Doing the Right Thing and Making a lot of money

In game theory and real life, one is presented with moral choices that initially seem amoral. One can pursue games that are "win win", "win lose" or one can be forced to chose between various kinds of "lose lose" games. Few people choose lose lose games, but we are often stuck with them against our will. All games involve a set of resources (or the loss of resources for loss/loss) and choices about how to distribute those resources.

When economists talk about such principles as "comparative advantage" -- they are positing a win/win game -- in which all the stakeholders gain value. Some more than others, but all win. In this case, people in Bolivia part with refined chemicals from a plant that isn't much use elsewise, and gain currency to buy food and clothing. And the people buying those chemicals get a drug that helps them endure pain and get dental work done; Win/Win. When the games are win win, no one is intruding on other's property or using power to oppress others. The lines are clear and the exchanges are voluntary and transparent.

In a win/lose game the loser gains no resources and often loses existing resources. Gambling is such a game. The "stake" can and will be lost and those who win do so at the expense of the many who lose. When we talk about banks gambling with our money it's because they've turned the financial markets into a casino. Only it's a rigged casino where 99% of us lose; and even when they roll the dice and lose, they manage to make us pay.

Games are setup by governors. There is no free market without government. When the cons try to sell you that the "Free Market should decide" they are simply baiting you with a ridiculous argument and then switching to the reality; "We should set the rules to guarantee you will lose in the market we set up and run." Even Ancient markets had government. When the Bible, Koran or other ancient documents talks about some person being so valued by a town that they had him "sit in the gate" it meant that he was put there to judge disputes in the market and enforce fair market rules. A free market with no rules can't exist. The rules are usually either created by insiders, or by governments that acknowledge other stakeholders. Without a just government markets are ruled by extrajudicial judges and insider organizations. If those organizations are outlawed, they will be created secretly. Adam Smith alluded to this when he said that "there is no gathering of merchants that doesn't involve some effort to" fix markets. Free Markets are only possible on conditions of individual freedom, commonwealth government, and justice. In a rigged market the game is win/lose, never win/win.

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Unfortunately the reality of monopoly and Mafioso Capitalism is win/lose. And it is a rigged win lose. Workers are prevented, prohibited, and inhibited from representation, while our business hierarchies form hierarchies and conglomerates. 150 years of institutional memory is burned or locked away while we hear propaganda that somehow if we give all our power to these hierarchies and con artists we'll all be better off. Of course it is a con. Of course it is a lie. Our Grandparents and great-grandparents went through these lies before and many of them lost their shirts, their houses, their families and their lives thanks to rigged capitalism, frauds and swindles in the past. Many of our ancestors came here seeking economic opportunity and fleeing for their lives from economic dispossession by aristocrats who'd converted their private rule to an excuse to dispossess our peasant ancestors. And because of the instability and anger caused by the injustices of the aristocrats, some of them followed their victims overseas to escape the wrath of the French and other Revolutions that followed. And of course, before there were revolutions, was often displaced into anger at Jews, religious dissenters and other minorities instead. Our ancestors mostly fled economic injustice. Some of our relatives fought that injustice with more or less success in Scandinavia, but less elsewhere.

War and injustice are either zero sum or negative games, but they are win/lose games. Two entire countries may be destroyed by war, but the aristocrats (or even worse wannabe aristocrats) involved, who win the war, will get promoted. War is also a way to deflect anger from financial swindles and oppression. Folks don't feel so oppressed when they can be instigated to hate blacks or jews, Arabs or hispanics -- so the swindlers call themselves "conservatives" rather than admit to their cons and enlist their victims anger to their cause. It's no accident that the most victimized parts of the USA are dominated by the swindlers in this country. The con involves convincing people that "Their" aristocrats are really beneficient and that the win/lose games are really win/win in the long run -- which is a lie.

I guess it was the ability to stay out of the instigated wars in Europe that enabled the Scandinavians to identify and deal with their real enemies -- their own wealthy friends and relatives. They instituted work place democracy, forced people to have a say in the markets and workplaces, and had the sense not to buy the self serving propaganda of wannabe and real aristocrats -- and created "social democracy" that is also robust in the realm of markets and capitalism. We can do it too.

The one thing that the Ayn Rand/Austrian, Fascist and Bolshevic wannabe aristocrats agreed on was a disdain for the real proletariat and the common people. If we want to create a stable society then we need a justice of opportunity and an equality in access to markets and their products that is "middle class" by design. There will always be aristocrats, but aristocrats have to operate under win/win rules or they are oppressors and tyrants. Making a lot of money is good, but doing the right thing means that everyone wins. For 30+ year we've all been innovating and increasing our productivity -- but the benefits have gone to cons and scam artists who call themselves conservatives but are really radical redistributionists and regressives playing "win lose" games or even "lose/lose" games where they manage to win anyway. It's called "casino capitalism" because it is rigged worse than a casino. And it's got to stop and our democratic features be restored to our Democratic Republic.

The de-evolution of the Heritage Foundation

I used to love reading the heritage foundation's website. I knew they were spinning, but their spin was associated with facts. But now they are almost unrecognizable in their romantisation of the Gilded Age, and their misrepresentation (rewrite) of historical narrative. For example their page: notes on it's "Basics:" http://www.heritage.org/initiatives/first-principles/basics#progressivism-and-liberalism page:

The Progressives were reformers in the late 19th and early 20th century who believed that in order to address modern problems, America needed to abandon the old ideas of the Founding in favor of a new expansive conception of the role of government. Progressives paved the way for modern liberalism and politics, and their core ideas are still the mainstay of today’s liberalism.

Actually the progressives were building a new more expansive FEDERAL government to oppose the corruption and power of PRIVATE governments run by monopolies and corrupt city and State governments dominated by wealth and private interest. It was said in the 1800's that the Penn Railroad ran Pennsylvania and Vanderbilt controlled New York State. So this framing is designed to sell a product not tell the truth. It is basically an effort of the rich and powerful to rewrite the historical narrative.

They then go on to list all the heroes of the period;

Some Progressives were prominent journalists such as Herbert Croly (co-founder of The New Republic), some were distinguished professors such as John Dewey and Woodrow Wilson (president of Princeton before he was President of the U.S.), and many were political leaders such as Theodore Roosevelt and Robert La Follette. Progressives could be found in both political parties: Wilson was a Democrat, Roosevelt was a Republican.

And they both try to hook people with misrepresentations of what the progressives were about, and at the same time manage to defame all the heroes of the progressive era (including people they otherwise claim to admire) with a broad brush:

The Progressives were united in their contempt for what they called the “individualism” of the Founding. Instead of a government that protects natural rights through limited, decentralized powers, they envisioned an expansive government, a “living” and evolving Constitution, and the rule of “experts” in nationally centralized administrative agencies.

Contempt for individualism

Actually their contempt was for the abusiveness of the "Horatio Alger" narrative of the lucky few pulling themselves up by non-existent bootstraps; when the reality is that most people simply wanted to make a living, improve the lives of their children and leave the world a better place for their grandchildren. The Horatio Alger myth creates a world of a one percent of "winners" and brands the other 99% as losers. And since the "economic royalists" [FDR's term] of the previous century were utterly corrupt, willing to recklessly go to war with one another [When Rockefeller laid his pipeline network he brought down the entire economy and many of the weaker railroads just to undermine his erstwhile allies in the rail industry], and owning the Senate and Courts, theirs wasn't a struggle against "individualism" but against corporate Kinglets.

Natural Rights

And DeMint turns the "natural rights" narrative on it's head too. The progressives were not against natural rights, on the contrary they sought to use the Federal Government to make sure that individuals could retain their natural rights in the face of corporate kleptocracy, rent seeking, legal theft of mineral rights and land, and monopoly. To do this they had to use "Hamiltonian methods" to advance "Jeffersonian Goals." TR would first use the power of anti-trust, and when that wasn't sufficient he came up with the idea of organizing corporations so that they could be better governed. TR's ideas never really were fully realized, and Reagan corruptly ended efforts at Anti-Trust, so the issue now remains the same for modern day Progressives. The Empire Struck back, through it's armies of attorneys. And by creating the Heritage Foundation and then corrupting it into a propaganda rag. They've not only created an astroturfed ideology, but an alternative reality. A kind of corporate version of "Game of Thrones" only with lawyers instead of armed warriors.

Living Constitution

Most of the right would also have you believe that all their precepts are based on the founding fathers, who somehow in their narrative were all rugged individualists who interpreted the constitution exactly the same and collectively wanted it frozen in ice (except where most conservatives want to chip away at it). They claim to want a literal and strict reading of the constitution, but since they ignore (conveniently) words they don't like they ignore the "militia" clause of the second amendment and ignore the 18th century meaning of "secure in one's person" since the word "privacy" in those days referred to Privy's (urinals) not privacy as we understand it now and "secure in one's person" referred to privacy. Since they are only literal or "strict" where it suits their convenience what they really want is an authoritarian or even tyrannical reading of the constitution that affirms their private separate advantage to make judgments and rule people locally with impunity. This puts the lie to their argument that it was "progressives" who wanted an expansive government. The conservatives just want that government either bought and paid for by themselves, or delegated to corporate and landlord rule. In short the argument isn't between a living constitution (since the advocates also interpret it) or a strictly interpreted one, but between a living constitution and the dead hand of local and distributed tyranny.

Experts

The one accusation that I'll grant the DeMint has a point on. And that Progressives made, was that they settled on administrative (bureaucratic) efforts to rule American Business. They started with experts, but nowadays they are likely to be well connected lawyers and the experts are either marginalized or get fired if they open their mouths. Still I'd rather have a genuinely neutral expert playing judge and having to justify his decisions than pretend creationists who are really Social Darwinists... The progressives did have faults. Just not the ones outlined by DeMint's heritage foundation.

And unfortunately regulation has become so complicated and such a round robin "captured" endeavor, that the government lawyers writing the rules are often working almost directly for the regulated, and they use their expertise to make money for the corporations once they leave government. Conservatives only pretend to complain about rent seeking, since that is the real object of de-regulation. If the Government doesn't regulate business, they locate businesses where they can kill the most [poor] people when something goes wrong -- like West Texas and then want the taxpayer to pick up the Tab, and "Gubbornment" to take the blame -- as if they weren't in fact doing much of the governing.

This adamantine romanticization of the 19th century (apparently including Antebellum Southern Slavery) is the real problem with the right in general and the Heritage Foundation and it's other organs. Folks like Jason Richwine, can't help themselves in exposing their racism, as he did in his College Thesis, because their sense of entitlement is on their sleeves and they regularly isolate themselves from reality. Prejudice is judging things before one actually studies all the angles, and that is what these articles represent. When one believes something "in advance" of evidence, one hunts for any argument to advance one's "truth".

I don't know what kind of heritage that is.

Further reading:

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/05/08/jason-richwine-dissertation_n_3240168.html

http://www.heritage.org/initiatives/first-principles/basics#progressivism-and-liberalism

Votes Matter

Time to shame the shameless,
Name the people of the shadows.
They cannot hide from what they wrought
It is time that they be taught.

The light drives out the parasite.
The warmth of love wins over hate and misdirection.
Our vote still counts in this world,
and is the difference between a vote and an insurrection.

Chris Holte

DreamOfCaroline

Caroline Previdi

Dream of Caroline my friend.
My anger at you is gone.
I see her in my dreams again,
and she tells me you are wrong.

Dream of Caroline my friend,
we will soldier on,
until your kind are sane and clear,
and the desire to murder is gone.

Her life is over, but her spirit lives on,
she will talk to you each night,
until you hear her screams and whispers,
and decide to do what is right.

Christopher Hartly Holte

Written to one of my gun nut friends.

Edmund Burke Versus John Locke

Introduction

Most people know that Edmund Burke wrote in response to the French Revolution and is universally admired for his criticisms of Democratic Republicanism. They often are not clued in to what he actually said. Rather most intellectual conservatives refer to him in code. When conservatives quote Burke they usually first quote his earlier writings and speeches supporting the US Colonies revolt against the Crown.  They rarely quote “Reflections on the Revolution” directly. Instead they refer to it obliquely. I’ve come to realize why, over time. 

Burke was ostensibly arguing against the French Republicans, Jacobins and revolutionaries in Paris. But in reality he also was arguing with his own previous generation of Whigs and John Locke. He was arguing with the very notion of democratic republicanism.

The Case was too good to go forward -- Corruption and the Courts

In this weekends news is an article that shows just how bad things have gotten for the American Worker. Workers were trying to get a class action suit going based on evidence that our major IT companies were "allegedly forming an illegal cartel to tamp down workers' wages and prevent the loss of their best engineers during a multiyear conspiracy broken up by government regulators."¹. The Judge Ruled:

"U.S. District Judge Lucy Koh in San Jose, Calif., issued a ruling Friday concluding that the companies' alleged collusion may have affected workers in too many different ways to justify lumping the individual claims together. She denied the request to certify workers' lawsuits as a class action and collectively seek damages on behalf of tens of thousands of employees."

This despite the fact that "The allegations will be more difficult to pursue if they can't be united in a single lawsuit. Koh, though, will allow the workers' lawyers to submit additional evidence that they have been collecting to persuade her that the lawsuit still merits class certification." So, all is not lost. But this case illustrates the difficulty of dealing with a system that is increasingly plutocratic and oligarchic, and where the oligarchs use their partial monopolies to oppress people instead of to uphold their fiduciary responsibilities and trust obligations over resources.

Workers are having trouble, because our wealthier "liberal" allies go along with the right on worker issues. From Rahm Emmanual to outright righties, we see that our wealthier brothers and sisters are making "hard decisions" on the backs of 99% of us, while many of them (not including Rahm yet) are hiding money in offshore banks. And there is no shared sacrifice. This is a system that is oppressive to most of us and getting more so. And we have to convince people to do the right thing instead. I hope the judge hasn't killed this lawsuit.

Source:
• http://abcnews.go.com/Technology/wireStory/judge-deals-blow-high-tech-workers-lawsuit-18891744#.UWHFlldTmrh
• http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424127887323916304578401023993657866.html
• http://holtesthoughts.blogspot.com/2013/04/the-massive-corruption-behind-our.html

The massive corruption behind our current dysfunction

The international Consortium of Investigative Journalists has just published summaries of leaked documents demonstrating the massive scale of worldwide financial corruption in this country (and world). In my last blog post I explained why there really is a "one percent," why the concentrated weatlh and power have not been a good thing, and some other things about the one percent that I found disturbing. But this latest revolution takes the cake, and explains why the current system needs worldwide reforms.

The One percent is a problem because they tend to band with the mega-rich. They don't all have the access to offshore accounts the super rich do, and so they are as much prey as predator for their wealthier relations. The article lists a bullet list of findings about the mega rich that ought to disturb anyone:

• Government officials and their families and associates in Azerbaijan, Russia, Canada, Pakistan, the Philippines, Thailand, Mongolia and other countries have embraced the use of covert companies and bank accounts.
• The mega-rich use complex offshore structures to own mansions, yachts, art masterpieces and other assets, gaining tax advantages and anonymity not available to average people.
• Many of the world’s top’s banks – including UBS, Clariden and Deutsche Bank – have aggressively worked to provide their customers with secrecy-cloaked companies in the British Virgin Islands and other offshore hideaways.
• A well-paid industry of accountants, middlemen and other operatives has helped offshore patrons shroud their identities and business interests, providing shelter in many cases to money laundering or other misconduct.
• Ponzi schemers and other large-scale fraudsters routinely use offshore havens to pull off their shell games and move their ill-gotten gains.

Tip of an Iceberg

Lest the moderately rich think this system is good for them, the lower half of the one percent are those purveyors of Ponzi schemes are their targets. Looks like Bernie Maddoff was the tip of an iceberg in more than one way.

And the article exposes some typical behaviors that come with this Virgin Islands Territory. It details for instance how Tony Merchant, a Canadian Businessman hid his money and lied about his income. It tells how "Between 2002 and 2009, he often paid his fees to maintain the trust by sending thousands of dollars in cash and traveler’s checks stuffed into envelopes rather than using easier-to-trace bank checks or wire transfers, according to documents from the offshore services firm that oversaw the trust for him." Obviously this guy is small fry. Most folks involved in this sort of thing have their lawyers do the dirty work so they can hide behind client confidentiality, but his wife is a Canadian Senator.

The list of names includes a lot of foreign despots, and others we are already familiar with such as the wife of Mark Rich, Denise Rich, who was famous in the 90's for Clinton pardoning him. Today's list was only a sampler of a few dozen out of thousands of names.

Source:

http://www.icij.org/offshore/secret-files-expose-offshores-global-impact