Jonah Goldberg wrote another column today, which means, as Roy over at Alicublog is so fond of pointing out, that it's the dumbest thing ever written. In his column at the National Review dated "America's moral compass"* Jonah asks if it would be moral to deploy super drones to kill every member of Boko Haram.
Jonah's little 'thought experiment' reveals far more about himself than it could possibly reveal about the morality of drone warfare. Even his modified version where the members of Boko Haram are paralyzed until they can be apprehended is less credible than the thought experiment most of us learned in nursery school about the three magic beans. In his concluding paragraph he pulls out 'with great power comes great responsibility' cliche, he handwaves away the fact that we don't actually have super drones capable of paralyzing specific evildoers, and that they are roughly as likely as Mars colonies in our lifetime.
So let's change his thought experiment to reflect reality. If our informants and allies of wildly varying reliablility and with agendas of their own, point out a group which may or may not be Boko Haram, do we have the responsibility to take that information, and, hours later, try to kill them with an airstrike or with ground forces that would also kill anyone in the area, and knock over most of the buildings nearby?
And now, we have a thought experiment that is worth considering. But it cuts to the heart of the real problem, which is lack of information. A shit load of questions need to be answered before one even thinks about taking the dust covers off the drones. Who are our allies and informants? Can they identify Boko Haram? Can they be trusted not to finger their rivals in an attempt to have the US eliminate them? How old is their information? Have they moved in the intervening time? Are the kidnapped girls held separately or would an attack endanger the hostages? How fast can military assets be deployed? Do we have sufficient forces available to handle an ambush? How many causalities are we willing to suffer in this attack? Can they distinguish Boko Haram from hostages and bystanders? How will the hostages receive medical care and evacuation? How will our forces return from this engagement? What will be done with prisoners? To whom do we hand off any rescued hostages? How can we prevent similar occurrences in the future?
Life or death isn't flipping a switch. Condemning people to death from halfway across the world is cheap, lazy, bloodlust. Jonah's "thought experiment" is about as fleshed out as one would be that starts with "consider a frictionless spherical terrorist of uniform density". Not a goddamn thing has stopped Jonah from enlisting his flabby ass in the USMC or Army since the most recent round of pointless wars began back in 1991, or again in 2001 when it was obvious to anyone with eyes to see that we would be at war again and soon. Bizarro Jonah who joined the USMC or Army in 1991 would have fought at a minimum in Kuwait and Iraq, the former Yugoslav republics, Somalia, Afghanistan, Iraq again, and possibly Libya. Bizarro Jonah would have had the opportunity to have his ass shot off or blown up by a roadside bomb for more than 10 of the last 20+ years. Biazarro Jonah would have had an informed opinion on the use of force and its limitations.
But pointing out his complete lack of combat experience doesn't mean that this public ignoramus is shooting his mouth off again about matters which he doesn't understand, it just strongly implies it. Just like the fact that he has publicly advocated for the use of force in every major political crisis since forever, doesn't mean that the use of force in this instance is wrong, but what it does mean, is that he is the last person one should turn to for accurate and carefully reasoned opinion on this matter. He is like the proverbial stopped clock, right twice a day by sheerest coincidence but without additional sources of information, you'll never know when that happy event occurs. Jonah Goldberg doesn't have a moral compass, he has a finger-painted arrow that points to war.
*I really hate linking to that cretin, but I want to make it easy for anyone who cares to, check my work and verify for themselves that I'm not exaggerating the depths of his ignorance and laziness.
Sunday, May 25, 2014
Thursday, May 22, 2014
Weak Sauce
Roy over at Alicublog brought this to my attention with this post:
http://alicublog.blogspot.com/2014/05/more-conservatives-getting-straight.html
I'm going to be fair to Rod Dreher. He doesn't deserve it, but here you go: http://www.theamericanconservative.com/dreher/power-purity-pol-pot-left/
Properly sourced and linked and everything, just like I would for a column written by someone worthy of respect. In this column at The American Conservative, Rod tries to link the rejection of Condi Rice as a commencement speaker, with the killing fields of Cambodia. That chain of, for lack of a better word. 'reasoning' has a good chance of making it into the big book of logical fallacies as a textbook example of the slippery slope. But in trying to prove his point he writes:
This week, it is the dumbest thing ever written. I'm sure that Jonah Goldberg will rise to the challenge and regain the crown soon, but damn. That is the laziest excuse I had the misfortune to encounter. What possible circumstance are we supposed to consider that would excuse, for example, lying to the American public to start a war that killed thousands of Americans and hundreds of thousands of Iraqis? Is there any situation at all that could be excused by his "it's a flawed world" line? Let's try it out.
Scenario 1:
The world as it is: The Catholic Church has harbored priests who are rapists and child molestors, and has deliberately stymied efforts to prosecute offenders and compensate victims. We should identify and punish the offenders through a combination of civil suits and criminal prosecution.
Rod's excuse: Have you considered that this is the best of all possible worlds, that things are already the best we can hope for, considering the circumstances?
Helmut's reaction: remind me again what circumstances excuse child rape?
Scenario 2:
The world as it is: The drug war has imprisoned so many African Americans for non violent offenses that it is more common for an African American man to have been incarcerated than to have attended university.
Rod's excuse: Have you considered that this is the best of all possible worlds, that things are already the best we can hope for, considering the circumstances?
Helmut's reaction: What circumstances make this situation, unique among all of the nations of the world acceptable?
And so on, etc. Pick a social ill, pick a flagrant abuse of power and Rod can hand wave it away in the laziest way possible.
The progressive movement isn't fighting the second law of thermodynamics, gravity or the speed of light in a vacuum. Human rights are an achievable goal, and to suggest that they are unachievable or unimportant, is to choose to side knowingly with sloth and despair.
http://alicublog.blogspot.com/2014/05/more-conservatives-getting-straight.html
I'm going to be fair to Rod Dreher. He doesn't deserve it, but here you go: http://www.theamericanconservative.com/dreher/power-purity-pol-pot-left/
Properly sourced and linked and everything, just like I would for a column written by someone worthy of respect. In this column at The American Conservative, Rod tries to link the rejection of Condi Rice as a commencement speaker, with the killing fields of Cambodia. That chain of, for lack of a better word. 'reasoning' has a good chance of making it into the big book of logical fallacies as a textbook example of the slippery slope. But in trying to prove his point he writes:
This is a fair enough description of the problem with American progressivism. They are never satisfied with the world as it is, and never think of the possibility that the world as it is might be the best we can hope for under the circumstances. Rather, they push and they push and they push for utopia, and consider themselves virtuous pilgrims on the Grand March.
(True, the problem with American conservatives is that we are too much enamored of the evils we have, and insufficiently motivated to imagine a better way to live and to work to achieve that end.)
This week, it is the dumbest thing ever written. I'm sure that Jonah Goldberg will rise to the challenge and regain the crown soon, but damn. That is the laziest excuse I had the misfortune to encounter. What possible circumstance are we supposed to consider that would excuse, for example, lying to the American public to start a war that killed thousands of Americans and hundreds of thousands of Iraqis? Is there any situation at all that could be excused by his "it's a flawed world" line? Let's try it out.
Scenario 1:
The world as it is: The Catholic Church has harbored priests who are rapists and child molestors, and has deliberately stymied efforts to prosecute offenders and compensate victims. We should identify and punish the offenders through a combination of civil suits and criminal prosecution.
Rod's excuse: Have you considered that this is the best of all possible worlds, that things are already the best we can hope for, considering the circumstances?
Helmut's reaction: remind me again what circumstances excuse child rape?
Scenario 2:
The world as it is: The drug war has imprisoned so many African Americans for non violent offenses that it is more common for an African American man to have been incarcerated than to have attended university.
Rod's excuse: Have you considered that this is the best of all possible worlds, that things are already the best we can hope for, considering the circumstances?
Helmut's reaction: What circumstances make this situation, unique among all of the nations of the world acceptable?
And so on, etc. Pick a social ill, pick a flagrant abuse of power and Rod can hand wave it away in the laziest way possible.
The progressive movement isn't fighting the second law of thermodynamics, gravity or the speed of light in a vacuum. Human rights are an achievable goal, and to suggest that they are unachievable or unimportant, is to choose to side knowingly with sloth and despair.
Here is an article that you should read:
http://www.theatlantic.com/features/archive/2014/05/the-case-for-reparations/361631/
Ta-Nehisi Coates shows at length and in depth the extent of the historical and continuing injustice being done to African Americans. He makes a convincing case that the continuing insult of centuries of institutional overt racism have denied African Americans their fair share of the wealth of the wealthiest nation on earth. He doesn't have a suggestion on what form the repayment should take, but after reading the article it is blindingly obvious a huge debt is owed.
http://www.theatlantic.com/features/archive/2014/05/the-case-for-reparations/361631/
Ta-Nehisi Coates shows at length and in depth the extent of the historical and continuing injustice being done to African Americans. He makes a convincing case that the continuing insult of centuries of institutional overt racism have denied African Americans their fair share of the wealth of the wealthiest nation on earth. He doesn't have a suggestion on what form the repayment should take, but after reading the article it is blindingly obvious a huge debt is owed.
Friday, May 16, 2014
Meditations on a particularly odious piece of juvenalia
Recently a freshman at Princeton, who in a fit of almost certainly unwarranted generosity, I will refrain from naming or linking to, penned a petulant repudiation of the phrase "check your privilege", in the probably misplaced hope that sooner rather than later he will come to regret writing it. Gods know why, but the piece was then published in the Princeton Tory and made a minor splash on the web. Cerb at Sadly No wrote an excellent critique of the article and there I posted a version of the text below:
What joyful prose. Another college republican boasts to the world that he has nothing of which to be ashamed. He has made it to the rarefied summit of academia as a freshman at Princeton, by steadily treading the straight and narrow path of hard work and personal virtue. He is a man who has made the good choices and stands at the cusp of his reward for virtue. Never mind that his particular straight and narrow path is about 20 feet long, brightly lit and patrolled for those who would do him harm. Certainly his path was harder than that of the scions of the truly wealthy who, one assumes, are conveyed to the gates of Princeton via private limousine. He doesn't realize that someone less well starred than himself might have a straight and narrow path of virtue that leads to barely staying out of jail.
He is remarkably silent on the fact that making good choices are entirely dependent on having good options. And, coming from a home that valued education, hard work and had the prosperity to back that up gave him an enormous head start. No one, no matter how much of an autodidact, raises themselves. Our bright and beamish boy did not tag his parents out on his natal day, thank them for the fact of his conception and birth and inform them that further parenting would not be required. They fed and sheltered him, they educated him at considerable expense, and regardless of how much of a sacrifice it may have been for them, they did it. Which only means he is not a member of the .001%, not that he has a high score of martyr points in the suffering Olympics. He is blessed in that his hard work was rewarded, and that any of "the thousand natural shocks that flesh is heir to" didn't set him right back at square one.
Working harder than the children of our American aristocracy is a mighty low bar. I might have accidentally done it the day after I ate a half pound of cheese in one sitting. Working hard is, of itself not much to be proud of either, as anyone who has ever worked an 11 hour shift for minimum wage could tell you. But despite what theologians as diverse as John Calvin and Creflo Dollar would have us believe, prosperity is rarely the reward of virtue. Any number of well publicized news stories could illustrate that the prosperous and the virtuous are two distinct groups with little overlap. So, even if he is the charity scholar attending Princeton on the strength of his academic excellence at the sufferance of his betters, he is mostly giving plausible deniability to the charge that the ivy league is far more about giving the children of privilege a place to drink to excess with a group of like minded affluent young men and women in a place where they won't end up puking on the heirloom rose bushes, than it is about education.
The day junior here first begins to regret writing this particular piece of embarrassing drivel, and opens his eyes to just how bad it is for just how many people, will be the day he can start to call himself a grownup.
What joyful prose. Another college republican boasts to the world that he has nothing of which to be ashamed. He has made it to the rarefied summit of academia as a freshman at Princeton, by steadily treading the straight and narrow path of hard work and personal virtue. He is a man who has made the good choices and stands at the cusp of his reward for virtue. Never mind that his particular straight and narrow path is about 20 feet long, brightly lit and patrolled for those who would do him harm. Certainly his path was harder than that of the scions of the truly wealthy who, one assumes, are conveyed to the gates of Princeton via private limousine. He doesn't realize that someone less well starred than himself might have a straight and narrow path of virtue that leads to barely staying out of jail.
He is remarkably silent on the fact that making good choices are entirely dependent on having good options. And, coming from a home that valued education, hard work and had the prosperity to back that up gave him an enormous head start. No one, no matter how much of an autodidact, raises themselves. Our bright and beamish boy did not tag his parents out on his natal day, thank them for the fact of his conception and birth and inform them that further parenting would not be required. They fed and sheltered him, they educated him at considerable expense, and regardless of how much of a sacrifice it may have been for them, they did it. Which only means he is not a member of the .001%, not that he has a high score of martyr points in the suffering Olympics. He is blessed in that his hard work was rewarded, and that any of "the thousand natural shocks that flesh is heir to" didn't set him right back at square one.
Working harder than the children of our American aristocracy is a mighty low bar. I might have accidentally done it the day after I ate a half pound of cheese in one sitting. Working hard is, of itself not much to be proud of either, as anyone who has ever worked an 11 hour shift for minimum wage could tell you. But despite what theologians as diverse as John Calvin and Creflo Dollar would have us believe, prosperity is rarely the reward of virtue. Any number of well publicized news stories could illustrate that the prosperous and the virtuous are two distinct groups with little overlap. So, even if he is the charity scholar attending Princeton on the strength of his academic excellence at the sufferance of his betters, he is mostly giving plausible deniability to the charge that the ivy league is far more about giving the children of privilege a place to drink to excess with a group of like minded affluent young men and women in a place where they won't end up puking on the heirloom rose bushes, than it is about education.
The day junior here first begins to regret writing this particular piece of embarrassing drivel, and opens his eyes to just how bad it is for just how many people, will be the day he can start to call himself a grownup.
Saturday, April 26, 2014
On the [F]utility of political violence
Out west in Nevada Cliven Bundy 'won' his standoff with the BLM officers who tried to repossess cattle improperly grazing on protected land. He refused to pay grazing fees for 20 years, and after all of the court cases were decided against him, he owes the Government more than a million dollars in fees and penalties. So, insofar as he gets to continue doing what he's doing, he 'won' that particular conflict. Of course, to do it, he had to rile up as many disaffected anti authority gun nuts as he could, in order to momentarily outgun the Feds.
Which of course means the public at large loses. We lose the million dollars he owes us, we lose respect for lawfully constituted authority, we lose protected habitat for endangered desert tortoises, his neighboring ranchers who abide by the law have to compete in the marketplace with someone who doesn't have to deal with the costs of lawfully doing business. What do we gain? we gain a political movement that doesn't hesitate to use threats of deadly violence to advance their agenda.
If the Feds were wearing their thinking caps, every person who took up arms and stood with Mr. Bundy will get added to a list of potential domestic terrorists. I fear that in the future, more people will chose to defy the federal government in a similar fashion and someone, or a lot of someones will get killed. In this instance the Feds probably chose correctly, when they elected not start shooting. The tortoises that live on the land probably are safer from Mr. Bundy's cattle than they are from retaliation minded rednecks in the event of violence.
The BLM is nothing if not patient, and by working with the IRS and the court system, they will no doubt eventually be able to thwart Mr Bundy, especially given his habit of going on record with ignorant racist bilge. If the reactionary wing of the American right thinks they have a champion in Mr Bundy, they are mistaken. His appeal is limited to the people who thought Archie Bunker was the hero of 'All in the Family'.
So when the next bunch of 'patriots' openly defies the feds, will it be in the Nevada desert? or will it be closer to home? Who watched the situation play out on their TV and will decide that they too can fight the law and win? If this leads to more violence down the road, are we going to look back and see this as a missed opportunity?
Which of course means the public at large loses. We lose the million dollars he owes us, we lose respect for lawfully constituted authority, we lose protected habitat for endangered desert tortoises, his neighboring ranchers who abide by the law have to compete in the marketplace with someone who doesn't have to deal with the costs of lawfully doing business. What do we gain? we gain a political movement that doesn't hesitate to use threats of deadly violence to advance their agenda.
If the Feds were wearing their thinking caps, every person who took up arms and stood with Mr. Bundy will get added to a list of potential domestic terrorists. I fear that in the future, more people will chose to defy the federal government in a similar fashion and someone, or a lot of someones will get killed. In this instance the Feds probably chose correctly, when they elected not start shooting. The tortoises that live on the land probably are safer from Mr. Bundy's cattle than they are from retaliation minded rednecks in the event of violence.
The BLM is nothing if not patient, and by working with the IRS and the court system, they will no doubt eventually be able to thwart Mr Bundy, especially given his habit of going on record with ignorant racist bilge. If the reactionary wing of the American right thinks they have a champion in Mr Bundy, they are mistaken. His appeal is limited to the people who thought Archie Bunker was the hero of 'All in the Family'.
So when the next bunch of 'patriots' openly defies the feds, will it be in the Nevada desert? or will it be closer to home? Who watched the situation play out on their TV and will decide that they too can fight the law and win? If this leads to more violence down the road, are we going to look back and see this as a missed opportunity?
Tuesday, April 22, 2014
Contemplating the future
The end of the world is in again. After the cold war failed to deliver a hot sequel and y2k landed with a wet flop instead of a bang, I thought the end of the world might fall out of fashion. It is not so. In the last few years, the rapture has become bigger than ever, the zombie apocalypse has become a national obsession, and peak oil and the singularity round out the list of popular end of the world scenarios. Digging a little deeper we can look at global climate change and various local secession movements for equally grim situations.
And looking at the problems facing the US and the modern world there are ample grounds for pessimism. The world's population of humans has never been larger, the climate has never been hotter (in human history) and most of the easily exploited fossil energy resources have been exploited right out of existence.
But the key thing to remember is that despite the wishes of an apocalyptic few, there are 7+ billion of us who have a vested interest in improving the status quo. Survivalists and secessionists both labor under the same delusion, that the reason they aren't more successful is that more powerful forces are holding them down. Survivalists, imagine a world in which their carefully hoarded AR-15 and pallet of ammo are worth more than a well-paying job [even more so than a supportive community of friends and family]. Preppers imagine roughly the same scenario only their power flows from a diesel generator or cache of canned food. Secessionists imagine the only thing separating them from their own kingdom where they get to make the rules and taxes are merely an unpleasant memory is the boot-heel of the federal government.
But the answer to powerlessness in the face of government or corporate exploitation isn't building a separate microcosm of society. If the civilization were to crumble tomorrow, by next week the people running what's left would not be the back to nature farmers, the paramilitary militias or the jack-of-all-trades preppers. The people running the show will be the organizers, the business people, and the leaders, who pretty much are running the show already. Organizing in the wake of disaster is what governments live for. It's why the army corps of engineers gets to redesign the Mississippi river every decade or two. Its why New Orleans isn't a ghost town. Its why New Jersey and New York are rebuilding after Hurricane Sandy and why Florida is inhabitable at all.
Acute national disasters are the local's worst nightmare but the aspiring administrator's opportunity. FEMA is pretty freaking good at what it does. The National guard and the Red Cross do a bang up job at getting to where the action is, rescuing the distressed and giving them a hot meal, a place to poop and a place to sleep. Even the government's belated and half-assed response to hurricane Katrina, saved far more people than it failed. And insofar at it failed, it is rightly seen as a disgraceful lapse, rather than business as usual.
This is why, in the face of global climate change, and all of attendant food shortages, water shortages, plagues and brushfire wars of the coming century our best bet isn't to stockpile guns or canned food. Our best bet is to meet our neighbors, and work together to build a more resilient civilization. We need to build and remodel houses and multi-family residences that are liveable year round, where a power grid failure would be an annoyance not a catastrophe whether it happens in January or July. We need neighborhoods where residents can build a real sense of community. We need power and water not dependent of the price of ever more expensive carbon.
And looking at the problems facing the US and the modern world there are ample grounds for pessimism. The world's population of humans has never been larger, the climate has never been hotter (in human history) and most of the easily exploited fossil energy resources have been exploited right out of existence.
But the key thing to remember is that despite the wishes of an apocalyptic few, there are 7+ billion of us who have a vested interest in improving the status quo. Survivalists and secessionists both labor under the same delusion, that the reason they aren't more successful is that more powerful forces are holding them down. Survivalists, imagine a world in which their carefully hoarded AR-15 and pallet of ammo are worth more than a well-paying job [even more so than a supportive community of friends and family]. Preppers imagine roughly the same scenario only their power flows from a diesel generator or cache of canned food. Secessionists imagine the only thing separating them from their own kingdom where they get to make the rules and taxes are merely an unpleasant memory is the boot-heel of the federal government.
But the answer to powerlessness in the face of government or corporate exploitation isn't building a separate microcosm of society. If the civilization were to crumble tomorrow, by next week the people running what's left would not be the back to nature farmers, the paramilitary militias or the jack-of-all-trades preppers. The people running the show will be the organizers, the business people, and the leaders, who pretty much are running the show already. Organizing in the wake of disaster is what governments live for. It's why the army corps of engineers gets to redesign the Mississippi river every decade or two. Its why New Orleans isn't a ghost town. Its why New Jersey and New York are rebuilding after Hurricane Sandy and why Florida is inhabitable at all.
Acute national disasters are the local's worst nightmare but the aspiring administrator's opportunity. FEMA is pretty freaking good at what it does. The National guard and the Red Cross do a bang up job at getting to where the action is, rescuing the distressed and giving them a hot meal, a place to poop and a place to sleep. Even the government's belated and half-assed response to hurricane Katrina, saved far more people than it failed. And insofar at it failed, it is rightly seen as a disgraceful lapse, rather than business as usual.
This is why, in the face of global climate change, and all of attendant food shortages, water shortages, plagues and brushfire wars of the coming century our best bet isn't to stockpile guns or canned food. Our best bet is to meet our neighbors, and work together to build a more resilient civilization. We need to build and remodel houses and multi-family residences that are liveable year round, where a power grid failure would be an annoyance not a catastrophe whether it happens in January or July. We need neighborhoods where residents can build a real sense of community. We need power and water not dependent of the price of ever more expensive carbon.
Friday, April 4, 2014
Re-mold it nearer to the Heart's Desire!
I am not the only person who notices that things cannot continue as they are. Changes need to be made. In the US, the productivity gains of the last 30 years have gone straight into the wallets of the richest .01% of us. In real terms the purchasing power of the average American has been in decline since the late 1970s. That isn't just a problem for the middle class, that isn't just a problem for the lower class, it is a problem for every American.
And it isn't just the US. The manufacturing jobs that let anyone with a high school education support a family and buy a house on a single income are long gone. They were the backbone of the economy, they won us two world wars and they were an escalator out of poverty. Investors in the US thought it would be better to move those jobs overseas so they didn't have to deal with unions and American environmental and safety regulation. Now we get cheap electronics and the Foxconn employees that make it are committing suicide to escape the misery of 21st century indentured servitude.
Wealth is brought into the economy in two basic ways, harvest or extraction. You can broadly characterize them as agriculture vs mining, but that's an oversimplification. Harvest is the sustainable production of a good or service in a way that means it can happen year in and year out. When farmers produce crops year after year, and take care to guard against erosion and rotate their crops and even leave fields fallow to protect the soil, that's harvest. However if the farmer plants the most lucrative crop year after year, fertilizing and spraying pesticide as much as they can to maximize yield without giving any consideration to runoff or soil erosion or anything that would cost him an additional cent, that would be extraction, that farmer is trading in the long term viability of that farm for an immediate paycheck.
Mining is, by definition, extraction. Mining is also necessary and central to our current economy. But
even mining could be better. Some plants bio-concentrate heavy metals, they could be grown on beds of crushed ore, and later burned and smelted for a dramatic reduction of energy input to produce metal. Smelters themselves need not use coal fired furnaces, they could just as easily run from wind power or solar arrays.
Extraction is attractive to financiers and investors, it maximizes the return on up front investment and
pushes off negative externalities onto local communities. It is less attractive to those local communities, because of those same negative externalities, like communities full of underpaid workers, piles of coal dust, mine tailings and smokestacks belching smoke.
Leveraged buyouts, and hostile takeovers and stockholder lawsuits are all the result of investors demanding higher return on investment, which is to say a shift to extraction, or to double down on it. If you examine what used to be considered the hallmarks of a well run company, e.g. a well trained, prosperous work force, production capital that was wholly owned, not mortgaged or rented, a well staffed R&D department busily developing new products and production methods and a pension fund that was fully funded and invested in safe investments. Every single one of those things is something a buyout artist will liquidate for a quick payout. Workers will be downsized or outsourced, facilities will be sold and rented back or mortgaged, and pension funds will be raided.
For a current example I invite you to read this article on what Bain Capital is doing to Guitar Center, the "big box" merchant of musical instruments.
http://www.ericgarland.co/2014/03/29/parasite-economy/ (I am a fan of knowing where a hyperlink will send you, sono shortened links here!) Guitar Center is just another example of a company that is being squeezed to death by too much attention from investors.
When big finance turned its attention to real estate, we got credit default swaps, the ongoing recession and millions of Americans bankrupted and evicted. Every step of that process was squeezed for maximum upfront payoff, which is why banks got in trouble for foreclosing on everyone they could, even those eligible for assistance. They wanted the immediate payout of a short sale.
Now, big finance has turned it's eye to post secondary education. State financial support for public universities has collapsed since the seventies, so prices have ballooned, college loans are easy to get and federally subsidized, so for-profit colleges of doubtful utility have bloomed like mushrooms in manure, private college loans are ruinously expensive and now college debt cannot be discharged in bankruptcy. From an economic standpoint, we have another situation akin to a pile of oily rags stacked next to a leaky furnace (hmm, it's almost like someone's out there doing this on purpose). The result is millions of young people have huge amounts of debt they that many of them will never earn enough to discharge.
We need a way to insulate our institutions from the financial sector. We need a way to shield a boring profitable business from the investors that will break it up for a quick payday. We need a way to stop propping up businesses that take government money in one hand and beat up their workforce and outsource and send profit off shore (...with their other three hands? metaphors are not an exact science)
And it isn't just the US. The manufacturing jobs that let anyone with a high school education support a family and buy a house on a single income are long gone. They were the backbone of the economy, they won us two world wars and they were an escalator out of poverty. Investors in the US thought it would be better to move those jobs overseas so they didn't have to deal with unions and American environmental and safety regulation. Now we get cheap electronics and the Foxconn employees that make it are committing suicide to escape the misery of 21st century indentured servitude.
Wealth is brought into the economy in two basic ways, harvest or extraction. You can broadly characterize them as agriculture vs mining, but that's an oversimplification. Harvest is the sustainable production of a good or service in a way that means it can happen year in and year out. When farmers produce crops year after year, and take care to guard against erosion and rotate their crops and even leave fields fallow to protect the soil, that's harvest. However if the farmer plants the most lucrative crop year after year, fertilizing and spraying pesticide as much as they can to maximize yield without giving any consideration to runoff or soil erosion or anything that would cost him an additional cent, that would be extraction, that farmer is trading in the long term viability of that farm for an immediate paycheck.
Mining is, by definition, extraction. Mining is also necessary and central to our current economy. But
even mining could be better. Some plants bio-concentrate heavy metals, they could be grown on beds of crushed ore, and later burned and smelted for a dramatic reduction of energy input to produce metal. Smelters themselves need not use coal fired furnaces, they could just as easily run from wind power or solar arrays.
Extraction is attractive to financiers and investors, it maximizes the return on up front investment and
pushes off negative externalities onto local communities. It is less attractive to those local communities, because of those same negative externalities, like communities full of underpaid workers, piles of coal dust, mine tailings and smokestacks belching smoke.
Leveraged buyouts, and hostile takeovers and stockholder lawsuits are all the result of investors demanding higher return on investment, which is to say a shift to extraction, or to double down on it. If you examine what used to be considered the hallmarks of a well run company, e.g. a well trained, prosperous work force, production capital that was wholly owned, not mortgaged or rented, a well staffed R&D department busily developing new products and production methods and a pension fund that was fully funded and invested in safe investments. Every single one of those things is something a buyout artist will liquidate for a quick payout. Workers will be downsized or outsourced, facilities will be sold and rented back or mortgaged, and pension funds will be raided.
For a current example I invite you to read this article on what Bain Capital is doing to Guitar Center, the "big box" merchant of musical instruments.
http://www.ericgarland.co/2014/03/29/parasite-economy/ (I am a fan of knowing where a hyperlink will send you, sono shortened links here!) Guitar Center is just another example of a company that is being squeezed to death by too much attention from investors.
When big finance turned its attention to real estate, we got credit default swaps, the ongoing recession and millions of Americans bankrupted and evicted. Every step of that process was squeezed for maximum upfront payoff, which is why banks got in trouble for foreclosing on everyone they could, even those eligible for assistance. They wanted the immediate payout of a short sale.
Now, big finance has turned it's eye to post secondary education. State financial support for public universities has collapsed since the seventies, so prices have ballooned, college loans are easy to get and federally subsidized, so for-profit colleges of doubtful utility have bloomed like mushrooms in manure, private college loans are ruinously expensive and now college debt cannot be discharged in bankruptcy. From an economic standpoint, we have another situation akin to a pile of oily rags stacked next to a leaky furnace (hmm, it's almost like someone's out there doing this on purpose). The result is millions of young people have huge amounts of debt they that many of them will never earn enough to discharge.
We need a way to insulate our institutions from the financial sector. We need a way to shield a boring profitable business from the investors that will break it up for a quick payday. We need a way to stop propping up businesses that take government money in one hand and beat up their workforce and outsource and send profit off shore (...with their other three hands? metaphors are not an exact science)
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