Theres probably a word for it in German

There’s probably a word for it in German – that surprising circumstance when you realise that someone whose political opinions are diametrically opposed to your own has had a political reaction which is a mirror reflection of your own.  Gegenubereinstellungpolitikspektrumbegreifen = fun with compound nouns!!

It happened to me the other week, when a mate of mine, a former young liberal and general  conservative all star, expressed a sense of disgust with the current political situation in Australia. His opposition to the current government was actually leading him to consider a move away from this country.

This was exactly the reaction I had in 2005, when working for the Democrats, after we had lost the 2004 election and Howard was voted in for another 3 years. I can still remember the sense of disgust, of alienation from my own country, of wanting nothing more than to leave for a while. Which is exactly what I did, heading off to Europe for 2 years before returning just in time to observe the whirlwind of spin, naiveté and silver hair that was Kevin Rudd’s 07 victory.

I remember watching Howard’s 04 victory speech on the ABC. I remember dropping my dacks and mooning him along with all the other pissed staffers in the room, most of whom were dealing with the confirmed reality of political demise. I remember waking up the next morning, hungover, accompanied by the horrid feeling that everything we had worked toward had been thoroughly rejected by the Australian public.

And thinking “well fuck youse all, I’m leaving”.

So now the shoe is on the other foot and the side who I am generally more sympathetic to are in power. In 2007 the sense of alienation went away and I felt like I was again moving in step with the rest of the country. But I can recognise how my colleagues on the other side are feeling, and, believe it or not, can actually sympathise.

Personally, I hope my mate sticks around. Being surrounded by people who always agree with you gets boring after a while.   

I am a radical centrist bitches!!

Aside from the fact that it’s an obvious violation of the Copernican principle, I really honestly feel that we are living in interesting times. And while these interesting times have probably been brewing for a while, its only in the last few months that I’ve really started to feel it, to notice it, on a visceral and front-of-brain way.

Part of it is the fascination with the Occupy movement. I’ve actually caught myself referring to it as “the movement” in a non-ironic way, like some relic of 1969, which is kinda scary – those without a sense of irony tending to be the eye gougingly dull ideologues we love to hate. But the fact remains – I’m fascinated by the tenacity, by the growing sense of mass, by the potential for change that seems to surround this nascent movement.

Part of it is also a growing recognition of the value of disorder. Working in government, where we try to manage risk and develop structures to withstand all manner of market chaos, this has not been something that has come easily. But increasingly, there it is – chaos is essential in the healthy functioning of a real democracy.

Put it another way: Fuck the Marxists who believe in freeing us all by first subjecting us to a preliminary dictatorship….which, of course, never ends. Fuck the devotees of capital who want to wrestle our democracy and civic society into subservience to the market. Basically – fuck the utopians. These are the fundamentalists, the ones without a sense of irony, who want to create a world where everything runs smoothly, everything is shiny and everyone thinks like them.

Boooooooooooooring. People with no sense of irony are unable to perceive the absurdly obvious flaws of their own perfect world views. What they are able to do is perceive anyone who doesn’t share their broken view of the world as utterly irrational and beyond redemption. Easier to purge or bash by cop that way…

Nah, paint me black and white and spank my Hegel, but I love a good dialectic!! It’s only through the opposition of different ideas that the majority tend to benefit. Adoption of extreme modes of political and economic theory all too readily turn into just another form of slavery, and that just makes me grumpy. It’s only through constant conflict, the playing out of opposing memes, powers and interest groups in the public domain that stable and effective modes of governance and economics emerge.

So, I’m starting a new movement – I’m a radical centrist. Like a chubby patrician, I bathe unashamedly in the self-contradictory absurdism of my movement’s name. I resolutely sit on the fence and have a bet each way. I refuse to join, but sit making snide comments at the earnestness of others. I let the extremists slog it out, exhaust each others idiocy, and benefit in the better world that results. Play ‘em off against each other and the rest of us will be better off.

In terms of what’s happening on Wall Street and at all the other places where the citizenry dares to exercise its right to free assembly, I can only hope that they continue to resolutely reject any kind of political coherence or adherence to any ideology. Bless you unruly mob, but as soon as you replace your genuine discontent with formulae, you will lose. Cos by doing that, you would allow your enemies to paint you into a corner, marginalise you, and pretend this shit never happened.

Goddamn hippies and the 99 percenters

Cops bashing kids and hippies is always kinda fun to watch. Nothing like a bit of blood, sweat and CS gas to sell a few tabloids and get the pulse of the plebs a-thumping. And I have to confess, I’ve been sucked in just as much as everyone else. Even to the point of heading down to Martin Place last Friday to stand around and watch the Occupy Sydney protesters….well, stand around and watch the bemused Reserve bank employees watch them right back.

There’s something to be said for the people who spent the last week or so hoboing it up in Martin Place. I certainly shared a lot of their anger from the safety of my keyboard. These protests are important for one primary reason, namely that they highlight the hypocrisy of governments providing socialised safety nets for dysfunctional capitalist enterprises, rather than letting those companies die the true financial death that real capitalism would allow. But that isn’t what I wanted to write about.

So we were down there at Martin Place last Friday, watching the hippies sit and ferment and foment in the sun, and I remember saying to my friend – “this won’t last. They will definitely get shut down.”

And sure enough, last Sunday morning, the inevitable occurred. A massive number of coppers in full riot gear descended upon the malodourous mob and had a good old fashioned shit kicking festival. Hurrah!

A whole range of thoughts and emotions went flooding through me as I watched this. Firstly, a kind of angry frisson, a sense of loathing that helps to confirm just who and what I hate. And then outrage, and then more anger, and then cynicism, and then a gentle subsidence into contentedness and bliss as the next episode of So You Think You Can Dance came on. Ha.

Actually, one of the more interesting reactions I noted was that I also felt a sense of confidence, a weird kind of empowerment. Because by the sheer volume of the reaction, by the ridiculous hyperbole that has spewed from the usual media goons, by the fervent claims of justification from government mouths, one thing is above all clear. There is fear there. You can smell it, and its almost as strong as the BO and hemp that wafted over Martin Place for that brief and tentless week.

Fear of the masses. Because what happens when the bread runs out? They (noting that THEY are such a clear and well defined social grouping, aren’t they?) got off easily here in Australia - the 99% have enough to eat, can generally afford somewhere to live (though increasingly not to own that place) and around 95% have jobs. So the hippies never really got traction.

But what happens if the shit hits the fan? Surely this is why Zucotti park is still full – there are simply too many people there. And many of them aren’t the usual social marginals who you can happily bash in the face and be confident that the corporate media will continue its compliant silence.

So ultimately, we are in a weird place. On the one hand, the occupy movement has the potential to really shake things up. It’s helping to challenge the long felt assumption that large corporations have all the rights but none of the responsibilities of average citizens. It’s helping to highlight the gross and growing inequality which has all the hallmarks of shifting us into some neo-liberal wetdream of economic feudalism.

But for it to really change the way our society functions, things have to get a whole lot worse. I wasn’t down there in Martin Place for long because I have a well paying job that I enjoy.  While I can’t speak for anyone else, I’m pretty confident that there were many keyboard jockeys like myself who probably share the sentiments of the protesters, but simply don’t share the economic impetus to be down there waving a picture of Che and misquoting Lenin. But that can change, and quickly. Watch this space in a few years when the Australian commodities boom tapers off and things start to look a whole lot less peachy.

Anyway, the protesters are gone now and we can all return to enjoying the soothing balm of  MasterChef, My Family stickers, Home and Away (or The Slap, if you prefer you soapies with a dash of intellectual elitism) and decent employment prospects. What happens now really depends on how smart the 1 percent are from this point on. If they are smart, they’ll authorise the expenditure of a small fraction of their wealth to address the most gross examples of inequality, and therefore take the fire out of the beast’s belly.

Or they may continue to ignore it, try to repress it, propagandise against it, and ultimately insure against it by investing in better weapons. However, the problem here is that 99 is a lot more than 1. And no matter how much riot gear you wear, you’ll still get smooshed if 99 people decide to step on you at once.

Give us this day, our daily wedge...

So the war drums are beating again in the Liberal heartland, much to Tony Abbots chagrin – the economic “drys” have restarted the individual workplace agreement / deregulation / productivity debate. Abbot is struggling to avoid handing Labour a campaigning point on which it has traditionally been stronger, and which helped win it the 2007 election.

This may present Labour with a natural wedge to be used on Abbot’s battlers, those middle Australians who are drawn to his position on asylum seekers and climate change. The underlying antipathy of the battlers toward onshore processing and a carbon tax is the perception that spending on such issues reduces the amount of revenue available to be spent on everyday Australians. Basically, the battlers have a canny ability to perceive whether or not macro policies will provide them with any personal financial benefit and, if it ain’t so, they are probably fairly unlikely to support it.

Enter productivity gains. One of the arguments in restoring Australia’s levels of productivity is further deregulation of the workforce, which in the current Australian context refers to the re-introduction of individual workplace agreements. While the inclusion of a “no-disadvantage clause” in these agreements may or may not address potential unfairness, it remains clear that the underlying reason for employers to support AWA type arrangements is that is provides them with the upper hand – an employer, with access to legal, HR and managerial expertise, is always likely to be in a stronger bargaining position than an individual worker. It follows that one way of improving the profitability of a business is to pay your labour force less, so it’s no wonder that some employer groups are supporting to re-institution of AWAs.

The productivity argument is that sectors like manufacturing or heavy industry are increasingly untenable in Australia due to the “inflexibility” of our labour market arrangements and that our productivity in these sectors is declining relative to the rest of the world. Accordingly, one way to increase the productivity of these sectors is to introduce “flexibility” into the workplace, which is really another way of saying “lets provide ourselves with the opportunity to pay workers less, so that we can remain competitive with the Chinese”.

So here’s a perfect labour wedge – the Liberals can be shown to be seeking to reduce the incomes of “battler” Australians, in order to provide the “big end of town” with fatter paychecks. And, to boot, you can chuck in an xenophobic element as well, by suggesting that working Australians can only remain in employment in these sectors if they are paid as much as a Chinese factory worker somewhere in Guangdong. Perfect!!

Cynicism aside, my problem is that productivity gains seem to be inextricably linked to reducing ordinary Australian’s share of our nation’s wealth – that is, the assertion is that our international competitiveness is dependent upon reducing worker’s rights. Obviously, this doesn’t appeal to my lefty ideological programming. Unfortunately, aside from introducing subsidies or tariff structures, is there actually any way of bolstering these sectors and making them competitive against Chinese and Indian manufacturing and heavy industry? Perhaps, rationally, it may actually be preferable to let these industries go and transition to an economy based on resource exploitation and service provision (which is probably how things are heading naturally anyway).

But of course, such a transition is anathema to the Labour heartland, as evidenced by Doug Cameron’s viscerally appealing “I don’t want us to be country who makes nothing”, or Keating’s banana republic quote. And so we’re back to square one.

Anyhoo, wouldn’t it be just too funny if Abbot’s natural tendency to engage in populist politics not only forces him to bend on this workplace flexibility argument but actually pushes him toward a protectionist stance to ensure the continued support of “the battlers”. Wouldn’t that be hilarious: a party supposedly committed to free market economics but dependent on the support of an inherently self-interested heartland, forced to support direct government intervention to prop up ailing sectors. From the sublime to the ridiculous, and back again…

Is anyone else obsessed, compelled, drawn beyond their will to read Miranda Devine?

I know I shouldn’t do it but, like Bill Hicks watching Cops, I’m compelled, obsessed, drawn beyond my will to read Miranda Devine’s articles.

Its sick. I’m sick, I know, I have a problem, but I just….can’t….help myself.

I’ve had this problem for many years now, and I know that it’s affecting my loved ones, my workmates, and any other poor bastard who is forced to interact with me while I’m under the influence of her unrelenting irrationality.

But I just….can’t….help myself. Its disgusting. I keep stashes of her diatribes in my sock drawer, in a secret compartment in my desk, I retire furtively to the bathroom (or any room with a locked door) and I imbibe, like a sick, sad junky, the torrents of bile that she lets fly on a bi-weekly basis.

Why? I’m not sure what it is about her that fascinates me. I think it might have something to do with the fact that she is female. I can’t explain why but something about right wing females hits that attraction repulsion button and…bingo, I’m, hooked.  And I don’t think I’m alone – maybe every man adores a fascist. In the same way that American liberals seem to revile Anne Coulson with a vociferousness far in excess of that reserved for Glen Beck, Sean Hannity, Rush Limbaugh and their ilk, I have the feeling that Miranda seems to have a place high in the hate stakes of most “lefties”.

Maybe it’s a fascination with how someone can think and write with such a refined sense of irrationality and bloody mindedness. As it’s been said that arguing with someone like Alan Jones is like arguing with a child, its often just not possible to meet Miranda head on and debate her arguments. While someone like Janet Albrechtsen tends to make points which are backed by (admittedly sometimes spurious) facts, Miranda has a unique ability to locate half truths, unsubstantiated assertions and the like and somehow weave them into a sickening, yet fascinating diatribe which bears no resemblance, whatsoever, to the real world.

But actually, I think her real appeal is the fact that in her writing she manages to create a weltanschauung which is diametrically opposed to everything I have grown up believing and perceive to be worthwhile. According to Miranda, everything from renewable energy to Radike Samo to asylum seekers to primary school education to Christianity to the Victorian bushfires to Penny Wong’s baby are all somehow related to the insidious work of lefty pinko elites. I think I’m so attracted to this because it provides me with such an easy “other” to define myself against, a ridiculously simplified version of reality which I can nevertheless revile and thus cheaply acquire a sense of political identity.

Which is really just the same old story as far as political debate in Australia goes. The Culture Wars have this horrid ability to turn intelligent, rational analysts into the equivalent of chanting footy fans baying for the blood of the enemy. All considered analysis of any issue is fair game in service of fighting this greater war; you like wind farms? Well, seeing as you and I are on different sides of the fence I, by default, must then hate wind farms. You believe that children should be taught not only about the positive aspects of the white settlement of Australia but also about the way indigenous Australians were actually treated? Well seeing as you and are in different camps, I’ll accuse you of wearing a black armband and buy myself a ticket to see Keith Windschuttle employ every bombastic weapon in his arsenal of hyperbole at a symposium on re-writing Australian history.

On and on it goes, with nary an end in sight. And I guess I’m just another one of them slinging mud back and forth over the ramparts.  

Or maybe I just have a thing for right wing North shore Mums with 4WDS and an unrelenting sense of outrage. How kinky.

Why my wife is a better person than me

My wife is a better sort of person than me, which is probably why I like her.   Last night she came home from attending a meeting of unions, social workers, nurses, priests, not-for profits, charities and all other manner of people who work to help the disadvantaged of Sydney. The Sydney Alliance, according to its website, “brings together diverse community organisations, unions and religious organisations to advance the common good and achieve a fair, just and sustainable city.”

So my wife came home full of enthusiasm for the sense of community that was built at this meeting, and talked about the young Lebanese boy who spoke about a world where he and his mates could get together and hang out, without being hassled by cops. I was prepping some veggies for dinner at the time and so was a little distracted - she quite rightly stopped and said ”what’s that look on your face supposed to mean?”

What indeed? A whole range of preconceptions was running through my head. “Yeah well there’s probably a reason the cops hassle him and his mates, this kind of thing doesn’t just come out of nowhere.” Or “well, honestly, if I saw a bunch of pumped up, yahooing young blokes coming down the street toward me, I’d probably cross to the other side of the road.” (Shit, I sound like an Alan Jones caller).

Anyway, the animated discussion that followed basically boiled down to me taking the “personal responsibility” line, versus she on the “community engagement and positive action” argument. You know how that one goes and I’m not going to repeat it here.  But what struck me most about the discussion was the underlying sense of forgiveness, openness and, let’s be blunt, love that seems to be the motivation of the people who take part in things like the Sydney Alliance. While I ranted about how “I don’t care how disadvantaged you have been, once you pick up a weapon and you hurt me, or anyone I care about, I will try to end you”, my wife insisted that the only true way to make things better, to stop the kinds of things I was talking about, was to engage and build. Basically, to forgive.  She repeated the story told at the Alliance meeting of a lady who had been stabbed in the eye while filling up her car at a petrol station, and who had talked about how she had come to forgive her attackers. I shook my head incredulously – I would never do that. My instinct would be to pursue anyone who did that to me, through whatever means were open to me, and seek to ruin them. Eye for an eye, literally.

The Sydney Alliance consists of all sorts, including members of a whole range of Christian denominations.  But, there were also a massive number of non-Christians as well, including representatives from Muslim faiths, unions, and my wife herself, who has grown up in an atheist/agnostic household.  It struck me that it is people like this who are the real Christians, the ones who are actually working through what Jesus taught. It’s such a juxtaposition from the hatred, exclusion and judgemental attitude of most politicised Christians, or the “religious right” as they have come to be called.

Anyway, all that this made me realise was that I am not a Christian, nor a particularly “progressive” member of society. I should probably hand in my theoretical “lefty” membership card. I have never forgiven those who wronged me, and I’ll never forget. I don’t think I really can let go of my anger enough to actually embrace that particular ideology. But I admire those who can. I just hope that there are more people like my wife than me out there, otherwise we’re all fucked.

Lone gunmen and fatal ideologies

Many of the media headlines regarding the recent shootings in Norway have referred to the shooter, Anders Breivik, as a “mad man”. His criminal defence team have also been quick to describe him as being “insane”,  a definition which is likely to benefit their defence strategy. In Australia, our own experience of mass murder involved a man who has since been declared insane and institutionalised.

The labelling of someone who has perpetrated such a horrific crime as “insane” is understandable. The murder of children is something so far outside the ken of a sane person that we can’t help viewing anyone who could commit such an act as being “wrong”. That a person could consciously and rationally develop a strategy to orchestrate human suffering is alien, aberrant, and is so considered insane.

However, Breivik appears to have exercised an extreme degree of premeditation in carrying out his murders. Planning for the massacre, according to media reports, began many years prior to the actual event. Explosives and weaponry were researched, purchased, processed and stored meticulously. Breivik himself kept diary style records, which demonstrate a mind whose capacity for rational processing was in perfect order.

This is not the working of a delusional or deranged individual. This was planned, calculated and carried out with horrific precision. To define these actions as insane takes away from the evil of what was done. Not only that, it prevents us from understanding the fact that his murders are in fact the ultimate and revoltingly “rational” expression of a specific strain of political ideology.

Breivik’s ideology is one of those which advocates the murder of innocents as part of a greater “struggle”, or achievement of “a greater good”. The Islamic jihadists are another example, advocating murder to achieve a caliphate, while extreme leftist movements throughout history have also promoted slaughter of class enemies as a legitimate aspect of the struggle for a socialist utopia.

In this case, the atrocities carried out in Norway were the final and horrifyingly rational expression of the ideology of extreme right wing nationalism. The “greater good” in this case was a Europe “free from Islam”, while the murders themselves were part of the struggle toward this utopian goal as they would dramatically weaken the demographic base of one of the prime ideological “enemies” of the struggle.

To excuse Breivik’s actions as being the lone act of an “insane” man detaches them from the political process which spawned them. Murder is the final and ultimately rational expression of any ideology which sees its final goal as justifying any means of achievement. Anders Breivik massacred children in a wholly “rational” way, using bullets which fragmented inside bodies to cause maximum damage. He did this of his own free will. The ideology to which he subscribed absolved him of any guilt, just as the jihadists who massacred New Yorkers, or the Maoists who massacred Nepalese villagers, were absolved of their guilt by their respective ideologies.

But maybe, if the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different outcome each time, perhaps a more accurate candidate for the definition of insane are these extremist ideologies themselves. Time and time again anarchist, socialist, nationalist, fascist and religious extremist movements have sought to force their repugnant ideologies on others through murder. Time and time again their actions have been met with revulsion, ultimately resulting in their marginalisation and extermination. We can only hope that is what will happen in this instance, and that the evil of the ideology which prompted Breivik to commit murder is recognised, and properly reviled.

Angry protesters

Watching the news last night, there was footage of Tony Abbot and Julia Gillard facing protestors at various town hall type meetings. In both cases these protesters exercised their democratic right to question the policy position taken by either politician. Both protestors offering critiques were middle aged women, both of them spoke their minds freely and spoke directly to the relevant politicians.

The difference between the two was that while the woman criticising the prime minister was allowed to have her say and then walk away, the woman criticising the leader of the opposition was shouted down by anti-carbon tax protesters. She was then heckled and shoved, and followed down the street and taunted by a middle aged man who was close to twice her size. The footage ended with the man standing over her, smirking, while she cowered, calling for help on her phone, saying “I’m scared”. The police were eventually called to prevent the situation going any further.

To me, this little tableau was representative of the extreme political (or ideological) polarisation that is becoming increasingly the norm in Australia. Arguably, we haven’t seen such political antagonism since 1975. That’s a fairly large call to make, but, as highlighted by Michelle Grattan in today’s SMH, is there anyone who doesn’t think that the Libs would block supply if they had the numbers?  I think that the antagonism over carbon pricing has escalated to such a point that this is now an outcome that could quite realistically occur (if they had the numbers).

I’m personally struggling with this polarisation. I’ve been brought up toward the “left” side of the spectrum and I try to constantly consider how this shapes the way I interpret facts. I know that the people on the “other side” of the fence have been similarly raised according to a particular ideological world-view, and that they honestly believe that they are doing what they think is right. And yet, when I see footage like that described above, I can’t help yelling at the TV screen and reducing all those who have a different opinion to me on this issue to mindless, bullying “baddies”.

Perhaps it would be best if something similar to the dismissal were to occur. A mass cathartic expression of the political stresses that otherwise manifest in these futile little displays of antagonism. Problem is, I don’t know whether my programming would let me sit idly by and let it happen, or whether I’d be out there, taking a swing at all those old bullying fucks who think it’s OK to shove and intimidate a middle aged lady who has a different set of opinions to their own.

Group mind and air craft carriers

Been reading a bit about the concept of distributed decision making/computation recently. The essay in question discussed the idea that currently, construction of a complex machine (an aircraft carrier, say) cannot be carried out by one brain working alone, or even a series of individual brains working in isolation of one another. Rather, its necessary to “hook up” a bunch of brains into a interlinked network - engineers, weapons systems designers, logistics managers, construction workers all working and communicating, both with each other in an overarching project framework.

In developing this final product, these hooked up brains can be considered to be a networked series of processors, with the links between each processor being the verbal exchanges, emails, documents and other kinds of informational exchanges between each worker building the aircraft carrier. A networked series of processors is effectively the basis of mind – an obvious parallel being the interlinkages of neurons in the human brain, or chemical exchanges between individual members of an insect hive mind. The more complex the interlinkage, the greater the potential for the emergence of consciousness – compare the complexity and number of interlinkages in a human brain to the number of interlinkages in an insect colony.

The essay went on to say that the power of a group “mind” is limited by the speed at which the informational exchanges between each constituent of the network (each brain) can take place – ie, the speed at which one individual can explain, and another can absorb, pieces of information.  As such, you wouldn’t expect significant synergies from such a networked processor – while it will produce the expected final product - an aircraft carrier in this instance - its unlikely that any greater product /output than this will be achieved.  That is, its unlikely that anything that could be described as “consciousness” would emerge.

However, increase the speed and complexity of the interlinkages between each brain, and you increase the power of the overall networked processor. Accordingly, you may start to see much more complex interactions emerging – the end result being not just the development of the expected aircraft carrier, but maybe something far greater in complexity and usefulness. This is the concept of emergence – self sustaining complexity emerging from sufficiently complex underlying physical systems. Effectively, what you might see could be the emergence of AI from the interlinkage of individual human brains – a consciousness greater than the sum of the individual minds that make it up.

So – one way to achieve such emergence may be to increase the speed of communicating and processing of the information exchanges between each brain. However, aside from developing new, highly efficient codified languages (faster talking), or directly augmenting the processing capabilities of individual human brains (faster absorption of information) I’m at a loss as to how this could be achieved with current technology.

However, a potential alternative is to consider whether by increasing the scale of the networked minds, rather than the speed of the interlinkages between its constituent parts, we might see a similar increase in processing power.  Potentially, with reasonably fast internet connections, and more importantly, increased connectivity of a large number of individuals, you might see the formation of a sufficient number of complex pathways. The question is, are there enough sufficiently complex and sustained pathways to result in the emergence of something which might be called mind?

This concept is particularly attractive as it might be a way to facilitate effective group action. I’ve suggested earlier that the basic failure of centralised or planned economies is the lack of a smart and sufficiently materially disinterested central planners. Could the emergence of a human group mind/AI resolve this issue?

The Culture and the benefit of mutation in free market economics

I was recently rereading a piece by Ian M Banks, describing the “backstory” of his Culture series of novels. For non-nerds, the Culture novels are set in a high technology, post scarcity civilisation (the Culture), where artificial intelligences live alongside highly evolved humanoids. Some time ago, Banks published a “brief history of the culture”, http://www.vavatch.co.uk/books/banks/cultnote.htm which contains some very interesting commentary on the concept of economics in complex type 2/3 Kardashev civilisations. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kardashev_scale )

One of the most interesting parts of Banks’ piece is his suggestion that the current manifestation of “free markets” is analogous to a biological evolutionary process, in that a wide array of options are explored by a large number of players, as opportunity dictates, with the options that provide the strongest rewards flourishing and becoming dominant, while the weaker options (and players) wither into obsolescence.  Banks suggests that the “randomness” of this process results in gross waste and inefficiency, as well as the potential commodification of sentient beings (as acquisition and wealth are the only goals of such a system, rather than the achievement of a greater good).

The alternative? As civilizational intelligence grows and human ability to plan ahead expands, the potential for a planned or centralised economy becomes an increasingly viable alternative. Banks draws an analogy between the randomised and merely “shining” efficiency of the productive output of a free market economic system, as opposed to the highly focused and “lased” efficiency of an effectively and efficiently planned centralised economy.

Of course, Bank’s assertion is predicated upon the existence of highly intelligent and unbiased central planners – in the case of the sci-fi Culture novels, this takes the form of apparently omnipotent AI. This requirement for a benevolent AI/dictator highlights one of the obvious problems with centrally planned economies (under human rule anyway) – that is, the potential for gross inefficiency if the central planners get it wrong, and the great scope for corruption if the central planners decide to maximise their own welfare at the expense of others.

But there are some other problems here as well. If we return to the comparison of free markets to the biological evolutionary process, then there is also a value to be placed on randomness and mutation itself.  A centrally planned economy, whose output is “lased” into great efficiency, presumably has a single, or at least a significantly focused, set of goals. This focus on specific goals places greater emphasis on projects or opportunities conforming to the achievement of those goals, with resources allocated accordingly; those projects which are less obviously related to the achievement of this goal are less likely to receive allocation of resource.

So what becomes of the randomly generated, but highly beneficial economic “mutations”? A recent example might be something like Facebook, an “option” that appeared out of seemingly nowhere and which filled a hitherto unrecognised “niche” in the social and economic ecosystem (if you’ll allow some clumsy metaphors). Under the current free market system, there is opportunity for such an option to be recognised and allocated resources, and allowed to grow into something integral to our social and economic structures, with in turn greater potential to foster new and useful options.  Under a centrally planned economy,  would there simply be any “left over” resources to be allocated to the development of such a random option? Furthermore, would even the most omnipotently powerful central planner be able to recognise and foster those few random but beneficial mutations, given the sheer number of ideas and possibilities generated in a complex society?

Anyway this all makes sense in my head…not sure if it has made it to paper all that well.

In defence of Ayn Rand (or those bloody kids...)

The old saying goes that those who are conservative when young have no heart, and those who are not conservative when old have no common sense. Or something along those lines. Now exactly what “conservative” means is beyond me (I think it has something to do with thinking it the height of wit to refer to the prime minister as Ju-liar). However I’ve discovered, with some unease, that I am increasingly capable of occasionally considering the writings of Gerard Henderson or, (shock and/or horror), Dennis Shanahan, with something other than involuntary loathing.

Is this normal? Am I a freak? Am I submitting to the aforementined platitude? Fuck, it’s a depressing thing indeed if the entirety of a person’s cultural and political development can be reduced to some condescending axiom.

I dunno. At the risk of engaging in reckless self rationalisation, I think there may be a kernel of something appealing in what the old bastards are getting at with their endless railing against “greenies”, “pinkos” and ”latte sipping, ivory tower dwelling, basket weaving, doo gooding” elites.

Don’t get me wrong – conservatives’ endless desire to castigate by way of puerile labels is unarguably retarded. But what I do like about the basket of political opinions termed conservative is those generally referred to as “libertarian”. That is, self determination, anti-authoritarianism and the unrelenting arrogance of the “get out of my way” viewpoint, encapsulated by none other than that fucked up prophetess of “objectivism”, Ayn Rand.

Rand has provided “progressives” with something of a paradoxical difficulty for yonks. While promoting female characters who are strong, self defined and active agents in a “masculine” world, she also manages to provide those female characters with a range of submissive sexual proclivities not far off the kind of kitcsch goings on in novels with titles like “Spanking Stories” or “Ms M’s school for naughty girls”. But more to the point, while her staunch promotion of the invisible hand and lassaiz faire markets is anathema to most progressives, her almost anarchistic opposition to statism and authoritarianism is likely to appeal to many of those lefties.

And its that anti-statism that also appeals to me. (Somewhat paradoxically, given that I work in government). Maybe it’s a mark of arrogance, but I just don’t consider there to be many people in the world who are really in any position to tell me how to live my life. Elected governments are a convenience in that they provide services which I desire, and for that I am willing to contribute revenue to them by way of taxes. But when they start telling me whether I can go see a movie or not, what books I can read, what God I can or can’t believe in, what man/woman/donkey/tree I can or cant fuck….well it really “gets my goat” (as Mavis, calling from Ipswich, is wont to scream at Alan Jones on the morning shift…)…

And the thing is, the “progressives” are just as capable of this kind of behaviour as the “conservatives”. Most traditional leftist parties are all about increasing government control of the marketplace through the use of regulation, nationalisation or other forms of direct government intervention. While a degree of government involvement in any free market is a good thing, too much of it inevitably leads to gross inefficiencies, not to mention consolidation of far too much power in the hands of bureaucrats (like me). Similarly, excessive increases in personal income tax, or company tax, can be viewed as governments directly constraining the freedom of individuals (or, shareholders, by way of companies) to economic self determination. And this is just economics - we haven’t even started talking about those issues “wrapped up” in the burqua – the right of non-western cultures to self determination vs the universal right of women to be considered equal to men and not cloistered behind layers of heavy black cloth.

Anyway, maybe I’m becoming an anarchist in my old(er) age. That’s more appealing – anarcho syndicalist has a better ring to it than cranky old fucker ranting at “those bloody kids”…

singing while Rome drowns (or, ostriches)

Theres a scene from Eric the Viking where an island sinks beneath the waves, following the spilling of innocent blood by one of Eric's men. The island's inhabitants, refusing to acknowledge the sinking of their home, sit atop a hill singing joyfully until the last voice is reduced to drowned gurgle. I cant help relating those singing islanders to anthropogenic climate change skeptics, singing joyfully away while the water gets higher every year.

I guess another hack allegory would be that of the ostrich with its head in the sand - in any case, the point of the image is the willful denial of the nasty shit going on around you, simply because you dont want to have to confront said nasty shit.

The extent to which this is actually occuring at the moment is arguable, because its not yet obvious enough to a majority of people that there is actually any nasty shit happening. While cyclones Yasi et al, or the QLD floods had an obvious impact, I think that many people are having trouble making a link between these things and anthropogenic climate change. Or, maybe they are subconsciously, but dont like the implications when anyone points it out - witness the hysterical outrage when Bob Brown suggested a link between use of fossil fuels and extreme weather events.

The question is, how long will people be able to keep up the facade? What level of extreme event does it take for a majority to sit up and make a clear decision that some action must be taken? My thinking is that this species is still sufficiently unevolved that we are only capable of responding to immediate and obvious threats - my guess is that its going to take something like a sudden increase in sea levels, or explosive methane hydrate outgassings in Canada/Northern Eurasia, before we gain a sufficient quroum or consensus, to warrant action.

By which time, of course, it may be too late anyway.

The other possibility, which I find far more frightening, is that our potential for self deception is so great that the "climate skeptics" will be able to continue their denial ad infinitum. Sea levels rising explosively? Must be due to the patterns of sun spots. Greenland iceshelf collapsing? Too many overweight polar bears pushing the ice ever downwards...

Of course another potential is that there may be no sudden event, no change which is obvious enough for the Daily Telegraph to pick up on. That may be even more catastrophic. Much like the frog in the slowly boiling pan of water, we might never get the chance to figure out the shit that we are in, until its closed over our heads. So to speak.