The Zero Room

This week, I have been mostly reading:

• Neoliberalism: Political Success, Economic Failure — Robert Kuttner in the American Prospect: As the great political historian Karl Polanyi warned, when markets overwhelm society, ordinary people often turn to tyrants. In regimes that border on neofascist, klepto-capitalists get along just fine with dictators, undermining the neoliberal premise of capitalism and democracy as complements. Several authoritarian thugs, playing on tribal nationalism as the antidote to capitalist cosmopolitanism, are surprisingly popular. It's also important to appreciate that neoliberalism is not laissez-faire. Classically, the premise of a “free market” is that government simply gets out of the way. This is nonsensical, since all markets are creatures of rules, most fundamentally rules defining property, but also rules defining credit, debt, and bankruptcy; rules defining patents, trademarks, and copyrights; rules defining terms of labor; and so on. Even deregulation requires rules. In Polanyi's words, “laissez-faire was planned.” The political question is who gets to make the rules, and for whose benefit.
• The Green New Deal must wipe out precarious work and underemployment — Bill Mitchell: I keep reading so-called Green New Deal proposals that put the Job Guarantee at the centre of the employment considerations of the concept. I think that is unfortunate. We must understand that the Job Guarantee is a very specific approach to maintaining loose full employment and price stability. At its heart it is a buffer stock mechanism rather than a job creation structure. Sure enough, it creates jobs on demand by workers who want to work but cannot find work elsewhere. In normal times, it might not create or sustain many jobs at all. And, importantly, it might not be part of a fiscal ‘stimulus’ program. […] As carbon-intensive sectors are closed down by regulation, the affected communities will transit into new activities and new employment opportunities. Underpinning it all will be the Job Guarantee safety net for those workers with a need for a minimum wage job. But the scale of the investment and skill development required will see massive shifts in workers between industries, occupations and sectors (public and private). The Job Guarantee will only be a small part of those shifts and should not be seen as the employment solution to the disruption that the Green New Deal will generate.
• #1067; The Post-Game Interview — Wondermark by David Malki !:
  
• The Tragedy of the Tragedy of the Commons — Matto Mildenberger in Scientific American: Thirty years ago, a different future was available. Gradual climate policies could have slowly steered our economy towards gently declining carbon pollution levels. The costs to most Americans would have been imperceptible. But that future was stolen from us. It was stolen by powerful, carbon-polluting interests who blocked policy reforms at every turn to preserve their short-term profits. They locked each of us into an economy where fossil fuel consumption continues to be a necessity, not a choice. This is what makes attacks on individual behavior so counterproductive. Yes, it’s great to drive an electric vehicle (if you can afford it) and purchase solar panels (if powerful utilities in your state haven’t conspired to make renewable energy more expensive). But the point is that interest groups have structured the choices available to us today. Individuals don’t have the agency to steer our economic ship from the passenger deck. As Harvard historian Naomi Oreskes reminds us, “[abolitionists] wore clothes made of cotton picked by slaves. But that did not make them hypocrites … it just meant that they were also part of the slave economy, and they knew it. That is why they acted to change the system, not just their clothes.”
• Calvin and Hobbes — by Bill Waterson:
  
• Why I Hate Houses — Yves Smith, Naked Capitalism: There are bona fide reasons to have problems with this way of living, namely the environmental cost. Free-standing buildings take more energy to heat and cool than multi-unit structures. Car ownership is pretty much unavoidable, since even in those few suburbs with decent public transport, it’s designed for going in and of the city center (as in for commuting), not for provisioning, transporting kids, or running other errands. And if you decide to fit in, as a recent post pointed out, “Lawns, in general, are pretty much the enemy for healthy insect habitats.” And don’t get me started on leaf blowers. Now I could pretend to not like houses out of reasons of conscience, or a preference for living in high-density areas (which I do have). But my big reason for not liking houses is the inefficiency and time sink of maintaining them.
• The Tragic Story of Jimmy Aldaoud, Deported From the Streets of Detroit to His Death in Iraq — Chris Gelardi, the Intercept: Before he was deported, Jimmy Aldaoud had never stepped foot in Iraq. Born in Greece to Iraqi refugee parents, he immigrated to the United States with his family via a refugee resettlement program 40 years ago, when he was just 15 months old. He considered himself American and knew hardly anything of Iraqi society. Still, on the afternoon of June 4, he found himself wandering the arrivals terminal of Al Najaf International Airport, about 100 miles south of Baghdad, with around $50, some insulin for his diabetes, and the clothes on his back. […] Aldaoud spoke no Arabic, had no known family in Iraq, and nobody knew he was there. Disembarking in Najaf, he was “scared,” “confused,” and acting panicked, according to an Iraqi immigration officer he encountered. And 63 days later — this past Tuesday — he was dead.
• The ideology of postmodernism is to present all existing injustice as an effect of discrimination; Robert Pfaller tells ILNA — Iranian Labour News Agency: The general ideological task of postmodernism is to present all existing injustice as an effect of discrimination. This is, of course, funny again: Since every discrimination presupposes an already established class structure of inequality. If you do not have unequal places, you cannot distribute individuals in a discriminating way, even if you want to do so. Thus progressive neoliberalism massively increases social inequality, while distributing all minority groups in an "equal" way over the unequal places.
• We are approaching a period of fiscal [policy] dominance — Bill Mitchell: The dissonance in mainstream economics and the political debate about policy settings is getting deeper and more public. We now have examples of central bankers ‘throwing their hands up in the air’ and nearly begging governments to abandon their obsession with fiscal surpluses, and, instead, use fiscal policy to stimulate waning economic growth. What I think is happening is that we are entering a period of fiscal dominance, which will represent a categorical rejection of the mainstream macroeconomics consensus that has dominated policy making since the 1980s – the neoliberal era. In turn, this shift will ratify the main precepts of Modern Monetary Theory (MMT). We are observing paradigm shift occurring as the dominant neoliberal paradigm fails at every turn. There is a long way to go though before the practitioners acknowledge that such a shift has occurred. But there is progress.
• How Richard Vague Discovered Gravity: An Interview + Book Review of A Brief History of Doom: Two Hundred Years of Financial Crises — John Siman in Naked Capitalism: Richard Vague: […] A couple of years ago, I was lamenting the fact that the U.S. did not have an industrial policy of the sort China now has and the U.S. itself has had in the past in efforts like the construction of railroads and canals. I was lamenting the lack of significantly stepped up government support for areas like 5G, high tech manufacturing, genetic engineering, and artificial intelligence, and expressed fear that China would surpass us in those areas as Japan had in automobiles in the 1980s. A friend quickly corrected me, saying that the U.S. most definitely had an industrial policy, even though it was largely unstated: namely, support for the financial and real estate sectors. That support is manifested in tax laws, regulation, and a host of other ways. A light bulb went off, since his statement was in lockstep with what I had been finding in my research. Bit by bit, by hook and by crook, there has been a disproportionate accumulation of policy support for these two industries—the very two industries I had come to view as the “swing sectors” in the economy, the most frequent source of booms and busts. And they are wed together—it is increased leverage that directly results in increased asset values. And orthodox economics, both by commission and omission, has facilitated this.

This week, I have been mostly reading:

• Doonesbury — Gary Trudeau:
  
• French city of Dunkirk tests out free transport – and it works — Colin Kinniburgh, France 24: For many, the effect has been nothing short of liberating, says Vanessa Delevoye, editor of Urbis, a magazine of urban politics published by the local government. To get around town, you no longer need to look at the schedules, buy tickets or worry about parking, she says. You just hop on the bus. “It’s become a synonym of freedom,” she says, attracting those who might not otherwise have used public transport. In this largely working-class city, “people of limited means say they’ve rediscovered transport” – a prerequisite to finding a job, maintaining friendships or participating in local arts and culture.
• Feminism explains our (toxic) relationships with our smartphones — Maria Farrell in the Conversationalist: A couple of weeks ago, I gave a talk in Austria on smartphones and cybersecurity. “Put up your hand if you like or maybe even love your smartphone,” I asked the audience of policymakers, industrialists and students. Nearly every hand in the room shot up. “Now, please put up your hand if you trust your smartphone.” One young guy at the back put his hand in the air, then faltered as it became obvious he was alone. I thanked him for his honesty and paused before saying,“We love our phones, but we do not trust them. And love without trust is the definition of an abusive relationship.”
• Uh-oh: Silicon Valley is building a Chinese-style social credit system — Mike Elgan in Fast Company: Nobody likes antisocial, violent, rude, unhealthy, reckless, selfish, or deadbeat behavior. What’s wrong with using new technology to encourage everyone to behave? The most disturbing attribute of a social credit system is not that it’s invasive, but that it’s extralegal. Crimes are punished outside the legal system, which means no presumption of innocence, no legal representation, no judge, no jury, and often no appeal. In other words, it’s an alternative legal system where the accused have fewer rights. Social credit systems are an end-run around the pesky complications of the legal system. Unlike China’s government policy, the social credit system emerging in the U.S. is enforced by private companies. If the public objects to how these laws are enforced, it can’t elect new rule-makers.
• Humility — Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal by Zach Wienersmith:
  
• Why an “AI Race” Between the U.S. and China Is a Terrible, Terrible Idea — Sam Biddle at the Intercept: Sure, yes, it’s doubtful we could have “marshaled a whole-of-government approach” to space travel without having first “marshaled a whole-of-government approach” to rocket-borne atomic genocide, but to highlight the eventual accomplishments of NASA without acknowledging that it entailed a very close dance with a worldwide apocalypse is ahistoric and absurd. To use this comparison to goad us into another nationalist tech race with a global military power is outright dangerous — if only because the victory remains completely undefined. How would we “beat” China, exactly? Beat them at what, exactly? Which specific problems do we hope to use AI to fix? At a point in history when cities are beginning to scrutinize and outright ban “AI” technologies like facial recognition, are we sure the fixes aren’t even worse than the problems? Nationalists caught in an arms race have no time to answer questions like these or any others; they’ve got a race to win! […] Rarely does anyone explain exactly why we should ever want to beat China in this particular field, one that’s helped the government there build incredibly powerful systems of social control, civil liberty annihilation, and minority oppression — areas where the U.S. is still competitive, sure, but perhaps falling behind.
• U.S. Economic Warfare and Likely Foreign Defenses — Michael Hudson's keynote paper delivered at the 14th Forum of the World Association for Political Economy, July 21, 2019: We are still mired in the Oil War that escalated in 2003 with the invasion of Iraq, which quickly spread to Libya and Syria. American foreign policy has long been based largely on control of oil. This has led the United States to oppose the Paris accords to stem global warming. Its aim is to give U.S. officials the power to impose energy sanctions forcing other countries to “freeze in the dark” if they do not follow U.S. leadership. To expand its oil monopoly, America is pressuring Europe to oppose the Nordstream II gas pipeline from Russia, claiming that this would make Germany and other countries dependent on Russia instead of on U.S. liquified natural gas (LNG). Likewise, American oil diplomacy has imposed unilateral sanctions against Iranian oil exports, until such time as a regime change opens up that country’s oil reserves to U.S., French, British and other allied oil majors. U.S. control of dollarized money and credit is critical to this hegemony. As Congressman Brad Sherman of Los Angeles told a House Financial Services Committee hearing on May 9, 2019: “An awful lot of our international power comes from the fact that the U.S. dollar is the standard unit of international finance and transactions. Clearing through the New York Fed is critical for major oil and other transactions. It is the announced purpose of the supporters of cryptocurrency to take that power away from us, to put us in a position where the most significant sanctions we have against Iran, for example, would become irrelevant.” The U.S. aim is to keep the dollar as the transactions currency for world trade, savings, central bank reserves and international lending. This monopoly status enables the U.S. Treasury and State Department to disrupt the financial payments system and trade for countries with which the United States is at economic or outright military war.

This week, I have been mostly reading:

• Perry Bible Fellowship — by Nicholas Gurewitch:
  
• The people of the Middle East should be reassured by one thing – their autocrats are no longer a global anomaly — Robert Fisk at the Independent: President Hassan Rouhani of Iran got it right on Tuesday. He said that the White House is “afflicted by mental retardation and doesn’t know what to do”. Donald Trump’s new sanctions may not be as “outrageous and idiotic” as Rouhani claims, but we’ve now reached a stage where the American president’s mental incapacity is plain for all to see. It is a sign of the times – our times, I’m afraid – that all the rantings and ravings of Iran’s leaders over the past 40 years at last sound clear cut, true, absolutely on the cue. Trump is crackers, barmy, off the wall, categorically lunatic. Rouhani is a sane man, but in the past we could listen to folk like President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, who was crackers, and take a chuckle at Iran’s expense. Talk of the “Great Satan” could even get a bit boring after a while. But Trump, while possessing some of the characteristics of Colonel Gaddafi, now sounds like Ahmadinejad.
• Are Cryptocurrencies the First Crack in the Wall to Regulate Facebook? — Marshall Auerback on Zuckarus flying too close to the sun, in Naked Capitalism: How does Facebook potentially bypass central banks, bank regulators and existing currency systems when it is backed by these very same government-issued currencies? Even more anomalous, the company is provisionally partnering with entities firmly locked into the existing payments system, such as Visa or MasterCard. It has even suggested that banks are welcome to join the “Libra Association” if they wish to do so. What’s the point, and what advantages would these companies secure? Ultimately, this makes Libra look like just another link in a daisy chain of credit, the “moneyness” of its proposed cryptocurrency effectively established by its backing by other pre-existing monetary instruments. So why bother? Just because the label says Facebook (or Libra)? In case Mark Zuckerberg hasn’t noticed, Facebook isn’t quite the reputable brand it was a few years ago, and companies like PayPal already provide many of the types of services purportedly on offer from Libra (already operating under regulatory sanctions from the existing monetary authorities).
• Absent — Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal by Zach Weinersmith:
  
• Political Cartooning Was Murdered. Here’s the Autopsy. — Tedd Rall: Individual cartoonists are under fire around the world. Only in the United States, “land of the free,” has the art form as a whole been targeted for systematic destruction by ruling elites and cultural gatekeepers. After decades of relentless, sweeping and never-reversed cutbacks there are now far more political cartoonists in Iran than in the United States. After terrorists murdered 12 people at Charlie Hebdo, a single publication in France, hundreds of U.S. newspapers ran editorials celebrating the power of cartoons; 99% of these hypocritical blowhards didn’t employ a single cartoonist. American editorial cartooning didn’t just die. It was murdered. Here’s how it happened/it’s happening
• What a Pediatrician Saw Inside a Border Patrol Warehouse — Jeremy Raff in the Atlantic: Sevier set up a makeshift clinic—stethoscope, thermometer, blood-pressure cuffs—in a room, lined with computer stations, that agents use for paperwork. Each of the agent stations had its own bottle of hand sanitizer and disinfectant wipes. But when Sevier asked the 38 children she examined that day about sanitation, they all said they weren't allowed to wash their hands or brush their teeth. This was “tantamount to intentionally causing the spread of disease,” she later wrote in a medical declaration about the visit, the document that the lawyers filed in federal court and also shared with me. (Asked for comment on this story, a Customs and Border Protection official wrote in an email that the agency aims to “provide the best care possible to those in our custody, especially children.” The agency’s “short-term holding facilities were not designed to hold vulnerable populations,” the official added, “and we urgently need additional humanitarian funding to manage this crisis.”) As agents brought in the children she requested, Sevier said, the smell of sweat and soiled clothing filled the room. They had not been allowed to bathe or change since crossing the Rio Grande and turning themselves over to officials. Sevier found that about two-thirds of the kids she examined had symptoms of respiratory infection. The guards wore surgical masks, but the detainees breathed the air unfiltered. As the children filed in, Sevier said she found evidence of sleep deprivation, dehydration, and malnutrition too.
• The System Doesn’t Forgive You. Why Would You Forgive It? — Ted Rall:
  
• The New Right: how a Frenchman born 150 years ago inspired the extreme nationalism behind Brexit and Donald Trump — Pablo de Orellana and Nicholas Michelsen in the Conversation: We spent the last two years analysing hundreds of documents written by New Right thinkers and their forebears to explain how and why these ideas take root. This ideological history is important if today’s nationalists are to be understood, and if there is to be any hope of overcoming the racism and sexism inherent to their ideas. What our research shows is that we are living through the latest battle in a 300-year long ideological war over the meaning of humanity itself. On one side is the belief in a universal idea of humanity, which produced notions of equal rights, humanism and liberalism. Opposing it is the belief that marks all forms of nationalism: that humanity is not a single entity but rather, one divided by nature into national identities.
• In which One become Two — Wondermark by David Malki !:
  

This week, I have been mostly reading:

• Apple locked me out of its walled garden. It was a nightmare — Luke Kurtis in Quartz: All in all, I was locked out of my account for roughly two months. Had I not taken advantage of my internal Apple contacts, I may not have gotten my account back. I spent a large part of those two months in a kind of grief, mourning not only the loss of a collection of media built up over a decade and a half, but also all the products I owned that no longer functioned as they were supposed to. The company I had given so much money to over the years could revoke my access to everything with just the press of a button. This whole ordeal made me wonder if I want to continue using Apple products. The more I consider it, the more I realize it’s not just a question of choosing one product over another. The truth is that Google or Microsoft (or Nintendo, or Samsung, or Sony, the list goes on) could just as easily cut off a customer for no stated purpose and without recourse.
• Thirty-Two Short Stories About Death in Prison — Ken White in the Atlantic: Jeffrey Epstein’s name and face are everywhere following his death. Even as an investigation reveals that the Metropolitan Correctional Center, where he died, was terminally short-staffed and relied on untrained guards who failed to monitor him, conspiracy theories persist. Americans who believe in their justice system assert that it is obvious that he was murdered, and that jailers could not possibly be so incompetent, cruel, or indifferent as to let such a high-profile prisoner commit suicide. Here, to help you evaluate that claim, are 32 short stories about in-custody deaths or near-deaths in America. These stories don’t mention Jeffrey Epstein, but they are about him. Epstein was incarcerated in the United States of America, and this is how the United States of America, the mightiest and richest nation there is or ever has been, treats incarcerated people. When you say, “There is no way that guards could be so reckless, so indifferent, so malicious as to just let someone as important as Epstein die,” this is how 32 Americans respond. Many, many more could respond in kind.
• No, Productivity Does Not Explain Income — Blair Fix: Did you hear the joke about the economists who tested their theory by defining it to be true? Oh, I forgot. It’s not a joke. It’s standard practice among mainstream economists. They propose that productivity explains income. And then they ‘test’ this idea by defining productivity in terms of income. In this post, I’m going to show you this circular logic. Then I’ll show you what productivity differences look like when productivity is measure objectively. They’re far too small to explain income differences.
• Outer Turmoil — George Monbiot: In politics almost everywhere we see what looks like the externalisation of psychic wounds or deficits. Sigmund Freud claimed that “groups take on the personality of the leader”. I think it would be more accurate to say that the private tragedies of powerful people become the public tragedies of those they dominate. For some people, it is easier to command a nation, to send thousands to their deaths in unnecessary wars, to separate children from their families and inflict terrible suffering than to process their own trauma and pain. What we appear to see in national politics around the world is a playing out in public of deep private distress. This could be a particularly potent force in British politics. The psychotherapist Nick Duffell has written of “wounded leaders”, who were separated from their families in early childhood when they were sent to boarding school. They develop a “survival personality”, learning to cut off their feelings and project a false self, characterised by a public display of competence and self-reliance. Beneath this persona is a profound insecurity, that might generate an insatiable need for power, prestige and attention. The result is a system which “consistently turns out people who appear much more competent than they actually are.”
• The brain-eating zombie party — This Modern World by Tom Tomorrow: