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anonymous

Why So Much Anarchy? - 0 views

www.stratfor.com/...why-so-much-anarchy

shared by anonymous on 06 Feb 14 - No Cached
  • Civil society in significant swaths of the earth is still the province of a relatively elite few in capital cities -- the very people Western journalists feel most comfortable befriending and interviewing, so that the size and influence of such a class is exaggerated by the media.
  • The End of Imperialism. That's right. Imperialism provided much of Africa, Asia and Latin America with security and administrative order. The Europeans divided the planet into a gridwork of entities -- both artificial and not -- and governed. It may not have been fair, and it may not have been altogether civil, but it provided order. Imperialism, the mainstay of stability for human populations for thousands of years, is now gone.
  • The End of Post-Colonial Strongmen. Colonialism did not end completely with the departure of European colonialists. It continued for decades in the guise of strong dictators, who had inherited state systems from the colonialists. Because these strongmen often saw themselves as anti-Western freedom fighters, they believed that they now had the moral justification to govern as they pleased.
  • ...13 more annotations...
  • No Institutions. Here we come to the key element. The post-colonial Arab dictators ran moukhabarat states: states whose order depended on the secret police and the other, related security services. But beyond that, institutional and bureaucratic development was weak and unresponsive to the needs of the population -- a population that, because it was increasingly urbanized, required social services and complex infrastructure.
  • with insufficient institutional development, the chances for either dictatorship or anarchy proliferate. Civil society occupies the middle ground between those extremes, but it cannot prosper without the requisite institutions and bureaucracies.
  • Feeble Identities. With feeble institutions, such post-colonial states have feeble identities. If the state only means oppression, then its population consists of subjects, not citizens. Subjects of despotisms know only fear, not loyalty. If the state has only fear to offer, then, if the pillars of the dictatorship crumble
  • Doctrinal Battles. Religion occupies a place in daily life in the Islamic world that the West has not known since the days -- a millennium ago -- when the West was called "Christendom." Thus, non-state identity in the 21st-century Middle East generally means religious identity.
  • As the Roman Empire collapsed and Christianity rose as a replacement identity, the upshot was not tranquility but violent, doctrinal disputes between Donatists, Monotheletes and other Christian sects and heresies. So, too, in the Muslim world today, as state identities weaken and sectarian and other differences within Islam come to the fore, often violently.
  • Information Technology. Various forms of electronic communication, often transmitted by smartphones, can empower the crowd against a hated regime, as protesters who do not know each other personally can find each other through Facebook, Twitter, and other social media.
  • while such technology can help topple governments, it cannot provide a coherent and organized replacement pole of bureaucratic power to maintain political stability afterwards. This is how technology encourages anarchy.
  • The Industrial Age was about bigness: big tanks, aircraft carriers, railway networks and so forth, which magnified the power of big centralized states. But the post-industrial age is about smallness, which can empower small and oppressed groups, allowing them to challenge the state -- with anarchy sometimes the result.
  • Because we are talking here about long-term processes rather than specific events, anarchy in one form or another will be with us for some time, until new political formations arise that provide for the requisite order. And these new political formations need not be necessarily democratic.
  • When the Soviet Union collapsed, societies in Central and Eastern Europe that had sizable middle classes and reasonable bureaucratic traditions prior to World War II were able to transform themselves into relatively stable democracies
  • But the Middle East and much of Africa lack such bourgeoisie traditions, and so the fall of strongmen has left a void.
  • The real question marks are Russia and China.
  • The possible weakening of authoritarian rule in those sprawling states may usher in less democracy than chronic instability and ethnic separatism that would dwarf in scale the current instability in the Middle East. Indeed, what follows Vladimir Putin could be worse, not better. The same holds true for a weakening of autocracy in China.
  • anonymous on 06 Feb 14
     
    "Twenty years ago, in February 1994, I published a lengthy cover story in The Atlantic Monthly, "The Coming Anarchy: How Scarcity, Crime, Overpopulation, Tribalism, and Disease are Rapidly Destroying the Social Fabric of Our Planet." I argued that the combination of resource depletion (like water), demographic youth bulges and the proliferation of shanty towns throughout the developing world would enflame ethnic and sectarian divides, creating the conditions for domestic political breakdown and the transformation of war into increasingly irregular forms -- making it often indistinguishable from terrorism. I wrote about the erosion of national borders and the rise of the environment as the principal security issues of the 21st century. I accurately predicted the collapse of certain African states in the late 1990s and the rise of political Islam in Turkey and other places. Islam, I wrote, was a religion ideally suited for the badly urbanized poor who were willing to fight. I also got things wrong, such as the probable intensification of racial divisions in the United States; in fact, such divisions have been impressively ameliorated."
anonymous

Lawrence O'Donnell Yells at Julia Ioffe About Putin and Snowden - 0 views

www.newrepublic.com/...-ioffe-about-putin-and-snowden

shared by anonymous on 11 Aug 13 - No Cached
  • I decided to contest O'Donnell's premise that Russia had this thing planned and under control from the beginning, and that they did, in fact, create the situation.
  • We then squabbled over whether Putin personally controls everything in Russia: what TV anchors say, everything that happens at Sheremetyevo, even every breath that Snowden takes.
  • I am also seriously suggesting the following things:Vladimir Putin is not omnipotent. He does not control everything that happens in the Russian Federation, a vast and often inhospitable landmass that spans 10 time zones. Similarly, Barack Obama does not have total control over the minutiae of the United States of America.
  • ...6 more annotations...
  • The Obama administration trapped Snowden in Russia. The U.S. unsealed the charges before it had Snowden in custody, revoked his passport, then downed the plane of the president of a sovereign state over other sovereign states because it thought Snowden was on board.
  • If a Russian Edward Snowden ended up in JFK Airport, there is no way in hell we'd turn him over to the Russians. Not in a hundred years, and not ever.
  • If you are a world leader worth your salt, and have a good diplomatic team working for you, you would know that. You would also know that when dealing with thugs like Putin, you know that things like this are better handled quietly. 
  • The Obama administration totally fucked this up. I mean, totally. Soup to nuts. Remember the spy exchange in the summer of 2010? Ten Russian sleeper agents—which is not what Snowden is—were uncovered by the FBI in the U.S. Instead of kicking up a massive, public stink over it, the Kremlin and the White House arranged for their silent transfer to Russia in exchange for four people accused in Russia of spying for the U.S.
  • My main beef with O'Donnell is not that he wouldn't let me make these 11 points—because, let's face it, that's not what the TV is for—but that he did exactly the same shit Russians did to me when I was in Russia. They assumed that the U.S. and its government was one sleek, well-functioning monolith, that Obama was omnipotent, and that everyone in the world, including other important (and nuclear!) world leaders, act and must act as Russia demands it should, using Russian foreign policy calculus, and with only Russian interests in mind.
  • Sound ridiculous? Believe me, it sounds just as insane in reverse. The problem is that this was not in the ranting comments section, but was coming from the host of a prime time, national television show. And if you don't have the good sense and education or, hell, the reporting experience to know better, then just let the guests you invited on speak.
  • anonymous on 11 Aug 13
     
    "Tonight, I went on Lawrence O'Donnell's show, and Lawrence O'Donnell yelled at me. Or, rather, he O'Reilly'd at me. That O'Donnell interrupted and harangued and mansplained and was generally an angry grandpa at me is not what I take issue with, however. What bothers me is that, look: your producers take the time to find experts to come on the show, answer your questions, and, hopefully, clarify the issue at hand. "
anonymous

You Broke Peer Review. Yes, I Mean You | Code and Culture - 0 views

codeandculture.wordpress.com/...youbrokepeerreview

shared by anonymous on 19 Nov 13 - No Cached
  • no more anonymous co-authors making your paper worse with a bunch of non sequiturs or footnotes with hedging disclaimers.
  • The thing is though that optimistic as I am about the new journal, I don’t think it will replace the incumbent journals overnight and so we still need to fix review at the incumbent journals.
  • So fixing peer review doesn’t begin with you, the author, yelling at your computer “FFS reviewer #10, maybe that’s how you would have done it, but it’s not your paper”
  • ...32 more annotations...
  • Nor, realistically, can fixing peer review happen from the editors telling you to go ahead and ignore comments 2, 5, and 6 of reviewer #6.
  • First, it would be an absurd amount of work
  • Second, from the editor’s perspective the chief practical problem is recruiting reviewers
  • they don’t want to alienate the reviewers by telling them that half their advice sucks in their cover letter
  • Rather, fixing peer review has to begin with you, the reviewer, telling yourself “maybe I would have done it another way myself, but it’s not my paper.”
  • You need to adopt a mentality of “is it good how the author did it” rather than “how could this paper be made better” (read: how would I have done it). That is the whole of being a good reviewer, the rest is commentary. That said, here’s the commentary.
  • Do not brainstorm
  • Responding to a research question by brainstorming possibly relevant citations or methods
  • First, many brainstormed ideas are bad.
  • When I give you advice as a peer reviewer there is a strong presumption that you take the advice even if it’s mediocre
  • Second, many brainstormed ideas are confusing.
  • When I give you advice in my office you can ask follow-up questions
  • When I give advice as a peer reviewer it’s up to you to hope that you read the entrails in a way that correctly augurs the will of the peer reviewers.
  • Being specific has the ancillary benefit that it’s costly to the reviewer which should help you maintain the discipline to thin the mindfart herd stampeding into the authors’ revisions.
  • Third, ideas are more valuable at the beginning of a project than at the end of it.
  • When I give you advice about your new project you can use it to shape the way the project develops organically. When I give it to you as a reviewer you can only graft it on after the fact.
  • it is essential to keep in mind that no matter how highly you think of your own expertise and opinions, you remember that the author doesn’t want to hear it.
  • time is money. It usually takes me an amount of time that is at least the equivalent of a course release to turn-around an R&R and at most schools a course release in turn is worth about $10,000 to $30,000 if you’re lucky enough to raise the grants to buy them.
  • Distinguish demands versus suggestions versus synapses that happened to fire as you were reading the paper
  • A lot of review comments ultimately boil down to some variation on “this reminds me of this citation” or “this research agenda could go in this direction.” OK, great. Now ask yourself, is it a problem that this paper does not yet do these things or are these just possibilities you want to share with the author?
  • As a related issue, demonstrate some rhetorical humility.
  • There’s wrong and then there’s difference of opinion
  • On quite a few methodological and theoretical issues there is a reasonable range of opinion. Don’t force the author to weigh in on your side.
  • For instance, consider Petev ASR 2013. The article relies heavily on McPherson et al ASR 2006, which is an extremely controversial article (see here, here, and here).
  • One reaction to this would be to say the McPherson et al paper is refuted and ought not be cited. However Petev summarizes the controversy in footnote 10 and then in footnote 17 explains why his own data is a semi-independent (same dataset, different variables) corroboration of McPherson et al.
  • These footnotes acknowledge a nontrivial debate about one of the article’s literature antecedents and then situates the paper within the debate.
  • Theoretical debates are rarely an issue of decisive refutation or strictly cumulative knowledge but rather at any given time there’s a reasonable range of opinions and you shouldn’t demand that the author go with your view but at most that they explore its implications if they were to.
  • There are cases where you fall on one side of a theoretical or methodological gulf and the author on another to the extent that you feel that you can’t really be fair.
  • you as the reviewer have to decide if you’re going to engage in what philosophers of science call “the demarcation problem” and sociologists of science call “boundary work” or you’re going to recuse yourself from the review.
  • Don’t try to turn the author’s theory section into a lit review.
  • The theory section is not about demonstrating basic competence or reciting a creedal confession and so it does not need to discuss every book or article ever published on the subject or even just the things important enough to appear on your graduate syllabus or field exam reading list.
  • If the submission reminds you of a citation that’s relevant to the author’s subject matter, think about whether it would materially affect the argument.
  • anonymous on 19 Nov 13
     
    "I'm as excited as anybody about Sociological Science as it promises a clean break from the "developmental" model of peer review by moving towards an entirely evaluative model. That is, no more anonymous co-authors making your paper worse with a bunch of non sequiturs or footnotes with hedging disclaimers. (The journal will feature frequent comment and replies, which makes debate about the paper a public dialog rather than a secret hostage negotiation). The thing is though that optimistic as I am about the new journal, I don't think it will replace the incumbent journals overnight and so we still need to fix review at the incumbent journals."
anonymous

Geopolitical Journey: The U.S.-European Relationship, Then and Now - 0 views

www.stratfor.com/...pean-relationship-then-and-now

shared by anonymous on 24 Sep 13 - No Cached
  • We have spoken of the Russians, but for all the flash in their Syria performance, they are economically and militarily weak -- something they would change if they had the means to do so. It is Europe, taken as a whole, that is the competitor for the United States. Its economy is still slightly larger than the United States', and its military is weak, though unlike Russia this is partly by design.
  • American intervention helped win World War I, and American involvement in Europe during World War II helped ensure an allied victory. The Cold War was a transatlantic enterprise, resulting in the withdrawal of Soviet forces from the European Peninsula.
  • The question now is: What will the relationship be between these two great economic entities, which together account for roughly 50 percent of the world's gross domestic product, in the 21st century? That question towers over all others globally.
  • ...26 more annotations...
  • The Syrian crisis began not with the United States claiming that action must be taken against al Assad's use of chemical weapons but with calls to arms from the United Kingdom, France and Turkey.
  • The United States was rather reluctant, but ultimately it joined these and several other European countries. Only then did the Europeans' opinions diverge.
  • Most important to note was the division of Europe. Each country crafted its own response -- or lack of response -- to the Syrian crisis. The most interesting position was taken by Germany, which was unwilling to participate and until quite late unwilling to endorse participation.
  • Their differences have not manifested as virulently as they did before 1945, but still, it can no longer be said that their foreign policies are synchronized. In fact, the three major powers on the European Peninsula currently are pursuing very different foreign policies.
  • Nothing has ruptured in Europe, but then Europe as a concept has always been fluid. The European Union is a free trade zone that excludes some European countries. It is a monetary union that excludes some members of the free trade zone. It has a parliament but leaves defense and foreign policy prerogatives to sovereign nation-states. It has not become more organized since 1945; in some fundamental ways, it has become less organized.
  • Where previously there were only geographical divisions, now there are also conceptual divisions.
  • no individual European nation has the ability by itself to conduct an air attack on Syria. As Libya showed, France and Italy could not execute a sustained air campaign. They needed the United States.
  • I am old enough to remember that Europeans have always thought of U.S. presidents as either naive, as they did with Jimmy Carter, or as cowboys, as they did with Lyndon Johnson, and held them in contempt in either case.
  • After some irrational exuberance from the European left, Obama has now been deemed naive, just as George W. Bush was deemed a cowboy.
  • Amid profound differences and distrust, U.S. and Soviet leaders managed to avoid the worst. Given their track record, Europe's leaders might have plunged the world further into disaster.
  • The Europeans think well of the sophistication of their diplomacy. I have never understood why they feel that way.
  • We saw this in Syria.
  • First, Europe was all over the place. Then the coalition that coaxed the Americans in fell apart, leaving the United States virtually alone. When Obama went back to his original position, they decided that he had been outfoxed by the Russians. Had he attacked, he would have been dismissed as another cowboy.
  • Whichever way it had gone, and whatever role Europe played in it, it would have been the Americans that simply didn't understand one thing or another.
  • The American view of Europe is a combination of indifference and bafflement. Europe has not mattered all that much to the United States since the end of the Cold War.
  • all of Europe became Scandinavia. It was quite prosperous, a pleasure to visit, but not the place in which history was being made.
  • When Americans can be bothered to think of Europe, they think of it as a continent with strong opinions of what others should do but with little inclination to do something itself.
  • The American perception of Europe is that it is unhelpful and irritating but ultimately weak and therefore harmless.
  • The Europeans are obsessed with the U.S. president because, fool or cowboy or both, he is extraordinarily powerful. The Americans are indifferent to the Europeans not because they don't have sophisticated leaders but because ultimately their policies matter more to each other than they do to the United States.
  • But the most profound rift between the Americans and Europeans, however, is not perception or attitude. It is the notion of singularity, and many of the strange impressions or profound indifferences between the two stem from this notion.
  • The dialogue between Europe and the United States is a dialogue between a single entity and the tower of Babel.
  • For example, a friend pointed out that he spoke four languages but Americans seem unable to learn one. I pointed out that if he took a weekend trip he would need to speak four languages. Citizens of the United States don't need to learn four languages to drive 3,000 miles.
    • anonymous
      anonymous on 24 Sep 13
       
      This is an absolutely crucial point and another reason why geography is a very powerful - and perplexingly invisible - determiner of action.
  • The United States is a unified country with unified economic, foreign and defense policies. Europe never fully came together; in fact, for the past five years it has been disintegrating.
  • Division, as well as a fascinating pride in that division, is one of Europe's defining characteristics. Unity, as well as fascinating convictions that everything is coming apart, is one of the United States' defining characteristics.
  • Europe's past is magnificent, and its magnificence can be seen on the streets of any European capital. Its past haunts and frightens it. Its future is not defined, but its present is characterized by a denial and a distance from its past. U.S. history is much shallower. Americans build shopping malls on top of hallowed battlefields and tear down buildings after 20 years. The United States is a country of amnesia. It is obsessed with its future, and Europe is paralyzed by its past. 
  • Where once we made wars together, we now take vacations. It is hard to build a Syria policy on that framework, let alone a North Atlantic strategy.
  • anonymous on 24 Sep 13
     
    "Most discussions I've had in my travels concern U.S. President Barack Obama's failure to move decisively against Syria and how Russian President Vladimir Putin outmatched him. Of course, the Syrian intervention had many aspects, and one of the most important ones, which was not fully examined, was what it told us about the state of U.S.-European relations and of relations among European countries. This is perhaps the most important question on the table."
anonymous

In search of perfection, young adults turn to Adderall at work - 1 views

america.aljazeera.com/...dultsturntoadderallatwork.html

shared by anonymous on 04 Dec 13 - No Cached
  • Benson (whose name, like all the people in this story who discuss their ADHD drug use, has been changed to protect her identity) is typical of a growing population of young adults who went to college in the 2000s. As they age out into the workplace, they’re taking with them the ADHD med habits they developed in college — and finding the drugs still work.
  • a more complete explanation suggests an environment that encourages stimulant use.
  • what is fast becoming the modern condition: guilt and anxiety over any minute not spent working or promoting that work.
  • ...8 more annotations...
  • According to IMS Health, in 2007, 5.6 million monthly prescriptions for ADHD medications were written for people ages 20 to 39.
  • By 2011, that number had jumped to 14 million, a staggering 150 percent increase.
  • The active ingredients in Adderall target the parts of the brain responsible for executive function. In other words, Adderall solves the very problems the modern world creates. Long now uses the drug daily
  • The drugs are so popular because they work. “Adderall opens up time for you,” Collier said, emphasizing that using it enables him to get all his work done and still have time to work on other projects.
  • Essentially, Chatterjee argues that the advances in cognitive neuroscience and neuropharmacology mean the question of to what extent we want to create and live in a drug-enhanced society may no longer be relevant. That way of life is already here, and society must now account for the moral implications it brings.
  • Like cosmetic surgery, cosmetic neurology will likely be available only to those with the disposable income to afford elective medicine, expanding the already wide gap between the haves and have-nots.
  • An added concern is that the growing use of stimulants in the workplace will produce a new work environment in which use of neurological enhancement through pharmaceuticals is just one more thing expected of the perfect worker.
  • “Everyone is in an arms race of accomplishment,” Chatterjee said.
  • anonymous on 04 Dec 13
     
    "Ella Benson was a junior in college the first time she took it. With a class assignment due, she was offered the drug as a means to stay up all night and crank out something respectable by morning. It worked, and Benson now says it was the first time she "really connected" with something she was working on. "It was the first paper I wrote where I felt like I came up with an idea that was meaningful and important," she said. "I got an A on it." An A for Adderall."
anonymous

Why You Might Want to Rethink Going Gluten-Free - 3 views

gizmodo.com/k-going-gluten-free-1475646469

shared by anonymous on 11 Dec 13 - No Cached
  • Gluten is a sticky, stretchable protein found in grains like wheat, barley, oats, and rye. Formed during the kneading process, gluten chains create a matrix that trap carbon dioxide bubbles produced by the fermenting yeast. This gives bread its chewiness, pizza dough its stretchiness, and acts as a thickening agent in dozens of products from salad dressing to soy sauce. Even beer contains a fair amount.
  • Gluten is a relatively new addition to the human diet. For a large portion of our species' evolution, humans subsisted primarily on animal protein supplemented with fruits, vegetables, nuts, and seeds. It wasn't until the start of the Neolithic era—around 9500 BCE—and the transition to agriculture that we began consuming carbohydrates and gluten in the form of grains.
  • for the one in seven Americans that suffers from a sensitivity to gluten, consuming it can lead to severe intestinal distress.
  • ...12 more annotations...
  • And even that discomfort is a walk in the park compared to what happens when someone who suffers from celiac disease—full blown gluten intolerance—eats the stuff.
  • For them, any amount of the protein will trigger a massive autoimmune response within the gut as the body's defenses attack gliadin, a glycoprotein found in gluten.
  • Once regarded as an rare digestive malady afflicting maybe 1 in 10,000 people worldwide, celiac disease is now considered one of the most common genetic disorders in the western world by the Center for Celiac Disease Research at the University of Maryland.
  • celiac disease affects an estimated 1 in 133 people in America alone.
  • celiac disease is far less common for Americans of African, Hispanic, and Asian descent—just 1 in 236.
  • this disease has shown a marked propensity to occur in combination with lactose intolerance, as well as with type 1 diabetes.
  • an increasing number of people have begun self-diagnosing as gluten sensitive
  • It's also been touted as a new-age cure-all for a number of maladies including migraines and fibromyalgia, though there is little scientific data to support such claims.
  • "There's no scientific evidence that it's better for you if you don't have celiac disease," Shilson told the Journal Sentinel.
  • As Shelley Case, R.D., author of Gluten-Free Diet: A Comprehensive Resource Guide and a medical advisory board member for the Celiac Disease Foundation, explained to Women's Health, without gluten to hold baked goods together, food manufacturers will often use fats and sugar instead.
  • That means, Case continued, going gluten-free can potentially increase your risk of developing a micronutrient deficiency
  • While there is no reliable means of testing for a gluten sensitivity, a simple blood test can determine whether or not someone suffers from celiac disease by identifying specific anti-gluten antibodies.
  • anonymous on 11 Dec 13
     
    "Going gluten-free is all the rage these days. It's the diet of choice for Hollywood starlets and health nuts alike; supermarket aisles are packed full of products touting their lack of the stretchy protein. But for a lot of people, the gluten-free lifestyle may do more harm than good."
anonymous

The Libertarian Case for a Basic Income - 0 views

www.libertarianism.org/...libertarian-case-basic-income

shared by anonymous on 20 Dec 13 - No Cached
  • Still skeptical? Well, here are three libertarian arguments in support of a Basic Income Guarantee. I begin with a relatively weak proposal that even most hard-core libertarians should be even to accept. I then move to stronger proposals that involve some deviation from the plumb-line view. But only justifiable deviations, of course.
  • 1) A Basic Income Guarantee would be much better than the current welfare state.
  • Current federal social welfare programs in the United States are an expensive, complicated mess. According to Michael Tanner, the federal government spent more than $668 billion on over one hundred and twenty-six anti-poverty programs in 2012. When you add in the $284 billion spent by state and local governments, that amounts to $20,610 for every poor person in America.
  • ...29 more annotations...
  • Wouldn’t it be better just to write the poor a check?
    • anonymous
      anonymous on 20 Dec 13
       
      There's still an argument to be made that flat out giving poor people money would result in tons of misspent cash because we aren't very good with money if we haven't nurtured good habits.
  • A Basic Income Guarantee would also be considerably less paternalistic then the current welfare state, which is the bastard child of “conservative judgment and progressive condescension” toward the poor, in Andrea Castillo’s choice words.
  • Conservatives want to help the poor, but only if they can demonstrate that they deserve it by jumping through a series of hoops meant to demonstrate their willingness to work, to stay off drugs, and preferably to settle down into a nice, stable, bourgeois family life.
  • 2) A Basic Income Guarantee might be required on libertarian grounds as reparation for past injustice.
  • One of libertarianism’s most distinctive commitments is its belief in the near-inviolability of private property rights. But it does not follow from this commitment that the existing distribution of property rights ought to be regarded as inviolable, because the existing distribution is in many ways the product of past acts of uncompensated theft and violence.
  • However attractive libertarianism might be in theory, “Libertarianism…Starting Now!” has the ring of special pleading, especially when it comes from the mouths of people who have by and large emerged at the top of the bloody and murderous mess that is our collective history.
    • anonymous
      anonymous on 20 Dec 13
       
      THANK you. It's a strong objection from people like me who are all too aware of the twisted LP-logic emerging from enthusiastic converts.
  • But Nozick’s entitlement theory of justice is a historical one, and an important component of that theory is a “principle of rectification” to deal with past injustice. Nozick himself provided almost no details
  • In a world in which all property was acquired by peaceful processes of labor-mixing and voluntary trade, a tax-funded Basic Income Guarantee might plausibly be held to violate libertarian rights. But our world is not that world. And since we do not have the information that would be necessary to engage in a precise rectification of past injustices, and since simply ignoring those injustices seems unfair, perhaps something like a Basic Income Guarantee can be justified as an approximate rectification?
  • 3. A Basic Income Guarantee might be required to meet the basic needs of the poor.
  • Could there be a libertarian case for the basic income not as a compromise but as an ideal?
  • Both Milton Friedman and Friedrich Hayek advocated for something like a Basic Income Guarantee as a proper function of government, though on somewhat different grounds.
  • And so, Friedman concludes, some “governmental action to alleviate poverty” is justified. Specifically, government is justified in setting “a floor under the standard of life of every person in the community,” a floor that takes the form of his famous “Negative Income Tax” proposal.
  • Friedrich Hayek’s argument, appearing 17 years later in volume 3 of his Law, Legislation, and Liberty, is even more powerful. Here’s the crucial passage:The assurance of a certain minimum income for everyone, or a sort of floor below which nobody need fall even when he is unable to provide for himself, appears not only to be wholly legitimate protection against a risk common to all, but a necessary part of the Great Society in which the individual no longer has specific claims on the members of the particular small group into which he was born. (emphasis added)
    • anonymous
      anonymous on 20 Dec 13
       
      In my 3-5 years being a Libertarian, I *never* read this bit from Hakey. Methinks that may be a sore-spot I was blind to.
  • But as my colleague Kevin Vallier has documented repeatedly, Hayek was not opposed to the welfare state as such (not even in the Road to Serfdom). At the very least, he regarded certain aspects of the welfare state as permissible options that states might pursue.
  • But the passage above suggests that he may have had an even stronger idea in mind - that a basic income is not merely a permissible option but a mandatory requirement of democratic legitimacy - a policy that must be instituted in order to justify the coercive power that even a Hayekian state would exercise over its citizens.
  • A Basic Income Guarantee involves something like an unconditional grant of income to every citizen.
  • So, on most proposals, everybody gets a check each month. “Unconditional” here means mostly that the check is not conditional on one’s wealth or poverty or willingness to work.
  • A Negative Income Tax involves issuing a credit to those who fall below the threshold of tax liability, based on how far below the threshold they fall.
  • So the amount of money one receives (the “negative income tax”) decreases as ones earnings push one up to the threshold of tax liability, until it reaches zero, and then as one earns more money one begins to pay the government money (the “positive income tax”).
  • The Earned Income Tax Credit is the policy we actually have in place currently in the United States.
  • It was inspired by Friedman’s Negative Income Tax proposal, but falls short in that it applies only to persons who are actually working.
  • 1) Disincentives - One of the most common objections to Basic Income Guarantees is that they would create objectionably strong disincentives to employment.
  • After all, with a Basic Income Guarantee, the money you get is yours to keep. You don’t lose it if you take a job and start earning money. And so in that way the disincentives to employment it creates are probably less severe than those created by currently existing welfare programs where employment income is often a bar to eligibility.
  • 2) Effects on Migration - When most people think about helping the poor, they forget about two groups that are largely invisible - poor people in other countries, and poor people who haven’t been born yet
  • With respect to the first of those groups, I think (and have argued before) that there is a real worry that a Basic Income Guarantee in the United States would create pressures to restrict immigration even more than it already is.
  • That worries me, because I think the last thing anybody with a bleeding heart ought to want to do is to block the poorest of the poor from access to what has been one of the most effective anti-poverty programs ever devised - namely, a policy of relatively open immigration into the relatively free economy of the United States.
  • 3) Effects on Economic Growth - Even a modest slowdown of economic growth can have dramatic effects when compounded over a period of decades.
  • And so even if whatever marginal disincentives a Basic Income Guarantee would produce wouldn’t do much to hurt currently existing people, it might do a lot to hurt people who will be born at some point in the future.
  • Tyler Cowen and Jim Manzi put forward what seem to me to be the most damning objections to a Basic Income Guarantee - that however attractive the idea may be in theory, any actually implemented policy will be subject to political tinkering and rent-seeking until it starts to look just as bad as, if not worse than, what we’ve already got.
  • anonymous on 20 Dec 13
     
    "Guaranteeing a minimum income to the poor is better than our current system of welfare, Zwolinski argues. And it can be justified by libertarian principles."
Ed Webb

Thomas Piketty: "You do need some inequality to generate growth" - The Globe and Mail - 0 views

www.theglobeandmail.com/...article18586580

capitalism economics democracy

shared by Ed Webb on 12 May 14 - No Cached
  • if people feel that a disproportionate share of growth only goes to the top-wealth minority, then a large fraction of public opinion in European countries or in North America might turn against globalization
    • Ed Webb
      Ed Webb on 12 May 14
       
      Seems Piketty's project is to save capitalism/liberal globalization. Deferring (indefinitely) structural change by applying minor corrections to the cycle of creative destruction and negative externalities. A kind of FDR project at the global level: dilute capitalism in order to prevent revolution.
  • I belong to the post-Marxist generation, if you wish – I turned 18 in 1989, with the fall of the Berlin Wall; I travelled to Eastern Europe to see those countries after the fall of their communist dictatorships, and I’ve never had any temptation for that. Anti-capitalists should read the history books.
    • Ed Webb
      Ed Webb on 12 May 14
       
      I am almost his exact contemporary. I visited Eastern Europe shortly after 1989. I have read many history books. I still want to overthrow capitalism.
anonymous

The Origins and Implications of the Scottish Referendum - 0 views

www.stratfor.com/...plications-scottish-referendum

shared by anonymous on 16 Sep 14 - Cached
  • the idea that the union of England and Scotland, which has existed for more than 300 years, could be dissolved has enormous implications in its own right, and significant implications for Europe and even for global stability.
  • In many ways, this union was a pivot of world history. To realize it might be dissolved is startling and reveals important things about the direction of the world.
  • Scotland and England are historical enemies. Their sense of competing nationhoods stretches back centuries, and their occupation of the same island has caused them to fight many wars. Historically they have distrusted each other, and each has given the other good reason for the distrust.
  • ...30 more annotations...
  • The British were deeply concerned that foreign powers, particularly France, would use Scotland as a base for attacking England. The Scots were afraid that the English desire to prevent this would result in the exploitation of Scotland by England, and perhaps the extinction of the Scottish nation.
  • From an outsider's perspective, Scotland and England were charming variations on a single national theme -- the British -- and it was not necessary to consider them as two nations.
  • We need a deeper intellectual framework for understanding why Scottish nationalism has persisted.
  • The French Enlightenment and subsequent revolution had elevated the nation to the moral center of the world. It was a rebellion against the transnational dynasties and fragments of nations that had governed much of Europe.
  • After the French Revolution, some nations, such as Germany and Italy, united into nation-states.
  • After World War I, when the Hapsburg, Hohenzollern, Romanov and Ottoman empires all collapsed
  • A second major wave of devolution occurred in 1992, when the Soviet Union collapsed
  • The doctrine of the right to national self-determination drove the first wave of revolts against European imperialism in the Western Hemisphere, creating republics in the Americas.
  • The second wave of colonial rising and European withdrawal occurred after World War II.
  • the entire world could not resist the compulsion to embrace the principles of national self-determination through republican democracy. This effectively was codified as the global gold standard of national morality in the charters of the League of Nations and then the United Nations.
  • The incredible power of the nation-state as a moral principle and right could be only imperfectly imposed. No nation was pure. Each had fragments and minorities of other nations. In many cases, they lived with each other. In other cases, the majority tried to expel or even destroy the minority nation. In yet other cases, the minority demanded independence and the right to form its own nation-state. These conflicts were not only internal; they also caused external conflict over the right of a particular nation to exist or over the precise borders separating the nations.
  • After the war, a principle emerged in Europe that the borders as they stood, however imperfect, were not to be challenged. The goal was to abolish one of the primary causes of war in Europe.
  • The point of all this is to understand that the right to national self-determination comes from deep within European principles and that it has been pursued with an intensity and even viciousness that has torn Europe apart and redrawn its borders.
  • One of the reasons that the European Union exists is to formally abolish these wars of national self-determination by attempting to create a framework that both protects and trivializes the nation-state.
  • The possibility of Scottish independence must be understood in this context.
  • Nationalism, the remembrance and love of history and culture, is not a trivial thing. It has driven Europe and even the world for more than two centuries in ever-increasing waves. The upcoming Scottish election, whichever way it goes, demonstrates the enormous power of the desire for national self-determination. If it can corrode the British union, it can corrode anything.
  • There are those who argue that Scottish independence could lead to economic problems or complicate the management of national defense. These are not trivial questions, but they are not what is at stake here.
  • At best, the economic benefits are uncertain. But this is why any theory of human behavior that assumes that the singular purpose of humans is to maximize economic benefits is wrong.
  • Humans have other motivations that are incomprehensible to the economic model but can be empirically demonstrated to be powerful.
  • If this referendum succeeds, it will still show that after more than 300 years, almost half of Scots prefer economic uncertainty to union with a foreign nation.
  • This is something that must be considered carefully in a continent that is prone to extreme conflicts and still full of borders that do not map to nations as they are understood historically.
  • The right to national self-determination is not simply about the nation governing itself but also about the right of the nation to occupy its traditional geography. And since historical memories of geography vary, the possibility of conflict grows.
  • Consider Ireland: After its fight for independence from England and then Britain, the right to Northern Ireland, whose national identity depended on whose memory was viewing it, resulted in bloody warfare for decades.
  • England will be vulnerable in ways that it hasn't been for three centuries.
  • This is not an argument for or against Scottish nationhood. It is simply drawing attention to the enormous power of nationalism in Europe in particular, and in countries colonized by Europeans.
  • the idea that Scotland recalls its past and wants to resurrect it is a stunning testimony less to Scottish history than to the Enlightenment's turning national rights into a moral imperative that cannot be suppressed.
  • At a time when the European Union's economic crisis is intense, challenging European institutions and principles, the dissolution of the British union would legitimize national claims that have been buried for decades.
  • But then we have to remember that Scotland was buried in Britain for centuries and has resurrected itself. This raises the question of how confident any of us can be that national claims buried for only decades are settled.
  • For centuries, nationalism has trumped economic issues. The model of economic man may be an ideal to some, but it is empirically false.
  • I think that however the vote goes, unless the nationalists are surprised by an overwhelming defeat, the genie is out of the bottle, and not merely in Britain. The referendum will re-legitimize questions that have caused much strife throughout the European continent for centuries, including the 31-year war of the 20th century that left 80 million dead.
  • anonymous on 16 Sep 14
     
    "The idea of Scottish independence has moved from the implausible to the very possible. Whether or not it actually happens, the idea that the union of England and Scotland, which has existed for more than 300 years, could be dissolved has enormous implications in its own right, and significant implications for Europe and even for global stability."
anonymous

Two Decades Of Greed - The Unraveling - 0 views

www.zerohedge.com/...t-two-decades-greed-unraveling

generations

shared by anonymous on 14 Jun 10 - Cached
  • Michael Lewis was a 24 year old Generation X Ivy League graduate who ended up on Wall Street at the outset of the Unraveling. He was flabbergasted by how clueless youngsters could pretend to know what they were doing while taking home phenomenal amounts of money. He was sure it would end in short order. But he was wrong. It built to a decadent crescendo two decades later. It took longer than he expected
  • They were a hollowed out oak tree and Reagan’s defense buildup was the gust of wind that blew the rotting tree over. His achievements were great, but his failure to reduce government spending will haunt the country for decades and planted the seeds of economic disaster.
  • The movie’s message was clear. Unrestrained free-market capitalism with no principles is destructive for society. The movie isn’t anti-capitalism. It distinguishes between the cynical, quick buck culture of the Boomers and the moral hard working culture which had built America.
  • ...5 more annotations...
  • The 1980’s proceeded as expected with strengthening individualism and weakening institutions. The GI Generation Heroes began to depart from the scene. This steady, cautious, risk adverse generation that built American industry and finance were being pushed into retirement by the Baby Boomer Generation.
  • The delusion of the American populace cannot be underestimated. Their worshipping at the altar of materialism and adoration of Hollywood created pop culture was crucial to the societal delusion.
  • A country that had once produced its way to world domination degenerated into a paper kingdom run by Harvard MBAs, lawyers, tax accountants and central bankers.
  • The result was that the Crisis that arrived in 2005-2008 will be more painful and possibly fatal for the United States. The multiple wars of choice, immense housing bubble, stunning government deficits and unaddressed unfunded liabilities have created a nation weakened and unprepared for the harsh reality ahead. The Empire of Debt has reached epic proportions.
  • Americans are slowly coming to the realization that unbridled greed is not the same as capitalism.
  • anonymous on 14 Jun 10
     
    A guest post by Tyler Durden at Zero Hedge on June 14, 2010. Thanks to @justinmwhittaker for the hat tip.
anonymous

Mr. America - 0 views

www.tnr.com/...-middle-or-rather-center-right

media

shared by anonymous on 12 Jul 10 - Cached
  • As the 41st Republican in an institution that requires 60 out of 100 votes to pass legislation, he’s had the power to stop, or at least massively slow down, everything from health care to financial reform. But Brown actually looms much larger than even this calculus would suggest. In his concerns, priorities, and, maybe most important, his confusion about the economy, Brown has come to represent the average voter in 2010. If Democrats are going to be successful this November, they’ll have to figure out a way to seize the territory that Brown currently holds.
  • A recent Globe poll illustrates the point nicely, crowning Brown the most popular politician in his overwhelmingly Democratic state. According to the poll, Brown’s favorable/unfavorable split is 55-18, versus 52-37 for Kerry and 54-41 for Barack Obama. Brown accomplishes this feat on the strength of his appeal to independents (55-11) and a surprisingly robust showing among Democrats (41-32). Given that Democratic candidates are highly unlikely to win many Republican votes this fall, they’ll have to limit their defections among Democrats and carry independents in order to hold Congress. Judged against Brown’s performance in Massachusetts, they are currently failing at this task.
  • Brown has been following a simple formula for building public support as a Republican: Toe as right-wing a line as you can without alienating the political middle. To take the subject of his interactions with Tim Geithner, Brown has used his influence as a pivotal Senate vote to extract loopholes for financial firms (like easing restrictions on their investments in hedge funds) and to beat back a tax on big banks. But, in the end, there’s little doubt he’ll embrace the financial reform bill.
  • ...1 more annotation...
  • One of his first acts as a senator was to vote for a $15-billion Democratic measure giving companies a payroll tax-break if they hire unemployed workers.
  • anonymous on 12 Jul 10
     
    "Why Scott Brown is the key to U.S. politics" By Noam Scheiber in the New Republic on July 12, 2010. All I can say is, "hmmmmmm, okay...."
anonymous

Bank of America Building: A New Green Standard? - 0 views

www.time.com/...0,8816,1994554,00.html

layscience sustainability technology

shared by anonymous on 08 Jun 10 - Cached
  • The tower's air circulation system is equipped with sensors to detect what are known as volatile organic compounds (VOCs), and a rapidly evaporating substance like Purell is full of them.
  • That drooping feeling you get midway through a meeting in a crowded conference room may not be caused by boredom, but by too little oxygen circulating in an overpopulated space.
  • Do celebrity tenants and a shiny LEED label really mean as much as they seem, or will an exercise in enormity like the BOA building wind up being more of a feel-good project than a do-good one?
  • ...1 more annotation...
  • Even if every LEED point is justly earned, however, the question isn't how the building performs the day you take the shrink wrap off, it's how it does 5 or 10 or 100 years down the line.
  • anonymous on 08 Jun 10
     
    A fascinating look at the newest BOA building in Manhattan. By Jeffrey Kluger at Time on June 6, 2010.
anonymous

Moscow's Espionage Addiction - 0 views

www.nybooks.com/...moscows-espionage-addiction

geopolitics russia

shared by anonymous on 12 Jul 10 - Cached
  • Russia is generally freer now than it was under communism, but its spy-chiefs are, if anything, even more entrenched. No longer is it the government that is running the spies. The spies are running the government.
  • The effect, less commonly observed, is that post-communist Russia has emerged, not as a police state, but as a secret-police state—something of a novelty in international relations, and with its own characteristics.
  • The secret-police state, as best we can judge from the Russian prototype, is a much more evasive beast. The people who run it prefer to spend their time away from the public eye. They take minimal interest or pleasure in the traditional business of government, such as providing public services. They care little for public or private morality. Their method is to monopolize power, not so much by crushing rivals, as by preventing potential rivals from gaining any traction in the first place—which requires, naturally enough, an extensive domestic spying apparatus capable of infiltrating all social and economic structures.
  • ...4 more annotations...
  • It follows from this that the only really useful type of diplomacy is espionage, getting at the hidden story. The rest of diplomacy is either useless protocol or useful cover.
  • This was a serious piece of espionage, however comical some of the trappings.
  • America’s way of ending the affair has been exemplary. By arresting the spies, it has demonstrated the efficacy of the FBI and humiliated Russia’s intelligence services, at little or no diplomatic cost.
  • Another criticism of the swap might be that, if America lets these Russian spies off so lightly, then Russia will only be the more emboldened to send new spies in their place. Which is true—but Russia is going to send more anyway.
  • anonymous on 12 Jul 10
     
    "Russia is generally freer now than it was under communism, but its spy-chiefs are, if anything, even more entrenched. No longer is it the government that is running the spies. The spies are running the government." By Robert Cottrell at The New York Review of Books on July 12, 2010.
anonymous

Arizona, Borderlands and U.S.-Mexican Relations - 0 views

www.stratfor.com/...lands_and_us_mexican_relations

geopolitics

shared by anonymous on 03 Aug 10 - Cached
  • the entire issue cannot simply be seen as an internal American legal matter. More broadly, it forms part of the relations between the United States and Mexico, two sovereign nation-states whose internal dynamics and interests are leading them into an era of increasing tension. Arizona and the entire immigration issue have to be viewed in this broader context.
  • Until the Mexican-American War, it was not clear whether the dominant power in North America would have its capital in Washington or Mexico City.
  • Mexico was the older society with a substantially larger military. The United States, having been founded east of the Appalachian Mountains, had been a weak and vulnerable country.
  • ...31 more annotations...
  • The War of 1812 showed the deep weakness of the United States. By contrast, Mexico had greater strategic depth and less dependence on exports.
  • The American solution to this strategic weakness was to expand the United States west of the Appalachians, first into the Northwest Territory ceded to the United States by the United Kingdom and then into the Louisiana Purchase, which Thomas Jefferson ordered bought from France.
  • During the War of 1812, the British tried to seize New Orleans, but forces led by Andrew Jackson defeated them in a battle fought after the war itself was completed.
  • Jackson understood the importance of New Orleans to the United States.
  • Mexico therefore represented a fundamental threat to the United States.
  • In response, Jackson authorized a covert operation under Sam Houston to foment an uprising among American settlers in the Mexican department of Texas with the aim of pushing Mexico farther west.
  • Mexico’s strategic problem was the geography south of the Rio Grande (known in Mexico as the Rio Bravo).
  • The creation of an independent Texas served American interests, relieving the threat to New Orleans and weakening Mexico. The final blow was delivered under President James K. Polk during the Mexican-American War, which (after the Gadsden Purchase) resulted in the modern U.S.-Mexican border. That war severely weakened both the Mexican army and Mexico City, which spent roughly the rest of the century stabilizing Mexico’s original political order.
  • The U.S. defeat of Mexico settled the issue of the relative power of Mexico and the United States but did not permanently resolve the region’s status; that remained a matter of national power and will.
  • An accelerating population movement out of Mexico and into the territory the United States seized from Mexico paralleled the region’s accelerating economic growth.
  • The inclination of the United States to pull labor north was thus matched by the inclination of Mexico to push that labor north.
  • The U.S. government, however, wanted an outcome that was illegal under U.S. law.
  • Three fault lines emerged in United States on the topic.
  • One was between the business classes
  • The second lay between the federal government, which saw the costs as trivial, and the states, which saw them as intensifying over time.
  • And third, there were tensions between Mexican-American citizens and other American citizens
  • Underlying this political process was a geopolitical one. Immigration in any country is destabilizing.
  • Immigrants have destabilized the United States ever since the Scots-Irish changed American culture, taking political power and frightening prior settlers.
  • That equation ultimately also works in the case of Mexican migrants, but there is a fundamental difference. When the Irish or the Poles or the South Asians came to the United States, they were physically isolated from their homelands.
  • This is not the case, however, for Mexicans moving into the borderlands conquered by the United States just as it is not the case in other borderlands around the world. Immigrant populations in this region are not physically separated from their homeland, but rather can be seen as culturally extending their homeland northward — in this case not into alien territory, but into historically Mexican lands.
  • The Mexican-American War established the political boundary between the two countries.
  • The political border stays where it is while the cultural border moves northward.
  • The underlying fear of those opposing this process is not economic (although it is frequently expressed that way), but much deeper: It is the fear that the massive population movement will ultimately reverse the military outcome of the 1830s and 1840s
  • The problem is that Mexicans are not seen in the traditional context of immigration to the United States. As I have said, some see them as extending their homeland into the United States, rather than as leaving their homeland and coming to the United States.
  • when those who express these concerns are demonized, they become radicalized.
  • Centuries ago, Scots moved to Northern Ireland after the English conquered it. The question of Northern Ireland, a borderland, was never quite settled. Similarly, Albanians moved to now-independent Kosovo, where tensions remain high. The world is filled with borderlands where political and cultural borders don’t coincide and where one group wants to change the political border that another group sees as sacred.
  • Migration to the United States is a normal process. Migration into the borderlands from Mexico is not.
  • Jewish migration to modern-day Israel represents a worst-case scenario for borderlands.
  • An absence of stable political agreements undergirding this movement characterized this process.
  • The problem as I see it is that the immigration issue is being treated as an internal debate among Americans when it is really about reaching an understanding with Mexico.
  • Immigration has been treated as a subnational issue involving individuals. It is in fact a geopolitical issue between two nation-states. Over the past decades, Washington has tried to avoid turning immigration into an international matter, portraying it rather as an American law enforcement issue. In my view, it cannot be contained in that box any longer.
  • anonymous on 03 Aug 10
     
    "...the entire issue cannot simply be seen as an internal American legal matter. More broadly, it forms part of the relations between the United States and Mexico, two sovereign nation-states whose internal dynamics and interests are leading them into an era of increasing tension. Arizona and the entire immigration issue have to be viewed in this broader context." By George Friedman at StratFor on August 3, 2010.
anonymous

War and the American Republic - 0 views

www.3quarksdaily.com/...and-the-american-republic.html

war geopolitics america ideas

shared by anonymous on 14 Sep 10 - Cached
  • I offer three reasons that I believe, taken together, provide an answer: (a) The demographics of the American military (b) Historical inexperience of war and the world, and (c) The impetus from corporate capitalism.
  • The Demographics of the American Military 
  • The composition of most militaries today, including the U.S., suggests that this is indeed the case. The economic and political elites tend not to serve in the military, but very much dictate its priorities. They increasingly have no skin in the game, and a diminishing sense of its human cost.
  • ...10 more annotations...
  • Thucydides clearly cautioned against such trends: ‘The nation that makes a great distinction between its scholars and its warriors will have its thinking done by cowards and its fighting done by fools.’
  • Historical Inexperience of War and the World
  • The last real war on the U.S. mainland was the Civil War, 150 years ago. Not since then has the U.S. experienced war at home.
  • Europeans are also shrewder than Americans about non-Western societies—a byproduct of Europe’s geography, colonial empires, and in some ways, their salad-bowl model of immigration
  • and of this Kantian insight: ‘Out of the crooked timber of humanity, no straight thing was ever made.’ Keener than the Americans that is, whose relative naivete, insularity, and evangelical instincts (religious, political, and economic) only make them more vulnerable to demagogues who cry wolf about threats from foreign cultures.
  • The Impetus from Corporate Capitalism
  • Not usually through boardroom conspiracies, which surely happen, but by staying true to its dominant class character, like an animal who cannot help being any other way, whose one authentic instinct is to sustain and engorge itself. To that end, it uses every tool at its disposal.
  • One such tool is the news media, which has changed drastically in recent decades.
  • It tends to employ company men and women who uphold their bosses’ values and viewpoints—not from coercion but consent, in exchange for some of the spoils.
  • War often boosts the economy (especially via the military-industrial complex) and is usually good for the media.
  • anonymous on 14 Sep 10
     
    "War is always spoken of as an option; to be averse to it is taken as a sign of weakness. Indeed, why are the Americans so much more jingoistic today than, say, the Europeans? I offer three reasons that I believe, taken together, provide an answer: (a) The demographics of the American military (b) Historical inexperience of war and the world, and (c) The impetus from corporate capitalism. " By Namit Arora at 3 Quarks Daily on September 13, 2010.
anonymous

The Geopolitics of France: Maintaining Its Influence in a Changing Europe - 0 views

www.stratfor.com/...tralized_system_guarding_plain

geopolitics france

shared by anonymous on 14 Sep 10 - Cached
  • Mountain ranges inhibit trade and armies alike while peninsulas and islands limit the ability of larger powers to intimidate or conquer smaller ones. Because of such features, it isn’t as much of a surprise that Europe has never united under a single government as it is that anyone has ever tried.
  • two other geographic features that push Europe together
  • The first is the North European Plain
  • ...58 more annotations...
  • Northern Europe is home to the densest concentration of wealth in the world
  • The second feature — the Mediterranean Sea — plays a similar role to the continent’s south
  • Mix the geographic features that inhibit unification with the features that facilitate trade and communication and Europe becomes a very rich, very violent place.
  • three places on the Continent where this pattern of fragmentation does not hold
  • The first are the Seine and Loire river valleys
  • The second and third places where the fragmentation pattern does not hold are the Garonne and Rhone river valleys
  • The one thing these three geographic exceptions have in common is that they all have long resided in the political entity known as France.
  • France is nearly always engaged but is only rarely ascendant.
  • Mountain chains, rivers and seas therefore enclose France at all points save for one: the North European Plain.
  • Internally, aside from the Massif Central in the southeast, France is a country of relatively low-lying terrain with occasional hills.
  • The Beauce region is therefore the French core.
  • Paris is also close enough to the Atlantic — connected by the Seine — to benefit from oceanic trade routes but far enough away to be insulated somewhat from a direct naval invasion.
  • In comparison with its continental neighbors, France has almost always been at an economic advantage because of its geography.
  • Phase I: Centralization (843-1453)
  • The Beauce region of France has always been the core of the French state because of its fertile land and strategic location on the North European Plain.
  • Early France faced two problems, both rooted in geography.
  • The first dealt with the plains.
  • The solution to this military reality was feudalism.
  • French, one of the Langue d’oil, did not become the official tongue until the 1500s, and linguistic unification was not completed until the 1800s.
  • England considered continental France their playpen for much of the Middle Ages. In fact, the Norman leaders of England did not distinguish much between their French and English possessions
  • As in the conflict with the Muslims, it was a technological innovation that forced France’s political system to evolve, and this time the shift was toward centralization rather than decentralization.
  • The combination of the political disasters of the feudal period and the success of consolidation in the battles with the English served as the formative period of the French psyche.
  • Phase II: The Hapsburg Challenge and Balance of Power (1506-1700)
  • Europe’s Hapsburg era was a dangerous time for the French.
  • In three major wars — the War of the Spanish Succession (1701-1714), the War of the Austrian Succession (1740-1748) and the Seven Years’ War (1754-1763, against Britain in North America) — France expended great financial resources in efforts to dominate one region or another, only to emerge at each war’s end with little to show for its efforts.
  • Phase III: Nationalism and the Rise of Germany (1789-1945)
  • two equally damning results
  • First, the depleted treasury led to a general breakdown in internal order, contributing to the French Revolution of 1789.
  • Second, Paris’ distraction with England and Spain led it to miss the emergence of Prussia as a serious European power that began to first rival and ultimately superseded Hapsburg Austria for leadership among the cacophony of German kingdoms.
  • One of the many unintended side effects of the French Revolution was the concept of nationalism,
  • From nationalism grew the nation-state, a political entity that harnesses all people sharing a similar ethnicity into a single governing unit.
  • The result was the one near-unipolar moment in European history.
  • Not only was France the only state to have embraced the concept of nationalism, but it also grafted the concept onto an already centralized system, allowing French power to pour forth across Europe and North Africa.
  • From 1803 to 1815, France nearly overwhelmed the rest of Europe before a coalition of nearly every major and minor power on the Continent combined forces to defeat her.
  • The lesson was a simple one, again rooted in geography. Even when France is united and whole, even when she is not under siege, even when her foes are internally distracted and off balance, even when she is led by one of the greatest organizational and military minds in human history, even when she holds the advantage of nationalism — she still lacks the resources and manpower to rule Europe.
  • But most of all the advantage of nationalism spread. Over the next few decades the political innovation of the nation-state spread throughout Europe and in time became a global phenomenon.
  • The culmination of this dichotomy was the events of May-June 1940, when the French military crumbled in less than six weeks. The defeat was by no means solely the result of geopolitical forces, but it sprang from the fundamental imbalance of power between France and a unified Germany.
  • Phase IV: Managing Germany
  • as France is concerned, however, STRATFOR views the entire post-World War II era as a single chapter in French history that has yet to come to a conclusion. In this phase, France is attempting to find a means to live with Germany, a task greatly complicated by recent shifts in the global political geography.
  • And far from being exposed and vulnerable, France found itself facing the most congenial constellation of forces in its history.
  • The stated gains of the EEC/EU have always been economic and political, but the deeper truth is that the European project has always been about French geopolitical fear and ambition.
  • Eventually the Cold War ended, and the Soviet collapse was perceived very differently in France. While most of the free world celebrated, the French fretted.
  • the Soviet collapse led to the reunification of Germany — and that was a top-tier issue.
  • Twenty years on, Germany cannot abandon the European Union without triggering massive internal economic dislocations because of the economic evolutions Maastricht has wrought.
  • that leaves the French with two long-term concerns.
  • First, the cage breaks, Germany goes its own way and attempts to remake Europe to suit its purposes.
  • Second, the cage holds, but it constrains France more than Germany.
  • Geopolitical Imperatives
  • Secure a Larger Hinterland
  • France is the only country on the North European Plain that has an option for expansion into useful territories beyond its core without directly clashing with another major power.
  • Always Look East
  • Being situated at the western end of the North European Plain makes France the only country on the plain that has only one land approach to defend against.
  • Maintain Influence in Regions Beyond Western Europe
  • Unlike the United Kingdom, whose expansion into empire was a natural step in its evolution as a naval power, France’s overseas empire was almost wholly artificial.
  • These colonial assets served one more critical role for Paris: They were disposable.
  • Louisiana was sold for loose change in order to fund the Napoleonic wars, while Algeria was ultimately abandoned — despite being home to some 1 million ethnic French — so that Charles de Gaulle could focus attention on more important matters at home and in the rest of Europe.
  • Be Flexible
  • Geopolitics is not ideological or personal, although few countries have the discipline to understand that.
  • anonymous on 14 Sep 10
     
    "France is bound by the Alps in the southeast and the Pyrenees in the southwest, the Mediterranean Sea in the south and the Atlantic in both the west and north. In the east, France is bound by the river Rhine and the low mountains of the Ardennes, Vosges and Jura." At StratFor on September 13, 2010.
anonymous

Why US Different? - 0 views

www.overcomingbias.com/...why-us-different.html

criticalthinking america socialscience

shared by anonymous on 22 Sep 10 - Cached
  • anonymous on 22 Sep 10
     
    Quoted at OB: "Perhaps it is this extreme tendency for Americans to punish free-riders, while not punishing cooperators, that contributes to Americans having the world's highest worker productivity. American society is also anomalous, even relative to other Western societies, in its low relational focus in work settings, which is reflected in practices such as the encouragement of an impersonal work style, direct (rather than indirect) communication, the clear separation of the work domain from the non-work, and discouragement of friendships at work." Post by Robin Hanson at Overcoming Bias on September 22, 2010.
anonymous

Barack Obama and the Limits of Prudence - 0 views

www.dissentmagazine.org/online.php

politics

shared by anonymous on 12 Oct 10 - Cached
  • Obama and America are disenchanted today less because they have different values within the American political spectrum than because they have different orientations toward politics as a whole. More than any American president within memory, Barack Obama embodies the “ethic of responsibility” identified by the sociologist Max Weber in his lecture Politics as a Vocation. Obama weighs possible consequences carefully and tries to produce the best result. This comes in contrast to the “ethic of ultimate ends” favored by large swaths of the American public. The president’s detractors—from the Tea Party to his progressive base—prefer moral imperatives to the weighing of consequences. Do what is right, they say, and if others lack the insight to follow, that’s their problem. Foreseeable consequences are beside the point. To Obama, this posture has always seemed like empty moralizing masquerading as morality, a rejection of politics itself. What seems truly right, to him, is to act in ways likely to make this world better, not to insist on noble extremes that will backfire.
  • anonymous on 12 Oct 10
     
    "IF YOU have waited to see Barack Obama lose his cool, your moment has come. After the president finished giving the interview published in the October 15 issue of Rolling Stone, he charged back into the room to deliver a parting salvo. Stabbing at the air, Obama berated Democrats for "sitting on their hands complaining." He even questioned their motives. "If people now want to take their ball and go home," he said, "that tells me folks weren't serious in the first place."" By Thomas Meaney and Stephen Wertheim at Dissent on October 11, 2010.
anonymous

Glenn Beck as America's Professor - 0 views

www.theawl.com/...enn-beck-as-americas-professor

politics criticalthinking

shared by anonymous on 11 Oct 10 - Cached
  • In terms of presidents, it’s like giving a lecture about James Bond focused entirely on George Lazenby.
  • Well, scholarship has a certain authority, and Beck would like to claim that authority. In the post-civil rights era, Beck's familiar us-versus-them stance can't be framed in terms of identity; most of his audience may be white and middle-class and older, but even older middle-class white people would be uncomfortable publicly making the argument that they deserve to be heard because they are older and middle-class and white. Instead, he (and many other media figures on both sides of the spectrum) utilize the stance that their audience deserves to be heard because they're objectively correct about certain things.
  • Beck is taking advantage of the American tradition of the “self-made man."
  • ...9 more annotations...
  • The problem with this sort of learning, though, is that there's no one to tell you if you're getting it wrong, no one to tell you about the recent Economist article nicely summarizes the problems with Beck's method: If you try to teach yourself history and political science from scratch, you're likely to draw a lot of shallow and inaccurate conclusions, particularly when you're the sort of person who's predisposed to seeing things in terms of white hats and black hats. One role of instructors, particularly at the college level, is to smack down the sweeping generalisations and facile analogies their students tend to make, and try to force them to adopt more rigorous and complicated approaches. But what if you're surrounded by people who reward you handsomely for making sweeping, slanderous generalisations, both because it delivers ratings and because it's ideologically helpful?
  • But when Beck argued on-air that Hoover's depression-causing mistake was backing away from Coolidge's laissez-faire policies (rather than, say, not allowing the government to pursue more activist strategies), he's doing so not on the basis of a careful assessment of the facts but because it fits in with his ideological assumptions: laissez-faire economic policies couldn't have caused the depression, because laissez-faire policies only cause good things.
  • This sort of reasoning is sufficient for politics, but in a more academic context it looks an awful lot like question-begging. Despite the props of learning he employs (blackboards, spectacles, pointers, Socratic dialogue), Beck's technique brings him closer to the conspiracy theorist than to the scholar.
  • by carefully hewing to the performance of the self-made scholar, Beck is able to make his audience feel like they're learning something new, even when they're just being told the same old thing.
  • The big question with Beck, as it is with a lot of figures in the latter-day conservative moment, is this: what is he? Is he evil? Ignorant? Performance art?
  • The conservative guy who comes to a school-board meeting demanding that they not teach evolution just wants everyone to agree with him. As do we all! In terms of motivation, liberals' demands that the unpleasant parts of American history be taught in schools is no different from conservatives' insistence that they be expunged: both want the story told as they see it so that children will grow up sympathetic to their view of the world. Of course, liberals have the advantage in this case of wanting things to be revealing, rather than concealing. But that doesn't make our intentions any nobler, particularly.
  • it would take a pretty stupid conservative not to question the fundamental aspects of their political beliefs after an arch-conservative, ultra-capitalist Republican president ushered in a massive recession.
  • But it's unrealistic to expect them to change their minds; after all, neither liberals nor conservatives change their political beliefs very often. Instead, we just find new ways to justify our ideology, which indicates, I suspect, that our political beliefs are more of a cultural trait than a carefully reasoned view.
  • Glenn Beck tells a good story; Glenn Beck makes, though he doesn't intend to, impressive art. The world would just be a better place, I tend to think, if he stuck to novels.
  • anonymous on 11 Oct 10
     
    "Recently I decided to check in with Glenn Beck. (I do this semi-regularly with all the various cable news talk shows out of a sense of responsibility, though I never last more than about 10 minutes at a stretch.) I was not optimistic. Based on the clips I'd been exposed to by people who don't like Glenn Beck, I expected a mix between a revival meeting, a Klan rally, and the McCarthy hearings. Instead, I got Glenn in front of a blackboard, lecturing about…Calvin Coolidge." By Mike Barthel at The Awl on October 11, 2010.
anonymous

A radical pessimist's guide to the next 10 years - The Globe and Mail - 0 views

www.theglobeandmail.com/...singlepage

futurism predictions

shared by anonymous on 11 Oct 10 - Cached
  • 2) The future isn't going to feel futuristic It's simply going to feel weird and out-of-control-ish, the way it does now, because too many things are changing too quickly. The reason the future feels odd is because of its unpredictability. If the future didn't feel weirdly unexpected, then something would be wrong.
  • 16) “You” will be turning into a cloud of data that circles the planet like a thin gauze While it's already hard enough to tell how others perceive us physically, your global, phantom, information-self will prove equally vexing to you: your shopping trends, blog residues, CCTV appearances – it all works in tandem to create a virtual being that you may neither like nor recognize.
  • North America can easily fragment quickly as did the Eastern Bloc in 1989 Quebec will decide to quietly and quite pleasantly leave Canada. California contemplates splitting into two states, fiscal and non-fiscal. Cuba becomes a Club Med with weapons. The Hate States will form a coalition.
    • anonymous
      anonymous on 11 Oct 10
       
      No it can't. I'm going to trust geography in this instance.
  • anonymous on 11 Oct 10
     
    "The iconic writer reveals the shape of things to come, with 45 tips for survival and a matching glossary of the new words you'll need to talk about your messed-up future." By Douglas Coupland at The Globe and Mail on October 8, 2010.
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