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.

Normally Inert

In apocryphal metaphor, a frog will not jump out of a slowly warming pan of water until it is too late. Similarly, people continue their normal lives as disaster approaches or rages around them.

When I was much younger, I’d casually wonder what I would have done were I living in Germany in the 30s. Or how I would have reacted in the Roman empire as barbarians invaded distant frontiers, or what I might have done in a medieval European village as plague swept nearby.

Sadly, I now know the answer: nothing at all.

We may dream of being part of or even of influencing grand history, but the fact is we live in daily routine. We are too busy with everything around us to care much about big issues. At least until they strongly affect us.

To be fair, this is evolutionary sanity. Survival overrides everything else. We may use leisure to consider cosmic issues, but often leisure not related to daily life is counterproductive to security and happiness.

So the American voter frogs squat in their warm water, as customs and institutions they took for granted are ripped to shreds and incinerated. The only consolation is that sometimes vast destruction leads to evolutionary (perhaps good) change.

Once upon a time I thought the cataclysm would at least take a while and be imperceptible locally. Now I’m not so sure.

Ignorant Belief

My childhood education was stuffed with scientific outlook. It was a dangerous world out there and we needed all the science we could handle to defeat godless communists and other horrible menaces. Science can, after all, help us build much bigger bombs and delivery systems.

But science is stark, complicated, and based on probability. It’s turned out most folks can’t handle it as a life guide. Belief in anything simplifies a complex world immensely, represents common sense, and ignores annoying exceptions. Most of the time, for an individual, it is comforting and harmless.

If you believe that the lucky penny in your pocket keeps away elephants, you’re in luck. If you believe it helps your team win you will be sporadically rewarded. If you believe it will deliver next week’s lottery, you’ll probably be disappointed. No matter. You have a right to believe anything.

Unfortunately, ignorant belief is not as useful as science in dealing with the “objective world” you and I share. And it may be a danger to others or society. If you believe your sick child will be saved by a lucky penny rather than a doctor’s care, I may decide to help that child and the hell with your belief.

Many beliefs, however comforting to believers, have been horrible to societies. Witness the Nazis or Aztecs.

Humans are complicated and finite in an ever more complicated and infinite universe. Lucky pennies may help any individual. But they can be an evil way to deal with others.

New House

One year after the house across the street burned down, various permits and legal issues have been cleared and building is rapidly underway. A typical American balloon frame. In only a month, concrete has been poured for foundation, the skeleton is complete and plywood is being slapped on.

Americans invented this type of home – stronger than it appears and in some ways ideal as long as there is an abundant supply of milled lumber and cheap nails. Much easier to maintain then old European chateaus – as wealthy expatriates have been discovering for years.

Over a century or so, we have come to expect this to be the absolutely typical housing outside of urban areas. We assume the materials are available and labor is plentiful. Most of the middle class regard it as a birthright.

I suppose that like everything else it will vanish soon.

In the meantime, my wife and old time neighbors complain “too big for the lot” “No personality.” It’s true that current aesthetics (or lack thereof) tries to fit the largest blocky McMansion on as many square inches of property as code allows. People these days live indoors unless away on vacation. A yard larger than a living room is a nuisance. A giant box fits the bill.

Anyway, I enjoy the sense of old-fashioned construction, workers like busy bees in a hive, something quickly emerging from nothing.

Besides, lately complaints are futile and as my radical friends used to say, so it goes.

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.

Risky “Makers”

The smug justifying fable of the wealthy these days is that they “make” things, while the peons just take them away in order to exist. The poor are thus all morally thieves, and the virtuous rich sweat and labor to keep civilization staggering along.

In our capitalistic system, of course, most of the hyper affluent don’t know the difference between a hawk and a handsaw. They take risks (in other words, gamble) mostly with other people’s money on things that might turn a profit. Only a few of these “investments” work out, and of those that do a lot are straightforward manipulation of financial assets with no “making” involved .

I admire free enterprise. These are generally small time entrepreneurs who risk their own time and money to truly make something or provide a necessary service. They rarely climb into the ranks of the hyper-affluent, but they often do well enough and truly provide the frameworks of civilization. To keep them striving, the myth of makers is endlessly proclaimed .

I do not mind the billionaire class, whose equivalent has always been with us. I do prefer the old desire of this class to be “patrons” doing public works to show off. Our current set of selfish “makers” tend to think they should use their assets as “takers” to buy islands and other fantasies that are hidden and private, hence of no use to anyone. “Grabbers” might be a better term .

The current real dream of grabbers is to become immortal and omnipotent rulers of space and time. Individual private “glory” with no connection nor responsibility to anyone else .

Spoiled, dangerous, and increasingly in control .

Missing Middle

Since the rise of agricultural civilization, wealth has always been unequal. A small rich elite floated over the “masses”. Admittedly, in both groups, there were variations, sometimes major. But to speak of the rulers and the ruled pretty much said it all .

For a while during the turmoil of world exploration and industrial revolution, there came to be a myth of a “middle class”, neither rich nor poor, in control of their lives but not lording it over everyone. American economists continue to focus on this fairy tale which is no longer even partially true .

In the scientific, automated, predatory modern economy there is truly only a normal curve of wealth distribution. Sure, there is still a middle, but it is not defined by the endpoints. Most people in first world economies are affluent beyond the dreams of their ancestors. Even if “poor” they have food, shelter, clothing, dignity, and hope. Even if “rich” they fear they may lose a gamble once too often and drop out of the top percentile .

More importantly, from the economists’ viewpoint, it is impossible to define what “middle class” means. The marker once taken for granted – the suburban nuclear family with one man the breadwinner – no longer exists as a reliable guidepost .

The point is that we should abandon any desire to fortify a non-existent “middle class”. We need to concentrate on basic minimum living standards for all, and how to pay for them. “Work”, for example, may or may not be involved. We need fresh new viewpoints, and strategies as old certainties mutate or vanish .