Trego's Mountain Ear

"Serving North Lincoln County"

Tag: Politics

  • It Didn’t Start at Fort Sumter

    As I’ve been following posts about what’s happening, I keep encountering comments about a looming civil war. I think there are some crazy bastards out there that really want to see it happen. There may be as much disagreement politically as there was in 1860 – but it may be time to look at what occurred in the war between the states.

    It didn’t start in Charleston – the political violence started in Kansas. Sure, Robet E. Lee took John Brown out in Virginia – but the man began his career in Kansas. The fictional opening scenes from Eastwood’s “Josey Wales” provide a more realistic example than the courteous actual history at Charleston. The war between the states started in Kansas, and, as Eastwood showed, quickly spread to Missouri, then to most of the nation.

    By and large, the craziness didn’t make it to Montana. In 1863, our predecessors had better things to do – Union or Confederate, they had moved to Montana and left that war behind them. Definitely not cowards, the founding Montanans left a war they found unnecessary behind them and created a new state.

    Colorado almost did as well until a Methodist minister named Chivington took a group of volunteers to New Mexico, showed up at the wrong place, and for lack of anything worthwhile to do tackled a Confederate supply column, and became a hero for it. He got a star for his blunder, and his next action is known as the Sand Creek Massacre. A murderer in blue uniform that time. As the nation built up to the war between the states (and during that war) there was a similar emphasis on soft targets. We still remember William Quantrill and Bloody Bill Anderson as murderous Confederates. Our historians are a bit more inclined to remember John Brown for his anti-slavery stance than for the Pottawatomie Massacre – but crazies on both sides of the issue selected soft targets. We forget that George Hoyt, the lawyer who defended John Brown after the Harpers Ferry raid was also a captain in the Red Legs. On both sides, generally awful people who chose to kill those who disagreed with them, and sought out soft targets.

    As I write this, I’m thinking of the shooting at an LDS church and the North Carolina shooting, and the various school shootings – we’re seeing crazies attacking soft targets. And I read folks predicting a civil war – right against left, liberal against conservative. And somehow, it looks to me as if our nation’s whackos will claim the moral high ground as they endorse politics as their grounds for murder. I’ve seen news of one young man using his grandfather’s re-barreled Mauser to kill another – then the next whacko left cartridges that appeared to be 303 Brit (developed in 1888) when he shot at ICE and killed some poor mojado who ha been brought in for deportation.

    Montana’s early settlers chose to ignore the path of the crazies, leave the war between the states to those who either wanted it or couldn’t get out of it, and proceed to an area where, Unionist or Confederate, they could work together to build better lives, first in the mines, then in ranches. It’s still a good technique.

  • Misinformation

    It’s easy to spread misinformation. Unfortunately, we all have a tendency to believe data that supports our beliefs. On the morning of September 10, I wouldn’t have recognized Charlie Kirk if he had walked up and bit me on the leg. By the afternoon of that day, I heard the the President’s words confirming his death. The folding table, and the sign “Prove Me Wrong” were vaguely familiar – it turns out that I retired from the college campus scene about the time he was starting – so I looked at YouTube to see what he did.

    I watched him debate, or attempt to debate, a young man whose stance was that anyone who identified as a woman was a woman. Charlie Kirk’s stance was that it took two X chromosomes. He was using rationality against repetition – and, to me, it looked like he was on top of the debate. The guy who was arguing against him looked frustrated, angry and foolish.

    I tried rational discourse on Facebook years back. A classmate had posted that (based on her experience as an election official) there was no election fraud in Montana. It was too easy – all I needed was to show one 8conviction, and I had a dozen or more to choose from. Piece of cake – but my rational assessment wasn’t enough to overcome her beliefs. Confirmation bias has a lot of power.

    I read left-of-center publications as well as the right. If I limit my information sources to those I want to hear, confirmation bias will beat me. Years back, on Facebook, I cited data from Texas that showed illegal immigrants have higher rates of criminal activities than US residents in general. Texas was the only state collecting and publishing such data. I got a reply telling me my data source was bad because some right-wing pundit had used the same information. I would have preferred more sources – but as a social scientist, you use the best you can get. Unlike Charlie Kirk, I responded to the insult with an insult of my own. A long time ago, Chet Apeland told me, “Mike, you don’t want to get in an argument with an idiot – after the third exchange, nobody will know which is which.” Chet’s rule has been good advice. Whenever I have ignored it I’ve looked like a jerk.

    Some of the best information on a specific topic available deals with abortion. Every state collects, maintains, and publishes data on who gets abortions. It’s there. So when a lady from DC – a lawyer – told me that American Indians get abortions at the same rate as white women, I could check. They don’t. At least in South Dakota, American Indian women are less likely. What really shocked me was how much more likely South Dakota’s few black women were to get abortions (than whites). South Dakota is a state that is mostly white, then a lot of American Indians. Still, I was more shocked by the Attorney giving misinformation to the State Demographer. I’m still not sure if she was ignorant, or just believe that she was credible and I would accept her statement without checking.

    The data doesn’t affect the argument – one side argues for reproductive rights, the other argues against killing babies. It’s hard to debate when each side has it’s own topic. Makes confirmation bias even more powerful.

    Getting back to the murder of Charlie Kirk – when the photo of the assassin’s rifle showed up, I saw a comment: “That’s not a military rifle.” The rifle was a scoped 1898 Mauser with a black synthetic stock. The best guess I’ve seen is that over 100 million of these rifles were made between 1898 and the end of World War II. The 1898 Mauser might be the statistician’s primary example of a military rifle. I suspect I read an opinion from someone who first thinks of an AK-47 (also 100 million produced) or the AR-15 platform (over 30 million individually owned in 8the US). Confirmation bias leads to misinformation.

    I have a tendency to distrust all politicians – regardless of party. They live in a world of partisan bias – and, like the lawyer lady, want me to accept that view without checking. It’s easy to get misinformation – and there will always be unpleasant facts. I thought that “Trust but verify.” came from Ronald Reagan – it turns out that it’s a Russian proverb. It was a good idea in a country where the line went “there is no truth (pravda) in the news (isvestia) there is no news (investia) in truth (pravda). It’s probably just as good an idea here and now.

  • Feeling Politically Normal

    I read a substack called “The Liberal Patriot.” It’s basically the writings of middle-of-the road Democrats – I can’t say that I fully agree with what is written there – but I’m within reach of some of the messages. This morning, in an article titled “The Independent Era Is Coming,” they included some polling results:

    I figure that translates to 2/3 of people agree with me – disappointed with government, and 5/8 are frustrated by government. The thing is, largely I’m disappointed by my elected officials and generally frustrated by the professional bureaucracy. That isn’t a winning percentage for either side. The article shows this pie chart:

    75% want major reforms or a complete overhaul of the system – and the one-time head of the FBI has been indicted by a Virginia Grand Jury. Comey is an example of the problem and the dissatisfaction with our political bureaucracy – with a Virginia jury of his peers he is likely to walk free with a hung jury, but that will only emphasize the feeling of a need to change the system.

    The article ends with : “Be yourself and not a partisan. If you’re economically populist and socially conservative and don’t see this represented in the two-party system, be yourself and support independent candidates who back a pro-worker, pro-family, pro-America agenda. Alternatively, if you really care about a specific economic or social issue and don’t feel that either Democrats or Republicans equally care about the issue, then be yourself and support those who do back the issue regardless of their party label. Some of these candidates may be Republican, some Democratic, and others may be independent. Make them work for your vote! Don’t be a partisan and blindly accept every position and argument on one side and reject those on the other. Don’t write off outsiders without a party label. The beauty of political independence is that you no longer must toe anyone’s line or feel any pressure to conform to a specific party platform or candidate. Embrace the liberation from partisan insanity!”

    It would please me if my readers went to the Liberal Patriot and read the articles. I don’t agree with all of them, but their substack does a nice job of showing that middle-of-the-road liberals exist – and they can still communicate with the rest of us. Give the Liberal Patriot a read.

  • Studying Capitalism

    Karl Marx spent about six weeks writing the Communist Manifesto, and his entire life writing Das Kapital, but we know him as the originator of Communism rather than a long-term student of capitalism.   The possible relevance of Joseph Tainter – Niskanen Center interfaces some Marx-like observations of modern Capitalism (things that were not readily observable during Marx’ lifetime) with Tainter’s theory of Complexity:

    “capitalism is currently suffering from chronic, degenerative conditions – namely, faltering dynamism and inclusion combined with increasingly dysfunctional politics.”

    “After all, contemporary postindustrial capitalism features a mass elite of entrepreneurs, managers, and professionals. Comprising some 20 to 30 percent of the population, this is the largest elite, both in absolute numbers and in size relative to society as a whole, that any social order in human history has yet produced, and – making due allowance for all the problems that bedevil life at the top today – its members are flourishing at a level that would stagger the imagination of aristocracies past. Thus, capitalism as a system for producing mass flourishing is overextended: It works for the top quarter or so of society, but not so well for everybody else.” 

    Karl Marx died in 1883 – before capitalism managed to pull most people up from abject poverty.  He chronicled the problems associated with capitalism – yet years before his death wrote “If anything is certain, it is that I myself am not a Marxist.  Still now, 140 years after his death, the problem of Capitalism is that “capitalism as a system for producing mass flourishing is overextended.  It works for the top quarter . . . but not so well for everybody else.”  

    That phrase strikes me as today’s most legitimate criticism of capitalism.  It doesn’t lift everyone equally.

    I’ve worked and researched the most successful communist group in North America – the Hutterites.  Simply enough, their society functions for two reasons – first, the communal ownership they espouse has a strong religious component. The belief is that it is much easier to ascend to heaven from the communal society – which can be one heck of a motivator.  The second reason is that the folks who are born Hutterite but do not share the beliefs can easily move from the communal colony into the larger, mostly capitalistic society. I suspect that Karl Marx would have recanted his manifesto had he observed late twentieth century communism in all its forms.  

    So here’s the next quote from The possible relevance of Joseph Tainter – Niskanen Center

    “One fundamental reason for capitalism’s difficulties in promoting more widespread flourishing is the steadily diminishing nexus between economic growth and well-being. It’s not true that more money above a certain threshold has no effect on happiness: The most recent examination of this issue found that reported happiness, both in terms of positive affect and overall life satisfaction, continues to rise indefinitely. Importantly, though, happiness doesn’t increase in linear fashion as income rises; rather, it increases in linear fashion with every doubling of income.”

    And that brings us back to the chart that the Niskanen Center shows – demonstrating the decreasing returns to increasing complexity:

    Read the whole article.  I’ve seen the problems of communism on the small scale of the Hutterite Communes, the Soviet Union, and I owned a Yugo.  I don’t know how any economic system can make the lowest sixth flourish as well as any member of the top quarter.  Read the whole article,  The author does a lot better job at showing how Tainter’s theory applies to our own society than I can.   The possible relevance of Joseph Tainter – Niskanen Center

  • Complexity and Collapse

    The ending years of the 20th century saw three theorists developing hypotheses related to societal collapse of states.  George Cowgill (1988:263) saw internal economic reasons – societies that depend on taxation develop increasing numbers of people and organizations that are legally exempt from taxes . . . and increasing numbers of taxpayers find ways to avoid taxes illegally.  Bureaucracies – expensive bureaucracies – grow, with “increasing corruption, rigidity, incompetence, extravagance and inefficiency.”  Simultaneously, citizen expectations of state services increase.

    Jared Diamond looked at growing populations mandating agricultural intensification – and that intensification carries with it unanticipated consequences – soil erosion, problems with water management, deforestation, etc.

    Joseph Tainter looked at complexity – challenges in production are met with increasing complexity (1988:88-90) and listed 8 causes for the collapse of complex societies.

    1. Resource Depletion
    2. New Resources
    3. Catastrophes
    4. Insufficient response to circumstances
    5. Other complex societies
    6. Intruders
    7. Mismanagement
    8. Economics

    Economic factors and mismanagement kind of go together.  If we look at the bureaucracies that keep our nation state functioning, we find ( https://www.federalpay.org/employees ) 

    2,807,126

    EMPLOYEES

    732

    AGENCIES

    $76,667.77

    AVERAGE SALARY

    $215.22B

    TOTAL SALARY

    Now if these numbers seem large, the Census provides us with numbers for state and local governments: 19,768,685 employees, with $89,265,296,554 in total salary.  Frankly, I don’t trust my data – it comes from two sources, and the proportions look a little strange.  But questionable data isn’t the problem – we’re talking over 22 million government employees to manage.  Tainter’s 7th cause of collapse is mismanagement.  

    The total number of jobs listed for the US in February 2022 was 150,399,000 – and a little bit of rounding tells us that about 2/15, or 13% of US jobs are for one form of government or another.  On one hand, 13% of the nation’s jobs are to make government work – which is a large expense.  On the other hand, there is a tremendous opportunity for Murphy to get into a system this large and complex and arrange for things to go wrong.

    Under the heading of Mismanagement, Tainter’s explanation is “The elite in a civilization may so abuse their power and direct so much of the surplus wealth and labor of their society to their own benefit that not enough is left for the maintenance of the economic and political system, leading to collapse.”

    If you’re politically on the left, you can readily see where the fat cat right wing elite can do this.  If you’re politically on the right, the stories of Joe Biden and son that are available support Tainter’s explanation.  If you’re somewhere in between, Tainter makes even better sense.

    Simply enough, the more moving parts there are in a system, the more opportunities Murphy has for things to go wrong.  The less competent management is, the more opportunity there is for systemic failure.  It kind of goes back to Malthusian demographics – for a bit over 225 years, our society has developed increasingly complex systems that made Thomas Malthus wrong.  The thing is, Malthus only has to be right once.

  • A Right to Your Own Opinion But Not Your Own Facts

    I always credited this quote to Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan. It turns out that the original was Bernard Baruch, “Every man has a right to his own opinion, but no man has a right to be wrong in his facts.”

    According to QuoteInvestigator.com “In 1983 U.S Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan was a member of the National Commission on Social Security Reform. He employed the saying within an op-ed piece in the “Washington Post”:

    “There is a center in American politics. It can govern. The commission is just an example of what can be done. First, get your facts straight. Everyone is entitled to his own opinion, but not his own facts. Second, decide to live with the facts. Third, resolve to surmount them. Because, fourth, what is at stake is our capacity to govern.” So I have the original Moynihan quote – and it is a little different from the Baruch quotation.

    My father credited Moynihan with the destruction of the Black family – when I finally asked the right question – basically a why do you believe this- I realized he had never read the Moynihan report – the title is The Negro Family: The Case For National Action (published in 1965 and available at https://old.blackpast.org/african-american-history/moynihan-report-1965/

    Dad had confused the messenger with the message. Perhaps because Lyndon Johnson continued his ‘Great Society’ message and policy despite Moynihan’s recommendations, possibly because Johnson never bothered to read Moynihan’s report. Moynihan wrote the facts as he saw them in 1965 – and history has demonstrated that he was correct.

    I’m sure Moynihan never knew that Dad had the wrong opinion of his report and the wrong facts. I’m fairly sure that he knew President Johnson had a flawed opinion based on incorrect facts.

    A lot of our current political differences can be seen as people insisting on their own facts. When the definition of “woman” becomes something we don’t agree on, we have a communication problem. I have a tendency to accept Mussolini’s definition of fascism – others accept Joe Stalin’s. Those different ‘facts’ have been around for nearly a century – and the Soviet definition included all Capitalists.

    When the definitions change, people have their own facts. In the mid-eighties, when I taught at Trinidad, only one hospital – Mount San Rafael – and only one surgeon – Dr. Stanley Biber – was performing transexual surgery. Biber required a lot of counseling before performing the surgery – no one considered the surgery, available only in a rural Colorado hospital – to be normal. Now, with athletes and assassins arguing the meaning of the word “woman”, and with at least one Supreme Court Justice unclear on the definition, we have disagreements over facts.

    Are Palestinians facing genocide, or did they attack and murder/kidnap 1300 people a couple years back? It’s past time to quit changing definitions. We can’t afford to have people who are a couple bubbles off making their own facts.