Asshole of the Year...

Do you know who this is? I realize there is so much time left in the year for a bigger asshole to appear, but I think this guy has to be in the running. Thomas Gerard Tancredo, formerly a Republican representative from Colorado. One of the most staunch anti-immigration conservatives in the land, he once sponsored a bill called the Mass Immigration Reduction Act which would have put a moratorium on immigration. I don't know if he understands economics, sociology, or any other discipline committed to actually understanding social processes, but to stop the flow of immigration (while being impossible anyway) would be disastrous for a nation that is aging and has a replacement fertility rate which means a much smaller native employment pool. Not too mention the degrees Americans inordinately receive (30% of Americans will earn a bachelor's degree, which is significantly higher than every other country in the world) fosters an attitude that shuns menial, physical, or other types of labor sectors that immigrants often populate heavily.

As the first speaker at the Tea Bagger's Coconut Bangers Ball, he had this lovely quote to offer us: "people who could not even spell the word 'vote', or say it in English, put a committed socialist ideologue in the White House. His name is Barack Hussein Obama." During a townhall meeting in Iowa a few years ago, when asked how we could stop terrorism, he replied that the only thing "he could think of" was threatening or bombing Mecca and Medina.

That a guy like this even exists speaks to the unfortunate political landscape the the U.S. has fostered.

Things That May Only Interest Me

I realize I have been negligent of this blog, but frankly sometimes work must come first. Here are some links to amuse, scare, and keep you awake on a dreary (in Cali) Friday afternoon.

How fast can humans actually run? Is there a limit...evidently, we could potentially get to 40 mph.

Do you get migraines? Do you suffer from depression? There may be a genetic link which means taking drugs or lamenting your existence are unnecessary. In other words, just live with it and take five advil!

It appears that smoking kills, but quitting at any point -- even after getting cancer -- radically improve your life span! Evidently, people who quit smoking after getting lung cancer more than double their chances of living at least five years longer (Here). This is very good news, even if one shouldn't really smoke in the first place; or, for that matter, wait until they contract a terminal illness to quit.

I knew it! Sitting too much can be deadly! Office life be damned...sitting is correlated to fatness, heart disease, and death.

In other news, American public and courts are still trying to wrap their heads around the fact that being gay is rooted in biological causes and not environmental conditions (being a lesbian is a bit more complicated and cloudy). During the Prop 8 hearings an expert witness testified that being gay is not a choice. The fact that there has to be testimony suggests this is disputed scientific knowledge, when it is not. This would be like the courts asking an astronaut to come in and testify that the Earth is flat or that Budweiser is beer.

10 years ago, I laughed about the fact that America would never legalize marijuana let alone decriminlize it. California proved me wrong. And, what's more the state's courts are routinely preventing city councils and law enforcement agencies from stopping the people's voice from being hear. California legislators recently altered the law to limit the number of plants someone with a prescription could grow and how much they could legally have for personal use...the courts rejected this, saying that people can have as much weed as they can smoke, grow as much weed as their house can hold, and get as high as they want to. Stay classy California!

I leave you with this study: erectile dysfunction predicts heart disease. Better use it while you got it, otherwise that's not all that's going to stop working!!

Look Out...Health Care is Going Out the Window

I am not sure how this happened? Well, actually I am. Recall a post I had about Obama months ago where I asked, among other things, was Obama struggling because he was trying to be too weak and bipartisan or the election itself was a sham and reflected a sentiment against the GOP and not necessarily towards more regulation? The Tea Baggers certainly made the latter seem more important than the former, but their protest was shrouded in latent racial hostilities. Did you know, for example, Obama has had 60% of his proposals to slash government spending approved? This is a much greater % than his predecessors. You would never know that because of TARP, which has also been gradually recouping the banks' "loans."

But, now with the health care bill -- which was going to be a bit stronger after the compromise and not as shitty as the Senate version -- in a precarious position, I fear the worst. If Mass., a typically democratic state, elects that schmuck Brown and he uses his power to put the filibuster on, there is going to be some ugly politicking with few gains to be made by the Dems. How did it get to this? Was there no person strong enough to run for that seat? Why did a Kennedy not step up to the plate? If he gets elected, the Dems will have to use some arcane rules to get their ways, unless the Senate accepts the House bill, which would be good because it has a public option, but bad because it would put more Senate seats in danger. At this point, though, Nelson, Reid, and a few others look like they are going down anyway. If one is indeed a public servant and he/she saw the writing on the wall, wouldn't he or she want to go out with memorable legislation?

All of this stems from Obama's unwillingness to be combative. A great quality, no doubt; but, a sign of weakness in the face of staunch GOP opposition. There is no easy solution for him. He inherited a seriously fucked up thing and a slim majority with some very center-right Dems helping secure that majority. His mandate was ambiguous, founded on sand castles of hope and never truly seized by Obama. Busy dealing with the plummeting economy (and, based on some indicators, doing as good a job as possible), Obama went head first into the Health care debate. Perhaps hedging his bets on 2010 in 2009 and assuming the outcome of the election was in doubt early on (hey, he could have looked at the seats up for grabs and made decent predictions), decided to do this now before his mandate's consequences were spent. I don't know. But, I do know this is it for him if he cannot get the health care thing passed; and, it will put a serious strain on an already strained economy and the next generation's burden.

Top 120 Movies Continued, (49-41)

This set stands out as great movies any director would kill to make, but unfortunately, they made movies that transcend these movies. In other words, these movies are movies lesser actors/directors/producers wish they could even sniff, yet these movies do not match the best of work of these directors.


49. Saving Private Ryan. One of the best war movies you'll ever see; and the saddest. Spielberg begins the movie with an intense 30+ minute recreation of the intense moments of WWII when marines stormed the beaches at Utah and Omaha. Faced with entrenched machine gun turrets, the vast majority of soldiers were marched to their death before reaching land. The strategy, as was evident also in the first World War, was to simply outlast the opponents man power and ammunition. In a mechanized style of warfare, this may be the only real strategy aside from the use of very powerful weapons. Spielberg uses this intro as his only real nod to the standard Platoon/Full Metal Jacket war genres; balls out, intense, and violent. Spielberg, however, transcends these genres with his cinematography, the hallmark that will define his career. But, what he is really setting us up is that war, no matter how justified, is really just a waste of time, money, resources, and lives. And, the wanton expenditure of the most precious resources a society has seems to be senselessly tossed about.

The real story, of course, takes place after the beachhead is established. Tom Hanks, a school teacher at home, yet a captain in battle, is instructed to go find one Pvt. Ryan. All of Ryan's brothers have been killed in the war, and the army decides that it would be a disservice to not send one of the brothers home to his mother. Hanks chooses his best men, and they set out across the Rhine land in search of a needle in a haystack. The movie revolves around the humanness of Hanks, who is thrust into a position of authority because of his education back home, yet is ambivalent about leading these troops...taking their lives into his hands. He is a good commander; quick on his feet; but, he is a very sad person. The rest of the movie is classic Spielberg. In some ways, I would compare his work to a Chinese landscape artist: broad, powerful brushstrokes; the placement of objects like mountains and waterfalls disproportionately large in relation to people. He takes serious subjects, recognizes the most powerful forces that people find their biographies embedded within, and weaves a story of how these people become aware of the forces, try to circumvent the forces, and how the success they find is always balanced very carefully with the loss, the horror, and the sometimes meaninglessness of it all.

48.Star Wars IV-VI. How do you rank something as epic as this trilogy? I couldn't decide. It is certainly not the best set of movies in the world, but has there ever been a set of movies that defined a whole generation? Moreover, it launched Harrison Ford's career that led to some unbelievable performances. I suggest watching them all in order again, in one sitting (with some breaks for pizza).


47. The Will Be Blood. This movie lands here for Daniel Day-Lewis and a performance of a lifetime. Or not. I feel he was better in another movie, which will be revealed below. But, wow...can you not feel the power of his character. Can you not feel the greed oozing out of his pores. The darkness of this movie does the book justice, as well as the themes Upton Sinclair stood for. The oil industry in contemporary America is one of the most dangerous, most powerful, most careless, and most reprehensible. Power and energy go hand in hand, and Daniel Plainview (Day-Lewis) embodies the lust for power, wealth and prestige that drove the growth, expansion, and entrenchment of the oil industry. This is Day-Lewis' Cast Away. To be sure, there are other actors who all do a marvelous job, but this movie is a one-man show. A tour de force, if you will. Plainview consumes each scene as if he is this poor prospector who struck black gold by sheer luck, and whose cunning and clever mind fit perfectly with his lack of scruples.

46. No Country for Old Men. Dark. Empty. Vacuous. Eroded. Simple. These adjectives fit this movie's landscape, its main antagonist, and its message. The movie, an adaptation by phenomenally underrated author Cormac McCarthy, is not the masterpiece of the Coen's catalg, but it certainly deserves high praise. As in all of their movies, the matter-of-factness of violence and the very real problems of suffering as well as meaning are painted vividly on a uniquely American canvas. Undergirding each character's actions is the question, why? Why are we motivated to act good or bad? There are rarely any clear protagonists in the Coen brothers films, but rather a cast of flawed individuals whose flaws cannot be weighed against each other. Javier Bardem's character who would seem to be the most sinister of all of the characters because his violent acts seem random and have no real reasoning behind them gradually becomes portrayed as having principles that guide his actions; a point the Coen brothers suggest is all any person can have. That is, meaning is constructed by people; actions are judged by the meanings we construct; and while the audience may want to believe there are universal rights and wrongs, each character understands their position in the universe and acts based on a set of principles of their own making, which are inherently flawed. At the end, which was considerably long and unnecessary to some extent, Tommy Lee Jones who plays a sheriff who seems to be more of an unwilling witness to the bizarre twists and turns of the human heart than a player in the game summarizes what we have learned: nothing. Are the Coen's suggesting we do not learn from past experiences and actions, that senseless violence is simply an extreme reflection of senseless everyday behavior, or that we are really alone in our own subjective worlds with only illusions of objectivity? 


45. Monty Python's Life of Brian. Underrated? Absolutely. The problem with this movie, in relation to their masterpiece the Holy Grail!, is that it requires some serious historical and biblical knowledge to make it as funny as it really is. Not to blow my horn, but this is a time period I do study and the jokes are even funnier because of this (kind of like the difference between having worked in an office or never working in an office and then watching Office Space. Clearly it is funny for both sets of people; but, the context becomes even more funny for those who have worked in offices).

The movie takes place around the beginning of the Common Era (or the point where the Christian calendar flips and goes from BC to AD) in ancient Israel under Roman rule. False prophets are everywhere; the iron hand of Roman rule is a running theme (the People's Front of Judea or the Judean People's Front!?!); and, the absurdly disgusting conditions of urban life are put on display for comedic purposes. Brian, a half-Jew, half-Roman, experiences a series of events that lead to some people thinking he is the messiah, despite his desire to not be. It is a spoof on the story of Christ not meant to offend, but meant to present a different story of religious beginnings. I think it is very funny, but it might not make much sense to most people given the "dated" humor.

44. The Deer Hunter. Watch this movie if only because Meryl Streep is unreal. Christopher Walken and Robert De Niro round out an all-star cast that netted this movie the 1977 Best Film Oscar. Classic 70's film: long, elaborate, and highly detailed settings draw the viewer into an intensely sad and dramatic plot, that is intensified by the acting. Unfortunately, Hollywood refuses to produce movies like this nowadays (The Pianist represents one exception), but man, the 70's were filled with them. If you have patience and an attention span, and admire the art of filmmaking, then watch this movie.

43. Spaceballs. Mel Brooks!!! Does it pass the name test? President Skroob/Yogurt (Mel Brooks); Dark Helmet (Rick Moranis); Lone Starr (Bill Pullman); Barf (John Candy); Princess Vespa; Colonel Sandurz; Prince Valium; Major Asshole; Snotty; Pizza the Hut. The only thing stopping this movie from being Brooks' best is the fact that he made Blazing Saddles and Young Frankestein...both of which were enhanced by the genius of Gene Wilder (the most underrated comedian...perhaps because he retired so early and is never in the public light?). I love this movie. It is rewartachable...filled with great one-liners...and some memorable performances by the cast.

42. Talledega Nights. I hated this movie in the cinema. I watched it again...and couldn't stop watching it. It is so damn good. It would be higher if Will Farrell hadn't made Anchorman which might be the best comedy since National Lampoon's Vacation or Fletch. Name test: Ricky Bobby; Carl Naughton Jr.; Lucious Washington; Terry Cheveaux; Walker and Texas Ranger (the names Ricky gives his kids); Jean Girard; Larry Denitt Jr. What, not funny...Farrell thought real hard about these names to give a sense of realism, and it worked. Comedies don't always need hilarious names, but they need names that took some thought; names with surnames.


The real winner here is the pairing of Farrell with John C. O'Reilly, which would be reprised awesomely in Step Brothers. O'Reilly, like Farrell, just looks funny. His mustache; his height; his goofy body shape; and then the delivery of his lines. These two were meant to be a tag team. Then, there is the performance by Sacha Baron Cohen, who plays the Frenchmen who seeks the best competition. The scene in the bar when we first meet Girard is classic. It leads to the unraveling of Ricky Bobby's life, which culminates in Carl Naughton moving into his house one day to be with Bobby's wife and not seeing anything wrong with it.


41. Swingers. The single greatest breakup movie (for a guy) ever. Nothing like watching someone more pathetic than yourself (Jon Favreau) as well as seeing how important good friends are to your recovery. Jon Favreau wrote and directed this movie, managing to capture two very antithetical elements: the seemingly timeless nature of the L.A. night scene and Hollywood world, with the very dated mid-90s "swing" resurgance that is long since passed (the Derby, which is the nightclub Mikey meets Heather Graham in and swing dances with just closed down a few months ago). The swanky and classy LA-ness mixed with the sleazy, pretention. Favreau really captures it nicely...LA really is a strange mixture of new smashing into, integrating with, recombining, and struggling to understand the old.

Vince Vaughn's was the real winner as his career was launched as the kind of sleazy, but ultimately warmhearted likable guy. His comedy depends on his vocal delivery and his sense of irony. He places the best friend of Mikey who's own lifestyle is filled with hookups, a carefree attitude towards most things, and a generally positive disposition. Of these three, he only imposes the latter one on Mikey, who wants real relationships, is serious about his craft, and is generally pessimistic. Ron Livingston (of Office Space acclaim) has a sneaky good performance as Mikey's good, but naive, friend from NYC. This movie is great in so many ways. It will make you laugh; make you want to hit Vegas; and give you a really good sense of what LA is like for good and for bad...

Update on Health Care

Here is a link to a reasonably written article on health care that warns against seeing this bill from any angle other than its historical importance. Here.

Question of the Day: What Happened to John McCain?

I'll be the first to admit this isn't a fair picture, but I am not so sure McCain deserves anything resembling fair. I loved this guy in 2000. In fact, I remember dreaming about a McCain vs. Bill Bradley presidential match up. Both obvious outsiders of their respective political parties; both with fresh sounding ideas; and both with a little counter-establishment vibe. Bush destroyed McCain in South Carolina during the primaries, relying on a strategy of questioning his military record (sound familiar?). A man who had spent something like 4 years in a POW camp in Vietnam was being questioned by a guy who signed up for the National Guard, yet according to records was rarely in attendance (and, remember, Dick Cheney avoided it by being an aide to Nixon). Considering these facts you would think McCain would have been embarrassed to be in the same party with someone who low-balled him so badly and unfairly. But, he stayed. Fine; he had done bipartisan before.

Fast forward to now. McCain was for cutting medicare in the past, then the health bill appeared and was going to trim medicare and he was suddenly against touching it. He acted near at the end of the election as if he was ready to embrace a position of power: Obama clearly saw him as a worthy ally and opponent, someone who Obama could reach out to from the other side, while cementing McCain's bipartisan legacy. Instead, we have Mitch McConnell (Sen from Kentucky-R) defending McCain on the floor of the Senate, despite some serious past animosities. I feel bad, sort of. McCain could not be Bob Dole and fade away from political life and briefly revive his career by doing some Super Bowl Viagra ads; nor could be be Al Gore and go to Harvard for a year to teach, grow a beard, and then make an award winning documentary; nor could he be Ross Perot and just return to his Texas mansion. He stayed like Kerry. Kerry was weak to begin with, so he is just as much a non-entity as he was before he won the democratic nod four years ago.

Where did the 2000 McCain go? In some ways, he reminds me of a baseball player. We talk about players' individual seasons like fine wines. Guys may have peaks over multiple seasons, or be consistent throughout their careers, or even have multiple peaks over a career. But, the greatest players have individually great seasons (the super-duper stars have more than one of these). Barry Bonds' 2001-4 seasons (yes, everyone) were transcendent. Or, Pedro Martinez 1999 season. You get the point. Now, those two players had so many great seasons, and their careers will eventually be etched in bronze at Cooperstown, they do not provide good analogy. Because McCain was a middling infielder who showed bursts of occasional power at the plate, but was always a bust. Then, it all came together...all five tools were on display in 2000, until Bush beat him out for the MVP trophy. The following eight years were filled with random highlights reminding us of the brilliance his 1999-2000 season produced, but never again approached greatness; as if he injured himself and never regained confidence. Now, he relies of steroids to even play at a replacement-player MLB level...McCain, what happened?

Yea for Health Care?

The Senate passed their version of health care this morning...5 AM my time, which meant I woke up to a pleasant surprise. You know it must be helping Americans out to some extent when the GOP attorney generals plan on suing to analyze the constitutionality of telling Americans they must have health care and then providing them with potentially cheap alternatives!!! Really!?! I should sue them because it is mandatory to have a driver's license which costs me money every five years to renew; the constitution says nothing about the government's right to regulate my operation of a motor vehicle. Or, more germane (and so much more ironic): why does every child, until the age of 16, have to go to school. Public school (or the alternatives) is compulsory. I should contact my GOP representatives and ask them to review the constitutionality of that one. Oh yeah, and the state provides (in the "public option") a cheaper alternative to the more expensive private and prep schools. Which, by the way, are not hurting due to the competition with the more robust and affordable public option.

What do I not like? I do not like the weakness of the Senate and the lack of a public option. What is strange to me is this: the democrats won a majority across the board. This was the public voting for some change. Instead of embracing the larger vision Obama presented that won him so much support, they hedged, allowed the GOP to reshape the narrative over the summer, which painted them into a corner (especially those in precarious seats). The public either (a) recoiled in fear of a socialist takeover, (b) recoiled in disgust at the lameness, lack of vision, and lack of balls exhibited by the vast majority of democratic senators, or (c) recoiled in fear over (b) and over the crazy teabaggers whose inane arguments were dominating the airwaves and making (b) even worse! I am going with (c) on this one.

My second thought is this (and it will be a run-on sentence). If the economy keeps stabilizing, and health care is passed through congress and not by Obama personally ramming it through, and, Obama passes the next stimulus meant to reward job creation and benefit normal people, and the Wall Street legislation does indeed regulate them more efficaciously...could we not call that a successful first year? Also, the surge in Afghanistan may end up being a very good decision as it was in Iraq, and may help prepare for a real withdrawal in both war zones. We live in a strange time, my friends. A time where judgments are passed so quickly and rescinded almost as quickly. Obama is not going to be Roosevelt; he was not as prepared as Roosevelt. Obama is going to do something that impacts the American people, and I think it will be either benign or positive, because he does not seem committed to destroying the universe much like Bush and Cheney were.

Debunking Free Market Myth #3

Government run things are bad. Somewhere along the line, we got into the mode of thinking that the government cannot run anything efficiently. Well, this is true; anyone who works for (or has worked for) a corporation that is larger than 200 employees knows bureaucracy inevitably becomes irrational as it gets larger and more complex. So, yes...the government cannot run things efficiently and will likely be wasteful in many respects.

Does this mean government run things are bad? Sometimes yes, and sometimes no. The post office, for example, is a government run service. It is neither a good or bad service. My mail tends to make it out and arrive nearly every time; the mailman never misses a pickup since I can remember; the cost is relatively low considering the alternatives; and most importantly, this large cheap service has not put the kibosh on capitalist competition: FedEx and UPS are quite strong, and there are a million little companies like DHL that specialize in delivery. So, it is really difficult to use this line of argument.

Here is why government run operations become bad. Reason 1: they hire out. The Republicans, trying to implement a market model for war, decided to hire contractors at the beginning of the Iraq war for driving, security, etc. Of course, not following the market model, they avoided a true bidding system and essentially gave sweetheart deals to their close friends (Halliburton anyone?). The result was (a) corruption and a serious loss of government money, (b) no oversight in a foreign country, and (c) the same inefficiencies with even less accountability.

Reason 2: lobbyists. Its one thing to decide to lower costs for senior citizens on their prescription drugs; its a whole other thing to pass legislation meant to provide this lower cost by having a government agency buy the drugs at a high price, with no bidding, from select pharmaceutical companies. You cannot have a government run program that lacks autonomy from economic influences at that level and expect it to do what it is supposed to do.

Reason 3: lack of vision. The health care bill, albeit an important bill that can be amended in the future, is going to watered down so much that it might not even do what it was originally meant to do: lower costs. A true public option is the key, says the CBO (the non-partisan accounting agency that analyzes bills), to promoting competition, ensuring low prices, and keeping insurance companies in check. We will likely get a kicker in the final bill that triggers a public option in five years if the nothing changes, but why wait? No one, except those getting money from the insurance or health industry, likes insurance companies...ask yourself, do you like the way you have been paying absurd prices for car, health, or any other insurance? Or, if you've made a claim, the company treats you terribly as they attempt to not pay you a sliver of what you have paid them? Of course not! So, why don't we just get the punishment over with and move on?

Why are government services good? First, they are not about profit. Health and education, especially, should never be "for profit" services. I am fine with private options (e.g., personal doctors, private schools), but I am  not fine with public schools having to secure funding when the state decides the money we are spending on stupid wars is more important than educating our youth. Second, despite the bogeyman conspiracy theorists and the Rush's of the world, most government services are well intentioned. Medicare, social security, and welfare all are meant to provide a safety net to people in society; a society that could not exist without all of its members contributing. Why should a person work 40 years for a shitty company who reaps profits from his blood and sweat, and then retire and have no protection from the society he just served for so long? Why should a child be born into poverty -- not choosing this life -- and not have equal opportunities to succeed as those born into affluence? These programs are meant to help people out (60% of Americans will use government money in welfare or unemployment benefits once in the lives...so, it isn't just crack whores trying to be free riders on the system). Third, the alternatives are terrible. California deregulated its energy years ago and started buying from random people (thanks Enron!). What we got out of that was this: rolling brown outs meant to threaten the population and government into higher costs, higher costs from corporations trying to squeeze us, and a basic need (heat, electricity) turned into a commodity whose cost affected people's budgets. The market is not always a free market; monopolies exist (Microsoft; insurance; airlines; gasoline; media), not in the purest sense of a single dominant company, but in the sense of oligarchies. Governments should and do force companies to play fairly. In the gilded age (the 1880's-early 1900's), the people we called the Captains of Industry were simply monopolists who made so much money off the sweat of non-union labor at a fraction of the cost of wages. They were ruthless, cruel, and have become revered because they donated a proportion of their money (Carnegie anyone) making them seem good. Let's face it: free market is code for exploitation, unregulated business ethics, and making shitloads of money and running. How many examples do people need before we realize that a pure economic theory doesn't work in the real world, much like gravity doesn't act the same in practice as it does in a vacuum (hey, throw a cannonball and a feather out of a window, they should both land at the same time). Here are some reminders: the Savings and Loan disaster in the late 80s; Bernie Madoff; Enron and Tyco; the Captains of Industry; the Great Depression; the railroads; the money it costs to put your bag on an airplane combined with the decline of service on every airline; carpetbaggers during the early 1800s; slavery.

All "isms" are what they are: ideologies which orient our attitudes and actions in ways that make sense of the world, events, behavior, etc. They are rarely true in an objective empirical sense, but they do guide us. Socialism, in its purest form, is good; when humans implement it, it has the potential to be very bad (Nazism); Capitalism in its purest form is good; when humans implement it, it often goes awry. The government, for better or for worse, is the corporation "for the people," and should try to at least speak for those of us who cannot do much against the large machinary of capitalist bureaucracy. I prefer no "isms." Take what works and integrate it; isms produce dogma, self-righteousness, and resistance to compromise. Orthodoxy is rigid, and often collapses in the face of environmental changes.

Your Quote for the Day

Everything we do in life is based on fear, especially love. - Mel Brooks

Your Quote for the Day

Be kind, for everyone you meet is fighting a hard battle. - Plato

Your Quote for the Day/Night

An employee will go home and ask his neighbor, "Hey, did you get an award?" "No man. I mean I slave all day and no one notices." Next thing you know, he smells something funny from his neighbor's house. Neighbor hanged himself due to lack of recognition. - Michael Scott (The Office)

Debunking the Free Market Myth #2

Myth #2: Free markets are imperative to innovation. My favorite line from pro-market people is that socialism prevents innovation, whereas free markets and capitalism generate innovation. Now, before we go further it should be noted that markets do have a positive effect on innovation, predominantly technological innovation. This presents two very different questions we need to address: do free markets facilitate more, less, or non-significant amounts of new innovation. Two, is technological innovation all its cracked up to be?

There are two sets of logic at work here, one implicit and the other explicit. Adam Smith proposed that the division of labor that rapidly intensifies in capitalist economies (i.e., factories divvy up tasks to increase production, efficiency, and control human error as best as possible, while also differentiating vertically -- management -- to facilitate control, coordination, and communication across employees) also drives innovation in technology. The reason: people who work at the same job, doing the same tasks are bound to simplify them, know them best, and begin to find shortcuts that lead to time-saving innovations. The explicit argument is this: market-based incentives (i.e., wealth, fame, power) motivate people to innovate, which ultimately benefits them while benefiting everyone. This logic returns to the old "rational-man" model presented in the first myth earlier, and assumes pure self-interest is the best panacea to society's ills.

I don't know about you, but I have worked in offices, restaurants, retail, and other places...I don't recall any employees I personally or impersonally knew innovating. Perhaps it is because of a lack of incentives, as any time-saving or increase in productivity will only benefit the owner of the company or means of production. Marx also pointed out that people who are separated from the entire process of production -- that is the creative side of producing, the productive side, and seeing the finished product -- experience high levels of alienation, which is just a heady word for dampened motivation. Moreover, the person does not see their work, their company, or their employees as anything other than means to their own extra-work satisfaction: job = salary; company = necessary evil; co-workers = enemies, or friends against the man.

On the other hand, market-based incentives may produce global motivation to innovate. Yes, and no. First off, turn on your TV at any hour of the day and you will find products for three easy shipments of 19.99 that were invented to simplify some aspect of life or maximize another. This is not progress in my opinion; though, there are people filling their lives and apartments with crap right now. Secondly, how do you explain the wheel? Or penicillin? Or space travel? All three of these present innovations of import that lacked capitalist motivation, even if one could argue that money and fame were secondary or tertiary motivations. The wheel: necessity is the mother of innovation; penicillin: the pursuit of science is filled with competing interests, but it was an accident borne out of the search for knowledge; and space travel: it was a political attempt at proxy warfare against the Russians, while also meant to boost nationalism and patriotism. As Marx noted, people are naturally creative animals; we will innovate regardless of the money involved because we enjoy it, because we look to solve problems, because we like to simplify life, and because it does produce benefits to us and our groups. One might point to the rapid advances in technology as indicative of the superiority of capitalism in driving innovation, but this ignores two important facets. The first, is technological innovation all its cracked up to be will be tackled below. The second: how do we define time, history, and pace. If we look at the long view, since the plows invention followed closely by the emergence of writing some 5,000 years ago, technological innovation has moved very rapidly in relation to the 3 million years plus that humans lived in hunter/gatherer societies; another way is to look 12,000 years or so ago when humans became sedentary...again, technological advance has been rapid in relation to the slow, gradual socio-cultural evolution of humans. The point is, certain forces drive innovation outside of self-interest. Population growth and density; resource scarcity; centralized and consolidated forces of control/coordination; and improved means of production/distribution. Indeed, we are focused much more intently on the last of these five forces, but the first two are just as relevant across time and space. More people mean more ideas and more people to bounce those ideas off of; density leads to new problems of production, distribution, and coordinating space; centralization/consolidation make dividing labor up, resolving conflicts that arise, and fostering a larger integrative identity beyond the family and religious possible; and you know what improvements in productive and distributive forces leads to. These are general, ubiquitous characteristics. Capitalism harnesses them as well as any economic system, save for those intent on destroying its citizens.

How we harness it varies though. Capitalism, as its proponents correctly assert, does so through economic innovation, whereas political, religious, educational, scientific, legal, or kin-based innovations are also possible and have been used. None seem better than the others; they both present unique challenges and consequences when implemented. Capitalism is really good at producing choice while intensely limiting it: rather than treat people globally as citizens, kinsmen, or part of a larger moral community, or atomizes people and objectifies them as consumers. This is bad; it is our modern malaise.

Thus, we can look at part two: is technology good. Yes and no. More food, more efficient farming and production, medicine, more leisure, etc. are all positives to a certain extent. But, no...absurdly myopic focusing on materialism is never good. Self-interest becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy: the mantra of the rational-man model becomes accepted by all. Then, people treat each other as if they are means to their own satisfaction; corporations see people as means to their collective goals; and, in the end, morality and ethics become buzz words that are not to get in the way of the machine. Having more stuff leads to the need and desire for more stuff...plain and simple. I dare you to dispute that. And, if you think having and desiring more material things, you should see my students, talk to them, read their papers, analyze their thoughts, and consider their futures...then get back to me.

Moreover, call me cold or call me prescient. Improving people's lives is one thing, prolonging them with little birth control regulation means growing the Earth's population to catastrophic rates. Having people live longer, but get sicker more often taxes the entire society and its infrastructure. Prolonging the life of children born terminally ill, regardless of what your religion tells you, does not shore up a society's long-term survivability. I don't think people get how close to the precipice modern society is, but you can only tempt the forces of nature for so long before she will strike (no society is invincible...look it up; its an historical fact). I am not calling for death squads, or eugenic programs: I am calling for a rational discourse that actually tries to plan  out the future of this country and world in such a way that we balance, even if they are a bit skewed in our favor, our needs and the Earth's. We could plausibly do it; but, constant material innovation might not be the answer. There is, for instance, a finite number of silicone chips; a finite amount of iron; a finite amount of fresh water; a finite amount of fossil fuels. Each new person will use some of this finite number. So, in other words, imagine I have five friends over. We order two pizzas with eight slices each. We each get three slices, with two left over. For every person I invite over, the number and size of slices decreases. At some point, their is a crisis as the number and size of slices cannot meet their function: feeding and satiating us. This is a reality that population size has an effect on. We cannot simply genetically modify the pizza every time to increase slices and sizes.

Debunking the Free Market Myth #1

The fight against health care and Obama's administration has been carefully defined by the right as a narrative of free market versus socialist tactics, or more implicitly, everything American versus either benign pseudo-European socialism or at worst, authoritarian socialism of the fascist ilk. But, I find it ingenuous and nonsensical to not look at Obama's efforts, the country's needs, and the economic structure through a more nuanced, socio-historical lens that avoids the empty platitudes of politicking. Moreover, when one is confronted by an agitator, or someone arguing based on historical eternals or faulty logic, you need to be equipped. Let's look at some of the myths.

Myth #1: In the past, markets were freer. Be dealing with this myth first, I am essentially destroying my entire blog below; if I can handle this one, then every other is simply a corollary and therefore debunked. Anyway, have there ever been truly free markets? If by free, we are referring to the "invisible hand" of supply and demand that underscored Adam Smith's vision of capitalism, then the answer is a resounding no. One of the things my students, and nearly all humans do -- which was at the heart of Marx's argument -- is assume the social structure that they are born into has always been and will always be. Part of this is intellectual laziness: not taking the time to learn about past societies or massive historical changes. However, the lion's share of blame likely can be found in our neuro-anatomy. Think about it in this way: you grow up with yourself, and while you know you have changed as a person over the last however many years, the changes have been imperceptible. So much so, that you likely have found yourself evaluating how you have gotten where you are today. Maybe you see a "turning-point" moment and highlight it as the day things changed, but can we really be sure? In thirty years, will that moment still be seen the same way? Well, this analogy can be applied to our conception of social structure. And, learning history does not suffice. One must gain historical consciousness: they must make the facts they are learning breath with life. As the famed Roman historian Livy once said, "The study of history is the best medicine for a sick mind."

Back to our myth. Were there ever truly free markets? Not really. Before states and writing existed, it appears as if the form of economic subsistence was mostly derived from the household in hunting and gathering techniques. There were no markets. With chiefdoms came some early market-like notions: relatively long-distance trade emerged, but mostly for prestige goods from one chief to another and vice versa. With the rise of states some 5,000 years ago, state-sponsored long-distance trade occurred. Merchants were endowed with goods, they would take the entire risk born of traveling, sell their wares to other merchants, aristocracy, or nobles, and return with new goods for the king and some profit for themselves. The key, though, is the vast majority of people in these early urban states were super poor. They weren't farmers because they lived in cities; and not everyone was a good craftsman or artisan. They were laborers, beggars, or servants. They had no disposable income. The bazaars that did exist catered mostly to bartering and trading as money was not yet as standardized and diffuse as it would become later.

Again, this history lesson is a bit off of the myth, which is really about classic America: a golden age of veritable free market entrepreneurship. Is this true? Again, no. Markets were freer in a sense in the 18th and 19th centuries. Less government regulation, but also much greater risk. Snake oil, one of my favorite products, is a perfect example for an entire economic system. People were free to sell what they wanted, and they worked very hard to create a market. There was no FDA to review whether the product was safe or even effective; there was no agency that put pressure on you to be honest in your business practices and truthful in your claims. So, in a sense, the market did regulate itself, but at a disadvantage to the average person who had little time or education (or wikipedia) to discover whether snake oil was healthy, efficacious, or useless; he market then was still tilted against the working class. Thus, the arguments then were like today: corporations and the capitalist class deserve free markets. By the time capitalism and the industrial age took off, post-Civil War America, it looked nothing like the GOP wants it to be and the tea baggers think it was. Just go back and look at the Supreme Court decisions from about 1870-1930...they are unbelievably lopsided towards defending the rights of corporations; the 14th amendment, enacted to protect the protect individuals especially newly "freed" black slaves was used by corporations to protect themselves against the claims of individuals. Moreover, the so-called gilded age coincided with the rise of the "captains of industry" like Carnegie and Rockefeller, who also looked like the monopoly fellow and acted like him too. They were cruel, nefarious, cunning, and not unlike the oil barron that Daniel Day-Lewis played in There Will be Blood. They hated workers and saw them as expendable, fighting against workplace regulations that led to the death, dismemberment, illness, and malaise of uncounted numbers of people who helped build this country. Like the GOP today, they were hypocrites: from one side of the mouth they supported the working white American class in public, while hiring immigrants whenever possible because they were cheaper, harder workers, and expendable. They bought congress....look it up. The most corrupt period in legislative history in the US was during the "gilded" age. The markets were anything but free. The Horatio Alger myth of people pulling themselves up by their bootstraps distorted the objective reality: few people experienced mobility then, few experience it now. Demand could be shaped with cunning and creative advertising campaigns; this is also a fact. Think about this....why would a corporation spend 1-2 billion dollars on a thirty second Super Bowl ad if it had no impact on people's buying habits? That is irrational and everything economic models of capitalism would rally against. The early Sears and Roebuck catalogs provided strong indications that people's tastes, preferences, and desires could be shaped by advertisers. Was the market free? Yes, because the government continued to not care. That is, the practices of the capitalist class sunk the economy into the Great Depression and it was clear the old ways were unstable. What followed was the Warren court which salvaged the Bill of Rights as a document of the citizen and not the corporation; the restructuring of the American economy and government such that we didn't have to follow Germany's, Italy's, Spain's or any other European nation's strong moves towards socialism. We could have capitalism, and relatively free markets, while also protecting people...What a novel idea!!!!

One final note: go read Adam Smith. His theory was essentially this: where merchants, tradesmen, and owners of capital were unregulated, the nations wealth would grow. A sort of trickle-down economics pre-Reagan. You have to put his words into a certain socio-historical context (the late eighteenth century). First, England likely taxed and regulated inter- and intra-national trade. Second, he recognized in his book that completely free trade could and probably should never happened. Third, the question that often is ignored by modern GOPers/free-market advocates because modern economics has institutionalized its (wrong) answer is: what ensures that the market will regulate itself and people will do what it is right and not do things like monopolize, sell bad wares, etc? His answer is self-interest. If everyone follows their own self-interest than the economy will run smoothly. People won't buy things they don't need, are made terribly, or they can find cheaper; people won't sell things that will bankrupt them, that will harm people and come back to financially haunt them, etc. It is called the "rational-man" model and it is the basic assumption of human agency that underlies modern US action and interaction. Sociology, anthropology, and many other social sciences have long demonstrated empirically that people don't act this way. (1) Not every person has access to all the relevant knowledge in order to make the best decision in pursuing their self-interest; (2) socialization and social pressures go a long way in shaping our self-interest, often in ways counter-intuitive or against what would objectively be in our best interests; (3) corporations, like the car companies, do use rational calculus...but not for the benefit of the many: when a defect that kills people is discovered they weigh the cost of recall and repair vis-a-vis the number of likely lawsuits they will get; (4) irrationalities dominate market actions: gas spikes lead to people hoarding gasoline, brief fads and fashions created by TV, celebrities, and other media spark intensified purchasing, planned obsolescence precludes consumers from making good purchasing decisions, and people often think with their heart, their sexual organs, or other non-cerebral aspects of their body, which advertisers use to their advantage. So, the answer is no: markets are not free, never have been, and never will be. In theory yes, in practice absolutely not.

Your Quote for the Day

As the poet said, 'Only God can make a tree' -- probably because it's so hard to figure out how to get the bark on. - Woody Allen

Your Quote for the Day

Character, in the long run, is the decisive factor in the life of an individual and of nations alike. - Teddy Roosevelt