Karl Marx

At the moment there's a piece by David “The Wire” Simon floating around the web which I don't think reflects him at his best, but which does include a good statement of something I agree with:

I'm not a Marxist in the sense that I don't think Marxism has a very specific clinical answer to what ails us economically. I think Marx was a much better diagnostician than he was a clinician. He was good at figuring out what was wrong or what could be wrong with capitalism if it wasn't attended to and much less credible when it comes to how you might solve that.

You know if you've read Capital or if you've got the Cliff Notes, you know that his imaginings of how classical Marxism – of how his logic would work when applied – kind of devolve into such nonsense as the withering away of the state and platitudes like that. But he was really sharp about what goes wrong when capital wins unequivocally, when it gets everything it asks for.

My relationship with the political left

A friend recently commented that he has divorced himself from the political left; another friend waggishly suggested that he is still married to it but could use some relationship counseling.

Speaking for myself, I wouldn't quite claim that I'm happily married to the left, but I am committed to the marriage.

Truth to tell, I've been stepping out on the left a bit, in online forums, for some time. It's fun, and some of those other political philosophies are sexy and fun. But while the left can be annoying at times, it isn't batshit crazy like so many of those “alternative” political philosophies you meet on the internet.

So a little flirting with other philosophies has only strengthened my marriage to progressivism. It may not quite be like when I was young, but when you get older you develop more realistic expectations.

Conservatives and racism

Jonathan Chait at New York offers us Why Conservatives Got Segregation Wrong a Second Time in South Africa, which reminds us that their specific arguments vary but their conclusion about racism is perennial.

Over the last century, the conservative line on racial questions has undergone a constant flux in its particulars. The distinguishing element of conservative thinking on race is the belief that, at any given moment, the balance of actual or threatened power is arrayed against whites. The conservative line often concedes that whites may have sinned against blacks in the past, and may even continue to do so, but that at the present moment the risk lies in taking things too far in the opposite direction.

These arguments are not always entirely wrong. They often contain important elements of truth: Mandela did have some dangerous communist allies; some affirmative-action programs can have terrible side effects; and so on. For that reason, whenever it’s plausible to do so, the specifics of conservative racial thinking need to be analyzed and debated on their merits, not stigmatized as racist. And even if conservative racial arguments had been completely wrong, it wouldn’t prove they would continue to be completely wrong forever. Still, understanding the history of conservative racial arguments is vital to understanding what conservative racial thinking is.

Dogs in the Vineyard play aids

Dissatisfied with the available handouts for players in D. Vincent Baker's brilliant, groundbreaking tabletop role-playing game Dogs in the Vineyard, I created these.

• Player character sheet — The character sheet in the rulebook is oriented around character creation; this sheet is oriented toward play
• Player's game summary — Key rules and play advice in a readable format, for players
• The World of the Faithful — A short summary of the setting information from the game rules
• GM's game summary — Key rules and advice, for the GM

You can find more resources from John H. Kim, Carl Rigney, and Jason Morningstar.

One more thing: in the game I GM, I use Sacred Harp's track “Whither the Wind” as title music at the start of the game: wistful and a little bit spooky.

Close reading

Two blogs at Patheos, the religion site, offer close readings of texts held as sacred and inspired by millions of Americans. I'm speaking, of course, of Atlas Shrugged and Left Behind.

These are critical readings. Very critical. Slacktivist, who writes the Left Behind blog, tells us:

I'm not a pastor, so I won't be pastoral here. These books are evil, anti-Christian crap.

Worth your time.

Lady Blackbird

Pound-for-pound, Lady Blackbird may be the best tabletop roleplaying game ever made. It weighs in at only sixteen pages (including the blank character sheet and two half-page illustrations!) but you could run a ten-session campaign grounded in its single page of setting. Or you can finish the game with a satisfying climax in one sitting. It delivers character relationships, a vivid and interesting setting, a simple game engine with a novel dice pool mechanic that plays swiftly and encourages good roleplaying, and an adventure setup that is open-ended but has a strong narrative drive. You can run it with experienced roleplayers or story game virgins or a mix of both. I have never heard of it going wrong for a player group; I can't even imagine how you could screw it up.

I love it so much that I made special dice for using the system.

And it's free!

On the Non-Aggression Principle

I would very much like the elimination of coercive violence as a factor in human society.

I would also like a pony.

Until all people abjure violence, I will regard those who fight against publicly-accountable government coercion as de facto allies of the forces of private coercion.

If you're wondering what the “Non-Aggression Principle” is:

• von Mises Institute
• Wikipedia
• Lew Rockwell
• Advocates for Self-Government

If you're wondering what the illustration is, it is Norman Rockwell's painting “The Problem We All Live With”, depicting young Ruby Bridges attending public school, defended by U. S. Marshals, against the violent objections of bigots in her community.

(And another comment from Bleeding Heart Libertarians describes how the Principle isn't the strong argument that many libertarians imagine it is.)

On smarm

A brilliant analysis for our times from Tom Scocca at Gawker. I'm serious.

But why are nastiness and snideness taken to be features of our age? One general point of agreement, in denunciations of snark, is that snark is reactive. It is a kind of response. Yet to what is it responding? Of what is it contemptuous?

....

If you listen to the crusaders against negativity—in literature, in journalism, in politics, in commerce—you begin to hear a recurring set of themes and attitudes, amounting to an omnipresent, unnamed cultural force. The words flung outward start to define a sort of unarticulated philosophy, one that has largely avoided being recognized and defined.

Without identifying and comprehending what they have in common, we have a dangerously incomplete understanding of the conditions we are living under.

Over the past year or two, on the way to writing this essay, I've accumulated dozens of emails and IM conversations from friends and colleagues. They send links to articles, essays, Tumblr posts, online comments, tweets—the shared attitude transcending any platform or format or subject matter.

What is this defining feature of our times? What is snark reacting to?

It is reacting to smarm.

What is smarm, exactly? Smarm is a kind of performance—an assumption of the forms of seriousness, of virtue, of constructiveness, without the substance. Smarm is concerned with appropriateness and with tone. Smarm disapproves.

I am shocked! Shocked!

This should be handy to have around.

Freedom archipelago

From the Associated Press:

The case marks the first time that Europe’s role in the CIA’s controversial rendition program, which was in operation at the height of then-President George W. Bush’s war on terrorism, has reached the European Court of Human Rights.

All the prisons were closed by May 2006. Interrogations at sea have replaced CIA “black sites” as the U.S. government’s preferred method for holding terrorism suspects and questioning them without access to lawyers.

Thank goodness we have ended the shameful American practice of secret torture prisons on land. Oh, except that one, though I guess it doesn't count because it isn't secret.

Choose two

• Good
• Cheap
• Fast

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• Omniscient
• Omnipotent
• Omnibenevolent

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• On spec
• On budget
• On time

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• good grades
• social life
• sleep

One demand

A Message From Occupied Wall Street (Day Five) still moves me profoundly.

This is the fifth communiqué from the 99 percent. We are occupying Wall Street.

On September 21^st, 2011, Troy Davis, an innocent man, was murdered by the state of Georgia. Troy Davis was one of the 99 percent.

Ending capital punishment is our one demand.

On September 21^st, 2011, the richest 400 Americans owned more wealth than half of the country's population.

Ending wealth inequality is our one demand.

On September 21^st, 2011, four of our members were arrested on baseless charges.

Ending police intimidation is our one demand.

On September 21^st, 2011, we determined that Yahoo lied about occupywallst.org being in spam filters.

Ending corporate censorship is our one demand.

On September 21^st, 2011, roughly eighty percent of Americans thought the country was on the wrong track.

Ending the modern gilded age is our one demand.

On September 21^st, 2011, roughly 15% of Americans approved of the job Congress was doing.

Ending political corruption is our one demand.

On September 21^st, 2011, roughly one sixth of Americans did not have work.

Ending joblessness is our one demand.

On September 21^st, 2011, roughly one sixth of America lived in poverty.

Ending poverty is our one demand.

On September 21^st, 2011, roughly fifty million Americans were without health insurance.

Ending health-profiteering is our one demand.

On September 21^st, 2011, America had military bases in around one hundred and thirty out of one hundred and sixty-five countries.

Ending American imperialism is our one demand.

On September 21^st, 2011, America was at war with the world.

Ending war is our one demand.

On September 21^st, 2011, we stood in solidarity with Madrid, San Francisco, Los Angeles, Madison, Toronto, London, Athens, Sydney, Stuttgart, Tokyo, Milan, Amsterdam, Algiers, Tel Aviv, Portland and Chicago. Soon we will stand with Phoenix, Montreal, Cleveland and Atlanta. We're still here. We are growing. We intend to stay until we see movements toward real change in our country and the world.

You have fought all the wars. You have worked for all the bosses. You have wandered over all the countries. Have you harvested the fruits of your labors, the price of your victories? Does the past comfort you? Does the present smile on you? Does the future promise you anything? Have you found a piece of land where you can live like a human being and die like a human being? On these questions, on this argument, and on this theme, the struggle for existence, the people will speak. Join us.

We speak as one. All of our decisions, from our choice to march on Wall Street to our decision to continue occupying Liberty Square, were decided through a consensus based process by the group, for the group.

Privatization

For future reference, a long report from In The Public Interest talking about breakdowns from privatization in the US:The Coast-to-Coast Failures of Outsourcing Public Services to For-Profit Corporations.

Gawker has a list of highlights:

• Los Angeles County continually renewed its ^$3 million year contract with a firm called Wings of Refuge to place foster children, despite numerous reports of kids going to abusive homes where they were beaten and locked away for days on end.
• Indiana hired IBM to run its food stamp and Medicaid programs, then bungled it and dumped thousands of residents from the rolls—including an elderly nun who was denied food stamps because she missed a recertification interview while hospitalized for cancer.
• School-cafeteria workers in New Jersey saw their hourly wages cut by ^$4 to ^$6 an hour after their jobs were privatized. “[W]e use our personal sick days just to get paid so we can pay rent for the next month,” one told investigators.
• Also, there was the whole Chicago parking meters thing.
• Denver contracted with a Portuguese company to run a toll-road for 99 years. That firm successfully prevented the construction of a free road nearby, citing its contract. The city is stuck unable to build new roads nearby for a century unless it richly compensates the toll-road operator.
• During the 2008 flood emergency in Indiana, tolls on turnpikes were suspended for travelers. The company running the toll roads, citing its contract, billed state taxpayers ^$447,000 for the lost revenue… and got it.
• A company contracted in New Mexico to tape city commission meetings refused to make those tapes available to the public because they were "private property."
• A California public transit district hired for-profit companies to run bus routes—companies that didn't do complete drug-and-alcohol tests on drivers and stranded handicapped riders at their stops.
• Two-thirds of Florida's privatized prisons failed to meet the legal requirement to run at least 7 percent more cheaply than state-run jails. Half of the private jails were actually more expensive to run. But the state never set up a mechanism for punishing them.
• 65 percent of private prisons require the states and cities they work with to meet inmate quotas, forcing governments to find inmates to keep the jails up to a profitable capacity.
• Northwest Missouri State University forked over tons of taxpayer cash to contract out most of its food, vending, and bookstore services. Rather than open up the contract to bidders, it took contractors at higher rates who were willing to donate to the university's athletic stadium fund.

The origin of corporations

In an online discussion an anti-corporate anarchist who held that the regulatory state is just a tool of corporations' project of extracting wealth from society linked the article Our Hidden History of Corporations in the United States, and said:

It's hard to discern why [progressives] ... are so ingrained in seeing government as their sole savior in fighting against corporate Frankensteins — but they are clearly incorrect, as a legal and historical matter.

I wanted to keep this lovely reply by another participant in the discussion:

I have never denied the moral hazard in tax breaks and limited liability. I have never denied the corruption ensuing from thence in how corporations can achieve protected status from government.

I, like Theodore Roosevelt, and some of our early practitioners of government, would never have been cozy with this idea. Nevertheless, the reality is that corporations file for incorporation, pay on a periodic basis for their limited liability, but are not created by government.

More particularly, you can thank the Supreme Court for its ruling in Dartmouth College v Woodward, February 2, 1819, for first overturning the attempt by government to limit and control business charters.

How can you read these paragraphs and not see that government put up a good fight against corporations:

But the men running corporations pressed on. Contests over charter were battles to control labor, resources, community rights, and political sovereignty. More and more frequently, corporations were abusing their charters to become conglomerates and trusts. They converted the nation’s resources and treasures into private fortunes, creating factory systems and company towns. Political power began flowing to absentee owners, rather than community-rooted enterprises.

The industrial age forced a nation of farmers to become wage earners, and they became fearful of unemployment—a new fear that corporations quickly learned to exploit. Company towns arose. and blacklists of labor organizers and workers who spoke up for their rights became common. When workers began to organize, industrialists and bankers hired private armies to keep them in line. They bought newspapers to paint businessmen as heroes and shape public opinion. Corporations bought state legislators, then announced legislators were corrupt and said that they used too much of the public’s resources to scrutinize every charter application and corporate operation.

Government spending during the Civil War brought these corporations fantastic wealth. Corporate executives paid “borers” to infest Congress and state capitals, bribing elected and appointed officials alike. They pried loose an avalanche of government financial largesse. During this time, legislators were persuaded to give corporations limited liability, decreased citizen authority over them, and extended durations of charters.

Attempts were made to keep strong charter laws in place, but with the courts applying legal doctrines that made protection of corporations and corporate property the center of constitutional law, citizen sovereignty was undermined. As corporations grew stronger, government and the courts became easier prey. They freely reinterpreted the U.S. Constitution and transformed common law doctrines.

Corporate personhood was a court reporter's mistake in Santa Clara County v Southern Pacific Ralroad. And forever after it has become a stare decisis nightmare.

Corporations were never intended nor are now creations of government.

Having said that, I still believe with you we need to fix corporate status.

Informed radicalism

I end up spending a fair bit of time talking to radicals of various stripes, both online and in real life. It's something I enjoy, and I think it's important for an intellectually curious person to do.

Understand, I don't mean “radical” as a dismissive insult, as most Americans seem to misuse the term. I mean it in the proper sense of striking at the root. These are times that call for radicalism. Our institutions are failing us.

But we mostly have a poor crop of radicals, and one thing I find particularly vexing is radicals who only know their own radical school of thought.

An anarchist who doesn't know who Hobbes was, or an Austrian who doesn't understand what Keynesian economics actually says, or an anti-globalist who doesn't know what comparative advantage is has not done their homework. If one has not devoted enough attention to understand the best arguments for conventional solutions well enough to recognize and describe them, one does not have an informed opinion worthy of attention.

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A friend suggests this could be coined as Korman's Law:

if you don't understand the conventional thinking, there's no point in offering radical thinking

Though of course John Lennon said it better:

You say you want a revolution?
Well, you know
We'd all like to see the plan.