Posts Tagged ‘Disinformation’

« Older Entries
Newer Entries »

Trump and the ‘bloodbath’: What did he say?

April 5, 2024

As usual, reports of Trump’s apparent calls for a bloodbath have been dismissed as anti-Trump hysteria. He is supposedly threatening Chinese car manufacturers not his opponents

However as usual, the actual state of things is more ambiguous.

Here is the actual transcript, nothing deleted, giving the context:

Transcript

China now is building a couple of massive plants where they’re going to build the cars in Mexico and think, they think that they’re going to sell those cars into the United States with no tax at the border. Let me tell you something to China, if you’re listening, President Xi, and you and I are friends, but he understands the way I deal, those big monster car manufacturing plants that you’re building in Mexico right now, and you think you’re going to get that, you’re going to not hire Americans and you’re going to sell the cars to us. Now, we’re going to put a 100% tariff on every single car that comes across the line, and you’re not going to be able to sell those cars, if I get elected.

Donald Trump Dayton Ohio Buckeye Values PAC Rally

Now, if I don’t get elected, it’s going to be a bloodbath for the whole… That’s going to be the least of it. It’s going to be a bloodbath for the country. That’ll be the least of it.

But they’re not going to sell those cars. They’re building massive factories. A friend of mine, all he does is build car manufacturing plants. He’s the biggest in the world. I mean, honestly, I joke about it. He can’t walk across the street, in that way he’s like Biden. But for building a plant, he can do the greatest plants in the world, right? That’s all he cares about. I said, “I’d like to see one of your plants.” Recently, I said, “I’d like to see. Where can we go?” “Well, we have to travel to Mexico.” I said, “Why Mexico?” He said, “Because that’s where the big plants are building. China’s building really big plants in Mexico and Mexico’s building…” “What about here?” “Well, we’re building much smaller plants here.” Can you believe it? Can you believe it?

Comments

For Trump this is an amazingly coherent passage. As readers will probably know his normal speeches are fairly incoherent and repetitive rambles. So my guess is that most of this speech is prompted and prewritten. It is supposed to be about car manufacturing in Mexico, and everything he says could be true, Capitalists are not going to operate where its more expensive. They race to the location of the cheapest cost of production of the quality they need. Low wages costs, low materials cost, low pollution costs. Automation gives them the quality, so they don’t care that much about ‘quality’ workers, and the workers in Mexico may be the same kind of people they would employ in the USA.

In the middle of this speech apparently prompted by the “if I get elected” he appears to change subject. This section has little to do with the rest of this part of the speech at all, and there is an incoherence break, and repetition, possibly indicating it is not part of the script, its a digression and improvisation.

“Now, if I don’t get elected, it’s going to be a bloodbath for the whole… That’s going to be the least of it. It’s going to be a bloodbath for the country. That’ll be the least of it.

Let us be clear. He could be referring metaphorically to Chinese and other car manufacturers. But it does not fit in with the rest of the speech at all. It seems to be a mind-flash, a real statement of what he feels…

We can either be charitable to man who has threatened violence to his opponents elsewhere and say this is about a fight to the death against manufacturing in Mexico, or we can treat it as a real threat to non-Trumpist American citizens. I think the second option is a better interpretation. He does not specify the country where the bloodbath is to take place, although it makes better sense in the context, to think he is referring to America.

So a few interpretative quotes to give my impression of what he is saying:

  • “If I win, then the Chinese car manufacturers will suffer because I will do 100% tariffs…”
  • “But if I don’t win that its going to be a bloodbath for the whole country.”
  • “That will be the least of it.”
  • “Getting back to the cars in Mexico, even Americans are going to move there if we don’t act….”

If you are a free market person you should be angry in either case.

Earlier in this speech he also engages in dehumanisation of people he does not like, ‘illegal immigrants,’ which is often a precursor to bloodbaths and death squads:

But I got to know all these people…. Young people, they’re in jail for years, if you call them people, I don’t know if you call them people. In some cases they’re not people in my opinion, but I’m not allowed to say that because the radical left says that’s a terrible thing to say. They say you have to vote against him because did you hear what he said about humanity? I’ve seen the humanity and these humanity, these are bad. These are animals and we have to stop it. We can’t have another Laken {a woman who was killed by an illegal person}. We have so many people. We have so many people being hurt so badly and being killed. They’re sending their prisoners to see us. And they’re bringing them right to the border and they’re dropping them off and we’re allowing them to come in.”

same source

We can also remember this recent mindflash in what seems an otherwise unscripted speech….

On Veterans Day, we pledge to you that we will root out the communists, Marxist fascists and the radical left thugs that live like vermin within the confines of our country that lie and steal and cheat on elections and will do anything possible. They’ll do anything whether legally or illegally to destroy America and to destroy the American dream. The real threat is not from the radical, right? The real threat is from the radical left and it’s growing every day, every single day, the threat from outside forces is far less sinister, dangerous and grave than the threat from within our threat is from within. Because if you have a capable competent, smart, tough leader, Russia, China, North Korea, they’re not gonna want to play with us and they didn’t, despite the hatred and anger of the radical left lunatics who want to destroy our country, we will make America great again. Thank you, New Hampshire. God bless you. God bless you all. Thank you. God bless you all. Thank you.

President Trump Campaigns in Claremont, New Hampshire2024

I don’t quite know what he is saying about Russia, China etc. That the radical left stop us playing with them?

But the threat of him, when he wins, purging the USA of people who disagree with him seems clear, and it should threaten everyone as the number of Marxists and communists in the USA is trivial and they are not very powerful or influential, unlike the radical right. He appears to confuse fascists with the left, but that is common for the right, who ignore the people waving swastikas at their rallies, or even encourage them. I guess because of their mutual sympathy.

So, on the whole, to me, it sounds most likely that Trump is threatening a bloodbath in the USA, whether he wins or not. This is compatible with his often expressed desire for revenge. Some people may think that this bloodbath will lead to a peaceful and functional country, rather than to accelerated collapse.

Tags:, ,
Posted in Uncategorized | Leave a Comment »

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.

Tags:,
Posted in Uncategorized | Leave a Comment »

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.

Tags:, , ,
Posted in Uncategorized | Leave a Comment »

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

Tags:, , ,
Posted in Uncategorized | Leave a Comment »

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.

Tags:, , , , , ,
Posted in Uncategorized | 3 Comments »

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.

Tags:, , , ,
Posted in Uncategorized | Leave a Comment »

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

Tags:, , ,
Posted in Uncategorized | Leave a Comment »

Economics and climate: Another defense mechanism? 01

November 5, 2023

We know emissions are still rising.

We know that temperatures are increasing faster than expected. We have just had several months in which global average temperatures were over 1.5 degrees warmer….

We know governments such as those of Australia, the UK, the USA etc are still authorising new fossil fuel fields that can be described as “carbon bombs” that will either lock us into even greater emissions, or be abandoned at a huge loss to fossil fuel companies – no prizes for guessing which is most likely.

We know that it does not matter which country the fossil fuels are burnt, whatever governments argue about measurements of emissions, the burning will increase climate change for everyone.

We know that this increase is likely to lead to tipping points being triggered (such as runaway ice melts, Amazon forests dying, oceans dying, release of methane from under land and sea ice), which are likely to trigger even more tipping points, leading to irreversible ecological and climate change.

These events are likely to trigger agricultural collapse in at least some parts of the world, which could lead to mass human death, and human population movement.

In other words, while the best solution is to install governments that will listen to scientists and to the signs of collapse, the most likely result is that we will break the 1.5 degree limit.

One of the apparent tools to allow this emissions increase is economic models.

Economics

John Stuart Mill explicitly excluded a large number of human and social factors from economic analysis, in order to make it simple. In somewhat convoluted terms (skip if its too much of a headache) he wrote:

“Political Economy” …. does not treat the whole of man’s nature as modified by the social state, nor of the whole conduct of man in society. It is concerned with him solely as a being who desires to possess wealth, and who is capable of judging of the comparative efficacy of means of obtaining that end…

Political Economy considers mankind as occupied solely in acquiring and consuming wealth; and aims at showing what is the course of action into which mankind, living in a state of society, would be impelled, if that motive, except in the degree in which it is checked by the two perpetual countermoves above adverted to [aversion to labour, and desire of the present enjoyment of costly indulgences,] were the absolute ruler of all their actions….

With respect to those parts of human conduct of which wealth is not even the principal object, to these Political Economy does not pretend that its conclusions are applicable. But there are also certain departments of human affairs, in which the acquisition of wealth is the main and acknowledged end. It is only of these that Political Economy takes notice….

Not that any political economist was ever so absurd as to suppose that mankind are really thus constituted, but because this is the mode in which science must necessarily proceed.

Mill On the Definition of Political Economy and Method of Investigation Proper to It

He admits to massively simplifying human psychological complexity. He also simplified other matters, but the problem is that on the whole, most neoclassical neoliberal economics, ignores vital factors of life and forgets they are doing it, making their economics the whole of life.

Mill admits to his economics ignoring the psychology of markets, the ways we engage in self destruction, fantasy, self-justification for harms and scapegoat others. He ignores the ways that markets and information might shape our psycologies in ways which sabotage our ability to take action on the challenges facing us, and even to use economics to distract us from real problems.

It ignores the way economic action is part of politics. Markets are also structured by power and politics, and power and politics structure markets. It ignores the fact that inequalities of wealth lead to inequalities of action and influence, and that inequalities of wealth can reinforce those inequalities through the State its laws, regulations and procedures. Established economics will tend to support established political and riches arrangements, as those forms of economics will receive the awards, the funding and promotion.

It ignores the effects of economic action on the ecology and climate, and the effects of climate and ecology on economic action. The pricing mechanism is supposed to mean that if prices go up, then people change their usages, or are stimulated to produce more. It does not assume that ecological effects can link together, or be suppressed by politics until they cascade or hit like a tidal wave. It ignores the politics and ecological ‘side effects’ of the struggle for resources. Economics is locked into viewing ecology as passive and endlessly giving – if something dies off somewhere, the same can be produced elsewhere. Economists can even argue that because agricultural production is a small fraction of the gdp (<4%) it is largely unimportant, while most people can figure out that without that production the rest of the contemporary world economy would crash.

It ignores the effects of illth (pollution, dispersion, destructive extraction and harmful labour), rendering them externalities that do not have an effect on the economy or life. Essentially this leaves it to taxpayers to clean up the mess produced by business, and helps boost profit from destruction and the loss of vital materials. Economics ignores harms produced by its actions, as it tends to be about justifying riches and producing more riches.

It ignores the effects of technology and technological lock-in, other than through magical claims that needed technology will always appear through the market. Economics only considers technology beneficial if it makes money.

It ignores the importance of information systems for economies, and how those can be ‘corrupted’ or ‘distorted’ by politics, riches or over-plenty, so that the economy is functioning only at a level of fantasy, (and that the economics used to describe that action is also a consoling fantasy). Economics ignores the ways economic propaganda can create harms and fantasies to boost the wealth of people making the sales. This is because one of its fundamental assumptions is that only good information counts, every one has access to good information, or that the price system acts as a perfect information processor. Economics assumes that error is not normal, and that people will not buy rubbish like collateralized debt obligations, which will lead to economic harm.

Finally it assumes energy production is simple, and continuous with no harms or limits, dependent largely on money (which stores psychological energy to an extent), so that economies can grow forever. Economies can supposedly violate the laws of thermodynamics with ease.

There are undoubtedly other issues that mainstream economics dismisses or hides which are important.

It should be clear that by ignoring these factors economic models go about hiding the challenges of climate change and eco-destruction, and that is the subject of the next page.

Tags:, ,
Posted in Uncategorized | Leave a Comment »

(dis)information and knowledge 3: (dis)information becomes symbolic

October 27, 2023

Saying that (dis)information can become symbolic, or serve symbolic functions, asserts that (dis)information can have other, often more important, values than its ‘accuracy’.

It can stand for, or express,

  • Something important that is known subliminaly or unconsciously,
  • Something socially censored (becoming unconscious to a degree),
  • Something which is important but not completely knowable, or
  • Something which is iniherently unknowable (such as the nature of the cosmos, existence, social complexity, the full nature of climate change, or God, and so on).

If what a symbol expresses is vitally important to a person’s sense of wider self, then it can appear numinous or ‘holy’, such that challenging it’s accuracy is almost impossible.

This can be true for (dis)information, even if that information is as accurate as it can be.

For example, climate change can easily become symbolic of a sense of personal and social collapse, of being ‘unmored’, of not being heard or taken notice of, and of living within processes which seem out of control or hostile.

For oil companies and their supporters, emissions perhaps become symbolic of, or express, profitability, survival, plenty, liberty and a good future for everyone. They could express desired human dominance over the world. With this symbology, it becomes more destructive to attack fossil fuels, than to recognise fossil fuels are destrutive. The symbolic status helps people not hear the evidence that might demolish the symbolic organisation of their lives and leave them vulnerable.

For people supporting Q-Anon, Trump, etc, then various improbable conspiracy theories also expressing their intuitive knowledge that the world is being run strangely and without regard for them; vast forces are opposed to listening to them, or dealing with the visible collapse and problems of their lives. Nothing official makes sense. Trumps’ legal troubles can become symbolic of the ‘persecution’ of the general populace by government, the private sector, conventional laws, the workplace etc., and fits in with the sense of general collapse and indifference. That “Trump is a persecuted victim” (perhaps like Jesus) appears validated by the reality of their own victimised, ignored and persecuted lives. So do claims of a faked election, as people have experientially played by the rules and lost – hardly anybody was rewarded for hard work. Election theft is symbolic of theft of their lives by the system.

Acceptable (dis)information, and interpretation, is chosen to express and reinforce the true realisation of growing collapse, which cannot be spoken without risk.

This is a normal human function. Unconscious and unspeakable knowledge, can often be ‘perceived’ through symbols, as in dreams, artwork, slips of the tongue, fantasy, and scapegoating. But taking symbolic information literally can lead to further misunderstandings of the world, just as refusing to accept the import of symbolisation can also lead to misundertandings and misperception.

Because, say, the Democrats did not, and do not take, take Trump’s symbolic role seriously (as “no one could trust him”, “What he says is gibberish”. “He’s obviously criminal” etc) they cannot listen to the real grievances of Trump’s supporters, or understand what people are going through which leads them to vote for his supporters.

Tags:,
Posted in Uncategorized | Leave a Comment »

(dis)information and knowledge 2: Politics

October 27, 2023

Given that one of communication’s major functions is persuading others to perform, or not perform, actions (follow instructions etc), then communication, and (dis)information, is constantly ‘political’.

If an organisation can persuade people not to engage in climate action through misinformation or confusion, then they may benefit from that lack of action. For example, if you look at what oil companies have done they:

  • 1) Knew about climate change from their own research as early as the 1950s and 70s and later research by themselves and others simply confirmed what they already knew.
  • 2) Underplayed, or ignored that research in favour of increasing their business and profit.
  • 3) Cast doubt on the data, and the knowledge that CO2 emissions created climate change.
  • 4) Actively tried to inhibit actions and agreements at COP meetings.
  • 5) Initiated supposed climate schemes which increased business, profit and emissions with the hope that emissions could be reduced in the future rather than now – Carbon Capture and Storage for example
  • 6) Set up networks of think-tanks whose primary purpose was to promote denial and delay which was not completely associated with the fossil fuel companies, such as the Atlas Network etc.
  • 7) They currently spend more on new exploration and prospecting, than on emissions reduction.
  • 8) Even if we can think they are doing something about climate change now, they delayed action for at least between 30 or 40 years, increasing emissions in that period and encouraging lock-in to fossil fuels. This makes any transition much harder. But it did boost their profits and power.
  • 9) They are still amongst the richest and most powerful companies on the planet.

They have campaigned to make the situation safe for them and worse for others. Their riches helped them to promote information and communication to persuade others not to act.

For some reason the Right has seemed to be able to make much better use of this persuasive capacity of (dis)information – with climate denial, US election denial, economic denial, smearing oponents and so on. Perhaps they have learnt from corporate techniques. We could tritely say that truth is somehow less important to them, or less important to them than victory. What is relevant is the easy manufacture of distraction, misinformation and the audience selection of particular memes by their appeal. which then get repeated. Repetition is a major way of ‘proving’ (dis)information – “why would people keep saying this if it was not true”. That is, information is not judged by accuracy but by its reinforcement of already existing bias, proclivities and action as motivated by political allegiance to the ‘information group’ – and that political allegiance makes information from their own ‘side’ more acceptable than information from out-groups.

This partly occurs, not just because of the loyalty aspect of groups and building a self identity out of what is acceptable to our own group, but because of another property of human psychology, which is that information (as with most processes, such as technology, politics, animals or ecologies) can easily become symbolic. This is covered in the next post.

.

Tags:,
Posted in Uncategorized | Leave a Comment »

« Older Entries
Newer Entries »