Planned obsolescence: A short history

"By the mid-1920s [1], just about every American who needed a car had one. It had been hard enough to convince Americans that this new-fangled invention was a necessary investment, but now automakers had a new problem. How the hell were they going to sell more cars? How were they going to make any money?" 

The program Throughline, which is broadcast by NPR, looks at the historical origins of various aspects of modern society, politics and life (link here). This program is devoted to the origins and modern manifestations of planned obsolescence is instructive. Not surprisingly, planned obsolescence is designed by capitalists to increase profits by decreasing the durability and/or repairability of products that consumers and businesses have to buy more frequently than if those products had been designed to last and be more easily repairable.

Maybe less known, but also no surprise once it is known is the fact that modern planned obsolescence marketing and rhetoric is grounded in modern cutting edge propaganda technology, which is grounded in cutting edge cognitive biology and social behavior science research. 

A couple of points merit mention:

• One of the first known examples of planned obsolescence was hatched by a global organization of businesses called the Phoebus Cartel. In December of 1924, the cartel hatched and initiated a secret plan to increase sales of light bulbs by bringing the average bulb's lifespan from 2,500 hours down to 1,000 hours. It took several years of engineering and testing to finally build light bulbs that reliably burned out at about 1,000 hours, but the plan finally succeeded. Giant businesses such as General Electric participated in this plan to boost profits by selling light bulbs intentionally designed to fail sooner.

• Under the guidance of the brilliant engineer and master marketer Alfred P. Sloan, General Motors (president, chairman and/or CEO from the 1920s through the 1950s), along with designer Harley J. Earl, pioneered the concept of psychological obsolescence, e.g., by inventing annual car and truck model changes. That was do to make last and previous year's vehicles look and feel obsolete or shabby compared to newer year models. One tactic that GM used was to flog a new car sales as hard as the GM sales force could, but then the instant a new car was sold, the sales people would instantly pivot to a ruthless psychological campaign to instill regret in the new car buyer by shifting the consumer's focus from their brand new car. The focus changed from how great this new car is to how great the new and improved model that will come out next year compared to the one you just bought. This sales tactic started even before the buyer had driven a new car off the lot. Psychological obsolescence was worth billions is sales to GM over the decades. From what I can tell, GM marketing worked so well that most Americans actually came to believe the propaganda that what is good for GM is good for America.

• Modern products are obsolescence planned. The Throughline program discusses the iPhone as a prime example. Batteries were built to fail and not be replaceable until enough consumer complaints forced just enough changes to mostly blunt the complaints. The overall iPhone strategy is to force customers to replace their designed-to-fail iPhones as soon as psychologically acceptable to consumers. 

One way to see this more broadly

Stepping back and looking broadly, essentially all American political, religious and business elites are well-grounded in cutting edge propaganda technology, which includes planned obsolescence. It arguably amounts to a propaganda movement. Most of the public is mostly unaware of how pervasive and effective it is, maybe because,  like fish in water, most people can't see it because it is everywhere and therefore nowhere. That is no accident. The elites use propaganda technology ruthlessly and relentlessly on average citizens to get what they want, often or usually by deceit, flawed reasoning, irrational emotional appeals, and irrationally fomented social division and polarization. The latter tactic applies to all three of modern American politics, American Christian religion and American business.

What do the elites want? For the most part, and regardless of what they say to the contrary or how hard or often they say it, the elites in America want and are getting wealth and power concentrated among themselves at the expense of the masses (the mob as they see us, or as Trump has called us, "disgusting people"). In general, two kinds of ideology or mindset drives the wealth and power trickle up in modern America, laissez-faire capitalism and radical fundamentalist Christian theocracy.

That is the real us vs. them fight that is now underway in America, and liberal democracies elsewhere. Planned obsolescence is just one manifestation of the bigger picture. 

When an apologist for hard core capitalism tells you that capitalism works because it is based on selling the best products at the lowest cost to maximize benefit to all people, it is fair and balanced to tell them they are full of crap and either ignorant or lying. Yes, some businesses are exceptions, but most or all of the big ones are not. 

As discussed in footnote 1, early on Ford and GMN operated on different principles. Ford build vehicles to last a long time. GM built them to not last. The economic success of GM's sales and marketing propaganda forced Ford to adopt the same tactics. That is why I assert that that most of all big corporations have the same mindset, which is maximize profit over all other concerns, including social, personal and environmental risk or harm. That is what it means to have profit as the one and only overriding moral value in most of capitalism and most capitalists. Planned obsolescence is just one manifestation of that general rule.

Footnote: 

1. That article, A Primer on Planned Obsolescence – How to Avoid Self-Destructing Goods, includes these comments:

Henry Ford, despite his white supremacist leanings, had an engineer’s integrity—and didn’t see any point in altering the Model T. It worked well, it came in one color (black) and they lasted as long as their owners maintained them.

His competitors at General Motors, however, didn’t have the same scruples. The head of GM, Alfred Sloan Jr., suggested a campaign that his critics would later label “planned obsolescence,” he would introduce new models each year, in new colors, styles, and with more powerful engines. In so doing, he would create demand for new cars, even before his customers had worn out their first one.  

If you’re reading this article on your phone or computer (or even if you’re a psycho and printed it out), you’re familiar to some degree with planned obsolescence. Notice how your devices don’t hold a charge like they used to? Or how your printer cartridges seem to run out of ink before they ought to? That’s planned obsolescence, baby.  

Though we attribute the first modern application of planned obsolescence to Alfred Sloan of GM, the philosophy thereof was developed by another man: Bernard London. London’s 1932 pamphlet, Ending The Depression Through Obsolescence, espoused the theory that creating products with an artificially shortened lifespan could boost the economy and lift the nation out of the Great Depression. He explains,

In a word, people generally, in a frightened and hysterical mood, are using everything that they own longer than was their custom before the depression. In the earlier period of prosperity, the American people did not wait until the last possible bit of use had been extracted from every commodity. They replaced old articles with new for reasons of fashion and up-to-dateness. They gave up old homes and old automobiles long before they were worn out, merely because they were obsolete. All business, transportation, and labor had adjusted themselves to the prevailing habits of the American people. Perhaps, prior to the panic, people were too extravagant; if so, they have now gone to the other extreme and have become retrenchment-mad.

London goes on to suggest a government program whereby old goods that had been deemed “useless” would be bought up by the government and destroyed so that consumers could go out and buy newer versions of the same products and stimulate the economy and get people back to work in manufacturing jobs (*cough cough* Cash for Clunkers *cough cough*) .

NOTE: As noted above, the Phoebus Cartel to control light bulbs was launched in 1922 and London wrote in 1932. Thus, the article above gets the origins of planned obsolescence wrong, but it's there for some historical context and commentary, e.g., Henry Ford really was a rabid White supremacist.

 

A fight over solar power: Capitalism and money vs. environmentalism and consumers

When money is at stake, deceptive propaganda, lies and smears is the go-to tactic for capitalists. Consumers get slaughtered in the crossfire because they have few or no big guns on their side, so they stand there with sticks and rocks while the opponents use more effective weaponry. In other words it is business as usual. This is about a huge fight over solar panels on rooftops here in California. Tens of billions of dollars are at stake. California skies have gone black with lobbyists carrying briefcases from capitalists on both sides parachuting in from squadrons of massive aircraft transports. 

A batch of lobbyists parachuting in to

fight for the cash

Getting another load of lobbyists ready for transport to 

do battle in California for huge piles of cash 

The New York Times lays out the battle lines and describes what’s at stake:

California has led the nation in setting ambitious climate change goals and policies. But the state’s progress is threatened by a nasty fight between rival camps in the energy industry that both consider themselves proponents of renewable energy.

The dispute is about who will get to build the green energy economy — utilities or smaller companies that install solar panels and batteries at homes — and reap billions of dollars in profits from those investments. At stake is whether the state can reach its goal of 100 percent clean energy by 2045.

For years, the rooftop solar business was ascendant in California, growing as much as 62 percent a year. That angered utilities and their labor unions, which long controlled the production, sale and distribution of electricity, and they lobbied state leaders to rein in the rooftop solar business — an effort that is on the cusp of success.

In addition to having about 12 percent of the U.S. population, California is widely considered a leader in energy and climate policy. Its decisions matter far beyond its territory because other states and the federal government often copy them.

The California Public Utilities Commission [CPUC] plans to vote in the next few weeks to reduce the growth of solar energy in the state, which has added more of it than any other. The commission has proposed slashing the incentives homeowners receive to install rooftop solar systems. Officials argue that the changes would help reduce utility bills for lower-income residents about $10 a month by forcing rooftop solar users to pay higher fees to support the electric grid.

The proposal would force California to rely more on large power installations, including solar and wind farms, and long-distance transmission lines operated by utilities like Pacific Gas & Electric and Southern California Edison. Every watt of electricity not produced on the rooftop of a home will be produced and transmitted by a utility or wholesale power companies.

“You can understand why utilities don’t like distributive resources,” said David Feldman, a senior energy analyst at the National Renewable Energy Laboratory, using an industry term for small energy systems. “The more electricity they sell, the more money they make.”

Some energy experts say utilities would not be able to produce or buy enough renewable energy to replace what would be lost from the decline in rooftop solar panels — which supplied 9 percent of the state’s electricity in 2020, more than nuclear and coal put together. California would need to set aside about a quarter of its land for renewable energy to meet its climate goals without expanding rooftop solar, said Mark Z. Jacobson, a professor of civil and environmental energy at Stanford. As a result, utilities would have to turn to natural gas and other fossil fuels.

People who install solar panels on their roofs or property are still connected to the electrical grid, but they receive credit on their bills for power they produce beyond what they use [Consumers are proposed to get paid a paltry ~$0.04/KWh for excess energy their solar produces and the utility then sells it at market rates, ~$0.31/KWh here in San Diego (national average is ~0.11/KWh) -- a bad deal for consumers, but a freaking gold mine to the utility]. California’s proposal would cut the value of those credits, which are roughly equivalent to retail electricity rates, by about 87 percent. In addition, the measure would impose a new monthly fee on solar homeowners — about $56 for the typical rooftop system [about $672/year]. 

The monthly cost of solar and electricity for homeowners with an average rooftop system who are served by PG&E, the state’s largest utility, would jump to $215, from $133, according to the California Solar and Storage Association.

An intense campaign is underway to sway regulators. Rooftop solar companies, homeowners and activists on one side and utilities and the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers on the other are lobbying Gov. Gavin Newsom to intervene. While the commission is independent of Mr. Newsom, he wields enormous influence. The governor recently told reporters that the regulators should change their proposal but didn’t specify how [Newsome is scared -- he’s between a capitalist-campaign contribution 

rock (special interest and rich people free speech) and a consumer-environmental hard place].

The electrical workers union, which did not respond to requests for comment [not surprisingly], is playing a central role. It represents linemen, electricians and other utility employees, who usually earn more than the mostly nonunion workers who install rooftop systems. Many union members, an important constituency for Democrats, fear being left behind in the transition to green energy. 

Californians carry the10th highest tax burden in the US, is one of the most heavily regulated states, and consumers here pay high utility costs. Adding a fee, proposed by the CPUC at $8/month/KWh of solar panels on roofs, would add another ~$600 in utility fees adds to the average consumer’s electric utility bills. For context, California utilities are usually solidly profitable -- 10.2% for our local SDG&E. For every dollar California utilities spend building electric or gas infrastructure, they are allowed to charge customers an additional ~10 cents in profits for their shareholders. 

Tax burden data

Source: WalletHub

Question: Which side are you on, the greedy company capitalists and their non-union labor or the greedy utility capitalists and their protected by law labor union, or the consumers and the environment (which are not represented in the arguments between the two elephants, but both elephants argue they are on the side of consumers and the environment), or no side because this is just too complicated and it makes your brain hurt?

Higher income may modestly positively affect child brain development

Distribution of brain wave activity (power)

High cash group got $333/month ($3996/year)

Low cash group got $20/month ($240/year)

In child development, more mid and high frequency (alpha, beta, gamma) wave activity and less low frequency (theta) correlates with improved language, memory, self-regulation, and social-emotional processing. Researchers postulated that children raised in poverty might have decreased mid and high frequency wave activity and increased low frequency activity compared to children not raised in poverty. A new study suggests this hypothesis could be true. The New York Times comments:

A study that provided poor mothers with cash stipends for the first year of their children’s lives appears to have changed the babies’ brain activity in ways associated with stronger cognitive development, a finding with potential implications for safety net policy.

The differences were modest — researchers likened them in statistical magnitude to moving to the 75th position in a line of 100 from the 81st — and it remains to be seen if changes in brain patterns will translate to higher skills, as other research offers reason to expect.  

“This is a big scientific finding,” said Martha J. Farah, a neuroscientist at the University of Pennsylvania, who conducted a review of the study for the Proceedings of the National Academies of Sciences, where it was published on Monday. “It’s proof that just giving the families more money, even a modest amount of more money, leads to better brain development.” [It’s evidence, not proof yet, because (i) this research would need to be repeated and verified, and (ii) the children would need to undergo cognitive testing to verify that the observed brain activity patterns correlate with expected cognitive function changes]

Evidence abounds that poor children on average start school with weaker cognitive skills, and neuroscientists have shown that the differences extend to brain structure and function. But it has not been clear if those differences come directly from the shortage of money or from related factors like parental education or neighborhood influences.

The study released on Monday offers evidence that poverty itself holds children back from their earliest moments.  

The question of whether cash aid helps or hurts children is central to social policy. Progressives argue that poor children need an income floor, citing research that shows even brief periods of childhood poverty can lead to lower adult earnings and worse health. Conservatives say unconditional payments erode work and marriage, increasing poverty in the long run.  

Greg J. Duncan, an economist at the University of California, Irvine, who was one of nine co-authors of the study, said he hoped the research would refocus the debate, which he said was “almost always about the risks that parents might work less or use the money frivolously” toward the question of “whether the payments are good for kids.” 

But a conservative welfare critic, Robert Rector of the Heritage Foundation, argued that the study vindicated stringent welfare laws, which he credited with reducing child poverty by incentivizing parents to find and keep jobs. “If you actually believe that child poverty has these negative effects, then you should not be trying to restore unconditional cash aid,” he said. “You certainly don’t want to go in the business of reversing welfare reform.” [Once again, mindless, rigid anti-government ideology and culture war tends to poison rationality, data interpretation and open-mindedness -- the data isn’t in yet to draw firm conclusions, and even if it was, this blowhard ideologue would still find excuses to oppose cash payments, even if (i) the evidence showed the payouts returned more to the US Treasury than the taxpayer investment, and/or (ii) regardless of what public opinion on this issue was]

One of the complexities here is trying to show that poverty causes differences in brain activity patterns, instead of just correlating with such differences. This research hints at the possibility that poverty causes the observed differences.

The research paper comments: 

Early childhood poverty has long been associated with lower school achievement, educational attainment, and adult earnings (1⇓⇓–4). Moreover, from early childhood through adolescence, higher family income tends to be associated with higher scores on assessments of language, memory, self-regulation, and social-emotional processing (5⇓⇓–8). Furthermore, poverty has been correlated with the structural development and functional activity of brain regions that support these skills. For example, higher family income is associated with a larger surface area of the cerebral cortex, particularly in regions that support children’s language and executive functioning (9, 10). This association is strongest among the most economically disadvantaged families (9), suggesting that a given increase in family income may be linked with greater differences in brain structure among economically disadvantaged children compared with more advantaged peers (11).  

However, while it might be tempting to draw policy conclusions, we caution that the present findings pertain only to the first 12 mo of a multiyear unconditional cash transfer intervention. Recent legislation and policy proposals provide income supplements to low-income families in the form of Child Tax Credit payments with higher payments in early childhood, but none would limit assistance to the first year of life (54). For our part, we do not suggest that a 12-mo intervention alone would be likely to have lasting effects, nor that cash transfer policies obviate the need for direct service interventions, such as well-child pediatric visits, home visitation, or high-quality early childhood education. Nonetheless, by targeting families during children’s earliest years, BFY [Baby’s First Years] has found important evidence of the effects of increased income during a time when children’s brains are particularly sensitive to experience. Traditionally, debates over income transfer policies directed at low-income families in the United States have centered on maternal labor supply rather than child well-being. Our findings underscore the importance of shifting the conversation to focus more attention on whether or how income transfer policies promote children’s development. (emphasis added)

The Christian Reconstructionism political movement

NPR broadcasts a show called No Compromise (NC). It is a series of programs that deal with aspects of modern society and politics and their origins. The 45 minute NC broadcast below, Building the Kingdom of God, starts out with comments about the Dorr family, a radical pro-gun and anti-public school family that travels all over the Midwest as paid agitators for various clients. One of the things they get paid to do is protest against funding of public schools. Their clients sometimes want to block school funding to keep their property taxes low. 

After meandering somewhat confusingly for ~10 minutes, the program finally turns to the topic of Christian Reconstructionism (CR). CR appears to be some form of Christian fundamentalism. Extreme biblical beliefs are at the core of this religious political movement. CR adherents want to establish Old Testament law as American law. Homosexual sex and adultery would be capital offenses punishable by death. The movement wants to establish Christianity and Christian law as the world's religion and law, starting with the US. Those laws will be imposed by by force according to God's sacred, righteous will. These people are terrifying in their ice-cold nonchalance and absolute moral certainty about the righteousness of what they are trying to do.

Wikipedia gives some definitions:

Christian reconstructionism: a fundamentalist Calvinist theonomic movement.[1] It developed under the ideas of Rousas Rushdoony, (1916 - 2001) Greg Bahnsen and Gary North[2] and has had an important influence on the Christian right in the United States.[3][4] In keeping with the cultural mandate, Christian reconstructionists advocate theonomy and the restoration of certain biblical laws said to have continuing applicability.[5] These include the death penalty not only for murder, but also for propagators of all forms of idolatry,[6][7] open homosexuals,[8] adulterers, practitioners of witchcraft and blasphemers.[9] .... Christian reconstructionists are usually postmillennialists and followers of the presuppositional apologetics of Cornelius Van Til. .... Christian reconstructionism's founder, Rousas Rushdoony, wrote in The Institutes of Biblical Law (the founding document of reconstructionism) that Old Testament law should be applied to modern society, and he advocates the reinstatement of the Mosaic law's penal sanctions. .... Rushdoony wrote in The Institutes of Biblical Law: “The heresy of democracy has since [the days of colonial New England] worked havoc in church and state” [citation needed] and: “Christianity and democracy are inevitably enemies,” and he said elsewhere that “Christianity is completely and radically anti-democratic; it is committed to spiritual aristocracy,” and characterized democracy as “the great love of the failures and cowards of life.” .... Some sociologists and critics refer to reconstructionism as a type of dominionism. .... religious author, feminist, and former Roman Catholic nun, Karen Armstrong sees a potential for “fascism” in Christian reconstructionism, and sees the eventual Dominion envisioned by theologians R. J. Rushdoony and Gary North as “totalitarian. There is no room for any other view or policy, no democratic tolerance for rival parties, no individual freedom.”

Theonomy: Christian reconstructionists advocate a theonomic government and libertarian economic principles. They maintain a distinction of spheres of authority between self, family, church, and state.[14][15] For example, the enforcement of moral sanctions under theonomy is carried out by the family and church government, and sanctions for moral offenses are outside the authority of civil government (which is limited to criminal matters, courts and national defense). .... Reconstructionists also say that the theonomic government is not an oligarchy or monarchy of man communicating with God, but rather, a national recognition of existing laws (Germaine: whatever that means, if anything). 

Presuppositionalism: a school of Christian apologetics that believes the Christian faith is the only basis for rational thought. It presupposes that the Bible is divine revelation and attempts to expose flaws in other worldviews. It claims that apart from presuppositions, one could not make sense of any human experience, and there can be no set of neutral assumptions from which to reason with a non-Christian. .... Presuppositionalists compare their presupposition against other ultimate standards such as reason, empirical experience, and subjective feeling, claiming presupposition in this context is:
a belief that takes precedence over another and therefore serves as a criterion for another. An ultimate presupposition is a belief over which no other takes precedence. For a Christian, the content of Scripture must serve as his ultimate presupposition… This doctrine is merely the outworking of the lordship of God in the area of human thought. It merely applies the doctrine of scriptural infallibility to the realm of knowing.

Dominion theology or dominionism: a group of Christian political ideologies that seek to institute a nation governed by Christians based on their understandings of biblical law. Extents of rule and ways of achieving governing authority are varied. For example, dominion theology can include theonomy, but does not necessarily involve advocating Mosaic Law as the basis of government. The label is applied primarily toward groups of Christians in the United States.

The flaw running through all of this gobbledygook and nonsense is the fact that for any of it to make any rational sense, a person has to have faith and believe in what the Christian elites and leaders are telling them is true. Actual facts and logic are absent and scorned whenever they are inconvenient.

Some key points in the broadcast:

10:20 CR believes that Christianity and its laws will come to dominate all people everywhere on Earth and non-believers will be suppressed

11:05 Just waiting for the 2nd coming of Christ will not work, and instead it will be necessary for Christians to get involved in politics and change secular laws to Old Testament Biblical laws

13:40 In 2018, Paul Dorr, patriarch of the Dorr family (11 home-(un)schooled kids), burns children's library book that discuss homosexuality and other forbidden subjects and streams the book burning live on Facebook; he is convicted of criminal mischief 

15:40 The Dorrs do not appear to be just grifters, the money they take in isn’t great, but instead are motivated by radical Christian belief, e.g., hate of feminism, abortion, drag queens, false Christian churches and Jews; Dorr says he is advancing Christ's kingdom via the law of God

Paul Dorr

17:20 On the reconstructionist radio program, the War Room, Dorr advocates RC propaganda, lies and tactics for living a strategic Christian life

20:26 Paul’s main focus is on dismantling public education funding because it is secular and pluralistic and thus not biblical, while his sons focus on opposing gun regulations; Paul is paid by anti-school tax people to set up opposition to proposed local school funding ballot measures; he spreads disinformation and foment fomenting irrational distrust; Paul sets up local Facebook sites and focuses on deceiving, angering and/or scaring local voters into opposing school; the NC program asserts that Paul's efforts are successful about 70% of the time 

23:30 CR (like Christian nationalism) is a political movement, not a specific religious denomination; it wants to literally reconstruct all of American society according to its radical Christian vision, which is a necessary prelude for the 2nd coming of Christ

24:50 The closest thing to a leader that the CR movement has is Rushdoony; his Chalcedon Foundation think tank (for example, this blast on dominionism) advocates CR dogma and propaganda:

25:21 Rushdoony argues this: “Thus the goal of modern politics is to make man guilty in order to enslave him and to have people themselves demand an end to liberty. To have the people demand of Washington and of the UN ‘here are our hands, put the chains on, we are afraid of liberty’. .... This, then is our destiny as Christians. Freedom. And Christians are the only true freedom fighters the world has ever had. The rest offer slavery.”  There Rushdoony argues that humans do want liberty, not secular government and its spiritual slavery; that is something that Christians cannot allow because only Christian government, and God’s law or theonomy (not sinful human or secular law) can free people 

30:05 CR dogma is patriarchal and women serve their men, say home and have lots of babies; women who have power are cruel, brutal and oppressive 

31:55 a core CR goal is to completely eliminate public or “government schools” and replace them with Christian schools, hence constant attacks on public school funding; the public school system causes mass shootings because there is no right or wrong

34:15 CR wants to end all government spending on anything that is not biblical, including social security and highways

34:45 CR dogma is includes a core belief that people have a divine right, or actual moral obligation, from God to carry guns, which are needed for defense of family

37:10 current CR propaganda argues that the BLM movement is intensely racist and a political front for sodomy and transgenderism and committed to ending the family

38:05 a lot of people who hold core CR beliefs do not know they are Christian constructionists or what CR is or who Rousas Rushdoony was; there is no church of Christian reconstructionism, just like there is no church of Christian nationalism; in addition, there is a lot of ignorance going on here; some of the more informed Christian reconstructionists deny that they are Christian reconstructionists because they know how radical and crackpot their beliefs are usually seen to be in our secular, multiracial and multiethnic society

39:15 a former Christian reconstructionist pastor abandoned CR because it was too hard, too out of step with modern society, too divisive within some Christian denominations and, with Google available, it is too easy to find out just how crackpot and hateful the CR movement is, e.g., Rushdoony was a holocaust denier and a staunch defender of American Black slavery because it was good for Black people and for society, i.e., textbook racism

41:45 some modern CR pastors simply ignore the hate, racism and crackpottery that underpins CR ideology; they keep quiet via lies of omission, so that average many or most parishioners are unaware that their church donations are going to support the CR political movement; these preachers do not use inflammatory terms that accurately describes the CR movement to keep the cash flowing and minds deceived; millions of conservative Americans hear the ideas of Rushdoony and his CR movement without understanding what they are being told is God’s word and will; ignorance is dangerous and IMO, inherently theocratic, anti-democratic and pro-authoritarian

42:50 Rushdoony’s main legacy today is home schooling and conservative religious opposition to funding public schools, expansion of gun rights and White nationalism

It is unclear how many Americans are Christian reconstructionists. Probably not a large number. What is hard to asses is how much poison the movement injects into government, religion and society.

What's wrong with libertarianism

 The following is a very long assertation, so I won't post it all on here, suffice it to say, it gives a somewhat biased, but not totally inaccurate breakdown of what is wrong with libertarianism.

Apparently someone's curse worked: we live in interesting times, and among other consequences, for no good reason we have a surplus of libertarians. With this article I hope to help keep the demand low, or at least to explain to libertarian correspondents why they don't impress me with comments like "You sure love letting people steal your money!"

https://www.zompist.com/libertos.html

In short, they're spoiled, and they've evolved a philosophy that they should be spoiled.

ENJOY!

Chapter review: The Spoils: Plundering Congress

The Spoils: Plundering Congress is chapter 11 of Jane Mayer’s 2017 book, Dark Money: The Hidden History of the Billionaires Behind the Rise of the Radical Right. Mayer has been an investigative reporter at New York Magazine since 1995. Chapter 11 is in part three of her book which is entitled, Privatizing Politics: Total Combat, 2011-2014. Given titles like that, one can imagine where this little review is going to go.

This chapter details several important things. One is the rise of tax cuts for the top 0.1% and cuts in domestic spending that billionaire Republican donors demanded. Another traces the loss of power by the Republican Party and its purchase by billionaires who bought Republican candidates for congress. 

Chapter 11, like the rest of the book is reasonably readable for general audiences. But it is dense with details and facts, which are backed up by 51 pages of citations to information sources. The content is based on work that Mayer did as a journalist over about a 30 year period, starting in the 1980s. A post on part of the book is here.

Mayer’s other book

Mayer starts the chapter with this accurate quote by billionaire Warren Buffett: There’s class warfare all right. But it’s my class, the rich class, that’s making war, and we’re winning.

Some key facts and points:

• Republican billionaire donors, like the Koch brothers (only Charles is still alive, David died in 2019), usually operate in as much secrecy as they can, but their power and reach are staggering. They have taken control of the Republican Party and ruthlessly use their power to enrich themselves and increase their power, while claiming that what they do is for our good. They hate government and government regulations. They hate domestic spending programs and want to eliminate all Medicare, Medicaid and other major safety net spending. The donors literally see this as a necessary and moral thing to do. 

• In an apparently unguarded moment in 2011, just before John Boehner was sworn in as House Speaker for the 112th Congress, David Koch answered a reporter’s questions. In response to a question about what he wanted from Boehner and the new Republican House, David said: “Well, cut the hell out of spending, balance the budget, reduce regulations, and uh, support business!” He and the rest of his donor class saw it the same way.

• Some of the billionaire donor class propaganda claimed that the GOP favored personal charity over government spending on safety nets, because individual people should be free to spend on charity. Charles Koch, saw it a bit differently, arguing in a speech that, like Maimonides (a influential medieval Sephardic Jewish Torah philosopher, 1138-1204) he saw the highest form of charity as paying no taxes to government and no charity to anyone. Charles commented: “I agree with the 12th century philosopher, Maimonides, who defined the highest form of charity as dispensing with charity altogether, by enabling your fellow humans to have the wherewithal to earn their own living.” One expert on Maimonides, a university professor who taught classes on him, commented “This is false and tendentious and idiotic.” He argued that Maimonides wrote that “he who averts his eyes from the obligation of charity is regarded as a villain.” For whatever reason, the billionaires seem to feel a need to try justify themselves and their policies, which invariably adds to their own power and wealth. Maybe this mental gymnastics gives them a fig leaf to hide the social, governmental and environmental wreckage their core policies leave behind. Regardless they are either just bad liars or blind motivated reasoners. At best, Republican billionaire moral philosophy and morality sucks.

•  The Kochs were radical libertarians and that is what their money bought and still buys. Hate of government and regulation were at the core of their scared laissez-faire capitalist ideology. In an essay, Charles wrote: “Morally, lowering taxes is simply defending property rights.” He argued that it was a moral imperative for the wealthy to cut their own taxes. Money is property and taxes take some if it. Another billionaire, Foster Friess (a Christian nationalist who claimed ownership of a business with $15 billion in 2020, he died in 2021), tried to be a bit more nuanced about the morality of not paying taxes. He argued that “wealthy people self-tax” by contributing to charities, commenting “It's that top 1% that probably contributes more to making the world a better place than the 99%.” (Some data helps put that in context. In 2017, total contributions to charities by all Americans were about $390 billion. Over their lifetimes, the top 25 billionaires gave $149 billion as of 2019, but getting accurate numbers is hard because of complexities in how billionaires do charity, some of which is self-serving and some of which is to political action committees and political campaigns, etc. Maybe billionaires aren’t better than the 99% at making the world a better place, especially since some of their charity spending is offset by the damage social and environmental their policies inflict -- they ignore that part.)

• Coordinated campaign contributions and a relentless public propaganda campaign got the Republican Party in congress to oppose efforts to deal with climate change. Republicans in congress who wanted to act on the climate issue, were threatened with being primaried by a well-funded opponent. One happy donor operative commented that the tactic of threatening to primary a reluctant congressman was so effective it caused them to “pee their pants.” Republican climate polluting efforts the billionaire-tamed House put forward included proposed legislation to (i) block all legislation to deal with climate change, and (ii) requiring the EPA to consider costs of regulations, while ignoring the science about pollutants and any health impacts on humans. The billionaires hate the government trying to protect the environment. One billionaire operative, Tim Phillips (president of Americans for Prosperity, an influential Koch-funded political advocacy organization) was tickled pink at how effective billionaire cash was in setting the GOP straight about climate change. He commented to the National Journal: “Most of these candidates have figured out that the science has become political. We’ve made great headway. The vast majority of people who are involved in the [Republican] nominating process -- the conventions and the primaries -- are suspect of the science. Groups like Americans for Prosperity have done it.” Koch industries was one of America's top polluters and Koch money was hell bent on keeping the the pollution freely flowing, regardless of who or what it killed.  

• The billionaires like to operate quietly in public, while they and their lobbyists exert pressure behind closed doors. A former associate claimed that Koch family patriarch, Fred had a saying he liked to use: “The whale that spouts is the one that gets harpooned.” That sums it up nicely. Billionaires really are whales, but they just need to breathe quietly in the dark. 

• The Republican billionaires play hardball politics. They rely on lies and slanders when they think they can get away with it, and sometimes even when they know they can’t. For example, in August 2010, Mayer wrote, and New York Magazine published, a long article about Koch brother influence on the GOP. The Kochs were enraged and caught flat footed. They thought they and their billionaire peers could buy a major American political party and no one would notice or comment on it. In response the Kochs hired a new team of public relations propagandists who specialized in aggressive, hard ball tactics. One of them, Michael Goldfarb, had worked on Sarah Palin's vice presidential campaign. He had founded the Washington Free Beacon, a radical right propaganda and lies source whose motto was “do unto them.” He described his job as “attack the press” using “combat journalism” against “liberal gasbags.” The Kochs’ tactics included hiring a private investigator to find dirt on Mayer to smear her with. That failed so the propagandists made up a potentially career-ending lie that Mayer had plagiarized four journalists in various stories she wrote and had published. She found out about the impending story that the radical right propaganda and lies source The Daily Caller (one of seven big conservative politics sites that banned me from commenting in 2016), edited by Tucker Carlson (at the radical right CATO institute at the time), was planning to publish. Mayer realized that if the Koch slanders published, her career would be seriously damaged, even if it was later disproven. People remember juicy lies against evil journalists much better than they remember the later truth, assuming they even hear the truth in their echo chambers, which they usually don’t. (Hence the dangers of lies and smears in hyper-partisan echo chambers.) Once she understood the danger her career was in, Mayer contacted the journalists she would be falsely accused of  plagiarizing and asked them to look at the allegations and comment. Three of the four asserted in writing she had not plagiarized their work. Later the fourth said they were not plagiarized. Mayer found out that The Daily Caller had not even bothered to contact any of the journalists it had planned to cite as Mayer’s victims. Mayer then sent the real facts to The Daily Caller, which then confirmed them and dropped the story before they published it. Another reporter who was aware of all of this sleaze asked the Kochs if they were behind it, but their spokesman refused to answer any questions. He then contacted Carlson (a self-confessed (under oath in court) professional liar, now lying to audiences at Fox News) and asked who the source of the Mayer smears was. Carlson responded with, “I have no clue where we got it.” Good old plausible deniability -- the best friend of liars, crooks, tax cheats, traitors and thugs the world over.

• Over time, the billionaires got their money’s worth from their corrupted, captured and radicalized Republican Party. Yes indeed, the billionaires really did radicalize the GOP. Politicians who hesitated to radicalize and tow the line were either RINO hunted out of the party into retirement or primaried out in the next election. The tax rate on billionaires dropped to levels below average taxpayers making less than $50,000 per year. In the past, they paid much higher tax rates to pay for things like wars and safety net programs. They fixed that problem by forcing government into creating endless new debt. That allowed themselves to keep their loot mostly intact. Some of the tax breaks they bought were potentially worth tens of billions to the 16 wealthiest families in America, e.g., estate tax reductions. Campaign contributions, a/k/a/ free speech, really does have great value. Of course, that assumes you have enough cash to make your free speech heard above all the other free speech out there. Given how pay-to-play politics works, all the other speech is just white noise that Republican politicians can and do safely ignore.