WSJ's Stable Of Dissemblers and Disinformationists Keeps Churning Out BS

It appears I may have written too prematurely when I opined in my post about Kim Strassel's conspiracy flatulence, e.g.

http://brane-space.blogspot.com/2017/07/skewering-another-right-wing-conspiracy.html

that at least Holman Jenkins had pulled back from his own brand of garbage. As I had written:  "goofy as he was, Jenkins at least appears to have moved on to other subjects like trade, tariffs, and Elon Musk."   But alas, that didn't last too long.  By the time of the Weekend WSJ (Sept. 8-9, p. A13) little Holman was back at his personal propaganda mill once more - this time writing swill under the header 'We're Surviving Trump Just Fine'.    Seriously? Not from what Bob Woodward has presented in his recent interviews stemming from the upcoming publication of his latest book,   Fear: Trump in the White House ,

Indeed, in interviews over the weekend and yesterday (CBS, NBC) Bob Woodward warned that too many Americans aren't taking Trump's mental deficits and incompetence in office seriously enough, asserting we need to "wake up", e.g.

Bob Woodward: 'People better wake up' about Trump - CNBC.com

Which elicits the question why little Holman doesn't want his readers to be awake to what's going on, as when he pens such hog swill as "Mr. Trump is functionally, Mr. Obama, without the ambition".

Really, you terminal,  brainless maggot?  How about this:

 "Mr. Trump is functionally Mr. Obama - but minus Obama's brains."

Oh, another choice nugget from Holman: Quoting from Woodward's book, Trump saying "everyone's out to get me", and adding "So at least he is compos mentis about about some things."  Uh no, he is classically paranoid schizoid - when not being incompetent - but still needing to be confined to a rubber room, preferably in straight jacket.

But only at the end do we finally encounter the real reason that Jenkins is committed to spreading garbage like in his op-ed:

"I keep hearing from Trump voters who are satsfied they got the wrecking ball they voted for aimed at the Obama-Bush elite."

Thereby more than justifying Janice's malignant hatred of this human offal (her term is  "vermin")  - the "minority faction" - who tossed the whole country into a shitshow and national nightmare out of pique.   At least Jenkins is honest in his last sentence noting that "at least no president in my lifetime came wrapped in less false advertising".

Righto, which explains why Janice and millions of others are justified in hating the Trumpers even more - because they knew what they were doing - and said 'Bring it on!'

Another dissembling,  putz loser from the  WSJ stable of disinfo specialists is columnist Barton Swaim ('We Are All Aggrieved Minorities Now', p. C8, Sept. 8-9)

Swaim in his piece takes aim at Francis Fukuyama and his book, 'Identity'  while claiming "It's a tough sell on the topic of identity politics which is overwhelmingly a creation of the  left."  Seriously?    

Methinks Barton is either woefully ignorant or unable  to grasp or realize white identity has been around since before the Civil War slave era when slaves were expected to know their place and "Massah" was forever on slave patrol.  If Swaim did know that he'd have been aware white identity has actually metastasized since the Reconstruction era and fueled the excesses of Jim Crow. 

In Trump it reached its apotheosis, with the scumball  being the first ever "president" to appoint an outspoken white nationalist (Steve Bannon) to his national security council.   Hence, Swaim is either appallingly ignorant or stupid when after citing Fukuyama's claim "there are plenty of white nationalist voices that would like to drag the country backward on race," he proffers the rejoinder:

"Oh come on! White nationalism has no purchase whatsoever in American society."

No purchase whatsoever?  Then how did these vile memes spread during the Obama era? 

Again,  Swaim is unable to parse the blatant evidence for white identity and its presumed privilege,  not only in the media but in nearly every other Trump tweet. Oh, as well as filling the federal courts with reactionaries to defend his border policies and praising the Nazis and Johnny Rebs marching in Charlottesville last year as "some very fine people".  So one must conclude Swaim wouldn't be able to locate his ass from a hole in the ground, especially after the latest  White "massah" display in terrorizing Nike after it endorsed Colin Kaepernick's  kneel down NFL displays. See e.g.

The NFL's Ongoing Kaepernick Controversy Shows Much of White America Is Still in 'Slave Patrol' Mode

As Thomas Hartmann puts it: 

"The slave patrols live. 

Just ask any of the people at Nike who answer the phones and are dealing with an avalanche of angry white callers throwing the N-word around and complaining about Nike treating Kaepernick with respect. Trump, Pence, and billionaire Rupert Murdoch’s Fox News are ginning up even more racist hysteria on a near-daily basis.

But this doesn’t come out of thin air. There’s a long history of whites trashing blacks when they protest the systems whites have put in place to keep them down."

All of which is, of course, tied to white identity politics - whether Swam recognizes it or not. Swaim then goes on to bloviate, playing the false equivalence card:

"Whereas identity -obsessed progressives dominate America's universities, media and entertainment industry."

Which is a pile of rank codswallop.  Indeed, three political scientists: John Sides, Michael Tesler and Lynn Vavreck, in their new book 'Identity Crisis', show that issues of white identity drove most white Trump voters. Tied to matters of economics, this identity stamp emerged as "racialized economics" in the parlance of the authors.

 Meanwhile, progressive identity has largely been energized in response to the reactionary identity politics and memes projected by the Right, e.g.


With such odious, infernal ,  white identity excesses the Left and its remaining bastions had no choice but to stand tall and explicate its own identity politics  - well, to protect besieged identities!  Naomi Klein in her recent book, 'NO Is Not Enough - Resisting Trump's Shock Politics'), argued that, pp. 90-91:

"It is short-sighted,  not to mention dangerous, for liberals  and progressives to abandon their own focus on identity politics",

Because:

"To a terrifying degree, skin color and gender conformity are determining who is physically safe in the hands of the state, who is at risk from vigilante violence, who can express themselves without constant harassment and who can cross a border without terror."

Bottom line? So long as the Right embraces identity politics and tribalism  - seeking to stoke their voters using hate and distrust,  we on the sane side  must adopt a counter identity politics - appealing to the angels of citizens' better nature - not their worst.  Those appeals to citizens' better natures then are all about protectively circling the  "wagons" - whether on behalf of the 800,000 DACAns Trump wants to ship out, or the decent Muslims he wants to block from coming in, or the Puerto Ricans he has abandoned as "too costly" for federal assistance after Hurricane Maria. In other words, our tribal identity must be to protect those minorities threatened by the howling banshees of the Right.

Then for the penultimate disinfo scribbler we have WSJ book reviewer Deirdre McCloskey (WSJ Review, p. C9) who knows about as much concerning Adam Smith and his conception of capitalism as the nearest rock.   She writes, for example:

"If you are a compassionate conservative... you will delight in 'Adam Smith: Father of Economics'. If you are what Americans call a 'liberal' you can get along with it, unless you go to full socialism."

Uh, you mean full democratic socialism?  Because if McCloskey had read Smith's  marvelous tome  'An Inquiry into the Wealth Of Nations'   she'd have seen he himself could be regarded as a democratic socialist, as when he wrote:

"there are needs in a civilized society that a barbaric one refuses to address."

Adding:

"What improves the circumstances of the greater part can never be regarded as an inconvenience to the whole"

What improves the circumstances of the "greater part", like the 75 million currently on Meciaid and another 24-30 million on the ACA apart from Medicaid.  And hey, "can never be regarded as an inconvenience to the whole" - so not to be dinged down by benefit cuts to protect Tax cuts!  Maybe little Miss McCloskey ought to pick up Adam Smith's original work from the library and read it sometime!

But the top prize this week for major spin, bullshit and plain poppycock ought to go to William McGurn ('Playing the Civility Card',  yesterday, p. A13) when he actually summoned the chutzpah to first deliver an Oscar Wilde quote:

"A gentleman is one who never hurts anyone's feeling - unintentionally"

Then by an inversion of logic and exploiting the reverse Wilde notion that a gentleman is perfectly entitled to offend intentionally,  McGurn suggests Dotard J. Trump is really a "gentleman":

"Even the most ardent Never Trumper must concede that when this president offends, it's intentional."

But this is the sort of never ending bollocks we have to put up with from the Reich wing media machine, which incessantly churns to misalign the brains and thoughts of millions.   As for the WSJ op-ed pages and even Weekend Reviewe pages, they ought to include a warning label: "Perusing these pages could be detrimental to your mental health if you fail to exercise your critical thinking skills."

Why James Damore's Google "Memo" Is a Load Of Right Wing Anti-Female Balderdash

The Culture Wars are back on again, this time fired up by a 23 year old conservative twerp  and former Google Software engineer named James Damore.  Like most young conservatives he has zero clue about the deep politics issues of our time, and is more concerned with hurling his verbal vomit into so-called "manifestoes". In this case, a 3,000 word effort blasting Google's "left bias" for "creating a politically correct monoculture" that ignores differences between the sexes.

Do we all kowtow to this wet behind the ears techie and part time sociologist, biologist who isn't shy about filling us in on those difference? Hell no! His manifesto waxes long about the supposed traits of females which makes them less able to cope in a software programming environment, but doesn't hold up to scrutiny.  One wonders where this twerp even got the time to write a 10  page manuscript given he's supposed to be programming code.  

Some of the screwball tropes exposed in his ten page "memo" and my responses:

1) Political orientation is actually a result of deep moral preferences and thus biases. Considering that the overwhelming majority of the social sciences, media, and Google lean left, we should critically examine these prejudices:

Damore adds as an aside, in a footnote:

Of course, I may be biased and only see evidence that supports my viewpoint. In terms of political
biases, I consider myself a classical liberal and strongly value individualism and reason.

-------------------------

This is mostly the usual classic, conservative codswallop supported by neither neurobiology or sociology. It is more a product of the political stereotypes spewed out over decades by right wing talk radio and more recently FOX news and others (Sinclair Broadcasting). Nor is there a basis in ethics or morality, so "deep moral preferences" doesn't wash in the way Damore has spun it.  As the Jesuits at Loyola taught me, and with which I can agree even as an atheist, "deep moral preferences" must include seeing the human family as one's own.  You act therefore to reduce unfair disparity via social justice initiatives.  You do not act like a knuckle dragger to advance social Darwinism.

There is indeed no basis in standard evolution theory for the latter.  For example, ‘survival of the fittest’ was never uttered or stated by Charles Darwin himself, in any of his treatises. It was, rather, promoted by the English sociologist Herbert Spencer, in a misguided attempt to extrapolate Darwinian principles to the social sphere. (E.g. The Study of Sociology, 1873, serialized for an American audience in Popular Science Monthly)

In his serialized tracts, Spencer absolutely repudiated all state assistance to the poor, needy, physically feeble, or infirm – based on a bastardized “survival of the fittest”  or "preference for the strong" concept. He believed, erroneously, that people are like beasts that had to be forced to compete for precious resources. If they didn’t do this, they’d produce degenerate, weakened humans- unfit in the evolutionary scheme. Hence, the name “Social Darwinism”.

This Social Darwinism remains embedded in the current incarnation of rabid individualism disseminated by conservative ideologues, who salivate non-stop at the prospect of using it to dismember social safety nets.  Damore's manifesto reeks with the false scholarship of Herbert Spencer in his references to disparities being "natural and just" and  "humans being naturally competitive".

Also his blanket assertion that "the overwhelming majority of the social sciences, media, and Google lean left" can also be challenged on multiple grounds. Indeed, he seems to need to be reminded (assuming he read it at all),  of the words of the original capitalist, Adam Smith. In his 'Inquiry into the Wealth Of Nations' Smith evoked a more rational attitude when he noted there are:

"needs in a civilized society that a barbaric one refuses to address."

He also pointedly stated (Vol. II, p. 648):

"What improves the circumstances of the greater part can never be regarded as an inconvenience to the whole "

THIS is the basis for the true classical liberalism (governing markets) that Damore purports to embrace yet seems to have vacated his brain when he set out his left-right  "bias" markers. Smith recognized, unlike such modern high priests of conservative economic thought as Martin Feldstein and Milton Friedmann, that any economics devised to create more inequity can't be sustained. Eventually, as Lenin predicted in his essay on Imperialism, it must consume its seed corn and also its raison d'etre.

Echoing Smith, Charles Reich poignantly noted in his book, Opposing the System, Crown Books, p. 103:

"When society itself comes to be modeled on economic and organizational principles, all of the forces that bind people together are torn apart in the struggle for survival. Community is destroyed because we are no longer 'in this together' because everyone is a threat to everyone else. "

In such a capitalist-driven, consumerist organizational economic model, wherein the resource “pie” for the non-wealthy elite grows ever smaller, the young are threats to us oldsters, as we are threats to them, as neighbor is to neighbor. It can't be otherwise. This capitalist model has seen fit, in other words, to destroy our areas of commonality and common cause, replacing neutral civic space with demeaning commercial space and commercialist, market values. Reich's appeal, as well as Smith's is to a traditional capitalism as opposed to the "cowboy" mutation that most conservos today embrace.

----------

  2) On average, men and women biologically differ in many ways. These differences aren’t just
socially constructed because:
● They’re universal across human cultures
● They often have clear biological causes and links to prenatal testosterone
● Biological males that were castrated at birth and raised as females often still identify
and act like males
● The underlying traits are highly heritable
● They’re exactly what we would predict from an evolutionary psychology perspective
Note, I’m not saying that all men differ from all women in the following ways or that these
differences are “just.” I’m simply stating that the distribution of preferences and abilities of men
and women differ in part due to biological causes and that these differences may explain why
we don’t see equal representation of women in tech and leadership.
-------------------------------

That males and females "differ biologically in many ways" is not up for debate. What is up for debate is Damore's contention that these biological differences translate into radically different psychological  and job aptitude differences (e.g. women "have more neuroticism, higher anxiety, lower stress tolerance" so are less capable in high stress jobs). Also there is Damore's contention that biological traits define personality differences. For example, Damore blabs:

"Women, on average, have more openness directed towards feelings and aesthetics rather than ideas. Women generally also have a stronger interest in people rather than things, relative to men (also
interpreted as empathizing vs. systemizing). This leads to women generally having a harder time negotiating salary, asking for raises, speaking up, and leading."

None of these assumptions, claims is substantiated by any research published in respected, peer-reviewed  journals of sociology or psychology. If in fact they were, Damore doesn't cite them which indicates he's merely regurgitating stereotypes imbibed from non-academic sources. Or he's confected his own biased conjectures based on limited experience and maybe frequenting right wing sites.

My own experience has been that if a female physics student is given the opportunity to be systematic and excel in a serious challenge she will do it. Often she will easily surpass even talented male counterparts. One of the more challenging physics projects I've assigned was completed by two female students. It entailed the careful computer modeling of a standard Newtonian orbit - including the code and the base equations used. It was of such a high standard it became one of the few student projects published in The Journal of the Barbados Astronomical Society.

The project entailed using a set of initial conditions (for position) to then construct a Newtonian orbit  by using appropriate differential equations for acceleration and velocity.  Thereby the girls  obtained successive iterations in position, a and v,  and a complete orbit. Their result is shown below:


Nor was this a "one off" or exceptional. In other words, whenever female physics students were given the same opportunities they generally surpassed the male students, in attention to detail and the overall quality of their work.

The upshot is that nearly all Damore's assertions may be merely based on his own limited  expectations of how females perform in a working environment as opposed to how they actually perform. So he expects they will be "agreeable" or "have a stronger interest in people rather than things" so sees that in female peers.  In other words, he is hostage to his own innate confirmation bias.

3) We always ask why we don't see women in top leadership positions, but we never ask why we
see so many men in these jobs. These positions often require long, stressful hours that may not
be worth it if you want a balanced and fulfilling life.

Status is the primary metric that men are judged on, pushing many men into these higher
paying, less satisfying jobs for the status that they entail. Note, the same forces that lead men
into high pay/high stress jobs in tech and leadership cause men to take undesirable and
dangerous jobs like coal mining, garbage collection, and firefighting, and suffer 93% of
work-related deaths.
-------

This again is merely more social Darwinist bunkum,  recycled to attempt to justify gender stereotypes to fit the standard conservative milieu i.e. "women are to be kept barefoot and pregnant".  Damore would obviously deny this but his prose fairly reeks of the underlying template that screams: "women are inferior workers to men".  Even Google CEO Sundar Pichai noted that "to suggest a group of our colleagues have traits that make them less biologically suited to that work is offensive and not OK."

The WSJ in its editorial Aug. 9 ('Google's  Diversity Problems', p. A14) tried to attack that rationale for letting Damore go,  averring:

"In other words its OK to express views as long as they are not antithetical to Google's political culture."

Which misses the point entirely, As author Charles Reich noted in his 'The Greening of America' it actually endorses throwback views antithetical to human decency and inclusion. These are every bit as objectionable as a racist tract used to justify the exclusion of black workers.

The WSJ may whine and moan, but Damore's firing is going to stand. Strangely, the organ of high finance seems to have forgotten that workers in corporations have absolutely no free speech rights, or First Amendment ones. This was pointed out over a quarter century ago by Charles Reich in his book 'Opposing the System.'  Citing the case of 'Waters v. Churchill' (p. 146). He noted "the Supreme court made clear that an employee's speech is not protected if the employer  believes the speech might interfere with the efficiency of the employer's operations."

Since it is clear that allowing Damore's presence (after his memo went viral) would definitely undermine Google's efficiency of operations, it was clear Google had to give this right wing troll the heave ho, all the Right's whining aside.  Indeed, Damore's timely firing may have well kept Google on the right side of the law, especially if the company or its employees felt the memo had created an adverse work environment.

Especially pathetic is Damore's assertion:

"the same forces that lead men into high pay/high stress jobs in tech and leadership cause men to take undesirable and dangerous jobs like coal mining, garbage collection, and firefighting, and suffer 93% of work-related deaths."

What exact "forces' are these? Damore doesn't elaborate so I presume we're just expected to guess. But without specifying them his words end up as merely an empty rumination, devoid of any substance. Indeed, Damore tries to make his point later referring to  "the Left tends to deny science
concerning biological differences between people (e.g., IQ and sex differences)." But the "Left" does no such thing.

We do acknowledge differences in IQ and sex (biological) differences, but we absolutely reject the notion that these differences translate into  psychological manifestations that would disqualify a person of particular gender - or race- from doing a specific job.  That includes an African -American from being an investment banker and a young female Ph.D. from being a rocket scientist or astrophysicist. Let me also add that for anyone to drag IQ into worker profiling and job qualification smacks totally of Charles Murray's "Bell Curve" nonsense which I already skewered, e.g.

http://brane-space.blogspot.com/2017/07/was-splc-wrong-to-educate-middlebury.html


4)   Unfortunately, the overwhelming majority of humanities and social sciences lean left (about 95%), which creates enormous confirmation bias, changes what’s being studied, and maintains myths like social constructionism and the gender wage gap. Google’s left leaning makes us blind to this bias and  uncritical of its results, which we’re using to justify highly politicized programs.

--------

Again, we have an assertion unsupported by actual statistics. Where - from what journal of sociology - did Damore obtain the "95 percent" figure?  Where is the fully cited reference and humanities' job by job tally of percentages disclosing a leftward tilt?  Since Damore has offered only his own bloviations without citation then this is mere blowing smoke.  He's attempted to garner specious support for his trope by tossing out generalities and pseudo stats with no backing.

5) Stop alienating conservatives.
○ Viewpoint diversity is arguably the most important type of diversity and political
orientation is one of the most fundamental and significant ways in which people
view things differently.
○ In highly progressive environments, conservatives are a minority that feel like
they need to stay in the closet to avoid open hostility. We should empower those
with different ideologies to be able to express themselves.
--------------

More  victimization and whining as is now typical of the poor little Righties.  They scream their own incessant invective over talk radio, and in "memos" and online forums but crawl into little holes when challenged in other public forums, or work environments. Pardon me while  I play the world's smallest violin for them.  Did Damore even ask himself why "conservatives" are a minority in many of these high caliber environments, especially academia?  Maybe it's because their lot - embracing a "dog eat dog" culture and world - simply doesn't fit into those work environments.

The WSJ editorial stated at the end:

"Many on the left are dismissing Mr. Damore as an alt-Right nut"  and "the monolithic progressive culture incubated on college campuses has spread to corporate America"

The first part is essentially correct, meaning the arguments of Damore could have emanated from Alt Right sites or groups. The second part is a dramatic oversimplification.  It is not that there exists a "monolithic progressive culture" either on college campuses or in some corporations (like Google). Rather,  that as one enters environments where the life of the mind trumps the almighty buck one simply finds fewer conservatives in general - given the preponderance are about making money, not investigating new quasars, or quantum entanglement.  Damore and the WSJ basically just whine because conservative thought and ideas are not dominant everywhere. But why the hell would it be if there exist different priorities for progressive minds and conservative ones?   This is not so much biological in origin as  based on political outlook, and that outlook often hinges on intellectual markers.

Damore's stereotypical rot almost reminds me  of Todd Akins' comments in an interview that  went public back in August, 2012. To quote, after being asked why he supported banning abortion:

“It seems to me from what I understand from doctors, if it’s a legitimate rape female bodies have ways to shut that down.”

Damore's speculations on female biology and how it relates to female job performance being limited  in assorted areas, bears many similarities.   Maybe Damore needs to go back to university and take a few modern sociology courses. At the very least he needs to learn how to cite appropriate research sources when he purports to write future company "memos" or personal manifestos. 

Is Paid Wage Labor Really Worth It?

Writing in his two-volume masterpiece, An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth Of Nations,  Adam Smith envisaged a market society of individual proprietors: butchers, bakers, printers etc. all of whom would be self-employed and not dependent on performing wage labor under a single employer.  Abraham Lincoln was no different, stating in an 1859 address before the Wisconsin State Agricultural Society:

"The prudent, penniless beginner in the world labors for wages awhile, saves a surplus with which to buy tools or land for himself, then labors on his own account another while and - at length- hires another beginner to help him".

In other words the beginning job taker may work under wage labor himself but ultimately becomes an employer of others.  Thus the takeaway that even well into the 19th century wage labor was seen as only a temporary step to individual entrepreneur.    Today, many who've lost their wage jobs are also attempting this route, but alas- because of the competition - too many are failing.  Most tragically, the yearly glut of degree-holding younger job seekers has pushed many into the unskilled labor force - including as Starbucks baristas and retail clerks.

A lot of other systemic factors contribute too, including lack of guaranteed health care for self-employed folks - so that they now have to gamble they won't fall ill or have a serious accident under Trump Care.  Then there is the scale of initial investment needed, often making it a huge risk even to operate a franchise.

As opposed to Lincoln's era then, establishing a small business today is simply too fraught with risk for too many Americans, who still rely on their employers for health insurance and long term income. And that's assuming they can even get the level of pay and benefits needed.  Too many Americans now, including amongst the Trumpies, are forced to patch together a precarious existence and income from freelance gigs, using Uber, 'TaskRabbit' etc.  Or being an adjunct prof - who has to ply his teaching trade at 5 or 6 different universities.

WSJ columnist William Galston in his May 8 piece ('An Econ Mystery: Why Did Wages Flatline"') makes an even more cogent case for avoiding wage labor, but alas, offers no solutions how to escape it. This is despite the fact, as he points out "the labor-force participation rate which nudged above 67 percent in the 1990s, stands at only 62.9 percent today".

So what's happened? Well, for one thing much less investment in paid work, human labor. As I noted already (April 14), automation is grabbing more and more jobs, citing the WaPo article (4/ 8) by Jeff Guo,  'Robots Take Production Up Another Notch'

"Industrial robots alone have eliminated up to 670,000 American jobs between 1990 and 2007, according to new research from MIT's Daron Acemoglu and Boston University's Pascual Restrepo."

But in addition there is the Neoliberal dynamic explained by William Wolman and Anne Colamosca in their 1997 work, 'The Judas Economy: The Triumph of Capital And The Betrayal of Work'.  The authors argue that the modern Neoliberal state has no interest in human labor, paying it properly, or re-investing. It is capital that takes precedence, hence business is only invested in its own aggrandizement and proliferation at the expense of citizens. A key indicator? The magnitude of investment by corporations in stock buybacks as opposed to labor investment.   Since 2009, U.S. firms - entrenched in their own myopic interests- boosted capital investment by only 43%, dividends by 67% and stock buybacks by a whopping 194%. This according to Jason Thomas of Carlyle Group. In addition, rather than investing in new plants for new jobs, businesses have squandered $2 trillion on mergers and acquisitions .

Galston in his WSJ piece is clear on the trends:

"Firms have gains they could share with workers, but they have chosen not to do so. Even in occupations where there companies complain of labor shortages, there is scant evidence they are responding by raising compensation."

So one arrives at the question of whether paid labor is even worth pursuing anymore, or - to use the refrain of James Livingston - a historian at Rutgers: "Fuck work!".  Livingston takes up this theme in his new book, 'No More Work: Why Full Employment Is A Bad Idea.'.  His arguments are corroborated and reinforced by a similar work by Elizabeth Anderson of the University of Michigan: 'Private Government: How Employers Rule Our Lives (And Why We Don't Talk About It).

I mean think about these titles before even considering the respective content (for which the general theme in each case is that corporations now rule our lives as opposed to the government).  Think this is preposterous? For most workers entering wage labor at a corporation it's no joke. They are warned by finance columnists (like Jill Schlesinger) that they had better take down any anti-capitalist or controversial blogs or posts on news forums before going to that interview. (Some of the material such as I've written on 'Brane Space' would prevent most from even getting in the door for that interview, because employers now Google you first).

Then there are the other warnings, i.e. to remove all "controversial" photos, images etc. from one's Facebook pages. Also, any comments, writings that might be construed as anti-free market, or espousing any kind of "aggressive" environmentalism, or activist protests including climate change tracts.

If one is "lucky' enough to then get hired by "Corporation One", the extensive contract terms in fine print (sometimes given by HR depts.) let you know you are under constant surveillance. That includes all your outgoing (and incoming ) emails read by the boss and oh yeah - your keystrokes recorded as well as time consume for any bathroom breaks. If you have to take a crap - as one boss once confided to a friend at a radiotherapy software company "Make sure you're wearing Depends if you have overtime..")

But it doesn't stop there. In today's proto-fascist corporate work environment where ten million bosses channel Donald Trump, they can dictate how underlings wear and style their hair, when they can eat, how often drug tests are imposed, and the right to rifle through belongings in your desk any time they want. These tyrants can also require their slaves.....errrr, workers, to complete - as endurance test for entry - lengthy questionnaires concerning off-hours alcohol consumption, exercise habits as well as childbearing intentions.  The real howler here? The number of conservatives and Right wingers who whine and moan about "government intrusion" in our lives but are quite okay with a hotshot corporate CEO doing it to them - daily.

So much for any "rights". Meanwhile, Americans are daily fed the codswallop that "work builds character", "work will give you meaning", "work will give you satisfaction"  and other hogwash. Surely, if any of those tropes was true it ought to be possible to work full time in the 'richest nation on Earth" and not have to apply for food stamps or Medicaid. But we all know that's not the case and it isn't because those affected are "lazy" or "lack, ambition". They have plenty of ambition, there just aren't the quality jobs available to provide ample support - including to afford decent housing.

For these reasons, Livingston - like me- believes the cockeyed aspiration to "full employment" is misplaced and in the wrong direction. With automation and shrinking available quality jobs - along with too many people chasing them, it makes more sense to implement a "universal basic income" (UBI) to correct the course.  A start in that direction meanwhile would be to lower the maximum number of hours that comprise a "full work week". The French have already done that, capping the work week at 35 hours.  

A recent WSJ editorial (May 8) didn't like that, carping:

"Successive French presidents have failed to undo the 1999 35-hour workweek law amid militant union protests"

But the French are correct, because on its face the 35-hour week (in the context of a still "full employment" era)  enables more workers to be hired. It also paves the way for further lowering of paid wage hours as automation and other (economic efficiency) forces exert their unstoppable attrition on wage labor.  The next step, at some point, is the implementation of UBI.  The trick is to get politicians and other academic elites to use their heads and get going sooner than later, when it may be too difficult. This is especially as global population continues growing to the point of tripling (by 2050) from what it was 50 years ago.

The two authors cited in this post - Livingston and Anderson - make clear that no one should bemoan the demise of paid wage labor. It has already stolen too much in the way of time from families and caregivers, even while we've ceded an unconscionable amount of our energy in making wage work the primary conduit for our liberty and morality. In the end, all we've done is sacrifice our time and humanity to an entrenched Corporatocracy and its overpaid CEO henchmen.  Insisting the companies can improve our "work-life balance" misses the point, according to the authors, and is too timid. The cold hard fact is that corporate employers hold the means to our well being and currently have the law on their side.

Livingston's recommendation is blunt:  Instead of idealizing work and making it the linchpin of our society he asks: "Why not just get rid of it?"

Something to ponder.

The Most Savage Aspect Of Capitalism: The Medical Arena

"America's real religion is capitalism, and like any religion it needs a devil. And that devil has always been socialism....Republicans think if you allow a little socialism it will spread out of control. But actually it's capitalism that has spread out of control. It's eaten our democracy and it's eating our middle class - our health care system, our prison system, our news media. It's even eaten our food system so a lot of our food is no longer something that should be eaten

Capitalism is a shark, or a tidal wave...an unthinking force that devours everything in its path. Socialism is capitalism's 'lap band' - something to prevent it from eating almost everything"  - Bill Maher in last of his 'New Rules' on Real Time last night.


One of the hallmarks of a religion is that its dogmas and tenets are accepted without question, or challenge. These arrive from 'on high' so are presumed beyond experimental test, or testing via personal experience in the real world.  On account of the absence of reality testing even its myths are thereby integrated into a person's belief matrix and become unquestioned tropes.

In this sense, Bill Maher's comparison of capitalism to a religion in the final segment of his Real Time episode last night was spot on. One of the ongoing myths concerning capitalism is that it is based on a "free market". But as I already pointed out in other posts this is simply untrue. Large domains exist where markets are effectively coerced and hence rendered out of consumers' control. Nowhere is this more valid than in the medical arena,  given that the purchase or use of health care is unlike that for  commercial products like HDTVs, Ipads, SUVs or cell phones.  People often need medical services the most at the very time their health is gravely compromised - say in an emergency - as with my gall bladder attack back in March.

 I simply didn't have the luxury to look all over tarnation for the cheapest services. I had to go to the ER that was closest to get the issue resolved at that point. It's emphatically not like buying a damned car or an HDTV!

Consider the issue of coercive markets in medical care, and especially in the area of pharmaceutical drugs that one may need to live. I already examined this in the case of a number of cancer drugs  in a December post, e.g.

http://brane-space.blogspot.com/2015/12/big-phrma-extortionists-exposed-ya.html

Therein I cited a  Wall Street Journal article from Dec. 9. 2015 of how Pfizer (which also makes Viagra)  arrived at a whopping drug price ($9,850 a month) for Ibrance. According to the piece it was originally called PD-0332991 and "grew out of work on proteins that help regulate how cells form and divide". The research "won a Nobel Prize" and "set off a hunt by drugmakers to put the brakes on the overactive proteins called cyclic-dependent kinases."

Pfizer's specific novel compound "targeted advanced breast cancer fueled by estrogen  - a disease for which existing therapies offered only modest extension of life"

The WSJ author then exploded one of the more common tropes: that costs are based on research. Forget that. In fact, as per the article (p. A1):

"Drug companies routinely raise the cost of older medicines and then peg new ones to these levels".


In other words, they game the system, and this is one huge reason medical costs are spiraling out of control.

Here's another aspect: One of the first things budding economics students learn is that capitalist markets are subject to the "law of supply and demand". If the supply of a thing plummets then its price is bound to rise in direct response to the demand. The converse is also supposed to be true, where there is little or no demand for a product, the price is expected to go down. This applies across the board, whether the item is a new Ipad, or cell phone, or TV.  According to an expose in TIME (May 30, p. 40):

"The first thing to understand about drug prices is that the rules of supply and demand do not apply. 'People say let pharmaceutical manufacturers charge whatever the market will bear' says Aaron Kesselheim, an associate professor at Harvard Medical School. 'But it doesn't work like that. It's not rational - it's a flawed market."

The article goes on to point out, as I did in reference to my gall bladder attack, that this situation is because "sick patients aren't normal consumers and therapeutic drugs are normal products. Unlike the way we shop for say, hand soap, patients typically lack the knowledge and options to compare the cost and quality of various medications. They just want to get well."

Indeed. But as the TIME expose makes clear, "the problem is exacerbated by our insurance-based system which shields most of us from the real impact of a drug's prices - driving up spending overall."

Spending is huge if patients need a specific drug say like Syprine - one of the only drugs that treats Wilson's disease  but for which Valeant has boosted the price by 3200 percent - leaving those who survive on the drug very little choice but to bankrupt themselves. It's either that or die. This is a coercive market that eliminates choice, not a free market.

All this has just been hunky dory with Wall Street investors "who have swooned over the sector". And why not? As asserted by John Rother, head of the National Coalition on Health Care (p. 41):

"From 2012 to 2015, more than  $50 billion in new capital poured into the industry"

This then has further distorted the so-called market by convincing the drug companies to focus on delivering short term gains to shareholders instead of developing drugs based on time-consuming R& D..

Hence, the fiction peddled that all the high costs arise from research is pure bunkum. It's a smoke screen to cover the actual game which is to lard the pockets of Maul Street speculators using the Pharma sector as their personal piggy bank.

Charles Reich poignantly notes in his book, Opposing the System, Crown Books, 1995, p. 22:

"A free market produces results that favor the health of society as a whole, because an essential balance is maintained. But in a coercive market, the balance is destroyed, the earning power of work and the standard of living of workers declines, and society as a whole is devastated while those with economic power gain an ever more unbalanced share of the nation's economic wealth."

Thanks to gimmicks such as run by PhRMa this is exactly what's been happening. The speculators are reaping huge rewards while the enormous costs of drugs have been socialized to the hoi polloi who can least afford the burden. Meanwhile, they are stuck with 30-year old hyper-expensive drugs like Syprine which has had its price inflated by 3200 %.  What's wrong with this picture of capitalism run amuck? Everything!

Ironically, it's been pointed out  (TIME, p. 42) that the PhRMa industry was "quick to condemn Valiant and similar tactics from other drug makers, decrying them as hedge funds masquerading as pharmaceutical companies" and yet they engaged in similar - but more nuanced - tactics."  Thus (ibid.):

"Instead of hiking prices as dramatically as Valeant did, mainstream pharmaceutical companies built their businesses on boosting drug costs slowly, sprinkling 7 to 10 percent hikes over the course of a year. The result? Many popular drugs increase in cost by as much as 300% and drive profits but they don't draw public scrutiny."

But a 6 oz. bottle of arsenic will finish you off, whether taken in measured drops-doses or all at once, something these drug makers understand. But, riding the capitalist "shark" they don't give a damn - let citizens sink or swim.


Adam Smith - in his 'Inquiry into the Wealth Of Nations' - noted: "there are needs in a civilized society that a barbaric one refuses to address." He also pointedly stated:

"What improves the circumstances of the greater part can never be regarded as an inconvenience to the whole"

This may certainly be stated of health care, when provided in a way that doesn't bankrupt a person. At the end of the day, the more healthy citizens we have, the more productive a nation we become. Thus, tax money for genuine health care ought be looked upon as a real investment in domestic economic and national security, not some kind of pernicious "robbery" from the tax commons.

Liberals and social justice activists are not looking for any free "ride" so much as an equitable playing field for all. A civic landscape wherein the common welfare and good has at least an equal chance to flourish as individual gain, or corporate profits