year trying to keep to a 100-mile diet. I myself have lived like a monk for several years, sometimes to the detriment of my health and my happiness, yet climate change continues apace; therefore my actions have been inadequate. It’s impossible to say whether another 5 years of monasticism, by myself or with 100 000 other individuals, would be enough to reverse the damage our society is causing. We can measure total pollution levels, but we just don’t have enough information to determine our individual pollution.


My first point dealt with those who are concerned and capable enough to change their destructive behaviour (no easy task in an industrial society like ours). Many others, however, are too indifferent or indecisive to change their ways. Because of the nature of, well, nature, the pollution of these inertial individuals becomes more significant the less the rest of us pollute. Even if most of the guests at a party drink moderately, it only takes a few alcoholics to empty daddy’s liquor cabinet. The health and healthfulness of fish in a given river depends on the local pollution levels, ie the total pollution emitted in the river’s watershed. Even if 99% of individuals have zero impact, there is still catastrophe if fish lice from a poorly operated salmon farm. Wisdom slowly spreads through social channels, and to a lesser extent through the Internet and the media, but this takes years and it is a simple matter for major polluters to ignore those they disagree with. There must be a way to curb this irresponsible behaviour, either through mass persuasion or coercion, and a legion of well-intentioned but unorganized individuals cannot do so. Approaching ecological problems from an individual perspective is overwhelming and frustrating.


This is the line of thinking that led me to join the Green Party 3 years ago. A collective approach solves both problems I described above. First, through the miracle of statistics, the forest of patchy information disappears at a national or international level. We know with reasonable accuracy where our greenhouse gases come from, and with some study we can determine the best way to reduce them. Second, a government can pass laws which modify everyone’s behaviour, not simply those who are supporters. A pollution tax, for instance, would make certain actions much more expensive, which would provide an incentive to pollute less.

I’m tired of environmentalists acting like a team of 6-year-old soccer players, all chasing the ball with no plan. There are serious problems with our political system and with the Green Party itself, but as far as I’m concerned it is the only avenue that can solve the crises we face.

These words will never touch the ground

I learned a useful word a few years ago: ephemera. It’s an art collector’s word, and it refers to manmade objects that were meant to be used a few times then discarded (streetcar tickets, movie posters, cigarette lighters…). It doesn’t include disposables which are considered memorable like stamps, clothing, or paper money. In recent decades, there has been a trend among collectors and historians to seek out and preserve this ephemera to give a candid glimpse at life in days gone by, before these inherently impermanent objects disappear.

I started to wonder what traces my own generation will inadvertently leave behind. In this “information age,” we all broadcast personal details of our lives (whether we like it or not) via e-mail, Facebook, cookies, blogs, forums, online shopping, e-petitions and membership forms, phishing, etc. etc. There is a mind-boggling reservoir of mundane information floating around. I’m careful to keep my privacy, but I just googled my name and got 140 different hits. Will any of this still exist 50 years from now? Will we ever see a museum exhibit “Amazon.com wish lists 2005-2010”?

Unlike traditional ephemera, electronic media requires careful maintenance and high energy and quickly becomes obsolete or unfashionable. With the disruptions of climate change and the decline of global energy supplies, there is no guarantee that this trillion gigabytes of information will continue to exist. Perhaps future historians will be left to comb through electronic flotsam like the Google search queries of August 2011, all MySpace profiles that start with “M”, the contents of individual computers, or all US e-mails with the word “bomb” in them.

Ironically, my generation will also bequeath a heavy legacy to the future—our ingeniously indestructible plastics, refrigerants, artificial sweeteners, etc., the steel and concrete bones of our cities, and the negative inheritance of an impoverished planet. Unlike the million whispers that make up our electronic personae, this legacy is more like a rolling thunder, a monolithic and overpowering sound that erases all beauty and individuality. Sometimes I worry that the beautiful things my generation creates will vanish with the end of the electronic age, leaving future generations to curse us for our selfishness and lack of aesthetics.

Goodbye Mary Lou, hello heart

Trailing a cord of false stops
Under a compass rose
I feed the ducks with raindrops
And fill myself with prose

Static receptors left me
Narrative disarray
The fragments of my story
Are buried in my clay

Monday to Friday, work burns
Memory from the floor
My steady calculation turns
One zero into more

Friday, I tumble down stairs
Carefully synchronized
I watch the moon for wet flares
Then wash out with the tide

Whispering bristles sand down
Saturday's morning face
Outside I found a ghost town
A silence meeting place

Sunday, I carry rag time
Skating without applause
Or slowly spend my odd prime
Composing traffic laws

Tenderness let her name brand
Venice in my skin
Years late, I clutch the mic stand
To speak above the din

Wrapped in a net of raindrops
Wearing a wild rose
I sow the dusk on dead crops
To harvest dawn's first glows

Left alone to get gigantic/Hard, huge, and haunted

I always thought those lines were a good description of the slow development of the US state from a backwater boy's club to a global empire. If anything says "hard, huge, and haunted," it's the US military.


It has been four months since Barack Obama assumed the US presidency, with his famous “yes we can” mandate. (We can do what? And who is we?) So far he has been just as managerial as his predecessors, showing no sign of mobilizing or even exhorting the American people towards a particular goal.

When he was elected, I predicted that he would have to make a choice between being a caretaker president like Clinton—to repair and strengthen the US state for its next mass expropriation—or making small fundamental changes and being a one-term president. It is clear now that he has chosen the former. Despite a financial catastrophe, he increased the Pentagon budget by 4% over last year. His “withdrawal” from Iraq closely parallels the multiyear withdrawal from Vietnam. His reforms to science funding, health care, energy efficiency, and credit card regulations have been similarly tepid. He moved to close Guantanamo Bay but not Bagram, Abu Graib, etc., and he has not repealed any pernicious Bush-era legislation or dissolved the organizations that administer them. His only ground-breaking action to date has been the $1100 billion (and counting) cash giveaway to Wall Street. At this rate, the “battleship of state” will be in full working order when Mitt Romney takes over in 2017.

Some defenders of Obama argue that I expect too much, that even the most well-intentioned US president must tread lightly in the 21st-century USA. They point to his modest reforms as victories. Presumably this need for accommodation explains Obama's uniformly pro-corporate and imperialist Cabinet. But in that case, who in their right mind would want to be president? To campaign for months, to ask for the trust of the American people, and then to stand in the corner while the real decisions are taken? Surely someone of Obama's intelligence would not commit to such a task if he knew he was powerless from the outset.

If nothing else, Obama could take the JFK route, and eloquently call for reform even though his own government won't allow it (I’m thinking of the 1960's death squads in Southeast Asia and South America). Maybe I missed that speech, but it seems to me he's been pretty bland since he got elected.

I don't think Obama is a bad person; I just think that he sees his job differently than the general public. In this day and age, a president is like a CEO for the US state, and that state is geared towards keeping American dominance worldwide much more so than helping the weak or unlucky. Historically, a president was like a king: the nation's chief diplomat, general, and judge, and a splendid and majestic father figure for the ignorant masses. As we saw at Obama's lavish inauguration, there are still elements of that today.

Incidentally, Noam Chomsky came out of retirement last week to pen an essay. Therein he patiently explains, yet again, that torture, repression, and imperialism (directly or by proxy) are not a post-9/11 phenomenon or even a post-1980 or post-1945 one—they have been part of the US government toolbox since its creation. The West didn’t win itself, after all…


PS For those who don’t recognize it, the title of this entry comes from a Tragically Hip song. It begins: “Me, debunk an American myth?/And take my life in my hands?”

Update: Perhaps I spoke too soon. Nothing substantive yet, but you never know.

BBMillions throws down the gauntlet

Capitalists* beware! The burning fire of my unstoppable logic shall reduce your palaces to small yet tasteful townhouses and your foot soldiers to part-time mall security guards. This is no dead letter, but an UNdead letter, who unnatural power and longevity are wholly bent on the destruction of your economic engine of doom. Tremble--yes, tremble! The fear you feel from this preamble is nothing compared to the bone-melting terror that will seize you when my rhetorical drumbeat reaches its bloody crescendo. Capital flight cannot save you; tariff walls cannot hide you; angel investors cannot protect you. Kiss your shibboleths goodbye because they'll be nothing but shi't when I'm done with them.

Now then, where was I?

Some months back, I tried to grapple intellectually with my discovery that private banks literally have a license to print money. (This contributes to inflation, exacerbates boom-bust cycles, and enriches well-placed individuals at the expense of the rest of us.) Lately I came across an author who developed this line of thinking more clearly and fully (Herman Daly, Beyond Growth, ch.12). He points out that traditional lenders charged interest in exchange for temporarily giving up the use of their cash. However, modern banks sacrifice nothing when they lend because they create cash out of thin air when they draft the loan (and destroy an equal amount when the loan is repaid). There is no longer any economic justification for charging interest on loans beyond the tiny bookkeeping cost.

I also discussed that, to prevent inflation, the money supply needs to keep up the with the uneven growth of the "goods and services" supply. I said banks are useful for that because they create money case-by-case for those who intend to spend on new goods or services. I realize now that that is wrong: the net money created is equal to the interest charged by the banks not the capital, so there will still be a mismatch between the growth of goods and services and the money supply. Daly has a different proposal: banks should only lend money which they actually have, and the size of the money supply is controlled directly by the state through the issue or redemtion of government debt. It would be controlled to keep purchasing power constant, ie to average zero inflation on a certain basket of goods. Something else to consider.

This monetary skimming is irksome, but it's far from the most important economic problem. The worldwide ecological damage is related only to the total physical throughput of the economy, not the amount or distribution of human currency. By throughput I mean the rate of input (trees cut per year, fish caught per year, oil pumped per year) and output (CO2 emitted per year, garbage landfilled per year, wastewater discharged per year). Daly combines neoclassical economics with the second law of thermodynamics (irreversibility) to develop a crude but useable economic model. (In contrast, mainstream economics is like mechanical engineering without heat loss, corrosion, plastic deformation, or any other irreversible behaviour.) Needless to say, his new economic model leads to very different economic policies than the pervasive perpetual-growth paradigm. He was a World Bank economist, and in more enlightened times he might have sparked a transformation there, but as it is this book is essentially an extended letter of resignation.

I don't have space to reproduce his arguments here, but his central postulate is that manmade capital (industrial machinery, buildings, consumer goods) requires not only labour and capital but also high-value material and energy from nature (coal, sunlight, soil nutrients) and that such "natural capital" is non-infinite. Sounds reasonable to me, but that heresy was enough to get him stonewalled at the World Bank.

I'll mention one last thing, which Daly doesn't address but which follows from his argument. There can only be environmental macroeconomics not microeconomics because it is unfeasible for citizens and firms acting independently to keep resource consumption and pollution within safe limits. To make a rational economic choice, they would need to know all the material and energy that goes into each item they could buy and how close each type of input and output is to its safe limit. In other words, microeconomics must be a subset of the human economy, whether or not macroeconomic planning incorporates environmental limits.


*Defined herein as those who live well by creating and/or exploiting flaws in the monetary/financial system rather than through their manual or intellectual labour. This includes bank senior executives, speculators, and most economists but not bank clerks or other salaried financial workers.

In with the old

Yesterday, British Columbians faced a referendum on electoral reform, namely the adoption of single transferable vote (STV) elections. As I explained last year, the current voting system disenfranchises most voters, disadvantages new parties, and leads to unstable governments. That isn’t surprising considering it survived mostly unchanged from the Community of the Realm of medieval England. Alas, BC soundly rejected STV, which will likely forestall any other attempts at electoral reform for the next 10 or 20 years.

This is a setback for Canada, but even more so for the Green Party—unless we can become the first or second most popular party, the most we can hope for is a handful of MP’s at the back of the backbenches. I still intend to vote and volunteer for them, but without electoral reform they can only be the handmaiden of a broader social mobilization rather than an independent agent of change.

Although the STV defeat is a serious long-term setback, the GP also has an important short-term advantage courtesy of the Liberal Party of Canada. In the last federal election, roughly half of Green supporters voted Liberal to support Stéphane Dion, who brought several ecological policies to the Liberal platform. Given his party’s track record, I wasn’t convinced that he could really implement such policies; we’ll never know now because he was edged out of 24 Sussex by Stephen Harper. After his defeat, Dion pledged to keep the party strong until their national convention in May. Instead, in December leadership hopeful Michael Ignatieff cut some kind of backroom deal and became Liberal leader without a contest. The national convention, which just passed, had no meaningful content. For those who don’t know him, Ignatieff’s contempt for democracy, along with his support for the Iraq war, corporate globalization, integration with the US, etc. make him almost indistinguishable from Harper. Therefore it will be crystal-clear in the next election that voting Liberal means four more years of industrialism, imperialism, and inequality. So I expect we’ll see a rise in Green votes as “Dion Greens” return to the fold.

Some Greens refer to the other parties as factions of a single Grey Party because despite their different visions (watered-down conservatism, liberalism, socialism), they are united in their pursuit of industrial capitalism, an inhuman and unecological economic model. With Stéphane Dion, some greens believed that the Grey Party itself would become a powerful force for progress; but with Ignatieff that is clearly not the case.

An election in which only Stephen Harper or Michael Ignatieff can become Prime Minister also shows how absurd Canadian democracy has become, which could give a second wind to the electoral reform movement.

The Petri dish of idiocy

(from a Google ad)

The Internet must be a godsend for sociologists and psychologists. Face-to-face, people generally think twice before saying something blatantly ignorant or stupid, but on the Internet, inhibitions don't exist. They even pay to advertise their idiocy in hopes that others will follow in their footsteps.

Happy Earth Day (?)

Take it away, Honest Abe:

"The dogmas of the quiet past, are inadequate to the stormy present. The occasion is piled high with difficulty, and we must rise with the occasion. As our case is new, so we must think anew, and act anew. We must disenthrall ourselves, and then we shall save our country.

Fellow-citizens, we cannot escape history. We of this Congress and this administration, will be remembered in spite of ourselves. No personal significance, or insignificance, can spare one or another of us. The fiery trial through which we pass will light us down, in honor or dishonor, to the latest generation ... We shall nobly save, or meanly lose, the last best hope of earth. Other means may succeed; this could not fail. The way is plain, peaceful, generous, just -- a way which, if followed, the world will forever applaud, and God must forever bless."

Brevity is the essence of wot

I think I've found my word of the year:

Sesquipedalian (ses-kwi-pi-DAY-lee-uhn)
adj
1. given to using long words
2. (of a word) containing many syllables.

Boredom's end

As of today, I'm moving to Montreal to start my new job there. New posts will be few and far between on this site for a while.

Immetric (part II)

A sketch of the real economy, drawn from here. See also "The Story of Stuff" here.

A previous post criticized our current economic system (method of resource allocation) on several fronts. That begs the question--if this one isn't working, what should we replace it with?

Whenever we design something, there are certain steps to follow. First, we need to decide what we want the economy to do. I offer the following:

An economy should reliably provide subsistence to all.

That is, all humans should have access to enough healthful water, food, and shelter to contribute fully to society. Any resource use beyond that is a cultural or political matter and should be decided by the people not by economists. The reliability condition means that the system must be robust and flexible enough to function amid the normal disruptions of life, and it implicitly forbids any irreversible or unpredictable degradation of the planet. There is already enough food, water, and goods produced to satisfy the needs of everyone on the planet--it's just a matter of allocating it more intelligently.

Second, we need to understand the "universe" we're working with. That sets the limits on the economy. How big can it be? How much resource consumption and pollution can the biosphere tolerate? The classical view of economics as a tension between supply and demand is woefully inadequate here because it ignores limits entirely.

That was fine when the economy was far from its limits, but these days, such a view is dangerously simplistic. A better picture of the economy is shown at the top of this post. The limits are the supply of energy and raw materials, the capacity of the biosphere to absorb waste products, and the physical dimensions of the Earth. The sectors or aspects of the economy can be tweaked to improve the operation of the overall economy.

Third, we need to sit down and design the structure of the economy. We don't need to re-invent the wheel: there have been many economic systems throughout history, and we can learn from their successes or failures. I can't go much further without getting into specifics; there is a body of work already out there describing possible economic models and how to get there. Personally, I favour ecological economics, which is based on steady-state use of materials and energy rather than perpetual growth.

Sustainable electricity--not as easy as it sounds

In the past few months, along with job hunting and reading and keeping house, I've occasionally worked on a technical side project. I didn't write about it here because, without a workshop or money for components, I could only do a literature survey. I will be busy with my new job for a while, so I thought I may as well go back and explain what I'm trying to do.

In our society, fossil fuels are the basis of our material well-being. We rely on them for transportation, heating, cooling, lighting, food, clothing and consumer goods, pharmaceuticals, and many other things. Other energy sources (besides hydropower and nuclear power, which are near their technical limit) make up a tiny fraction of our energy use. However, fossil fuels are being depleted much faster than they are regenerating--we've already consumed more than half of all crude oil on earth--and our demand is increasing exponentially. Even with strict energy efficiency measures, sooner or later we will have a sudden and painful scarcity of fossil fuels. In certain sectors it is better to move forward to a low-energy paradigm, such as organic agriculture or solar heating, or simply do without; in others, we must use alternative energy (electricity) to maintain our health and comfort while avoiding ecological damage. This last category is what this project is concerned with.

A major problem with the alternative energy industry is that units are manufactured almost entirely using fossil fuels. Alternative energy is currently more expensive per Watt than fossil fuels, so in a free-market system manufacturers will use fossil fuels. If and when there is a fossil fuel shortage, though, it will be difficult for society to switch to a non-fossil-fuel energy source. Moreover, in the long term the only way to have a sustainable energy supply is to manufacture energy sources entirely without fossil fuels. So the central question is this: how can alternative power sources such as solar panels, wind turbines, cellulosic alcohol, fuel cells, or geothermal power plants be manufactured and operated without fossil fuels? (Cost will be ignored for the time being because I assume that the prototype will not be widely adopted until fossil fuels are unavailable or much more expensive.)

Moving picture review

Apropos of nothing, here are some Youtube clips I enjoyed.

Athletic stock footage set to music:


The exquisite Rita Hayworth with Fred Astaire:


Charlie Chaplin in a dramatic turn--his closing speech from 1940's "the Great Dictator":


The opening of Watchmen. The film had to cut about half the material of the book due to time constraints, so instead they have this brilliant montage:

Несдержанность

Уже был целый год, пока я не писал по-русски здесь. Я думаю по-английски или по-французски и сразу пишу мысли так. До времени, когда я мыслю что-то по-русски, я перевожу свои прошлые тексты на русский язык.


по Beehive Collective

В прошлых месяцах я был неохотно праздным, итак я иногда писал о портящейся экономике у нас. Вредных последствий много, но официальные объяснения и средства противоречивые и нелогичные. Я вполне инженер; когда нахожу незнакомую сломанную машину я думаю, <<Что делает этот выключатель? как машина работает в холодном дне? что происходит когда прерываю электричество? Могу ли я починить сам?>>

К сожалению наша экономика действительно как машина. Капитализм* двигатель, который только работает на одну сторону. С 1991 года капитализм победоносный в целом мире и видим результат: быстрый и необратимый экологический гибель, безграничное производство вооружения и одноразовых товароф, распространённая бедность, непредсказуемые крахи, искажения демокрации и непрозрачный механизм. Другие критикуют то, что он стирает нашу индивидуальность, уменьшает красоту на товар и подчиняет свободную волю финансовой необходимости. По-моему, первый список уже опрадание найти новую систему.

Другие длинно написали об этих проблем. Я просто разъясню свой список.

♦Экологический гибель. В капиталистической системе ценность только в деньгах, товарах и труде. Новый компьютер высоко ценят (тут $1000), а чистый воздух без ценности. Система двигается к максимуму суммы ценности, поэтому является много компьютероф и мало чистого воздуха. Почти всё в природе без финансовой цены, и поэтому природу непрерывно унижают. Правительство может бороться против этого, но пока есть такой побуждение, правила и наказания не остановят повреждение.

Эта слепота очень вредная. Учёбные говорят, что наше самое сильное оружие против изменяющегося климата наши лесы потому что они потребляют CO2, стабилизируют климат, умеряют засухи и наводения и не нуждаются в содержании. Но в математике капитализма доски дорогие а живые деревья ничего не стоящие. Климат конечно тоже без ценности; разрушение богатства из-за изменённого климата не относится к этому на счётах. Поэтому ровняют лесы с землёй пока мы придумываем дорогие и неиспытанные приборы.

♦Безграничное производство. У нас в богатых странах есть прибор iPhone. Он и телефон и маленький компьютер. У нас уже всякие такие приборы... лучше ли жизнь с добавочным? А продают миллионы этого, и каждый потребляет ресурсы и скоро становится отбросами. К финансовому богатству прибавляют кредиты а не дебеты: новый iPhone прибавляет $500, а брошенный в следующем году не отнимает ничего. Двигатель капитализма потреблял бы и загрязнял бы, из-за нового прибора в каждом году, до нашего последнего дыхания.

Одни говорят, что потребители свободно требуют такие товары и их быстрые изобретение, производство и распределение означают, что капитализм работает. Это ясно неправда. После того, как придумывают новый прибор платят биллионы за рекламы чтобы создать требование. Предлагаю эксперимент: пусть остановят рекламы везде во время года, и мы увидим то, что потребители сами решат.

Торговля вооружения привелигированный рынок одноразовых товароф. Не надо подождать несколько годоф до неудачи товара; товары построены к быстрой неудаче (пули, ракеты, бомбы) или построены с многими тонкими деталями (тайные бомбовозы, автоматические самолёты, Щит Против Ракет). Человеческая жизнь нигде не находится на счётах оруженных корпораций.

♦Мировая бедность. Города палаток, работа как раб, беззаконность, голод, плохие санитарные условия, болезнь, невежество. Воины угоняют фермероф, выращивают непищевые культуры и этими деньгами продают оружие из наших заводоф. Океан кормил бедных с начала истории; сейчас богатые страны высыпают его механическим рыбным флотом. Полезные минералы уже у богатых перед тем, как добудут их. С капиталистической точки зрения эти хорошие. Бедные ничего не стоящие. Бизнесмены не извиняются... капитализм и их оружие и их оправдание.

♦Бумы и крахи. Все здесь говорят о настоящем крахе, а я редко слышу критику системы. Вспоминают люди, что такие крахи случались десятки раз? Потому что финансовое богатство воображаемое, оно может сразу же явить и исчезнуть. Даже математический анализ кажет, что в такой системе большие и неровные колебания бумажного богатства. Говорят, что капитализм лучшая система создания богатства, а он разрушает богатство часто и непредсказуемо. Хорошая денежная политика и хорошие финансовие правила улучшают это, хотя под чистым капитализмом их нет. Трудно действительному человеку готовиться к будущему, потому что успех зависит и от действительности и от настроения дальних и незнакомых финансистоф.

♦Искажения демокрации. В обществе со строгой собственностью и большим неравенством, одни могут стать очень властными. Почти все президенты и министры миллионеры. Демократические выборы становятся состязаниями богатых. Много важных проблем игнорируют, потому что они не касаются богатых. Ещё более капиталистическая система, то больше разрыв между народом и штатом.

♦Непрозрачный механизм. Хотя под <<идеальным>> капитализмом у каждым вся информация, действительный рынок не так. Большинство экономических деятелей огромные корпорации, которые хотят секретность. Всё-таки есть так много информации в настоящей экономике, что только самые большие организации могут знать обширно. Несколько корпораций фальцифицирует свои счёты (особенно перед крахом рынка). Поэтому трудно починить проблемы системы; после краха у бюрократоф мало информации. Трудно механику починить машину с закрытыми глазами! В прошлом году несколько банкоф национализировали США, которые ничего не знали об их. Невозможно понять или починить капитализм без ясности.

Профессоры экономики должны осматривать структуру и поведение капитализма, а к сожалению они обычно бесполезны. Передаваемые критики могут мешать действия богатых, поэтому легче экономистам оправдывать решения, которые сильные уже выбрали. Их теории логичные только когда игнорируют всякую информацию.


Бюрократы, которых мы выбрали починить нашу оборванную экономику, думают, что она как машина. Они не глупые... они сами богатые, и они приносят пользу нашей системе. Нам надо не такие экономические <<механики>> или <<инженеры>> а врачи. Врачи понимают, что не стоит дать хлеб бедному если его лёгкие повреждаются. Даже в хороших годах капитализм вредный. Нам решить действительные проблемы людей; затем сможем создать теории.


*В этой статье я определяю капитализм так: он система, которая распределяет ресурсы между многими автономными экономическими деятелями. Они всегда поступают, чтобы увеличивать свое финансовое богатство (измеряемое по $, Р, и т.д.). Труд, капитал и товары покупают и продают свободно. Потому что потребители хотят товары добавленной стоимости (которым надо и труд и капитал и простые товары), финансовое богатство всех деятелей увеличивает. Всё произведённое лично и всё у личностей. Нет коллективных организаций, так например штаты, корпорации и профсоюзы.

Filler

I found a text file with commentary from my pre-blogging days, so I may reheat some when I feel like posting but don't have anything new to say. Most are excerpts from online debates I've had--in this case, a woman opined that since Greens cherish life, we should work to make abortion illegal.


If I understand you correctly, your point is that as environmentalists, we should hold all life sacred, including human fetuses. I take the opposite view: to me it is arrogant and human-centric to think that a human embryo has equal value as, say, a grown dog or an oak tree. Human DNA or not, a first-trimester fetus is on par with an algae colony in complexity and consciousness. (In fact, I would be more upset at the arbitrary murder of an algae colony, because it is part of a balanced ecosystem whereas a human fetus is not.) There are many fully conscious and fully developed humans and animals who are victims of capricious violence and death, and as far as I'm concerned, they should take priority in Green Party policy.

Practically speaking, we can't always be pro-nature and anti-violent--we need to kill other life forms for food, to correct unbalanced ecosystems, to make space for us to live, and so on. You could just as easily argue that those "feed into the hierarchy of might makes right," and maybe you'd be right, but that wouldn't change the necessity of it. (A British satirist recently suggested that environmentalists should all commit suicide, because we're damaging the planet just by being alive!) We need to weigh the merits of the options available to us, not impose a blanket prohibition on all violence; there are many historical instances when nonviolence led to more death and suffering than judicious violence would have.

So let's look at our options on abortion. First, if we made clinical abortions illegal, we would go back to the 19th century--women would be forced to stab themselves with coat hangers, drown their newborns in a river, or raise the child in an abusive relationship because of social or economic pressures. Second, we could set requirements on who can have abortions. No doubt many women today have abortions unnecessarily, but I don't think the state should be the one to decide when they are necessary and when they aren't. That would force women to publicly reveal their private life and sexual habits and would likely drive many of them to unsafe abortion clinics. Third, we could allow women to choose for themselves what is best. To me, that is the lesser of three evils even though as you point out, it is violent and anti-life.

Immetric

illustration by the Beehive Collective

Over the past few months, to escape my unwilling idleness, I've occasionally written here about the unfolding economic mess. It's certainly causing a lot of suffering, yet the official explanations and remedies are so confounding and counterintuitive that I can't make sense of them. I suppose it's the engineer in me: I discover an unfamiliar, half-broken machine and ask myself, "what does this button do? how well does it run on a cold day? what happens if the power is interrupted? can I fix this myself?"

Unfortunately, the machine analogy is too apt by half: capitalism* is like an engine that only runs in one direction. Since 1991, we've witnessed the triumph of capitalism worldwide, and look at the results--increasingly rapid and irreversible ecological damage, overproduction of armaments and disposable consumer goods, endemic poverty in most of the world, unpredictable crashes in wealthy countries, distortions in democratic political systems, and an irrational and opaque mechanism. Some criticize it for more intangible reasons: robbing people of their individuality, elevating the seven deadly sins to virtues, reducing beauty to a commodity, and subordinating free will to a dollar-maximizing imperative. For my purposes, the flaws I listed above are more than enough reason to discard that economic model.

Others have written at length about these problems, but I'll just clarify what I mean:

♦Ecological damage. Capitalism only assigns value to things which can be commodified. A new computer is $1000; clean air has no value. Since capitalism maximizes financial wealth, society will have many computers and little clean air. (See also "overproduction" below.) Nearly all components of a healthy ecosystem are assigned zero value, so they are routinely despoiled to retrieve those components which are considered valuable. Government intervention can counteract this, but as long as there is economic incentive to pollute, regulation and enforcement will always be a step behind.

This lacuna has far-reaching consequences. Scientists tell us that our best weapon against global warming is our forests because they consume CO2, stabilize climate, moderate floods and droughts, and require no upkeep. But in a capitalist system, lumber has value while a living tree has none. A modified climate, of course, also has no value; the wealth destruction due to freak weather is written off as an act of god. So the world's forests continue to be clearcut while we devise expensive and unproven carbon-capture-and-storage devices.

♦Overproduction. Let's call it the iPhone syndrome. We already have ways of cheaply storing and listening to music; playing games; organizing our affairs; and talking to our loved ones. It would be hard to argue that having one device which combines all those functions would improve our quality of life. Yet millions of iPhones are sold, which consume finite resources and quickly become waste. Financial wealth accumulation is all credit and no debit; a brand-new iPhone adds $500 to the wealth of society, but a discarded iPhone a year later subtracts nothing (in fact, there is a small credit because the garbage man is paid to drive it to the landfill). The engine of capitalism will blindly keep polluting and consuming oil and industrial metals to make iPhones until a new gadget replaces it or the raw materials are exhausted.

Some argue that consumers (species Homo capitalis) demand these products, so their rapid development, production, and distribution is a sign that capitalism works. That's simply not true. After a new consumer good is developed, billions are spent to market it, that is, to create demand for it. I propose an experiment: stop all advertising worldwide for one year, and let consumers decide for themselves what they want.

The arms trade is a privileged niche market of consumer goods. Instead of waiting a few years for the product to break down and be replaced, the manufacturer creates products which are designed to be destroyed in a matter of weeks (bullets, missiles, bombs) or which require a large number of fragile components (stealth bombers, drones, Missile Defense System). Human life doesn't appear on Lockheed Martin's balance sheets.

♦Global poverty. Tent cities, sweatshops, lawlessness, famine, poor sanitation, no medicine, no education. Warlords (state or non-state) displace subsistence farmers to grow cash crops for export and use the money to buy guns from our factories. The sea, which fed the poor since the dawn of mankind, is denuded of fish by industrial fishing fleets. Any useful minerals are "owned" by the rich before they even leave the ground. From a capitalist perspective, all this is considered positive. In this world, if you have no cash, you don't count. The business community is unapologetic: capitalism is all the logic they need. They use their knowledge and resources to mercilessly extract wealth from the poor. Even if foreign aid met the UN target of 0.7% of rich countries' GDP, nearly 100% would still be devoted to this cold and mechanical exploitation. What's worse, the industrialized world has consumed so much of the world's resources that it's now mathematically impossible for the rest of the world to ever live as well as we do--there just isn't enough oil and minerals left.

The global trade imbalance is repeated in microcosm within capitalist countries. The Dow Jones industrial average was above 10 000 for almost ten years, so in theory there was more wealth than ever before; but even then, millions of Americans had inadequate food, shelter, and social services. I'll be charitable and assume that the government is interested in solving those problems; but even so, there are millions of businessmen who can benefit by exploiting the poor who have speed, scope, and flexibility the government can never match.

♦Booms and busts. This is what everyone's talking about, but I never hear any systemic critique or any mention of the dozens of times it has happened before. Because of the imaginary nature of financial wealth, it can be created or destroyed in an instant. In case real-world experience was not enough, stability analysis (a mathematical tool) shows that the financial system is prone to large and erratic oscillations in paper wealth. Although it is supposedly the most effective wealth-creation system, capitalism destroys wealth seemingly at random. From the perspective of a real person, this makes it impossible to confidently plan for the future because assets and employment depend on the emotional state of distant financiers. Only sound monetary policy and financial regulation can avert this, neither of which exist in pure capitalism.

♦Political distortion. In a society with strict property rights and high financial inequality, it is logical that rich individuals who wish to do so can become politically powerful. Prime Ministers and Presidents are almost uniformly millionaires. Elections often become a money-spending contest, which favours the party whose members have the most financial wealth. Many important issues are ignored because they don't interest the rich power brokers. The more purely capitalist an economy is, the more it suffers from such a nation/state disconnect.

♦Opaque mechanics. Although "ideal" free-market capitalism assumes perfect access to economic information by many independent actors, the reality is very different. Most activity is performed by large private companies which have an interest in secrecy. Even with publicly available information, only large organizations can afford to gather extensive data. Some companies falsify internal or public bookkeeping, especially right before a market crash. This makes it difficult to fix systemic problems; when the economy crashes, decision makers' only source of information is public data... which is bit like trying to fix a car engine with your eyes closed. Last year the US government nationalized several bankrupt banks with no idea of their true financial situation. Without transparency, there is no hope of fixing or even understanding modern capitalism.

Academia, which in theory should investigate the behaviour and problems of capitalism, is unfortunately mostly useless. Because so much money is involved, there is a strong incentive for economists to justify the status quo or decisions which the powerful have already taken. For instance, Reagan's tax cuts for the rich led to "trickle-down economics", which even now has some believers. Such theoretical systems are only self-consistent insofar as they ignore contradicting factors. Without well-funded research, it is more difficult to identify solutions for many problems of capitalism.


Unlike me, those we elected to fix the EconoMess still consider the economy a machine to be fixed. They're no fools: most of them benefit directly from the "wealth output" of that machine. But what we really need is not economic "engineers" or "mechanics" but doctors: someone who understands that feeding a hungry man is no use if the man's lungs are collapsing. Even in good times, capitalism simply doesn't work. Let's address the real needs of real people and then worry about the theoretical details.


*My working definition of capitalism is a system of resource distribution characterized by many independent actors, each of whom act to maximize their financial wealth (ie net worth in dollars, euros, etc.). Labour, capital, and goods are bought and sold in a free market. The demand for value-added products will distribute resources so as to maximize the total creation of wealth. All goods and services are produced privately and all wealth is privately owned, that is, individuals have no right to property except through paid labour, capital gains and interest, or gifts and inheritance. Pure capitalism has never occured because it assumes the absence of corporations, labour unions, states, and other collective institutions.

Clever as FOX

Any time I read comment threads or internet message boards, I find a vocal minority who are completely batty. (On some boards, they're a majority.) Nothing is too outlandish. The economic meltdown is Obama's fault; creationism should be taught in science class; taxes should be abolished; climate change is a conspiracy by scientists to get more funding; all moslems hate freedom; our soldiers can only win if we publicly support them; Jesus loves you but if you don't praise him he will torture you for eternity; and on and on... I enjoy debating, but faced with such "arguments" I hardly know what to say. I used to keep a set of e-ripostes to cut-and-paste whenever I saw the same old drivel, but now I rarely bother. As they say, "don't try to wrestle a pig; you'll both get dirty, and besides, he enjoys it."

Bust'd

I ran across an obscure 1975 book by JK Galbraith, Money, a brief and entertaining history of currency and banking. In recent times, that consists of capitalism's great booms and busts (interspersed with central planning during major wars). With respect to the US, he sketches out the crashes of 1778, 1819, 1837, 1857, 1873, 1884, 1893, 1907, 1921, and 1929 (to which we could perhaps add 1973, 1980, 1987, 2000, and 2008). The root of the problem is always someone's "new" way of creating money out of thin air; if investors and legislators go along with it, it becomes a financial bubble which wreaks havoc when it bursts. Afterwards, remorseful legislators impose restrictions to prevent a recurrence... and a few years later those restrictions are quietly removed.

He illuminates some patterns. For one thing, financial bubbles are often the consequence of military overreach. A clear example is the US War of Independence, which could not conceivably be financed by taxation (there was no state apparatus yet) or loans (creditors were not convinced the fledgling state would survive). So the American rebels printed money (see image above) with a certain (inadequate) amount of gold to back it up. True, the money devalued almost to zero after the war, but by then the state was secure. If you think that's ancient history, just look at The Three Trillion Dollar War. The event that bursts the bubble is usually in the civilian real estate or stock markets, but the original bubble came from the monetary policy of the state.

He also points out:

"During the last century and until 1907, the United States had panics, and that, unabashedly, is what they were called. But, by 1907, language was becoming, like so much else, the servant of economic interest. To minimize the shock to confidence, businessmen and bankers had started to explain that any current economic setback was not really a panic, but a crisis. [...] By the 1920's, however, the word crisis had also acquired the fearsome connotation of the event it described. Accordingly, men offered reassurance by explaining that it was not a crisis, only a depression. A very soft word. Then the Great Depression associated the most frightful of economic misfortunes with that term, and economic semanticists now explained that no depression was in prospect, at most only a recession. In the 1950's, when there was a modest setback, economists and public officials were united in denying that it was a recession--only a sidewise movement or a rolling readjustment. Mr Herbert Stein, the amiable man whose difficult honor it was to serve as the economic voice of Richard Nixon, would have referred to the panic of 1893 as a growth correction." (103)

Alas, all too true. With each burst bubble, a legion of teleconomists appears with new mushmouth words for it: "market correction", "slowdown", and most recently "credit crisis". We need macroeconomists who actually study the real economy, draw conclusions, and make reasonable predictions and recommendations--people with intellectual integrity and a memory longer than 6 months--not the glorified grief counselors we have now. Joseph Stiglitz, are you listening?

Galbraith touches on many other topics as well. Here is a good passage about the de facto adoption of cigarettes as the currency of 1945 Germany:

"This was the equivalent, in all respects, of a well-considered coinage. The single cigarette was excellent small change; the package of twenty and the carton of two hundred were convenient multiples for large or major transactions. The decimal form was modified but not to the point of mathematical difficulty. Few forms of money in history have been more difficult to counterfeit. None had within it such an excellent tendency to self-regulation of its value. If the exchange value of cigarettes had a tendency to fall, i.e., if supply was too great and the price of products in exchange for cigarettes too high, there was a tendency for the holder of this coin to smoke it up or offer it to his addicted friends rather than pass it on. This had the effect of reducing supply, maintaining value." (251)

Hope meets fear

President Obama made his first visit to Canada today, a one-day, hyper-security visit to Parliament. Needless to say, I'm mortified that Stephen Harper is the chief representative of Canada. If Obama had given a speech I might have slogged my way downtown, but I didn't have much interest in watching his bulletproof limo speed down the Airport Parkway, so I stayed home. All in all, he got a very warm welcome from Canadians.

I'm pleased with many of Obama's policies, although it's far too early to judge their success. He seems to take climate change seriously. But his cabinet appointments and especially his foreign policy are very worrisome to me. First, Obama intends to expand the US military, a $700 billion/year Leviathan whose 800 bases outside US territory house 600 000 soldiers, spies, mercenaries, and miscellaneous contractors. Although he intends to reduce the troops in Iraq by about half by mid-2010, he will redirect those forces to expand the war in Afghanistan into Pakistan, a politically unstable nuclear state. He unconditionally supports Israel's attacks on Lebanon and Gaza. Worst of all, he keeps repeating Bush's completely unfounded claim that Iran has a nuclear weapon program which must be dismantled. (Israel, a nuclear state, has repeatedly threatened to attack Iran for its alleged nuclear ambitions.)

Before the election, you could say that he needed to look tough to attract Republican voters. But now he's the commander-in-chief, inheritor of all of Bush's extraordinary executive powers. Why is he taking steps towards even more war?

Bus strike epilogue

I had a letter to the editor printed in the local paper about the bus strike which ended this week.


Re "Strike cost city $13.4M--so far" Feb 10, A1

Dear Ottawa Citizen:
Mayor O'Brien--thanks to your hard-nosed negotiating, Ottawa bus drivers are slightly poorer. Sure, it cost all of us more than it saved, and many of us risked our lives or our jobs biking or hitchhiking to work at 20 below... but the final symbolic victory made it all worth it. I can't wait to see your next innovative morale-boosting and cost-saving strategy.

No more crumbs for you

(click on image to enlarge)

Above are two cartoons by Ruben Bolling, who pens Tom the Dancing Bug, a brilliant mix of absurdity, irony, and satire. He's part of a small community of full-time alternative cartoonists. (The latest TtDB compilation is the 2004 Thrilling Tom the Dancing Bug Stories, and an overview of the genre can be found in Ted Rall's Attitude series.) Unlike strips like Garfield, Mary Worth, or Hagar the Horrible, alternative cartoons have to fight to survive, and their creators work for (ahem) peanuts. However, there was terrible news a few weeks ago: due to the recession, the largest altweekly syndicate, Village Voice Media, decided to cancel all cartoons in its dozen major weeklies. Many excellent cartoons will probably disappear. I can only hope there are enough fans willing to pay directly to keep the cartoons alive.

...and Blondie has been running 7 days a week for 80 years. There's no justice.

Update: I should add that alternative comics don't only face competition from daily three-panel gag cartoons; they also compete with an army of so-called editorial cartoons. Every paper has them, and 99% are utterly vacuous. Take a look at this collection of cartoons after Michael Phelps was photographed smoking pot. There is no insight and minimal artistic value. Invasion of privacy? Expensive and destructive War on Drugs? Distractions from real news? Why bother taking a stand when you can reinforce the readers' preconceptions?

A real editorial cartoon, by Matt Wuerker. He's not exactly incendiary, but even so he is only published in a few newspapers.
If you ever come across it, Art Spiegelman wrote a very insightful article for Harper's a few years ago about editorial cartooning called "Drawing Blood".

Where is he now? redux

Like so many others these days, I am unemployed. It's boring, frustrating, lonely, and humiliating. But things could be far, far worse.

I am staying for free with my parents in Ottawa while I look for work. I have no income, but my expenses are very low, and there are good job prospects because the federal government is based here. I have no family to support, no fixed lease or mortgage to pay, no car payments, and no high-interest debt, so I don't need to work a low-wage job in the interim (although I do have one I can fall back on).

So far, I've been following the same script as I did in Vancouver: cook and clean to earn my keep, job hunt during the day, exercise, phone my friends, and read library books. After 6 months of job hunting, I'm really running out of ideas, so I'm down to 4-5 hours a week of that. I decided that I need to do something new before I lose my mind, so I'll start volunteering, studying Russian, taking aikido classes, and pursuing my research project. If this recession gets worse I may be un- or underemployed for quite a while, and I need to find some fulfillment and balance.

Ergo failure

My limited knowledge and incomplete logic doesn't tell me whether the trillion-dollar bailouts will lead to hyperinflation. I just don't know the details of how it is financed and distributed. I find it hard to believe that a government with $10 trillion in debt could find creditors willing to lend another trillion... but without raising taxes or cutting spending, where will that money come from?

I think I've wasted too much time already trying to make sense of our dysfunctional economic system and its handmaidens. When I have a nonzero income, I'll be able to make financial/economic choices, but for now I'll stick with my employment, language, and technical projects.