Rentier Politics

The rentier class, in economics, is that group which collects income from rent, from owning things.  One can easily imagine feudal, aristocratic landlords who did nothing to earn the land, but profit from their heredity.

Increasingly it is considered acceptable in economics to refer to rentier economies.  Oil extraction, for instance, involves vast sums but very few employees.  Governments survive not because of their own productivity, or that of their citizens, but because of rent.

John Ghazvanian, in Untapped, say economists Hazem Beblawi and Giacomo Luciani point to a mentality among the citizens of a rentier state emerge, that they see wealth as accident rather than the result of hard work.

Looking at the American political scene, I have to say that we must live on some sort of rentier political landscape.  I feel it is accident, more than hard work, which brought a great number of federally elected officials to power, the majority, even, Democrats and Republicans. 

Grisly, Interesting

and maybe even true.  What does "war hero" really mean?  I didn't get past the "McNasty" part before I wrote this, but the first chunk is really mind altering.

I'm Superstitious

About tons of stuff, but none of the normal things.  Black cats concern me no more or less than cats of any other color, and that not much at all, unless they are feral.  No, I consider things like the subway system.  When I show up at the subway, is the train just arriving, perhaps just leaving?  The former is a much better sign than the latter.  Sometimes I'll imagine that for a week straight I haven't had to wait for a subway.  The way things work in NYC, the subway platforms have to be about the most disgusting things that a person would normally walk in to.  Surely there is no place of commerce with that little regard for cleanliness.  The phrase "cleanliness is next to godliness" puts cleanliness in a real high position, especially for atheists.  I imagine the subway tunnels have never really been cleaned, which means about 100+ years of muck and mire have accumulated.  I guess it is no wonder I don't want to spend any extra time there than I have to.  Most of the subway cars are spotless by comparison.

By the way, the German Romantics were a movement of the early 1800s in Germany that some people had given me the impression spoke of Language And Conflict, my thesis.  Well, they don't.  However, Ficthe and von Herder weren't German Romantics, and for some gal-darned reason, although everything else from Amazon comes very quickly, my two Fichte and von Herder still aren't here.  It's a good thing, too, about the German Romantics, since other people trace a direct line from them to the Nazis.  Not really surprising after reading Novalis.  A whole bunch of pro-monarchic, pro-catholic, pro-inquisition (basically) claptrap which suggests that a good ruler just needs to be poetic.  I'm not saying, if it isn't too much trouble, for rulers to be poetic.  I'm just saying it is ancillary.

Would Someone Sending Their Kids To Private School Fund Public Schools to Beat Them?

Of course no one who sends their kids to private school would elect to fund public schools at such a rate (5 kids per class, teachers earn $100K to start!) that would exceed the funding for private schools.

Roughly 1% of people give 80% of all donations to political campaigns.  Roughly 11% of all students go to non-public schools.  Let's imagine, since data is not readily obtainable, that the richest Americans, generally speaking, both donate to political campaigns and send their children to private schools.

It would then be clear that the people who impact political discourse in America have little personal interest in good public schools.  It is actually worse than that, since, to be honest, you don't just want your child to do well in school, you want your child to do better than the other children in other schools.  Parents of private school students almost have a vested interest in making sure public school children only learn enough to perform "service industry" tasks.  People might complain about people in checkout lines who can't make change, but the computer does it for them, so it is really no big deal, right? 

Not to mention the school connections that private schools offer.  I know some of the kids who went to a private school I went to have advanced degrees and high-paying jobs.  I'd be utterly shocked to learn that none of them used school connections to get any of it.

My solution? The average wage for teachers should meet, if not exceed, the average wage, nationwide. And, of course, smaller classrooms.

Why did it work so well before?  Women smart enough to do any job were limited by convention and rules from pursuing careers outside of teaching or nursing. When women were freed, the quality of teachers and nurses decreased.

All in all, even though it meant Ann Coulter would become a lawyer, of course I wouldn't want to go back.

And remember, the reason America lost WWII was that most of our soldiers had been sent to public schools!

Games with Semantics: There will be no "permanent" bases in Iraq!

Bush is chiding people who believe reports that say the "Status of Forces Agreement"(SOFA) that is secret, and to be signed by the Iraqi government, includes "permanent" bases.

Now let us step into the mind of President Bush:

Look, even if we gave Hallibuddy and Buckstel a gazillion dollars (and Lord only knows, we tried) those bases wouldn't last more than, what, a couple thousand years?

That's not "permanent" where I come from.  Thank goodness no reporters ever had the temerity to ask if we are paying for bases that will last for a decade or more.

Patrick Cockburn has been in Iraq a long time and has been breaking stories on the SOFA.  His recent report on it is here.

Feedback, Government and Language

I've already written how a popular government is a sort of feedback loop, the people elect officials, the officials decide, the officials act, the press reports on the actions, the press reports on the results, the people elect officials...

At the time I was interested in the fact that the press was an essential part of this loop, but that it was also a corporate interest, a profit-making enterprise.

Now I am just interested in pointing out that, in addition, if you don't speak the language of the local press, it is a wonder how informed your vote might be without extensive efforts on the parts of translators, most likely in the form of family members who would read and then relay the news.

Slothful Sunday?

There are a bunch of fun videos at The Real McCain.  "The Real McCain 2," linked, is good.  Another video at Brave New Films is called John McCain vs. The Video Tape which isn't as good, and is eight minutes long, but is also pretty embarrassing for John McCain, it even makes John Kerry look pretty good.

Gosh, this online video thing is really going to change things, I was thinking it would all be words.  I was using the internet in the early days, and bandwidth was critical.  I know how to divide images up into chunks to maximize throughput for the (expected) 56K baud modem.

Another video, also pretty neat, is on the connection between Rod Parsley and John McCain

Barack Obama is not George Washington

Some people are concerned that Barack Obama spent so much time in church with a pretty radical pastor.  Some people think that if America rapes a 14 year old girl, then kills her entire family to silence all the witnesses, no one should ever say "God Damn America."

George Washington was a deist.  In his entire list of speeches and writings he never once affirmed any doctrine of the Christan faith explicitly.  It is doubtful he ever prayed, or even knelt in church to pray, and it is extremely unlikely he ever took communion.  He believed in God, although a good portion of the time he called it Providence, which sounds a lot like fate, or even luck.

So why did George Washington go to Church?  He didn't go that often, but he certainly did attend.  The church was the central social gathering of his community.

There is no doubt that Pastor Jeremiah Wright's church was the linchpin, the greatest social nexus, of the area in which he lived.

Civilization II

I feel strongly about humans being more civilized, and, if it were up to me, I'd say we couldn't go out and play (send humans into outer space) until we straighten up our room (the planet). In other words, nothing past the realm of satellites in orbit until we've fixed these problems.

Are We Civilized?

If we were civilized, as a species, the only people who would live as pictured below would be people who had sinned against society or, at least, society's code.

Does it require a government of the world to deal with this situation?  I hope not.  I think we can all see that there is no benefit to having people born and raised in the most marginal, or in some cases sub-marginal, conditions.  Does it do you or I any good to have someone born to live as pictured below? 

I think it speaks badly of us, not that this is the only thing I'd be embarrassed about if we ever do meet any life from beyond the planet.

This image is from Afar, Ethiopia, site of the mid-1980s drought and famine, and again, now, there is another drought, and millions of children are growing up malnourished (UNICEF estimate).  Human needs don't allow us to live in the deepest deserts, or on the highest mountains, but to survive, tenaciously, people have lived on the very edges of these uninhabitable zones. 

Michael Kinsley's newest book is titled:

Please Don't Remain Calm, a collection of his essays from Slate, which he ran.  He is now the editor of the Los Angeles Times.  Although he is certainly literary, as the quote below proves to me, he is in fact of dubious political acumen.

Fleischer speaks a sort of Imperial Court English, in which any question, no matter how specific, is parried with general assurances that the emperor is keenly aware and deeply concerned and firmly resolved and infallibly right and the people are fully supportive and further information should be sought elsewhere. [...]

The Middle East? "I think that, as always, the President wants events to develop over time in a way that he hopes will be fruitful …" That "as always" is truly bravura banality. Never for one moment has the president wavered in his desire to see events develop in ways he hopes will be fruitful. Logicians may puzzle over how it is even possible to hope that your own hopes be dashed, but in case it is possible, the president is not doing it.

When Fleischer produces a rare vivid image, it appears to be unintentional. But is it? On Wednesday, he was asked about the president's thoughts regarding the American who was caught fighting for the Taliban. Rather than say he didn't know the president's thoughts or that the president had no thoughts—dangerous territory—Fleischer rushed through only a few throat-clearing pieties to declare that "the president hasn't really entered the realm of conjecture." The image lingers, like one of those huge allegorical paintings in art museums: George W. Bush poised at the portals of the Realm of Conjecture. Will he enter?

That said, I don't know where he gets off naming his book that without consulting me.  The opposite of Remain Calm is FIGHT!, anyway.

Another Congressional Low: Nationalism meets Education

Democrats, with full Republican support, are amending a bill to make it complete stupid.

The original bill says that Federal funding to build schools have to go to green/efficient schools.  7% of school funding nationwide is from the Feds, and a lot of that, I understand, is for school construction.

The amendment says that all steel and iron used in such schools must be made in America.  The reasoning, repeatedly stated, is that Chinese steel, well, all non-American steel, doesn't meet American standards for quality, and we don't want to endanger the kiddies.

Call me "someone far more likely to cross a bridge than enter a grade school," but if Chinese steel is so bad, I don't want it to be used to build any bridges, either!  And if it isn't that bad, maybe this amendment wasn't really the way to address the problem of Chinese government subsidized, and sub-excellent, steel.

Capitalism Fails

Capitalism might be said to serve as an adequate economic system if it provides, at least to those who work, sufficient goods "for carrying on the business of common life."

Capitalism does not do this, as evidenced by people starving to death every single year, and many children raised so malnourished that they are doomed to a life of ill health and (I think I read) diminished mental capacities. Therefore, capitalism is inadequate.

There are external forces, droughts and storms, which make food distribution difficult, but no one can argue that the existence of droughts or storms are anything new, and yet capitalism, generally speaking, sees no profit from preparing for such eventualities, and, in fact, there is often profit found when situations of scarcity occur.

There are also internal reasons why capitalism might not do as well as it could.  Unfair trade is commonly practiced by the largest companies, and seems to follow Thucydides' formula "the strong do what they can, the weak suffer what they must."  Generally it appears that as soon as one sort of unfair trade is ferreted out, then another comes along.  Those with vast sums will almost always be of the mind to spend great sums to enhance, or at least protect, what they have. 

Authoritarianism and the Communication

This argument is quite facile, but, then again, so are most people, and what I'm going to talk about is not advanced authoritarian precepts, just popular authoritarianism.

Is either party more authoritarian than the other?  If you ask me, the Republicans surely want to project authoritarianism, but technically the Democrats are the ones who want to increase the size of government.  One appears more like the authoritarianism of the individual, while the other is that of the institution.  To say that either group is more authoritarian than not is not the same as saying either is absolutely authoritarian.

What do I mean by authoritarian?  Well, for the purposes of this post I am only going to discuss communication between the government and the people.  The authoritarian seeks to both a) communicate widely and, b) has no interest in any feedback.  The anarchist, for just one contrast, would have no interest in communicating widely, but also no interest in any feedback.

I see older forms of communication, most specifically radio, television and newspapers, as being inherently authoritarian.  I've always felt radio was the most authoritarian, because of the history with both Adolph Hitler and the genocide in Rwanda.  Perhaps there is something more powerful about the disembodied voice that is lost on television.

Newspapers have been slightly less authoritarian, because it is so much easier to start alternative newspapers compared to radio or television.

In sharp contrast with this form of communication is the internet, where feedback for many or most is websites is immediate and unfiltered. 

The Order Of The Votes: The Democratic Rules And ByLaws Committee

Yesterday the Democratic National Committee's Rules And ByLaws Committee (RBC) listened to, and then voted on, a set of three proposals, each, for seating the delegates elected by the primary elections in Michigan and Florida. 

For Florida, the RBC followed the rules, whether or not these rules were fair, or resulted in the most reasonable result.  Yet, for Michigan, the rules were changed, and, even though I believe the accepted proposal represents the most rational compromise, it conflicts with the rules, and hence the reasoning behind the RBC's Florida ruling.

The order in which the proposals were voted on in the afternoon matched the order in which they were presented in the morning.  The order of the votes may have changed the outcome.  Sophisticated voting techniques, my favorite all involve ranked ballots.

In the case of Florida, the first vote was to seat the delegates with 100% voting power.  This was a violation of the rules but it isn't clear it wasn't fair.  By and large, the Republican Party decided when the Democrats of Florida had their primary, and hence caused them to be penalized.  The motion failed, 12 to 15.

The next motion followed the rules, but removed any extra penalties.  It passed unanimously.

The first vote on Michigan was also one that violated the rules.  It seats the Michigan delegation with half voting power, but it also comes up with made-up numbers for the delegates.  The numbers were made up by the Michigan Democrats, based on a formula explained to include the actual vote count, exit polls, and uncounted write-in votes.  There were two other distributions of the delegates proposed, Obama's even split, 64 delegates for each candidate, and Clinton's, which was to give her 73 delegates and to give 55 to uncommitted.  The proposal of the Michigan Democrats passed, 19-8, but we will never know how much support there was for either of the other two proposals.  Now, it does appear that the Michigan proposal was a compromise, and so probably earned the most votes, but only with a more sophisticated voting method will can we ever be sure.