Month: September 2020

R.I.P. David Graeber

On September 4, 2020

So, David Graber’s dead. Author of “Debt” and “Bullshit Jobs.” An anthropologist, anarchist and fierce activist. The link to his obituary is to the Guardian because it amuses me: he stopped writing for them after they helped smear Corbyn for anti-semitism (a charge Graeber fiercely refuted). Somehow they don’t mention that in the obituary.

Debt was and is an important book. Graeber goes into how money was actually created, as debt, and in effect a way to force people to work for money, even though they didn’t want to. (This is a vast over-simplification and you should read it.) Bullshit Jobs posited that about 40% of jobs don’t need to be done or are actively harmful, and went into some details. I don’t own either of them (read them in bookstores), so I can’t refresh my memory, but Debt in particular struck me at the time as important.

Graeber got some historical details wrong, but none of them were sufficient to undo his overall thesis, and he was roundly hated by historical economists for the book.

He has one more book coming out, “he Dawn of Everything: a New History of Humanity,” written with David Wengrow.

When I heard the news of Graeber’s death I was shocked. I didn’t know him, we weren’t friends. But he was doing actual important work, he was fiercely willing to stand up for what he believed right, and the work he was going to do won’t be done now. At age 59, he had probably another 10 years and two or three books, possibly important, in him.

De Gaulle quipped that “the graveyards are full of indispensable (people)” and mostly he’s right, most people’s deaths don’t matter much to anyone who didn’t know them. Someone will replace them who will do about as good a job.

But an intellectual or artist worthy of the name is, in some sense, indispensable. There are works they will not do, and if they don’t do them no one will.

I didn’t know Graeber, and I can’t claim to be personally sad. But he had important work still to be done, and no one will do it now. And without him to defend Debt from its attackers, it will lose luster and importance (because it’s the sort of book which must be destroyed by status-quo defenders, as it suggests capitalism is not what it claims to be.)

May he rest well, and if there is an afterlife, may it be kind to him. He will be missed by people who never knew him.

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The Principle of Elite Consequences

By Ian Welsh

On September 3, 2020

Comments

Sometimes the comments on an article, like my recent post on reforming the justice system, reveal a deep misunderstanding of how the world works.

People with money and power run our societies. The Princeton/Northwestern oligarchy study found that what they want is what matters, and that the opinions of the rest of us don’t matter.

If they are not subject to how a part of society operates, they don’t care if it runs well, and it will run badly (or, in a way that profits them, which is generally the same thing).

The justice system, for the rich and powerful, works well. They have good counsel, because they can afford it. They can afford bail. They generally go to minimum security prison if they happen to be indicted, and they are never actually charged with most of their crimes — as was the case in widespread fraud leading up to the financial crisis or the robo-signing fraud used to steal people’s houses afterwards. (At most, they pay fines, which are less than the value of what they stole.)

The security systems in airports are hell. But rich people don’t go through it, they fly in private jets.

The medical system in the US is bad and overpriced for most people. But it’s very very good if you’re rich or powerful.

The US has been at war for almost 20 years now, but US elites don’t care, because they and their children don’t fight in it.

The US education system is bad, and worse in places which are poorer. US elites don’t care, because they either go to private schools or cluster in rich neighbourhoods where the schools are good, because they are funded through property taxes.

Covid-19 is not a problem, because it mostly kills poor people and minorities, and it’s making the rich much much richer, getting rid of their competition among small business-owners.

If you want something to work well, powerful and rich people must be forced to use it. They must have the same experience as ordinary people.

It takes an especially bad dose of capitalist ideology (or aristocratic or oligarchic ideology) to not perceive this point. If the powerful aren’t affected by how they run society (except to get richer and more powerful), if they don’t experience how the society runs for ordinary people, then society will be shit, AND, if you want society to be good, you can’t allow rich and powerful people to opt out of ordinary experiences.

They must have the same health care as everyone else, including the same odds of not receiving care, being bankrupted by it or getting bad care. They must go through the security lines at airports and be groped. Their kids must have the same odds of having shitty schools. They must have the same odds of dying of Covid-19. They must be given rifles after voting for a war in the Senate and sent to the front lines (or at the least their kids must be, though I see no reason why they shouldn’t be, and if they’re too physically weak to fight, they shouldn’t be allowed to vote on a war they won’t be involved in).

All of this is the most basic of common sense, a level of reasoning that a ten year old would be able to follow easily.

If you cannot follow this reasoning you are suffering from a very bad case of ideological poisoning or you identify with the rich and powerful class. Perhaps you belong to it, or perhaps you’ve just lost a sense of your own position.

I can hear many people now, “rich and powerful people deserve to be treated better, and everyone else deserves shit.”

You can have a good society when you are willing to do what it takes, and the most important rule of a good society is that important people don’t get to opt out of the world their class creates for everyone else.

9/3-20: article edited to reflect oligarchy study authors being at Princeton/Northwestern, not Harvard.

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The Simple Way to Fix Law Enforcement in British-style Systems (Like the US)

By Ian Welsh

On September 2, 2020

Comments

As with most problems, the solution is simple.

Everyone has to use a public defender for all cases, civil and criminal.
The public defender is chosen by lot, using simple mechanical dice, which citizens can inspect and which are inspected by the equivalent of the Las Vegas Gaming Commission.
Any case of tampering is an automatic life sentence without parole.
Everyone has the right to a jury trial if they choose and juries are told about jury nullification.
No pleading, all cases get a trial.
End cash bail and all monetary penalties for criminal cases, since they make some crimes not crimes for the rich.

The US system currently gives justice only to the rich because only they can afford proper representation. The US has the highest incarceration rate in the world, because most crimes are never tried, they are plead out. As a result, US prisons are full of people who are probably innocent, because it’s not worth going to trial and risking far harsher sentences.

A system which requires assembly line trials is putting too many people in prison. Most crimes are victimless, and no one should be in jail for them. If you can’t run the system fairly, with actual trials, the system needs to be changed.

BUT the most important part is simple: It is a specific case of the general rule that no one should be able to use power or money to buy a better version of anything which matters — health care, education, security theater, justice, etc.

The second elites have to use the same lawyers as you do, pay the same, and are subject to the same rules, and can’t game it, the system starts working.

Elites must never be allowed to avoid any part of the common experience that matters. They can fly first class, but not on their own jets. They must go through the same security lines as everyone else. They can buy a private room at the hospital, but not jump the queue for care or get better care in any way that matters medically. They cannot send their children to private schools or over-funded local schools (because of local property taxes).

When elites are subject to the same roulette as ordinary people, things become both fair and good by default. When they can opt out, everything they’ve opted out of goes to hell.

Everything I write here is free, but rent isn’t, so if you value my writing, please DONATE or SUBSCRIBE.