Over the weekend, billionaire venture capitalist Tom Perkins caused controversy when he said that the way activists and progressives in San Francisco are starting to treat the super rich reminds him of how the Nazis treated the Jews.
Former Wall Street executive and auto bailout czar Steve Rattner wrote an editorial in the Sunday New York Times called The Myth Of Industrial Rebound. I'm a little puzzled because I don't expect to read phrases like "let's get real" from guys like Rattner, but I'll take it wherever I can get it.
WITH metronomic regularity, gauzy accounts extol the return of manufacturing jobs to the United States.
This is my first long essay (14 printed pages) on morality, human social groups and how these relate to socio-economic systems. Future essays will appear sporadically as I get it together — Dave
Only those who benefit from the status quo would deny that social life in America is deteriorating. Those among the ever-growing group of disenfranchised citizens experience this unraveling everyday. Social deterioration is usually expressed in economic terms (declining median household incomes, the record number of those receiving food stamps, elevated poverty rates, astonishing income inquality, etc.).
Now ponder this definition of morality from social psychologist Jonathan Haidt.
... morality is any system of interlocking values, practices, institutions, and psychological mechanisms that work together to suppress or regulate selfishness and make social life possible. It turns out that human societies have found several radically different approaches to suppressing selfishness, two of which are most relevant for understanding what Democrats don't understand about morality.
Aside from what Democrats don't understand about morality, which is a lot, consider the United States in light of this definition. In any human social arrangement various things work together to suppress or regulate selfishness and make social life possible.
A few weeks back I featured New Yorker writer Elizabeth Kolbert talking about the human-caused Sixth Extinction, which we're in the middle of. I had a chance to read an excerpt from her forthcoming book on that subject called The Lost World — Annals Of Extinction, Part II.
Geologists and paleontologists are arguing about whether to formally accept Paul Crutzen's term "the Anthropocene", which is meant to capture the idea that humans are now the main agent of change on the geological time scale. I thought you might find the debate amusing.
I haven't posted much this year because my life has been troubled lately. However, I do have a long essay in the pipeline which I should be able to publish in the next few days. I'm posting today to let you know that I'm still following Schopenhauer's excellent advice — I'm still keeping busy, at least when life lets me.
Earth set a new record for billion-dollar weather disasters in 2013 with 41, said insurance broker Aon Benfield in their Annual Global Climate and Catastrophe Report issued this week.
As I've mentioned, I am trying to understand human morality (generally, the lack thereof) in the context of the large, liberalized ("free") market economies we (you and most of my readers) live in.
It is only very rarely that I run across something which has the ring of truth. Concerning human morality, this TED talk by Jonathan Haidt runs roughshod over the mountains of human bullshit which obscure clear perception. This talk goes straight to the heart of the matter in explaining how the political economies we live in actually function. Pay particular attention to "groupiness" in Haidt's talk (e.g., liberals and conservatives, in-groups and out-groups). For some strange reason Haidt refers to humans social groups as "teams."
Human morality, such as it is, arose as and remains entirely a product of the regulation of behavior in human social groups. There is no natural predisposition (to pick one example) to treat others (those not in your group) fairly with a concern for their welfare. There is no instinctual (universal) preference that the "wealth" in large, complex modern societies be distributed in such a way that no one does without (to pick another example). When I talk about the invisible poor, I am ridiculing this glaring omission in the human animal.
But there are is an initial "first draft" in the mind which gives rise to moral preferences. Haidt attempts to define this initial blueprint.
Big Bank profits hit a seven-year high in 2013. Profitability would have broken all previous records if the banks hadn't been forced to set aside $18,000,000,000 to deal with legal issues and settlements pertaining to the fact that so many of those working at these heavily subsidized institutions are scumbags.
What a relief! That's six banks I don't have to worry about.
I'm sure I'd be in much better shape if only I could Homo sapiens seriously
I am writing a multi-part series about economics as a moral science, liberalized ("free") market societies and related subjects. Those new essays are coming along very slowly because there's a lot to consider, meaning there are reams of human bullshit which must be waded through and filtered.
This week marks the 50th anniversary of Lyndon Johnson's "War on Poverty" speech. Nobody disagrees with the fact that the war was a failure. Whatever gains had been made (by official measurements) have been wiped out in the last decade.
The water pump of the furnace providing heat to the old house I live in has been failing lately. I live on the first floor, and there are tenents on the second and third floors. It's been a fiasco, and today the furnace people are going to install a new pump, which takes eight hours. During the time they will make the repair, the temperature outside will fall from 22°F (my back porch thermometer now) to 3°. The wind chill ("real feel") will fall from 9° to -21°. That's minus 21 degrees. From there it will continue to get colder. By 11 o'clock tonight, the actual temperature will be -5° and the "real feel" will be -32°.
Such temperatures will be quite generalized over large parts of the midwest and the northeast.
