No Principles of Economics?

The latest episode of Economic Update, Where Economic Theories Clash, strongly implies something I feared regarding the field of Economics. In it, Richard Wolff called Neo-classical economics, Keynesian economics and Marxian economics 'theories' of economics which implies they have undergone some form of validation or testing (scientific theories are vigorously tested before they are called 'theories'). But in real economies, each of these 'theories' has failed in one permutation or other. This suggests that Economics has no unifying principles. [To use the physical sciences as an example (again): the Theory of Evolution is a unifying principle in biology - it connects all living organisms and justifies the study of model organisms to better understand life; Atomic Theory is a unifying principle of chemistry - it predicts the behavior of all matter.] An example of a possible unifying economic principle is the presumption that functional economies must yield profit; this would have strong implications for capitalism.

This is particularly troubling when it comes to policy. All public policy is economic policy and it is argued and made on the basis of Economic theory. If Economic theory is as poorly developed as implied above, then for all intents and purposes, Economic theory is ideology without basis in empirical principle. As it stands now, the science of climate change has very strong physical evidence backing it and thus should drive energy policy. In its stead, we have nonsense 'economic' arguments that the cost of protecting the biosphere is 'too expensive'. Policy makers are balancing the future of humanity against the profiteering of capitalists at our ignorance. If science can detangle systems as complex as climate to predicted global climate change, it should be able to apply similar methods to answer the question of how to best structure economies for the sake of mankind. Economies should serve humanity not the other way around.

Cult of Fear

This was intended as a comment on a Truthout.org post about how politicians, especially Republicans, use fear to manipulate voters into supporting them. However, my argument got a little too complex for a simple comment, so its only appearance is here:

Marketing appeals to fear and sex to sell because human biology is programmed to respond to these emotions. Monotheistic religions capitalize on fear in two ways: (1) Religions justify fear by providing an object – women are a constant threat to the power of men; their sexuality is their most fearsome weapon and must be brought to heel and under the control of men. (2) A fearsome all powerful, all knowing being has all the answers. But those answers are too much for men’s small brains and most men can’t communicate with the big dude anyway. Only special people (kings, emperors, popes, and the like) get to translate for him.

In modern times, religion teaches believers to trust their church authority (most people don’t read primary religious texts) over what can be objectively measured (faith over science). When personal faith is imbued in the words of an authority figure, it’s easy to transfer that trust into other people who present similar absolute certainty (for example, Rush Limbaugh is never wrong). Enter right-wing media which gives self-aggrandizing braggarts enormous forums and infrastructure to in essence to form cults (like Fox News under Roger Ailes). As bad as Democrats are, they have not codified the ideological Cult of Fear that Republicans so effectively used to ensnare their followers. Republican followers are told to fear women for taking men’s jobs and dignity; fear immigrants for taking jobs; fear Muslims for terrorism; fear liberals for taking their guns (but not to fear guns); fear science/scientists for their ‘self-interested agendas’; fear President Obama for being a foreign born Muslim; fear black people for existing; fear Obamacare for insurance mandate; fear the poor for needing social services; fear veterans for using the VA… In the face of such terrifying scenarios, cultists are told Republican politicians know how to keep them safe from all these threats.

Fear is the defensive emotion to the unknown. That’s why Republicans fear science. Science is a system of knowledge that seeks to determine patterns capable of accurately predicting the future. In other words, science answers questions about the feared unknown. The question is how to stage a cult intervention on the scale of roughly half the U.S. population.

Update: Yes, evangelical cults exists and they can be difficult to escape from.

economics is life

Economics is life because economics is how workers provide the necessities of life. In exchange for labor, workers earn the means to purchase food, clothing, shelter and all other sundries. But the policy and practice of economics does not account for the inherent life aspect of economics. Instead, economics is defined as "a social science concerned chiefly with description and analysis of the production, distribution, and consumption of goods and services" [Wikipedia]. And this has allowed governments and policy makers to couch the purpose of economic policy only to the end goal of creating capital, another word for wealth and profit.

With a 'pro-economy' argument, essentially every decision of the DJT presidency is intended to generate profits for the owner class without regard for workers. Oil pipelines have been approved at the risk of contaminating the soil and water necessary for human consumption and agriculture. Health care reform to profit insurance providers is under consideration at the risk of workers losing medical insurance or essential benefits with the projected likelihood of decreasing overall life expectancy.

These policies literally put profit over life. And that is completely contrary to the purpose of work. If work cannot provide the means to survive, their is no reason or purpose to work. So the current definition of economics is incomplete. It needs to include a purpose, the survival and wellbeing of workers. And because workers are always making more workers in the form of children, wellbeing has to extend into time, the sustained survival and wellbeing of workers.

Economic policy that must take the long term wellbeing of workers in account would change the nature of geopolitics and culture. It would be a positive change.

Susceptibility to demagoguery

Comment at Crooks&Liars:

People who have learned to believe myths and fairy tales, also known as theist religions, are more susceptible to demagoguery. They readily expand their circle of information/authority to demigods. Aggressive right wing braggarts are today's demigods.

Our five senses are essential to survival. They tell us when our environment is safe or dangerous and guide our daily activities. Religion and faith programs believers into believing the existence of beings that cannot be sensed and to trust the authority figures of their church. Larger than life political personalities assume a similar mantle of authority by the way they present themselves. Even the Bible, which is not the word of God, warns of worshiping false idols.

Scientific theories are emergent properties

Part of Wikipedia entry:

In philosophy, systems theory, science, and art, emergence is a phenomenon whereby larger entities arise through interactions among smaller or simpler entities such that the larger entities exhibit properties the smaller/simpler entities do not exhibit. 

Emergence is central in theories of integrative levels and of complex systems. For instance, the phenomenon of life as studied in biology is an emergent property of chemistry and psychological phenomena emerge from the neurobiological phenomena of living things.
In philosophy, theories that emphasize emergent properties have been called emergentism. Almost all accounts of emergentism include a form of epistemic or ontological irreducibility to the lower levels.

Scientific theories are the distilled explanations that emerge from the sum of known empirically observed facts.

Insidious capitalism

Anyone who has read any portion of this blog knows I advocate strongly for information transparency. Net neutrality is essential to information transparency. Lee Fang has an article up at The Intercept about how telecoms have 'invested' (capitalist speak) in civil rights groups to persuade them to lobby against their larger interests against net neutrality.

This is another example of the power of the elite to push the economic narrative to their advantage (and profit). It is also more evidence of the importance of information. The power of the elite is derived directly and indirectly from the information they control. To free ourselves of their influence, we must have free access to all this information. Without net neutrality, telecoms control much of our information infrastructure.

Transparency over banning

My comment at a Truthout.org article: Gene Drives: A Scientific Case for a Complete and Perpetual Ban which proposes banning gene drives 'techniques to promote the inheritance of specific alleles':

Broadly speaking, the scale, scope and range of human economically driven activity has extended beyond the containment of normal (non-human) geophysical, geochemical or biological systems. The only hope for containment is other human activity. When most of the human decision making (various forms of consumption) is directed by profit making business interests, controlling information is key. Consumers are told consumption will make them happy and the planet is good and dandy (more profits for business!). If consumers actually understood the unknowns and risks of their consumption (less profit for business), we would all be living in a far different world.

When the disposition of privately owned information is enforced by the power of the state, it's not difficult to control its dissemination. When all information is publicly owned, it becomes very difficult to apply it in secret.

Update: same post

Someone commented: I still haven't read any evidence of actual harm. Only potential, theoretical harm. Did I miss something?

I responded:

The impact of an asteroid caused the extinction of dinosaurs. The outcome of such an event could not be tested prior to it happening. It was possible that the asteroid would break up into chunks and disintegrate into smaller less destructive meteors but as it happens, that natural experiment resulted in the mass extinction of the majority of the plant and animal species on earth. Climate change is an anthropogenic global scale experiment with a potential outcome on a similar scale for humans and the environment. The risk of gene drive technology is unknown and may fall into a similar scale. In theory, a large asteroid impact (or climate change or gene drive or any novel chemical(s)) could do minimal damage, in fact, it has the potential to do immense damage.

If you chose to expose yourself to the risk, please contain its effect to yourself and do not place anyone else at risk.

Repeat

Sorry for the repost. This is a record of another Truthout comment. They seem to be censoring me...

Truthout may be censoring my comments. I wrote this in response to another post but much of it is relevant here - terms have been adjusted to reflect this. It has been on 'pending' status for close to three business hours at this point... 

The media is not fully at fault here. Nor, for that matter, is fault at the foot of the First Amendment. The problem is the concentration of power. Concentration of economic power => concentration of political power => continuous feedback to increase power concentration (greater media consolidation) => fewer media voices/viewpoints. This is the step wise consequence of the elite doing everything they can to increase their power. In 'open' economies and countries, the elite are the capitalists (in modern parlance, corporatists); in China, the elite are generally members of the Central Committee; in Russia, Putin confers 'elite' status. 

The solutions offered by progressives, return to greater media regulation, primarily through government programs/policy, are short term fixes. They want to shift power to a (slightly) different set of elites while keeping structures of power (government & corporations) intact. This sets up a situation where the 'losing' elites will use the system to regain their lost advantages. That's the entire story of the Republican effort to reverse the New Deal. 

The real solution is to fully disseminate power to every citizen and individual. And the key to that is to maximize transparency so information is freely available. The elites have power because they control information. If their hold on information is taken away, neither they nor anyone else will be able to concentrate power in the future. From a media perspective, this translates to: all means of disseminating information should be essentially free. 

Warning to readers: Truthout may be censoring the content of allowed comments. In the more than 1 hour since writing this post, another comment has been written, approved and posted. This brings to question the 'journalistic' integrity of this institution. Bear in mind some issue I brought up elsewhere:
My comment at a piece Lewis Wallace wrote called 'Objectivity is dead, and I’m okay with it':
In no particular order:
1. Textbooks are carefully vetted for their content. In recent years, there have been any number of partisan battles to rewrite a historical bent but these seldom occur in backrooms. This means what schoolchildren learn has undergone some degree of scrutiny. The information available to adults by way of media does not undergo an equivalent degree of scrutiny for accuracy; in fact, it is legal for media to outright lie. This placed the burden of critical evaluation on consumers who more often than not, do not have the wherewithal to carry out that responsibility. ‘You decide’ is by definition, not journalism. I am not knowledgeable of most topics, I need knowledgeable journalists to accurately *and* pointedly highlight lies, mis-directions and distortions.
2. Today’s news in tomorrow’s historical record. Consider how little we know about the past (very little is known about lives of slaves, women and poor) because only white male voices were recorded, often silenced by deliberately and maliciously enforced illiteracy. There’s is no excuse or justification for that in this day and age of near universal literacy and vast mechanisms of information dissemination.
3. Some examples of false binaries that the media promulgates by never deviating beyond their boundaries: (a.) Political ideology is not fully covered by the Democratic Party’s definition of ‘liberal’ and the Republican Party’s definition of ‘conservative’. Alternate models of organizing health insurance (user pays vs single payer) or childcare (private vs. state subsidized) or criminal justice (reform/punitive) for example. (b.) Social gender is not biologically defined by sex; neither is biological sex always clear cut. All issues related to sexual identity and sexuality. (c.) Socialism is always public and capitalism is always private. Private insurance providers run by socialist principles; publicly owned utilities operate much like capitalist corporations.
4. What it means to be ‘objective’ or ‘neutrality’, journalistically speaking? (a.) to not insert any voice outside of the news item — journalism by stenography or “ ‘you decide’ journalism”; (b.) insert ‘opposite’ voice of news item — journalism as sports commentary; (c.) insert corrections of specifically mentioned lies; (d.) insert relevant factual context — for example, “…the millions of dollars mentioned by the Senator lost to fraud accounts for less than 1% of the overall program.”; (e) insert long term context — future cost/savings; past injustices.
Your essay was couched primarily in terms of journalistic integrity; it’s critical to also include the responsibility journalism has to public and social integrity.

China is not responsible for U.S. decline

It seems that Truthout.org maybe censoring their comments section. This is a comment I am attempting to post here. We will see if it passes muster.

China is not to blame for the declining working class. Nor, for that matter, is capitalism at fault. The problem is the concentration of power. Concentration of economic power => concentration of political power => continuous feedback to increase power concentration => greater feeding on labor of workers => increasing the numbers of workers to feed the power hungry => globalization. The shift of manufacturing jobs overseas is the step wise consequence of the elite doing everything they can to increase their power. In capitalistic economies, the elite are the capitalists (in modern parlance, corporatists); in China, the elite are generally members of the Central Committee; in Russia, Putin confers 'elite' status. 

The solutions offered by progressives, more equitable wealth redistribution, primarily through government programs/policy, are short term fixes. They want to shift power to a (slightly) different set of elites while keeping structures of power (government & corporations) intact. This sets up a situation where the 'losing' elites will use the system to regain their lost advantages. That's the entire story of the republican effort to reverse the New Deal.  

The real solution is to fully disseminate power to every citizen and individual. And the key to that is to maximize transparency so information is freely available. The elites have power because they control information. If their hold on information is taken away, neither they nor anyone else will be able to concentrate power in the future.

Note: Truthout does seem to be censoring content/concepts and not  language/tone. It has been more than 1 hour and my comment has yet to be posted. Within that time, another comment has been written and posted. This is a sign of highly questionable journalistic integrity. The comment above is not rude nor combative in tone; it challenges the status quo and that is scary.

Note: It's been over 21 hours and at this point, this is censorship. Few readers will read articles days after posting, much less follow comments.

Note: After three days, Truthout posted my comment. They responded to my email query and said the delay had to do with a a updated word filter that picked up 'feedback' as possible expletive. I rarely use expletives. The English language is rich enough that there are plenty of ways to express expletive worthy emotions.

Update: As it turns out, Truthout.org has not changed its comment policy. They had a filter in place that disliked the word 'feedback' because it starts with 'f' and ends with 'ck'. My comment was posted days after it was submitted.

What is Journalism?

My comment at a piece Lewis Wallace wrote called Objectivity is dead, and I’m okay with it:

In no particular order: 

    1.    Textbooks are carefully vetted for their content. In recent years, there have been any number of partisan battles to rewrite a historical bent but these seldom occur in backrooms. This means what schoolchildren learn has undergone some degree of scrutiny. The information available to adults by way of media does not undergo an equivalent degree of scrutiny for accuracy; in fact, it is legal for media to outright lie. This placed the burden of critical evaluation on consumers who more often than not, do not have the wherewithal to carry out that responsibility. ‘You decide’ is by definition, not journalism. I am not knowledgeable of most topics, I need knowledgeable journalists to accurately *and* pointedly highlight lies, mis-directions and distortions. 

    2.    Today’s news in tomorrow’s historical record. Consider how little we know about the past (very little is known about lives of slaves, women and poor) because only white male voices were recorded, often silenced by deliberately and maliciously enforced illiteracy. There’s is no excuse or justification for that in this day and age of near universal literacy and vast mechanisms of information dissemination. 

    3.    Some examples of false binaries that the media promulgates by never deviating beyond their boundaries: (a.) Political ideology is not fully covered by the Democratic Party’s definition of ‘liberal’ and the Republican Party’s definition of ‘conservative’. Alternate models of organizing health insurance (user pays vs single payer) or childcare (private vs. state subsidized) or criminal justice (reform/punitive) for example. (b.) Social gender is not biologically defined by sex; neither is biological sex always clear cut. All issues related to sexual identity and sexuality. (c.) Socialism is always public and capitalism is always private. Private insurance providers run by socialist principles; publicly owned utilities operate much like capitalist corporations. 

    4.     What it means to be ‘objective’ or ‘neutrality’, journalistically speaking? (a.) to not insert any voice outside of the news item — journalism by stenography or “ ‘you decide’ journalism”; (b.) insert ‘opposite’ voice of news item — journalism as sports commentary; (c.) insert corrections of specifically mentioned lies; (d.) insert relevant factual context — for example, “…the millions of dollars mentioned by the Senator lost to fraud accounts for less than 1% of the overall program.”; (e) insert long term context — future cost/savings; past injustices. 

Your essay was couched primarily in terms of journalistic integrity; it’s critical to also include the responsibility journalism has to public and social integrity.

He was fired for posting his piece. I hope things work out well for him. We need journalists of his caliber.