PROCÈS-VERBAL

Some random thoughts I put out there just for the sake of argument:

• After reading Men Not Working, and Not Wanting Just Any Job, I think there’s one thing which should be made absolutely clear from the start: the economic “utility” of the vast, vast majority of jobs could only be quantified in negative numbers. And really, even under the best conditions, who would want to work for a bunch of people (shareholders) who believe you are lazy, think that cutting your wages and eliminating your benefits is a good thing, and are happiest (given AAPL’s share price) with a mute, compliant workforce out-of-sight in any foreign country?

  File this under, “I want to be an corporate cog when I grow up!”

• Belonging to, believing in, and identifying yourself with any organization necessitates tendering the individual’s moral proxy to the organization. Who today would want to work Goldman Sachs? In the political realm, taking back one’s moral proxy is, in itself, a radical act.

  Full disclosure: By another criteria, believing in the need for major structural reform makes me a “radical” as well. However, I am content (but not overjoyed) to do my own thinking and bear the burden.

• Once you’ve taken back your moral proxy, it’s easy to note the myriad ways the organizational precepts both underlie and are reinforced in the media. Over time, the foreign press is frequently shown to be a more reliable gauge of America than we are of ourselves. The downside is that participatory government is only as strong as its electorate.
   
  
• The big difference between now and when Hayek and Von Mises were developing the economic philosophies we today call neoliberalism is that we now have decades worth of good, hard data and the computing power to view and analyze it, which didn’t exist then. I commend you to the revelations shown by viewing a century’s worth of income tax records as well as The Two Income Trap, based on real data from the Department of Commerce.

  Many times I’ve claimed that free markets expand to absorb all resources (even real, but intangible resources like time and human capital), and Elizabeth Warren’s work does a fine job of documenting this in action.

• Those who were rich in land, and derived their incomes from rents are in what ways different from those who have fat bank balances and derive their incomes from renting their money out in financial markets? Aren’t they all rentiers?
   
  
• The retail investor with his sexy eTrade (or any other) platform . . . is nothing more than a noise trader.

Any more of this and my head will explode, however I do want to note an interesting exchange I had with CNN’s Ram Ramgopal and Richard Murphy, co-author of Tax Havens: How Globalization Really Works. Beginning with the tweet of a story about how identity thieves might be responsible for $26 billion in tax return theft, I countered with the fact that it’s estimated that $15 Trillion sits in tax havens worldwide, and Murphy chimed in with the finding that tax evasion could be removing as much as $3.1 Trillion from the world’s taxable income annually.

CNN’s face on Twitter had this to say: “Wow, that’s big. Had no idea.“

Who does? Of course I’m a radical, but is this because I am a bomb-tossing nihilist or the result of a massive failure of the mainstream?

Now you can go back to watching the Military Channel, some major league sports, NASCAR or Dancing With the Stars.

How I spend my day off. I do some housekeeping here at home as well as on the various places on the web where I reside. A little organization to make life easier. It’s a regularly recurring task, because I normally use three browsers: one for news, another for blogs, and a third to touch base with various online foreign policy journals.

Using multiple tabs, opening a browser is an exercise in patience for me.

Later on today, I’ll scroll through the twenty or so studies and white papers I downloaded last night. My idea of a fun time.

One thing I did was to gather all my news links into one place so Firefox opens a bit faster than it did: my *Daily Readswas the target of some cleanup. Hopefully, while the rest of the political blogosphere moans and groans over things like the failed debt limit vote in the House (why this is news isn’t exactly clear to me, the GOP telegraphed their intentions months ago and the markets have ignored the kabuki), I will attempt a quick news roundup of stories of note which go unremarked in the lefty blogosphere:
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Well, if you didn’t believe me when I posted Regime Change is the Official Coalition Goal, here you go. The road we started down when we first decided to intervene has now reached it’s logical conclusion.

Well. It was inevitable, wasn’t it? Does anyone remember when this was billed to us, the UN and the world as a no-fly zone?

Published in three newspapers, Presidents Obama, Sarkozy and Prime Minister Cameron have now publicly admit what many believed (me included) was always their agenda.

Actually, there was no “road” as I’ve described it here. We arrived at this destination in the first two weeks of March, and this is where we’ve remained ever since.
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One step forward, one step back. It seems that reports that the Supreme Military Council in Egypt was as eager to crush the peaceful protests in Tahrir Square could very well been true, that the thugs are still hard at work suppressing dissent.

Freedom House reports that Maikel Nabil Sanad, and Egyptian blogger has been arrested:

by Egyptian military police on March 28 on charges that he allegedly defamed the armed forces

To the generals running Egypt: civil societies are NOT subject to military discipline. Military enrollment is a contract under which an enlistee agrees to accept such discipline. Civilians, by definition, have not agreed to accept being treated like raw recruits. That’s their job.

One wonders when they’ll get that. One also wonders when our own officials will understand that expanding military and police powers does exactly the same damned thing.
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Former Pennsylvania congressman Curt Weldon (R-PA) leads a small, private delegation to meet with Moammar Gadhafi. Politico reports that congressman Weldon will urge Gadhafi to step down:

“We must engage face-to-face with Colonel Qaddafi and persuade him to leave, as my delegation hopes to do,” writes Weldon, who says he is in Libya at the invitation of Qadhafi’s chief of staff.

“I’ve met him enough times to know that it will be very hard to simply bomb him into submission,” he writes. Weldon first met with Qadhafi as part of a 2004 congressional delegation and has visited Libya twice since then before this visit.

The Obama administration and members of Congress from both parties, he writes, have “knowledge” of the mission. The State Department did not immediately respond to POLITICO’s request for comment.

Also reported on CNN and Jordan Fabian, blogging for The Hill.
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Pastor Terry Jones’ desecration of a holy text and the violent reaction it spawned are but some of the long series of acts of violence and hatred which have been acted out worldwide. The recent history of US military and diplomatic choices in the past twenty years have in no way accomplished any purpose but has ensured that the incidence of violence worldwide will continue to rise for at least twenty more years, and more likely thirty or forty, and quite possibly indefinitely.

With our voluntary involvement in the internal affairs of Libya, it is time to take note of the consequences of our decisions and our actions. To bring them right to the front of the discussion. Indeed, from my perspective, continuing along our current trajectory while knowing what we now know is as criminal as any outrages committed by any authoritarian ruler.

The time to choose a different road is now.

Just to make myself clear, I’m going to refrain from getting into a “who started it” discussion and won’t acknowledge comments attempting to make this kind of point. With the stakes being what they are, I think we all need to restrain ourselves from assigning guilt and seeking retribution.

All that is moot at this point.
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For the record (hold onto your hat, MB, I’ll return to this), I’m not in favor of a no-fly zone over Libya. Not only is it a slap in the face to international norms, it’s needlessly dangerous.

One can envision the line of universal monarchs, of great empires, stretching from the Pharaohs in Egypt, through Persia, Macedonia, Rome to the Holy Roman Empire and Ottomans. Today, the notion of empire, of a universal regime, is not all that far behind us. Cpl. Frank Buckles, the last WWI veteran died just 13 days ago as I write. A man who fought in the war that brought down the last two empires left in Europe.

And of course, there’s always PNAC.

The western notion of state sovereignty has largely been endorsed by the entire world. It was not easily won. Perhaps eclipsed only by WWII and the holocaust, the Thirty Years’ War (1618-1648) was one of the worst catastrophes ever visited on Europe. Over a majority of the territory now part of Germany, one third of the population vanished. Throughout large swaths of that territory—almost half—the figure rises to 66%.

It is out of this carnage that the modern state arose, and here’s how it happened.
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“Farmers in Meru had prospered from the production of coffee. With the proceeds they had earned, some had invested in cattle. many had financed the education of their children, some of whom attended elementary school in the village, others secondary school in town, and some universities abroad.

Many of these who secured an education then taken jobs in the cities, maintaining ties with their families at home, they funneled a portion of their earnings back to the farms and shops at Meru. Even during a drought in 1985—the year I worked in the district—Meru, its farmers, and its towns radiated a sheen of prosperity and well-being that reflected the successful response of its peasants to the opportunities presented by the export of coffee.

Departing the farms at the foot of Mount Kenya, I then journeyed farther inland and crossed into Bugisu, a coffee-producing region lying on the slopes of Mount Elgon in Uganda. There too farmers had invested in the production of coffee, and towns had sprung up to provide them the means to ship their crop, to collect payment, and to make purchases for their farms and families. But prosperity and tranquility, I soon learned, lay in Bugisu’s past; stagnation and fear characterized its present. Unlike the streets and towns of Meru, those in Bugisu were not crowded with farmers hurriedly making purchases or leisurely enjoying the pleasure of town; rather, they were occupied by soldiers, while farmers fearfully huddled on their homesteads in the forests. Youths did not stroll about in school uniforms, as they had in Meru, in Bugisu, they instead marched, lockstep, in military garb, lashed by the voices—and the belts—of their commanders. On the farms, the coffee bearing trees remained unpruned; diseases ran unchecked from plant to plant and farm to farm; stocks accumulated, for want of the ability of merchants to finance the purchase of the crop or its transport to the coast.

By venturing from the coast inland, I was therefore forcefully introduced to the link between prosperity and violence. In the central harbor, force was not absent; rather, it was structured and organized.”¹

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The World’s Newest Nation

In case you’ve missed it, the news from Africa isn’t all bad, Egypt notwithstanding. The world’s newest nation, South Sudan, was born after years of dogged diplomacy helped end the world’s longest civil war (excepting perhaps the Karen revolt against the central government in Myanmar) which claimed the lives of an estimated 2 million. China has announced it’s recognition, and the US is poised to follow suit in July.

I’d like to take this opportunity to offer my own, humble, congratulations to the people of South Sudan and wish them health, prosperity and peace.
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Well.

I was flattered to be asked by Howard Dean for my thoughts on the way forward for progressives. Thank you, Governor Dean, that was gracious of you, and my thoughts follow.

I deleted my extended answer, then bobswern’s diary prompts me to revisit my concerns. This post is actually a comment which had gotten out of hand, as well as my response to Gov. Dean.

If you will, follow me beneath the fold . . .
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