I would hope, over time, that people with moderate political views (most Democrats and Republicans) come to the realization that the Ratchet Effect  is the source of their unhappiness with government.

The varied interests that make up the political Right applies as much leverage as possible to society through legislation and other political/legal activity.  The Rachet Effect  predicts that there will be more extreme candidates and legal challenges coming from the Republican party only because a compromise (the crux of politics)  is a ‘win.’

Just like the Democrats, the Republican voters (whomever still bothers to go) get to pick from some ugly choices and get no representation for their vote.

The next step is more difficult regardless of your political affiliation.  What kind of social/political organization breaks the cycle described by the Ratchet Effect?

• No on limiting leverage.
• No on the FDIC ‘consumer financial protection’ department.  This was weak, but better than nothing.

I didn’t dig around long enough to find the other parts of the bill voted on, but the whole thing is dead and Feinstein gets some credit.

There was another critical vote yesterday that might have set the stage for a GAO audit of the Federal Reserve.  She voted No on that too.

It’s no longer hard to wonder why you’ve got such dismally low trust in the U.S. Government.  Few Representatives are legislating the interests of the majority of Americans.

Barbara Boxer did The Right Thing and has voted for all of the items mentioned above.

They have a new strategically elegant but tactically unworkable document they are calling the “Mount Vernon Statement.”

I’ll ignore all of the messy historical baggage just like the average “Morning in America” conservative and say that I think much of what they write works for many Americans.  I’m easily categorized as a Liberal and yet I agree with many of the principles in the rhetoric.  That is, until they turn the rhetoric into tactics and policy.

Trojan Horse Part 1

• It would be nice if they actually meant they want encourage Religious Freedom.  Tactically, their version of Freedom is called Christianity and the rest of you are going to Hell. (See “nature’s God”)
• It would be nice if ‘ordered liberty’ was meant to encourage more social and political freedom.  Tactically, they want Government to alter the lives of the people they don’t agree with.
• Government is the new Self.  It’s clear they want to alter the lives of the people who do not live according to their rules.  See “moral self-government”
• The military and Conservative pet projects win big too.  They get big budgets to spend on projects wrapped in the perfectly circular argument they will be ‘responsible.’

The bomb drop is buried near the end.  “economic reforms grounded in market solutions.”

Trojan Horse, Part 2

Let’s review some facts regarding capitalism and how the vaunted ‘market solutions’ accelerate economic disparity and lead to a weaker economy.  This ‘market solutions’ newspeak is not exclusive to the Republicans.  The Dems are using the same kind of  ‘market driven’ newspeak and they are as much to blame for the last 20 years of economic disparity.

Question: What is the rough definition of  an economic market?

Answer: A place potential Buyers and Sellers meet to possibly exchange goods and services.

Examples of markets are a car dealership, the grocery store, ebay.com.

Question: Are markets all-inclusive?

Answer: Never.  There may be lots of willing suppliers for eggs at greater than $25/dozen, but there are very few buyers.  This perfectly satisfies the political argument of ‘market solutions’ and more specifically meets the definition of a market.  Mission Accomplished!!! (GWB ironic reference)

Examples of inclusive markets are Ferrari automobiles, private American Medical Insurance policies, your grocery store with the homeless person in back digging through the trash.   Each market example has customers and the rest just stand idle.

There are at least two consequences of  ‘market solutions’ groupthink.

1. Increase economic disparity.  10+ years of unfettered capitalism in the U.S. has shown (again) that it ends up making more people poorer and few people richer.  Diminished economic activity follows.  Fewer people have disposable income as a result of increasing economic disparity.
2. Political and social instability.  People are falling out of the economy (> 10% unemployment, closer to 17%.) and probably won’t have the same kind of wages when they eventually return to work.  This creates a great deal of social and political instability.

The economic consequences of the Mount Vernon Statement are clear, it will  increase the ranks of the working poor, decrease social and political stability all of which decreases economic activity.

For those wondering why I don’t pound the Democrats as mercilessly, the Democratic Party has always been equivalent to herding cats.

If the unwashed masses are discouraged from discussing social class relativity/locality then the economic leaders have more freedom to create greater social and economic divisions.  There’s a perverse logic at work that somehow makes a few very rich, a tiny unstable middle class, and the vast majority with the least resources a Good Thing.  The longer discussions of social class are kept out of the scrum of daily life, the more time there is for increasing political and social inequality.

In America 2010, everyone is Middle Class.  Howard Stringer, Jamie Dimon, Frank Atlee, they are all Middle Class.  Only they are more Middle Class (and right) than the rest of the primitive populists.  The actions of these Middle Class Warriors  since the 1980’s has resulted in increased political and economic inequality.  Some obvious artifacts of this is the declining distribution of wealth.  Another artifact is the stagnant wage growth for the bottom 90%.

Another example, in this post.  Towards the end of the piece on banking regulation, the author labels the ideological assault as Serfdom circa 2010. What’s nice about the article is that someone else at least recognizes that income inequality is an explicit goal .   But then it tries to add some heat to the discussion by abusing the term Serfdom.  I don’t agree with the use of the vague word Serfdom.   Otherwise, the author describes the mechanics of failure at re-regulating the current form of Banking very elegantly.

Why does a country need a large middle class?  Greater political and social stability on which to build a vibrant economy.   The simple fact of the matter is creating a vibrant middle class require redistributing wealth. Uh oh.  Another American thoughtcrime.  I’m actively encouraging redistributing wealth.  Your average deregulator demagogue will now chime in with some faulty logic wrapped in Economics lingo “Redistributing income destroys wealth!”  or the hilarious “deregulated markets are more efficient!”   The general consequences of believing some version of the previous two arguments is greater economic and political disparity.

To specifically refute the wealth destroying argument,  empirical evidence like the banking interests mentioned in the article above repeatedly shows wealth being destroyed any number of ways.  I’d also argue most mature segments of the American economy are Oligopolies continuously destroying wealth anyway.

To specifically refute the deregulated marketeer, the theoretical model is elegant, but humans just don’t work like that and no amount of deregulation gets to the mythic perfectly competitive environment.   Empircal evidence repeatedly shows that unregulated market suppliers continuously destroy wealth by restraining competition.  Some empirical evidence of market deregulation are the repeal of Glass-Steagal Act and the consequent bank bailouts, California’s deregulation of electricity suppliers that lead to artificial scarcity and exorbitant pricing.

Maybe the end-game is class immobility? Maybe that’s the point behind the destruction of New Deal goals?  The next time an industry is deregulated, ( Gramm–Leach–Bliley Act) it’s another strike against the vast majority of Americans regardless of your political affiliation.

It is very hard to tell.

Now they are trying to run a Redwood timber harvest.  “Second-, third- and fourth-generation redwoods will be thinned…”   SFGate Leaving only the largest of the great trees.  This is a classic power monger remake of the physical world.  The mightiest few are meticulously cared for (themselves and the oldest growth trees) and fell anything less.  That probably means clearing a few old-growth trees to make the property better conform to their orderly world view too.

They wrapped the harvest in the previously politically correct and fail-safe  ‘fire suppression’ meme.   Now, if it were the case that they did just harvest the fast-growing pine-variety invaders, I’d have no problem with the harvest.  It’s the fact they documented clearing the younger redwoods.  This is an external validation of the epic scale of their self importance.  Who needs to be bothered with petty small trees that won’t be large enough to gaze in wonder at (like me and my fellow Bohemians) for at least 1000 years?

Is it the case that their business lives are so slow they have time for a little ‘grounds maintenance?’  Or maybe they can’t get their rapacious urges sufficiently validated by a hostile proletariat?  Like the typical maniacal messiah, do they simply blame the thankless populists that can’t possibly understand the enormous burdens of remaking the world in their view?

An inquiring populist would like to know…

There are probably others though…

Someone inside the bowels of the NBC organization will immediately grasp the simple fact that Microsoft’s Silverlight is locking out ~20% of all web users because of a buggy Mac Silverlight runtime shipped with buggy  implementations for Firefox and Safari.  That simply drives viewers away.

I think the thing that bugs me the most is the pervasive culture of mediocrity that goes into decision to support a limited number of visitors to what is a huge investment/opportunity for NBC.  The attitude that alienating 20%  of your audience is perfectly okay is bewildering.  I’d think advertisers would feel differently about it, but my gut feeling is that mediocrity is just okay with them too.

The ‘Office Space’ moment that has already occurred was when the list of browser/OS combinations tested was severely limited due to ‘resource constraints.’   ‘ Resource constraint’ being the code words for,  “Do as little work as possible.”  and a workplace culture that aggressively penalizes risk takers.

The next ‘Office Space’ moment will be where Yahoo’s Olympic traffic beating NBC’s Olympic traffic is cast as a win for NBC, advertisers, Moms everywhere, and the U.S. of A.

The basic idea is no TV, DVD’s or movies for the month of August. Email? Sure. We do lots of online shopping, so that’s okay, but the idea being not to spend time on the Internet unless it is task-specific.

We stopped watching local/national news long ago. Local/national news is irrelevant anyway. The infinite variation on “Man Bites Dog!” and random acts of violence negatively affect anyone’s world view.

Anyway, in August:

The first thing that always happens is the amount of time available for tasks goes up quite a bit.

The second thing that happens is I am better able to focus and think more clearly.

The third things that happens is priorities change for the better.

Parents who use the television/video games as a baby-sitter will have many problems getting the child to fill their time with play. That should clue you in on how much influence the television has on a developing mind. Parents won’t have it much easier so don’t exclude yourself from the exercise.