Blackcap Blog

Published at 11:07 on 20 December 2015

Is his dystopian novel The Iron Heel, written over 100 years ago. Consider how concisely London lays out the inevitability of class struggle (and by implication the hypocrisy of those who denounce demands of anyone who’s not a capitalist for more):

“Are you discussing the ideal man?” Ernest asked, “–unselfish and godlike, and so few in numbers as to be practically non-existent, or are you discussing the common and ordinary average man?”

“The common and ordinary man,” was the answer.

“Who is weak and fallible, prone to error?”

Bishop Morehouse nodded.

“And petty and selfish?”

Again he nodded.

“Watch out!” Ernest warned. “I said ‘selfish.'”

“The average man IS selfish,” the Bishop affirmed valiantly.

“Wants all he can get?”

“Wants all he can get–true but deplorable.”

“Then I’ve got you.” Ernest’s jaw snapped like a trap. “Let me show you. Here is a man who works on the street railways.”

“He couldn’t work if it weren’t for capital,” the Bishop interrupted.

“True, and you will grant that capital would perish if there were no labor to earn the dividends.”

The Bishop was silent.

“Won’t you?” Ernest insisted.

The Bishop nodded.

“Then our statements cancel each other,” Ernest said in a matter-of-fact tone, “and we are where we were. Now to begin again. The workingmen on the street railway furnish the labor. The stockholders furnish the capital. By the joint effort of the workingmen and the capital, money is earned.* They divide between them this money that is earned. Capital’s share is called ‘dividends.’ Labor’s share is called ‘wages.'”

* In those days, groups of predatory individuals controlled all the means of transportation, and for the use of same levied toll upon the public.

“Very good,” the Bishop interposed. “And there is no reason that the division should not be amicable.”

“You have already forgotten what we had agreed upon,” Ernest replied. “We agreed that the average man is selfish. He is the man that is. You have gone up in the air and are arranging a division between the kind of men that ought to be but are not. But to return to the earth, the workingman, being selfish, wants all he can get in the division. The capitalist, being selfish, wants all he can get in the division. When there is only so much of the same thing, and when two men want all they can get of the same thing, there is a conflict of interest between labor and capital. And it is an irreconcilable conflict. As long as workingmen and capitalists exist, they will continue to quarrel over the division. If you were in San Francisco this afternoon, you’d have to walk. There isn’t a street car running.”

The whole book is, by the way, now in the public domain and thus available for free.

Probably the first political work of London’s I encountered was What Life Means to Me, as a freshman or sophomore in college. It was I believe the first piece of socialist propaganda I had read which really resonated with me. (I had looked at Marx and found his prose mostly inscrutable; I still find his writing very heavy and difficult to parse.)

As an aside, in general, the writers who have the greatest influence on my beliefs have been not political theorists but authors of fiction who have also written political works, for the very reason that they do a better job of explaining things to those, like me, who are not academics in the field of political science.

Published at 07:45 on 5 December 2015

So, the other day I overheard on the ferry this guy, older than me and by all outer appearances quite educated, go on about how he sincerely believed Barack Obama is a secret Muslim who is set on destroying America.

How does one have a reasonable conversation with someone who believes such nutty things? Short answer: you can’t. So I didn’t even try.

If someone is running that much on deeply-felt gut beliefs that he or she will buy into some loopy theory for which there is absolutely no hard factual evidence, that individual is obviously in a mental space where facts and logic basically don’t matter anymore when it comes to the subject that belief falls into. As such, no basis exists anymore for having a reasonable discussion with someone who has differing political opinions.

Now switch to Congress. How does one achieve compromise is one side is dominated by individuals like that? Same answer: you can’t. For basically the same reason.

And that is why “gridlock” exists.

No, loopy theories don’t exclusively lie on one side of the political fence. When I was volunteering at a radical bookstore in Portland, one guy in the collective believed in a conspiracy involving shape-shifting aliens and several believed that 9/11 was all a vast, planned conspiracy by the Bush Administration.

But such beliefs are not equally spread across the spectrum, and it’s not the Left where they predominate. As an example, consider which of the two parties has denial of ample scientific evidence for human-caused global warming as a core part of its platform.

The political moderates’ dictum that all sides have an equally valid amount of input to offer is simply not a valid one; it is not always true. If you have an argument between one person who claims that 2 + 2 = 4, and another who insists 2 + 2 = 5, one does not obtain a correct answer by concluding therefore 2 + 2 = 4.5.

Published at 08:45 on 14 November 2015

One simple sentence basically sums it all up:

The West is less morally superior than it pretends to be.

If you’re flying off the handle about that statement being a justification for what just happened, then you didn’t actually read what I just wrote. Go back and re-read the sentence. It’s actually very nuanced and sums up a lot in a few words.

For openers, it actually states that the West is in fact morally superior to ISIS. The wording is goes “…less morally superior than it pretends to be.” It does not go “…not morally superior,” “…morally equivalent to,” or “…morally inferior.”

It’s just that the actual level of moral superiority is significantly lower than the professed one.

For example, there is no rejection on either side over the principle of engaging in actions which cause civilian deaths. Drone strikes have been accomplishing the latter for decades. And doing so routinely; they’re remarkably imprecise. How can they be otherwise, given how they are conducted remotely? If all one is going on is a fleeting image from above of a fairly distant group of people, you’re going to be misjudging the nature of those people fairly often.

Sure, ISIS deliberately sets out to cause civilian deaths whereas in the drone strikes they happen incidentally as part of efforts targeted at combatants. But dead is dead, so rhetoric like “we value life and they don’t” is, well, B.S.

And the West, despite those somewhat higher standards, is the party that is far more heavily armed, and thus far more likely to inflict actual civilian death. Terrorism has killed far fewer civilians in recent decades than the war in Iraq did, for example.

Mind you, I’m very glad I live where I do and not someplace controlled by ISIS (or by the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, which is just about as bad). But please, spare me the “we’re good, period and they’re evil, period” rhetoric.

Published at 11:50 on 17 September 2015

I expected Fed’s decision to leave interest rates as-is:

1. There have been at best only limited signs of inflation. By contrast, there have in the last year been deflationary periods in the consumer price index.
2. Inflation is easy to control (raise interest rates). Deflation is very difficult to control (you can’t cut rates to zero or below, because banks make money by lending money at a higher rate than they pay savers, which means a negative rate on deposits, which savers can beat by stuffing their money in a mattress and earning 0% interest). So rulers of any sort, central bankers included, tend to be more willing to risk inflation than deflation; it’s one of the reasons they never target zero inflation. Instead, they target a low inflation rate, just to err on the safe side of not having deflation.
3. Some inflation is actually a good thing, as by making money lose value over time it punishes people who would stuff their money in a mattress as opposed to investing it in the economy, thus encouraging investment.
4. Recent signs the bubble in China might be ready to pop. The Fed doesn’t want to be the straw that broke the camel’s back and caused a severe recession.

That final one provides a key to their near-term plans. The Fed is doubtless waiting to see if the China jitters blow over before making any decision on a rate hike.

They don’t want to flatly admit it, of course, because that would be admitting the problems in China are real and serious (as they are) which might itself provoke a recession. But they alluded to it by burying a revealing phrase in their press release:

To support continued progress toward maximum employment and price stability, the Committee today reaffirmed its view that the current 0 to 1/4 percent target range for the federal funds rate remains appropriate. In determining how long to maintain this target range, the Committee will assess progress–both realized and expected–toward its objectives of maximum employment and 2 percent inflation. This assessment will take into account a wide range of information, including measures of labor market conditions, indicators of inflation pressures and inflation expectations, and readings on financial and international developments [emphasis added]. The Committee anticipates that it will be appropriate to raise the target range for the federal funds rate when it has seen some further improvement in the labor market and is reasonably confident that inflation will move back to its 2 percent objective over the medium term.

And if the Associated Press’s economic pundits are correct, this is in itself somewhat unusual (and thus particularly revealing):

It’s extremely rare for Fed officials in their statement to highlight the risks posed by foreign economies. This means that they’re carefully monitoring the aftershocks from a slowdown in China and other emerging markets, in addition to struggles by Europe to increase economic growth.

 

Published at 10:20 on 16 September 2015

Is amply illustrated by this article.

First, there is the equating of Trump (who has no political experience whatsoever, and who engages in largely fact-free xenophobic rhetoric) with Sanders and Corbyn (both of whom have decades of experience and whose policy proposals, though on one side of the political spectrum, are generally fact-based and definitely do refrain from stoking the flames of ethnic bigotry).

Second, there is a complete lack of investigation into any of the Establishment’s many failings, and how those (and not mere New Media attention) might be playing a role in the popularity of all three.

Trump, whatever his failings, is a free trade skeptic, and most of the free trade agreements pushed by that same Establishment consensus have failed to live up to their promises. Take NAFTA: it was supposed to reduce illegal immigration. Its skeptics pointed out that illegal immigration would probably increase. In this real-world experiment, it was the skeptics’ prediction and not the Establishment’s that was proven correct.

Both Sanders and Corbyn opposed the Iraq War fiasco. This was so self-evidently a blunder that outside the English-speaking world, even some prominent conservative leaders (such as Jacques Chirac) opposed it. As did some prominent centrists, like Senator Byrd (who was I believe the only Senator who had also been in office when LBJ pulled the Gulf of Tonkin snow job on Congress and led the nation into the Vietnam War based on lies).

Meanwhile, both the “New” Democrats and the “New” Labourites decided to be “practical” and “realistic” by supporting the war.

At the time, the best the Establishment could manage was : “Oh, isn’t this interesting: the anti-war crowd is playing the national security card by saying that going to war will end up actually undermining it; there’s a controversy about which course is best for national security. Let’s present both sides as equally plausible — even though the preponderance of evidence favors the skeptics — because, heavens, we wouldn’t want to be accused of ‘bias’ or anything.”

And then there’s the financial deregulation that paved the way for the Great Recession, something else that the self-professed “responsible” “New” Democrats and Labourites united with conservatives to enact over the opposition of the left wings of both their parties.

If the Establishment wants answers as to why it is getting less and less respect, it would be better served by taking a good long look in the mirror rather than playing pin-the-blame-on-the-Internet and sermonizing about ignorant peasants.

Published at 19:08 on 14 September 2015

Well, isn’t this one precious.

A left-winger just won* the race to be the leader of the Labour Party. And the losing side, which calls itself “New” Labour is whining about things like “returning to the past,” “delusions,” and “failed policies.”

Reality check time: Blair is no longer PM, and hasn’t been for some time now. So far as “delusions” go, how about the one that Dubya was telling the truth about Iraq being a threat worth going to war for? And for “failed policies,” how about the resulting war there which paved the way for ISIS, a group that manages to make Saddam Hussein look OK in comparison?

And of course the ultimate irony is the term “New” Labour. It’s the past, it’s dying, and good riddance.

* Won it quite handily, in fact, on the first round of voting, with the largest margin ever for such a victory.

Published at 11:08 on 11 September 2015

Mainly because sexuality is more than a simplistic gay/bi/straight spectrum, and I happen to be further from that line than most.

I just don’t have the sort of strong sexual urges most men do, so if I wanted to I could become an “ex gay” and put up with the ruse basically indefinitely. Attractive men would still catch my eye, but it would be trivially easy to resist any temptation to go further (because for me there simply isn’t much temptation).

It would of course still be a lie (I’d not be straight), and I have no interest whatsoever in practicing fundamentalist Christianity (or any other sort of organized religion, for that matter), and I strongly support the right of all individuals to live according to the sexuality they actually possess, so I’d never actually do such a thing.

But if I wanted to, I could. And although my sexual orientation is unusual, I doubt it’s unique.

So there exist “gay” men who are sexually active to the degree they are not because they’re gay and that’s what their deepest intrinsic desires lead them to be, but because they can be that way if they try. (They’re play-acting at being gay, in much the same way that many so-called “ex gays” play-act at being straight.)

Perhaps, like me, they were curious about sex and wanted to experience some at least once in their lives. I realized that I just didn’t fit in with what is — to me — a hyper-sexualized subculture that was continually imposing its alien sexuality onto me, primarily through the implicit assumption of others that I wanted the same sort of frequent, often casual, sex they desired. I wanted a little bit of sex, with one or two individuals I had a very close relationship to, that’s it.

I resolved the problem by basically walking away from the subculture and ceasing to identify as a member of it. Others may find that difficult to do, and want to replace the gay male subculture with another one, say that of conservative Christianity. And the world’s a large enough place that at least a few individuals probably have.

Keep that latter point in mind. Because, no matter how many “ex gays” continue to be caught in the act of lapsing, it means that somewhere there are probably some who don’t — and won’t — “lapse.” Odds are this will eventually get some attention in the Establishment media.

When it does, it in no way means that it’s possible to become “ex gay;” the individuals which will be reported on never actually were gay in the first place.

Published at 18:58 on 8 September 2015

Had another interview today, and the way it want (not badly, but not great either) makes it pretty certain I’m not going to get an offer. Which is OK, given the next point.

The biggest catch is that the guy who would be my boss, while very smart, has fallen victim to Respected Academics Syndrome. That’s when someone with lots of formal education and recognition to their name lets it all go to their head, to the point where they can’t take any constructive criticism, no matter how valid, from someone with less of either. They have the credentials, I don’t, so therefore there’s absolutely nothing they could ever learn from me. Period.

In this case, it was about SQL. The guy wanted to design a program that sent SQL to back-end databases that was both standards-confirming (so it would be database-independent) and efficient. You can’t do that: the SQL standard is surprisingly small. A lot of the SQL syntax that one takes for granted as basic stuff for writing efficient queries (such as the LIMIT clause) are actually nonstandard extensions. But no, I couldn’t make that point without being interrupted and having my concerns waved off (never with any actual evidence to the contrary, of course).

What’s sad is that it is at an organization with a very noble mission (cancer research). So this project is going to run into all sorts of unnecessary and easily foreseeable difficulties, wasting lots of money and effort, largely because the workplace is a hierarchical and authoritarian place. If the world wasn’t largely on such principles, personality faults like that wouldn’t do nearly so much damage: he’d still be respected for his past accomplishments but the moment he tried to bluster others into doing the impossible he’d get ignored and overruled by group consensus, because there would be no such thing as a “boss”. And because such academics could get easily called on their shit, they wouldn’t let their recognition go to their head in the first place.

And that is the biggest reason I am an anarchist: because life experiences keep on underscoring to me that authoritarian hierarchies just don’t work very well.

Published at 09:11 on 13 August 2015

Arresting one of your own because he wants to volunteer to fight against terrorism? Mainstream news article here, anarchist news article here.

To make matters even worse, he could potentially face life in prison.

Published at 07:57 on 15 July 2015

I mean, even the IMF (hardly a radical-left source) is saying the austerity the Greek ruling party is pushing for is too much and Greece needs more debt relief. So much for the “radical left” Syriza party.

I guess there’s another lession about Establishment politics corrupting everything it touches here. Even “anti-Establishment” parties really can’t be trusted to accomplish much if the ever get power. The seats corrupt whomever happens to sit in them.