AZspot

As for the incredible gall of Glenn Beck arrogating the mantle of “Heir of Martin Luther King?” I have one response that may seem unfair, regionalist, even a bit snippy. On the other hand it says a lot, in a visually powerful way. Find a map showing those states that were most opposed to Martin Luther King and the Civil Rights Act. Now compare that map to one showing the regions where Glenn Beck is most popular today. I mean, geez. Some things ain’t complicated. David Brin ☀

One outgrowth is more disturbing than any other, when it comes to the current status of corporate “persons.” The decisions made by the CEO and directors of Big Megacorp can be controlled by hidden entities and shell holding companies, held by other shell companies, culminating at a single individual, somewhere hidden from view, whose actual ownership share of BM may be minuscule, but whose clever set of shells and puppet strings allows him to control vast enterprises, against the interests of much larger numbers of actual, living shareholders, or the public good. Moreover, that hidden ownership may be foreign, even hostile to the nation where most of the corporation’s employees, stockholders, creditors and customers live, while ordering the corporation to “speak” or behave in ways inimical to the republic. If there were any reform that merits topmost attention, it is this utter failure of transparency about ownership and control… a failure that has no justification, even in conservative or libertarian terms. David Brin ☀

The denier movement pretends to be about asking honest questions about a scientific matter that is both complex and *possibly* fraught with systematic errors. I believe that honest skeptics can play an important role there. But denialism is ALSO about preventing the community consensus in atmospheric science from affecting public policy. They insist on a burden of proof that 99%+ of skilled experts in a field are insufficient - and yet a slim majority of science-illiterate politicians (during the Bush Era) and now a 40% *minority* of science-clueless politicians - should have absolute power to ignore the best scientific advice of the era. This legerdemain and sleight of hand over burden of proof is dismal, ignorant, dishonest and purely a product of left-right fixated ideology. David Brin ☀

For the neoconservative movement to haul forth Hayek at this point an howl at Keynes… after their entire movement has seen its credibility destroyed by reality, across the last twenty years, is an ultimate groaner. Let’s put it plain. The neocons can point to NOT A SINGLE CLEAR STATISTICAL METRIC OF NATIONAL HEATH THAT UNAMBIGUOUSLY IMPROVED DURING THEIR TENURE. Their mythologies lie in ruins, along with our economy, our civil society, our small businesses, our markets, our military, our alliances, our stature and our science. Not one of the bold predictions made by Supply Side economics ever came true. Not one, ever. David Brin ☀

You rarely find the wealthy, CEOs or celebrities in 1st class anymore; they’ve fled the airlines for private jets & charters. It’s now mostly business travelers & frequent flier upgrade folks. Reduced cash flow forces airlines to chivvy the rest of us for petty fees. The wealthy bypass the cattle car experience of our airports & security checkpoints; otherwise, they’d demand better & we’d all benefit. David Brin ☀

Why then, are most libertarians instead the most intransigent and obnoxious of fuming dogmatists, contemptuous of practicality or compromise, endlessly reciting nonsensical pseudo-religious catechisms from a dunce-prophetess and railing at the stupidity of their fellow citizens for having committed the unforgivable original sin known as Franklin Delano Roosevelt? Cajoled by paid shills from the Cato, Heritage and American Enterprise “institutes,” most libertarians and libertarian minded conservatives have been duped into calling government an inherently satanic foe of Manichean dimensions. Indeed, they see civil servants as the only force out there that’s inimical to liberty, something that Adam Smith (mindful of 4,000 years of history) would have found laughable. While worshipping at an altar of private property (coaxed coincidentally by propaganda paid for by billionaires), libertarians thus turn their gaze away from the two desiderata that ought to be the movement’s core focus. Freedom and fair competition. David Brin ☀

Are the Israelis starting to turn hard and unreasonable? Yes. Peace would have been easier 30 years ago, when Israeli politics was dominated by Europe-born socialists and Kibbutz-raised leftists. Now, many Israelis are nativist and much harsher in the opinion that peace is utterly impossible. It is making them increasingly foolish. They are playing into the Wahhabis’ hands. David Brin ☀

Despite some similarities, there are differences between my approach to the Tobin transaction tax and Mark Cuban’s. He calls for a levy of 25 cents per share traded. Ouch. Not gonna happen; won’t pass. Simpler, and a way to ease it in, would be to levy one hundredth of a percent of the VALUE of each trade. Or else… more directly justifiable… don’t charge all of the costs of SEC etc to the federal budget. Instead the new transaction fee (not a “tax”) rises or falls based on the current cost of enforcement, regulation and reserves. Either way, what Cuban strangely never mentions is my chief motive for doing this… a general Tobin Trading Levy would be death to a recent-modern villainy — coded-reflex cheat-trading by big brokers who gamble and nibble at the margins through billions of tiny, computer-spun micro-trades, taking unfair advantage of both their privileged stock market memberships (no commission) and their quicker access to inside information to detect clients’’ buy orders — thus gaming the system while those buy order are in play! This reform is obvious… and won’t happen. The Chicago School neo-classicists who caused the collapse still see a trillion efficiency angels dancing on the head of a pin. The pin that popped our economy. David Brin ☀

Keep up the fight. NOT for “the left” or even liberalism. I care little about narrowing my range of choices, which is why I most despise those who have made the Right an impossible shopping ground for modern solutions. No. Fight for the general Western Enlightenment, for the American Experiment, and a return to sanity among many of our brothers and sisters who’ve mixed Koolaid with their tea. David Brin ☀

Lest we forget — George W. Bush and the GOP Congress passed Medicare Part B, an expansion of federal entitlement largesse that was easily as large as Obama’s. Though with one crucial difference. The Democrats’ new Health Insurance Bill was designed to add nothing to the federal deficit. In fact, it is revenue neutral and even promises some black ink. The Republicans’ Medicare B entitlement, in contrast, passed without a scintilla of provision for how to fund it. It simply said “bill our grandkids. David Brin ☀

Fly through the air, flash a plastic card & be given food; turn a switch and light bursts forth. I tell students: in other times the powers at our command would have been associated with omnipotent beings. Yet our society has done something unprecedented…it has given god-like power to everybody! We’ve taken bona fide miracles & made them mundane, even boring…without enough enthusiasm for the underlying science. David Brin ☀

I am concerned about one thing, above all, understanding how and why humanity escaped (at last) from its old, vicious cycle of feudalism and began a tremendous enlightenment. One that included vital things like science, democracy, human rights and science fiction. I’ve come to see that openness — including openness to free-flowing criticism — has been the key. Secrecy is the thing that makes every evil far worse. And it is especially pernicious when practiced by the mighty. But the real irony is inside the sci fi community. The trend toward feudal-romantic fantasy may seem harmless. But dreaming wistfully about kings and lords and secretive, domineering wizards is simply betrayal. Pure and simple. Those bastards were the enemy for 6,000 years. Some kings and wizards were less bad than others. But they were all “dark lords.” We are the heirs of the greatest heroes who ever lived. Pericles, Franklin, Faraday, Lincoln, Einstein. Any one of whom was worth every elf and dragon and fairy ever imagined. David Brin ☀

Supply Side holds that you best stimulate economic activity by Increasing the net wealth possessed by society’s top echelons — people and groups who have no urgent material needs. Instead of spending it on direct “demand” purchases, these wealth-owners will invest any marginal wealth-gain (say from tax cuts) on things that increase “supply” — factories, new businesses, innovative goods and services. Thus the name Supply-Side. Interestingly, the most famous proponent of this approach was Karl Marx, who maintained that the owner-capitalist class propels industrial development by re-investing profits in plants and equipment, thus building up society’s capital stock and the means of production. SSE is, in that respect, an entirely Marxist theory. David Brin ☀

It was the great historian, Arnold Toynbee, who I believe got it right. After studying dozens of past cycles, he declared that civilizations thrive when they invest faith and hope in their creative minorities. When they see the future as a destination and willingly adapt new ways to reach it. Toynbee — after surveying many tales of rise and fall — concluded that cultures start to decline when those creative minorities become distrusted, or are starved of capital, or left out in the cold. Or when they are shunned by those in power. I mention this, because the clear and distinct pattern the we see in the latest phase of the American Civil War… similar to what occcured in earlier phases… has been an underlying theme of populist hatred for society’s brightest and most skilled. David Brin ☀