Capitalism will not survive trump

 

Mancur Olson showed that kleptocracy at the top stunts the growth of...countries. Having a thief for president doesn't necessarily spell doom; the president might prefer to boost the economy and then take a slice of a bigger pie. But in general, looting will be widespread either because the dictator is not confidant of his tenure, or because he needs to allow others to steal in order to keep their support.

Then further down the pyramid of wealth, development is thwarted because the rules and laws of the society do not encourage projects or businesses, which would be to the common good. Entrepreneurs don't establish official businesses (too difficult) and so don't pay taxes; officials demand ridiculous projects for their prestige or personal enrichment; schoolchildren don't bother to acquire irrelevant qualifications...

The rot starts with government but it afflicts the entire society There's no point in investing in a business because the government will not protect you against thieves. (So, you might as well become a thief.) There's no point in paying your phone bill because nobody can successfully take you to court (so there's no point being a phone company). There's no point getting an education because jobs are not handed out on merit (and in any case, you can't borrow money for school fees because the bank cannot collect on the loan, and the government doesn't provide good schools.) There's no point setting up an import business because the customs officials will be the ones to benefit (and so there is little trade, and so the customs office is underfunded and looks even harder for bribes.)...

[China's 'Great Leap Forward'] seemed to make sense, but it was the greatest economic failure the world has ever seen. Mao conducted economic policy based on the hidden premise that if people tried hard, the impossible would happen. Zeal alone was sufficient. Villagers were ordered to build steel furnaces in their backyards but had no iron ore to put into them. Some villagers melted down good iron and steel--tools, even doorknobs--in order to meet the quotas demanded by the state...

If industrial policy was a farce, agricultural policy was a tragedy...Mao ordered the people to kill grain-eating birds, and the population of insect pests exploded as a result. Mao personally redesigned China's agricultural techniques, specifying closer planting and deeper sowing to increase yields. Rice planted so closely together could not grow, but party officials, anxious to please Mao, staged shows of agricultural and industrial success. When Mao traveled by train to admire the fruits of his policy, local officials built furnaces along the railroad and brought rice from miles away to replant, at the officially specified density, in adjacent fields. Even this charade could not be maintained without the use of electric fans, which were used to circulate air and prevent the rice from rotting.

--From The Undercover Economist by Tim Harford, 2007 edition 

We Don't Go Golfing

 By now it's probable you have heard about the loss of over a hundred lives in the July 4th flooding of Texas' Guadalupe River. I'm not interested here in who's responsible for the lack of information or timely warnings. Those people will be identified and I hope they will face consequences.

What I am interested in here is the misinformation you may have heard or seen thanking Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum for having immediately dispatching rescue teams from her country to Texas to help in efforts there. This, in spite of the meanness, cruelty, and racism displayed by the trump administration's ICE efforts. But that is not true. The truth, I think, is better. 

On July 6th at 5 AM the Dirección de Protección Civil y Bomberos de Acuña, Coahuila (I could not hope to accurately write that out so it is also a link to their Facebook page), along with members of Fundacion 911, left for Kerrville to assist. This was in response to a request from Texas Equusearch, a search and rescue based in Houston. 

Direccion de Proteccion is located in Cuidad Acuna, near the Texas border and Kerrville and the Guadalupe River are 275 kilometers northeast.  Their response was not based on permission or arrangements. Both organizations are volunteer. While President Sheinbaum acknowledged them for their swift response, she did not claim to have contacted or facilitated them. 

The volunteers of Ciudad Acuna responded on their own. They did this because a call went out to a neighbor for help. As President Sheinbaum later said, "That is the people of Mexico. That is our culture." It is what we do in the Beloved Community. We don't go golfing. We put on our big boy and big girl pants and we respond. 

You Know It's Time to Act

 I like post-apocalyptic fiction as much as the next guy, but I've often wondered why there's such an emphasis on dystopia rather than on cooperation as the method for going on. In reality, guns and motorcycles and theft are only going to feed you or keep you safe for so long, and it won't help your contributions to the future, i.e., children. The term I often think describing these kinds of novels or movies or TV shows shouldn't be dystopia but nihilist. 

Recently I read The Ministry for the Future by Kim Stanley Robinson and I'd call it an excellent example of what I think is the proper way we need to think about anything like a post-apocalypse. Published in 2020, it presents a world facing the certainty of climate change with nothing having been done to slow it down or even address it. After a devastating heat wave kills millions of Indians over a course of weeks, the UN recognizes something must be done and empanels a ministry designed to focus on both the future and the development of ways to be certain there is one. Various countries, starting with India, decide to ignore the richer nations and their do-nothing procedures and jury-rig a program meant to help themselves first of all and benefitting all other nations secondarily. 

Not to spoil a 500+ page book, but this jump-starts a series of escalating programs and laws that manage to keep the earth turning for the near future. The reason I applaud this "science fiction nonfiction" (as Jonathon Lethem dubs it) and I suppose a reason it was named one of Barack Obama's favorite books of the year is because the solution doesn't lie in guns and marauding bands and white American individuals making heroic sacrifices but in the subtle use of economics, policy, and science to come to terms with our reckless disregard for responsible use. The world finally discovers it needs a Plan B.

What was it? Big parts of it have been there all along; it's called socialism. Or, for those who freak out at that word, like Americans or international capitalist success stories reacting allergically to that word, call it public utility districts...Public ownership of the necessities, so that these are provided as human rights and as public goods, in a not-for-profit way. The necessities are food, water, shelter, clothing, electricity, health care, and education. All these are human rights, all are public goods, all are never to be subjected to appropriation, exploitation, and profit. It's as simple as that.

Democracy is also good, but again, for those who think this word is just a cover for oligarchy and Western imperialism, let's call it real political representation. Do you feel you have real political representation? Probably not, but even if you feel you have some, it's probably feeling pretty compromised at best. So: public ownership of the necessities, and real political representation...

[There] still has to be money, or at least some exchange or allocation system that people trust, which means the already existing central banks have to be a part of it, which means the current nation-state system has to be part of it. Sorry but it's true, and maybe obvious...It is what we've got now, and in the crux, when things fall apart, something from the old system has to be used to hang the new system on, hopefully something big and solid. Without that it's castles in air time, and all will collapse into chaos...It's like being hypnotized; you have to agree for it to work. So we are all hypnotized in a giant dream we hallucinate together, and that's social reality...

 [The] current order is so unequal, so unfair. Old story, of course. Biblical; detailed in Genesis; it's the oldest story, inequality, and never much changed from the start of civilization. So how can we change that? What do we do now?

Now, everyone knows everything. No one on the planet is ignorant of the real condition of our shared social existence. That's one real thing those stupid smartphones have done; you can be illiterate, many are, and still have an excellent idea of how the world works. You know the world is spinning toward catastrophe! You know it's time to act. Everyone knows everything. The invisible hand never picks up the check. The money is already here, it just isn't evenly distributed. Which is to say properly distributed. So now things have broken. We broke them; we broke them on purpose! Riot, occupation, non-compliance, general strike: breakdown. Now it's time for Plan B. Time to act...