Monoculture of nation-states

Barack Obama held a town hall in Berlin recently. [As an aside, his intelligence and oration are such a refreshing contrast to POTUS DJT.] Part of his answer to a question was (~20:10):

[in a democracy]... you never get 100% of what you want...

So far as it goes, this is true. But there also seems to be the presumption that what the consensus agrees to is the 'right' or 'best' answer... what if it's not? The political consensus on nuclear weapons had the U.S. build and stockpile thousands of nuclear warheads, enough to push the entire planet into nuclear winter several times over. And the slow pace of political solutions to climate change would see the likely decimation of the human population due to wars, famines and disease brought about by climate disruption before a 'political' solution is considered.

This reminds me much of the dangers of agricultural monoculturing, when corporate commercial farming grows only the most productive/mechanization friendly strain of any single crop and through their neglect, lose the genetic diversity of less 'useful' strains. Small farms will grow other strains for other reasons (flavor, growth conditions, resistance, etc.). Monoculturing only preserves the information of one strain while the vast information in other strains are lost. Nation-states are similar in that the ideas and memes of the powerful become dominant and other ideas are muted to the point of loss. The lack of diversity in ideas and approaches also means little to no opportunity to test social solutions. Smaller units of governance means more units of governance which increases diversity and diversity/flexibility of thinking is the source of innovation. Small units of governance are flexible in contrast to the rigidity of large nation-states.

Capitalism is destroying the economy

Michael Hudson was interviewed at TRNN. He links the incentives of stock market, financialized capitalism to the failure of the American economy to thrive; instead of investing in innovation and workers, owners are feeding off workers through monopoly. It fits into my ideas of how ecosystems are a metaphor/model for economies. Go read/watch/listen. It's very informative. 

My comment:

The key take homes: "Trump's donors were basically the monopolists: the Koch brothers, and the oil and gas industry, and other far-right-wing corporate organizations that are all in favor of monopoly... Both parties have the same donor class and they're trying to get elected by groups in America that they have no intention at all of carrying forth their promises to help their interests." 

Follow the money trail for motive and intent of policy. And know that a major intent of policy and regulation is to hide & control information to make it difficult or illegal to follow the money. 

As I've posted in the past, regulations are tools of power to control information. Secrecy and control of information are enemies of democracy. Without transparency, voters/consumers are choosing between packaging with no clue of what's inside, like choosing between multiple doors in a game show; they could all be hiding the same 'prize'. Increasing transparency through universal whisteblower protection is a good place to start. 

Theories of inequality antecede economic benefits

Comment at Truthout where historian Ibram X. Kendi discusses the root and cures of racism in America:

Dr. Kendi clearly defined the causal relationship: economic benefit precedes racist ideas precedes persistent cultural racism. This relationship applies to *all* manner of division, not just racism. 

Economic benefited class -> 'theory' of inequality -> policy and culture of inequality 

some examples:(1) big Republican donors -> trickle-down/supply-side economics -> 'deregulation' & right to work(2) religious right -> abortion is murder -> post Roe v. Wade abortion restrictions(3) POTUS DJT (and other politicians) -> 'illegal' aliens are criminals -> mass deportation 

The cure for these inequities is not embedded in their theories or policies. Because they are rooted in economic inequality (unequal economic power), their cure is to equalize economic power. And the secret to decentralizing power is information transparency/dissemination. The wealth/power of modern corporations and institutions are derived directly from the information they control or 'own' (patents, copyrights, trademarks, branding, proprietary/trade secrets, 'national security' secrets, etc.). Looser controls on information would increase opportunities for economic competition and, over time, decrease economic disparity.

Low taxes is bad economics

David Graeber is a Professor of Anthropology at the London School of Economics. This is his response when asked about DJT's intent to decrease the corporate tax rate at TRNN:

The point at which the U.S. did the most technological research and had the most productive corporations was when the tax rates were highest. The reason you had Bell Labs in the 50s was they had a 90% tax rate on the highest brackets of income, and they had a 60%, I can't remember what it was, corporate tax rate. It was very high. 

At a certain rate of profits, you're not going to keep it anyway, so people would say, "Okay, we'll give higher wages to our workers, make them happy. Why not give it to them instead of the government?" They'd say, "We'll invest in research, because you can write that off." There was a massive amount of internal research, and also just general improvement of productivity, because it paid to invest in that if you ended up having to give it in taxes anyway. The more that taxes go down, the more they just take that money and put it in financial stuff instead, basically trapping other people in debt, extracting rents of one kind or another. Lowering the tax rate is just going to cause them to invest even less in productivity and more in predatory activities.

I wonder about the role of being au courant or fashionable... 

When taxes were high, what was the fashion amongst the 1%? What did they did they want to show off and compete amongst themselves? The wellbeing/wages of their workers? The innovative products/ideas they funded? Today, taxes are low and the 1% seemingly compete to cheat their workers of more and more of their wages/labor so they can claim to have made more profits. Just contrast the views of high tax George Romney, father, to those of low tax Mitt Romney, son.

Owner rights

It seems to me that Trump's budget director, Mick Mulvaney, is of the opinion he and his socioeconomic class 'owns' the taxes paid by American workers to the government. My comment:

There is a presumption among Mulvaney and his ilk that ownership confers additional/special rights. Unfortunately, they've influenced legislators and judges to their side with court rulings like Citizens United which give owners additional rights of personhood through corporate proxies. The 'owners' responsible for the financial collapse of 2007/8 are protected from prosecution. Contrast this to low income and especially low income minorities who own very little and are prosecuted and jailed at much higher rates for less egregious crimes. 

Mulvaney is just expressing this doctrine more openly - owners control everything - wages, profits, spending, workers' health, workers' rights, workers' votes. everything. They should keep in mind what happened to Arthur William Hodge and the French Revolution.

The current administration really needs to figure out who owns what (American public owns the public lands) and who governs what (elected officials and unelected civil servants) and who's direction (voters).

Entitled politicians

An Oklahoma Republican, Markwayne Mullin, actually said taxpayers do not pay his salary. Instead, representing his constituents is a 'service' he provides.

IMHO, this is deserves to be filed in the dictionary under 'entitlement'.

Capitalism - entitlement to everything (profits, wages, labor, taxes, subsidies, infrastructure, public services) workers produce and pay for.

March-in rights

Who knew?... Apparently the federal government has some rights to the intellectual property developed from publicly funded research:

Here's how it works. When the federal government — through an agency like the National Institutes of Health — pays for medical research that leads to an invention that can be patented, federal law gives the government a license to use that intellectual property.

According to the NPR story,  Rep. Lloyd Doggett of Texas has requested the U.S. exercise these rights to decrease drug prices. Not only has NIH refused to do so, they've also refused to hold hearings. Supposedly one reason is fear that:

... lower prices could also make drug companies less eager to invest lots of money in new medications.

...

"Perhaps we as a country would rather have lower drug prices and a little less innovation," Ellison said.

Stupid argument. Right now, big pharma uses their huge treasuries to strong arm competition out of the market - they lobby for trade agreements that protect their intellectual property and regulations that keep smaller firms out of the market. If big pharma decides to not invest in research, this opens business opportunities for small firms. So not only would drug prices come down due to competition from government licensed production, they would likely be more competition from newly invented products.

Transparency of information is good economics. Even as little as permitting more than one institution (a pharma and the government) to make use of it has the potential to improve the market for consumers.

BTW, taxpayers paid for the research on drugs under discussion. Right now, taxpayers pay to invent the drugs (researchers earn a living) and taxpayers pay to buy the drugs (big pharma makes astronomical profits). My preference would be to give the inventors a significant bonus and allow any pharma to produce and sell it under safe conditions. The drug information is freely available to all taxpayers and the drugs are available at very competitive prices.


Update: NPR story suggests U.S. government buy a drug company to lower drug price. Effectively, this is another way for the public to buy intellectual property. Owning the rights to a drug allows makers to control how much they can charge - it's a monopoly on that item. These two stories are varients of transfering intellectual property from private control to public control - increasing transparency.

Why do they need to see ID?

Shopping is far from my favorite activity and I had a highly questionable experience recently when exchanging a gift. As it happens, a brand name retailer wanted to see my ID for an exchange... why was this necessary? Legal identification has a great deal of personal information which a retailer has no need to access. Are they building a a marketing database? Are they planning to sell my information?

At this point, I will forego purchasing anything with this brand logo. They have enough on me; I see no reason to allow them more profit.

Note: I should have said I don't carry ID.

A silly rant...

... but perhaps indicative of profit seeking corporate culture.

My MacBook needs a new battery. Fine. I'm not happy but I'll deal. I also don't have a car so I either walk or take public transportation. Also fine, I deal. But when I called the Apple store to ask if they had the battery in stock, you know, so I didn't have to trek all the way over to the mall for no reason... guess what?

They can't talk to me on the phone because I don't have a service contract!

I ended up going to a small independently operated computer store. They had to order the battery so it'll take a few days but the personal contact beats the electronic Apple voice any day. Especially when the electronic Apple voice isn't willing to answer a non-device specific diagnostic question.