Who is 'us'?

This post is meant to be faintly sardonic and humorous, indicating the many and varied implicit answers to the question exhibited through revealed choices across the social spectrum worldwide.

Personally I'm most inclined to option 10. But I don't want to fall into complete relativism. I won't convince anyone in this post but I do have a methodological view, which is always to start on these questions from sociobiology.

For almost all species, the answer to the question "who is us?" is "kin".

In a species which practises reciprocal altruism, the answer is "family and friends".

In that uniquely ultra-social species which is humanity, the answer is: the toleration of unrelated individuals who:

(i) don't threaten the essential interests of family and friends (item 10);

(ii) contribute through their structured and disciplined activities to a level of civilisation (= an enhanced environment) which enhances the survival and flourishing of your family and friends (item 9).

Most of the other items either reflect survival strategies in situations of social instability (5-8) or are parochial and egregious generalisations based upon ideological/material drivers which represent the interests of privileged social groups (1-4).

If I had one wish, it would be for a non-ideological sociology based, as E. O. Wilson wished, on sociobiology.

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Question 1: who is 'us'

1. Those who are prosocial, compassionate and tolerant
2. Those who are the oppressed of the world
3. All life in the universe/galaxy/solar system/planet Earth
4. All of humanity across the world
5. Those in my religious community
6. Those who share my ethnicity
7. My fellow members of the rich and powerful elite
8. Those who live in my country
9. Those who are civilized and productive
10. People who will leave me alone.

One option only to be chosen.

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Question 2

Match answers to Question 1 with the following tribes and class-fractions.

1. Liberals
2. Social-Justice Warriors
3. Buddhists/Jains
4. Communists/Socialists/Humanists
5. People of the Book
6. X-Power advocates for values of X
7. Rich and powerful elites
8. Nationalists
9. Conservatives
10. Libertarians.

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Clever Sillies

This is a short post with some examples of clever people believing stupid things. And here is the origin of the term: "Clever sillies: why high IQ people tend to be deficient in common sense."

In fact clever sillies are people who have an agenda defined by their social position, which being axiomatically believed, prevents them from understanding reality properly.

1. The Catholic Church cannot understand evolution

From a biological view, the whole of life is a space of genotypes, mutating and complexifying over time via new phenotypes in response to environmental challenges caused by geophysical events and the feedback loops within ecologies themselves.

If you look at primate genomes, the C, G, A, T sequences, nothing jumps out at you about humans. They're pretty indistinguishable from other primates. There's continuity.

Yet in Catholic doctrine, people are in a unique relationship with God, have souls and so forth. Chimpanzees not so much.

Evolution can't support such theological discontinuities, so lip-service only is paid to it.

2. Liberals cannot understand evolution

From a biological standpoint, the presently-existing human race is a marvel of diversity. Over and above the basic XX-XY genomic differences encoding differential male-female reproductive roles, we see regional and historical adaptations to climate and social complexification marking and enabling geographical migration, the neolithic revolution and even the turbulent social history of the last millennium.

New results are being released every day, from teams like that of David Reich through to everyday personal genomics companies such as 23andMe.

None of this is consistent with equal outcomes, an axiom of SJW thought. So human micro-evolutionary plasticity must be denied.

3. Economist can't understand capitalism

As Steve Keen showed, the theoretical structure of neoclassical economics - the current orthodoxy - is laughably stupid. It takes years of education to ram this nonsense firmly into economists' heads. Capitalism is conceptualised as an idealised village market: petty-commodity production.

All this to wish away the obvious truth that investment is conducted for profit, and that profits result from the appropriation by private owners of produced value from propertyless workers. Unthinkable.

Conclusion

We live in a society which denies its own economic nature and for its own replicatory purposes misrepresents the nature of the people who comprise it. No wonder we are drowning in lies.

Where is the truth?

Where is the truth, you ask. Marxists come close with their understanding that capitalism is a kind of game played by people in unequal class relations. The ideologies which makes this seem natural and right are discussed above.

Yet Marxism buys into a naive ideology of the ur-nature of mankind: generalised benevolence waiting for the right social conditions to emerge. This unlikely prospect has been falsified both by history and biology. So there's another agenda subverting the truth. The ever-critical Marx would have been horrified.

I think the people who get closest to truth are the sociobiologists (check out West Hunter some time). They have the kudos of being reviled by everyone.

As the petty-bourgeoisie gets ever more outraged at its lacklustre prospects, its febrile mobilisations, its crazed intellectual frothings get ever more irksome and dangerous.

Hold on tight .. .

Straussian Ethics

This is a post about Straussian ethics. Or, when is it worth dying in a ditch?

Let's start with a typical scenario. Suppose it became a commonplace, but morally-charged, belief that the moon was actually a cube of green cheese.

People who were unwise enough to note that common observation might suggest otherwise would be rebutted with the usual litany. They would be accused of deploying old, discredited stereotypes about heavenly bodies. ‘Scientific Geometry’ would be ridiculed.

And so on.

A prominent astronomer would make an exasperated speech refuting this conventional wisdom about the moon and unwisely ridiculing its proponents. A media firestorm would then ensue, resulting in the scientist being expelled from the community of right-thinking people. He would be fired from his job.

So far, so familiar.

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Now consider Dr Smith, a software developer who writes a blog on technical topics. Over the years he has posted articles about the spherical geometry of large gravitationally-bound objects. Maybe written about the composition of the lunar regolith.

He feels he should write an indignant post about the disgraceful hounding of this astronomer. A few years ago he would not have hesitated. He would have skewered the green-cheese cubists with glee.

But now he thinks:

'What would be the point? I'm a nobody. No-one cares what I think. My thoughts will have zero effect on history. I'm not part of any organised tribe. There's no decisive battle here to be fought and perhaps won.

'Worse, sticking my head up makes me a target. The howling, tribal mob can find my post on the public Internet. On a whim I'll get the same treatment. No-one will care when my reputation is trashed and I'm fired for my unacceptable values.'

So Dr Smith makes a rational calculation. He doesn't write his incendiary defence of the hapless astronomer. Instead he spends an evening carefully reviewing his blog, deleting any posts about the moon.

And why stop there?

He removes all his posts about astronomy and resolves in future never to touch the topic again.

In addition, he will write henceforth in deliberately abstract, tortuous and obfuscatory language, unlikely to trigger the roving eye of the Inquisition.

He has resolved to become a Straussian.

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People who take Dr Smith's view are roundly denounced from a safe distance, by liberals not themselves experiencing life-changing pressure. “Stand up for the truth and be damned!” they say.

Dr Smith notes that in history, people who did that were cut-down and left for dead. In the end, in almost every case, their courageous stand made no difference.

The dead hero has generally made a poor, stupid choice, he thinks. Sanity is eventually restored by the pendulum of history, not the blood of forgotten martyrs (although one or two high-profile ones are handy as symbols).

We no longer believe in heavenly credit for bearing witness.

Is the obscure Dr Smith right?

Capitalism, Democracy and China

Bill Markle writes (about the present situation in Chinese politics):

"At one point, the grand political bargain that CCP struck with the population was, “We will let you get rich, you let us govern.”

Those circumstances that allowed China to prosper and CCP to thrive since 1978 are no longer in place. The wealthy and the very wealthy are now forces with which to contend, even as they are beholden to the Party for continued flourishing.

As hard as it tries, the government cannot import western Dr. Science without the specter of Mr. Democracy. The same students who go to the US for degrees in STEM come back wanting to say what they think, even as they adjust to life back within the authoritarian regime.

Middle class CCP cadres whose livelihoods depend on party stability still want clean air, water, food, and good education and job opportunities for kids.

China is not a tinderbox waiting for a spark, but the constant stirring of anger and resentment is no way to run a country.

If something cannot go on forever, then it will eventually stop – hence a warning to CCP, which turns 100 years old in 2021 and in that year will be the longest lasting single party state in history, at 72 years."

Democracy under capitalism ('bourgeois democracy') is a peculiarity within history. All previous social formations (in their respective modes of production) have been autocracies for the many, even if they had a democratic formulation for the ruling class itself.

Why?

Because capitalism separates the economic class, which secures wealth for itself, from the state apparatus and political power. Capitalist relations generally reproduce themselves without direct, repressive coercion from the state. You do not go to work at the point of a gun.

Slaves and peasants metaphorically did.

In the normal state of affairs, the capitalist economy grows. This is inherent in the competitive process. Invest or die. However, a rising economic tide can lift all classes. Buy-in can be bought. Meanwhile, a democratic form allows the state to debate optimal policies. Not an easy task, as Brexit is currently demonstrating.

Centrally-planned economies, where the bureaucracy attempts to direct production (through central planning) via administrative means are always repressive. The interests of the bureaucracy cannot be aligned organically with the interests of the masses. As Markle indicates in his post, this is a sign of weakness, not of strength.

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The story changes when the capitalist economy falters in stagnation, or plunges into recession, or worse, depression. The working class and sections of the petty-bourgeoisie (the middle classes) no longer economically advance. Instead, they mill around in confusion and obdurate resistance (one of the key motors of the Brexit vote). They obstruct the measures necessary to restore profitability which always include company bankruptcies, mass unemployment and serious cuts to real wages and benefits.

Sometimes authoritarian-state or paramilitary force is required to cow the masses and economically scatter them. It's always a multi-year project, but in history we've seen reactionary strong states and fascistic movements triumphing.

The attractor form of governance is always bourgeois democracy, but the duration of repressive structures can be long. If Spain (1939-1975) or Portugal (1932-1974) are taken as examples, you can see that it took generations to move from regimes like those of Franco and Salazar back to democracy.

I do not see an infinite history ahead for the Chinese Communist Party. The economy will become more capitalistic, that sector will continue to grow. The rising middle-class will demand dynamic economic growth. Given China's size and historic fear of disintegration, some kind of strongly presidential state seems likely to emerge, something like France or Russia.

Perhaps Xi is giving us the preview.

Plumbers are a market failure

The shower is dripping again.

I phone our fifth plumber (all the rest have been struck off for incompetence or a refusal to attend - this one actually came the last time). He texts back airily, 'Busy right now, maybe three weeks time?'

I am wise to the language of plumbers. He means he has a lucrative long-term contract and cannot foresee a time when our little piece of work could make economic sense to him, or be scheduled.

Given the new houses being built in our neighbourhood, this makes complete sense.

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I am dissatisfied with plumbing as a service, in a way I am not with retailing.  

Waitrose. Why can't plumbing be like Waitrose?

We tried a national organisation once. They advertised that they'd find a plumber for you. In so many hours, at such-and-such an inflated cost. I called them. Then I cancelled within the hour after reading - belatedly - their terrible reviews. They were cowboys and charlatans.

Most plumbers are small businesses. Family and friends. The job does not lend itself to economies of scale: each house and job is different, with little standardisation. This means that there is no value-adding role for a Waitrose-type organisation of plumbers.

The cowboy outfit I called was just an Internet middleman. But they sign up primarily incompetent plumbers because the margins their plumbers see are worse.

The supply of plumbers is inelastic.

The steady-state number of plumbers in an area is set by periods of weak demand, usually during a recession. When times are better, the good plumbers are always busy on the best contracts; the long-term ones sourced from house-builders.

The little family-house problem gets short shrift.

If supply of plumbing services is structurally inadequate, then what about demand? Deskilling the task would help: better quality piping and joints, designed for less, and easier, maintenance.

But housebuilders have no incentive. New-house plumbing works just fine for the first few years. The builders have been paid and are long-gone when the problems start.

With local supply restricted and local demand hard to decrease, the mismatch looks here to stay. Only labour mobility can solve this problem.

Market equilibrium demands we say yes to the Polish plumber!

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This is not an argument against Brexit. It's an argument in favour of access to competent, skilled workers.