Posts Tagged ‘Disinformation’

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The Anthropocene and Geological Time

August 16, 2019

There is a common argument that the idea of the Anthropocene is a joke. That in terms of geological time the idea of the Anthropocene is meaningless; it is currently much shorter than the margin of error for declaring a geological epoch, and that the traces of humanity are unlikely to be marked because “If 100 million years can easily wear the Himalayas flat, what chance will San Francisco or New York have?”. Geological time stretches for billions of years, not millions, and especially not hundreds of years. Even radioactivity is irrelevant “If there were a nuclear holocaust in the Triassic, among warring prosauropods, we wouldn’t know about it.” Personally I like the idea that there were intelligent dinosaurs – there apparently were big brained dinosaurs who were co-operative pack animals with opposable thumbs, and it is interesting to think that no traces of their civilisation survives. However, that is a digression

Basically the argument is that humans are irrelevant in the grand scheme of things and that we have an inflated opinion of our ability to control events. Any human effect on the planet is transient and meaningless (just as was the effect of our imagined intelligent dinosaurs). We will probably be gone in a blink of God’s eye, in geological terms. The idea of the Anthropocene, according to this position, is stupid; nothing that humans can do matters.

I’d have to say this argument does not convince me.

The problem with geological time is precisely that humans, or other genus and families of creatures, don’t matter. It is true, we are probably not going to be here for 10s of millions of years, never mind 100s of millions of years, because if we survive we won’t be the same – evolution will change us. Taking a geological approach to human problems is probably why it seems that geologists are usually the scientists who don’t care about climate change or ecological destruction. In terms of geological time such destruction is totally trivial. The Earth goes on.

However, the problem comes when this position is used to imply that social action is not resulting in a series of ecological crises, that the sixth great extinction of life on Earth is not likely to be happening, that climate change is a mere blip, that we are not leaving forms of pollution all over the global eco-system, or disrupting that system to an extent which is dangerous for many species, and possibly for human survival. Such an implication is simply wrong, and when pushed, most geologists would probably deny they are making it.

The term ‘Anthropocene’ is useful because it recognises that contemporary human societies are having a marked effect on global ecological, climate and geological systems. We are potentially changing the ecology to such a degree that our current civilisations may not be able to survive, and possibly billions of humans will die off. These crises would probably not have arrived, or been the same, without human action.

In human terms, as opposed to geological terms, this recognition is relevant. Having a term that recognises those changes and our role in creating them is useful. Suppressing it, almost certainly makes it harder to think about it, which is probably why articles like this get published.

Now, I’m certainly not going to argue that we can reverse the crises and return to the world we have destroyed, or that people always achieve the results that they intend. The world involves interconnecting complex systems, and consequently unintended consequences are routine and reversibility is not generally on.

If human social action results in unintended, unplanned, consequences which involve ecological catastrophe and (as far as we can tell) the deliberate actions of bees (for example) don’t, then I think humans are more responsible than bees, dolphins, or koalas, for those consequences. Furthermore, I’m not convinced bees, or other creatures, can take responsibility or act differently, while we can.

Yes, the Earth goes on, but I would rather it went on with us, than it went on without us. This is irrespective of the billions of years of Earth history in which humans have not, and will not, exist. This may be selfish or self important, but if we are to think about humans and the creatures who share the Earth with us, then we cannot think primarily in geological time – that is an abrogation of responsibility, and of our own, and other species, survival in the immediate future – and, if we do cause a mass extinction, then we are affecting the future history of life on Earth – no amount of saying we don’t matter in geological time will change that.

Lack of total control of the world does not mean we cannot mitigate and lessen the crisis. Who says that we have to “defeat” an ecological crisis, rather than, say, refrain from causing one – given we know how we are causing it? We do not have to have complete control to take action. If we had to take control of the world before we did anything, we would never act.

Even stopping causing the problem as much as we can individually, or as groups, is an improvement on the actions of the Australian and US governments (to take two of many examples), who seem to be trying to encourage corporations to pollute more for higher profits and to make things worse for us.

Refraining from making the situation worse may not be enough, but it is better than nothing – and because we are living in complex systems with unintended consequences as normal, we cannot be sure a particular action won’t start something which eventually becomes enough.

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Free speech and the information mess

August 15, 2019

I read yet another article decrying the loss of free speech, by which they seem to mean that right wingers may have to think about abusing people, or damning them to hell, before they go ahead and do it anyway… but the article misses the point.

Yes we really do need to worry about loss of free speech, but the losses being complained about are trivial and avoid reality.

In Australia
We have the Federal Government harassing media organisations for reporting things they don’t like about themselves or right wing allies. And then suggesting that media are used by foreign spies, so as to make such critical media traitorous, and open to more harassment.

The government perpetually harasses and cuts back the public ABC news service because they don’t appear to like any news being critical or exposing them; if they can shut it off, they will, with screams of bias.

The government is actively hostile to animal rights activists exposing bad conditions on farms, making such activity criminal, while of course excusing those agri-businesses who cut back on decent conditions because it might lower profit.

I believe they have forbidden people in the CSIRO for speaking publicly about climate change – following the US example of shutting down talk about a really important problem they don’t want to face.

Public servants have been forbidden from even anonymously liking facebook posts critical of the government – even if these likes have nothing to do with the sacked person’s work. If you are a public servant you cannot talk.
We don’t know if this regulation will be extended to public universities or used to club people in the ABC even more.

The federal government routinely appears to revoke or delay visas for left wing activists, but this is rarely reported in the media unless they are semi-celebrities like Chelsea Manning.

The Coalition government’s (Federal and State) record on freedom of information is terrible.

Neoliberal ‘commercial in confidence’ regulations, means that much information relevant to taxpayer’s evaluation of services which have been contracted out is unavailable, and it can be a felony to release it. This helps support the corporatization of social services, and protects the unaccountable handing out of taxpayer’s money to the private sector.

The NSW government has, over the years, increased prison sentences for people protesting against mines.

We have no, or very few, protections for whistle blowers.
For example the people who revealed the Australian government security services spied on Timor in order to benefit the Woodside Corporation (which is surely a criminal act), and lower royalties paid to Timor for oil, face criminal charges and jail.
People who reveal massive corporate corruption may never get another job.

We have students being suspended for protesting against right wing speakers, as if such people deserve to be heard unopposed.

The Prime Minister has just announced that he will seek regulation of ‘Get-up’, a group funded by voters, which generally opposes his policies. No such regulation is sought of those groups who support his policies.

This is not just an Australian problem.

In the US Republicans are suggesting that protesting against fascism constitutes terrorist activities. They don’t appear to have any problems with death threats coming from fascists

The FBI is active against climate activists.

We cannot say that President Trump is welcoming of criticism and indeed seems to threaten those who criticise him regularly. Indeed free speech is not speech which criticizes him, because that is lying by definition. See an official speech

The President ignores the murder of an progressive (in Saudi Arabian terms) American based Journalist by Saudi Arabian friends, and then denies his own intelligence agencies reports which suggests his friend was responsible for organizing the murder. After all its a matter of priorities:

I only say they spend $400 to $450 billion over a period of time, all money, all jobs, buying equipment… I’m not like a fool that says, “We don’t want to do business with them.” And by the way, if they don’t do business with us, you know what they do? They’ll do business with the Russians or with the Chinese.

Snowden and Assange etc.

All of this comes about because rightwing governments want you, and everyone else, to be ignorant, and to support corporate profit taking from any challenge. Ignorance makes it easier for them to persuade you to keep supporting them.

However free speech is not simple. There are lots of situations in which free speech is not allowed: libel, defamation, national secrets, commercial in confidence etc.

We can say that with free speech there comes responsibility. If lying becomes a normal example of free speech, then maybe such speech has no meaning? And yet it is hard to tell lies from mistakes. The issue is complicated, and yet some examples, like those above, are clear…..

It is easy to favour free speech that favours the establishment, or attacks those opposed to the establishment, and attacks on established order can seem like vandalism deserving of punishment.

If you want to talk about this, then get real on the real sources of anti-free speech.

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Conventions, Knowledge and Politics

August 3, 2019

I want to discuss the connection of conventions and knowledge by consideration of a political speculation.

The speculation is Could US President Trump declare a third term, or even become president for life?

If you don’t like speculating that Trump is able to violate existing convention, then substitute the name of your favourite political villain, who has power, whenever you read the word ‘Trump’, or just delete the word Trump. Cut and paste if necessary.

To begin to answer this question we have to ask “What is a constitution?” “What kind of power does a constitution have, and how does it get it?” and “how do people know about the constitution?”

I will suggest that constitutions have power because of the way they are interpreted, and the web of institutions and conventions that grow up around that constitution. This web of conventions and interpretations, sets up people’s knowledge about the constitution. Most people will not know the constitution in detail, they will only know it by what they are told, or how they are told to read it. As the interpretations change and the web of institutions change, or the conventions around those institutions change or weaken, then the interpretations of the constitution, knowledge of the constitution, and the role of the constitution can change. No constitution has power in itself alone, outside of this dynamic and complex context.

Constitutions are, like most laws, to a large extent decided by argument and by what people find they can get away with.

To return to the initial question about President Trump. This is of course a difficult question to predict the answer to, because the answer precisely depends on the interactions in complex web of institutions, conventions and interpretations, which will inevitably be involved in political struggle. Victory in that struggle is hard, perhaps impossible, to predict.

The simple answer to the question about President Trump, is that ‘constitutionally’ “no, it can’t happen” because of constitutional amendment XXII.

The status of an amendment is, again, not set in stone, but in convention. That the term limit is set by an amendment, may suggest the Constitution could be amended again to remove that clause. There is also a debate as to whether the framers of the constitution would have supported such an amendment, or whether they may have intended the President to be an elected king. If so, people could argue that the amendment is unconstitutional in itself and should be revoked, subject to further debate, repealed, or de-ratified in some way. If the institutions, or some of them, could be persuaded, or commanded, to be considerate of this view then the struggle is partly over. Yes there will likely be dispute, but the result depends on the strength of conventional institutions, their interpretations and the ruthlessness of the politics supporting or challenging these conventions.

To repeat, constitutions are matters of struggle, interpretation and precedents which are not certain – the knowledge of the precedents and what the constitution means is tied up with the interpretation of the Constitution. Words are always ambiguous, and their meaning can alter as the context (political or otherwise) alters. Even knowledge of the past can be interpreted in different ways and become a different history, which then gives different meanings to the present, and can be used to justify the argument the presenter wishes to justify. So the supposed constitutional framework of politics, and knowledge of that framework, is affected by the politics that is conducted within it.

President Trump and his party have to be admired for the skill with which they have undermined convention, interpretation, precedent and knowledge, and have set up new modes of interpretation and knowledge which favour them. It is no longer apparently disapproved for the President and his family to profit financially from the presidency. It is no longer disapproved for the President to accept help from a foreign power to boost his electoral chances. The President can apparently seek to obstruct the course of justice and it is not a problem.

President Trump has been explicitly attacking standard conventions of the US constitution. He has claimed that Article II gives him powers which no one has previously realized. He says it means he can do whatever he likes. People who are experts in the Law, say this is not true, but he has made the point, and his followers are more likely to believe him, than the experts. He has not been condemned for making these claims about the lack of limits on his power, by many people on his side of politics.

He has also claimed on two separate occasions that he can easily overthrow the 14th Amendment which says:

All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside.

Initially he claimed he could change it by executive order, and later by somewhat vague method. However, it is being asserted that the Constitution is not immutable and that he can suspend it, and those who say he can’t are wrong. Importantly Republican members of Congress seem to be largely not protesting against these claims, which suggests tacit support for Constitutional fragility, as long as it benefits them.

If any of this is disturbing to supporters, they can also deny it is true quite easily because of the mess of information, and because any position can be supported in information society – including positions which support any presidential overthrow of term limits. Likewise, as I have argued elsewhere on this blog, the information groups we belong to limit our access to disapproved-of-information and tie the information we accept to those we identify with so that information received and accepted becomes a matter of identity. In this situation, people who support, or oppose the President are less likely to have the full arguments of the ‘other group’ presented to them, and most likely dismiss them without understanding them. This is part of the way we come to know things.

President Trump also intensifies the patterns employed by previous Presidents to bolster power-concentrating conventions and precedents. He is part of a trend which helps him. He has continued deepening ‘the swamp’ of corporate interest, and governing according to those financial interests. He openly encourages corporations to pollute and poison people in the name of economic prosperity. He breaks treaties, and threatens war, by himself without consultation with Congress. His followers do not appear to expect him to tell the truth to the people, to conduct a remotely civil debate, or to refrain from multiple adultery and sexual assault. And so on.

The conventions have changed, and the sources of information the President’s supporters are repeatedly exposed to, have changed as part of this change. The lack of civility which the President encourages, also encourages the sharp separation of information groups, and the unlikelihood of his supporters or opponents getting information presented to them neutrally.

Within this kind of context, can we assume that if Trump did declare martial law, or claim a third term (perhaps because a winning Democrat had accepted help from Russia, had a sex scandal, or committed massive financial fraud that disqualified them from office), can we guarantee that fellow Republicans, judges and officials would not support him and would not denounce those opposed to this move as traitors, communists, or even terrorists? Would they absolutely not talk about armed insurrection if they were losing, or using the army to suppress dissent if they were winning? Would they not have the support of large swathes of the generally pro-Republican media? Especially after a few well placed threats? Would they not claim that violent neo-fascists who might go around beating up opponents were innocent, patriots, or just people fed up with the ‘deep state’? Would the institutions which support the conventional meaning and knowledge of the constitution, stand up for those meanings and knowledges against the direct instruction of politically appointed directors? Could they organize themselves effectively, or would they collapse in confusion and multi-directional impulses or internal dispute, which have resulted from the political discourse that splits the country?

I’m not sure whether any of this is possible or not. It would be nice to think it is all rubbish, but events suggest the US would not have that much further to go before it became possible, and then possible and acceptable, almost no matter who was President, and that the country and its institutions are heading in that direction, slowly and almost imperceptibly to most US citizens.

People can acclimatize to anything, given enough time, and the argument that President Trump is stupid, misses the fact that ignorance is not stupidity, and he has years of successful self-promotion behind him. He may have a limited set of skills, but they may be exactly what is needed for him to gain a third term if it is possible. He also has incentive to go for a third term because it protects him from prosecution…

There are plenty of occasions in which people have said that something could not happen, or would not happen again, just before it happened. Historically dictators have ignored convention, re-interpreted laws, declared states of emergency, got support from other interested factions, conducted massive misinformation campaigns, suppressed dissent, changed the status of knowledge or whatever. It has happened.

It would not seem impossible that Trump could suspend a Constitutional amendment, and that he would received support, rather than face immediate and compelled dismissal. Especially if he and his supporters were prepared to use violence to support their position.

Overconfidence in procedure, convention or knowledge, remains a great way to remain unprepared.

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Mining in Australia

July 8, 2019

9th July 2019 version

People frequently say something like we should not stop fossil fuel mining and export in Australia, because we would go ‘bankrupt’ without income from mining.

This is a response which will be updated as I do more research.

Australia does not earn much in royalties or income from mining, as we tend to give away minerals (when compared to other countries), profits are transferred overseas to tax havens and so on….

Wikipedia states: “At the height of the mining boom in 2009–10, the *total* value-added of the [entire] mining industry was 8.4% of GDP.” That is not the same as useful income to the country….

Adani predicted in court that the full coal mine would produce less than 1500 direct and indirect *job years* (not jobs) over the life of the mine, which is basically nothing (given a life of 25 years that is an average total employment of 60 jobs per year).

The Labor market information portal states that mining employs less than 2% of the total workforce. And that is from all the mines (iron, copper, lithium, uranium etc), not simply the fossil fuel mines. According to a parliamentary website mining employs much less than any of ‘Retail Trade’, “Wholesale trade’, ‘Professional, Scientific and Technical Services’, ‘Construction’, ‘Manufacturing’, ‘Accommodation and Food Services’, ‘Agriculture, Forestry and Fishing’, ‘Transport, Postal and Warehousing’, ‘Financial and Insurance Services’ and so on.

Some old surveys suggest that Australians think that mining employs about 8-9 times more people than it does. Increasing, automation, means employment in mining is decreasing all the time.

I have no idea how many mining workers are here on temporary visas, ready to take their wages back home either. The mining industry is always complaining there are not enough locals with the skills – which is odd given that there used to be, and less people are working in mining. However, overseas based workers are probably not unionized so they can earn less.

If climate change goes ahead uncontrollably, then there will be massive job losses in tourism (no barrier reef) agriculture (Adani taking all the water and poisoning the artesian basin). People will loose their homes, and so on – but that will be a boost to building.

So while Australia may go bankrupt (or at least face financial stress in the future), it will probably not be from stopping fossil fuel mines or refusing to help the world be destabilised.

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On ‘Cultural Marxism’?

July 2, 2019

Some people, usually on the Left, deny the existence of ‘cultural marxism’, while some critics claim it exists, and some of them claim it exists as a movement.

Looking at what the critics actually discuss when they refer to cultural marxism, then it seems they are pointing towards people who criticise contemporary Western culture and capitalism. Such people definitely exist and always have. There are some major conservative political thinkers who also criticise their contemporary Western culture and capitalism: Coleridge, Burke, Ruskin, and innumerable religious thinkers etc. So there is nothing necessarily Marxist about such criticism, although Marx does criticise aspects of Western culture and obviously criticises and analyses capitalism.

Gathering from what I have read those criticising cultural Marxism tend to object to objections to:

  • fixed gender roles and male authority
  • the authority of wealthy people and corporations
  • the authority of religion
  • patriotic violence
  • the authority and superiority of ‘white culture’
  • compulsory heterosexuality
  • being polite to people who are different to yourself

and so on.

To simplify the critics of ‘Cultural Marxism’ object to challenges to forms of authority and customs they approve of. They themselves challenge forms of authority and customs they don’t like, but they don’t call themselves “cultural fascists” or even “cultural capitalists”. So the name would appear to have the rhetorical function of trying to get people to dismiss what is being challenged before any argument is made, rather than any form of clarification. It may rely on an expected automatic negative reaction to the name of Marx, by people in their in-group.

One slightly weird thing, if we were to take the critique seriously, is that many of these critics do not deal with specific thinkers they identify as cultural Marxists. For example after listening and reading quite a lot of Jordan Peterson, it seems to me that he frequently makes sweeping statements, but I have never heard him give any evidence that he has read the people he might name (like Foucault) in any depth, or even have read a book like ‘Foucault for Beginners’. He does not seem to think any real engagement is necessary – and this in university lectures. Ok people may not have the space to do this in blog posts, but in university lectures they should. While I cannot guarantee that he does not have a serious discussion about particular ‘cultural marxists’ somewhere or other, it is not obviously apparent, and suggests that his criticism is not based upon much thought, understanding or work. The critique seems to be politically motivated by a need to defend certain types of authority – for Peterson this seems to be primarily male authority, and occasionally religious authority, although his relation to religion seems complicated or inconsistent.

However, rather than something dreadful I would continue say that the criticism of Western culture, capitalism and other forms of authority has been a long standing and continuing part of the Western tradition involving both Protestantism and enlightenment. We could easily push it back to Heraclitus or Plato, if we wanted to.

Protestantism almost begins with the assertion that the worshipper should not accept the authority of the Catholic Church to tell worshippers the details of the Christian religion. Protestants claimed individuals should have to power and ability to challenge the teachings of the Church based upon their reading of the bible, their direct experience of God and the power of their own mind. The declarations of the pope and the Doctors of the Church were largely irrelevant. Sometimes this went as far as the free spirit antinomians who may have argued that being saved by faith you can commit no sin, and all is permissible.

Protestants in many cases then came to accept the authority of their own Churches and leaders, but they had challenged authority, and they constantly broke apart from each other over differences of doctrine. They often also challenged the authority of aristocracy, and the sins of culture (art theatre etc) especially if they were merchants. They also often broke the socially sanctioned ties between rich and poor, deciding that charity had to involve discipline of those who received charity, or that people who needed charity were sinners and thus should not receive charity. This breaking of demands may have helped the acquisition of capital, and other people attacked that. Whether intended or not, this created a tradition of ‘free thinking’, which allowed attacks on Protestantism itself.

In the enlightenment supposedly irrational forms of authority were also attacked, again primarily focusing on the Church, but also on wealth. The idea took root that people should be able to govern themselves to the extent that was possible. Authority should be acceptable, rational and ideally non-repressive. This is expressed in the American Revolution, the abolition of slavery, further challenge to the aristocracy, the formation of worker’s unions, the growth of science as a middle class activity, the promotion of religious freedom, the acceptance of less orthodox religious people into politics and so on.

The enlightenment both promoted and attacked capitalism. Adam Smith is a good example. He points to the benefits of capitalism, how merchants conspire to defraud the public, how the organisation of labour corrupts people, and how military activity defends merchants interests at the cost of the general taxpayer. John Stuart Mill likewise has a complicated attitude towards capitalism, being heavily aware of how it can further oppress those who have to labour.

Karl Marx uses the labour theory of value to argue that capitalist’s profit is stolen from the workers, that capitalism is incoherent and inevitably self destructive, and that capitalist culture and ideology is all about supporting the ruling class and crushing opposition to that rule. According to Marx, the culture that gets spread is that which the ruling groups promote and help spread and which fits in with social organisation and experience. Famously Marx declares religion to be equivalent to opium, at best a distracting fantasy – not something all Marxists believe – see ‘Liberation Theology’ and the people around the young Paul Tillich….

Later on, Marxists will allege that the workers are not that passive with respect to ruling class culture, they can transform it and use it for their own purposes. People can discard the distortions of reality produced by ruling culture and come to see the truth of their oppression and work towards liberty through revolutionary action. Ultimately, the Marxist position, is that all culture comes out of ‘material’ action or ‘praxis’.

Currently some people recognise further oppressions other than that of the capitalist dominant class, that stem from the irrational oppressions of the past. They ask, why should women be considered as secondary citizens, badly represented in areas of official power, subjugated by male violence, mocked for being female, considered to have less of the right intelligence, and so on. They ask why should homosexual people be threatened or attacked because of their sexual/romantic preferences, condemned to hell, unable to marry and so on. Why should poor people be treated like dirt and ruled by those who can make money or have inherited money. Why are the monied considered to be better human beings and more entitled to rule, when clearly there are things they do not know about most people’s lives. Why should we have to cheer or face exile when our country goes to war with another that has not attacked us, or is so much less powerful than us that we shall be responsible for massive death, and undesired abortions? Why should we not try for something better? Why should capitalists have the force to poison workers or destroy the environment and people’s futures?

All these kinds of questions are part of the Western tradition, and to me much of what is labelled as ‘cultural Marxism’ seems to be part of the search for liberty. Both the liberty from interference and restriction, and the potential liberty to act. Of course, for those who support restriction of the liberty of others, it can seem that their liberty to restrict is being removed, and that therefore they are not being respected as much as they should, or that they are being constrained.

Perhaps we could think that the Cultural Marxists are the defenders of that tradition while their attackers are those who ally with authority and attempt to fossilize that authority, or increase that authority as when they promote the extension of capitalist power, through winding back the checks and balances which have evolved to balance out that power.

At the least, they appear to want to shut discussion down by lumping the critical western tradition along with something they think should be despised.

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Australian fantasy

June 30, 2019

Just struck me that Australia is suffering a similar but even more silly fantasy than Brexit. Brexit is the idea that Europe is of no importance to the UK’s prosperity or coherent politics….

In Australia we think we can do “Eco-exit”. We can cheerfully exit a functioning ecology and water supply, and make heaps of money out of it, and that money will keep us alive and prosperous….

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Mess of information again

June 30, 2019

One of the problems when discussing communication is that we don’t recognise that communication is not primarily about exchanging accurate information. Communication is about persuasion, power, and building group loyalties and bonds so that cooperation occurs and things can be done. In the 1930s Malinowski described communication as phatic, by which he meant it was primarily about building relationships. While Malinowski concentrated on the positive side of this, building relationships can also involve destroying other relationships. We can reinforce our ‘ingroup’ by showing that some people (our ‘outgroup’) are evil or inferior. By doing this we show that they do not share our values, do not understand us, and they become less persuasive. We no longer have to waste time trying to understand them, we can get on with the action that is urgent.

Communication is primarily a social phenomena rather than a purely informational phenomena.

If people use communication to build bonds with those in their ingroups so things can be done, then they will tend to exchange ‘information’ that does precisely that. If they are building say political groups then they will tend to exchange information which confirms their identities and portrays those who criticise their point of unity as being outsiders, ignorant, stupid, slaves of hostile authority, whose information does not have to be taken seriously.

As people online have very little else (such as physical force, contact, unambiguous presence) to maintain unity, then these symbolic political factors become increasingly important to maintaining both group bonding/identification with a degree of trust and mutual recognition, etc. so communication is possible in the first place.

We can see the same process in climate ‘discussions’ online. People hostile to climate action will accuse those in favour of it of deceit, stupidity and political motivation, and usually appear not to have not read anything from their opposition. The same is often true of people supporting climate action – they routinely denounce people who oppose them as ignorant, stupid, and politically motivated. Neither position encourages discussion, but it does encourage righteous closure, identity group reinforcement and a tendency to accept almost any information if it comes from our own side. “Those [opponents] are really rude and won’t listen. They are bad people. We are good people.”

Therefore information which supports my and my group’s position is more easily seen as accurate or good (even if faked, because it still symbolically points to truth), and information which supports the outgroup’s position is more easily seen as lies.

Another problem with communication is that it is symbolic, it can be an expression of things that the person has no words for, but must point to or imply. At the best this leads to poetry, but at the worse it leads to incoherence. A person may express their sense of marginality, for example, by expressing their dislike of an outgroup which is even more marginal than them. They may talk about protecting their nation from some imprecise or unlikely threat. Much communication may offer this kind of expression, which is unlikely to be accurate in the normal sense of the word.

These kinds of conditions lead to high levels of suspicion of fakery. One way people have of dealing with this is not to see misinformation issued by our ingroup as disqualifying that side, but to say all sides are equally fake, or the other side is even worse. So even when we realise your side lies or is mistaken, then we can still stay with it. This position also demonstrates our media savvy, that we are not being taken in, and therefore demonstrates to that we are correct in supporting our side, because we can say we know when they are wrong!

These dynamics do not mean that both groups are equally inaccurate. It just means good communication does not happen, war is reinforced, and all becomes fair in war (including faking). Again this does not mean that both sides are equally prone to faking, just the conditions for such fakery are being established.

My own feeling, which is obviously caught in this tension, is that what we call polarisation encourages, or naturalises, this kind of bad communication, so it is handy for those who want to build support to encourage the idea that opponents are evil and will play any kind of trick.

In this view, the completely pro-corporate side of politics is promoting policies which cannot deliver what they promise, but do deliver misery, lousy conditions, and political marginalisation for the vast majority of people and huge profit for others. Consequently they have pretty deliberately used what we know about human communication to promote these splits and to keep their voters onside and immune to counter information.

The problem then becomes that this mode of communication and its fake news becomes normal; the mechanisms of generation spread everywhere, and nobody really knows (within a range of doubt) what is actually happening. So few policies can be based on reality any longer, few people can know what is really urgent and group reinforced faith and symbolic expression becomes the major determinate of truth. There are few to no places outside the information mess from which to make accurate judgements all the time. In which case, the plan to reinforce political dominance of the established corporate sector undermines it’s success in inaccuracy.

Communication happens all the time. It is primarily about building groups and persuading people to cooperate. Good accurate communication is difficult, when these other factors get in the way.

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Neoliberalism, the State and economic crashes

June 9, 2019

The Question

Can repeated economic crashes and collapse disprove Neoliberal positions for neoliberals?

What are neoliberals?

‘Neoliberal’ is the name given by their opponents to a collection of people and economists (Mises, Hayek, Friedman are the traditional core) who support domination by corporate capitalists, through talk of free markets and through imposition of an unrestrained capitalist state (paradoxically often by supporting the idea of a small State or a demolished State). Neoliberalism seems primarily about re-regulating markets to preserve and increase corporate domination. Some neoliberals may propose a more humanistic corporate domination, while others may propose a more total form of that domination.

‘Neoliberal’ is not a neat category, it is defined by function rather than by ideology. Democrats and Republicans, Coalition and Labor[1] can be called neoliberal, depending on their level of support for capitalist plutocracy. That few people call themselves ‘neoliberal’ does not mean the term describes nothing. The term sums up the political dynamics of corporate dominance and the ideology of its supporters.

An answer

Repeated economic crashes and collapses cannot prove neoliberalism wrong, because the official pro-free market position is that capitalism can never be harmful, never produce unintended consequences, and never fail. Failure must, as a consequence, always be explained by something supposedly outside capitalism, or outside the “free market”, such as the State, or by any attempts by workers to soften the effects of capitalism, or diminish capitalist exploitation.

Some followers of ‘Austrian economics’ (Mises, Rothbard etc.), have argued to me that the superiority of free market capitalism can be deduced from obviously real/true axioms, and that no empirical check is ever necessary as the superiority and naturalness of capitalism becomes intrinsically obvious and only denied by the willfully stupid. This position also helps people to ignore failures or to explain them as being caused by the political obstruction of perfect free markets.

However, a theory which tells you some process of organisation is always the best, cannot fail and is only disrupted by ‘others’ is pretty clearly ideological. When Communists say communism does not display its full democratic glory only because of the actions of paid capitalist subversives, this ideological factor becomes clear to most people.

Capitalism as the State

Perfect capitalist non-State based free markets, as promoted by neoliberals, have never existed, because the State is part of the capitalist system. There is no known species of capitalism which does not have a State to protect capitalist forms of private property, capitalist types of market, extreme inequalities of wealth, and capitalist power. States have, largely through violence, also helped the establishment of capitalism through dispossessing people from their land and helping to stop people from being self-supporting so they have to become wage labourers and dependent on wage-payers.

In Capitalism, wealth not only becomes the primary token of virtue but it allows its possessors, as a class, to buy politicians, buy the State, buy the laws, buy the violence, buy the religions, buy the education, buy the media and buy public information generally (nearly all media is owned by corporations, and the media that is not corporately owned is constantly threatened). Through information control, PR, media and advertising, pro-capitalism becomes a form of “common-sense”.

Consequently, wherever there are successful capitalists, they attempt to take over the State (even if it was previously non-capitalist), or establish a State, to help protect themselves and regulate markets to benefit the corporate elites and discipline workers. Unrestrained capitalists always produce a capitalist State. The big contribution of Neoliberalism to this takeover has been to try and obscure the connection between business and the State, so as to shift blame away from capitalism.

In the neoliberal capitalist State, the idea of “free markets” is used to argue that the corporate sector must not be inhibited in any way, or by anything such as worker’s rights, as these disrupt the workings and perfection of a (non-existent) free market. Observation will show you that supposed libertarians will almost always vocally and hostilely oppose anything that could benefit workers, or give them some liberty from business control, and largely ignore regulations or subsidies that support the corporate sector. Neoliberal ‘liberty’ is always about the liberty of those with resources, although neoliberals usually do not say this as they would lose popular support.

Unrestrained capitalism always produces plutocracy. Hence it tends to be heavily promoted and supported by the rich. Capitalism almost always ends up undermining the liberty that it claims to promote.

The conditions we observe today of corporate domination, curtailed liberty, incoherent policy, an unresponsive State that people feel separated from, stagnant or declining wages and conditions, and massive environmental destruction, are probably what we could expect from the pro “free market” talk that we have been bombarded with over the last 40 years. Capitalism without regulation is, in reality, a contradiction in terms; an impossibility, or a joke.

[There are occasions in which other classes, or wild parties, can gain partial control over the State, but they generally end up protecting some corporations; we don’t have to assume the wealthy are always unified, although they will probably tend to support their class in general.]

The State and economic failure

Because there is no capitalism without a State, and neoliberal capitalism pretends it is different from the State it controls, neoliberals can always blame the State, and its unsuccessful attempts to prop up industries and finance, for any economic collapse or the hardship that anyone suffers to lower the costs of business (like mutilation and injury at work, wages too low to live on, no health care, heavy pollution, etc.).

Capitalists can also point to the failure of Communist States to prove capitalism is the best system going. This is hardly logical, as the failure of Communist States could equally be evidence of the wonderful success of Byzantine forms of State organisation. Neoliberal apologists then appear to confuse post-world-war II mixed economies and Nordic Socialism with communism, rather than seeing them as States where people had some participatory role in controlling their lives. This becomes part of the capitalist common sense, promoted by capitalist media.

These ideological non-falsifiable positions make it harder to restrain economic collapse, or even to observe how businesses generate collapse through the ways they pursue profit, organize themselves, pursue internal and external corruption, distort information for economic purposes, or use the State to keep themselves going.

The Neoliberal ‘Small State’

Neoliberals claim that because the State is always to blame, rather than business no matter how corrupt or stupid, it must be diminished. However, their ways of making the State small, always end up (possibly unintentionally) being about diminishing the power of ordinary people to oppose corporate domination. This is one reason why the State constantly expands while being controlled by people who talk about making the State small. They cut back social insurance, medical assistance, pensions, anti-pollution controls, working conditions, health regulations at work, etc., while massively expanding the military (subsidies to arms manufacturers etc.), using expensive private contracting, subsidizing already wealthy private schools, boosting tax concessions for wealthy people, extensively policing the workers or poor people heavily while giving liberty to the rich to rip people off, and so on. Again this is because actions by the working or middle classes that might curtail, or seriously challenge, corporate power are said to interfere with the completely fictitious and beneficial “free market”. [2]

Neoliberalism opposes any efforts to constrain the generation of climate change and its growing effects on the middle and lower classes, because that would interfere with the free market and the power of some corporations and wealthy individuals. If people die from bad health care or corporately generated disaster, that is their fault for not being wealthy enough to avoid it.

With neoliberal small State policies, the State usually becomes much more oppressive and useless for most people, and many can be persuaded to support making the State even ‘smaller’ and less useful to them.

Concluding Remarks

Neoliberals can be distinguished from anarchists, because anarchists recognise that corporate capitalism involves concentrated power, and they challenge that power.[3] Neoliberals can also be distinguished from real conservatives who recognize that capitalism often destroys tradition and virtue for profit.

Neoliberalism is an ideology of transcendent value imposed by money, experts and capitalist hangers-on with no regard for empirical reality, or attention to the ways capitalism is dysfunctional. It is, at best, a set of good intentions which produces harsh consequences for most people. It is designed to help its followers avoid noticing the ill effects of capitalism, and so cannot be disproved by those ill-effects.

NOTES

[1] The supposedly left wing Labor Party introduced neoliberal policies to Australia by floating the currency, privatising State-owned institutions, removing tariffs and so on, with many ‘humanistic’ qualities such as working public health, good social services, and a wages accord between unions and business. It has proven very easy to dissolve this humanistic framework in favour of corporate dominance. Support for ordinary people seems incompatible with neoliberalism; such support must be attacked. It has been argued that the neoliberal military coup in Chile demonstrates that neoliberalism is, however, completely compatible with dictatorship, violence and terror.

[2] Given that ideas about the free market function entirely to justify corporate dominance, then if the dominance of particular factions is better served by imposing tariffs, controlling prices, inhibiting competition, or providing taxpayer subsidies then this can be done. Sometimes this is done at the same time as praising free markets.

[3] It should be noted that plenty of trade and exchange has occurred without a State, but these systems are not capitalist. If you want learn how to establish a ‘market’ without a State, then you need to read some anthropology.

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Denying consensus

May 27, 2019

There was comment on the Guardian site recently which shows at least some of the problems with the Left.

It ran something like:

Three really good reasons to deny the science of climate change:

  • 1. Ignorance
  • 2. Stupidity
  • 3. Insanity

    • This formulation tells us nothing. It offers no strategy for persuasion or action. Perhaps, it makes the writer feel better, and heavens we all need to feel better, but it succeeds in making the likelihood of communication and problem solving even less, by name-calling and making barriers and reactions. It puts people who disagree with the speaker(and even some others who might be friendly to those speakers) into dismissible social categories and prevents people from hearing each other.

    It creates problems, it does not diminish them.

    Let’s look at some other reasons people might have for not being active, which are slightly less closed.

  • Fear. People don’t want to think about climate change, because there are no obvious things they can do. It threatens their children and grandchildren, and that is not easy to face. If correct it could be terrifying. Yet we have lived with the threat of nuclear war, population increases and so on, and so far everything is all ok. I spent my youth terrified and nothing happened. Maybe this will be ok, as well?
  • Lack of fear. Everything is in the hands of God. The world is too big to hurt. How is this tiny amount of a perfectly normal gas I breathe out every day going to massively disrupt the whole Earth? It doesn’t make sense. Humans are insignificant in the scheme of things. I cannot change what will be.
  • Sense of probable loss. Loss is painful, and over the last 40 years we have lost out over and over. The promises we were given have not eventuated. You guys trying to stop climate change could take even more away from me and my family. This is another loss. Let’s hope it is as unreal as the promises we were given.
  • Uncertainty as to whether remedies will work. Do we have any guarantees these remedies will work? No? In reality we don’t. It may even now be too late, and plenty of people assure us the costs are way to great to take action without certainty. What are you asking that we should give up again? Why is it always us that are giving up our prospects?
  • Uncertainty about change. Futures are not predictable any more. Who could have guessed this would be happening? Who would guess contemporary technology? Polls are always wrong. Guesses at the future are just guesses, and you are probably using your guesses to gain power over me, and persuade me to act against my interests, like everyone else. Why should I trust you?
  • Experts are often wrong. This is obvious. All of you promised that “free markets” would deliver liberty and prosperity but they haven’t. Even vaguely. They said war in the Middle East would be easy and successful, but its been a total mess, hurt lots of people, and made things worse. Even doctors change their minds every five minutes about what is good or bad for us. They promise cures that never come. These experts are just con-artists without common sense. Everyone makes mistakes you know.
  • Life is overwhelming. I have to make too many decisions. I have pressures from work all the time. My wages and conditions are being cut. I never get any holidays. My boss is a total dickhead. My company is corrupt. I’m not feeling well. My spouse is unhappy. I’m one or two pay days away from family disaster. My kids are acting weird, and I don’t know what to do to help. I’ve too much on my mind. Go away… I don’t need this climate bullshit.
  • Immediate pressures. [Pointed out by Alice Suttie] I have to provide for people around me today. I have to deal with real problems now, not decades, or even just years, in the future. My mother is really sick, I have debt collectors at the door, the electricity may be going to be cut off. I’m busy. I don’t have time to worry about irrelevancies. If you can’t help me now, or propose policies that help me now, then trouble someone else will you?
  • You people are just rude. You obviously don’t understand me. You are obviously not going to listen to me. Why should I listen to you? You are up yourselves, you f+@in alarmist morons

    • There is almost certainly more that could be said here. The advantage of some of these formulations is that the speakers are seen as relatively rational (as people are). We are not dealing with stupidity or insanity which cannot be altered. The statements are largely based on real remarks I have read from people. They are specific, not catastrophizing, not foreclosing of all solutions, like ‘madness’ is. They suggest that some of the problems might be generated by the activist approach, so the approach may need to change. They also suggest that there are specific questions and dialogues which need to be opened and pursued, and that people might be persuadable.

    Now these dialogues may not be easy. They may involved being abused. But the possibility of dialogue and failure also suggests the possibility of learning something new together.

    And that might get somewhere. At least further than thinking the opposition is ignorant, stupid or mad.

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    Conservatives and the Left vs the Right

    May 26, 2019

    This post makes use of the political triad (Right, Conservative, Left) proposed in a previous post.

    What seems clear is, that over the last 40 years of the Pro-Corporate Right (and its talk of ‘markets’) being dominant, ‘ordinary people’ have been marginalised from political and economic processes. Median wages have stagnated, share of wealth has declined, housing has become largely unaffordable, social services have become persecutory, developers can over-ride locals with impunity, people’s objections are largely ignored, and so on. Yet we are all are surrounded by displays of great wealth and squander. Over these last 40 years, the Right has engineered massive change to benefit the wealthy, to break any ties of obligation the wealthy have to any other portion of society, and to break any checks and balances the system had developed. They have succeeded in that aim, to a greater degree than they probably thought possible, yet they appear to want to continue that path until the end of the world.

    Both Conservatives and the Left are unhappy with this result. However, rather than blame their own attempts at allying with the power of the Right, they both blame the other.

    Conservatives wonder why minorities are supposed to get priority when white workers are loosing out, and the Left saying “white privilege”, while true, is not an answer; everyone should feel they are advancing together. They will never feel that under the Right, because, to the Right, wages are a cost and ordinary people are a potential obstruction; both should be eliminated no matter what hardships that brings. Today, hard working people can hold two jobs and still only just support their families. The current system is failing everyone.

    Conservatives are suspicious about climate change as, so far, all the big changes put forward by the Right have not benefitted any ordinary people. It is reasonable to suspect that if climate change is dealt with in the normal way, it will hurt people yet again – that is how things work nowadays. If the left makes dealing with climate, a matter of capitalism as usual, then this is probably going to be true. If they make it a matter of challenging capitalism, then they also face problems of gaining support as it is unclear how change will be carried out.

    Conservatives generally fear that if they break with their support of the Right, then they will completely loose influence, or they try and convince themselves that they will eventually win over the Right, but all that happens is that they become corrupt and throw conservation aside. They may need to remember that there is no compromise between God and Mammon. Wealth is not ‘the good’.

    The Left tends to blame the supposed stupidity, racism and small mindedness of Conservatives for their failure. The apparent inability of Labor to analyse its failings in the last election, and the number of Labor supporters apparently blaming the Greens is extraordinary. The Greens did not lose Labor’s election, Labor did.

    But again, this ‘stupid’ attack on Conservatives misses the reality, that ordinary people are resentful of their decline in power, income and position, and are suspicious of grand plans and experts who have harmed them (remember all those experts who said free markets would benefit everyone?). That the Left also attempted to ally with the Right, does not help here. As is the case with conservatives, the alliance only ends in corruption, and support for plutocracy not democracy. The whole point of Left existence is lost.

    I’m not denying that Conservatives and the Left have real disagreements, what I am suggesting is that those disagreements are not more severe than the disagreements they both have with the Right. The Right is good at lying, making false promises, and running the other two sides against each other, so distrust is easily stirred. However, if either Conservatives or the Left wish to survive, then they have to ally with each other. There is no future for either of them if they don’t – at best we will get more of the same. However, 40 years of Right dominance, show that it is much more likely that things will get far worse for the rest of us if we allow things to continue as they are. There is no chance anything will spontaneously recover.

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