Neoliberalism: its knowledge and free markets are weak

March 15, 2024

Neoliberalism is not just an economic theory but a cosmology, and a political/ethical way of understanding humans and the universe. As such, it is extremely limited, and hence surprisingly weak in some ways.

Neoliberalism attempts to govern complexity and emergence by only attending to markets. It possibly rightly warns of the dangers of government planning and of concentrated government power, as (due to complexity) no government planning can be based on a total understanding of the world system (or ‘Gaia’), and governmental power can interrupt and disrupt beneficial processes. It tends to see all government action on behalf of ‘the majority of the people’ (such as livable minimum wages, social security etc) as leading to totalitarianism. Neoliberalism supports its position by suggesting that the market acts as both an information system and as a responsive system generating spontaneous and beneficial order. As such it tends to argue that markets can solve all problems, and that governments are necessarily sources of disruption, corruption and inefficiency, and should do little beyond supporting the market, enforcing contracts and providing military defence.

In order to make these claims neoliberalism ignores some important factors. It ignores the effects of corporate power and planning and riches, by assuming that rich people and organisations will not ally and plan together, organise to structure markets in their favour, or have enough power to affect the system. It denies that the power of riches could be as disruptive and ignorant as the power of government. It also does not appear to consider that attending to price systems as information systems emphasises price signals, profit and the power of others to disrupt profit, while suppressing or distracting people from other vital information. It lives within self-produced disinformation. It also downplays the possibility neoliberal corporately bought governments may be encouraged by market participants to support established markets and market players and throttle emergent or necessary change or correction.

In other words neoliberalism may well cut itself off from information vital to its sustainability, and interfere with systemic processes to disrupt its survival. It also seems to ignore the idea that Gaia is relevant to economies, and propose that markets have no limits which they should refrain from disrupting. Neoliberalism encourages a politics of unboundedness, which is not currently founded on fact. Neoliberals largely ignore climate change and ecological destruction, although they would acknowledge them as price signals. Limits are only known as far as they affect profits, and that might encourage (or not hinder) destructive practices to maintain profits.

Discussing neoliberalism’s success as a cosmology and method of preserving corporate power from challenges may give the impression that it is a system of total control. Neoliberalism may be a system which encourages a type of total control that reduces every possibility to some form of profit or capitalist organisation and evaluation. There is also the possibility of its followers using some kind of corporate fascism (as capitalists did in the 1920s and 30s) to maintain stability, but complexity means that control cannot be total, or feel total – it is distributed. Neoliberals my try so hard because they always fail to make everything capitalist.

Neoliberalism is vulnerable to its own success in removing visible opposition, the lack of perception it encourages, the interstitial gaps it produces and cannot recognise, and the resistance it generates. If many of the rich elites are concerned with escaping from the world crisis as suggested by Bourdieu and Rushkoff, then that is an indication they have no solutions they have any faith in, and hence that their weakness is growing.

There is also the possibility that some of the harmful effects of neoliberalism such as growing inequalities, massive ecological destruction and climate change are unintended consequences of its practices, rather than the product of deliberate evil (Keen #)[j1] . This possibility might also change the way we approach it.

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What economic theory needs to realise?

March 6, 2024

A kind of sequel to the previous post about free markets and politics.

A realistic economic theory needs to recognize that:

Politics

  • ‘The Market’ is never separate from politics. Riches gives power so, to survive as a free and open market, the economy needs power relations to be equalized (especially across generations) and equitable access to power available to all.
  • It is standard for the rich to team up to protect and increase their riches. The rich want power and buying it is easy in a society that values ‘The Market’ beyond anything else, as everything is up for sale. It would be seem to be immoral not to make a profit when its offered. Standard market theory recognizes that poorer people can team up against the rich, and does everything it can to stop it, but does nothing to stop the rich teaming up against the poorer – or even hails it as good business practice.
  • The rich tend to pollute more, and often attempt to make sure that pollution gets dumped on poorer and less powerful people. This is the real meaning of the trickle down economy.

Psychology and information

  • People are co-operative as well as competitive. Market theory needs to recognize that actually functioning markets involve co-operation, collaboration and competition, and that models based on entirely ‘selfish’ individual actions are unreal. Social psychologies are complex.
  • Price systems are not perfect information processors, because market practice includes distorting information, PR, advertising, faking prices, collusion, internal trading, wiping out small competitors by price cutting, becoming monopolies or oligopolies, profit gouging, overriding local information, and so on – all of which distort the price system, until it is too late and a crash of some kind occurs. Markets operate in unreal and fantasy spaces as much as in real spaces.
  • Markets are reflexive. What people believe about the market and how the market works, may change their behaviour and therefore change the market. Economists are much more likely to be driven by ‘selfishness’ than non-economists who have a more complicated view of human nature. The same is likely to be true of business people, who believe this idea. Hence control over information is important to market activity.
  • Maximal profit seeking does not conserve traditions, stability or anything else (it is anti-conservative), and does not encourage ‘virtue’. It even invents religions who proclaim that God allocates wealth to good people, and that if you are not rich, you are not virtuous. The market is likely to continually undermine its moral legitimacy. More importantly, encouraging only the one value, motivation and form of organisation, can lead to lack of variety in response and hence lack of resilience.
  • In current riches-structured markets, corporate power can ignore information about say climate change, with the apparent exception of insurance corps who recognize the growing problem that past data on disasters is no longer of use to calculate their risks. In this market bent by power and propaganda, it seems really good strategy for fossil fuel companies to continue to sell their products and massively profit, while they still can, despite the harms it will bring for others or for the market in general. They hope that riches will protect them as other people die. And its profitable for politicians to go along with this, and to fear what the corporations will do to them, if they act. Ideologues can even dismiss business concerns about survival as being woke capitalism.

Complexity

  • Economies are complex systems that interact with complex social, psychological, ecological, energy, and technological systems, amongst other systems. As such, markets are inherently unstable subject to unpredictable changes – equilibrium may be rare. Markets crashes occur even if all actors are perfectly selfish and rational because markets require actors to make predictions in an unpredictable situation with bad information.
  • Complex systems have patterns which arise despite the intentions or workings of the participants. Thus market workings cannot be completely derived from ‘economic man’ even if it was an accurate idea. ‘Economic man’ is as likely to arise from the system as vice versa.

Ecology

  • A functional market requires a functional ecology. Markets operate within ecologies. Ecologies are not completely submissive to market demands. Ecologies can change because markets alter or destroy them.
  • Markets and manufacture involve waste, pollution and extraction. These necessary processes to particular forms of market organisation, can be harmful to the market as they can destroy the ecology the market depends upon. Markets are systems of destruction as much as they are systems of production.
  • Markets cannot expand forever on a finite planet. We are already over consuming our resources faster than they regenerate, which will lead to a crash, because of lack of water or other essential supplies. We cannot assume useful innovation will certainly happen.

Innovation

  • Markets like other complex systems have emergent properties and they can be considered creative.
  • Innovations and product substitutions may not be possible, no matter how useful, or how much the price system signals that it would be a good idea.
  • Innovations may not arrive in time, in a form which is useable, at a price which makes them useable, in a form which is acceptable to both the dominant elites or the economic system, and they may have destructive effects which undermine their use.
  • Markets cannot solve every problem or challenge that can arise, because some problems may be wholly or partly generated by markets, such as climate change.
  • Emergence does not have to harmonise with what the market would like. Emergent processes can destroy essential properties of the market.

Energy

  • Markets require energy and energy sources. With declining energy, then in general, but not always, less can be done. Systems will likely collapse without a change in organisation or organisers. With more energy more can be done and more can be disrupted or destroyed.
  • Energy availability is usually structured by riches. The rich use more energy not only in their work lives but in their personal lives.
  • The basic form of energy for markets is human labour, or labour power. However, this can eventually become far less important than other sources of energy, and these other sources can become directed by machines. The economy can destroy the need for much human labour. A question is whether labour providers then starve or not.
  • The main sources of effectively unlimited energy are the Sun, nuclear forces, earth processes (such as wind, tidal power, and thermal gradients).
  • The presence of entropy (energy dispersion) and physical entropy (pollution and costs of maintenance and repair), cannot be ignored in a real economic model..

All of this may be difficult, but having easy but fundamentally inaccurate theories, which leave out vital parts of economic dynamics, will not give useful results, and may hinder necessary transformation.

Finally

Non-revolutionary approaches to the free market, are basically plans to reinforce power and wealth inequalities and stop most people from improving their lives. Forty plus years of neoliberal talk and legislation for ‘free markets’, should show the truth of this.

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Free market theory

March 5, 2024

Ok I keep writing similar things 🙂 but the variations might be useful.

The obvious first point is that capitalism does not allow a ‘free market.’ Free markets will always be prevented by the entrenched power and the patterns of behavior of those who benefit from the current market arrangement including: the corporate class, the hyper-rich, their networks of think tanks and their bought, or hopeful to be bought, political supporters.

Markets are always about politics. Even markets of ‘gift exchange’ tend to be about establishing alliances, relationships, obligation, dominance etc. which involves and manifests politics. Gift exchange economies have the advantage that the tend not to build up class systems, they are more ‘immediate’ and status cannot be inherited, and most people can participate in them if they want.

If a free market could exist, it would undermine itself politically. Such markets inevitably lead to plutocracy and to constant demands for ‘the people’ to subjugate themselves to bosses. The more talk of free markets, the more plutocracy, and the more markets are structured to favour those who are already a success and their children.

If a person really wanted free markets then there seem, in general, to be two ways of getting them. One is the Revolutionary way and one we might call the Neoliberal way

The revolutionary way to get a free market is to abolish and overthrow the currently existing market completely, as it is a market established, designed and built for the rich and their networks of exclusion – and it does not work to deliver general liberty, openness, equal opportunity, efficiency or prosperity.

This revolutionary approach would first get rid of huge accumulations of ‘private property’ and its power, as property is often stolen from original inhabitants and ordinary people. That property should be made common. Perhaps people could be allocated roughly equivalent housing and other essential property and start again more equally with a more level playing field with open access. This would help get rid of the wealth inequalities which would then get rid of the rich’s ability to buy markets, politicians and information. People would need to make it so the wealthy cannot structure the market to suit them and to stop a massively unequal accumulation of riches from ever happening again and destroying free and open markets through modes of inheritance and accumulation. People would need to remove all state subsidies for wealth and corporate pollution, although allowing equitable social insurance so everyone has some levels of protection against misfortune, fraud, and the capitalist boom and bust syndrome. You would also need to try and destroy the rich’s networks for ‘self-help’ and mutual backscratching, so people can operate according to their abilities rather than to who they know. And so on.

Libertarians will never take a revolutionary approach, because libertarianism is about protecting the liberty of the wealthy, protecting rich people from other people and from the State. Nothing more than that.

The Neoliberal (conservative political party) way is to protect all the inequalities, and roll back the State from helping anyone who is not rich. It aims to stop the State from protecting people though environmental or anti-pollution regulation, eliminating fraud, legislating minimum wages, minimum protections at work, social security and welfare and so on. They officially say this will increase liberty but it clearly won’t – it will just free the corporate sector to do what it likes to you, and make you more desperate to sell your life to a job.

Libertarians generally support this Republican approach, which increases the power of the rich.

The next post looks at some of what a realistic theory of economics needs to consider

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Continuing the points: systems of ‘physical entropy’:

February 18, 2024

Physical Entropy

  • Living systems take energy from outside their own fuzzy boundaries in the form of sunlight and/or food.
  • The boundaries are fuzzy, because the living system would not exist without the food and sunlight. They use this energy to build, repair and develop themselves.
  • In this building, repairing and developing, living systems turn energy sources into waste, in the form of excreta: gasses, liquids and ‘solids’.
  • In a coherently evolved system this ‘waste’ then acts as food for other beings (plants, insects, worms, etc). The waste does not accumulate, poison or overwhelm the system as a whole, but is ‘recycled’ as part of the Gaia system.
  • Eventually most living systems either change through processes of evolution, start to run down, or can no longer extract enough energy to keep their processes completely functional. They wear out and die – assuming that they do not die by accident or through feeding some other being. As they wear down the chances of accident increase – they can avoid fewer accidents or recover from them as well as previously.
  • We can call this process, after it starts, “physical entropy” to distinguish it from normal entropy which is the dispersion of energy, into non-usable forms (usually as heat).

Social generation of Physical Entropy

  • All social systems, like all other systems, generate entropy or energy dispersion. This what they do. As long as the Sun keeps going this is not a problem for Gaia as a whole, although systems which use non-renewable energy may face considerable challenge.
  • ‘Physical entropy’ likewise happens normally, but can also be generated by economic and social systems, to a degree which overwhelms these social and economic processes.
  • Sometimes this may arise from the system slowly suiciding, although the system may be able to responsively change and adapt, and not suicide (as argued in the Toynbee cycle [1]).
  • This blog considers social generation of ‘illth,’ the term John Ruskin developed for the generally ignored (by the elites), but socially generated forms of harm which manifest as increasing physical entropy. Illth is the opposite of wealth. Ruskin appears to argue that true wealth is collective.
  • The blog recognises Illth as arising from the following processes. There may be more.
    • Pollution: when materials are released into the ecologies, which are poisonous or non-reprocessable by those ecologies. It is contrasted to recyclable ‘waste.’
    • Dispersion: when essential materials are dispersed into the ecology, and require too much energy to be able to recompile. Contemporary Marxists talk about this as the ‘metabolic rift’.
    • Destructive extraction: when the process of gathering essential materials destroys or poisons ecologies, faster than they can regenerate, or makes regeneration impossible in a humanly ‘reasonable time frame’.
    • Harmful production: when the process and products of economic action hurt beings.
      This includes harmful labour and work which poisons people, causes them to develop occupational or consumerist illnesses, distracts them from challenges, hurts their modes of being and thinking, and so on.
    • Expansion – involves a society or a social process growing beyond the ability of the ecology, or the extraction system (etc) to support it. Expansion can also involve military force aiming to get new ‘resources’. Any social feature which demands increasing ‘growth’ is going to lead to crisis in a finite bounded system, possibly fairly quickly. Estimates show that we already ‘overshoot’ or consume more in a year than the planet can produce in a year. This should show that continual growth is no longer an option. In 2023 we consumed Earth’s production by the 2 August. In 1971 we consumed it by nearly the end of December, so the increase of destruction is marked. We are already highly indebted with a lowering income.
      • [I don’t know if this is correct or not, but these figures result from using the exponential growth calculator. Let us assume that we currently consume 1 earth per year and are just about balanced. Let us also assume that we grow at 2% per year. That’s pretty small by capitalist standards, probably bad for business. In just 100 years (assuming this would be possible without interruption or collapse), we end up consuming 7.2 Earths per year. That is clearly not ‘sustainable’. Continuing expansion is destructive]
  • Physical entropy can be ‘natural’ and the system slowly evolves to a new equilibrium (attractor point).

Power Relations and Physical Entropy.

  • As shown, in social systems, physical entropy can be generated by unconsidered social processes, or through elites ignoring both the entropic challenges which are arising and the energy needs for repair. They presumably are worrying about other things, or severely implicated in producing the entropy to maintain their status or power, and worry about other things to keep themselves from worrying about their own self-destructiveness.
  • Social entropy often involves power relations, or the ability to keep on generating illth processes, against opposition, or evidence of impending collapse.
    • Power relations allow pollution to be usually dumped on the relatively poor and powerless.
      Elites think they will be immune.
    • Power relations and technologies allow elites to consider that dispersion of materials will be overcome by economic need and economic processes.
    • Power relations allow people and other beings to be dispossessed from their land or water (or even killed), and for that ecology to be destroyed. The inhabitants and users are ignored, while the elites consider themselves immune.
    • Harmful production: the elites consider themselves immune from harming others, and are able to make people work in harmful labour.
    • Power relations make expansion continue, because it is thought be elites to be essential, and it gives the less powerful some hope of sharing in social wealth.
  • The more energy is dispersed and systems start to break down (perhaps because of power relations) the more vulnerable the system becomes to accident overtaking the ability to repair, especially with cumulative accidents, such as wild weather events coming one after the other. Hence the system is also likely to collapse, unless this challenge is dealt with. For example, the Lismore floods reached 11.6m in march 2017. Repairs were not complete before the record floods of 2022 when the flood level reached 14.4m. Lismore today is still full of damaged and unusable buildings (personal observation), and obviously there is some lack of human energy, because we don’t know how long it will be before the town and surrounds seriously floods again.

Capitalism, Developmentalism and power

  • Capitalism and developmentalism, especially their neoliberal forms, can be considered as a systems of: power relations, exchange, production, and illth generation.
  • Many other systems are systems of production and exchange which are not remotely capitalist – unless you are willing to define capitalism so generally that even a working communism would count as capitalism.
  • Many other economic systems can generate illth production. Overthrowing capitalism may not be either necessary or enough to stop illth. We are simply referring to the obvious present.
  • Neoliberal Capitalism and developmentalism (and state communism if you wish) seem patterned by their illth production and the power relations that allow this to continue.
  • As cleaning up, not polluting, not dispersing, not destroying etc, cost companies money, and therefore subtract from profit, capitalist organisations will make non-destructive behaviour secondary and consider illth to be an externality which is no concern of theirs, unless they are compelled to prevent it by regulations and legislation. Pro-corporate politicians will often try and remove any restrictions on pollution as part of their service to profitable polluters and destroyers.
  • Power relations and normal capitalist processes of advertising, PR, hype, marketing, misdirection, etc, also corrupt the production and distribution of information, and disempower movements against illth. Workers do not have the knowledge to act and face the dangers or asking. For example: Exxon knew about climate change and denied it to maintain sales and profit [1]. [2], [3], [4], [5], [6], [7], [8].

Not Suiciding by Physical Entropy

Not suiciding or system continuance, requires, at a minimum:

  • 1) System repair: Systems that are wearing out, need repair or replacement. Repair or replacement need available energy, money, ‘resources’ and organisation.
  • 2) Maintaining renewable resources: Renewable resources (including oxygen production), should not be used, or destroyed, faster, than they can regenerate.
  • 3) Replacement of non renewable resources: non-renewable resources should be replaced by renewable ones, wherever possible.
  • 4) Fewer physical entropy and illth generating actions: Only production of recyclable waste and less pollution, less dispersion, less destructive extraction, less harmful labour.
  • 5) Careful waste production: no waste should be produced faster than it can be recycled or re-processed. Obviously that includes CO2 and other Greenhouse gases.
  • 6) Recovering awareness: Less unconsciousness of the social and economic destruction of systems that support continuance – ecologies, other people and so on.
  • 7) Better information sources, that are independent of corporations and governments.

These are all relatively obvious, sensible and logical processes, hence they have been avoided for 50 or so years. We cannot assume that sense and logic is persuasive to the elites or the populace.

The next blog speaks more directly to solutions.

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Summary of points by points

February 15, 2024

Systems and Complexity

  • Systems theory implies that humans, societies, ecologies, and biochemical functioning make up one vast interactive system affecting each other, even if not in harmony.
  • Humans are part of this. They are not currently independent of earth functions, or of Gaia if you prefer.
  • Dominant systems of human social action seem to be disrupting planetary systems and breaking ‘planetary boundaries‘. One of these disruptions is the generation of climate change via the burning of fossil fuels for energy, and cheap but harmful agricultural practices.
  • There are many intersecting systems which influence each other – not only the ecological systems, but the human systems of energy, technology, illth [1], economics/power, information and social psychology. All of these seem stretched to breaking point. Economics and power is shoveling riches and power to the hyper-rich, information is becoming propaganda and defense, energy is breaking due to peak oil and the energy that will be needed to transform to renewables to stop system collapse. New technologies like 3 D printing, AI, Genetic Modification are likely to have systemic effects.
  • The complexity of these systems makes prediction, knowledge and co-ordination difficult. We do know that the current interactions are likely to be disruptive and cause struggles between social groups.
  • Small changes can make large differences. Tipping points accumulate and cascade throughout the system.
  • Unintended consequences of action and policy are normal, hence political action should be considered as an experiment, and unintended consequences be looked for rather than dismissed.
  • People at different places in the system will perceive things differently. Hence a functional information system is required, which we do not seem to be able to organise, partly because capitalism seems to depend on inaccurate information (advertising, hype, PR, marketing, misdirection etc are market tactics).
  • In complexity, ‘Knowledge’ is always a simplification.
  • Simplification leads to unconsciousness as well as awareness. Knowledge is paradoxically both necessary and a possible misdirection.
  • Uncertainty is normal and should be recognised.
  • The only accurate model of the system is the system itself.
  • Diversity can help survival by allowing a multitude of experimental responses to change.
  • Suppression of diversity reduces resilience and adaptive capacity, even if it helps administration, because diversity can hinder centralised governance. Everything nowadays should be run like a business, irrespective of whether that is appropriate or not.
  • Government in complex systems appears distributed, and it is easy to avoid responsibility, or try and freeload onto others. The problems of co-ordinated action are boosted if everyone has to agree to a strategy for it to work – such as not increasing fossil fuel consumption, and then phasing it down. those who don’t agree will maintain what appear to be advantages.
  • Even the ultra powerful can feel stymied.

Challenges and Avoidence

  • Societies and individuals regularly face challenges.
  • Turning away from these challenges to try and maintain the status quo or ‘elite consciousness and knowledge’ (social egos), does not help survival, mental health, or future progression.
  • During their development, societies have produced ‘resolution sets’ which have solved, postponed or hidden past challenges.
  • Resolution sets include types of technology and the elites that have commanded those technologies and used them in particular ways.
  • Technologies include forms of social organisation. Military, economic or political forms etc. Neoliberal capitalism and developmentalism are both resolution sets that have probably developed into obstacles to facing challenges, partly because they involve continual growth and a convenient belief that The Market solves every problem and its victors should be helped rather than hindered.
  • The problems neoliberal capitalism and developmentalism have ‘resolved’ largely do not include the current energy, ecological or climate challenges.
  • The current resolution sets have generated the new challenges.
  • Elites can get ‘stuck’ in their resolution sets as those sets provide them with status, income, power and the certainty of being useful. They give meaning.
  • It is easier to turn away from those challenges when they are as big as current challenges, and solving them may involve giving up power, familiarity and meaning, which are already under threat because of the challenges.
  • Sometimes new resolutions come from creative groups hidden in ‘niches’ or the spaces between powers, where they can develop without being prematurely crushed. This is a diversity in action.
  • If these creative groups succeed they may become a new elite from without or, if the current elites are functional, a new part of the established elites and produce change from within.
  • The presence of successful movements can change the politics of the dominant system, as politicians seek the potential votes of those involved in the new success.
  • Not changing the workings of the economic and political, neoliberal and developmentalist elites, will lead to disaster.

Energy

  • Energy is vital for all life including social life. The basic forms of energy are sunlight and ‘food’.
  • Energy is found in ecologies (social or ‘natural’), in the active patterns of systems.
  • Energy in society tends to be intertwined with power relations.
  • Powerful people often have more access to energy, and to the provision of energy – through money, might and so on. Less powerful people have less available energy.
  • The more energy available, then the more can be funneled to the dominant elites, increasing inequality, and apparently making those dominant elites more secure and more able to ignore challenges.
  • Dominant elites, and dominant ways of life, are threatened by lack of energy. Hence the change from fossil fuels to renewables, which could provide less energy, can be seen as threatening.
  • Energy cannot be created or destroyed, it can be released and lost. Releasing energy takes energy – First Law of thermodynamics.

Energy and Entropy

  • Energy is always dissipated when used. A closed system will run down – this is the Second Law of thermodynamics.
  • Energy needs to come from outside the local system, so social access to energy tends to be competitive between social groups and between nations.
  • Structures of order require energy expenditure, or they will decay or wear down, and need to be repaired, or changed, through energy use – or else more energy is required to bypass the decay.
  • The more ‘artificial’ the structures of order the more energy they will need.
  • Societies and businesses tend to let their structures of order such as sewage, electricity cabling, gas piping, buildings and so on decay, as repairing them is endless and takes money away from other more ‘glamorous’ or status filled projects and most of the time we don’t notice.
  • Paradoxically, more energy can lead to both benefit and more destruction especially ecological destruction, reinforcing the smashing of planetary boundaries.
  • Fossil fuels have been an excellent source of energy.
  • The modern world has been built on fossil fuels.
  • Without fossil fuel burning producing the unintended effects of pollution, ill-health, climate change and the possibilities of peak oil, few people might wish to change.
  • The Energy Transition requires large amounts of energy. It will almost certainly be some time before the transition can be powered without burning fossil fuels, and increasing GHG emissions and making the situation worse.
  • This is especially the case if humanity keeps increasing its energy demand, or if Jevons effects mean renewables simply add to energy supply without replacing fossil fuels in the longer term.

Steady State? Degrowth

  • One possible route to transition is to reduce energy use (perhaps through efficiency measures, but perhaps through cutbacks).
  • Perhaps less energy should be devoted to harming the planetary systems, and to the political systems.
  • This (as implied above) will be resisted by current elites, and has other consequences, many of which may not be foreseeable.

The situation is difficult.

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Regenerative cultural values

January 28, 2024

Faced with the apparent visions of the future as involving ‘Collapse’ or ‘Authoritarian continuance and rising dystopia’. A group I belong to, associated with the Anthropocene Transitions Network, aimed for a an alternate vision of ‘Regenerative Cultural Values’.

This is some basic thinking on what is involved, obviously it is not just my own thinking (see ‘ecology of mind’ below), but I don’t want to scapegoat anyone else, for its deficiencies.

The Problem?

Apart from disliking the targets of ‘Collapse’ and ‘Authoritarianism’, there are lots of consultative processes in modern society, which essentially seem to be set up so people can drain themselves in effort, to be ignored by the powers that be. This is a common neoliberal consultative practice. The aim of the consultation seems to be to support whatever action is being taken by the authorities, and pretend it has support. Perhaps we can add this “Neoliberal Consultative Process” to the targets of Collapse and Authoritarianism as it can be part of either.

Is there some other way?

What are Regenerative cultural values?

Regenerative cultural values aim to revitalise values and relationships and make them as functional, participatory and resilient as possible, so as to produce constructive ‘democratic’ change.

Regeneration appears to have to involve systems thinking as its base, and preferably complex systems theory. Complex systems thinking could also be called ‘ecological thinking,’ as seeing oneself and others as a system and acting in the midst of systems is part of the process of the new vision. It also involves the recognition that ecologies change, evolve and regenerate. They are not stable forever without force.

The term ‘ecology’ does not have to refer to ‘natural environments’, but can also refer to communities, and economies etc. All of these involve interaction with other participants and other systems, mutual influence, symbiosis, conflict and co-operation, and so on. ‘We’ spill out into the social culture, borrow other people’s ideas or language, are shaped by (and shape) traditions, use tools and objects to think with. As Gregory Bateson argued, our minds are not alone, but exist in an ecology of mind which extends way beyond our skins, with feedback and originality. In an ecology nothing dominates completely according to its will. The most dominant feature in most ecologies is the Sun. It does not control anything, but without it most ecologies would die.

Boundaries between different systems and different people tend to be fuzzy and vague, this ‘spill out’ is not unique.

Being outsiders within

However, we live in a hierarchical social system, and higher levels do try and control lower levels, rather than let those lower levels freely adapt to local conditions. Consequently, regenerative cultural values may need to separate from, or hide from, the hierarchies until they get established. That is, they may have to form what Geels has called ‘niches’ – areas of creativity which both avoid being: noticed until ready; pushed into the service of the hierarchies worldview or; crushed. They form ‘subcultures,’ ‘temporary Autonomous Zones’ or even act as hidden ‘parasites’ using the hierarchies without submitting to them.

Community

‘Community’ is a vague concept that carries a lot of baggage, but it is important.

What we can observe is that humans, if unobstructed, nearly always build something we can call ‘community’. In villages, suburbs, online groups, sports clubs, children’s sports, mother’s support, child minding groups, even in prisons, and so on. The trend is that people support each other to the degree possible, take note of each other, identify with each other, and build friendships and rivalries, and so on. Ideally they come to form a mutual ecology; community is not an on/off process but develops. ‘Community’ can also be a political term which indicates people are seeking recognition for their groups, and participation in wider spheres. All ‘healthy’ human systems probably involve some forms of community and relationships, not just with other local humans but with animals, surrounding environments and so on. Community does not have to be anthropocentric.

Community can arise out of ‘projects’, or people working on something for the common good, such as building a local arts/sports centre, developing community energy, helping people in floods or fires, protecting the local village from over-development or being overwhelmed with current strangers, preserving the local wildlife and their ecologies, recognising common responsibilities or ownership of rivers or woods or community gardens, and so on. Projects also involve mutual learning, and cohabitation with others.

If so, then one way of generating community is to help people to get working or projects relevant to them, without expecting the project to be accepted by the ‘powers that be.’ If possible perhaps the project should also be outside the influence of the powers that be (in a ‘niche’), so that these powers do not interfere, and processes get finished. This community might then extend into other fields not as remote from the hierarchy – say agitating the local council, people with similar views, or the police office, for support, and getting forest protection etc.

This kind of action can also build a political base to challenge the way things are done, or to support those local powers who might challenge the system that produces local and national misery.

Resilience

Resilience seems tied into an apparent paradox: allowing diversity and conflict can build unity on some occasions.

Deviance, diversity and conflict are necessary for resilient communities. A community of ‘perfect harmony’, probably has a limited number of roles, responses and modes of control, and probably is not capeable of surviving disharmony. It could find it difficult to try processes out to see if they work, because people and processes, have to follow the established and harmonious patterns. Diversity allows diversity of responses without planning, and evaluation of the responses, and hence more chance of adapting.

I suspect that a community only appears perfectly harmonious if there is ongoing threat of violence and suppression.

The challenge is that the community has to be able to survive the internal conflict which can be generated by diversity, and levels of diversity may have to be experimented with. People still have to manage to think of themselves as ‘together’ with each other and their various ecologies even in diversity. I suspect that it is social tradition, rather than human nature which makes this difficult, but I could be wrong. This is especially so where the general political ecology acts to force people into opposing ‘sides’, but if people are aware of the engineered polarisation they can try to reject it, and be open to one another.

Openess – the Thou

I have written elsewhere of Martin Buber’s idea of ‘it’ and ‘thou.’ [1], [2], [3] This is an easy, and apparently trivial distinction, but it seems important.

When we make something or someone, an ‘it’, then we consider that person or thing to be without complexity, without valuable being. They are something to be used and manipulated, perhaps discarded with complacency. Culturally, ‘we’ seem to regard most ‘things’ in the world as ‘its’ – we pollute air and rivers, move rocks without care, chop down trees to stop the mess of dropped leaves and so on. There is no real care needed for an ‘it’.

However, when we regard something, someone or some process as a ‘thou,’ we approach it as a being that is open, that must be learned about, lived with, cared for and so on. It is a bit unclear in Buber, but it would seem to be possible not only to treat those we regard as deviant as worthwhile thous, but all the ecologies we live with. People can treat their cars, their pets, their toys, trees, beaches, special rock platforms etc, as thous if they care about them. The idea of caring for the non-human as if they were beings of worth, is not foreign to us. Thouness and caring seem to be related.

This caring does seem foreign to the idea that monetary profit is the only value, because with profit, some things have to become its, to be sold, destroyed or polluted, and things which cannot be profited from are valueless by definition.

It seems part of the basis of regenerative cultural values to rediscover the ‘thouness’ of life and being, perhaps within a community project of some kind.

Summary

Regenerative cultural values, begin locally. [Added from Ken McLeod: where “local” can reference both spatial and cultural proximity].

They begin in the making of community, collaboration, conflict and recognition.

Regenerative values are open to the thouness of people and ‘nature’.

Regenerative values accept that diversity is useful for survival and adaption, despite the unease it may generate.

Community may be generated through projects of general value to the the local people.

These projects may need to be hidden, or to engage only briefly with established hierarchies, until they are robust or finished.

Once the projects have results, then it may be useful to venture out into the world, gain support and give support.

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Population is the Problem?

January 21, 2024

There are many people apparently trying to blame climate change entirely on population growth in China and India and elsewhere, or on migrants from those countries to ‘developed’ countries.

Let us be clear population will certainly be a problem if we expect everyone to pollute and destroy like people in the ‘Western, developed world’ and it will be a problem if it gets big enough no matter what, but it is not the only problem, or the “everything issue” as its promoters often claim. As such focus on population tends to be a distraction from other issues.

In complex systems, Everything is the everything issue.

Focusing on one thing that does not cause ‘us‘ to change, or to think about change, in our daily lives and political systems is a diversion – we live in an ecological system of problems not just one problem. Promoting ‘population as the (only) problem’ causes us to ignore the ways we Australians, or other ‘developed peoples,’ have been acting to bring about ecological and climate disaster for ourselves and others for a long time (at least over 200 years), despite our relatively low populations.

Strangely, people campaigning against population and those migrants who increase local populations rarely campaign against migrants from the UK or America who are moving their pollution footprint here and making our country much less habitable. They campaign against migrants from China, or India, who have comparatively low footprints, and whom we might learn from.

Population is not just a distraction but a defense mechanism, to say that our country is ok, we are good and don’t really have to do anything other than attack other people.

Why not campaign for Australians to stop breeding as well, if our population is the problem?

Likewise, population campaigners rarely mention exports of Australian, or American, or UK, fossil fuels, which will take temperatures up directly throughout the world. Perhaps its just a matter of not blaming us for anything?

Why not campaign against the political structures which make it much harder to launch renewable sites than to launch more highly polluting and poisoning coal or gas mines? Even if our population crashed, those mines would still contribute to the world’s problems. Focusing on population is another way of not blaming us, or not taking responsibility for what our countries contribute, and have contributed, to the growing challenges.

Why not campaign for lower fossil fuel usage in our own country? Unless its about not taking responsibility, and not doing anything ourselves. Its not our fault, we don’t have to do anything.

Why not promote responsibility in Australia for our own pollution? If twenty poorer Indians make less pollution than one Australian, or whatever the current figure is, then we are the problem. But “Don’t blame us”.

Why not point to the forests we are clearing, the land we are poisoning, the top soil we are stripping, the rivers we are making unusuable, the underground water we are fouling? We have been destroying the country and subsidising companies to do this destruction, since Westerners arrived here. This is not the fault of modern immigrants, or of massive population. It has always been the case. It is our system that is the problem.

Why not campaign against the economic system that demands increasing migration, instead of the expense of teaching locals skills and capacities? The economic system also seems to be prepared to chuck older people on the scrap heap, if there is no growing population (rather than corporate profits) to tax, or cheap labour? Why ignore the economic system that depends on fossil fuel sales, and fossil fuel use? Perhaps its not just about not blaming ‘us’, but not challenging the economic powers of the country and giving them an excuse.

The way population is used in supposed climate campaigns, seems to be just a comforting way of blaming other people, rather than getting on with what we should be doing and cutting back on the way we already over-stress our environment. It is not just a defense mechanism, or a distraction, but a deadly distraction that allows destruction to continue.

****************************

Some one responded that there is no way 11 billion people is not a problem, and that academics are deceptive…

However, no one is saying that endless population increase is not a problem or we should ignore it. It is a problem, but it seems to be being used by some people as a complete distraction from doing anything else.

And what is it that we can do about population increase anyway?

Should we be murdering people en mass? Encouraging pandemics to wipe them out? Have a nuclear war? We know having educated female populations is good for population control. And according to Wiki pedia:

Population growth has declined mainly due to the abrupt decline in the global total fertility rate, from 5.3 in 1963 to 2.3 in 2021. The decline in the total fertility rate has occurred in every region of the world

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Population_decline

Scientific American states:

China’s population has fallen after decades of sky-high growth… the United Nations predicts dozens of countries will have shrinking populations by 2050… But if you listen to economists (and Elon Musk), you might believe falling birthrates mean the sky is falling as fewer babies means fewer workers and consumers driving economic growth.

https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/population-decline-will-change-the-world-for-the-better/

If we are interested in climate change as a symptom of population alone, then we should try and wipe out the most heavily polluting populations, like those in the USA and Australia? If not why not?

[The answer seems relatively clear…. we don’t complain about, or wipe out, Australia and the USA, because that affects us…]

Being responsible adults, shouldn’t we be changing the way we and our societies, behave, rather than demand that other people change?

Why not try and stop new fossil fuel fields coming online in Australia, to destabilise the world? Why not try and lower our own social footprints? Why not help other countries install renewables as well as get on with it here? Why not try fixing the economy so the bosses do not demand population increase?

There are many things we can do about climate. Focusing on population does not help us do them.

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Systems of Failure

January 21, 2024

This is just a list of some reasons for failure to face challenges, especially the challenge of climate change (although the list is not intended to be complete or deep).

Pride and fear of loss. We know what we are doing. We are committed to a set of actions and policies. If we admitted we had been wrong, and indeed suicidal, for 20 years then, we would undermine the legitimacy of our power, heirachies, and modes of organisation which are undoubtely for the best. Another similar way of seeing this kind of blockage, is as a commitment to existing social and technical competencies and a refusal to explore new possibilities, as that possibly disturbs systems and status.

Trying to impose the established order and its normal solutions more rigorously. Follows on from Pride. In general, the established and standard solutions to challenges are the only ones which can be used. They are imposed upon systems that reject these techniques, or make the situation worse. Currently, many promoted climate solutions involve letting ‘The Market’ take care of the challenges, by imposing more ‘free market’ discipline on workers (as a cost cutting exercise), persecuting people on social welfare, handing more power to the corporate sector, making sure the wealthy become even more wealthy, removing protective regulation, and so on. It is quite common for pro-right people to reduce the environmental protection, perhaps to encourage businesses to pollute heavily as they used to. Liberty for corporations (just a particular section of society), is thought to produce good results in everything. Such limited action lowers diversity of possible response and hence lowers resilience. It simply increases the pressure on the ecological system and will lead to greater tumult.

Pretending that the signs of disorder are illusionary, irrelevant or passing. “There really is no crisis. So nothing should be done.” For example, arguing that ecological destruction and climate change generated by society’s economic processes and success is not a problem, will return to normal, is beyond human remediation, or is a purely natural process. When this position is taken as true then the logical conclusion is that people pointing to the challenge are engaged in some kind of hallucinatory conspiracy, so they can be ignored, or perhaps locked away. Anyway, trying to fixing the challenge will cause even worse problems, disrupt our cosy lives, or be expensive, and so it can’t be real.

Pretending to be solving the problem, but carry on as previously. This is a common response at COPs. For example, you praise yourself for boosts to renewables, but you are encouraging a) new coal and gas mines, b) building more coal fired power stations, c) keeping fossil fuel based energy economic through subsidy and ignoring costs and potential costs, d) promoting ‘clean’ fossil fuels though Carbon Capture and Storage or other fantasy technologies, or e) claiming increasing biofuels does not increase emissions at all. Imagined solutions become defense mechanisms.

Support incremental and slow response to problems, while protecting the established system. This could be fine if we had lots of time left, but people have been delaying action for so long it is now just more suicidal delay. It removes preceptions of the urgency of the problem, and awareness of cascading and accumulating challenges.

Attacking those who might be trying to solve the challenges – People concerned about the challenge, are a potential challenge to the power and wealth of elite modes of organisation – for the reasons above. As people point to the challenge and imply that the elites have to change (as they have not remotely solved the problem), it is logical to assume that scientists came up with climate change to support something the elites don’t like, like socialism and tyranny. Yes acting against climate change could be beneficial for ordinary people, not the elites. It can be said that rivals like China promote the idea to weaken the West, or that people who recognise climate change as a problem, are elites who want to spread even greater costs of living onto ordinary people and, although it is never said, ordinary people are already suffering the results of elite neoliberalism and do not want more ‘austerity’.

Emphasising the challenges in transition and playing down the problems of staying largely inert. Counting the expected economic and social costs of transition while ignoring the costs of ignoring climate change, (because those climate costs are declared unreal, or are not the elite’s problem as they think they can survive).

Blaming attempts to fix the problem for the problems. The Australian coalition frequently blames power failures on renewables, even when the coal energy generators collapsed in the heat, gas backup did not come online, or exceptional storms ripped down power cables. Another technique is to Invent new problems associated with solutions (such as health issues for wind turbines while ignoring massive, and well documented, health issues for coal mines or from fossil fuel air pollution), and so on.

Oversimplifying the challenges to make them seem manageable. This affects both sides. While renewable energies are useful and may solve a large number of problems, they are not a complete solution. They do not solve the problems of over-fishing, deforestation, peak-phosphorous, over-grazing, greenhouse emissions from industrial agriculture and other parts of the general social approach to destroying ecologies. The challenge is large, not narrow. Likewise people often say that the results of climate change are unpredictable, and then firmly predict that everything will be fine. Anti-renewable people also can blame population growth for the total problem.

Stirring up distractions to get people’s attention focused elsewhere, especially if the chosen challenge, seems unsolvable by the current order. One way of doing that is through scapegoating, or blaming people overseas, so we can keep on with pollution.

Locating a scapegoat to blame for the problems and arguing everything will be well when that scapegoat is purged. Dominant groups can actively blame the relatively powerless (refugees from wars and climate change, illegal or legal immigrants, Muslims, professors, gay people, non-existant marxists, and ‘liberals/greenies’) for almost all problems. In Australia, after the ‘Black Summer fires’ the Coalition and the Murdoch media blamed Greens for not preventing the bush fires, when the Greens did not have the policies claimed, did not have the power to implement them, and when the clearances to prevent fires had exceeded the targets set by Coalition governments. Again the point, is “Its not [our country] causing the problem, its someone else. We can keep on”.

Punishing people for objecting to the established order and the problems it generates. Australian and other governments have intensified penalties for protests: increasing jail sentences and fines, trying to prohibit those charged with protest from associating with other protestors, and making it difficult for people to encourage boycotting those companies who help generate climate change and so on. This also has the ‘advantage’ of disrupting the information system, so news of challenges is less circulated or broadcast.

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On Modern Conservatism and the Right

January 18, 2024

Conservatism is the idea that we should preserve social institutions, processes and land, and improve them gradually because life is complex and we don’t know how things mesh together, or every (or even what) function they might have. Moving quickly is always high risk, and any improvement has to be done with care.

Conservatism has a great respect for historically developed ‘checks and balances’ and for varied sources of power (so that one power cannot become dominant and bend everything to its will). It is also suspicious of fanatical adherence to ‘ideologies’ as they can blind people as much as help them.

As a failing, they might be a bit oblivious to violence which protects the system, but they certainly will object to violence that attempts to overthrow the system.

Conservativism is a perfectly coherent political philosophy that is a vital part of any political system. It constrains people from rushing ahead without thinking or feeling.

However, the Modern Right (as a movement) is not conservative at all, and constantly rushes ahead destroying checks and balances and obeying ideologies, rather than thinking.

The modern Right has acted rapidly to break down the post-war compromise between capitalism and socialism which developed to protect the population from the vagaries of capitalism, and to curtail boom and bust cycles. Rather than proceed cautiously with care, it destroyed checks and balances and followed an unproven ideology that the free market always knows best and that governments are always useless to provide help for people who are not part of the wealthy.

The modern Right has rushed to concentrate power and wealth in the hyper rich corporate class, turn democracies into plutocracies, and aimed to destroy any opposition to this concentration (unions, left wing thought etc. Most people now do not know what left wing thought is, any more than they know what conservative thought is).

It has rushed to destroy land, air, and water, and has boosted climate change by being reluctant to move against the plutocracy it created. It has no love of its country’s nature.

It is now rushing into scapegoating people for the social collapse its policies have generated. These people have had no provable role in that collapse, and the Right appears to be trying to undo civil rights for everyone who are not officially supporters.

It is now rushing into trying to discredit (not improve) vital social institutions such as systems of Justice. This would be more or less incomprehensible to a conservative, as they would know that once social discrediting of systems of justice happens, we are headed towards ‘justice’ as violence and justice at the whim of the tyrant. There is no longer any rule of law.

Likewise attempts to discredit the electoral system (rather than improve it) are also attempts to destroy the basis of the legitimacy of the government. And indeed we see this in Trump’s attempts to steal the election by intimidation and fraud. Again this would be completely incomprehensible to any genuine conservative, because they know that these actions will lead to chaos, violence and tyranny.

The Right is also trying to bring pro-corporate (ie non-traditional Christian) religion into power, to support the plutocracy, and thus end any separation between Church, State and Business.

In all, any person who considers themselves conservative, should carefully distinguish their position from that of the pro-corporate, or neo-fascist, Right.

Real Conservatives will get mowed down by it as much as anyone else

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Democrats remove Trump from Ballot????

December 28, 2023

To understand what is happening you need to read at least some of the two High Court judgements.

Here is a quick run down. We will start with the High Court of Colarado.

Colarado

This High Court says:

  • “More than three months ago, a group of Colorado electors eligible to vote in the Republican presidential primary—both registered Republican and unaffiliated voters… filed a lengthy petition in the…. “Denver District Court”… asking the court to rule that former President Donald J. Trump… may not appear on the Colorado Republican presidential primary ballot”

So on the very first page the judgement states that the motion was brought by Republicans.

People who tell us it was a Democrat motion are lying. Not unusual perhaps. But, it is probably good to remember not to trust them in anything they say, as that was pretty easy to discover, and reporters might have to go out of their way to avoid discovering it.

In this Denver District Court case:

  • “The court found by clear and convincing evidence that President Trump engaged in insurrection as those terms are used in Section Three [of the 14th Amendment].”

In other words Trump was essentially convicted of insurrection – which is something the MSM also seem to have ignored.

However the District court also found that:

  • “Section Three does not apply to the President”

This District Court decision was appealed both by Trump and by the Republicans and unaffiliated voters to the High Court.

  • “The Electors and President Trump sought this court’s review of various rulings by the district court.”

The High Court found:

  • “The Election Code allows the Electors to challenge President Trump’s status as a qualified candidate based on Section Three.”
  • “Congress does not need to pass implementing legislation for Section Three’s disqualification provision to attach, and Section Three is, in that sense, self-executing.”
  • “Section Three encompasses the office of the Presidency and someone who has taken an oath as President. On this point, the district court committed reversible error.”

In other words being President does not exclude you from the 14th Amendment. As well the lower court made a decision about ‘insurrection’.

  • “The district court did not err in concluding that the events at the U.S. Capitol on January 6, 2021, constituted an “insurrection.”

and

  • “The district court did not err in concluding that President Trump “engaged in” that insurrection through his personal actions.”

In other words, by the legal standards of a civil case, there is no doubt Trump engaged in, or participated in, an insurrection. He appears to have been convicted without penalty which perhaps shows how privileged Trump is.

The Logical conclusion is:

  • “President Trump is disqualified from holding the office of President under Section Three; because he is disqualified,”

Trump broke the law and the Constitution, which is usually considered to be bad, and perhaps people don’t want to set a precident for Presidents to be known lawbreakers? However, the ultimate decision depends on the US Supreme Court

  • “If review is sought in the Supreme Court before the stay expires on January 4, 2024, then the stay shall remain in place, and the Secretary will continue to be required to include President Trump’s name on the 2024 presidential primary ballot, until the receipt of any order or mandate from the Supreme Court.”

The rest of the document justifies their position, and includes more justification of the point that Trump participated in insurrection.

I personally suspect that the Supreme Court will overturn this decision, despite the High court having apparently demonstrated their arguments well, and argued that the framers of the amendment intended it to apply to the office of President. But the Supreme court could easily argue that it does not matter what the framers intended, all that matters is the words, the lack of words and the Supreme Court’s interpretation of the words. This would completly go against their usual originalist interpretations of the Constitution, but it helps save Trump, so who cares?

In short.

  1. The case was not brought by Democrats. In my experience Democrats want Trump on the Ballot as they think Trump is the easiest person for Biden to defeat.
  2. Trump has been convicted of participating in insurrection.
  3. The 14 Ammendment covers the office of President, when the President participates in Insurrection, and forbids him from running for any office including that of President..
  4. Therefore by the law set out in the US Constitution, Trump has disqualified himself from standing for the Presidency. Only Trump did this. No one else disqualified him.

If people break the law, President or not, they should pay the penalty, perhaps particularly if they were president. Indeed, we would expect the “law and order party” to agree with this, but apparently the law is for others.

Of course if, in other cases, Trump does get declared immune from prosecution for all crimes committed while President, then that will affect Biden too, and it will be hard to remove him from the ballot on the grounds of crime, or to prosecute him for crimes…

Michigan

In Michigan, the high court (apparently controlled by Democrats) said:

  • The only legal issue properly before the Court is whether the Court of Claims and the Court of Appeals erred by holding that the Michigan Secretary of State lacks legal authority to remove or withhold former President Donald J. Trump’s name from Michigan’s 2024 presidential primary ballot. I agree with the Court of Appeals that under MCL 168.614a and MCL 168.615a, the Secretary of State must place Trump on the primary ballot “regardless of whether he would be disqualified from holding office”

in other words, it does not matter if Trump has disobeyed the constitution, or could be disqualified from office, as the Michigan Secretary of State cannot stop his name being put on the primary ballot.

The previous court had ruled

  • the relevant statutes require the Secretary of State to place any candidate” who has been identified by the relevant political party “on the presidential primary ballot, and confers no discretion to the Secretary of State to do otherwise, there is no error to correct.”

The big difference between Colarado and Michigan is that the Colarado code insists that Presidential candidates should be qualified, and could rule that Trump is not qualified because of his crimes, but in Michigan, there is no such requirement – anyone can stand for a primary no matter how criminal they are.

To repeat: nothing can be done about lawbreakers or constutional violators standing for a presidential primary.

  • the Secretary of State is not legally required to confirm the eligibility of potential presidential primary candidates. She lacks the legal authority to remove a legally ineligible candidate from the ballot once their name has been put forward by a political party in compliance with the statutes governing primary elections.

This may mean that State law overrides the Constitution

As far as I understand, the judgement suggests in an endnote, that people could appeal to stop Trump being on a Presidential ballot, once Trump becomes the nominee. That is a different matter.

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