sanctuary

Thursday, May 28, 2015

I can't find my bootstraps to pull up



Clinton's welfare reform was the logical conclusion of Ronald Reagan's pernicious use of the 'welfare queen' myth in the 1980s.
(Amy B. Dean, fellow, Century Foundation)

The most brilliant propagandist technique will yield no success unless one fundamental principle is borne in mind—it must confine itself to a few points and repeat them over and over.
(Joseph Goebbels, Propaganda Minister, Nazi Germany)

Nature and nurture

“Good wombs have born bad sons,” as Shakespeare says in The Tempest. The nature versus nurture debate goes back to at least the time of Plato. But perhaps over the past fifteen or twenty years we have acquired a remarkable pool of knowledge regarding human behavior in general, be it the mapping of the human genome, neuroscience discoveries, behavioral psychology or even the controversial field of genopolitics. As individuals we are a complex mixture of genetic and environmental factors. But who are we in assorted groups or various interests or particular markets?

Behavioral economics it seems to me has a great deal to offer, for example, the 2016 presidential election in the United States, which promises to be once again less than enlightening, informative and honest.

Behavioral economics may also have a lot to say about how we look at poverty in the U.S. and throughout the world. Poverty in America has come out of the shadows, for the moment at least, in part because of the issue of racism, a central piece in understanding this country.

Where once behavioral economics was an outlier in the field, it has now become an influential element in understanding economic decision making. Even the World Bank in its 2015 annual report devoted most of the document to behavioral decision making. Ultimately, to be truly successful, it has to influence policymakers to think in a different way. This, however, is hardly ever easy; we humans are reluctant to let facts get in the way of our strongly held beliefs. Call it nature vs nurture.

My cortisol hormone just doesn't feel right

Researchers are familiar with what's called a hormone-receptor complex. There are steroid hormones, which include cortisol, estrogen and testosterone. Cortisol, for example, is released under stress, the proverbial threat, but it can also occur by merely thinking about unpleasant things. High levels of cortisol over long periods may cause such illnesses as depression, heart disease and overall suppression of the immune system.

Stress and prolonged complex tasks can cause glucose levels in the region of the brain associated with attention and planning to drop. Physical capabilities can decrease but mental acuity can be affected as well.

Neurotransmitters, serotonin and dopamine being two, are related to stress and motivation. Levels of serotonin in an individual can affect the sense of well being and confidence. These individual variations might cause different reactions and possibly have a bearing on how we think about and react to real world issues, such as violence, gay marriage and poverty.

The point of all this is that we know a good deal more about genetic and environmental factors when it comes to human behavior. This connects to behavioral economists and how they have looked at the field of psychology and the discoveries in neuroscience and have adapted and applied many of the ideas to economics. Some have referred to behavioral economics as the “hybrid offspring” of economics and psychology.

You've been framed

Frank Luntz, a political operative in the early George W. Bush presidency, told the administration that it was important to always refer to global warming as “climate change.” This phrase, it was believed, was less unsettling and more controllable, thus more easily ignored. The fossil fuel industry could rest easily.

More than 30 years ago two psychologists published a paper questioning the standard assumptions regarding decision making, which ultimately had a significant impact on traditional economic theory. See Prospect Theory: An Analysis ofDecision Under Risk.

The long standing belief had been that the “Economic Man” was rational and by in large made self-interested decisions. Intentionally or otherwise, this idea benefited the status quo and provided a justification for what has been thought to be the “inherent” wisdom of what is universally referred to as the free-market, which is hardly “free” in any sense of the word.

What was being suggested is that the reality was actually more about how alternatives were framed and not about their “relative value.” It became all too often a zero-sum game. The framing was what strongly influenced the decisions that people made.

Now, some thirty years later, the word “framing” is familiar to a great many people, and certainly it's part of the strategy for both marketeers and political operatives among others. Of course, who would want to pay a “death” tax. Outrageous! But what about a small percentage of the rich paying a very moderate estate tax upon their departure from the living, considering how they benefited from America's political and economic system? Andrew Carnegie, one of the founding fathers of the Gilded Age, did not believe that the children of the rich ought to be handed a pot of gold. This was the United States and we of course did not want to create a parasitic aristocracy. You've been framed.

Now, behavioral economists are looking at how people actually act in making economic decisions, which could influence the kinds of programs that might be developed, not only in dealing with poverty but improving upon the choices we all make—unlike what the traditional economic model claims we have been doing all along. It has been to a large degree a lovely fairy tale. Go ahead, treat yourself and pull out that credit card. You deserve it.

The problem with those people

It seems that so many of the tired, moth-eaten cliches have never gone away and have a life of their own: character flaw, lazy, lack of self-discipline and so forth have been the constant refrain. In my part of the country you only have to follow the state legislatures in Missouri and Kansas to know that obliviousness and general obtuseness have been raised to the level of sacred text.

It's not that an individual might be deemed unambitious, but that an entire class of people or group of individuals have been summarily dismissed as, well, “flawed.”

What makes behavioral economics so compelling is the many studies that have been undertaken and the quantifiable data gathered. It refutes so many of the standard, mythical economic beliefs beloved by the status quo—most obviously the comfortable and the privileged.

In the now well studied Dutch Hunger Winter of 1944, as the allies advanced across Europe, the Nazis let the people of Holland starve. This affected the fetuses of pregnant women, especially those fetuses in the 2nd and 3rd trimesters. The fetuses took the cue from their mother's low nutrient intake, but even when the war ended and there was plenty of food, in many cases the “thrifty” metabolism couldn't stop storing calories away. In a number of instances health problems like diabetes developed later on for these children.

We learned that physical deterioration was clearly obvious, but we also observed the mental effects of starvation. Food became the central thought, above anything else. Fast forward more than 60 years later and behavioral economists want to know how mental states along with social and physical environments affect economic activity on a very specific level … realizing that one size (program) does not fit all.

While behavioral economists, like any group of people, can have varied points of view, some basic ideas seem to stand out, oftentimes contrary to the prevailing views. Sendhil Mullainathan, a behavioral economist at Harvard has said that, “To put it crudely, poverty—no matter who you are—can make you dumber.”--anywhere in the world, among any economic class of people.

The gnawing away of cognitive competence, counter-productive decisions, the inability to consider the long-term best interest are all related to what economists refer to as scarcity. While the standard belief is generally that those poor people are poor because they make bad decisions, the behavioral economists believe that people make bad decisions because they are poor, perhaps obvious to some people, but observing (in the U.S.) the Congress, many state legislatures and numerous politicians pontificating on poverty and the poor, you would be hard pressed to locate cognitive competence among these “decision makers.”

This is a complex subject, and while behavioral economics is a central part of economic theory today, for many, it goes against deeply ingrained beliefs and vested interests. Framing is going to matter a lot.

For those who want additional information on the subject the following may be of interest:

Foundation





History


Other























Friday, May 15, 2015

By by ice shelf

Larsen B, Antarctic

Nature is always changing. You environmentalists and your scare tactics. Don't worry, be happy. We'll study it when we have time.


Saturday, May 09, 2015

Friday, May 01, 2015

Climate change once again, and again--and again

When the facts change, I change my mind—what do you do, sir?
(John Maynard Keynes)

A perpetual motion machine for sale


Snake oil salesmen

A number of years ago I was at a global climate change conference in Washington, D.C. One day was devoted to visiting the offices of various senators and representatives. I ran into a cigarette lobbyist, a former congressman from North Carolina, who was visiting the representative from his old district who was a personal friend. We had a pleasant chat before he was ushered into the office of his friend. While we chatted, I wondered what he might have said if I'd told him he was working for a criminal enterprise. Needless to say, back then, I didn't. Probably today I would have.

The fossil fuel industry has run a similar campaign to what the cigarette manufacturers once did. It has worked for a very long time. It's about denial, deception and a belief that the public in general is easily manipulated and by in large not well informed.


How the good guys win









Believing things which we know to be untrue, and then, when we are finally proved wrong, impudently twisting the facts so as to show that we were right 
(George Orwell)

Wednesday, April 22, 2015

Los Afectados 2015

The sad truth is that most evil is done by people who never make up their minds to be good or evil.
(Hannah Arendt)

Five years ago this month the BP Deepwater Horizon disaster began in the Gulf sixty miles off the coast of Louisiana. Five years later the region is still suffering the consequences of the worst oil spill in U.S. history.

In the late 1960s the Texaco Petroleum Company got the concession to search for oil in a remote region of Ecuador. Eventually some 16 billion gallons of toxic waste were dumped in one of the most fragile ecosystems in the world, covering approximately 1,500 square miles, about the size of the state of Delaware.

I first wrote about the Ecuadorian oil field called Ispingo-Tiputino-Tamboccocha back in 2007 and again in 2012, see Los Afectados. As well, I had lived in Ecuador in the early 1970s. It is now an old story but still a new story and one that is ongoing.

A major difference, however, is that some forty years later the size of Los Afectados (The Affected Ones) has grown well beyond Ispingo-Tiputino-Tamboccocha, the country of Ecuador and the continent of Latin America.

2015

On March 4, 2014 the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York said that the $9.5 billion Ecuadorian judgment was—regardless of its merit--the product of fraud, racketeering, false testimony and bribery instigated by the plaintiff and its lead attorney, Steven Donziger, with the defendant being Chevron Corp. The judge stated that Chevron did not have to pay anything. It was “unenforceable.”

Some people have referred to this case, which has been going on for some twenty years, as “never-ending litigation,” even though Chevron has some very deep pockets with considerable political influence. According to an analyst with OilPrice.com, Chevron in 2013 in the fourth quarter alone made $4.9 billion.

As of April 2015 the plaintiff expects the case to come before the Canadian Supreme Court. A Chevron subsidiary is developing the Alberta tar sands. Chevron also has assets in Argentina and Brazil, which Donziger has indicated he will go after.

The way the world is

Lost in this endless litigation, political maneuvering and money exchanging hands, the fact is that no one is disputing that a large portion of the Amazon region in Ecuador has suffered serious environmental damage along with crops, soil and water having been contaminated and people getting sick.

Above all else it is the indigenous community voices in the region that may have been drowned out. Will many of them die before there is any conclusion to this case? Will their children have to contend with the same environmental damage?

A brief story

From the plaintiff—LosAfectados

From the defendant—Chevron


…......



I got mine

Was “evil” committed in Ecuador forty years ago? I suppose it depends on your point of view. Did the executives at Texaco know the difference between right and wrong back then? Did the military junta who ran the country care about what happened in the jungle?

Texaco was well aware of “best” practices. They chose to ignore them. I doubt the generals cared at all about indigenous people in the Amazon. They wanted the money. Can Chevron be held responsible for what Texaco did? The government of Ecuador “oversaw and certified” the successful completion of remediation by Texaco. Texaco became a subsidiary of Chevron in 2001. Chevron never drilled for oil in Ecuador. The case of course will play out.

The only real option is confrontation. Unless we afflict the comfortable everywhere, our actual future at the very least will be a dreary 21st century serfdom. We are Los Afectados across the globe and ultimately we have only ourselves to blame.







Thursday, April 16, 2015

So-called science: Climate change

A bit of levity regarding the minds of climate change deniers, but the ultimate consequences are likely to be anything but amusing. The question is as always how do we go about changing those minds or ignoring them completely?


Saturday, April 04, 2015

You don't need to know that


Liberty cannot be preserved without general knowledge among the people.
(John Adams, second president of the United States)

This video came out two or three years ago, but it's telling on so many levels that it is worth looking at more than once. The reality is that it may be even more pertinent three years later. The mere “tweaking” of the system will not change anything.

Wealth Inequality in America




The U.S. is now the most unequal of all Western nations and has a lot less social mobility than Canada and Europe. In the 2014 mid-term elections the voter turnout was as low as the 1830 elections, where only white male property owners could vote. It is in the short-term interest of the plutocracy (read globally) to keep it this way.


Source: Credit Suisse Global Wealth Databook

Saturday, March 28, 2015

Who loves you



Trans-Pacific Partnership

Trust us--it's far too complicated to explain to you. International trade benefits everyone. We understand, you don't have to. We're bringing the world together.... Do what you're told.

Saturday, March 21, 2015

The authentic invasive species

Several days ago I received some material from the Sierra Club reminding me to renew my membership, which I had let lapse for a couple of years. What caught my attention however was a short letter that was included in the membership material. The letter read as follows:

“Dear Human:

Imagine that, little by little, your home was taken away from you. The forests and mountains where you once roamed freely disappeared, replaced by roads and concrete buildings.

What if politicians in suits, someplace far away, decided your fate … decided that you, your family, your friends, and neighbors had become a nuisance—a menace—to those who had invaded your home?

And so now, you must die.

Imagine these politicians rallying for your slaughter … ignoring what science has told them, encouraging citizens to hunt you down and kill you.

Imagine your family under attack. Defenseless, with nowhere left to hide, you must dodge bullets from the ground and sky, just to find food for yourself and your young children.

Imagine that, in one of these public hunts, you watched your offspring die.

Then you will know the terror that wolves face every day … and why we so desperately need your help.

After all, you and your fellow humans are the only ones who can save us. Our fate is in your hands.

So I hope you will answer this cry for help. You are our only hope. And time is running out ….”

Murder for fun, profit and prestige

The late, great comedian George Carlin once remarked that we humans can't destroy the Earth. The planet will deal with us without difficulty. I remain optimistic that after humankind vanishes (at least the current variety of Homo sapiens), the remaining life on Earth, as science writer Michael Tennesen says, “ will survive, adapt, diversify, and proliferate.”

I don't want to think that the combination of our technology, slow evolutionary development and general ignorance could actually turn our planet into an uncompromising nightmare like that offered up by the novelist Cormac McCarthy in his novel The Road.

Yet, regardless of whether or not we humans do ourselves in sometime in the future, the mind numbing misery we're inflicting on other species right now is appalling. It is conceivable that up to 50 percent of plant and animal species could have gone extinct by the end of the century. Unlike other mass extinctions, the principal cause this time will most likely be humankind. There's a reason that most scientists refer to our current geologic age as Anthropocene.

Wide areas of Asia currently, because of official corruption, greed, ignorance and even what is casually called “cultural” cuisine, are destroying plant and animal life across the planet at an astonishing rate. We humans have become like the invasive plant kudzu on steroids.

While we collectively—with some notable exceptions—have been killing and destroying most everything around us for thousands of years, it was far less noticeable before the industrial age and a global population under two billion. But now, with a population of more than 7 billion humans and increasing, we are destroying life on Earth on an industrial scale, seemingly unaware of its consequences for us.

So what ought we to do? One possibility certainly is that we may not be able to do anything in time. Fields like neuroscience and behavioral genetics have provided considerable insight in how humans think and process information and why we often do what we do ... but, the “so what” question however can't be tossed aside.

How do we confront, educate and find the resources fast enough to turn the human death cult into a manageable problem at the very least. Cowboy yahoos in the American West, clueless Chinese bourgeoisie desperate for the “bling” of ivory and other human predators are not going away anytime soon.

Maybe it does begins with trying to understand what the wolf could be thinking as he stares at his dead cub bleeding to death from the gunshot wound. Maybe we have to find better ways to talk to narcissistic Homo sapiens. Anyway, I renewed my membership in the Sierra Club. Giving up can't be an option.


For an unvarnished assessment of wildlife destruction read The Politics of Extinction. Getting angry is good but then come up with a plan. We need one right away.

Tuesday, January 13, 2015

Welfare queens in America

You know, they're just lazy, drug addicts, poorly educated, naturally inclined parasites.... The taker class.

The Best of American Capitalism

Monday, January 05, 2015

White America's secret, part 4

The United States of America is awesome, we are awesome.
(Andrea Tantaros, Fox News TV co-host, responding to U.S. Senate report on torture)

The loneliest moment in someone's life is when they are watching their whole world fall apart, and all they can do is stare blankly.
(The Great Gatsby, by F. Scott Fitzgerald)

Accepting

It's the unsettling truth that may be the hardest part right now for a large portion of white America; after all, the U.S. has the oldest functioning Constitution in the world, and that might be the problem on any number of levels.

It was the brilliant James Madison, author of the United States Bill of Rights and one of the authors of The Federalist Papers who, in 1787, said, “They ought to be constituted [the nation] as to protect the minority of the opulent against the majority.” Ah, always the dangerous mob, the rabble, a consistent yet unspoken “through-line” of the United States.

Is an 18th century document going to serve our needs in the 21st century? Most likely not. Our social and political myths—created most certainly by white America and in particular the “minority of the opulent”--have largely remained intact for more than 200 years. The last occupying foreign army in the United States was the British during the war of 1812.

The many reasons given for not voting in the recent mid-term election represent at the very least intellectual laziness, be they offered by the “millennials,” those that just find the Republican party repugnant and of course the “disenchanted” liberals. But we've reached the point where we can probably say “so what” with some qualifications. The rot has advanced too far.

The Democratic party is a feckless relic, a hollow shell; yet, it possibly could morph into some sort of sane conservative movement, at some point in the future. The handful of genuine Democratic political progressives in the party, and they are only a handful, ought to be spending their time building a new progressive movement elsewhere.

The Republican party, the party of Lincoln, at least outside the benighted Confederacy, is really about the intentional development of an authentic, nativist, totalitarian movement, what the Europeans were familiar with in the 20th century and that may be once again rearing its head in Europe in the 21st century.

Black America, more than anyone else, clearly has a compelling reason to develop an organized and disciplined movement, one capable of acquiring greater political power at the national and most definitely at the local level.

The Occupy movement demonstrated that people could come together for political change with a serious moral purpose, but Occupy ultimately floundered and became a minor irritant to the kleptocracy and the political hacks that do its bidding.

We seem to have difficulty accepting the fact at the present time, but radical change is never a brief “get together” without any clear, definable objectives. To succeed, a movement has to ultimately bring in large, diverse groups of people of all ages, who aren't going away under any circumstances.

Of course it's about power, gathering it in and confronting those who refuse to give it up. Above all, it has to be unremitting and offer an understandable alternative to the status quo. This is not something done overnight nor is it a fervent wish for some messianic vision to make it happen.

An excellent time to begin is in January 2015. There will be more than enough motivation to go around. Once again from The Great Gatsby, a novel about illusion: “Americans while occasionally willing to be serfs, have always been obstinate about being peasantry.” Well, we'll find out.

For an interesting documentary on the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW), the use of police repression and the connections between what happened more than a 100 years ago and today, watch the video below.



Some Additional Reading and Considering Other Possibilities:








Thursday, January 01, 2015

How to go California

Hens, unbound

We need to pressure the rest of the United States and across the planet. Change can happen. Non-humans--everywhere--deserve more than unremitting human cruelty.