Political theory and the original position

The first few paragraphs were ok, but eventually this essay on how to structure a society glazed my oculars. I reference it because it's a window into what political theorists talk about -- and it's fundamentally a topic I care about (albeit without the rigor).

The theorist, a certain Mr. Rawls, is making a rationalist case that the "best" way to structure society is such that:

I. Each person has an equal claim to a fully adequate scheme of basic rights and liberties, which scheme is compatible with the same scheme for all.

II. Social and economic inequalities are to satisfy two conditions: first they are to be attached to positions and offices open to all under conditions of fair equality of opportunity; and second, they are to be to the greatest benefit of the least advantaged members of society.

In other words, Mr Rawls is specifying a resolution to the "Problem of the Weak". His proposal is a compromise between Marxist views (from each according to their strength, to each according to their need) and Libertarian views (to each according to their strength). Liberalism, in other words.

Works for me.

Gwynne Dyer: at least four June articles online

Gwynne Dyer's very peculiar web site has four new articles on Peru, conspiracy, Nigeria, Zarqawi and China. All interesting of course.

What does this guy have against subscription and notification (aka syndication)?

One extract:

... There must be a major terrorist threat; otherwise, the government is wrong or lying, the
intelligence agencies are wrong or self-serving, the media are fools or cowards, and the invasion of Iraq had nothing to do with fighting terrorism...

Self sustaining entities: corporations and the Spanish Inquisition

One of the puzzles of classical economics is why we have corporations. In theory corporations induce overhead and distortions to a pure market of buyers and sellers of goods and services.

I suspect modern economics has many good answers as to why corporations survive and flourish, but I am innocent of deeper knowledge. I am thus free to speculate in the great blogging tradition.

My hunch is that corporations have some of the self-sustaining properties of (super)organisms (which modern biology actually considers rather corporate); in essence they have a will of their own beyond the wishes of their shareholders, stakeholders, customers, board and executives. I don't think this emergent intelligence is much above that of the proverbial amoeba, but it's enough to get by in the emergent ecosphere of cash (eg. energy) flow.

Now, I admit that's whacky. But there's a tangential connection to a different story told by reputable folk:

BBC - Radio 4 In Our Time - The Spanish Inquisition

... Efforts to suppress religious freedom were initially ad hoc until the establishment of an Office of Inquisition in the Middle Ages, founded in response to the growing Catharist heresy in South West France.

The Spanish Inquisition set up in 1478 surpassed all Inquisitorial activity that had preceded it in terms of its reach and length. For 350 years under Papal Decree, Jews, then Muslims and Protestants were put through the Inquisitional Court and condemned to torture, imprisonment, exile and death.

How did the early origins of the Inquisition in Medieval Europe spread to Spain? What were the motivations behind the systematic persecution of Jews, Muslims and Protestants? And what finally brought about an end to the Spanish Inquisition 350 years after it had first been decreed?

I have more to say about the Catharists, Dualism, the Graviton and consciousness [1], but the here I'm writing about the conclusion of these eminent scholars. They felt that the Spanish inquisition was so "successful" for so long because it took on a life of its own. The Catholic church and French aristocracy set up an effective apparatus (Bushies take note) for suppressing a proto-insurgency. In France it did its job and moved on, but the unique ecosystem of medieval Spain was much more welcoming.

In Spain the inquisitorial apparatus served many purposes beyond those of the church, it became what I (not they) would call a self-sustaining corporate enterprise [2]. In other words, it developed a mind of its own; the Inquisition served enough powerful people in enough ways that it stayed in business. A business run, as it turns out, by lawyers rather than theologians. (You'd think the Church would have recognized Satan's henchmen, but they're notoriously weak at that sort of thing.)

There's a theory of history to be written that tells the story of such self-sustaining 'corporate' entities across time, space and culture. Probably to be told by a neo-Marxist ....

[1] Actually, the draft of that post is rather conventional, despite the odd connections.
[2] I do have to note that the speakers seemed to dance around how much anti-semitism underlay the beginnings of the Spanish inquisition, though much of it took place after Spain had expelled all Jews. On the other hand they point out that Spain's precipitate decline over the next 500 years was in some measure due to that expulsion, abetted by their all too robust Inquisition.

The WSJ, the American Right, and the Protestant view of sinful poverty

A brief and amusing excerpt in Crooked Timber, quoting from an off-web article by a former WSJ journalist, tells us quite a bit about the Wall Street Journal editorial page, the sin of poverty and disability, the corrupting effect of Henry Beecher's Protestantism, and the human capacity for wilful ignorance

It is all of a piece with 'The Problem of the Weak'. The Wall Street Journal's editorial pages, a large segment of the GOP, the religious right and the Libertarian party all implicitly advocate a common solution.

Great post, and some excellent comments as well.

New York Times for free? Use the library

FMH writes about the hidden power of the library account:

Follow Me Here... : 06/25/2006 - 07/01/2006

... I just logged onto the Brookline (MA) library site and discovered I have free searchable access to the full text of all New York Times and Boston Globe articles, for starters. I have paid, oh I don't know, $3 or $5 to the Times or the Globe when I have needed to download an article in the past...

University students and some alumni organizations provide similar benefits. FMH points out that one can often obtain an out-of-area library cards for a small amount of money. In practice the library databases and access systems are often archaic and painful to use, but there's a chance that will improve.

The brilliant Hilter/Coulter quiz

The Hitler - Coulter quote quiz is brilliant. I did assign 11/14 correctly, but I relied on writing style, reference to Americans, etc. If not for those tricks I'd have been guessing randomly.

Coulter's language, like so much of American hate radio, really is eerily similar to Hitler's.

It's useful to try the quotes while substituting "Jew" or "Bourgeois" or "Intellectual" or "Intelligentsia" for "Liberal". Works well with any of those.

Stross on imagining 2016

Charlie Stross is a talented science fiction writer. Here he writes about what it's like to to imagine the world of 2016 - merely 10 years ahead. Emphases mine.

Charlie's Diary: Thoughts from the coal face

... The near future is frustratingly like the present, only different. I'm surrounded by electronics and media today that would have been bizarre and exotic back in 1986, never mind 1976 — but I'm still basically sitting in an office chair at a desk, wearing jeans and a t-shirt, typing away with some rock'n'roll on the stereo. Difference from 1996: there's a download going, the progress bar is ticking away tens of megabytes instead of tens of kilobytes, and the music's playing via streaming MP3s rather than CDs. Difference from 1996: back then, the word processor had a green screen and a 10Mb hard disk, and the music was playing on cassette tape. But the organizing parameters were the same — this is a writer in his study writing. How do you signal that the story is set ten years in the future, without succumbing to spurious futurism?

6. History inserts itself into our lives, seamlessly. When did you last get through a day without hearing some kind of off-hand reference to 9/11 or the Iraq war? Kids these days are learning about Margaret Thatcher in history lessons at school. In ten years time there'll be some other iceberg-like intrusion of History into the zeitgeist: the question is, what? (My money's on something energy or environment related, and big.)

7. Trying to get into the head of a 28-year-old British professional circa 2016 — the people this novel is about — is an interesting exercise, even though people of this generation are easy enough to track down right now: the trouble is, if I ask them questions now, I'm asking a bunch of 18 year olds. Whereas what I'm interested in is what they'll be thinking when they're 28 ...

You were one year old when the Cold War ended. You were thirteen when the war on terror broke out, and eighteen or nineteen when Tony Blair was forced to resign as Prime Minister. You graduated university owing £35,000 in student loans, at a time when the price of entry into the housing market in the UK was over £150,000 (about 4-5 times annual income; the typical age of first time buyers was 35 and rising by more than 12 months per year). Unless you picked the right career (and a high-earning one at that) you can't expect to ever own your own home unless your parents die and leave you one. On the other hand, you can reasonably expect to work until you're 70-75, because the pension system is a broken mess. The one ray of hope was that your health and life expectancy are superior to any previous generation — you can reasonably expect to live to over a hundred years, if you manage to avoid succumbing to diseases of affluence.

For comparison, when I graduated university in 1986, I had no student loans, first homes cost £30,000— or about 2-2.5 times annual income — and the retirement age was 60-65. So it should be no surprise if the generation of 1988 has very different expectations of their future life from the generation of 1964.

8. Agatha Christie once said, "when I was young I never expected to be so poor that I couldn't afford a servant, or so rich that I could afford a motor car." Yet these were the prevailing parameters from 1945 to the present. I might equally well say that when I was eighteen I never expected to be so poor I couldn't afford a four bedroom house, or so rich that I could afford a computer. What terms of reference will these people use to define their relative affluence and poverty? Motor cars and domestic robots? (Too facile.) Children and immortality treatment? (Too crudely obvious.) Privacy and ubiquity? (Too abstract.) ...

Noblesse Oblige and the Problem of the Weak: Buffett and Gates

Noblesse Oblige was a good thing once. Now that we are entering neo-feudal world of Lords and Servants we need it again. Warren Buffett is a believer:

A $31 Billion Gift Between Friends - New York Times

... more than anything, what Mr. Buffett's $31 billion gift to the foundation that Mr. Gates runs with his wife, Melinda, shows is a common disdain for inherited wealth and a shared view that the capitalist system that has enriched them so handsomely is not capable alone of addressing the root causes of poverty.

'A market system has not worked in terms of poor people,' Mr. Buffett said yesterday, in an interview taped earlier in the day for 'The Charlie Rose Show' on PBS.

As for any thought he might have had in giving the bulk of his billions to his three children, Mr. Buffett was characteristically blunt. 'I don't believe in dynastic wealth,' he said, calling those who grow up in wealthy circumstances 'members of the lucky sperm club.'

I am not happy with the software Bill Gates brought us; I remember too well the excellent alternatives of the 1980s to think that Microsoft's monopoly has been a good thing. He earned his fortune ruthlessly and dishonestly. He has a lot to make up for.

I can believe, however, that he is lonely. He is intensely clever, notoriously harsh, and unfathomably rich. All of those things bring loneliness. Given Gates wealth and power it is fortunate for all of us that Warren Buffett, a more balanced man, beame his friend and mentor. Gates has time to balance the scale.

I wish the New York Times had explored Buffett's sentiments in more detail. I suspect he's thinking about the "Problem of the Weak". This is good.

Cosmologic roundup: meaning and nothingness

Jim Holt, one of my favorite science writers, has written a pretty introduction to modern cosmology. He makes the rounds of the famous, and even introduces a bit of Bayesian cosmology via the Copernican principle.

He has a light touch with the biggest possible topics. It's a fun read, don't resist.

The BBC's new blog: something different?

The BBC is launching a new blog -- of course I'll subscribe. They've have an amusing and intriguing story about about how they're approaching this:

BBC NEWS | UK | Magazine | Down with blogs... so here's another

...the editors across BBC News have got together to start their own blog. Called 'The Editors', it launches on Monday. The hope is that it will become a discussion forum for all sorts of issues and dilemmas surrounding our news programmes.

The BBC is becoming a major force in new media -- rather under the radar of much of the US. They're quiet little (big) radicals over therer ...

The Bush timetable for leaving Iraq

The good news is that the Bush plan is rather similar to what I and a zillion others write -- it's time to leave Iraq.

U.S. General in Iraq Outlines Troop Cuts - New York Times

... after criticizing Democratic lawmakers for trying to legislate a timeline for withdrawing troops, skeptics say, the Bush administration seems to have its own private schedule, albeit one that can be adjusted as events unfold.

If executed, the plan could have considerable political significance. The first reductions would take place before this falls Congressional elections, while even bigger cuts might come before the 2008 presidential election.

Of course Bush says something different ("stay the course" blah, blah), but if Bush says it's sunny an umbrella is obligatory. Follow the body, not the puck.

The cynical electoral timing is a nice touch, also predictable. On balance the plan is a good thing.

Greenland's day after tomorrow

If Greenland's galciers melted all at once, sea level would rise 21 feet. That won't happen, but the glaciers are melting faster than climate models predicted.

Computer simulations always start out with large assumptions -- like treating a glacier as a homogeneous block of ice. If the data doesn't fit the model's predictions, scientists study what's really happening and refine the models. It sounds like glaciers have complex internal structures that can cause non-linear responses to external warming.

It will be interesting to see what the next generation of models look like. We cannot assume they will show things getting warmer everywhere. Even if all of Greenland's glaciers don't melt, a large melt will introduce a new and large chaotic element to global climate change. Currents shift, precipitation varies, contintents rise ...

We'll have to wait for the simulations. Ohh, and a carbon tax might be a good idea too ....

Bank record spying: why I didn't read about it.

Another story about domestic spying. Another Cheney attack on the media.

Cheney Assails Press on Report on Bank Data - New York Times

Vice President Dick Cheney on Friday vigorously defended a secret program that examines banking records of Americans and others in a vast international database, and harshly criticized the news media for disclosing an operation he said was legal and "absolutely essential" to fighting terrorism.

I can't force myself to read about this.

I assume that any and all laws, regulations and practices that "protect" our privacy have been swept aside. I assume that the data will be used for other purposes than fighting terrorism. I assume there are no effective protections or regulations. I assume the people doing this don't understand sensitivity, specificity, response curves or positive predictive value. I assume their laptops will be stolen. I assume their data mining is no better than Google's -- and Google's spam and splog detection is very bad. I assume that Americans don't understand any of this and don't care. I've read that it's extremely unlikely that either house of Congress will switch hands this November.

Things will have to get much worse before they get better. So there's not much point in reading this ...

DeLong does cosmology: The anthropic principle

DeLong has a readable and amusing defense of the Anthropic Cosmological Principle. Now if he'd only bring in Bayes' theory.

Doing evil with Google stuff

I can't improve on the original posting or the title. Educational, amusing and inevitably prophetic:

The Devil's Guide to Google

Here’s how to become a totally evil, worm-like creature with Google’s array of services in under a month ...

I know a smart young developer who's traveled this dark road. It's hard for some to resist the combination of the technical challenge and the money.

On a different note, I've posted elsewhere about the 21st century employment opportunities for the outsiders and for the "weak", I couldn't help but notice that 'click jockey' is a position that could be filled by someoneone with fairly severe cognitive and physical disabilities. An oddly positive feature of an otherwise dark world.