What They Died For

I have included this picture in lieu of another. The one that should be here is not for a number of reasons, including that it is indeed offensive to many, many people. So too is the one I have chosen, but the primary difference is that this picture is (relatively) unlikely to cause my untimely death. Given the historical precedent of fatwas, firebombed embassies and authors in hiding, the other picture just might.

I understand that the original reasoning behind not depicting Muhammad was fairly reasonable. Preventing the worship of a human being is a worthy goal. However, as many people have pointed out, it has turned out that the ban has actually contributed to the deification of the Prophet.

As with many other religious edicts, this particular one has gone far beyond the original intent and has become a true assault on reason. The fact that drawing a cartoon can land you the death penalty in several countries is absolutely ridiculous.

To all those people who advocate self-censorship in the name of not causing a fuss, or who claim that pictures of the Prophet are not speech, consider the picture above. This picture is speech, it makes a clear statement about the sheer absurdity of a particular religious tradition (in this case young-earth creationism).

In precisely the same way, drawings of Muhammad (and the subsequent reactions) serve to make a statement about another, equally absurd religious tradition. This is speech just as much as my picture is.

This is not about Islam. This is also not about religion. I am just as opposed to laws prohibiting the burning of the American flag. We can't be hypocrites. That is speech as well.

These pictures also make a statement about freedom of religion. It is your right to believe whatever you want to believe, and as much as I will argue that belief should be based on the best available evidence, I will not ever question your right to believe something different. However, no one has a right to impose their beliefs on others, which is what is happening here.

These twin freedoms, speech and religion, form the basis of our society. If they are not worth defending, nothing is. Our forefathers understood this, and in 1939 they went to war to defend these freedoms. At terrible cost, they emerged victorious.

Now, it is our turn. As John McCrae said in his famous poem, "To you from failing hands we throw the torch. Be yours to hold it high."

As much as we would like not to carry this burden, there is no one else. The task falls to us. As much as we would like to avoid confrontation, there are places where we must take a stand. This is such a place.

Make a statement. Remind people what this is about. I would not be opposed to every magazine, newspaper and website in the free world plastering pictures of Muhammad and Jesus riding a dinosaur while burning an American flag across their front pages, under the headline, "What They Died For".

The 22nd Century Economy (1 of 10)

As much as we like to present history as a series of distinct epochs, in most cases that is an artificial simplification. Within individual societies throughout history, and now in our global society, different periods of history tend to blend together.

Each period of history can be seen as both an outgrowth of its predecessor and as a lead-up to its successor. I believe that most people throughout history have seen their own age as a transitory one, bridging the storied past and the uncertain future; I also believe that this is a healthy outlook because it creates a mindset for advancement and change.

As I have previously said, I believe that it is difficult to form forward-looking policy without a coherent vision of your goal. I believe that this is one of the reasons much government policy remains reactive, because politicians do not have, cannot articulate, or will not disclose their visions of the future.

I aim to be different. I have said before that my long-term environmental vision is of people living in urban "islands", surrounded by mostly unspoiled landscape. That vision drives much of my environmental policy. I want to expand on this vision of the future and discuss some other policy areas from a viewpoint of creating proactive policies that work toward identifiable goals.

In this post, I will start with the economy. I have referred to it as the 22nd century economy because I see our current system as being the 21st century economy, the successful but flawed basis which leads into the next age. I see the 23rd century economy as the "ideal" that the next age will play a part in ushering in. The time scales involved may be longer or (somewhat) shorter, I have simply used the 23rd century as the ideal in homage to Star Trek, which presents a vision of an ideal economy where scarcity no longer applies, people are driven by contribution rather than profit, and merit is the determining factor of success.

What we have now is a nascent global economy, artificially divided into ~200 nation-states, most with some form of mixed market system, combining capitalist economics with a moderately interventionist state. A little over half these states have some form of democratic political system, with the rest being authoritarian.

As I have said many times before, the current system is not in need of wholesale change, as it has been proven to be very efficient and has drastically improved living standards across the board. It can and will, with appropriate guidance, continue to improve life for humanity and bring us closer to our goals.

However, the system should also not remain static, because a fragmented, mixed capitalist economy is not equipped to transform into a global, democratic post-capitalist meritocracy, even if fusion power and replicators (scarcity-eliminating matter-energy conversion devices) were invented and perfected tomorrow.

I believe our attitude should be one of gradual change and improvement, constantly attempting to make our system one that will bridge the gap between the present and the future.

The obvious question then becomes, what will this "bridge" economy look like? What kind of system can reduce the problems we face today while simultaneously preparing for a post-scarcity economy and thriving in one where scarcity still applies?

I think we can start by identifying some of the things in the current system that will have to change to reach the long-term vision. Once we have incorporated those adjustments, we can work from there to complete the transitional framework.

Here are some of the problems I see with our current system:

1. The biggest problem is the inability of pure capitalism to price in externalities, that is, effects that economic transactions have on third parties. I have said before that in our system I believe governments must do their best to manage these externalities, but it is possible there is a better way.

2. A related problem is the tragedy of the commons, where a common resource (like fishing stocks or water) is overexploited because it is available to all. Again, government regulation has been the default (and relatively unsuccessful) solution to this problem, although some other novel approaches have been proposed, such as simply privatizing ownership of all resources, removing the incentive to overexploit.

3. The second great challenge we face, as I have mentioned before, is the reconciliation of profit with contribution. If we are move toward a true meritocracy, two things must happen. We must have equality of opportunity, and we must solve this problem. This will be a tricky one to solve, primarily because people don't agree on what constitutes contribution

4. Speaking of equality of opportunity, it is a necessity and we don't have it. There have been significant strides made in this area, but there is still a long way to go. Differences need to be eliminated between countries and within them. The two major sub-problems here are the lack of global economic and political integration disadvantaging people in certain countries as well as the neo-aristocracy created through inherited wealth.

There is progress being made on the first issue, through gradual increase in worldwide development as well as through political and economic integration. It is the second problem that really causes me grief.

I strongly believe that the majority of people who work their way to extreme wealth deserve to have such wealth, because they have indeed made contributions. Probably the opposite is true for so-called "trust fund kids". My observations suggest that the massive wealth they inherit tends to be a deterrent to contribution, rather than an enabler. There are exceptions, but they are rare. To solve this problem, I have previously advocated a heavy estate tax, but I am cognizant of the enforcement problems with estate taxes. A different approach may be necessary here.

5. Capitalism in its current form seemingly disincentivises efficiency in some ways. This is a curious problem, but it is pervasive. Presumably, most people would rather work less, and less time spent on low-skill activities would theoretically free up additional man-hours for more "contribution-added" activities. However, the trend in capitalist societies has been towards more work, not less, and employment economics are such that many people (and unions) are actually strongly opposed to changes that would replace human labour with machine power.

A related problem involves technologies that are more efficient, but more expensive. The energy efficiency of nuclear power, for example, is much higher than other alternatives, but its use is still relatively limited because of the cost. This disconnect between economic efficiency and technological efficiency is an interesting one, which I will have to give more thought to.

6. There is a small disconnect between our current form of capitalism and the democratic ideals we claim to value. The corporation, pervasive in today's capitalism because of its unique ability to raise large amounts of capital from strangers, is not a democratic beast. As a result, many people spend half (or more) of their waking hours in what is essentially an authoritarian environment. It would seem that we would want to move away from this if we could.

7. The last issue I will discuss is a controversial one, because of the atrocious evil that has been associated with perverse forms of the idea in the past. I thought long and hard about whether or not I should include it at all, and am fully expecting people to twist my words and crucify me for them. However, it is a real issue, and I can't not mention it.

This issue is evolution. I would argue that human evolution has been affected by the advent of industrial capitalism and modern medicine. I don't think its revolutionary to believe that there are certain genetic traits that we have an interest in promoting or preventing, mostly to do with inheritable diseases, but also traits like intelligence. It would seem self-evident that since intelligence (for example) is a trait almost universally valued across societies, and absolutely necessary for the survival and expansion of the human race, that we would want to make sure that the next generation is as intelligent as possible. It seems to me, however, that in developed countries, the smartest people are having fewer and fewer children.

By now, half of you are probably thinking I'm about to advocate Nazi-era policies of forced sterilization and the other half are probably thinking "I have five kids so he's saying I am dumb". I am not saying either of these things. I violently oppose the kind of restrictions on freedom and the loss of human dignity that are necessary for the first, and the second is not true in many, many cases, and is only a statistical argument. I am merely trying to say that if each successive generation is becoming less and less intelligent, that is (or will be) a serious problem and one that we should at least discuss in a reasonable fashion.

In the next few posts, I will discuss these problems further and try to point out some potential ways forward. Frankly though, I don't have very many answers yet, and these are tough problems.

As a sidebar, I have been reading about something called Economic Democracy, which is what got me thinking about the dynamics of a post-capitalist economy. Basically the idea is to retain a market economy, but replace corporations with worker-run cooperatives, which would borrow money from state-owned banks based on previous success and (possibly) how the objective of the business conformed with state goals. The cooperatives would pay a flat capital asset tax to the state. It is an interesting idea, and some of the ideas it presents deserve a long, hard look, but it suffers from three main problems in my view:

1. It would not be feasible to establish this system before worldwide political integration has been achieved. The very nature of the system precludes foreign investment, and it would substantially damage the economy through the loss of global application of comparative advantage. It would also reinforce national standard-of-living differences.

2. A worker-run system would suffer even more from a tendency to reject labour saving technologies in favour of inefficiency.

3. The capital allocation decisions made by the state owned banks make me very skeptical. I highly doubt that these decisions would be made effectively because of political interference and the historical inability of government bureaucrats to make good decisions on similar matters.

I will come back to Economic Democracy in later posts.