History In a Nutshell

Update, 8/24/15:  Quote of the day, via Robert Reich on Face Book:

"In all civilized as well as barbarous countries, a few rich and intelligent men have built up nobility systems by which, under some name and by some contrivance, a few are enabled to live upon the labor of the many. These ruling classes have had many names -- kings, lords, priests, fund holders, bankers -- but all are founded on deception, and maintained by power."

-- Amos Kendall (1833)

A Brief Summary of Human History

History is the chronicle of human cruelty.   There are two over-riding and inter-related themes:  Oppression and War.

Oppression

In every place and time there has been a struggle between a small elite group possessing wealth and/or power and the rest of the population.   The elite use their advantage to dominate, oppress and exploit the labor of the majority for their own gain.  Although there have been brief, occasional, exceptional periods when the playing field might have appeared to be more or less equal; by a large margin, the elites have stayed way up on top.   The tools they use to maintain their advantage are execution, incarceration, overt brutality, brainwashing, propaganda and scapegoating minorities.  And there are always willing servitors to do the dirty work of the elite in exchange for some advantage in status or creature comforts. These advantages are large from the perspective of those who come to enjoy them, but insignificant from the perspective of the elites, who grant them with the flick of a finger. Sadists and sociopaths naturally migrate into those rolls. 

[As an aside, I’ll mention the U.S.A in the few decades following WW II as one of those exceptional times.  I can’t pin down a specific date when it ended: historical corners are never turned in such a crisp and definitive manner.  But if you peruse the tool list above, it’s clear that the exceptional period is over and the oligarchs are once again in the driver’s seat.]

War

War is armed conflict between or among differing groups. There are three types of war: conquest, civil war, and revolution.

Conquest

One group, usually a nation, state or tribe, wants something that another group has - material wealth, land, natural resources, a population to be enslaved - and engages in armed conflict in an attempt to take it away from them.  Generally, the aggressor group uses some cover to incite the population and get them ready and willing to die on the next hill.  Nationalism, racism and religion, alone or in combination are usually all that it takes.  

Civil War

One group inside a country or region wants to dominate the other group.  In general, neither group has any particular merit.  Death, rapine and mayhem ensue until one side is either destroyed or gives up.  Regionalism, clannishness, racism and religion, alone or in combination are usually all that it takes.

Revolution

This one is different.  The oppressed minority somehow manages to acquire enough man power and weaponry to challenge the ruling elite and their servitors.  Usually, by the time is’s all over, there are no good guys left.

So there you have it: all of human history in a nutshell.  Did I nail it or slam the hammer down on my thumb?

Effort and Reward

Jim Kwack cites Milton Friedman with the idea that inherited wealth should be taxed at the same rate as regular income.   Given a modest exemption - say a few million dollars, to avoid destroying family businesses - I concur.

I'm not sure I believe Friedman when he says this, though.

The man who is hard working and thrifty is to be regarded as ‘deserving’; yet these qualities owe much to the genes he was fortunate (or fortunate?) enough to inherit.”

This deterministic idea gives the individual no credit at all for his own hard work and dedication, and implies that twins should be equally hard working and "deserving."  Even more insidiously, though, it enables thinking about the unsuccessful in terms of a stereotyped notion of hereditary laziness for those inheriting less fortunate genes.  Down that road lies eugenics.

The lucky sperm club notion does have merit, though.  Not in terms of abilities but in terms of financial stability and backing, educational opportunities, network connections, access to health care and numerous other intangibles.

I have a different take from Friedman, more along the lines of the ideas expressed in comments to Kwack's article by Charles Broming.   Luck - and not of the genetics dice-roll type - plays a huge and generally unrecognized roll in the success or failure of any endeavor.  Two identically talented and ambitious entrepreneurs can set up identical businesses on the same day and one might succeed while the other fails due to either completely random factors like the weather, a change in traffic patterns or gentrification, or some other uncontrollable external factor; or due to unequal opportunities like available financing, suitability of location or a variety of other luck-related circumstances.

Two identical baseball pitchers can have widely different results due to the park they play in, the quality of the defense behind them, and the run support given by their own offense.   This barely hints at the notion of unequal opportunities.

Beyond that, there is the fact that rewards are not distributed linearly with respect to outcomes.  In fact, reward levels can often be quantized.  This, from the world of pro golf, is illustrative.

The difference between making it back onto the tour and being demoted to the Nationwide might only be a couple of dozen golf shots over the course of a season, but the financial repercussions are huge. Prize money on the Nationwide is only about 10% of the tour’s. Last year’s top moneymaker on the PGA Tour, Luke Donald, made $6.7 million on the golf course; the top player on the Nationwide Tour made $414,000. Most Nationwide events are not televised, and endorsement deals are one-third as big, if not smaller. If playing on the PGA Tour is like having your product stocked at Wal-Mart, competing on the Nationwide is like selling through a regional supermarket chain.

I firmly believe that a more equal society is, generally speaking, better than a society characterized by stark and growing inequality.  Whether this notion is supported by brute economics or not; a humane consideration of quality-of-life issues for the have-nots influences the equitability and stability of society in numerous non-trivial ways.

All of this lends support to my belief in high inheritance taxes and a steeply progressive income tax.

Thoughts on Ferguson

I've been reluctant to comment on the shooting of Michael Brown because so much is not known, and so much of what has been thought to be known is either speculative or irrelevant. 

But I am now prepared to say a few things.

Whenever an atrocity is committed, two things always happen -
--  Real information is suppressed
--  The victim is demonized

We don't know - and may NEVER know - if the killing of Michael Brown was an actual atrocity.  But we see the atrocity cover-up-and-deflect scenario played out here, exactly according to script.

There's a third thing that happens, which is an amalgam of the first two - the spreading of misinformation that is either intended to be exculpatory of the person(s) committing the atrocity, or damning of the victim.

So it is with the fractured orbital bone fiction perpetrated by the right wing media and spread so far and wide in recent days.

Evidently this story originated with Gateway Pundit, probably the least reliable of all the rabid right wing propagandists on the web.  In this instance the level of deceit is astounding.  It is actual fraud.  

It was then spread by first, the Murdoch owned New York Post, followed quickly by Murdoch's Fox News, and thence like wild-fire to a wider population hungry to have their facile and too often racist biases confirmed.

This story smelled very odd to me the first time I saw it.  If the officer had a serious injury, that would have been known immediately, since he got X-rays shortly after the event.   And since the cops were eager to smear Michael Brown by releasing the completely irrelevant security video from inside the store, it's hard to believe they would have held back something that at least marginally tends to make the shooting seem more justifiable.

Then the whole thing got a whole lot stinkier when I checked out the sources.  As always, critical thinking and a slow walk to judgment are advised.

Political Incorrectness

These days there is some well-deserved critical attention being paid to the name of the Washington D.C. professional football team.   The name has been around since 1933 when George Preston Marshall, one of the original owners of the at-that-time 1-year-old Boston Braves, changed the team name to the current racial epithet.  In 1937 he moved the team to D.C.

Marshall was by all accounts a virulent racist who deliberately chose a  team name that would be overtly offensive.  Make no mistake, this was done knowingly and willfully.  1933 was not some innocent, halcyon time.  Racism in those days was more explicit, vicious and violent than anyone born in the civil rights era would be able to imagine. 

Marshall also refused to let African-American players participate on his team, until finally relenting in 1962, 13 years after the rest of the league began drafting black players.  Even then, he relented only under a direct threat of having his stadium lease revoked.  It's no coincidence that for most of Marshall's tenure, the Washington team was the southernmost in the NFL.

You can have whatever opinion you like on this matter.  But the fact remains that the team name is a racial epithet, offensive per se, and specifically selected to be so.  In my opinion, every bit of that is inexcusable. 

A couple of weeks ago I heard a radio host rant about this topic, going on to likewise condemn the names of the Florida Seminoles, Illinois U. Illini, Cleveland Indians, etc.etc.  Also included in this rant was criticism of the Altlanta Braves.  There is considerable validity to this point of view, but it's possible to take it too far.

The radio host went on to say that there are no mascots that are caricatures of white people.  But, without too much dedicated thinking, I came up with the Minnesota Vikings, Notre Dame Fighting Irish, Michigan State Spartans, and Southern Cal Trojans.  That pretty much deflates the argument.  Also, the Oklahoma Sooners and Nebraska Corn Huskers, though not ethnic groups, specifically refer to the white settlers in these areas.

The other part of it is that team names, or mascots if you prefer to think of them that way, have as eponyms entities known for courage, valor, tenacity and fighting spirit.  Consider those chosen from the animal kingdom:  Lions and Tiger and Bears, oh my, Eagles, Falcons, Hawks, Sharks, Wolverines, Badgers, 'Gators; on and on it goes.  No sheep, lemmings, flamingos or squirrels, though the Cardinals and Ducks might make you stop and go, "hmmmmm."

So I think harping about the Braves is protesting too much.  In between, there is a broad, gray area.  The Cleveland Indians Chief Wahoo is certainly pushing it.  But is that really any more out of line than the pugnacious leprechaun representing the Fighting Irish, the horn-helmeted Viking, or Herbie Husker?

As I said before, you can have any opinion you like.  Mine is that the Washington D.C. professional football team should either change their name to something non-offensive [or at least LESS offensive] or adopt a new logo.