Chattel Slavery is a terrible thing. A chattel slave can be punished or killed if they refuse to work, and in many cases can be sold or traded, they can be forced to breed with whoever their master demands, and the offspring are slaves from birth. It was an institution in virtually all areas around the world from before the invention of writing, and it was widely accepted until the 19th century when it gradually began to be illegal. Many slaveholders resisted with all their might and many wars were fought--the American Civil War being only one of them. It is officially illegal in all countries around the world, but variations of it continue in (probably) all of them in various forms: debt bondage, serfdom, prostitution, child soldiers...estimates are around 25 million people are slaves worldwide.
Wage Slavery is a little different. In the 19th century, a desperate person would come to a company town. There they would be provided housing, food, friends, and most of their other needs, in return for work. All houses, the grocery store and most others, would all be owned by the company. Wages and prices would be such that the worker would get into debt quickly and over time this debt would grow. As long as the worker continued to work and not cause trouble, the debt would be forgiven. But if that changed, the full force of the law could be used to recover the unpaid debt--usually an impossible thing. The people in the community supported each other, and generally if someone became unable to work due to age, illness or injury, the company would be supportive. It was possible to live a relatively happy, but impoverished life as a wage slave.
The modern version of wage slavery is similar, but different in some important ways. Rather than one company owning everything in one town, and a different company in another, in the modern scheme, the companies are technically separate, although generally within each industry they are monopolies or near to it. The market has balanced prices so that things can remain relatively stable: The companies providing loans will tolerate reasonably high debt as long as the person remains employed. Many companies provide pensions and health care. In business economics, this distinction is analogous to the distinction between vertical integration and horizontal integration.
Employers like wage slavery, whether it's the 19th century, vertical kind, or the 21st century horizontal kind. They can treat employees almost as badly as they like, and the employees have little choice but take it: the other companies pay just as badly, may not offer as good a pension or health care. When employees have bargaining power--a unique skill, or a union, that forces them to be treated better, the employers resist with all their might. Many employers have tried treating their employees better, from Henry Ford paying them more to keep them from going to his competition, to high tech companies offering benefits ranging from graduate school to stock ownership, and nearly always, this leads to better employees and greater productivity and profits. But it takes imagination and a leap of faith to make this move, and one thing that most business owners are not is imaginative. For most of the 20th century, the union movement and a few enlightened political leaders, most importantly the two Roosevelts, took matters into their own hands and forced most businesses to give better pay and benefits, shorter hours and safer workplaces, and the consequence was the strongest economy the world has ever seen.
The unions were the most important source of this broad based economic boom. The better paid workers are, the more consumer products they are able to buy, and the more money is in the economy. Seems simple, but no economy in history had tried it--a few came close, such as the renaissance guilds, the Hanseatic league, and a number of others, but none tried it so broadly. Not long after WWII ended, many of the participants also tried it, and their economies boomed too.
Also very important are anti-monopoly laws and government intervention when an industry had engaged in a race to the bottom. The telephone company, the railroads and airlines, the power companies and many others. In virtually every case, the regulated companies were more profitable than their unregulated selves, and they provided better service too.
Usury laws and bank regulation keep lenders from abusing customers, but allow them to make a fair, and very safe profit.
One of the most important regulations is the minimum wage. It provides a bare minimum level of support--a full time worker making the minimum wage (and practicing a normal level of fiscal restraint) should not be in poverty, as long as the minimum wage matches the poverty level.
Social Support mechanisms like pensions, unemployment insurance, health insurance, education are very important. All of these are most efficient when practiced on a large scale, so even though employers provide some of them, a baseline level is best provided by the government and supported by employers.
One of the most important is transit. Transit allows a worker to leave a job and go to another. Or to get to a job that's moderately far from their home. Like the other social support mechanisms, it needs to be provided by a mechanism larger than an individual business. The businesses benefit hugely from it and they scream when their employers lose it.
It is difficult to directly ban wage slavery, the way chattel slavery has been banned in most countries (and even then, it's impossible to ban it completely). But all these things: unions, regulation, pensions, etc., are barriers to wage slavery. Even a few of them, in place, can make it hard for a wage slaver to keep power. But the leaders of the Wage Slavery movement, organizations like the US Chamber of Commerce, the American Legislative Exchange Council, The funders of the the Tea Party movement (including the Koch brothers), the various right wing "think tanks", have set about destroying all of these things. And in the past decade, they have succeeded.
23 July 2014
06 July 2014
Guns, Drugs and Immigration
The administration has announced new spending to stem the tide of undocumented children immigrating to the US, fleeing from drug violence in Mexico and Central America. The number of such children coming in over the border has roughly doubled to 50,000 a year. This is an appalling international tragedy and the response has been to trap the children in a hopeless situation. Their home is being destroyed and they have nowhere to go.
Why is this happening? American drug policy makes it very profitable to import and sell drugs in the US. To some degree the demand for these drugs is home-grown, but the profitability creates a large incentive for the smugglers to stimulate this demand. The labor doing the smuggling and distribution are mostly poor and desperate, but the people running the cartels make gigantic profits and the smugglers and distributors are viewed as expendable. When they are caught, they go into the partially private American prison system, which is profitable for the prison operators.
There are numerous competing cartels, and each is vying to control this lucrative market. They are already outlaws, and in many cases they are more powerful than their local police, so much of this competition comes in the form of violence. The region is awash in firearms, virtually all of them smuggled in across the US/Mexico border. The US has attempted to staunch the flow of firearms but they have met intense opposition from the US gun industry and their lobbyist, the NRA. The "fast and furious" program was such an effort.
I see 4 problems here, all created entirely by backwards policy driven by conservatives and their corporate puppeteers:
Drug addiction should be viewed as a mental health problem, not as a crime. Addicts should be kept out of society until their addictions are stabilized, but they should not share housing with murderers and other violent criminals--unless they are also such criminals. Many addicts need long term treatment, but much such treatment can be done as outpatient care for very much lower cost and recidivism than incarceration.
The most popular illegal drug, Marijuana, is substantially less dangerous than many legal drugs, including alcohol and tobacco, and should not be illegal at all, beyond DUI rules and use by children and so forth. Marijuana is only a problem today because it is illegal. Legalizing Pot would substantially reduce all of these other problems, although most of them stem from the more dangerous drugs so it wouldn't cure them.
For-profit prisons should probably be banned. The incentive to wrongly incarcerate and thus steal from the taxpayers is simply too high.
The NRA should probably be banned as a terrorist organization. The gun industry needs lobbyists and firearms hobbyists need a representative, but the NRA has swung so far off the rails that I think there is no saving it. All firearms should be in a national registry and all transfers should be tracked. If you sell a gun to drug runners or their representatives, or put it in a situation where such could happen by accident, you need to go to jail. Because of the history of guns in the founding of our country, we need to be very careful. Any such actions must have careful due diligence, probably involving the court system, especially confiscations.
Finally, is illegal immigration really a problem? Only a little. Most immigrants, legal or not, are willing to work hard, get educated, pay taxes, follow all other laws. There are fewer than 12M illegals, of about 40M total immigrants. Legal immigrants are just as likely to be criminals, take jobs that could go to other people, end up homeless. Illegals are much more likely to be abused by employers, landlords, gangs, etc. They hurt us only in the way that a too-low minimum wage does: it depresses wages for everyone else.
Why is this happening? American drug policy makes it very profitable to import and sell drugs in the US. To some degree the demand for these drugs is home-grown, but the profitability creates a large incentive for the smugglers to stimulate this demand. The labor doing the smuggling and distribution are mostly poor and desperate, but the people running the cartels make gigantic profits and the smugglers and distributors are viewed as expendable. When they are caught, they go into the partially private American prison system, which is profitable for the prison operators.
There are numerous competing cartels, and each is vying to control this lucrative market. They are already outlaws, and in many cases they are more powerful than their local police, so much of this competition comes in the form of violence. The region is awash in firearms, virtually all of them smuggled in across the US/Mexico border. The US has attempted to staunch the flow of firearms but they have met intense opposition from the US gun industry and their lobbyist, the NRA. The "fast and furious" program was such an effort.
I see 4 problems here, all created entirely by backwards policy driven by conservatives and their corporate puppeteers:
Drug addiction should be viewed as a mental health problem, not as a crime. Addicts should be kept out of society until their addictions are stabilized, but they should not share housing with murderers and other violent criminals--unless they are also such criminals. Many addicts need long term treatment, but much such treatment can be done as outpatient care for very much lower cost and recidivism than incarceration.
The most popular illegal drug, Marijuana, is substantially less dangerous than many legal drugs, including alcohol and tobacco, and should not be illegal at all, beyond DUI rules and use by children and so forth. Marijuana is only a problem today because it is illegal. Legalizing Pot would substantially reduce all of these other problems, although most of them stem from the more dangerous drugs so it wouldn't cure them.
For-profit prisons should probably be banned. The incentive to wrongly incarcerate and thus steal from the taxpayers is simply too high.
The NRA should probably be banned as a terrorist organization. The gun industry needs lobbyists and firearms hobbyists need a representative, but the NRA has swung so far off the rails that I think there is no saving it. All firearms should be in a national registry and all transfers should be tracked. If you sell a gun to drug runners or their representatives, or put it in a situation where such could happen by accident, you need to go to jail. Because of the history of guns in the founding of our country, we need to be very careful. Any such actions must have careful due diligence, probably involving the court system, especially confiscations.
Finally, is illegal immigration really a problem? Only a little. Most immigrants, legal or not, are willing to work hard, get educated, pay taxes, follow all other laws. There are fewer than 12M illegals, of about 40M total immigrants. Legal immigrants are just as likely to be criminals, take jobs that could go to other people, end up homeless. Illegals are much more likely to be abused by employers, landlords, gangs, etc. They hurt us only in the way that a too-low minimum wage does: it depresses wages for everyone else.
28 June 2014
Franz Ferdinand
100 years ago today, Franz Ferdinand, Habsburg heir to the throne of the Austro-Hungarian empire, and his wife, were assassinated in Sarajevo.. His Austrian family, allied with Germany, made unreasonable demands for compensation from the Serbian government, which was allied with Russia and France and after a month of posturing and threats, Germany invaded France, neither of which were involved with the assassination in any way, but had fought a war 40 years earlier that Germany was still sore about, even though they'd more or less won. The assassin himself was a Serbian nationalist and frequently expressed horror at the orgy of killing he had triggered, before he was executed 4 years later, but he had no connection with the government being forced to make reparations.
There was no good reason for the war. A bunch of stupid, inbred people with too much ego and not enough sense had a bunch of petty disputes. Mainly, Kaiser Wilhelm had had a disagreement with his Chancellor, Otto von Bismarck, who had multiplied the size and power of Prussia and the Kaiser himself enormously. France was understandably concerned about the growing power on its border and that's what 1870-71 had been about. But Wilhelm had had a minor dispute with Bismarck and fired him. Bismarck was long dead by the time Franz Ferdinand was shot but his heirs, not nearly as wise, had made a series of plans to invade France. On June 28, 1914, something happened...nothing to do with France or Germany, but enough to pull the trigger.
At one level, WWI did a lot of good for the world. All the hereditary monarchies were gone, or turned into constitutional, parliamentary systems with a monarch as figurehead with no real power. All the new governments understood that ordinary people had bourn the brunt of their government's foolishness and the union movement and worker protection laws, and women's suffrage became unstoppable. It cemented the United States as a great power and showed that the rule of law is more effective than the rule of authority. One of the best ideas was the League of Nations, which was made toothless by Republicans in the US Senate and their belligerent counterparts in Europe. These same Republicans were not entirely happy with law and fair treatment of the masses of people and wanted a more authoritarian system, and the policies they advocated went hand in hand with the craving by the authoritarian leaders of Britain and France for onerous reparation from Germany. This created what may have been the worst possible outcome. Germany was ruined by these reparations, and only recovered when enough time had passed and a German leader came to power who didn't care a whit about law and fair treatment and was happy to ignore the reparations. The authoritarians who demanded them are ideologically almost identical with the leaders of today's Tea Party movement and share a great deal with Hitler and Stalin. They prefer government by thuggery and don't like systems where their views aren't automatically adopted. Suppression of voters they don't agree with is the first step.
Recognizing the error of the French and British leaders after WWI, the Allies, led by the incomparable George Marshall, used the assets of the winners of WWII to rebuild both the winners and losers. His success, and the catastrophe that the authoritarians brought on, should give the authoritarians pause, but it doesn't. Germany is now a power again, but they are part of a united Europe and while they are abusing their neighbors economically, at least they aren't shooting them. An economist who is as good a teacher as Marshall was a statesman may be needed.
The consequences of Franz Ferdinand's assassination are still playing out. The trigger Gavrilo Princip pulled killed at least 100M people and put almost a billion under repressive rule. It gave numerous petty, incompetent and often sadistic, but ruthless politicians the opportunity to rule. It removed constraints from a lot of rivalries, which continue to fester, and will probably continue to fester for a lot longer. For example, the borders that were drawn by the Sykes-Picot agreement around Arabia, Syria, Jordan, Lebanon and Iraq, having nothing to do with the factions within those countries, have created a century of internal frictions and civil wars.
There was no good reason for the war. A bunch of stupid, inbred people with too much ego and not enough sense had a bunch of petty disputes. Mainly, Kaiser Wilhelm had had a disagreement with his Chancellor, Otto von Bismarck, who had multiplied the size and power of Prussia and the Kaiser himself enormously. France was understandably concerned about the growing power on its border and that's what 1870-71 had been about. But Wilhelm had had a minor dispute with Bismarck and fired him. Bismarck was long dead by the time Franz Ferdinand was shot but his heirs, not nearly as wise, had made a series of plans to invade France. On June 28, 1914, something happened...nothing to do with France or Germany, but enough to pull the trigger.
At one level, WWI did a lot of good for the world. All the hereditary monarchies were gone, or turned into constitutional, parliamentary systems with a monarch as figurehead with no real power. All the new governments understood that ordinary people had bourn the brunt of their government's foolishness and the union movement and worker protection laws, and women's suffrage became unstoppable. It cemented the United States as a great power and showed that the rule of law is more effective than the rule of authority. One of the best ideas was the League of Nations, which was made toothless by Republicans in the US Senate and their belligerent counterparts in Europe. These same Republicans were not entirely happy with law and fair treatment of the masses of people and wanted a more authoritarian system, and the policies they advocated went hand in hand with the craving by the authoritarian leaders of Britain and France for onerous reparation from Germany. This created what may have been the worst possible outcome. Germany was ruined by these reparations, and only recovered when enough time had passed and a German leader came to power who didn't care a whit about law and fair treatment and was happy to ignore the reparations. The authoritarians who demanded them are ideologically almost identical with the leaders of today's Tea Party movement and share a great deal with Hitler and Stalin. They prefer government by thuggery and don't like systems where their views aren't automatically adopted. Suppression of voters they don't agree with is the first step.
Recognizing the error of the French and British leaders after WWI, the Allies, led by the incomparable George Marshall, used the assets of the winners of WWII to rebuild both the winners and losers. His success, and the catastrophe that the authoritarians brought on, should give the authoritarians pause, but it doesn't. Germany is now a power again, but they are part of a united Europe and while they are abusing their neighbors economically, at least they aren't shooting them. An economist who is as good a teacher as Marshall was a statesman may be needed.
The consequences of Franz Ferdinand's assassination are still playing out. The trigger Gavrilo Princip pulled killed at least 100M people and put almost a billion under repressive rule. It gave numerous petty, incompetent and often sadistic, but ruthless politicians the opportunity to rule. It removed constraints from a lot of rivalries, which continue to fester, and will probably continue to fester for a lot longer. For example, the borders that were drawn by the Sykes-Picot agreement around Arabia, Syria, Jordan, Lebanon and Iraq, having nothing to do with the factions within those countries, have created a century of internal frictions and civil wars.
22 June 2014
The Monopoly Party
One of our great parties has been taken over by pro-monopoly radicals. Most of the supporters of that party don't know that, but the monopolists have figured out that if they can sell their story of laissez-faire economics, support for religious wedge issues and by sowing disruption and conflict in their party and their opponents, they can gain power and keep their monopolies despite it being against the law.
The most obvious monopolies are the big banks, the big oil companies, the big insurers, and a few others, most notably Walmart, the biggest company in the world. Many of these are not literally monopolies: e.g. 4 banks control $8T of the $10.5T total assets managed by all US banks. But they collude on policy--you really don't have much choice, and none of the hundreds of smaller banks can compete with any of the big 4 even if they have a better product.
The pro-monopolists want monopoly in other things than their own narrow business: they strenuously object if anybody criticizes them. They teach their naïve supporters that any arm of government that doesn't do exactly what they want them to is dangerous and can't be tolerated. They work very hard to discredit opposing opinion, a lot of it through name calling. (they talk about taxation without representation: in fact they have a lot of representation---the Tea Party are about 10% of the electorate but they control one house of congress and successfully block all action in the other). They look for opportunities to suppress voters likely to object to them. They suggest that some offenses are so bad that such people should not receive due process. They tell us--against all evidence--that the current Democratic president is the most outrageously radical leftist in our history...in fact he is one of the two most conservative Democrats since the 19th century and about even on the left-right spectrum with Nixon and Eisenhower and not far left of their plaster hero, Reagan.
Most dangerously, they have been buying up and monopolizing media, so that only their narrow, pro-monopoly message gets out. There are a few centrist news operations remaining: New York Times, MSNBC, Huffington Post, etc., but most of the mainstream has moved very far right. An important way to do this is by buying lots of advertising and hinting that the funding source will dry up if they don't give "equal time" to their pet right wing pundits. Many of the bastions of good reporting: the Wall Street Journal, the PBS News Hour, 60 Minutes, The Washington Post, and more, have fallen prey to this. The once carefully neutral PBS New Hour will give equal time to a knowledgeable expert and a crackpot, and sometimes they skip the expert altogether. There are NO left wing news sites with a significant following in America and precious few elsewhere.
The bottom line is this: Laissez-Faire is anything but fair, free enterprise. It can be, for a little while. But very quickly, it almost always degenerates into monopoly or race to the bottom, and without regulation, once you have monopoly or race to the bottom, it's practically impossible to break out. There are very few supporters of Laissez-Faire who have an informed understanding of it and its history. But there are tens of millions who hear that there's freedom involved and stop thinking at that point. Ayn Rand's childish wish-fulfilment fantasy novels are very popular among these people.
Nobody argues that we should do away with referees in sports. We can sometimes get away with it in sandlots and schoolyards, but very often it degenerates into disputes and cheating--where nothing is on the line but bragging rights for a few kids. But that's what the monopoly party wants us to do in politics and business and media. Millions of lives are on the line.
The most obvious monopolies are the big banks, the big oil companies, the big insurers, and a few others, most notably Walmart, the biggest company in the world. Many of these are not literally monopolies: e.g. 4 banks control $8T of the $10.5T total assets managed by all US banks. But they collude on policy--you really don't have much choice, and none of the hundreds of smaller banks can compete with any of the big 4 even if they have a better product.
The pro-monopolists want monopoly in other things than their own narrow business: they strenuously object if anybody criticizes them. They teach their naïve supporters that any arm of government that doesn't do exactly what they want them to is dangerous and can't be tolerated. They work very hard to discredit opposing opinion, a lot of it through name calling. (they talk about taxation without representation: in fact they have a lot of representation---the Tea Party are about 10% of the electorate but they control one house of congress and successfully block all action in the other). They look for opportunities to suppress voters likely to object to them. They suggest that some offenses are so bad that such people should not receive due process. They tell us--against all evidence--that the current Democratic president is the most outrageously radical leftist in our history...in fact he is one of the two most conservative Democrats since the 19th century and about even on the left-right spectrum with Nixon and Eisenhower and not far left of their plaster hero, Reagan.
Most dangerously, they have been buying up and monopolizing media, so that only their narrow, pro-monopoly message gets out. There are a few centrist news operations remaining: New York Times, MSNBC, Huffington Post, etc., but most of the mainstream has moved very far right. An important way to do this is by buying lots of advertising and hinting that the funding source will dry up if they don't give "equal time" to their pet right wing pundits. Many of the bastions of good reporting: the Wall Street Journal, the PBS News Hour, 60 Minutes, The Washington Post, and more, have fallen prey to this. The once carefully neutral PBS New Hour will give equal time to a knowledgeable expert and a crackpot, and sometimes they skip the expert altogether. There are NO left wing news sites with a significant following in America and precious few elsewhere.
The bottom line is this: Laissez-Faire is anything but fair, free enterprise. It can be, for a little while. But very quickly, it almost always degenerates into monopoly or race to the bottom, and without regulation, once you have monopoly or race to the bottom, it's practically impossible to break out. There are very few supporters of Laissez-Faire who have an informed understanding of it and its history. But there are tens of millions who hear that there's freedom involved and stop thinking at that point. Ayn Rand's childish wish-fulfilment fantasy novels are very popular among these people.
Nobody argues that we should do away with referees in sports. We can sometimes get away with it in sandlots and schoolyards, but very often it degenerates into disputes and cheating--where nothing is on the line but bragging rights for a few kids. But that's what the monopoly party wants us to do in politics and business and media. Millions of lives are on the line.
15 June 2014
The Indigent and the Insane
60 Minutes just re-ran their piece on 100,000 Homes, a project that helps the homeless by giving them free housing. Counterintuitively, this turns out to be a significant cost saver: the worst of the homeless cost the taxpayers a lot. For example, a night in the hospital costs as much as several months rent. But homeless folks don't have insurance: The hospital has to cover this somehow--ultimately taxpayers and other patients and their insurance companies. 100,000 Homes focuses on the most threatened homeless, the ones who are most at risk of hospitalization, or committing a desperate act. Remarkably, a majority of the recently homeless, when given safe, clean housing, get themselves cleaned up very quickly, and with a little help, are able to get a job and before long are able to pay their rent. All they needed was a leg up.
Not all the homeless are have mental health issues, but around 30% do. A surprising number of them have minor, easily treatable problems that become debilitating or worse if left to fester. Desperate for food, they steal, or confused, they commit violence. A few hours of counseling a month, or a few dollars of medicine, are all it takes to prevent this in a great many cases.
The homeless and the mentally ill are among the most defenseless sectors of our society. The war on the mentally ill was led by Reagan and similarly inclined people, but the mentally ill themselves and their families contributed to it, by fighting what had been relatively sensible involuntary commitment laws. It's understandable why the patients would object to involuntary commitment, and many mental health facilities were horrible, but it was a system that had a chance of being fixed.
So instead, we wait for the mentally ill to commit a crime and use our remaining involuntary commitment system: the prison system. This isn't actually much cheaper than the old asylums, and it treats the "patients" just as badly as the asylums did, but a great many people with minor problems become hardened criminals in prison.
Most people who are powerless to deal with their circumstances feel anger or depression, whether they have mental health problems or not. Mental health problems only make these feelings worse, and a tiny fraction of them lash out, however they can...using a gun if it's available.
We must restore and repair the asylum system. It did many evil things as it was, but we have "thrown out the baby with the bathwater" as it were. Like prisons, we need many levels of asylum and both voluntary and involuntary commitment. They need to be decent places that keep the worst of the worst away from the vast majority, who have only minor problems. Almost half of the people now in our prisons have committed non-violent, victimless crimes like drug possession and should simply be released (upon review, of course), and a sizable fraction of those remaining (including a lot of addicts) should be moved to asylums or other places that have a better chance of dealing effectively with their problems.
I am convinced that this will save a lot of money: getting the indigent into a circumstance that helps them find work should have positive cash flow if the costs of hospitalization is factored in. Getting the mentally ill into a circumstance that doesn't make them worse has to be cheaper than the present system--the mentally ill commit a sizable fraction of crimes, and they will need a lot less security (although more medical assistance) than criminals if we house them properly. Like the non-crazy indigent, in many cases, simply treating them decently will turn them from problems to useful, or at least not harmful, members of society.
Not all the homeless are have mental health issues, but around 30% do. A surprising number of them have minor, easily treatable problems that become debilitating or worse if left to fester. Desperate for food, they steal, or confused, they commit violence. A few hours of counseling a month, or a few dollars of medicine, are all it takes to prevent this in a great many cases.
The homeless and the mentally ill are among the most defenseless sectors of our society. The war on the mentally ill was led by Reagan and similarly inclined people, but the mentally ill themselves and their families contributed to it, by fighting what had been relatively sensible involuntary commitment laws. It's understandable why the patients would object to involuntary commitment, and many mental health facilities were horrible, but it was a system that had a chance of being fixed.
So instead, we wait for the mentally ill to commit a crime and use our remaining involuntary commitment system: the prison system. This isn't actually much cheaper than the old asylums, and it treats the "patients" just as badly as the asylums did, but a great many people with minor problems become hardened criminals in prison.
Most people who are powerless to deal with their circumstances feel anger or depression, whether they have mental health problems or not. Mental health problems only make these feelings worse, and a tiny fraction of them lash out, however they can...using a gun if it's available.
We must restore and repair the asylum system. It did many evil things as it was, but we have "thrown out the baby with the bathwater" as it were. Like prisons, we need many levels of asylum and both voluntary and involuntary commitment. They need to be decent places that keep the worst of the worst away from the vast majority, who have only minor problems. Almost half of the people now in our prisons have committed non-violent, victimless crimes like drug possession and should simply be released (upon review, of course), and a sizable fraction of those remaining (including a lot of addicts) should be moved to asylums or other places that have a better chance of dealing effectively with their problems.
I am convinced that this will save a lot of money: getting the indigent into a circumstance that helps them find work should have positive cash flow if the costs of hospitalization is factored in. Getting the mentally ill into a circumstance that doesn't make them worse has to be cheaper than the present system--the mentally ill commit a sizable fraction of crimes, and they will need a lot less security (although more medical assistance) than criminals if we house them properly. Like the non-crazy indigent, in many cases, simply treating them decently will turn them from problems to useful, or at least not harmful, members of society.
25 May 2014
Overwhelming Majorities
Here's a list of things which have overwhelming support by Americans,
yet which congress is actively blocking or trying to overturn.
- 91% want universal background checks for all gun purchases, with no loopholes.
- 82% say the war on drugs has been a failure
- 72% of Americans want the minimum wage to be increased
- 72% want higher taxes for rich people. Even a lot of rich people do...e.g. Warren Buffett and Nick Hanauer
- 82% want health insurance companies to be banned from denying coverage to those with pre-existing conditions
- 72% want companies with 50 or more employees to be required to provide health insurance
- 89% of those who are favorable or neutral to ACA say congress should improve it. 59% of all Americans say congress should improve it.
- 69% say Alcohol is more harmful than Marijuana. I suspect the vast majority of those who disagree haven't tried it...
- 69% of Americans under 30 support gay marriage. 54% of all Americans now do.
- 80% of Americans think that Corporations should not be allowed to contribute to political causes.
- 76% of Americans believe abortion should be safe and legal in at least some circumstances. more than half believe it should be safe and legal in most circumstances.
- 70% think the US should not arm the rebels or anybody else in Syria
- 97% of climate scientists believe that climate change is happening and that human activities are causing it.
- 57% of Americans believe humans are causing it.
- 64% of Americans believe there should be strict limits on CO2 emissions from coal.
- 69% of Americans believe that global warming is a serious or very serious problem
- 70% believe the government should regulate greenhouse gas emissions
- 63% believe the government should regulate greenhouse gasses even if it would increase their electric bill $20 a month.
24 May 2014
Gresham's Law
The simplest expression of Gresham's Law is "bad money drives out the good." But the same principle applies in any other area where cheating is possible.
Thomas Gresham was an English financier who lived during the time of Elizabeth I. The archetypical bad money of his day were coins which had been "stripped", their edges clipped and the small strips of precious metal collected and sold for a profit. The serrated edges of many coins are intended to make this practice more difficult. Gresham observed that when there is bad money in circulation, anybody who finds themselves with good money is less willing to spend it, knowing that it will preserve its value better, while bad money is best spent while they can get away with it.
Cheating in sports follows the same pattern. By the 1990s, bicycle racers had all realized that blood doping, EPO and other cheats made it very difficult for non-cheaters to be competitive, and it's thought that there were very few non-cheaters in the pro peloton. 14 of the 15 winners of the Tour de France between 1996 and 2010 have admitted to doping, as well as many dozens of others in the field. The officials tried to regulate cheating out of the sport, but the cheaters got better at avoiding detection. Perhaps they're now strict enough--we shall see. The achievements of Lance Armstrong, Bjarne Rjis, Marco Pantani and the others are not really diminished by the fact that they were cheating: most of their competitors were too. For example, the 2nd place rider in all but one of Lance Armstrong's victories was also convicted of cheating at some point, and that one, Andreas Klöden, has been plausibly accused.
This is true in other sports too: Large chunks of the record book in baseball was rewritten in the 1990s and 2000s by steroid users. American Football, where the players seem to be regarded as more disposable than in most other sports, has been rife with steroid use since the 1950s at least, and there's been very little attempt to stop this.
But the most impact that cheaters have had on our society is in economics. Derivatives and banks were deregulated, coming to a head in the late 1990s. Within a few years, several effective scams to disguise fraud were invented: Derivatives were used as a way of distributing a small amount of high risk mortgages among a larger number of low risk ones, theoretically moderating the risk. These were extremely profitable. But with a little bit of fraud, it became possible to put more and more high risk mortgages in with the good ones and soon there was a bubble. There was a demand for mortgages to "securitize" and to the people making the short term profits, it didn't really matter if they were good or bad--bad ones were easier to get though. All the banks, even the government backed ones, felt they had to get in on this bubble or miss out. But after a few years, the bad mortgages started to make their presence felt. The panic that resulted crashed our economy. A few of the guilty have received handslaps: Angelo Mozillo was fined of about 12% of his take, much of which was paid by his company. Bernie Madoff, who was running a ponzi scheme that benefited from the climate of regulatory blindness but really wasn't a part of the problem, actually went to prison. A few of the perps lost their companies.
Most companies want to treat their employees fairly. Provide a decent pension, health insurance, a living wage, etc. But when a few companies find a way to undercut this, their competitors all feel the need to do the same, or lose in the market. An example is the airlines, which once had pretty good pensions and wages for pilots and other employees. In 2005, US Airways, and then United, declared bankruptcy and were allowed to default on their pension programs, turning them over the taxpayer funded Pension Benefit Guarantee Corporation, which would pay only a fraction of what was due to retirees. Many other airlines were soon forced to follow suit.
Thomas Gresham was an English financier who lived during the time of Elizabeth I. The archetypical bad money of his day were coins which had been "stripped", their edges clipped and the small strips of precious metal collected and sold for a profit. The serrated edges of many coins are intended to make this practice more difficult. Gresham observed that when there is bad money in circulation, anybody who finds themselves with good money is less willing to spend it, knowing that it will preserve its value better, while bad money is best spent while they can get away with it.
Cheating in sports follows the same pattern. By the 1990s, bicycle racers had all realized that blood doping, EPO and other cheats made it very difficult for non-cheaters to be competitive, and it's thought that there were very few non-cheaters in the pro peloton. 14 of the 15 winners of the Tour de France between 1996 and 2010 have admitted to doping, as well as many dozens of others in the field. The officials tried to regulate cheating out of the sport, but the cheaters got better at avoiding detection. Perhaps they're now strict enough--we shall see. The achievements of Lance Armstrong, Bjarne Rjis, Marco Pantani and the others are not really diminished by the fact that they were cheating: most of their competitors were too. For example, the 2nd place rider in all but one of Lance Armstrong's victories was also convicted of cheating at some point, and that one, Andreas Klöden, has been plausibly accused.
This is true in other sports too: Large chunks of the record book in baseball was rewritten in the 1990s and 2000s by steroid users. American Football, where the players seem to be regarded as more disposable than in most other sports, has been rife with steroid use since the 1950s at least, and there's been very little attempt to stop this.
But the most impact that cheaters have had on our society is in economics. Derivatives and banks were deregulated, coming to a head in the late 1990s. Within a few years, several effective scams to disguise fraud were invented: Derivatives were used as a way of distributing a small amount of high risk mortgages among a larger number of low risk ones, theoretically moderating the risk. These were extremely profitable. But with a little bit of fraud, it became possible to put more and more high risk mortgages in with the good ones and soon there was a bubble. There was a demand for mortgages to "securitize" and to the people making the short term profits, it didn't really matter if they were good or bad--bad ones were easier to get though. All the banks, even the government backed ones, felt they had to get in on this bubble or miss out. But after a few years, the bad mortgages started to make their presence felt. The panic that resulted crashed our economy. A few of the guilty have received handslaps: Angelo Mozillo was fined of about 12% of his take, much of which was paid by his company. Bernie Madoff, who was running a ponzi scheme that benefited from the climate of regulatory blindness but really wasn't a part of the problem, actually went to prison. A few of the perps lost their companies.
Most companies want to treat their employees fairly. Provide a decent pension, health insurance, a living wage, etc. But when a few companies find a way to undercut this, their competitors all feel the need to do the same, or lose in the market. An example is the airlines, which once had pretty good pensions and wages for pilots and other employees. In 2005, US Airways, and then United, declared bankruptcy and were allowed to default on their pension programs, turning them over the taxpayer funded Pension Benefit Guarantee Corporation, which would pay only a fraction of what was due to retirees. Many other airlines were soon forced to follow suit.
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