Archive for August, 2021

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Decline of the West 02: Massive Inequality of Wealth

August 14, 2021

While general living standard matters, relative wealth inequality also matters.

The less wealth a person has relative to other people the more constrained their actions. The more wealth they have relative to other people, the freer they are to act, team up with others, and to shape politics to reinforce their wealth.

The more unequal the wealth distribution, the less chance of ideas which do not support the security of the wealthy getting much spread – especially given the media are corporately owned, or billionaire owned, and supported.

Many wealthy people seem safer in a pandemic than others, because they don’t have to go to work, they can do their work online, or rest, they can keep relatively isolated, they can flee to isolated islands and so on. Poor and middle class people people are forced into the danger to survive, or to keep their homes.

I suspect the wealthy also think they can move away from climate change, and set up their own enclaves in small safe countries such as New Zealand [1], [2], [3] or Tasmania, so there is nothing for them to worry about. If so, this is running away from the problems, and hoping to leave them for other people to suffer, but that is simply a suspicion. It may not be correct.

Solutions to economic problems often seem to benefit the wealth elites more than the benefit those who desperately need help. For instance my government is pursuing small people for extra unnecessary hundreds of dollars they may have got from Covid relief, while letting profitable big business, wealthy private schools or the right churches, retain hundreds of thousands to millions without question.

We learnt repeatedly how much extra wealth the billionaire class gained during the pandemic. [2] This may not be a problem, but how many of those billionaires used an extra billion or so to help protect their workers? Not that many as far as I can tell. They are the elite who set the tone after all. Not surprisingly, less wealthy people, without the monetary resilience, fell into poverty.

The problem here is that most of the English speaking West is a Plutocracy [3]. Ignoring wealth as source of power, which seems the standard approach, seems odd, and any honest economic praxeology would have to note the normality of crony capitalism and the likelihood of the wealthy teaming up to preserve their wealth and power, and to run things in a way that favours them. Fossil Fuel companies can buy Think Tanks, politicians, media presenters and even museums.

Some countries will have more plutocrats and others less. The extreme wealth elites are going to be small. And the smaller and more concentrated they are, then it seems probable that they will be more dominant. After all, wealth buys every other source of power – and the more relative wealth some groups have, the less wealth is around to counteract their propaganda and influence. The much fewer billionaires in India than in the US, does not mean they have less influence.

During the cold war, the West took the option of trying to increase the participation of ordinary people and provide a real saftey net for them, to protect against revolution. This incidentally gave people some extra freedom, as being sacked was less of a problem for survival – people could move out of intolerable working conditions, which helped improve working conditions. Governments did this partially by tax rates which look extraordinary nowadays, driving low unemployment rates, and partially by supporting union participation in government and workplaces. This was also a period of massive social mobility. You can think of the opening of public education to working classes, cheaper non-charity health services, public housing, yearly rising wages and so on.

It certainly made a huge difference to my family.

After the collapse of the Soviet Union, there was no longer any need to avoid revolution. Middle incomes declined relative to upper level incomes (and particularly to upper, upper level incomes, and people power seemed to diminish. No one paid any attention to the massive demonstrations against the second Iraq war, or in favour of climate action. Back to the gilded age, and the conditions and alienation which gave birth to Trump.

Plutocracy adds to the hardships of the poor and the lower middle class, because policies and ‘the rules’ are aimed at benefitting the rich, and assume that people have money, and that if they don’t they are inferior and exploitable, or should depend on the generosity of the rich, rather than be self-supporting. Hence things like Robodebt, which penalises those unemployed people who actually tried to support themselves, and the generosity of taxpayers to companies in crisis and harshness to those without money.

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Decline of the West 01: Run from problems

August 14, 2021

Climate change and ecological damage.

People have known, at a public political level about climate since the late 1980s and we basically have done nothing except increase the rate of producing greenhouse gases. Even now with year after year of temperature records, wild weather all over the world, major ice melts, and the UN calling for no new fossil fuel fields, the US, UK and Australian governments (among others) are promoting new coal and gas mines. The Australian government is enmeshed in fantasy.

Ecological damage continues to increase. The day by which we have estimatedly consumed all that the earth produces in a year keeps slipping back towards the start of the year.

Over fishing does not appear to have slowed in general etc etc.

One ongoing issue is the question of whether it is possible for Capitalism and developmentalism not to be destructive of the ecology?

We have to accept that these ideologies have been present during this period of ecological destruction. This may not be complete causation, for example capitalism and developmentalism have developed the way they have, precisely because they were able to freely destroy ecologies and pollute. If pollution and ecological damage had been factored into the system as costs, then they may not have developed the way they have….

However, it does possibly suggest that it is improbable that people will solve problems of pollution and ecological destruction within systems that have flourished by ignoring these problems.

Covid-19

The first year of Covid in the US, was pretty much a disaster. Apart, perhaps, from a roughly two week period in which people were cheering Tucker Carlson for persuading the president it was serious, which now seems to have been forgotten, the year was a mess. We know from the Bob Woodward interviews that the President knew Covid was serious in February 2020, but decided the American people needed to be cheered up and so he pretended the disease would vanish without much problem. Rather than face the problem, he engaged in positive thinking.

The President attacked quarantine and lock downs, he encouraged armed occupation of state buildings. According to some he thought the big cities would suffer worst and that they voted Democrat and so hindered their actions – does not appear to have helped (but part of the problem is the normalized abuse, which makes truth finding difficult). Simple things like using the pandemic plans, telling people the situation was dangerous, or coordinating PPE purchases would have helped. Sure he did help remove obstacles for vaccine production, although the vaccines were first developed overseas. He also seemed to have been caught in political bind about encouraging people to take the vaccine, and got his own shots in private.

Biden came along, and let’s disbelieve ‘sources’ who claim that there was no organisation from the previous administration for vaccine roll out. Despite the vaccines we now seem to face some Republican State admins not only distributing what appears to be misinformation, making it illegal for businesses to protect their customers and staff, and media saying that everyone should get back to work. This is odd as usually Republicans argue that businesses should be free to serve who they want and only who they want, and employ who they want etc.. I guess this is similar to the way it is ok for businesses to chose censor left wing thought and speakers, but terrible if they censor right wing thought and speakers.

The delta variant seems worse than the original form, and is spreading. The vaccines slow infection rather than stop it.

But with America now averaging about 113,000 cases a day, an increase of nearly 24% from the previous week, and hospitalizations up 31% from the week before, Republicans stand accused of causing the deaths of their own voters as the highly contagious Delta variant scythes through red states where vaccination rates are low….

In the past week Florida and Texas, states whose leaders take pride in riling the Biden administration, have accounted for nearly 40% of new hospitalizations across the country

Smith. Republican leaders fiddle while Covid burns through their own supporters. The Guardian 14 August 2021

In the UK, as far as I can see, the government has given up. The disease is rampant in India, Indonesia and South East Asia. People I know who live in those regions tell me that they hear of deaths of people they know almost every day.

Where I live the government is encouraging people from infected areas to go to the regions to buy real estate, and has contradictory rules, that make it hard for people to figure out what they should do, and was so overconfident that they blew their first serious challenge. Indeed it was so overconfident it seems to have had no plans for a problem. We have just heard from the Australian Medical Association that hospitals are not keeping up [2], and we have a long way to go before it gets really bad.

On top of that we seem to be ignoring long covid – well I have not seen any official stats – and pretending Covid is a form of flu rather than a new disease. While I’m ignorant it seems to be worth testing the hyporthesis, that in some cases Covid does long-term, or even permanent, damage to the body which produces long Covid.

In other words, the world as a whole, seemed to want to take the easy option, or even sabotage action, although it is true that some people did not. However, running around panic struck is not facing problems.

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The Decline of the West?

August 14, 2021

This is all a bit amateurish but it might be useful…. and it might get expanded. These strike me as the most obvious dangers for English speaking ‘civilisation’ in the short term.

We run away from major problems, like Covid, Climate Change and ecological destruction. Running away from problems, or pretending they don’t exist is a fundamental mark of decline

Wealth distribution is massively unequal, in most countries. Inequalities of wealth distribution generally mean poor health, and domination of politics by the wealthy, or plutocracy. This generally means that the middle class start sinking, and social mobility declines. The possibility of fresh ideas which do not benefit the wealthy alone, are minimalised. Again the likelihood of solutions to pressing problems diminishes,

Refusing to help the poorer parts of society is also a mark of decline, as it indicates they are not considered to be part of society, and that the rulers of society have given up hope for society as a whole

Falsehood and fantasy seem to be rampant. In many cases it seems hard for people to see the real problems. This arises because the real rulers are opaque and so form a blank space for fantasy and because they engage in distraction techniques, to keep themselves safe from those who rule. The rulers also are probably not getting real information from their underlings, who depend on flattery for their positions. This reinforces the tendency not to face problems.

Encouraging and normalising political abuse prevents people from talking about almost anything, and promotes internal splits, but it keeps enough people onside with the plutocracy. As real discussion does not occur, again problems do not get faced, they tend to be blamed on others.

Infrastructure is falling apart all over the world. The cost of maintaining a working society goes up, and the wealthy do not pay enough taxes to make repairing it possible. This makes it harder to deal with major problems.

Authoritarian states seem to be slowly replacing democracies. This could be a sign of forthcoming war, or forthcoming breakdown. Authoritarian states can respond in a disciplined manner but rarely care about sacrificing people, and may not respond to a collapse that might cost the rulers anything.

The final issue is being able to distinguish different types of problems. Problems often have social components which mean they are not faced and left alone, or are faced in harmful ways. It is useful to remember these social components.

***********

In a rare moment of optimism, I forgot to mention the effects of prolonged or total war. Even ‘cyber’warfare’ or terrorism – local or international. There is no reason to assume that people could not war over political, or religious, ideology, over a shortage of resources, over the inability of the planet to regenerate, over the need to move away from unlivable areas, over the failure of food supplies, for revenge, and so on.

War nearly always takes away a focus on other problems, as immediate survival is primary. This allows other problems to get worse.

I don’t think that such wars are improbable – and if they go nuclear, destroy more infrastructure, or destroy more of the ecology, they could be highly damaging to the ability of societies to survive.

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What do followers of Trump get?

August 13, 2021

This is pure hypothesis.

After 40 years of neoliberal attacks on working conditions and lower income Americans, Trump recognised that many people in the US are in despair. They see no future. Things are not as good as they were for them. No one was paying any helpful attention to them. Social Mobility is pretty dead. They were in a mess of apathy, because they were repeatedly told they were useless, or responsible for their own pain, by politicians, media, employers, preachers and self-help people. They had no security and little way of bettering themselves. Many people were and are struggling. The American Dream, was lost.

Many of them saw affirmative action programs for other people, but nothing to help them. People rarely see what they have. They were annoyed about this and it reinforced their sense of rejection. The Left in particular seemed, to them, to worry about other people.

Trump managed to change the apathy to anger. He made their suffering and lack of hope, all the fault of Democrats, liberals and communists, despite the neoliberal domination of politics and economics for the last 40 years. Indeed, he made it so, there was no difference between Liberals and communists and fascists. He would protect the people, by tariffs and trade wars with China, by cultivating national pride.

He was supported in this by one of the biggest pro-neoliberal media organisations in the English speaking world, News Corp. which owns Fox. They helped build the anger. People felt recognised, and so pardoned Trump’s incoherence (he was just an ordinary guy) and his violence, because they were angry and felt like violence, even if they were not openly violent and didn’t want to be. They respected Trump for saying what he thought, no matter how petty. And they empathised with him when other people denounced him for speaking his mind or making stuff up, because that happened to them all the time. And when he accused others of cheating it meshed with their life experiences, because they had been cheated of their dreams, despite their best efforts.

That Trump did not succeed, is either denied, or proves to them that the establishment still cheated them. Naturally the establishment, which won’t accept them or listen to them, got rid of Trump through massive undetectable electoral cheating. This is just normal experience.

What they don’t want to know, is that their only hope is a fraud, with no plans to help them, and with no care for them at all. So that knowledge becomes subliminal: he isn’t perfect but he can still be a tool for God’s purpose to bring America back to faith and greatness. We must have faith. Otherwise there is apparently nothing for them. It is easy to deny what would make it seem we have been deceived.

Even if Joe Biden was great for the working and middle class, then how would they get to know about it? Fox and ONAN won’t let them know – people don’t experience events directly, they experience them through past knowledge, through the comments of those on their side and so on.

So the tools President Trump uses to keep at the centre of attention are pretty basic, he pretends to listen and to sympathise with them, while working up anger against supposed enemies who are his enemies. He keeps harping on how successful he is, and that he can do more or less anything. And he keeps repeating this framework over and over.

Then there is what his followers do for themselves.

People who go to his big rallies get a sense of togetherness, they build bonds with other people who have similar experiences and talk about them. It gives people a sense of being part of a movement. It appears to repair the networks of self-organised support, and helps to make people feel safer, with some hope for the future. Surely if so many people turn up, this hope can be the basis for the future?

People who join Trump conversation sites get their ‘knowledge’ reinforced and an even greater sense of participation and meaning. They also have it reinforced that non-Trumpists are their enemies, because they might obstruct Trump, and these enemies form a great place to dump and purge some of their anger. This is much better than feeling depressed and apathetic. This is living.

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Australian response to the IPCC report: Technology and magic

August 11, 2021

The IPCC report is pretty simple. We have to cut emissions drastically in the next ten years to maintain some kind of climate stability. We cannot have more new coal mines or gas fields, or we have to make those new fields produce zero emissions. Even then it may not be enough.

The Australian government’s response has been odd.

From the minister for emissions reduction:

  • He praises the adoption of solar by homes and business – which has mainly been encouraged by the States and people acting on their own.
  • He claims Australia is going to be “a leader in the next generation of low-emissions technologies that will make net zero emissions practically achievable.” This seems to be backed by hope, not evidence.
  • and says “We are reducing emissions in a way that transforms industries through the power of technology, not through taxes that destroy them and the jobs and livelihoods they support and create.” By this he means they are supporting Carbon Capture and Storage (CCS), which does not work, hydrogen made from gas with CCS and increasing soil carbon which while good, will not fix the problem .

The PM started his day by blaming developing countries for the problem:

We must take action, as we indeed are, and continue to take action, as we will continue to, in developed countries, in advanced economies. But, we cannot ignore the fact that the developing world accounts for two thirds of global emissions, and those emissions are rising. That is a stark fact. It is also a clear fact that China’s emissions account for more than the OECD combined…. Unless we can get the change in the developing countries of the world, then what we’re seeing in these IPCC reports will occur.

I think that is pretty clear. The developing countries are to blame. Not us, thank goodness, even if we are among the world’s biggest gas and coal exporters.

not to say that we should be posing taxes on this, these countries.

Putting tariffs on high per capita emissions countries would affect exports from Australia, this may even affect Australian income – it may not depending on how much tax, royalties and local wages these exports pay for.

His solution to the problem is hope:

World history teaches one thing, technology changes everything. That is the game changer. Governments, political leaders can pretend to these things but, I’ll tell you what makes the difference, technology changes on the ground. And, that is why our approach is technology, not taxes, to solving this problem. It’s not enough for the technology to work with a tax in an advanced economy.

I suspect that world history, if it teaches anything, teaches that societies which fail to recognise their problems collapse. But again the immediate point, we don’t want our exports to be taxed because we are freeloading on emissions, and costs.

what’s important is that we ensure that the technology breakthroughs that are necessary to transform the world over the next 10, 20 and 30 years are realised.

I’ve said this many times but let me say it again. Just because we would like a technology that solves all our problems to exist does not mean:

  • it will come to exist
  • it will come to exist before it is too late to solve the problem
  • It will work at the scale we need
  • people will want to use it
  • It will not be too expensive to use
  • It will not have many unintended and deleterious consequences

Technology is not magic or wish fulfillment.

I could do with a couple of million dollars to move to a safer location from climate change. It does not mean it will happen – even if I tried.

The great thing about imaginary technology is that it can do anything, there are no physical boundaries or limits which cannot be overcome, and there is therefore no need to make any potentially painful changes.

the day before we spoke about COVID, and we talked about how science and technology is helping us, in fact, enabling us to ultimately beat COVID-19.

True, although vaccines are a known and largely working technology. They are not a technology we do not have yet, and as far as I can tell the vaccines we have will not enable us to “beat COVID-19”, they enable us to lessen the effect for a while. To be fair to the PM, later in the press conference he states “you can’t eliminate COVID.”

Even so, people can resist the technology, including the members of the government. Not only do some not recognise Covid is a problem, they don’t recognise climate change is a problem. If enough people don’t risk taking the vaccine, the vaccines will not work. If the vaccine roll out is too slow, or leaves vulnerable parts of the population uncovered, then it will not work well. New forms of covid will develop and people will die. I suspect we cannot wait for technologies which do not exist, before using the ones we have.

However, we will win, because:

Australia has a strong track record of performance, and we intend for that to continue to increase in the years ahead.

Actually we have a terrible record with Carbon Capture and Storage (CCS) which is one of the Government’s chosen technologies. Like the rest of the world, we don’t have a working energy generator with CCS installed, and significantly lowering emissions. We have thrown money at the idea, masses of money, to save coal exports, but the coal industry was not interested.

Our commitments are backed up by plans, and we don’t make them lightly.

Probably more truthful to say we don’t make plans, we don’t make targets. After all, the Deputy Prime Minister has said:

Until you lay down a plan, and show us the costs, you haven’t arrived at a point of consideration. Now, show us the plan, show us the cost and we’re happy to consider it and the National Party  room will do that.

quoted by Martin. Barnaby Joyce says Nationals won’t commit to net zero carbon emissions without seeing ‘menu’. The Guardian 18 July 2021 see also an interview with Fran Kelly ABC 11 August

So presumably those plans don’t exist. We do have aspirations that we can exceed targets by boosting gas and without losing any exports of fossil fuels. Yes, we can export more gas, and burn more gas and get lower global emissions. That is fantasy. No one has the CCS to store the greenhouse gases, that the gas mining and burning is emitting. So we are increasing world emissions.

We will set out a clear plan, as we have been working to do.

Ok, the Prime Minister admits we don’t have a plan, but we might have one some time.

He then attacks protesters who peacefully wrote ‘Duty of Care’ on various walls and buildings in Canberra…

I’ll tell you what the Australian way isn’t, the Australian way is not what we have seen with the vandalism in our capital today. I don’t associate, in any way, shape or form, that foolishness with the good-hearted nature of Australians who care deeply about this issue, as I do and my Government does. I don’t associate them with this. They have no part with that foolishness today, any more than we’ve seen in other selfish protests around this country.

Sorry I’m not going to get indignant about people protesting against government policy, and I doubt anyone outside of Skynews will.

We need the technological changes that will transform the global energy economy of the world. It’s not good enough for it to just happen to Australia and the United States and in Europe. It must happen in these other countries, and they must have prosperity.

So it is the developing world’s fault again – nothing to do with the gas and coal we are selling.

Let me repeat. Just because a technological change would be nice, that does not mean it will happen.

The Minister for emissions reduction gets a speech now. He says, the IPCC report

underscores the importance of practical solutions to bring down global emissions, find those pathways that allow countries across the globe to strengthen their economy, at the same time as they’re bringing down emissions.

It might be thought that the main practical solution is to cut back on making the emissions in the first place, not increasing them through increased mining.

And the pathway to do that is technology, not taxes, not defacing buildings.

I’m glad they get so worked up about slogans on buildings. It must mean something. I guess protesters should shut up, because protest does not help.

By the way government supported technological research has to raise money from somewhere, and that somewhere is the taxpayer. At the moment, it appears that taxpayers’ money is being used to support fossil fuels, or attempts to keep fossil fuels viable.

The technology investments that we know solve hard problems, have been solving hard problems for humans for a long, long time.

How often do we have to repeat technology is not magic. CCS has been around since 1976 at least. It has not worked well enough, no matter how much we would like it to.

We have the highest rate of installed solar PV in the world. One in four houses in Australia with solar on their roofs.

True, but the government decided that emissions free technologies were now established, and taxpayers needed to support new technologies like gas pipelines and fracking. I’m not quite sure how long we have been using gas for heating, but I presume it must be more recent than solar, or perhaps they are just directing taxpayers’ money to friends, or they have a weird sense of innovation…. It all looks suspiciously like “Imaginary or established technology and taxes”.

we will lead the world on healthy soils, energy storage, Snowy 2, a huge storage project to make sure that not only can we absorb the record renewables investment in our grid

Putting carbon back in Australia’s destroyed soils is good, but how much carbon do we have to put in the soil to make a difference to emissions? Is it possible to do that? Where is the carbon coming from? Does it look like we will do that? How will Snowy 2 (pumped hydro) work if we have drought and low snow falls? What powers the pumps?

also bringing down emissions with flexible dispatchable storage.

I think everyone now knows that by ‘dispatchable’ storage the government does not mean batteries, but gas power. For example the government stopped the Northern Australian Infrastructure Facility from supporting a wind power and battery development in North Queensland and favoured a gas development, because they did not consider the stored energy from wind and battery to be dispatchable and, perhaps more importantly, the development was inconsistent with their goals and policies.

A journalist bravely asks where is the modelling? We might want to know how you model non-existing technology?

The PM replies

We need more performance. We need more technology. And, no one will be matching our ambition for a technology driven solution, because I believe that’s what will work.

Yep we need more vroom. Vroom is good. Vroom is better than modeling. Vroom predicts the future.

The PM then talks about transparency of emissions. Yes that is good, but not everyone agrees that Australia is transparent, or that the government is not engaged in some pretense about figures. For example coal use has not declined very much – it is still over 60% of the energy supply, and if you take out decreased rates of land clearing then emissions have increased.

The PM also claims:

We are the only country to our knowledge, that engages in the transparency of reporting our emissions reductions, every sector, every gas, every quarter. No other country, to our knowledge, does that. 

We perhaps are living in fantasy land here. Next day Pat Conroy will ask in the House:

Is the prime minister seriously telling the House he has no idea that the United Kingdom, New Zealand, Sweden and the Netherlands have published quarterly greenhouse gas emissions statistics for years?

Australia Covid live news updates The Guardian 12 August: 14.34

I gather from the answer from Angus Taylor, that they either didn’t know this, or they hoped no one would notice it was wrong.

Back to the Press conference. Another journalist points out that mining magnate Andrew Forest says the report shows humans are slowly cooking themselves, but that Matt Canavan, a member of the government, says the coal assumptions in the report are overstated and therefore the numbers can’t be trusted.

As an addition it appears Mr Canavan condemned the “absolute panic merchant material that we get from the IPCC these days.” Presumably because he knows better than the people who study climate change for a living.

The PM replies

The Government’s policy is clear and the Government’s position is very clear. We need to take action to address climate change and are.

Presumably he is taking the position that if you say something often enough it must be true. He also states:

in fact, it’s everybody in this building’s job to take all Australians forward with us on this

I guess no dissent or querying is to be allowed. He does point to an important possible truth. That there are people:

who have great anxieties about these changes and what it means for them. Will they have a job? Will their kids have a job? Will their electricity prices go up?

There are also people who wonder if their houses will burn down again. If they will have enough water for their farms and families. If they can survive days of the heat that we have reached. If they can survive another ‘one in one hundred year flood’. If their houses will have high tides running through them. What will happen if another unseasonable storm blows trees and powerlines down and so on. However, these people apparently do not need to be mentioned.

Yes, there is a problem, but you can’t just look at one side of the problem and ignore the other. And you could recognise that jobs, and living without jobs, is affected by more than policies intended to deal with climate change – neoliberal economics for example.

The PM goes on to assure people that Australia will beat its low targets for 2030, and we don’t need higher targets.

We will meet and beat our targets and we will update what we expect to achieve by 2030, as we always do. And we will make that very clear about what Australia is achieving and what we intend to achieve

So targets will be achieved without targets. Certainly if you don’t have targets, you cannot fail to achieve them. Lets scrap exams, and scrap KPIs. I think that would make many people happier. It could be a good general policy, but I suspect that it will remain with climate change alone.

Australia’s old targets are for a decrease in emissions of 26% from the levels of 2005 by 2030. On the other hand G7 countries are supposed to be making cuts of between 40% and 63% by 2030. We don’t even have aspirational targets for 2050, just a preference that we achieve something, but no problems if we don’t.

The minister for Emissions reduction adds

We have an extraordinary track record of beating those projections and we’ll update them this year, as we always do.

I guess this is updating the projections rather than the targets.

The PM then adds that there will be no target for agriculture because he does not want rural Australia to carry all the burden – which I suspect is not being suggested by anyone. And if there are no targets and no benefits for soil carbon, how well will it work?

Again the solution is technological magic.

My approach is finding practical solutions to what are very practical problems. And that practical problem is ensuring that the technology that works here needs to work in other parts of the world and we’re positioning Australia to be in the forefront of that. And our hydrogen strategy, our carbon capture and storage, our soil carbon, all of these initiatives are about positioning Australia to be successful in that world. Chris.

The only incentive to be offered, seems to be taxpayer handouts to the right people, there is nothing like a carbon price which provides a financial incentive for innovation all over the place and that costs the taxpayers very little. Indeed the carbon pricing mechanism the government got rid of, used the price to subsidise ordinary people so they could make market based decisions to buy expensive polluting energy, or cheaper non-polluting energy if they wished.

focusing on political solutions won’t solve this problem. Focusing on technology solutions will.

Unfortunately technology is not separated from politics. The arguments, and ministerial powers, over the new energy market shows that. Regulations, tax breaks, subsidies and so on, can support deadly technologies, or hinder those deadly technologies. It is a matter of politics whether we protect fossil fuels, or encourage them to die out. Technology is social and is governed by rules, inclinations and fashions, and therefore by politics.

For example, it can be argued that we already have low emissions energy production, we already have low pollution transport, we already have storage. All these could be improved perhaps, but without the politics we could start to cut back polluting energy to the minimum (without pushing for even more of it) and increase the supply of renewables. Yes there are problems, but we would be working with tech that works, and if better tech came along we could use that as well. That is, if the politics did not get in the way.

It’s about technology and technology that works in countries that need it to transform their economies, provide jobs and livelihoods for people to ensure that they can prosper as we have in advanced countries like ours. I recognise that equity issue. I think it’s a very real issue. But the thing that solves it is not political commitments. It’s real technology.

Equity and climate justice demands we pollute, unless the magical tech comes along to solve not only climate problems, but economics problems and political problems like how income is distributed.

A journalist asks:

The point of the IPCC report is the cost of inaction. Will any government modelling that you’re currently undertaking to put costs in front of people also include a cost of inaction?

The PM says they recognise this, this is why they are taking action. But essentially the answer is no, in the sense that the question is not answered by other than insisting they have a plan and that the plan will be successful because of future technology

Comments

It is hard to say how much the Government is under the control of fossil fuel companies. How much it is derailed by ideas that established players in the markets should keep wining. How much it assumes Australia depends upon fossil fuel exports for jobs and income. How much it believes that fossil fuels are essential for the economic structures it supports, And, How much it is being held to ransom by a very few parliamentarians who don’t consider climate change an immediate problem, and who support fossil fuels at all costs to their own side. Essentially, the government depends for its majority on these radical MPs, and could lose power if it did not yield to them. This means that about 5-10 parliamentarians govern Australia on this issue, backed by the might of the Murdoch Empire.

The Government’s policy and evasion would possibly have been fine 50 years ago, but Australia has already experienced a 1.4 degrees temperature rise since 1910. We have longer term droughts. We have massive fish kills in rivers, and rivers are drying up. We have wild storms creeping south. We have inland temperatures which are life threatening in the suburbs of Sydney. The great Barrier Reef is dying. We have longer and fiercer bushfire seasons. And we have fossil fuel mining that threatens the water table, and water supplies. Delay is not sensible. the problem is urgent. If we (a relatively prosperous country) won’t make the effort to fix the problem, then who will?

Addenda 27 October 2019

The Government issued a 15 shot powerpoint to show the response it was taking to COP.

The graph at the end is the killer:

  • 40% from roadmap tech
  • 15% from global tech trends
  • 10-20% from offsets and
  • 15% from tech breakthroughs

That seems to mean that 70% of reductions will come from imagined technology. [offsets are generally accounting tricks]

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Buber and nature

August 9, 2021

I have written a little about Martin Buber on this blog, see here and here. Again I emphasise that I am not Buber expert, but I want to talk about Buber’s comments in the afterward to I and Thou on nature, or on what I generally call ecologies.

People may remember the fundamental binary of approach to relationship that Buber distinguishes. To simplify there is:

The I-Thou relationship, in which we treat the other as mystery, to be related to in all its complexity, we dialogue in language. Ideally the relationship should be mutual, but it cannot always be equal.

and

The I-It relationship in which we treat the other as a thing, something to be reduced to our own purposes. We might think of dialogue as irrelevant, although instruction and command might happen.

[I suggested there was a third relationship, an it-Authority relationship, in which people reduced their own ‘I’ to an it, in the face of authority, but that is irrelevant here.]

To reiterate this is a simplification of Buber’s position. However, there is a problem when we encounter ecology. As Buber states

if the I-Thou relation entails a reciprocity [mutuality] that embraces both the I and the Thou, how can the relationship to something in nature be understood in this fashion?

I and Thou, Trans. Kaufmann (p. 172). Kindle Edition. Translation modified by reference to I and Thou trans by R. G Smith p 125.

Automatically, Buber is buying into the problem of the binary. Thou’s might only be human or linguistic. He continues:

If we are to suppose that the beings and things in nature that we encounter as our Thou also grant us some sort of reciprocity, what is the character of this reciprocity [mutuality], and what gives us the right to apply this basic concept to describe it?

ibid

This implies again, that the human is somehow of a different order to ‘nature’ and somehow unrelated to it, or un-mutual with it. Humanity becomes an opposite to nature, if you want, rather than ambiguous. However, Buber recognises the problem and to some extent struggles with his binary. His first suggestion is that we cannot treat nature as a whole, we have to divide it into realms. In practice this can be a lot more difficult than it seems, but Buber divides the whole into animals and plants – ignoring bacteria and possibly insects which are vital to our healthy functioning, as well as dangerous to that functioning.

Animals can be drawn into the human orbit. ‘Man’:

obtains from them an often astonishing active response to his approach, to his address—and on the whole this response is the stronger and more direct, the more his relation amounts to a genuine Thou-saying.

I and Thou, Trans. Kaufmann (p. 172). Kindle Edition.

This implies humans can be open to animals if they treat them as Thous, However, this implies that animals which ignore humans cannot be related to. Spiders for example. And so it sets up levels of importance of nodes in the complex system of the ecology, that implies we can safely ignore some beings, even if the ecology holds us all together, and that holding together may be necessary for survival. It appears Buber takes the standard Western approach of defining something special in the human and then claiming it does not apply to animals, or only partially applies.

Animals are not twofold, like man: the twofoldness of the basic words I-Thou and I-It is alien to them although they can both turn toward another being and contemplate objects. We may say that in them twofoldness is latent…. we may call this sphere the threshold of mutuality.

I and Thou, Trans. Kaufmann (pp. 172-173). Kindle Edition.

So relationship between humans an animals is inferior, in some ways, to the potential linguistic relationship between humans, only a threshold or a liminal zone. But liminality should imply some levels of ambiguity, of borders being vaguer than we might think. Possibly there is a continuum of possible relationship.

Yet again, the dynamics of his exclusionary argument are contradicted by Buber’s process. When talking of Plants he says, the plant:

cannot “reply.” Yet this does not mean that we meet with no reciprocity at all in this sphere. We find here not the deed or attitude of an individual being but a reciprocity of being itself—a reciprocity that has nothing except being [in its course (seind)].

I and Thou, Trans. Kaufmann (p. 173). Kindle Edition. Translation modified by reference to I and Thou trans by R. G Smith p 126

Buber remarks that humans can indeed grant a tree the opportunity to manifest its “living wholeness and unity” and “now the tree that has being, manifests it [that being?]”. So, the human has again, the ability, or choice, to allow things to manifest in the I-Thou relationship, or the I-It relationship.

Given that Buber seems to have considered the two relationships to be ‘ontological’ he would not agree with the point that the type of relationship seems to be a decision, or a matter of culture, as much as a function of reality. However, it seems clear that it is common for indigenous peoples to relate to nature as Thou, as full of living beings which speak in their deep interaction with each other, and with humans. Relationship is fundamental – and if a place tells you to go away, you should make sure you do. If a place tells you it is sick, it is your responsibility to heal it, unless it says otherwise.

Again there is an opening from Buber which speaks to a partial recognition of this:

Our habits of thought make it difficult for us to see that in such cases something is awakened by our attitude and flashes toward us from the course of being. What matters in this sphere is that we should do justice with an open mind to the reality that opens up before us.

I and Thou, Trans. Kaufmann (p. 173). Kindle Edition. Translation modified by reference to I and Thou trans by R. G Smith p 126

But again there is the coming down.

This huge sphere that reaches from the stones to the stars I should like to designate as the pre-threshold, meaning the step that comes before the threshold.

ibid

The relationship seems to be being made inferior, not really an I-Thou relationship. Not even a liminal zone – despite the fact that, at least by my reading, the prose suggests he seems more enthusiastic about trees than about animals. There still seems the ease of slipping into the I-It when faced with ecology and thinking this is normal, or to subjugate ourselves and nature before the Authority of the State, the Party, the Market or God.

The question, then, is can we be open to the mystery and depth of the complex systems we participate within?

I think it is both possible and necessary. We cannot exhaust those systems, anymore than we can exhaustively know another person, We can be surprised, and that is itself offering an opening to the world. We can come to feel them, to have an awareness which is non-linguistic, unconscious even, or ‘tacit’, and this may be true of our relationships to other people as well. Probably very few people can express themselves totally in dialogue (we may not even know what we say), and there is a presence and mutuality in silence, in which we can still be open to the Thou, in which presence and dynamism can be found, and in which we can feel ourselves part of something beyond us which is not only necessary for us, but which can be with us.

Buber seems trapped by a binary, and a desire for borders, which he seems aware are ambiguous at best. However, ambiguity does not seem acceptable perhaps because humans are supposed to have a special relationship with spirit or God. But could not the whole world have such a relationship, not just humans?

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Incompleteness and life

August 8, 2021

A simple insight, made many times before, but it ties into complexity and uncertainty.

Life is always incomplete. There is no way that I can read or even gain access to everything that is important, or everything that might illumine my thinking, change my mind, or improve my art. I am incomplete, I am uncertain in my understanding. I am unfinished.

No matter how many books I buy, my collections will always be incomplete. There is always more philosophy to think about, facts about life to know, novels to read, music and different performances to listen to.

Partly this occurs because life is finite. You are unlikely to get more than 120 years or about 6,000 weeks of living, which is not much. But even if you lived forever, the chances are high that you could not get, read, look at or hear everything you wanted, as it would keep being produced as you lived.

The attempt to gain all this experience or knowledge is self defeating, because it consumes the time you could be living, or developing what you do know, and have experienced. It takes time away from life, and diminishes life.

Of course you have to learn some amounts of material, and you are always learning, but there is a point at which the returns diminish and the loss through seeking accumulates.

The art is recognising when you are hitting those limits, and have to put up with incompleteness and uncertainty.

Those of a more mystical bent, would probably tell you that, once you have attained supplies of food and shelter, you already have most of what you really need, you just have to realise access to it.

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Ambiguity

August 7, 2021

I’m trying to write something on ambiguity, as part of the the nature of life, and how ambiguity becomes part of the response to climate change…. This is a space to try and work on it.

Definition of ambiguity

To begin let me try for a definition of ambiguity – which not only begins well, but fits with what I’ve discovered in the writing. The definition is probably not completely unambiguous.

Using the full Oxford English Dictionary (OED) we can construct not only a definition of ambiguity but show that attitudes towards ambiguity are generally hostile until the 20th Century when it comes to be recognised as important – possibly an opening to limits.

Ambiguity arises when events, situations, beings, or words (I’m trying to be definitive here, rather than rely on a word like ‘something’) have “different possible meanings; [the] capacity for being interpreted in more than one way; [or] lack of specificity or exactness.” The OED goes on to elaborate (slightly rephrased), ambiguity occurs when interpretation of language or events is uncertain, doubtful, dubious or imprecise. We can also have situations in which the events are difficult to categorize (linguistically, or practically) or to identify; especially due to changeable or apparently contradictory characteristics. Reality is in flux, and our perceptions may shift, so nothing remains the same forever. We can say that ambiguity is demonstrated whenever people see an event in a different way, or choose to emphasise different parts of the event and its context or surroundings.

Ambiguity in language

Ambiguity is almost always present in language due to homophones, words with multiple meanings, normal and expressive imprecision (‘My love is like a red red rose’ – not really, even though we may know what the poet implies), metaphor, meaning being shaped by context of the text’s emission, the context of its interpretation, or the context of the words which surround each other. We have shifting contexts, framings or word meanings (so that the same sentence issued at one time, or by one person, may not have the same meaning as when it is issued at another time or by another person), and through strategy in which people use words to persuade others, or to interpret a statement in a way that satisfies them. That misunderstanding seems common also implies ambiguity is common.

In many of the early illustrative quotations ambiguity is to be removed (“That alle ambiguites and dowtes may be removede.” “To puttyne awey alle ambyguite” etc), as it is a cause of hazard or dispute (“To prevent ambiguities and quarrels, each Prince..shall declare his pretences.”), and it indicates probable lack of understanding.

Some forms of philosophy from Plato onwards, have attempted to suggest either that poetry and ambiguity makes bad philosophy, or that most philosophical problems stem from bad use of language or cultivated ambiguity, and they may be right, at least some of the time. However, they are perhaps unable to demonstrate consistent lack of ambiguity, or perhaps fixity of meaning, in their explication ].

There is also the possibility that if a person is trying to work up to say/write what has not been said before then that person will not have the language to say it, and hence will, necessarily, be ambiguous or at least obscure. At one stage of my life, I argued that language found in new knowledges was almost always ‘magical,’ dependent on metaphor, ‘similarity’ and ‘contagion’ and I still think that is true, and likely to produce ambiguity and misunderstanding.

William Empson famously insisted that awareness of ambiguity and multiple association (together with the reader’s own experience) was an essential part of receiving the richness of poetry. However, he also suggests “any prose statement could be called ambiguous,” (p1). That language, at enough length, is ambiguous is perhaps revealed by the fact that literary critics never cease to find new points and new approaches and new meanings for valued plays and novels and even for philosophers. To some extent we get by, by ignoring the ambiguity of ordinary speech, by communication being good enough, or exact enough, for purpose.

We further face ambiguity because of the social dynamics of information, the way that information is distorted and filtered by human desires for social belonging (to fit in with others’ understandings and be confirmed in that understanding), the social construction of trust though identification, and the habit of seeing our group as good, and outgroups as untrustworthy.

Ambiguity of Reality

However, not only is language ambiguous, but so are our perceptions of reality, descriptions of reality or perhaps reality itself. Simone de Beauvoir states that “to say that [reality] is ambiguous is to assert that its meaning is never fixed, that it must be constantly won” (#).

While meaning is rarely fixed I suggest that an unambiguous meaning cannot be won without loss of reality and loss of recognition of complexity.

For example most people today appear to ignore the ambiguity in capitalism. Thus the pro-corporate player notes that capitalism brings prosperity (all the world’s most prosperous countries are capitalist), it brings choice (think of the realms of books you can buy), it brings freedom etc. While the anti-capitalist might note that it brings plutocracy, destroying democracy through purchase of politicians and policies; undermines ecologies through overenthusiastic extraction, pollution and growth; substitutes greed for virtue; and promotes pleasing blame and fantasy instead of information, as the media is controlled by corporations and competing for sales and influence. The ambiguity arises in that both sets of claims are accurate to a point. Suppressing one set of claims simply suppresses reality and complexity.

In approaches to climate change we find the same kind of suppression of ambiguity. This often involves suppression of normal uncertainty, or an over insistence on uncertainty.

If there is any uncertainty about future trajectories (which there is) then people can decide to be certain that nothing bad is happening at all, or if we are told that 97%, or whatever, of climate scientists say climate change is happening and is humanly caused, then people will insist this means scientists are conspiring or suppressing counter evidence, or that we should completely trust the 3%, or even non-experts, who do not agree before we take climate science seriously.

Then people will claim that action on climate will undermine the prosperous economy, and others claim it will not – the problem here being that the economy causes ecological destruction and climate change and is thus destroying itself, and that effective acting on climate change has to alter the economy and what it can do, or the destruction will continue. Others claim the economy will adapt to climate change in time to prevent climate change. There is no evidence for this. The economy is ambiguous in that it brings both good and bad, and we cannot control it completely: the economy we have, encourages people to game rules and regulations to get the maximum profit, not produce communal survival. We need to recognise that economic change to fight climate change will require the economy to change and that may produce chaos, although perhaps not as much as climate change itself. However, economic change and climate change will interact and almost certainly produce unexpected results – which will be only ambiguously relatable to one or the other.

Then we have the supporters of renewables who condemn those people who want to defend their local environments against windfarms or masses of solar panels. It is true that renewable farms are not as destructive as coal mines, or coal-seam gas fields, but nevertheless, do we not want people to defend and relate to their local environments? If we what to save the environment in some way destroys or alters that environment, is their not a problem?

How, in climate change, do we balance the loss of liberty to pollute, or other losses of liberty, with survival or repair? It depends on what we consider more important to our group life, and that is an ambiguous decision because not everyone will see it the same way.

Again we have to recognise both the social dynamics of understanding and the politics of making some set of statements true, as often functioning as modes of reduction of ambiguity rather than modes of truth seeking. While perceived ambiguity may be lowered, it is also likely to reduce our perceptions of complexity and real uncertainty.

Ambiguity in Morals

Likewise we often have moral ambiguity. This is shown by the simple fact that most crimes can be defended, that people can undermine the reputation of those thought to be good, or that there are competing moral priorities. For example, justice through imprisonment can compromise the value of reforming someone, or sometimes it may not. What is a large fine for some person, may be trivial for another and just taken as the necessary ‘charge’ for being able to commit a crime. If a person has done lots of good things, but one really bad thing how do you weigh the good and the evil? Mother Theresa was frequently seen as a moral saint, for looking after dying people, but then we learn that she refused to lessen the pains of dying, because she thought those agonies part of God’s will, or reformatory. Is this good or bad? Moral dilemmas are normal, and arise because the world is complex and ambiguous, and again are often resolved by our assumptions about who is likely to be guilty and who is likely to be innocent, and the politics of morals in which we are more interested in defending what our group has done, than understanding the complexity of ethics in the situation.

For me, moral ambiguity is present in most conceptions of God. There is the old problem that if God allows evil, then God permits evil, and is therefore evil or impotent – and God is usually defined as omnipotent. In sacred writings we read of God commanding cruelty and genocide, because those who displease him can be treated harshly, and those who please him are compelled to attack those who displease him, or they become displeasing. Or we hear of a God who arranges for people to be tortured in hell forever with no remission, for often what seem to be trivial ‘sins’ which may even have no lasting effect especially if the sinned against are in heaven…. and if they are not in heaven it is because of the judgement of God. I would say that gods tend to be morally ambiguous when their morals are worked out.

Strategic Ambiguity

To return to a point made previously, ambiguity can be used strategically, to persuade others or elide reality. People can use an ambiguity in an attempt to remove an ambiguity which could be kept in mind.

One recent example. A government minister was accused of anally raping a young woman when he was young. The woman is dead, so apparently a case cannot be brought against him. I don’t know why as murder cases can be brought with the subject being dead, but this assertion is frequently made and accepted as true. Anyway, when facing the press he forcefully denied he had slept with the woman. The problem is that this statement is ambiguous. No one was actually accusing him of having slept with her. Indeed, if they had slept together, than perhaps the rape charges would be less believable, or indicate more of a misunderstanding. However ‘slept’ is in the context of sex usually taken to mean having sex, but it may not, and his words may have been carefully chosen to truthfully avoid the untruth of denying he raped her.

Again in climate change, we may be told the government has acted, or is acting rationally and carefully, when they have done little to reduce the potential damage of climate change – they may have acted in other ways, or the evidence that they use to imply successful action does not originate in their action or lack of action.

Ambiguity and Complexity

We both are complex systems, and live amidst complex systems, and these systems produce ambiguity for humans. They are inherently not fully understandable by humans; we cannot predict the course of events or the results of actions with absolute precision. Events in one complex system are not separate from the system, or from events in other systems, boundaries are rarely precise, events are nodes rather than things: a storm is not separated from the atmospheric conditions, or the wind, or the low pressures, or the moisture contents, or the cloud formations, or the sea, or… A person is not completely separable from their culture, their language, the cultural history they participate in, those around them, their experiences and learnings, their social position, the food they eat, the air they breathe, the bacteria they carry and so on. So even if we were to have a completely precise non-metaphoric language, then reality would still escape that language and appear ambiguous. Language itself is an interactive complex system, in that words interact with each other and with different contexts to produce understanding, meaning and behaviour. We discover ambiguity everywhere even, if I understand Godel, in mathematics, which is the best attempt humans have made to remove ambiguity from rules and their consequences, and mathematics may not be able to formulate ‘subjective’ qualitative events to begin with, and that is what we live with.

Conclusion

The point is that we face several types of ambiguity, and this ambiguity is normal and unavoidable. We face the ambiguity of language, brought about by the complex multiple and different social tools we use to use and understand language and communication, and we face ambiguity in the world because of the lack of precision in our social tools of understanding a constantly changing complex reality, and we face moral ambiguity when judging our actions and the actions of others again partly because of complexity and also because of social positioning and alliances around the case we are judging.

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Thoughts on change in the workplace

August 3, 2021

1) Workplaces like any social systems are ‘complex systems’ , this means that complete prediction of the results of any ‘reforms’ is impossible, and that unexpected consequences are normal. Being wrong is normal.

2) This means that any change in work environment should be provisional. You can plan all you like, but you must be prepared to keep observing, and modify the plan as it goes along. Management must be capable of admitting mistakes and correcting them, without appearing confused and indecisive.

3) Information about almost anything in the workplace will probably be disrupted and inaccurate. Hierarchies distort information flow. The more punishing the hierarchy, the less accurate the flow.

4) Information disruption gives rise to destructive fantasies, especially if people feel ignored or pushed to one side. This can obstruct any attempts at improvement, meeting psychological needs, or finding the best work environment for workers. People’s perceptions of how they fit in, will be distorted.

5) While many organisational structures demand that managers appear to know the work better than workers, this is normally not the case. Managers may not understand how people have to do their jobs, or even what those jobs require. However, maintaining the appearance of superior knowledge can be vital to maintaining status in the company. This again leads to disruption.

6) Good communication generally becomes possible with equality, which can disrupt chains of command. So it can be unnerving. This is the role middle managers should have been serving, with feet in both camps, acting as a bridge.

7) In software programming, the lack of knowledge of managers can cripple the software and its capacity. This is overcome by actually listening to the workers and what they do. You may also want to ask ‘What do workers think their role in the organisation is, what would they like it to be?’ And that may include, “hey your management, you make decisions” it may not.

8) Trust building is fundamental but difficult, and it is probable managers are not perceiving the causes of distrust, because of the information distortion. Fixing this primarily means listening to and acting on suggestions from people below.

9) You cannot switch trust on, it takes time to lower levels of distrust. That means you need time before reform, time during reform and time for follow up. This time should be leisurely if at all possible. The less pushed people feel, and the more they feel participatory, then the more involved they will feel. However, even with care change can be messed up.

10) Do NOT do consultations in which you already know the answers and are going to do what you want to do anyway. While it is obvious that this sets up resentment, obstruction and delay, and breaks trust and information flow, it seems normal for managers and authorities to behave like this. The real point of a series of consultations should be to be open to improving the plan, and let people see you are open to their input.

11) Change consultants will often not help here, as they can see their job to implement the managerial plans, rather than to build trust or communication. That is much safer for them, and pleasing management leads to more job recommendations for them.

12) Repetition 1: Without attention to information flow, the building of trust and the recognition of unintended consequences, the workplace will be a mess, and people will not be satisfied.

13) Repetition 2: Workspaces are complex. Different people have different requirements of their work satisfaction. This is why ‘caring’ but unobtrusive managerial attention is important. In general people want to feel they have done something, that they have control over work, that they can make mistakes and not be crucified, that they have a chance of getting better and getting rewards.

14) If changes appear random, too frequent, or appear to over ride what workers know works, or is needed to do their job, then they will never understand their role in the organisation, other than as people who suffer arbitrary change and the whims of management.

15) I you want your organisation to be resilient, it needs redundancy. It needs more workers than strictly necessary, those workers need more time than strictly necessary. Not only does this often produce better thinking, but if everything is stretched to begin with, then in a time of crisis, there is no slack helping to hold everything together, and the crisis is likely to have worse effects.

16) Please note that if your organisation is thoroughly neoliberal, and regards workers as inconvenient but necessary costs, who must operate with machine like precision, and who are completely expendable in the name of profit, then you will never succeed in producing a ‘happy’ reform of the workplace. Any such reform would be destroyed as it appears slack, and the managers are not getting every drop of blood from the workers.

17) Final reiteration. As a manager, you may have an idea of what is best in advance, and that is probably good, but it needs constant testing and consultation, and awareness of information problems.

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