COVID-19 Pandemic Will Trigger Collapse of the Global Political Left’s Soft Totalitarianism

Soft totalitarianism is an unstable mix of anarchy, democracy, and totalitarianism. The good news is that it will not survive the COVID-19 pandemic. The bad news is what will likely replace it.

Updated October 18, 2021

The political left in Western countries has transitioned since the 1960s from a movement primarily promoting the interests of the working class to a strange mix of disparate elements. On the one hand, there continues to be the traditional leftist redistribution advocacy, including support for higher taxes, increased minimum wage, unions, regulation, etc. But the 1960s added social liberalism and identity politics. Social liberalism is the belief in unrestricted personal freedom, including collapse of the traditional family and traditional gender roles, fighting for the rights of sexual nonconformists like LGBT, psychotropic drug use, and extreme anti-authoritarianism, including handcuffing law enforcement while extending the rights of criminals. Identity politics is viewing all public policy from the lens of one’s group, rather than the general public interest. Feminism and black advocacy are examples of identity politics.

Since the 1960s, social liberalism has resulted in a condition of semi-anarchy in regions of many Western countries. In the U.S., this began with the 1960s and 1970s explosion of crime and drug use in the big cities. As people escaped to the suburbs, crime and drug use migrated there. Crime was successfully reduced beginning in the 1990s with a combination of more effective policing, mass incarceration, and legalized abortion. All three of these crime-reduction tactics were controversial, with the left opposing policing and mass incarceration, and the right opposing legalized abortion. Mass incarceration, especially, has been both extremely expensive and partly self-defeating, as it is enabling future crime by expanding the number of fatherless children in minority neighborhoods.

The explosion of drug use and addiction, on the other hand, has never been successfully managed, and it has only gotten worse with prescription drug abuse and deadly synthetic opioids like fentanyl. A recent partial surrender to the war on drugs by legalizing cannabis will help with states’ revenues and redirect law enforcement to more serious drugs, but will probably have little impact on the overall drug problem.

Identity politics has produced a condition of warring groups, which fight each other to the death, while the general public interest is ignored. The U.S. in the new millennium is an extreme example of this trend.

The recent George Floyd protests and riots demonstrate how social liberalism and identity politics combine to promote the indefensible notion that the police are the enemy, and black men who defy the police and resist arrest, and who are subsequently killed, are heroes. This is an ideology of anarchy, which does nothing to address the real economic and social problems in the black community. Seattle’s autonomous zone was a recent example of a failed attempt to create a small region of anarchy in a big city.

While the left has been in favor of participatory democracy, including a universal franchise (e.g. the Voting Rights Act of 1965), and mass protests, on the intellectual side there has been a soft totalitarianism. Unlike the old-fashioned totalitarian tactics of arresting, jailing, torturing, and sometimes executing dissidents, soft totalitarianism uses more subtle tactics to ensure intellectual conformity. These tactics include gaining near-total control of major institutions which employ artists and intellectuals, including academia, the media, art and cultural institutions, think tanks, publishing, etc. That resulted in most dissidents without a way to financially support themselves, forced to work in non-intellectual fields. For the few dissidents who remained employed by these institutions, the leftist soft totalitarians utilized social pressure, protests, boycotts, and other means to force them out, or at least keep them silent (e.g. preventing Charles Murray from speaking at Middlebury College). Even dissidents working in non-intellectual careers such as technology weren’t immune from this pressure to conform, finding themselves fired from their jobs for speaking out (e.g. at Google and Cisco).

Anarchy is inherently unstable. There is no known stable anarchic society in history. The extreme social and intellectual control of totalitarianism requires extreme restrictions on liberty and democracy. There is no known stable soft totalitarian society in history. This instability implies that soft totalitarianism is destined to be a fad, to be swept away in a major crisis. COVID-19 is the crisis that will end soft totalitarianism.

While the leftists in Western societies were able to gain near monolithic control of intellectual life, they have not been able to maintain totalitarian control of economic and political life. As long as they stayed in the intellectual realm, they were probably reasonably safe. But the COVID-19 pandemic has extended their control in unprecedented ways. Mass lockdowns are a totalitarian tactic learned from China, which have no precedent in the U.S. or other democratic societies, even for the far-worse Spanish flu of 1918 - 1919. The business restrictions are driving many small and medium-sized businesses to bankruptcy, and also are without precedent in democratic societies.

There are three types of totalitarianism in history:

1. Communism, e.g. Soviet Russia and Red China.
2. Fascism, e.g. Nazi Germany.
3. Religious Theocracy, e.g. post-revolutionary Iran.

Communism is the most economically destructive of the three. Businesses are mass-expropriated in the name of the proletariat, and the economy is centrally planned by the state. Beginning with the 1917 Russian Revolution, communist revolutions have cratered their countries’ economies. This economic destructiveness has been protective, as there is no example in history of a successful communist revolution, or communists being voted into power, in a major world economy. Russia during World War I, China after World War II, Vietnam, Cambodia, Cuba, etc. were all basket-case economies. The only times that major, advanced economies have gone communist is after a military invasion, e.g. Eastern Europe after World War II.

Our contemporary soft totalitarians have made a major tactical error in destroying their countries’ economies in the name of public health. They have crossed a line, going beyond the intellectual realm to affect daily life. That will be their undoing.

The similarities between the COVID-19 response and a communist takeover are uncanny. In both cases, you have “idealists” who claim that economic devastation is justified by a higher purpose. For communists, it’s Marxist-Leninist ideology, which promotes the ideal of a classless society. For contemporary leftists, it’s saving lives. Both share a blithe disregard for the economic destruction their ideals engender, and for the “selfish” capitalists whose businesses are expropriated (communism) or killed via regulation (contemporary leftists).

In both cases, they make an appeal to science. Marxism-Leninism is supposed to be a scientific way to run a country (religion is outlawed, for example). Contemporary leftists say that they are following scientific guidance from epidemiologists. But this scientific justification is a sham. Marxism-Leninism was a pseudoscientific political-economic theory that was one of the greatest failures in world history. Epidemiology can assert that if you shut everything down and force people to stay at home, you will have fewer infections. But epidemiology doesn’t take into account other factors that should also be considered in political decision making, such as the effects of shutdowns on the economy and individual liberty, the destructive mental and physical consequences of social isolation, the detrimental effects on child development of not going to school, etc.

While clueless leftists call for a second major U.S. lockdown  (if it didn’t work the first time, why do they think it will work the second time?), and say that the economy won’t come back until the virus is “crushed,” I argue for the opposite extreme of ending all U.S. COVID-19 restrictions. The COVID-19 pandemic is not unprecedented historically, and is not comparable to the deadly 1918 – 1919 Spanish flu, contrary to what the leftists keep telling us. It is instead comparable to milder flu pandemics of the 1950s and 1960s, which most people alive at the time don’t remember because there weren’t any economically-destructive public health measures. COVID-19 is hard to control in democratic countries because it is so mild, with many infected people experiencing either no symptoms or minor symptoms, especially the young and the healthy. It is not in the public interest to sacrifice the young and the healthy to the old, the sick, and the fat, as we are doing with these idiotic restrictions.

Regardless of what other dissenters and I argue, the leftist soft totalitarian establishment has determined that we need to respond to COVID-19 as if it were the second coming of the Spanish flu, with even more extreme measures than were taken a hundred years ago. They have, true to form, silenced dissenters by utilizing their usual tactics. They have forced every Western country (except Sweden) to follow the harsh Chinese lockdown tactics and economically destructive restrictions.

The fact that supposedly conservative governments like those in the U.S., U.K., Australia, and Israel went along with the totalitarian lockdowns reveals the intellectual bankruptcy of modern conservatism. When faced with a crisis, the conservative leaders of these countries were unable to resist the monolithic advice of people with MD or PhD degrees to lockdown. Sweden’s more laid-back approach came not from a conservative government (Sweden is run by Social Democrats), but from a nonconformist state epidemiologist named Anders Tegnell. “Once you get into a lockdown, it’s difficult to get out of it,” he said. “How do you reopen? When?” As other countries have reopened, cases have increased, forcing more lockdowns.

Major world economies will not fall to communism, and will not fall to the neo-communism of contemporary leftists. At some point in the near future, there will be a reaction. This reaction will depend on a country’s individual circumstances, including its history, strength of democratic institutions, how quickly an effective COVID-19 vaccine or treatment is invented and made widely available, and how rapidly the country’s economy is brought down by shutdowns and other COVID-19 restrictions. This reaction will spell the doom of soft totalitarianism, to be replaced by something different. This replacement most likely will be worse, sometimes much worse.

In most countries, soft totalitarianism will be replaced by either authoritarianism or (hard) totalitarianism. The U.S. will most likely turn authoritarian, and eventually become a Christian religious theocracy. This will mean that the three most powerful countries in the world (the U.S., China, and Russia) will be either authoritarian or totalitarian. Unlike during the bipolar Cold War, when the U.S. promoted liberal capitalistic democracy, and the Soviet Union Marxist-Leninist communism, the tripolar post-COVID-19 world will have three powerful countries promoting their political-economic systems to smaller countries. China will promote its unique type of totalitarian quasi-capitalistic communism to smaller countries in East Asia. Russia will promote its brand of Putin-type authoritarianism to smaller countries in Eastern Europe, and possibly Western Europe. The U.S. will promote its version of capitalistic authoritarianism to countries in Latin America. Africa and the Middle East will be a free-for-all, with all three major powers competing. India will be the major authoritarian power in South Asia, and will likely be a lesser superpower competing with the big three.

Liberal capitalistic democracy will live on in smaller Western countries, but unlike during the Cold War, they won’t have the backing of a superpower, and will be impotent to affect world events. Eventually, their number will shrink as one or more superpowers use persuasion or coercion to bring them into their fold.

Why such pessimism? After all, things were looking so bright after the end of the Cold War, with the U.S. liberal capitalistic model seemingly victorious. The reason has to do with the creative intellectual vacuum of our age, which I talk about here. Liberal capitalistic democracy was born in the U.S. in the late eighteenth century during one of the greatest Western intellectual movements in history, the Enlightenment. The modernist movement that began at the turn of the 20th Century has become an anti-Enlightenment, reversing a 500-year glorious history of Western progress in the arts and culture. Science continues, but global progress is held back by lack of individual accomplishment. COVID-19 is an example of this lack of accomplishment, as this pandemic could have been prevented if we had responded appropriately to the threat that SARS revealed to the world in 2002 – 2003. This response should have been using the past 18 years to develop panviral (i.e. universal) coronavirus vaccines and treatments. Such an effort would have required a combination of political long-term, strategic planning along with scientific genius, which are globally lacking in today’s world thanks to the anti-Enlightenment.

As I indicate here, there is some hope for the future. The cause of the modernist movement has to do with the interaction of modern technology with the human magnetic sense, which has led to an explosion of drug abuse and mental illness. We are starting to make progress in understanding human magnetoreception, which will take some time. This understanding will lead to both better treatments for mental illness, and fewer people being affected. Eventually there will appear creative geniuses who will lead a future major intellectual movement that will replace modernism. This movement will also lead to a restoration of liberal capitalistic democracy.

End U.S. COVID-19 Restrictions Now

It’s not in the public interest to sacrifice the young and the healthy to the old, the sick, and the fat. 

Updated September 14, 2020

COVID-19 has upended life globally. As of August 2020, it has directly killed over 800 thousand people  and indirectly killed thousands more due to their not being treated for other medical conditions. It has led to a global recession that may turn into a second Great Depression. Governments worldwide have taken unprecedented powers to enforce social distancing, lockdowns, and other public health measures, and to try to prop up economies.

There are heroes in this worldwide tragedy. Doctors, nurses, and other healthcare workers have stepped up at significant personal risk to treat the sick. They should be saluted, along with other essential workers like grocery store workers, police officers, and transit workers who have helped keep us fed, safe, and able to go to where we need to go.

But we must not overlook the collective failure of important institutions that could have prevented this catastrophe. This pandemic is both a scientific and political failure. Scientists knew from the SARS epidemic of 2002 – 2004, and the MERS epidemic beginning in 2012 that certain coronaviruses could be deadly, but didn’t do enough to prevent the COVID-19 pandemic. What could they have done? Universal (aka panviral) coronavirus vaccines or treatments. Isn’t that very difficult? Yes. It would have required the combination of a major research effort, including funding, along with a scientific breakthrough. In other words, a combination of political long-term, strategic planning along with scientific genius. Both are globally lacking in today’s world, and we are now paying the price.

Many countries have combined lockdowns with widespread contact tracing, testing, and social distancing to flatten the curve  The economic cost has been high, but countries that managed to reduce the case count are now reopening (although some of them are locking down again due to renewed COVID-19 spread). In the U.S., this has not been successful. Although it created a temporary flattening of the curve, buying time for health professionals to ramp up testing, PPE, and better treat the disease, we are now seeing a spike in many parts of the U.S. (although this spike is associated with much lower death rates than before). The combination of poor U.S. public health infrastructure, large number of people with chronic health conditions, fragmentary government responses, and history of individual freedom and rejection of government authority, made the global standard COVID-19 public health response a failure in the U.S.

While some commentators have attributed this failure to American decline, others have noted that the projected COVID-19 death count is not comparable to the horrific Spanish Flu of 1918 – 1919, but instead the Asian flu of 1957 – 1958, or Hong Kong flu of 1968 – 1969, in which there were no U.S. shutdowns, and minimal public health response and economic impact. We had better leaders back then who, guided by common sense, understood that shutting down the economy in response to a pandemic would have devastating effects.

At this point, it’s time to reopen the U.S. economy. Repeated widespread lockdowns to flatten the curve are not going to be politically acceptable anymore. The business closures that remain are only postponing the inevitable deaths, while destroying the economy. People are going to become sick and die of COVID-19 whether or not the economy reopens. We might as well reopen it now.

It’s summer as I write this. People are doing less risky outdoor activities. It makes sense to completely open up the economy now. Let’s build up herd immunity among liberated younger people. Continuing the way we’re going with partial closures and restrictions will result in a large number of susceptible people this coming flu season. Then hospitals will be overwhelmed with the combination of flu and COVID-19, and our leaders will demand more shutdowns. Small businesses can survive a single shutdown, but not repeated ones. Very soon, years of hard work and effort among thousands of business owners to build their brands will be flushed down the toilet.

By rescinding all state, county, and local COVID-19 business restrictions, many small and medium-sized businesses will be saved from destruction. Governments are not expropriating wealth, but instead are destroying it by continuing with these restrictions. This will save a large fraction of our middle class, many of whom are small business owners. It will save millions of jobs from elimination. Opening schools will save our children, the future of our country, whose education is at risk of being abandoned. Many school systems refuse to reopen despite the overwhelming evidence that remote schooling is ersatz, especially for disadvantaged kids, and children rarely become seriously ill with COVID-19.

I’ll now discuss some arguments and counterarguments for COVID-19 restrictions.

Economist Paul Krugman argues that Republicans have “sacralized selfishness,” encouraging people to act irresponsibly by going to bars and refusing to wear masks. Implicit in this argument is that it’s selfish for young people to party, hang out at bars, and engage in what otherwise would be a normal social life for a young adult. Taking its argument to its logical conclusion, it’s also selfish for young people to go to school, work, shop, socialize, travel, or do anything other than sit at home and watch Netflix, because there’s the chance that they will catch COVID-19 and pass it onto vulnerable people. That’s one way to look at things.

There’s another way to look at this. We know that people vulnerable to getting seriously ill and dying from COVID-19 include the elderly, those with chronic health conditions like hypertension and diabetes, and the obese. In other words, the old, the sick, and the fat. Isn’t it selfish for the old, the sick, and the fat to tell the young and the healthy that they cannot have a life? They cannot go to school, work, shop, socialize, or do anything that normal, healthy young people do? They cannot do this because there’s a chance they will catch the virus and pass it onto a vulnerable person? Many of the old, sick, and fat were once young and healthy. Back then, they had the opportunity to go to school, work, socialize, travel, and have fun. Isn’t it selfish of them to tell the youth of today that they cannot do what they themselves did when they were younger? That the youth of today must come of age in Great Depression 2, a Great Depression that was caused by a global overreaction to COVID-19, with no opportunities to have a fulfilling career and make money? That the youth of today must pay off massive government debt that we have accumulated trying to prolong the lives of the old, the sick, and the fat?

Another perspective, common in contemporary America, is the rights perspective. The old, the sick, and the fat have a right to life, that’s being taken away by the irresponsible young and healthy who party and pass on the virus to them. That’s one perspective, and the right to life is important.

But there’s another perspective: the right to liberty. The young and healthy have a right to liberty, which is being taken away in an unprecedented way with COVID-19 restrictions. For example, when in American history has there ever been a general stay-at-home order or lockdown, affecting most of the population? World War II? There were restrictions and shortages, and young men were subject to the draft, but people were free to move about and go on with their lives. The same was true for World War I and the Civil War (with the possible exception of being actively attacked or invaded). There were pandemics in the past that provoked a public health response, the most notable being the Spanish flu pandemic of 1918 – 1919. As I said above, COVID-19 is not comparable to the Spanish flu. The Spanish flu’s death rate was 2 to 6 times higher than COVID-19’s death rate. Also, unlike COVID-19, the Spanish flu was especially deadly for young adults. But despite being the most deadly flu pandemic in modern history, the public health response was muted compared to what we’ve done with COVID-19. In some cities, bars, restaurants, theaters, and schools were closed, and masks were required. Sound familiar? But there were no general lockdowns, no attempt at universal “social distancing” (a euphemism for enforced mass social isolation), and no restrictions on private social functions. The economy back then was mostly agricultural and industrial, and healthy people continued to work in the farms and factories.

If this extreme mass denial of liberty resulting from the global overreaction to COVID-19 didn’t come from democratic historical examples, where did it come from? China, where the virus also came from. Although China at first denied the severity of the virus, allowing it to escape to other countries, eventually they instituted a strict lockdown of Wuhan. Other countries, including the U.S., decided to imitate the Chinese response, conveniently forgetting that China is a totalitarian communist dictatorship. Why should democracies imitate the actions of a totalitarian communist dictatorship? Aren’t we supposed to value individual liberty? 

In my opinion, the best perspective to evaluate the COVID-19 response is on the basis of the “public interest.” I define this as the long-term interest of society as a whole. In the contemporary U.S., the public interest is not discussed very often. On the political left, identity politics rules. Every group is concerned with its own interests, and these interests conflict with each other. Examples include feminists, and advocates for blacks, gays, and the disabled. On the political right, the interests of the wealthy donors are paramount. Hence the Reagan, Bush Jr., and Trump tax cuts, which overwhelmingly benefited the rich.    

Looking at COVID-19 from a public interest perspective, is it in the public interest to sacrifice the young and the healthy to the old, the sick, and the fat? Let me ask the question in another way. Who is the future of our country? Is it the demented 85-year-old man in a nursing home, or a 7-year-old in elementary school? Should the 7-year-old elementary school student be denied an education because there’s a chance that, not that the student will get seriously ill from COVID-19, but that he might pass the virus to someone, who will pass it to someone else, and it will eventually reach the 85-year-old demented guy in the nursing home? The 85-year-old demented guy represents the past. He’s lived his life. It may have been a good life, maybe not. He has, at best, a few more demented years left. The 7-year-old represents the future. He may live another 80 years or more. His development could be irreparably harmed if he’s denied an education and normal social interaction with his peers.

Some may argue that I am making a straw man argument. Many people who die of COVID-19 are not demented old guys in nursing homes. But 40% of U.S. COVID-19 deaths are linked to nursing homes (nursing home residents make up only about 0.5% of the U.S. population). Elderly people are in nursing homes for a reason. They’re not doing too well. The point is that by continuing these restrictions, we’re sacrificing our future to our past.

What about teachers in schools? Let’s take the case of a 65-year-old teacher with diabetes and hypertension. She is afraid of contracting COVID-19 from her students. I would be afraid if I were in her situation, also. But there’s a simple solution for her: she can quit. There are plenty of unemployed and underemployed young healthy college graduates who could replace her. You could hire someone with a bachelor’s degree and without teaching credentials, and have her earn credentials while she’s working.

Another argument is that the restrictions are only temporary, until we get an effective vaccine or treatment. In the meantime, why can’t the young and healthy stay at home and not infect the vulnerable? If “temporary” meant a month or two, I might agree with this. But the lockdowns and restrictions in the U.S. started in March, over 4 months from the time I’m writing this. I don’t see an end date. The longer the restrictions occur, the more businesses will fail, the more the economy will suffer, and the better chance the world economy will sink into Great Depression 2. While optimists can say that as soon as we have a vaccine everything will return to normal, we don’t know that. We don’t know if or when we’ll have an effective and safe vaccine. Many small businesses, and the jobs associated with them, will be permanently closed. The passion, energy, and years of hard work they put into these businesses will be lost forever. Some of these businesses go back generations. It’s unlikely that we can just flip a switch and get back to the way things were. It’s incredibly risky to start a Great Depression 2. Along with the expected consequences of widespread unemployment, homelessness, starvation, etc., the unexpected consequences can be catastrophic, as they were for the Great Depression in the 1930s. The Great Depression led to Hitler and the Nazis coming to power in Germany, and six years later Hitler started World War II by invading Poland. 70 to 85 million people died in that war.

Rushing a vaccine to return as quickly as possible to normal life is also a bad idea. An unsafe and ineffective COVID-19 vaccine would not only hurt the people who received the vaccine and got sick and/or died, but would also make people wary of taking other vaccines. Even before the COVID-19 pandemic, there have been a lot of people refusing to take safe and effective vaccines like measles. A COVID-19 vaccine fiasco would accelerate this anti-vaccination trend, resulting in preventable outbreaks of measles and other diseases.

The solution in the U.S. (and many other countries) is to no longer utilize public health interventions for COVID-19. These interventions, such as testing, contract tracing, and isolation/quarantining, made sense early in the pandemic, as an attempt to contain the virus. Not only would containment have saved thousands of lives, but it would have had minimal impact on the economy and daily life. After containment failed, it no longer was logical to continue these interventions. The cost in terms of jobs, economic collapse, mass restrictions on individual liberty, and disruption to daily life have become too high. “Flattening the curve” sounded good in theory, but has proved to be a total failure, at least in the U.S. People with serious symptoms requiring medical attention should be tested and treated; everyone else with mild or no symptoms should be left free to go on with their lives. All state, county, and local restrictions should end (with the exception of protecting nursing homes and other elderly long-term care institutions). Schools should be open for full-time in-person instruction under normal pre-pandemic conditions. People with mild or no symptoms should go about their life without being subject to testing, enforced mass social isolation, masking, quarantining, or any other public health intervention. If businesses want to implement health measures such as masks/distancing/cleaning, they should be allowed to but not required by law. Vulnerable people living outside of institutions will need to take appropriate precautions while there is community spread (e.g. while usually it’s healthy for obese people to work out at the gym, not now). It’s possible that natural herd immunity will occur before an effective and safe vaccine is developed, which will make the vaccine superfluous. Whether the herd immunity is achieved naturally or through a vaccine, life must go on.

Tea Party Republicans Are Anarchists

Two years ago, I blogged about Tea Party Republicans, asking the question if they are anarchists. This was the first time that the Tea Party brought America to the brink of default on its debt. I blogged that since Tea Party Republicans want limited government, they are not, strictly speaking, anarchists. But they are extremists, and if they get their way the economy and federal government may collapse, producing a condition of anarchy.

After the recent government shutdown and near-default, I will change my question to a statement: Tea Party Republicans are anarchists. They were willing to let our country default on its debts to force a repeal of Obamacare. Whatever one thinks of Obamacare, it’s crazy to seriously consider having the country default. As we got closer to potential default, economists, bankers, and financial people sounded the alarm. A default by the U.S. on its debt would be catastrophic, as reported by International Business Times and Center for American Progress. Some of the consequences of a default include:

• Higher interest rates on Treasuries and all consumer credit
• Stock market crash
• Plunge in value of the dollar
• Worldwide recession
• Freezing up of the U.S. financial system

It would be very bad, a major economic blow to every American (and to others in the world). Anyone who would consider this as serious policy option does not have the best interests of the country at heart. Such a person is an anarchist and saboteur. Instead of blowing up buildings or factories, he has the potential to do immeasurably more damage by blowing up the entire U.S. economy.

Public opinion has soured against the Tea Party since the shutdown and debt ceiling debacle. A Pew Research Poll earlier this month shows the Tea Party with 30% favorable, and 49% unfavorable ratings. Business leaders have also turned against the Tea Party, igniting a Republican civil war between business groups allied with the Republican establishment versus the Tea Party. It’s possible that the Tea Party has reached its peak, and is on the decline. But there’s no way to be sure.

There is considerable danger ahead. If Republicans and Democrats can’t come up with a budget agreement, which is a realistic possibility, we will have to go through another possible government shutdown and debit limit crisis next year. The 2014 elections could provide the Tea Party more victories. The more Tea Party members in Congress, the greater chance of a default, economic crisis, and descent into anarchy.

I see nothing wrong with criticism of Obamacare. The American health care system is an expensive mess, and Obamacare falls short in many areas. If Republicans don’t like it, they need to come up with a viable alternative. After coming up with an alternative, they would then need to convince the voters that this alternative is better. That’s the way change is done in a stable democracy. It may not be quick, and will involve compromise, but can lead to gradual improvement. Threatening economic chaos and ruin if Tea Party Republicans don’t get what they want is not the American way. These anarchists need to be voted out of office, the sooner the better.

David Brooks on American Politics

David Brooks has an interesting perspective on American politics and public policy. A New York Times Op-Ed columnist, his viewpoint can be described as moderately conservative (a vanishing breed in contemporary American politics). His commentary is informed by a humanities and social sciences perspective that is rare among political analysts today. I earlier blogged about his criticism of the current American meritocracy. I want to talk today about two of his recent columns that provide an interesting perspective on what’s wrong with our political thinking. While he doesn’t provide specific solutions, he talks about some failings among both parties, along with how we need to change our thinking about what we want government to do. As we enter the election year 2012, in which Americans will choose between the same tired and failed alternatives, it’s important to think about our political problems in a different way, as Brooks does.

His first article entitled The Two Moons, is named after Samuel Lubell’s concept of a “political solar system.” Lubell, writing in the 1950’s, proposed the idea that at any moment there’s a Sun Party (the majority party) and a Moon Party (the minority party). The Sun Party drives the agenda, and the Moon Party (which shines by reflecting the Sun’s rays) opposes the Sun Party. During the New Deal, the Democrats were the Sun Party. During the Reagan Revolution, the Republicans were. Between 1996 and 2004, the two parties were tied. This was a transition time, in which from historical experience a Sun Party usually emerges. But no Sun Party emerged. No party was able to take the lead; they both are now Moon Parties. Both Republicans and Democrats have record low approval ratings. “Neither party has been able to rally the country behind its vision of government.”

Having two simultaneous minority parties leads to strange outcomes. Both parties embrace minority mentalities. Democrats feel oppressed by big business and big finance, while Republicans feel oppressed by big government and the big liberal establishment (the media, academics, judges, artists, Hollywood, etc.). Neither side wants to compromise, feeling that the outside world, and especially members of the opposing party, are hostile. They instinctively protect their special interests (labor unions, the poor, the old, and minorities for Democrats; the rich, big business, big finance, and evangelicals for Republicans), and refuse to engage or try to convert outsiders. Neither party engages in serious internal debates, and moderates are no longer welcome.

The Two Moon era is volatile. Voters reject one party, then two years later reject the other party. That happened in the 2008 and 2010 elections, which had a historically large shift from Democrat to Republican. Usually, minority parties suffer a string of election defeats, promoting modernization and revision. The Republicans’ defeats in 2006 and 2008 did help promote internal change via the Tea Party. But rather than owning up to the failures of their neoconservative ideology, and moving more to the center, Tea Party Republicans pushed the party to an extreme libertarian agenda. The Republicans’ 2010 victory encouraged them to act like a Sun Party, trying to force their Tea Party agenda, but were stymied by the fact that they were not a true majority party, and that Democrats controlled the Senate and Presidency. The Democrats’ defeat in 2010, along with subsequent Republican intransigence, is making the Democrats become more extreme. Even if they win big in 2012, however, they do not have the broad-based support to become a Sun Party.

How will the Two Moon era become resolved? Brooks suggests either a third party or a crisis. A third party faces enormous obstacles in the American political context, as discussed in this article. A third-party presidential run has always lost, but sometimes (e.g. Teddy Roosevelt in 1912, or Ross Perot in 1992) can spoil an election. Even in the unlikely event that a third-party candidate can win the election, he’ll have to govern with a Congress in which almost all members are Republicans or Democrats. For a third party to make fundamental changes in government, it needs to control both the executive and legislative branch, which the American political system makes virtually impossible.

This leaves a crisis as a way to break the Two Moon deadlock. It’s possible that a financial panic and/or war will force some major political change. Exactly how the events will unfold and what the responses will be are impossible to determine, but the American political system will have to undergo a radical (and painful) transformation for the Two Moon deadlock to become resolved.

* * *

Brooks’ second article is entitled Midlife Crisis Economics. Brooks criticizes the Obama’s administration’s historical accuracy. When the administration first came to power in 2009, it compared the current situation to the 1930’s, and promoted a second New Deal. Obamacare was a product of this thinking, a successor of ambitious social legislation like Social Security. The problem is that the public’s perception of government has radically changed since the New Deal. “Today, Americans are more likely to fear government than be reassured by it.”

The Obama Administration then switched historical analogies from the New Deal to the progressive era at the beginning of the 20th century (e.g. Obama’s “Roosevelt Speech” in Kansas). There are some similarities between today and a century ago. “Then, as now, we are seeing great concentrations of wealth, especially at the top.” But the differences outweigh the similarities. The economy was much different back then, a vibrant jobs machine at the height of the industrial era. The information age we live in today is not a jobs machine. The industrial decline and elimination of jobs due to outsourcing/offshoring/automation was taking place well before the current recession. Factories that used to employ 1000 workers can now produce more products while employing fewer than 100 workers.

Inequality, while due partially to government policy, has a structural economic component that would be difficult to reverse (short of communism). Inequality is growing in all developed countries, including ones (e.g. Sweden and Germany) that have much more generous welfare states.

Brooks succinctly summarizes the essential differences between today and a century ago: “In the progressive era, the economy was in its adolescence and the task was to control it. Today the economy is middle-aged; the task is to rejuvenate it.” A century ago there were few or no government agencies, institutions, or regulations to protect workers, the sick, the disabled, the old, children, minorities, etc. Today, we have more than enough government; the challenge is to make government more effective. We need to reform existing programs to make them deliver more services at less cost.

Brooks also talks about the moral differences between today and the progressive era. The beginning of the twentieth century was still a time of Victorian culture, with its strict moral code. Individuals and the government taking on debt that they had no hope of repaying would have been considered sinful. Illegitimacy and divorce were culturally prohibited and very rare.

These moral differences have major practical consequences. It’s obvious today what harm the contemporary embracing of public and private debt has caused our economy. Subprime and other risky mortgages led directly to the 2008 financial crisis and subsequent recession. Deficit financing that the American federal government has been doing routinely for decades has led to a buildup of unsustainable debt, and is preventing the government from responding in an appropriate way to the magnitude of the current crisis. The fact that 40% of American children are born out of wedlock leads to a number of social and mental health problems that were unknown a century ago. These problems, including crime, juvenile delinquency, drug abuse, dangerous neighborhoods, failed schools, etc., forces the government to intervene in family life and child upbringing, and spend billions of dollars that it otherwise would not have had to spend.

My favorite quote from this article is the following: “One hundred years ago, we had libertarian economics but conservative values. Today we have oligarchic economics and libertarian moral values — a bad combination.” It’s important to understand that the last (and only) time that libertarian economics was ever practiced, during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries in America, Britain, and (to a lesser extent) in other Western European countries, was a time of strict conservative Victorian morality. There is no historical example of a combination of libertarian economics and libertarian morality. There is no contemporary example of libertarian economics. Contemporary countries with strong, rapidly growing, export-oriented economies, e.g. China, are anything but libertarian.

Ron Paul’s fans need to understand that they are advocating an experimental system, something never before tried. They also need to understand that the rise of American government deficit spending, regulation, waste, inefficiency, and all the other things they complain about occurred during a time of increasing libertarian morality. It was the 1960’s embrace of individual social liberty, of personal and sexual freedom from authority, of licentiousness, that represented a cultural revolution, something unique in history. The trend for increasing individual social freedom and autonomy has only increased since the 1960’s. During that period, government deficit spending, regulation, litigation, interference with the economy, waste, fraud, and incompetence has also increased. The two are clearly correlated; it’s impossible to prove whether libertarian morality caused the explosion of government spending and regulation.

Note that Brooks said that we have “oligarchic economics” in America today, not “socialist economics.” The distinction is important. It implies that libertarian ideas did in fact influence not only social and cultural life, but also the economy. Instead of moving toward the libertarian ideal of limited government, however, we moved toward a corrupt, oligarchic form of government, one in which the rich and powerful use a bloated government to become more rich and powerful. The most egregious example is explosion in growth of the financial sector, which occurred after libertarian-inspired deregulation. The investment banks won the freedom to gamble on risky mortgage-based securities, a gamble that led to the 2008 crisis. Unlike in a truly free market, they felt secure enough to make these gambles knowing that the government would bail them out.

As usual, Brooks has no specific solutions to the problems he talks about. “The job is to restore old disciplines, strip away decaying structures and reform the welfare state. The country needs a productive midlife crisis.” I’d agree with that, but how is it going to happen? How can we reform an oligarchic government while maintaining libertarian moral values? How can people from different socioeconomic status, intelligence, race, age, ethnicity, culture, sexual orientation, political beliefs, religious beliefs, etc. come together and agree on anything, when libertarian morality tells them to pursue their own self interest no matter the social cost? Will they be willing to make sacrifices for the common good, whether it take the form of accepting fewer government benefits, more taxation, or a combination of the two? I doubt it. My view is that the “productive midlife crisis” our country needs must include a serious re-evaluation of the permissive morality that has been dominant since the 1960’s.

Are Tea Party Republicans Anarchists?

NY Times columnist Timothy Egan’s recent article describes radical Republicans as anarchists, seeking to destroy the U.S. government. Their refusal to raise the debt limit, and refusal to deal at all with Obama and Democrats, threatens America with another financial crash and economic catastrophe. This “burn-it-all-down position” indicates that the Tea Party Republicans “didn’t go to Washington to find solutions; they went there to destroy the place.” Is Egan being fair in his description of radical Republicans?

Anarchy is the absence of government, a condition of complete freedom from government coercion. Anarchists are people who want to bring about this utopian condition. Tea Party republicans claim to want to reduce the size of government, not eliminate it entirely. So by the strict dictionary definition, radical Republicans aren’t anarchists. They are extremists, however, and this extremism threatens the stability and health of our government and society. It also threatens to bring about a condition of anarchy.

Extremists share some common attributes, whether they are anarchists, libertarians, communists, Nazis, sixties radicals, or religious zealots:

1. Promoting extreme change
2. Wanting the extreme change now
3. Being unwilling to compromise
4. Promoting violence

I’ll go over these attributes and see if the Tea Party Republicans fit these characteristics.

1. Extreme change: The Tea Party Republicans claim to be conservative, wanting the federal government to return to its small pre-Great Deal size. But since so many people have become dependent on government programs, and we’ve had for decades a large military, progressive income tax, and widespread regulation of industry, a return to the way things were 80 or more years ago is an extreme change from the status quo. Thus I can conclude that radical Republicans promote extreme change.
2. Wanting the extreme change now: Paul Ryan’s plan to overhaul Medicare doesn't take effect until 2022, exempting people 55 and older from the change. Although it proposes a radical change to Medicare, it’s not extremist in the sense of wanting the change now. The refusal to extend the debt limit in the absence of an immediate agreement to major cuts in government spending is, however, extremist. It threatens economic catastrophe unless changes are made now. While it’s true that changes are badly needed in Washington, threatening an economic crisis unless changes happen immediately is extremist and very dangerous. So I conclude that in the context of the debt crisis radical Republicans want extreme change now.
3. Being unwilling to compromise: Tea Party Republicans are refusing to compromise with Obama and the Democrats on the issue of tax increases. They will not accept any deal that involves tax increases, even if the spending cuts vastly outnumber the tax increases, as is the case in the Obama plan. This “my way or the highway” attitude is definitely extremist. Tea Party Republicans have exuded this type of extremism since they began their term in office.
4. Promoting violence: Tea party advocates and representatives so far haven’t advocated violence or committed any violent acts. But the other three extremist characteristics that describe Tea Party Republicans make it highly likely that violence will eventually happen. If one of the two major American political parties wants extreme change, wants it now, and is unwilling to compromise, then the legislative process will grind to a halt. We can see that happening already. If legislators cannot accomplish anything, then the government won’t be do anything, even to pay its bills. This will provoke a crisis.

While it’s possible that the crisis can be solved peacefully, I wouldn’t bet on it. Historically, economic crises have sometimes led to violent revolutions in other countries. The French Revolution and subsequent reign of terror was a product of a financial crisis. The Bolsheviks came to power in the context of the economic and political chaos of World War I.

A revolution can sometimes be a good thing, right? What about the American Revolution? The Tea Party Republicans may claim to be intellectual heirs of the American Revolution, but in reality they are far apart ideologically. Compared to other revolutions, the American Revolution was moderate. Before the revolution and after, Americans enjoyed the privileges of a representative government, freedom of expression and religion, a capitalistic economic system, and the absence of any hereditary aristocracy. The biggest change was the withdrawal from the British Empire and the establishment of a new republican political system. While this was a substantial change, it didn’t affect the daily life of most people. There was no widespread expropriation of property or political murders that characterized the contemporaneous French Revolution.

The Tea Party Republicans may not provoke a revolution at all. Since their dominant ideology is anti-government, if they succeed in bringing the economy and the federal government to their knees, we may end up with a condition of anarchy. The best contemporary example is Iraq after the 2003 invasion. Like the Iraqi government, the American government may become so weakened and ineffective that terrorists and criminals will basically take over the country. Anarchy is an unstable condition, so it won’t last forever, but as we’ve seen in some countries (e.g. Somalia) this could last for years and possibly decades.

I think that America has too much going for it (i.e. its wealth, history, political system, social structures) that we will become another Iraq or Somalia. But there’s a real chance of some major political and economic disruption that will affect the lives of millions. If the Tea Party Republicans get their way, this disruption will happen soon.

How Greed and Ideology are Endangering America’s Financial and Mental Health

I just watched the excellent documentary Inside Job about the financial crisis. Its main point is that the 2008 crisis and subsequent Great Recession were a consequence of deregulation of the financial sector. This deregulation (primarily in the United States, but also in other countries like Iceland and Ireland) led to an explosion of trading in risky investments like CDO’s, that in turn led to the housing bubble and crash. The tragic thing about this crash is that if we had kept the regulations in place that came about after the 1929 crash and Great Depression, we would never have had the recent crisis. Protections such as separation of savings and investment banks, restrictions on leverage, and enforcement by the SEC and other regulatory agencies of securities and fraud laws were stripped away in recent decades. Also, the financial services industry created new exotic “financial weapons of mass destruction” and successfully lobbied to keep them unregulated.

How did this unstable and risky situation develop? Inside Job argues that a combination of greed and free market ideology led to the housing bubble and bust. The greed came about from the enormous profits generated by the deregulated post-1980 financial services industry. This money flowed to traders in the form of multi-million dollar bonuses, to politicians in the form of lobbying and campaign contributions, and to academic economists in the form of consulting fees. The free market ideology, promoted by right-wing think tanks, politicians, and academic economists, provided a rationalization for the government to deregulate the financial services industry. This ideology argued that allowing an unfettered financial services industry to generate incredible amounts of wealth, and to make riskier and riskier investments, was good for the economy. This attitude is best summarized by Gordon Gekko’s memorable line in the first Wall Street movie: "Greed, for lack of a better word, is good."

While the free market ideology is seductive, and I admit that I was once an enthusiastic follower, it clearly failed as a rationale for financial services deregulation. While it’s easy to blame the government for everything bad that happens, and the government did promote home ownership for people who should have been renting, the leaders of the Wall Street investment banks were the main culprits. They knowingly and deliberately invested their client’s savings in risky mortgage securities, sometimes while simultaneously betting against the securities (i.e. betting that their own clients would lose money). It was Wall Street money that bid up housing prices, that promoted subprime mortgages, that paid the ratings agencies to give ridiculously high ratings to what was basically junk, and that led to the worst financial crash and recession since World War II. Some foreign banks also were to blame, as they did the same thing that the Wall Street banks did. Ireland and Iceland are two egregious examples of investment banks destroying their economies. The executives in charge of the investment banks got greedy, and even after their companies lost billions and needed to be bailed out, they got to keep their multi-million dollar bonuses and salary. The most disgusting thing is that not one of them has been prosecuted (in the U.S.) for fraud or securities violations.

When an ideology fails in the real world, people who believe in it have two options. One is to accept reality, and stop believing in the ideology. The other is to continue believing in the ideology, and abandon reality. Most Democrats, who in the past (especially in the Clinton administration) joined with Republicans in eagerly stripping away financial services regulation, realized after the crash that they made a grave error. When they were in charge of Congress, they passed the Dodd-Frank bill to improve regulation of Wall Street. These regulations, while inadequate, were better than doing nothing. These regulations are now law, but as Paul Krugman writes in an article, they are in danger of not being enforced. The reason for this is that Republicans have chosen to keep their free market ideology, while abandoning reality. Republicans are now in charge of the House, and Republicans don’t believe in regulation in any form. Since they control the funds, Republicans can prevent the SEC and other agencies from doing any regulating and investigating. Wall Street will then be free to create more bubbles and more crises.

Why do people continue believing in an ideology when it has clearly failed? To answer this, consider the historical example of Communism. Within a few years after the 1917 Bolshevik revolution, it was clear that Communism was failing in its ability to provide goods and services that people wanted. That’s when the scapegoating started. It wasn’t Communism’s fault, it was the fault of the capitalists (or the kulaks, or the imperialists, or the fascists, etc.). That scapegoating continued for decades, until finally no one believed the ideology any more, and all that was left was greed and corruption.

In the case of Republicans, the scapegoat is the government. Wall Street didn’t do anything wrong, it was government intervention in the economy that caused the crash and recession. The fact that the financial services companies made many risky investments and bad decisions, not just in the U.S. but also overseas, is also a result of U.S. government intervention. If the government hadn’t provided guarantees and bailouts, the companies wouldn’t have made these risky investments.

In the context of a mixed economy, with an internationally-linked market, the government needs to regulate the financial markets. If Republicans get their way, and repeal or refuse to enforce the new regulations, another crash will happen. We’ll then be in the same situation in which the choice will be government bailouts or a second Great Depression. Blaming the government for all our problems is similar to the Communists blaming the capitalists for all their problems. The free market ideology has failed the reality test vis-à-vis financial regulation, and continuing to adhere to it is a sign of either delusion or greed. Regarding the latter motive, Wall Street continues to utilize its vast wealth to lobby politicians to weaken and gut regulations.

Now let me turn to mental health and psychiatry. While watching Inside Job, I was struck with the parallels between the financial services industry and the psychiatric-pharmaceutical industry. While the free market ideology is used by the financial services industry to justify deregulation, the chemical imbalance ideology is used by psychiatists to justify their prescribing drugs to patients. The chemical imbalance ideology states that schizophrenia is caused by too much of the neurotransmitter dopamine, and that depression is caused by too little serotonin. These imbalances can be treated by antipsychotic and antidepressant drugs, respectively. Patients who take their drugs restore balance in their brains, become symptom free, and function better than patients who are unwilling or unable to take drugs.

This chemical imbalance ideology doesn’t fit the facts. As Robert Whitaker describes in his book Anatomy of an Epidemic (which I reviewed in a previous blog post), after many millions of dollars of research money, and enormous time and effort spent, this theory remains unverified. Scientists haven’t made much progress in understanding the cause or pathophysiology of mental illness. Diagnosis is still based on symptoms due to a lack of any reliable or valid lab tests. Drugs that seem to help patients in the short term, have a much more problematic long-term outcome. As newer drugs began to be prescribed more frequently, patients seemed to function worse than they ever did before, many of them becoming permanently disabled and unable to work.

Just as the free market true believers identify the government as an all-encompassing scapegoat, the chemical imbalance true believers come up with their own scapegoat: the disease. The reason why juvenile bipolar disorder prevalence skyrocketed, why so many children were being diagnosed and treated with drugs, and becoming permanently disabled, wasn’t due to drugs they were being prescribed. It was due to something else in the environment causing a psychiatric epidemic. It’s almost comical reading Whitaker’s description of how bipolar disorder was “discovered” in children. Before psychiatric drugs were widely used, children never got bipolar disorder. The fact that stimulant and antidepressant drugs induce manic episodes, and that many more children were taking stimulants and antidepressants than ever before, was conveniently ignored. Since many children taking antidepressant drugs became bipolar, some researchers argued that the drugs were an effective diagnostic tool, unmasking the bipolar disorder that was hidden underneath. Diagnostic boundaries for juvenile bipolar disorder were expanded to include irritable and antisocial children, and these children were given drug cocktails that led to functional impairment and serious physical and mental side effects.

Another similarity between the financial services industry and the psychiatric-pharmaceutical industry is greed. When the ideology has cracks, fill in the gaps with cash. Just as academic economists receive thousands of dollars from the financial services industry in consulting fees, academic psychiatrists receive thousands of dollars from the pharmaceutical industry. This money provides an incentive for economists to spout free-market/deregulation dogma, and psychiatrists to promote drugs.

This ideology-greed connection becomes self-perpetuating. Academic economists promote deregulation and free markets, which leads to more profits for Wall Street, which means more consulting fees, which means more economists promote deregulation, etc. Academic psychiatrists promote the chemical imbalance theory and drug treatments, which means more profits for the pharmaceutical industry, which means more consulting fees for the psychiatrists, which means more psychiatrists promote drugs, etc.

What can be done to emerge from these vicious circles of greed and failed ideology? Reform from within isn’t an option. Both the financial services and psychiatric-pharmaceutical industries are too hopelessly corrupt to reform or regulate themselves. The only institution powerful enough to take on the economic and ideological might of these two industries is the federal government. But the government is itself corrupted by Wall Street and Big Pharma money. The government must be spurred into action by grassroots advocacy groups.

Any advocacy group needs to have a clear, specific goal in mind. The American Tea Party had a vague goal of opposing big government and bailouts. It has now been hijacked by libertarian/free market extremists.

The group that takes on Wall Street should have these goals: Phase 1 should be to pressure the government to fully fund all the regulatory agencies involved in enforcing Dodd-Frank. In addition, the government should prosecute bank and financial executives who committed fraud and securities violations during the housing boom and bust. Phase 2 should be to make even more ambitious reforms to curb the power, influence, and money of the financial services industry.

The group that takes on Big Pharma should begin with pressuring for congressional hearings. Robert Whitaker and other people who criticize the psychiatric-pharmaceutical industry should be allowed to speak, along with academic psychiatrists, drug company representatives, and parents and patients. If it turns out that there’s not enough evidence to demonstrate that drugs do long-term good (the burden of proof is on the pro-drug people to show that they work), then Phase 2 should be a major overhaul of psychiatric drug regulation. This can include banning drug advertising, banning off-label prescribing, banning prescribing the drugs to children, and extending clinical trials to several years (from the current 6 weeks).

How Did “The Land of the Free and the Home of the Brave” Become the Land of Lawyers and the Home of Bureaucrats? A Review of “Life Without Lawyers” by Philip K. Howard

In these recessionary times, Americans are divided along partisan lines on many important issues, such as whether to give tax breaks to the rich versus extending unemployment benefits. Democrats and Republicans argue about government spending, taxation, health care reform, immigration, foreign wars, and a host of other issues. But away from the spotlight of media attention and political debate is a cancer that has gnawed away at the social fabric of American society. This cancer has been growing for the last four decades, and shows no signs of improvement. I am speaking about the litigation and regulation explosion that has reduced Americans' ability to take risks, exercise authority, fire incompetent employees, maintain discipline in schools, and to take responsibility for their actions. The tragic part of this is that there is a bipartisan consensus for reform that is stymied by self-serving special interests such as trial lawyers and public-sector unions. Philip K. Howard takes up this issue in his latest book Life Without Lawyers: Restoring Responsibility in America

Howard, author of the best-selling The Death of Common Sense, has talked about the issue of excessive and nonsensical lawsuits and regulation in previous books. Since the problem hasn’t gotten any better, Howard revisits these issues, presenting newer examples, but also suggesting solutions. He also is trying to improve things via his organization Common Good.

There are two main points in the book. One, is that there are too many rules prescribing how to do things. These rules derive from the assembly-line mentality that arose from the Industrial Revolution. While some rules are necessary in any complex endeavor, such as a business, government, or school, our society has gone overboard with rules and organization. Too many rules stifle individual initiative and decision making. Howard presents many examples of this in the public schools. Teachers in New York City are forbidden from calling on students who raise their hands during the first part of class. A mother of a third grader, who arrived with a supply of birthday cupcakes, was turned away because there is a rule against parents in the classroom. Teachers write out detailed course plans every week that no one ever reads. Loudspeakers constantly blare out announcements, interrupting classes and making it impossible for teachers and students to concentrate. No Child Left Behind made things worse by focusing on standardized testing. Teachers’ union contracts dictate hours worked, limit teacher duties, and make it virtually impossible to fire incompetent teachers. Paint crumbles at the top of walls in some New York City schools because unions prohibit painting walls higher than ten feet.

The second main point is that since the 1960’s individual rights have trumped concerns over the common good. “Let any individual who feels aggrieved bring a legal claim for almost anything” (p. 23). This mindset arose from a desire to remedy abuses due to racial and gender discrimination. The problem is, however, that “[u]nlike constitutional rights, which shield citizens from state power, these new rights gave citizens a sword against other free citizens” (p. 23). It isn’t hard to find examples of how citizens utilize lawsuits as swords against other citizens. In 2007, a Washington, D.C. lawyer sued his dry cleaner for $54 million because he claimed that they lost a pair of pants. This idiotic and absurd case, which should have been immediately dismissed, was allowed to go on for more than two years, costing the family owning the dry cleaner over $100,000 in legal fees. While they won the case, they ended up having to close the store. Another example is a medical malpractice case. A dermatologist advised a patient to remove skin based on a biopsy indicating malignancy. The patient got a second opinion which indicated no malignancy, and didn’t get the skin removed. After getting terminal cancer several years later, the patient sued the first doctor on the basis that the doctor should have been more insistent about getting the skin removed. While the doctor prevailed in the case after seven years of legal battling, it could hardly be called a victory.

The result of out-of-control lawsuits is that Americans don’t trust the justice system anymore. They become defensive in their behavior, refusing to take risks out of fear of being sued. The most familiar and costly example of defensive behavior is in the field of medicine. Unnecessary care accounts for 30% of total health care spending. Nursing homes send dying ninety-year-olds to intensive care units, so that they can’t be sued for negligence in the person's death. Doctors have to document everything, in case they have to justify their decisions in court. Minor surgeries require expensive and unnecessary preoperative tests to prevent the providers from being sued.

The threat of lawsuits, combined with burdensome regulation, has eroded discipline in public schools. In a 2001 survey, 43% of high school teachers said they spent more time maintaining order than teaching. One in seven teachers in urban schools has been physically assaulted by his students. In New York City more than 60 steps and legal considerations are required to suspend a student for over 5 days. “Just sending a disruptive student out of the classroom requires layers of bureaucratic compliance” (p. 104). A violent autistic child in Hartford, CT, was kept in a regular classroom because his parents, exercising their rights under federal law, refused to allow him to be transferred to special ed. The school had to institute formal legal proceedings and receive a judge’s order to remove the disruptive child. After 2 years of hearings and thousands of dollars of expense, the school finally received the order to move the child.

Howard uses the “broken windows” analogy to explain how this erosion of discipline has harmed schools. If broken windows in a building aren’t fixed, the tendency is for vandals to break more windows, and eventually break into the building. After a few unchecked incidents, disorder takes over a school. “Young people aren’t known for their maturity, and pushing the envelope becomes a sport” (p. 105). Zero tolerance rules, which were supposed to counteract school disorder, only make things worse. The problem with these rules is that they can’t distinguish trivial from severe infractions. In 2001, a National Merit scholar in a Florida high school was suspended because of a small kitchen knife found in the back seat of her car on school grounds. “Instead of bolstering school authority, zero tolerance rules have become a symbol of lack of authority to do what’s right” (p. 106).

The fear and distrust of authority that began in the 1960’s was a major factor that led to our current legalistic mess. We tried to outlaw any type of discretion by people in positions of authority—teachers, administrators, managers, and government executives—by replacing this discretion with a tangle of rules and threats of litigation. But there is no substitute for good judgment, and good judgment relies on subjective and intuitive factors. Having to prove the correctness of decisions in legal proceedings leads to worse decisions. It’s true that people can explain why they did something, but only to a point. These explanations rarely rise to the level of legal proof.

“The alternative to absolute rights is not absolute discretion” (p. 58). Legislatures can establish clear public goals, and give officials the responsibility to achieve these goals. But meeting these goals requires the use of individual judgment, such as the decision that a student is too violent to be mainstreamed. People in power will at times make mistakes, and they should be held accountable for their mistakes. But trying to prescribe decisions by legal rule is a self-defeating way to organize our society.

Some specific reforms that Howard advocates include:

1) Judges must draw legal boundaries of reasonableness as they pertain to lawsuits. The “lost pants” type of lawsuit should be immediately dismissed. For other suits that aren’t obviously ridiculous, judges need to take into account whether a claim might undermine reasonable activities of people not in the courtroom. For example, the threat of lawsuits has resulted in playgrounds being stripped of fun equipment. Many schools have eliminated recess, and parents are afraid to allow their children to engage in unstructured play. As a result of these changes, children today spend much of their time in front of television and computer screens. This lack of exercise is one important factor in the obesity epidemic plaguing our nation’s youth. By trying to eliminate risky behavior among children, we’ve succeeded in making many of them fat, a health problem which will eventually cause much more suffering and death than an occasional accident.

2) Special courts are needed for medical malpractice claims. The problem isn’t the setting of standards of care. The problem is finding courts that are trusted to uphold these standards. Allowing medical malpractice claims to be heard in regular courts, with greedy trial lawyers manipulating clueless juries, has led to an explosion of defensive medicine. Special courts for medical malpractice would have the following characteristics: judges dedicated to health care claims, written judicial opinions rather than jury verdicts, neutral experts in place of hired guns, and expedited proceedings with incentives for early settlements.

3) Abandon the due process model for social services, especially public schools. Daily choices in schools and other public institutions need to be made by teachers and administrators with the freedom to use their judgment, without fear of lawsuit. These choices should not be determined by burdensome detailed regulation. In successful private and charter schools, teachers and principals are free to do what they think is best for their students. For public schools to succeed, their teachers and principals need the same freedom. This freedom includes the freedom of school administrators to fire incompetent teachers.

4) Don’t tolerate disorder in public schools. Principals and teachers need the authority to promptly remove disruptive students without worrying about following regulations or being sued by parents. Some students are too disruptive or violent to be mainstreamed, and they need to be removed from the regular classroom. Allowing individual students to disrupt classes makes it very difficult to properly educate the other students. While one student and his parents may win, everyone else loses. This individualistic and selfish model needs to change.

5) Discrimination cases should only be allowed for systematic practices of discrimination. This was the original purpose of discrimination laws, which since the 1960’s have been corrupted by greedy trial lawyers and irresponsible minority advocates. If a minority feels he’s being discriminated against, his lawsuit would be dismissed unless he can present evidence that the employer discriminates against minorities in general. Individuals should not be allowed to bring claims only on behalf of themselves. An exception is for individual claims of sexual harassment, but only if they rise to the level of quid pro quo.

6) Washington needs to be fixed from the outside. Partisan politics and special interests have made it impossible for our representatives to achieve any important changes in the areas that Howard talks about. As with the No Child Left Behind law, they just pile layers of legal concrete on people and institutions that are already crushed by law. We must form a national coalition of citizen leaders, a shadow government, to propose an overhaul of government. The models for this are the base-closing commissions in the 1990’s, or the current deficit-reduction commissions. To effect change, public opinion must be mobilized in a way that it hasn’t been since the 1960’s. “America doesn’t need a new Constitution, just a healthy spring cleaning and a practical approach to making public choices without crushing us under endless law” (p. 177).

The only problem with this book is that it lacks an index. I don’t remember ever reading a nonfiction book without an index.

Due to excessive regulation and litigation, America in the early 21st century is a shell of its former self. We’ve become afraid to take risks, afraid to use our judgment, and afraid to do what we think is right. Is this the type of mentality that motivated the early pioneers, people who risked everything to settle an unknown and sometimes hostile country? Is this the type of mentality that motivated the great American inventors, entrepreneurs, and other creative people? Would Edison have invented the light bulb if he was afraid of being sued by the candle makers? Would Tesla have invented A/C electric power if he was afraid of being sued by the family of the rare person who was electrocuted? Would railroads, cars, and planes have been invented and made available to the masses if companies were afraid of being sued due to accidents? Would America have risen to a leadership position among nations if its public schools were always in the sorry shape they are in today? Would a legal and political system have been a model to the world if it allowed a greedy scumbag to sue his dry cleaner for $54 million dollars?

The problems that Howard describes in his book are not the only problems that America faces. Obviously, we need to be concerned about other things, including the recession, our government’s long-term fiscal health, and the threat of terrorism. But overregulation and overlitigation, although less publicized, nevertheless affect Americans in their daily lives—in their schools, workplaces, doctors offices, hospitals, and even their homes. The cost in money, worry, wasted time, and unhealthy behavior is severe. I recommend “Life Without Lawyers” to all Americans.

Is Globalization Good For America? A Review of “The World is Flat” by Thomas Friedman

Globalization has its advantages and disadvantages. While American consumers can enjoy cheaper products and services thanks to manufacturing plants in China and call centers in India, many American workers have lost their jobs. What was an economic change affecting mainly manufacturing workers in the 1980’s and 1990’s has in the last decade, and especially since the Great Recession began, been transformed into a job-destroying mechanism for workers at all levels of ability, in many different fields. Secretaries, computer programmers, and even lawyers have seen their jobs outsourced to India and other countries. Does globalization benefit the country as a whole?

Thomas L. Friedman writes about globalization in his 2005 book The World is Flat: A Brief History of the Twenty-First Century. I decided to read this book because I have read many New York Times opinion columns by the author, and found him to have an interesting perspective on the economy, politics, global warming, and the Middle East. Friedman is a journalist, and traveled extensively to research this book, interviewing business executives from around the world, from Bill Gates to Vivek Paul (president of the Indian outsourcing company Wipro). The book contains no footnotes, endnotes, or bibliography. Most of the material comes from Friedman’s observations and interviews.

Being a computer programmer, I have seen firsthand that many IT jobs have been shipped to India. I was fascinated by Friedman’s account of the history of this outsourcing process. It began with India’s opening up of its previously socialist economy in the early 1990’s, a political change influenced by the fall of the Berlin Wall and the collapse of the former Soviet Union. The computer, telecommunication, and Internet revolutions helped create a platform for globalization of IT. During the late 1990’s technology bubble, companies overinvested in fiber optic networks. The dotcom bust in the early 2000’s bankrupted many companies, but brought down the price of data and phone transmission. These technological and economic changes made India “the luckiest country in the history of the late twentieth century” (p. 103). Finding themselves with cheap fiber optic networks just waiting to be used, Indian entrepreneurs utilized homegrown engineering, computer science, and software talent to outsource American jobs. The Y2K computer crisis that occurred at the turn of the twenty-first century gave Indian outsourcing companies a big project to work on, and programmers there did much of the Y2K upgrade work. E-commerce was another important technology outsourced to India, and pretty soon it would be hard to find a technology or software product in which Indian companies didn’t have a footprint.

The title of the book reflects how technology, business process, economic and political changes have “flattened the world,” i.e. removed barriers that prevented individuals or countries from competing. The above paragraph shows how India benefited from these changes. China, Russia, Eastern Europe, and some countries in Latin America and Asia also benefited. Certain countries, such as many in the Middle East and Africa, have not benefited. Friedman talks about the reasons why Arab-Muslim countries have been left behind in the global flattening. In his view, anger and frustration at the Israeli occupation of Palestine, at the Arab-Muslims having to live under authoritarian governments, and at a decadent and promiscuous West has helped promote religious extremists such as members of al-Qaeda. He calls al-Qaeda terrorists “Islamo-Leninists.” Like Lenin, they have a utopian-totalitarian worldview, one in which their acts of terrorism against the West mobilize and energize the Muslim masses to rise up against their corrupt rulers. Unlike Lenin, however, they want to establish an Islamic state that spans the territory of the former Muslim empire. Desiring life and government to return to the way it was in the Middle Ages is not an attitude conducive to participating in the global economy. Friedman offers a counterexample of Arab entrepreneur Fadi Ghandour, cofounder and CEO of Aramex, a package delivery service company, the only Arab company listed on the Nasdaq. If more Arabs would desire to be like Ghandour, and fewer like bin Laden, the Middle East would be part of the flat world.

Friedman believes in free trade, the economic basis for globalization. Trying to protect certain jobs or industries, while helping one group of people, is not going to help the country as a whole. The wealth of examples he provides of how globally integrated our economy has become is good evidence in support of his view. An example is his description of how his Dell computer was assembled using a global supply chain. His order was emailed to a Dell notebook factory in Malaysia. The notebook was codesigned in Texas and Taiwan. The Intel microprocessor came from a factory either in the Philippines, Costa Rica, Malaysia, or China. The memory came from a factory in Korea, Taiwan, Germany, or Japan. The motherboard came from a factory in China or Taiwan. The hard drive came from a factory in Singapore, Thailand, or the Philippines. Note that the only thing from this list made in America was the notebook design, and it was only codesigned here. Most of the factories are in Asia.

While there may be transition phases in certain fields, in which wages go down, and people lose their jobs, there’s no reason to believe that this downward trend will be permanent. Not everything that can be invented has been invented. New technologies, new types of jobs will replace the ones lost. A good example is the computer/IT/Internet revolution. Fifty years ago, who could have imagined how the computer revolution would take place, how many jobs would be created, and how our lives would change? There will likely be new technologies that come into existence in the future, that no one can imagine now. These technologies will produce new jobs and new companies, just as the computer revolution produced Microsoft, Apple, and Google.

Friedman is sensitive to the plight of workers who become unemployed due to globalization. He would like to see instead of lifetime employment, lifetime employability. Government and business can both help in making a worker employable for his lifetime. Education is the key to this. Tertiary education should be government-subsidized for at least two years, whether at a state university, a community college, or technical school. Employers should help train and cross-train employees so that if their job is outsourced, they have the skills necessary to get another job.

Friedman talks about social problems in America that will make the country less competitive down the road, something he calls “a quiet crisis.” He wrote the book before the Great Recession began. Now, this crisis is becoming noisier than ever. One problem is that fewer Americans are becoming scientists and engineers, at a time when the number of jobs requiring science and engineering training continues to grow. A National Science Board report in 2004 notes that science and engineering degrees represent 60% of all bachelor’s degrees in China, 33% in South Korea, 41% in Taiwan, but only 31% in the United States. The number of American college-age students who receive science degrees has fallen to seventeenth in the world, when we ranked third 30 years ago. Immigrants have filled in some of this gap. 60% of the nation’s top science students and 65% of the top mathematics students are children of recent immigrants.

Another problem is that Americans have a sense of advantage and entitlement that makes them lazier than people who grow up in less affluent countries and homes. It takes a sense of self-discipline, delayed gratification, and long-term thinking to pursue higher education and achieve success in an intellectually-demanding career. Americans seem to have lost the ability to defer gratification and look to the long-term. The best example is the debt-fueled consumption of the recent decades, financed in large part by the disciplined and motivated Chinese. The Great Recession has forced many an American to “wake up” to the new reality, and redirect their lives.

Friedman doesn’t mention a related problem that seems to afflict Americans more than anyone else: the drug epidemic. Nothing represents a national failure to delay gratification more than widespread drug abuse and addiction. The illegal drugs like cocaine, heroin, pot, and ecstasy give the user an immediate high, they feel good for a short time, but then pretty soon they feel miserable until their next fix. The legal psychotropic ones like antidepressants, antipsychotics, benzodiazepines and analgesics help people suffering from a variety of disorders to temporarily feel better. But they don’t provide any long-term relief. As I report elsewhere, many of these supposedly therapeutic drugs make people worse over the long run, suffering from chronic addiction, and physical and mental side effects. Antidepressants and antipsychotics also blunt motivation and emotion, something not conducive to career achievement. Doctors ignore these deleterious long-term effects, prescribing these drugs willy-nilly. A nation of drugged-up zombies and addicts can't compete in the global marketplace.

What should people do to keep from being outsourced? Friedman devotes a chapter to this. One suggestion is for people to work in a specialized field. Examples include specialized lawyers, brain surgeons, cutting-edge computer architects, and robot operators. This type of work cannot easily be digitized and transferred to a lower-wage location. The problem for most people is that they don’t have the skills or education necessary to work in these fields.

Another suggestion is to be anchored, i.e. to work in a service job that cannot easily be automated or outsourced. Robots or Indians can't serve you lunch or check out groceries, at least not yet. The problem with these jobs is that they are usually low wage.

Another suggestion is to be adaptable, to constantly acquire new skills, knowledge, and expertise. If you are a computer programmer and only know the C language, you’re not very marketable. The problem with this suggestion is that older and low-IQ people have difficulties being adaptable.

Friedman doesn’t mention that there is a large group of people who are being left behind in this new economy. They don’t have the intelligence, education, ambition, or skills necessary to work in a specialized field, or to be adaptable. The only thing left for them is to work in a low-wage service job. I have some friends, bright people, people who have worked in good, decent-paying, middle class jobs, who are unable to get a good job in the current economy. They are forced to take low-wage service or call center jobs. Eventually, as robots become more advanced and prevalent, even the service jobs will become automated. Then what will happen to people who can only work in these jobs? Will we have a large group of unemployable people who will have to rely on state assistance to live? How can society afford to support these people? What will being on chronic state assistance do to their inner dignity and self-worth? These are questions that Friedman and others who applaud globalization need to answer.

How an Unstable Meritocracy Has Failed America

David Brooks’ interesting NY Times Op-Ed column points out that while American society has become more fair and open, the level of trust and respect of our institutions has plummeted. The male WASP, blue-blood establishment of the past has given way to a new establishment in which religion, family, race, and gender are no longer as important. People get into the top schools largely based on intelligence and academic achievement, and after they graduate they move into positions of power in government, business, and academia. This can be seen as a triumph of meritocracy, a system in which people are promoted and reach leadership positions based on ability. Isn’t that a good thing, something that generations of Americans have longed for, something that harks back to the anti-aristocratic heritage of the American Revolution?

Brooks points out that this meritocratic establishment is lacking in several respects. One is that it’s based on a narrow (academic) definition of talent. This definition lacks context and empathy, two important factors for good decision making. In recent years, members of the political and economic elite have made some poor decisions that have severely harmed American long-term interests.

Another problem with the current meritocracy (a point which was made by the authors of The Bell Curve) is that members of it live almost entirely separate lives from everyone else. They go to their elite schools, work in a rarefied environment, live in gated communities, and marry and socialize with other elites. They could care less about ordinary people.

Another problem is that solidarity among elites is weaker. The socially connected, inbred WASP elite may have competed with each other, but didn’t fight an all-out war, as elites do today. Is it in the best interests of the country that Democrats and Republicans can’t agree with each other on anything?

A related problem is that our society is too transparent. No one knew at the time that JFK was having various love affairs, because certain topics were considered off-limits to reporters. Was it in the best interest of the country that Bill Clinton was impeached for sexual indiscretions?

The most important problem with meritocracy is that it is unstable and based on short-term thinking. The WASP elite could trace their lineage back generations, and this family-centric perspective encouraged long-term thinking. The 1960’s revolution and its aftermath swept away the WASP elite, but didn’t put any stable social structures in its place. The U.S. has been a very unstable country since this revolution. This instability occurs at every level of society, from the family breakdown, drug abuse, and crime in the inner cities, to the reckless gambling of Wall Street elites that led to the current Great Recession. Schools and infrastructure have declined as our political leaders put special interests over the interests of the country as a whole.

Brooks doesn’t offer any solutions to this problem. While we can’t go back to the 1950’s, I think that we need to start rolling back some of the reforms that have led us to our present dire situation. We need to regain our appreciation for social stability and social structures, for family connections, and for long-term thinking. Creative public policy ideas that involve such an appreciation need to be formulated and implemented.