Zombie Mentality

The zombie mentality, is how people become susceptible to programming through becoming team supporters.

Another way to describe this is speaking to the echo chamber. Basically, people like to join communities that just repeat their preconceived view right back to them. (It's the echo chamber...get it?)

A simple example of how they do this is by subscribing to non challenging Facebook groups.

The point isn't to question their own presuppositions. Rather, its to learn easy talking points to further entrench them.

Claims of fake news or spin, to avoid debate, is yet another rendition of the zombie mentality. Appeal to conspiracy theories, particularly when its for the political aims of ones team, is similar. These are the crutches of those looking for ways out of doing the hard work of really thinking about issues.

Why think, when positing there are aliens in the Federal Reserve, will solve all the problems much more easily for you.

Don't misunderestimate the zombies

There was probably a time when I and many like me assumed such people couldn't derail the system. We were all just proven wrong.

(The most ignorant, uneducated and hateful among us, can very well dictate the future for the rest because the authoritarian has a ready made zombie army of the easily manipulated to do his evil bidding...)

Yellow Journalism

“Journalism that is based upon sensationalism and crude exaggeration.” Google define.

I don't know if the foreign sources flooding America with fake news is quite what I'd call yellow journalism yet; but, clearly it has become entertainment based. Perhaps that's because so many politicians are professional entertainers now.

That is, the “sensationalism” is in what's being covered: The crass, entertainer, who's gained a whole lot of power.

Xenophobia

Simple question. If America destroys Mexico's economy will that lead to fewer Mexicans wanting to go to America? Just a straight forward example of how Xenophobia eats itself.

War Rules

In the entry "Just War" two types of just war topics were mentioned. The kind that talks about justification for war, and the kind that talks about ethical practices during war.

During this entry I will just sketch out a few points about that second kind of Just War discussion.

One of the thirty or so Republican candidates made a very interesting comment, which was repeated during several rallies, that went something like this: Torturing and killing POWs is a very good idea.

I think the point he was trying to make was that America was perceived as soft because it didn't kill and torture captured enemies.

POWs vs Combatants

Now, this is where I run into my first puzzled question about the comments made.

Did the candidate understand the difference between POWs and non uniformed combatants? Whether he did or didn't leads to somewhat different conclusions about what he was trying to say about military issues in general.

First of all, POWs are uniformed soldiers. Their uniforms are to clearly identify themselves as participants in the war. According to the rules, when captured they are to be put aside until the end of the war when they will be released to continue life as usual.

Combatants, on the other hand, are involved in the fighting despite the fact they did not identify themselves with a uniform. Because they are rule breakers, they can be executed without trial.

Some western countries will still hold a tribunal to decide the fate of the non uniformed combatant; but, now this is the legal process of the country that's determining things, not the Geneva Conventions.

The United States currently has rules trying to bring parity in its treatment of POWs and combatants. That is, it basically tries to treat combatants under all the same guidelines it treats POWs.

This is easier said than done though. And, I'm not just talking about emotions on the battlefield. Combatants, by playing outside the rules, put everything in a much more complicated place. When should they be released for example?

There is no official cease fire or peace treaty, when those being fought are indistinguishable from common criminals. Their leader often isnt some head of state who can even sign such treaties.

So when does the endpoint of the fighting come? Should they be released, as POWs might have been, in a parallel universe, where all the fighting took place between uniformed soldiers?

Thoughts on our candidates pronouncements

With this bit of preamble out of the way, let's consider our candidate again. My instinct is to assume a person has the most intelligence, and is taking the strongest version of the position that can be interpreted from his words.

Given that, I'd assume he knows what POWs are, and he has thoughtfully come to the conclusion, that torturing them with pigs blood, and then executing them, exactly as he described it at the many rallies he spoke about it, is indeed a great idea.

This means, he wants to torture uniformed soldiers, who clearly identified themselves during the fighting and then have them executed.

Ill stand by something Sun Tzu said, since he has clearly shown himself to be the most respected military theorist throughout history. I will try to explain his reasoning as well.

Treat captured soldiers with dignity and respect.

Sun Tzu understood that every moment you are fighting for something during the conflict, you are doing things that hurts or helps your ultimate goal, to win, in both big and small ways.

To get people to support you. To get the enemy to lose its confidence against you. These all flow from the nuances of the leaders decisions.

What better way to get the enemy to lose his fighting spirit against you, then to make it easy for him to give up.

Because, as Sun Tzu said several times, the way to control your enemies behavior is by constantly offering them a way out.

For the sake of this posting, it doesn't matter who that republican candidate was. But, it's very clear they were very unwise, and unthoughtful about issues of war and prisoners.

However, the rules of war, and applying ethical standards during war only seem like BS to the most ignorant about war. Because once they dismiss these options, they have removed tools from their tool kit, right when they needed to have the most strategic possibilities open to them.

And, as we all know, whoever takes over the leadership of the US will be facing war and combat decisions, every single day of their presidency.

Verify But Never Trust

It never ceases to amaze me, how little most people believe in logic, reason or the scientific method. 

Whether they are arguing for or against religion. No matter what political position they hold, there are very very few people who take these things all that seriously.

Carl Sagan said in Contact, you basically had five percent of the world, offering all kinds of technology, progress, thoughtful debate etc. , which the rest of the world benefited from; but, that other 95 percent could take everything down without moments notice. 

I'm far less skeptical about just how big a threat the dumb people are to the world than Sagan was; but, then again, they did just put a guy in office, who says global warming is a hoax created by the Chinese. It is definitely enough to make me stop and think about the lessons of the novel, Contact, one more time...

Understanding Marx' Flaw

Marx was part of a wave of thinkers, of which I'd include Freud. These were the early social scientists, who got us to take one framework, and then translate much of the social goings on, in terms of it. It is a credit to Marx, that through descriptions based on class structure, economics and some his theory was convincing enough to lead those applying it to believe it described human life.

Reductionist Approach

But the theory's very inception contains its most critical flaw: Namely, its approach is fundamentally reductionist. Marx, and most of the thinkers that follow him ultimately fall to taking a more explanation and trying to explain a more complicated aspect of human life with it.

Let's give an example. Suppose you have a factory worker, who upon pay day, buys a new truck with the money he's earned. The factory worker gets in his new truck, thinking he's quite happy with his new toy. The Marxist hears the word “happiness” and shakes his head somberly, realizing its his job to pop the workers bubble of delusions.

He proceeds to list the social methods of indoctrination that were used to teach the factory worker  to love trucks; like the big monster truck rally he attended last summer.  The poor factory worker, the Marxist explains, internalized values which inflated and exaggerated “trucks” into a much more important thing than they really are. These “lies” or “false values”, notes the Marxist, serve the purpose of keeping the poor factory worker in the bonds of slavery.  He will keep working for the evil factory, to earn money to buy a truck, which really has no value at all really. Just some fake thing taught to a naive worker.

“But I'm happy,” says the factory worker, “and your theories don't explain it,” And, that of course is the problem with  the reductionist approach right there. The Marxist framework, as complicated as is it, isn't nuanced enough to explain the human feeling of happiness. The factory worker feels it very strongly as he drives his new truck home, dreaming of screaming machines, from last summer's monster rally.

Transparency

We've spoken a few times about transparency. About how it affected the financial crisis and its role in corruption. But, I'd go a step further in speaking of its benefits because, at the end of the day, it is about being connected to the truth.

Obfuscation. How's it working out for you?

We currently live in a world where obfuscation and “fake news” are the weapons of the day. As if, clarity is some kind of problem, if people have it with regard to your political opponent. Why is it if people are against this or that political leader, they cant just say the truth about the person, or their reasons for not liking them? Its as if the lie to one's self, is as important as the obfuscation to others.

Occam's Razor

Occam's razor is one of the weapons you can use to fight conspiracy theories and other types of obfuscation because a lot of the time, although consistent, the conspiracy story just has way too many vague complicated points that are hard to explain.

One of the 911 truth theories, for example has the US government hiding two or three hundred people on a desert island. Its never even explained why they would want to keep these people alive. The vagaries and unanswered questions can kept being made to “connect the dots” with more vagaries and long winded theories and the ultimately reason why this can't work for the logical thinker has to be: the increasing lack of clarity in this approach to explaining things.

But, at the end of the day, I think the most important tool in being a force for clarity and transparency, is to pursue your political goals, without using obfuscations, or conspiracy theories, you don't understand yourself. It's almost as if its becoming a civic duty to get people to stop polluting the rhetorical airways.

Social Contract Theory

Social contract theory has a certain practical purpose in ethics. It allows the theorist to give a kind of explanatory foundation for their ideas. Over time, I have found that this is indeed a most useful purpose for giving a foundation to my own ideas about society and politics.

I should say, upfront,  I have borrowed from both John Locke and John Rawls; but, my idea about how to use social contract theory differs from both of them.

What is Social Contract Theory?

My version of social contract goes like this: The government's role is two fold: 1. To protect rights and freedoms. 2. To maximize utility. Note, the difference between my position and utilitarians: Maximizing utility is second in  importance compared to protecting rights and freedoms. (I do agree sometimes 1 and 2 can be the same.)

Social Contract Theory as a way of showing the benefits of government  

For the sake of argument, social contract theory here means the minimal benefits of government. For example, I might say: If we didn't have government, we would have problems, x, y and z, and therefore the benefits of entering the social contract is a, b and c.

But, it's important for me to explain that I do not see the social contract as only a relationships between people and their government or people and their sovereign. Rather, I see it more like a foundation for ethics between people, including, when they form governments.

So in an ethical conundrum, a person might use this outline as a basis for figuring out how to treat someone else. (It need not be a relationship between government/sovereigns and individuals. It can also help sort out relationships between individuals.)

Why are rights primary? Why not be a utilitarian?

Making rights primary is just a stop gap measure to insure the basic “rights of man” and fundamental dignity is guaranteed. It is also understood that there is going to be situations where this will decrease utility for everyone as a whole.

The concept “not proven” in criminal court as an example

The concept “not guilty” or “not proven” is an example of this ethical principle in action, in western courts. If you have a jury that thinks the person being tried committed the murder; but, they don't believe the prosecution demonstrated their case, its very important they declare the case “not guilty” or “not proven”. While its true, they knowingly let a murder go free, the idea of continuity of protecting rights, being the higher value, was maintained.

The OJ Simpson murder trial was an example of this. Several of the jurors who gave interviews, after the case was closed, said on the one hand they believed he really did kill his wife. On the other hand, they did not believe the prosecution did not demonstrate it. There was only one truly ethical, and legal choice in that situation, and I think they made it correctly: NOT GUILTY.

Redistribution

I want to take a stand for the right/left dichotomy. Too many people are attacking it, based on what I believe to be pretty dim witted ideas. An example of such an argument we heard in the US 2016 election, is that GW Bush and Hillary Clinton are “the same” therefore there is no right left problem that describes modern politics, etc.

I think this kind of argument, that pretends to gloss over the differences between different party representatives, is pretty artificial. I understand, however, the point of the people making it, is to dismiss the positions of both of them...They tell themselves this is part of tearing down the system, I guess, of standing against the “establishment”. You can probably guess I don't see much substance in these would be terrorists; but, that doesn't mean I don't take them seriously. It's impossible to ignore them after they put Donald Trump in office, after all. It's just that opposing them will not ultimately be based on reasoned arguments, since that isn't something this movement currently responds to.

It's also beyond the scope of this blog to go any further in refuting them just now.  Rather, let's consider why there is still a substantive difference between right and left:

Redistribution is a pretty fundamental difference 

We live in a society where disparity between rich and poor is growing. Whether, we should be taking from the rich, and giving to the poor, is the basis of the difference that still exists between the right and left side of the political spectrum; and, I think its a pretty fundamental one.

Both sides see their position as rooted in “fairness”

The “right” sees redistribution as unfair, or perhaps even theft and the “left” sees inequality as unfair. They want to “redistribute” wealth from the poor to the rich. The problem then, is that fairness can not decide this issue. It's a political problem that is truly deeper than an appeal to that particular value.

At this point, each side would have to reach beyond their fairness arguments to explain their position, for or against redistribution respectively. And that is the place where ideology truly begins.

Question Everything

Is too much self questioning a bad thing?

There is a fear people have that questioning everything will lead to relativism. This kind of person “values” deeply held beliefs that are difficult to challenge; and, they don't want to lose them.

These deeply held values can be arrived at in different ways, however. The person that questions everything, can have deeply held values too. That is, the ones that withstand the fire of his scrutiny and self questioning.

The person who has “deeply held values” based on avoiding questions, is the dogmatist, in other words. And, if they fear losing their values, you have to wonder why that is as well. Maybe they never had them in the first place.

Perfect Storm

What Is The Perfect Storm?

What I mean by perfect storm is an accumulation of smaller events that combine together in just the right way to create one big heck of a catastrophic event. The catastrophic event we are most interested in, of course, is the 2008 financial crisis.

Threads of the Perfect Storm

I cant possibly list all the threads that came together to create the perfect storm of the financial crisis; but, here are some of them: Real estate myths, transparency, leverage, confidence in experts, other economic problems like labour surpluses and shortages etc. There of course, are many more than this. It takes many many problems hitting at the same time to take down the economy the way it did in 08.

It's not my intention or ability to go through every thread of of the 08 crisis. I will however pick a few examples just to illustrate my idea of how this particular perfect storm worked.

Confidence in Experts

In the case of the financial crisis experts, they created insurance tools they thought would be safe because it placed them and their clients on both sides of certain critical bets. That is, betting against their initial investment was thought of as a kind of insurance. If you bet against yourself, you can't lose right? The problem was this confidence, given by the financial experts, made the consequences of the financial collapse even worse when it came. This is the case because it made the crash less expected. If you think you are protected, and then in the middle of the disaster, find out you aren't, it leaves you with no sense of worry, which might have helped you when things went wrong.

Real estate myths

If there is one tenet that seems more salient than the others its this one. And it forever connects *everyone* to the crisis that eventually developed. Namely, the price of land will always go up. When I say everyone is connected, I mean everyone. We would like to think we can easily blame banks or politicians for what happened; but, our very own misconceptions played a critical role in this event. Small, in the context of the perfect storm; but, critical nonetheless.

Ninja loans

People assume loan making businesses were just criminal orgs or stupid. But, this assumption lets hatred of banks lead to biased analysis.  Loan making orgs, did indeed make mistakes; but, these mistakes were only identified in hind sight. The loans they made, they thought, were profitable; and, the reasons they had at the time for making them seemed good enough.

Even if the loan client had no job, and so on, they still had a HOUSE that could, from the loan company's perspective, be double in value than it was three years earlier. The institutions didn't mind getting the house if the client was unable to pay their mortgage. In the meantime, they would get the commission on making the loan. There was no way to lose...right?

Like all bubbles, real estate bubbles in particular raise a kind of confidence. Remember, this is combined with everyone and their uncle saying, buying and holding land is ALWAYS a good bet. You get stuck with a house with 1/3 lower value than it used to have? Don't worry. Land always bounces back.

Tools to avoid the trust laws lead to lack of transparency

Freddie Mac was instrumental in creating investment tools that were inspired by the idea of finding ways to invest in real estate across state borders. The bottom line is that the complexity of these investment tools made it difficult to quickly understand contracts based on them when the financial crisis hit. The system froze as the system tried to understand barely understandable contracts.

These are just a couple examples of the factors of the perfect storm that came together in 2008. Each factor hit the system a certain way to bring it down. Experts who were on the lookout for problems, in fact, made things even worse by the false confidence they brought to people who had spent their adults lives in the financial industry. People's exaggerated belief in the benefits of owning real estate, lead them to buy over priced homes. And those making the loans for those homes, discounted the personal finances of those seeking them, because they too, thought, getting the home in the worse case scenario wasn't that bad.

It was a confluence of events that we all contributed to; even if was just with our ultimately false beliefs.

Oligarch

The authoritarian promise

We are seeing, in both the east the west, the oligarchs rise to power. Their ability to be captains of industry has made them the heroes of those who have become frustrated with democratic institutions, where bureaucrats inability to get along, has made the governing environment one of toxicity. That is, the oligarch offers the authoritarian promise, of being able to cut through the bullshit of compromise.

The oligarch's expertise in leadership

These are the people who enriched themselves heavily in the private sector and now, as systems face unprecedented lack of confidence, are being relied upon to “save” the systems of government, they are being elected to lead. Of course, the idea that the system needed saving came from media owned by the oligarch's allies.

Putting aside the idea that success in one field will lead to success in a very different one, this is another extension of the concept, that rich will take over, or perhaps take down, democratically principled systems. While its true, the oligarchs, as proven by their success, did become a kind of expert in capitalism, their path was often one of cronyism as opposed to pure experts in system building.

So, they already had connection to government; but, from the business crony angle. And, their path to the top of government had its wheels greased by their existing understanding of where the fault lines lay in a system with corrupt elements.

Strangely, the oligarch's do not hide their intention to enrich themselves

We have seen, some of the oligarchs do not hide that their intention is to enrich themselves. Deals that benefit their privately held companies, are done in plain sight; and, with governments they must also deal with as public servants.

It could be, this is a show of strength. Their ability to flaunt their conflict of interest, is also a sign of their unstoppable power.

Is the rise of the oligarch helpful or hurtful?

Even though there is rule of law that stands against an oligarch, whose main intention is self enrichment, its not clear, if their rise to power, is a temporary thing; a bump in the road for an increasingly rich democracy; or, is the beginning of the end of the system.

Let's not forget, the weakening of the system that lead to the oligarch's ability to use their authoritarian appeal to win elections, was something that has been building for decades. It's still not clear to me, if it just illustrates problems which can then be corrected down the road. (Maybe its easier to correct these problems now that they've been illustrated.)

Certainly, citizens, while they still have power, will have to decide if they are going to jump on the bandwagon of giving up this very power, to strengthen those of the oligarch ; or, whether they will seek to keep a certain amount of weakness in the government. Weakness, that while frustrating, is the check that protects their own freedom.

Nassim Taleb

I've already talked about black swans, a concept that largely came from Nassim Taleb's book, “Black Swan”. So let's talk about another concept from another book of his: Antifragile.

Antifragility is the idea that some systems thrive on the chaos, problems and shocks in their environment. Life itself is antifragile, in that, in a universe hostile to life, it thrives if there are enough resources for it to take off; and, there is just enough stability to do so.

Consider the following comparison: You take a plant or animal and move it to another kind of environment, perhaps on a different continent to where it naturally came from.

The life form will often just die in a short period of time. It can't find the resources it needs to survive. It's the wrong temperature. There are a thousand reasons why it's likely going to die off.

But then you have the case of the invasive species. In this situation, the new form rapidly takes over the new environment because it literally has no opposition to its thriving. This second case is what I see as the strongest example of antifragility, in that the invasive species is literally thriving against previously unknown opposition.

Maslow's Hierarchy Of Needs

The existing system in a very basic way works towards increasing people's standard of living. That's what the vast majority of the people on the Forbe's list get wealthy doing...proving goods and services to people. (Ill add over 70 percent of them did not inherit the business that put them on the list.)

If your interest is improving either standard of living or the environment what about our current system is it most necessary to change? There are the things we do directly through consumption, like dig materials out of the ground; but, how do you go about reducing things like that? Given the world we live in, I'd argue population reduction through increasing standard of living is one of the few realistic avenues open to us.  There are at least two basic reasons for this: 1. people need to reach a certain economic level before they can think about the environment and 2. increasing peoples standard of living leads to them having fewer children.

Thought Experiment

I want you to imagine walking up to some guy in India who lives and works in one of those huge garbage dumps. Try to explain to him your ideas about global warming. He will think you are full of shit and ignore everything you say. You need to first create a level of economic stability before you can have that discussion.

This concept is called "Maslow's Hierarchy". Its the basic idea as people rise economically, there are better able to think about and address more general philosophical concerns that are beyond their immediate survival.

Secondly, as people's standard of living increase; as women go out and get careers; they have fewer children and they have them at an older age in life.

As I've mentioned before, we are seeing this phenomenon reflected in the demographics in a large number of countries from Russia to USA to Japan. In Japan, for example, women are staying at home into their 30's while they go out and get careers. I've already mentioned: the government of Japan calls this a crisis even though they have 127  million plus people crammed onto a handful of islands.

This fear of a demographic crisis is counter productive to those who'd like to see a natural and non oppressive way of reducing the worlds population. It leads to the artificial tension between improving standard of living and the environment at the same time...

Liberaltarian

My opposition to the Iraq War lead me to question whether the political right in North America was really such a good home base for people who lean libertarian. Because of their relationship to freedom one of the foundations of libertarian though is rights. But right wing parties have increasingly fought for policies that encroach on rights. Their advocacy of torture and eminent domain are cases in point.

I am also quite discouraged by how many libertarians buy into conspiracy theories and outright fascism. The way some right leaning libertarians buy into tyranny and authoritarianism makes their affiliation to libertarianism outright contradictory, at times.

Looking particularly at the situation in USA, its fair to say, the “big tent” of republicanism is increasingly excluding libertarian thinking people. Those who think along these lines are going to have to build up a small party or remain party-less. The other side of the coin, is their minds might become more open to alliances on the left and in the Democratic party. The type of pro freedom ideas they would like to champion have some representation from those who are on the left or centrist. Camille Paglia comes to mind, because she was someone fighting the biggest excesses of feminism and political correctness, even as she did so as a democrat.

Will Wilkinson, in his bloggingheads.tv discussions, didn't seem to  reject libertarian values so much as talk about how they can  be achieved through a long game. And let's face it, many of us who see ourselves as libertarian leaning are thinking about the long game now. The VERY long game...sigh.

Rights and freedom based libertarianism strongly rooted in the left?

It's probably best to remember that rights and freedom based libertarianism has some strong historical roots in the left. If we think of the original republican party's association with abolitionism, as one of the places this grew out of in America, then the “big switch” that happened in the civil rights fight (where Strom Thurmond became a republican) explains why the heritage of fighting for freedom belongs as much with democrats than with republicans. (And, they were the ones who passed civil rights, after all.)

The US Left has its own tyrannical impulses

All this has to be tempered with the fact, that there are enough on the American left, who cheered on the shutting down of speeches by Charles Murray and Milo Yiannopoulos. In America, students who use violence to quash free speech are often acting on the ideas taught to them by their professors. So while many of us worry about the authoritarian and tyrannical impulses rallying the right right now...we should remember where their ideas and techniques came from...

Kleptocracy

It might be a little strong to say we live in a nation of thieves; but, it's not far from the truth. The problem we have today is that all levels of government have become addicted to money. They are absolutely desperate for it. The province of Ontario, for example, wants to introduce license requirements to a whole host of businesses including hair dressers.

This would mean, in order to keep their jobs, people working at hair salons and barbers would have to pay hefty licensing fees and take mandatory courses. It's nothing short of a money grab scheme, because while our government can't say no to spending entire emergency funds and local savings on stadiums, its closing down high schools and eliminating services.

An example close to home

In the area where I live, there is a pleasant old street of business shops. Trendy antique stores, places to drink coffee, book and music stores are among them. During the financial crisis half the stores closed. I remember one antique shop owner telling me a heart wrenching story of his struggle to keep his business going.

Now, getting close to a decade later, everyone has noticed the street has made a come back. Every shop is open, and more are being built. The city has especially noticed this. They have decided to extend parking times and ramp up the fees. It hasn't occurred to our civic planners that this is still a struggling area.

Now that the paid parking has been extended into the evenings I've noticed some of the coffee shops are half empty again. I don't know how direct the cause and effect relationship is between the cities actions and the decrease in business but I have heard many complaints about the ill timed parking fee extensions and increases. Groups that used to meet here are going to where there is free parking instead.

I don't quite call the situation we are in a kleptocracy. Yet, we are well on our way to becoming one. Our current leaders do their stealing and gouging for benign reasons. Sooner or later, however, we are going to get someone who doesn't.

Just War Theory

I'd like to take this moment to apologize to anyone who's decided to read through these  initial 26 blogs. I think apologies are getting a bad rap these days, so I just through I'd throw one in, and make apology tours great again.

But, it's impossible to hide I'm in the middle of a rush job to achieve the A to Z challenge. Let me just say, while quality will be impossible to maintain, I hope readers will at least be left with some key points about how I see things. Then later, when its not about blogging challenges any more, we can see how these ideas might apply to political issues of the day, or how they came from philosophical, political and religious readings or investigations I did in the past. Just War Theory is a case in point. It will be impossible to do a complete investigation of a topic that deserves it more than just about any other.

Two kinds of  just war ethics

Ok onto the topic. There are two ways to think about Just War Theory. The first, and most obvious, is the ethical justification for waging war. Are there ever situations where war is just?

The second, outlines the boundaries for conducing war. Rules of war, like the Geneva Conventions come to mind. For the purpose of this blog, I'm just talking about the first kind; although, I have plenty to say about the second, if someone reminds me to do so later on...

The main rule of war - Reluctance

I wanted to cross reference a basic idea about war justification between Christian apologetics and a classic Chinese text, to show how wide spread and culture crossing the concept is. Showing something's wide acceptance, doesn't make it true. However, it makes a good starting point for later discussion.

So, reluctance to go to war and the related concept: ethical justification leads to reluctance. This is so because the very nature of adding an ethical foundation has a built-in reluctance in the formula. It's “baked in the cake”, as Americas like to say. For most of us, what is ethical, stands in contrast to what war is. War is a pragmatic approach to things on the *extremes* of social/moral acceptance. It is “politics by other means”; but, clearly the normal means have broken down.

St Thomas Aquinas had a certain predictability with regard to what he was going to say about war. Christians are supposed to turn the other cheek, so there were only going to be limited ways any Christian could consistently talk about doing any kind of violence, never mind engaging in war. He and St. Augustine are pretty true to that pattern: they show an extreme reluctance to enter war.

Sun Tzu's difficult benchmark for war

Sun Tzu, who's work, "Art Of War", which I skimmed through for the first time in many years before writing this entry, showed near agreement on war justification, that was close to stunning to me.  He went beyond the need for an ethical justification. He argued, it was best to be RIGHT about the issues being fought over. Notice the difference between this and propaganda, where you are merely trying to convince people of your reasons.

Sun Tzu literally thought the side that was right about its convictions could count this as an advantage on the battle field. That isn't to say, convictions are going to win any  fights without a proper supply line. But, holding those things equal, the side that's right about why its fighting, will have an advantage.

Very few wars qualify as just wars

The moral underpinning, even in the case of Sun Tzu, for a just war, means that very few wars are going to be just.
If you are not defending yourself or not helping someone you are not trying to stop a force that's truly "evil", It's already going to be questionable if you can meet the ethical conditions for war. Wars for adventure, to create opportunities for one's industries, not only, do not pass the ethical standard for a just war, they, in the long run, fail to meet their own objectives, and they, through their short shortsightedness undermine the military plan itself.

Impeachment

In political conversations with Americans, they often want to impeach the leader of the other side. Unlike countries like Canada or Israel, however, where courts can charge a leader with a crime, the American system offers its president and head of state, immunity from such legal recourse. The leader can eventually be charged with crimes after his/her term has ended; but, not during.

In most parliaments the Prime Minister is not that different from other elected ministers. Like them, he represents a single riding (or district, as they call them in the US). In a country like Canada, it's the party, its policies, loosely tied together by an ideology, and the Prime Minster combined, that's elected by the population. The PM, btw, can be defeated in his/her local riding/district race.

In USA the districts and the president are given power in separate elections. The White House and the House of Representatives (along with the senate) stand in political opposition to each other as checks against each other.

Removing a president from office is based on two 2/3 votes: one from the House of Reps ...the impeachment... and one from the Senate...the conviction. That is, the check on his leadership is vote based, that is, it's a political mechanism, not a rule of law based one. And this is why, I like to argue, the American system is not based on rule of law; but rather, a system based on balance of power.

Hans Rosling

The main thing I want to say about Hans Rosling is that he, along with Nate Silver, opened my eyes to the power of statistics. While I agree with the statement, “You can prove anything with statistics”, I don't believe any position holds up when you start digging into them more deeply. Sometimes, astounding, inevitable and even anti intuitive conclusions can be made from them.

Here are two Hans Rosling lectures that made me re think many of my preconceptions about whats going on in the world.

The Best Stats You've Ever Seen

This first video Rosling challenges ideas like “poor countries have big families” and what “developing country” means.

Don't Panic – Hans Rosling Showing the Facts About Population

The second video Rosling shows the facts about population. Basic question: Why did population increase in Bangladesh while women had increasingly fewer children over time? No No No NO! Don't Switch Off! This video gives the answer!

Rest in peace Hans Rosling, who recently passed away. Many of us will be thinking about your ideas represented through big animated charts and over excited commentary for a long time to come!

Geopolitics

Recently, a friend, who I assumed was a completely reasonable person, phoned and said, "The problems we have today are all based on geopolitics." He then went into a detailed explanation about how the federal reserve was controlled by aliens.

Conspiracy theories aside, I was quite frustrated by his use of the term, *geopolitics*. So lets go over what it really means.

Historically, groups of people created stable communities when they settled resource rich tracts of land surrounded by natural, geographical barriers. Typically the kinds of barriers we are talking about are rivers, mountain ranges and oceans etc.

Before we go on, “stable” here does cover a wide range or social/political systems. This includes kingdoms or tyrannies, for example. So stable, here, just means a political system that lasts even for a relatively short period of time.

So its easy to understand why Egypt, for example, had long lasting, “stable” kingdoms both within its borders; and, when it came under the control of the Roman empire. It's natural borders included the Mediterranean on one side and its large supply of fresh water, brought by the Nile, made it the breadbasket and center of that region's power (no mater who controlled it) for centuries.

We can also see why the European part of the Roman empire had much of its border politics play along the Rhine and the Danube rivers. Their mastery of the political issues that developed along these rivers (both through diplomacy and war) is one of the key reasons they were one of the longest lasting empires.

But, just like large, stable, resource rich, areas surrounded by natural barriers become centers of power (in one way or another); areas broken up, divided, or exposed to a larger culture, (thus giving them little natural defense), become fault lines, buffer zones and “choke points” where instability and conflict never seem to go away as empires use these zones against each other.

What we now call The Balkans and the region surrounding Syria, seem like troubled regions now; but, they were during Roman times as well. These “broken” regions separating big powers from each other, have been pawns and buffer zones of those same big powers for centuries.

So the next time you hear, Americans or the Russians should stay out of Balkan or Syrian (or Ukrainian issues, for that matter) because these regions have “nothing to do” with issues back home; consider if the commentator is talking realistically, in terms of geopolitics. Or, maybe just blame it on the aliens in the federal reserve.

Free Trade

Suppose someone wants to build a factory in China. What are the reasons for blocking them? When companies are at home whats the point of protecting them with tariffs? Here is a list of some of the reasons some hate free trade. They are followed by some quick responses by me.

Objections to free trade:

1) Building a factory in China hurts local workers.
2) The factory builder has the duty to support the country that gave him roads, education and all the other things that lead to him being able to have the wealth and power to build factories.
3) We need to be “nationalists” and put our workers first.
4) Trade deficits are bad.
5) There are local companies that will go under if we don't protect them.
6) An “international game” develops that allows rich and powerful to break laws. We have to stop free trade in order to stop these international players from avoiding rule of law.

Responses:

1) It's innovation that helps workers in the long run. That's what improves their standard of living.

2) This response gets things reversed. If you want roads, a good education system and so on, you need a dynamic society filled with ambitious people. It's not the roads that facilitates this. It's the opportunity to be ambitious and part of something dynamic...

3)This begs the question. Will we really make our workers better off by enacting protectionist measures? I think we will make them better off by giving them a better standard of living, opportunities a more dynamic society and so on...

4) A country, by having a big market of consumers, attracts lots of goods and services from other countries. This leads to its own population having a better standard of living. Why? Because they pay less to have more and better things they need and want in their life. How many tv's and cars do the countries with the big market attracting others have?

5) Some companies may go under if they do not make their product cheap or good enough to compete with the foreign products. I agree this can cause short term harm. But, just like the people who made stage coaches ultimately benefit from the creation of cars; others benefit from technology and innovation. Let's add that foreign countries that “unfairly” block/protect OUR (whatever our home country happens to be) products just end up hurting their own people's standard of living.

Let's consider an important objection to 5.)

5a) Losing your manufacturing job “now” is worse than losing the stage coach job was in the past. The cars replacing stage coach makers were made locally.

Response to 5a)

As I understand it 5a.) is basically saying: The situation is fundamentally different now to what it was years ago when the black smiths and the stage coach makers lost their jobs.

The above statement is not factually true except in the following sense: New jobs being created are increasingly specialized and are often beyond the skill level of current workers. That is, there was a gap in skill between stage coaches and cars; but, we are still able to make cars with workers without extremely specialized skills. Sketch artists and computer programmers are not so easily handed “unskilled” work.

Thus the problem, in modern times, isn't the lack of jobs; but, the education gap between those who lost their jobs (in manufacturing for example); and, skills needed where there are job shortages. This problem is compounded by corporate/office culture (or academic culture) where there is a shortage of higher paying jobs. Will the anti establishment, union culture, prepare these workers for jobs that pay at higher rates? Learning new skills is not the only challenge these workers face. They must learn to be ambitious.

6) Let's make a distinction between enforcing rules on international players and stopping the benefits of free trade. If it turns out that its correct for businesses to pay taxes then enforce taxation law. If labor or environmental standards are the problem, then enforce rule of law to protect these standards. (A separate question might be whether some of these standards are actually good; but, let's assume for the moment there are at least some standards most would agree on.)

If NAFTA or WTO or the EU allowing agreed upon standards to be broken, then let's re negotiate any agreement to help a nations enforce rule of law. We should not, btw, open up these agreements for the purpose of sabotaging them or bringing about a “nationalist” agenda. Such opening of agreements should be done in good faith.

Additional Arguments/Comments:

7) Free trade isn't just an economic issue. It's a moral one. If I try to sell a book to someone outside my country what place is it for my government (or the foreign one) to step in and charge me or a foreign buyers a prohibitive fee? Even if a utilitarian argument could be created to justify such a policy; it would have to be demonstrated harms for “everyone” has reached a threshold great enough to over rides rights of individuals and business. Most trade examples are not going to meet this standard. Certainly not selling books across borders, for example.

8)It's easy to villainize big international players like Apple; but, take a look at Upwork.com or Freelancer.com and note: many of the international players are individuals and small businesses. Big companies like Ebay, Amazon and AliBaba are in essence providing structures or “rails” for these small players to operate. Yea, they get super wealthy in the process of doing so...

9) The benefits of free trade is a counter balance to war. Take a look at the US/Canadian border. Once one of the most militarized borders in the world, it is now recognized among the friendliest. Let's not pretend there is some kind of inherent friendship between these two nations when American troops were burning down peoples homes in their vigilance to capture Fort George.

It was, “the benefits of co operation”, that made this border peaceful; and, I'd argue, the way forward to making others more friendly as well.

Environmentalism and Poverty

How do we improve peoples lives and decrease harm to the environment at the same time? Our high standard of living is maintained by digging up minerals and changing the landscape for farming and city planning. Do the solutions of one problem create barriers to solving another?

Lets go down the rabbit hole a bit further with our assumptions: Increasing the standard of living of many nations has lead to a decrease in their birth rate. As women get jobs they have children in their 30's instead of their 20's or not at all. Decreasing poverty, at least in theory, should lead to a decrease in population. And whats the best thing we can do for the environment? How about decrease the population?

The Demographic “Crisis”

If policy makers focused on making their peoples' lives even better there should be an eventual population reduction.

We've see this happening already. An array of nations as diverse as USA , China, Russia (along with much of Europe) and Japan have experienced decreasing birth rates. The lowering of their populations has only been offset by nations able or willing to drastically increase immigration. Many refer to whats going on as “the demographic crisis”. But, to my mind it's not a crisis if its our goal to lower the population. If we focused on standard of living instead of GDP growth as a political target we would also have a goal that doesn't directly include having a greater population as part of what its calculation rewards.

Poverty Reduction

At the same time, poverty reduction, as suggested by demographics expert Hans Rosling, is leading to a long term downward trend in population, of the impoverished countries targeted. Areas of the most extreme poverty, such as, Bangladesh, have already shown a big difference. Population growth didn't decrease right away because of the increased number of people surviving sickness; but, birth rates did. The long run projection of population is that it will eventually follow suit.

So those of us who care about the environment should not just jump on the extremist bandwagon just yet: It's not quite time to start sterilizing the population in mass numbers. At the same time, we can't just sit on our laurels and hope things will solve themselves. Poverty reduction has been something of an active goal by many charities and other NGO's, and other forces outside the populations receiving the help.

Underlying this all we have to think about the unique character of human beings and how the principle of unintended consequences tends to put what we would think of a direct cause and effect result into question: After all, The Black Plague lead to an *increase* in population.

Disparity

There are many articles out there about income inequality.  They assume its unfair one guy can make a billion or more dollars while hundreds of  millions live in extreme poverty. The problem, is an attack on the rich wont help the people at the bottom.

Articles and conversations on the subject, including the one that lead to this post, do not attempt to establish the connection between disparity and problems for the poor. Disparity is often demonstrated then stated as a problem in itself. The benefits of getting rid of disparity are not. How to get rid of it is even further removed.

The reality is that as the number of billionaires have increased the number of world the worlds extreme poor reached record low levels. Extreme poor is defined here as people earning under $2 a day. These record low levels were reached in 2006, 2012 and again in 2015. The question I have been asking myself, since I first heard Fareed Zakaria talking about this issue on his PBS show (about 2006), is couldn't it be possible the extreme rich and extreme poor get better at the same time?

Note: I am not saying there is a cause an effect relationship between these two classes. I am also not discounting such a relationship.

Poverty is still a terrible problem in the world. At about 700 million or so by the World Bank's $2 definition, we still have a long way to go. Still, that's a big drop from what it was in 2012, about 900 million.

Anyways folks, don't always assume everything is a zero sum game.

To see more on this issue check out the World Bank's section on poverty:
http://www.worldbank.org/en/topic/poverty/overview

Corruption

Google “define” states corruption as, “Dishonest or fraudulent conduct by those in power, typically involving bribery.” This standard definition sticks it to those in power, which is how the term is used by most people. But, a more expanded idea can take it beyond politicians and bribes.

Imagine someone wants to do something that has a law or sanction against it. Let's say, a married man wants to have an affair. So he sneaks around at night; maybe, creates fake ID for hotel rooms. He obfuscates the trail of clues that leads back to him. This obfuscation of the truth is a metaphor for corruption. It's the “system” he builds to help him live his normal life, with wife, kids and job unaffected by his sanctioned behavior.

Now, in those few moments when this guy is tired of the stress of lying and hiding things, we could imagine he wishes he could live in a different kind of world. One, where he could just do what he wants, truthfully. Straight forwardly, even. Without the lies, wouldn't things be so much easier? This kind of questioning of barriers, parallels the libertarian point of view. The honest, straight forward approach, it's assumed, would lead to things being so much better. A person is going to go after what they want, anyways, so let's just get rid of the lies, obfuscation ..the complexity; and, just let people do what they want.

I'll leave it as an open question whether the libertarian point of view should be adopted in the case of affairs; but, you get the point.

To restate the basic principle: You have a social value or law; and, a system develops to try and circumnavigate the “barrier” to the thing desired. This circumnavigation may be completely legal; but, there will be consequences. Namely, a less transparent, usually more complicated set of systems used for the circumnavigation. (Not to mention, the risk of a frying pan to the head.)

Black Markets

When a drug is banned people find a way to buy it anyways. For the right price, someone will scheme to get the product in another country (or make it in a lab). They smuggle it into the country and take the risk of confrontation with the state's law enforcers. For this to happen, the smuggler/lab producer is paid a premium. The amount must be high enough to cover the cost of the product, as well as, the risk they take to fight the legal system.

According to our framework, corruption is the subsystem that arises to get around society's laws or social value. In this case, drug dealers build an organization, including lab workers, smugglers, sales staff and other risk takers, to get around society's barriers. The system of corruption can become violent as they inevitably clash with law enforcement.

Investment tools created to circumnavigate US Real Estate Laws

The following is a more complicated example of our corruption principle. It would be impossible, given the scope this blog to cover every detail; but, here is the summary: A major company, Freddie Mac, was created, with a lot of input by the US government. Its purpose was to help facilitate the secondary mortgage market. One of the ways it did this was create investment tools related to real estate.

At the same time, the US has laws which put barriers on real estate investments across state lines. Freddie Mac's investment tools were designed to circumnavigate these barriers; or, at least not be in conflict with them. To achieve this, there was a combination of lobbying for some legal changes; and, the tools themselves contained enough complexity that US real estate laws wouldn't be broken. These investment tools, in other words, reached a level of complexity that went beyond the scope of the US and state laws to contain them.

Their role in the financial crisis

Real estate tools were created by other institutions, emulating Freddie Mac's; and, additional, secondary tools, were created that worked along side ones of this first type. This second type, in effect, added a layer of complexity to the contracts/legal relationships investors and banks would see at the end of the process.

When the financial crisis came these investment tools “gummed up the works” because the different banks couldn't understand (quickly enough) whether certain investments based on resultant contracts could be used as collateral. (The attempt to describe all of this exponential complexity, in a general way, is itself, near impossible to contain the messiness!)

The time it was taking to understand these investments played a major role in the credit freeze which took place between banks. Complexity and obfuscation was a major barrier to investigations by the banks and authorities.

In this case, nothing illegal happened. Even if we assume politicians didn't take bribes during the initial lobbying process the “corruption” is still there, however. There was indeed a legal sanction in place; and, a regime built up over time to create a LEGAL subsystem to get around it. The “getting around” was legal; but, the resulting regimen was necessarily complex. This very complexity, was one of many factors that lead to the catastrophic consequences of 08. It was one the key factors that combined to create the perfect storm for that year's “black swan”.

Circumnavigating the law

In both the case of drugs and avoiding trade/investment barriers, a set of systems can develop to facilitate this circumnavigation. It's possible this type of system gaming was facilitated by unnecessary law; but, whether you agree with the law or not, they corruption problem and resulting transparency problem, happened because there was some kind of market demand to get around the law.

Politicians Taking Bribes

Is there a complicated construction zoning law, a local politician, knows how to get around? Is there some other kind of permit he knows how to get his “customers” under the table? Again, the corruption, is the system that develops as the politician and his “team” are interested in circumnavigating.

It follows, a system with a lot of laws blocking things people want to do will develop a set of “black market professionals”. Whether these are politicians, civil servants or drug dealers, who sell their expertise at a premium on getting around these sanctions, it has the same underlying principle.

Approaches to corruption - Simplicity or Sanction?

The approach to corruption is at least two pronged. There is deterrence or punishment of the politician, civil servant, drug dealer, or adulterer. Another way of doing things would be the removal of the law, sanction or social barrier. The legalization of alcohol in USA lead to a drop in the organized crime surrounding it. Although there have been negative consequences, like drunk driving accidents, many of those problems existed when alcohol was illegal. An objection to this argument, might be, those drunk driving accidents happened far less frequently when drinking was illegal.

Whether there is a law or not there will always be behaviors and practices society frowns on. Some wanna be adulterers might find a partner who is willing to have an open marriage; but, then my question is, what sanctions will they impose on their partner?

Black Swan

What is the Black Swan?

A Black Swan is an event that is unlikely or surprising. It's not unlike the term, “Dark Horse”, which can refer to a player or competitor, who no one thought would do well; although, black swans are a wider range of things including unexpected physical events. Lately, the usage has come to focus on catastrophic events, like the financial crisis in 2008.

Credit for the popularisation of this term can be given to Nassim Taleb, who wrote a book, also named, Black Swan. This book was credited for predicting and explaining many aspects of the financial crisis of 2008.

Black Swan – Historical Usage

In 1697 Dutch Explorers saw black swans for the first time in Western Australia. Up until that point, the term "black swan" referred to what was thought of as a non existent bird. So, to say, “its like a black swan”, meant it was something impossible.

After the sighting of actual black swans, the term transformed. It came to mean something unlikely that may later be disproved

Black Swans in Philosophy

Notable in the field of philosophy, is the "Black Swan Fallacy". As a fallacy, this has been credited to John Stuart Mill but its not clear to me if it has a single author.

As I understand it, this fallacy goes something like this: Someone claims, because something hasn't been experienced, it can not be so. Eg. Jimmy says, “We have never seen black swans therefore they do not exist.” As happened historically, many people not having witnessed black swans, didn't mean they didn't exist.

How Experts Make Things Worse

Here is how the Black Swan applies to economics, social science and therefore politics:

You have experts who, if you follow their advice, give you confidence against a bad outcome, in the field they are experts in. However, when something bad happens in that field, the confidence these experts gave you, make things worse. Why? Because the confidence they gave you made you less wary of the bad outcome.

Example from the financial crisis:

Experts gave investments a “triple A” rating they often did not deserve. Some people who bought these investments found out they were built on a completely shoddy foundation; but, by then it was too late. Now the crashing value of these investments were doubly hard on the owners because they hadn't even considered the possibility there was a problem. It was..a double gut punch, so to speak.

The Danger of Taking Black Swan Ideas Too Far

I think there is a danger of going way too far with black swan thinking. For example, I read the following idea in the Black Swan entry in Wikipedia: Every significant event in history is a black swan.

Are the only significant events in history the catastrophic or surprising ones? This is taking things too far! Those who get too deep into the lore of black swan ideology, perhaps the result of a kind of pessimism, risk going off the rails with their analysis. I guess many good ideas can be taken to extremes or applied with too much reductionism.

A counter example to illustrate what I mean: Consider a long establish system of farmers working their farms every day (and bringing their goods to market). By doing this they feed hundreds of thousands of people. The sheer ordinariness of what these farmers do, day in and day out, does not make what they do less significant than the financial crisis or the great depression. In fact, this particular pattern seems more critical than those catastrophes.

And, that, my friends is where we come full circle. For, at any time, something can come along, to take down this “established system”. And, sometimes this unexpected event is beyond our ability to predict it...

Authoritarianism

A commentator claimed, authoritarianism was a made up and meaningless attack term. By the end of this blog, it is hoped, its meaning will have returned.

Local Rejection of Rule of Law

In many detective novels and thrillers there is a kind of supporting character that is willing to “cross the line” in order to help the protagonist in the name of justice. This character could be played by a chief of police or a computer hacker. They do everything from break into the villain's cell phone to reveal his tax returns.

What is the writer doing by telling this kind of story? Society has laws. Tax returns and cell phone data are private information. Why is it OK to create some hero's helper who can undermine these rules?

Readers of thriller novels are rewarded by fictional teams that don't play by the rules. It's all in the name of pursuing a just cause. An escape from real world frustration, where rights can mean, the bad guy gets away. Think OJ Simpson.

This is authoritarianism at the local level. In the big scheme of things, even the chief of police is just a small guy trying to do the right thing. Sure, he bends the rules a little; but, it's OK, because you have to do what it takes to get the jerk criminals. Until, some guy in uniform tells you, you're the bad guy, that is.

Macro Authoritarianism. Authoritarianism at the National Level

Rather than make a comprehensive list of the ways authoritarian leadership works at the top a couple of specific examples will be used to illustrate it in the context of democracy. Namely, crime and breaking bureaucratic deadlocks.

Where as, at the local level, we might have an honest cop perusing justice, at the top we have, WAR ON CRIME! Take, Rodrigo Duterte, leader of the Philippines, for example. He boasts, he personally kills criminals! No such thing as rights for scum bags in Manila or Quezon. Because even with a little slack, these folks will use their drug money to game the system and create chaos. Someone had to step in to protect the people...right?

It's not just about bending the rules to put the badman in jail. It's about flaunting who had the power and the will to bend the rules in the first place. It takes a special person to break the law for justice.

Breaking Deadlocks and Breaking Faces

Coalitions. Compromises. Committees. The three evil C's of freedom. Democracy seems filled with a lot of road blocks to getting anything done. And when things do get done its a watered down version of the initial proposal. Nobody is ever happy.

By having general elections we end up with regions, different economic classes and other special interests at the table. How else are we supposed to create policy that represents the general will of the electorate? But, when these competing interests and ideologies start to lock the system. A growing frustration begins to grow, especially among the voters who wanted a particular policy there seem to be a decent amount of agreement on.

Take health care in USA, for example. The groups most opposed to competition across state lines are the businesses themselves. The Republicans can't agree among what the general approach to health care should be. Never mind the left, who had a bitter, contentious fight that lasted 13 months, before they came up with the hardly agreed upon, Obamacare. And, it was the passing of this bill which is most often credited with their election defeat in 2010. (Note: My Democrat friends claim it was gerrymandering ;-))

Then the authoritarian pops up, promising to resolve the deadlock. No explanation is given on how this magic act will take place or why the normal process of coalition building is such a bad idea. All the reasons for disagreement are ignored, of course. All those different groups and regions seeing the problem differently are just dismissed as bureaucratic bs by the authoritarian.

The Paradox of the Democratic Authoritarian: Populism Undermining Rights

The authoritarian, if he comes on the scene at the right time, can truly ride a populist wave to victory. Why? Because the people, at such a moment, have been caught when they don't have the patience to wait for cops and courts to co ordinate on being in accordance with the constitution.

When it comes to policies, they are sick and tired of waiting for all those different groups at the "table" to agree on anything. NOW is the time for action. Because, action is the one thing, we the people, never seem to see. (Its also not clear being jacked up on soda chips, pop and video games is helping them with that patience thing either.)

The authoritarian has a decent chance to gain in popularity because he's delivering the goods. But, to succeed, he's going to have to undermine the rights of his supporters; because, what does cutting corners mean at the end of the day? How do you make these short cuts magically appear?

Whatever, pass the potato chips!