An Alternative Visual Model for a CAS

Complex Adaptive Systems are complicated to model and to understand. 

The application of a model like this to a particular entity like a social system or an ecosystem or an economy can be confusing, but typically you'll find common ways to do it with in any particular arena.

The nice thing about this model is it's basically a dissection of the overarching process. It's just that we don't normally need to see the insides of all this to be able to use it.

One of the downsides of the above is that it underplays the impact of environment, which serves a primary, not secondary role in shaping CAS behavior.

Furthermore, the above model doesn't say anything about the roles of the individual agents, even though they can be broadly categorized into at least two discrete groups.

Another issue with the model above is it's oriented as though the "complex adaptive behavior" is what we're trying to figure out. In most cases, we already know the emergent behavior, and we have some idea of the local relationships. What we're usually looking for then, is either the moving parts that connect one to the other, or often as not, simply plotting a course based on past behavior.

The former is difficult no matter what. The latter is simple, as CAS follow a simple overall dynamic where this is concerned. CAS have inertia due to the positive and negative feedback loops

I propose a very simple alternative model when you don't need the inner workings of the CAS, and you know the emergent behavior with some idea of the local relationships. This alternative can be useful in terms of charting the overarching course of a CAS, and locating it within the downcycle or upcycle phases of its evolution.

Here's the most basic example

In the context of modeling economies, agents would be market transactions (or if you want to try for it - market actors, though that can get dicey) - the predictable ones versus the disruptive ones. When a market tanks, the sell offs of previously profitable stocks is disruptive. As the market tanks there are greater numbers of these sell offs and they encourage more sell offs, taking into account that negative feedback inertia, up until it reaches an equilibrium again. That process is the downcycle phase. The high water mark rises, tapers, then crashes usually slowly rising in response to a market tanking and finally recovering.

In the context of modeling societies, agents would be individual social behaviors (or if you want to try it, social actors) - the predictable ones versus the disruptive ones. A crime is disruptive. Response to a crime is disruptive. As crime increases, and response to it increases, the high water mark raises until it finally finds its equilibrium, often again with a finally drop as said crime is now once again "under control" - until conditions create the rise again and crime reasserts itself.

This is very simplistic, but I'd argue it's very useful as CAS go because it makes understanding the motion of them much easier.

I've never really tried to flesh this out before, I just keep this stuff filed away in my head. Any attempt to articulate it is a work in progress.

The Phone Call Transcript: Impeachable Abuse of Power or Not?

Many people are familiar with the unauthenticated transcript of the president's phone call with the Ukrainian president. Democrats generally see impeachable abuse of power in the call, and republicans generally see either no quid pro quo offer at all, or an offer that does not amount to any impeachable offense.

Here is the unauthenticated transcript, with key passages underlined:


UNCLASSIFIED
Declassified by order of the President
September 24, 2019

MEMORANDUM OF TELEPHONE CONVERSATION
SUBJECT: Telephone Conversation with President Zelenskyy of Ukraine
Participants: President Zelenskyy of Ukraine
Notetakers: The White House Situation Room
Date, Time July 25, 2019, 9:03-9:33 am EDT
and Place: Residence

The President: Congratulations on a great victory. We all watched from the United States and you did a terrific job. The way you came from behind, somebody who wasn't given much of a chance, and you ended up winning easily. It's a fantastic achievement. Congratulations.

President Zelenskyy: You are absolutely right Mr. President. We did win big and we worked hard for this. We worked a lot but I would like to confess to you that I had an opportunity to learn from you. We used quite a few of your skills and knowledge and were able to use it as an example for our elections and yes it is true that these were unique elections. We were in a unique situation that we were able to achieve a unique success. I'm able to tell you the following; the first time you called me to congratulate me when I won my presidential election, and the second time you are now calling me when my party won the parliamentary election. I think I should run more often so you can call me more often and we can talk over the phone more often.

The President: (laughter) That's a very good idea. I think your country is very happy about that. President Zelenskyy: Well yes, to tell you the truth, we are trying to work hard because we wanted to drain the swamp here in our country. We brought in many many new people. Not the old politicians, not the typical politicians, because we want to have a new format and a new type of government. You are a great teacher for us and in that.

The President: Well it is very nice of you to say that. I will say that we do a lot for Ukraine. We spend a lot of effort and a lot of time. Much more than the European countries are doing and they should be helping you more than they are. Germany does almost nothing for you. All they do is talk and I think it's something that you should really ask them about. When I was speaking to Angela Merkel she talks Ukraine, but she ·doesn't do anything. A lot of the European countries are the same way so I think it's something you want to look at but the United States has been very very good to Ukraine. I wouldn't say that it's reciprocal necessarily because things are happening that are not good but the United States has been very very good to Ukraine.

President Zelenskyy: Yes you are absolutely right. Not only 100%, but actually 1000% and I can tell you the following; I did talk to Angela Merkel and I did meet with her I also met and talked with Macron and I told them that they are not doing quite as much as they need to be doing on the issues with the sanctions. They are not enforcing the sanctions. They are not working as much as they should work for Ukraine. It turns out that even though logically, the European Union should be our biggest partner but technically the United States is a much bigger partner than the European Union and I'm very grateful to you for that because the United States is doing quite a lot for Ukraine. Much more than the European Union especially when we are talking about sanctions against the Russian Federation. I would also like to thank you for your great support in the area of defense. We are ready to continue to cooperate for the next steps specifically we are almost. ready to buy more Javelins from the United States for defense purposes.

The President: I would like you to do us a favor though because our country has been through a lot and Ukraine knows a lot about it. I would like you to find out what happened with this whole situation with Ukraine, they say Crowdstrike... I guess you have one of your wealthy people... The server, they say Ukraine has it. There are a lot of things that went on, the whole situation. I think you're surrounding yourself with some of the same people. I would like to have the Attorney General call you or your people and I would like you to get to the bottom of it. As you saw yesterday, that whole nonsense ended with a very poor performance by a man named Robert Mueller, an incompetent performance, but they say a lot of it started with Ukraine. Whatever you can do, it's very important that you do it if that's possible.

President Zelenskyy: Yes it is very important for me and everything that you just mentioned earlier. For me as a President, it is very important and we are open for any future cooperation. We are ready to open a new page on cooperation in relations between the United States and Ukraine. For that purpose, I just recalled our ambassador from United States and he will be replaced by a very competent and very experienced ambassador who will work hard on making sure that our two nations are getting closer. I would also like and hope to see him having your trust and your confidence and have personal relations with you so we can cooperate even more so. I will personally tell you that one of my assistants spoke with Mr. Giuliani just recently and we are hoping very much that Mr. Giuliani will be able to travel to Ukraine and we will meet once he comes to Ukraine. I just wanted to assure you once again that you have nobody but friends around us. I will make sure that I surround myself with the best and most experienced people. I also wanted to tell you that we are friends. We are great friends and you Mr. President have friends in our country so we can continue our strategic partnership. I also plan to surround myself with great people and in addition to that investigation, I guarantee as the President of Ukraine that all the investigations will be done openly and candidly.. That I can assure you.

The President: Good because I heard you had a prosecutor who was very good and he was shut down and that's really unfair. A lot of people are talking about that, the way they shut your very good prosecutor down and you had some very bad people involved. Mr. Giuliani is a highly respected man. He was the mayor of New York City, a great mayor, and I would like him to call you. I will ask him to call you along with the Attorney General. Rudy very much knows what's happening and he is a very capable guy. If you could speak to him that would be great. The former ambassador from the United States, the woman, was bad news and the people she was dealing with in the Ukraine were bad news so I just want to let you know that. The other thing, There's a lot of talk about Biden's son, that Biden stopped the prosecution and a lot of people want to find out about that so whatever you can do with the Attorney General would be great. Biden went around bragging that he stopped the prosecution so if you can look into it... It sounds horrible to me.

President Zelenskyy: I wanted to tell you about the prosecutor. First of all, I understand and I'm knowledgeable about the situation. Since we have won the absolute majority in our Parliament, the next prosecutor general will be 100% my person, my candidate, who will be approved, by the parliament and will start as a new prosecutor in September. He or she will look into the situation, specifically to the company that you mentioned in this issue. The issue of the investigation of the case is actually the issue of making sure to restore the honesty so we will take care of that and will work on the investigation of the case. On top of that, I would kindly ask you if you have any additional information that you can provide to us, it would be very helpful for the investigation to make sure that we administer justice in our country with regard to the Ambassador to the United States from Ukraine as far as I recall her name was Ivanovich. It was great that you were the first one who told me that she was a bad ambassador because I agree with you 100%. Her attitude towards me was far from the best as she admired the previous President and she was on his side. She would not accept me as a new President well enough.

The President: Well, she's going to go through some things. I will have Mr. Giuliani give you a call and I am also going to have Attorney General Barr call and we will get to the bottom of it. I'm sure you will figure it out. I heard the prosecutor was treated very badly and he was a very fair prosecutor so good luck with everything. Your economy is going to get better and better I predict. You have a lot of assets. It's a great country. I have many Ukrainian friends, their incredible people.

President Zelenskyy: I would like to tell you that I also have quite a few Ukrainian friends that live in the United States. Actually last time I traveled to the United States, I stayed in New York near Central Park and I stayed at the Trump Tower. I will talk to them and I hope to see them again in the future. I also wanted to thank you for your invitation to visit the United States, specifically Washington DC. On the other hand, I also want to ensure you that we will be very serious about the case and will work on the investigation. As to the economy, there is much potential for our two countries and one of the issues that is very important for Ukraine is energy independence. I believe we can be very successful and cooperating on energy independence with United States. We are already working on cooperation. We are buying American oil but I am very hopeful for a future meeting. We will have more time and more opportunities to discuss these opportunities and get to know each other better. I would like to thank you very much for your support.

The President: Good. Well, thank you very much and I appreciate that. I will tell Rudy and Attorney General Barr to call. Thank you. Whenever you would like to come to the White House, feel free to call. Give us a date and we'll work that out. I look forward to seeing you.

President Zelenskyy: Thank you very much. I would be very happy to come and would be happy to meet with you personally and get to know you better. I am looking forward to our meeting and I also would like to invite you to visit Ukraine and come to the city of Kyiv which is a beautiful city. We have a beautiful country which would welcome you. On the other hand, I believe that on September 1 we will be in Poland and we can meet in Poland hopefully. After that, it might be a very good idea for you to travel to Ukraine. We can either take my plane and go to Ukraine or we can take your plane, which is probably much better than mine.

The President: Okay, we can work that out. I look forward to seeing you in Washington and maybe in Poland because I think we are going to be there at that time.

President Zelenskyy: Thank you very much Mr. President.

The President: Congratulations on a fantastic job you've done. The whole world was watching. I'm not sure it was so much of an upset but congratulations.

President Zelenskyy: Thank you Mr. President bye-bye.

- - End of conversation - -

If it were president Clinton 

If it was president Hillary Clinton instead of the current US president speaking to a foreign president about a political rival of hers, would republicans see anything wrong in that phone call? Would republicans be fine with a president Clinton having tried to hide the phone call from the public? Does it matter that the president is lying to the public about fact issues related to Biden?[1] Does it matter that a whistleblower saw the call as a serious abuse of power?

When the president said “I would like you to do us a favor though because our country has been through a lot and Ukraine knows a lot about it,” does what the US has ‘been through’ refer to anything other than investigations of Trump’s own political problems? Would it be inaccurate to translate that sentence as: “I would like you to do me a favor though because I have been through a lot, and investigations into my presidency are getting closer to critically damaging me, and opinion polls show Joe Biden beating me, and you know exactly what I am talking about.”?

More broadly, does impeachable abuse of power need to be blunt, such as this: “Mr. President, I will release US military aid to your country only if you investigate and find the evidence that the Russians did not hack and attack Clinton’s campaign and only if you find the evidence that Joe Biden acted illegally and corruptly in shutting down a fine corruption investigation by a fine investigator. If you promise me those two things, I will promise you I will release the military aid as a quid pro quo to help my re-election campaign in 2020.”

Is that what it takes to abuse power? No, it isn't. For republicans, that kind of language by a republican president might rise to the level of something of some concern, maybe even to the level of impeachable abuse of power for some. However, it is as certain as most things in politics can get, that if it was president Clinton making those statements and trying to hide the phone call from everyone, 100% of republicans in congress and probably 98% of rank and file republicans would be screaming, not asking, for her immediate impeachment for treason, not just abuse of power.

Is this a matter of partisan hypocrisy by spineless republicans defending a corrupt republican president? Or, are democrats seeing things that are not there?

Footnote:
1. Slate reports on one of Trump’s lies concerning Biden and efforts to disrupt a Ukraine investigation into (non-existent) evidence of misconduct by Biden or his son: “1. The Lutsenko retractions. Trump claims that he pressed Ukraine for the investigations because he sincerely believed—and believes today—that Ukraine had information implicating Biden and other U.S. Democrats in conspiracies. But Trump escalated these allegations even as Yuri Lutsenko, the Ukrainian prosecutor on whose statements the president relied, was admitting that they were false. In April, Lutsenko, who is seen as corrupt by many Ukrainians, retracted his claim that the Obama administration had ordered him not to investigate a list of possible suspects. Despite this, a week later, Trump hyped Lutsenko’s work as “big stuff” that could expose a Democratic plot. In May, Lutsenko retracted additional allegations: that he had evidence of misconduct by Biden or his son and that the family was under investigation. Again, a few days later, Trump repeated the allegations. He wanted dirt on Biden, regardless of whether it was true.”

The Intractable Reality of Racism

The NPR program This American Life is broadcasting a story about racism in the Amsterdam fire department. The overall story seems painfully familiar to me, but just in a different place in present time. The broadcast begins with firefighters urinating in the helmets of other firefighters. It spirals down from there.

The point is simple: Some racists do not believe they are racist and allegations of racism against them are nonsense. The facts contradict that, but attitudes among many people in Western societies is changing for the worse. Western culture and civility are in retrograde. Western political and educational systems are failing to combat the propaganda of hate and bigotry. Liberal democracy and tolerance are failing, while hate, bigotry and authoritarianism is rising.

The broadcast will be available today at 8 pm Eastern time: https://www.thisamericanlife.org/684/burn-it-down

Transcript: https://www.thisamericanlife.org/684/transcript

WHAT DO YOU SEE IN THIS PHOTO

Five Things You Notice When You Quit the News

DATED BUT STILL RELEVANT!!
https://www.raptitude.com/2016/12/five-things-you-notice-when-you-quit-the-news/

I grew up believing that following the news makes you a better citizen. Eight years after having quit, that idea now seems ridiculous—that consuming a particularly unimaginative information product on a daily basis somehow makes you thoughtful and informed in a way that benefits society.

But I still encounter people who balk at the possibility of a smart, engaged adult quitting the daily news.

To be clear, I’m mostly talking about following TV and internet newscasts here. This post isn’t an indictment of journalism as a whole. There’s a big difference between watching a half hour of CNN’s refugee crisis coverage (not that they cover it anymore) versus spending that time reading a 5,000-word article on the same topic.

If you quit, even for just a month or so, the news-watching habit might start to look quite ugly and unnecessary to you, not unlike how a smoker only notices how bad tobacco makes things smell once he stops lighting up.

A few things you might notice, if you take a break: 

1) You feel better

A common symptom of quitting the news is an improvement in mood. News junkies will say it’s because you’ve stuck your head in the sand.

But that assumes the news is the equivalent of having your head out in the fresh, clear air. They don’t realize that what you can glean about the world from the news isn’t even close to a representative sample of what is happening in the world.

The news isn’t interested in creating an accurate sample. They select for what’s 1) unusual, 2) awful, and 3) probably going to be popular. So the idea that you can get a meaningful sense of the “state of the world” by watching the news is absurd.

Their selections exploit our negativity bias. We’ve evolved to pay more attention to what’s scary and infuriating, but that doesn’t mean every instance of fear or anger is useful. Once you’ve quit watching, it becomes obvious that it is a primary aim of news reports—not an incidental side-effect—to agitate and dismay the viewer.

What appears on the news is not “The conscientious person’s portfolio of concerns”. What appears is whatever sells, and what sells is fear, and contempt for other groups of people.

Curate your own portfolio. You can get better information about the world from deeper sources, who took more than a half-day to put it together.

2) You were never actually accomplishing anything by watching the news

If you ask someone what they accomplish by watching the news, you’ll hear vague notions like, “It’s our civic duty to stay informed!” or “I need to know what’s going on in the world,” or “We can’t just ignore these issues,” none of which answer the question.

“Being informed” sounds like an accomplishment, but it implies that any information will do. You can become informed by reading a bus schedule.

A month after you’ve quit the news, it’s hard to name anything useful that’s been lost. It becomes clear that those years of news-watching amounted to virtually nothing in terms of improvement to your quality of life, lasting knowledge, or your ability to help others. And that’s to say nothing of the opportunity cost. Imagine if you spent that time learning a language, or reading books and essays about some of the issues they mention on the news.

You’ll find that your abstinence did not result in any worse cabinet appointments than were already being made, and that disaster relief efforts carried on without your involvement, just as they always do. As it turns out, your hobby of monitoring the “state of the world” did not actually affect the world.

We have inherited from somewhere—maybe from the era when there was only an hour of news available a day—the belief that having a superficial awareness of the day’s most popular issues is somehow helpful to those most affected by them.

3) Most current-events-related conversations are just people talking out of their asses

“Because it helps you participate in everyday conversations!” is a weak but at least meaningful answer to the “What is accomplished” question. But when you quit playing the current events game, and observe others talking about them, you might notice that almost nobody really knows what they’re talking about.

There is an extraordinary gulf between having a functional understanding of an issue, and the cursory glance you get from the news. If you ever come across a water-cooler conversation on a topic you happen to know a lot about, you see right through the emperor’s clothes. It’s kind of hilarious how willing people are to speak boldly on issues they’ve known about for all of three hours.

It feels good to make cutting remarks and take hard stands, even when we’re wrong, and the news gives us perfect fodder for that. The less you know about an issue, the easier it is to make bold proclamations about it, because at newscast-distance it still looks black and white enough that you can feel certain about what needs to happen next.

Maybe the last thing the world needs is another debate on Issue X between two people who learned about it from a newscast—at least if we’re trying to improve relationships between people from different groups.

4) There are much better ways to “be informed”

We all want to live in a well-informed society. The news does inform people, but I don’t think it informs people particularly well.

There are loads of sources of “information”. The back of your shampoo bottle contains information. Today there’s much more of it out there than we can ever absorb, so we have to choose what deserves our time. The news provides information in infinite volume but very limited depth, and it’s clearly meant to agitate us more than educate us.

Every minute spent watching news is a minute you are unavailable for learning about the world in other ways. Americans probably watch a hundred million hours of news coverage every day. That’s a lot of unread books, for one thing.

Read three books on a topic and you know more about it than 99% of the world. Watch news all day for years and you have a distant, water-cooler-level awareness of thousands of stories, at least for the few weeks each is popular.

If we only care about the breadth of information, and not the depth, there’s not much distinction between “staying informed” and staying misinformed.

5) “Being concerned” makes us feel like we’re doing something when we’re not

News is all about injustice and catastrophe, and naturally we feel uncomfortable ignoring stories in which people are being hurt. As superficial as TV newscasts can be, the issues reported in them are (usually) real. Much more real than they can ever seem through a television. People are suffering and dying, all the time, and to ignore a depiction of any of that suffering, even a cynical and manipulative depiction, makes us feel guilty.

The least we can do is not ignore it, we think. So we watch it on TV, with wet eyes and lumps in our throats. But staying at this level of “concerned” isn’t really helping anyone, except maybe to alleviate our own guilt a bit.

And I wonder if there’s a kind of “substitution effect” at work here. The sense of “at least I care” may actually prevent us from doing something concrete to help, because by watching sympathetically we don’t quite have to confront the reality that we’re doing absolutely nothing about it.

Watching disasters unfold, even while we do nothing, at least feels a little more compassionate than switching off. The truth is that the vast majority of us will provide absolutely no help to the victims of almost all of the atrocities that happen in this world, televised or not. And that’s hard to accept. But if we can at least show concern, even to ourselves, we don’t quite have accept that. We can remain uninvolved without feeling uninvolved.

This may be the biggest reason we fear turning off the news. And it might be the best reason to do it.

Have you quit the news? What did you notice?

RETRACTED IN PART: Does the President Share Any Responsibility for Bad Behavior?

I retract the discussion below as marked. It is fake news. The girl who accused others of bullying her made her accusations up. The WaPo grossly erred by prematurely reporting this story. A follow-on story describing the real story is here: https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/education/virginia-sixth-grader-now-says-she-falsely-accused-classmates-of-cutting-her-hair/2019/09/30/ad0cbd92-e390-11e9-a331-2df12d56a80b_story.html

The original WaPo article is now marked: (UPDATE: Virginia sixth-grader now says she falsely accused classmates of cutting her hair)

The damage from the mistake will be real and long-lasting. Millions of people will use this gross error by the WaPo to attack the press and its credibility. They will also use it to downplay evidence of bigotry, arguing the professional press is just propaganda, democratic talking points and the enemy of the people. In my opinion, such extreme beliefs are clearly false and highly socially damaging. Unfortunately, given the raw tribalism, hate and distrust that dominate politics, those minds cannot be changed any time soon, maybe ever.

I do not retract the portion of this discussion that focuses the broader idea on the influence of a president on society and social behavior. This story does not affect the underlying facts or logic.

RETRACTED

The Washington Post reports that white school children attacked a black 12 year old sixth-grade student:

“Fairfax County police are investigating an alleged attack on a sixth-grade girl by three boys Monday at the private Christian school they attend in Springfield, Va.
The 12-year-old girl, who is African American, told police that three white sixth-grade classmates held her down, covered her mouth, called her insulting names and used scissors to cut several of her dreadlocks from her head during recess in the playground at Immanuel Christian School.

‘I was about to go down the slide, and the three boys came up and surrounded me,’ the girl said in an interview Thursday afternoon. ‘They were saying my hair was nappy and I was ugly and I shouldn’t have been born.’”

.... She also said the boys had been bullying her at school and taking her lunch for weeks. According to Allen [the girl’s aunt], her niece was afraid to tell teachers about the incident because she feared retaliation from the boys and also didn’t want to get anyone in trouble.

“I felt hurt and angry, but I also felt compassion for them because something must have happened to them and that’s why they bully,” the girl said.

WaPo also commented that Vice President Pence’s wife, Karen Pence, teaches art part-time at the school in grades 1-5. The school is investigating the incidents, claiming it has a “zero tolerance policy” for bullying and abuse.

NOT RETRACTED

Any presidential responsibility?

Some research indicated that school bullying increased in areas of Virginia that voted for the president. Fairfax County did not vote for him. Some other research indicated that school bullying increased after the president announced his candidacy for president.

Is it rational and fair to think that the president bears some degree of responsibility for bad behavior in schools and elsewhere in society? His public rhetoric can be harsh, insulting and racially divisive. People pick up on that and some act on it. One man was arrested for planning to murder journalists at the Boston Globe after being inspired by Trump repeatedly attacking the press as the enemy of the people. Can one reasonably think that the president is, say, 50% responsible at least for the increased level of bad behaviors that arguably are tied to him, his rhetoric and his behaviors? If, instead of being divisive and polarizing, the president had turned out to be a unifier and aggressively anti-racist, would the level of bad behavior before taking power have decreased?

Self-Regulation in America

A long-time personal acquaintance has been complaining for decades that self-regulation doesn't work. Instead, it is mostly a cover for companies, congress, special interests and professions such as doctors and lawyers to protect themselves and profits from transparency, accountability and liability. The Washington Post describes an interesting example in an article today of how self-regulation can work.

WaPo describes how Uber protects itself from liability by have an investigating unit of employees look into bad experiences that passengers sometimes have with some Uber drivers. The top priority for company investigators is to protect the company first. Passenger safety is a secondary concern. WaPo writes:

“Uber has a three-strikes system, investigators said, but executives have made exceptions to keep drivers on the road. For instance, a New York-area driver allegedly made three separate sexual advances on riders, said an investigator assigned to the case. After an executive overruled the investigator, the driver was allowed to continue working until a fourth incident, when a rider claimed he raped her.

The agents are forbidden by Uber from routing allegations to police or from advising victims to seek legal counsel or make their own police reports, even when they get confessions of felonies, said Lilli Flores, a former investigator in Phoenix — a guideline corroborated in interviews with investigators, alleged victims and plaintiffs’ attorneys.”

The top priority is to protect Uber from liability. Even if Uber kicks a driver out because felonies were committed, the company does not report driver’s crimes to local police, other ride-share companies or background check firms. In other words, an Uber driver who commits felonies against customers can just go to work for Lyft and continue to commit felonies.

Uber does this for obvious reasons -- liability avoidance and profit maximization. Uber insists its drivers are not employees but are independent contractors. Therefore the company isn’t liable for illegal actions by bad drivers. Uber isn't alone in using independent contractors as a liability shield tactic. As discussed here before, Amazon claims that its drivers are independent contractors to avoid liability for driving accidents.

California recently passed a law that consider drivers for companies including Uber and Lyft to be employees, not independent contractors, thus opening the companies up to liability for employee bad acts, taxes, employee benefits and fuel and vehicle insurance costs. Not surprisingly, gig economy companies that had rejected employees over independent contractors are fighting the California law tooth and claw.

In essence, what companies that reject employees in favor of independent contractors does is privatize profit, while socializing cost as much as possible. These companies assert that they are doing their best for society. For example, Uber denies that the top priority of its own investigations unit is to protect the company first. Instead, Uber claims its top priority is to protect customers. However, the rationale is nonsense because it is irrational. WaPo writes:

“At the end of the day, we’re not the judge and jury to determine whether a crime has occurred,” said Tracey Breeden, Uber’s global head of women’s safety. “We’re here to gather information, make a business decision. We’re not law enforcement.”

Is that rationale convincing? It does not explain how a simple referral of criminal actions to police to a company by its customers amounts to being a judge, jury, law enforcement or anything of the sort. Reporting crime amounts to a responsible, moral corporate citizen reporting to police, nothing more.

On the other hand, irresponsible, immoral corporate citizens help hide criminal acts to protect their profit and shift corporate liability to society. Arguably, one consider self-regulation as trickle up for profit and trickle down for liability.

Is that a reasonable, fair analysis of how the profit and liability game is played under self-regulation rules and morals?

Right-wing media launch unhinged attacks on Greta Thunberg

Right-wing media figures -- many of whom deny the evidence of human-caused climate change -- have been making deranged attacks on Swedish teenage climate activist Greta Thunberg in recent weeks and after she addressed the United Nations.

On Monday, Daily Wire podcaster Michael Knowles attacked Thunberg on the Fox News program The Story with Martha MacCallum as a “mentally ill Swedish child who is being exploited by her parents.” The segment was widely covered by news outlets after the other guest, Christopher Hahn, immediately shamed Knowles for his “despicable” comment. Although the Fox show’s anchor failed to object to Knowles’ attack as it happened, the network later apologized to Thunberg for his “disgraceful” comment. 

Fox also told The Hollywood Reporter that it likely won’t book Knowles as a guest on its shows again, but many other conservatives have made unhinged attacks on Thunberg in recent weeks as well. Some conservatives have advocated using violence against her; others have likened her to Nazi leaders and propaganda; and more, like Knowles, have denied her agency by smearing her as “mentally ill” and/or controlled by others. Notably, shortly after Knowles used his Fox News appearance to attack Thunberg, Fox host Laura Ingraham broadcast a segment that compared the climate activist to an evil character from the horror film Children of the Corn. 

Here are some of right-wing media figures’ worst attacks:

https://www.mediamatters.org/dinesh-dsouza/right-wing-media-launch-unhinged-attacks-greta-thunberg

The Rationale for Impeachment

Democrats have decided to open an impeachment inquiry based on revelations about the president allegedly trying to extort Ukraine into investigating Joe Biden. They cite the clarity of the case and point to public confusion over existing evidence of possible impeachable actions by the president. The New York Times describes the rationale:

“The sudden embrace of an impeachment inquiry by previously reluctant House Democrats — most notably Speaker Nancy Pelosi — is attributable to one fundamental fact: They believe the new accusations against Mr. Trump are simple and serious enough to be grasped by a public overwhelmed by the constant din of complex charges and countercharges that has become the norm in today’s Washington.”

Public confusion and political blowback from that confusion was what held the democrats back. The confusion is a direct result of the power of dark free speech[1] to confuse, polarize and mislead whole societies.

The impeachment process

If enough lawmakers in the House vote to say that a president committed “treason, bribery, or other high crimes and misdemeanors” the president will be impeached and possibly removed from office if enough Senators agree.

The term “high crimes and misdemeanors” originated in British common law. It constituted offenses that Parliament cited in removing crown officials. In essence, it is an abuse of power by a high-level public official and not necessarily a violation of any criminal law.

No president has been impeached by the House and convicted by the Senate. Nixon resigned before he could be impeached. The House impeached Andrew Johnson in 1868 and Bill Clinton in 1998, but the Senate acquitted both. They went on to complete their time in office. The House impeaches by  a majority vote, but the Senate must convict by a two-thirds vote supermajority.

Although the constitution states that the Senate must hold a trial after the House impeaches, there is no enforcement mechanism. Mitch mcConnell could simply do nothing and the process would die. On the other hand, since the Senate can set the rules for an impeachment trial, they could rig the process to be minimally damaging to the president by limiting what evidence could be considered. It is also important to understand that, even if the Senate did convene a trial, the Republican majority could vote to simply dismiss the case without considering any of the evidence. Regardless of Senate rules or actions, the possibility of 66 Senators voting to impeach the president is nil. That assessment is based on the intense hate and distrust the two parties have for each other.

The important point is that impeachment is a political process more than a legal one. In legal proceedings, most or all relevant evidence and fairly well-defined laws are important. In impeachment, tribe loyalty can negate the evidence and the ill-defined impeachable offenses, treason, bribery, or other high crimes and misdemeanors, helps make it easy to simply ignore evidence that the tribe in power in the Senate does not want to consider.

Polarization

In the Federalist Papers in 1788, Alexander Hamilton asserted that the inherently political nature of impeachment proceedings would polarize the country. An impeachment prosecution “will seldom fail to agitate the passions of the whole community, and to divide it into parties more or less friendly or inimical to the accused. In many cases it will connect itself with the pre-existing factions, and will enlist all their animosities, partialities, influence and interest on one side or on the other; and in such cases there will always be the greatest danger that the decision will be regulated more by the comparative strength of parties, than by the real demonstrations of innocence or guilt.”

Thus, despite how polarized Americans are now, it is possible that it could get worse. Given the fact that the Senate will not convict, maximum polarization might be avoided.

Footnote:
1. Dark free speech: Constitutionally protected (1) lies and deceit to distract, misinform, confuse and/or demoralize, (2) unwarranted opacity to hide inconvenient truths, facts and corruption (lies and deceit of omission), and (3) unwarranted emotional manipulation (i) to obscure the truth and blind the mind to lies and deceit, and (ii) to provoke irrational, reason-killing emotions and feelings, including fear, hate, anger, disgust, distrust, intolerance, cynicism, pessimism and all kinds of bigotry including racism. (my label, my definition)

Trump Administration Was 10 Minutes away from striking Iran (as reported by NYT this weekend)

WASHINGTON — By the time President Trump met with congressional leaders on the afternoon of June 20, he had already decided to retaliate against Iran for shooting down an American surveillance drone. But for once, he kept his cards close to the vest, soliciting advice rather than doing all of the talking.

“Why don’t you go after the launch sites?” a Republican lawmaker asked.

“Well,” Mr. Trump replied with a hint, “I think you’ll like the decision.”

But barely three hours later, Mr. Trump had changed his mind. Without consulting his vice president, secretary of state or national security adviser, he reversed himself and, with ships readying missiles and airplanes already in the skies, told the Pentagon to call off the airstrikes with only 10 minutes to go. When Vice President Mike Pence and other officials returned to the White House for what they expected would be a long night of monitoring a military operation, they were stunned to learn the attack was off.

That about-face, so typically impulsive, instinctive and removed from any process, proved a decision point for a president who has often threatened to “totally destroy” enemies but at the same time has promised to extricate the United States from Middle East wars. It revealed a commander in chief more cautious than critics have assumed, yet underscored the limited options in a confrontation he had set in motion....

Strained by the “maximum pressure” sanctions that Mr. Trump has imposed, Iran this summer acted out aggressively, targeting oil tankers in the Gulf of Oman and vowing to reconstitute its nuclear program. The overnight downing of the Global Hawk drone in June seemed to climax a campaign of escalation that would draw in Mr. Trump.

Hours after the drone was destroyed, the president’s team met for breakfast at 7 a.m. in the office of John R. Bolton, then the national security adviser. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and Gen. Joseph F. Dunford Jr., the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, were joined by two acting secretaries of defense, Patrick M. Shanahan, who had just announced his resignation and was days away from departing, and Mark T. Esper, his designated replacement.

At the meeting, several strike options were discussed. The Pentagon’s preferred plan was to attack one of the missile-laden Iranian boats that the United States had been tracking in the Gulf of Oman. American forces would warn the Iranians to evacuate the vessel, videotape them doing so, then sink the boat with a bomb or missile strike.

The end result would be zero casualties, which Mr. Shanahan and General Dunford argued would be a proportional response to the downing of a $130 million drone that had itself resulted in no loss of life.

Mr. Bolton and Mr. Pompeo were concerned that would not be decisive enough and pushed for strikes on Iranian soil. Mr. Bolton argued for what was described as a “comprehensive list” of targets, but only so many could be hit if the operation was to be carried out quickly, so the officials settled on three Iranian missile batteries and radars.

The same advisers reconvened along with more officials at 11 a.m. in the Situation Room to brief the president. The meeting lasted for about an hour as various possibilities were discussed.

Four officials said that striking the three targets would result in about 150 casualties, a number derived from Iranian manning doctrine for these particular facilities, including operators, maintenance personnel and security guards.

How much Mr. Trump was paying attention to that part of the briefing or what he absorbed was not clear in hindsight to some officials. But they said the casualty estimates were included as part of the target package presented to the president.

The national security team emerged from that meeting convinced it had a decision from Mr. Trump to strike, and soon the aircraft carrier Abraham Lincoln and other ships and aircraft were on the move, preparing for an attack around 9 p.m. Washington time, or just before dawn in the region.

Still, there continued to be pushback from Pentagon civilians and General Dunford. They argued that killing as many as 150 Iranians did not equate to the shooting down of a drone and could prompt a counterstrike by Iran that would escalate into a broader confrontation.

Read the entire NYT article here: https://www.nytimes.com/2019/09/21/us/politics/trump-iran-decision.html

What is the probative value of a Trump-released transcript?: Shifting the burden of proof

12:20 PST: Bloomberg cable is reporting that tomorrow the president claims he will release a transcript of his phone call to the Ukraine to dispel any criticisms about Ukrainegate -- a sleaze operation directed to extorting a foreign government into helping him discredit Joe Biden.

In view of our president's proven track record of unprecedented lying, including hiding his conversations with foreign dictators, enemies and governments, one question pops right up: will the transcript our president releases be honest?

It is reasonable to believe that whatever the president releases to the public will be a pack of lies. His supporters will cheer his patriotic honesty and transparency. Skeptics like me will demand to hear the phone call and have it confirmed as unadulterated by honest, unbiased experts, not anti-fact and anti-truth operatives working for our corrupt, treasonous liar president.

The fact checkers have made the breadth and depth of the president's lying abundantly clear. Normally I cite my sources, but the liar's track record is easy to find and clear to everyone with an open mind. It is no longer worth my time to cite the fact checkers, just like it is no longer worth it to cite the evidence that climate science deniers are wrong. Some things are just matters of settled fact.

What??

That is what logically happens when a person dedicated to facts, truths and logic (conscious reason), e.g. me, comes to believe that some things are settled matters of fact as best the human species can settle complex things. The loss of trust can be complete, and in my case it is complete for our corrupt, lying, treasonous president.

The burden of rebuttal proof is on people who disagree. I'm done wasting my time showing closed minds counter evidence here. Closed minds are impervious to facts they don't like. The burden of proof is hereby shifted to closed minds to show their evidence.

For smaller things, I'll still show evidence.

If the closed minds don't like being asked for evidence or refuse to provide it, they can get the hell out of here and don't come back.

Fired for “conduct unbecoming a county employee”

This note of bizarre comes from a New York Times article about a country employee in Georgia being fired for bad conduct. The bad conduct was a male employee joining a gay softball league because doing that, and/or maybe something else constituted “conduct unbecoming a county employee.”

The Supreme Court will take up the case to determine if the Civil Rights Act of 1964 guarantees nationwide protection from workplace discrimination to gay and transgender people. At present, 27  states do not offer any protections. Employers are free to fire all non-heterosexual employees, possibly for no reason other than being non-heterosexual.

Some commentators argue the court will allow the county to fire the employee, while others argue the court will extend civil rights protection to the employee and save his job. The NYT summarizes the two sides legal thinking: “The question for the justices is whether the landmark 1964 law’s prohibition of sex discrimination encompasses discrimination based on sexual orientation or gender identity. Lawyers for the gay and transgender plaintiffs say it does. Lawyers for the defendants and the Trump administration, which has filed briefs supporting the employers, say it does not.”

As usual, the facts are contested. The county claims that the employees’s sexual orientation had nothing to do with his firing. Instead, the county claims he misused county funds.

In a federal appeals court court ruling in a companion case with similar facts, the NYT comments: “Writing for the majority, Chief Judge Robert A. Katzmann concluded that ‘sexual orientation discrimination is motivated, at least in part, by sex and is thus a subset of sex discrimination.’” It is possible that the Supreme Court’s decision will turn on acceptance or rejection of this legal rationale. That depends on how much evidence the county has to show misuse of funds. If the evidence is strong, the court could ignore the alleged sex discrimination and rule that the employee was fired for misconduct. That is also a plausible outcome, but that would not affect the companion case where the issue would still be central to a decision.

Does the Rule of Law Apply to Politicians and Elites?

“The lives of the richest people in the world are so different from those of the rest of us, it's almost literally unimaginable. National borders are nothing to them. They might as well not exist. The laws are nothing to them. They might as well not exist.”
-- Sociologist Brooke Harrington commenting on how many very wealthy people see the rule of law

“Well, when the president does it that means that it is not illegal.”
-- President Richard Nixon commenting on the law and the president

In an interview on the NPR program Hidden Brain, sociologist Brooke Harrington discussed her experience as a financial advisor to extremely wealthy people. Harrington took classes to train herself as a financial advisor. In the interview, she noted that her clients generally viewed both the rule of law and government differently than most people understand it. In general, the financial advisor works to maintain secrecy about the scope and amount of the client’s wealth above all other considerations. They deal with family problems such as cutting family members out of the will and hiding assets from a spouse in advance of a divorce.

Other common tasks are minimizing taxes legally (tax avoidance) and hiding assets to illegally avoid paying taxes (tax evasion). She did not state if or how financial advisors avoid criminal liability for their help in tax evasion. She did not state if she participated in tax evasion. Presumably, some financial advisors show the client how to evade taxes and then turns a blind eye to the client when he (it is usually men) commits the crime.

The rule of law

At 13:20 of the interview, Harrington comments that one of the beliefs that very wealthy people tend to share is that the laws do not apply to them: “National boundaries and laws are all optional. Taxes are optional. All forms of law are essentially optional at that level of wealth.”

Government and society

At 14:05-15:50, she elaborated on attitudes toward paying taxes: “Some of them actually do sound a lot like Donald Trump. When I heard Donald Trump say that not paying taxes made him smart and if he had paid his taxes, they would have been wasted anyway. That was like, ‘Yup, he’s the voice of a lot of very wealthy people around the world.’ .... [Other financial advisors that Harrington spoke to said their clients] are very committed to neoliberal ideology and very committed to the idea that these elite clients are doing the world a favor as wealth creators and their initiatives should be protected against governments and what they regard as theft by taxation by incompetent governments that would just waste any money they collected anyways. They also by the way, regard redistribution of collected tax as immoral because it creates dependency on the part of the poor. .... There is a strong component of ideology here. You see it in the wealth management training program. ..... About a quarter of the people I interviewed really seemed to believe quite unironically in the justice of protecting the wealth of their clients from taxation. They literally view taxation as theft, and they view government as incompetent at best and corrupt at worst. They are deeply suspicious of any sort of welfare state programs because they see it as destroying initiative.”

How the humans deal with the sleazeball

It is somewhat reassuring that only about a quarter of financial advisors feel that way. What do the others feel? At 16:25-18:00, Harrington commented about financial advisors who work for clients who cheat on taxes, wives and employees, i.e., sleazeballs: “Well, some of them don't [sleep well at night]. And I think that is one of the reasons we’re seeing a wave of leaks recently. Some people are so troubled by what they are seeing that they just can’t stomach it any longer and they blow the whistle, often with dire personal consequences. About a quarter of the people I interviewed I would characterize as being conscience-stricken about the larger impacts of their work.” She went on to comment that some advisors try to assuage their moral concerns by gently raising the problem with depriving the state of revenues by tax cheating, Those people risk losing clients who do not want to hear such things. Sleazeballs really do not care about people living in poverty.

Harrington is not the only one saying these things

A previous discussion based on the work of historian Nancy MacLean and her 2017 book, Democracy In Chains: The Deep History Of The Radical Right's Stealth Plan For America, focused on the anti-government ideology that drives the modern republican party and populism. That mindset is in accord with how Harrington describes some of the very wealthy: “In the radical right vision, power would flow from the central federal government to authoritarian, oligarchic state governments that are captured by wealthy, powerful capitalists and like-minded individuals. The goal of that form of government is to weaken and then destroy the ability of average citizens, especially minorities to work together to defend their interests using equal protection and due process as their main tool to exert influence. The ultimate goal is to elevate property rights above all other rights, including the rights of people to tax property or otherwise burden it in any way.”

Another discussion based on journalist Jane Mayer and her 2017 book, Dark Money: The Hidden History of the Billionaires Behind the Rise of the Radical Right, sees the same thing: “Essentially no one on the right will accept Mayer's version of events or the authoritarian goal of the radical right to neuter the federal government, gut regulations, quash civil rights and install an oligarchy of billionaires with proclivities to kleptocracy and brass knuckles laissez-faire capitalism. The radical right sees very little room for government spending on social safety nets. Those things just increase their tax burden and they vehemently reject it. Whatever social good may come from that safety net spending, just like contrary public opinion, is of no concern whatever to the radical right. This is crowd has no compassion for anything except the oligarchs at the top.”

Obviously, not all wealthy people or corporations feel the same way about the rule of law, government and taxes. The question is, what portion do feel that way? The entire GOP has fallen to this radical anti-government ideology. The GOP is redistributing wealth from the bottom to the top, e.g., the 2017 tax cut law, where some wealthy people and corporations believe it belongs. Harrington’s comments about financial advisors suggest that at most, about 25% of them feel conscience-stricken, leaving the remaining 75% to be in full or partial accord with neoliberal anti-government ideology. Those people are helping to cheat governments worldwide out of trillions of tax dollars. And, where governments are corrupt, it is usually or always the same wealthy anti-government people and companies who are fully participating in and fomenting the corruption. That includes fomenting corruption in the US government.

Our Besieged Rule of Law

The New York Times reports that the president's legal team is arguing in legal briefs that all criminal inquiries into a sitting president are unconstitutional. The NYT writes:

“Lawyers for President Trump argued in a lawsuit filed on Thursday that he could not be criminally investigated while in office, as they sought to block a subpoena from state prosecutors in Manhattan demanding eight years of his tax returns. 

Taking a broad position that the lawyers acknowledged had not been tested, the president’s legal team argued in the complaint that the Constitution effectively makes sitting presidents immune from all criminal inquiries until they leave the White House.

The lawsuit filed on Thursday was the latest effort by the president and his legal team to stymie multiple attempts to obtain copies of his tax returns, which Mr. Trump said during the 2016 campaign that he would make public but has since refused to disclose.”

The president is arguing that both criminal charges and investigations against a president are unconstitutional. That makes a sitting president above the law. This is another step toward tyranny and corruption.

The president has declared his admiration for Vladimir Putin, Rodrigo Duterte, Kim Jong Un, Mohamad bin Salman, and Xi Jinping all and and expressed his jealousy at their dictatorial power. All are murderers and brutal dictators who demand respect, obedience, loyalty. They all want their followers and citizens to believe and do anything they are told. The president admires all of these dictators, once commenting:

“He’s [Kim Jong Un] the head of a country and I mean he is the strong head. Don’t let anyone think anything different. He speaks and his people sit up at attention. I want my people to do the same.”

Good Lies vs Bad Lies: A Fuzzy Gray Zone

Readers here may have noticed a recent uptick in content here that focuses on some aspect of morality, mostly as applied to politics. That is inspired by a growing personal belief that politics is significantly driven by moral beliefs and judgments. This discussion focuses on good vs bad lies-deceit in politics.

Good vs Bad Lies

There are times when politicians lie to the public. Essentially all, if not all, do this from time to time. Motivations range from honestly wanting to serve the public interest to honestly wanting to serve self-interest, even if it betrays or harms the public interest. One commentator wrote this in 2016 shortly before the election:

“You just have to sort of figure out how to — getting back to that word, ‘balance’ — how to balance the public and the private efforts that are necessary to be successful, politically, and that’s not just a comment about today,” she said [Hillary Clinton in a 2013 speech]. She added: “Politics is like sausage being made. It is unsavory, and it always has been that way, but we usually end up where we need to be. But if everybody’s watching all of the back-room discussions and the deals, then people get a little nervous, to say the least. So you need both a public and a private position.”

In politics, hypocrisy and doublespeak are tools. They can be used nefariously, illegally or for personal gain, as when President Richard M. Nixon denied Watergate complicity, but they can also be used for legitimate public purposes, such as trying to prevent a civil war, as in Lincoln’s case, or trying to protect American prestige and security, as when President Dwight D. Eisenhower denied that the Soviet Union had shot down a United States spy plane.

During his 2008 campaign, Barack Obama promised to televise negotiations over health care reform, but when the real work had to be done, the negotiators shut the doors. In a study of defense bills in Congress, the political scientist Colleen J. Shogan quotes a former Senate Armed Services Committee staff director as saying: “Why should we do it in the open? It would wreck the seriousness of the purpose. Staff needs to give candid views to senators, and you can’t do that in open session. Governing in the sunshine shouldn’t be applied to everything.”

Is it hypocritical to take one line in private, then adjust or deny it in public? Of course. But maintaining separate public and private faces is something we all do every day. We tell annoying relatives we enjoyed their visits, thank inept waiters for rotten service, and agree with bosses who we know are wrong.

The Japanese, whose political culture is less idealistic than our own, have a vocabulary for socially constructive lying. “Honne” (from “true sound”) is what we really believe. “Tatemae” (from “facade”) is what we aver in public. Using honne when tatemae is called for is considered not bravely honest but rude and antisocial, and rightly so. Unnecessary and excessive directness hurts feelings, foments conflict and complicates coexistence.

If one accepts those comments as basically true, government cannot operate under full transparency. The question is whether things can be more transparent than now, and the answer is yes. Often much of what is hidden is to shield the actors from bad publicity, not to serve the public interest.

Another commentator points out instances where a politician lies to deceive an uninformed public:

Political leaders often conceal their true views when the latter diverge from majority public opinion, or from the beliefs of a key part of their base. Both Barack Obama and Dick Cheney spent years concealing their then-unpopular support for same-sex marriage – only coming out of the closet when the political winds changed. Well-informed observers knew that their true views differed from their public positions long before Obama and Cheney openly admitted it. But they nonetheless kept up the pretense because it did effectively fool some substantial number of less knowledgeable voters.

Widespread voter ignorance also incentivizes another common type of political deception: lying about the nature of your policies in order to overstate benefits and conceal possible downsides. The most impressively successful recent deception of this type was Barack Obama’s promise that, under the Affordable Care Act, “if you like your health care plan, you can keep it.”

In view of the foregoing, it is inevitable that there are times when it makes sense to lie to the public or to be opaque and hide truth. The problem is that there are many times when service to the public interest is not the motivating force. As discussed here yesterday, the politicians and bureaucrats involved in neutering DEA drug enforcement efforts in 2016 to deal with the opioid epidemic clearly served the drug companies and the politicians who received benefits, while clearly harming the public interest and allowing many more people to die from drug overdoses. Everyone involved is doing what they can to hide what they did from the public.

Sometimes the line between a ‘good lie’ and a bad one is hard to know. It can be more of a gray zone than a line. Sometimes there simply isn’t enough information available to the public to make a reasonably informed assessment. In those situations, there is no choice but to trust the morality of public servants and the people they interact with. If one accepts that logic, then one could argue that immoral lying, immoral deceit and unwarranted opacity by public servants is usually more morally reprehensible than when it comes from most private sector actors.

A Bit of Cognitive Science Snuck into a Journalist’s Mind

I look for signs that journalists are looking to cognitive and social science as a way to help them communicate. Occasionally, some of that seems to be happening. In an opinion piece for the Washington Post, columnist Dana Milbank makes an important point about the word “racist” based on cognitive science research. He writes:

President Trump is a horrendous racist. And it’s time for Democrats to stop calling him one. 

Counterintuitive? Yes. But substantial evidence shows that labeling Trump “racist” backfires against Democrats. It energizes his supporters without providing any additional motivation to Democrats, and it drives soft partisans — voters who could be up for grabs in 2020 — into Trump’s arms.

This doesn’t mean letting Trump off the hook for being the racist he obviously is; I’ve been using the term for four years because it objectively describes him. But this means talking about his racism in a different way:

Say that he tears America apart by race and threatens our democracy.

Say that he pits Americans against each other by color and religion to distract from his cruelty.

Say that he enables and encourages white supremacists.

Milbank points to social science research showing that the term ‘racist’ has become politicized. Research during the 2016 campaign found that voters with high levels of racial resentment who read a statement saying that some people oppose Trump “because he supports racism,” became much more supportive of Trump. By contrast, researchers found that the term “white supremacist” didn’t backfire the way “racist” does. Other research that Milbank points to found that Republicans are two to three times more likely to reject the label “racist” for racially charged attitudes than Democrats and most independents. Thus, calling Trump a racist tends to anger some or many whites who are racially resentful. They double down on their support for him. Americans do not agree on what is racist and what isn’t.

The Morality of American Capitalism in Action

The New York Times reports that the the New York attorney general’s office tracked about $1 billion in offshore wire transfers by the Sackler family, owners of Purdue Pharma and the opioid epidemic. As usual for rich people, Swiss bank accounts are part of the story. The money transfers are Sackler family’s attempt to hide assets in advance of lawsuits against them for opioid epidemic. They don't want to pay any more than they have to. From 2008 through 2016, the Sacklers paid themselves over $4 billion, so they have a lot more wire transferring to do to hide it all.

It gets much worse

Meanwhile, the Washington Post is reporting that drug companies got together to sabotage federal drug enforcement efforts in 2016. They formed a group that successfully blunted DEA enforcement efforts at the height of the opioid epidemic. Members of the group included corrupt politicians in congress and Obama administration officials. WaPo writes:

“In 2016, the drug companies convinced members of Congress and Obama administration officials to rein in the DEA and force the agency to treat them as “partners” in efforts to solve the crisis. The crowning achievement of the companies was a piece of legislation known as the “Marino bill,” named after its original sponsor, which curbed the DEA’s ability to immediately suspend the operations of drug companies that failed to follow the law. ..... But the full story has never been told because so few of the people involved will talk about it. The list of people who have declined to be interviewed includes former congressman Tom Marino (R-Pa.), who first proposed the bill; former acting DEA administrator Chuck Rosenberg, whose agency surrendered to the pressure; former attorney general Loretta E. Lynch, whose department did not stand in the way of the legislation; and, finally, then-President Barack Obama, who signed it into law.”

One can reasonably presume that an awful lot of free speech (campaign contributions) went into that patriotic effort to vindicate the valiant revenue streams the speech was defending.

What about a social conscience for businesses?

As discussed recently here, and here, the moral code that many or most US companies operate under is ‘profit first’. That may also be the moral code that most politicians operate under. According to the code, anything that reduces profits, e.g., spending for a social conscience, is immoral. As the modern leader of the moral code once said, CEOs with a social conscience are “highly subversive to the capitalist system.” No one wants to be highly subversive to the capitalist system, right?

Opacity, especially the plausible deniability brand, is a wonderful thing. It helps shield all the bad acts of deceivers, emotional manipulators, tyrants, demagogues, crooks and liars.

And, it is not the case that such a moral code cannot exist under socialism, fascism, tyranny, anarchy, libertarianism, etc. There just seems to be something irresistibly seductive about profit and to hell with everything and everyone else. Maybe it's a tragedy of the commons sort of thing.

In view of how the profit first moral code usually seems to work, one can argue that corollary moral values often include some combination of contempt for inconvenient facts and truths, opacity is good, transparency is bad, and/or, unwarranted emotional manipulation to keep the masses fearful, angry and above all, distracted.

Does this, or some variant of it, also apply to voting democratic?

Or, is this assessment of the profit first moral code inaccurate, too harsh or unfair?

Ideological Asymmetry in Moral Approval of Lying in Politics

Researchers publishing in the journal, Personality and Individual Differences (Volume 143, 1 June 2019, Pages 165-169), report finding a difference in acceptance of lying between individuals that score high on a particular personality trait and those who score low. The research investigated the relationship between ideology and moral disapproval of spreading misinformation by politicians.

The researchers found that people having higher scores on Right-Wing Authoritarianism (RWA) and Social Dominance Orientation (SDO) were positively related to tolerance of politicians lying by commission, paltering (using truthful facts to create a false impression), and lying by omission (hiding facts or truth). The researchers wrote:

“Also, republicans were more tolerant towards politicians lying by commission and paltering than democrats. Experiment 2 (N = 395) replicated these results, and examined partisan bias. Democrats (but not republicans) showed a partisan bias in tolerance of lying by commission, whereas republicans (but not democrats) showed a partisan bias in tolerance of paltering. In both experiments, RWA and SDO mediated the relationships between political party and approval of spreading misinformation. These results suggest that right-wing individuals are more tolerant to the spreading of misinformation by politicians, although it should be noted that overall levels of approval were relatively low.”

What is interesting is the data showing that levels of tolerance toward misinformation are “relatively low.” If one accepts data showing that the president has made over 10,000 false or misleading statements is true, then most of his supporters disapprove of misinformation and lies but still support the president. If that is true, then many, maybe most, of supporters do not believe the president lies and misleads nearly as often as he doe, and/or they are unaware of unbiased assessments of the evidence as usually or always fact-based.

The other interesting observation is that the data suggests that authoritarian mindsets are somewhat more accepting of misinformation from their own side, but presumably not from political opposition. It may be the case that for hard core partisans, pundits and political players, this personality trait could be more pronounced and acceptance of lies is even greater than the subjects in the experiments described here. That would be an interesting experiment, assuming it is possible to do.

As is usual for most new social science research, these results need to be replicated to at least partly confirm their validity.

The Morality of Capitalism

A discussion here a couple of weeks ago focused on a joint statement signed by over 180 CEOs, Statement on the Purpose of a Corporation, of major US companies about what social responsibilities, if any, that companies have toward anything other than making profit for owners. The guiding moral principle, articulated by economist Milton Friedman, had been anything that needlessly reduces profits is immoral. Thus, it would be moral for a company to donate money to a charity if it helped build public goodwill, thereby increasing profit. But, donating and not getting a profit would be immoral.

Friedman published an essay in 1970, The Social Responsibility of Business Is to Increase Its Profits," argued that the best type of CEO was not one with an enlightened social conscience. CEOs with an enlightened social conscience were considered to be “highly subversive to the capitalist system,” at least in Friedman’s opinion.

An essay in the Economist magazine, What companies are for, comments on the joint statement. The essay argues it probably arose in part as a means to begin a defense against rising public sentiment that corporations should have some responsibility to society, the environment, business suppliers and workers. One source of concern is the rise of younger workers who feel that the businesses they work for should have a broader responsibility.

Also, democratic proposals for a broader corporate social conscience include a plan that would require U.S. corporations to turn over part of their board of directors to members chosen by employees and prohibiting corporations from buying back their own stock unless they offer a certain level of pay and benefits for workers. Another proposal is to require federal chartering of companies and revocation of their licenses if they unreasonably abuse the interests of staff, customers or communities. Such proposals would underpin a system where business determines and pursues social goals and not just narrow self-interest. Presumably, most corporations do not want that kind of regulation.

The Economist opposes efforts to impose a broader social conscience because it would risk “entrenching a class of unaccountable ceos who lack legitimacy,” arguing that would be a threat to long-term prosperity. The essay points out that some companies now endorse social causes popular with staff and customers or deploying capital for reasons other than efficiency, citing Microsoft financing $500 million for housing in Seattle. The Economist argues that such a broader social conscience creates two problems: a lack of accountability for the business elites who make decisions and a “lack of dynamism.” The essay asserts that “ordinary people would not have  a choice” in where resources are deployed. The implication is that special interests, politicians and business elites would corrupt the effort in the name of self-interest. To inject more citizen power into social conscience, the Economist proposes

The other problem, lack of dynamism, would arise from an alleged tendency of collective capitalism to not change. As evidence, the essay cited abuse of customers and poor quality products by AT&T and General Motors in the 1960s as being shielded in part by various claims of social benefit, e.g., jobs for life.

Not persuasive or realistic

The Economist’s libertarian arguments are not persuasive. Business elites already are not accountable. For example, no executive was prosecuted for any financial crime after the 2007-2009 financial crisis. American citizens already have no influence over policy, so that situation cannot get any worse. If it is true that collective capitalism turns out to dampen dynamism, then competitors will impose dynamism or the business will go away. The essay admits that businesses with a social conscience will continue to maximize profits. If laws are passed that impose a social conscience, the playing field will be leveled and no one will be allowed to play self-serving games shielded by false assertions of social conscience.

Finally, the essay argues that corporate accountability will be enhanced by broadening ownership so that more Americans own stocks by tinkering with the tax code. The essay admits that stock market power is heavily skewed toward rich people, so changing the tax code to expand the numbers of small investors will make no difference. In essence, the Economist raises concerns over the rise of problems that already exist and proposes solutions that will make little, if any, significant difference.

For the most part, most corporations will continue to have as little social conscience as they can for as long as they can. The major owners, not small shareholders, have power and they will fight to keep social conscience from damaging their investment. The only way to grow social conscience is to impose it by law. Corporations are already building their defenses to fight off social conscience. The the Statement on the Purpose of a Corporation is an early step in the defense against social conscience. The next steps? Most likely, the most obvious ones: bring on the campaign contributions and call out the lobbyists.