Decline of the Empire

Dear Dr. Kelemen — You're The Problem

We already know that Dot Earth science blogger Andy Revkin is harmless because he writes for The New York Times. Bland statements about "uncertainty" and contentious but unimportant scientific details flow easily from his pen, even as Homo sapiens carries out its not-so-secret agenda to destroy many of the ecosystems upon which that species depends. Boat-rocking is not permitted at the Times, which is dedicated to the proposition that regardless of the size and scope of the problems humankind faces, everything is OK, or will be OK, when all is said and done.

In fact, reassurance is an important purpose behind all mainstream media. No matter how bat-shit crazy the world has become, and assuming you find that insanity troubling, the corporate-owned media is there to reassure you that all is well, or will be well very soon. In fact, the problem clearly lies with you — you're the one who's crazy! But that's not a problem either because they have something to sell you which offers The Cure. Problem solved!

But I digress. Revkin's post An Earth Scientist Explores the Biggest Climate Threat: Fear beautifully exemplifies some points about optimists and pessimists I recently made in DOTE Has No Natural Constituency.

Here’s a ... contribution pushing back against apocalyptic depictions of the collision between humans and the climate system — written by Peter B. Kelemen, the Arthur D. Storke Professor and vice chair in the Department of Earth and Environmental Sciences at Columbia University. Kelemen has done a lot of interesting work on possible ways to capture carbon dioxide from air (none being easy or cheap):

Kelemen is working on sucking up CO₂ directly from the air! Which is not of course easy or cheap. Even before we read Keleman we know that we've got a techno-optimist on our hands. And here he is—

Fear Itself

“We already know it is too late to reverse the planet’s transformation, and we know what is going to happen next – superstorms, super-droughts, super-pandemics, massive population displacement, water scarcity, desertification and all the rest. Massive destruction, displacement and despair. Our worst fears are already upon us. The reality is far worse than anyone has imagined.”

These phrases are distilled from “Writing at the End,” an essay by Nathaniel Rich in Sunday’s New York Times Book Review.

They capture its doomsday ethos, and its breathtaking certainty. Rich, a novelist, is sure he knows the causes of our present ills, and the nature of the near future. He probably feels that he learned this from the 98 percent of climate scientists who – famously – agree on some things. I am part of that community; we agree that human greenhouse gas emissions are having a huge, negative effect on global climate. But I don’t agree with Nathaniel Rich.

Ah, do you see the strategy? The inveterate optimist Kelemen is going to blame everything on Doomers like Nathaniel Rich. Andy Revkin approves of course.

Apocalyptic warnings sell newspapers, power Web sites, and are surprisingly good for marketing. Beyond the media, in the sciences and social sciences, if your research predicts a scary outcome, your name gets in the news, your grants get funded, and you feel like Paul Revere (though you might be Chicken Little). It’s a heady experience.

Meanwhile, my children are fearful of, and almost paralyzed by, the prospect of an inevitable, dystopian future. They would like to contribute to avoiding calamity, but they don’t see where to start, and they are told it is too late to begin. And my children are lucky, in a stable home, among the 3 percent, talented, athletic, well educated. In the face of an overarching climate of fear, people with less opportunity find there is nothing they can do to help avoid “destruction, displacement and despair.”

These over-the-top pessimists are scaring the shit out of Kelemen's kids! Stop me if I'm wrong here, but isn't it all for the children? We're going to suck that CO₂ directly out of the air for the children, right?

However, climate catastrophe is not inevitable, let alone irreversible. Of course, it could happen. It is logical to expect that, as atmospheric greenhouse gases increase and the world warms up, the extra energy in the atmosphere and oceans will move things around in unusual ways for which we are not prepared. The costs will likely be very high. We should work to avoid this, for simple, practical reasons.  Avoiding emissions now will be far less expensive than capturing carbon dioxide from air in the future. But the future is unpredictable, our mistakes are correctable, and there is plenty of reason for optimism about what people can accomplish in the face of necessity.

There it is. I could spend all day trying to come up with a single good example of why "there is plenty of reason for optimism" regarding our climate future, but then I would be very late publishing this post. In fact, I might never publish it if I wait for a good example of humans correcting their mistakes.

Throughout the past 10 to 20 years, despite many obstacles, worldwide wind and solar energy generation have grown exponentially, at more than 24 and 33 percent per year, respectively. They still constitute a small share of total energy production – not surprisingly, since they still cost more than other sources. A carbon tax would help to even the playing field, factoring in the likely damage due to greenhouse gas emissions. This is overdue. But my point here is that, despite the obstacles, some segments of society are sufficiently farsighted to invest in the future, even at a present-day premium. It is happening.

... Gas-fired power plants are a nimble addition to the overall energy grid. They are relatively easy to switch on and off, compensating for asynchronous variation in wind speed and sunlight on the one hand, and power consumption on the other. And the increasing supply of home-grown hydrocarbons is changing the global strategic picture in positive ways. All of these topics are debatable, but it is wrong to portray the [fracking] discussion as a contest between good and evil, or assert that the pro-gas path will inevitably lead to disaster. No one can know all the answers.

The standard techno-optimism, bolstered by great uncertainty. After all, no one can know all the answers!

But we don't need all the answers. Humans have only one answer, which consists of growth, growth, growth and more growth. More is better!

In coming years there will be plenty of big storms and deep droughts. They will come in unpredictable clumps, like the giant earthquakes that have been unusually frequent in the past decade. In the midst of this natural chaos, it is hard to discern whether the long-term frequency of destructive events is really increasing or not, and why. In the popular imagination, especially in this country, when something bad happens, someone is always to blame. But in the real world, stuff happens.

Over time, we will find out what will happen. As the costs and dangers of present trends become clear, people will react. Virtually the entire oil and gas industry was built in a century. Half of it has been constructed since 1980.

Think of what we, and our children, can accomplish in the next century, starting with the next 30 years.

I am optimistic about this. Climate, energy, and resource problems have solutions, and we can solve them when we muster the resolve to do so. This requires a costly commitment, which will only be made if most people believe a positive outcome is both attainable and worthwhile.

Kelemen is optimistic about all we can accomplish in the next 30 years, despite the fact that we have hardly begun to put even a minor dent in the climate problem. Of course he is!  He's got kids! More is better!

I needn't remind you that all that optimism and growth created this mess in the first place. Keleman is just like the other 7,000,000,000 optimists on this planet.

Kelemen finishes up. Extreme pessimists are to blame for all our woes.

Therefore, the climate that worries me most is the climate of fear, the belief that our current trajectory leads inevitably to total disaster.

This belief discourages constructive action, and can result in irrational acts by people in despair, individually, or as nations, willing to do anything to derail the juggernaut we are told is carrying us, inevitably, to destruction.

Unlike environmental problems, it is less clear to me how we change this. But at least, those of us in science, social science and the media can seek to craft solutions and enlist engagement, rather than feeding fear. With hope comes action.

This final text is so delusional that Kelemen could be my 2013 nominee for Optimist of the Year.

With hope comes action? I have yet to see that. The reason "obligatory hope" is obligatory is that such hope is always offered up regardless of the total absence of any meaningful action which might make that hope realistic. I have defined the difference between false hope and authentic hope.

Shoot the messenger

Pessimists are not the problem. Doomers are annoying, but they're not the problem. Optimists are the problem, and since nearly all humans are optimistic in the way Kelemen is, then we might as well say that humans are the problem. And of course realists are very rare, as I said in my DOTE Constituency post.

And thus in this particular case, we can conclude that Dr. Kelemen is the problem.

On that happy note, I will conclude this post.

This Is Progress?

I call your attention to Pew Research's A Rise in Wealth for the Wealthy; Declines for the Lower 93%.

During the first two years of the nation’s economic recovery, the mean net worth of households in the upper 7% of the wealth distribution rose by an estimated 28%, while the mean net worth of households in the lower 93% dropped by 4%, according to a Pew Research Center analysis of newly released Census Bureau data.

From 2009 to 2011, the mean wealth of the 8 million households in the more affluent group rose to an estimated $3,173,895 from an estimated $2,476,244, while the mean wealth of the 111 million households in the less affluent group fell to an estimated $133,817 from an estimated $139,896.

These wide variances were driven by the fact that the stock and bond market rallied during the 2009 to 2011 period while the housing market remained flat.

Affluent households typically have their assets concentrated in stocks and other financial holdings, while less affluent households typically have their wealth more heavily concentrated in the value of their home.

From the end of the recession in 2009 through 2011 (the last year for which Census Bureau wealth data are available), the 8 million households in the U.S. with a net worth above $836,033 saw their aggregate wealth rise by an estimated $5.6 trillion, while the 111 million households with a net worth at or below that level saw their aggregate wealth decline by an estimated $0.6 trillion.

Because of these differences, wealth inequality increased during the first two years of the recovery. The upper 7% of households saw their aggregate share of the nation’s overall household wealth pie rise to 63% in 2011, up from 56% in 2009. On an individual household basis, the mean wealth of households in this more affluent group was almost 24 times that of those in the less affluent group in 2011. At the start of the recovery in 2009, that ratio had been less than 18-to-1...

It's an old story—the rich get richer, everybody else gets poorer...

Here is what I wrote in The Inevitable Rise of Wealthy Global Elites on October 18, 2012, well before this Pew study came out.

We should not be surprised to see this enormous wealth gap. When has unfettered Capitalism, given free rein over markets and labor, ever led to a different outcome? The promise is always the same, and might be summarized as a rising tide lifts all boats, a phrase first used by Jack Kennedy in a speech in 1960. The free flow of capital which gives us this "winner take all" situation justifies itself in the great prosperity many ordinary people (labor) will allegedly achieve, although these people don't have access to capital and markets. So we see right away that the world is neatly divvied up into the Those Who Make The Magic Happen (the global capitalists) and Those Who Benefit From the Magic (global labor).

A rising tide lifts all boats—if you have a boat, or temporary access to one...

There is nothing to discuss here. The promise of limitless economic Progress—the rising tide lifting all boats—is bogus. That story is false. Those extolling the inherent goodness of economic growth are full of shit, and have been for the last 35 years here in the U.S.

Now, let's ask ourselves why human societies work like this. Even when a rising tide does lift most boats for some period of time, as occurred in the three decades after World War II in the U.S., it is always the case that complex societies revert to their natural state, which is great (and growing) wealth inequality.

Why aren't human societies organized around the principle that everyone must be taken care of?

That is to say, there would be a minimum standard of living for all members of all societies, and no one would go without, and no one would be able to accrue such great wealth that they can skew the society to serve their own interests.

Well, of course, that story is a fiction. I just made it up. But the question remains—why do we always have the one kind of society, and not the other? Why do socialist economies always fail? Why do democracies always fail?

Why must we live in society which finds a way to rationalize great unfairness, and mostly ignores that unfairness?

The question of Progress in human affairs begins and ends with the question what is Human Nature?

If humans could acknowledge that there is such a thing as Human Nature, even if they don't quite know what it is, then the question regarding future human societies becomes what is possible?

Once you understand what is possible, you also can identify what is not possible.

Any discussion of Progress—explicit or implicit, pro or con—is merely empty talk if one doesn't address the question of Human Nature. Such a discussion is just so much bullshit, which is one thing we have in great abundance on Planet Earth.

I have a lot more to say about all this, but I will say it in future posts.

The Failures Of Progress — What Has Been Lost

On Wednesday of last week, I posted Economics As Religion, which might appear to be an over-the-top appraisal of the economics profession, but which actually describes the easily observable role of economists in a general context of unquestioning belief in (economic) Progress, which I have characterized as a secular religion. Economic progress means "growth" in all cases, and economists are "cheerleaders" for growth.

A related post called The American Fantasy World discusses the causes and consequences of all this Progress in the United States.

I originally published today's reprint on April 2, 2012. This short essay is a "prequel" to the posts mentioned above. There was also a follow-up a few days later called The Failures Of Progress — What Will Be Lost, published on April 5, 2012. I made some important edits to the original.

— Dave

---

They paved paradise, and put up a parking lot...
They took all the trees and put 'em in a tree museum
And they charged all the people a dollar and a half just to see 'em
   — Joni Mitchell

Today I will discuss the failures of Progress, and the "liberal" tradition which defines it. The notion that humankind is moving down an ever-better road has once again been overthrown in the 21st century. No honest person could look around at the current chaos and corruption in the United States and elsewhere on Earth and still argue that humanity continues to travel down the road of perpetual improvement. The tradition I am talking about began in the 19th and early 20th centuries, and has its roots in the Enlightenment. Whether they know it or not, nearly everybody in America, excluding some "reactionary" elements of our society, is firmly ensconced within the Progress myth. It's just like the air you breathe.

Let me be clear about what I'm not talking about. The current political divide between the "liberal" left-wing and the "conservative" right-wing represents a caricature of the original meaning of these words. In the original sense, Barack Obama is a Progressive, but so is Mitt Romney. Both believe in the magical ability of free markets, democratic governments and technology to make our lives better, to achieve the greatest prosperity and comfort for the greatest number.

Except for a few atavistic throwbacks and Luddites, everybody is a Keynesian now. Or an Austrian, or a Libertarian, or whatever. These distinctions make little difference. All these people are "liberals" in the grandest, philosophical sense of this hallowed tradition. Without exception, these groups believe in continual "improvement" of the human condition, whether they emphasize markets over government or vice versa. Again, such distinctions make little difference, for everybody is swimming in the same water. Technology is universally hailed as humankind's continuing and ultimate savior. Gross Domestic Product is a precise measurement of our progress. If GDP goes up, everyone rejoices. If it goes down, we vow to try harder. No one questions these assumptions, despite ultimately trivial political differences about how to grow GDP.

Before I begin my critique of Progress, I must be sure to point out that liberalism in the traditional sense has given us some very good things. Equal rights for women and minorities, child labor laws, an end to slavery, religious tolerance, important advances in medical science—all these developments and many others are unequivocally positive. I would never advocate returning to a world without them.

The critique of Progress begins with the questions of human rationality and decency, for the assumptions of pure reason and good-heartedness drive the improvement engine. Let's start with a quote from Christopher Lasch's The True And Only Heaven: Progress And It's Critics. In this passage, Lasch is discussing John Maynard Keynes and his lingering doubts about the program of improvement he advocated (pp. 76-77).

[Keynes] never modified his belief that civilization was a product of the "personality and the will of a very few," but he now took the position, having lived through two world wars and a global economic crisis [the Great Depression], that civilization was altogether more "precarious" than he and his companions had been willing to admit in the confident years before World War I. "We were amongst the last of the Utopians, or Meliorists, ... who believed in a continuing moral progress by virtue of which the human race already consists of reliable, rational, decent people ... who can be safely released from the outward constraints of convention and traditional standards and inflexible rules of conduct."

Keynes's memoir was slightly equivocal. Was the vision of men and women released from outward constraints—the essence of liberalism and the core of the belief in progress—wholly misguided or merely premature? When Keynes questioned the assumption that humanity "already" consisted of individuals who could dispense with convention, he left open the possibility that it might consist of such individuals in the long run.

He went on to argue, however, that he and his contemporaries had "completely misunderstood human nature, including our own."  Their "irreverence" for "traditional wisdom or the restraints of custom" derived from an excessive confidence in reason. "It did not occur to us to respect the extraordinary accomplishments of our predecessors in the ordering of life ... or the elaborate framework which they had devised to protect this order."

Keynes's theory of "abundance through full employment" ... gave "new life to the old ideology of progress and national economic growth." ... Keynes was neither the first nor the last exponent of progress to rediscover the value of "outward constraints" and "traditional standards" that his own work helped to undermine. But no other career exemplified the contradictory implications of progressive ideology quite so clearly...

It is high time we re-evaluated the ideology of progress. I am not the first to do so, nor will I be the last.

Let us start with some open questions which should be closed.

Are humans rational, reliably good-hearted creatures who can be "safely" freed from outward constraints and traditional standards? No.

Are our politicians rational and good-hearted in this sense? No.

Are our monied elites and business leaders rational and good-hearted in this sense? Hell, No.

Are American citizens—the hoi polloi, also called "consumers"—rational and good hearted in this sense? No.

Are economists, environmentalists and other "thought leaders" rational and good-hearted in this sense? No.

In fact, humans are unconscious creatures motivated by instinctual drives and other hidden agendas they do not even begin to comprehend, but I will skip the Human Nature lecture today.

I am not going to argue these points. If these conclusions are not clear to the reader in 2012, four years after another global economic crisis and the ensuing, continuing chaos, they never will be. In short, does the human race consist of "reliable, rational, decent people" who can be counted on to do the right thing for the good of the whole, whether it is through Adam Smith's "invisible hand" or a powerful central government's alleged altruism? No.

Might we then leave open the possibility that humanity might consist of such individuals in the long run as Keynes hoped? No. A long time has passed since Keynes expressed some doubts about the ideology of Progress, and despite a few triumphs here and there like the Civil Rights Movement in the decades after World War II, the notion of perpetual Progress has once again been stood on its head in the early 21st century, just as it was in the Great Depression and wars of the 20th century, for example, in the great income and wealth inequality we have in contemporary America, which Bill Moyers calls The United States Of Inequality.

It thus appears that Keynes and his contemporaries did indeed "completely misunderstand human nature, including their own." And if they and others did not understand the human animal, then the ideology of Progress is wholly misguided. I am wondering how many decisive, falsifying demonstrations of the lack of "improvement" in human behavior are required before this theory of perpetual Progress is completely discarded.

I shall require another essay to discuss the details of my critique of Progress, but for now I want you to consider what has been lost in American society, not what has been gained over the last 150 years. Specifically, I want you to think about these propositions concerning what characterizes a Good Society. Do you disagree with any of the following?

• Tradition has great value
• Continuity has great value
  
• Conservation has great value
  
• Stability has great value
• Constraints (on behavior) have great value

All these things, these great values, have been lost in America, a society which more than any other was founded on (or at least taken over by) the ideology of Progress, a society which also valued freedom of human action above all other things. [Note: see The American Fantasy World.]

If you disagree with all these propositions, you are indeed a liberal in the sense described here. If you agree with most or all of them, you are a conservative in the traditional sense or have those leanings. I am a conservative. As I said, I would not be willing to give up the liberal reforms we have achieved, as unimpressive as they appear to be given the great difficulties we face, but I do not generally subscribe to a philosophy of "improvement" in the human condition. Progress is illusory, and all we've achieved could be lost in a heartbeat if things go badly in the future, which they almost certainly will.

Remedy du Jour -- April 27, 2013

Today's remedy features film composer Angelo Badalamenti, who most recently scored A Late Quartet (2012). However, today we are more interested in his older collaborations with David Lynch. If Lynch is a sick guy, and I hope we can agree that he is, Badalamenti has been more than up to challenge of conveying whatever evil mood Lynch wants to get across. I love this stuff, which has some of the best elements of film noir music.

• Laurens Walking — from David Lynch's The Straight Story, a great film (1999)
• theme for Mulholland Drive — from Lynch's 2001 film of the same name
• Twin Peaks suite — from Lynch's early 1990s TV series (Laura Palmer's and the main theme)
• Mysteries of Love — from Lynch's Blue Velvet (1986)
• Wicked Game — Chris Isaak's 1989 song, used in Lynch's Wild At Heart (1991), which was scored by Badalamenti

 

 

 

 

 

Compost Cars (Onion TED Talks)

Having presented two real TED talks yesterday, I think we need to put them in perspective.

Reader Jim reminded of the wonderful Onion Talks series, which does the job very nicely.

"Compost Cars" and "Ducks Go Quack" serve to remind us what dumb motherfuckers the people who give TED talks usually are, although it's hard to say who is dumber—the vacuous optimists giving the talks, or the hopeful sheep lapping up their every word.

 

 

Two TED Talks, Open Thread

I would like to follow-up on my post Economics As Religion, but in order to do so, I need to further explain the "religion of Progress" which underpins economic faith.

A reader (lucaswheeler) brought up Christopher Lasch's essential book The True And Only Heaven — Progress And It's Critics, but was apparently unaware that I have written about or mentioned it in the past.

I am a critic of Progress

I doubt many of you will read it, but Lasch's exhaustive research should be required reading for anyone seeking to understand the world he or she lives in.

Another reader (Brian M.) sent me links to two TED Talks. These can be taken as required viewing, but must be seen through the lens of the religion of Progress to be understood properly. On April 25, 2013, TED sponsored a mini-debate.

Is America past its prime? Discuss with Robert Gordon and Erik Brynjolfsson in a live debate, Thursday at 4pm Eastern.

Is job growth over in the United States? Will the future economy look anything like the past? Whither American innovation?

At TED2013, two economic experts aired radically opposing views. Watch their TED Talks, then join us for a live discussion with speakers Erik Brynjolfsson and Robert Gordon...

In fact, Robert Gordon and Erik Brynjolfsson do not have "radically opposed views" of the future. Both of them unquestioningly subscribe to the religion of Progress. Both refer again and again to the standard gods of the Progress pantheon—the awesome power of technological innovation, unbounded human ingenuity (cleverness), soaring productivity, and, above all, endless growth.

The difference which makes the debate possible is that the "pessimist" (the cautious optimist Gordon) sees "headwinds" to Progress, whereas the standard optimist (Brynjolfsson) does not. I will post about the religion of Progress on Monday, but today (and this weekend) you have the opportunity watch the videos before then.

Feel free to comment on these TED talks, or anything else. This is also an open thread.

Have a nice weekend.

Does Writing DOTE Add To GDP?

The title question occurred to me when I found out that the Bureau of Economic Analysis (BEA) is going to magically increase U.S. Gross Domestic Product (GDP) to take "creative" endeavors into account (also known as "intangible goods").

Huzzah! America’s economy is around $400 billion bigger than you thought it was.

And the details of why include some really important lessons about the contributions that the creative class, including corporate research and development staff and America’s moviemakers, TV producers, and songwriters, make to the economy. Star Wars creator George Lucas and his counterparts, it turns out, are more important to growth than the numbers have previously captured.

The Bureau of Economic Analysis is doing a “comprehensive revision” of the data that form the raw material for gross domestic product, the most widely cited measure of how the economy is doing. And it appears that the numbers, due out this summer, will increase the size of the U.S. economy by about 3 percent (as Robin Harding of the Financial Times, who first reported the story, points out, that’s like tacking an extra Belgium onto the U.S. economy).

GDP is being revised right back to 1929, so it's all relative. The geniuses at NPR assure us that the size of GDP doesn't matter; it's the change in GDP that counts as we move forward.

I wonder if that's what women think too

The next step on the rocky road to Consciousness would require these public radio geniuses to realize that the change in GDP doesn't matter either. It's the quality of everyday life for Americans that truly matters. And if you ask them about the economy, 35% will tell you it sucks, and 18% will tell you conditions are "excellent or good." Last week, 42% of Americans said the economy is getting better, while 52% said it is getting worse. 

GDP goes up and up while for most Americans, quality of life goes down and down. But I digress.

When [George Lucas] made a Star Wars movie, his company spent a lot of money to create the film. It then owned a copyright, and could make money for many years afterward on that investment. In other words, it’s a lot more like our washing machine company building a factory than it is like the routine process of making washing machines. The same is true for a lot of types of intellectual property: When Apple researchers develop the iPad, or Suzanne Collins writes a Hunger Games novel, it is an upfront investment that will have a long payoff.

So now BEA will treat research and development and creation of artistic works as longer-term investments, not unlike factories,  equipment, or software...

Thus we learn that the "investment" made to create all this mediocre horseshit (like Star Wars or The Hunger Games), which passes for "art" in contemporary America, will now be accounted for in calculating GDP. I suppose that's fitting & proper because all of this crap was designed to make money, just like manufacturing robots or games software. I hope "artists" like George Lucas, who is a lousy filmmaker, will not object if I say that. But of course, when he made Star Wars back in the 1970s, he was trying to sell Luke Skywalker action figures.

And sell them he did! They are collectors items now, still boosting GDP.

See my recent post The American Fantasy World for a high-level view this nightmare.

I wonder how much GDP was boosted by the "investment" made by jazz pianist Brad Mehldau—an actual genius—and his producer Jon Brion—another genius—to make the album Highway Rider. I'll wager that "investment" didn't raise GDP as much as Lady Gaga did when she made the videos for The Fame Monster. And Mehldau often has to play outside the United States to get gigs and make a living, so that doesn't help GDP much

Which brings me back to the title question: does writing DOTE add to GDP? 

I've got to admit it, DOTE does not look good from a GDP point of view. After all, I write it for nothing and you read it for free. Some readers are kind enough to support my work by sending donations, and I'm grateful for that, but believe me when I tell you that those donations are not enough to make much of a dent in GDP.

So, from an economic standpoint, DOTE is virtually worthless. DOTE has little or no economic value

Well, I guess that's bad news, and there's more where that came from. As you watch the Brad Mehldau video, imagine GDP faltering.

But there's plenty of good news. As you watch Lady Gaga, imagine GDP going up and up and up...

 

 

Economics As Religion

The discipline of economics is less a science than the theology of this new religion, and its God, the market, has become a vicious circle of ever increasing production and consumption by pretending to offer a secular salvation
   — David R. Loy, A Buddhist History of the West

The role of economists in modern human societies has become greatly clarified since the financial crisis of 2008. I fear that in the past I have not been sufficiently forthright about macro-economic theory (in all its elaborate variations) and its practitioners. I am going to correct that oversight today.

Zachary Karabell, an economist I criticized in my Letter To God, assures us that the 'laws of economics' do not exist. However confused he is about other things, we can only agree with Zachary on this one. Here is what has become clear since 2008.

• Economists serve as a secular clergy.

• The religion they serve is economic and social Progress, sometimes called humanism. Progress is always conflated with growth in the economics sphere.

• Economists are ordained when they obtain a degree in economics, after common sense has been beaten out of them.

• Although their main function appears to be "analysis" of the current and future situation according to the non-existent laws of economics, their primary role is cheerleading.

• Economists are congenital optimists, as their religion requires.

• As mere clergymen, economists do not dictate policy; that job is left to politicians, who can pick and choose among often contradictory macro-economic theories (models) to rationalize whatever it is they want to do.

I trust this is sufficiently clear, but some of you will require additional details. Some of you may find it useful to compare the role of economists in modern societies to the role of bishops and priests in the medieval Catholic church of Europe, although economists are not hierarchically arranged nor is there a Pope. I have in mind Keynesians of all stripes (= medieval Catholics) although there are other minor sects (for example, Austrians).

Let us begin with a quote from Paul Samuelson's The End Of Macro Magic.

The International Monetary Fund recently held a conference that should concern most people despite its arcane subject — “Rethinking Macro Policy II.” Macroeconomics is the study of the entire economy, as opposed to the examination of individual markets (“microeconomics”). The question is how much “macro” policies can produce and protect prosperity. Before the 2008-09 financial crisis, there was great confidence that they could. Now, with 38 million unemployed in Europe and the United States — and recoveries that are feeble or nonexistent — macroeconomics is in disarray and disrepute...

... Still, the subsequent record is disheartening. The economic models that didn’t predict the crisis have also repeatedly overstated the recovery. The tendency is to blame errors on one-time events — say, in 2011, the Japanese tsunami, the Greek bailout and the divisive congressional debate over the debt ceiling. But the larger cause seems to be the models themselves, which reflect spending patterns and behavior by households and businesses since World War II.

Straightforwardly, we note that macro-economics is in a state of "disarray and disrepute" and economic models which did not predict the crisis have repeatedly overstated the recovery because clergy of the religion of Progress can not have anything other than an optimistic view of the future.  We observe without fear of contradiction that economists always predict that the economy will grow, regardless of the poor quality of that "growth" for those who allegedly benefit from it. GDP "growth" can be accomplished in many ways.

Even when economists are "pessimistic" in the short-term, meaning that some of them believe GDP growth may slow for a few quarters, they are always optimistic about the longer run. Thus they may predict lukewarm growth of 1-2% in the current quarter, and perhaps the next, but later (for example, next year, or in 4 years) the pace of growth will pick up, likely exceeding 3%. I call this cheerleading. A common variant states that if only we do this or that, the economy will grow and grow again without limit.

You needn't take my word about these statements. Observations of how economists see the world will confirm them again and again. You might look at my recent Sunday reprint This Time Really Is Different to see an example of economic "pessimism".

Therefore, it is not possible for economists to predict any crisis, nor is it possible for them to predict bad outcomes in the aftermath of a crisis. The optimism inherent in the religion of Progress precludes it.

If you've absorbed the significance of these simple statements, you may now also understand that to say that economists are "right" or "wrong" about this or that is simply nonsense because, necessarily, their many errors all go in one direction (rebuffed optimism). And when we combine this inescapable bias with the acknowledged fact that the laws of economics do not exist, we can clearly see that economists form a secular clergy whose primary function is cheerleading.

There is much, much more I could say about this, but I will defer those remarks to later posts. Suffice it to say that Ben Bernanke's "Great Moderation" has now been shown to be a multi-decade delusion, which should not surprise us in any way.

It seems that humans require a religion in all circumstances, even when invisible, all-powerful entities are not part of it.

I will finish up with a quote from Milton Friedman which was the subject of a recent article called The Con In Economics. Steve Keen quoted this passage in his book Debunking Economics.

In so far as a theory can be said to have assumptions at all, in so far as their realism can be judged independently of the validity of predictions, the relation between the significance of a theory and the realism of its assumptions is almost the opposite of that suggested by the view under criticism. Truly important and significant hypotheses will be found to have assumptions that are wildly inaccurate descriptive representations of reality and, in general, the more significant the theory, the more unrealistic the assumptions.

The more significant the theory, the more unrealistic its assumptions. Precisely.

And on that splendid note, I will end this post.

The United States Of Inequality

I was taken aback to read a post called In the US everyone’s talking about income inequality, but nobody’s really doing anything about it (Quartz, April 18, 2013). Since the death of the Occupy movement, only infrequently will someone mention astonishing inequality in the United States. It is rarer still for somebody to notice that nobody's doing anything about it.

On the face of it, income inequality is high on America’s agenda. President Barack Obama has made it a signature issue of his second term, bluntly stating that the US won’t succeed “when a shrinking few do very well and a growing many barely make it.” Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke decried inequality for “creating two societies.” Nobel laureate Joseph Stiglitz blamed the “concentration of income and wealth at the top, the hollowing out of the middle and increasing poverty at the bottom” for disrupting the American dream.

Even Goldman Sachs CEO Lloyd Blankfein called for “some redistribution” to create a stable and just society. But despite the growing consensus in Washington, Wall Street and academia, there hasn’t yet been concrete action and the situation is only taking a turn for the worse.

The US has the highest level of income gap of any of the advanced countries, with the top 1% capturing over 90% of the income growth.

A Gini coefficient (the most commonly used measure of inequality) of zero represents perfect equality, while 1.0 indicates maximum inequality where one person takes all the income.

A reading above 0.4 is widely seen as an indicator of potentially destabilizing inequality. In 2011, the Gini coefficient for the US rose sharply to 0.475 from the 0.469 recorded in 2010 (pdf, p.2), and not a single state managed to reduce inequality.

When Lloyd Blankfein calls for "some redistribution" of the wealth and income, you know we are in some deep, deep shit. That is lip service of course.

The author of the Quartz article, Nandagopal Jayakumar Nair, goes on to say that even Brazil and China are making efforts to reduce poverty and thus inequality, as measured by their Gini coefficients. (See my 2011 post Income Inequality — America Is Like Mexico And The Philippines.) Brazil's inequality is still worse than America's, but China's is better.

Here in the Greatest Country on Earth, inequality just gets worse and worse. The last time I talked about Bill Moyers, I gave him a hard time. He deserved it, but I feel a little guilty about it because Bill's heart is in the right place.

The Moyers video below, called The United States of Inequality, describes general inequality in America and also contains a heartbreaking segment describing grotesque inequality in Silicon Valley. It is no surprise that among such great wealth there is also grinding poverty.

In the past I have tried to take an objective, hard-hearted attitude toward inequality in America, often saying that such unfairness is simply part & parcel of all complex human societies. That's true, but putting it that way doesn't capture the way I feel about our stunning inequality.

Frankly, it makes me sick at heart. If it didn't, I wouldn't have written about it as much as I have over the last three years. Among Homo sapien's defective traits, and there are lots of them, the irrepressible tendency of humans to treat other humans like shit is a constant source of sadness for me.

 

Earth Day (Not!)

I was born in 1953. The Earth's population stood at about 3 billion humans.  As all people are, I was still rather new on the planet for my first three decades here, still learning the ropes. When I was 18, in April, 1970, a new group of humans called "environmentalists" held the first Earth Day celebration. At the age of 35, in 1988, I started to notice that things were going horribly wrong here on our lovely blue-green planet. I started learning about what was going on, started looking at human behaviors and trends. Over the next 25 years, I left no stone unturned.

Fast forward to 2013. I am now 60 years old, and there are more than 7 billion humans on the planet. Those disturbing trends I started following in the late 1980s got more and more pronounced as time went on. Now they seem unstoppable and the eventual end is in sight.

7,080,430,265 (estimate) is a large number. Every single one of those humans needs to eke out a living. There's only one Earth on which they can do so. Busy, busy, busy. Some earnest, well-meaning people have decided that the human footprint is much larger than this one planet can support. They believe that (as of 2007) humans required at least 1.5 Earths to support them all.

I have spent much of the last 3 years (since January, 2010) documenting and explaining the root causes of the human destruction of Earth's biosphere, specifically, the destruction of marine ecosystems, the changing of our once benign Holocene climate, and the killing off of various species, both large and small, both animals and plants.

It was all I could do. I mean, I could have planted some trees, but that seemed pointless because some rapacious land developer could just as easily bought the land where those trees grew, and bulldozed them into oblivion to build condos or something. Those developers want to make a buck! Doesn't everybody? Planting trees seemed pointless until such time as the bulldozers were silenced. They have not been silenced, nor will they ever be silenced until everything else has been silenced too.

And now today is April 22, 2013—it is Earth Day.

Instead of planting trees, I've reported on stories like Dolphin Hunting in Pangani Worries Tourism Stakeholders (AllAfrica.com, April 14, 2013).

Hunting of dolphins has become a problem and conservation activists want authorities to put a stop to the malpractice which has become rampant in Dar es Salaam and Tanga regions [in Tanzania, west Africa].

Sibylle Riedmiller who is Secretary of the Tanga Tourism Network Association (TATONA) is quoted to have written in a correspondence that "We received reports of dolphins being hunted in Tanga Coelacanth Marine Park off Kigombe."

Ms Riedmiller pointed out that although dolphins are protected by law, guests visiting the Marine Park, the first of its kind in the country, witness fishermen catching dolphins and some destined for fish markets in Dar es Salaam.

"While it is certainly distressing for guests to witness this, we were not sure whether dolphins are actually protected," she noted. Riedmiller pointed out that among local fishermen, ignorance is widespread on protection of dolphins by law, hence, the need for sensitisation.

"Awareness is definitely lacking, it may be a good idea to write about dolphins, their importance for the marine ecosystem and their immense value for the tourism industry and their protection status at least in Mainland Tanzania and Zanzibar," the TATONA Secretary noted.

World Wildlife Fund for Nature advisor, Jason Rubens, said dolphins have been protected by Tanzanian Fisheries Regulations since 2009.

Mr Rubens wrote in a message to Reidmiller that WWF has included dolphins as one of the species to be protected when the Fisheries (Amendment) Regulations, 2009 were made.

"The list of 38 species I put together in the regulations includes spinner dolphin, grey dolphin, spotted dolphin and bottle nosed dolphins.

It's very likely the species mentioned at Kigombe would be one of those as these cover the species known commonly to occur in Tanzania near-shore waters," Rubens noted.

He said dolphins are now being actively targeted by dynamite fishermen in Dar es Salaam because their flesh makes a very good bait for sharks, the ultimate driver being the shark fin trade.

Modest Kiwia who is a Warden-in-charge at Tanga Coelacanth Marine Park, is urging stakeholders to report such incidents to authorities whenever they observe them.

I wrote about shark finning in Shark Finning — The Carnage Continues (Jan 4, 2013) and again in The Fate Of The Earth's Largest Animals (March 4, 2013).  I wrote about shark extinctions in Humans Jump The Shark (November 10, 2012). I don't remember writing about using dolphin meat as shark bait, so that's new today. There you go.

As I said, when I was born in 1953, there were around 3 billion humans on the Earth. Now there are more than 7 billion. All those humans need to make a living. Tanzania can protect dolphins to promote tourism all day long—the dolphins are more valuable alive—but those Tanzanians who aren't in the tourist trade still have to make a living. And they are in luck!

The Chinese crave shark fin soup. There are lots of newly wealthy Chinese who want this soup! The fishermen of Tanzania have a chance to make a few bucks by killing some dolphins, luring in some sharks with dolphin meat, dynamiting the sharks, finning them, throwing the carcasses back into the ocean, and sending those fins on to Dar es Salaam. Refrigerated, they are shipped to China from there and finally end up in somebody's shark fin soup.

There it is.

You don't have to be rocket scientist to see what's going on here.

Busy, busy, busy.

It's Earth Day (Not!)