Author: ontheoutside

Mathematics and Politics

/ ontheoutside / Leave a comment

It strikes me that there is something to be said about mathematics and politics that goes beyond just numbers.  Mathematics, because it is a logical system, guards against some kinds of sloppy thinking that can get in the way or be exploited in propaganda.  Here are a few examples.

  1. Not every function is bounded or even linear.

I’m starting here because it came up in a previous discussion of climate change. Damage from climate change is not bounded or even linear.  The world just gets that much farther from what human civilization was built to deal with.

Destruction from climate change increases exponentially with the concentration of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere.  As noted there is no such thing as a “new normal” or even a price limit for the damage done by a ton of CO2.   So there is no alternative to preemptive action, hard as that is for any society to achieve.

2. Negative numbers are just as real as positive ones.

In our national budgets positive expenditure are discussed in terms of things bought:  for infrastructure, education, healthcare, safety net.  Deficits are abstractions: possible effects on the financing costs for the national debt for example.  In fact deficits are negatives of things bought—things not bought.  They have to be evaluated by tradeoff of what that money was spent on versus what now isn’t going to be bought—for infrastructure, education, healthcare, safety net.

3. You can’t understand a function of two variables without looking at values for both.

It may seem obvious, but it is still worth stating: if you have a function of two variables, you can’t understand anything by looking at variation in one.  Performance of Trump’s golden dome depends on how well the new defense handles the offense coming at it.  We already had a much-touted proposal like that under Reagan—his Star Wars.  That was an expensive program that sounded great and went absolutely nowhere—no successful tests even of highly-simplified versions!

We’re told the time has come to build another one, because defensive capabilities have increased so much that it’s time to finish Reagan’s job.  To my knowledge, no one has said a single word about what has changed with the offense.

4. You have to be able to learn from applicable results in different contexts.

This may seem abstract, but some of the greatest advances in mathematics have been made by recognizing that results in one area can be brought to bear on seemingly different classes of problems.  Life is like that, just generally.  You have to understand how things work, so you can apply what you know to new problems.

What have we as humans learned about how a society should function?  Most of all that chaos is a bad thing.  If we are going to live together successfully, we need rules of behavior and at least mutual tolerance.  There is also some notion of caring for the weak as an essential part of social cohesion.  That is built into essentially all successful cultures and all religions, because chaos is unstable, exhausting, and dangerous. It also undermines the stability needed for economic growth and prosperity.

For international relations we have nonetheless chosen to ignore that experience, on the grounds that of course we are going to win, rule the world, and steal everything of value from everyone else. That’s not new as motivation, but it is precisely the mentality that our species has learned is self-destructive.  Christianity has a few apt quotes:  “As a man sows so shall he reap” or more to the point “For they have sown the wind, and they shall reap the whirlwind”.

 In a age of proliferating nuclear weapons and accelerating climate change, that’s not something you want to think about too much.

5. There is one more relevant point:  not all functions are continuous.

It is natural to believe in continuity, that the features of one’s current life are somehow normal and can be relied upon.  That is felt as reality, not complacency.

But history has shown over and over again that there are no guarantees.  It’s all up to us.

Trump’s Tariffs are a Dry Run for the World’s Future

/ ontheoutside / Leave a comment

As the Trump administration ramps up its efforts to sabotage climate action, we have to think about what that means.  There is only one atmosphere, and the consequences of climate change are becoming ever more obvious.  Our policies are not just putting the US at risk, we’re putting everyone at risk.

So it is only a matter of time before the rest of the world will have to react.  The US has become not just a rogue state but a criminally insane one.  The only reasonable action is a global embargo.  The US has to be treated as a matter for quarantine.

Fortunately for the rest of the world, Trump is providing an excellent transitional strategy.  As exports to the US become subject to draconian and unpredictable risks, the world has a chance to live without us. The supposed lifeline we’re throwing to the rest of the world is actually worthless—building factories in the US just increases the exposure to Trump’s whims, and further the fossil-fuel-privileged industries of the US (e.g. cars) will have little future elsewhere.

There is a remarkable consistency in US policy—we are doing everything we can to turn ourselves from a world power into an afterthought.  That’s not just the tariffs, it’s the attacks on education, healthcare, and forward-looking research.  The demonizing of all immigrants. It’s amazing what dreams of past imperial greatness can do.

Maybe it’s in part an Anglo-Saxon thing.  The parallels with Britain are close, although our fall is much greater.  Brexit was Britain’s effort to restore its nineteenth century dominance by withdrawing from cooperation with the EU.  The result was an instantaneous economic downturn that took about five years for the population to understand.  There may well be no way back—with more Farage populism in the offing, the downward spiral could continue.

We voted for Trump to bring back the glories of the post-war fifties.  He has promised to make everyone rich by shaking down the rest of the world.  With tariffs, we are in essence doing our own Brexit with everyone else. Whatever the evangelicals may believe, there is no God protecting us from folly.

We Are Russia In Ukraine

/ ontheoutside / Leave a comment

In case you haven’t noticed we just declared war on our independent neighbor Canada.  We haven’t sent an army yet, but that’s only because we think we can win with financial weapons.  But there’s no mistaking it—it’s war.  And our declaration of war was beyond ludicrous—for few immigrants, just about no fentanyl, and a balance of payments deficit that has nothing to do with protectionism.  The real reason is no better—a vanity project so that Trump can say he personally added the extra territory to the USA.

That’s pretty bad, but it is certainly not the worst of the lying going on.  For that, you can point to all the talk about getting rich. We’re constantly told that everything going on, no matter how painful or immoral is about getting rich.  But no one has any intention of creating a world where the population gets rich. This is government of, by, and for big corporations.

There is no linkage between all the firings and the well-being of the population—the money being saved is to justify the tax cuts for rich people and Wall Street.  The tariffs are a sales tax paid by buyers—a regressive tax.  The deportations will raise prices even on basic foodstuffs and essential services such as elder care.  Finally and most importantly, as even Adam Smith understood and the entire nineteenth century demonstrated, the big corporations are not going to shower golden paychecks.

If you want to understand what’s in store for the population just look at what uncontrolled free enterprise did in the nineteenth century.  The picture was very much like the story Trump tells—the European powers dominated their colonies and brought all the profits home.  Industrialists made fortunes, controlled government, and kept the work force desperate.  Uncontrolled capitalism is good at making money for itself full stop.  Most people are in no position to bargain.

There is no miracle world of uncontrolled free enterprise—the only people who preach that religion are handsomely paid to do so.  Governments can do bad things too, but without the countervailing power of government there is no one to speak for the well-being of the population.  Just look at some problems facing us today: 

– AI (with robotics) is already becoming a hit on employment. Musk’s savaging of government jobs is actually a foretaste of what to expect throughout the private sector.  Someone will have to help.

– Climate change is real—whether Trump likes it or not—and there will be major changes to be managed if the population is to be kept whole.

– Education and healthcare are necessary for personal financial success and stability.  The private sector is not going to fund it.  Punting it to the states is something business interests do to avoid paying for it.  Musk goes a step beyond that—preferentially hiring H1B slaves whose education was paid-for by someone else, and who can’t quit or change jobs.

– The technological environment is changing faster and faster.  No one predicted just how far generative AI would be able to go.  Unless we are prepared to spend real money on pure research we will be left behind.  That means not only missed opportunities in the economy but these days also military weakness.  Regardless of what politicians may say—the private sector does not do basic research.

Trump’s golden world does none of these things. It’s not good for the vast majority of people.  Except in the very near term it’s not even good for the billionaires.

In business I’ve been to plenty of meetings where someone proposes a new idea—different and exciting, thinking outside the box.  Frequently what makes it new, different, and exciting turns out to be that it’s wildly unethical—kind of like invading Canada.  Wildly unethical may be different, but that does not mean good.  In fact most of the time it’s terrible.  And with Trump that’s what we’ve got.

Nuclear Proliferation Needs Its Own Story

/ ontheoutside / 1 Comment

From a comment to the Washington Post:

There is one effect of Trump’s destruction of the international order that hasn’t received enough notice—nuclear proliferation. Every country—even Canada—now has to think seriously about nuclear weapons for defense. Otherwise they are sitting ducks for conquest.

Any kind of nuclear non-proliferation agreement is out the window. This is terrible. It not only increases the risk of use by national actors, it greatly increases the risk of theft for terrorism.

In our greed for conquest we are inviting catastrophe.

Two Views of Government

/ ontheoutside / Leave a comment

It seems to be taken for granted that everyone knows the objective of government:  it exists for the good of the country.  However it’s not obvious what the “good of the country” means, and that ambiguity leaves plenty of room for confusion.  There are two models.

Model number one is more or less derived from the family.  The good of the family is the well-being of its members.  Government exits for the well-being of the population. Reasonable enough.

Model number two is a business.  The goal of a business is returns to its investors.  The employees are a cost center, and every dollar earned by the workforce is a dollar lost to investors.  The population is at best a necessary evil, with fewer and fewer really required for business operations and with available slave substitutes (who can’t quit or change jobs) as Musk’s beloved H1B’s.

We are currently seeing model two in full operation.  Everything has to be sacrificed to the 4.5 trillion dollar tax cut for rich people and businesses. Despite all the rhetoric about a golden era, all the money from the cuts and firings ends there.  It’s golden for the people with the gold.

And that’s not the end of the story. As even Adam Smith understood perfectly, the private sector is actually not good at providing for its own success. Left to its own devices it rutherlessly sacrifices everything to immediate profit, which leads to longer-term collapse. Think about the cuts to education, research, and climate change. So as far as the two models of government are concerned, we’re running headlong into a worst of both worlds–sacrificing both the population and the economy.

Do We Neeed More Proof that Dictators are Bad for the Economy?

/ ontheoutside / Leave a comment

When dictators make bad decisions no one can stop them. Here are a few:

  • Trump likes oil, so we’re doing everything possible to push fossil fuels in the economy, and eliminating anything to support sustainable energy.   We are even so petty as to take out installed car charging stations for government employees.  So we’ve pegged our economy and everything in it to fossil fuels, a future that is going away–not tomorrow but necessarily soon, whether we like it or not.  We’re not just a non-player in the coming economy (presumably the US auto manufacturers will be lucky if they’re picked up–instead of closed down–by the dominant Chinese players), we’re tying a weight around the neck of all our industrial production.
  • We’re killing any kind of government supported research.  We have made ourselves non-players in anything beyond current mainstream production.  If you ask business leaders how much basic research is done by the private sector they will tell you the answer is pretty much none.  Business deals with current and coming product.  We as a country will no longer be inventing the future.  We can ask the Chinese for help when we need it.
  • We have decided there is no need for competence in government employees.  Instead for the entire federal government all that matters in loyalty.  There are no more real government jobs—just political appointees.  If these are the rules of the game, there will be no more competence or help from Washington.  If you don’t think that matters you should look at the mess today.  That’s the tiniest piece of what is coming.
  • We have decided to convert all of our alliances to protection rackets.  Unfortunately we’re not the only game in town.  We have opponents in China and Russia.  They, not us, have understood there is strength in numbers.  We have given them an enormous present with no positives in return.  For Russia we have even descended to flattery.
  • Our now to be jettisoned international order was established to provide stability and reduce the danger of war. It wasn’t perfect but it gave us many years of growth and peace. The danger to growth has been much talked about, but the danger to peace less so. In this new era of every land for itself, all efforts to manage nuclear proliferation are now out the window. On the contrary, every country had better get its own nuclear weapons fast–or be prepared to face defeat. In our glorification of selfish greed we’re stupidly asking for disaster.

Many people have figured out these are mistakes.  But as long as this dictatorship continues, we as a nation we have no way to fix it.

My Letter to the Democrats After the Election

/ ontheoutside / Leave a comment

For what it’s worth, I think the single most important thing that needs to happen in the Democratic Party is to fire everyone associated with the disastrously-mismanaged Harris campaign.  For now all I see are excuses, including in a much-discussed podcast.  If the Democrats can’t come to terms with what they did wrong, it’s hard to imagine them ever doing anything right. The campaign validated the charge that Democrats are arrogant elitists with no respect for the people they claim to represent. In so doing they didn’t just lose the election, they discredited everything they stand for.

If Biden had run, he would have run on his record.  While Biden’s favorability rating was low, the Biden economy was the envy of the Western world, inflation was lowest here, and the country had taken important steps for climate and infrastructure.  Biden was replaced not because he was unsuccessful but because he was no longer up to the demands of campaigning.  We had expected him to lead the fight on his record in the first debate, and were shocked when he wasn’t up to it.  Harris was put in place to address that problem.

Harris had a tough job, to put together her own campaign with only a few months before the election.  So she had to rely on party regulars to make that happen.  Poor Harris.  Poor all of us.

Harris’ genius handlers threw all of that out for a new approach.  Because of the low Biden numbers, we wouldn’t defend any of Biden’s accomplishments.  Instead Harris would become a brand new candidate, not linked to Biden’s problems, and exciting for the future.

There were two obvious problems with that:

–        It was an outright lie.  If you want to be the adult in the room, you can start by not lying.

–        It didn’t address the reasons for Biden’s low rating—in particular the pain of inflation with higher prices continuing to the present day.  In answer to the pressing question—who is to blame for my pain?—the answer was Biden, but he’s not here, so let’s just move on.  Who were we kidding?  That was acceptable to Democrats, because we believed in Biden’s economy, but for anyone else it was an infuriating punting of responsibility.

The geniuses presumably decided they were so much smarter than the voters that no one would notice.  But in fact it was the geniuses who were morons, and the voters knew exactly what was going on.  The core of the Harris campaign was an insulting and infuriating lie.

I went door-to-door with the campaign, and ran into this problem constantly.  I and other people tried to point this out to the campaign, but we were informed by campaign organizers that there were no channels up to the campaign from the field.   No one cared about all those people talking to voters.

The geniuses had a few other equally brilliant contributions:

–        Since they weren’t defending Biden’s record on the economy, they didn’t want to talk about inflation at all.  In particular no one was making the point (that you read everywhere now that the election is over!) that all three of Trump’s major measures (tariffs, tax cuts, and deportations) are wildly inflationary.  So virtually none of Trump voters thought there was any risk to their vote.

–        They repeated Hillary Clinton’s mistake of counting on big Republican defections, to the point that they went out of the way to tone down anything that might offend Republicans.  One terrible mistake was to moderate Walz’s behavior in the Vice Presidential debate—where the Harris campaign lost momentum that it never recovered.  The debate served no purpose other than to “sanewash” truly hateful Vance. Further no one ever mentioned George Bush’s disastrous 2008 crash—which is certainly relevant for Trump’s proposed policies.

This election ultimately came down to a contest of dishonesty and arrogance on both sides.  We need to recognize that the Democrats were not better than Trump in that respect.  Who knows if an honest campaign would have won, but in our eagerness for dishonesty we lost big with the people most hurt by inflation, as shown by this exit poll:

I’m not claiming there were no other issues–after all Netanyahu and Trump made sure we had a mess in the Middle East with even an October surprise in Lebanon.  But mistakes need to be acknowledged.  After this disaster there needs to be an accounting for consultants and anyone in the campaign organization making $500K or more. If we don’t fire them all we deserve what we get.

This election reminds me of experiences I’ve had in business.  A bunch of people in a room are working on a serious problem, and someone (usually in sales) gets up and announces “we need to think outside the box.”  What followed invariably was something impossibly unethical, some way of cheating customers where they couldn’t figure out what happened until too late.  Here the problem is inflation.  Let’s think outside the box—we’ll put all that awful stuff on Biden and walk away scott free!

La Clemenza di Tito

/ ontheoutside / Leave a comment

This Mozart opera is an odd piece with an odd history. It was composed at the end of his life, simultanous with the Magic Flute. But it was an obligation, not a choice. It had an imposed libretto and was intended for a major Esterhazy event. Haydn would have been obliged to do it if he hadn’t been in England, and many other composers turned it down. Mozart’s finances did not permit him to say no. If I remember he had only a few weeks to do it.

The opera has some very good parts, but a lot of filler, so it is hard to get into. It occurred to me that it might be possible to make a workable version. (Years ago I did something for the sequence of items in act II of the Magic Flute.) When I started working, it was surprisingly clear what had to happen. So clear that you might say that Mozart intended it to be fixed. In any case, this hangs together surprisingly well and helps make a case for the opera. Perhaps many other people have already done this, but I have no way to know. What I hacked up was the Jean-Pierre Ponnelle version on Unitel. Please try this link.