Dystopian Paradox

Maureen Dowd in her NYT column today bemoaned to the offshoring of domestic journalism including reporting. I posted the following comment to he article:

The USA will soon be a third world country unless the government takes back control of the generation of US money (read “dollars”). Private money generated by private financial institutions is accounted for with a dollar sign. Deregulation of the private financial sector combined with Nixon’s announcement to the world in 1970 that dollars will be redeemed only in Treasury debt has resulted in what we see today: the deterioration of our industry and the financial credit (debt) crisis.

Globalization has resulted in the inflation of non-productive assets, that is, assets that don’t find their way to fund increased industrial productivity. Interest income does not equate to increased productivity but only accumulation of dollars for those who own the assets that produce the interest. That has meant stagnation for those who work to make a living, including journalists.

Displacement of US industry with offshore facitlites and labor is but one result of our unregulated international financial system. Get your brighter investigative journalists to educate themselves about the interworkings and dynamics of the international private financial system.

Use the power of the pen you now hold to advance the well being not only of domestic journalism but rather all aspects of American industry. Get educated and then educate your readership before the owners of the NYT take your pens away from you.

I checked and my comment has been published (number 128 on the sixth page) but it didn’t make the editors’ selection list. Maybe the NYT management has on its editorial board the equivalent of a KGB political officer who serves side by side with military officers to keep them in line.

While having little use for any Republican presently holding office, I don’t automatically support the Democrats on every issue. Obama and Pelosi are calling for a Detroit bailout, which I don’t support.

My view is that the present management of Detroit and its present shareholders should disappear. They chose a parasitic agenda- short-term profits while the host dies. They must be accountable for the consequences of their choices.

Let Detroit either expire or morph through Chapter 11 proceedings. If it emerges from Chapter 11, then hopefully the process will have turned a syphilitic spirochete into a butterfly.

Once in Chapter 11, the fed can come in with funds with lots of strings attached, including strict criteria on vehicles powered by something other than carbon fuels, and the cost of USA produced parts being the majority with final assembly here.

Corporations are suppose to hold the public trust. Greedy management, shareholders and government leaders have conspired to destroy this concept in our collective public consciousness. We must make the term “public trust” a part of our daily lexicon in the context of our present economic woes. The constitution neither mandates nor sanctions monopolies of wealth and power.

GM, Ford and Chrysler are examples of corporate and shareholder greed sucking the blood out of the future economic potential of this country, resulting not only in our own loss but that of future generations.

And the financial industry should be no more sacrosanct than Detroit. As to their management and shareholders and government officials who support them including Henry Paulson, let them all eat dirt.

Don’t miss the PBS Frontline episode “Heat” tomorrow evening. It’s a new two hour program covering big business’s vow to reshape its approach to the environment.

I’m anticipating this program with mixed emotions. It makes me sick when I think about what we our doing to our planet. But I’m hoping that this program provides information that will give us hope.

The current economic situation and even the coming world peak oil is nothing compared to the disastrous consequences of global warming. Obama has made one of the planks of his platform for America to become energy independent within ten years. I somehow feel that his primary agenda is for America to be a leader in bringing to an end human behavior as a factor in global warming.

I decided to start riding my bicycle more a few months back for several reasons: it’s good exercise; it saves gas; it’s my minuscule contribution to reducing co2 into the atmosphere (except in my breath when I exhale).

Anyhow, it’s a beautiful morning in Fort Worth, so I decided to ride while it’s cool. Lots of people were out, and a couple passed by me going the opposite way on a bicycle built for two. Man, that’s taking a committed relationship too far.

It was an older couple and I wondered if younger couples ride the things. Women are much more independent now. Shrink types 20 something years ago corrupted the term “co-dependent” to mean that a couple have become too dependent on each other for emotional support. Back in the eighties, insurance companies were paying for institutionalized treatment for the conjured-up disease. That didn’t last long, but the shrink types kept making money off the farce.

But with a bicycle built for two, one or both of the riders are getting the short end of the stick. I’ve ridden in the back seat of light two-place planes tandem configuration. It’s not a great experience because you can’t see out in front of you. Same thing with a tandem bike.

And sure enough, this morning the female of the couple was on the rear seat. So she’s got to stare at the guy’s back or see stuff to the side which goes by very quickly. And who wants to be there if the old man breaks wind.

Maybe the offset is the back rider can act like she’s pedaling and make the male do all the work. So the husband gets to work harder for a better view, and the wife gets a free ride but a lousy view.

Maybe that’s what co-dependent people do. Be a relationship where both people lose. I think I’ll never get on a tandem bike because I might catch the disease.

And maybe that’s the kind of relationship we the people have had for the last eight years with the presidency. We lost, but did the forces behind the Bush administration lose. In the long run (which may not be so long), all parasites lose.

Ridge Dickey

One of McCain’s criticisms of Obama is that Obama is not qualified to be commander in chief. The problem with this argument is that the logic is faulty. It’s based on several underlying assumptions that are not necessarily true. One is that McCain’s military experience makes him more qualified to be commander in chief. Another is that the president as such holds a military position. If that’s true, he or she should be decked out in military attire at least some of the time.

I accidentally bought a book by Andrew Bacevich copyrighted in 2005 entitled The New American Militarism. Bacevich is a Vietnam war veteran and a professor of international relations at Boston College. I had intended to purchase his new offering Limits of Power: The End of American Exceptionalism, but I got Militarism by mistake at Barnes and Noble a couple of weeks ago. So I’ve been reading it. My comments here include views Bacevich expresses in Militarism.

At the end of the cold war, the U.S. remained the sole super power militarily. Post cold war, the U.S. has displayed that power both as show and in two wars to demonstrate what we can do in a conventional war. Our military power became the single facet of our foreign policy under the Bush administration. Diplomacy was out. You’re either for us or against us and we don’t care what the rest of the world thinks. It would seem we got to where Hitler wanted to be.

The problem with this attitude is that it didn’t and still doesn’t reflect reality. We were not the world hegemon in 2003 when we invaded Iraq nor are we now. But the problem is that militarism has become a part of our mindset. It’s a an accepted, and embraced, component of our mainstream culture. The citizenry for the most part, and irrespective of whether so called liberal or so called conservative, has bought into the idea that we have been imbued with the divine right and duty to make history.

Moreover, the president has been catapulted from the position of commander in chief as a citizen to commander in chief as the top military officer. Bacevich states that the “framers of our Constitution designated the president as commander-in-chief as a means of asserting unambiguous civilian control.” He notes presidents George Washington, Grant and Eisenhower went out of their way to avoid their prior military identity while in office.

So what does Bush do, one who was in the reserves and maybe awol from that light duty? He dons a Navy flight suit and hits the deck of an aircraft deck as commander in chief of the military in a grand photo op in which he states “Mission accomplished,” referring to the Iraq war.

In a recent Bill Moyer’s interview, Bacevich said that a new president will change nothing regarding how we deceive ourselves into believing that we are destined to be the world’s police (one of our many misconceptions). Bacevich’s statement is supported both by Obama’s and McCain’s campaign rhetoric. Obama said in his acceptance speech that he would rebuild our military. McCain’s campaign continues to tout his Vietnam experience as a credential for qualification as commander-in-chief. Both candidates know that campaigning on a promise to reduce our military is political suicide.

What’s suicide is spending money you don’t have, both personally, at the business level, and at the governmental level. And that’s what we’ve been doing at all three levels for the last eight years. GM for example owes tons of money because its management thinks that it must show its shareholders profits each quarter; they did that with SUVs and trucks and now where are they. We did it personally with homes and cars we can’t afford and credit card debt. The fed creates money to keep this insane economic model in place as long as possible so that they keep their jobs and get reelected. We have a huge military with 100 or more bases around the world allegedly to keep oil coming in to keep the cars going we can’t afford financially or environmentally.

There are similarities of the to the run up to St. Helens explosion in 1980, to warning signs of an impending financial disaster now.

With Mt. St. Helens and other explosive volcanic eruptions (Krakatoa for example), the warning signs were tremblers. Maybe not so big on the Richter scale, but a warning that something’s going on underneath a volcano.

With our economy, and our standing in the world as alleged hegemon, we have warning signs: extremely volatile markets that indicate nobody knows where things are going to be in the relative short term; a challenge to our military might by insurgents in Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan along with Russia’s new assertiveness militarily.

David killed a giant with a rock. Achilles was done in by an arrow to his eponymous heal. Patrol boats sank heavy cruisers in WW II. A few missiles with conventional warheads can take out our aircraft carriers. A well placed bomb in a weak spot killed the Deathstar in Star Wars. The bigger and more complex our military hardware and organization designed to fight conventional wars, the more vulnerable they become to unconventional, cheaper, less ostentatious warfare.

A lot of bullies find out they’re not so tough just because they’re bigger. Kick ‘em in the crotch and suddenly they’re shorter than their intended victim. It’s fantasy to think that a huge military is going to keep us out of trouble. In reality, it’s a big part of our problem. Our main challenge doesn’t lie outside our borders. Our challenge is to come to grips with reality, to recognize that the problem is systemic- a disease within several aspects of our mainstream culture, and to take steps to treat not the symptoms but the disease itself.

Neither Obama nor McCain can bust our bubble during the campaign, the bubble that we are world hegemon, the bubble that was Dorothy’s vision while out of touch in lala land and in which the Good Witch of the North arrived. An apparition. As between Obama and McCain, the question is which one is more in touch reality and once in office will do something positive to get the U.S. headed in a sustainable direction.

For me the answer unequivocally is Barack. He’s demonstrated his executive skills in community organizing, and in his presidential campaign fueled on the audacity of hope.

Moreover, there’s no way I can buy into McCain’s Rovian guided, fear based campaign rhetoric. He plays on our citizens fears and prejudices. I can get a good feeling talking trash about somebody, especially a public figure that isn’t going to sue me. But I know it’s cheap to do so.

And I have hope that the U.S. citizenry will see above the baseness of McCain’s smear campaign, and elect Barack Obama, someone with proven organizational and executive talent.

Thomas Friedman reports in the NYT today that yet again the Senate has failed to pass a bill that if enacted, would extend the investment tax credits for installing solar energy and production tax credits for building wind turbines. Senators McCain and Obama were both absent for the vote. McCain has not shown up for any of the eight votes on the measure in the last year, yet within the last couple of weeks he was calling for Congress to reconvene to do something about our energy crisis.

For background on the peak oil scenario, check out Josh Matlock’s article posted on The Texas Blue blog August 5. Peak oil is the point at which the rate of consumption of oil and gas exceeds capacity to produce. World peak oil has either happened or will soon. Domestic (USA) peak oil occurred long ago. Additional domestic drilling will not reverse domestic peak oil, and won’t be a drop in the barrel of global production.

Contact your elected representatives and let them know they are working for you and not big oil. Let them know you’re aware of the peak oil scenario and globle warming. Make it clear that you don’t want the US of A to be the next General Motors. Short term thinking must be used in the short term, like now, to rid ourselves of short term thinking.

A couple of weeks ago, my son Bud mentioned to me an article in the Summer 2008 issue of Strategy+Business. A few days later, I found the article entitled “The Next Industrial Imperative,” and low and behold, Peter Senge and three of his colleagues are the authors.

Peter Senge, who is now a senior lecturer at MIT, authored The Fifth Discipline: The Art and Practice of the Learning Organization, published in the early ’90s. I read it soon after it was published, and have carried with me as a part of my personal creed what I condensed from it: I am a learning organism and want to be associated with learning organizations; a learning organization is one that realizes it is in control of its own destiny; I am a learning organism because I realize that I am in control of my own destiny as long as I have my health and no one is holding a gun to my head.

Presently, none of us individually is in control of our destiny. Check out the upcoming Frontline episode “Heat” on global warming. Global warming is the loaded gun pointed at each and everyone one of us.

If you read “The Next Industrial Imperative,” you will discover that Senge and colleagues use imagery effectively to make their points memorable. In The Fifth Discipline, Senge did the same by relating the boiled frog parable in the context of a business on its way out because it is not aware of or denies the existence of forces and changes that are taking it down.

It seems as though frogs, and human beings for that matter, sense heat only when heat is moving through their heat sensory systems. Ever notice when you relax in a hot bath, the water seems to lose its heat quickly? It’s not losing its heat so fast, but rather the flow of heat from the water through our heat sensors has slowed down because all layers of our skin (and probably the fat just beneath it) are approaching the temperature of the bath water.

So the boiled frog parable is that you put a frog in a pot of water that’s at room temperature and then put him on the stove. The water warms slowly, with the result that heat is flowing through the frog’s heat sensors slowly. At any point in time, the doomed frog doesn’t perceive a dangerous change in the water temperature. The result is a boiled frog that never becomes aware of his imminent demise.

I gave my copy of the The Fifth Discipline to Bud not long after I read it, so when I sat down to write this post, I called him to see if he still had it. Of course he no longer had the copy but had recently bought an audio version on CD to listen to in his car. I mentioned the boiled frog thing and we started talking about the financial pundits on CNN etc and how they are clueless as to what’s going with the breakdown of the financial system. Bud said, “Yea, and if you tried to relate the boiled frog story to one of them, they’d think the point of the parable is that the pot is half full.”

That’s a nonsensical quip but that’s what you get from the financial and political pseudo pundits in the mass media. Nonsense. Pseudo information. Kinda like eating a Twinkie. Tastes good but no nutritional value. Check out what’s in a Twinkie and you’ll discover it has more ingredients than a car engine has moving parts. It’s manufactured not for its substantive value but rather only to taste good and get you hooked. Just like nicotine-enriched cigarettes and high octane Starbuck’s coffee.

And if we rely on pseudo pundits in making personal decisions, we may find ourselves in boiled frog heaven. Or hell. The talking heads aren’t there to communicate useful information, but rather to entertain people. Any useful information in the content is accidental. Strategy+Business and its content are not Twinkie-like.

“The Next Industrial Imperative” article uses images of bubbles to help make its points. We are living in the industrial revolution bubble. Bubbles tend to pop. There was the dot.com bubble and it popped. There is the housing boom bubble of the last several years and it has popped. The securitized debt, over-the-counter derivatives bubble is connected to the housing boom bubble; sort of a double-bubble. These bubbles pop when the real value of the assets within are overvalued and the overvaluation becomes generally accepted. The result is that the assets inside the bubble become assets outside the bubble and their value drops to true value in the sustainable world outside the bubble. Enron and Bear Stearns are examples of micro-bubbles.

What keeps a bubble inflated is the belief of those operating inside the bubble that the notational values of the assets are their real values. Once this perception becomes generally accepted as being a fantasy, the bubble pops.

The industrial revolution brought about a great many benefits for some of us, including improved health and comfort. But it has created environmental problems culminating in global warming as the most pressing challenge of our time. We have been like the boiling frog, sitting inside a pot of water on a stove located in the bubble of the industrial revolution. The present value of the industrial revolution as it currently exists is less than zero. It is not sustainable as it’s presently configured.

And while the financially savvy among us chose to avoid both the dot.com and securitized debt, over-the-counter derivatives bubbles, none of us can unilaterally escape the industrial revolution bubble. It is imperative that the industrial leaders of the world work together to develop solar based energy sources to replace fossil fuels. Not to do so will result in continued global warming evaporating the thin film of the industrial revolution bubble, casting us into a dystopian one that may last centuries.

“The Next Industrial Imperative” points out that the level of Co2 is “35 percent higher than at any other time in the past half million years.” In addition to the bubble imagery, another visual reference in “The Next Industrial Imperative” is a bathtub filling up with water. At some point, the inflow of water exceeds the outflow and the tub becomes full. At some point in our future, the inflow of Co2 into the atmosphere will “cross a threshold” where continued global warming will be beyond our ability to reverse.

To avoid disaster, “The Next Industrial Imperative” states that the world must reduce the release of Co2 from the burning of fossil fuels by 80 percent in the next 20 years. The Frontline trailer includes a sound bite of a person stating that the goal cannot be met. Let’s hope that person is wrong.

Visit the Strategy+Business website and read the entire “The Next Industrial Imperative” article. It contains much more information than this post.

My hope is that we avoid the worst case scenario from the effects of global warming. Or even the next worse, which is a dystopian world for us all.

It’s imperative that a new industrial bubble emerge that is sustainable. Hope means nothing without action, so become politically involved. Read about Sweden’s amazing progress in “The Next Industrial Imperative.”

Driving a Prius, or a plug-in electric when they become available, will help. But keep in mind that transportation in all forms accounts for less than half of our present rate of consumption of fossil fuels.

Express your concerns to public officials at all levels, and take advantage of available means to learn more. Let your views be known to your friends (and your employers if you can do so without getting fired). And don’t miss the Frontline episode “Heat” coming out this fall. The background music for the trailer is “Burning down the House” written by David Byrne and the other Talking Heads.