Legibility is a denial of complexity, and it was also a prerequisite for the type of mechanical thinking that gave rise to the world of debt as we know it. If technology marks the gradual advancement of civilization, then illegibility is the monster we always end up on a quest to slay under different guises. It comes from a very deep place in our psyche; it is nothing less than a projection of our own desire to make sense of the world around us in order to reduce uncertainty. It is perhaps the same place where the urge to accumulate power comes from, and what drove the Swiss social historian Jacob Burkhardt to say “The essence of tyranny is the denial of complexity”. One must understand this without necessarily attaching a value to it. Scientific progress owes a great deal to our tendency as a society to move toward legibility. A calculative-rational mode of thought depends on being able to measure things discreetly and objectively. Scientific inquiry is the exploration of the entirety of reality to the extent that it can be understood with our human brains. The tools we make with that newfound knowledge, though, are a product of their time. Just as with discovery, there is an air of inevitability with certain key developments. Toward a Grand Narrative of Civilization ☀
Governments that issue their own money don’t have to pay off their debts. They actually can’t. In fact, they issue money — the money that’s necessary for a growing economy to operate — by deficit spending. The Meme that Refuses to Die: Government Debt Must Be Paid Back ☀
The first economic exchanges, in a tribal setting, were based on networks of mutual support and reciprocity. Early tribal societies were more about giving away than hoarding, because the gift economy strengthened the network of mutual obligations. Graeber’s anthropological point of view supports the ideas of University of Bologna professor of economics Stefano Zamagni, who has long argued that reciprocity runs prior to market relations. (A family governed entirely by market relations would be a nightmare, Zamagni observes.)
Graeber, who approaches money from the discipline of anthropology, insists that currency-gold and silver in particular-emerged in the markets that often followed armies or royal entourages “or formed near palaces or at the fringes of military posts.” Commodity money has long gone hand-inhand with violence, he contends. In fact, one of the principle uses of money by warring states involved slavery.
War fuelled debt, which demanded taxation, and debt was payable in slaves. No one was safe from this dynamic. If a farmer could not pay his debts, he could lose his property, his wife, his children and his own freedom, which became a commodity to be bought and sold. The debtor could only return to his or her homebase after working for a term set by the creditor. Wisely, Biblical patriarchs instituted the custom of jubilee, where all social debts were cancelled after seven years. (Graeber observes that the first word for “freedom” known in any human language, the Sumerian amarga, literally means, “return to mother.”)
“Debt slavery” is no arbitrary term, either for indentured servants of the past or grad students in the present. To use a Seussian analogy for a complex historical process, social conflict and debt enslavement have been like those agents of chaos, Thing One and Thing Two-and money has been like the Cat in the Hat. Graeber notes that the value of gold and silver rises in times of war, when the social contract crumbles and credit can no longer be relied on.
From lily pads to aircraft carriers, advanced drones to special operations teams, it’s offshore and into the shadows for U.S. military policy. While the United States is economically in decline, it remains the sole military superpower on the planet. No other country pours anywhere near as much money into its military and its national security establishment or is likely to do so in the foreseeable future. It’s clear enough that Washington is hoping to offset any economic decline with newly reconfigured military might. As in the old TV show, the U.S. has gun, will travel. Onshore, American power in the twenty-first century proved a disaster. Offshore, with Washington in control of the global seas and skies, with its ability to kick down the world’s doors and strike just about anywhere without a by-your-leave or thank-you-ma’am, it hopes for better. As the early attempts to put this program into operation from Pakistan to Yemen have indicated, however, be careful what you wish for: it sometimes comes home to bite you. Offshore Everywhere: How Drones, Special Operations Forces, and the U.S. Navy Plan to End National Sovereignty As We Know It ☀
When it shall be said in any country in the world, my poor are happy; neither ignorance nor distress is to be found among them; my jails are empty of prisoners, my streets of beggars; the aged are not in want, the taxes are not oppressive; the rational world is my friend, because I am the friend of its happiness: when these things can be said, then may that country boast its constitution and its government. Thomas Paine ☀
The CIA’s drone campaign in Pakistan has killed dozens of civilians who had gone to help rescue victims or were attending funerals, an investigation by the Bureau for the Sunday Times has revealed.
The findings are published just days after President Obama claimed that the drone campaign in Pakistan was a “targeted, focused effort” that “has not caused a huge number of civilian casualties”… .
A three month investigation including eye witness reports has found evidence that at least 50 civilians were killed in follow-up strikes when they had gone to help victims. More than 20 civilians have also been attacked in deliberate strikes on funerals and mourners. The tactics have been condemned by leading legal experts.
Dear @GoDaddy: Your objectification and exploitation of women disgust me. #HopeAnElephantStompsAllOverYourServers Eugene Cho ☀
Still and all, it’s true that the federal income tax is indeed progressive. Conservatives are right about that—though it’s not as progressive as it used to be, back before top marginal rates were lowered and capital gains taxes were slashed in half. But conservatives are a little less excited to talk about other kinds of taxes. Payroll taxes aren’t progressive, for example. In fact, they’re actively regressive, with the poor and middle classes paying higher rates than the rich.
And then there are state taxes. Those include state income taxes, property taxes, sales taxes, and fees of various kinds. How progressive are state taxes?
Answer: They aren’t. The Corporation for Enterprise Development recently released a scorecard for all 50 states, and it has boatloads of useful information. That includes overall tax rates, where data from the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy shows that in the median state (Mississippi, as it turns out) the poorest 20 percent pay twice the tax rate of the top 1 percent. In the worst states, the poorest 20 percent pay five to six times the rate of the richest 1 percent. Lucky duckies indeed. There’s not one single state with a tax system that’s progressive.
Christianity has not, and does not profess to have a detailed political program. It is meant for all men at all times, and the particular program which suited one place or time would not suit another. C.S. Lewis ☀
Simply put, with its frontiers all but expanded to their limits, if Facebook wants to keep going it must try to dig deeper into its existing user base in search of profit. To do this it will have to become ever more intrusive in its advertising and marketing methods. Yet this will turn people off the platform and diminish its popularity. So, Facebook finds itself caught between a rock and a hard place.
This is a struggle to win the hearts and minds of the wider public and those within the structures of power (including the police) who are possessed of a conscience. It is not a war. Nonviolent movements, on some level, embrace police brutality. The continuing attempt by the state to crush peaceful protesters who call for simple acts of justice delegitimizes the power elite. It prompts a passive population to respond. It brings some within the structures of power to our side and creates internal divisions that will lead to paralysis within the network of authority. Martin Luther King kept holding marches in Birmingham because he knew Public Safety Commissioner “Bull” Connor was a thug who would overreact. The Black Bloc’s thought-terminating cliché of “diversity of tactics” in the end opens the way for hundreds or thousands of peaceful marchers to be discredited by a handful of hooligans. The state could not be happier. It is a safe bet that among Black Bloc groups in cities such as Oakland are agents provocateurs spurring them on to more mayhem. But with or without police infiltration the Black Bloc is serving the interests of the 1 percent. These anarchists represent no one but themselves. Those in Oakland, although most are white and many are not from the city, arrogantly dismiss Oakland’s African-American leaders, who, along with other local community organizers, should be determining the forms of resistance. Chris Hedges ☀
This year’s ads were quite varied thematically, but two themes stood out to me: nostalgia and destruction/redemption. It’s not too hard to explain the source of these themes — our recent economic collapse and very slow recovery, a long and difficult war, widespread confusion about who we are and what our future is, make these particular themes good bets for advertisers trying to hook the emotional mind of the American populace. Both nostalgia and destruction/redemption play to the pervasive anxiety in the country.
A GNT creation ©2007–2011
