Jed Rothwell wrote:
Edmund Storms wrote:
The complication I was addressing is based on the need to make a
policy decision based on many conflicting possibilities. The number of
these possibilities is increasing, as it always the case in every
country, from classical Greek times to Germany under Hitler.
Honestly, I do not see this happening. Policy decisions and economics
have been complicated throughout history. I do not see why they are more
complicated today.
Well, let me provide a few examples. Never before was a "wrong"
decision able to eliminate most life on earth. We now have at least
three ways to do this - by nuclear weapons, by bioweapons, and by
ignoring growing CO2 in the atmosphere. I get the impression that
policy makers have no understanding of these dangers, especially the
Bush administration.
Never before have the economics of the world been so inner rated and
complicated. In the past a company, located in a particular country,
made something using local labor and materials. A simple ledger could
be used to keep track of their activities. Now a company is located all
over the world, it sells its products everywhere, and make the products
in many locations. They use money from many sources, including debt
based on derivatives, and other new and complex systems. Some companies
are more wealthy and powerful than many governments. The activities can
only be understood using large computers.
Never before has scientific knowledge been so extensive and complicated.
Knowledge is growing so rapidly that it can only be organized using
computers and no single individual can understand the general field of
scientific knowledge. This was not always true. People we elect to
manage this system are generally scientific and economic idiots, as
recent decisions demonstrate.
There were often times in history when people could
not tell whether policies were helping or hurting. The British
experience with the East India Company and later with their colonies was
so complicated that economists and historians still argue about whether
the British made money or lost money on the deal, and it is even more
difficult to determine whether the people in India benefited more than
they were harmed.
Yes, and this is a good example of my point. As a result of this
complexity, the British Empire Died. England is a much different country
now. The development of the computer has made a greater amount of
complexity understandable in recent times. However, even this tool is
now being overwhelmed. In addition, the educational system has not kept
up in the US so that an increasing number of voters are totally ignorant
of basic information. This ignorance produces confusion and anxiety, so
they turn to religion, something they can understand and from which
they can obtain emotional support. They can't understand or control the
threats - maybe God, if asked properly, well help.
(There was no question that a small class of people in
England made a fortune on the colonies.) Pre-modern Japanese governments
gathered immense quantities of data from the population, and they
micromanaged every aspect of the economy and millions of people's lives.
The inventoried every major tree in the country. They specified the type
of cloth that every class of person was allowed to make into clothing,
how many suits of clothes people would be allowed to own. They spelled
out how big their houses could be, how they were designed, what kind of
wood was allowed in each type of house. They decreed what kind of dishes
people of different classes and occupations would be allowed to use.
They did not just make these rules; they enforced them, with inspectors,
paperwork galore, centralized record keeping and so on. This was an
incredibly complicated undertaking.
I suggest the effort was designed to reduce the complexity for the
general population. Ordinary people in Japan did not need to know very
much, they only had to follow the rules. The people in charge had to
understand the system very well, but these people could be given
sufficient education. The US takes an ordinary C student and puts him
in charge of a system that is very complex and open ended, with few
rules. It is no wonder we are in trouble.
I assume that the US congressmen are smarter than they look, they
understand that ethanol is an energy sink, and they voted for it because
they are corrupted by payola from big agriculture.
They may be smarter than they look, but they are not smarter than they
act. Granted, corruption is common place. However, even obvious self
interest does not seem to be acknowledged. Why would a smart person who
needed votes from workers in his state support NAFTA?
This is nothing new.
The U.S. Congress has often voted for economically dysfunctional and
unfair taxes and benefits. The ancient Roman legislators blocked the
construction of better channels and improved freight landing docks and
warehouses in Rome, because they want to keep a choke-hold on the
importation of food at critical times of the year, to drove up prices.
It is likely they were paid off by by corrupt shipping interests who
wanted to gouge the public by keeping supplies tight and prices high.
And we all know what happened to Rome.
During the fake California energy crisis of 2000, Enron and other
companies did the same thing, and the US fossil fuel companies
accomplished exactly the same thing this week: they engineered an energy
bill that rewards them with billions of dollars while choking off the
development of competing technology and efficient automobiles. They even
managed to slide in a provision that kills the development of
energy-efficient overhead fans by nullifying standards set by the
California legislature. (This is a gift to Home Depot -- a major
contributor.)
Greed will always be present. The problem comes when complexity is so
great that greed can not be kept under control. ENRON is a good example
of a greed driven company that created a system that was so complicated
that government could not control it. Only bankruptcy stopped the
greed, not the government. ENRON could have milked the energy system for
many years if they had controlled their hubris.
Ed
It does not seem complicated to me. I would call it corrupt,
dysfunctional, treasonous, and a lot of other nasty words, but not complex.
- Jed
