Just A Tho't

(sparked by a bit in the Adam Curtis piece I posted yesterday)

"The Invisible Hand" has become the catch-all shield for anybody arguing for austerity and privatization, etc; or against Gubmint and social welfare or whatever evil rotten thing they find moldering in their fevered skulls.

The Invisible Hand (per Wikipedia):

In economics, the invisible hand of the market is a metaphor conceived by Adam Smith to describe the self-regulating behavior of the marketplace.[1] The exact phrase is used just three times in Smith's writings, but has come to capture his important claim that individuals' efforts to maximize their own gains in a free market benefits society, even if the ambitious have no benevolent intentions. Smith came up with the two meanings of the phrase from Richard Cantillon who developed both economic applications in his model of the isolated estate.[2]

From just a quick look at our own relatively brief history, I'm sure we could all come up with some good examples of bad results whenever The Invisible Hand was allowed to rule - the Slave Trade in America comes to my mind.  But maybe what we really need to consider is something a bit more ethereal, even tho' in a weird way it's right there in front of us.

Maybe "The Invisible Hand" is invisible because it isn't fucking there.  Not as a prospectively guiding force anyway.  My main problem with "market-based self-regulation" is that the regulatory function is always retroactive; it's remedial instead of preventative; and so any solutions or corrections always come after the fact, which means the whole mess is way more costly than it'd be if we'd had good regulations in place that were aimed at heading off problems before they become problems.

Looking at it thru the "Fuck Your Buddy" filter, the picture clears up a bit more.

BTW: "Conservatives" adhering to the (increasingly debunked) theories of Milton Friedman and John Nash and Friedrich von Hayek seem to be insisting that all the bad shit that seems always to happen with unregulated capitalism hasn't actually happened.  And that's all part of the revisionist bullshit theme that runs very strong in "Conservative" politics - start with your desired outcome, and then do whatever is necessary to fix the facts around that outcome.  (see Downing Street Memo for an excellent example)

Friedman's shock therapy gets applied in Chile and Argentina and Iraq and Greece and and and - and it's mostly pretty much all fucked up.

Nash's Game Theory gets played out with the secretaries at Rand Corp, and what happens?  The subjects insisted on cooperating with each other instead of fucking each other over all the time, so the experiment was a complete flop.  And of course, it wasn't because there were serious problems with the theory - it had to be because those stupid secretaries weren't behaving in the "appropriately rational manner".  So the theory didn't fail, those idiot biddies failed the theory.  Sound familiar?

Here's a little experiment we can try: whenever you hear somebody use the phrase "The Invisible Hand", substitute "the will of god", or "god's mysterious plan".  Now tell me if anything else that person says makes any real sense from the standpoint of what a "fully rational, pragmatic adult" might say - about economics or politics or actual human-type people.

If it's bullshit, then you're not being rude when you call it bullshit.

Using The Language Of Freedom

Adam Curtis.  Yeah, he can be formulaic, and more than a little heavy on the Makes-Ya-Clench-Yer-Asshole thing when he lays the spooky music over the gritty visuals.

Well, maybe we need a little asshole clenching now and then.

And not to get too Centrist here, but I do know this seems to dance perilously close to the kinda shit being peddled by Alex Jones and Glenn Beck, et al, but comparing black helicopters and FEMA camps and Ammo-gate to what Mr Curtis has to say makes my decision on what's closer to reality much easier.

Mathematicians such as John Nash developed paranoid game theories whose equations required people to be seen as selfish and isolated creatures, constantly monitoring each other suspiciously – always intent on their own advantage.

… politicians and scientists came to believe that this idea of human nature could be the basis of a new type of free society. But what none of them would realize was that within this dark and distrustful vision, lay the seeds of a new and revolutionary system of social control. It would use the language of freedom, but in reality, it would come to entrap us and our leaders in a narrow and empty world.

The Trap, part 1: "F**k You, Buddy"


The silly thing from days long past that comes to mind:  "Only yo mama loves ya, and she might be jivin' too."

The Trap, part 2: "The Lonely Robot"


The Trap, part 3: "We Will Force You To Be Free"

Go, Charley

The staffers working for Charley Pierce must be truly awesome (or maybe it's just Charley).  I dunno, but dang, somebody has some real chops when it comes to diggin' up nuts.

I first saw President Reagan as a foot, highly polished brown cordovan wagging merrily on a hassock. I spied it through the door. It was a beautiful foot, sleek. Such casual elegance and clean lines! But not a big foot, not formidable, maybe a little ...frail. I imagined cradling it in my arms, protecting it from unsmooth roads. --Peggy Noonan, speechwriter for the Reagan administration

If you wanna good breakdown of the monuments to mendacious mediocrity that David Brooks puts up every week, read driftglass (he does pretty well with Sully and Friedman too).

But nobody (imo) gets at Nooners With Ronnie better than Charley Pierce:

Anyway, she's on again about the IRS dumbassery. A while back, she pronounced it the worst scandal in the history of scandalosity. Everybody laughed, even the ghosts of the Nicaraguan peasants killed by the contras with the weapons we bought for them by selling missiles to the mullahs in Iran, which happened while Peggums herself was contemplating hot monkey bunion-sex with Reagan's metatarsals. So, she has now moved along. The IRS dumbassery is now a clash of American civilization itself.

The Benghazi scandal was and is shocking, and the Justice Department assault on the free press, in which dogged reporters are tailed like enemy spies, is shocking. Benghazi is still under investigation and someday someone will write a great book about it. As for the press, Attorney General Eric Holder is on the run, and rightly so. They called it the First Amendment for a reason.

Uh, because it was the first one?
(This is really too easy.)

God Love The Onion

Popular Children's Book Author Reveals The 'Spooky Truth' About Creepy Conspiracy Theories

Today In Atheism

Rotten Kid

14-year-old Tremaine McMillian stared at a police officer in a dehumanizing way, clenching his fists and flaring his nostrils - looking all mean and threatening and shit - while holding a puppy.

So of course, the cops had no choice but to body-slam the kid and choke him out til he stop resisting.



hat tip = Wonkette

Picture This

The Repubs are known far and wide as the Party Of No.  But I have to wonder - since my default position is that "it's never really about what they say it's about", and since the GOP doesn't ever really do anything to push back against that perception - well, what's up widdat?

It's not so much that they wanna take the really stoopid ideas of the wingnuts and turn 'em into law (in spite of what seems obviously contrary to that statement - cuz you can dip me in shit and call me lonesome but there's a buncha Monumental Stoopid goin' on over there).  I'm just thinking the wingnut agenda is diversionary. It's there to keep everybody yappin' along about stuff that's never gonna happen.  The wingnuts are forever  being encouraged to get nuttier and nuttier, and "the left" / "the public" / "the rest of us" - the big squishy middle is always being pinged with all this nuttier and nuttier shit that we're supposed to think about / talk about / be upset about - but mostly send-money-to-somebody about.

Sump'm ain't right.

Crazy Theory Alert - proceed only if adequately equipped with NaCl.

It is my considered opinion that we're living in a time of transition (I am, if nothing else, a regular genius, eh?).  My guess is that what we're watching now in 2013 is more or less what is fairly easy to imagine was going on maybe 20 years before the opening scenes of Rollerball (the original - not that pocket lint remake).

But anyway - wanna see what that diversion looks like?  Here ya go:

Bachmann's been in office for 8 years, and the US has nothing to show for it.  She's raked in over $1 Million in salary, plus close to another 40% in Federal Bennies, plus Farm Subsidies (estimated at another $1 Million), plus whatever she's made in "Honoraria" and perks and what she's managed to "earn" trading on the inside info she gets because of her position in government.

And now, of course, we'll be further amused (ie: distracted) as we watch Ms Bachmann's excellent adventure with the Ethics Investigation.

And maybe it's just a good grift, but it seems like we watch the fluttering birds and the glitter showers and the crash scenes while everything we need to make life workable is either stolen outright or co-opted, commoditized, processed, repackaged and sold back to us at a price just slightly higher than what we're allowed to make in wages.

Welcome to the World Wide Company Store. 

My Pal, Charley

I wish.

Marco Rubio Is Still Not Ready For Prime Time

By Charles P. Pierce

at 2:00pm

Every few months, Senator Marco Rubio reminds us that, in his case, the goblet of victory comes with a sippy-cup lid.

"So the only answer to this is to repeal Obamacare," Rubio said in response to an email from a man in Orlando, Fla. "It's just one more reason why this law is going to be a disaster for our country. And in the months to come, I'm really going to focus on the issue of repealing Obamacare because in addition to the IRS's role there is all sorts of other problems with regards to Obamacare that we need to answer." 

What in the climate-controlled hell is this man talking about? We have a situation with some IRS dumbassery in which inappropriate criteria were used to evaluate the claims of thousands of groups attempting to get in on an embarrassing scam made possible by a lint-headed Supreme Court decision that handed the job of regulating the insane way we run elections to the federal agency least qualified to do the job. So, naturally, the solution is to...repeal Obamacare! Because...IRS! This leads me to the completely cynical conclusion that Rubio is now trying to suck up to the crazoid Republican House caucus in the hopes that its members will vote for something they wouldn't vote for if you took out their fingernails with tractor-trailer trucks — namely, whatever immigration bill he and his Senate colleagues produce. Remember, Marco Rubio is the young man who can get...things...done. He is the face of the rebranded GOP. Good luck with that.

The KrugMan Speaks

Paul Krugman tells about Taxing The Rich:

First, over the past three decades we’ve seen a soaring share of income going to the very top of the income distribution (right scale) even as tax rates on high incomes have fallen sharply, with the recent Obama increases clawing back only a fraction of the previous cuts:

Second, there is now a lot of hard empirical work on the incentive effects of high top tax rates. None of it shows the kind of huge negative effects that figure so prominently in right-wing rhetoric. In particular, none of it suggests that we are anywhere close to the point where raising taxes on the rich would reduce revenue as opposed to increasing it.

Here're the bullet points from the article at Economic Policy Institute:

The top U.S. income tax rate is currently well below best estimates of the optimal rate for revenue maximization.

Recent research implies a revenue-maximizing top effective federal income tax rate of roughly 68.7 percent. This is nearly twice the top 35 percent effective marginal ordinary income tax rate that prevailed at the end of 2012, and 27.5 percentage points higher than the 41.2 percent rate in 2013.2 This would mean a top statutory income tax rate of 66.1 percent, 26.5 percentage points above the prevailing 39.6 percent top statutory rate.

Tax reform that broadens the tax base and minimizes tax avoidance opportunities actuallyincreases the revenue-maximizing top marginal tax rate.

This means that base-broadening tax reform and higher marginal rates should be seen as complements, not substitutes. Analyses of top tax rate changes since World War II show that higher rates have no statistically significant impact on factors driving economic growth—private saving, investment levels, labor participation rates, and labor productivity—nor on overall economic growth rates.

Both short-run demand-side and long-run supply-side growth effects stemming from top tax rate changes are extremely modest. Thus, related “dynamic” revenue “leakages” stemming from reduced economic activity following top rate increases are small as well. Indeed, the net revenue feedback of the 2001–2004 tax cuts was recently estimated at recouping just 1 percent of their scored cost.

Historically, decreases in top marginal tax rates have widened inequality of both pre- and post-tax income. This has been interpreted by some economists as marginal rate reductions providing a higher payoff to rent-seeking (i.e., using influence to “bargain” a higher share of income at the expense of other workers).

Today’s economic context of a depressed U.S. economy, political pressure to prematurely reduce near-term budget deficits, and ever-widening income inequality actually strengthens the case for raising top marginal tax rates. There remains substantial scope for further raising top rates toward the revenue-maximizing levels estimated by the best economic research.

I'm all for letting your Freak Fly.  You feel a deep driving need to get rich? Go for it. It's mostly a lotta fun to watch, and you should get to hang onto the bulk of it.  But let's make sure the things that need to be taken care of are getting taken care of - 'cuz those are the things that everybody's responsible for; the things you get the biggest benefits from; and the things that make it possible for you to continue making your zillions.  But mostly, let's make sure the disparity and inequalities are kept to reasonable levels - 'cuz that's what keeps the wait staff from takin' a giant shit in your punch bowl.

Today's Pix