Naivete on the Left Concerning Corruption

Just listening to Heather 'Digby' Parton on The Majority Report. Bit disappointed with how those lefties are marvelling at the naked corruption surrounding the current US administration. They seem amazed that Republicans no longer seem to care too much about hiding their corruption. And they discuss how Donny Trump had broad appeal partly because he claimed he knows all about corruption form his business world and so he will be able to work the system for the benefit of his people (little did they know his people are not going to benefit from his brand of corruption fighting corruption).

Here's the episode:

Naivete over Corruption

All that was fine if a little simplistic, but what triggered me was when Sam Seder and Digby seemed stupefied that a dude like Chris Collins could be so corrupt for a gain of a mere 700 thousand when he is already a multi-millionaire (worth 25 million they claimed). This is very naive. So here is what I posted:

The naivete of Digby! Whoa! Someone like Collins gets multi-millions they cease to be corrupt just for the money, it becomes more a game of one-upmanship, "How much more than my buddy on Wall Street can I make without getting caught...". So it's not hard to understand these folks, they operate on a relatively simple psychological level. Without getting draconian we (all of us) need to accept some sort of reconfiguration of economics in praxis whereby money is used purely as a medium of exchange but not something anyone can hoard, that removes the profit motive, but does not stifle investment. I've been reading Paul Mason's book "Post-capitalism" and he nearly gets there, but gets too hung-up on cyber-utopianism and "knowledge economics" --- similar techno-optimism tunnel vision to the Zeitgeist folks. What these folks are missing is the spiritual dimension of ethics and morals which, contra- to historical materialism, have to be the foundation for motives for moving away from capitalism. (In fact, if you read Marx, he was deeply spiritual, his whole historical materialist vibe was intellectually disingenuous, since his writings are permeated with moral and ethical concepts. All Marx was really saying, in a confused and obscure way, was that old traditional religions had become corrupt --- but corruption their material pursuits and power structures, not in their foundational morals --- and deeper spiritual motives pervade all people and should be the basis for our concrete material considerations and actions, provided we do not fetishize the spiritual by avoiding putting spiritual principles into action.)

More Naivete over Meritocracy

Earlier in that MR episode, Seder and Digby discuss the "failure of meritocracy" in the USA, briefly alluding to Chris Hayes' book "Twilight of the Elites" (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Twilight_of_the_Elites).

As is typical the USA screws up at the foundations re: Hayes' analysis of "failure of meritocracy" . A meritocracy is what you want, but it cannot be a "David Brookes/Tom Friedman" meritocracy based on education level or income level or IQ, because none of that guarantees justice & freedom from corruption, a nation should want a meritocracy for sure*, but on the *merits of ethics and spiritual values (honesty, compassion, trust). You do not need a PhD to be a wonderful person, and (as any doctoral candidate knows) a PhD does not inoculate one against indulging in corruption and dishonesty. From the stating the bleedin' obvious department.

I hope a few readers think that Hayes' is unwittingly hilarious, e.g., when he writes about "fractal inequality":

From Wikipedia: "Hayes expounds the concept of "fractal inequality" defined as the insecurity which haunts elites of not belonging to even more elite circles from which they are excluded. He credits the insecurity caused by fractal inequality, coupled with what he calls "the cult of smartness" for rampant institutional corruption.

and his solution? (don't laugh now!):

"The book ["Twilight of the Elites"] concludes with an exploration of the rise of leaderless organizations such as Occupy Wall Street."

Seriously though, if you do not find that slightly hilarious I would question your perceptions. What is Hayes' smoking, whatever it is I do not want any!

Leaderless or flat hierarchy organizations are fine for many institutions and purposes, but leaders are necessary when fast decisions can be made and responsibility is tightly enforced --- i.e., when an executive is needed to complement the otherwise flat hierarchy. The two organizational structures are thus not incompatible. An organization could even have rotating leadership, and/or annual voting for leadership. Permanent boards of directors are also useful, but permanent membership is not, boards can be annually elected.

If you don't find the "fractal inequality" concept hilarious then let me explain: Hayes' is using language and concepts from physics, non-linear dynamical systems theory, colloquial known as chaos theory, which predicts many types of fractal geometry in natural systems. But wealth and meritocratic hierarchies are not fractal. Hayes' is just using this as a buzz word to make his boring writing seem a bit sexy. NYT Best Sellers readers love that sort of faux highbrow physics reference. But merely referencing fractals is not what is hilarious. What is more hilarious is that Haye's is arguing elitism is a dying "thing", but he writes as if he is trying to appeal to the elite with his jargon and NYT best seller inspired vocabulary. "Fractal inequality" is obvious jargon of the kind a great (truly smart) writer would avoid, as George Orwell advised, a great writer uses plain language, avoiding jargon, and avoiding cliche, and writing as clearly and directly as possible. (I do see the irony here that my own writing is not so flash.)

What Hayes is actually writing about is something much simpler, it is the culture of envy combined with greed. There is nothing fractal about this. There are just greedy people, some who have more wealth than the others.

There is merit in some of Hayes' idea. Wealth and income distributions are self-similar over different scales, so if you look just at the bottom 10% you should find that the 9-to-10th percentile have more wealth than the 1-to-8th percentile, roughly in similar proportion to the 99-to-100th percentile compared to the lower 1-to-98th percentiles. This power law distribution is fractal geometry. If you split a sub-population into a lower 99% and a top 1% you should find the same inequality pattern, the top 1% own as much or more wealth as the bottom 99%. If you do find this, then the distribution is fractal-like.

However, Hayes was writing about cultures within cultures. Cultures of envy scaling also in power law fashion? Ok, I will concede maybe Hayes can get away with this, since I do not have any data whether this is a real thing or not, but I bet he doesn't either, it is just a fiction. He should stick to the material facts about income and wealth inequality, and not confuse the issue by bringing greed, envy, and corruption into play.

The simple facts are that what drives such inequality is not fixed solely by trying to eliminate envy and greed, although that would help. Rather, what we need (at least until people generally become less envious and less greedy) is a structural change so that people are not working for wages and monetary wealth is not hoarded. The motive for doing business needs to be to help people, not just to make money. How we do this has to be some kind of post-capitalism. We have to find ways to eliminate profit motives.

Lest you think this sounds insane, I will just point out the most successful tech company in the world at present, Apple, was founded and recovered from near total collapse (i the 1990's) partly because the founder, Steve Jobs, was driven by an aesthetics (to build the best products and focus on user experience) rather than by profits. He wanted to build great devices, and making money out of this was secondary. He was an arch capitalist, no doubt, but in a post-capitalist economy he would also have done just fine, and his brilliance would have perhaps shone even brighter.

I say this even though I loath Apple products, and based on Apple's business and tax avoiding practices alone I would recommend boycotting all Apple products, no matter how cool their products are. You do not need iTunes to get great digital media content. No that Google and Android are much better, but at least the Android OS stand-alone is not a business which exploits users too badly (although most smartphones based on AndroidOS probably have spyware on them, just like the iPhone). I am a GNU+Linux user if you must know. So yeah, not fond of Steve Jobs at all.

So there is another even better example of post-capitalist type success in tech: that would be all the free open source software created on top of Richard Stallman's pioneering efforts in creating the GNU system which all began with his FLOSS efforts on writing the first truly free (as in freedom) C compiler. Linux piggy-backed on top of Stallman's software. Tha's why it should be called GNU+Linux. Did Stallman do this for money? You can read about it for yourself in the copyleft book "Free as in Freedom" by Sam WIliams:
https://www.pdfdrive.com/free-as-in-freedom-e20432923.html