Posts Tagged ‘disorder’

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Toynbee cycle again

June 7, 2023

I’ve already argued that Arnold Toynbee’s work is useful for looking at whether societies will collapse or not. Here is a slightly differen version.

One reason for societies failing, is that people, in particular the intellectual, power or riches elites, cannot face up to new problems that arise during periods of change. Given that change is always happening in complex systems (such as social relations, ecological relations etc.), this is a problem itself. Societies may be especially resistant to solving problems generated by the established elites of that society, who have made the society a success.

This seems more likely to occur in societies with a ‘conservative culture’, because

  • They believe all problems are old problems or similar to old problems and can be solved in the old ways, which have always worked previously.
  • New solutions would imply uncertainty, and conservatives do not like uncertainty, as it disrupts established patterns of behaviour, everything could change including their power and status.
  • The elites of that society will be those who are good are the old ways, and using the old solutions.
  • The Elites will discourage any investigation of their role in creating the problem through their mastery of the old ways.
  • If they control the media then they will denounce or hide information dangerous to their rule and thus most people will be unaware, or not applying their abilities to solve the problem.
  • They will probably enforce their elite position and the ‘class system’, and stop society from challenging their actions or powers, and thus entrench the problems, which will keep getting worse.
  • The government will side with the elites as they have the riches and status. The elites can buy government members, or bless them, if its a religious elite.

The policies used to get a society through a period of growth, or maximal power, are generally not the same policies that will get a society through problems it is not faced before, or it has generated through those previously succesful policies. The tendency is that new problems will be ignored until its too late and the society cannot flex enough to get around them. Conservative society will fail if there are new problems. Otherwise it might do ok.

On the other hand a less ‘conservative’ society should be able to:

  • Admit the existence of new problems, and embrace the uncertainty around finding new solutions, and experimenting with new solutions.
  • Accept the likelihood that problem solving often leads to social change.
  • Have a circulation of elites, which allows the elites to change depending upon ability, and the flexibility to deal with new situations, as new situations are always arising. The elite is not completely hereditary.
  • The presence of new members in the elites can help old elites to see the probable need for change, that old solutions have not worked, and the need for new approaches.
  • People will be prepared to accept this probability of change, and get on with problem solving, not enforcing a set of non-working solutions.
  • The government will think about the solutions independently of the other elites.

Unfortunately, as we can see through climate change, most societies on the planet are conservative and are busy not responding to the problems, and certainly not thinking about how to use the change for everyone’s advantage.….

The Polluter and Market elites, especially fossil fuel elites, have way too much power, and too much control over governments. Circulation of elites seems to have declined. Nowadays people have to start rich to get anywhere. The Polluter elites just repeat endlessly that more free markets, and more suppression of ‘workers’ and protestors is all that is needed, Any interference in the economy, which is not support of them, is to be condemned. The attitude is that nothing need change for success, or there is no problem.

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Brandolini’s Law

May 19, 2022

The original

Brandolini’s Law, or the “bullshit asymmetry” principle is a really neat summation of things that are well-known, but hard to express simply

the amount of energy needed to refute bullshit is an order of magnitude bigger than to produce it.

Alberton Brandolini, twitter 11 Jan 2013

I’m going to slightly rephrase this as:

the amount of energy needed to refute bullshit is much greater than needed to produce it.

Not as neat, and its not going to supersede Brandolini’s formulation, but its a bit clearer for those without a science background.

Brandolini’s law is implied in a lot of the material I’ve written on disinformation and the mess of information, but I now have a phrase that summarises the problem, and sets out areas for future research, much better than anything I’ve written.

It is much easier to invent ‘facts’ that appeal to people’s biases, fears and already accepted truths, than it is to make a reasonably accurate statement about reality. An explanation for why someone is wrong is often lengthy, and sometimes impossible.

As an example of impossibility, say for example someone asserts that the President of Agleroa engages in the slave trade of children, and uses his power to hide this.

No one can disprove this. A disproof can simply be another example of his power in action, or “fake news”. How can I show an absence of children being traded etc? To make a disproof requires vast amounts of energy. If for example the bullshitter had made a claim that the President had traded kids on a particular date, and I could find no evidence for that, it does not disprove all the dates that such trades could have occurred, and it might be argued that I could not find anything because I’m operating in bad faith or that the data is hidden beyond my capacities to find it. Even if I succeed in convincing one person that the President is not trading children then, if there is a group of people devoted to slandering the President of Agleroa who find it profitable to spread this accusation, it will still keep surfacing. People may even disbelieve me if I try and show Agleroa is not a real place.

In a similar case a real President was repeatedly said to be fighting organised pedophilia. There was no evidence for this, and it was similarly hard to disprove, because we were told he was working in secret. He apparently didn’t even talk about it, so as not to alarm pedophiles, and this silence could be taken as proof. Those who could be bothered to disprove it, were probably trying to defend pedophiles and therefore not trustworthy.

These situations are like disproving climate change denial.

If a person assumes nearly all climate scientists are lying or conspiring so as to harm them, then there can be no disproof. A person who tries to participate in the disproving by pointing out ‘facts’, is either part of the conspiracy, or a dupe repeating these scientist’s false information. How do you disprove the assertion that nearly all climate change scientists are lying, to a person who accepts that proposition as more probable than they are not lying?

This energy needed to maintain a “true position” means that what I’ve called “information groups” that filter out information rejected by the group, condemn those outsiders who disagree, and which propagate the misinformation the group lives by, and identifies with, become even more important.

Other Formulations

My earliest formulation of a similar position was what I called Gresham’s law of information “Bad information drives out good”. This is partly because bad information is plentiful [is easy to manufacture], but people may want to hoard and hide good information to give themselves an advantage, or it gets lost in the ether [Entropy]. But this is nowhere near as elegant, or as explanatory, as Brandolini’s Law.

Earlier formulations include this from Jonathan Swift:

Besides, as the vilest Writer has his Readers, so the greatest Liar has his Believers; and it often happens, that if a Lie be believ’d only for an Hour, it has done its Work, and there is no farther occasion for it. Falsehood flies, and the Truth comes limping after it; so that when Men come to be undeceiv’d, it is too late; the Jest is over, and the Tale has had its Effect…

Quote investigator: ‘A Lie Can Travel Halfway Around the World While the Truth Is Putting On Its Shoes”

The obvious point here being that human energy use always involves time. Information takes time to discover and test, and it needs to be present at the time it is needed. Misinformation can have its intended effect, and by the time it is satisfactorily refuted, it is too late. Again we can see this with climate change denial claims in which it now seems too late to do anything effective about climate change, so let’s not bother.

Slightly later we have George Holmes:

Pertness and ignorance may ask a question in three lines, which it will cost learning and ingenuity thirty pages to answer. When this is done, the same question shall be triumphantly asked again the next year, as if nothing had ever been written upon the subject. And as people in general, for one reason or another, like short objections better than long answers, in this mode of disputation (if it can be styled such) the odds must ever be against us; and we must be content with those for our friends who have honesty and erudition, candor and patience, to study both sides of the question.

Holmes “Letters on Infidelity” Leter VIII p146-7

Holmes points out another problem, which is even more common in the information age, disinformation never dies. The disinformation can be reprised with ease, in perhaps a slightly different form if necessary. And, in the unlikely even that the person who revitalises the disinformation wants to find something more accurate, it will take them a lot longer to locate and read the refutation (assuming the refutation is good in the first place :). The short punchy lie is much easier to grasp than the lengthy refutation, at any time.

Conclusions

Brandolini’s Law is a succinct and explanatory formulation that has great relevance for modern information society.

There are two big questions it raises:

  1. Given the huge (and probably increasing) amounts of energy that it takes to maintain a shared sense of the universe in a large society and keep people well informed about reality and responsive to events in reality, is it inevitable that such societies will fragment into factions pushing their own truths and ignoring what is happening, until they collapse? [this is a bit like
  2. What can we do to lessen the law’s effects, so we can resurface from being buried under disinformation and misinformation?

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Cipolla’s Laws of Stupidity

November 9, 2021

Cipolla’s “Laws of Stupidity” (The Basic Laws of Human Stupidity) are an interesting ‘useful joke’ for anyone who is concerned with information distortion, or the production of disorder. However, I think they can be easily be made more realistic, expanded and personal solutions proposed.

The axes

Cipolla first sets up two graph axes. The first axis ‘measures’ whether an action is harmful or beneficial to the person performing the action. The other axis ‘measures’ whether the action is harmful or beneficial for others. He then puts forward the suggestion that there are four ideal types of behaviour

  • If a person performs an act which is beneficial to themselves but harmful to others, he defines them as a ‘brigand’. I will use the word ‘criminal’ because of problems with English, which I hope will become clear as we progress.
  • If a person performs an act which benefits themselves and others, then they are defined as ‘intelligent’.
  • If a person performs an act that harms themselves and benefits others, he defines them as acting ‘helplessly’.
  • If a person performs an act that harms themselves and others then they are ‘stupid’.

The Problem with Nouns

The problem with nouns is that they tend to imply stability, and suggest a person can be classified in one of these categories forever in everything. Rather strangely he does use the idea that people can behave helplessly. So let us consider a slightly more realistic set of definitions.

  • If, in particular circumstances, a person performs an act which is beneficial to themselves but harmful to others, then they are behaving criminally.
  • If, in particular circumstances, a person performs an act which is beneficial to themselves and others they are acting intelligently.
  • If, in particular circumstances, a person performs an act which harms themselves and benefits others, they are acting helplessly
  • If, in particular circumstances, a person performs an act which harms themselves and others they are acting stupidly.

This makes it clear that otherwise intelligent people can in certain circumstances act stupidly. Which is something we can agree with and is also is part of Cipolla’s second law. The question now becomes in what kind of circumstances will people act in particular ways, psychologically and socially? We may never find a complete answer to that question, but at least we have the capacity to shift from either praise or condemnation, into something which might prove useful to ourselves.

“When do we behave stupidly” not “Damn, you are so stupid”.

The ‘laws of stupidity’ may change a bit as a result, and we may get a few more such ‘laws’ which add to our understanding.

Law 1

Always and inevitably, everyone underestimates the number of stupid individuals in circulation.

The amount of stupid behaviour is huge.

We can change this to: “In any given circumstances the number of people who will behave stupidly is larger than we think.”

This implies the people who behave stupidly in different situations may be different people – those people may behave intelligently, helplessly or criminally in other situations. We cannot assume that stupid people remain consistently stupid – indeed if they behaved in a stupid manner all the time, they might be more noticeable and less dangerous.

Law 2

The probability that a certain person (will) be stupid is independent of any other characteristic of that person.

We can change this to: People who behave stupidly in one set of circumstances may behave in many other ways in different circumstances. “There is no observable behaviour which eliminates the possibility of a person behaving stupidly in some circumstance or other.”

Law 3

A stupid person is a person who causes losses to another person or to a group of persons while himself deriving no gain and even possibly incurring losses.

This is a definition not a law. But it is possibly wrong in implying that people are coherently stupid. Let us replace it with another definition.

Definition: “A person is behaving stupidly when they cause losses to another person or group of persons, while themselves deriving no gain or even incurring losses.“

Law4

Non-stupid people always underestimate the damaging power of stupid individuals. In particular, non-stupid people constantly forget that at all times and places, and under any circumstances, to deal and/or associate with stupid people always turns out to be a costly mistake.

Let us rephrase this as well: “People always underestimate the damaging power of people behaving stupidly. Dealing with a person who consistently behaves stupidly, or who behaves stupidly in the particular circumstances you are operating under, always turns out to be a costly mistake.“

This again helps to remind you that many people are not always stupid, and that a person who does not behave stupidly in most set of circumstances, can behave stupidly in another. It takes art to find out who is stupid, when.

Law 5

A stupid person is the most dangerous type of person.

This is partially a rephrasing of the last ‘law’.

“People who often behave stupidly, or who behave stupidly in the circumstances you are in, are dangerous.”

Extra Laws

Given this approach we can also add some extra laws.

Law 6

“Even the wisest person is capable of behaving stupidly in the right circumstances.“

Non of us are, at all times, immune to behaving stupidly. This could be thought of as a basic ‘psychoanalytic’ statement, pointing towards the unconscious reality: stupidity is not just other people.

Law 7

“The more immune we think we are to behaving stupidly, the less chance we have of perceiving our stupid behaviour, or changing it.“

This seems almost obviously correct. I have never met a person who I thought was behaving stupidly (as defined by Cipolla), who could see they were behaving stupidly at the time. They tend to be vituperative in their defense, and condemn everyone else for stupidity (or malevolence) rather than themselves. They can usually point to areas of life in which they are not stupid, as evidence they cannot be behaving stupidly now.

‘Causes’

The Causes of people behaving stupidly could be both psychological and sociological. It could be a feedback situation, the more people who behave stupidly the more others are under pressure, and the more likely they are to behave stupidly as well.

It seems probable that people are more likely to behave stupidly, criminally, or helplessly, when they are exhausted, overworked, feel that superiors in the hierarchy are pressing them or not listening to them (bosses, politicians or other rulers), when they have little hope for the future, when they are flustered, neurotic, in fear and so on. Some of these kinds of circumstances will arise because of the interaction of individual response and social factors; we cannot expect everyone to behave the same, simply that more people are likely to behave non-intelligently under pressure.

It is, for example, likely that people, in the Western World, and elsewhere, are feeling exhausted and pressured by work or by the lack of work, they are likely (under neoliberalism) to feel that bosses and politicians are not listening to them but to ‘elites’ (however they define that), they may have little hope for the future due to economic decline, personal debt, job insecurity, or climate change, they may feel the world never leaves them alone, or they may build up anger by participating in polarising information groups online. All of which is likely to narrow their focus, and influence them to behave non-intelligently in some areas of their lives. They also may lack models of intelligent behaviour to emulate.

Solutions

  • Recognise the possibility that you may be behaving non-intelligently in some circumstances.
  • While this may be influenced by others, change starts with yourself.
  • Few ‘normal’ people want to behave stupidly, criminally or helplessly. They want to help and build for themselves and others. They want less pressure.
  • Pause and break the cycle – regularly.
  • Five minutes in every hour, take a break – with no stimulation (No reading, no watching tv or youtube, no gaming, no chatting, no brooding, no problem solving, no web browsing, etc. ).
  • Listen. Accept what is. What you are feeling. Accept your body. Pressing discomfort down can be useful in emergencies. It is not useful all the time. Listen. Look around. ‘Listen’ again. Let ‘images’ arise if they arise.
  • Be honest and kind to yourself. Self compassion is nearly always useful.
  • Relaxing demands, accepting feelings, can lead to solutions arising.
  • This is close to what has been called Dadiri – being open to the world and its patterns.

This may well not solve all your problems (we may need a change of system, which starts with you and your interaction with others), but it will almost certainly help you to behave intelligently in more circumstances – and that might help change the world, so that people are more likely to behave intelligently more often.

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Jared Diamond and Crisis

October 1, 2021

I’ve only just started to read Jared Diamonds book Upheaval (Little & Brown/Allen Lane 2019), so what I say may prove incorrect and need to be modified later.

Diamond posits a similarity between the way individuals and nations face crisis – and he uses a template developed in the 1950s to help people adapt to crisis, to help show how nations can change and triumph over such crises.

A crisis occurs when the ways people have developed to live a life are obviously no longer working, and things are breaking down. In personal life this may be because you cannot solve problems at work, you are no longer invested in work, someone important to you dies, your partner leaves you or vice versa, you loose your money, you loose you job, your town is hit by a natural disaster, there is war, or you become very sick and so on. Clearly not everything is under our control. That is life. The same kind of events can happen to a nation. More difficultly, as I have said before, the techniques of life that the society promotes can often lead to destruction if circumstances change, then those techniques of life may need to change to deal with those changing circumstances and the changing problems they present.

Diamond makes a long series of points that a person and a nation will find helpful, to work through the problems.

Today I will look at the first three points, because they seem to be foundational. I’ll phrase them slightly differently to Diamond, because I think he looses a clarity in concision.

The points are:

  • Recognise the problems and be prepared to face them
  • Take responsibility for the problems. It is you reactions to those problems that determine what will happen. It is not other people’s fault, even if they are harming you.
  • Find what in your life is working and ‘fence’ it off from change, to give you a base to work from

Diamond point 1) Recognising and facing problems

This is part of the what I’ve called the Toynbee cycle. Civilisations or societies, if they are to succeed and survive, have to adapt to, or solve, problems, or challenges, in their environment and inadequacies in their actions. Many problems can be generated by social action, ideological unconsciousness, established hierarchies and power relations.

The major problem, sometimes at this stage, is the difficulty of facing, or admitting the problems.

At the moment, I don’t think there is much evidence the nations of the world as a whole are facing up to the problems before them, or recognising the seriousness of those problems. This is partly because they are difficult problems, and partly because they derive from patterns of action which have, in the past, brought success, wealth and power – especially for those currently dominating life, economics and politics. This latter point, brings about social resistance from powerful people, and from lack of apparent alternatives (as alternatives may have been crushed or removed by regulations that favour the previous system).

One obvious problem is that the currently dominant economic system is producing pollution which produces climate change (among other things), while the same economic system is destroying both ecologies and the remaining planetary resilience that would help us humans deal with these problems (or at least give us more time to act). It also seems to be a way to build prosperity and security, and there is no obvious replacement, if it needs replacing.

A second problem is that our political system, as a whole, is devoted to protecting the economic system and the systems of power and wealth it produces – and this helps the dominant groups to ignore, play down or dismiss the problems, and keep the system that apparently benefits them (but will ultimately disrupt them severely).

Climate

The latest version (September 2021) of the UN NDC Synthesis Report states:

[The IPCC estimates] that limiting global average temperature increases to 1.5C requires a reduction of CO2 emissions of 45% in 2030, or a 25% reduction by 2030 to limit warming to 2C…

The available NDCs of all 191 Parties taken together imply a sizable increase in global GHG emissions in 2030 [when] compared to 2010, of about 16%. 

The 16% increase is a huge cause of concern. It is in sharp contrast with the calls by science for rapid, sustained and large-scale emission reductions to prevent the most severe climate consequences and suffering, especially of the most vulnerable, throughout the world

UN Full NDC Synthesis Report: Some Progress, but Still a Big Concern 17 September 2021 Italics added.

On the other hand, Climate Action Tracker estimates that emissions levels will remain constant until 2030, rather than decline by the roughly half which is necessary to stay under a 1.5 degrees increase:

Australia, Brazil, Indonesia Mexico, New Zealand, Russia, Singapore, Switzerland and Viet Nam… have failed to lift ambition at all – they have submitted the same or even less ambitious 2030 targets than they had put forward in 2015.

CAT Global Update: Climate target updates slow as science demands action 15 September 2021

It seems nations are not facing the problems. Australia, which has no excuse as it is a prosperous country, is busy having a gas led recovery, and even those Australian states which have emissions targets are promoting new coal and gas fields. For example, the NSW Energy minister, Matt Kean, is reported as saying:

Our emissions reduction target assumes continued expansion of coal mining in NSW

Daily Telegraph NSW will halve its carbon emissions by 2030

and

the coal industry here in NSW won’t be affected by domestic policy makers, it is going to be affected by the decisions of borders overseas and governments overseas

Raper NSW government sets more ambitious 50pc emissions reduction target for 2030. 29 September 2021 and On why some of us know we need to get our green skates on and some of us are still coal gazing Fifth Estate
  • [For some bizarre reason the press conference transcript does not seem to have been issued.]

Even here where emissions targets are being set, the problem of coal export emissions is being left to others at best. The problem is being turned away from. Probably because coal mining companies are powerful, and because coal is supposedly good.

There are obvious other problems which are not being faced up to, such as Covid openings based solely on vaccination numbers, information distribution and corruption, distrust and so on…. but let’s leave it there.

There is no really evidenced ability to face up to problems fully.

Diamond point 2) Taking Responsibility

It is hard to take responsibility for problems you don’t recognise. Australia’s PM seems to refuse to take responsibility for much. Almost everything is someone else’s problem.

It is also easy to blame climate and other problems on other States you may not like, like China. But, so what if China is not delivering on emissions reduction? That does not absolve us from doing our best, even if it makes us feel good to scapegoat others and engage in shadow politics.

Rather than wondering what they can do themselves, many people seem keen to blame population for the problems. The problem is more to do with the amount of consumption and destruction per head than population itself. If you think consumption and destruction per head is a problem, then work to reduce the population of places like Australia, or the wealth elites. But people’s enthusiasm seems tied in with blaming foreigners and less powerful people.

‘We’ have responsibility for ‘our’ part of the problem, and for trying to intensify that problem by selling more coal and gas. We cannot stop China or other people from doing what they are doing, we can only stop ourselves.

Diamond point 3) Keeping what works

The problem here is severe. Especially if we consider the US. What in the US works?

I’m not going to document much here because I’m not really going beyond cliché.

The Economic system

is working if you think its purpose is to continue to transfer wealth upwards, otherwise it is not doing much except destroy the planet. Trump supporters, and others, know that things are not working for them economically as well as they used to – and few people seem to be listening to them.

Covid may have produced an increasing collapse of supply chains, and this is likely to have systemic economic effects [1], [2], [3], [4], [5].

The Political system

does not appear to be working after Trump. One party has gone along with the idea of destroying trust in the system (references to this would clog the page completely), in order to ‘fairly’ take actions to ensure they will win in future, no matter what. Again Trump supporters and others distrust the political system, as it does not deliver for them. It seems largely bought by a politically active corporate sector. It is doubtful the political sector could ever act against that corporate sector in the public interest, without extreme difficulty and with much cost to the actors. This is not just a US problem.

The Information system

is widely distrusted, and the most distorting parts of the system endeavor to destroy trust in other parts of the system, and many people seem to just accept what they want to hear. Education also seems to be failing, or being wound down in favour of home schooling or private schools. This does not help people to distinguish what is real from what is fantasy. Raising anger rather than discussion seems to be the main aim of participants, and they do that well. Polarisation is frequently remarked, this is exemplified in a situation where anything the outgroup proposes must be wrong, and all virtue resides in one’s own group (even if you don’t think they are particularly virtuous). The internet does not help. One of the problems about facing problems, is that people can always find some group telling them that a problem is not really a problem, and the real problem involves something easy, or some scapegoat.

The Health system

is not working. Life expectancy is declining in the US, and not just because of COVID-19, or the failure of the economy to have the resilience to provide for ordinary people. One journalistic account states:

the US houses among the most advanced medical and research centers in the world, but performs poorly in basic health metrics such as maternal mortality and infant mortality; accidental injury, death and disability; and chronic and infectious disease….

“So much of the whole issue of social determinants of health and the US ‘health disadvantage’ is rooted in a lack of trust and a lack of trustworthiness in many parts of our society,” said Laudan Y Aron, a senior fellow at the Urban Institute’s health policy center….

[A report] US Health in International Perspective: Shorter Lives, Poorer Health… describes how Americans spend more than double per person on healthcare compared with 17 peer nations, but rank near the bottom in health outcomes….

recent research show[ed] that American life expectancy has declined while peer nations saw continued gains.

Glenza How the US vaccine effort derailed and why we shouldn’t be surprised. The Guardian 27 September 2021

It is frequently said the US has an extremely expensive health system, which delivers bad results for the people. But if all you count is profit, then it’s doing remarkably well.

The Food system

may not be working well, either.  The health of soil is seriously compromised:

Iowa has lost about half the topsoil it had in 1850. Since they were first plowed, America’s farmland soils have lost about half of their organic matter – the dark, spongy decomposed plant and animal tissue that helps make them fertile.

The soil that produces [the] nation’s food supply is a weakened link slowly failing under ongoing strain. 

Otten & Collier It’s time to rethink the disrupted US food system from the ground up The Conversation 5 June 2020

On top of this there is the mass marketing of cheap, sugary and ’empty’ food which possibly affects people’s health, energy and capacity, the death of small farms and the growth of oligopolies which tend to be narrowly focused, water pollution etc etc.

Disaster Relief Systems

may or may not be working. I’m not having much luck working out whether Hurricane Ida was better survived than Hurricane Katrina, but the point is that the more the weather gets wild, the more disaster relief systems will be stretched, and less likely to work. Covid also means that the health systems needed to protect people after a disaster are already stretched, and it is likely that the disease will spread unless care is taken.

This depressive interactivity is true for all other systems. The closer some systems get to breakdown, the more stress on other systems.

As mentioned before, some times processes which used to work, and may still work for you, have become obstacles or even sites of destruction. This is something we may have to be aware of, especially if we have benefitted from those processes.

Declines in other ‘infrastructure’ such as roads, bridges, water, sewerage, power cables, etc. may also add to the problems [1], [2]

General

One of the problems the US might face, might precisely be that very little works, and that gives them little space to move from to recover from crisis. All the non-working systems compound the problems in each other.

So far Diamond’s analysis is not providing much hope, especially at the ‘fencing off what works’ stage.

However, we can still push governments, corporations and people to recognise the problems, and their responsibility for producing the problems and acting on the problems….. Hopefully people can build new systems as they go about facing those problems.

Indeed I expect that change will come from below as people realise they have to make the change from below.

Given that not much is working we either have to let experimental groups explore future modes of organisation, or take a ‘leap into the dark’ with experimental policies which can allow us to learn more about the situation and explore what works and discard what does not work. This would require a great deal of popular support to work as it will lead to mistakes, which render it open to sabotage by those protecting the establishment, and those who already ‘know’ what works. This is unlikely to happen in a polarised and distrustful society.

We must also be ready to defend ourselves from what seems to be fossil fuel fascism – as that is one solution we can expect will be pushed by the establishment to avoid any real change.

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Capitalism, disorder, sociopathy

September 10, 2021

This is a response to a response, elsewhere online, to my definition of capitalism post.

Their argument is that the features I determined to be part of capitalism, are not part of capitalism, not found in any dictionary definition of capitalism and are found elsewhere. They argue that wealthy people are not sociopaths but quite nice, and this is backed by research…. They also say that with no profit, there is no sustainability.

I will suggest that:

  • My definition is useful and does not delete important features of capitalism as system.
  • While I am dubious that the capitalist elite are specially virtuous, I did not argue that wealthy people have to be sociopaths for them to be a problem, they just have to team up to support what they see as their own interests, and this teaming up seems obvious and ‘natural’.
  • It is useful to remember that sometimes capitalist organisations do commit crimes, and override the liberty of other people.
  • You cannot separate capitalism, capitalist government and capitalist economics. Economic action is political action and vice versa.

Defining capitalism

I agree that all the factors I have described as being part of capitalism are possibly found elsewhere. That is not the point. The point is that they are nearly all part of any actually existing capitalisms. I don’t think you can discuss the functioning of capitalism by ignoring those factors or pretending they are irrelevant. As far as I can see, no form of capitalism has ever existed without most of these factors. Certainly modern capitalism appears to hold them all, and the fact that it does hold to most of these features, means that it cannot support liberty (collective or individual), for anyone other than some of the wealth elites. Capitalism needs to be considered as a system of power as much as a system of trade. Capitalism requires a State and will take over that State, to expand its power and security.

This is why I cannot support a definition of capitalism that pretends capitalism is (for instance) just a form of private property and trade. Trade happens everywhere (even in communist States), and is no inherent sign of capitalism. There are many forms of trade which are not capitalist. Likewise, if we are going to talk about ‘private’ property as being central to capitalism (which it is), we have to talk about the different forms of property, the history of property, the history of property accumulation, the destruction of other forms of property by capitalism, and look at how private property gets selected out from general production. To understand capitalism you probably have to understand non-capitalist and stateless societies, otherwise capitalism might just seem ‘natural’ to people who have lived with it alone. It is not ‘natural’ in any sense other than it can exist.

These kinds of overly simple definitions are like saying communism occurs when the workers own and control the means of production in common and live happily ever after. It is true in ideology, but we have to ignore a lot of history, organisation, practice and failings to make it an accurate description of large scale Communism.

Capitalism is a set of variations on a form of social organisation that seems to require, and enforce, hierarchies, inequalities and destruction. Any form of analysis of, or support for, capitalism that decides these unpleasant factors are unimportant, or accidental, seems inaccurate, and is probably dangerous or ‘ideological’ because it is set on being unconscious, and is refusing to deal with the realities of actually existing capitalism.

The pretense of perfection is part of the problem

Nearly all hierarchies and tyrannical systems, I am aware of, pretend that their cruelties, obstructions, miseries, failures, inability to meet their ideals, and so on, are aberrations, or nothing to do with the ‘real’ system. The Islamic world would be in perfect peace and harmony if people were truly just obeying God’s obvious and wise laws and there were no infidels stirring up trouble – the system itself is not a problem. Communists would not require a State or a secret police if they had completely succeeded in the revolution, and these temporary necessities, will fade away when they have succeeded. They are not essential parts of communism – the system itself is not a problem. We would have a healthy, happy and peaceful Germany without the Jews, and other people who keep fighting against the true wisdom of the Führer, and who wish to hold us back – the system itself is not a problem… etc etc.

Same with capitalism, all this undesirable stuff is just an accident of history or the fault of government; it has nothing to do with ‘real’ capitalism – the system itself is not a problem. This move supports a fantasy of a capitalism which has never existed, and substitutes that fantasy for the more checkered reality.

I’m also not alleging that all monetary profit is bad (although there are other forms of profit, social, intellectual, spiritual, ecological etc, which are probably as important). I am alleging that making monetary profit the only value is quite probably harmful, as it appears to suppress other all the other values, and shuts down, or restricts, our perception of reality to what makes profit. It also makes wealth the major marker of virtue, and thus allows people to sell (or buy) anything, as their only principle is wealth accumulation, and wealth is the most all-encompassing power, as it can buy any other power. More importantly, the drive for perpetually increasing profit, is almost undoubtedly harmful and counters any sustainability criteria such as the survival of other people, or ‘nature’. It is an example of the case in which a drive might be useful at an individual level, but is harmful if everyone does it. It also becomes almost impossible to survive by not doing it, if everyone else does it – you are likely to get bought out, and either asset stripped, or converted into an increasing profit organisation.

Disorder Theory

If a system nearly always displays recurrent features or failings (no matter how unpleasant or apparently unrequired), then those features are part of the system. And if you want to describe or improve the system, you have to understand how the system really works in its total mess, recognising that everything effects everything else, and nothing in the system is isolated from the system. Accidents pass, but recurrent features are likely to be significant features.

I call this realisation ‘disorder theory’. The statement that social modes of ordering tend to produce the disordering and unintended consequences, that they consider threatening, is not popular. People will try and separate out the order which they declare ‘good’, from the disorder they ignore, declare ‘bad’ or irrelevant, or someone else’s fault – but they all occur together as part of the order.

The idea, pretty obviously, stems from depth psychology, in which it is asserted that we repress parts of our nature, inclinations and understandings (our psychological and biological systems) so as to fit in with our familial and social situation, and that this repression bites back in the forms of symptoms which disrupt our ability to fit in, or to live in any kind of satisfying sense. However, we are encouraged to pretend that these symptoms are unreal, or personal, rather than generated by the social system of order itself. No matter how common, they are said to not be essential parts of our faulty adaptation to social reality.

The Virtuous Billionaire

The connection between wealth, morals and social organisation seems complex. See these popular references with a mixture of arguments – some of which tells of the same research from different perspectives [1], [2], [3], [4], [5], [6], [7], [8], [9], [10], [11], [12], [13], [14], [15], [16], [17], [18], [19], [20], [21], [22], [23], [24]. There are a growing number of ethnographies of corporations and financial services organisations, which could add to our understandings of how customs and conventions can increase harmful behaviour.

However, it seems obvious that ‘dominating hierarchies’ will tend claim that their ruling elites are superior in some way, either because god has chosen them, because their rulership is natural, or perhaps because they are particularly virtuous or particularly talented. The dominant class nearly always claims to exemplify a special set of virtues.

In aristocracies, the dominant groups are said to be noble, learned, valiant, different beings to peasants, placed in power by God, and so forth.

In theocracies the dominant groups are said to be holy, knowledgeable of scripture, wise, keep to the laws rigorously, touched by god, in direct communication with god, etc.

In bureaucracies the elite have unquestionable loyalty to the state, are thorough, knowledgeable, honest, familiar with regulations, good hearted, neutral, refined etc.

In capitalism, the elites are rich, hard working, noble, trustworthy, uniquely talented, self-sacrificing for their vision and so on.

This claim can be true of some. I assume some high-up people in the Catholic Church are religious, and do live relatively holy lives. But it may not be correct about all of them. One Marcus Aurelius does not make up for loads of Commoduses, or people selected to the throne because the guard thought they could control them, or who were crazy enough to kill everyone else first. Same with capitalists. Not all billionaires have earned their wealth. Some inherited it. Some were massively lucky. Some likely destroyed or copied the work of others. Some appear massively incompetent, completely untrustworthy and are well known for ripping people off or vindictive revenge. Some might once have been reasonable people, but lost it as power and wealth corrupted them. Donald Trump should end the argument about the inherent virtue and good will of all billionaires, even if you think that Warren Buffett and George Soros may be good people. Trump’s corruption was well known to everyone who read the US business pages before his election, although this was largely ignored by the entrepreneur worshipping US corporately-owned media.

If the society is literate, there may be a whole literature teaching you how to cultivate the virtues the elite are supposed to have. This not only gives readers hope of social mobility, but it sanctifies the elite – who do this naturally, or perhaps after a sinful youth. There are hagiographic books telling you how smart, or holy, or whatever these people are; some of these get quickly forgotten when it becomes obvious their heroes were not smart or consistently good at what they do (Al Dunlap?). There are even books glorifying Donald Trump as the most talented man who ever lived and which claim to teach you the secret of rising from nothing like he supposedly did. Some books point out how he has been blessed by God, to bring righteousness to business and America. Such books should be recognised as what they are, propaganda tools, which is not to say they cannot ever be useful. Stoicism is as valid for Emperors as for the poor. And books of exposure, may attract law suits, or other forms of revenge, like Trump Nation did, so the elites are protected.

Why then do people co-operate with ‘bad’ but powerful and wealthy people? Sometimes, people may not read the business press and learn, for example, that working for Trump is only rarely a good deal. However, we can assume that more often people work for business people for the same reason they work for dictators (why did people not kill Stalin in advance?), because they hope the money and power will flow down, because the person only occasionally goes off the edge, because it seems safer to be an associate than an enemy, because you don’t recognise you are expendable, because you like being close to power and wealth, because you think you are smarter than them, because you think their selfishness will help you manipulate them, because you have seen what happens to businesses that challenge them, because they are good liars and promisers, because they are exciting, because you hope they will look kindly on you and leave you alone, and sometimes because they are well-intentioned and kind people, who kill thousands with the best intentions. Perhaps corrupt people work for corrupt people, so it becomes a self-reinforcing circle. Most people who work for them, do so because if they don’t work for them, or somebody like them, then they will starve.

In other words powerful capitalists get people to work with them or for them, just like other powerful elites get people to work for them. Politicians who lie, should lose trust, and people should abandon them, but Donald Trump again demonstrates that supporters won’t necessarily move away no matter what; they may deny obvious lies, declare the lies are unimportant, or decide the lies are true, they may argue that the person’s failures only occur because of a monstrous conspiracy. Indeed because politicians depend upon good moral standing, good interpersonal skills, being obsessively focused and productive, with an ability to deal with incredibly complex situations and balance all kinds of competing interests, that to pull political success off they must be honourable, or they will not succeed. People in the opposing parties (and their supporters) are already against them to begin with, some of their own party want to replace them with themselves, and some people are generally against successful people in any case. They have to be good. The logic is sound, but of course it is inadequate to describe reality, just as it is inadequate to describe the reality of corporate power. People get to occupy positions of power and wealth for all kinds of reasons, not least inheritance.

Sociopathy and Wealth

I’m not actually alledging anything about wealth and sociopathy, other than:

  1. Some people allege capitalist (and other) managerial structures could select for sociopathy or even create it by creating distance between people, and power over ‘less worthy people’… This is not inherently implausible.
  2. I can’t see any reason why sociopaths would not be attracted to making money, or why they would not be good at it, or again why making heaps of money would not encourage social separation, feelings of dominance, and hence what we can call ‘sociopathy’.

Now this does not mean that all the wealthy are sociopaths or psychopaths, or whatever label you want to use. I am not arguing that billionaires have to be ‘bad people,’ just that, like most humans, they will team up to bend policy and politics to favour what they perceive as their common interests. This should not surprise anyone. In a capitalist society, money talks loudly and persuasively.

To repeat, a person does not have to be a sociopath to team up with others to support what they consider to be their joint interests, dominance, security or place in ‘The Market’. It would be incredibly surprising if wealth elites did not act this way with the aim of pushing their interests in the State, and they have the money to do it successfully, especially if they team up. And this is pretty much what we observe in modern politics.

The fact that libertarians, Austrian economic theorists and so on, do not recognise this as an issue, while being fully capable of recognising that other people (workers, politicians) can team up to interfere with ‘The Market’, is interesting.

And it seems logical that people who could buy their way out of the penalties of law, or consider fines as costs, would not fear the consequences of illegal acts; consequences are for lesser people.

I just read that a family who profited from opiate addiction and death, have managed to escape prosecution through bankruptcy and largely keep their fortunes. They apparently show no remorse or feel there is any need to compensate families. Defending their wealth might come first? Sociopathy?

Likewise where I live people are being thrown out of their homes, doctors’ advice about pollution is being ignored, limits to liability are much smaller than the evidence suggests they should be, contracts being signed before Environmental inquiries held etc… all to make money for a toll road company. Let’s be clear. People will die because of this, houses have and will fall down, and there is nothing anyone could do to stop it. Protests and political campaigns were ignored. This is a bought State in action, defending profit maximisation at all costs. Sociopathy, or normality?

Most of the damage to the Earth’s ecology is owned by a very small percentage of the Earth’s population. But they get away with it, even when there is now no real excuse to pretend such damage is not a problem. Indeed we know that fossil fuel companies have been fighting against recognition of climate science for years, deliberately creating the conditions for mass loss of property and life, to keep making profits. Instead they had rather blame population growth. Sociopathy? Maybe. Capitalism, yes.

I should not need to mention:

  • Tobacco companies, and the trade in death they did quite well out of, and are still doing well out of, and still searching for new customers to kill.
  • Slave traders arguing they were civilising and rescuing savages while delivering them to kindly masters who had an interest in looking after them
  • Finance companies shifting costs on to those they ripped off, or the general behaviour of finance companies in the lead up to the crash of 2007-8, and its aftermath
  • Arms manufacturers who want to sell to terrorists
  • I’ve previously mentioned the East India Company’s plunder of India. But to add to it, they cut off the thumbs of hundreds of weavers in Bengal to maintain their profit on imported cloth, but this was more or less normal for companies
  • Other capitalists have had workers working in dangerous and unhealthy conditions, because workers may not have any alternatives. The mid to late 19th Century free market generated many quite unsettling stories and reports about this, and workers had to join together and fight hard for their safety.

Conclusion

To understand capitalism, you have to understand real, existing, forms of capitalism, not ideal forms which do not exist and have never existed, and which only exist as ideas to justify the actually existing forms of capitalism and pretend they are other than what they are.

To be able to prevent tyranny you have to be able to stop it from occurring, and that includes tyranny of the State, tyranny of wealth, tyranny of religion, tyranny of violence, tyranny of landholding, tyranny of control of communication and information, tyranny of control of energy, and tyranny of enforcing valued social categories.

If you want to stop the tyranny of the State, then you need to dismantle or inhibit the State. If you want to stop the tyranny of religion, then you have to diffuse the power of the Church, or the organisation of religions and introduce more religions…. If you want to stop the tyranny of wealth, you need to opposed the way the wealth is organised and passed on to the next generation. If you don’t then the tyranny will become established….

This sets up a paradox, that for some people to have liberty, the power of other people to deprive them of liberty must be curtailed. This can either be done by an independent power, which is likely to become arbitrary, or by attempting to set up a more participatory system of governance, by allowing such customs such as demand giving, or distribution of wealth and property at death, to non-family members, or simply destruction of that wealth.

If you cannot stop accumulation of power occurring then you have surrendered and there is no liberty. Libertarians do not acknowledge the power of wealth, or the power of organisation by the wealthy, or consider it an accident, and not part of the social functioning of wealth. They do not seem to promote limits to the authority of wealth.

Of course ‘liberty’ may not be the only social virtue to begin with.

Finally, we are in a situation in which the US political party of corporate domination, is:

1) Ignoring major problems with capitalism and ecology because it affects corporate sponsorship,
2) Pretending that the wealthy and the poor have the equal liberty to avoid a pandemic and get good treatment,
3) Preventing businesses from protecting their staff and customers from the pandemic,
4) Trying to prohibit teachers from talking about the history of race in America,
5) Lying about an election result with no evidence that will hold up in court,
6) Attempting to restrict votes that will go to their opponents, and
7) Attempting to restrict investigations into an apparent attempted coup.

Like the corporate and aristocratic backers of nazism, the right seem to be trying to hold capitalism and its hierarchy stable by cultivating an authoritarian, non-democratic State. This may be the standard capitalist response to crisis. It may not be the only such response. Again it needs thinking about.

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Decline of the West 03: Falsehood and fantasy

August 14, 2021

I have written many blog posts on how the structure of the ‘information society’ leads to massive distribution of disinformation and misinformation.

While I agree that falsehood and fantasy have always been rampant, see Charles MacKay Memoirs of Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds for example, some of the things discussed in Mackay’s book are perfectly normal and understandable.

Tulip Mania and the South Sea bubble, are standard financial bubbles. The prices of goods and stock did rise, and with skill and luck a person could have made a fortune if they got out at the right time. That people appeared to be becoming rich, was not a fantasy. That the economic fundamentals were bad is not an obvious reason for not participating. When Amazon launched onto the stockmarket, its economic fundamentals were terrible, but anyone who bought shares then might be worth a fortune now. It seems odd to blame people for normal market behaviour.

Likewise, if you have ever fiddled with chemistry you will know that chemical combinations can have surprising and transformative results even when the textbooks can tell you what to expect because of 100s of years of experience. Weird things happen quite naturally. If you have impure substances then weird things will happen even more, or nothing might happen. Alchemy had a coherent and logical set of theories. For the alchemist there was no necessary boundary, or distinction, between psycho-spiritual experience and action in matter. Spirit was as much part of the world as matter. That some people believed in it is not surprising. That some people lost their health and livelihood is also not surprising. How many crowds were obsessed with it is debatable – probably few.

Magnetisers were possibly demonstrating hypnosis or the placebo effect, in an era without even vacuous words like ‘placebo’ to explain mysterious healing away. Again not a big deal, I’m doubtful it affected political rule that much.

Fantasies have always had the potential to seize politics, that is true. But in my long years of watching politics, I have never seen a situation in which a US party is pretending it had an election stolen from it, without any reasonable evidence. I take the lack of reasonable evidence to be demonstrated by the recounts, and by the courts refusing the evidence and legal arguments over 60 times, and the apparent refusal of many of Trump’s lawyers to even allege fraud.

Sadly this denial of loss has not been just a momentary aberration, it appears to be one that is strengthening, despite the growing lack of evidence. And it has consequences: if a side keeps telling people the election was stolen, then it jacks up hostility towards those who accept the election and justifies desperate, and possibly illegal, measures to combat the ‘fraud’ – nothing is out of play. Purging the party of dissent is not a good sign for liberty

We should also note that Republicans did not, as far as I know, allow the presentation of evidence at either of Trump’s impeachments. This could indicate they have little intention of being evidence based.

For instance can see an apparently coordinated attempt by Republican media to make it impossible to discuss race relations in the USA in a way which might offend anyone who thinks the real problem is black racism. Again they demonstrate that Black lives do not matter, and that real problems can be avoided rather than faced.

And big tech/media censorship used to be approved and even gloated over by the Right when it did not affect them, but now it affects them they are trying to make it a left wing thing, even if facebook and twitter helped Trump to win the 2016 election by delivering continual streams of positive misinformation to people interested in Trump.

This is by no means an attempt to defend the Left. The mainstream left is almost as frightened of and addicted to plutocracy and problem avoidance as the mainstream right.

The great thing about fantasy is that fantasy avoids problems. It allows us to think that by not discussing problems they go away. We can feel we have solved the climate crisis by proposing fantasy technology, and doing nothing to bring that technology about, as the fantasy serves its purpose by providing an imaginary solution.

And we can just abuse anyone who disagrees because they are contemptable, and not one of us.

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Decline of the West 02: Massive Inequality of Wealth

August 14, 2021

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

It certainly made a huge difference to my family.

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

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

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Decline of the West 01: Run from problems

August 14, 2021

Climate change and ecological damage.

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

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

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

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

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

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

Covid-19

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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The Decline of the West?

August 14, 2021

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

***********

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

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

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

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Australian response to the IPCC report: Technology and magic

August 11, 2021

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

The Australian government’s response has been odd.

From the minister for emissions reduction:

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

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

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

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

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

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

His solution to the problem is hope:

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

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

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

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

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

Technology is not magic or wish fulfillment.

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

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

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

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

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

However, we will win, because:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

also bringing down emissions with flexible dispatchable storage.

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

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

The PM replies

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

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

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

The PM also claims:

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

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

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

Australia Covid live news updates The Guardian 12 August: 14.34

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

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

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

The PM replies

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The minister for Emissions reduction adds

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

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

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

Again the solution is technological magic.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

A journalist asks:

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

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

Comments

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

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

Addenda 27 October 2019

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

The graph at the end is the killer:

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

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

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