In their fine documentary “The Corporation, Mark Achbar, Jennifer Abbott and Joel Bakan have taken modern law at its word and ask, “If the corporation were a person, what sort of person would it be?” …The American Psychiatric Association classifies psychopaths and sociopaths under the general diagnosis of “antisocial personality disorder,” and to be diagnosed with the disorder, the patient needs to meet three of out these seven criteria:

1. Failure to conform to social norms with respect to lawful behaviors indicated by repeatedly performing acts that are grounds for arrest;
   
2. Deceitfulness, as initiated by repeated lying, use of aliases, or conning others for personal profit or pleasure;
   
3. Impulsivity or failure to plan ahead;
   
4. Irritability and aggressiveness, as indicated by repeated physical fights or assaults;
   
5. Reckless disregard for safety of self or others;
   
6. Consistent irresponsibility, as indicated by repeated failure to sustain consistent work behavior or honor financial obligations;
   
7. Lack of remorse, as indicated by being indifferent to or rationalizing having hurt, mistreated, or stolen from another.
   

The filmmakers find that corporations do indeed behave in these ways, breaking the laws if they can, dissembling and hiding their behavior, sacrificing long-term welfare for short-term profit, being aggressively litigious, flouting health and safety codes, welching on payments to suppliers and workers and never once feeling a pang of remorse. (Raj Patel, The Value of Nothing, Page 41)

I might add that the qualities above are pathological – that is – no matter who is at the helm of a corporation, that person cannot change these behaviors and so is not even aware that these behaviors even exist. For instance, oil, gas and pipeline companies that contribute to global warming have run a propaganda campaign, a highly successful one, to convince Americans that it is not a problem. The CEO’s of these corporations surely know better, and yet cannot change their behavior because they know that if they acknowledge the problem, the group that sponsors the position that the CEO’s occupy will expel them.

It is group pathology, and so cannot remedy itself. For that reason, corporations need to be heavily regulated and subordinated in law to the status of servant of the public, and not a legal person.

Has anyone ever seen Rod and Kenny Kaley together?

An exchange with Polish Wolf over at Intelligent Discontent brought to mind a truth that is not so much inconvenient as unpleasant. I keep it submerged and don’t often let it surface. 

It is widely shared wisdom that everyone should vote, no matter intelligence or education. We should all have a voice. That sounds really good. We should all genuflect now. 

The  universal franchise created a new environment,  new problems for leaders last century. The biggest one was most people are clueless about international and national affairs, so that consulting them should only be done for show. There are two spins to put on this:

Bertrand Russell agreed that the average citizen was indeed clueless, but that the process was useful anyway. It routinely forces changes in leadership, a good in itself even if that is an unintended outcome for voters. It reins in aristocracy.

In the US  his reasoning does not apply, as our elections are privately financed, and this has led to two, and only two parties. The two parties and their financiers are our aristocracy. Democracy is a sham here. 

In the twentieth century American intellectuals addressed the problem of the universal franchise coupled with the ignorant voter. Their conclusion was that people had to be allowed to believe that they were in  charge, and so be given their sham elections and never let in on the secret. 

That’s pretty much how we do it now, and if we had enlightened leadership it would be a workable system. But we do not have that, so that the true effect of manufactured consent is an elite and detached leadership class fronting for silent power, or what we now call the “1%” (but which is in truth more like the “1/10th of 1%”). There is no effective way to hold them accountable, as our elections have no substance and do not affect policy. 

So contrary and illogical as it seems, our democracy was killed by too much democracy.

My solution? Rewrite or throw out the constitution. It’s dysfunctional anyway. Eliminate private money from politics, and minimize high elective offices, instead having very small districts elect representatives in gymnasiums, each required to make the case for election by means of deliberation. The resulting body, a parliament of sorts, would by ballot appoint the top tier of leaders and hold them accountable, removing them from office when they misbehave. Sound familiar?

The advantage of this system is that disinterested people would not show up, nor would they be encouraged to do so. People would not be encouraged to vote for the sake of voting, nor would they be influenced by stupid TV ads and other manipulations used to win elections. However, if conflicts arise that spring into action various constituencies, they have a means to power.

There is no system that satisfies ideal democracy, but my goodness, the one we have here is a not even a good joke. It is a hoax. My suggestion does not eliminate the problem of parties, but without money, influence, there would be more than just two.

We watched Man on the Moon again last night, and I remembered what a talented man Andy Kaufman was. What a tragedy that he died so young – he neither smoked nor drank, did not use any kind of substance, and died of lung cancer at the age of 35 in 1984.

Sorry if they run an annoying pre-roll ad. Whatever it is they are advertising, do not buy it.

This from John T. Harvey, economist, at Forbes Blogs:

…I wonder how many people know the formal Monetarist (Milton Friedman’s school of thought) explanation of how the Great Depression occurred? Their analysis depends on the existence of something called money illusion on the part of workers. The idea is that laborers are never quite certain what the current cost of living is since they do not keep a careful accounting of their expenditures. Meanwhile, firms are pretty darn sure what prices are because it is so important to their livelihood to pay close attention. Now imagine the following. Let’s say there is a massive collapse in the supply of money, leading to a fall in prices … The fall in prices, because it means they are earning lower profits, leads firms offer lower wages to their employees. But–and here’s what they say happened in the Great Depression–workers, not realizing because of money illusion that the cost of living has declined (and that firms’ offer is therefore not unreasonable), quit their jobs. And that, apparently, is how unemployment rose to 25% in the 1930s: the money supply fell, lowering prices, leading firms to offer lower wages, and causing workers to VOLUNTARILY QUIT THEIR JOBS!

I’ve heard this before – the monetarist explanation for the Great Depression, but had no idea it was mainstream neoclassical thought.

Read the whole article here.

This thread at Electric City Weblog caught my eye, and reminded me that I live on Neptune. These guys are arguing about the wages of a teacher, and Gregg Smith, condescending in tone, says that the teacher who wrote the following letter doesn’t understand the difference between “wage” and “salary.”

CALCULABLE

In his Jan. 25 letter to the Tribune, Montana state legislator Tom Bur­nett presented the idea that state employees should punch a time clock because he feels that they’re not being honest about their hours. As a “part-time” public school teacher, I have to say I love this idea.

Currently, most of my work is long-term sub­bing. I don’t know how many hours I spend meet­ing with teachers who are planning long leaves, preparing lesson plans for their absences, evaluating student work, submitting grades, cleaning class­rooms and working with parents to solve problems, but I must say if I were punching a time clock, I’d be making twice my cur­rent wage. The same is true of every teacher I know.

They put in hours before school, after school, on weekends, during “vaca­tions” and all the rest.

Montana’s public educa­tors put in an incalculable number of hours of their own time, all of which is not paid.

Maybe Burnett’s on to something. Mount a time clock on my wall, and I’ll punch in while I’m writ­ing constructive feedback on my students’ work dur­ing the time between when school gets out and dinner with my family begins. I’ll clock out while I eat, then I’ll clock in while I enter that grading data. I’ll clock out while I bathe my kids, put them in jammies, brush their teeth and read them their nighttime story. Then I’ll punch back in while I plan tomorrow’s lesson. I’m all for this plan.

— Christopher Cummings, Kalispell

In the mind of the right-winger, people only “earn” what they are “worth.”

Oh, we have markets indeed, but in no way are they “free.” That clever little phrase is merely a mental trick, use of a word that has a pleasant feel about it to mask the true nature of markets. As shown in the photo above – “free markets” place no restraint on the powerful in exploiting the weak. It is not talent or contribution to our well-being that determines our wage (scuze me — salary). It’s power, proximity, acquisitiveness, scaling, enclosure, and the kill instinct.
Continue reading “The view from Neptune” →

This seems incongruent to me, and I need for a neo-classical economist, or a Randian or Austrian School person to explain it. Your theory states that optimal economic performance is achieved if taxes are kept low, and that wealthy people should not be taxed at rates higher than anyone else. That way they invest their money and create jobs. [sic]

We have low tax rates now for very wealthy people, and learn that Mitt Romney has paid an effective rate of 13.9% in 2010, lower than anyone above EIC status. And yet he takes his money and stashes it in the Cayman Islands! What’s up with that? Why is he not reinvesting? Why is he not creating jobs? [sic]

Ingy? Budge? Gregg Smith? Craig? Eric? Perfesser?

[chirp]

On a few occasions here I’ve ventured into the unspeakable – that the events of 9/11 are mysterious and unexplained by the official investigative body, the 9/11 Commission. I don ‘t know what the real explanations are, as it is all hidden from view, but do know that the cellular phone calls, the un-invterviewed witnesses, the highly unlikely coincidences … the very fact that everything went right for a guy in a cave 7,000 miles away while everything went wrong for the most powerful and sophisticated military in the world … that a passport with a hijacker’s name on it survives a towering inferno … c’mon. You guys know this too. You know something’s up.

And that is why I am writing this – not because I know the answers, as I do not. I am addressing the various reactions that people have when they come across the same anomalies. It’s understandable. I get it. I was there at one time.
Continue reading “Realistic vs fearful vs wishful” →

I am not here to cheer you up. The situation is about as serious and difficult as I’ve experienced in my career. We are facing an extremely difficult time, comparable in many ways to the 1930s, the Great Depression. We are facing now a general retrenchment in the developed world, which threatens to put us in a decade of more stagnation, or worse. The best-case scenario is a deflationary environment. The worst-case scenario is a collapse of the financial system.

Those are the words of George Soros, speaking to Newsweek recently, or so my link says. The billionaire financier who is so feared by the right wing, known to finance such subversive undertakings as Wikipedia and Adbusters. As perhaps the only billionaire who is engaged in proactive movement politics, he is naturally demonized, thought to sleep every day under the bed of Ingamar Johansen before venturing out on moonless nights to destroy capitalism, turn women into lesbians, and promote witchcraft.

“The collapse of the Soviet system was a pretty extraordinary event, and we are currently experiencing something similar in the developed world, without fully realizing what’s happening.

Except that so many people on the margins do realize what’s going on. We are re-inflating the bubble, overextending the military, encircling ourselves with enemies of our own making. Collapse is not only imminent, but for rest of the planet, perhaps welcome.
Continue reading “If it ain’t a mess, it’ll do till the mess gets here” →