Ian Welsh

The horizon is not so far as we can see, but as far as we can imagine

Month: June 2021

Way Past Time to Leave America

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On June 10, 2021

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I wrote this article in January of 2010. I’m re-posting it because, alas, it is STILL important. I had some hope Biden could at least put through a good economic package; I was wrong.

My errors are far more often on the side of “hope” and optimism than pessimism, which is something people who consider me a pessimist get wrong.

I have updated commentary after the piece.

The Unvarnished Truth About the US

I’ve been meaning to write this post for some time and in light of yesterday’s Supreme Court decision allowing unlimited corporate money into the political system, I think it’s time.

Yesterday’s decision makes the US a soft fascist state. Roosevelt’s definition of fascism was control of government by corporate interests. Unlimited money means that private interests can dump billions into elections if they choose. Given that the government can, will, and has rewarded them with trillions, as in the bailouts, or is thinking about doing so in HCR, by forcing millions of Americans to buy their products, the return on investment is so good that I would argue that corporations have a fiduciary duty to their shareholders to buy out government – after all, if you pay a million to get a billion, or a billion to get a trillion, that’s far far better returns than are available anywhere else.

And no politician, no political party, can reasonably expect to win when billions are arrayed against it.

The one faint hope is that politicians in the Senate will panic, know they have ten months to do something and ram something through. Of course, that will only be a stopgap measure, until the Supremes overthrow it, but in the meantime, maybe Dems will get serious about the Supreme Court and not rubber-stamp radical right-wingers like Alito and Roberts.

That is, however, a faint hope.

Add to this the US’s complete inability to manage its economic affairs, and its refusal to fix its profound structural problems, whether in the financial system, the education system, the military, concrete infrastructure, technology, or anything else, and I cannot see a likely scenario where the US turns things around. The US’s problems in almost every area amount to “monied interests are making a killing on business as usual, along with ologopolistic markets, and will do anything they can to make sure the problem isn’t fixed.”

Even before they had the ability to dump unlimited money into the political system, they virtually controlled Washington. This will put their influence on steroids. Any congressperson who goes against their interests can be threatened by what amounts to unlimited money. And any one who does their bidding can be rewarded with so much money their reelection is virtually secure.

This decision makes the US’s recovery from its decline even more unlikely than before -— and even then, it was still very unlikely. Absolute catastrophe will have to occur before people are angry enough, and corporations weak enough, for there to even be a chance.

So, my advice to my readers is this:

If you can leave the US, do. Most of the world is going to suffer over the next decades, but there are places which will suffer less than the US, places that have not settled for soft fascism and a refusal to fix their economic problems. Fighting to the very end is very romantic, and all, but when you’re outnumbered, outgunned, and your odds of winning are miniscule, sometimes the smartest thing to do is book out. Those who came to to the US understood this, they left countries which were less free or had less economic hope than the US, and they came to a place where they thought freedom and opportunity reigned.

That place, that time, is coming to an end. For your own sake, and especially for the sake of your children, I tell you now -— it is time to get out.

I am not the only person thinking this. Even before the decisions, two of my savviest American friends, people with impeccable records at predicting the US meltdown, told me that within the next few years they would be leaving.

There’s always hope, and those who choose to stay might stop this terminal decline.

But you need to ask yourself, seriously, if you are willing to pay the price of failure, if you are willing to have your children pay the price of failure. Because it will be very, very steep.

I understand that not everyone can leave the US. Look within the US for places that will be least affected. I don’t know what those are. I suggest being willing to adopt “protective” coloring; if you aren’t, and things go really south, understand that the right (and a big chunk of what passes for the center in the US) is itching to do a purge of left-wingers and, indeed, of a lot of centrists (the Clintons, for example).

Next, I’m Canadian, and despite our image, things aren’t going great in Canada. We are badly infected by US-style politics, but even if we happen to win against them (not a sure bet at all — and remember my comment about my errors being errors of optimism), we are a US satrapy which the US may decide to take direct control of. Even if they don’t, Canada cannot realistically resist most US demands if the US is serious; well, not without steps Canada has refused to take, like getting a credible deterrent.

Smart Jews fled Germany to other European nations, and wound up in the camps anyway.

Canada and Mexico (a completely failing state) may well not be far enough away.

Next: Understand that the world IS moving towards a new cold war. It looks like China/Russia + allies vs. America/Europe plus allies, at least so far. There is some chance that Europe will try to go third-path, but so far it is choosing to go with the US, despite misgivings. You can see this in its rejection of Huawei 5G, after a great deal of wavering. Some countries even started to deploy 5G, and are now dismantling it.

There are some other considerations, like China now competing with Germany more than being a customer, but overall Europe seems to be choosing the current hegemon over the new rising one. This is a startling failure on the part of Jingping (who is incompetent at almost everything except controlling the Party). Other countries should be falling into China’s arms, but China now wants to be a bully, too; to reap the rights of being powerful.

So, where you settle will have a lot to do with your future mobility; which part of the walled internet you’re in and so on. Look at countries and consider which side they’ll be on, or if or how they might manage the neutrality dance. This will matter for extradition, visiting the relatives, what technology you use and much more (Russia, for example, is where people in the US really want go, not because Russia is great (it’s a mafia state) but because Russia won’t extradite).

It is, of course, possible that I am wrong, and the US will pull it out. Every great nation (“great” is not a synonym for “good”) pulls it out over and over again until they don’t. England lost an empire then created another, for example, but Britain seems unlikely to exist soon: Both Northern Ireland and Scotland will likely go, and it’ll just be England and Wales again (and even Wales may go in 20 to 30 years, which would be losing a possession conquered 800 years ago).

So, it’s always possible that the US will pull it out. History goes in waves: There was a Gilded Age before, and it ended. That may happen again this time, either by force or luck of disaster.

That said, I don’t think that’s where the smart money is, and you’ll be gambling with more than your life.

If you do stay, remember that you have two defenses: (1) Other people who care for you and will fight with you (fight is not entirely a metaphor here), and; (2) Anonymity: Sliding along with no one really knowing anything about you and your beliefs (far harder than it once was).

All of this is complicated by climate change and environmental collapse putting pressure on systems never designed to withstand shocks.

Be well and be safe, whatever you do.

(The more people subscribe or donate the more I write. So please consider subscribing if you like my writing.)

Huge Western Wildfire Season Far Beyond California

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On June 8, 2021

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So, this is the drought map for 2020:

Here’s the drought map for this year:

Yeah.

Expect wildfires all through this region and beyond. You should prepare NOW if you live in these areas (check for Mexican or Canadian maps if you live in those countries). Remember, you buy NOW because if you wait everything will be out of stock.

You may need (not a complete list):

  • Respirators
  • Air filters, have extras, especially for any air conditioners
  • A “go bag” in case you’re forced to evacuate.
  • Some sort of back-up electricity, even if only some batteries for your small items.
  • Tape to tape over your doors and windows. Painters tape, perhaps.
  • Internal air filtering fans. (Tutorial on how to make from box fans.)
  • Standard stuff like water and staple foods in case supply chains are disrupted.
  • Asthmatics and other people with breathing problems should make sure they have enough meds, if they can.

 

Larger scale preparations may include:

  • Non-flammable roofing and keep the roof clean of flammable materials like leaves and needles;
  • Change your lawn to something non-flammable; a rock garden perhaps.
  • I hate chopping down trees, but you may wish to consider any too near your house.
  • Be sure any flammable vegetation is not touching your house nor can fall on it.

I’m sure no expert on this sort of thing, so please leave suggestions for preparing in the comments and do your own research.

BUT the main thing is to do your research and preparation NOW. (Really ,it should have been sooner, and I apologize for not writing this article earlier.)

This is, yes, a result of climate change, exacerbated by bad forestry and soil management. But without climate change it wouldn’t have happened. This is how the ecology of local areas is changing to match the new climates. Unfortunately, that means the destruction of what is there now.

(In that vein, we are coming up on a period of serious food inflation. If you can store it, buy food now.)

Be well, be safe.

(The more people subscribe or donate the more I write and the happier I am. So please consider doing so if you like my writing.)

Week-end Wrap – Political Economy – June 6, 2021

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On June 6, 2021

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Week-end Wrap – Political Economy – June 6, 2021

by Tony Wikrent

Strategic Political Economy

The Particular Psychology of Destroying a Planet” What kind of thinking goes into engaging in planetary sabotage?

Bill McKibben [The New Yorker]

….in a new book from the British psychoanalyst Sally Weintrobe. “Psychological Roots of the Climate Crisis” states its argument in its subtitle: “Neoliberal Exceptionalism and the Culture of Uncare.” Weintrobe writes that people’s psyches are divided into caring and uncaring parts, and the conflict between them “is at the heart of great literature down the ages, and all major religions.” The uncaring part wants to put ourselves first; it’s the narcissistic corners of the brain that persuade each of us that we are uniquely important and deserving, and make us want to except ourselves from the rules that society or morality set so that we can have what we want. “Most people’s caring self is strong enough to hold their inner exception in check,” she notes, but, troublingly, “ours is the Golden Age of Exceptionalism.” Neoliberalism—especially the ideas of people such as Ayn Rand, enshrined in public policy by Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher—“crossed a Rubicon in the 1980s” and neoliberals “have been steadily consolidating their power ever since.” Weintrobe calls leaders who exempt themselves in these ways “exceptions” and says that, as they “drove globalization forwards in the 1980s,” they were captivated by an ideology that whispered, “Cut regulation, cut ties to reality and cut concern.” Donald Trump was the logical end of this way of thinking, a man so self-centered that he interpreted all problems, even a global pandemic, as attempts to undo him. “The self-assured neoliberal imagination has increasingly revealed itself to be not equipped to deal with problems it causes,” she writes.

The real Lord of the Flies: what happened when six boys were shipwrecked for 15 months

[The Guardian, via The Big Picture 6-3-2021]

When a group of schoolboys were marooned on an island in 1965, it turned out very differently from William Golding’s bestseller, writes Rutger Bregman….

For centuries western culture has been permeated by the idea that humans are selfish creatures. That cynical image of humanity has been proclaimed in films and novels, history books and scientific research. But in the last 20 years, something extraordinary has happened. Scientists from all over the world have switched to a more hopeful view of mankind. This development is still so young that researchers in different fields often don’t even know about each other.

The carnage of mainstream neoliberal economics

Chris Hedges: “Dying for an iPhone”

[Scheerpost, via Naked Capitalism 6-1-2021]

Global capitalists have turned back the clock to the early days of the Industrial Revolution.  The working class is increasingly bereft of rights, blocked from forming unions, paid starvation wages, subject to wage theft, under constant surveillance, fired for minor infractions, exposed to dangerous carcinogens, forced to work overtime, given punishing quotas and abandoned when they are sick and old. Workers have become, here and abroad, disposable cogs to corporate oligarchs, who wallow in obscene personal wealth that dwarfs the worst excesses of the Robber Barons

Amazon Prime Is an Economy-Distorting Lie

Matt Stoller [BIG, via Naked Capitalism 5-31-2021]

Read More

Open Thread

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On June 5, 2021

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Use the comments to discuss topics unrelated to recent posts.

How to Do Single-Payer, Medicare-for-All Properly in the US

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On June 4, 2021

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One of the issues often pointed out about single-payer, Medicare-for-all is that the US system has an extreme problem with prices and processes. Surgeries, hospital stays, ambulance visits, medical appliances, and drugs are all vastly over-priced. The actors in this: hospitals, drug makers, and appliance makers, among others, have great interest in maintaining high prices. Just switching to, “the Federal government pays” doesn’t fix all the fucked up prices, incentives, and wrong things that are being done.

One thing to understand about single payer is that it can be used to fix hospital and other prices. You make the government a monopoly buyer of health care. The government sets the prices, period. “We will pay X. This is a take it or leave it price. No one else can pay you, it’s not even legal for anything that we pay for.”

Now this doesn’t entirely work if you aren’t a hegemonic or at least a “Great Power,” because too much stuff comes from outside and externally applied laws, especially IP laws, impose limits. It is worth it for providers to just stop selling to you if you won’t pay their over-inflated prices.

But if the US does it, and is serious (meaning it will change other laws if required), it can set almost all prices.

“We’re going to give you cost +5% profit over inflation. And that’s it.”

To do this properly, the next thing you do is have some hospitals run entirely by the federal government so they know the actual price structure. You also have the government do some drug and device design+ manufacturing. This is so you can’t be snowed about cost/price.

This isn’t just on-shoring production; it is having the government do the work itself. This also includes research: Some is done in-house — and not at universities or private firms, again so you can directly observe what the actual cost is and what the processes are. (Universities are terrible actors when it comes to research, often taking 80 to 90 percent of the money that supposedly goes to researchers as “fees and rent.”)

It does not matter if public drugs, hospitals, appliances, or research cost a little more or less, the function isn’t to be the “cheapest” — the function is to make sure government knows how things work and can’t be cheated by private providers.

You also must break up all oligopolies, monopolies, and cartels, so that no private outfit can control prices and try to challenge you with a “we’ll walk.” There should always be the government plus at least five providers in any reasonably large health care-related industry and if the country is large enough, even the government should have more than group doing it. (In the US, the Veterans Admin + HHS or something + various others).

Nothing that is truly important (vaccines, as the most current example) can be just imported unless you truly cannot make it or learn how to make it. Create a domestic industry. Let other countries do so. IP Laws MUST be amended/broken to allow this and yes, the US has sufficient power to more or less “just” do this. (The EU will be a stumbling block, but they don’t have a veto on the US).

If you need things that must be bought, in effect, in a currency you can’t print, you are not free, and you cannot control prices or outcomes. Pure autarky is not possible right now, but you want as much as you can reasonably get on anything essential.

I see no reason why all hospitals shouldn’t be independent, by the way. No groups, no cartels, etc. This will allow for actual innovation.

Finally, as a general rule, you mandate outcomes not processes (except your payment processes) so that various providers, including those operated by your own government, can innovate. Mandate process and innovation dies.

To summarize: Single payer is used to force all the other necessary changes. “You are paid by us, and only us. If you wish to stay in business you will do what we want done.” To do this correctly, you must truly understand what is wrong and what is currently possible and you must remove any actor with sufficient power to distort information or who will try and enforce any type of veto or a compromise on you (i.e., “everyone else has to make cost+5%, but us.”)

Every other country but the US has big problems when doing this because of how the current world order is set up in terms of trade and IP Laws, and even the US will have trouble even though the current trade regime was its own creation more so than any other entity. But the US retains, for now, more freedom to act than any other country in the world. Only China and the EU, if you consider the EU a country, come close.

Now, understand that this is not a “what I think will happen” post. This is an article setting out what would happen if the US government and the American people were serious about doing Single-Payer / Medicare-For-All properly. It is an “ideal type” which allows you to judge proposals and anything that happens. It can, of course, be used to judge doing things properly in other countries too, with the understanding that other countries suffer constraints the US does not, often constraints enforced primarily by the US and the EU.

May we come to a world where posts like this are well-understood because the actions outlined are being done, and where everyone gets the health care they need at a reasonable price and those who create the future of health care are concentrated on cures and good  health throughout everyone’s life, not palliatives, high profit, and just keeping unhealthy people stumbling along as they suffer.

(The more people subscribe or donate the more I write and the happier I am. So please consider doing so if you like my writing.)

 

 

 

The Squad and Kabuki Votes

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On June 1, 2021

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Back on May 20th, a bill passed to increase funding for the Capitol police. The idea is that the events of January 6th mean they need more funding. They’re already VERY well-funded, and the failure was not due to lack of funding, but lack of preparation for a forseeable event (as it was announced and organized on social media), and failure to call in help. The capitol will become even more locked down, and access of ordinary citizens to it and to their representatives and senators will be more restricted.

This bill passed by ONE vote.

Whenever you see this, you should suspect absolute and complete bullshit.

The progressive defectors have all called to “defund” the police in the past: Reps. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY), Jamaal Bowman (D-NY), and Rashida Tlaib (D-MI) voted present, while Reps. Cori Bush (D-MO), Ayanna Pressley (D-MA), and Ilhan Omar (D-MN) voted against the bill, which includes funds for the Capitol Police.

This is an arranged vote. House members who need to be seen to oppose the bill were given “walks.” Because they needed the Squad to note vote against it, three didn’t, and the three who wanted/needed to keep their cred were allowed to vote against.

I am thinking back, and I can’t remember a time that the Squad, when they had the margin of victory, has ever cast the deciding vote against a bill that Democratic House leadership wanted passed. It may be that they have, and that I missed it; I don’t follow legislative matters super-closely.

But this vote was Kabuki, and unfortunately (I really did want to believe) I’m coming around to the view that the Squad is now basically onside. At a guess, I’d say a combination of co-option and punishment/threats have made clear to them their position, as when AOC didn’t get the committee assignment she wanted.

This is a genuinely difficult problem. People who go to Congress and want to play spoiler — to actually use their power when they have a veto, have to be willing to withstand both gestures of kindness and real punishment, along with the genuine hatred of their colleagues. If you’re not a “team player,” if you don’t do what leadership wants, there are prices to be paid.

It appears that those prices are too high for the Squad. Again, I may be wrong, but this isn’t a conclusion I come to anything but reluctantly. Nor, of course, does it not mean they aren’t “better” in some ways than other members. But there appears to be a fundamental dishonesty here that is disturbing, and a lack of willingness to use power when they have it.

(The more people subscribe or donate the more I write and the happier I am. So please consider doing so if you like my writing.)

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