One of our chief entertainments here at LiteralMayhem is the contortion, manipulation and general abuse of language — primarily at the hands of PR and marketing folks. But sins abound throughout the worlds of business, academia, and politics… and when those worlds collide, watch out.

You're certain to get some truly head-spinning, tongue-teasers like this one:

"We come together to offer a tangential view, not a consensus view, and not the average view. We seek to synthesize information and ideas from different vectors and extrapolate a resultant vector in an orthogonal dimension."

Sometimes you read something and you feel like you've just had brain surgery. It hurts so much you have to ask: Oh for Heaven's sake, what on Earth were you thinking? What does it MEAN??? Please, someone pass the Vicodin.

The quote comes from a blog on Huffington Post by Leslie Pratch, an executive coach who "assesses the leadership potential of executives." Ms. Pratch appears to be a highly qualified academic who:

"helps executives strengthen their capacity for active coping and bring about dramatically improved performance in a relatively short period of time."

In other words (less than the 1,500 or so used on the firm's website to describe its service offering), she counsels CEOs on how not to act like dickweeds.

REDUCING WAGES TO "MARKET-CLEARING LEVELS"

What caught my eye was a recent post by Ms. Pratch entitled: "Are U.S. Workers Overpaid?"

Hmmm… But who, pray tell, is a "worker?" Don't we all work? Doesn't Ms. Pratch herself "work" for a living?

The term "work" comes from Old English "weorc," its original meaning closer to achievement, accomplishment, or deed — the outcome of one's labor rather than the process of one's labor (i.e., doing work). But over the centuries, the term "worker" has evolved to connote more about the process of work, particularly manual, industrial, or manufacturing labor… or as a catch-all: unskilled labor.

For example, Marxists deepened the association of "worker" with manual labor in mid-1800s, as did the U.S. trade union movement during the Industrial Revolution, and Maoists in the 1920s with their identification of "workers and oppressed peoples."

All this is a neat preface to Mr. Pratch's point when she says:

"U.S. workers are overpaid relative to equally-productive foreign workers doing the same work. If the global economy is ever going to get back into balance, that gap needs to be closed…

"It's possible to run the numbers to show that U.S. manufacturing workers should take average real wage cuts as much as 20% to get into global balance. The required cut may be smaller."

[emphasis added]

And if one follows today's economic debate — about jobs, wages, inflation, and middle class prosperity — the crux of the problem always seems to be these pesky "workers" wages. U.S. "workers" are uncompetitive and they have to suck it up and take a pay cut.

Pay has to be "equalized" to "market clearing levels," according to Pratch, so that poor countries no longer outcompete "rich" countries simply on wages and productivity. The threat hanging over our collective heads is… "something approaching 1930s levels of unemployment."

A "WORKER" HERE, A "WORKER" THERE…

What's interesting here is that the cultural definition of "worker" (i.e., our notions about who is and isn't one) is central to the economic debate and greatly influences its outcome.

The products that all "workers" make are pretty much the same (notwithstanding Chinese drywall, pet food, kid's toys, heparin, etc.). A running shoe made in India is usually not materially different from one made in Indiana.

So it begs the question: If that shoe up on the shelf is worth $100 no matter where it's made, then why shouldn't the worker's share of the price be the same no matter where he or she lives? The aggregate work contribution is the same, whether it takes two man-hours on an expensive machine, or twenty man-hours at a wooden bench in thatched hut.

The answer is that if we can get away with paying less to "workers" who live somewhere else, it's better for profits… and thus, shareholders.

But such wage penalties are only applied to a subset of "workers"… only those whose jobs are mobile. It's mobility that's being penalized. Not intrinsic talent, contribution or worth.

The relevance of linguistic hair-splitting becomes clear when one considers other types of "workers"… say, of the over-paid, linguistically challenged consultant variety.

These "workers" get to charge $200 to $300 an hour to tell a CEO not to act like an asshole because that particular job isn't mobile… the CEO lives in a rich country and won't move to a poor country to save the company money.

THE DOUBLE STANDARD FOR EXECUTIVE "WORKERS"

Here's a funny thing about executive "workers": Even if the CEO did decide to move to a poor country, he'd probably get paid MORE to do so. It's called a "foreign service bonus" or a "hardship bonus." 

When "work" shifts overseas for the LOCAL talent to do it, the "worker" gets paid less. But when a U.S. "executive" has to move to such a country, he actually gets paid MORE. Living with substandard amenities earns you a premium, but only if you're starting out from a place of privilege.

There's something pretty hinky about insisting that I deserve to be paid more to go live among you in your foreign, peasant shithole… but since you already live there and you're used to it, you deserve to be paid a lot less than a non-shithole-dwelling (i.e., Western) "worker" gets paid for doing the same job.

Economists will no doubt tell me I have it all wrong. It's all about capital flows, and efficiency gains, and labor cost equalization, and productivity measures, and a whole lot of other intricacies that the un-schooled do not understand. I would reply that it's about language: meaning, understanding, and perception.

Instead of saying that U.S. wages are too high, why can't we just say that really really poor "workers" deserve a really really big raise?

After all, whether I pay the "worker" 15 dollars an hour to work on a machine, or 5 cents an hour to work at a wooden bench, I'm sill going to charge you $100 for the sneakers. And I'm still going to pay Ms. Pratch her First-World salary to show me how to do it in the nicest, most humane, gender-neutral kind of way. With an "active coping style" of course.

The question gives lie to Pratch's assertion about the "required cut" in U.S. wages. There is nothing "required" about it. No invisible hand is signing U.S. pink slips. No unseen irresistible cosmic force "requires" that poor workers get paid less.

These are choices that people make because we can. And while we may look to the complex jargonistic labels of economics for rationalizations and justifications, there really aren't any. Wage levels (for both the unskilled and skilled alike) are a relative value based simply on an accident of history: where you were born. Keeping them that way is a choice, not an act of God.

LEVELLING THE CEO

To the author(s) partial credit, in the comments section of the blog post, Ms.Pratch's colleague clarifies their position on CEO pay:

"In our article we classify CEOs as workers. CEOs are employed by the shareholders via the board. Most CEOs are not owners of their business. CEO wages need to get normalized as well."

Well actually, in the article Ms. Pratch says no such thing. There is no mention anywhere of "CEOs as workers." And CEO wages being equalized DOWNWARD is about as likely as Rush Limbaugh tongue kissing John McCain on the Capitol steps.

All the references in Ms. Pratch's piece clearly are to "workers" of the manual, industrial, manufacturing, unskilled, under-educated variety. And her partner Raj's hostility to "workers" of this ilk is evident in his comment:

"Lazing in a recliner, claiming exploitation, blaming the world and reminiscing about past glories is not the playbook to compete globally."

Unless of course you're an ousted CEO who flew off on his golden parachute to a comfortable retirement in Boca. Or an academic with a thriving CEO baby-sitting practice.

Economists treat "workers" akin to vivisection subjects only because they don't identify with them. The word "worker" has a precise cultural meaning that splits them off from all of us who "work" for a living, but whose jobs are not mobile enough to be vulnerable.

All of that is changing. For those of us lucky enough to have jobs these days, "work" is a blessing. But it's also a source of angst. Even many "workers" of the executive variety are now finding themselves just as vulnerable as workers of every other kind.

Figuring out a solution to our employment, wage and quality of life issues requires dropping our current limited concept of "worker" — as well as its narrow implications. Everyone is vulnerable, even Ms. Pratch and her fellows in the consultant class. Have you seen the quality of the robots coming out of Japan these days?!

[P.S. "orthogonal" = perpendicular; and if you teach yourself how to "extrapolate a vector in an orthogonal dimension" you'll have job security for life!]

GET A LOAD OF THE BOAT’S NAME…

Hmmm… wasn’t Utopia 1 good enough? The original “Utopia” must not have been all it’s cracked up to be.

Ditto for Utopia 2.

Clearly these people are having trouble finding happiness.

Well maybe “third time’s a charm!” Somehow I doubt it. After all, money can’t buy…

Utopia: It’s like potato chips; you can never have just one!    

The latest Olympic development is not just that the Chinese government falsified a gymnast’s birth date on her passport, but that they went back and altered PREVIOUSLY PUBLISHED NEWSPAPER REPORTS about her age!!

Columnist/Blogger David Flumenbaum has posted copies of an article from the China Daily that was altered (after publication) to reflect Chinese officials’ version of the facts.

I reproduce them here, but for David’s analysis and more documentation please read his post.

The newspaper article as it originally appeared…

And now… as it’s currently seen online….

In Orwell’s 1984, in the bowels of the enormous Ministry of Truth…

What happened in that unseen labyrinth to which the pneumatic tubes led, he did not know in detail, but he did know in general terms.

As soon as all the corrections which happened to be necessary in any particular [issue] of the Times had been assembled and collated, that [issue] would be reprinted, the original copy destroyed, and the corrected copy placed on the files instead.

This process of continuous alteration was applied not only to newspapers, but to books, periodicals, pamphlets, posters, leaflets, films, sound tracks, cartoons, photographs — to every kind of literature or documentation which might conceivably hold any political or ideological significance.

Day by day and almost minute by minute, the past was brought up to date. In this way every prediction of the Party could be shown by documentary evidence to have been correct…

All history was palimpsest, scraped clean and reinscribed exactly as often as was necessary.

Wet Noodle: IOC’s Rogge Sells Us Down the (Yellow) River

The Chinese government got caught because they did not track down and alter other official documents (posted by Dave) that contradict the falsified news reports. But you can bet it wasn’t for lack of trying.

And now that they know where their vulnerabilities are, how much you wanna bet that next time they’ll be a lot more thorough?

And what’s the likelihood that internet companies — even Western ones — will be subject to even stricter oversight and control over what’s chached and how those files are managed?

And just how cooperative do you think those revenue hungry Western companies will be?

If the IOC is any indication we might as well kiss it all goodbye. Here is what IOC president Rogge said to the Associated Press:

“The IOC relies on the international federations, who are exclusively responsible for the eligibility of athletes. It’s not the task of the IOC to check every one of the 10,000 athletes.” (story)

Gucci Blinders and an Hermes Gag

The interesting thing about self-interest, which free-marketeers tout all the time as the all-powerful saviour of humanity, is that it leads people to do dastardly things. And it leads other people, on the fringes, who benefit, to turn a blind eye.

Where is the IOC’s outrage? Where is the promise of an investigation? Where is the slap at the Chinese regime for its asaault on the integrity of the Olympics?

And where oh where is the thinking person’s absolute shock that they tried to get away with rewriting the past???

Rogge clearly sees no/hears no/speaks no evil… no matter what.

Down the Memory Hole

We are fast approaching a level of technological capability and proficiency that’ll enable the implementation, on a global scale, of exactly the kind of information and reality controls Orwell described nearly 60 years ago.

And we have seen quite clearly that:

a) there is no shortage of deft spin-masters who have no patience for facts or independent reality… (e.g., Karl Rove’s assertion that… “We’re an empire now, and when we act, we create our own reality. And while you’re studying that reality — judiciously, as you will — we’ll act again, creating other new realities, which you can study too, and that’s how things will sort out. We’re history’s actors.. and you, all of you, will be left to just study what we do.”)

b) there is no shortage of self-interested lackey’s who will stand idly by, or even enable powerful people to re-make reality wholesale to suit their interests.

To quote Orwell…

“Not merely the validity of experience, but the very existence of external reality was tacitly denied by their philosophy… The Party told you to reject the evidence of your eyes and ears. It was their final, most essential command.”

When you look at some of the BS perpetrated by high-profile PR pros these days, Orwell doesn’t sound very far off the mark, particularly in the political realm. Could it escalate to the kind of continuous rewriting of the facts that Orwell describes?

Who knows. Who ever seriously thought it could go THIS far?    

Stuck for nearly half a day in an airport this weekend, I was browsing the itty-bitty bookstore and stumbled on George Orwell’s 1984. If you haven’t read it in a while, I’d highly recommend it.

We are so inured to the machinations of politicians, business leaders, spin doctors, and even the media that we tend to think of their antics as tragicomedy. After re-reading 1984… mmmm, not so much.

It’s part of the reason I was so blown away by the revelation that part of the TV broadcast of the Olympic opening ceremony — the firework “footprints” — was faked, according to news reports.

Another Olympic Deception

The decision to fake the fireworks was approved by the Olympic Committee…

the same Olympic Committee that lied about open Internet access for the press and then apologized not for censorship, but that people had been “misled by what I told you”… a mealy mouthed apology if there ever was one.

This time, a Chinese “visual effects team” worked for more than a year to perfect the deception, because the Beijing Olympic Committee (BOGOC) thought it was too dangerous to film the fireworks live.

And though they may take credit for the visual deceit:

“…it was still a bit too bright compared to the actual fireworks,” he said. “But most of the audience thought it was filmed live – so that was mission accomplished.”

They point the ultimate finger of fakery at Beijing Olympic Broadcasting (BOB) , the joint venture between the International Olympic Committee, which decided to permit it.

BOB was unapologetic:

“As far as we are concerned, we let off the fireworks – that’s what’s important to us.”

How Lies Become Truth?

It may be a small thing. The fireworks in fact did go off. It’s not like they made up the event wholesale.

Filming them was problematic, so they mocked-up what it would look like if they could film them, while the real fireworks went off for the live audience.

But then again, maybe not such a small thing. The TV audience was NOT informed that it was a “dramatization,” as they say in TV commercials… (we’ll get back to this in a minute).

And what if the “footprints” did not actually look like footprints? Or what if a few of them had misfired? The visual record would not reflect the actual as-it-happened-in-real-life truth.

The visual record had already been faked. And the PR victory of the Beijing regime would have been preserved for posterity with nothing to contradict it.

To quote Orwell…

“And if all others accepted the lie which the Party imposed — if all records told the same tale — then the lie passed into history and became truth.”

George’s Vision for the War on Terror

I’m talking about Orwell’s vision, not Bush’s: the former predicted the prospect of “continuous war” managed for the benefit of those in power — through deceit, deception, and manipulation of perception — to “keep the structure of society intact.”

Sound familiar? It should… last week we saw, for the first time in what seems like years, an elevated “terror threat level” of Orange, which just happens to take place… in the middle of a very tight election season.

When was the last Orange Alert? It’s very hard to tell.

The threat warning section of the U.S. Homeland Security website looks like something from the Ministry of Truth in Orwell’s mythical Oceania:

DHS shows NO records of when the last Orange alert was. It might have been yesterday. Might have been last year… might have ALWAYS been Orange. We don’t know… we just have to care that it’s Orange TODAY.

You may recall that a key job of the Ministry of Truth was to change all past records every time Oceania switched its enemy from Eastasia to Eurasia, or back again.

All records would confirm that Oceania had ALWAYS been at war with that particular enemy. Every time the enemy changed, the records would be changed to suit. The real goal was to keep people in a constant state of jingoistic fury at the enemy-of-the-moment.

Point being: by depriving people of records of the past, it’s much easier to control their understanding of the present, and their behavior.

So when was the last Orange terror alert in the U.S.?

Surprise, surprise!!… Seems that it was sometime the 2006 election cycle. When the Party looks vulnerable, crank up the furor!

(Josh Marshall’s analysis of the manipulation of Orange alerts appeared in Time Magazine in mid-2006… and if anyone who knows of a historical record of these alerts… please feel free to share!)

A Lie That Became Truth

The magazine The American Conservative has confirmed Ron Suskin’s claim that the Bush Administration forged a key piece of CIA intelligence (a letter to Saddam Hussein from the head of Iraqi intelligence talking about uranium from Niger and terrorist training for Mohamed Atta). source

To quote Orwell…

“In the end, the Party would announce that two and two made five, and you would have to believe it.”

Nuff said.

Open Mouth Insert “Footprint”

But are American’s too stupid to care? Just like the “proles” of Oceania?….

“And even when they became discontented, as they sometimes did, their discontent led nowhere, because, being without general ideas, they could only focus on petty specific grievances. The larger evils invariable escaped their notice.”

Strong evidence of our “prole” nature appeared on MSNBC’s website a few days ago: an article by someone named Helen A. S. Popkin (which sounds suspiciously like a pseudonym).

The sheer stupidity of Ms. Popkin’s piece makes you wonder whether she is like, for reals, or just like, having a joke on us… she has a total “freakout” that the guy in the “freecreditreport.com” commercial is like… NOT FOR REAL!

Like OH. MY. GOD.

“Any shock associated with FreeCreditReport.com doesn’t come from any practices that might be construed as misleading. The freakout occurs when viewers learn that the guy in the commercial isn’t actually The Guy. That isn’t his band. He was never half of a marriage doomed by his dream girl’s heretofore unmentioned defaulted credit cards. He and the wife didn’t make their first (and last?) home together in the same place he conducts band practice — her parent’s basement.

“In fact, identity theft never forced his employment at a pirate-themed seafood restaurant or that due to his willful ignorance regarding his own credit score, his automotive choices were limited to a used subcompact which caused his legs to stick to the vinyl and his posse getting laughed at.” [emphasis added]

Repeat After Me: “TV Commercials Aren’t Real. TV Commercials…”

When I am watching TV, I intuitively know that:

scrubbing bubbles don’t dance and sing

bears don’t use toilet paper

the guy in the white coat isn’t really a doctor

and the guy with the guitar is just an actor; those bad-credit things didn’t really happen to HIM; it’s fiction; it’s a sales pitch; it’s not REAL

I read the piece from pundit Popkin a dozen times, looking for the tell-tale wink-wink-nudge-nudge of an Onion-style spoof, but I just can’t find it.

I think this chick really was shocked to find out that the guy in the commercial wasn’t real. And I am triply dumbfounded that an editor at MSNBC (… MSNBC for God’s sake!) found her freakout newsworthy, rather than a cringe-worthy self-disclosure of abject stupidity.

Do they really think that they have to reduce the quality of prose — in a national news outlet — to up-speak tween jargon in order to appeal to Audience 2.0? The writer comes off as just plain moronic:

“He’s the FreeCreditReport.com guy, and you are so totally in love with him you want to have like, 10 million of his babies…”

Yikes! PLEASE don’t have ten million babies!… the world is stupid enough already!

The fact that this kind of dreck appeared on a reputable news site makes one wonder whether the next generation(s) will have been so dumbed down and lacking in judgment as to… well… Orwell says it best:

“In a way, the world-view of the Party imposed itself most successfully on people incapable of understanding it.”

A World Without Kittens

Popkin’s article reads like an Orwellian nightmare come true.

She has no shock whatsoever for the fact that the product being advertised is a scam — i.e., she takes for granted that the substance of the pitch is fraudulent.

“Any shock associated with FreeCreditReport.com doesn’t come from any practices that might be construed as misleading.”

She is like Orwell’s Julia:

“Who cares? It’s always one bloody war after another, and one knows the news is all lies anyway.”

Her shock comes at the fact that the beloved scruffy guitar-guy isn’t real. Nor is the Easter Bunny, the Tooth Fair, or Santa.

Meanwhile, the BOCOG and BOB are painting pretty — but fraudulent — pictures for the viewers at home. And while the White House is caught red-handed fabricating evidence to push us into a state of constant war, MSNBC can’t get over the fact that they feel duped by a guitar-playing slacker.

They can’t tell the difference between fact and fiction; and they aren’t even ashamed to display this ignorance to the world. Presumably because the world shares it.

Wholesale fabrication is less and less of an outrage. We are less and less able to detect it. And the fabrication we care least about relates to substance. What matters most is retaining the credibility and power of fantasy.

At this rate, there will be no more kittens in America in my lifetime.

Just Be Happy Meal

In his 1961 afterword for Orwell’s book, Erich Fromm writes:

“It is one of the most characteristic and destructive developments of our own society that man, becoming more and more of an instrument, transforms reality more and more into something relative to his own interests and functions.”

Fabrications large and small, perpetrated every day, with fewer consequences and even less awareness… a scary reality, but one that is increasingly common.

A little ketchup and mustard with that kitten?    

On the Huntsville TV station WHNT, most of the 13-minute story was lost in an 8-minute broadcast interruption. The station first blamed CBS, but the network ran full speed in the other direction, telling Harper’s:

“There is no delicate way to put this: the WHNT claim is not true. There were no transmission difficulties. The problems were peculiar to Channel 19, which had the signal and had functioning transmitters.” I was told that the decision to blacken screens across Northern Alabama “could only have been an editorial call.”

Then the station changed their story and said it was a technical glitch on their side. No surprise that the blackout, in the very state where the prosecution took place, caught the eye of viewers and regulators alike.

“Stoopid” Rhetorical Outburst?

The station quickly tried to make amends, getting special dispensation from CBS to air the segment the next day, and a second allowance the following day. It ran promotional crawls during news shows. It posted the piece to its website.

But the big dogs were loose and sniffing for blood. The station was “bombarded” by complaints about sabotage, and the FCC is considering an investigation.

The station’s exasperated news director, Denise Vickers, posted a long detailed blog post about what happened. In the station’s defense she asked:

“Who would invite such a public relations nightmare on themselves??”

Hmmm… Coach, Walmart, Target, Facebook, FEMA, HP … the list is not short; need we go all the way back to “New Coke” or even “there’s no proof smoking causes cancer?”

My Transparency Can Beat Up Your Transparency Anyday

Crisis spokespeople should take note of two big “don’ts”…

1) Open-ended rhetorical questions are a poor choice for crisis defense.

2) Given the history of U.S. business’s recent PR disasters, claiming that no one would be stupid enough to provoke a PR disaster makes you look… well… a bit stoopid.

In her 1500-word blog post – no doubt vetted by management and legal – Vickers claims that the station experienced technical problems, but she never actually explains what those problems were. She alludes to a problem with a CBS feed the day before, but that is a red herring, considering that she admits it was not the problem this time.

It may yet prove to be an innocuous technical glitch, but the lack of “transparency” struck a raw nerve with the public.

Her post included these two telling comments from viewers, which raise the larger issues related to “transparency” of interest to this blog:

I have honestly gotten to the point where I question everything I read and hear. My cynicism has become most acute during these last seven years and networks like Fox News have conditioned me to expect the worst.

For me personally, after seven years of our current pitiful administration and it’s [sic] equally, willing to be deceived, pitiful supporters’ actions, I’m just not surprised any more by anything they may try to do in order to fool, scare, lie to, or keep from the American people. Sometimes (and unfortunately) honest folks get run over because of all the mistrust that the administration has caused. If you are some of those honest folks, then I sincerely apologize for making your life slightly more difficult. If not, well then I’m sure there are plenty who are keeping an eye on you.

This Is What We Mean By “Literal Mayhem”

Vickers was encouraged by viewers’ anger. For her, it was testament to their high expectations for free speech and journalistic integrity. She says:

My resolve is reinvigorated to do what the First Amendment protects journalists to do – give a voice to the voiceless and to seek the truth and report it as fully as possible.

But the only part of her entire blog picked up by Reuters was the dumb rhetorical question — the FCC threat got top billing. The FCC is using the entire incident for political haymaking. Bloggers are making unfounded assumptions based purely on suspicion. The public is exceedingly pissed-off, cynical, and in the mood to believe anything, nothing, and everything.

This whirlwind – with everybody believing his or her own spin and agenda – is a microcosm of our modern culture. And the pissed off people of Alabama un-pinched their noses long enough to put their finger on it. Spin stinks. Politicians and their handlers are most culpable. But in general, PR as a profession will be called to account for what the public mind has become: “conditioned to expect the worst,” in terms of manipulation and deceit.

This is one of the wider social consequences of PR. It goes well beyond skepticism, which is healthy. Our work engenders the purest form of cynicism, which is corrosive of the spirit, an assumption that people are basically assholes and up to no good. Guilty until proven innocent.

Cynicism also encourages intellectual laziness. If we disbelieve and dismiss everything equally, we abdicate the responsibility to engage in critical thinking and factual analysis.

I will say again: The consequences of what we do are societal and cultural. Our deliberate and continual undercutting of the idea of objective truth — or “truth” at all, never mind the “objective” part — is having tangible consequences with respect to the way people think and behave. In many cases it quite literally is causing “mayhem.”

Our profession needs to rethink its priorities and its approach to ethics, because there is a very unpleasant backlash brewing… Wherein we offer philosophical approach to thinking about PR, which highlights the ethical implications and responsibilities involved. I am interested to know how this strikes you:

PR is not just a business, or even a profession… PR is an epistemological assertion.    

The first post in this series got many comments — thank you to all. Especially those who were up for a conversation.

Most comments were from free-marketeers who accused me of being anti-economics. So let’s begin with this: I’m not anti-economics! It’s a wonderful science for managing systems of commerce. What I am opposed to is the use of economics as a “behavioral model of everything human.” This bass-ackwards pseudo-philosophy, unfortunately, is creeping ever deeper into the way we talk about, and make decisions about public policy.

To a large degree, the popularity of using an “economics explains everything” idea to make policy depends on rhetoric, specifically the Pavolvian terminology of “free markets.” This nebulous term has gained enormous rhetorical weight, and a near-utopian patina, in public discourse.

As a blog focused on language and spin, that’s a helluva juicy target!

But first, a funny ice breaker… (to the WayBack Machine!…)

One of the funniest ledes I’ve ever seen in a news article was in a small industry publication called Chain Drug Review, back in 1997. At the time, I was doing research for a ghost writing assignment for a prominent drug industry consultant.

I keep this little gem as a real-life example of how peering up one’s own ass (literally and figuratively) can cause a very special kind of myopia. Here it is:

LAXATIVES AREA IN NEED OF A SPARK

New York – More than anything else, the continuing decline in sales of laxatives is the result of a lack of innovation, according to those involved in the category.

It doesn’t take more than one or two re-reads before all the various nuances of idiocy begin to unfold before you.

Never mind the danger of sparks in a “laxatives area”… fart-lighting images from “Jackass the Movie” anyone? Instead, consider the basic life-questions the article raises:

[head scratch]… In reality, aren’t laxative sales driven by how many people can’t poop? If fewer people are constipated, isn’t that a good thing? Are there really people sitting around conference rooms thinking up ways to push laxatives to “regular” people? If we “innovate” laxatives, will sales go ever-upward? Is a limitless demand for laxatives a good thing, or evidence of a deeply embedded cultural dysfunction?

Sadly, this “news” was reported with a straight face, as if “lack of innovation” truly was the culprit for low laxative sales. As if peoples’ ACTUAL-PHYSICAL- CONSTIPATED NEED for laxatives had nothing to do with it!

Here we have to stop and introduce a new candidate for our dictionary of rhetorical dysfunctions: Hyper-Masticative Reductionistic Reflux Disease.

And now the official definition:

The continual regurgitation, chewing-over and re-ingestion of one’s own arguments; leads to the mistaken belief that theories about reality are more important, relevant, and life-sustaining than reality itself.

And now back to our story of economics. Consider the following entry from the Freaknomics blog:

I have come to the position that the economic approach is a comprehensive one that is applicable to all human behavior, be it behavior involving money prices or imputed shadow prices, repeated or infrequent decisions, large or minor decisions, emotional or mechanical ends, rich or poor persons, men or women…

I applied the economics approach to fertility, education, the uses of time, crime, marriage, social interactions, and other “sociological,” “legal,” and “political” problems …

Good health and a long life are important aims of most persons, but surely no more than a moment’s reflection is necessary to convince anyone that they are not the only aims: somewhat better health or a longer life may be sacrificed because they conflict with other aims … According to the economic approach, therefore, most (if not all!) deaths are to some extent “suicides” in the sense that they could have been postponed if more resources had been invested in prolonging life.

- Gary Becker

Get that man a laxative! And for Heaven’s sake take away that bowl of macerated economic theory before he chokes on it.

Is it true that the only pure “unintentional” death is that of a person who thinks about avoiding death every living moment? (Sounds like fun, sign me up!) Is the universe of human choice unipolar… there’s choosing length of life, and then there’s everything else (i.e., everything that suicidally shortens life), and there’s no overlap?

No. It’s not true. In reality (where most of us live), we could not dedicate every waking thought to avoiding death even if we wanted to. It’s simply idiotic to say:

If I don’t drink this Diet Coke I will die at 82 years, 5 months, 3 days and 1 hour. And if I do drink it I’ll die at 82 years, 5 months, 2 days, 11 hours and 58 minutes. I’d lose exactly 62 minutes. Hmmm… an acceptable sacrifice. I’d be asleep anyway.

It’s idiotic because any fool knows that….

The caffeine in this Diet Coke will help me move my bowels and evacuate the undercooked organic chicken I ate (which was supposed to lengthen my life by 47 minutes, but now threatens to make me sick and shorten my life by 32 minutes). And by early evacuation of the tainted meat, I will balance out the chemicals in the Diet Coke and actually lengthen my life from 82 years, 5 months, 3 days and 1 hour… to 82 years, 5 months, 3 days and 2 hours. (Allowing for an extra hour for dreaming.)

PS… Until the chicken fiasco, I had been a vegan, which should have lengthened my life by 9 weeks, 4 days and 22 minutes; instead the lack of protein was causing early muscle atrophy, which ultimately would accelerate bone loss, leading to a 21% increased chance of hip fracture and subsequent lung embolism that would have killed me 100% dead on my 80th birthday. So now I eat steak, which ironically allows me to live longer than being vegan.

The whole idea is stupid. It’s like tracking down the proverbial butterfly that flaps its wings in the Amazon and causes a typhoon in Bali.

And yes, I believe my ridiculous exercise in hyperbole is exactly the context in which to analyze this theory, because theories are only useful if they have a basis in REALITY. When you dig into how this one might apply to real life, you find quite quickly that it doesn’t. It’s loony-toon. And even from a purely theoretical POV it’s ridiculous, requiring that…

A) we actually KNOW all possible information about what lengthens life and what shortens it, a subject that will keep PhD’s dancing on the head of a pin until the end of time…

B) that each decision has only a positive or negative value, in reality it has increments of both, depending on multiple contextual dimensions

C) that we can consciously process an infinite pool of facts with a doubly infinite number of possible interactions and a triply infinite set of conflicting implications, leading to an infinitely informed decision at every waking moment. (Also, it leaves no time for the sex that is supposed to be good for my heart.).. and finally

D) that we all have access to the same unlimited universe of healthful choices – just try buying fresh vegetables in my (rather poor) neighborhood and then talk to me about “choosing” suicide. (The broccoli I buy is wilted and a bit musty… so is eating it a good thing because it’s a vegetable, or a bad thing because it’s almost rotten?)

Yet somehow this over-masticated drivel passes for brilliance. (Mr. Dubner is positively “floored” by it.) It sounds just like this equally ridiculous idea, which made the news in 2003: the Happiness Equation. A couple of psychologists claimed they had discovered a mathematical equation for happiness:

H = P + 5E + 3H

In this case, thankfully, people took the Happiness Equation for what it was, a lark. And soon enough it disappeared into the ether. People didn’t go off half-cocked and start Graduate School Programs around it.

The issue here is just how far one can push reductionism out of the realm of real life before it becomes completely farcical. (Emphasis on the word “REAL.”)

Try this on for size…

Our ever-expanding innovative laxative market results in overuse. The largest manufacturer then sees new opportunity in the adult diaper market. Then it deliberately subverts research into how to prevent constipation. Then it buys off some politicians who appoint a laxative friendly director to the FDA….

Sound dumb? Meanwhile back in reality….

The Health and Human Services Department tried to launch a hard-hitting ad campaign to get new mothers to breast feed. Lobbyists for the infant formula industry stepped in to stop it. The infuriated companies accused HHS of “scaring expectant mothers into breast-feeding.” The real issue, of course, was maintaining sales of infant formula – independent of whether the formula was needed or even appropriate for newborns.

In reality (yes, where most of us live), the overriding question should be, What’s best for the babies? But screw reality. Getting to the numbers you want is what counts.

And this is the problem with the economic model of behavior: it reduces the basic operating principle of the human psyche to something transactional. Then, when you start BEHAVING that way you get very corrupted thinking and very bad decision making. You get people trying to force behavior in the direction of “getting the numbers you want” because that’s what the theory tells you is the “optimal” outcome… independent of the REAL LIFE circumstances, or the multiple conflicting demands, concerns, influences, objectives, considerations, emotions, contexts, and a million other dimensions of decision making.

The White House has been fudging the numbers on climate change for years, for political reasons related to fundraising. Pfizer is now on the hot seat for lying about its promotional sales tactics for Lipitor. And on and on…

My biggest gripe with the extremist free-marketeers (just add mouse ears and suspenders and you get the picture), is not even that they want to apply “free markets” to non-market contexts (e.g., healthcare and education), but that they think economic self-interest is the sum total of human motivation and we should build our entire social order around maximizing it. An absolutely corruptive and psychologically corrosive force if there ever was one.

Anyway, what “free market” extremists want is not social order or even maximum public good. They are spinning the public toward “free market” policies and institutions because they offer maximum profit potential. The “public good” message point is just window dressing.

To wit: In a fundraising prospectus, Montgomery Securities called the K-12 elementary school “market” the “big enchilada” of profit opportunity – according to Jonathan Kozol’s August 2007 article for Harper’s Magazine. Sounds so altruistic, no? Sounds so concerned about the kids, no? Want to send your kids to an EMO? (Education Management Organization – education HMO style!) Why not?… It’s just like sending them to the nuns!

Free market advocates talk a good game, but talk is what it is. And we will talk about a few more examples in the next installment. In the meantime, go ahead and call me a socialist. I work in financial services, and increasingly in venture capital. I hope to make big bucks and retire in style. The markets have been good to me so far….

I’d be (P + 5E + 3H)* to hear your thoughts!

(*happy)    

Arguing with an economist is like trying to eat spaghetti with a spoon. It’s slippery, messy and seldom worth the effort.

But occasionally the claims are so outlandish and the affront so egregious that one can’t back away from a confrontation. Such is the case with a screed called “The Myth of the Rational Voter,” by Bryan Caplan and reviewed (glowingly) in the New Yorker by Harvard English professor Louis Menand.

The dubious point of the book is that “those who worship at the temple of democracy,” as Caplan derisively calls the majority of the U.S. population, do more harm than good by voting. The reason: we are “morbidly ignorant” of the laws of economics and therefore vote for unsound economic policies, harming society’s economic well-being.

In his view, we’d all be better off if the only people whose votes counted were economists and like minded “economically literate” people. He also argues that a market-based political system would take care of social needs more efficiently and better than a democratic one.

Now, there are a lot of problems with the book. (Too many to cover in a single post.) But the initial problem is one of scale: when faced with a mountain of bullshit so enormous as this, it’s difficult to know where to dig in the shovel first. But here is a clue: you know you’re in trouble when the author quotes Ayn Rand in the very first chapter.

(I will leave it to the Philosopher’s Playground to place her inhuman philosophy in the proper context: it’s the best rebuttal of the Randian outlook I’ve ever come across. Read it here.)

As is the point of this blog, however, I will take on the PR snow job that is the unrelenting case for “free markets” – a bludgeon with which the public is frequently beaten. The main problem with “free markets” is that, as a concept, it falls within an odd linguistic convention: words-for-things-than-don’t-exist, like “panacea” and “utopia.” They are concepts, but concepts only. Their infinite scope precludes existence in an finite realm; especially a flawed human one. They don’t, and can’t ever exist.

Yes, markets properly harnessed (with mandated openness, enforced transparency, and maybe a bit of government-supplied cheap credit) fuel the growth of material wealth, and can be yoked to deliver social benefits. But economists, enthused with the idea that more is better, exaggerate the markets’ socially beneficial character and relentlessly force the paradigm, arguing that the economic model provides the best explanation for all human behavior… that we are all essentially economic in nature and all our endeavors (including social ones) can be productively managed under the yoke of economic science.

So economics is not yoked to benefit mankind. We are yoked to its rules in order to… in order to what, exactly? To increase the power, scope and freedom of markets, because social benevolence is their byproduct.

A virtuous circle, no?

The idea would be just plain sad, if it weren’t so scary. The objections are too many to cover in a single post, but here’s a Top 10 list from this reader:

10… He’s Disingenuous

Caplan goes to great lengths to strike a fair-and-balanced pose. He talks up disagreements within his own field: the self-doubts and the examples of market failure discovered by economists themselves. He claims to be anti-fundamentalist.

His words, however, betray him. He has nothing good to say for democracy and vilifies those who “worship at the temple of democracy” as being “enthusiasts,” who “embrace dubious ideas on emotional grounds.” He alternately describes such people as:

ignorant, completely ignorant, morbidly ignorant, irrational, naive, hopelessly uninformed, leftists, Hollywood leftists, partisans, religious devotees, ungracious, dogmatic, protectionist, stubbornly wrong-headed, prejudiced, credulous, unenlightened, fundamentalist, and biased.

Economists and their ilk, on the other hand, are showered with praise. In his world, such people shine with goodwill and beneficent intention. Such people:

think like economists, are economically minded, deeper thinkers, sophisticated, informed, well-informed, well-educated, enlightened, expert, economically literate, and less biased

And he complains about all the name calling against economists! As the book progresses, he shows less and less discipline in restraining his contempt for non-economists in general and voters specifically.

This book is less an economic treatise than a political manifesto. His goal is to promote markets through political means, and he believes that the primary purpose of government is to act as a gas pedal, not a brake. Every argument advances the idea: markets good, democracy bad. No nuance. No moderation. No balance. No perceived trade-offs.

Though he claims such a thing barely exists in his profession, his method and tone of attack leaves one with the distinct impression that he is, contrary to his loud denials, a market fundamentalist.

9… Rhetorical Belching

The book is chock-a-block with gaseous pronouncements. One of my favorites is: “Brand names help shoppers far more than Consumer Reports ever will.”

His claim is totally divorced from reality. Had Dr. Caplan spent even one day on a corporate branding team, he would know that brands are designed to lead consumer choice through emotional decision making. They are a compressed message system that aims to circumvent rational faculties. Sometimes brand values reflect reality. More often, especially in consumer products, they make “distinctions without difference” and sell perceived benefits that are only marginally present, if at all.

Caplan’s inflated assertion about the value of brands also runs counter to his claimed respect for rational thought, as well as contradicts his contempt for “embrac[ing] dubious ideas on emotional grounds.”

And how about this gem: “Worldviews are more a mental security blanket than a serious effort to understand the world.”

His own included? And his well-educated economist pals? Or the legions of informed and sophisticated captains of industry who are expected to save the world through the magic of markets? What Caplan’s really claiming is that any worldview other than his own is ill-informed and erroneous.

This kind of arrogant, universal dismissal of other people’s views is nowhere more apparent than in his derision of religion. For example, consider the idea that Caplan himself uses to burnish the reputation of his compatriots: economists themselves have identified most all of the significant cases of market failure.

Theologians can make exactly the same claim about their field. Religious people have, for hundreds of years, been discussing and debating the tension between faith and reason, and many of the thorniest problems have been raised by people of faith themselves. For Caplan, such distinctions are helpful in defending his own profession against charges of fundamentalism, but he is less generous with others. He is also mistaken.

He quotes Gaetano Mosca’s insulting claims about the inherent superiority and self-satisfaction of the religious mind. In the case of Buddhism: “The Buddhist must be taught highly to prize the privilege of attaining Nirvana soonest.”

What? Clearly Mosca and Caplan are clueless about Buddhism. If that religion had “sins,” comparative thinking would be among its worst. The idea that “soonest” equates with “best” or “better than someone else,” is anathema to the most basic Buddhist teaching. Indeed judgmentalism – asserting oneself at the expense of someone else or as better than someone else – is one of its most grievous wrongs.

Caplan is a rhetorical gas bag. He pulls unfounded assertions out of his hind parts and uses them as proof to support his ideas, or trots them out as unquestionable truths on which he can build an argument.

He gets the facts wrong, and in reality his bloviations have almost no resemblance to… um… reality.

8… Mangled Terminology

The problem with all this rhetorical belching is that it carries over into his key arguments. And when he starts contorting the meaning of words to support his claims, things get serious. Take his analysis of voter altruism. It includes two key ideas:

A) In his tortured logic, altruism and morality are “consumption goods like any other.” The idea itself is bizarre, but let’s focus on his core economic argument: “If people [can be expected to] buy more altruism when the price is low… and altruistic voting is basically free… then we should expect voters to consumer more [altruism].”

B) He sees this “altruistic” behavior as proof that voters are not selfish. So he claims that, based on this un-selfish behavior, voting must be seen as the antithesis of shopping.

Here’s the first problem: altruism is never free. It is by definition selfless, and altruistic action, in particular, necessarily entails personal sacrifice. To speak of “free altruism” is to be utterly oxymoronic!

He then mangles “altruism” further by claiming that free altruism leads to voter over-consumption, which he describes as: “‘stuff[ing] themselves with moral rectitude.” Hmmm… Altruism equals cheap moral rectitude? Did he flunk high school English? (And Prof. Menand ought to be ashamed for not calling him on it.) To sum up:

• Voters act altruistically (i.e., give of themselves) only when costs nothing.
• The cheaper it is (i.e., the less they have to sacrifice) the more of it they “consume” (the more they give).
• Which logically implies that the more expensive “altruism” is (i.e., the higher the personal cost) the less they “consume” (give/sacrifice)?

What he’s describing is selfishness, not altruism. And the tendency to over-indulge when it’s on sale is absolutely typical shopper behavior. His example actually reinforces the connection between voting and shopping.

This kind of literal butchering, pervades the book. Another example is his assertion that democracy is not a market but a “commons.” It’s neither. In reality, it’s a cartel.

To wit: It’s a consortium of two. They strictly control production, distribution, and market access to the product. Barriers to entry are prohibitively high and competitors are systematically squeezed out or barred from participating. And the two key participants regulate their own marketplace.

Consider: In 2004, by the end of the “Super Tuesday” primaries, when the major party candidates were a foregone conclusion, only 7 percent of the eligible electorate had voted. And as a registered “Independent” I was not even allowed to vote in the primaries.

The bad voting behavior cited by Caplan all took place in a cartel political-economy in which the only “choice” that the vast majority of voters got was the dregs of what the parties put on the ticket. He is comparing apples and oranges, indicting “democracy” with evidence gleaned from a system that’s only partially democratic.

Moreover, he is too enamored of his own ideas to point out, never mind reconcile, the tensions between “democracy” as a concept (one person one vote) versus the real-life election mechanisms of party politics.

7… Unhinged From Reality

By now, the pattern is plain to see. Caplan lives in world of graphs, demand curves, integers, equations, and illiterate illogic, not real people doing real things. He replaces a complex human social enterprise with a single mathematical paradigm, and shows no inclination to consider what might be lost in translation.

We can call this malady Anti-Social Dissociative Theoretits – this is a condition in which theory swells to the point of displacing the real-world situation from which it was derived; advanced cases become dissociative in that the derivative theory is considered more real than the underlying reality; the most serious cases are anti-social in that the theory is used as a tool of social control in an attempt to extinguish all incompatible activities and beliefs.

Caplan is hermetically sealed inside his own thinking, unhinged from the day-to-day world in which we all live – like so many overzealous academics and think tank policy wonks. And nowhere is this more apparent than in one of his central theses: what I’ll call the “probability discount” theory of voting.

Here’s the idea: The true cost of a bad policy to any voter depends on the odds that he or she will be the one to cast the deciding vote in the election – i.e., if a bad policy costs you $1,000, but your odds of casting the deciding vote are 1/1,000 then the actual cost of your vote is $1.

In an election with millions of voters, your odds of casting the deciding vote are practically zero. Therefore, he says, the cost of bad policy to each voter is really “close to zero,” and he argues that the discounted “zero” cost leads people to over-consume bad policy. This, he claims, is a classically “rational” economic choice. Consume more of what’s cheap.

I have one question: on April 15 when the tax man comes with his hand out, does he ask for $1,000, or does he give me a probability discount of $999 and only bill me $1?

Caplan’s assertion is totally unreal.

In another example, he undoes his own argument. He says that when “Hollywood leftist millionaires” Tim Robbins and Susan Sarandon voted for Bill Clinton in 1992, his victory over Bush probably cost them “hundreds of thousands of dollars in extra taxes.” But in the very next sentence he takes it all back: “In the astronomically unlikely case that Clinton won because of their actions, they would have lost a large sum.” [italics original]

Since they did not cast the deciding votes, he argues, the real cost was only “expectational pennies.”

OK. Head scratch: On their 1040 form, was the “due” amount pennies, or hundreds of thousands of dollars? He admits himself it was the latter! So what gives with the “expectational pennies” BS?

It’s Theoretitis plain and simple. He is totally unhinged from reality.

6… Dishonest Double Standards

His inventive, if unreal, “probability discount” might be more plausible if it were applied fairly and even-handedly, but Caplan is as dishonest as he is unhinged. Here’s the rub. He never applies this same discount method to the question of policy benefits! In every example (pp: 18, 106, 131), he accrues to every voter the full dollar value of free-market policy benefits.

Caplan wants us to believe that discounting is a fact of life whose consequences are unavoidable. But if it’s true, then “probability discounting” should be applied to benefits as well as costs! If the individual cost of voting for bad policy is discounted to zero (leading to over-consumption), then individual benefits of voting for good policy should be discounted to zero as well (leading to under-consumption).

In his analysis, over-consuming bad policy is a “rational” economic choice, given the zero cost; to be consistent, under-consuming good policy must also be a “rational” economic choice given a discounted zero benefit. Why would you over-consumer something with no benefit?

The result is logical spaghetti: voting against free-market [beneficial] policy is an economically “rational” [wise] decision because such [beneficial] policies offer individual voters no tangible benefit.

Caplan is either oblivious to, or dishonest about the self-defeating implications of his own argument.

5… Cultural Prejudice

If Caplan has a childlike faith in his own fantastic concoctions, his faith is even more pronounced when it comes to the goodness, social benevolence, and “magic” of markets. He quotes Adam Smith often and at length, using as a common theme The Wealth of Nations: “…the study of his own advantage naturally, or rather necessarily leads him to prefer that employment which is most advantageous to society.”

In Caplan words: “For economists, greedy intentions establish no presumption of social harm.” Another whopper of a rhetorical belch. It’s a quaint idea, but belies a distinctly Western (and rather Edwardian) cultural prejudice toward commerce: attributing innate goodness to an intrinsically amoral social system. And it has been disproved by a hundred years of direct experience not with markets alone, but with market participants whose bad behavior is legion.

Take monopolies, which Caplan gives the warm-and-fuzzy treatment, saying that their negative impacts are “marginal.” For a moment, let’s leave aside the base cost of price-fixing in everything from airline tickets, to auction markets, to food additives, to computer memory, to pharmaceuticals and vitamins, to electrodes, even to funerals! Let’s instead focus on the social impact.

Enron manipulated markets in the western U.S. for years and raked in more than $1.5 billion in illegal profits. All the while, heartless cowboys on the trading desk gloated over “Grandma Millie’s” complaints about exorbitant rates, which the traders had joyously “jammed up her ass.” Not to mention the untold loss of productivity and revenue by companies affected by blackouts. How’s that for “marginal” cost?

And here’s an even bigger story:

Los Angeles used to have the largest interurban rail system in the in the world! What happened to it? General Motors and a consortium of others (Mack Truck, Standard Oil, Phillips Petroleum, and Firestone Tires) created a shell company to buy the LA system and rip it from the ground, replacing it with bus lines. GM and Mack built the buses; Firestone provided tires; the oil companies sold the fuel.

Rather than compete in a fair and open market, they mugged the competition, dragged it behind the assembly plant, and put a bullet in its head. In one way or another GM participated in or directed the destruction of about 1,200 interurban electric rail systems with 44,000 miles of track and carried 15 billion passengers a year, and this was back in 1921.

The cartel was convicted on federal conspiracy charges. The other key result was the destruction of public rail transport in just about every major US city, which ushered in an age of suburban sprawl, choking pollution and a national addiction to gasoline.

4… His View is Ahistorical

The only way that someone can be so entirely unhinged from reality and so addicted to his own fantasy world, is to be in complete denial of history.

Example: Caplan’s take on Thalidomide.

He says that drug policy experts take the “low road” in telling a “credulous public” that drugs need to kept off the market until effectively tested, even if it means people go untreated. He says that some take the “high road” instead. His example: “The public might be sure that Thalidomide should be totally banned, but defer when the FDA approves it as a treatment of leprosy.”

The “low road” is drug testing? Has he been living in a cave for the past fifty years??? The reason Thalidomide was pulled from the market was that it caused horrific birth defects in children around the world and more than 3,500 hundred babies died in infancy from their deformities. The horrendous cost of this blunder was due to INADEQUATE testing!! Proper testing to establish appropriate guidelines could have saved thousands of lives – those properly treated as well as those saved from fatal improper treatment.

Another example: Sweatshops des Miserables

Caplan quotes a lyric from the show Les Miserables, sung by a villainous innkeeper: “Charge ‘em for the lice / Extra for the mice / Two percent for looking in the mirror twice…” He uses this example to scoff at the public’s urge to demonize greed, claiming that greed is intrinsically “intelligent” because self interest “militates against ‘deceit, unfairness and dishonesty.’”

Consider this reality: In the sweatshops of New York City in the late 1800s seamstresses were charged rent to use the employer’s sewing machines, rent for the stools and boxes they sat on, rent for space in the coat closet, even rent for their needles; they were charged for thread; charged for drinking water at work; they were fined for talking or laughing. And there were 60,000 children working in those sweatshops. (References here and here.)

“Intelligent greed” my ass. Even a cursory tour through the actual history of commerce (as opposed to the fantasy world of economic theory), shows that concentrations of capital tend to foster distinctly anti-social behavior among market participants – who, after all, ARE the “market.” The “market” is not some abstract concept, it is real people in the real world doing real things, and those things are often very ugly.

3… He’d Toss Out the Constitution

One of Caplan’s scariest contentions is actually a small aside, near the end of the book, which knocked me flat. He writes:

If a [Supreme Court] justice defies public opinion by protecting flag-burning, his decision should diminish the popularity of the president who appointed him and the senators who confirmed him. This assumes, however, that the average voters correctly perceive the chain of responsibility. If they systematically underestimate the strength of its connections, delegation undermines the popular will. Politicians have to denounce flag-burning to win voter approval, but it remains legal as long as the decision is in the hands of subordinates who demur.

Caplan, it seems, wants to subject the Constitution to market testing. He is dead silent on the fundamental rights of citizens and appears to be totally ignorant of the complexities of Constitutional law. He seems quite happy to govern according to the popular whims of the market. I guess he believes that liberty is a “consumption good like any other” and ought to be managed as such.

But he says not a peep about how to correct the market when it encroaches on liberty and public good. I wonder what he’d say about the recent censorship of political speech by AT&T, Fox and Fox again here. Probably nothing. Or worse, that commercial entities have a right to control what they distribute.

2… He’s a Wimp

I say “guess” and “probably” about the tangible consequences of his beliefs because there aren’t any specifics. The only direct claim he makes is that markets work better than democracy. (Next we will get to the question of: “Work better” toward what end?)

When he gets close to a recommendation, he wimps out. He talks up English election laws circa 1948, which allowed plural voting for the elite, and adds: “there is much to be said for such weighting schemes.” But then he punts: “I leave it to the reader to decide whether 1948 Britain counts as a democracy.” Boo hiss. Wimp out!

For clues about how Caplan’s brave new world might work, we have to read between the lines. The most telling snippet – aside from his admiration for Ayn Rand – is this claim:

“Before the 1930s… many areas of U.S. economic life were undemocratically shielded from federal and state regulation. The market trumped democracy, on everything from the minimum wage to the National Recovery Administration. And unless you are a democratic fundamentalist, you have to agree that this was all to the good.”

Ah, the truth will out, as they say. Caplan wants to repeal the New Deal, because that would solve everything. And anyone who disagrees with him is an idiot. That’s basically his argument.

Let’s see. We could ask the sweatshop workers in the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory about the minimum wage. But… oh yeah, they’re all dead. Locked in a dank, filthy hovel of a factory and left to die in a fire.

I have no doubt that Caplan would return us to the robber baron capitalism of the late 1800s, quoting Rand along the way:

Robber barons were the “greatest humanitarians and the greatest benefactors of mankind who had ever lived because they had brought the ‘greatest good’ and an impossible standard of living – impossible by all historical trends – to the country in which they functioned.”

The looking glass is getting very twisted indeed. Let’s just finish here with an observation: In 1897 a NYC tenement dweller had about a 1 in 800 chance of having a toilet in his or her apartment. Most toilets were communal and placed in the backyard. In 1901 the city enacted new regulations requiring toilets in each apartment.

What did Caplan’s enlightened, benevolent, humanitarian real estate moguls do? Did they show “socially beneficial behavior?” Did their “intelligent greed… militate against deceit, unfairness and dishonesty?” Did the “magic invisible hand” of the market motivate them to provide better conditions to better compete for tenants? Hmmm???

Hell no! They fought the new regulation all the way to the Supreme Court! And they lost every single case.

1… Inhumanism

Caplan’s most despair-inducing claim comes at the very beginning of the book: “Economic policy is the primary activity of the modern state…”

Ugh. The man is alternately crude, delusional, illiterate, illogical, in denial of history, and plagued by an exponential swelling of the ego. His ideas are also shockingly inhuman. As an antidote to Caplan’s claim, let’s go back to Thomas Hobbes, who originated the concept of self-interested cooperation. In his view, without a central government to restrain our natural war-like condition of “every man against every man,” or “all against all,” we would revert to a “leviathan” life that is “solitary, poor, nasty, brutish and short.”

Caplan’s world, in which government’s primary role is protector and enabler of markets, is terrifying. There is no humanity in it anywhere. Consider one of the heroes of “pre 1930s” capitalism, Alfred P. Sloan, CEO of General Motors and the architect of the destruction of urban rail systems in the United States.

He was also an admirer of Adolph Hitler. Sloan insisted on retaining operational control of German car manufacturer Opel, even as it was building armaments for the invasion of Poland, which Sloan called a “petty international squabble.” GM retained board control of Opel well into the war; the Reich protected GM’s 100% stock ownership; and Sloan appointed to the position of president of GM, the former president of Opel, an American who was awarded the “German Eagle” medal for service to the Nazi Reich.

Sloan, an “economically minded” man through and through, saw the escalating war in purely economic terms and claimed in 1941 that: “I am sure we all realize that this struggle that is going on though the World is really nothing more or less than a conflict between two opposing technocracies manifesting itself to the capitalization of economic resources and products and all that sort of thing.”

But here is the most chilling quote of all:

“It seems clear that the Allies are outclassed on mechanical equipment, and it is foolish to talk about modernizing their Armies in times like these, they ought to have thought of that five years ago. There is no excuse for them not thinking of that except for the unintelligent, in fact, stupid, narrow-minded and selfish leadership which the democracies of the world are cursed with.… When some other system develops stronger leadership, works hard and long, and intelligently and aggressively – which are good traits – and, superimposed upon that, develops the instinct of a racketeer, there is nothing for the democracies to do but fold up. And that is about what it looks as if they are going to do.”

[Thanks to Edwin Black of The Jerusalem Post for the thorough reporting... read it here.]

This is, admittedly, an extreme example. But with someone as dogmatic as Caplan, extreme is the only way to go. Caplan is dangerously wrong to assert market supremacy over democratic politics.

Civil government in general, and democracy in particular, is NOT primarily charged with protecting markets. Their primary responsibility is protecting PEOPLE by acting as a brake on human indecency. If people are biased, irrational and selfish in a democratic enterprise, what would they be in an unrestrained economic one? History gives us too many clues to ignore. Markets do work – of course they work. But they do not automatically do anything, except foster the creation and concentration of capital. And absolutely “free markets” have a proven tendency to squeeze out the “free” part.

Certainly, markets do not automatically provide socially beneficial ends. They need to be managed, like any other social enterprise, to minimize corruption and malignity while maximizing the liberty and welfare of participants… if that’s the goal.

Unfortunately that’s not Caplan’s goal. His aim is more markets, always bigger and less restrained. Using markets as a tool of social engineering is anathema to his thinking because markets are adequate in themselves to deliver the goods, so to speak.

He is wrong in fact, and wrong in principle. A “market” is a means not an end. Without a defined goal, markets just reproduce capital and themselves. Any other result, beneficial or malign, derives from the human social circumstance in which the market operates.

Democracy is also a means, but ours does have an end in mind: balance. Democracy not only balances majority and minority rights, but also balances popular will with enduring principle. As was their wont, the men who wrote the Constitution chose a definition of enduring principle and created a political system to protect it, while also striving to respect the will of the polity. It’s not an easy task. And, if anything, one of the great strengths of this form of government is a built-in braking system that forces restraint. And history shows that this restrained form of democratic capitalism is a lot better at promoting free markets than free markets are at protecting the commonweal.

Caplan will have none of it. He squeezes all non-economic factors and benefits out of policy decision making. In fact, out of human decision making entirely. All aspects of human nature and behavior are “consumption goods” subject to the laws of economics. To him, every aspect of human life is simply an economic variable. (e.g., He believes literally that “Time is money.”) He treats “personal wealth” as the entire scope and limit of human interest.

Caplan would entrust our fate to the captains of industry. I shiver at the thought. Subjected to the whims of the market, liberty does not stand a chance.

Caplan would no doubt scoff and bluster… deride and dismiss… but his magical electionomic machinery is built in a land of make-believe, out of iron-willed self-deception and unyielding superiority — it also comes without any damn brakes.

At worst, it’s a recipe for disaster. At best, it’s an ugly world, and all it provides for its people is unlimited incentive to act like a$$holes.    

All the while IRA bombs were wreaking havoc in London. But that was never spoken of. As a youngster, I hardly even knew to connect the two.

Which brings me to the current t-shirt tumult, in which the principal of an Arabic-based New York City public school led a group that offered young girls t-shirts emblazoned with the word “Intifada NYC.” The principal resigned in the uproar, basically saying that she had only wanted to empower the young women to “shake off oppression,” but underestimated the “historical association” between the word “intifada”and violent uprising.

Now back to the Irish metaphor: a green white and gold “Free Ireland” t-shirt in Boston in 1973 would have earned smiles of approval. Wearing same t-shirt in downtown London in 1973 would have earned one an interrogation at the very least, and depending on the wearer’s personal circumstances, maybe even a quick and unceremonious deportation.

The point: context matters. The site of the current Intifada t-shirt furor can’t be but a few miles from the site of the World Trade Center attack. Of course people are sensitive.

Second point: naiveté has no place in the discussion. Hyperventilating bloggers like Alif Sikkin need to step back and approach the issue with a bit more humility. He lambastes Americans for misunderstanding Arabic words, as if Westerners deliberately twisted their meaning.

That argument is pedantic nonsense, and totally disingenuous.

The word “intifada” has been co-opted by Muslim militants: from the Palestinians in their two Intifadas (1987 and 2000) against Israel, to the Syrian group Fatah al-Intifada that is responsible for bombings in Lebanon, to the “Intifada En France.”

The global Intifada narrative is being written primarily by Muslims, not Westerners.

Their grievances may be legitimate. Some even see their methods as justified. But legitimacy and justification are totally beside the point in a responsible debate about language. That debate must investigate the source of the momentum behind the transformation of Arabic words in the world consciousness.

Same applies to the word “jihad.”

The group Hamas claims in the eighth article of its Charter: “Allah is its goal, the Prophet its model, the Koran its Constitution, Jihad its path and death for the case of Allah its most sublime belief.” And the twelve point program of the militant Muslim Brotherhood includes No. 9 “To support jihad wherever possible,” and No. 11 “To exploit the Palestinian ’cause’ as part of a global strategy, and to foment enmity towards the Jews and Israel as a rallying point for Muslims.”

A West Bank militarist group called “Islamic Jihad” sponsors armed resistance against Israel. The Pakistani-based MMA vows to wage jihad in Kashmir. The PBJ in Indonesia is a group of 200 self-scribed “jihad bombers.” The Bangladeshi “Harkat-ul-Jihad-al-Islami” has expanded beyond its home turf and is now recruiting in Southern Thailand, fomenting an Islamic separatist movement there.

The site historyofjihad.org provides a complete overview of the militancy associated with “jihad” dating back to the year 620 C.E.

So Mr. Sikkin and those who want to lay the blame for linguistic misunderstanding and general thick-headedness at the feet of Westerners alone are just plain wrong. To be sure, Westerners are thick-headed about a lot of things Eastern, but this is not one of them. Militant Muslims bear more responsibility than Westerners for co-opting the meaning of “jihad” and “intifada.”

Look, a “faggot” will never again be just a bundle of sticks. The word “gay” will never simply mean happy. And “queer” will never just mean “different.” Never ever. To say nothing of “fairy.” (We are lucky, in fact, to still retain quotidian uses of “pansy” and “fruit.”)

I doubt that the term “niggardly” (def: cheap, stingy) will ever regain common usage as it is too close to an epithet. The Confederate flag symbolizes war in defense of slavery, and as such it will never be simply a banner of Southern “states rights,” nor should it be.

And finally, what of the poor swastika? This 3,000 year-old sun symbol carries a powerful and positive meaning in Hindu and Buddhist faiths. Even in a grand Catholic cathedral in Ireland – St. Coleman’s in Cork – there are swastikas in the mosaic floor tiles. But the swastika will be never be simply a symbol of power and good luck, and will probably never regain any positive colloquial associations or common usage in the West.

Barking about dictionary definitions and claiming that the linguistic mis-attribution is the fault of ignorant Westerners who can’t tell the difference between a clockwise swastika (Nazi) versus a counter-clockwise swastika (mostly everybody else) is… it’s worth repeating: pedantic and disingenuous. (Especially since the two were interchangeable in early uses.)

Like it or not, reality intrudes on and changes language all the time, and we are left to deal with the aftermath as best we can. Sometimes the cost is that words and symbols fall out of common usage because they can no support productive dialogue.

Seen in this light, selling “Intifada” t-shirts to teenagers in an Arabic school in NYC is, at best, clumsy and insensitive. It calls to mind another recent symbolic dust-up: the “Brown is the New White” t-shirts that Macy’s recently withdrew from stores. Like the Brooklyn principal who sincerely wanted to empower her students, the maker of the “Brown is the New White” t-shirts had a celebratory vision:

“We are taking over the world so everybody better watch out!!!!!!! (Ha ha ha! just kidding!) NO! It’s hard to ignore the fact that Latinos are everywhere now… its [sic] hard to pick up the newspaper and not read about Latinos in politics, music, art, design, etc. It’s just shining a little light on that in a funny way. That’s it.”

Since the t-shirt deliberately plays on racial power dynamics, the result (one might say predictably) was a storm of outrage on all sides of the power equation: anger from the left, the right, immigrant’s rights groups, and some Latinos that it was racist and poorly thought out; anger by yet other Latinos at anyone who co-opted their right to be ironic. It turned into a sociological-racial Rorschach test.

In reality, however, the literal reason for the global dominance of white Western culture is that white Europeans, for several hundred years running, mercilessly slaughtered, conquered and pacified their social and spiritual “inferiors.” So in a purely literal sense, the t-shirt is saying that that’s the legacy “Browns” are taking over. The writer’s cheeky empowerment and attempt at being edgy is actually pretty uninformed, ham-fisted and dumb.

For language buffs, these two controversies provide yet more evidence that our modern mindset is in the full-on throes of Baudrillard-ian delusion. (Like we needed any more evidence?) Symbols have replaced reality. They now are reality.

The factual basis of the controversy (the word “Intifada” on a shirt offered to teenagers by a moderate, peace-loving public school principal with a record of fostering productive religious dialogue) is meaningless. A t-shirt is not a bomb, but people treat it like one because a symbolic detonation is as good as the real thing. It is the real thing.

Circumstances and facts are lost in the volley of symbolic rhetoric about deliberate provocation, endorsements of violence, Islamist propaganda, Western hostility to the East, political theater, clashes of civilizations, the struggle for Western values, a competition between secular and religious institutions, etc., etc.

The symbolism is what we see. The symbolism is what we react to. The symbolic content is what dominates our thinking and our reasoning.

In all honesty, my gut reaction is that it makes me nostalgic for the non-threatening conformity of school uniforms. (That sentiment, in turn, will be denounced as a symbol of my authoritarian urge to squash dissent and free expression. And so the ante is upped once more.)

Consider the following sentence: Don’t be niggardly with that gay swastika!

That earthquake you feel in your brain is symbolism grinding against literalism. Beyond the benign literal meaning of words ["Don't be stingy with that happy good luck symbol!"] lies a powerful psychological and symbolic realm ["nigger, faggot, Nazi!"]. Here, language is freighted with so much symbolic weight that it squashes all other possible meanings and interpretations. Symbols of power provoke the same response as power itself. Symbols of intolerance function in the same way and provoke the same reaction as intolerance itself.

Unfortunately, this is the psychological and linguistic default by which we now live. Symbolic power governs how we relate both to each other and the world around us, and it’s quite unhelpful and immature to deny it. The best thing we can do, under the circumstances, is to understand the dynamic, show some self-restraint and stop poking sticks at the beehive.

The Irish national airline (Aer Lingus) has removed the Wolftones’ music from all in-flight audio programs, ditto state-run RTE radio stations. The Aer Lingus move came after a Northern Irish Protestant hardliner compared it to playing an Osama Bin Ladin recording on an Arab airliner. Nationalists say it’s folk music, a part of Irish culture and heritage, and only advocates legitimate revolution against a criminal occupation. In the end, no matter how great or Irish the songs may be, or how much we may enjoy raising a pint and singing them, their time as a public rallying cry has passed. It only serves to exacerbate wounds that have barely started to heal. So in the interest of maintaining a fragile psychological peace, the Wolftones were taken out of circulation in these particular venues.

So here too, we can put away the t-shirt for now, as well as the blame please, and all get back to the issue of teaching our kids algebra so that Am-ur-ica doesn’t lose its competitive edge to the Chinese and Indians!

No, but seriously, given our woeful state of public discourse, we need to learn how to better use, interpret and respond to the power of symbols. Rhetorical brinksmanship and symbolic scorched-Earth policies are no-win situations for all involved. We need to fess up to that, and then find a way out of this linguistic corner into which we are painted, before we slaughter each other – or are all brain dead from inhaling the fumes.