Normal

Children accept almost any conditions as normal. As we get older we tend to look around and adjust our individual outlook to our culture. And as we age even more and more, we find it harder and harder to accept inevitable change.

Of course, there are different types of “change”.

The most oxymoronic is what I will call static change. It is exemplified by death or big events. An old tree that has been around “forever” is suddenly gone. Parts of landscape, ways of life, friends and relatives, once eternally available, now exist only in memory. Depending on that memory we cheer or regret what has vanished.

Then there is a creeping constant change in daily life patterns. What used to be normal is no longer. How we work or play, for example. What is our typical daily schedule, how vacations and holidays are different from “back then”. All this is usually gradual and we accept it with good grace. Just life.

Finally there is the most elusive and profound, which is trend change. Our expectations, which often drive our logical existence. The job should pay more each year. Prices will remain about the same day to day. Our health will last. Whole cycles and patterns integrated into our plans and imaginations.

It is the last, more than any other, that causes revolutions. If we worry that jobs are going away or food will become scarce or enemies are on the way. When “normal” expected trends change, watch out.

For that often means real daily change may arrive soon.

Great Expectations

In many horror films a group of well-off happy teenagers are beset with a mysterious dangerous evil. The immediate simple responses are to hide or run away (they always choose to hide). The correct but more complicated actions would be to stay together with whatever weaponry they can find, call the police and parents, maintain contact, and put as much distance as possible between them and whatever while staying in the open.

Our own social horror worries are numerous and affect well-off happy people. Crime, wages, health, job uncertainty, children’s future, finances, climate change, global menace, inflation, education, and you can continue the list. Our immediate simple response is to whack away with simple government policies, which in turn whack away with simple slogans and usually ineffectively transient actions. But, like the kids in the horror film hiding in the shed, we all feel better for the moment.

So if we “just” clean out immigrants, remove regulations, lower taxes, jail anyone we don’t like, ignore snotty experts, get back to the good old days – everything will once again be perfect. Of course most of us can’t agree on what any of that means, how to do it, or if it would work.

But we have great expectations. Like the movie victims, we know blindly running somewhere else must save us. No time to think. Thinking is for those useless pointy-headed experts.

So far, most of the actions based on such great expectations seem to have had the usual result.

Time to scream again?

Adversarial Justice

Once upon a time we were taught the glories of the jury system, adversarial justice with lawyers jousting, and the concept of innocent until proven guilty. Those worked remarkably well in the good old days, but times have changed. Look at it one by one.

Juries are a huge inconvenience to most people, and are rarely necessary. Certainly not 12 people in person listening to arcane arguments. Then the adversarial system itself, expensive as hell, courts and judges and lawyers where those with the most money usually win, and in any case the proceedings themselves are too theatrical and slimy to give real satisfaction of justice done. And as for innocent until proven guilty – just a defense lawyer lie. Filmed evidence, revealed details of previous crimes, all the crap of the 12th century hardly relevant in an era of photography, cell phone locations, and DNA.

Actually, that is why a lot of trials end up in plea deals.

Now I know all evidence can be manufactured or falsified. But in most situations that’s hardly worth the effort. At this point, perhaps we should ease back on worrying about letting hundreds go free lest one innocent be convicted. The odds have changed.

Just another example of how our ancient constitution and irrelevant traditions betray society in the modern world. The whole thing should be taken apart, streamlined, and rethought. Taking into account technology and an interconnected world. Time to leave the methodology of the 12th century behind.

Capitalism’s End

(With apologies to Arthur C. Clarke)

The mythology of capitalism has been established as pervasively as was the divine right of kings at the close of the middle ages. Capitalism, claims the dogma, makes society healthy, wealthy and wise. No other human system works as well and never will.

Things change. Those kings were deposed, beheaded, or shackled with constitutional oversight. New forms of government arose, sweeping away kingly beliefs in mercantilism, aristocratic rule, religious social control. Many alternatives have been tried, capitalism emerged as one of the successful ones.

Things change. Clearly we have reached the end of the industrial revolution. Machines produce everything, including other machines. Humans remain in the economic mix, directing and inventing machines, filling niche services, and toiling in leftover areas like agriculture where machines are only gradually replacing them.

Things change. If current trends continue, machines will have taken over all the production, no need for human intervention at any stage. We need new ideas, but fanatic “capitalists” have become the ignorant priests and destructive luddites of our age, unable to imagine any other system, fearful of what they do not know.

Things change. Like kings, capitalistic corporations may be in their final moments, as those rulers once were.

Things change.

Are you ready?

Humpty Dumpty

Louis Carroll had Humpty Dumpty state “words mean what I want them to mean, neither more nor less”. Orwell expanded this into the political realm (“war is peace”) following the Nazis (“work is freedom”). We are living in a time when the meaning of words is as fluid as water.

On the one hand are the straight reversals. “I am honest” claims the dishonest politician. “I’m not a crook” the crook tells us earnestly. And – worse than that _ what do we mean by “honest” or “crook?” And by extension and implication isn’t everyone?

Then there are the all-encompassing labels, when simple values or statements are branded as signals for so much more – usually evil. These are at least our traditional – “traitors”, “communists”, ” “woke”. By making any small idea (“police should be less brutal”) into a monolithic conspiracy including all ideas that the speaker does not like, conversation becomes impossible.

Obviously, when everyone from rulers to influencers to your mother-in-law, neighbor, and children can make any words mean whatever they want, communication cannot happen. Language has been a glory of our species.

In the old days, different languages sounded quite distinct. Now they all sound the same but are incomprehensible except to other members of your tribe.

We all know what happened to Humpty Dumpty.

Social Donations

Any society must do two big things: protect itself from other societies, and maintain internal order. Even the most rabid libertarian agrees there must be a military and an internal police force with systems to protect property, secure persons, and enforce contracts. That means bureaucracies that must be paid.

How to pay has varied tremendously. Small tribes were based on family obligation. Agricultural civilizations used payment in kind. Many empires simply looted. And, of course, there were taxes (for the military king) and tithes (for the social service priests).

After the industrial revolution, things have become very complicated. How to pay for necessary bureaucracy (and what is truly necessary to maintain that society) is uncharted territory in current civilizations. Everyone hates taxes and fees unless they fall on someone else. Hidden taxes and fees are hard to enforce and rarely bring in enough. Nobody is quite sure how to tax capital to retain meritocracy and production.

Two other methods have been tried. One is to simply let rulers buy their way to power and then loot and extort to get even richer. It worked for the Romans and it’s close to the democratic election system today (with elections bankrolled by corporations and special interests).

The other is donations as in religious tithes or today’s non profit gifts or internet pleas.

Purchase of power inevitably becomes unbearably corrupt and destroys the social fabric. Donations tend to clump into smaller and smaller cliques (such as immediate family) which also shatters society.

Perhaps there is a solution out there somewhere, or maybe simple evolution will provide a working methodology. It’s worked so far.

Sports Government

Forget ancient authors, theories, history. Boring. Nobody cares nor has the time to know. What Americans KNOW is sports. Especially professional sports. Put government rules and explanations in the form of sports and everyone would be happier.

The federal government is the league, the states and corporations are the teams, the workers are the players, the citizens are the spectators. The talking heads remain as commentators. And, of course, the judges are the refs. Instant replay for laws!

Put in such terms, the first requirement for players is always a strong union. Protect and keep the players well paid and safe, which, we are all beginning to agree, is what most workers in the new AI economy need most.

How spectators pay for it all is always an issue. So I suppose society becomes like parents, citizens are its “children” and money appears adequately and kind of by magic, rationed a little.

Maybe we all must now truly become as little children. Or, in alternate reference, accept mana from heaven.

Not hard, the owners are already present. Oligarchs as there were in Rome. Let them vie for glory! An impossible dream …

Or – wait are we already there?

Mad King Ludwig

Some rulers such as Caligula or Vlad the Impaler are known for their cruelty. Some such as Hitler are remembered as evil. Others such as Louis XIV marked spendthrifts. And then there is mad King Ludwig of Bavaria.

His fantasy castle is famously the prototype of Disneyland palaces. His fairy tale caricature is as a vain, extravagant, impulsive, out of control sybarite. He did not so much ruin his country as ignore its true needs to pursue his own odd selfish ends.

Naming no names, America now has its own mad King Ludwig. His court is composed of spineless couriers, who desperately fear that if they fail to please him they will be dismissed into outer darkness. Most of them to remain unemployable or harassed by the law for the rest of their lives.

The king is fickle. Each day or night brings forth a few new massive directives, often contradictory, often reversed or ignored in a few days. Subjects ignore or laugh at them to their extreme peril. The king cackles into the darkness.

Unlike the old mad king, this one is quite vindictive and easily angered. Perhaps the new castles abuilding will be magnificent, attracting tourists; models for future theme parks. Or the plaster may all crumble away in time and rain, like most of the other directives.

Nevertheless, it’s surely very entertaining, especially if you are far enough away from the action.

Corporate Raptors

Mammals generally fall into three categories. Herbivores eat relatively specialized plant diets.. Carnivores eat only meat, which they either find or kill. Omnivores like us can get along on just about anything. Lifestyles vary. In a working ecology, a lot of herbivores, like deer, support a few carnivores, like wolves. The predators keep down the damage caused by overpopulation, while also removing the sick and the old. A useful function. On the other hand, too many wolves can make some of them starve. Omnivores generally stay out of the way, unless forced into food or fight situations.

The corporate ecology is not so different. A lot of companies graze on the economy producing value. A few omnivores collect groups of them into larger entities. And the wolf pack takes over stocks, privatized for “increased profit” and usually destroys its prey after gorging. Ah, “creative destruction”.

Obviously, too many wolves will eliminate too many deer, sometimes eliminating both species and certainly ruining life for individual animals of either type.

Right now, it seems there are way too many corporate wolves, tearing apart our civilization. “Iinvestors” who seek only quick returns, buy gentle useful things like hospitals, daycare facilities, farms, and schools to suck them dry in hopes of never having to work another day in their lives. Everyone suffers sooner or later.

Jurassic raptors have nothing on SPACS and stock swap kings. The government electric fences are down, and the park is wide open for carnage.

Holy Writ

Fundamentally, I believe most people are just like me – pretty smart and dumb at the same time. In general, I think small groups of people construct sane outlooks most of the time. There are exceptions. A few people are brilliant in certain areas, a few groups turn into insane cults.

I do not accept that gods directly write anything. All words are formed by other humans. And so I have a skeptical opinion of anything taken as “holy writ”, immutable and perfect from the moment marks are made on a surface.

No need to get directly into religion. What I most detest at the present moment is the “conservative originalist” interpretation of the US Constitution as not only inviolate and perfect, but also the result of a brilliant gathering of minds whose choices can never be questioned nor seriously modified.

The problems go beyond the obvious – that some of it may be wrong or have become irrelevant. Anything stiffly frozen is in some ways fragile, and in others just an obstacle to be destroyed. And there is a nearly nonsensical position taken by some specialists that they alone can determine what the folks who wrote it were “really” thinking and what they “really” meant.

It is simple madness, usually twisted to make words seem to say or mean exactly what interpreters and their cronies have decided. Sad times for our country.