IntegralJournal

Why Big Ag Won't Feed the World

Why Big Ag Won't Feed the World.

According to the author, as populations explode, chemicals and GMOs aren't the answer....

The Orchid Gene

Fascinating Article

An explanation of why that homeless person raving in the park often -- if you listen closely -- sounds far more sane than most of the bosses you have had. We have to create a place for the creative. Contemporary workplaces do not provide it -- because the intelligent know bullshit when they see it -- and contemporary academia does not provide it because it places you in a tiny box.

Related quote from Brain-Wise: Studies In Neurophilosophy: 

Not surprisingly, I have also found that history of philosophy invaluable in putting current philosophical orthodoxy at arm's length.  This is not because I subscribe to the goofy theory according to which the historical giants knew more because they knew less....Rather, it is because some of the greats were just a whole lot broader in their interests and a whole lot more curious about nature in general than are many of today's mainstream philosophers. [p.ix]

The same can be said for mainstream, period.

What is the significance of this?

http://www.mint.com/blog/trends/who-is-paying-taxes/

Not good.

Thinking In Systems, etc.

Epigraph from Thinking in Systems -- A Primer:

If a factory is torn down but the rationality which produced it is left standing, then that rationality will simply produce another factory.  If a revolution destroys a government, but the systemic patterns of thought that produced that government are left intact, then those patterns will repeat themselves.... There's so much talk about the system.  And so little understanding.

           --Robert Pirsig, Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance

Thinking in Systems is the primer that the subtitle promises.  This book should be required reading for both libertarians and liberals.  Both are guilty of not incorporating limits to growth in their respective philosophies.

From Understanding Knowledge as a Commons:

We hope the readers of this book take away a strong sense that there are indeed analytical commonalities underlying many problems of deep concern today.  How do we build effective forms of collective action and self-organizing, self-governing initiatives? [p.21]

A brief and easy to understand explanation of why the term "banksters" is warranted:

http://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2009/12/former-barclays-chief-points-out-bonuses-were-paid-fruadulently.html

"...the typical American lifestyle teems with risk factors for mental illness"

http://www.livescience.com/health/090729-what-makes-us-crazy.html

Fold 'em and Walk Away

I'm taking the liberty of sharing the last section of Financial Reckoning Day Fallout with you because I think that it is a must read.  If you can't buy the book, please check it out of your local library.  Get a copy via interlibrary loan if your local library does not have a copy.

Last Section in a Chapter labeled Moral Hazards:

ADVICE TO THE CLASS OF 2009

So far, not a single major university has asked us to make the commencement address.  Nor a minor college.  Not even a school of cosmetology or taxidermy.  But as we write from London, protected by a broad ocean and a narrow reading of the First Amendment, we will give advice no one asked for.

"Plastics," was the advice given to college graduates in Mike Nichols' 1967 film The Graduate.  But that was when there was still hope for the United States' manufacturing sector.  Even then, it was too late.  The percentage of GDP from the manufacturing sector fell for the next four decades, from more than 20 percent in the last [I assume this should be late] 1960s to barely 12 percent in 2008.  Better advice would have been "derivatives."  They stank just as bad, but they were much more profitable.  Although only 8 percent of GDP, finance accounted for 40 percent of corporate profits in 2007.  And derivatives grew from nothing to a face value of 16 time the GDP of the entire planet.

But your elders are always giving you bum advice.

"You cannot decline the burdens of empire and still expect to share its honors," said Pericles to the class of 430 B.C.  He lived during a time not unlike your parents' era in the United States -- when Athens was on top of the world.  But vanity got the better of him.  He launched an attack on Sparta that backfired badly.  He soon died of plague and Athens was not only ruined, but enslaved.  Athens' "golden age' turned to lead.  Young Athenians should have shrugged off the burden rather than accept it.  You should do the same.

When you were born 20-some years ago, the nation's total debt per person was less than $90,000 -- adjusted to 2009 dollars, of course.  Although that was a lot of money, it was nothing compared to what was coming.  Now it's $186,717 per person -- more than twice as much, in real terms.  Fortunately, private debt is not inheritable.  But it comes to you as a lien against property.  Instead of paying off their mortgages and leaving you a house, free and clear, the baby boomer generation spent the "equity" in their houses even faster than they got it.  House prices rose.  But mortgage debt rose faster.  Although your grandparents owned 80 percent of their houses, by 2007, the typical homeowner only really owned four rooms of an eight-room house.  And then, when house prices fell, so did his remaining equity...to the point where one out of six homeowners is now underwater.  You could still eventually inherit a house, but you may have to scrape the barnacles off the front porch.

But that's not even the half of it.  Although your parents had control of the U.S. government, they allowed themselves a little larceny.  Add the unfunded retirement and health care benefits they voted for themselves to the official national debt, and together they are scheduled to cost your generation four times the total annual output of the United States.  This is over and above the private debt they accumulated.

Some of this debt can be carried.  Some will have to be paid down.  But as it stands, as much as $77 trillion [with a "t"] of post-2009 earnings must be stolen from the future in order to pay for the liquor your parents drank...the bombs they dropped on god-forsaken foreigners...and the interest on their debts.  So, forget about saving for a European vacation or a house of your own.  Even if every penny of your savings -- and every other American's savings -- are put to the task you will still be paying for your parents' expenses all your life.

But wait, there's more!  The burden is getting heavier.  Federal budget projections show an additional $7 trillion in deficits over the next 10 years.  Described as the cost of fighting recession, the present generation buries its own mistakes under cash that the next generation hasn't even earned yet.  Today's bankers, businessmen, and speculators are being bankrolled by you -- tomorrow's bankers, businessmen, and speculators.  Today's homeowners get a helping hand...from whom?  Tomorrow's homeowners -- you.  Today's employees get a boost, too.  Same story.  Where do you think the money came from to pay Wall Street bonuses?  How do you think GM stays in business...and Fannie Mae...and AIG...Who pays those salaries?  Who pays to keep troops all over the world and keep old people supplied with new drugs?  Who pays for hundreds of billions' worth of "shovel-ready" boondoggles?  You will.  At least, that's the plan.

The luck [or bumbling idiocy] of one generation is the curse of the next.  Like Pericles, your parents inherited a dollar; they leave you a peso.  They took over the strongest, richest, most competitive nation in the world.  And like Pericles they minded everyone's business but their own.  Now, not only does the United States owe money all over town, its government puts out trillions more in IOUs every year -- each with your name on it.  You're not even out in the real world yet, and you're getting the bill for 50 cents of every dollar the feds spend -- almost none of it earmarked for you.  But that is the thing about the real world your teachers probably forgot to tell you about.  It is more unreal and fantastical than anything you studied.

Here's what's real: You've been dealt a bad hand.  From the bottom of the deck...your parents have slipped you some nasty cards.  Our advice?  Fold 'em.  Get up from the table before they clean you out.

Financial Reckoning Day Fallout: Surviving Today's Global Depression

Some additional excerpts from Financial Reckoning Day Fallout that I felt warranted inclusion [see yesterday's post]:  

From Page 151:

A learned and thoughtful man may speak before a crowd and get no positive reaction whatsoever.  A real demagogue, on the other hand, will distill his thoughts into a few simpleminded expressions [Lou Dobbs?] and soon have enough admirers to run for public office.  Readers who have wondered why it is that politicians all seem to be such simpletons now have their answer: It is a requirement for the job.  For, en masse, mankind can neither understand complex or ambiguous thoughts nor remember them.

Quoting Gustave Le Bon (The Crowd) on page 164:

Notwithstanding all its progress, philosophy has been unable as yet [The Crowd was first published in 1895] to offer the masses any ideal that can charm them; but as they must have their illusions at all cost, they turn instinctively, as the insect seeks the light, to the rhetoricians who accord them what they want.  Not truth, but error has always been the chief factor in the evolution of nations, and the reason why socialism is so powerful today [1895] is that is constitutes the last illusion that is still vital.  In spite of all scientific demonstrations it continues on the increase.  Its principal strength lies in the fact that it is championed by minds sufficiently ignorant of things as they are in reality to venture boldly to promise mankind happiness.  The social illusion reigns today upon all the heaped up ruins of the past, and to it belongs the future.  The masses have never thirsted after the truth.  They turn aside from evidence that is not to their taste, preferring to deify error, if error seduce them.  Whoever can supply them with illusions is easily their master; whoever attempts to destroy their illusions is always their victim.

According To Wikipedia, Hitler and Mussolini were big fans of The Crowd and Mussolini reportedly kept it by his bedside.  Today, our "leaders" simply use polls to guide their actions.  The result is the same.

From Page 166:

Essential to any society is what Le Bon calls a "General Belief" -- a very large myth -- that holds it together.  Marxist Leninism -- or at least lip service to it -- held the Soviet Union together for seven decades, for example.  Even in the 1960's, when people began to realize that the creed was a loser, they stuck with it for another three decades for they had nothing to put in its place.

City of the End of Things: Lectures on Civilization and Empire

As always, I'm trying to develop the case that we need to integrate the best of our existing institutions into a new institution that provides more security, freedom, opportunity, and sanity.  A few select excerpts from books I've read or previewed in the last few days that may cause you to question our current system:

City of the End of Things

From the Introduction:

In his first Whidden Lecture of 1967, Northrop Frye echoes a line and title from Lampman (1861-99), one of the most evocative poets writing in English in the last part of the nineteenth century.  The 1892 poem seems to represent a hellish or apocalyptic dream that begins in the Tartarus of classical mythology.  Frye names his first lecture after the poem in a book about Canada's first century....The title of this volume, which comes from Lampman via Frye, suggests the precariousness of modernity in its cities in and against nature....The years in and about 1967 have a good deal to say about what went before and came after.

From Page 119:

Technology cannot of itself bring about an increase in human freedom, for technological developments threaten the structure of society, and society develops a proportionate number of restrictions to contain them.  The automobile increases the speed and freedom of individual movement, and thereby brings a proportionate increase in police authority, with its complications of laws and penalties.  In proportion as the production of retail goods becomes more efficient, the quality of craftsmanship and design decreases...

One of the misconceptions of our time is that we have a great deal of freedom.

Rules, Games, and Common-Pool Resources

From Page 323:

...individuals may be more capable of changing their situations and of adopting workable heuristics (norms) than is typically presumed....The capability of humans to agree upon rules that structure their own games has not been taken sufficiently into account in traditional analysis.  We hope this book will help change that in the future.

In an empirical setting where individuals have at least some autonomy to decide on their own rules, we can also develop useful predictions.  If the interests of the individuals involved are relatively symmetric, face-to-face communication is possible, and the situation is relatively simple, we expect individuals to select rules that are

1. already known to them, either by experience or by reputation;
2. easy to learn, follow, and monitor;
3. likely to reduce the complexity of the situation; and
4. perceived as likely to improve joint outcomes.

From Page 329:

Those who have developed forms of mutual trust and social capital can utilize these assets to craft institutions that avert the CPR [common-pool resources] dilemma and arrive at reasonable outcomes.

I must admit that I quickly lose interest in books that are written for an academic audience.  The specialization that abounds these days -- higher education is built around specialization -- is mind-numbing.  It seems as if a lot of fiddling is going on as resources are squandered.

The Third Jesus

From Page 40:

...any attempt to impose an ideal society upon the framework of lower consciousness is bound to fail.

In my opinion, Chopra does not do enough to emphasize Supreme Identity -- as contrasted with Supreme Being.  I suppose that he is attempting to reach the Christian that is starting to think that there may be more to spirituality than doctrine and dogma...

Financial Reckoning Day Fallout

From Page 91:

Remember, the present economic system is not capitalism...it's a kind of Marxism for rich people...in which the elite make the profits while the losses are redistributed, shared throughout the entire population like Mao jackets and influenza.  The genius of the present system is that it dupes the masses into thinking they are capitalists, making it possible for the speculators and hustlers to offload their risks onto them.

A review of Threshold by Thom Hartmann can be found here.

If in doubt; double down: http://www.juneauempire.com/stories/111909/sta_524671946.shtml

If you are in a retirement plan and are concerned about whether there will be any funds in your account in the future, contact me.