The Big Issues

I don’t follow current events that much anymore. Especially now, in 2017, when everything seems designed to provoke a sense of outrage (the circus in bread and circuses), and yet, most of these issues, although not unimportant, are really fleeting issues or are not really the big issues in the grand scheme of things.

So what are the big issues? This is what I wish our media reported on. And what I wish our protestors focused on.

The Drug War

• This is one of the most immoral and evil things going on. It targets the most disadvantaged, disproportionately jailing blacks and other minorities.
• It drives up the cost of drugs, making drug dealing more lucrative. For inner city kids, it seems like an easy way out of poverty.
• It contributes to the militarization of the police, with SWAT raids, doors battered down in the middle of the night, flash grenades, dogs shot on sight. This is not how a republic treats its citizens its suspects of nonviolent crimes. Even the mayors of some towns have had their doors battered down and their dogs shot in front of the children.
• Militaristic behavior drives a wedge between local communities and the police.
• Like Prohibition of alcohol practically created the organized crime syndicates, the drug war has created the drug cartels with their horrific violence.
• It has cost tens of billions of dollars each year, for decades, with essentially no change in the rate of drug usage. The money is completely wasted (unless you count destroying the lives of minority kids as a benefit of the system). Not to mention the cost of the prisons, and the opportunity costs of the money itself as well as the wasted lives.
• The US government’s insistence on military action has destroyed entire countries in Latin and South America.
• In order to make room for (non violent) drug offenders, violent offenders have been paroled.
• The whole system seems set up to destroy the lives of poor people, funnel money from the taxpayer to organized crime, and to cow the populace with violence. This whole thing simply needs to stop.
• The drug war is catalyzing atrocious infringments of our basic civil liberties. See, for example, these podcasts, here and here.

The War on Terror

Trying to end terrorism by killing all the terrorists is like trying to end crime by killing all the criminals. An eternal war, where we continuously kill people that we even suspect might be terrorists, is immoral and counter-productive (as one Yemeni citizen recently remarked in Time magazine, “If you don’t want so many refugees, stop creating them.”). President Obama dropped bombs on someone in the Middle East on every single day of his 8-year administration. President Trump seems determined to up that game.

So here’s a question that I have often asked myself, but I’ve never heard anyone else ask it. Certainly I never saw a big debate in the media on this question. The question is, how many people must die to make us safe? We bomb and bomb, and kill innocents (we call it “collateral damage”, and we don’t count them, and we don’t apologize). All in the name of preventing attacks here, or even “economic disruption” (code for oil supply disruption). And yet we never ask, how many people is it ok to kill to make sure we are safe? 9/11 killed 3000. All the wars we’ve instigated in the Middle East since 2003 have killed millions. Are we even yet? Is it ok to kill 1000 innocent people to prevent an attack in the US? A million? How many of “their” lives are worth one of “ours”? Is it unlimited? Are we justified in killing as many people as we feel necessary to protect ourselves?

The Bush Doctrine goes something like this. The US is a sovereign nation, and as such has a right to protect itself from attack. In order to do that, we can go anywhere in the world if we find groups that threaten us. If there are people in Mosul that hate or threaten us, we can go bomb there. Iraq has no recourse against that action. This is basically what Bush put forth, and Obama reaffirmed and intensified. This is all commonly accepted and is official policy now.

But let’s change a few words around in that statement. China is a sovereign nation, and as such has a right to protect itself from attack. In order to do that, they can go anywhere in the world if they find groups that threaten them. If there are people in Atlanta that hate or threaten them, they can go bomb there. The US has no recourse against that action.

Ok, so how does that feel? Still in agreement? In fact, substitute any two countries in that phrase. If everyone in the world took this as their official policy, we would live in an incredibly violent place. So why is the US singled out with this right? Is it simply a case of Might Makes Right? We can, therefore we do? Or are American lives really more valuable than people in other countries? Should we have an “exchange rate” for how many lives they are worth? If we think a terrorist group exists that might kill 5000 Americans, we are allowed to kill 2,000,000 Iraqis, 4,000,000 Syrians, or 5312 Canadians in order to prevent the attack?

Another thing I wished the media had the guts to do is show the result of this war. If we bomb someone every day, then we should see film of the people we bombed, every day. Don’t tell me that it would make people “feel bad”. You think the parents whose child we just killed don’t feel bad? If we don’t have the guts to look at the results of our actions, we are contemptable.

All of this despite the fact that every intervention in the Middle East has been pretty much a complete disaster. Every country we’ve bombed to “make safe for democracy” is now destabilized, full of terrorists, the economy collapsed, and the ordinary people are suffering. With a record like that, you might be forgiven for daring to think that we should pursue, perhaps, a different path. Yet the people who promote these failed policies keep getting re-appointed. After all, they are experts!

The Surveillance State

Snowden showed us that the goverment was collecting all kinds of data on American citizens – this, of course, after the intelligence chiefs went before Congress and swore they don’t collect data on Americas (This was a bald-face, through-the-teeth, spit-in-your-face lie to Congress. Why are these people not in jail? If I deliberately lied to Congress, I doubt that I’d get a high-level Cabinet job like these jokers). Recent Wikileaks documents on “Vault 7” show that the CIA can use our computers and cell phones to spy on us (remember in the movie The Avengers when Agent Coulson said “anything in the world with a camera becomes eyes and ears for us”? It turns out to be true). Besides the moral argument, and the Constitutional argument against illegal search and seizure, this is simply too dangerous a practice. Lord Acton taught us the power corrupts. Having secretive, unaccountable agencies with nearly omnipotent power is simply a recipe for pure corruption. We cannot depend on the “civic-mindedness” of the intelligence community to protect us. The surveillance state must be arrested and reversed. Very soon (maybe already) it will become so powerful that it is uncontrollable. Just recently, they got some senior politicians fired by selectively and illegally leaking classified intelligence. They can do that to anyone if they collect everything we say and do. That means the intelligence apparatus controls every politician, every businessman, every public figure of any kind. This is insane.

In the last couple days of his final term, Obama issued an executive order that significantly expanded the surviellance state by allowing domestic agencies to share even more raw data, significantly expanding the surveillance state. Where was the media?

The Debt and Financial Excesses

Over these past decades, the Fed has cushioning downturns by preventing excesses from being rung out of the system, and blowing ever bigger bubbles. Sort of how a lot of our national forests were damaged by preventing periodic wildfires. However, now our official public debt is approaching $20 trillion, and add to that entitlements, household debt, student loan debt…we are way up over our head in debt and other financial excesses. And not just us, Europe is arguably in worse shape. And demographics are not on our side, the population is aging and about to claim far more medical benefits and other entitlements. We have little time to act, and little ammunition left. Our fiscal state is parlous, but the media seems to have signed on to the Keynesian goverment position that debt is fine and nothing bad will happen. This, as pension funds are starting to fail across the United States. People who worked their whole lives, planning on living on their pension after retirement, are now having their wealth confiscated to pay for the excesses of the past. As they say, the piper always gets paid.

Dodd-Frank was passed to eliminate the problem of “too big to fail” banks. Predictably, in the aftermath of Dodd-Frank, the big banks have gotten even bigger. I guess you can now call them “way too big to fail.” So when the next crisis comes, it’s completely guaranteed that your money will again be used to bail out Wall Street bankers.

Growth of Executive Power

Since 9/11, and especially under Obama, the Executive branch has claimed for itself extraordinary powers. We are all familiar with the rash of executive orders, the wars unauthorized by Congress (Obama dropped bombs every single day of his two terms, the only US President to do so), and the President’s “Kill List”, whereby the President grants himself the authority to kill anyone, anywhere in the world, with no trial, and no oversight. Extraordinary.

Beyond this, there is just the growth of the Federal government in general. Here’s a graph of the number of pages in the Federal Register.

If you want to see more data, you can go to this website. There was a book written in 2011 called Three Felonies a Day  that claims that just by going about your daily business, the average citizen unwittingly commits three felonies a day. By now (2017), the problem is larger.

The lawbooks now are so huge and complex that no human being can understand them. The Obamacare act alone is 8 times larger than the Bible!  Under these conditions, it’s a given that the rules are contradictory and inconsistent. I heard a story of an accountant that had a tricky tax question. He called the IRS 6 times, got 6 different advisors, and 6 different recommendations. The end result is that no matter how he does the taxes, he can be fined on an audit. It’s a lose-lose. The same thing with the Federal code – when there are so many laws, there is no way to conduct your life to be safe from a felony charge. If you piss them off, they can pick you up and lock you away, legally. There is no way to prevent it.

My question here is, how long can this continue? Can the number of laws double again? And again? How can anyone live under such a regime? Soon, if you want to start a startup company, you can hire one engineer, one designer, and 7 compliance people. I can just feel the innovation bursting out!

James Madison was clear on the effects of too many, or too quickly changing, laws:

The internal effects of a mutable policy are still more calamitous. It poisons the blessing of liberty itself. It will be of little avail to the people, that the laws are made by men of their own free choice, if the laws be so voluminous that they cannot be read, or so incoherent that they cannot be understood: if they be repealed or revised before they are promulgated, or undergo such incessant changes, that no man who knows what the law is to-day, can guess what it will be to-morrow. Law is defined to be a rule of action; but how can that be a rule, which is little known, and less fixed?
Another effect of public instability is the unreasonable advantage it gives to the sagacious, the enterprising, and the moneyed few, over the industrious and uninformed mass of the people. Every new regulation concerning commerce or revenue, or in any manner affecting the value of the different species of property, presents a new harvest to those who watch the change, and can trace its consequences; a harvest, reared not by themselves, but by the toils and cares of the great body of their fellow-citizens. This is a state of things in which it may be said with some truth that the laws are made for the few, not for the many. – James Madison

A lot of people don’t like Trump. They bemoan that he has so much power to mess with our lives. But as soon as “their guy” gets in, you can bet that they will agitate for yet more executive power. When the next person you don’t like takes office, they will have even more power to mess things up. They say when things can’t go on forever, they will end. Where does this end?

Fukushima

Radiation issuing from the damaged Fukushima reactor is still immense. Now they say it will take 40-50 years to invent the technology that will allow us to contain Fukushima.  Umm, so, “unimaginable” amounts of radiation will pour unfettered into the Pacific Ocean for the next half-century? Does this strike anyone as a “big issue”?

Summary

If you think these are the big issues, you might agree with Ron Paul that there’s not much difference between Democrats and Republicans. Depending on who’s in power, will the Drug War end? Will we stop killing people in the Middle East? Will we restrain spending? Roll back the growth of government (well, maybe Trump will do something here)? Roll back the surveillance state? Ha!  Good luck with that one.

So while the media titters on with “current events” (what I call The Outrage of the Day), these huge stories are barely covered or even acknowledged. This is why I don’t consider the mainstream media, with its “if it bleeds, it leads” attitude, to be very important in today’s issues.

Confessions of an Economic Hit Man

This is a fascinating little book. The author claims to have been a part of a conspiracy to cripple third world countries in order to bring them under the influence of the US during the Cold War.

The plan goes something like this: consulting company produces a glowing report illustrating how immensely rich a third-world country could become if they would only approve this World Bank project for a massive dam.  Sure, the dam costs $25 billion, but economic growth will be 18% per year forever, so they can pay back the loan easily (this part was Perkins’ role). Of course, the promised economic gain does not occur, the country cannot pay the debt, and the IMF has to come in with loans to save the finances of the country – in return, of course, for that country’s unflagging support for US foreign policy objectives. The idea is to keep the country in debt, so as to keep them in line.  In the meantime, the (US) construction firms building the dam make a fortune (off the US taxpayer), the consulting companies make a fortune (off the US taxpayer), and the citizens of the target country have their lives ruined.

Perkins reveals details of the collusion between the US goverment, massive private consultancies, goverment contractors, and corporations. He also speaks about his own personal role in the creation of the “special relationship” between Saudia Arabia and the US and the creation of the petrodollar. A relationship that even survived 9/11, which was funded and orchestrated by Saudi Arabia (we bombed the Iraqis instead, just for spite). He also claims Presidents Omar Torrijos of Panama and Jaime Roldós of Ecuador were assasinated for not “playing ball” with this regime.

Perkins writes out of repentance for the harm he caused.  If you are interested in this sort of international intruigue, it’s a very interesting read!

Why Liberty?

This slim little volume attempts to make the case for libertarian thought. It is a collection of short essays by various authors. The volume is freely available (linked through the image above), so you can easily download it and read it in an hour.  It has chapters on the basics of libertarian thought, the history, connections to abolition, Africa, and art, as well as some of the more philosophical justifications for libertarianism.

The book is written by many different authors, and so the chapters vary in quality and style.  Since the book is free, I’ll refrain from summarizing any of the arguments.  I will, however, include my two favorite passages so you can get a flavor:

As you go through life, chances are almost 100 percent that you act like a libertarian. You might ask what it means to “act like a libertarian.” It’s not that complicated. You don’t hit other people when their behavior displeases you. You don’t take their stuff. You don’t lie to them to trick them into letting you take their stuff, or defraud them, or knowingly give them directions that cause them to drive off a bridge. You’re just not that kind of person.
You respect other people. You respect their rights. You might sometimes feel like smacking someone in the face for saying something really offensive, but your better judgment prevails and you walk away, or answer words with words. You’re a civilized person.
Congratulations. You’ve internalized the basic principles of libertarianism. You live your life and exercise your own freedom with respect for the freedom and rights of others. You behave as a libertarian. – Tom Palmer

And then this one:

I could be wrong about pretty much anything. What I don’t know so outweighs what I do that my actual knowledge appears as little more than a small raft on an ocean of ignorance.
I suffer no shame admitting this unflattering fact, not only because there’s never any shame in acknowledging the truth, but also because everyone else is in the same boat. Our ignorance — what we don’t know — always and enormously outweighs our knowledge. It’s true of even the smartest and most educated.
Recognizing that fact ought to humble us. And that humility, informed by a realistic picture of how government operates, ought to make us libertarians. Libertarianism is a philosophy of humility. It’s one that takes us as we are and grants us the freedom to make as much of ourselves as we can. And it’s a philosophy that understands just how damaging human failings can be when coupled with the coercive force of government. Libertarianism limits rulers because it recognizes that rulers are just ordinary people who exercise extraordinary power — and that the harm that power can inflict more often than not outweighs any good it might achieve.
Libertarianism rests on humility and refuses to tolerate the hubris of those who would consider themselves higher and mightier than others. – Aaron Ross Powell

Enjoy the book!

Lead the Field

This is a classic audio series from Earl Nightingale, a prolific announcer and motivational speaker. Earl grew up during the depression, and wondered why some folks were doing just fine, but others (including his own family) seemed to perpetually struggle. He spent his life studying the issue, and you can tell from his speaking – he quotes scientists,  businessmen, philosophers, and poets, both contemporary and ancient.

When I first listened to this series, I was a little disappointed after the first tape or two.  It seemed so pedantic, even juvenile.  But by the time I got to the end of the series, I was struck by how powerful the 12 simple lessons were, when taken together.

Nightingale has a homey, folksy style, totally appropriate to a WWII veteran. There’s nothing difficult to understand here.  He uses quotes from famous people, stories, and research results to spin his story.  He crosses topics like the importance of attitude, the power of your thoughts, how to harness your own subconscious, and going the extra mile.  Again, nothing really super new here, but he has a way of putting it all together simply and powerfully.

One of my favorite stories: a young couple was about to leave Monterrey, CA, because no one would “give” them a job. Earl analyzes the situation and exclaims “They didn’t need a job.  They needed to think. But they had never thought before. It was a foreign to them as speaking Urdu…Most people would turn to a life of crime before they would actually think.”

I have listened to this series probably a dozen times. I find it inspirational and instructive. I can honestly say that this series turned around my attitude in life in several key areas.

If you follow Earl’s advice, not only will you make more money (almost guaranteed), but you will feel better about yourself, and your life.

The Science of Personal Acheivement

This isn’t a book; rather it’s an audio collection of recordings of Napoleon Hill talking about his science of personal achievement. Hill was the author of Think and Grow Rich, which arguably ignited the field of “self-help” books.

More so than the content of the course, what’s remarkable to me is the story of how it came to be.  Hill was born a dirt-poor hillbilly in West Virginia, but ended up an advisor to presidents. His break came when he interviewed the great Andrew Carnegie for his college newspaper.

Carnegie arrived in the US as a penniless teenager, and soon became fatherless. Yet he ended up as the richest man in the world – one of the richest in all history. When Carnegie met Hill, he regaled him with his idea that men like him didn’t get rich by luck; there was a system that could be used by anyone. Carnegie felt that his greatest bequest to mankind would be to get someone to elucidate and popularize this system, so that anyone could get rich. He thought Hill was the man to do it.

Carnegie knew everyone; in today’s parlance, he had access. He offered to give Hill letters of introduction to the 500 most famous, successful people in the world.  This included Thomas Edison, Henry Ford, Woolworth, Stone, presidents, bankers, scientists – all the movers and shakers of the early 20th century.  In return, Hill had to promise to work on the project for at least 20 years (Carnegie felt it would take about that long), and, incredibly, to not receive a dime from Carnegie.

It seems incredible. One of the richest men in history, hiring someone to work on what he hoped would be his greatest legacy, but refusing to pay??? In retrospect, Carnegie knew that Hill would only truly understand the method he was researching if he had to apply it. In order to survive, Hill had to constantly test and refine his ideas on his own business his own life. Carnegie was a genius.

In the end, Hill claims he met his goal of surpassing Carnegie.  He explains that he never really wanted as much money as Carnegie; he had no use for it.  But Carnegie made about 25 men into millionaires (which was a fortune in those days), whereas Hill claims to have made thousands of people into millionaires.

Hill claims that when Carnegie made him the offer, he was secretly timing him with a stopwatch under the desk.  If Hill had taken more than 60 seconds to answer, Carnegie would have withdrawn the offier. Hill answered in 31 seconds.

To me the story is absolutely fascinating, and to hear it told in Hill’s homespun no-nonsense style is an absolute joy. An example: he was named Napoleon after his rich uncle Napoleon in Tennessee, in hopes that his flattered uncle would leave money to the family. In fact, Uncle Napoleon completely excluded the W. Virginia Hills from his will.  Dr. Hill called this the greatest gift of his life: “Because you know what happened to my relatives who got the money??  Nothing!!!” (He rates as the second-greatest gift the fact that Carnegie refused to pay him).

Even if you don’t cotton to courses on success, this is a fun tape set just for the glimpse at history.  I only wish they had told us where and most importantly when the recordings were taken.

Doctoring Data

Another brilliant expose of the corruption in the medical industry.  Unlike Bad Pharma, Dr. Kendrick uses humor and math to debunk the breathless claims bandied about for medical research. He teaches how to think about and evaluate the invariably miraculous claims that you hear in the media when medical studies are publicized.  For example, these two claims derive from exactly the same data:

If another 10 million people would go on statins, 50,000 lives per year would be saved.

With certain definitions, that statement is actually true.  However, so is this way of summarizing the exact same data:

If you treat 200 people with a statin for one year, 199 would see no beneficial effect at all. The one person in 200 who does benefit will live a few extra months.

Dr. Kendrick emphasizes that you cannot save lives, you can only postpone death. This sounds silly but turns out to be a key to understanding how studies can, without technically lying, miraculously inflate their claims.

The rest of the book is also a fascinating romp through the misuse of statistics by an exceptionally clear thinker. He also goes into how many things that are generally believed to be true have absolutely no evidence whatsoever to back them up, and how many “facts” are in fact just made up.

One of the most disturbing chapters is the one detailing how those who dare to contradict the Conventional Wisdom are visciously attacked, defamed, slandered, and basically led out to slaughter.  It’s clear that modern medicine is much more a cult than a scientific exercise.

If you are concerned about your health (maybe your doctor just gave you the lecture on how you need to take this medicine every day or you will die), or are interested in the corruption in the medical system, this book is very highly recommended.

Bad Pharma

This book will forever change the way you look at medicine.  The author has a PhD and MD, and is a clinician and researcher.  The book uses almost exclusively peer-reviewed studies published in mainstream medical journals (there is one point in the book where he tells an anecdote, and he apologizes).

In the book he details how pharmaceutical companies game the system. They bias the trials, they bias the doctors, they bias the conferences, they bias the regulations, they bias the journals.  You may have heard the studies that find 50-60% of what is published in medical journals is wrong.  Read this book and you’ll find out how it’s wrong – and almost always in a drug company’s favor.

At one point Dr. Goldacre says, “As a clinician, when I diagnose a patient with some disease, I honestly have no idea what the best treatment might be.”  That’s a frightening statement. (Paraphrased from memory; forgive me if I bungled it).

If you want to learn about the corruption in the medical system in an objective, robust, and non-hysterical way, this is the book for you. I guarantee that it will change your view of medicine forever.

Reality is Not What It Seems

A layman’s book on quantum loop gravity, the current favorite to unify Einstein’s Theory of General Relativity and quantum mechanics.

This book was really delightful. The author has a very easy writing style. A bonus for me was his deep appreciation for the great thinkers of antiquity.  He seems to have the heart of a poet.

The book takes us from the days of Democritus, through the Greek thinkers, Newton, Maxwell, Einstein and Heisenberg, etc., at each step explaining how our view of the world changes between particles and fields and ends up with spin networks in the covariant quantum field.

The most fascinating thing to me what how his metaphors are so evocative of a program I listened to by an enlightened Buddhist monk Shinzen Young, The Science of Enlightenment. Dr. Rovelli talks about how time and space arise because we are essentially not looking carefully enough and we are averaging over many microscopic events.  In fact, this is exactly what Shinzen Young says about reality.  He talks about how the activity of The Source “ferments time, space, object and observer into existence” – this is almost exactly how Dr. Rovelli describes it (not quite so picturesquely).  I found that to be just fascinating.

It’s a quick, easy, and fun read.  Highly recommended, if you are interested in the nature of reality.  (BTW, The Science of Enlightenment is also very highly recommended).

Healing Our World

This is a must-read book if you are interested in thinking about public policy, the role of government, and how a just society might be organized. Obviously there are a lot of theories about how to do this, and Dr. Ruwart presents a set of options that gets precious little mindshare. So if you want to avoid groupthink, and want to have an opinion that is your own instead of CNN’s or Fox’s, you should be familiar with the perspective offered in this book.

In the first part of the book, the author reviews how many of our government policies actually backfire and have the opposite of the intended effect – anti-poverty laws hurt the poor, environmental laws hurt the environment, educational intervention hurts students, etc. She doesn’t just assert these positions – each chapter has dozens of references to original research.  As Dr. Ruwart says, “Don’t trust me. Go read the research.”

The next part of the book held more new concepts for me.  She talks about the idea of restorative justice – if someone commits a crime, the focus of the justice system is to make the victim(s) whole, rather than issue punishment. I took away a deeper appreciation for Japan’s judicial system – when I lived there I thought it was silly, but after reading her explanation I have more respect for that system. Sad that it took so many years for me to learn this.

The last part of the book talks more about how services that are now provisioned by government could be supplied better and cheaper by the private sector. I felt that this section was weaker than the others, and I was left with a lot of “yeah, but what about…” feelings. One of the gaping holes in this section was, what does the author envision the role of goverment to be? “Completely absent” is not a stable solution in my opinion.

In all, I think this is a very valuable book, and it should be a lot more well-known than it is. Don’t read it expecting an air-tight blueprint for a utopian society.  There are plenty of holes to pick in the arguments (and it’s not like our current society is perfect).  But let it open your mind to a new way of thinking, and a new perspective on social problems and solutions. The book is not “scholarly” in the sense that it’s ponderous and uses words like “normative” and “Lockian state of nature”.  It’s actually quite an easy read, totally conversational, and full of simple analogies, a very engaging read.

Finally, I thank the author for pointing out that the true heart of libertarianism is compassion. A lot of kooks have expressed wacky ideas and called them libertarian, but true libertarianism starts with a profound respect for uniqueness of each and every human being and their unique life paths. Dr. Ruwart shows, for example, that if you truly believe that the government’s War on Poverty hurts the poor (and she has the research data to back that up), then if we truly care about the poor we should oppose those programs.

Daemon, Freedom

These novels were freaking awesome.  A genius programmer dies, but leaves behind automated software executing AI programs that are attacking business, government, banking, etc.  The novel starts as a cool high-tech murder mystery, then man-vs-machine cybernetic war, then turns into an action thriller, then morphs into a tale of international spies and intrigue.  Finally, the series ends up quite unexpectedly at laying out a blueprint for how modern IT technologies, including especially gaming technology, could completely redesign our society into a completely different, and more humane, organization than it is now.

Besides being a blast to read, there’s a lot to think about in these books.  Highly recommended.  Also, his other novels are a blast, too.