I have written before on what I call "abstraction." I have remarked the human capacity to form general observations, e.g. that all of the same kind of thing have common properties, and then to treat those properties as independent elements for thought. As an example, the Egyptians knew the common properties of the right triangle. They used it to reallocate land to the appropriate owners after the annual flooding of the Nile. However it was a Greek, Pythagoras, who formulated the abstraction that in the right triangle the square of the long side (hypotenuse) equaled the sum of the squares of the other two sides.
Humans have applied this capacity in a variety of ways ranging from religion to science. In sociopolitical fields it is, for example, rampant in the fictions of law. In terms of our immediate situation it is what permitted the economic debacle which we are living through. Alan Greenspan, who was hired to watch over this process admitted he did not understand the process of securitizing mortgages, but idiotically and ideologically he assumed the "market" would control any such process: this meant he believed investors and sellers would understand even if he did not. The Indian government did not invest in these securities because, as they said, they did not understand them.
I have been reading recently of what I take to be another dimension of this human capability, namely, complexity. I have been reading The Collapse of Complex Societies by Joseph Tainter. We have had a number of works of late on societal collapse, perhaps because of concerns about our own future, that attribute such events to exhaustion of resources by disastrous agricultural practices or other processes or by overpopulation, war, climate shifts, etc. Tainter sees sociopolitical complexity as another reason for societal collapse. The underlying thesis is that primitive societies, e.g. hunter gatherers, direct all their resources to survival. As societies become more complex, i.e. functions other than hunting and gathering are adopted, such as social organization, religion, etc. they impose a greater energy demand upon the society. As long as the increased complexity pays off in added benefits everything works. However, when the burden of this continually increasing sociopolitical complexity outstrips the energy available to support it the society begins to decline at an increasing rate until a tipping point is reached and collapse takes place.
Using, as so many have in the past, the Roman Empire as a primary, although not the only, example of this process, Tainter asks why should the most dominant, powerful, empire of its time collapse, and in comparatively short order? It did not exhaust its immense and diverse resources. Rather it became so complex it was no longer governable. If you will recall, in this process of decline and disintegration the Empire had to be split into the Western and Eastern Roman Empires.
Let us look at some of the steps along the path to decline and collapse:
• The time came when the Roman army could no longer be supplied with manpower from Roman citizenry alone. "Barbarians" were recruited and could earn Roman citizenship and a retirement farm through military service. We did away with the draft after Vietnam and are now giving citizenship to those who serve in our volunteer (paid) military.
• The early success of Rome's military operations and the economic benefits it brought to Rome through loot, tribute and taxes sustained a vastly improved standard of living in Rome thereby addicting Romans to militarism.
• As complexity continued to rise with the increasing vastness of the empire the gains relative to the cost of this militarism began to decline. Eventually further expansion was halted and imperial policy shifted to maintenance of the Empire, especially against the increasing pressure of the barbarians.
• In defense of the Empire's perimeter the Romans began to recruit barbarians in their home areas rather than move them from one point to another as pressures required. This identity of soldiers and their home contributed to the rise of local power, which eventually contributed to the fragmentation of the Empire. Rome had been sensitive to this issue under the Republic, which forbade an army commander to bring his army any closer to Rome than the Rubicon river. As you know, Julius Caesar disregarded this rule and Rome became a despotic imperium as a result. Maxim: A standing army is a two edged sword. It inevitably breeds militarism and thereby distorts democracy's goals, it inevitably creates an elite focused on controlling that army's power, it devours resources with little societal benefit and it is not focused on human wellbeing. I admit that is a little long for a maxim, but the consequences of militarism, which our society increasingly suffers from cannot be overemphasized.
To continue with sociopolitical complexity; Tainter offers four concepts fundamental to understanding sociopolitical collapse
Four concepts discussed to this point can lead to an understanding of why complex societies collapse. These concepts are:
1. human societies are problem-solving organizations;
2. sociopolitical systems require energy for their maintenance;
3. increased complexity carries with it increased costs per capita; and
4. investment in sociopolitical complexity as a problem-solving response often reaches a point of declining marginal returns.
Let me see if I can illustrate some of this process using a fundamental sociopolitical component - communication. This activity is at its simplest when one human being we'll call "A", communicates with another we'll call "B", although, as a retired public librarian I know that his situation is anything but simple. Now bring a third human being "C" into this process. Not only do A and B have to figure out what the other is communicating, including all those variables such as intention, frame of reference, etc. they now have to figure out the same variables regarding C. Most importantly A and B now have to figure out how C's communication modifies that between them with regard to all the variables of human discourse. This is where the exponential increase in complexity begins. C of course is presented with this more complex problem for starters. It is easy to see how rapidly complexity with regard to this component of society can progress exponentially to criticality. This is not to say that complexity in itself is always the problem. We put men on the moon and built the Large Hadron Collider using complexity. We also created our current financial debacle, the near destruction of New Orleans and the Deepwaater Horizon oil well explosion relying on complexity. One of the major differences between these two results of communication complexity is the extent to which a passionate and determined effort to understand underlay these efforts, or did not. If understanding is the goal the resulting complexities, while not free from mistakes are decidedly less prone to them. Complexity of communication because it so rapidly increases the problems of communication is a refuge for scoundrels and can create monstrous results for mankind. Perhaps the most notable example is war. The G. W. Bush administration deliberately polluted society's communication complexity by lying about the motives of Saddam Hussein and by disguising their motive to control middle eastern oil and declaring that the enterprise would be a "cakewalk."
Another consequence of sociopolitical complexity and one that initially stimulated my interest in it, is complexity's effect on democracy. From what we have said above it is easy to see how rapidly the ordinary citizen of any sizable democracy can be and is aced out of the effective participation democracy presupposes. This is why I think it is extremely important for citizens to understand societal complexity, to demand the transparency necessary for that understanding, to receive training in how to deal with it, and to have the experience of evaluating with others a proposed course of social action. The latter is important because participation in such groups enhances the awareness of this complexity and can reveal methods for dealing with it. Not least of the benefits can be an improved understanding of when to trust complexity and to what degree and when not to trust it.
We have politicians promising "transparency" without, in my judgment, understanding the enormity of introducing transparency to any appreciable degree into the complexity of our enormous governmental environment. It is questionable whether in the long run this country, not to mention this state can maintain its current structure. Long ago the magazine The Futurist carried an article arguing that the North American continent would politically realign itself into economically similar "countries." The author suggested that economic identities would eventually outweigh the current political configurations. The common economic concerns of the Pacific Coast, Rocky Mountain, Great Plains and Eastern Seaboard would be the "countries" of the future. As he put it, the farmers of our Midwest have far more in common with the Canadian Prairie Provinces of Alberta, Saskatchewan, and Manitoba than they do with either seaboard of the North American continent. Among other things, commonality of interest goes a long way toward reducing the burden of sociopolitical complexity.
The length of this post may prompt readers to consider it an example of its subject.
Bob Newhard
Sunday, July 25, 2010
Sunday, July 11, 2010
"Deficit" as a Code Word of the Wealthy
According to reports, the primary concern of the G 20 conference in Toronto was the level of global debt. Most of the proposals were for a new round of austerity to reduce this deficit. Many counties, e.g. Germany wanted to attack this problem before it gets any worse. Obama wanted to go slower so that his stimulus program, (Another word for borrowing on the international financial market.) would have more time to take effect.
The thing that struck me was that the only solution considered was reducing cost, i.e. austerity, not increasing revenue. Reducing costs affects the mass of the world's population. Increasing revenue, if done fairly, would affect the much fewer rich. It should be remembered that the G 20 confab represents the interests of the global moneyed class, not the majority of citizens of the attending countries. In effect, the G-20, by its austerity pitch betrays its money, not people, roots. The popular press would have us believe that it is dealing with the world economy and its necessities.
I went to the World Social Forum's web site to see if this needed focus on the wealthy was in evidence. As far as I can see it was not. There was an abundance of sentiment about bettering the lives of the poor, about the evils of global capitalism, but I could find no specific proposals on redistribution of wealth and mechanisms for achieving this. I have visited various progressive web sites such as Progressive Democrats of America (PDA). I could find no proposals for redistribution of the world's wealth and mechanism's for achieving it and for maintaining an equitable distribution. Yet it is clear that the current mechanism for wealth generation and ownership are central to the world's economic problems.
It is not that the policy and mechanisms are unknown. For example James Tobin, a now deceased professor of economics, proposed what has been called the Tobin Tax. This is a very small, less than 1%, tax on global currency speculation transactions. This market processes over $1.8 trillion dollars daily. Tobin was concerned with transferring wealth from the rich portions of this planet to the poorest. He estimated a transaction tax, analogous to a sales tax, on this market, a market primarily of the rich, would generate about 300 billion a year, which was about what the United Nations said was necessary to achieve their goal of stamping out the abject poverty experienced by billions of people and providing a basic education for children.
It is high time progressives made the redistribution of wealth a prominent, well-articulated, political objective. Far from being the basis of unfairness that the political Right likes to paint such an effort, it is the prerequisite for creating a reasonably fair, healthy, democratic society. Excessively concentrated wealth must be seen as a fundamental enemy of democracy and human well being.
Bob Newhard
The thing that struck me was that the only solution considered was reducing cost, i.e. austerity, not increasing revenue. Reducing costs affects the mass of the world's population. Increasing revenue, if done fairly, would affect the much fewer rich. It should be remembered that the G 20 confab represents the interests of the global moneyed class, not the majority of citizens of the attending countries. In effect, the G-20, by its austerity pitch betrays its money, not people, roots. The popular press would have us believe that it is dealing with the world economy and its necessities.
I went to the World Social Forum's web site to see if this needed focus on the wealthy was in evidence. As far as I can see it was not. There was an abundance of sentiment about bettering the lives of the poor, about the evils of global capitalism, but I could find no specific proposals on redistribution of wealth and mechanisms for achieving this. I have visited various progressive web sites such as Progressive Democrats of America (PDA). I could find no proposals for redistribution of the world's wealth and mechanism's for achieving it and for maintaining an equitable distribution. Yet it is clear that the current mechanism for wealth generation and ownership are central to the world's economic problems.
It is not that the policy and mechanisms are unknown. For example James Tobin, a now deceased professor of economics, proposed what has been called the Tobin Tax. This is a very small, less than 1%, tax on global currency speculation transactions. This market processes over $1.8 trillion dollars daily. Tobin was concerned with transferring wealth from the rich portions of this planet to the poorest. He estimated a transaction tax, analogous to a sales tax, on this market, a market primarily of the rich, would generate about 300 billion a year, which was about what the United Nations said was necessary to achieve their goal of stamping out the abject poverty experienced by billions of people and providing a basic education for children.
It is high time progressives made the redistribution of wealth a prominent, well-articulated, political objective. Far from being the basis of unfairness that the political Right likes to paint such an effort, it is the prerequisite for creating a reasonably fair, healthy, democratic society. Excessively concentrated wealth must be seen as a fundamental enemy of democracy and human well being.
Bob Newhard
Sunday, June 27, 2010
Maturity
Recently my wife Eleanor and I attended the high school graduation celebration for one of our young relatives. This young lady graduated with honors. She wants to be a psychologist or a nurse and to my surprise, admires the young people of the 1960's, especially their protests against the Vietnam war and for civil rights. Dare one hope that hers is the generation that may bail this country out of its long nightmare of shallowness and militarism? But the most impressive thing about this youngster is that several years ago she lost her sister in an ATV crash with a train. She and her sister were very close. When offered rooms of their own they chose to continue sharing a room. For teenagers focused on establishing their individual identity this would seem to be a rarity. She came out of this traumatic loss with a concern not only to help others, but the understanding that society's welfare is central to this concern. To me this was a startling level of maturity in one so young. It would have been so easy, I am tempted to say natural, for her to have been embittered by a perceived unfairness in the traumatic loss she had experienced. I asked myself, in light of this display of maturity, how societies managed with their great traumas of which war is the preeminent one.
Until World War II the United States demonstrated a good deal of maturity in its response to war. While we were as guilty as most of using war, or threat of war, to get our way, nonetheless, after every war we demobilized and demilitarized. This demonstrated a degree of maturity as we repeatedly returned to a focus on civilian society at the end of each war.
Immediately after World War II we again demonstrated maturity when we established the Marshall Plan to help our erstwhile enemies recover after the war. Being as we had the only viable economy after the war this "generosity" also created jobs for returning soldiers, which helped avoid the bonus-march unrest following World War I. The Marshall Plan not only demonstrated maturity, but also that we were able to become a learning society as we recognized one of the sources of World War II in the depression-exacerbating reparations following World War I. However, all of this was lost as we failed to find some life-saving détente with the Russians. Both sides had humanity as a stated concern, for America it was liberty, for Russia the welfare of the proletariat. Had we fought as manfully for peace as we did for war we may have avoided the loss of millions of lives and massive human displacement and suffering that the so-called Cold War brought upon mankind. The bellicose Winston Churchill put an end to all hopes with his Iron Curtain speech.
Now we are again faced with a test of national maturity. The invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq were uncalled for. After 9-11 we were not faced with a "war" as G. W. Bush and his ruling neocons declared. We had the opportunity to use the overwhelming sympathy and willingness to cooperate of most of the world. We could have created a cooperative police action to track down the perpetrators and subject them to a world tribunal as was done with other criminals such as Milosevic. This, however, did not suit the plans of the neocons to create a defacto empire out of the "sole remaining superpower." The smallness of mind, the gross failure to understand human resistance to occupation by foreigners, especially as it developed after World War II, completely escaped them as they converted foreign policy into military policy.
What would national maturity now require of us? Many urged, and many thought, Obama would pursue getting us out of the aggressive wars initiated by G. W. Bush. This time the maturity required some of the courage displayed by Roosevelt in opposing Wall Street (the financiers tried to organize a coup) or by Truman, who fired General MacArthur at the height of his poularity for insubordination. In Barak Obama it was not forthcoming and hence we have not displayed the maturity to remove our troops from Afghanistan and Iraq.
This time it is up to we the people to create a movement for national maturity. We have no Roosevelt or Truman or Marshall. Maybe we shall find one in a Congressman Grayson or Congressman Sestak. For now it is totally up to us. Nine years after a hubris-driven and murderous mistake was made, it is time for an exercise of the national maturity we have demonstrated before.
Bob Newhard
Until World War II the United States demonstrated a good deal of maturity in its response to war. While we were as guilty as most of using war, or threat of war, to get our way, nonetheless, after every war we demobilized and demilitarized. This demonstrated a degree of maturity as we repeatedly returned to a focus on civilian society at the end of each war.
Immediately after World War II we again demonstrated maturity when we established the Marshall Plan to help our erstwhile enemies recover after the war. Being as we had the only viable economy after the war this "generosity" also created jobs for returning soldiers, which helped avoid the bonus-march unrest following World War I. The Marshall Plan not only demonstrated maturity, but also that we were able to become a learning society as we recognized one of the sources of World War II in the depression-exacerbating reparations following World War I. However, all of this was lost as we failed to find some life-saving détente with the Russians. Both sides had humanity as a stated concern, for America it was liberty, for Russia the welfare of the proletariat. Had we fought as manfully for peace as we did for war we may have avoided the loss of millions of lives and massive human displacement and suffering that the so-called Cold War brought upon mankind. The bellicose Winston Churchill put an end to all hopes with his Iron Curtain speech.
Now we are again faced with a test of national maturity. The invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq were uncalled for. After 9-11 we were not faced with a "war" as G. W. Bush and his ruling neocons declared. We had the opportunity to use the overwhelming sympathy and willingness to cooperate of most of the world. We could have created a cooperative police action to track down the perpetrators and subject them to a world tribunal as was done with other criminals such as Milosevic. This, however, did not suit the plans of the neocons to create a defacto empire out of the "sole remaining superpower." The smallness of mind, the gross failure to understand human resistance to occupation by foreigners, especially as it developed after World War II, completely escaped them as they converted foreign policy into military policy.
What would national maturity now require of us? Many urged, and many thought, Obama would pursue getting us out of the aggressive wars initiated by G. W. Bush. This time the maturity required some of the courage displayed by Roosevelt in opposing Wall Street (the financiers tried to organize a coup) or by Truman, who fired General MacArthur at the height of his poularity for insubordination. In Barak Obama it was not forthcoming and hence we have not displayed the maturity to remove our troops from Afghanistan and Iraq.
This time it is up to we the people to create a movement for national maturity. We have no Roosevelt or Truman or Marshall. Maybe we shall find one in a Congressman Grayson or Congressman Sestak. For now it is totally up to us. Nine years after a hubris-driven and murderous mistake was made, it is time for an exercise of the national maturity we have demonstrated before.
Bob Newhard
Sunday, June 13, 2010
The Politics of Values
Since the advent of Reaganism we have been subjected to the politics of values. But what are values and how do they play out in politics?
Let us consider values as distinct from facts. Facts require evidence, values do not. Facts have a greater or lesser amount of evidence to support them. The more evidence the greater the facticity. Values are human creations, they are not found in nature. They have a substantial degree of emotional content. Being a human creation, having no necessary connection to the natural world, and being emotionally charged makes them an ideal vehicle for controlling society.
This being the case values should always be examined, especially when being employed to persuade people. Questions that need to be honestly explored are: Who is pushing the particular values? Do they have any non-value interest in the effort being made? If so what are those interests and who else will benefit by society's pursuit of them?
Another downside of values is, that being detached from the real world, they can be treated as absolutes because there can be no fact contradicting them. This makes values immune to any imperative derived from the natural world, e.g. global warming or overpopulation. This detachment from reality also means that belief in values can lead to a kind of insanity. Human beings can invest any amount of passion, good or bad, they choose in support of them. This is compounded by their apparently absolute nature, another "benefit" of being detached form the real, testable, world of fact. As a result, there is nothing to cast doubt on a value and the human passion for certainty finds a safe home. Thus people are free to believe any fantasy by calling it a value, which, being absolute, cannot be challenged. As a result "belief" is elevated to the highest levels of certainty and is so psychologically powerful that many people cannot distinguish between belief and fact.
Some examples may clarify the relevance of this argument against the innocence of values. We have, for example, placed a high value on human life. Left unexamined, this value has been and is being used to thwart human birth reduction. Millions of people, e.g. Christian, Muslim, believe preventing the birth of human beings and aborting the human fetus is morally wrong. Yet the evidence is that this planet cannot handle unlimited human births. This obviously insane behavior is not only tolerated, but encouraged because values that once had relevance when humans were few and weak, have gone unexamined, and are even frequently reinvigorated despite the obvious consequences. Obviously we are at a stage where the quality of human life, not, the quantity, is of primary importance. It is also obvious that the facts have trumped values in importance.
Finally, as alluded to above, values are used by the powerful to control those less powerful. An interesting study would be to delineate the primary values of a society and then analyze the use made of those values by the controlling elite to control the rest of the society. In my last column I attempted to do that with the American value of freedom. As I tried to show, this value, left unexamined, has permitted corporations to defend their constant immersive propaganda as their right to exercise free speech. They, of course, have a huge megaphone, that will easily drown out the free speech of others. Because of the high value we place on free speech, we, including the Supreme Court, have allowed the free speech of some to kill the free speech of others. Obviously the facts surrounding this issue would call for a greater opportunity to be heard for those with a weaker voice, but the value of free speech cloaked in its robe of absoluteness, is not allowed to be challenged by the facts,
Socrates declared that the unexamined life was not worth living. One might add that the unexamined value can be a source of great harm to the living.
Bob Newhard
Let us consider values as distinct from facts. Facts require evidence, values do not. Facts have a greater or lesser amount of evidence to support them. The more evidence the greater the facticity. Values are human creations, they are not found in nature. They have a substantial degree of emotional content. Being a human creation, having no necessary connection to the natural world, and being emotionally charged makes them an ideal vehicle for controlling society.
This being the case values should always be examined, especially when being employed to persuade people. Questions that need to be honestly explored are: Who is pushing the particular values? Do they have any non-value interest in the effort being made? If so what are those interests and who else will benefit by society's pursuit of them?
Another downside of values is, that being detached from the real world, they can be treated as absolutes because there can be no fact contradicting them. This makes values immune to any imperative derived from the natural world, e.g. global warming or overpopulation. This detachment from reality also means that belief in values can lead to a kind of insanity. Human beings can invest any amount of passion, good or bad, they choose in support of them. This is compounded by their apparently absolute nature, another "benefit" of being detached form the real, testable, world of fact. As a result, there is nothing to cast doubt on a value and the human passion for certainty finds a safe home. Thus people are free to believe any fantasy by calling it a value, which, being absolute, cannot be challenged. As a result "belief" is elevated to the highest levels of certainty and is so psychologically powerful that many people cannot distinguish between belief and fact.
Some examples may clarify the relevance of this argument against the innocence of values. We have, for example, placed a high value on human life. Left unexamined, this value has been and is being used to thwart human birth reduction. Millions of people, e.g. Christian, Muslim, believe preventing the birth of human beings and aborting the human fetus is morally wrong. Yet the evidence is that this planet cannot handle unlimited human births. This obviously insane behavior is not only tolerated, but encouraged because values that once had relevance when humans were few and weak, have gone unexamined, and are even frequently reinvigorated despite the obvious consequences. Obviously we are at a stage where the quality of human life, not, the quantity, is of primary importance. It is also obvious that the facts have trumped values in importance.
Finally, as alluded to above, values are used by the powerful to control those less powerful. An interesting study would be to delineate the primary values of a society and then analyze the use made of those values by the controlling elite to control the rest of the society. In my last column I attempted to do that with the American value of freedom. As I tried to show, this value, left unexamined, has permitted corporations to defend their constant immersive propaganda as their right to exercise free speech. They, of course, have a huge megaphone, that will easily drown out the free speech of others. Because of the high value we place on free speech, we, including the Supreme Court, have allowed the free speech of some to kill the free speech of others. Obviously the facts surrounding this issue would call for a greater opportunity to be heard for those with a weaker voice, but the value of free speech cloaked in its robe of absoluteness, is not allowed to be challenged by the facts,
Socrates declared that the unexamined life was not worth living. One might add that the unexamined value can be a source of great harm to the living.
Bob Newhard
Sunday, May 30, 2010
Freedom versus power
Rand Paul, the GOP candidate for Kentucky's U.S. senate seat and son of Libertarian leader Ron Paul, recently stated that he believed the Civil Rights law of 1964 should have applied to public venues only, not private establishments. He argues that the Federal Government has no right to tell private business, organizations, etc. whom they can serve or admit as members with respect to race or sexual orientation. For him, when it comes to freedom of the individual versus other rights, there is no higher value than freedom. Many people view this argument as fundamental to the "American way." Others simply declare he is a racist and would be done with it. I think there is a more fundamental issue here and it is one that infects a good deal of American politics.
The argument from democracy as individual freedom goes back to the nation's founders. Jefferson believed freedom was fundamental to a democracy, however, he recognized that freedom had to have an economic base configured to democracy's needs. For this reason he argued for a nation of small farmers, each having the land and associated resources to maintain his economic independence of other citizens. In contrast Hamilton, among others, saw no threat to democracy when employees were dependent upon a factory owner for their jobs.
However, freedom and society can be in conflict because in addition to freedom all societies generate power. Under conditions of absolute freedom that power will gravitate to the strongest individuals or groups who, in their own interests will destroy the freedom of others. This is the law of the jungle. A democracy is intended to distribute the power a society generates to all its members thus assuring that freedom is not lost to those who agglomerate power. This simple lesson, I believe is at the root of much of what is wrong, dysfunctional, and potentially destructive of our society.
In Rand Paul's case if people and institutions, except those of government, were free to discriminate the power available to discriminate would be at least equal to that of government. The majority of employees work in the private sector. Think about the implications of that one fact. Michael Lind has an excellent article on this matter at http://www.salon.com/news/opinion/feature/2010/05/25/rand_paul_black_like_him. Lind recalls the book Black Like Me by John Howard Griffin that relates how Griffin, who had had his white skin darkened by a dermatologist, experienced the hostile racism that permeated the southern states. Griffin's experiences alone are enough to indicate the consequences of Paul's distinction between public and private sector racism.
This advocacy of radical individualism by Libertarians plays out in our own area also. The Murrieta Public Library as well as some others, offers as reading rewards at their summer reading programs for children, coupons from In 'N Out Burger for a free burger. The coupons are emblazoned with a burger, fries and a soda. I have repeatedly expressed my concern, in view of our rampant and increasingly dangerous childhood obesity epidemic. Every major political office from the President, to the Surgeon General, to the California Governor, and the Riverside County Health Officer has expressed their profound concern over what we are doing to children. In most of these cases they have launched programs to fight this trend. This generation of children is projected to be the first in 200 years to have a shorter average life span than the preceding generation. Adult onset diabetes usually first seen at age 45 to 55 is now being seen in children 14 to 16. Over the last 20 years childhood diabetes has increased 10 fold. I have presented this information to the city's Library Commission, to the Library Director and to the City Council. I have been told that it is not the Library's role to determine what the child eats; it is the child's parent. Put another way, the Library can offer coupons for food that is bad for the children, thereby becoming a shill for corporate marketing to the young, and it is up to the parent to stop them. That this is the environment in which this epidemic has occurred and has demonstrably failed escapes them. When children are threatened by commercial products, as in cases from defective cribs to cigarettes, we do not trust parents to protect their children; we pass laws enforced by government. This is exactly the same argument the Libertarians have used repeatedly and is, at root, the same as Rand Paul's racism, i.e. government has no right to tell free individuals in a democratic society what to do. Of course government does, of necessity, tell citizens what to do and often penalizes them if they don’t, e.g. our traffic laws. That an argument this transparently ludicrous should have power in this democracy bespeaks the low level of citizen education, awareness, concern, and, I believe, the power of the media. Why is it that people cannot see that a democratic society requires a strong government to keep the strong (think corporations), from preying on the rest of the citizenry. Is there a risk in a strong government? Of course there is if it is not held accountable by the people. But the people have to be adequately informed, willing to make government part of their lives and pass on a culture of responsible citizenship to their offspring. Without this they shall never be free. Without this they will be deceived pawns of the wealthy and the corporations they control. The pernicious practice of divorcing freedom from power so that power can prevail will inevitably destroy our democracy.
In the mouths of Libertarians "freedom" means power for the few. As recently made evident by the Tea Party rallies saturated with Libertarians, the Party has been a cover for racists, white militia, etc., all of whom prefer power to democracy. Unless capitalism is controlled by a responsible democratic government, it is nothing but a method for transferring power to the wealthy few. These people will trade this delusory notion of freedom for power any time for they know that power allows them great latitude to manipulate the ill defined , easily manipulated, and generally emotion-driven concept of freedom. Until the American public gets this through their heads we shall never have an effective democratic government. Until Progressives make this use of "freedom" clear to the public, they have failed in their presumed purpose.
Bob Newhard
The argument from democracy as individual freedom goes back to the nation's founders. Jefferson believed freedom was fundamental to a democracy, however, he recognized that freedom had to have an economic base configured to democracy's needs. For this reason he argued for a nation of small farmers, each having the land and associated resources to maintain his economic independence of other citizens. In contrast Hamilton, among others, saw no threat to democracy when employees were dependent upon a factory owner for their jobs.
However, freedom and society can be in conflict because in addition to freedom all societies generate power. Under conditions of absolute freedom that power will gravitate to the strongest individuals or groups who, in their own interests will destroy the freedom of others. This is the law of the jungle. A democracy is intended to distribute the power a society generates to all its members thus assuring that freedom is not lost to those who agglomerate power. This simple lesson, I believe is at the root of much of what is wrong, dysfunctional, and potentially destructive of our society.
In Rand Paul's case if people and institutions, except those of government, were free to discriminate the power available to discriminate would be at least equal to that of government. The majority of employees work in the private sector. Think about the implications of that one fact. Michael Lind has an excellent article on this matter at http://www.salon.com/news/opinion/feature/2010/05/25/rand_paul_black_like_him. Lind recalls the book Black Like Me by John Howard Griffin that relates how Griffin, who had had his white skin darkened by a dermatologist, experienced the hostile racism that permeated the southern states. Griffin's experiences alone are enough to indicate the consequences of Paul's distinction between public and private sector racism.
This advocacy of radical individualism by Libertarians plays out in our own area also. The Murrieta Public Library as well as some others, offers as reading rewards at their summer reading programs for children, coupons from In 'N Out Burger for a free burger. The coupons are emblazoned with a burger, fries and a soda. I have repeatedly expressed my concern, in view of our rampant and increasingly dangerous childhood obesity epidemic. Every major political office from the President, to the Surgeon General, to the California Governor, and the Riverside County Health Officer has expressed their profound concern over what we are doing to children. In most of these cases they have launched programs to fight this trend. This generation of children is projected to be the first in 200 years to have a shorter average life span than the preceding generation. Adult onset diabetes usually first seen at age 45 to 55 is now being seen in children 14 to 16. Over the last 20 years childhood diabetes has increased 10 fold. I have presented this information to the city's Library Commission, to the Library Director and to the City Council. I have been told that it is not the Library's role to determine what the child eats; it is the child's parent. Put another way, the Library can offer coupons for food that is bad for the children, thereby becoming a shill for corporate marketing to the young, and it is up to the parent to stop them. That this is the environment in which this epidemic has occurred and has demonstrably failed escapes them. When children are threatened by commercial products, as in cases from defective cribs to cigarettes, we do not trust parents to protect their children; we pass laws enforced by government. This is exactly the same argument the Libertarians have used repeatedly and is, at root, the same as Rand Paul's racism, i.e. government has no right to tell free individuals in a democratic society what to do. Of course government does, of necessity, tell citizens what to do and often penalizes them if they don’t, e.g. our traffic laws. That an argument this transparently ludicrous should have power in this democracy bespeaks the low level of citizen education, awareness, concern, and, I believe, the power of the media. Why is it that people cannot see that a democratic society requires a strong government to keep the strong (think corporations), from preying on the rest of the citizenry. Is there a risk in a strong government? Of course there is if it is not held accountable by the people. But the people have to be adequately informed, willing to make government part of their lives and pass on a culture of responsible citizenship to their offspring. Without this they shall never be free. Without this they will be deceived pawns of the wealthy and the corporations they control. The pernicious practice of divorcing freedom from power so that power can prevail will inevitably destroy our democracy.
In the mouths of Libertarians "freedom" means power for the few. As recently made evident by the Tea Party rallies saturated with Libertarians, the Party has been a cover for racists, white militia, etc., all of whom prefer power to democracy. Unless capitalism is controlled by a responsible democratic government, it is nothing but a method for transferring power to the wealthy few. These people will trade this delusory notion of freedom for power any time for they know that power allows them great latitude to manipulate the ill defined , easily manipulated, and generally emotion-driven concept of freedom. Until the American public gets this through their heads we shall never have an effective democratic government. Until Progressives make this use of "freedom" clear to the public, they have failed in their presumed purpose.
Bob Newhard
Sunday, May 16, 2010
Drowning in Denial
"Denial" is often offered as an account of why someone refuses to acknowledge the obvious. This has become a cultural phenomenon in the United States. But what are we really saying when we say a person or collection of persons denies that something obvious or exceedingly well founded either does not exist or is not true?
Two psychologists, Michael A. Milburn and Sheree D. Conrad, in their book Politics of Denial offer an explanation of the denial phenomenon. They say that this kind of adamant denial has its origin in the denier's childhood. Children unable to face a situation restore their sense of equilibrium by denying whatever they cannot face. We have often seen children put their hands over their eyes or pull the covers over their head when faced with an unplessantness. Supposedly, if it is not seen it does not exist. The human psyche requires this kind of protection. Having found the techniques useful in childhood, many people continue to use it throughout their lives. Indeed as they become adults they become belligerent in its defense. And when a large number of people find their society facing a catastrophe this kind of denial can become national policy. Denial in this sense thus becomes a very dangerous "madness of crowds" reaction to reality. Milburn and Conrad argue that this delusive mentality now dominates the Republican Party.
Bill Moyers in a talk titled Penguins and the Politics of Denial suggested that the way to deal with this phenomenon in the radical religious right is to translate an issue, in this case global warming, into the language and thought patterns of the religious right. He suggests, for instance, using the story of Noah, whom God had warned of an imminent flood, to build an ark. Noah's fellow citizens jeered him and denied the reality he declared. This, according to Moyers, rather then the language of science used by global warming environmentalists, could convince these deniers of the reality of global warming. This is seen by one writer as an advance in the effort to convince a large segment of the American population that something needs to be done. But is it the right thing? I think not. It is, in effect, to sacrifice science and the exactitude and discipline of its language to the vagaries of religious usage in which it enters into a welter of irresolvable "interpretations". There is nothing for it but that those who think in terms of stories need to realize that language matters. In my university days I had an Ethiopian friend working on his degree in pharmacology who assured me that one could not "do" science in Amharic, the major language of Ethiopia.
Making denial the threat to our society that it is is the work of those who manipulate this human failing. A prime example is the oil companies. Exxon Mobil, for example has given millions to the American Enterprise Institute to produce reports denying global warming or at least questioning its validity, which for political purposes amounts to the same thing. As a result the Institute advertised grants of $10,000 to any scientist who would produce a paper at least questioning the validity of global warming. Then there are those who use the ignorance of the deniers for political purposes. You may remember the scene from the 2008 Republican Convention when Sara Palin supporters, old and young, energetically chanted "Drill, baby drill." These people in their enthusiastic ignorance were pursuing continuing and increasing harm, both global warming and oil-spill, to the only planet they or their children have. Talk about immaturity!
There is another aspect to this gross denial which is that it is another instance of what I have called the downside of abstraction. Humans, when they were still living close to the real world as hunter-gathers and even as farmers had to take account of reality moment by moment, and could not indulge denial without great peril to themselves. They could indulge myth because it was generally used to emphasize reality. Thus the various rain and corn dances were performed to insure that the real world would remain true to them. Similarly, humans in their hubris prayed for the sun to return at the winter solstice. They were not creating a different world as today's deniers do. Once again it is the remoteness of people's mental state from the demands of the real world that allows this type of insanity to not only flourish, but to influence policies of the world's largest military power. That is frightening in its implications. I think this kind of mass craziness, undisciplined by reality is, to a considerable extent, the product of societal affluence. We need to be vigorous in our pursuit of understanding the downside of affluence before we do consummate damage to this planet and thus to ourselves and our posterity.
Bob Newhard
Two psychologists, Michael A. Milburn and Sheree D. Conrad, in their book Politics of Denial offer an explanation of the denial phenomenon. They say that this kind of adamant denial has its origin in the denier's childhood. Children unable to face a situation restore their sense of equilibrium by denying whatever they cannot face. We have often seen children put their hands over their eyes or pull the covers over their head when faced with an unplessantness. Supposedly, if it is not seen it does not exist. The human psyche requires this kind of protection. Having found the techniques useful in childhood, many people continue to use it throughout their lives. Indeed as they become adults they become belligerent in its defense. And when a large number of people find their society facing a catastrophe this kind of denial can become national policy. Denial in this sense thus becomes a very dangerous "madness of crowds" reaction to reality. Milburn and Conrad argue that this delusive mentality now dominates the Republican Party.
Bill Moyers in a talk titled Penguins and the Politics of Denial suggested that the way to deal with this phenomenon in the radical religious right is to translate an issue, in this case global warming, into the language and thought patterns of the religious right. He suggests, for instance, using the story of Noah, whom God had warned of an imminent flood, to build an ark. Noah's fellow citizens jeered him and denied the reality he declared. This, according to Moyers, rather then the language of science used by global warming environmentalists, could convince these deniers of the reality of global warming. This is seen by one writer as an advance in the effort to convince a large segment of the American population that something needs to be done. But is it the right thing? I think not. It is, in effect, to sacrifice science and the exactitude and discipline of its language to the vagaries of religious usage in which it enters into a welter of irresolvable "interpretations". There is nothing for it but that those who think in terms of stories need to realize that language matters. In my university days I had an Ethiopian friend working on his degree in pharmacology who assured me that one could not "do" science in Amharic, the major language of Ethiopia.
Making denial the threat to our society that it is is the work of those who manipulate this human failing. A prime example is the oil companies. Exxon Mobil, for example has given millions to the American Enterprise Institute to produce reports denying global warming or at least questioning its validity, which for political purposes amounts to the same thing. As a result the Institute advertised grants of $10,000 to any scientist who would produce a paper at least questioning the validity of global warming. Then there are those who use the ignorance of the deniers for political purposes. You may remember the scene from the 2008 Republican Convention when Sara Palin supporters, old and young, energetically chanted "Drill, baby drill." These people in their enthusiastic ignorance were pursuing continuing and increasing harm, both global warming and oil-spill, to the only planet they or their children have. Talk about immaturity!
There is another aspect to this gross denial which is that it is another instance of what I have called the downside of abstraction. Humans, when they were still living close to the real world as hunter-gathers and even as farmers had to take account of reality moment by moment, and could not indulge denial without great peril to themselves. They could indulge myth because it was generally used to emphasize reality. Thus the various rain and corn dances were performed to insure that the real world would remain true to them. Similarly, humans in their hubris prayed for the sun to return at the winter solstice. They were not creating a different world as today's deniers do. Once again it is the remoteness of people's mental state from the demands of the real world that allows this type of insanity to not only flourish, but to influence policies of the world's largest military power. That is frightening in its implications. I think this kind of mass craziness, undisciplined by reality is, to a considerable extent, the product of societal affluence. We need to be vigorous in our pursuit of understanding the downside of affluence before we do consummate damage to this planet and thus to ourselves and our posterity.
Bob Newhard
Sunday, May 2, 2010
The Future of Property
Given the imminent convergence of major impacts on humanity, e.g. global warming, global food shortage, global water shortage and all that these imply for human society, one of the more useful forms of inquiry is to ask what our situation implies for fundamental societal institutions, e.g. governance, marriage and family, social structure itself. In this column I will take a look at the future of property in an era of increasingly reduced resources and increasing population.
Property has had a varying history. Hunter gatherer societies had little property except their weapons and tools. To what extent these may have been held in common for everybody's use I am uncertain. While land was not owned, tribes might by force or tradition lay claim to hunting grounds. In the 21st century the "hunting ground right" is still an issue as the fish population declines. More on this later.
As humans moved to agriculture after the last ice age specific land allocation became more important for survival. Not only did the rise of agriculture result in more stable societies providing the basis for the rise of civilization, it also placed land ownership at the center of the human economy.
In terms of human history it wasn’t that long ago that medieval societies regarded all property as ultimately the monarch's, but in practice much of it belonged to the monarch's aristocracy. In the typical feudal arrangement the lord owned all significant property especially land. Even the so-called commons were owned by the lord and his serfs paid him a portion of the benefit they accrued from its use. At this time the economy was land based and wealth measured primarily in land holdings.
Gradually, with increased commerce, including the discovery of the new world, the European economy began to expand and land was no longer the only measure of wealth. The Industrial Revolution greatly enlarged the European economy, but also provided a new basis for wealth, i.e. manufacturing. Interestingly, at about the same time as the Industrial Revolution the land-based economy was facing a dilemma of its own creation. As families grew larger land holdings were being fragmented by multi-child inheritance, Thus came the practice of primogeniture in which the eldest son inherited all the land. A significant portion of the initial Industrial Revolution entrepreneurs and workers were the children of land holders ineligible to inherit the land.
Writing in the earlier phase of this economic transformation, Thomas Hobbes based freedom itself on property ownership. We find this notion in Jefferson when he envisioned a nation of small farmers as the economic foundation of democracy because their property and the living it provided would make them independent of overlords. I think that one reason for this close association of property ownership and freedom lay in the fact that the property of the monarch and aristocracy had given them power over the populace and that therefore property was necessary to assure freedom of the ordinary citizen. There is, to this day, a strong feeling among some citizens that property is the root of freedom.
However, as the impact of diminishing resources and increasing population make property increasingly scarce, ownership of property will become more problematical. One can easily see this as a source of ongoing violence.
With this brief history in mind what are the prospects for property or for that matter ownership in general? To assess the distance this society has to travel in this matter we need only recall G. W. Bush's 2004 campaign that flaunted the banner of the "Ownership Society." Such a society thoroughly based on ownership would require little government (except for military) and society's major domestic transactions, e.g. health care, education, retirement, employee benefits would be negotiated between "independent" entities. This would promote values such as personal responsibility, economic liberty and owning of property. Interestingly this view, but not Bush's reasons for it, is not too far removed from Jefferson's belief. Jefferson feared that Hamilton's economic view, focused on a manufacturing-based economy, would make employees vulnerable to political manipulation.
But back to Bush and the Republicans. The Ownership Society was little more than an attempt to preserve the wealth of the rich. It was offered as a defense for his wealth-favoring tax cut. It uncritically assumed that property would remain the basis of the U.S. economy, even if the rest of the world moved on.
This conservative effort to impose the wealthy on the rest of us by way of a 400 year old view of property and with mankind's survival in mind, indicates how massive a cultural shift will be required to allow our species to survive. In short, is there a surrogate for property?
One answer to that question is that we should substitute access for ownership.
There is some modest potential in some current arrangements. The fishing industry provides some perspective. While nations have long laid claim to areas of the ocean for fishing purposes they could, of course, not lay claim to the fish themselves, which may or may not enter a given national boundary. It is useful to keep in mind that fishing is the one holdover from the hunter gatherer societies.
Another step in this direction is car sharing instead of car ownership. Two companies, Zipcar and Flexcar, using a combination of wireless, GPS and other computer technologies allow customers to reserve cars online, walk a few blocks to where it is parked in their neighborhood, use it and return it to the parking spot. This form of car use not only avoids the ownership costs of maintenance, insurance, etc., it means fewer cars can provide the transportation needs of metropolitan areas.
Bicycle sharing, especially in Europe, is a going and growing public/private enterprise. Mexico City is trying to clean up its immense smog problem using bicycle sharing in the city's core areas.
Kevin Kelly, one of the founders of Wired magazine, has a long and interesting article on access versus ownership in which he sees technology driving a passage from ownership to access. He notes the digitized book as an example. It is interesting to note that Kelley, an avowed libertarian, sees tax-based public enterprise as a vehicle for this change as well as private enterprise. The article may be found at http://www.wired.com/culture/culturereviews/magazine/17-06/nep_newsocialism?currentPage=all.
But what of land itself, which remains the most basic measure of wealth for much of the planet's population? In this regard it is instructive to note that China, Saudi Arabia, etc. are buying up large tracts of land in Africa to grow food for their own populations. The only large effort at abandoning land ownership was the Soviet Union in which society, through the state, owned the land and farmers were in essence state employees. To many people in the West this was an instance of dictatorship. Farmers, like employees of a corporation, were told what and how much to grow based on the needs of their society. The farm was made to emulate the factory. This feature is currently duplicated, in spades, by American corporate farms, in which animals are raised in very confined space, fed large amounts of medication to avoid easily transmitted disease and hormones to increase the rate of growth and hence saleability. It is not clear whether this form of agriculture is necessary to support the population that the human species has produced and continues to produce.
Finally, ownership may be finding its comeuppance in the developing politics of Latin America, especially Bolivia. Evo Morales has been returning major extraction industries such as oil and minerals to the people by way of nationalization of corporations. Morales, of indigenous extraction himself, is basing this process on what the dominant economies owe Bolivia's indigenous people in recompense for all that has been taken from them. It will not do for a corporation to declare they have a contract with a preceding government that ruled by the power of elitism, not by the consent of the people. Morales in a recent conference in Cochabamba seemed to be calling upon all indigenous people to rise up and demand compensation from those who have plundered their lands and resources. In this connection more than one African government that agreed to sell millions of acres for growing food to China and others has been forced by outraged citizens to withdraw these agreements. China and others are now calling for such countries to supply troops to protect "their interest." If Morales and others focused on the welfare of the population find a significant and determined constituency among the economic victims of this planet, we may have found something of an answer to the future of property. At least in certain areas it will be possessed by society not by individuals. It will, however, place a greater burden on the citizen to insure that government itself is not co-opted by the wealthy and thereby become tyrannical. It may be that humans are condemned by their very nature to repeat Plato's cycle of aristocracy, timocracy (government by those possessed of great honor, usually military), oligarchy, democracy, and tyranny endlessly until the technology of violence overwhelms our species.
Bob Newhard
Property has had a varying history. Hunter gatherer societies had little property except their weapons and tools. To what extent these may have been held in common for everybody's use I am uncertain. While land was not owned, tribes might by force or tradition lay claim to hunting grounds. In the 21st century the "hunting ground right" is still an issue as the fish population declines. More on this later.
As humans moved to agriculture after the last ice age specific land allocation became more important for survival. Not only did the rise of agriculture result in more stable societies providing the basis for the rise of civilization, it also placed land ownership at the center of the human economy.
In terms of human history it wasn’t that long ago that medieval societies regarded all property as ultimately the monarch's, but in practice much of it belonged to the monarch's aristocracy. In the typical feudal arrangement the lord owned all significant property especially land. Even the so-called commons were owned by the lord and his serfs paid him a portion of the benefit they accrued from its use. At this time the economy was land based and wealth measured primarily in land holdings.
Gradually, with increased commerce, including the discovery of the new world, the European economy began to expand and land was no longer the only measure of wealth. The Industrial Revolution greatly enlarged the European economy, but also provided a new basis for wealth, i.e. manufacturing. Interestingly, at about the same time as the Industrial Revolution the land-based economy was facing a dilemma of its own creation. As families grew larger land holdings were being fragmented by multi-child inheritance, Thus came the practice of primogeniture in which the eldest son inherited all the land. A significant portion of the initial Industrial Revolution entrepreneurs and workers were the children of land holders ineligible to inherit the land.
Writing in the earlier phase of this economic transformation, Thomas Hobbes based freedom itself on property ownership. We find this notion in Jefferson when he envisioned a nation of small farmers as the economic foundation of democracy because their property and the living it provided would make them independent of overlords. I think that one reason for this close association of property ownership and freedom lay in the fact that the property of the monarch and aristocracy had given them power over the populace and that therefore property was necessary to assure freedom of the ordinary citizen. There is, to this day, a strong feeling among some citizens that property is the root of freedom.
However, as the impact of diminishing resources and increasing population make property increasingly scarce, ownership of property will become more problematical. One can easily see this as a source of ongoing violence.
With this brief history in mind what are the prospects for property or for that matter ownership in general? To assess the distance this society has to travel in this matter we need only recall G. W. Bush's 2004 campaign that flaunted the banner of the "Ownership Society." Such a society thoroughly based on ownership would require little government (except for military) and society's major domestic transactions, e.g. health care, education, retirement, employee benefits would be negotiated between "independent" entities. This would promote values such as personal responsibility, economic liberty and owning of property. Interestingly this view, but not Bush's reasons for it, is not too far removed from Jefferson's belief. Jefferson feared that Hamilton's economic view, focused on a manufacturing-based economy, would make employees vulnerable to political manipulation.
But back to Bush and the Republicans. The Ownership Society was little more than an attempt to preserve the wealth of the rich. It was offered as a defense for his wealth-favoring tax cut. It uncritically assumed that property would remain the basis of the U.S. economy, even if the rest of the world moved on.
This conservative effort to impose the wealthy on the rest of us by way of a 400 year old view of property and with mankind's survival in mind, indicates how massive a cultural shift will be required to allow our species to survive. In short, is there a surrogate for property?
One answer to that question is that we should substitute access for ownership.
There is some modest potential in some current arrangements. The fishing industry provides some perspective. While nations have long laid claim to areas of the ocean for fishing purposes they could, of course, not lay claim to the fish themselves, which may or may not enter a given national boundary. It is useful to keep in mind that fishing is the one holdover from the hunter gatherer societies.
Another step in this direction is car sharing instead of car ownership. Two companies, Zipcar and Flexcar, using a combination of wireless, GPS and other computer technologies allow customers to reserve cars online, walk a few blocks to where it is parked in their neighborhood, use it and return it to the parking spot. This form of car use not only avoids the ownership costs of maintenance, insurance, etc., it means fewer cars can provide the transportation needs of metropolitan areas.
Bicycle sharing, especially in Europe, is a going and growing public/private enterprise. Mexico City is trying to clean up its immense smog problem using bicycle sharing in the city's core areas.
Kevin Kelly, one of the founders of Wired magazine, has a long and interesting article on access versus ownership in which he sees technology driving a passage from ownership to access. He notes the digitized book as an example. It is interesting to note that Kelley, an avowed libertarian, sees tax-based public enterprise as a vehicle for this change as well as private enterprise. The article may be found at http://www.wired.com/culture/culturereviews/magazine/17-06/nep_newsocialism?currentPage=all.
But what of land itself, which remains the most basic measure of wealth for much of the planet's population? In this regard it is instructive to note that China, Saudi Arabia, etc. are buying up large tracts of land in Africa to grow food for their own populations. The only large effort at abandoning land ownership was the Soviet Union in which society, through the state, owned the land and farmers were in essence state employees. To many people in the West this was an instance of dictatorship. Farmers, like employees of a corporation, were told what and how much to grow based on the needs of their society. The farm was made to emulate the factory. This feature is currently duplicated, in spades, by American corporate farms, in which animals are raised in very confined space, fed large amounts of medication to avoid easily transmitted disease and hormones to increase the rate of growth and hence saleability. It is not clear whether this form of agriculture is necessary to support the population that the human species has produced and continues to produce.
Finally, ownership may be finding its comeuppance in the developing politics of Latin America, especially Bolivia. Evo Morales has been returning major extraction industries such as oil and minerals to the people by way of nationalization of corporations. Morales, of indigenous extraction himself, is basing this process on what the dominant economies owe Bolivia's indigenous people in recompense for all that has been taken from them. It will not do for a corporation to declare they have a contract with a preceding government that ruled by the power of elitism, not by the consent of the people. Morales in a recent conference in Cochabamba seemed to be calling upon all indigenous people to rise up and demand compensation from those who have plundered their lands and resources. In this connection more than one African government that agreed to sell millions of acres for growing food to China and others has been forced by outraged citizens to withdraw these agreements. China and others are now calling for such countries to supply troops to protect "their interest." If Morales and others focused on the welfare of the population find a significant and determined constituency among the economic victims of this planet, we may have found something of an answer to the future of property. At least in certain areas it will be possessed by society not by individuals. It will, however, place a greater burden on the citizen to insure that government itself is not co-opted by the wealthy and thereby become tyrannical. It may be that humans are condemned by their very nature to repeat Plato's cycle of aristocracy, timocracy (government by those possessed of great honor, usually military), oligarchy, democracy, and tyranny endlessly until the technology of violence overwhelms our species.
Bob Newhard
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