Capitalism

The Conservative Right likes to see themselves as the guardians of Capitalism. Liberals, in the worst light, are viewed as Socialists at the very least and, when tempers get really riled up, Communists. The trouble with the Conservative Right's position is that they neither define nor justify the particular form of Capitalism which they are guarding, and Capitalism can have many forms depending on the character of the people involved.

In the most basic sense, Capitalism is simply an economic system in which there is private ownership of the means of production. At the time of our nation's founding, the economy was agrarian so the principal means of production was land and certain tools involved in farming the land. The majority of Capitalists were independent farmers, the very population upon which Jefferson rested his utopian concept of a democratic government. With so much in common, people would be able to come together to participate in government and solve their shared problems.

Of course, even in the infancy of our nation, there were already economic factors that, as they developed, would topple such a utopia. There was already an industrial-agricultural split between New England and the South. And Southern Capitalism depended upon slavery. In the North, the means of production was moving toward the tools and institutions of industry and away from mere land and cottage tools. In the era of industrial production, Capitalism took on an entirely different appearance. Since the means of production was becoming factories and large-investment machines, Capitalists were far fewer in number and the remainder of the population increasingly turned to laboring for their means of survival. As Marx saw it, Capitalist society became increasingly divided between the Bourgeoisie (Capital owning class) and the Proletariat (laboring class). 

The notion of "means of survival" is interesting in the context of this discussion. In a strictly agrarian society the "means of production" is equivalent to the "means of survival". That equivalence continues for the Capitalist in an industrial society but the remainder of the population is alienated from the means of production so that its survival becomes contingent. Capital is a means of survival for the majority of people only in the contingency that they are able to sell their labor at a price that can sustain them. Today, the vast majority of Americans depend on selling their labor in order to survive. While 80% of Americans were still small farmers in the late 19th Century, the percentage of small farmers now is so small that the US Census has dropped the category as inconsequential. But selling our labor depends entirely upon the management of Capital and that means an enormous division of power. Jeffersonian democracy is a thing of the past. However one wishes to characterize the American government today, it is no longer a coming together of equals to solve shared problems. It is far more like an "oligarchy in democratic clothing".

In fact, the system of industrial Capitalism places an enormous moral burden on a small number of people for the welfare and survival of the majority of their countrymen has become their responsibility. That is the sad truth --- "sad" because with only a few exceptions Capitalists have largely ignored this burden. The situation is rather like the situation of the doctor Plato describes whose true role is nurturing the health of patients but who becomes so involved in the making of money that his patients' health suffers. Capitalists of the late 19th Century enhanced their profits by buying labor at the lowest possible price which was established by the most meagre sense of survival --- the simple ability to get up the next day and work again. Anyone injured in the process or becoming ill or refusing the indignity could easily be replaced. So long as the aim of the Capitalist is simply maximizing profits all kinds of terrible things can happen.

I see no problem with the Capitalist system of economy if the moral burden is understood. That burden is to produce products of superior quality for delivery to consumers and to contribute to the well being and survival of the people who contribute to production by selling their labor. But this burden requires that Capitalists focus on other matters than pure profit taking. The quality of products is a simple matter of honesty. Caring for the well being of those who work for you is a less simple but still clear matter. The means of production are useless without the help of those who labor; hence, the welfare of those who labor is an obligation that must be met. It is not a matter of simply buying labor at the minimum wage possible; it is a matter of functioning as part of a cooperative community.

Three More Years

Congress finally realized that going over the debt ceiling cliff was going to do too much damage to the country and they pulled a last-moment deal. Unfortunately for all of us, it is not much of a "deal" because it merely sets us up for another crisis in January and February. The Republican Storm Troopers will again tie some piece of their "wish list" to continuing national solvency. If it is not the Affordable Care Act, then it will be Social Security or Medicare or Education or the EPA. Since they do not have enough legislative power they will continue to blast at the front door by holding the nation hostage when it comes to running government, paying thousands of government workers, and borrowing with excellent credit. Can we really take this for three more years?

Basically, a small faction of the Republicans want to crush national government and they came very very close to doing it this time. The irony is that these are people who have been elected to "govern." But instead of governing, they have done everything possible to cripple government. When government shuts down, food inspections stop; but food inspections have already been critically limited simply by picking away at funding. Likewise for just about every government program. 

The money is there, of course, if Republicans would allow even modest increases in tax revenues. But, of course, their battle cry is "no new taxes!" Meanwhile, the super-rich continue to get richer and the rest of the population gets poorer. It is, indeed, the super-rich, like the Koch Brothers, who are behind the Tea Party and other right-wing conservative groups. What they want is their own little playground in which they can do anything they want without interference from government.

This is by no means the first time in the history of the United States that wealthy Capitalists have taken control of government --- national and local --- but periods like the late 19th Century have never been economically productive or produced a prosperous middle class. I hope that we can avoid re-living that history.

Hostage!

The majority of Americans have become hostages of a minority, what we can broadly call the Tea Party. Basically, this group of people wants to destroy the Federal government and will do just about anything to accomplish their wish. Unfortunately, because the House of Representatives is now dominated by these people and because the House holds the National purse strings, the majority of Americans have to suffer their whims. Also, unfortunately, there is no way out of this situation because the districts out of which these representatives are elected have been so maliciously organized that they cannot be defeated. I don't believe this was ever anticipated in all the debates over the Constitution. 

What I do not know is whether the Tea Party is simply an extreme version of Libertarianism or whether they support state and local governments (which, I assume, Libertarians do not do). If the Tea Party does support state and local government, then it seems to me that a happy solution would be to simply exempt those states from any interaction with Federal government and wish their state governments "god speed." This, in fact, would be a benefit to the rest of us because I believe it has been shown that these same states currently require more Federal income than they contribute to the Federal government. This might be facilitated by combining these states with the Republic of Texas. We might coalesce into something called "Washoregonia," a Pacific Rim economy. British Columbia might even join us. 

I have to confess that I do not understand Libertarianism. What I see in it is a hatred of government and a hope for a mythic state of complete individual freedom. But I always thought that Locke and the rest solved the "freedom" issue a long time ago by showing that we are bound to the protection of all our possessions unless we come together into some kind of contractual understanding that institutionalizes the protection of property. Perhaps that's why they like guns so much because they think they can do it alone. 'Alone' is a key word here, I guess. Government IS the possibility of collective action. But if you think that "going it alone" is paradise, then I guess that collective action doesn't mean much. But I don't know what "going it alone" means when it comes to repairing the roads, inspecting the food supply, and keeping airplanes from colliding with one another.

I do wish some Libertarians would explain how the Libertarian paradise would work on a practical day-to-day basis. What I read in their web sites is mostly negative --- what they do not want --- and very little positive. 

SYRIA

Obama and Kerry are both very intelligent men. Why then are they both out beating the drums for military action in Syria. Don't they know what an entirely foolish idea that is? What is the ruling psychology in the US today? For it surely is "psychology" rather than reason. 

First of all, if Obama believes we are obligated to do something, we have to remember that it is Obama himself who put us under that obligation. He is the one who foolishly drew the poison-weapons line in the sand. He didn't have to do that. And didn't he realize he was creating the very mess we are now in? 

"The world" may have decided to ban chemical weapons after the horrors of the First World War, but "the world" no longer seems to feel that way --- at least Russia and China don't seem to care about it. Why can't we let the world figure this out. No one really appointed the US as the chief of police for the world.

Then, look at the practical side of all this. "Limited strikes" means that we are just going to go and mess around with Syria and try to avoid too much damage. But that means we will just piss them off and they will do even more to bate us. Once we have committed anything there we will be unable to hold back. So where is this all going? The first strike means we are at war with Syria. How do we plan to end that war? Just back out after a little hand slapping? Very unlikely. 

The IRS

Almost no one likes paying taxes and almost all of us know one story or another about how dangerous the IRS can be if you get on their wrong side. Well, now the dear junior senator from Texas, Ted Cruz, has the solution. In his TV advertisement he proposes that we follow him in abolishing the IRS. What could be better? Right? All our troubles gone in one swift blow.

Well, not quite so fast. What does Cruz really mean or what does he really intend to accomplish. The IRS is only the institution which collects Federal taxes. Does Cruz mean to abolish taxes or merely cripple the system of collecting taxes? Congress sets tax rates and also legislates the minute details of exemptions and favors that haunt the system. It isn't the fault of IRS. Granting their may be issues in the way IRS interprets or administers tax collections, but someone must serve this function if taxes are to be collected at all.

Does Cruz actually believe that Congress can create a "simple and fair" tax system for the US and that Americans will just mail their checks to the Treasury voluntarily? He's got to be kidding! Look at the lengths to which people and corporations go now to avoid or minimize payment while the IRS looks on and real penalties are possible. I suppose what is really behind this is the standard Republican agenda of impoverishing the Federal government. The tactic is not to bother with legislation that limits or better defines government powers but rather to just make it impossible for government to exercise its powers by starving it. 

So Cruz's TV advertisement --- just another cynical political ploy, standard among Republican parlor tricks --- make something sound really sweat but don't let on what the actual consequences might be. 

Is Privacy Possible?

While the Constitution does not mention privacy as such, many people would like to believe that it is included in "the pursuit of happiness" in our Declaration of Independence, while others might argue that privacy is essential to liberty. You cannot promise liberty without implicitly promising privacy. Property that is privately owned is protected by law, and the Constitution, as amended, prohibits "unlawful searches and seizures." But the most abstract and insecure form of privacy is "personal privacy" --- essentially, the ownership of one's life story (everything that one does) as a unique possession that only he/she can freely share with others. 

Ever since the attack on New York's World Trade Center, September 11, 2001, both the Federal government and state and local governments have moved in significant ways to monitor people's activities both foreign and national. So now we have a young man, Edward Snowden, who prides himself as being a "whistleblower" by revealing details of current Federal surveillance practices. Republicans, under whom most of these measures began, are being smugly quiet, while they let Democrats try to defend NSA practices and take the heat. 

I do not know enough about any of this to make an interesting or important judgement of my own. What I do know is that every time anything like the Boston Marathon bombing happens, the people want to know right away why government agencies failed to see this coming and weren't there to prevent it. There are two sides to this coin and people need to be honest about whether they are willing to sacrifice some privacy for the security they want. But I think the present discussion highlights an even more important fact and that is that privacy may be impossible in today's world anyway. 

First of all, we give away portions of our privacy every time we enroll in any new program --- shopping, banking, credit, media, you name it.  All that material is put out there in digital files that can be accessed by all kinds of people whom we do not know and have no desire to know. Then, of course, when we use our credit cards or our Vons shopping cards, everywhere we go and everything we purchase is part of the great digital record. Vons knows I have both a cat and a dog and which foods I prefer. Hence, I get promotional offers aimed at my pets. If I am traveling, my credit card companies know where I am and what I am doing. More promotional offers. Then, of course, when I use any digital medium --- my cell phone, my iPad, my computer --- I am leaving a huge trail of data behind me at all levels of our very complex communication systems. Usually for very good reasons, that data is not erased for some time but lives in various backup systems. Of course, if I walk out my door, there is usually some surveillance camera on some commercial building that records my passage and holds it in a file for some period of time.

The issue here is not so much whether all of this "sharing" of my personal privacy is acceptable but it is who looks at this data and why. In effect is it such a big deal that NSA collects huge amounts of this data on everyone. The deal breaker is how they choose to look at it and why. As a breach of privacy is the NSA scanning my phone texts any worse than Google learning how to aim specific commercial messages at me by monitoring what I search for day-in-day-out. 

In our age, a person can secure his/her privacy only at great expense and with a whole lot of imagination. Know where surveillance cameras are located and avoid them. Do not use a personally registered cell phone, only cheep one-time units you can throw away. Arrange to hide the identity of your computing devices somehow. Don't use shopping or bank cards. Go cash only. Get out of Facebook or whatever. It's a very different style of life! What this means is that, in the present style, we have all accepted huge losses in personal privacy as part of the cost.

Health Report

I decided to break with the usual political stuff and publish one report on my health issues. Enjoy!

Back in March after a longish day of recovering our vegetable garden --- howing weeds, raking in fertilizer, laying down top soil, heaving bags, and planting new plants, I experienced about a week of bad pain in my shoulder and neck. Muscle relaxant took the pain away immediately after I saw my doctor but I then realized that I had lost a lot of mobility in my right arm, similar to when I tore my rotator cuff. Doctor said I should go to physical therapy so we started working on it. However, the therapist kept suggesting that it was caused by a pinched nerve rather than further tear in my rotator cuff. Eventually that lead to an MRI on my neck and that was when things got exciting. 

It turned out that I had two disks that were so badly herniated that they were squeezing my spinal cord to say nothing of the nerve roots that radiate out into the arms. Each of the disks above and below were also bad but not as bad yet. There were also bone spurs on the front of my spine that have been causing some difficulty swallowing bulky objects. Given the MRI data (you wouldn't believe the views that you can nowget with MRI techniques!) the doctors were amazed that I was just having numbing in my fingers at night and the loss of mobility in my arm. 

What made us go ahead with major surgery (an important step for someone who had never had surgery in his life) was the obvious fact that further deterioration in the neck could have grave consequences for the rest of my body to say nothing about further and permanent problems with my arms and hands. Any way, we sought the advice of two surgeons and chose the one my doctor recommended --- Ali Mesiwala (do any Anglo kids ever become talented surgeons now-a-days!). We decided to go ahead with this as fast as possible on the advice of the first surgeon, which meant canceling two lovely trips that we had been looking forward to. One doctor, looking at the MRI while I signed consent forms for the procedure, said he was amazed I could use my hands at all!

In the actual procedure, the surgeon makes an incision in the front of your neck and clamps aside your esophagus and wind pipe as well as various muscles and blood vessels. Then, using a microscope, he removes the disk materials, cleans the surfaces, inserts spacers with bone materials, grinds off bone spurs in the front, and screws on a titanium panel involving all of the disks affected. In my case, he removed four disks and attached five vertebrates. The incision is stitched up with absorbable thread and a liquid, insoluble bandage is painted over it. This took about 1 1/2 hours though I was completely out for about four hours. He had an emergence back injury on a young woman that he had to sneak in before me. All in all he was doing procedures from 7:30 AM on Monday until 4:00 AM on Tuesday. I was in my room by about 11:00 PM.

Recovery is primarily overcoming any nausea from the anesthetic (I had none), dealing with pain (I had very little), and regaining your ability to swallow and speak. Swallowing is going along though I continue on a soft diet. I am still pretty hoarse. All of that is from the trauma of being pushed aside for access to the cervical spine. The long-term recovery assumes enough bone growth to fuse the vertebrates behind the titanium panel. They look for that happening in about three months --- hence the hard cervical collar. No bending down, lifting, or twisting and worst of all no driving. It's going to be a long summer!

So that's about all I can say at this point, but I feel very fortunate to have had a fantastic surgeon and I feel very fortunate that my immediate recovery has gone so well thus far. Thanks to everyone for all the good wishes!