eye of the storm

the dramatic increase in tobacco taxes raises myriad issues. alexander hamilton thought that the federal government could be largely financed by taxes on alcohol, and said in federalist 12 that americans could never be made to pay taxes directly (har har).  then:

The single article of ardent spirits, under Federal regulation, might be made to furnish a considerable sum....and if it should tend to diminish the consumption of it, such an effect would be equally favorable to agriculture, to the economy, to the morals, and to the health of the society. There is perhaps nothing so much a subject of national extravagance, as these spirits.

the thing was an obsession with hamilton. before long, revenue collectors and still licensers in the western frontier were being tarred and feathered and run out of town on a rail. then there was a violent rebellion, put down personally by hamilton through military means. perhaps we are on the verge of a smokers' rebellion, though perhaps not. oddly, the argument is that the tax will reduce consumption, yet the children's healthcare initiative which it funds will be dependent on people's continuing consumption. really, the gov ought to get busy advertising smoking. the choice between smoking and children's health insurance is meant to put opponents in the extremely untenable position of favoring lung cancer for adults over the health of children. one thing i like about the whole deal: it makes children's health directly correlate with adult ill-health, or makes the health of children and adults vary inversely, which is excellent. meanwhile, the tax is a nice revenue-generator precisely because people are addicted; addictive substances are the perfect commodities, and also the perfect thing to tax, and gov gets into the lovely paradoxical position of discouraging and depending on addiction simultaneously, as in state governments in relation to gambling, for example. or state abc boards with booze.

it's obvious that barack obama is the de facto chairman of the board at gm and chrysler (etc) and that these companies have been in that sense nationalized: they are managed by the state. 

badass religion.

been watching a lot of women's college basketball, which i love. a brief comparison to the men's game. despite the 30-second clock, the game is slower and, obviously, played exclusively below the rim, although the athleticism seems to intensify every year, unlike the men's game, which plateaued long ago. it's somewhat more of a team game, although the men's college game is far more team-oriented than the nba. the passing is perhaps better overall, with fewer amazing no-look-type assists; but there are fewer players who can break you down off the dribble. there are fewer dominant rebounders, and the guards rebound more in the women's game, and probably it's more guard-oriented than the men's game. they are just as good, or better, shooting the three-pointer, but they will miss shots from elsewhere worse; there are a lot more bricks and airballs, even on layups (not too surprising in a way given that they're not dunking or dropping the thing in from above etc). this too is slowly improving as more girls shoot more younger. they react differently to getting hurt; they'll actually sob rather than merely grimace.

but whatever. the women are magnificently competitive, and there are transcendent players; like marissa coleman last night for maryland (and coleman can shoot with absolutely anyone), or candace parker, or epiphanny prince (playing right now for rutgers), or maya moore.

i guess i'm sceptical that an international or human identity could be forged that would allow us to organize into a single international polity. the idea of climate crisis is - more than it is science, i think - an attempt to motivate this development: it is an attempt to forge us into a single worldpeople. without a global threat requiring global cooperation, there would be all sorts of resistance to an international political regime. barring alien attack, climate crisis is about as good as we're going to do. if there were a crisis the only answer to which seemed to be radical decentralization, it would not be a very popular crisis, as demonstrated many. many times by every concentration and pervasion of political power. this is why climate change is more than "science": it is a means of pushing forward a particular political vision. that is not to say that it's all crap; like i always say, i'm not realy in a position to evaluate the data. but a healthy scepticism would make use of the way the motivations and constituencies flow together. al gore or tom friedman find the idea of climate crisis extremely useful in pushing forward an entire political agenda in every area, a world squishy totalitarianism.

let me do an incredibly cursory survey/evaluation of nationalism. one origin is the reformation, as religious leaders made use of political leaders/aristocracy to try to resist catholic power. or, for example, henry viii's assertion of sovereignty. the settlement of european borders at the peace of westphalia, 1648, establishing a principle of sovereignty was a turning point. the unification of germany into a political unit out of sort of feudal fiefs took another couple of hundred years, and the argument that resulted in it is the model of nationalism: the assertion of an "identity" based above all on language, but also folklore, arts, "values" and so on: mapping the political onto the "cultural": really a discovery or a manufacture of the nationalistic idea.

key to the making of such identities, or indiscernible from it, of course, is exclusion and a valuing of one's own culture above others. another site of this development is the forging of american colonies/states into a single nation: describing a liberty-loving national character across the seaboard etc.

the modern state arises together with nationalism: hence the expression "nation-state." state power makes use of and also forges, creates, re-emphasizes national identities: an essential ground of its legitimacy. the nation as cultural/linguistic/aesthetic identity and the state as a concentration of power in certain hands are mutually parasitic since westphalia at latest.

german nationalism is the paradigm, and in relation to state power it was a human disaster of unprecedented scale, a disgusting chauvinist totalitarian mess. in other cases the results have been more benign.

in making an assessment i will remind you that nationalism without militaristic state power is relatively impotent. national identities are of course "social constructions," not natural facts, but they are also not mere inventions of state power: language and other factors yield genuine human unifications. but they are expanded and emphasized and militarized by state power, and wielded/reinforced/forged explicitly as educational/propaganda strategies.

it's hard to evaluate whether this idea is actually dissolving; whether we are actually entering into a post-national or internationalist phase is, at least to me, a question, not some inevitable progression. yes and no. cosmopolitanism and species-brotherhood are groovy. but i'm always asking this: whose power is this consituting, whose power is using this, what forms of subordination are in store? this is what people should have been asking about nationalism in 1830. and one can't help feeling that one possibility is more complete subordination and hence more thorough human disaster even than was possible under nationalism: a world hierarchy and power-monopoly.

i'm no fan of nationalism overall, but nationalism, which once was about consolidation of power, is now a stage of localism. radical localism is of course my only actual prescription: constant reduction of the scope of anyone's coercion of others.

tom friedman today:

I’m convinced that our current financial crisis is the product of both The Market and Mother Nature hitting the wall at once — telling us we need to grow in more sustainable ways.

well, ok, if you're saying that the current economic situation is caused by global warming, then i want to see the argument. i think it's truer to  say that you wish it was caused by global warming, thus enabling a redoubling of the volume of shriek - if such a thing is possible - and of the global regulatory regime proposed. everything constitutes evidence of the "crisis" and the crisis is of use in creating the desired political outcome: squishy totalitarianism gone all-world. meanwhile, freeman dyson.

i think you'll find that - let's see - the north korean missile tests are the result of global warming, which is our greatest "national security challenge." the darfur genocide. problems of tibetan monks. my headache.

ps the maryland/vandy game was one of the best women's basketball games you'll ever see. md down 17 in the first half, win 78-74. marissa colemen had 42 points and 15 rebounds.

i think the thing to really worry about is the whole kit and caboodle merging into an international monetary/trade/regulatory/political regime. it might get to the point where nationalism is actually a liberatory ideology. already, as you can see from hillary's trip, e.g., it gets obvious that the interests of the chinese state-economy are basically the same as that of the american state=economy. now this all might seem like it's a mellow alternative to feuding religions/nations/ethnicities etc. but you're constituting a completely irresistible machine of infinite power under which nobody is free, and when it turns sour - which it will because it will still consist of human beings - there'll be no possible resistance to the unbelievable disaster.

you might think the state is fundamentally distinct from the "private sector" of the economy in that any real resources the former has are based on confiscation, while the latter gets cash by lure: consumption and investment based on advertising etc. well they are different. but we should point out that, as it's demonstrating in spades, the state manufactures the money that is a fundamental commodity as well as the circulating medium of the "private" economy. if the corporation can annex the monetary and confiscatory functions of the "public sector" and the state can annex the pr machinery and the profit slice of the corporate sector, then everything makes amazing sense: it's all circulating and expanding in the same system/environment. the addition of contemporary marketing strategies/companies to politics and state functions is an important development in squishy totalitarianism. or notice the inextricability of federal reserve policy from the stock market etc.

nice piece on the magnificent kristi tolliver, playing point guard in a few minutes for maryland vs. vanderbilt: both schools with which i have a connection.

i could say, for example, that the economy needs education, of a certain kind. the state's job is to supply it, to manufacture persons for the intergalactic economy of the 31st century, sophisticated users of information technology and docile citizens.  the economy requires health care, or else we'd never get to universal coverage. the economy requires international political relations. political and economic power are natural allies, and both operate within the flow of money/power.

here's a pretty interesting piece from the campaign for liberty site. anthony gregory argues, as you might expect from a, like, freee market libertarian, that the combination of "state socialism and corporate or free market capitalism" is inherently "unstable," as demonstrated in the current crisis. but i propose to you that it's perfectly coherent, and is in fact the form of government toward which the world, more or less, is moving, a model being china. as i say, the corporate and state sectors are merging or have merged into a single gargantuan cash machine: processing all the consumption and distribution. no doubt there are still crises and cycles etc. but there's no stopping the leviathan. we could call this state capitalism or squishy totalitarianism etc, and no doubt it appears incoherent by the standards of classical economics. but it is our future and our, um, doom. the political and economic powers are naturally allied and the distinction has never been as dramatic in practice as it is in theory. but it's in its process of perfection, and the crisis is only showing this and accelerating the complete merger. all of us will be little nodes in the state/corporate machine for generations.

where gregory is right, however, is that the answer is not regulation. that's not because all state interference in the free market is counter-productive, but because in a situation in which the regulators and the regulatees are in fact the same people, the same interests, the whole thing is a silly charade. as i say, there is, more or less demonstrably, no distinction between goldman sachs and the treasury department.

this is a pretty interesting little thing. the constitution party took the approach of posting a "travel advisory" for missouri, as one might for the sudan.

an assertion i found myself throwing out at c.w. post: we think of people like thoreau, or emerson, or william lloyd garrison, as leftists. thoreau in particular was a hero of the american peace and civil rights era. but i propose to you that their politics were no closer to barack obama's than they are to sarah palin's. this is because, though they were radical reformers and advocates of the rights of women, black folk, indians, etc, they were also radical protestant/post-protestant individualists. they were profoundly opposed to all forms of authority, particularly state authority. the statist solutions for every problem characteristic of the modern american left would have been as profoundly repugnant to them as, say, palin's rejection of gay rights. the hijacking of american radicalism by collectivism and authoritarianism is a profoundly sad story, a fundamental betrayal of the ideals of american liberatory saints.

my talk at c.w. post on tuesday: non-resistance, abolitionism, and anarchism: connections in american thought. also the handout that goes with it.

basically, politicians of all stripes have had the realization that there is some backlash against infinite spending/debt, and perhaps they even actually believe that borrowing/"printing" a new trillion every week might have some bad consequences. so here is the argument: we have to spend like crazy now, then return to fiscal discipline next year when it all turns around. only, the stimulus consists largely of programs, such as health care or the education stuff, that create entirely new entitlements and bureaucracies and which are, of course, going to have to be funded until the anarchist revolution of 2083. and guaranteeing investments, or simply buying highly questionable assets, produces a debt which is very likely to grow over the years/decades rather than shrink. it's not a temporary emergency measure; it's a permanent doubling of the size of the federal government. perhaps this will help us into a secure, albeit dependent, future. perhaps it introduces semi-permanent stagflation. perhaps the dollar collapses and we mutate into a large zimbabwe. but whatever happens, we are not going to "return" to fiscal responsibility next year.

the thing about money as a purely imaginary or fictional entity, or (to put it less pejoratively) the product of a convention: if people forget what it is or suddenly realize they don't have a grasp on the concept, it ceases to be anything at all. now that's a meltdown. it's a hopeful thing to say that race, for example, is  a social construction, because then it might dissolve like a mist at any moment. we're seeing money misting over right now. the end of race might be the end of certain kinds of suffering, though it is also a loss. the end of money is would entail massive suffering, though it might have excellent results as well, like an odd return to the real world.

really what replaced the gold standard is force: you are required to accept this stuff in payment of debts etc. but there are many factors in the value of money, which also functions as a fictive commodity and the value of which fluctuates by some funky analogue to the law of supply and demand. it could lose its value even without the complete disintegration of the force at the heart of its value.

me, interviewed by john wisniewski, on alterati.

i guess it's safe to say i don't understand monetary policy. it would seem offhand that the federal reserve buying treasury bonds just sort of can't have any real effects, as though i decided to improve my financial position by offering to cash my own checks. i guess what i don't get is where imaginary and real action intersect. or maybe i'm realizing i don't actually know what money is.